Heart-dropping moments

[Mister Six]

I half agree with this about Just Cause. The first 10 hours or so are incredible, but the diversity in missions and ideas are incredibly low. Every mission is usually just go to a base, kill someone or create an explosion and then run away.

"It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it..."

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I heard that technique often leads to a satisfactory outcome.

[Still Not George]

I agree with essentially every word TaC says about Halo. It's just... dirge in game form. Saying "every game after was influenced" is a bit misleading; yeah, the Call of Duty and Gears of War series copied it in places, and those places are the crappest bits of CoD and GoW.

Give me Red Faction: Guerilla or Timesplitters 3 any day of the week. Halo? Feck orf.


Anyway... heart-droppers. At this point I will again mention the completely needless and pointless STUPID FUCKING BOAT LEVEL in Half Life 2. Honestly, guys, you've made one of the best-plotted games of recent years. Do you really need to pad out the early game with a hour of riding a fucking stipid boat around endless identitcal dockyard areas? Really? You could just reduce the "expected gameplay time" by 1 hour, no-one will notice. You don't need to spend any more than about 3 minutes in that fucking boat. JUST FUCK IT OFF.

[Mister Six]

The sequels are a huge mess. Halo 3 gets it back to being quite good, but I think they lost something not having it all in the same environment. Lack of immersion, lack of context. They're a bit like later Peep Show series, same thrills, but difficult to grasp what's at stake.

Yes, absolutely. You're in a ship! You're on Earth! You're in some kind of swamp! You're in the Covenant! You have no idea what you're doing.

The beauty of Halo is its simplicity: Fuck, we're on a mysterious ring -> Better save all my marine pals[nb]I used to get really attached to those guys. I'd even reload if I accidentally flattened one in a warthog.[/nb] -> Hang on, zombies? -> AAAARGH! -> So the ring's going to destroy the galaxy? Best put a stop to that -> Yay!

The broad strokes and lack of detail make everything bigger, brighter and more mythic. As soon as you start faffing about with a regular supporting cast (like the stereotypical black sergeant), worrying about Covenant politics and setting it in the backstreets of Earth cities you lose all that. Plus, as you say, the storytelling itself is pretty poor and clearly written by people who are too close to the franchise (or expect everyone to have read the tie-in novels and websites).

Speaking of poor storytelling, here's one: getting about seven hours into Final Fantasy XIII (wouldn't have kept going that long, to be honest, but I was being paid to review it, so...) and realising that the only way to follow the story was to read the chapter recaps on the main menu that explained all of the context and backstory that nobody bothered to put in the endless fucking hours of CGI and cutscenes. And, around that time, realising that I'd burned an entire working day on the game but still only had about a third of the available battle options. Because obviously Squeenix thinks that its fans are so thick that they need 16 hours of tutorial before they can play the game proper. I think it took me less time to learn how to drive a car.

[Pedro_Bear]

the worst part of TR, especially the second I think, was having to run around a huge area looking for a really hard to find key or secret entrance, then loads more running to check all the rooms again, etc.

Tomb Raider 3 was the one for that. There was so little connection with the levers or puzzles where they were accessed as to what obstacle they removed on the other side of the map that it felt random rather than directed. The closed room puzzles of the original felt more satisfying. [nb]That and Lara is armed with a bazooka in 3... ancient wooden door that is going to dance me round the map for the next hour or so looking for a key... bazooka... hmm... There are ways to force clever, multi-part obstacles on players that feel consistent within a setting.[/nb]


Cut scenes in RTS that involve grouping our strategic genii together for a melodramatic man chat, out in the open, for no good reason other than to invite an airstrike or trigger an ambush. Chaos Rising pulls this one mid-level on occasion. The fuck?! I placed the slow-moving ranged squads in heavy cover for a reason dipshits, but no, go on, all meet up in the wide open all of a sudden and have a good ol' wooden dialogue exchange despite having, you know, radio contact with each other... Yes, de-stealth too Cyrus, why not? Send up a couple of flares for good measure... No wonder it's so Grimdark around here, you guys supposedly holding back the enemies of the Emperor are idiots when left following the script. And just where are the Bolter Bitches? Getting shit done while you guys get shot, presumably.

