Hardcasual

If you haven’t had time to pop in your fresh copy of GTA IV and don’t want a single blood-spattered moment ruined for you, don’t read further. Though this article won’t go deep into the plot or contain any major spoilers, I will be talking almost exclusively about a character encountered a good two hours into the game. You’ve been warned.

At first, I had trouble connecting with GTA IV’s narrative. A few months ago, I saw Ken Levine speak about Bioshock, and he stated that designers must consider that the majority of buyers are meatheads who want to fire first and get story later. He may be right, because I couldn’t help it, but feel that the guns and guts weren’t coming soon enough. After a half-hour, I Googled “GTA IV cheats” to find the weapons, health, and spawn codes.

Then, for another half an hour or so, I went on a massacre across greater Liberty City—helicopter duels at the statue of liberty, grenade tosses on the highway, and, a new favorite, rocket-jumps off the Empire State Building.

With that out of my system, I returned to the campaign’s narrative, and have since been able to enjoy the game at a leisurely pace, even undertaking the wide variety of side-missions with my dealer, Little Jacob, my cousin, Roman, and my girlfriend, Michelle. Yeah, we’re so dating.

When I drunkenly drove Michelle to her house after drinks at Steinway Beer Garden, she announced we were an item. She then flew out the passenger window as the vehicle careened into the tale of an ice cream truck.

A similar event happened, again out of the blue, when I met a peculiar, wealthy man roaming the streets. I walked up to him, and the game entered a cinematic where he criticized my European heritage, then flattered himself by forking over a fresh one hundred dollar bill. Strapped on cash and in desperate need of health, I gladly took it. Then, as a symbol of true good fortune, I spotted a hotdog stand across the street—two steps forward and a garbage truck blindsided me.

What I’m getting at is GTA IV’s narratives, intentional or unintentional, are dark and brutal.

That’s why Brucie Kibbutz is both a breath of fresh air, and, for me, the cherry-on-top of a carefully crafted story sundae. Brucie’s a steroid-popping, car-thieving maniac. As a cliché, a stock version of the same character would play a lot like Biff. Instead, he’s highly likable and surprisingly wise, all because of one well chosen character trait: Brucie’s impenetrable confidence both in his existence and his role in Liberty City. He’s a dude. He’s a ‘roider. He’s a racer. And he’s definitely “alpha.”

But best of all, those labels are never a problem for Brucie, because he’s always the first to identify himself. He’s resolute and so is his image.

How Brucie Kibbutz pulls back the curtain of GTA IV’s mechanical world after the jump…

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A month ago, Sam gave his opinion on Call of Duty 4, while taking a jab at me for skipping it. Look, the holiday season busy was last year, and though CoD4 was on my to do list after playing the multiplayer beta, one excuse or another always got in my way.

Excuses no more! I just completed the solo campaign on Hard, and I agree, the game’s great. But what more can I say? Reviews, blogs (including our own), and forums have covered the great scenes.

SPOILERS: You shoot militants sleeping like lambs. Stumble for safety before radiation kills you. Cause carnage with warship guns while your pilot quips.

These are all awesome moments, and I don’t mean to understate them by carelessly listing them. That said, they were for me (as they now are for you, if you haven’t played–sorry) spoiled. But honestly, if I play a game a month or more after release I’m shocked to be surprised once in 8 hours of game play.

Call of Duty 4 shocked me.

How I fell for a swimming pool after the jump…
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A few days ago, over coffee and Scrabble, my friend announced plans to buy his five-year old son a Nintendo DS and a couple games to jump-start his kid’s collection. He asked my opinion about children’s games, and I gave him my usual spiel: surely, there are great games exclusively for children, but rather than patronize the boy, give him something normal gamers play like Mario Kart DS, or Animal Planet, or Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword. And he splashed his coffee in my face, and bid me good day!

Actually, he let me explain, and, as usual, I mumbled, chased my tail, and recanted my recommendation. And, as usual, I thought up the perfect reply a few hours later–coincidentally while building the perfect scrambled egg sandwich.

First, I believe for videogames to best educate children they need a context, usually best provided via an additional component: a family member, a teacher, or, possibly, a book. Though I respect edutainment games, without proper support, they often confuse children. For example, a New York children’s game firm recently had children play a first-person game where their avatar was as an illegal immigrant.

One particular level went as follows. The player steps into the first-person perspective of the illegal immigrant. He immediately witnesses a terrible accident, but when he stays to help the injured people, the ambulance driver reports him for deportation. Game Over. Insert credit. A young girl retries the level, but, thinking she learned from her classmate’s mistake, chooses to run away from the accident. Game Over. She’s punished for abandoning the people in need.

