Much has been said about the legitimisation of video games as a medium. From countless debates about whether games are art, to just trying to get an uninterested parent/roommate/significant other to see how the latest thing from E3 is so totally amazing and will change everything forever. But one aspect seems missing in gaming culture – the attention paid to the people who make the games themselves.

With movies we care when we hear about the latest from Steven Spielberg or Christopher Nolan, or with TV shows from Joss Whedon or JJ Abrams. But we don’t care when we just hear Warner Bros. are making a new movie or NBC are making a new show. So why does video game culture focus so much on Sony or Square-Enix instead of the actual people, like the creative leads designing their latest games?

Sure, there’s the occasional figurehead like Shigeru Miyamoto or Peter Molyneux but they tend to gain attention more for PR celebrity than design substance. Not to mention the amount of attention paid to Assassin’s Creed producer Jade Raymond.

Anyway, here’s a convenient list of examples demonstrating why, if you take video games seriously, you should care about the people who actually makes them.

#4. L.A. Noire

“Well done Rockstar!”, “Should Rockstar stop with all the useless collect-a-thons?”, “Has Rockstars track record of great games finally end with LA Noire“: examples of actual topics from an LA Noire forum on a popular gaming message board. Except, hang on, Rockstar Games weren’t responsible for the content at all. The game was made by Team Bondi.

Now admittedly, most of you were probably familiar with this basic difference between game developers like Team Bondi (or Rockstar North: the in house developers that made Grand Theft Auto) – the people that create the games, and game publishers like Rockstar Games – the bigger companies that pay for the games to be made and marketed.

It’s probably even more well known since the accusations of mismanagement at Team Bondi. The studio are actually shutting down likely due to the fallout from this, as companies distanced themselves from them.

Who could have imagined this cockney man would turn out to be evil?

But the game is explicitly not made by the people behind Grand Theft Auto despite what many have implied. You know, from where it says it was written and directed by Brendan McNamara of The Getaway fame.

Not written by, say, Dan Houser who wrote Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto IV (including the fictional radio content) and was credited as a co-writer on Red Dead Redemption.

Despite all this pedigree and influence from the men behind the series, I’ve seen a room full of game journalists not even recognise the names of Dan or his brother and fellow important Grand Theft Auto producer Sam Houser. That is definitely a bad sign.

#3. Shadows of the Damned

So, the wacky developer responsible for No More Heroes is teaming up with the influential director responsible for Resident Evil, God Hand and Resident Evil 4 to make their second game since Killer7? And the music is by the composer from Silent Hill?

Cue an inevitable lack of marketing and disappointing sales.

You might call the sales…Flaccid. Get it? Because the game is about…Never mind.

Sure, the visuals weren’t the most original – dark castle environments, demons and the Unreal engine? The title sounds comically generic. The unending stream of dick jokes might have put off some. But the combination of Shinji Mikami, Suda 51 and Akira Yamaoka clearly does not have the star power it should.

#2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Regardless of what you think of Activision (the video game publisher most eager to paint themselves as the new evil empire of gaming with their insistence on annual “exploitation” of series and everything else Bobby Kotick says), you have to admit that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 were a pretty big deal.

They were released to critical acclaim and massive commercial success. Combining explosive action, massive set pieces, near perfect frame rate, addictive online play and a lot of clever improvements between them. All this, despite how much people will argue about certain facets of the competitive multiplayer.

OMG NOOB TUBE! (and other things the internet is sick of hearing about)

Both games were developed by Infinity Ward, who created the original Call of Duty. While Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Black Ops, games to fill Activision’s annual-isation quota, were developed by Treyarch. Despite using the same engine and basic core gameplay, Treyarch’s takes on the Call of Duty series were met with less acclaim and generally lower review scores.

Unfortunately, the much hyped Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is not being developed by the same people behind the previous Modern Warfare games. Head honchos at Infinity Ward: Vince Zampella and Jason West got into some trouble with Activision (which neither side has publicly discussed, possibly due to the ensuing and ongoing legal battle) and the pair were essentially fired.

A large number of staff (including all of the design leads) of Infinity Ward have since left too. Many of them have joined Zampella and West with their new company: Respawn Entertainment.

Left: MW2. Right: MW3. (Click for big.) Oh, and the ‘new’ red dot sight is even taken straight from Call of Duty 4.

This does not bode well for Modern Warfare 3 which is currently being developed by the remnants of Infinity Ward as well as Sledgehammer Games and Raven Software. Three developers working on one game sounds a lot like a deadline rush for the holidays.

So it’s not too surprising the footage of the game shows they’re reusing textures, character models, animations and barely tweaking weapon models from the previous game. Whereas the old Infinity Ward overhauled almost everything, including some of the same weapons, in the two years between Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2.

It doesn’t get more original than fiction featuring New York City in peril.

Most of the public backlash against Modern Warfare 3 is just from people that are sick of the same old yearly gameplay or whatever multiplayer imbalance bothers them. But very few people, be they fans, detractors or something else, pay attention to the people who built this series into what it is and now have to watch it be milked dry.

It will still almost certainly sell a bajillion copies.

#1. Final Fantasy

A video game developer named Hironobu Sakaguchi basically created Final Fantasy way back in 1987, and it arguably saved Square from bankruptcy. On the subject of the game, he claimed he didn’t have what it takes to make action games, but was better at telling a story.

Sakaguchi went on to spend over a decade writing, directing and/or producing every Final Fantasy in the main series. Also: Chrono Trigger. Then he made the tragic mistake of thinking that Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was a movie worth making. This risky move caused Square to lose a tremendous amount of money.

The second most important moustache in gaming. (Sorry, Luigi.)

After writing Final Fantasy IX, he got an executive producer credit on a few more big Square games including Final Fantasy X, but eventually left the company.