Cut scenes should never interfere with on-going strategy in a level. Stealth 'em ups are very bad like this. We've crept along all level, killing from the shadows, being clever and using the locale to our advantage, distracting and misdirecting, and we've finally got the target of the mission in our sights... so we STEP out into THE WIDE OPEN and spend a cut-scene GRANDSTANDING for no good reason, and then get our arses kicked for a monotonous run-round-in-circles-dodging end of level fight which could have been avoided. Grandstand over the corpses, not in front of three bodyguards. There are ways to force this sort of unstealthed confrontation without resorting to forced cutscene bullshit; just presenting it blankly shatters the illusion of control. [nb]It's anachronistic to demand end-of-level boss fights in a relatively free-form game anyway, but that's probably a different issue.[/nb]

[Mister Six]

Anyway... heart-droppers. At this point I will again mention the completely needless and pointless STUPID FUCKING BOAT LEVEL in Half Life 2. Honestly, guys, you've made one of the best-plotted games of recent years. Do you really need to pad out the early game with a hour of riding a fucking stipid boat around endless identitcal dockyard areas? Really? You could just reduce the "expected gameplay time" by 1 hour, no-one will notice. You don't need to spend any more than about 3 minutes in that fucking boat. JUST FUCK IT OFF.

My heart drops every time someone refers to Half-Life 2 as being well-written or well-plotted. It really isn't at all. I mean, it almost certainly had the best pre-production and visual design of any game of its era (indeed, I'd argue that it probably wasn't trumped until Bioshock in that regard) but its plotting is bobbins and the writing is dreadful.

I mean, here's the plot of Half Life 2:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gordon Freeman, held prisoner by The G-Man, awakes in a future Earth that's been taken over by The Combine. He stumbles about getting into scrapes until he meets Alyx Vance, who takes him to meet a scientist. The scientist is part of a tiny resistance force and has built a teleport machine to get them into their other base. The machine fucks up so Gordon has to head out on foot. Eventually he makes it to the base where he meets Alyx's dad and another scientist, Judith,[nb]Like 'Judas'! Holy shit, you guys, this is like Shakespeare![/nb] and gets given a better gun.

Then Alyx's dad is kidnapped, so Gordon sets off to rescue him. He does. Judith turns out to be a double-agent and teleports away. Then a teleporter fucks up again and transports Gordon a couple of weeks into the future. Now there's a full-on civil war happening and people are treating him like a Big Damn Hero even though his actual contributions thus far have been fairly minimal.

This time Alyx is kidnapped as well as her dad so Gordon sets off to rescue them but gets captured as well. Then Judith finds out that her boss at The Combine was lying to her about how brutal the alien regime would be and turns on him, releasing Gordon and his friends. The big boss then tries to escape in a big portal but Gordon blows up its reactor, destroying the tower that they're in. Before he and Alyx can be killed, The G-Man appears and spirits them away.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is shit. For a start, no explanation is given for how the world got into the state it's in and Gordon - being inexplicably mute - is unable to ask[nb]I fucking hate mute characters most of the time. It's particularly egregious in HL2 because Gordon's supposed to be a theoretical scientist; the kind of person who is inherently inquisitive about the universe and how it came to be. There's no way that he wouldn't, having reached Kleiner's lab, not ask what the hell has happened to the planet. It's the same thing that threw me out of Lost every time I tried to watch it; why weren't people sitting down and talking about the smoke monster? Why, when Locke gave them some bullshit non-answer, didn't they demand that the talk straight? In Gordon's case you don't even get the excuse that it helps put the player in his shoes, because Gordon is a specific, defined character with a history and friends not a nameless everyman like the Doom trooper.[/nb] Sure, there are some (fuzzy and unreadable) newspaper clippings on Kleiner's wall and if you go to the Steam website or buy the 'making of' book it's all in there, but why isn't it in the game? One of my favourite bits of HL2 lore is that all the baddies that came through the portal in HL1 (of which only a few remain in this game) were fleeing The Combine. That's a brilliant idea. Why wasn't it explained in either game?

