Wonderputt - thinking around the box

When I was a first-semester freshman in high school I took a drawing class. It was the only art class I took during my entire four years. This was back when I still had tentative career ambitions to become a graphic designer.

There was one assignment I remember in which we had to draw an abstract isometric picture—a kind of jumbling together of boxes and rectangular prisms. The idea was to create something figurative from these bland three-dimensional renderings. It felt similar to a Rorschach test—interesting from a psychological perspective to see what different students saw in a mass of boxes.

A friend who was also taking the class drew his initial piece and immediately envisioned a gun. He rendered his final drawing as a complex weapon resembling an Uzi. It was interesting. Very utilitarian.

I had a more difficult time with the assignment. I looked at my initial sketch and didn't see anything practical at all. Quite the opposite. The best I could envision was a futuristic, utopian cityscape, or rather just a small block of a fantastical (completely impractical) urban environment. I made little shops and buildings out of the blocky shapes. I drew in people walking through the alleys, one guy pulling money out of an ATM.

I was reminded of that 15-year old drawing exercise while playing Wonderputt, a web-browser game developed by Reece Millidge of Damp Gnat Ltd. As much a piece of interactive art as an actual game, Wonderputt presents a surreal isometric landscape as the backdrop for a five-minute point-and-click putt putt adventure. Its 18 holes are linked together by a series of quirky animation bits; the little yellow golf ball travels by balloon, submarine and all manner of imaginative transport. It's a delightful sight to behold as the static backdrop unfolds, reveals new layers and otherwise comes to life with each successive hole.

The game itself plays handily and functions more like a virtual billiards game than golf, in that it's all cursor-based. Position the cursor in a certain radius around the ball and a trajectory arrow will appear. The thickness of the arrow, which changes with the cursor's moment-to-moment distance from the ball, indicates speed.

Wonderputt really is the perfect name for the game. There are no clubs, and while the course itself takes inspiration from miniature golf with its banked surfaces and puzzle-like setup, these holes abandon the notion of traditional putting greens altogether. But it's still a type of golf game at heart, a golf game with a generous standard for par (I was already 16 strokes under after my second time through). Getting a bogey triggers a playful chicken cluck. A birdie activates a pleasant chirping sound. And putting for an “albatross”—one better than an eagle in the land of Wonderputt—awards the player with a victorious squawk.

A cursory peak into the background of the developer reveals some interesting information. Prior to making Wonderputt, creator Reece Millidge had developed a very similar experiment of a game called Adverputt. Just as the name implies, this browser game mixes commercial branding with putt putt golf, with each hole individually sponsored by a different advertiser. While a decidedly colder experience than Wonderputt—not necessarily for the hyper-advertising but more for its comparative lack of visual and auditory character—it's mechanically the same game and an intriguing idea. He even made a micro version of the game that individual companies can use on their own websites, plastering the small game world with their own name and logo. He strikes me as a pretty innovative guy. You can read a quick interview with the developer at Gamasutra.

Needless to say, that whole visual art career path didn't quite happen for me. If it did, or if I had the technical talent to develop small games myself, I'd like to think I would be creating things like Wonderputt. Ever since I was a kid I've been drawn to elaborate, visual-physical contraptions. I loved miniature golf. I swooned over marble mazes and labyrinth games, even the digital ones (a lá Marble Madness). There's also something aesthetically satisfying to me in the conceptualization of basic isometric design as an interactive space. So it's easy to see why Wonderputt and I really click.

But enough about me, you should really check out the game (such as here). It's free. It's fun. You might be as surprised as I was to see how advanced and polished a modern web browser game can be.

On the List — Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell

I'm starting a news series on Knee Deep in the Game called “On the List.” The idea is that for each entry I'll write a little bit about one of my favorite video games, one that could potentially end up somewhere on my Top 100 Games list if such a thing existed. That or someone else's list … or maybe not all. I don't know. Let's face it, there are no hard rules here. This is fifth-freedom territory!


Sam Fisher: He's a real nowhere man
I’ve never read a Tom Clancy novel. I guess I’ve always assumed the world of shadow governments and international espionage is frighteningly real enough. Why fictionalize it?

I am a fan, however, of the Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell video game franchise, which began as an original Xbox title back in 2002, developed by Ubisoft. In the game the player assumes the role of Sam Fisher, a Navy SEAL covert ops veteran whom we can probably assume has been through some serious shit in his day. Fisher has been called back into the field, recruited as the titular one-man “splinter cell” for the new ultra secret Third Echelon initiative within the National Security Agency. The idea behind the initiative is to gather info and intelligence from the most sensitive of around-the-world locations by means of physical infiltration and a compartmentalized support network of hackers, handlers and so forth.

The NSA basically needs Fisher to sneak into a former Soviet-bloc country to investigate some strange political shenanigans and the ominous disappearance of two CIA field agents. The information he uncovers has immediate, global consequences. Fisher then hops from country to country to track down new targets and throw water on all kinds of political living room fires that spring up from the fallout.

What the player experiences is a finely tuned stealth action video game, most of which is spent crouching among the shadows, trying to get from one place to the next without being noticed or shot at. Obviously, this is not always easy, causing the player to rely on a repertoire of cool takedown maneuvers and a limited inventory of techno gadgets and weaponry—including sticky cameras, some grenades and a silenced combat rifle. Needless to say, more than a few unlucky or deserving bastards will end up knocked out or rubbed out for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Taking a cue from the likes of Deus Ex and I'm sure other predecessors, Splinter Cell succeeded as a game that encouraged a certain level of player choice and technique. A scrupulous player was free to put in the extra effort to minimize fatalities and/or confrontations. The more speed-minded player could perhaps afford to run through an area with less caution, soaking up the bullets and simply healing with medical kits later on. Stealthy progress depended, in part, on the speed and sound of Fisher's movement, which the player controlled by applying degrees of pressure to the controller's analog stick.

