Out of the utopia, into the Problem Attic

I think I've been as guilty as anyone when it comes to projecting a kind of utopian ideal onto the world of games. Whether consciously or otherwise, I feel as if I've sometimes indulged in the hopeful fantasy that I've been living in the dawn of a golden age of video games—evidenced in no small part by the emergence of a (seemingly) thriving independent games subculture. Games, as we know them, I want to tell myself, are progressing—pushing old boundaries and exploring new territory in terms of technical innovation, design sophistication, and even artistic depth.

Of course, when I actually write it out like that, it sounds like total garbage—particularly in the third area. What does it even mean for a game to have artistic depth? The AAA games industry is still as infatuated with expressions of ultra-violent male power fantasy as ever. And even the expanded market for smaller games has become kind of a dull, saturated landscape that tends to pump out plenty of content that keeps us all fairly well engaged and amused but rarely offers anything deeply meaningful or intellectually challenging.

I can't help but feel that the recently announced semi-closure of Irrational Games in Boston will be one of the more significant events from this current decade in games—at least on a psychological level. Because it's more than just another studio experiencing some potential financial struggles. For many people, BioShock Infinite was supposed to be the great redeeming hope for AAA video games, and thereby all video games. It would prove to the world that a massively ambitious, story-driven, first-person shooter could in fact bridge the gap between violent interactive spectacle and grand artistic vision. It was as if that magnificent floating city of Columbia was the digital embodiment of those very hopes and dreams.

Of course it was naïve, because—again—what does that even mean? On the one hand, I think BioShock Infinite does represent a grand artistic vision, but not a very focused, articulated, sophisticated, or transcendent one. If anything, BioShock Infinite proved yet again that a well-funded PR campaign can still—if temporarily—bring the great gaming press machine into a state of awe-full, blissful worship.

But where does the industry go from here? Do we fool ourselves once again into thinking that the vast exploitation and corporate shepherding of a large creative team might lead to something other than an incoherent interactive experience with decent to impressive graphical polish. Do we move on and invest our hope and faith in some new messiah, or is creative director Ken Levine's move to the world of smaller games a telling indicator that the dream is truly dead?

Over the past two years since I started this blog, my focus and general thinking about games has been tossed and blown around so many times, influenced by so many competing manifestos both for games and games criticism—frankly, I feel dizzy. It's hard for me to know how to express anything worthwhile, particularly on a macro level. I find it all the more remarkable, therefore, when I come across the work of other writers and critics who manage to distill the so-called "state of games" so eloquently and persuasively. I get excited when I stumble upon a train of thought that seems so imperatively on to something.

One of the most refreshing voices I've encountered of late is Liz Ryerson—a blogger, musical artist, game designer, and probably plenty of other things as well. I've enjoyed reading Ryerson's work over the past few months, because it really has challenged me to reexamine any remaining utopian notions I may have had—in part by pointing out how the cultural worship of the elegant systems of games goes hand-in-hand with our present dystopian reality, whereby the pervasiveness of similar elegant systems (i.e. social media) threatens to drown out our humanity.

Consider this passage from her recent "Re: Fuck Videogames" talk:

within the current culture, there is a heavy emphasis of sort of clean, readable, egalitarian systems that are meant to make information more accessible and approachable and make their ideas easier to sell to a market. But they also serve as a kind of mundane filter to mask the messy, chaotic, subjective reality underneath. we may be living tremendously complicated and colorful lives, but all of those emotions and experiences are colored over by the overarching blandness in the presentation of the systems. for people whose lives are lived on much different terms and in much different places than the well-off Silicon Valley programmers maintaining these systems, the effect is much more drastic. and so, these serve as another institution – one we're being rapidly 'normalized' to, as in Foucalt's concept of 'normalization'. we like to hope they aren't having this kind of effect on us, but they are.

to what degree are we, as game developers, game critics, and game educators, reinforcing this normalization, and to what degree are we challenging it?

I think the entire essay serves as an excellent starting point for delving into Ryerson's work. It's also an incredible companion piece to her 2013 Flash game Problem Attic, which you can experience here.

There isn't a whole lot written about Problem Attic that I've been able to locate, but there is one extremely well-written analysis by Brendan Vance. He certainly articulates many similar thoughts and interpretations that came to me while playing the game, but he also widens the discussion, using Problem Attic as a means to expose the startling absence of intrinsic value at the core of modern commercial game development (he also wrote a followup piece talking about current unsustainable trends in game design—namely its overemphasis on transparent user experiences). It's so carefully laid out, it almost risks being regarded as a kind of definitive statement—something I wouldn't wish on any piece of criticism.

To borrow from Ryerson's own words, Problem Attic is a game about prisons, "both real and imagined," which I take to mean as either physical or psychological, imposed on the imprisoned both by outside forces and by the self. Ryerson represents these conceptual prisons in the form of abstract 2D environments, which the player explores in the guise of a simple avatar sprite.

And one of the first things I notice while playing Problem Attic is the representation of this avatar. It's a curious stick-figure shape—vaguely humanoid but almost like an E.T. character (which, strangely enough, recalls those dreaded vertical pits from the infamous Atari cartridge from the 1980s). Aside from the black body, there is a single red pixel that suggests an eye or a face, as well as a single gray pixel in the location of the sex organs. Already the game hints at themes of uncertain identity.

