What's in a roguelike?

Well, I was going to wrap up the year by posting a link to my second article on Unwinnable and calling it good. Unfortunately, it looks like I waited too long. In my laziness—perhaps as a result of it, for all I know—there seems to be a server issue with Unwinnable that has rendered anything pre-July 2011 inaccessible. Anyway, hopefully that gets resolved soon and I can furnish said link.

Still, that leaves the question of what to post for December 2013. So here's an idea. Let's talk about genre … or rather a particular sub-genre in the realm of video games.

Yes, I still want to be able to call FTL a roguelike.

It's recently come to my attention that some people have taken exception to the term “roguelike” — or rather, its liberal usage as a catch-all genre descriptor for a recent surge of games that involve a heady mix of procedurally generated content and permanent player death. I've written about some of these games on my blog (namely Spelunky and The Binding of Isaac), and in both cases I've basically called them both “roguelikes.”

It's also come to my attention that people have debated the usage of the term for different reasons, on the one hand because it may or may not violate a set of guidelines established by some people who met five years ago at a little get-together in Berlin. Other people say the term “roguelike” is just a bad name. It's confusing. Right from the get-go it references a particular game most people have never even heard about.

I may not have a personal stake in this debate, but I do have an opinion. I guess it just never struck me that the term was problematic.

I myself have never played Rogue or any of its spiritual brethren that used ASCII characters for graphics. For a couple of years I'd heard the term “roguelike” kicked around, not really knowing what it meant. Then, slowly, I began to piece it together. I started reading and following up on games like Epic Dungeon for Xbox Live Indie Games, 100 Rogues on iOS, and eventually the Spelunky remake for XBLA. The latter game particularly piqued my interest, and it was all I could do to resist buying it until it went on sale toward the end of 2012. It turns out I enjoyed the game about as much as I anticipated I would. And yes … it was sort of like being introduced to a new kind of game.

The game was like my own personal dungeon master. Each new attempt to make my way through the mines, jungles, ice caves, and that confounded temple was a unique experience. Each freshly generated level was like unwrapping a mysterious Christmas gift. It could be a Red Ryder BB Gun (a free jetpack waiting for me in a nearby item crate). It could be a lump of coal (a dark jungle level, wherein I stumble into a hive of giant hornets). I had to prepare myself for a multitude of potential scenarios, to gamble my precious time and resources on an unknowable path of downward progress.

This past year I played two of the other popular games commonly associated with the “roguelike” moniker—the aforementioned The Binding of Isaac and the spacefaring FTL: Faster Than Light. As far as I'm concerned, these three titles constitute the holy trinity of the neo roguelike. With no disrespect to the many talented developers who have been working within or around the genre for multiple decades, I think it's really these three games that have put the roguelike under the spotlight for a larger audience.

Partly what I like so much about the more generalized roguelike definition is how it puts the emphasis on something other than a game's central mechanics. In other words, by calling a game a roguelike we're not necessarily dealing with the specifics of what the player is doing. Spelunky could just as easily be considered a side-scrolling platformer, because the player must literally navigate their player avatar through a network of 2D platforms while avoiding hazards and fighting off enemies. Clearly, the same could not be said about The Binding of Isaac, which would more likely be pegged as a top-down dungeon crawler. FTL, which has players strategically managing the crew of a spaceship in a series of real-time encounters, is perhaps the most divergent of the three games, at least in terms of how the player interacts with it. What ties them all together is really more a matter of design philosophy. And while things like procedural content generation and permanent death might still be perceived as rather prescriptive or rigid genre signifiers, as these three games demonstrate, there are many different ways to put those signifiers into practice. There remains a similar quality to the playing experience, one that for me is about learning how to overcome the fresh surprises and incredible odds being stacked against me as I progress (hopefully) closer and closer toward the final boss encounter.

As I mentioned earlier, there's a crowd of people who take issue with the fact that these recent slew of games do not fit the more restrictive set of guidelines for what should be considered a true roguelike. None of these games are turn-based, grid-based, etc. None of them—to reiterate—use ASCII characters for graphics. This is partly out of deference and respect to a particular canon of games that became popular around the same time. It codifies a particular moment in gaming history.

In an attempt to satisfy the demands of the Berlin interpreters, some have suggested we call these modern-day imitators "rogue-lites" or—worse yet—"roguelike-likes." I myself am not a fan of either term. The latter one seems particularly silly and redundant. If we do have to make a distinction, I would rather use the term "neo roguelike," which I alluded to earlier.