Something the first Splinter Cell did better than any other game that came before was to render dynamic and realistic lighting effects. Various intensities of virtual light could be projected in all directions of a three-dimensional environment. The game's levels and their scripted obstacles were designed largely around the staggering of light and dark areas, all determined by the deliberate placement of things like street lamps and other artificial light sources. Perhaps the neatest trick up the player’s sleeve was the ability to shoot out light bulbs and rely on night vision goggles as a means of evading detection.

Similar to games in the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series—wherein an otherwise standard urban environment will be designed around the fantastical concept of grind-worthy edges and smooth, concave ramps built into virtually every utilitarian structure—the Splinter Cell games present a type of exaggerated environment suited to the mechanics of the game's genre. Most of the settings employ a contradictory combination of high-level security (patrolling goons everywhere) and incredibly poor lighting. The very halls of the CIA headquarters, for example, contain more predatory blackout spots than a mall parking garage.

Playing Splinter Cell invariably causes me to imagine a scenario in which Sam Fisher has to pass through my apartment at night while I'm at home performing some random task, like cutting an onion in the kitchen or folding my underwear in the bedroom. What path would he follow in order to pass through undetected? Or would he more-than-likely just grab me in a choke hold and pull me off into some dim corner of the room? Creepy!

These aren't my only questions. Sometimes, after finishing a level, I have to wonder ... what happens later? What happens in the hours after Sam Fisher has blown the proverbial taco stand and is back at home, drinking his morning protein shake, nagging his daughter to get out of bed for school? What happens when all of those guys who got knocked unconscious and dumped in storage rooms halfway across the globe start to wake up? Surely some of those dudes sustained physical injuries, if not brain damage! Are they going to be okay? What kind of a conversation do these baffled individuals have as they stumble groggily around trying to find one another, or when they start to sort out the living from the dead? What happens to the living guys who wake up underneath the dead guys because there wasn't any other convenient place for Fisher to quickly stash the bodies? Double creepy!

One narrative element I find interesting is the between-mission cutscenes, shown as quick snippets of TV news reports that sometimes present a revisionist spin on the events related to all of Fisher’s recent sneaking around. There's a moment at the end of the game when Fisher, watching a televised speech with his daughter, allows himself an amused chuckle or two as the president of the United States credits the spirit of “American tenacity” for what Fisher has almost singlehandedly accomplished behind the scenes.

What I find even more chuckle-worthy is the aspect of player complicity. People talk a lot about morality in video games, but that discussion typically is reserved for the games that bop you over the head with it, the ones that give you good experience points for helping the old lady across the street or evil experience points for pushing her under a bus. The interesting thing is that most players will go through Splinter Cell without a moment’s thought to the bigger picture of it all. Such as, is any of this Third Echelon business even legal?

At one point during the second level, Fisher’s remote handler Irving Lambert warns Sam about a military colonel approaching his specific location inside a foreign embassy building. “That’s detailed intelligence,” Fisher replies. No kidding! Sam Fisher is no idiot. He’s used to taking orders on little to no information, a so-called “need-to-know basis” if ever there was one. But, for God’s sake, what else are the folks in Washington seeing that we're not? And who's calling the shots? At multiple times in the game Lambert gives the call on whether Fisher is authorized to use lethal force, depending on the political stickiness of the situation. Lambert is sometimes explicit in telling Fisher his mission has not been officially approved by the Joint Chiefs. I'm sorry, did you just tell me we're working outside the approval of the Joint Chiefs? Suddenly, the idea of staying hidden all the time, of turning out the lights on everyone around you, becomes a much larger symbol. By the end of the game we may be wondering if the president himself has been privy to what's really gone on. Such is the way of things, I suppose, in the Tom Clancy universe. Just good fiction, right?

Images were borrowed from splintercell.wikia.com.

If necessary, use words

If you've read part three of my video game “memoir” series, you might remember that some of my earliest digital gaming experiences had to do with text-based adventures. I talked a little bit about King's Quest in particular.

King's Quest was an interesting type of game that was both a graphics- and text-based adventure. In it the player moved the character avatar around a set of static location screens using either keyboard directional buttons or by clicking with a mouse cursor. This, however, was purely for navigational purposes. The primary system of player input was handled via written commands that the player literally would have to type into existence.


If a player walked up to the castle doors, they would have to type “open door” to actually open the door and proceed. If the player wanted to speak to the king, they would have to type “speak to king.” Later on in the game these text-based commands became a little more puzzling. The player might wander into an exterior environment and have to type something like “look at room,” a basic command that usually would provide a rudimentary description of the environment immediately depicted on-screen. This visual description might even hone in on a particular object of player interest—perhaps a particular rock that required pushing or a tree to climb.

This system of text-driven input had its roots in earlier games such as the Zork series—the first of which were text-only adventures—and carried over into other adventure games for several years until pretty much the entire adventure game genre switched over to a point-and-click interface model. Instead of typing commands the player would select from various cursor icon types, each representing a specific type of action—an eye cursor for looking, a hand cursor for touching or taking objects, and a dialog cursor for speaking to people, things, etc. Other games employed similar systems, and they worked rather well for several more years. Then the adventure genre mostly disappeared.

This past January I downloaded Boxer, an awesome DOS-emulator program, onto my Macintosh computer so that I could theoretically go and play, among other things, a bunch of those classic Sierra On-Line adventure games from back in the day. The first (and so far only) game I went through was a game called Quest for Glory: So You Want to be a Hero, which I'd played to completion several times as a kid on our Macintosh Centris 610 computer.

