Oct 25, 2012

In Da Club: A Musical Moment Few Video Games Get Right

Max Payne

Games take us to all manner of fantastical, unlikely places. But as good as video games have gotten at accurately recreating a space-marine shootout or a mountaintop dragon battle, there's one thing developers are still learning how to create: A dance club.

Many games try to create thriving urban environments for players to occupy, and there's nothing that says "thriving" and "urban" like a packed, sweaty dance club. Unfortunately, until very recently, games have been very, very bad at rendering realistic dance clubs.

This scene from Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines (a game which I love, I should say) best exemplifies the sort of awkward, embarrassing antics you'd see in early video game dance clubs. There just wasn't enough processing power to make the club as hazy, loud, or crowded-feeling as it needs to be to be convincing. I love dancing at The Asylum, but mostly because it's so endearingly goofy.

There's nothing sadder than an empty dance floor, though, as evidenced by this video from Star Wars: The Old Republic. It's like being at an unpopular kid's Bar Mitzvah.

I remember playing Mass Effect 2, when I first arrived at the Afterlife bar, I was incredibly impressed with how alive it felt. (Now, when I visit, I'm more aware of how empty it is.) Still, it's a pretty good scene, if only in how it builds up to the entrance to the club.

I liked the vibe of The Hive in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The audio may not have been quite right, but it conveyed an icy, cool energy that worked with the game. Don't know how I feel about the random chicks gyrating around the place, but hey, no video game club is perfect.

Rockstar have long understood how dance clubs feel, once again demonstrating their preternatural ability to be ahead of the curve on this sort of thing. Even with its now-primitive graphics, Vice City's Malibu Club is a pretty convincing club:

It paves the way, of course, for the much more convincing clubs in Grand Theft Auto IV and its expansion chapters:

The dance club scene in Max Payne 3 may represent the pinnacle of video games' representations of dance clubs so far:

Nice. The thrumming bass, the way that dialogue instantly gets cut out and muffled, the fact that you can't understand what the hell anyone is saying. There are some shortcuts—see through the smoke and mirrors of the lens filters and fog machines and you can tell that the dancefloor animations are somewhat repetitive and limited—but all the same, this club feels more authentic than any before it.

A huge part of creating a convincing digital dance club is the music and more specifically, the way the music sounds. It can't just be the regular background music that plays during the game—music in a club is thrumming, physical, oppressive. You can't hear anything over it, and as a result everyone is shouting. On top of the pounding bass, there's a high-frequency scream of reverberating voices. It's not an easy thing to get right, making it all the more remarkable when a game does.

I turn it over to you—what are some of your favorite video game clubs? Any classics that are worth mentioning?

Oct 17, 2012

A Son Takes His Father on a Tour of His Boyhood Home—in a Video Game

L.A. Noire

When you introduce a video game to an older relative who doesn't play them—a parent or a grandparent—and they realize they've underestimated how detailed, how immersive these things really are, the conversations you have after that really are special. If this hasn't happened for you, ask anyone for whom it has.

Or better yet, just go read Christian Donlan's charming story of exploring Los Angeles with his father in L.A. Noire. The elder Donlan grew up in Los Angeles in the 1940s, and has a vivid recollection of the city in that time—where long gone landmarks were located, how wide the streets were, what sorts of things you'd see in a diner window.

L.A. Noire, a jewel box of a period piece, did profoundly well against his father's memory, whose photographic quality probably comes from his father, a Los Angeles police sergeant. Donlan's granddad had brushes with tabloid fame and deviations into petty graft, adultery and all the other pursuits that make for a good film noir cop. A colorful recounting of his career, including the only time he used his gun, opens the piece.

It's in the sightseeing tour of downtown Los Angeles where the real affirmation comes. Even minor landmarks seemingly there just to hold a city block together present some antecedent for Donlan's father to remark on and marvel at. There are some details gotten wrong—an engine note in one car is off; too many of them have whitewall tires. But the fact his father praised the gloomy quality of lighting on the streets, at night, in the game is rather profound. It reflects a great credit on anyone who worked on this game—for all of its troubled history—for it to get this stamp of authenticity, even 18 months out.