Children are used to games where you win. In this situation, they were forced to lose. Many children hated the game for putting them in this uncomfortable situation, and refused to read or listen to additional information provided by the game. Teachers were necessary to explain the situation, calm the children’s anxieties, and answer any questions.

So how, in any way, is Ninja Gaiden: DS (Dragon Sword and Dual Screen, well-played Tecmo) educational? It’s a virtual workbook, best supported by a strong teacher.

Teachers help explains workbooks and offer assignments, so, let me just don these sharp glasses and this over-worn tie—ink stains, no biggie. Great! Welcome to Prof. Plante in the Case of the Shaky Recommendation. Students, please grab your Ninja Gaiden workbooks.

Notice how the game requires the player to hold the DS not in the usual horizontal fashion, but vertical, like a small book. Many of NG: DS’s best qualities come from this brilliant design choice. Now, turn on your games, open a new file, and make sure to play on Normal—Hardcore Gaieden-ites, you’ll have your day.

The player’s placed immediately into a duel against Ryu, and allowed to explore her move-set with no rules or guides. The sequence, featuring Ryu and Momiji, isn’t hostile, but a spar between friends. It’s an important, explorative moment, that allows for creativity and discovery. Since the basic moves aren’t locked, an advanced player may learn a trick or two from the confrontation, while a younger player may surprise herself by unintentionally performing a multi-hit combo.

Afterwards, the player’s carefully informed of the basic touch screen moves: poke there and Ryu throws a shuriken, pull across here and he slashes, whip up and he jumps. Combined with the DS’s book-like format, the game mechanic resembles a pop-up book. Each screen, or page, requires the player to follow basic physical actions—pull, push, and poke—to get the page’s available reactions. When they complete the page, they progress to the next, receive a little more of Gaiden’s story, then re-perform the physical actions for a new set of reactions.

Video games further ruin the youth of today after the jump….

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On the weekends, HardCasual hands over their keys to friends. We encourage them to share their rants, raves, or groans about whatever they feel fit–the podium’s theirs. We only ask they stay on topic, don’t incite revolution, and vacuum the living room.

This week, a local NYC playwright and musician, Chris Littler, takes time away from the high arts to bless us with a revelation: Super Smash Bros. is the first Jukebox Game. If SVGL’s blasphemous SSBB comments made your blood boil, I warn you, beware. For what follows digs deep into the nether regions of Nintendo, Broadway musicals, and ABBA.

Proceed with Caution.

The Jukebox Video Game

Mr. Plante and I are currently trudging through the seemingly endless single-player mode of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. He does most of the grunt work. The camera follows him as he bounces around while I do my best to comprehend what the hell is happening on screen and stay alive.

Since the majority of my time is spent waiting to respawn, I have plenty of time to consider the big question that Subspace Emissary begs be asked of itself. Namely, WHAT IN HIGH HOLY SHITBALL ISLAND IS HAPPENING?

Why are Diddy Kong and Star Fox wandering the jungle, looking for a fight?

Oh. Then why are the two Earthbound leads (totally the same person) bouncing around a decrepit old zoo together?

I see. Ancient Wizard, you say? Okay, well who let Ganondorf, one of the most inept villains in videogame history (watch your back, Bowser!), run the villains new ramshackle bureaucracy? Were there always this many R.O.B.’s zipping around the world, and if so, who decided that an outdated Nintendo accessory would make an acceptable henchman? By my estimates, the Virtual Boy has a decade on R.O.B. Does that not count for anything?

Okay. You already knew that the game makes no sense, and maybe you’ve already come to terms with it. And, I admit, my own gut instinct was to shut up, plow through it, and forget the whole thing ever happened once everything that could be unlocked was unlocked.

But I can’t do that. I’ve got fingers to point.

See where the finger pointing leads after jump…

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(All apologies to Albert Brooks. And Jews. Who are more than welcome in space.) 

Is three hours into the single-player campaign too early to start talking about Mass Effect? No? Then let’s do this.

Mass Effect, BioWare’s yadayada-wah-wah-you’ve-heard-all-this-why-do-I-do-this-for-AAA-games, is about as far from the “hardcasual” moniker as you can get. It’s just straight up kick you in the head nasty-ass hardcore. It’s got an inventory system that doesn’t work, to begin with, and even reviewers weren’t able to puzzle out the experience system.

 So why am I so excited that I’ll spend my fleeting gaming moments climbing the dialogue trees instead of, say, the quick games of NCAA ‘08 or Pac-Man: Championship Edition that are much more my usual style?

This is exactly what the good people at WordPress developed the jump for.

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The videogame is a new medium, and unlike theater, which has had centuries to develop, it lacks established forms. Many designers and scholars have written guides and manuals to game structure, but most of these books rely on genre, a tool devised to delineate audiences for marketing games, not for game craftsmanship. As writers and avid fans, HardCasual will participate in game forms analysis in a bi-monthly column titled “The Save Files.”