I think the entire Quest for Glory series (there were five original games in the series released between 1989 and 1998, as well as one remake) deserves a writeup all its own, but I'll just mention a couple noteworthy points. The Quest for Glory series was an early and rare example of an adventure and role-playing game hybrid—arguably heavier on the former type of game. Long before BioWare's Mass Effect series did the same, the Quest for Glory games allowed the player to import their saved character file from one installment to the next, with all of that character's built-up statistics transported intact. Alternatively, one could create a new character file for each game, selecting from three optional character classes: fighter, magic user, and thief.


The version I played through this past January, same as the version I played through as a kid, was actually a 1991 remake of the original 1989 game (which also, incidentally, bore the original series title Hero's Quest, changed to avoid copyright infringement with the HeroQuest board games). Whereas the original game was a 16-color adventure with a text-parser input system, the remake was redone with completely redrawn 256-color graphics and a point-and-click user interface.

One aspect of the (remake) game that I had always enjoyed was its system of dialogue with non-playable characters. In all of the other Sierra adventure games I'd played, there really was no dialogue system at all. Speaking to other characters—whether initiated via text- or cursor-based command, depending on the particular game—was functionally no different from looking at something or performing any other type of action. In this Quest for Glory remake, however, clicking the dialog cursor on a character brought up a menu of dialogue topics, sort of an early dialogue tree. Selecting one topic might cause that character to provide background information on related subjects, sometimes bringing up a new sub-menu with some of these new topics. It was an excellent vehicle, I thought, for communicating story and information.


After going through the game again, I was hoping to finally transport my character over to the sequel, Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire. This was something I never got to do as a kid, because that game—as far as I'm aware—was never released for the Macintosh.

My original plan was to play through the sequel using a 2008 fan-made remake version from a group called AGD Interactive. Like the original Quest for Glory (or, rather, Hero's Quest), Quest for Glory II had incorporated 16-color graphics and a text-input system. The fan remake was a redeveloped game with improved graphics and a point-and-click interface. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the game to run on my OSX computer. I also couldn't run it on my dinosaur PC laptop. At that point my only recourse was to try and run a pirated download version of the original Quest for Glory II game, which didn't end up working on the Mac but luckily ran using DOSBox on the PC laptop. Whew!

(I normally wouldn't condone using pirated software, but in this case there currently is no digital distribution service, such as Good Old Games, for purchasing the Quest for Glory titles. And there's absolutely no guarantee I would have been able to run the game through any kind of legitimate used e-Bay copy.)

I'm actually glad I played the original Quest for Glory II in all of its original clunkiness. Again, I wish I could do better justice to this game with a more in-depth writeup. Maybe in the future. It would be very hard to recommend playing this game to anyone I know. It's primitive. It had some very strange design choices. Modern game players, with or without the background experience in old adventure games, would need the patience of Job to get through it. Even so, it's a fascinating kind of game. I quite enjoyed it myself.


If anything, playing the original Quest for Glory II made me a newfound believer in the potential of text-based player input.

Recall what I was just saying about the cool dialogue menus in the remade Quest for Glory I? At first I was baffled about how one was supposed to initiate dialogue in Quest for Glory II. If I were to type simply “speak to [character],” nothing would happen. Then I looked at the program menus and noticed a keyboard shortcut for the text prompt beginning “ask about.”

Instead of just typing “speak to [character]” and being spoon fed a dialogue tree with pre-selected conversation topics, the player has to be specific regarding what they want the character to discuss. Functionally, gleaning information from a character might play out very similarly to the dialogue tree. Perhaps in asking about a particular city the character will mention the name of a person. Ask about that person and the character will divulge more specific information. But it's up to the player to make those connections and associations to new topics. Better yet, as the player progresses through the game and learns about new potential conversation topics from other sources, the player can go back to earlier characters and see if they have anything to say about that new topic. Sometimes they do.

I'm sure if Quest for Glory II were converted to a modern game console there would be some kind of collectible achievement for activating every available dialogue window. In essence, there's nothing necessarily tangible gained from trying to “ask about” every single topic. But the typing system creates a playing experience that really is unlike almost any other. Accessing programmed content with the power of one's intuition is enjoyable. There's something to be said about being able try virtually anything, or of using one's brain power to find the necessary words, for initiating the type of action one might attempt for overcoming puzzles and obstacles. Quest for Glory II and its contemporaries may have been primitive games by today's standards, but I find it somewhat sad how the use of text-based input in games was abandoned.

On the one hand, I suppose this kind of itch for unlimited player input could be partially satisfied through different kinds of table-top role-playing or other community-driven games. I can't speak from personal experience. But I think there's something almost mythical about the connection of the minds between a player and a programmer that has nothing to do with real-time interaction or ad-lib dialogue. This has to do with a game inventor who has put in place a specific framework for responding to the predicted input of an actual user. (On a total side note, I'm reminded of the Foundation novel series by Isaac Asimov, dealing with “psychohistory” and the prediction of mass human behavior.)

When I was in middle school I went through a brief period where I tried programming and designing my own graphic adventure games using a Macintosh authoring system called World Builder, released first in 1986 by Silicon Beach Software (the same company that made the game Dark Castle) and later in 1995 as freeware. The program allowed users to create original adventure games using static black-and-white graphic screens and text.


This was an amazing piece of software, and there were a lot of interesting, albeit obscure, games created because of it. What was really neat was being able to create my own vector graphics in Adobe PageMaker and then copy and paste them into the World Builder graphic design engine. Even better, using the World Builder tool introduced me to a mode of simple computer programming, using a custom language similar to BASIC. For each static location I would have to create lines of codes that would correspond to player text prompts. For example, “IF a player types 'a', THEN 'b' happens.” I even figured out a way to use this programming to implement basic animations, such as a bird's-eye view of bungee jumping from off a bridge toward a river below (man, that segment was fun to make).