Soon afterwards, Square merged with Enix and certain writers and artists in the company like Tetsuya Nomura became creative leads on the games.  This roughly correlates with the time generic, brooding, metrosexual characters with far too many belts and zippers became less of a trend and more of a constant in Japanese RPGs.

While a lot of the new style gained an audience in the young gamers of Japan, and teenage anime fans in the USA, a lot of older fans were not happy with the latest slew of games from Square-Enix.

He even looks like what’s wrong with JRPGs.

This is also the time Final Fantasy stopped being a series that reinvented itself with every iteration. It started with Final Fantasy X-2 and lead to absurd numbers of re-releases, the use of established characters in the Kingdom Hearts series, revisiting the popular Final Fantasy VII with a number of poorly rated spinoffs, a Final Fantasy fighting game series and most recently a Final Fantasy rhythm game.

Storylines garnered less critical acclaim. The same applied to the battle systems, turn-based or otherwise. As graphics became more advanced, the games lost variance – mini-games and sidequests were replaced by longer dungeons.

The much hyped and very controversial Final Fantasy XIII exemplified a lot of this, with many criticising it for making the JRPG formula even more linear and basic than it already was. There were also concerns raised about an over-abundance of artists in place of design put into the game, with a staff member saying they had enough cut areas to fill another entire game.

Oh, hey, on that note – they’re making a Final Fantasy XIII-2? It seems to have had a much smaller development cycle than the original, doesn’t it?

Well, at least they haven’t just thrown Quick Time Events into the gameplay to…Oh dear.

Let’s not even go into what happened with Final Fantasy XIV.

Fans often blame the merger with Enix. But a corporate merger didn’t necessarily influence the design. It was Square’s old employees that were put in charge and are responsible for the changes in direction and writing, after all.

For comparison’s sake, Cloud Strife of Final Fantasy VII with Sakaguchi was a sarcastic jackass with a heart of gold, prone to psychotic breakdowns, who dressed up like a lady to infiltrate a pimp’s mansion, and had classic lines like “You look like a bear wearing a marshmallow” and “Let’s mosey.” Cloud Strife without Sakaguchi (in the spinoff media) is a brooding anime bishonen who speaks in awkward silences.

The modern Cloud (right) looks, well…I didn’t think I would be using the word ‘flaccid’ a second time in this list.

As for Hironobu Sakaguchi, the former storyteller-in-chief of Final Fantasy in its heyday? He created his own company Mistwalker and often teams up with fellow moustache enthusiast Nobuo Uematsu, the (currently freelance) composer behind the most famous music of the Final Fantasy series.

Mistwalker made a game called Lost Odyssey, which received praise for its story and in which one of the characters was a grizzled, elderly, ship-owning engineer named…”Sed“.

Because that wasn’t obvious enough for everyone, his next game was called The Last Story.

Get it now?

A variety of personal reasons mean I just can’t really keep it going any longer. But feel free to subscribe to the blog just in case I do ever post again.

This seemed like a good time for a reflective list of highlights from the last 65 or so posts. If you’re a random internet surfer from the future who has stumbled upon the blog, this is a good place to start!

The Best of the Blog:

Let’s Ruin Tetris! – What happens if you take a classic game and update it to modern, corporate standards? (Spoiler: The Worst Thing I Have Ever Done.)

Top 5 games that COULD make great movies – Basically a list of ideas and some cool trivia you might not know. Note that David O. Russell’s Mark Wahlberg mob movie is how not to adapt Uncharted.

Final Fantasy XIII sucks a lot like XII – An unrestrained rant, has some interesting comparison pictures and was one of the most popular posts on the blog.

The value of life in video games or: How not to throw disposable henchmen at the player – Because seriously. Stop doing that.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory guide for the PC – A serious take on the weighty issue of anti-piracy DRM for PC games and the effect it has on consumers.

The trio of comics:

• Alan Wake
• Red Dead Redemption
• Red Dead Redemption Again

(With props to hatebreeder for the great art on the first two.)

The Game Design category – is actually full of posts I believe are worth reading. That’s why half of them stopped being about game design and were just fun list articles. Whoops!

Anyway, I enjoyed writing here and I’m proud to have not missed an update in over a year. I hope everyone who read the blog and the extra lovely people that left comments enjoyed it too!

Thanks for reading!

It’s also worth mentioning this isn’t too definite a top 5 and might be more of a list of games with writing that I personally liked. With that bit of criticism nullification swiftly out of the way, let’s get on with the list!

5. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Uncharted 2 was praised for it’s funny, charming, Whedon-esque dialogue. Unfortunately, as is the nature of the polished “summer blockbuster” style, it doesn’t provoke much thought or emotional response. It does provide enjoyable exposition and likeable characters, however.

This exchange between Nathan Drake and a female companion is mainly what earned it a place on the list:

“So, on a scale on one to ten – how scared were you that I was gonna die?”
“Four.”
“Four?!”
“Yeah, why?”
“A four?”
“Yeah.”
“You were at least an eight.”
“An eight?”
“You were a total eight.”
“An eight? Those Guardian things were an eight.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Yeah, those were terrifying.”
“Then what’s a ten?”
“Clowns.”
“…Clowns over my death?”
“I, I hate clowns.”
“Clowns?”
“I hate clowns.”
“Oh my word. You thought I was dead.”
“No…”
“No, you thought I was gone.”
“No…”
“Yes, you did.”
“No, I had you all along.”
“I saw you shed tears. You shed a bunch of ‘em.”
“Tears?”
“Um-hmm.”
“It was raining.”
“No it was not.”
“You were unconscious and it was raining.”
“It was totally sunny out and you were bawling.”
“It wasn’t sunny and you were unconscious.”
“Whatever, I kept your tears in a jar. I have proof.”
“…I’ll give you a five, how’s that?”

4. Grand Theft Auto IV

Grand Theft Auto has always had humour and absurdity in the dialogue. No one who’s played the games can say they’ve never enjoyed the radio stations or general satire on western culture.