I can appreciate the recent efforts of game developer Lars Doucet, who has tried to singlehandedly coin the all-new term “procedural death labyrinth” as a replacement genre name. I could maybe get behind the shortened term “deathlab” if enough other people did the same, but … here's what I really think.

Popular opinion has already spoken.

I think it's already been established by too many people that Spelunky, FTL, and numerous other recent titles are indeed modern-day roguelikes. To try and backpedal seems to do little to elevate the conversation surrounding these games. But more than that, it might be futile. There's nothing wrong with educating people about the past, but people need to understand that genres and terminologies tend to function more like avalanches than like meteorites—they pick up more stuff over time. If you ask a pop music historian what constitutes hip hop music, they might be tempted to correct you in saying that "hip hop" technically refers to an artistic subculture that originated amongst the black and Latino communities of 1970s New York. While most people might use the terms "rap music" and "hip hop" interchangeably, for many the latter usage would be inaccurate, because hip hop also encompasses DJing, breakdancing, and graffiti. Still, try and tell that to the people who organize the music section at your local big-box retailer. It will probably fall on deaf ears.

Even today, there are those who would argue that a film noir can't truly exist beyond the boundaries of 1958 without being a self-conscious imitator of what was previously an undefined and organic trend in American cinema. And while I admit there may be some truth to this—once a genre (or really anything) has been defined and labeled, it reshapes our perception of the thing—no one can deny that artistic influence shapes all creative output with or without the guidance of established genre definitions. Many of the classic film noir pictures would never have existed in the same way that we know them without the hard-boiled literature that formed the basis of their adapted screenplays. The original game Rogue might not have been the same game without the influence of Dungeons & Dragons.

At its best, genre helps us identify and celebrate the ties, influences, and commonalities that underly a particular work of artistic expression in relation to other works that came before, after, or contemporaneously. Personally, I'm of the opinion that genre should try to be inclusive wherever possible and used as a means to encourage thoughtful elaboration, deviation, and reinterpretation of old ideas. Some of the best genre films, for example, have originated from iconoclasts like Robert Altman, who contributed to our understanding of multiple Hollywood genres by the act of subverting their conventions.

Then again, I also understand that we each must draw our own lines in the sand. Just as a particular camp of people have tried to argue for years that Citizen Cane is a film noir, so have a small but persistent number of people remained adamant that The Legend of Zelda is an RPG series. Determining whether or not a particular work of art fits a particular genre is always a matter of opinion, both to the populace and to the individual.

I will agree that the biggest danger with using the term “roguelike” is its inscrutability to the casual game player. But I'm also of the opinion that people marketing and developing games should find better ways to describe their products than through a reliance on genre tags. I'm more interested in the use of genre as a vehicle for rhetorical criticism. People who will want to know what a "roguelike" game is will be able to find out, just like I did.

As much as I might otherwise steer clear of semantics debates, I actually think it's a little bit exciting that this conversation is happening at all. I think it speaks to the fact that people do want to elevate and advance the way we think and talk about games. And whatever we want to call these particular games in question—be they roguelites, rogue likes, death labs, or something else completely—they've certainly struck a chord.

So I wrote a thing for Unwinnable...

So I wrote a thing for Unwinnable. You can check it out here. It's a personal reflection on one of my favorite games of all time, Ion Storm's 2000 PC masterwork Deus Ex. The article doesn't really critique the game itself. It has more to do with coming to terms with how the game may or may not have informed my political identity and susceptibility to real-world conspiracy theories—namely those surrounding 9/11.

It was published last Tuesday to coincide with election day, but in reality I finished the article in early September—and I'd been trying to write it since early May.

The piece was partly inspired by a previous Unwinnable article written by Owen R. Smith—an old friend and coworker at my former newspaper job—in which he talks about how the ending of Metal Gear Solid 2 made him reconsider his former adulation for the ending of Deus Ex. I had already been toying with the idea of trying to write for Unwinnable for a number of months, so I decided to see if I could respond in my own way to the game that had occupied a similar space in my own mind for so many years. I submitted a pitch to the site and then promptly failed to get my idea off the ground for months.

To be perfectly honest, I'm still not entirely satisfied with how the article turned out. Did I communicate what I had wanted to communicate? Sort of. But I only had a very nebulous idea of what I thought I had to say in the first place.