Donlan later asked his dad for a few thoughts on what he had seen. His reply concludes the essay, and it is well worth reading through to the end. But here's a highlight. "This seemed a refreshingly thoughtful—almost intellectual—scenario that I would not have expected in something called a game."

Night and the City [Eurogamer]

Aug 30, 2012

Here’s the First Look at Whore of the Orient, the Next Game from the Makers of L.A. Noire

L.A. Noire

Brendan McNamara's most recent game had players exploring the seamy underbelly of an impressive, gleaming recreation of 1940s Los Angeles with L.A. Noire. The first glimpse at his next game—being produced with director George Miller's film production firm KMM Interactive—the grime is all out in the open.

Despite the fact that McNamara's Team Bondi was supposedly absorbed into KMM, the dev studio's website shows off what appears to be the first image from Whore of the Orient. The title is being described as being developed for next-generation consoles and PC. The page also has the Warner Brothers logo on it, likely due to the fact that they've distributed KMM projects like the Happy Feet 2 movies and video games.

Last year, Kotaku's own Luke Plunkett speculated that the game would be set in an early 20th Century Shanghai, since the project's title came from that city's infamous nickname. The description on the Team Bondi site follows:

Shanghai, 1936. Whore of the Orient. Paris of the East. The most corrupt and decadent city on the planet, where anything can be had or done for the right price. Plaything of Western powers who greedily exploit the Chinese masses. Boiling pot of Chinese nationalism, with the Kuomintang ruthlessly trying to suppress Communism and the labour movement. Home to the International Police Force, a group of Western cops hopelessly trying to keep the lid on and keep the peace.

From the development team who brought you L.A. Noire and The Getaway, along with the Academy Award winning film production team of Kennedy Miller Mitchell comes a completely new and original IP being developed for next generation games consoles and PC.

The Getaway, famous for its photo-realistic look, strong narrative and uncompromising gameplay style, sold over 4 million units on the PlayStation 2. The release of L.A. Noire set the quality bar even higher selling over 5 million units. L.A. Noire was critically heralded as a breakthrough for interactive storytelling and was the first game ever to be invited to be shown at New York's world renowned Tribeca Film Festival. L.A. Noire has gone on to become the UK's fastest selling original IP - a title previously held by The Getaway - and a worldwide number one hit. Using award winning animation technology to capture every actor's facial performance in astonishing detail, L.A. Noire combined breathtaking action with true detective work to deliver an unprecedented interactive experience.

Aug 27, 2012

5 Ways Sleeping Dogs Improves On Grand Theft Auto

Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer

You could be forgiven for wondering what all the hubbub is about Sleeping Dogs. "Just another open-world crime game," you might think. "Been there, done that, yawn."

I've seen a few commenters ask why writers at Kotaku keep talking about this game—the simple answer for that is that we write about what we're playing, and several of us are playing Sleeping Dogs. That fact alone says a lot about how much fun the game is.

But of course, yes, Sleeping Dogs really is a GTA clone. It was supposed to be a new installment in the True Crime series, but the name got changed when Activision dropped the game and Square Enix took over. But as much as Sleeping Dogs is "just another GTA clone," it also brings a number of its own smart touches to the formula. The results are, in several respects, superior to the game that inspired it.

Here are five ways that Sleeping Dogs improves upon Grand Theft Auto.

It Doesn't Take Place In America

Every Grand Theft Auto game since GTA III has taken place in America. And hey, that's cool—I like America fine, I live here. But I'm also kind of sick of playing games that take place here, and have begun to yearn to explore someplace new. One of the great triumphs of Red Dead Redemption was that it put me in a part of America that felt totally fresh (and yeah, also that it took place in Mexico, too). When we heard rumors that GTA V would take place in London, or Sydney, I was really excited—please, let me play an open-world game in another country!