Here’s a typically beautiful exchange between Niko and Roman:

“I don’t want to die, man! Not like this!”
“How would you like to die?”
“Having a threesome on my hundredth birthday? I don’t fucking know, you cold bastard!”

But Grand Theft Auto IV showed that the writers could handle more serious matters pretty well too. A lot of Niko quotes could apply here, but here’s two that sum that up without the need for 20 hours of context:

Ileyna: He did not used to be like this. When we were young, at home, he was beautiful. He was happy. He made me happy. But then something changed. Years ago. I never quite knew what it was. So many years I wondered what it was, or what was wrong with me that I did not see it in him, or I changed him.
Niko: Life is complicated. I…I never thought I’d live like this.
Ileyna: No?
Niko: When the war came, I did bad things, but after the war I thought nothing of doing bad things. I killed people, smuggled people, sold people.
Ileyna: And you don’t worry about your soul?
Niko: After you walk into a village and you see fifty children, all sitting neatly in a row, against a church wall, each with their throats cut and their hands chopped off, you realize that the creature that could do this doesn’t have a soul.
Ileyna: God is very complicated. You mustn’t give up hope.
Niko: Well, I don’t know about that.

Niko:
“War is where the young and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other.”

The majority of the dialogue in any GTA is the protagonist dealing with assorted criminals in a Tarantino meets The Wire kind of way. It’s a unique and enjoyable touch that helped make Rockstar the kings of crime games.

It’s worth noting that the quality applies across the entire Grand Theft Auto IV  trilogy, and that Red Dead Redemption matches up too.

3. Vagrant Story

A game famous for it’s articulate and quote-worthy writing. It isn’t too flowery and isn’t purple prose unlike the sudden faux-Shakespearean shift midway through Final Fantasy XII.

Every line says something about the story or the characters. From Ashley’s “I am the reinforcements” straight talk to Guildenstern’s eloquence, Rosencrantz’ riddles or Sydney’s omniscient words.

The opening quote (that is a fictional quote from the world of Ivalice) technically isn’t dialogue but it sets a tone and is frankly just mandatory if we’re talking Vagrant Story quotes:

“The body is but a vessel for the soul, a puppet which bends to the soul’s tyranny. And lo, the body is not eternal, for it must feed on the flesh of others, lest it return to the dust from whence it came. Therefore must the soul deceive, despise and murder men.”

Here’s an actual conversation, for good measure:

“Where did he go?”
“Through the wood, he says. You will follow him?”
“I must avenge the foul murder of my brother, Duane.”
“Of course you must. But be wary, your foe is strong.”
“God is stronger.”

Here’s a few unrelated examples of Sydney’s very quotable lines:

“Warping the minds of men and shepherding the masses has always been your church’s domain. You lure sheep with empty miracles and a dead god.”

“Yet mark your savior well, for he is one of the demons that you so fear.”

“In my dreams, I see an evil tyrant’s hands, which would choke the world. And he is the only one blind to his own folly.”

“A tyrant always dies alone, Guildenstern. Surrounded by silver-tongued leeches, he is utterly alone. He sows sorrow and reaps death.”

Finally, this is a personal favourite from when, to buy time for his partner’s escape, huge knight Tieger faces off against his now undead comrade in the collapsing Undercity:

“Now the slowest dance begins, partner! …’Tis a fine tomb we shall share!”

2. Metal Gear Solid

No, seriously. Not the series. Just the original Metal Gear Solid. With the writing and voice acting, even barely animated character portraits could convey a surprising amount of emotion. Let’s take a look at a pretty important piece of story told purely in the codec screen:

Snake: Naomi, please talk to me. Say something to take my mind off the pain.
Naomi: What can I say?
Snake: Anything.
Naomi: I…I’m not a very good talker.
Snake: Please…Tell me about yourself.
Naomi: Myself? That’s a tough one…
Snake: Any family?
Naomi: (Sigh) That’s not a very happy topic for me.
Snake: I don’t have any family. No wait, there was a man who said he was my father…
Naomi: Where is he?
Snake: Dead. By my own hand.
Campbell: Big Boss.
Naomi: What!? Big Boss!? I had no idea.
Campbell: There was no way you could. It happened in Zanzibar 6 years ago. Only Snake and I know the real truth of what happened there.
Naomi: So, is it true? Was Big Boss really your father?
Snake: That’s what he said. That’s all I know.
Naomi: And you were able to kill him, knowing that?
Snake: Yup.
Naomi: …How?
Snake: He wanted it. Besides, some people just need killing.
Naomi: That’s patricide.
Snake: Yup.

Notice the interaction and pure character in each line? Could you even imagine anything like that in any recent Metal Gear Solid game?

Here’s some more random quotes that strike a very unique tone compared to the sequels:

Solid Snake:
“Unfortunately, killing is just one of those things that gets easier the more you do it.”

Revolver Ocelot:
“We live in a sad age. Imperialism, totalitarianism, perestroika… 20th century Russia had its share of problems, but at least they had an ideology. Russia today has nothing. They’re struggling between freedom and order. And with that struggle, a new spirit of nationalism has been born.”

Sniper Wolf:
“I watched the brutality…The stupidity of mankind through the scope of my rifle.”

Gray Fox:
“Snake. We’re not tools of the government, or anyone else! Fighting was the only thing…The only thing I was good at, but…At least I always fought for what I believed in.”

Liquid Snake:
“Foolish man. He prayed for death, and it found him. You see, Snake? You can’t protect anyone, not even yourself!”

A lot of this is probably down to the translation by Jeremy Blaustein (re: Shadow Hearts), who wasn’t hired for any of the other games in the series, explaining their ‘off’ feel.

Although you can’t help but wonder if series creator Hideo Kojima is partly responsible for the worse dialogue later on in the series. Try contrasting this sometimes flirty and very human Solid Snake with the robotic protagonist of Metal Gear Solid 2 and 4.

