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Trilby: The Art of Theft

Director: Ben Croshaw

Developer: Ben Croshaw

Release Year: 2007

Engine: AGS

System: PC

What It Is: A surprisingly nice 2D sneaking game with a retro vibe.

There is a game called football. Unless you are living in the US you probably know it. They have a game called football too, but you play it with your hands. They are confused. And maybe so am I.

Cultural differences aside, let me introduce the game for the uninitiated.

Football, also known as soccer, is a sort of team based, PvP, capture the flag game. Officially each team is made up of eleven players but private games may feature smaller teams, in which case usually the map is smaller too. At the opposite edges of the symmetrical map, each team has its base. The goal is to carry the small, spherical flag into the base of the enemy team but there is a catch: there is only one flag and you cannot touch it with your hands or arms. Therefore the best way of moving the flag is kicking it with your foot, hence the name of the game. There are a few special rules I didn’t mention but I’m sure most of you have at least seen the game once. Oh and under no circumstance are you allowed to shoot people.

Now imagine you are playing football. But we are introducing another inconvenient catch. This time we say you are allowed to touch the ball with your head only, even if the ball is on the ground.

Are we insane? Would you want to play this game? More importantly, would it be the same game?

No. It would be broken. I’m sure in time people would adapt and play the game similar to the football we know and love. I have seen people in wheelchairs play basketball very well too. And I have seen people play first person shooters with a gamepad…

You cannot attempt murder with a rubber duck. You cannot drive a car with your feet. You cannot drink water through your nose. You cannot sleep on razor wires. You also cannot play first person shooters with a game pad. This is plain and simple.

If you absolutely had to, given enough time and training, you could do all those things of course. You could even become so good at killing people with a rubber duck that people might think it’s awesome, and at one point you could reach a level of proficiency at which you can kill people more effectively with a rubber duck than you could with a machine gun, because at that point you are a rubber duck expert. No one kills people quicker than you using a rubber duck. Perhaps you are a more effective killer than many people with a machine gun. This still doesn’t change the irrefutable fact that a machine gun is a better instrument of death than a rubber duck.

I have yet to see a proper real time strategy game succeed on game consoles. This is because the funnily named genre called real time strategy was invented with keyboard and mouse in mind. It doesn’t work any other way. If you want to make it work you have to improvise. You have to change the game in some way so that it is playable. And it is open to debate if the game is still the same or not. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.

First person shooters have been on consoles for a long time now. Until “Medal of Honor”, they did not work. And the thing that made “Medal of Honor” work was simply superior production values. We all know that the series reached its summit with “Medal of Honor: Allied Assault” which was coincidently the first PC spin-off of the series. First person shooters are really at home with the PC, specifically with its keyboard and mouse. For a long while everyone knew that first person shooters didn’t really work on consoles. Then came “Halo”.

“Halo” is such an interesting subject that it deserves its own article. Suffice to say that, one way or another, “Halo” made people believe that First Person Shooters work on consoles. [ed: by “people” he means frat boys.] So people started producing more first person shooters for consoles than for the PC.

By now it is a well known fact that “Unreal Tournament III” on PS3 is supporting keyboard and mouse controls, a move I applaud. For years I could find absolutely no reason why developers did not support keyboard and mouse controls for console FPS games.

Actually the reason is very simple. It is the same reason why the PS2 port of a 4-player Dreamcast game only supported 2-players on the PS2. It has only 2 gamepad ports out of the box. Sure you can plug 8 game pads to it using a couple of multi-taps (and play 8 player Winning Eleven, a fine football simulation by the way) but still, the standard equipment supports 2 players.

And even though the PS3, for instance, supports Bluetooth and/or USB keyboards and mice out of the box, it is not the standard equipment a PS3 user has, for these things don’t come out of the box. In fact regardless of how much Sony is trying to say “Hey! It is not a games machine, it is a computer”, many people still have their consoles in their living room, underneath their TV set, a place the device was designed to sit at in the first place. How many of you really have a table in front of your games console? Have you tried using your mouse without a table?

That is probably why Mark Rein says he doesn’t understand why on earth a PS3 user would need keyboard and mouse support on their game. He says they added the function because their fans asked for it in the forums, but he doesn’t get why they asked for it.

Well, it is a simple matter of “can do, will do”. The previous paragraphs detailing how FPS games are best played with keyboard and mouse were probably unnecessary because this is a well known fact for any person with a functioning brain. And we all know developers produce games for the installed base of the hardware they chose.

Yes, many people will play those games with a game pad because they are either used to doing so or they simply don’t have a keyboard, a mouse or even a table. But quite some people would want to use their mice and keyboards. After all, if you are not going to support it in the games why do you put the support into the game console in the first place.

I am not saying developers should now start making proper FPS games which can only be played with keyboards and mice on the consoles. This would be stupid. I’m just saying that it should be an option. It is not a great mystery, Mr. Rein.

Many people play “Gran Turismo” with a game pad. But everyone knows it is best played with a “GT Force” wheel controller. Imagine the game not supporting that. It would be plain stupid.

Sure, finding a machine gun is not easy, and not many people have one. Still, next time I see a console FPS without keyboard and mouse support, I at least want a rubber duck as an in-game weapon.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Director: Jason West

Developer: Infinity Ward

Release Year: 2007

Engine: In House

System: PC, XBOX 360, PS3

What It Is: The re-imagined new entry into the well known first person shooter series.