It was fun to try and think about the different things a player might type while playing and program specific feedback to that potential behavior. I also learned it's just as much fun to create special triggered events for even the more obscure types of actions that a player might attempt—a sort of reward for intrepid and like-minded individuals. Unfortunately, I never did manage to create a finished product, nor did I have any actual players test my bedroom project. What I did manage to get underway is likely still stored on our family's antique black-and-white Macintosh somewhere in my parents' attic.

I myself am not yearning for a resurrection of traditional adventure games (although, oddly enough, there may actually be somewhat of a demand for it … see here and here). But I do think there is potential in the idea of modern text-based game mechanics, particularly in the android/iOS market where a nifty keyboard is already right there.

On a basic level, it's actually just plain fun to see one's words brought to life in a game. Examples? I've heard people get to name their own weapons in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. That's awesome! There's also a neat and completely throwaway feature in Team Ninja's Dead or Alive 4 fighting game. The game copies the text from the user's Xbox 360 profile motto and displays it on various electronic billboard banners in some of the fighting environments. It's pretty funny when beginning a virtual fight in a large packed-housed stadium and seeing my limited-character motto (“4 me 2 P@@P on”) displayed in gigantic moving text all around the enormous room.

On a larger scale, I wonder what might have happened if the idea of text-based commands had not been so completely abandoned. What if that type of system had survived, adapted to and evolved with modern games? What if we had a type of game today—like the Mass Effect series—that incorporated the individual choices of the player on an even more sophisticated level? What if these games involved complex and dynamic consequences resulting not just from the choices directly presented to the player but from the ones the player came up with independently?

Hidden collectibles cont.

In my previous post I discussed how the 2010 game Limbo incorporated a clever game within the game involving the search for hidden items. By using the Xbox achievement system the developers at Playdead gave the player descriptive hints for locating each item. I argued this particular hint system transformed what might otherwise have been an exhaustive time sink of an activity into an enjoyable and intuitive scavenger hunt.

One thing I didn’t come around to discussing in my earlier review of Alan Wake was the game’s obsession with hidden collectibles. Here’s a game that invites the player to locate hidden manuscript pages, hidden weapons caches, hidden beverage can pyramids, hidden readable signs, hidden radio shows, hidden TV shows, and—my personal favorite—hidden coffee thermoses. Finding these items is not a requirement for completing the main game, but as with Limbo it's an activity that can earn achievement points. The player can consult an in-game “statistics” screen to observe their progress toward locating each of these items.


While most of the items end up being pretty easy to spot through the regular course of play, there remain some proverbial needles in the haystack. This game presents a lot of virtual ground to cover.

The TV and radio shows are relatively easy to locate and worthwhile to find because they lend interest and a sense of authenticity to the game world. The manuscript pages basically do the same, adding narrative subtext, although these items are more scattered and much more numerous. The signs offer a little bit of subtext but it seems pointless to make a collectible game out of them.

The inclusion of weapons caches make the most sense from an actual game-playing perspective, as they contain useful items that bolster the player’s inventory and ability to combat enemies. The game also employs a helpful marker system for spotting and guiding the player toward these nearby caches. The player character’s flashlight will reveal painted golden splotches and arrows—previously unseen—leading to treasure. Even better, this aspect of the game is tied fittingly into the overarching storyline of the game (there's a character in the game who the player later discovers has actually gone around and supposedly set up these hidden caches for a reason). I like that. But, again, does the game need to turn these caches into part of a collect-a-thon?

The Alan Wake collectibles that make the least amount of sense would be the can pyramids and coffee thermoses. The can pyramids serve as a kind of quirky Easter egg. Find them and knock them over to unlock the item. Why include it? Well, why not?

The thermoses don’t seem to add anything to the game either. And yet there are 100 of them spread throughout the six episodes. That’s a lot! Their presence is never explained, let alone acknowledged. They serve no mechanical purpose. And while most can be located with minimal exploration, by their very inclusion it creates a situation in which the obsessive player will wander off the beaten trail time and time again simply because there might be a stray thermos just around the corner.

This type of feature throws the entire pacing of Alan Wake completely out of whack. From a narrative role-playing perspective, why would a protagonist who is in complete mortal peril—not to mention a time crunch—go off on a wild goose chase every other minute to look for coffee thermoses? I’m not saying everything in a game has to add up to neat narrative logic (although that wouldn’t be so bad), but it all comes back to the point that looking for a needle in a haystack is, most of the time, decidedly not enjoyable.

Another game that went heavy on the collectibles was 2009's Batman: Arkham Asylum from Rocksteady Studios. Similar to Limbo, one could reasonably argue the existence of multiple play-through modes in Arkham Asylum. There’s the main storyline with its clear chain of events, objectives, boss fights and other combat encounters leading to eventual narrative conclusion. There’s also a wealth of hidden collectibles associated with various Riddler challenges, and finding these can be a mode of game playing seemingly all its own.


On the one hand, there was some satisfaction to be had in seeking out these sundry secrets. Here's another game that employed a clever hint system—or in this case, appropriately, a riddle system—that involved thinking and analysis rather than mindless wandering around (although there was plenty of that too). It nevertheless bothered me thinking I could have otherwise charged through the game in a nice, action-packed eight-hour-or-so push.