Here’s two snappy exchanges between Snake and Meryl as one final example of the dialogue:

“Okay, let me try to say this another way…Stay the hell out of my way.”
“You’re a real bastard…Just like my uncle said.”
“Ha, I told you. The real me is no match for the legend.”
“It looks like you were right.”

“You’ll just slow me down. You don’t have enough battle experience.”
“I won’t slow you down. I promise…”
“And what if you do?”
“Then you can shoot me.”
“I don’t like to waste bullets.”

1. Grim Fandango

Every line in the noir/comedy/adventure Grim Fandango crackles with style. Almost every sentence seems like it was masterfully engineered to be clasy, smart and funny. Naturally, all packed in a very original world from the brain of Tim Schafer.

Here’s some one liners from protagonist Manuel “Manny” Calavera:

“My scythe… I like to keep it next to where my heart used to be. “

“This deck of cards is a little frayed around the edges, but then again so am I and I’ve got fewer suits… “

“I just locked an open door…Strange, yet symbolically compelling.”

“As a rule, I never touch anything more sophisticated and delicate than myself.”

“He doesn’t even HIDE his booze in a file cabinet. What kind of salesman is he?”

“Bound only by the paper-thin wrapper of mortality, a soul here lies, struggling to be free. And so it shall, thanks to a bowl of bad gazpacho, and a man named… Calavera.”

“You know, sweetheart, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: nobody knows what’s gonna happen at the end of the line, so you might as well enjoy the trip. “

Two exchanges between Manny and Eva:

“Could I take your hole punch?”
“Ha! I doubt you could take my HALF punch.”

“Well, I gotta go hit the bricks.”
“Okay. You go show those bricks a lesson.”

Of course it has a more serious side:

Manny and Meché:
“Buenos días.”
“You’re not the nurse.”
“No.”
“You’re not here to give me my medication?”
“No, but I am here to ease your pain.”
“Guess they couldn’t save me, eh?”
“No, but there’s still a chance you could save me.”

Salvador Limones and Manny:
“Manuel? Are you… in love with her?”
“Love? Love is for the living, Sal. I’m only after her for one reason…She’s my ticket out of here.”

Membrillo at the morgue:
All day long, Manny, I sort through pure sadness. I find evidence, and I piece together stories. But none of my stories end well – they all end here. And the moral of every story is the same: we may have years, we may have hours, but sooner of later, we push up flowers.

And finally there’s Manny and the beatniks:

“So what did you think of my poem?”
“I liked it. It was sad and beautiful, like my mother.”
“I despised it. It was too short and said nothing to me, like my father.”
“I had no feelings about it. It was aloof and licked itself too much, like my cat, Mr. Trotsky.”

Credit for most of these quotes goes to IMDB and Gamefaqs. Perusing them for these games was like a trip down memory lane. In a jetpack.

Maybe you should check out some quotes from your favourite games and let us know what games you think had the best dialogue.

Er…What? Look, you’re clearly speaking English, so why have you just randomly made up words there? I’ve been playing this game for 20 hours and I still don’t know what you’re talking about. Why not just say ‘group’, ‘rebels’ and ‘the mage’?

But there’s no dialogue option to point this out, because it’s Dragon Age 2 – where you can never do what you want to do. So with that level of quality established, here’s a list of some other dumb things that prove this game never should have had dialogue trees:

5. Choices matter! …Except the retconned ones

I distinctly remember killing elvish assassin Zevran for trying to kill me. I also distinctly remember importing my save from Dragon Age: Origins and having the decisions I made be referenced in this sequel.

So imagine my surprise when I bump into this very man I had distinctly killed, just hanging around in a cave. Apparently the game also retcons over possible fates of one other party member from the previous game. It doesn’t seem to be a bug, it’s just straight up Compilation’ing.

4. “Kill the villain later, I have conclusions to jump to!”

Quite often you will be speaking directly to an antagonist. Someone who, if killed – would leave their henchmen with no reason to fight you, would solve all your problems and would stop said antagonist from killing anyone else.

They’re not far away, they’re not on a balcony or anywhere untouchable. They are at lunging range. All Hawke would have to do is draw his knife and stab them. Not only is this option not present, but you will watch Hawke and co. allow the villain to run away, possibly multiple times.

While the rest of the game forces you into making decisions without allowing you to get the facts. It’s particularly bad in a story with so much magic that literally anything could happen with no internal logic.

The worst example is where you asked whether to kill a possibly innocent suspected serial killer or let him walk away free. There are no other options. Even if you have the captain of the city guard in your party!

3. Character sabotage

With the exception of Varric, the game soon ruined each of the seemingly likeable cast in the game, supplying reason after reason to hate every one of those monsters.

There’s the character that sends you on an infuriating, neverending fetch quest with cutscenes actively depicting boredom…Because this grown woman can’t talk to a man she like-likes.

You’ve got the two seemingly decent characters who are prone to evil demon magic. The former will disapprove any time you point out that demons might be bad, or destroy Evil Books of Evil. The latter turns out to be a terrorist who blows up lots of innocent people and starts a war.

Another character causes the deaths of many innocents and starts a different war with another completely pointless act that could’ve been avoided by…Killing one man. Which is what you do after all the death she causes.

2. The Qunari

You know what’s great in a game with an interactive story, a dialogue system and choices? A species whose only defining characteristic is that they never change their minds and you will never convince them of anything.

You know what makes that even better? When one third of the game’s story is built around them and their arbitrary societal rules.

1. The entire Templar/Mage struggle

One of the few interesting ideas in the Dragon Age story is how mages, with their potentially destructive, powerful magic abilities are confined to towers (that aren’t supposed to be like prisons) and guarded by Templars. They bring young mages to the towers and hunt down any rogue ones.