Turns out GTA V will return to Los Angeles (aka Los Santos), which is fine. But I'm still glad that exploring Sleeping Dogs' version of Hong Kong is slaking my wanderlust. When I first started playing the game, I remarked as to how much I was enjoying being forced to drive on the left, but really, that's just emblematic of what I really enjoy about the game—I enjoy how it takes me to another place. I love the all-Chinese cast, I love that I'm not playing a half-American, or an American who has relocated, or anything like that. Heck, I wish the game had an option to play in Cantonese with English subtitles. The location, cast and vibe all capture the films that Sleeping Dogs is emulating (films which Evan has helpfully catalogued for you here), and gives me that wonderful "stranger in a strange land" feeling that the best games conjure.

5 Ways Sleeping Dogs Improves On Grand Theft Auto

It's Not Gun-Crazy

Sleeping Dogs may have all of the same combat features as GTA IV, but it implements them much differently. You won't fire a gun at all for the first third of the story or so, and even after that, gun encounters are specific and almost instanced. There are very few encounters in the world that can be undertaken with a gun—instead, you'll be brawling your way through most of the encounters using the game's robust and enjoyable Kung Fu fighting system. It's something like a more slow-paced version of Arkham City's fisticuffs, and it's got a decent amount of depth and is satisfying. (It's a bit too easy to spam some moves, but hey, it's still a good challenge, brutal and fun to watch.)

The best thing about the lack of guns is that even though I've put 14 hours into the game, it has yet to devolve into the constant chase/shootout/shootout/chase/shootout that GTA IV did at around the same point. There are a few basic gameplay types—driving/shooting, chasing on foot, fist-fighting, shootouts—but they're shaken up and varied to a refreshing degree. The lack of handgun segments also helps the story along, as Wei doesn't feel like quite the psycho killer that Niko did. (He does rack up quite a body count, but at least he's not shooting hundreds of guys every half hour.) It also helps the cutscenes where someone waves a gun around or shoots someone feel more weighty and believable.

You Play An Undercover Cop

Every GTA game casts you as the same kind of guy—a likable criminal who is trying to change his ways but can't quite get out clean. Okay, fine—that's a workable archetype, and its proven successful in the past. That said, the protagonist of Sleeping Dogs is an undercover cop—deep undercover. TOO deep. The funny thing here is that it's anything but a fresh story—this story has been told dozens of times over, and every beat feels familiar. But it's never quite been told in a game like this before, and certainly not in a GTA-style game. I'm not a sociopathic killer, I'm a cop who is losing sight of which side he's on. It's a big change, and makes me more invested in the story.

Speaking of that...

The Story Is Much More Focused

Sleeping Dogs is, perhaps, a more modest game than Grand Theft Auto IV. I say "perhaps" because while it is certainly more modest in terms of scope and scale, it somehow feels more ambitious in its storytelling, if only because of the great focus with which Wei Shen's story unfolds. The first four or five hours of Grand Theft Auto IV remain my favorite part of that game, but by the second act, things had devolved into a lot of (fun, but repetitive) action-game histrionics. Sleeping Dogs has kept its story on a tighter leash (no pun intended), and in so doing has kept things tense and interesting for a far longer time. I'm at the 60% mark in the story, and it still feels like I'm in those opening hours of GTA IV.

Numerous Small, Empowering Touches

All this stuff about story and setting is great, but the most important thing is that Sleeping Dogs is also generally more fun to play than GTA IV was. That's because the game is designed around a bedrock of great design touches that iterate on the template that Rockstar set out back in 2008. I've played a ton of GTA IV, and so, clearly, have the folks at United Front who worked on Sleeping Dogs. Little touches like:

By pressing "X" you can lunge your car to the side or front, damaging pursuing vehicles.
Some gun-based events trigger slow-mo, letting you do a Max-Payne-style takedown. Further evidence that bullet-time is one part of Max Payne 3 that Rockstar should put in GTA V.
Right from the get-go, it's possible to store cars anywhere in the city, making it easier to get around in style.
You can do a move while driving where you leap from your car onto the car next to you, performing an "action-hijack." It's great, and useful.
When you're talking on your cell phone, you can get into a car and start driving without hanging up. (SMALL BUT CRUCIAL.)
Waypoints are marked on your mini-map but also in the world, helping you move one step closer to eliminating that troublesome mini-map entirely.
You can toggle through objectives using the left thumbstick, making it much easier to mess around and decide what you want to do next.