When I played through the game I found it somewhat annoying how these two basic modes—the so-called “main game” and the Riddler treasure hunt—were operating at odds with one another. The entire course of the game is supposed to occur in one epic night (although there is no actual time limit or consequence for taking too long to complete objectives). Everything in the main storyline of the game communicated urgency. Why then was the game simultaneously encouraging me to spend precious hours retracing my steps and exploring every corner of the island to find statues, tape recordings, hidden painted question marks and more?

The idea of incorporating hidden and/or collectible items within a video game world goes way back. I don't need to bother trying to identify the earliest examples, because the type of game element I'm talking about isn't easily defined. Super Mario Bros. incorporated all manner of hidden coins, power ups and extra lives. What's interesting to me, however, are the types of hidden collectibles that are in place to add another layer of player motivation, secondary to the main objective of simply finishing the game.

It think there was a time—particularly during the transitional years when game worlds became predominantly three-dimensional—when this notion of finding hidden or scattered items really had its heyday. I'm thinking of the Nintendo 64 era and the cutesy platformer games wherein this sort of activity served as a placeholder for keeping players occupied and goal-oriented. Forward progress in Super Mario 64 was tied to finding hidden or sometimes hard-to-reach stars within game levels to unlock new levels. Similar to Limbo, the game gave players helpful hints to finding these stars. This collecting business seemed to do the trick for a number of years until games like Donkey Kong 64 came along and turned us all insane (for brevity's sake, let it simply be said there was too much collecting, and it wasn't fun). And the cutesy-platformer genre went the way of the buffalo.

Nevertheless, the concept of hidden collectibles remained and persists—mostly as an afterthought. It's long seemed to me that scattering hidden items has to do with giving players an excuse to explore and interact with a large game world. In other words, the space is there. The developers went through a lot of trouble making it big and pretty. Incorporating combat only goes so far. Why let all that pretty space go to waste?

My point is there are good methods and bad methods for addressing this problem. If a game developer is going to include an activity into their game, hidden collectibles included, it should be deliberate and with purpose. I'm tired of these pointless hidden items being plopped down or tucked behind random corners with little reason or consideration for the player's sense of logic or intuition. I'm tired of wandering aimlessly without a clue. And I'm tired of doing this for no other reason than to get that 100%-unlocked statistic or achievement point.

If I'm going to be looking for something, I want it to be a game and not a random, time-wasting task. But I also want to play games that maintain their tension-heavy forward progress. Backtracking for the sake of collecting breaks the overall experience.

Does any of this rambling make sense? If anyone has any thoughts on this subject feel free to leave a comment.

The three play-through modes of Limbo and a lesson on hidden collectibles

Sometimes it's the simple things that matter. It really is. Take Limbo for example.

Have you played Limbo? Oh, man, you've got to play Limbo.


Don't watch any trailers. Don't YouTube any walkthrough videos. Just download it and play it. Turn the volume up. Keep the screen brightness relatively dark. And just go in cold. Experience it. I don't think you'll regret it.

Limbo, of course, is pretty much old news by now. It had its moment in the spotlight, but it's basically one of those relatively short games that you go through once and that's pretty much it.

Or is it?

I found myself going back to the puzzle-platformer this past weekend. It had been about a year since I'd played through. I had thought at the time that the puzzles were clever. They were logical, but not too obvious at first glance. Challenge increased with progress. And while the game relied on plenty of trial and error, the learning curve proved more intuitive than skull-bashing. Limbo also avoided repetition. Each successive puzzle, even if it contained elements from previous puzzles, threw clever new tricks into the mix.

Aesthetically, Limbo also was a beautiful game that offered no narrative explanations and instead welcomed any and all interpretations. And when it was over it was over. Fin.

So why return?


It comes back to those stupid Xbox achievement points. They're just points, I know. They don't do anything. And yet playing a game doesn't necessarily do anything either. The games are what we make of them. And so the best achievement points, as I see it, are the ones that steer the player toward approaching the game in a new kind of way. It could be like writing a new, completely optional set of rules to a pre-established game.

On the one hand, these optional points can be an irritating thorn in the side of players who happen to be obsessive “completionists,” sort of like those insane folks addicted to maintaining as many Guinness world records as possible, but on a smaller scale. On the other hand, it bears repeating these points are optional. Pursue the most challenging and time-consuming achievements at your own risk.

In Limbo there is one major achievement that nets 100 points for simply completing the game. And while neither the name nor description of the achievement (“Where Credit is due — Persistence has its own reward”) makes this explicitly clear, that’s what it is. Anyone who makes it through to the end—whether they look up the puzzle solutions online or rely on their own brainpower all the way through—will earn this achievement.

Then there is a series of ten rather cryptic achievements, two offering 5 points each and the other eight each worth 10—making for a combined total of 90 points. During my first time through the game I had assumed these referred to progress-based mileposts that would automatically unlock for solving the main puzzles. That’s not the case, but I'll talk about these more in a second.

Finally, there is one dastardly achievement for Limbo that tasks the player with completing the game in one sitting and dying no more than five times. Considering the swiftness and frequency of death in a typical player’s first run through the game, that's a pretty tall order. And frankly, for only 10 achievement points, not too many people are going to try for it. That’s okay.

So when I loaded the game over the weekend I did so in the interest of unlocking those ten cryptic achievements. Without actively trying, I actually had managed to nab one during my first run. I had been attempting to figure out a timing-based puzzle close to the end of the game (I didn’t know at the time it was close to the end) when I happened to go exploring in a particular direction at a particular moment, suddenly finding my player avatar in a particular spot of the two-dimensional playing area that I hadn’t realized was accessible a moment earlier. I thought I had found the location of the key to advancing the puzzle. Instead I found a strange egg-like item (a Limbo Easter egg?) that unlocked an achievement. It had nothing to do with solving the puzzle at hand.