It all taps into a classic moral dilemma over security versus freedom. But because it’s Dragon Age, it never really does anything interesting with the idea.

The third act of Dragon Age 2 instead just takes it to the most idiotic extremes possible. Conflict escalates, tensions reach boiling point and you are eventually forced to make a decision.

Side with the psychopathic Aryan tyrant who wants to exterminate all the mages. Or fight for the freedom of all mages with a seemingly nice man – who turns out to be a demon worshipping moron who had a hand in the murder of your in-game mother.

There is no middle ground. Despite this all could’ve been solved with about three quick stabbings in the space of one conversation, or just replacing the tyrant with a nice Templar much earlier.

Oh, and no matter which ridiculous side you take, the game still forces you to have drawn out boss fights with both of the leaders from each side, in the same order, no less.

Why bother with dialogue trees at all?

With the threequel – The 3rd Birthday on the way, now seemed like a good time to talk about the game.

NYPD officer Aya Brea is enjoying an evening out at an opera around the Christmas holidays. Suddenly, performers around one singer begin to spontaneously combust, then the audience begin to burn too.
The survivors retreat, but Aya, mysteriously unaffected, confronts the singer on the stage, who mutates and refers to herself as Eve.

Aya gives chase but eventually loses her in the sewers, while fighting mutating animals in the wake of Eve. This chaos soon spreads around Manhattan.
Aya – who is developing strange abilities akin to Eve – and her partner Daniel (think Glover) run around the city chasing any leads they have on the seemingly supernatural occurrences and how Aya is connected to it all.

Shadow Hearts had an interesting use of real world settings in a pre-World War 1 setting, Parasite Eve gives similarly you a real sense of place in modern day (well, 1997) New York. You explore Manhattan via a basic map screen, occasionally getting to choose where to go next or first.

But the use of real world locations and occasional hints of non-linearity really help ground the science-fiction storyline as one extraordinary element in the very world we know.

The science aspect of the story is about mitochondria essentially evolving. The game is complete with biological infodumps about how mitochondria provide energy for the entire human body and how the heat they can generate could cause spontaneous combustion.

A lot of the ideas are based on real science, even if there is a considerable dose of Plot Magic involved. It makes for a pretty compelling storyline either way.

The game is actually a sequel to a Japanese novel of the same name, with this interesting premise of sentient mitochondrial evolution. Fortunately, the game gives you all the requisite background information relating to the book.

The game has an nice little supporting cast, between Aya’s partner Daniel, his family, the duo at the Police station who deal in weaponry for Aya, the scientist with the hilariously evil name (Dr. Hans Klamp) and so on.

The game doesn’t provide rich character development or deep characterisation, but it does present you with a likeable and fairly memorable bunch.

It gives us some nice little moments such as the following lines from Aya and the foreign scientist Maeda when Daniel decides to shoot the door of a gun store open, after the city had been evacuated:

Maeda (to Daniel): “Are… are you really a cop?”

Aya: “We think so. But we don’t have scientific proof, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Another similarity to Shadow Hearts, the game has a classic survival horror atmosphere, essentially being Squaresoft’s take on Resident Evil. It has action set pieces (like the museum dinosaur display animated by mitochondrial ooze), some grotesque imagery and it also has quiet moments of loneliness and claustrophobia in abandoned environments.

You even read files to fill in the story. Not to mention the good ol’ pre-rendered backgrounds that add atmosphere and keep the Playstation 1 graphics from looking too dire.

Parasite Eve would actually be an ideal candidate for the Top 5 games that COULD make great movies. The characters, the plot, the setpieces, it’s all very adaptable. Maybe just cut the ending a little earlier.

Mainly, I just want to see the epic part where the character jumps out of a helicopter, bursts into flames, throws an ammo magazine to Aya and then crashes into the river – in live action.

As for Parasite Eve 2: that was not so impressive. Most of the game took place in one location and the plot ended up involving a lot of cliché comic book nonsense with clones, robots, a love interest and a conspiracy that went all the way to the preside-ZZZzzzzzzzzzzz

The newest game: The 3rd Birthday is to involve time travel and combing tentacle monsters with clothes-shredding technology.
A long way to fall for a refreshingly modest protagonist who spent most of her début  in jeans, a t-shirt and a leather jacket. Evidently Square-Enix is bringing their usual quality.

The first Parasite Eve had a lot going for it and may be worth checking out, even just in LP form as I can’t comment on the gameplay quality. It’s just a shame nothing else lived up to its legacy.

Challenge is a tricky term to discuss in video games. We probably all recognise exchanges like the one above, which demonstrate the relative subjectivity of the matter. Balance and difficulty present a complex riddle for game designers.

One of the important factors involved is the “punishment” for failure. Usually the player character will die and be sent back to the last checkpoint. The player then has to replay up to where they were originally.

It’s tempting to say no one likes doing that, but that would be ignoring the fondness for ultra-difficult NES era games and the slightly-more-than-cult following of Demon’s Souls.

But most have probably seen the human reaction when someone watching a game being played loses interest as soon as the player dies and is reset to an earlier position, like you rewound a few minutes of a film they were watching.

There are games like the Fable series and the 2008 Prince of Persia that practically remove the cost of failure altogether. Naturally this was met with a massively mixed reaction. Either it was praised for streamlining the experience or criticised for the casual pussyfication of gaming.

Lego Star Wars (and presumably the further entries of the franchise) did this kind of instant, no-cost respawn too.

They aren’t an invincible god mode. You can still fail. But those that dislike this kind of design say it takes away the consequence of dying and thus the meaning.

But shouldn’t the actual reason for the virtual loss of life be considered the real challenge? Whatever tricky platform, boss or sections that kill the player character. Punishment for death might seem like a totally different matter but it’s become totally conflated with the nature of difficulty.

To be fair, placement of checkpoints can add an extra level of difficulty. Having to replay the ten minutes between the checkpoint and the part that killed you will wear you down and make you more likely to fail again.