One of the things I found so interesting was how the choices I made while playing Deus Ex in the year 2000 felt more meaningful and predictive of my political identity than my actual voting choices that same year. Granted, I think that's more of a testament to the sad state of our present democracy than anything else. I really don't think the makers of Deus Ex were trying to make any kind of overt political statement—and my article basically suggests as much. It's more interesting to see how the choices of Deus Ex serve as a sort of personality test for the player, which—again—is not necessarily profound in and of itself. Nevertheless, I wonder if video games like Deus Ex—through their very emphasis on player freedom—lend themselves to a sort of libertarianism. Even when I listen to the rationale that Tracer Tong gives for destroying Area 51 at the end of Deus Ex, it's not a far cry from the rationale that someone like Ron Paul would offer for dismantling large segments of the Federal Government.

For better or for worse, I think there also seems to be a correlation between libertarianism and the conspiratorial outlook. In other words, people with a predisposition toward one have a tendency toward the other.

Obviously, a lot of people would consider this a negative trait. My feelings are a bit more ambivalent. I came to the conclusion long ago that I know very little about what actually goes on in the world—beyond what I can see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears, that is. There is a lot that I can choose to believe based on empirical evidence, popular opinion, and authoritative assurances. But I think it's probably just as unhealthy to subscribe to any old conspiracy theory as it is to write them all off just because they might be labeled such.

At the end of the day, my writerly feelings toward my own material notwithstanding, I did work very hard on the piece and I did manage to make a number of significant content revisions that made it stronger in the end.

As a matter of fact, it's a pleasure to be able to announce the article here at the two-year anniversary for this blog (see here and here). I feel very privileged to be able to share my writing with a larger audience, especially on a site that I truly admire and that has such a respect for the work of the writer to begin with. There's a good possibility that a second article of mine might be going up there in the near future, too. So … stay tuned?

Charmed to my wits end in the Machinarium

One of my favorite pastimes growing up was playing through Sierra adventure games again and again and again. I used to run laps around the fictional Kingdom of Daventry and its neighboring realms, playing speed runs that weren't really speed runs in the early King's Quest games. I had even more fun ripping through time and space as Roger Wilco in the satirical Space Quest adventures. Back then, it wasn't so much the challenge of the game that drew me in—I'd memorized the solutions to all of the so-called puzzles like the lines of dialogue in a movie. It was fun just going through the motions, triggering the animation sequences and sometimes having fun experimenting with all of the goofy ways to lose or die.

So it's interesting to return to the genre in the present day—even for a title as distinct as Machinarium.

Without a doubt, the game is a visual triumph. Its endearing hand-drawn art direction is the heart and soul of the entire playing experience. As I explored each location of the robot city, it was like peering into the daydreams of a gifted illustrator—someone who probably spent the majority of their high school days doodling away at the margins of their notebook papers.

Unlike the Sierra and LucasArts games of the past, Machinarium tells its story without text or exposition. Characters communicate with body language and illustrated thought bubbles. The protagonist is a down-on-his-luck robot, who finds himself cast out from a towering robot enclave by a band of unsavory robot thugs. After sneaking back into the city and succumbing to further gaffes and blunders, the player must uncover and thwart a nefarious plot against the denizens of the city.

The story and style of Machinarium actually reminds me of the silent movie era—particularly the American comedies of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, etc. I have no idea whether the influence is direct or intentional, but the plight of the protagonist does bear some thematic resemblance to that of Chaplin's tramp. The robot, while plucky and persistent, is clearly on the margins of this cold-hearted, industrial society, forced to navigate his many setbacks through impromptu tricks and disguises.

Those are the things I liked about Machinarium. What I didn't always like was how the game actually played as a puzzle-solving exercise.

It seems to me that the game's puzzles tend to fall into one of two camps. First are the environmental puzzles, the ones that involve finding clickable objects and inventory items to use and manipulate. These are the types of puzzles we typically associate with the classic adventure games genre. The second suite of puzzles were more like logic mini-games and brainteasers. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the latter much more than the former. The traditional puzzles rarely make logical or predictive sense, which means the player will resort to brute-force tactics—clicking the mouse cursor all over the screen in hopes of triggering some sort of interaction. In adventure game terminology, we call this activity “pixel hunting.” It's all the more frustrating in Machinarium, because the player is further restricted from interacting with anything outside of a short radius of the character avatar.