It then became clear the remaining nine cryptic achievements each referred to more of these hidden items. The names and descriptions of the achievements were clues:

• Wrong Way — That’s not right (5 points)


• Altitude is Attitude — Exploration off the ground (5 points)


• It’s Stuck — Prepare a dry landing (10 points)


• Urban Exploration — Involves heavy lifting (10 points)


• Alone in the Dark — Beneath the arthropod (10 points)


• Climbing the Cog — Don’t pull the lever just because you can (10 points)


• Backtracking — Ride the Crates (10 points)


• Guided by Sparks — The crate is key (10 points)


• Under Ground — Vertical passageway (10 points)


• Going Up — Don’t let gravity keep you down (10 points)

By re-reading these clues, I had a pretty good idea where some of the other hidden items might be located. So that’s what I focused on for my most recent play through, finding those remaining items. Well, I found them, and I had a good time doing it.

In a sense, I would argue these Limbo achievements encourage three basic play-through modes. The first and most important play through is all about completing the basic game. It’s about figuring out how to do it and doing it. This may or may not involve finding some of the hidden eggs, but the second play-through mode is to locate either all of or the remainder of the collectibles. It’s about the player referencing their memory and knowledge from their first play through and discovering the rather elegantly hidden game within the game—little puzzles contained inside the big puzzle. The third play through is to master the game by completing with minimal deaths—no more than five for the achievement. I can’t speak too much about the latter because I haven’t made any attempts to play through according to that set of rules.

So … what’s my point in all of this?

The point is this. It’s the simple things that matter. I encourage everyone to experience Limbo’s first play-through mode. That’s a given. I was surprisingly impressed, however, with the second mode as well. Finding hidden items simply for the sake of finding hidden items can actually be quite satisfying—when done smartly!

It would be quite possible to find each of the hidden Limbo eggs without any hints. It’s also possible to go through and not stumble upon any of them at all (as I almost did). Sometimes all it takes is a little bit of exploration, or paying close attention when noticing an area of the traversable screen that seems disconnected from the more visible path of forward progress. In a game such as Limbo, where every interactive element is in its place for a specific reason, that inexplicable object or open area would be a red flag.

But anyone who has ever tried to locate hidden video game items without cheating can probably tell you what an exhausting and maddening experience it can be. Sure, the completion-obsessed player may find some or even most of the items in a given game, but more likely than not there will always be those elusive needles in the proverbial haystack. Finding needles is great, but looking for them with no hot/cold feedback or helpful navigation often frustrates. In lieu of spending more potentially wasted time and energy poking through a level or game world, the player will eventually resign to seeking the answer online. From a game-playing perspective, this defeats the entire purpose of hiding whatever item is being sought after in the first place.

For this reason, Limbo’s clues function brilliantly. For one—and I don’t mean to spoil anything by revealing this—they are listed chronologically in relation to the linear progress of the game. The first listed achievement ("Wrong Way") is obtained before the second ("Altitude is Attitude"), the second before the third and so on. Second, each achievement name and description work together to point out types of landmarks or indicators. The “It’s Stuck” achievement description implies water. “Climbing the Cog” implies both a cog and a lever. They’re great hints, and in this case developer Playdead just happened to use the Xbox achievements system for presenting them. Instead of looking for a needle in a haystack, the activity becomes a scavenger hunt. It’s still about discovery and exploration, but it’s a type of exploration—it's a type of game!—that respects your time and energy.

In my next post I'll continue this train of thought further and discuss how Limbo's treatment of hidden collectibles informs and compares to similar features in other game titles. Stay tuned!


(Images for this post were borrowed from http://tig.wikia.com/wiki/Limbo and http://strategywiki.org/wiki/LIMBO.)

Alan Wake's American Nightmare review - a rough draft

I'll admit, this is weird. I was just wandering around my apartment today, trying to figure out what to do with my blog. All of a sudden I started picking up these random glowing pages to a video game review that I don't remember writing. The pages were everywhere. In the kitchen sink. On the bathroom mirror. Anyway, I apologize for the terrible writing, but I figured I just had to transcribe them and share...


Title Screen
I could see when I booted up the game that something was different. The nature of the series was changing. It was apparent from the word go.

The words on the opening title screen read Alan Wake's American Nightmare, and although it bore the namesake of the original game from 2010, the overall image conveyed something undoubtedly pulpier in tone.

The title character appeared to be standing on the precipice of a desert cliff, flashlight in one hand and a nail gun in the other. He stood tall and held up the makeshift weapon confidently. Gone was the dark forest motif from the first game. No longer was Alan Wake just a name, a figure in silhouette behind a white beam of light. It was as if the character from that first game had re-written himself onto the cover of a comic book.

Whereas Wake's previous adventures had left him mysteriously stranded beneath the dark waters of Cauldron Lake, fighting for survival and sanity, this Alan Wake had emerged stronger and more powerful. Like a superhero.

Exploring the Space
As I progressed further into the main adventure, I began to see more clearly the game's overall structure. The Arizona setting presented itself as a series of small open-world environments that I was free to explore. I moved the player character around these bite-size locations, using a kind of on-screen radar device that pointed as a map and compass toward various objectives.

I knew that were I a stronger man I could cut straight to the main business, probably zip through the whole game in a few short hours. I could use those spared hours to do something productive and meaningful with my life. But I also knew that scattered around that digital landscape were collectible manuscript pages, and with those pages, Xbox achievement points.

I was not a strong man.

The Giving Game
Even as the waves of enemies intensified, I never broke a sweat. I dispatched them with ease and precision. For being in a so-called “nightmare,” Alan Wake controlled like an absolute dream. His footwork was nimble. His aim was impeccable. And his ability to hold a flashlight steady on a moving target while reloading a pump-action shotgun? Effortless.