Little debate went into the topic for the first “Save File.” Aristotle’s Poetics is recognized as the guide to popular drama. Utilized by every major sitcom and blockbuster picture, to some screenwriters it’s a tool, to others, a Bible. Today, FPS’s use the form to tell epic, Hollywood stories, but it was in 1985, when one mustachioed hero first jumped, fireballed, and plumbed, that the form reached gaming stardom.

To understand Super Mario Bros.’s play mechanics is to understand the Aristotelian form; yet, games offer an interactivity unfamiliar to previous mediums. Below, the affects of SMB’s interactivity on and relation to the five parts of the Aristotelian form are broken down in three ways: the literal, Mario’s actual action; the traditional, Aristotle’s definition of the action; and the game factor, how the game either subverts, modifies, or expands Aristotle’s method.

The Aristotelian Form in 5 Parts:

a.) Inciting Incident:

The Literal: Mario sees a pile of rocks. He cannot turn around. He climbs.

The Traditional: The player is often allowed a brief moment to absorb their surroundings before they are forced to progress. In SMB, the inciting incident is simple: a Goomba. The player must either evade or jump on the Goomba to survive.

The Game Factor: SMB forces the character forward via an invisible wall. As the player progresses, the wall, a constant few paces behind Mario, restricts the player from retracing any ill-chosen footsteps. It’s great for adding action, and sucks for catching 1Ups off a bad bounce.

b.) Rising Action:

The Literal: Mario hops from rock to rock, avoiding potential enemies and gaps.

The Traditional: As the level progresses, enemies’ and obstacles’ difficulty increases. The player receives a sense of accomplishment as they stomp Koopa-Troopas and explore dangerous pipes.

The Game Factor: In other narrative mediums, the character often learns one lesson, and applies it to his next trial. Videogames force the player to continually learn and fail and learn and fail against a single enemy. A SMB novice may take a few lives to stomp their first Goomba. They may then encounter an enemy that requires a different method to avoid or defeat. Each enemy teaches the player a lesson and requires that lesson’s application, thus each enemy represents its own miniature rising action.

This will be discussed further through Aristotle’s Tri-Partite Structure. Likewise, it will include an equally adorable handmade diagram.

The Climax, a diagram, and Mario’s Tri-Partite Structure in Tri-Parts After the Jump… (more…)

Gore Verbinski’s recent comments on the MMO genre and zero-narrative received mixed reaction–snide chuckles, enthusiastic yelps–across the videogame blogosphere.

Here’s a quick recap:

Verbinski’s “big idea:”

“The initial response is that gaming needs good writing. I’ve heard that. They need screenwriters. Well, hold on a second. Before you jump to that conclusion, I don’t want to impose cinema’s narrative onto a completely different medium. I think that’s naive. The fact that the player is also the audience means you shouldn’t be imposing a scenario where the audience is passive. Don’t put those rules onto gaming. So out of that came in my mind new forms of narrative. I said, “Well, wait a minute, what if there is zero narrative?”

Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft responded disparagingly:

“The game would be a fucking mess that’s what. That, or Gears of War. Keen as ever, Verbinski’s in the early stages of planning some sort of gaming secret project. Hope it doesn’t suck.”

While Joystiq was enthusiastic:

“…but overall we can’t help but get caught up in the excitement and trust that Verbinski has the right message. Now how about some game work, Verbinski? Those Spielberg and Lucas guys are all over it.”

Yet, neither blog dug too deep into the implications of zero-narrative games, nor did their comments sections. Immediately, people discussed Portal, a game that would have succeeded without a narrative, though it was the narrative—the cake, the lies, the pit of fire—that made it a smash hit. Yet, I believe these same narrative points could have been accomplished in a non-traditional narrative form, one close to Mr. Verbinski’s.

Like all blockbuster film directors, Mr. Verbinski has a knack for speaking grand. Surely, he does not mean that all new great games should lack a narrative entirely, and though he specifically discusses the need for an MMO where players can develop their own storylines (i.e.: WoW meets Fable 2), a linear game like Portal represents a nice step towards zero-narrative.

Portal accomplishes what Half-Life could not. The player can finish maps in many different ways. Without additional players, your avatar does not play like the face-less, voice-less Gordon Freeman, and with little character history, you are able to project yourself into said avatar. And while Half-Life always resembled a film, Portal feels like a game. The mazes, the tests, and the portal mechanics: all these things are parts of ludology, rather than narratology. And they accumulate in a shocking moment where the game’s fate and narrative teeters on the player’s decision to progress or to submit.

Portal spoilers and Source Engine blasphemy after the jump… (more…)