Part of the problem is the lack of visual cues. At one point in the game I had solved a pretty challenging mini-game puzzle, which—in my mind—should have progressed a related environmental puzzle. Unfortunately, I hadn't noticed a small button on a panel, because there was nothing that differentiated that button from being anything other than a simple screw, rivet, or any other pencil-textured circle in the homogenous background environment.

With Machinarium, the developers must have foreseen this, because they implemented their own in-game hint and cheat system. For most locations in the game, the player can click on a lightbulb icon that offers a quick hint. Nine times out of 10, these hints are useless. In that case, the player can click on a book icon that enacts a strange side-scrolling arcade game. By winning the game, the player will gain access to a page that shows a visual representation of the solutions to that particular game screen's puzzles.

At first I hated the very thought of this. But let me tell you, it was necessary to go back to that cheat system more than once. And I guess if it's right there in the game, it's not technically cheating, is it?

By the time I made it to the end of the short game, I was happy that I'd stuck with it. And I'm definitely interested to check out some other games (newer and older) from Czech developer Amanita Design. Based on this title alone, however, I would have to say they are much better at animation and illustration than game design.

Hot Dog Homicide

The guys in my freshman dorm section—myself included—used to play large-scale multiplayer sessions of Grand Theft Auto 2 over the campus network. This was in the fall of 2001, probably in the short window between 9/11 and the release of GTA III for the PlayStation 2. I don't even remember who it was that furnished the original copy of the game, but we all pirated it onto our laptops.

Those death matches were a lot of fun. The game would start and you would find your little avatar placed in some random location of the sprawling city. Your safest bet—regardless of your positioning—was usually to get your feet off the pavement and into a vehicle as quickly as possible. The easiest and funniest kills involved simply finding and running over anyone who hadn't yet managed to steal a car.

Our afternoon play sessions didn't last very far into the semester, which is kind of a shame. There was a quality to those matches that was both Darwinian and democratic. None of us had come to the game with any prior experience, so nobody ever dominated. We were equal-opportunity psychopaths.

A few of us struck out on our own and tried playing the single-player game, and that's when we got a taste for what the GTA experience was really about. I distinctly remember huddling around some friends and watching a dorm mate play one particular mission that involved rounding up random, unsuspecting citizens on a hijacked transit bus and driving them to a nearby meat-processing facility. From there, a Russian mafia boss tells the player character to go to the top of the cage and supervise (which really just means watch) as the passengers—now stripped naked—are brought in and forced at gunpoint onto a conveyor belt headed toward the grinder.

I think our collective jaw dropped at the scene that unfolded—crude sound effects of people sobbing and pleading, a cluster of reluctant victims running backward off the belt and being mowed down by machine gun fire. I couldn't have been the only person to notice the resemblance of this massacre to a particular historic event, now being turned (whether intentionally or otherwise) into some kind of cartoonish parody—the punchline being a hotdog delivery van filled with fresh cannibal chow.

“That's fucked up,” said the guy playing the game, and he was right.

Still, we couldn't help but laugh—just a little bit—if only at the sheer audacity. Or maybe just to counter the shock.

Requiem for a Halo

Creating a sequel is no enviable task, even less so when the original artifact is something truly special.

Granted, there is perhaps the thrill—particularly for newcomers—of becoming a part of the saga, of being able to contribute to a great and admired legacy. But fans are a prickly bunch—very difficult to satisfy. The fans don't always know what they want. A sequel has to be innovative, of course. But it can't stray too far from the original source, not in spirit and certainly not in whatever has been deemed canonical. It must be … faithful.

Having played through the first few missions of Halo 4, I think I can safely say the developers at 343 Industries have remained faithful to the Bungie games that came before it—for better and for worse.

I like the Halo games. They tend to have a nice clean aesthetic. They're linear and easy to navigate. You see your objective marked off in the distance and you make your way there—picking off all the enemies standing in your way. I like to play on the heroic difficulty. It gives me just the right balance of fun and mild challenge. Playing legendary is slow and punishing. Heroic moves at a much nicer pace. Sure, I still end up failing a lot and repeating the same firefights, but I know there's never any doubt that I'll soon get it—it might even be close and a little bit exciting. I'll shoot down one of the last standing elites, my shields blasted down to nearly nothing. Then I'll see those two glorious words display without fanfare at the bottom corner of the screen: “Checkpoint... done.”

At the same time, I know these games are stupid. I think it was while playing Halo: Reach that I finally saw how stupid it really was. It was most evident while playing with the game's Firefight mode, which sends increasingly difficult waves of Covenant enemies to attack your position.