Worse, every major event happens offscreen. The Combine taking over the Earth? Offscreen. Someone mysterious paying the G-Man to unleash Gordon? Offscreen. The fucking uprising that sees the downtrodden masses rising up as one to turn the tide on their evil oppressors - the single most important part of the entire game? Fucking offscreen. Gordon Freeman's absent from his own revolution! Hell, he's almost absent from the entire game thanks to his ridiculous lack of presence. And aside from the above, the only other major event before the very end of the game is the bit where Judith turns on the big boss - something that's not caused by Gordon's actions at all.

And what's Gordon Freeman's personal plot? Under then pen of someone half-capable it would've been the tale of a meek scientist, a bespectacled, bearded dreamer with few friends and lots of time for work, discovering the primal, fight-or-flight caveman within after being forced into action. At first he's just fighting for his own survival, but pretty soon he's stepping up to the plate and becoming a leader: battling incredible odds to bring hope to the downtrodden masses and set up guerilla cells across City 17. The man who used to push trolleys around at the behest of his boss is now pushing armies around a battlefield, fighting not just for his survival but the survival of the human race itself. And in doing so he learns that there are more important things than graphs and equations - that there's a world out there he was ignoring for so long because he was hidden behind his computer screen.[nb]Here's something: the Half-Life series as the triumph of matter over mind; of brawn over brain. Gordon's a theoretical physicist - a man whose job is largely to think, not act. During the Black Mesa incident all that thinking goes out of the window. What's the first object he picks up? A crowbar: a blue-collar, utilitarian device. And what does he do with it? Bludgeons headcrabs, creatures that are not only unafraid of smart people but actively target them. And the boss at the end of the game? Basically just a giant flying brain with a vestigial body. Then you get HL2: The Combine are basically led by brains in jars, incapable of physical movement, that use superior technology to take over the world. They value the importance of the brain over the body; they even inhibit humanity's ability to breed, nullifying one of their basest instincts. And what's Gordon's iconic weapon this time, aside from the crowbar? The Gravity Gun - a gun that manipulates one of the simplest physical properties known to man to fling things around like a monkey throws poo.[/nb] And now he's the one who's saved it from ruin. 

But here's what Gordon Freeman's actual plot: Gordon wakes up in City 17, having been put there by a mysterious figure. He runs to a place and is told to go to another place. He does this unquestioningly only to be told to go to another place. Then he's told to go to a third place. In the third place a bunch of people with whom he has very little personal connection bicker amongst themselves. Gordon is utterly helpless but luckily - and with no intervention from him - they turn on each other. Then he teleports into the future, where - without doing much of note - he has become a mythical leader. Someone tells him to go to a fourth place. He does so, freeing the two hostages, then blows up the bad guy.

SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT.

[mycroft]

I've moaned about this before on here - the Killer Croc level from Arkham Asylum. They could at least have cut it from collecting five samples to three. And given us a manhole to escape up without going back through the bloody sewer system again, pausing at regular intervals to throw a batarang at Croc's entirely-expected appearances. And walking slowly doesn't make a bloody difference to anything Batman, you bastard liar!

Suppose they had to keep him a major feature because he was in the trailer. Like the Star Destroyer bit from The Force Unleashed, but that whole game sucked.

[The Region Legion]

Ravenholm in Half Life 2. Just a completely pointless diversion.

[Shade]

The go-kart bit in HL2.

Ravenholm in Half Life 2. Just a completely pointless diversion.

Thinking about it, it does seem pretty pointless, but who doesn't love shotgunning zombies?

[madhair60]

Bioshock, just before and entirely after you

Spoiler alert

kill Andrew Ryan

[close]

.  Goes from one of the most immersive, wonderful first-person games I've played to utter drivel.  The frustrating thing is, I can't quite put my finger on why - maybe it's just 2 hours too long. 

Spoiler alert

The final boss is ridiculous, mind.

[close]

[Famous Mortimer]

I'll defend Half Life 2 until it's time for my bus.

I think the lack of stuff coming from Freeman (dialogue, plot movement due to his character) allows the player to put more of himself in there. Think of it like "Twilight", which apparently features pretty much no description of Bella, so the female reader can put herself in her shoes.