When it came to weapons and supplies, the game was more giving than Santa Claus. No matter the number of monsters that swarmed in a given moment, it simply didn't matter. A full or partial resupply of batteries, bullets and health was rarely more than a few hundred feet away.

On the one hand I could appreciate a game with a more buffed up protagonist. Easier combat meant less frustration. Less frustration meant less cursing at the television set. On the other hand, I couldn't help but feel the game lacked a certain tension because of this.

Words Words Words
Within the game world I picked up page after page after page. Each time I did so I listened as the voice actor narrated. A few pages described plot events that had yet to transpire. Some filled in bits and pieces of backstory or brief subtext involving the game's minor characters. Most pages read like a boring, sentimental memoir. Alan had a loving wife. His agent Barry was a good friend. I wanted to shout at the TV. “I get it already!”

Alan Wake’s words had the power to reshape reality, but they also had the power to induce sleep.

In my own written review I had more-or-less forgiven the first game's sub-par prose, but this was getting ridiculous.


Déjà Vu
My wife had warned me that the game was recursive, requiring the player to repeat the same basic tasks in the same three locations, only with subtle storyline shifts.

Was this laziness on behalf of the developer, a way in which to recycle the same locations? Or was there a purpose? Did the storytelling communicate something significant through the use of this Groundhog Day setup?

Did developer Remedy leave room for surprises? Or did they merely throw in new weapons and enemy types with each recursive play through? It was hard to tell.

Paging Mr. Scratch
The premise of American Nightmare held promise. Alan Wake was hot on the trail of his nemesis Mr. Scratch, a doppelganger that was released into the world like an evil reflection when Alan plunged into the waters of Cauldron Lake at the end of the first game. Alan had written himself into some kind of vaguely remembered Night Springs television story in which he finally catches up to and corners Mr. Scratch.

Mr. Scratch had just wreaked strange havoc on this mysterious Arizona town. He had charmed many of the townspeople before turning violent and psychotic. He'd even recorded a series of taunting video messages, sometimes murdering random victims on camera while he waxed poetic to Alan about being nothing more than an unshackled version of Alan's true self.

There were other suggestions that this evil twin represented Alan's character flaws exaggerated to the extreme. The bad drinking habits. Alan's temper. But Mr. Scratch was also a serial killer, a concept all too morbid for such a lightly treated game.

Show or Tell
Aside from those few drawn-out Mr. Scratch videos, most of the overarching story was simply implied. Alan encountered some non-player characters who briefly described the events that happened before his arrival. Events mostly disconnected from the player's rather straightforward experience of running around an empty game world and battling nameless dark creatures.

There was nothing wrong with the idea of a game bringing the player character into the aftermath of a calamity. BioShock and its spiritual predecessors were evidence enough of that. But American Nightmare violated one of the supreme rules of good narrative. Instead of showing, it mostly told.


The Taken
When Alan Wake battled through the Pacific Northwest setting in the first game, the Taken had represented individuals who had been kidnapped by the elusive and unknowable Dark Presence. Loggers had been transformed into axe-wielding, chainsaw-revving murderers. Most of the Taken served as anonymous fodder that existed for the purpose of creating an obstacle to the protagonist's forward progress. But while their precise origins and identities may have presented a logical conundrum, they made enough aesthetic sense that it didn't really matter.

Their presence in American Nightmare felt more arbitrary. The enemies looked like cartoon characters in a cartoon setting. Alan's journey through the forests, farms, mills and mines of Bright Falls, Washington, had felt deeply authentic. The settings in American Nightmare—a generic motel, a mountain-top observatory, and a drive-in movie theater—felt haphazard by comparison.

A Critical Choice
Writing a game review is no easy task. People may think it's just words on a screen or a magazine page but it's not. There are considerations to be made. Will the review be a glorified consumer's guide? A think piece? Will it have a score or rating? A reviewer must identify a game's crucial components and determine either how well or poorly those components co-function to create an engaging or otherwise meaningful experience for the player.

I pored over the words I had written. My thoughts were as scattered and divided as the pages of Alan Wake's story. I had made a bold decision. I would try to write the review in the style of the author himself. I imagined Alan reading the prose as if it was his own. I searched in my memory for the rhythm and cadence of Alan's in-game narration.

Even as I struggled with the piece, I knew I was sacrificing the opportunity to put forth coherent criticism. My precious few readers would scoff. I might never be allowed to write for a respectable game publication because of it. It might not work. But I had made my decision. I'd gone all in. My chips were on the table and there was no turning back.

That Sinking Feeling
I started in on the third and final cycle of the game's narrative. The Alan Wake character had woken up once again on the shore of a small desert lake. In front of the character was the famous cabin from the island on Cauldron Lake. Like the Kansas farmhouse from The Wizard of Oz, it had been transported to a distant world. Only now it was partially submerged, sinking slowly into the dark sludgy waters.

Perhaps it was a metaphor for the character, trapped as he was in some metaphysical limbo of his own psyche. But it was more telling than that. To me the sinking cabin was symbolic of the Alan Wake series itself. The game that had begun with such potential had suddenly stagnated. The game developers had taken their narrative in a certain direction and now they were creatively stuck.

Conclusions
There was a time not long ago when I believed Alan Wake was on the cutting edge of some great shift in interactive storytelling. The first game had spun a gripping supernatural narrative that rivaled the best of high-concept television. Its linear level design worked brilliantly in episodic format, as each segment brought the game's protagonist ever closer to solving the mystery of his wife's disappearance. It was exciting.