It was during these staged battles that I began to question the entire Covenant military strategy. You see, the Covenant are an alliance of alien races, all bound together in service and adherence to some kind of religious order. There's a social hierarchy to the species, which shows in their military structure. The Grunts are the lowest ranking members—the cannon fodder. They're the squat, slow-moving creatures who get sent off to the front lines of skirmishes. Half the time they can't even figure out where they're supposed to be going, their relentless squeaking chatter giving away their position as they approach. When a human soldier actually engages them in combat, it's not uncommon for these grunts to simply turn around and waddle away in terror.

The next most-common enemy is the Jackal. Sometimes I think these guys are even stupider than the Grunts. The Jackals are easily spotted by the circular colored energy shields they carry around with them (some enemy types from this species forego the shield for a two-handed rifle). Their modus operandi is to fire off the occasional shot from behind cover before deciding—for whatever reason—to start creeping around the open battlefield, often turning their shields away from the line of fire in the process. Some are a little better at staying hidden than others, but when you happen to approach a Jackal in close quarters, don't worry—they're extremely frail and timid. Most of the time you can just punch them repeatedly until their shields peter out and they die. You'll feel like the playground bully, but it's faster than wasting ammo on their shields and having to reload.

The Elites are a different breed, and their name is no misnomer. Elites are the true soldiers of the Covenant military. They're tall, athletic, and they come equipped with surprisingly effective energy forcefields that the player needs to wear down before being able to impart any lasting physical damage. These guys employ much more believable fighting tactics. They take cover when shot at. They charge when desperate. Simply put, they're a worthy adversary.

I guess it just makes me wonder, why does the Covenant bother with the Grunts and Jackals at all? Are they simply meant to soak up and deplete the enemy's limited ammunition? I guess that might be a reasonable explanation if the rest of the crew managed to get the job done. But the Covenant troops are constantly failing—to a lone space marine, no less! As opposed to placing the Elites at the outer edge of the conflict, would it be more effective if they just rushed out with a giant horde of Elite soldiers right from the get go? Think of the terror and panic that would induce! Think of how quickly the humans would be wiped out.

That's close to what actually happens at an early point in the first game of the series, 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved. On the third level, the Master Chief and a band of human soldiers sets out on a kind of suicide mission—to covertly infiltrate a Covenant capital ship and rescue the imprisoned Captain Keyes.

This is such an awesome game level, punctuated midway through by one of the most memorable fight sequences of any video game. As the player and a crew of allies gets beamed aboard the Covenant vessel, they find themselves standing in the center of a dark empty loading dock. Master Chief's A.I. companion Cortana makes an obvious, cautious observation about the lack of Covenant forces. This of course reassures no one. The player knows something is about to happen—the setting is beyond ominous, and at this point completely foreign. Suddenly, one of four surrounding doors makes a soft pulsing noise and flashes color. As it slides open, the familiar growl of an Elite soldier echoes inside the dark chamber (prompting one of your human compatriots to utter the famous line, “No Covenant. You had to open your mouth!”). If the player manages to locate which door has just opened, they might spot the nearly invisible enemy rushing forward with some kind of glowing energy sword.

Most of the people who play this sequence their first time through probably get slaughtered immediately. It's such a startling encounter, such a great way to introduce players to the sword-wielding Elites. The first time I ever managed to clear each of the ensuing waves, I ended up being the lone human survivor. During later attempts I was able to arrive at that location with a better strategy. I knew to lob grenades at the first sign of approach. But that first time … what an exciting challenge!

Unfortunately, there's not much that can top an excellent first impression, and the original Halo had a lot of firsts—the first ride in a Warthog vehicle, the first tango with Covenant Hunters (twin armored juggernauts with high-powered energy canons for guns), the first major gameplay twist introducing the dreaded Flood creatures. Hell, just booting up the game for the first time and and hearing that epic a cappella theme was an event. Subsequent games tried to replicate these iconic moments—it seems like most Halo games include an obligatory infiltrate-the-Covenant-ship mission—but they were never as surprising and rarely as effective the second time around.

Jumping ahead to the latest entry in the series, it all just feels a little strange. For the third time this console generation, the franchise has returned sporting cleaner, crisper graphics. They're high-fidelity graphics, yes, but with regards to what? Everyone knows there's no such thing as a “real” Covenant alien. So why are we so easily led to believe that these crispier and crispier representations are any more or less “accurate” to the mythical real thing?