It's important to note that every one of these improvements came from Grand Theft Auto IV—without that game to set a precedent, it's doubtful that Sleeping Dogs would have improved upon it. What's more, there are plenty of ways that Sleeping Dogs falls short of its inspiration—motorcycles are a bummer, animations can be stilted, AI freakouts happen a little too often, and the physics engine is floaty and a bit spastic. The "face" respect system is an interesting idea with a flubbed execution. All the same, United Front should be proud of what they've accomplished—they truly have improved on one of the best and most successful game franchises of all time, and they've done it with style (and with a really good PC version, too).

The ball is now in Rockstar's court to not only improve on GTA IV, but to outdo the improvements made in Sleeping Dogs (and indeed, Saints Row The Third, Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noire). I'm not a betting man, but I have a feeling GTA V might just make all of those games look like iterative speed-bumps on the road to the next big thing. Here's hoping they pull it off.

And hey, in the meantime, have you heard of this game Sleeping Dogs? It's pretty good…

Aug 24, 2012

So, Tell Me About Yourself, Video Game

Prince of Persia®

Video games need more "Call Me Ishmael."

That quote is one of the most famous opening lines in all of literature. Sure, its popularity is owed largely to being the first sentence in Herman Melville's classic novel Moby Dick. But that introduction is also memorable because you're learning about an important character from the very second you start reading.

Earlier this year, Max Payne 3 did the same trick, letting players know about Max's nihilistic wit and gallows humor before they ever fired a bullet or did a slo-mo dodge. If you never played a Max Payne game before, you still knew for the most part what kind of game you were getting in terms of mechanics. But the journey was about who you were playing as, which wasn't neccessarily something you could learn about just from shooting dudes.

I was reading an issue of Mark Waid's excellent run of Marvel Comics' Daredevil when I stopped to think about how great first-person narration is as a storytelling tool. One that games should use more of.

Look, let's acknowledge that games unfurl their experiences in different ways than books or other media. Games can deliver story through interaction rather than scripting. But, the ones that want to tell tales have a great under-used tool in voiceover narration. Most video games struggle with telling you about their characters. They stop the thing you've shown up to do—solve tricky puzzles, shoot lots of alien invaders, explore vast landscapes—to roll out a cutscene where you finally get to see emotions play out on the front of a character's face. That's usually where you get to hear about what's motivating a hero or a party member. And these moments usually bring the play of a game to a dead stop. No wonder people skip through them.

That's why the narration of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time or Bastion (which, granted, isn't first-person) works so wonderfully. You can still be bounding around a crumbling castle or hacking away at a random enemy while getting fed information about the protagonist and the world. Even Metroid: Other M—controversial as its version of Samus Aran was for some people—let you into that character's head in a way by virtue of narration that previous games hadn't. In fact, I've found that narration heightens the action with a personality-driven filter. I cared more about getting Max past a wave of enemies than, say, Master Chief because I'd had his voice and his pain ringing through my head before the shots rang out.

First-person narration gets used a lot in detective fiction and its very existence imparts a subliminal knowledge that the lead character makes it through okay. You're hearing the tale told after the smoke clears. Where that might rob some of the tension from the proceedings in a book or movie, you're the one that has to navigate to resolution in a video game. That character's voice becomes a catalyst for closure.

So, more narration, please. After all, if I'm going to spend 10, 20, 100 hours with a character, I better feel like I know him or her.