From the player's starting location—a kind of partitioned or compartmentalized over-world screen (the titular "Problem Attic," I assume)—the player moves through a series of abstract chambers, the goal being to find each hidden exit and move on.

As I suggested before, I more or less agree with a lot of Vance's own interpretations—including his insights regarding the complicated nature of the pursuing cross figures, which inflict a kind of visual and auditory "pain" whenever they come into contact with the player avatar. I also agree there's a definite turning point that happens within the sixth room of the opening act of the game. It's in this room—a hellish environment using background textures reminiscent of DOOM—where the player avatar encounters a lone, sinister cross figure. More than any other "enemy" previously encountered, the speed and directness of this particular figure evokes a much more predatory motive. The fact that the tiled walls in this room are also semi-transparent gives the player the chilling sensation of being watched or taunted. It all gives the impression of a traumatic memory or event.

This interpretation is reinforced during the next prison section, in which the screen is superimposed with a line of text reading "i can't remember it was," followed by a random number ranging from 1 to 4. What is the "it" that can't be remembered? Is it an age or year that something happened? Is it the number of times that something happened? Obviously, we can't be sure. But the avatar's appearance is transforming, losing both its shape and axis of balance as it struggles to make sense of something.

It's after this that the second act begins. The player returns to the familiar over world screen, only the landscape of the attic is changing, filling in with new tiles and obstacles. And, of course, the gravity of the world has inverted. The sensation of movement in this part of the game recalls some of the joyous leaping I talked about in my writeup of VVVVVV, only in this case there's really nothing joyful about it. Instead, this falling sensation feels cruel and frustrating. All the player can hope to do is slowly crawl along the perimeter of the attic rooms, looking for anywhere that will grant entry or acceptance.

Ryerson reintroduces many of the former prison rooms, only now the typical mode of escape is to find the glitched-out areas that allow the player avatar to clip into the very walls of the room. From here, the player quickly grows accustomed to navigating at the margins of the very playing fields they inhabit. Are these the experiences of a marginalized individual in a hostile society? Is it a representation of circumventing old, uncomfortable memories?

One of the final prisons during this second of three acts stands out for a different reason in that it's actually kind of fun. It involves a kind of collecting mechanic, in which the player navigates the maze-like environment collecting these oddly shaped A.I. characters—who seem to symbolize fellow victims. To me this particular prison iteration plays out like a rescue mission of sorts, whereby the player makes use of a collectible power-up that allows for short teleports through the solid tiles. It's the one stage of the game where the player seems more focused on the wellbeing of others. But it's a short-lived segment that segues into the third and final act of the game, which plays out like the sad, sometimes anxious wanderings of a very hurt and psychologically troubled individual—culminating in a moment of transformation and acceptance.

The difficulty with all of this is that many players probably will not make it very far into the game. The first time I played Problem Attic, I had to throw in the towel early, because the game was giving me motion sickness from all of the jostling, forced encounters with the aforementioned cross figures. I was literally too nauseated to continue, something that has happened plenty of times while playing old first-person shooters on an empty stomach but never while playing a 2D platformer. Fortunately, I was invested enough to restart my play through the next day. I saw the game to its conclusion, and I've since gone through the entire experience again.

I don't dwell on this point as a matter of self-congratulation, or to suggest some quality of saintlike forbearance on my part for putting up with the game's nauseating aesthetics and frustrating design choices. In a Q&A interview with her and Robert Yang, Ryerson actually balks at the question of whether she ought to compromise her design choices—even a little—in order to make the game more accessible to players. And good on her, I say!

We're dealing, after all, with a game about imprisonment—and not some purely representational notion of imprisonment, or imprisonment as a clever gameplay mechanic. It's a game that communicates its theme not so much by challenging our reflexes or our logical thinking skills. Problem Attic hits us at a gut level, asking much more of our interpretive capabilities than the typical playing experience. Many of its design choices are certainly unorthodox but also essential to communicating its ideas.

I finished playing the game Braid last year, and during my time with it I kept coming back to a nagging question. From its puzzles to its cryptic text portions to its interesting choices in art direction, how are we to evaluate whether or not this game is actually good or just—as many have certainly argued—pretentious? I don't think Braid is merely pretentious, but I do have a difficult time deciding just how good it actually is. If the vast majority of games are like prose, then Braid and Problem Attic are more like gaming poetry. And I don't think we're very well accustomed to evaluating gaming poetry—at least not yet. Then again, this whole preoccupation with "good" is part of the problem to begin with, and it's not just confined to the world of games.

I think the danger of utopian ideals is that we latch onto the impossible notion that a perfect form exists, and that it's ours to obtain—if only we can chip away and pare down until only the perfection remains. And yet it seems as if the world of game development has become infected with a similar idea. You can see it in the present-day obsession with playtesting and polish. We must have pure, undiluted, perfect play! And it's not like that's a bad goal, in and of itself.

But to suggest this is the only way is not only dogmatic, it's potentially dangerous. The experience of play becomes yet another drug that fuels our desire for a kind of fluid and intuitive progress through the world that we rarely get to experience outside of games. And to pursue those ideals above all else risks to block out other types of play that might actually resonate with and inform what our inner and outer lives actually reflect.

Here's that other thing...

So here's that second piece I wrote for Unwinnable. It's basically about my experience playing Game Dev Story, which is kind of a fun, stupid business simulation game for iOS and Android. You can read it here (or rather, there).

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.