“Clive Barker’s Jericho” didn’t scare me. Of course everyone knows it is my psychiatric problem that no horror movie ever scares me, but that wasn’t the deal here. I think there is something genuinely wrong with this new breed of horror games. And that’s “wrong” in the wrong way.

The main attraction of horror movies comes from extraordinary events happening to ordinary people in mundane settings. The settings and the people should be ordinary because the audience itself is ordinary. We, as the viewers, identify ourselves with the protagonists and instinctively imagine ourselves having the same experience. That is why “Jaws” is so frightening. It’s not the giant shark. It’s the fact that it attacks you when you are swimming. And anyone could be swimming really. “A Nightmare On Elm Street” is great because Freddy attacks only when you are asleep. It is something we all do at least once a day.

In a regular horror movie there is usually an ensemble of these ordinary people, in order to keep us guessing which one will die first (and optionally how that person will die). Counter intuitively, the alpha of that group usually dies before the end of the story. This is necessary because if there was only one main character in the movie (see Silent Hill) it would stop being exciting. Whenever the main character is in trouble you’d only have to look at your watch. If it’s not the end of the movie there is no way she can die, because the movie cannot go on without her.

Video games, though, are different. You don’t need that many characters in video games because of their non-linear and/or interactive nature. The main character is usually the character you control and can easily identify with. Unlike the movie character, a video game character goes exactly where you want him to go and consequently commits her mistakes because of you. A video game character is essentially you. And unlike a movie protagonist, a video game protagonist can die even if she is the only protagonist of the story.

Now, the problem with “Jericho” is not its story. In fact Mr. Barker’s story is one of the more video game friendly and coherent stories lately written in this medium. Sure it has cliché dialog, run off the mill characters and an unnecessary amount of blood. And there is the fact that the game does not really have an ending. It doesn’t end, it just stops. But all this doesn’t change the fact that it has a logically progressing story, unlike its recent brethren “Bioshock” or “F.E.A.R.”. The problem is something else entirely. And that problem is shared by “Bioshock” and “F.E.A.R.” too.

In “Clive Barker’s Jericho”, you play a 7 man team, a special supernatural task force. Your protagonists are Ross, who is a spirit, able to possess his friends, making them regenerate their wounds and bringing others back from death. Sweet, eh? There is also Father Rawlings. He is a priest who carries not one but two modified .50 caliber automatic pistols and can suck the life out of his enemies to invigorate his friends, not to mention the resurrecting thing which can be performed from afar. There is a ninja with an Uzi, and she can burn people who get close to her. There is a sniper who can guide her bullets in slow motion and blow up the skulls of a potentially infinite number of enemies. Hell, there is even a kid who can slow down time, or rewind it just at the ammo belts so that the squad never runs out of ammo. That’s good because there is also a huge guy who has a chain-gun in one hand and a huge pistol in the other, due to the unfortunate fact that his right arm is possessed by a fire demon who can fly in the air to incinerate people. Clearly, these are not ordinary people.

In contrast, Alyssa in “Clock Tower 3″ is a 15 year old girl, who is slower than most of the psychotic murderers chasing her, cannot wield any weapons, and has to keep the panic bar low or else she freaks out.

Here is the question: Would you be afraid for Team Jericho, or little poor Alyssa?

Did “Bioshock” really made you experience fear as your protagonist was shooting around with six different heavily modified guns, hacking security bots and all sorts of murderous devices and launching tornadoes, thunderbolts, fireballs, ice spikes and killer bees from his hand? Killer bees! For God’s sake…

Let me answer the rhetorical question: No. I didn’t experience any fear. I didn’t feel any fear when “F.E.A.R.” teased me with the evil things that may be just around the corner, simply because my character is a super commando who can shoot several targets at the same time with a variety of different guns, healing himself with instant med packs, while drop kicking people to death. And the best thing is that he doesn’t have to do all these very quickly because he can… wait for it… that’s right: slow down time.

In every single dark corner of the repetitive, grey levels of “F.E.A.R.” you are supposed to say “Oh my God, what am I going to do now?” Instead I ended up saying “Bring it on bitch!” That is not exactly horror material.

Of course the shock value of the gruesome visuals should help with the horror the developers want to create. The monster and environment design in “Jericho” are appropriately sick. There is blood, flesh, skin and vomit all over the place. Even a single enemy is a horrifying sight when viewed separately. And precisely that is another problem.

Gore is a very common tool in horror. But when it’s gore everywhere your senses become dull. It is okay when you see a gory scene every now and then. It contrasts with the world you see all the time and is therefore shocking because of its abnormality and the implications contained within that perversity. But the walls of “Jericho” are literally made of gore. It is shocking the first time you see it. But then, after a while, all you see is red wallpaper. It is no different than the dull, grey textures of “F.E.A.R.” They are both boring. And horror isn’t supposed to be boring.

I am not saying the aforementioned games are not good games in their own right. That’s an entirely different story. My problem is with the lack of horror in these stories. That is assuming these games have “horror” as theme of course.

On the other hand, who am I to teach Mr. Barker, whose job is writing horror stories , how to write one? I’m not trying to do that. My problem is simply this:

If these games are supposed to be horror games, then I have to say they are not scary at all.

And I think there should be something seriously wrong with the world if horror is not scary.