I think the other plot points you mention - who's paying the G-Man, for instance; if they'd been resolved quickly then the central mysteries of the games would have all been wrapped up nicely and less people would have been interested. But, saying that, I think the delay between the "episodes" of HL2 is getting a bit silly- something that should have been wrapped up at least a year ago seems further from seeing the light of day than it did after the release of Ep2.

Also, Six, I think your "the HL stories apparently have this incredible plot" is a tiny bit of a straw man (unless I'm reading the wrong websites). It's an interesting story, certainly, but not deep on the level of good sci-fi. The game allows you to read into it what you will, and bring ideas from other post-apocalyptic / dystopian fiction to the experience, like a lot of other games.

Bus is going in ten minutes. But I'll write a bit more when I get in (can you wait?). Besides all the other stuff, it's just a hell of a lot of fun to play.

[Famous Mortimer]

No replies yet, evidently my powers of argument wowed you all?

I like the boat bit as well, although I have a sneaking feeling it was put in there just to show off the engine they had powering the game. I think it worked well, the physics were nice and they threw in the odd thing to think about in there, along with stop-offs to shoot Combine soldiers.

[jutl]

I hated the boat level in Half Life 2 until I tried parking it up and killing all the soldiers on foot. Once you've cleared an area you can go and get the boat and use it to clear whichever boat-necessitating obstacle is currently in the way. It takes a lot longer, but I felt uncomfortable blowing past combine whom I could have killed.

[Famous Mortimer]

I hated the boat level in Half Life 2 until I tried parking it up and killing all the soldiers on foot. Once you've cleared an area you can go and get the boat and use it to clear whichever boat-necessitating obstacle is currently in the way. It takes a lot longer, but I felt uncomfortable blowing past combine whom I could have killed.

I think that's how you're supposed to do most of the boat level, isn't it?

[jutl]

I think that's how you're supposed to do most of the boat level, isn't it?

Some parts force you to, due to gate switches, but a lot of it you can blow through like Wave Race.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I found quite a lot of the last few levels of Halo 3, especially on legendary came down to legging it and saving your bullets only for enemies directly in front of you (and even them a pistol whip sometimes does it). If you stopped to clear the room, as would be the usual thing (I like to know there is nothing that can kill me in a room, call me odd) you would be outnumbered and die.

I like that they give you the decision to make, but I still feel like a cheat just running off.

[Little Hoover]

Isn't the G-Man essentially the Mcguffin element? The mystery is far more satisfying than any solution could be.

[AsparagusTrevor]

Ravenholm in Half Life 2. Just a completely pointless diversion.

It's basically a physics tech-demo, which was back in the day when it was still a new thing and they wanted to show off an impressive and original new weapon. It also served as kind of a tutorial for said weapon. Gratuitous, maybe. Hell of a lot of fun, definitely.

My heart drops every time someone refers to Half-Life 2 as being well-written or well-plotted. It really isn't at all. I mean, it almost certainly had the best pre-production and visual design of any game of its era (indeed, I'd argue that it probably wasn't trumped until Bioshock in that regard) but its plotting is bobbins and the writing is dreadful. etc etc

Ah, but the beauty of Half-Life 2's story isn't what it told or how it's told, it's what isn't told. Nothing is given to us on a plate, no conveniently placed cut scenes to make sure the player is up to speed.  We learn snippets of story through the uninterrupted gameplay and its up to us to decide how and where they fit. It's only the elusive Episode 3 holding us back from totally forming a coherent story. Now if Episode 3 turns out to be like season 6 of Lost, then I'll certainly eat my words.

[Shade]

For people bemoaning the lack of narrative from Freeman, there is this:

http://www.accursedfarms.com/movies/fm/

[Mister Six]

I think the lack of stuff coming from Freeman (dialogue, plot movement due to his character) allows the player to put more of himself in there. Think of it like "Twilight", which apparently features pretty much no description of Bella, so the female reader can put herself in her shoes.

I'm not sure you want to be citing Twilight in reference to something you want people to take seriously. The mute hero trope's a useful one sometimes, I'll grant you - in the first FEAR, for example, it works brilliantly. But the point there is that you are a nameless, voiceless

Spoiler alert

   clone without a proper past   

[close]

being sent around by your superiors. Freeman's supposed to be this charismatic leader type who attended university, got a degree and was good enough at his job to get access to a massive quasi-military installation - apparently without speaking. It doesn't make sense. And everybody keeps calling you 'Gordon' unlike, say, Fear, Vampire: Bloodlines, Fallout etc etc.