I certainly think it's cool to play games with shinier graphics, but how is this constant pixel-pushing serving the series overall? Is it being used to tell a better story? Maybe that's asking too much from a Halo game. Is it at least being used to present new surprises or innovative enemy encounters—new memorable firsts? Unfortunately, I can't really say I'm in love with Halo 4's new enemy types, but at least it's an attempt at something new. One of the things I did during my last play session was to step into a mech suit, which was certainly another first for the series—and a bit of a surprise.

I think the original Halo accomplished something genuinely amazing in its day. It made the shooter fun … for everybody. If not everybody, it made the shooter accessible to anyone who would ever have any interest in playing a shooter.

Think of all the titles that came before it: Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Half-Life, Goldeneye 007. Were they fun? If you were already into games, almost undoubtedly yes. But they still had their quirks. They were mostly PC games. Halo: Combat Evolved made the experience of first-person shooting as kinetically fun, intuitive, and as streamlined as it would ever conceivably get. It did so many things right. It offered the best cooperative multiplayer experience of any almost game to date. Its competitive mode was incredibly well-balanced. It also told a coherent story that wasn't all juvenile gags and bloodlust. Halo was the Star Wars of video games, a true popcorn game if ever there was one.

Today, 12 years later, the shooter finds itself in an awkward position. Sure, the genre still sells like hotcakes, but I'm not sure it generates the same enthusiasm it once did. We're hearing more and more voices in the wilderness calling attention to this glut of shooting insanity (for starters, see here and here). These are smart, critical minded individuals rightly questioning the present-day value of games that revolve around shooting things from a first-person perspective—maybe from any perspective.

And the Halo series certainly doesn't get a free pass for being sci-fi. Just because it substitutes its human targets for alien ones, it's still a series that glorifies the whole notion of military force. Halo 4 can try to re-frame the picture all it wants to with its opening cinematic (and whatever follows … like I said, I haven't finished the game), posing the question of whether it's the Master Chief's humanity or utter lack thereof that makes him an effective fighter. At the end of the day, we're still shooting sentient creatures in the face.

I wonder, is every shooter in a post-Spec Ops: The Line industry going to have to make some kind of straw-man attempt at justifying its own violent systems? BioShock Infinite is probably the most notable recent example of this dilemma. It's really no secret what's going on here. We're no different from all these gruff, battle-weary protagonists in our games. We've sustained ourselves for so long on shooting for shooting's sake—it's the Rambo effect. We don't know anything else. The industry can't help but transfer and project this weariness into its own games, and these moral questions are merely circling back on themselves in an infinite loop. All this immense effort of stuffing meaningful narrative into these games isn't going to work if we're still making the same games at heart.

Did I mention I do enjoy the Halo games? I do, and I meant all those nice things I said earlier. But I'm not going to be sad if this is the last Halo game I ever play. There's just no getting around it—this series is tired. Master Chief is tired. That's not to say he won't or can't fight. He's a Rambo character. He's invincible. But there's just no joy in victory anymore—no joy for this series. Remember when the Halo games still had humor? They cast David Cross as the voice of the human soldiers in Halo 2, for Pete's sake—and it was great! The Halo games lost whatever semblance of humor they still had with the passing of the original Xbox. So, yes. Master Chief is tired, and frankly, he's also a little cranky. If we could peer behind that golden helmet visor of his, I know his expression would prove me right.

Running the Gauntlet

I thought I wanted to be done with it—to move on with my gaming life. I was wrong.

Having clocked in at more than 108 hours on my first play through, Dark Souls comes pretty close to being the longest game I've ever played. Granted, I could have finished it sooner, but I knew that once I defeated the game's final boss I'd be forced back to the beginning of a new play through—my access to all the unexplored locations cut off until I could manage to run my way back through the long, punishing gauntlet once again.

So I consulted online to see what other optional content was left to experience. I let myself be pulled into the Painted World of Ariamis, a ruined stronghold with an apparent legacy of bloody violence, strewn as it was with hanging and impaled corpses, infested with crazed and in some cases gigantically head-swollen, toxic-blooded hollows (insane, undead enemies), as well as new monsters even more fearsome and grotesque than almost anything previously encountered. Even in this cut-off—possibly imaginary—place of magical exile, the undead curse had taken hold.

I later made my descent (more like a death-defying, vertical plummet) through the Great Hollow to the quiet and immense basin of Ash Lake, a place where immortal pillars of vegetation held up the canopy of the entire world above.