But that also leads to infuriation and time-wasting. The gameplay equivalent of headbutting a brick wall. Killing pacing, immersion and probably braincells.

Then again, your character casually shrugging off being murdered and magically jumping back to full health in Fable doesn’t help the immersion either.

It seems that even the illusion of death is important to some players. If Prince of Persia and Fable just put you back one minute of gameplay from when you died, it’s likely that far fewer people would have complained about the lack of challenge.

As for the real challenge, rather than the consequences of not winning – there are design decisions that make general difficulty more approachable and forgiving.
From the classic example of regenerating health, to being able to rewind or slow down time to avoid in-game death. These too were met with mixed reactions.

Then there’s when the difficulty is downright unfair. Be it a massive difficulty spike, a cheap boss in a beat ‘em up or too many enemies being thrown at you. There isn’t really a solution to that occasional how-did-this-happen design oversight.

As for an overall solution? Well, the best mainstream games of recent times, such as Uncharted 2 or Mass Effect 2, have just been having more and more checkpoints (essentially putting them closer together) to minimise retreading and frustration.

But a better idea might be to take advantage of options.

Once again, the beauty of gaming lies in its interactivity. You could make the gap between Easy mode and Hard mode much bigger. Or essentially have tickboxes for certain functions.
If you want the game to restart from the beginning when you die once – that could be an option.
If you want the game to respawn you right before you died, that could be an option.

An option could be an unlimited ability to rewind time to avoid death in action game? Or the total freezing of time before a killing blow so you can always avoid death?

What if a game like Uncharted 2 only let your health get down to the lowest possible point before death? Thus preserving the illusion of danger. But that last bullet or attack would never register a hit on you. Would you even notice?

Then there’s the ability to level up. When an RPG doesn’t use grinding to pad out its length, the option to make your characters stronger is a way of adding adaptive and optional difficulty.
If an RPG is too easy, then you can avoid levelling up and limit yourself by not using magic or items.

I should admit that I fall into the camp that prefers to get through a game without losing a life. I often play on the easiest difficulty available and I see absolutely no reason to give Demon’s Souls a try.

But I think there are ways of giving the best of both worlds to those that like their difficulty and those of us who like to breeze through games. It’s up to creative developers to bridge that gap.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to run a marathon and then attempt surgery.

I recently bought Alpha Protocol on the cheap and it is a stupid game. Everything about it is lacking, although I expected as much from the reviews and scuttlebutt.

The thing that really bugs me is that Obsidian get a lot of credit for their writing. I do not understand this. I’ve always found them to be the ‘good ideas’ team, but definitely not star writers or storytellers.

Here’s a quick list of some of the dumbest highlights of Alpha Protocol’s story:

• Extremely out of place emo teenager with twin revolvers attacks you for no reason while working for a mysteriously mysterious organisation with unexplained motives who approach you for an alliance if you randomly let said homicidal teen go for no reason.
• Choosing between stopping the bomb and saving the girl – if you go for the bomb, the girl is brought to you and executed in front of you in a way that would’ve been stopped if Cutscene Protagonist had raised his gun. This also makes all the angsting over the decision seem rather pointless. (Compare this to the Ashley/Kaidan decision of Mass Effect to realise how Bioware‘s best could write circles around Obsidian)
• Nothing you do in the game has an effect on the antagonists or their fiendish plans until you just go to their base and kill them at the end. It’s linear-tastic!
• Random note: F.E.A.R. 2 beat Alpha Protocol to the ‘male protagonist basically gets raped by a woman’ thing. That lovely bit of info brings us to the hastily-written “romances” that make the Mass Effect games look like classic and epic standalone love stories.

The dialogue system itself is broken. With the cruel timer and the vague options, it’s easy to get lost in a conversation or to do things you didn’t intend to do. Having a mere few seconds to comprehend certain huge decisions late in the game is particularly bad.
Plus, much like Dragon Age: Origins, it often doesn’t give you the options you want.

The ‘suave’ dialogue options are supposed to be like James Bond, but the writers couldn’t write that, so the flirtier options come off more as a bumbling Hugh Grant. Or Michael Cera. (No wonder those options make most characters hate you.)

Obsidian are praised for moral ambiguity in their games, but I think that’s just down to how unclear they are about the options presented to you.

See, Bioware get accused of being too black and white when writing their in-game choices, and while they could do with injecting a little more uncertainty into decisions, the simplicity helps them keep the dialogue trees and the formula of choices understandable.
Unless confusion is intended by the Bioware writers, you tend to always know what is going on and what your options will do. It’s very intuitive.

Whereas in a number of Obsidian game, there’s poor presentation and exposition leading to a lot of “I didn’t know that option would do that.” The game has a lot of little branches, but people who have played through it multiple times probably couldn’t tell you how to get certain sequences to occur.

Bioware’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is one of  my favourite games and I would argue might represent the pinnacle of their interactive storytelling.
Obsidian’s Knights of the Old Republic 2 is one of the worst games I have ever played and not just because it’s infamously unfinished or because the gameplay is one long dungeon crawl.

The characters are horrible people, always bickering shadily and plotting behind your character’s back  – which is as infuriating as it sounds. The grand moral choices are bland and meaningless (side with the good guys or the bad guys on each planet) and the story is just bad. All it has is a few interesting ideas with wounding the Force, Darth Nihilus etc.

This pattern goes back to the horribly overrated Planescape: Torment too, which current Obsidian employees worked on. Great ideas paired with terrible execution.

As for the gameplay: it feels ten years old. Broken shooting mechanics, the ridiculous endurance fights with bosses that brandish massive health bars and psychic guards that telepathically alert everyone two rooms away of your exact location just by catching sight of you.