Plus, my complaints were in the context of the shit storytelling. Whatever the reason for making Gordon mute it gets in the way of explaining what's going on and why, and reduces him to a passive observer/lackey for almost the entirety of the game. He can't get involved in, for instance,

Spoiler alert

Judith turning on Dr Breen

[close]

, despite that being the single most important story moment to occur on camera.

I think the other plot points you mention - who's paying the G-Man, for instance; if they'd been resolved quickly then the central mysteries of the games would have all been wrapped up nicely and less people would have been interested.

I understand the need to keep the franchise going, but the game doesn't give anything. You arrive in a fucked up dystopia. How did it get this way? You don't find out. Why are The Combine doing this? You don't find out. How were the resistance organised? You don't find out. How did the revolution kick off? You don't find out. Why did the G-Man put you back down on Earth? You don't find out. What will happen to Alyx and pals when the city detonates? You don't find out. That's crap storytelling, man. If you went to a film and got that little information you'd think it was shit (cf. Jumper). It's kind of worst in HL2 because you'll spend 10 hours in the world, not 90 minutes.

As for the episodes - I shouldn't have to pay for DLC to actually find out what the shitting crikey was going on over the last few days of gaming.

Also, Six, I think your "the HL stories apparently have this incredible plot" is a tiny bit of a straw man (unless I'm reading the wrong websites). It's an interesting story, certainly, but not deep on the level of good sci-fi. The game allows you to read into it what you will, and bring ideas from other post-apocalyptic / dystopian fiction to the experience, like a lot of other games.

Not a straw man at all. The game's being feted as having a great plot - my point is that it doesn't, in fact, have a great plot. It's not even a poor plot told well. So much work has gone into realising City 17 and yet all the reasons for being there are lost.

[Mister Six]

Ah, but the beauty of Half-Life 2's story isn't what it told or how it's told, it's what isn't told. Nothing is given to us on a plate, no conveniently placed cut scenes to make sure the player is up to speed.  We learn snippets of story through the uninterrupted gameplay and its up to us to decide how and where they fit. It's only the elusive Episode 3 holding us back from totally forming a coherent story. Now if Episode 3 turns out to be like season 6 of Lost, then I'll certainly eat my words.

See, this is what gets on my tits. First off: if I buy a video game sequel I fully accept the possibility that there's a high possibility that it'll leave some stuff unresolved - that's the nature of franchise storytelling. But I do expect the game to provide at least some kind of resolution; some kind of closure on this particular story even if the wider conflict remains active (see, for example, the first Star Wars movie - the Empire is still active and dangerous but it's been dealt a huge blow and the heroes have been commended for their bravery). Certainly, after investing 40 quid and 10 hours of time into HL2 it's not unreasonable to expect that level of closure. But to expect the player to buy three more games in order to have anything explained at all? That is absolutely shameful.

Besides which, Half Life 2 isn't a fucking classic of modern literature. It's badly executed pop sci-fi. People making excuses for the woeful storytelling because they happened to enjoy shooting the baddies and lobbing stuff with the Grav Gun... well that's just frustrating.

[AsparagusTrevor]

Alright, you didn't like HL2. Most other people did. Nobody's saying it's a classic of modern literature, especially since it's a game, but the story is there, the game is fun and it all meshes together well.

Anyway, I'm playing through Black Ops, quite slowly really at a pace of about an hour a week. I've come to another fucking vehicle section, helicopter. Shooting away at indistinct targets in the distance while trying to direct a clunky copter away from RPGs for a section that's already gone on way too long, my heart lets out a sigh when these sections pop up.

[Spiteface]

The "Gas Zombies" in Dead Rising 2.  ARGH!

[Mister Six]

Alright, you didn't like HL2. Most other people did. Nobody's saying it's a classic of modern literature, especially since it's a game, but the story is there, the game is fun and it all meshes together well.

SNG said it was 'one of the best-plotted games of recent years'. It's a sentiment I've heard expressed before. That's what I was replying to.