By chance, I managed to pick up the Artorias of the Abyss DLC for a discount price on Xbox Live, and the timing couldn't have been better. After a frustrating first night of halted progress—hindered by my inability to slay the corrupted knight Artorias—my second evening with the new content was among my most fruitful hours of play in the game to date. After deftly taking down Artorias with the help of a summoned phantom, I managed to go solo against two further bosses (two of the toughest in the entire game) and restore peace—perhaps?—to the land of Oolacile.

I vanquished another hidden boss. I sought out any remaining secrets until there was nothing left to do. By the time I found myself attacking the game's non-aggressive NPCs, simply to claim their loot and humanity for a possible NG+ (new game plus) run, I knew it was time to finish the game—time to put this long journey to bed.

But then—lo and behold!—almost as immediately as I had cut down the ancient Lord Gwyn with my black knight great axe, pondered the unsettling non-closure of its ending cinematic, and returned to the game's title screen, I found myself back inside the character creation interface, trying to come up with a name for my brand new female sorcerer.

Just to be clear, I have never done this before! As much as I've enjoyed a good role-playing game in the past, I've never felt compelled enough to go back and do it again—at least not without a considerable amount of time in the interim, as in several years. And even then, I've never managed to make it very far into a second play through before abandoning my quest.

The funny thing is, I know I'm not the only person who has experienced this with Dark Souls. What is it about this game?

There's already been a lot of insightful commentary written about this game. The sense of place is palpable, something I've only marginally conveyed in my above descriptions. Lordran is a world with variety, character, and genuine "wow"-factor scale. The game's online interconnectivity with other players is forward-thinking.

What surprises me the most, however, is how well the game overcomes what might otherwise be considered a rather simplistic element of its design, which is the largely static nature of things. I'm talking about a game world populated entirely with pre-positioned enemies who remain non-aggressive—and for the most part motionless—until a certain programmed radius is intruded upon.

Once that radius is breached, of course, the meat of the game ensues. The dance of combat. Relentless exchange of swings, kicks, rolls, blocks, parries, and dodges as each enemy reveals its unique pattern of movement and defense. This is a far cry from the world of procedural generation or dynamic world simulation. It's a rudimentary approach, but it's designed with precision. And it works. Each new enemy or group of enemies presents a distinct, life-threatening challenge that is typically bested only with patience, practice, and observation.

Taken as a whole, the game is really one giant crushing gauntlet, a multi-directional barrage of pain. Everywhere you go, your enemies await—on your left, on your right, from above—their only purpose to deal the most possible damage and humiliation as you pass. And it is painful. As the game deals death after death, the repetition can be excruciating—like a nightmare version of the Groundhog Day syndrome.

But … it gets better. The grind pays off, and not only because the player gains a statistical advantage through leveling. There's an equal growth curve in terms of skill.

My first play through of the game was as a bandit build. I started out proportionately high in strength and continued in that vein through my leveling. But I also got a little distracted by throwing some precious points into faith, intelligence, and attunement, traits that I did not utilize practically at all. My best bet in battles was generally to strike hard and heavy and to block between hits—keeping an eye on my stamina gauge. By the time I had discovered a full set of black knight armor near the final boss, I couldn't resist turning it into my main duds for the rest of my play session.

With my sorcery build, I've been smarter in my leveling. I understand the convoluted mechanics more clearly. And it's been a much different overall experience, easier in some instances and more difficult in others. This time my main strategy has been to take enemies down using magic projectiles—trying to steer clear of physical contact as much as possible.

If it had simply felt like more and more of the same, I might never have kept playing. As it stands, I'm now over 50 hours in and arrived once again at the previous crossroads. Having vanquished all of the required bosses save for the final Lord Gwyn, I could easily make my way to the Kiln of the First Flame and cash out. Instead I'm poised ready to try my hand once more at saving the darkened kingdom of Oolacile in the DLC content. From there it will be another trip to the Great Hollow and Ash Lake. And then—finally—I might actually conquer the final obstacle and retire from the world of Dark Souls once and for all.

But I'm not making any promises.

Images were borrowed from http://darksoulswiki.wikispaces.com.

Dark Side of Nostalgia

There's a game that's been on my radar since first reading about it on The Verge last October. It's called Routine.