Much like in the story, you rarely feel like you’re in control of the stealth. The game also forces you into alerts and fights so often that it feels like it doesn’t know what it wants to be. If only it had taken more cues from Metal Gear Solid or even Splinter Cell Conviction.

It has patches of actual fun when you get the hang of it, and your repeat playthroughs can be interesting. But mostly Alpha Protocol is an exercise in wasted potential. The duplicity, stealth, violence and betrayal of the espionage world could make for an incredible interactive story.

The mere branching paths of Alpha Protocol are nowhere near that possibility. Nor are their attempts at stealth or action gameplay. It’s just good ideas and nothing else. Looks like we’ll be waiting for Burn Notice: The Game for a while longer.

As for Obsidian, they did do a much better job with Fallout: New Vegas. Well…Except for the bugs.

Things you may expect that didn’t make the list: The gravity gun from Half-Life 2, the Portal Gun from Portal, Metal Gear Solid‘s Stealth Camouflage and…The Portal Gun again.

6. Pokéballs

These hand-held spheres can capture, contain and release Pokémon of any size or weight at the whim of the user. How do they work? Nobody knows!

Does it cryogenically freeze the Pokémon? Does it shrink them? Do they have a little apartment in there with a tiny couch and very-mini-fridge?
Do Pokéballs work on inorganic matter? That would explain how trainers can carry a bicycle in their backpacks.

Either way, think of the real world implications of the mysterious transport devices for zookeepers or for shifting furniture!

5. Independantly discerning turrets

It’s not an exaggeration to say we’ve seen these in thousands of games. I wanted to exclude tech based around warfare, but you’ve got to realise just what a big deal these would be – we could win the war if we dropped a bunch of these into Afghanistan.

I mean they’re turrets that can differentiate between allies and enemies with 100% certainty. They don’t need to be remotely controlled, they don’t need to be plugged in and their inclusion in Bioshock proves they can be cheaply made with 1940s era technology.

I mean look: it’s just a machine gun and a torch strapped to a chair with Some Other Stuff. That last part is all you need to figure out, engineers of the future!

4. Zombies

(I would be remiss to talk about video game zombies and not link to the song Re: Your Brains by the very talented Jonathan Coulton of Portal fame.)

Whether it was the T-Virus, the G-Virus or any other experiment gone horribly wrong – zombies in video games often have man-made causes. Let’s be honest, we’ve all thought about what we’d do in the zombie apocalypse and it’s about time we actually had one.

All science has to do is invent a way for infected humans to die, rapidly decompose, rise up from the dead to shuffle around craving the taste of flesh with a bite that passes on the virus.
Oh and be able to withstand the loss of blood, limbs or vital organs, except the brain which somehow sustains the entire body and un-life.

Is that so hard, science?!

3. Super suits with regenerating health

While not as ubiquitous as turrets, you’ll probably recognise super soldier suits and their holographic visors from your Metroids, Crysises (Cryses?), Halos, etc.

The super suits usually offer an armoured defence, possibly augmented strength, a holographic display that keeps track of equipment and sometimes – regenerating health.

Excluding the way the visor would be a quicker way to check if you’d forgotten my keys, a suit that regenerates health has the greatest every-day possibilities. Throwing it on when you need to get over a cold, after a car accident, or even have your health bar race against cancer!

Small caveat is that it needs to have all this while being lightweight and flexible. Y’know…For running and those pesky platform sections.

2. The Enertron

The Enertron is an invention hailing from the 2300AD ruins in the world of Chrono Trigger. You climb in and within a few moments it grants all the benefits of a full night’s sleep. Even if we forget the standard JRPG benefit of healing all wounds, this has incredible practicality for the real world.

Exam tomorrow? Can’t sleep? Haven’t studied enough? Get a nights sleep in mere minutes and stride into the exam fully refreshed and wide awake, with an extra night’s worth of revision.
Holidaying in a new country, arrive in the morning horribly jetlagged? Pop in the local Enertron!
Just need to get more stuff done but need sleep for work in the morning? Enertron! It is the answer to everything!

…But you’re still hungry.

1. Jetpack

Because come on!

They’ve been a pop-culture staple since the 1920s or something and people have been working on making them work for about 50 years.

How on earth have are they not advanced enough to be available as personal transport yet? It’s not like anything could possibly go wrong with that!

What better way to examine the demo and the game than by hosting a disastrous, oversized and summarised screenshot Let’s Play of the demo? Let’s get into it.

You start by selecting the gender and class of the protagonist – for the purposes of this playthrough, I choose the good old fashioned male warrior. Because tanking is just my style.

The game opens on a dwarf named Varric being dragged through a hall by armoured men. They sit him down in a dark room. He is interrogated by a woman called Cassandra, who identifies herself as working for the Chantry – because Dragon Age is too fancy to say ‘church’.

Cassie there also has that weird almost-French accent that was associated with the almost-French country of Orlais in the Dragon Age lore.

Faux Frenchy demands to know about ‘the Champion’, claiming that Varric knew him. Varric starts to talk as it cuts to a barren wasteland. An armoured man with a beard – our protagonist Mr. Hawke and a mage later revealed to be his sister are fighting what appear to be the henchmen of Skeletor…

Then we’re thrown into tutorial gameplay. You click things and Hawke and his sister attack them. Then you click special attacks on the special attack bar and Hawke will attack the respawning skeleton monsters…Specially.

After killing them there’s a completely meaningless conversation that shows off the “new” conversation system and allows you to say the same thing three different ways!

Then you fight more of the same enemies in the same way in the same place. You do get to choose whether either you or your mage sister kill more bad guys in a cutscene. The cutscene kills look more fun and enemies seem to die much quicker than the ones in the gameplay.

Then an Ogre boss shows up. You and your sister just wail on it and its respawning allies, clicking special attacks, and waiting for them to recharge (strategy!) for about 50 seconds.

You kill the Ogre – well, Cutscene Hawke steals your kill in a badly animated finisher. Then more skeletons arrive and then a dragon roars and it cuts back to the interrogation.