[Still Not George]

SNG said it was 'one of the best-plotted games of recent years'. It's a sentiment I've heard expressed before. That's what I was replying to.

You're aware that statement is roughly equivalent to "one of the most cerebral reality TV shows of recent years", right?

[madhair60]

Thank you.  Fucking thank you.

[Mister Six]

You're aware that statement is roughly equivalent to "one of the most cerebral reality TV shows of recent years", right?

Yes.

[Famous Mortimer]

As for the episodes - I shouldn't have to pay for DLC to actually find out what the shitting crikey was going on over the last few days of gaming.

You're not, though, you're paying for a sequel to a game. You can play HL2: Ep1 (or 2) without having any of the other games in the series.

Not a straw man at all. The game's being feted as having a great plot

My point was, I don't think it has. SNG's reference to "well plotted" I would read through the filter of him being a game designer, which would mean the way the game's sections are laid out, and you as a character having a reason for going from A to B to C. That's a different thing than the "story" of the game. You've said it several times, now; who are these people who are feting the HL games as great storytelling?

I've played through all the HLs enough to hopefully be able to answer one or two of your questions, though. Why the Combine are on earth is never completely explained (although it's certainly hinted at); how they're there is due to the wormhole opened in the first game. They've banded together with whatshisname with the white beard who rules the Earth, Quisling-style.

The question "how were the resistance organised?" is an odd one, though. I've been casting my mind back through all the WW2 films I've seen, and all the political thrillers, and I can't think of any of them that show how a resistance movement starts. Perhaps they thought the nuts-and-bolts of the movement wasn't an appropriate topic for a fast-paced FPS?

The G-Man isn't going to have his motives revealed til the end of the series, if ever; the dude can stop reality, so taking him on is probably outside the remit of a game like this. How the dystopia came to be, though – well, the Combine made it that way. Think of City 17 like a Jewish ghetto in the late 1930s.

What happens to Alyx and pals when the city explodes? Er...the resistance have enough time to vacate the city, and

Spoiler alert

do so on a train at the end of episode 1

[close]

. Or is there a cliffhanger at the end of episode 2 I'm not remembering? That's the purpose of cliffhangers, I guess, and a problem with them in games is a problem with them in all forms of entertainment.

Re: Gordon being mute, they do kind of mock it at times, like when Alyx calls him the strong silent type; and he does have a tendency to be caught in a forcefield when important character stuff is going on in the same room as him. Ultimately, it's a different way of having a game unfold – all in-game vs. cutscenes. It's occasionally a bit frustrating, I suppose, but then the other end of the scale is the 45-minute cutscenes in the last Metal Gear Solid game.

If you went to a film and got that little information you'd think it was shit (cf. Jumper). It's kind of worst in HL2 because you'll spend 10 hours in the world, not 90 minutes.

But, you don't play a game to watch the story, though. You play a game to play a game. There's not much plot in driving round, attaching limpet mines to those long-legged fellas then detonating them; but it's loads of fun! Also, in films, they don't have conveniently-placed stashes of ammo and health packs which only help the main character, deep in the heart of the enemy base.

[Still Not George]

But, you don't play a game to watch the story, though. You play a game to play a game. There's not much plot in driving round, attaching limpet mines to those long-legged fellas then detonating them; but it's loads of fun! Also, in films, they don't have conveniently-placed stashes of ammo and health packs which only help the main character, deep in the heart of the enemy base.

Exactly. You can tell epic and involving stories in games, but those who want deep, involving plots are probably missing the point a little.

[Ignatius_S]

....Cut scenes in RTS that involve grouping our strategic genii together for a melodramatic man chat, out in the open, for no good reason other than to invite an airstrike or trigger an ambush. Chaos Rising pulls this one mid-level on occasion. The fuck?!...

Good call.

I've only just started playing Chaos Rising, but feel that the cutscenes have a tendency to interrupt the flow of the game (which I didn't find was the case with the first one much) and have experienced the kind of re-grouping that you mentioned. So far, nothing that bad has been the result (e.g. like being ambushed) – but it's annoying to discover a new target, being moved well over a screen away and then being told that I have to destroy it, when that's exactly what I was doing in the first place.