There weren't a whole lot of details released at the time, and from what I can tell now, there still haven't been, aside from a new alpha gameplay trailer that you can see embedded right above you. But from the information that has been fed, consider my interest piqued.

It's a first-person, sci-fi horror game about a derelict moon station that the player has supposedly been sent to investigate. The game features permanent death, forcing players to be always alert and mindful of their decisions. It also foregoes a standard heads-up display, meaning there should be nothing to distract the player from the immersion of the environment.

And, I must say, from the early announcement trailer to this newly released footage, it's the environment that has really captured my attention. The aesthetic of the game is built around a vision of the future circa 1983 or thereabouts—one in which floppy disks and other now primitive computer technology is the cutting edge. From the look of things so far, I'd say they've nailed it. It's in the gray computer consoles. It's in the boxy station architecture with the rounded rectangular windows and TV screens, the Spartan corridors decorated and sprinted into visual motion by way of simple, dark color stripes.

Many people have been quick to point out the recent surge of retro aesthetics cropping up in games. There's the Saturday-morning cartoon neon flair of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. I've recently been playing quite a bit of Hotline Miami, which takes something like an artificial coke-addled memory of 1980s Florida to use as the backdrop for its—how to say it—ultra-pixel violence?

I think those are different from what's going on here. The retro look of Routine is neither parody nor abstract. It's a high-definition, totally realized and believable setting, and it strikes me as a brilliant move on so many levels.

Why?

Because, from a certain point of view, nostalgia in itself can be terrifying.¹

Maybe it's because the era that's been so effectively encapsulated represents a time that I actually lived through, but I was also young enough that my memories are unreliable at best. I associate these aesthetics with my childhood and all of the confused and buried emotions that go along with it—the thrill of discovery (with a mind neither corrupted by nor enlightened with the perception of reality) coupled with the crippling urge to flee from everything dark or scary and simply crawl back into the womb. The fact that Routine borrows from the very aspects of 1980s culture that would most represent this convergence of real human wonder and dread—emerging computer technology—only serves to heighten the psychological tension.²

I listened to a 10-minute conversation with one of the game's developers from Lunar Software, and from the way he was describing things, it makes me wonder if there will even be a traditional win-state to the game. He at one point describes his vision for Routine as being more of an experience rather than a traditional game. They seem to be describing a built-in randomized structure, as if multiple players will end up uncovering different secrets and aspects of the moon base—suggesting that no one person will have a complete view of things. Will this be the Proteus of survival horror?

Maybe not quite, but I'm looking forward to whatever it will be. Even that depends on whether I'll be able to play the game—not just because it will need to be released for Mac (according to their Steam page, it will be). It's also a matter of whether or not I'll be able to face the horror. I've had my Humble Bundle copy of Amnesia: The Dark Descent sitting on my hard drive for months, but having seen prior footage and read some of the commentary about the game I haven't yet mustered the nerve to give it a try for myself.

Here's a last bit of interesting information. If you haven't yet watched the trailer, take a look now. It looks fantastic, yeah? It's actually being developed by a team of just four people—three full-time developers and one contracted sound designer. That's incredible.

Oh, and the game is also coming to the Oculus Rift headset, which I guess is pretty cool ... if you're into that sorta thing.

---

^{1. For a long time growing up, my sister and I used to watch The Price is Right every morning at 10 a.m. I loved that show—the set pieces and the tactile, moving nature of the individual games. And, come on, Bob Barker was the man. Later on, in middle school and high school, if I ever happened to be home during a weekday and I watched the show, it became slightly unsettling. It was years later and yet nothing had changed. It was like the reverse of cryosleep. Instead of returning from an interstellar journey, still young in body and looking out upon a radically aged world, this was like watching an anomaly of the space-time continuum—something forever stuck in a temporal stasis. As much as we think we might yearn for the past, there's a part of us that understands change as a natural process, cultural progress as a worthwhile ideal.}

^{2. Take a look at the 0:35 mark on the alpha trailer. There's a robot that walks by that looks like an old Macintosh computer on legs, emitting the kind of sound you'd expect to hear from a battery-operated toy (remember that Electronic Talking Battleship game your family was probably too poor to own?). It's a perfect example of that horror and fascination all wrapped up into one package. Machines on the edge of both servitude and sentience. Childhood innocence turned to foreboding. This is not, of course, entirely groundbreaking. It's recapturing the same latent paranoia that fueled much of 1980s sci-fi cinema. The cool thing now is the ability to re-frame that paranoia given 30 years of hindsight.}