American Nightmare felt like a video game. And an average one at that. It was possible this was just a diversion. A quick stopover on the way to a true sequel in which the developers at Remedy would pick up the pieces and continue the main storyline that had culminated to such great effect with their last downloadable episode. Only time would tell.

For now there was nothing to do but fudge around with American Nightmare's arcade action mode. As I preceded to play a thought came to me. “Hey,” I told myself. “This arcade action mode will really boost the game's replay-value score in my review.”

Alan Wake's American Nightmare gets 2.5 out of 4 stars. You can download this game on Xbox LIVE Arcade for 1200 Microsoft Points ($15).

Images were borrowed from alanwake.wikia.com.

Alan Wake review - heading toward the light

It seems so obvious after the fact and yet I never would have conceived of the idea myself. Model a video game on the pacing, structure and logic of a high-concept television series.

For example, what if we make a game about a famous writer who travels to the Pacific Northwest and stumbles upon a dark mysterious power that makes his words come to life? Or, perhaps more simply, what if Stephen King and J.J. Abrams got together and made a video game?

That, in a nutshell, is the high concept of Alan Wake on the Xbox 360, developed by Remedy Entertainment. And doggone if it doesn’t make for an interesting game.


It’s quite possible I’m just out of touch. I didn’t enter the current console generation until the very end of 2009, and I still have a lot of catching up to do. But I’d say more than any other current-gen game I’ve played, Alan Wake feels like it has the stirrings of something genuinely new.

Mechanically, it’s not. What the player’s got in his or her hands essentially is a linear third-person shooter with a flashlight thrown in to mix up the action. Shoot the bad guys first with light. Finish ’em off with the Second Amendment. Plus you can execute a cool slow-motion dodge maneuver. It’s clever. It’s tense. It can be a bit of a juggling act trying to fend off a pack of swarming specters and poltergeist logging equipment.

What makes Alan Wake really fresh, I think, has to do with a combination of the game’s setting, narrative structure and incredible production values.


Let’s talk about narrative. Specifically, let’s address some criticisms. I’ve come across some opinions regarding Alan Wake as a lousy protagonist. People say he’s kind of a jerk. He’s rude to his fans. He’s got a bad temper. I’d say that’s what makes him a complex character. These slightly embarrassing traits pop up pretty quickly and help establish some of the foreboding. We see that all is not quite well with the internal character. Through the course of the game we see this internal drama manifest in the external environment of the game as the protagonist works toward redemption. And I think Alan Wake has a lot of unmentioned redeeming qualities, i.e. his loyalty and determination. It sounds like L.A. Noire (which I haven’t played) received similar criticism for its central Cole Phelps character. So did Grand Theft Auto IV. My guess is that narrative-heavy games will likely continue to challenge players with this sort of set-up. Flawed characters have long been a part of literature and film. Some readers and filmgoers today still have a hard time engaging with books and movies dominated by what they might see as unlikeable or unredeemed protagonists. Video games introduce that other awkward dimension of direct player control and interaction, sometimes interrupted by bits of action—perhaps in cutscenes—where the protagonist might act in unsavory ways outside of that control or input.

There’s a pretty fun interview with Tom Bissell where he talks about the many ways Remedy misses the reality-check mark in developing a writer protagonist. No international bestselling author, he says, should have his best friend for an agent. No major publisher would let a writer’s spouse design the writer's official book jacket. These are all valid points, and yet obviously this is what happens in the realm of high-concept entertainment. Indiana Jones isn’t a typical archaeologist either. Barry Wheeler may not represent an actual New York agent, but he makes for a damn good sidekick character.

I like how the game introduces its characters, mostly without fanfare, and comes back to them in sometimes unexpected ways. I like how it slips in little storyline hints and clues that you might not at first realize are hints and clues. I like the game world's backwoods setting—its authenticity, consistency, its nods to Twin Peaks and that it doesn't rely on hyperbolic set pieces. I like the game’s measured plot reveals and, in particular, its TV-inspired episodic breakdown. I like that the game left me with lingering questions even at the end of the game, just as the opening narration more or less suggested was going to happen.


I like all of these things and yet I don’t necessarily like what it all portends—a future of episodic, download-only game releases being one likely possibility. I worry that I like Alan Wake probably more than I should, that I forgive too easily its faults and absurdities. It’s been suggested elsewhere and it bears repeating here that the actual writing in the game—as in the manuscript pages collected throughout each segment of the game—does not impress as great writing. The easy excuse, of course, comes back to the high-concept notion. It doesn't need to be Hemingway prose. It's a plot gimmick.

But this all leads me to wonder: Would I put up with cheesy narration and similar gimmickry in film or television? Does standard quality entertainment in one medium equate greatness when replicated in a video game, simply because it's novel to the medium?

Popular video games have long relied on their own version of the high concept, some cliché examples of which have been repeated with rapidly improving technology but slower-building narrative sophistication and/or creativity. You have the typically Western theme of the lone space marine battling vast armies of aliens, demons, etc. Japanese games have often maintained high concepts (A.K.A. absolute bizarreness) all their own. Ultimately, Alan Wake represents a positive step forward. I'll take the thought-provoking TV-style narrative incoherence of Alan Wake over the traditional video game incoherence of Bayonetta any day.

Sometimes I'm convinced that Alan Wake represents a type of game that wouldn't have been able to exist in a previous hardware generation, that its success hinges on the aforementioned production values. One game I have yet to play, however, is the sleeper hit Deadly Premonition, another 2010 Xbox 360 game that—oddly enough—also takes inspiration from the Twin Peaks series. How does a Japanese-developed game with a similar setting but notoriously low-budget production values test this particular theory?

I guess I'll let you know when I find out.

Alan Wake gets 3.5 out of 4 stars.

Images were borrowed from alanwake.wikia.com.