Cassandra immediately accuses Varric of lying. See, cleverly, you seem to have been playing his false, exaggerated version of events! Which would work and be a clever little narrative device…If it hadn’t made all that boring fighting entirely pointless.

She yells about what’s at stake and he hints at the larger plot (as seen in the picture), when their interrogation suddenly turns. It feels like Varric is control for no apparent reason now. And then the following strange bit of dialogue:

Varric: You aren’t worried I’ll just make it up as I go?
Cassandra: Will you?
Varric: Then let me tell you what really happened…

The game brings us to the character customisation screen, which locks out everything customisable, but Hawke’s first name (I went with Dasux, because I am mature) for the demo.

Then Varric narrates semi-animated artwork, akin to the intro in Dragon Age: Origins and recaps some of the plot of that game, focusing on the destruction of the village of Lothering by the Orcs Darkspawn.

The demise of Lothering was offscreen in Dragon Age: Origins, maybe we’ll get to see it happen here. Spoiler: We don’t!

Cut to the barren wasteland from earlier, Hawke in less armour, his sister with a smaller bust, an old woman and Some Guy are running away from the skeleton zombies. Apparently they are the Darkspawn. Looks like the Orcs had a makeover. Which is weird considering this bit is set during Dragon Age: Origins in which they were Orcs.

Er…I don’t have a screenshot of the family at this point. Whoops. Anyway, Hawke’s sister ignites the pursuers and blocks their path with fire magic.

There’s an expository conversation that reveals the old lady is the mother of the Hawke family and they are indeed running from the skeleton monsters from Jason and the Argonauts Darkspawn.

The guy there is that other guy. His menu screen tells us he is a Warrior and is closer to Rivalry than Friendship with Hawke. That’s about as much personality I could gleam from the entire demo.

This conversation also presents us with pointless dialogue choice number 2. Slowing down just to say “we have to keep moving” is dreadfully reminiscent of Final Fantasy XIII.

We are put in control of Hawke and co.
Examining a corpse will let us switch weapons for demo purposes, but let’s stick with the absurdly sized two handed sword, because the Buster Sword is the best kind of sword.

Before we can start looting glittering corpses, Darkspawn appear in front. It goes the same as earlier, but now we have fewer skills, so it’s mainly just click bad guy, then click next bad guy when previous bad guy is dead.

After the fight, we level up Hawke (which mainly involves a lot of complicated statistics – SO TOTALLY FUN) and take a look at the map. Speaking of Final Fantasy XIII similarities…

Plus, check out all these greyed out options we are not allowed to click in the menu. It’s worth noting, I first ran the game in High and it ran terribly. On a computer that can run Crysis and ArmA 2.

We march on and stop to have another pointless conversation about how we have to get away from the Darkspawn and decide where to go after that, which seems like something you could put off until you’ve escaped the things that are trying to kill you.

After the conversation, more of the same bad guys appear. Kill them and continue. Further on it goes back to cutscene mode and we see a man and a woman fighting…Wait for it…Darkspawn.

The man takes it from behind. His ladyfriend tackles the Darkspawn responsible, beats it in the face with her first and then uses a dropped sword to cut its head off. It was actually pretty cool.

She goes to the side of her fallen ally and repeats that weird protective line. Cut back to Hawke’s group. You have to fight through another group of Darkspawn in front of you, and follow the path around to the couple and fight the Darkspawn around them.

Strategy tip: kill the Darkspawn the same way you killed all the other Darkspawn.

After the killing, the couple introduce themselves. The supposedly wounded Sir (Yes, with an ‘i’!) Wesley starts mouthing off to your sister. See, he’s a Templar and in Dragon Age, that means he hunts mages and your sister is a mage aaaand I smell a sitcom.

Anyway, his ladyfriend Maybelline there, tells him to shut up and the pair automatically join you. Choices!

Let’s save us some screenshot time and space. Red dots are the same dreary enemies spawning out of the same dreary texture set.

And of course there are even more. Note in this shot that the Templar and the Hawkemother just cower at the side while everyone else fights.

If you’re feeling boredom looking at screenshots like this, it is intentional on my part. But a few samey screenshots don’t really get across what a chore this is to play at this point.

The way you can literally see enemies pop into existence is starting to get annoying.

The thing about this gameplay is the combat system isn’t the problem, it’s the total design. If it was Zelda combat, it would suck. If it was turn based combat, it would suck. If the merely functional battle systems of Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire or Mass Effect 1 threw this many enemies at you with nothing else inbetween – they would suck too.

It is like Final Fantasy XIII all over again!

After cutting through MORE Darkspawn, we get to a slightly open area with more Darkspawn.

It also has a new enemy! Feel free to take note of the spawning waves of normal enemies appearing at the sides on the map though.

After this fight, you move up to the familiar plateau that was the battlefield in Varric’s exaggerated intro.

An Ogre appears, That Other Guy from your party with no distinguishing characteristics charges it. It picks him up, slams him into the ground a few times and then throws him away. Another Jenkins, another pointless death.

I’m not surprised, but my money was on the Templar guy to die.

Note that Hawke doesn’t run up and stab it, and the sister doesn’t bother casting any spells at it while it’s grabbing and murdering their ally.

So you fight the Ogre. Again. While Darkspawn spawn around you. Again. Only this time you have a bigger party…And worse stats, so it takes longer to chip away at his health bar. Quality interactive entertainment!

After the fight, the crying Hawkemomma rushes to the side of Dead Guy .

Oh, he was Hawke’s brother? Oh, we’re meant to care? Well this death scene is totally up there with Aeris and The Boss.

(And his name was Carver? Carver because he hit things with a big sword? Really?)

Templarboy says a prayer and the crew start walking away. Then more Darkspawn appear and I’m not  going to bother screenshotting the ensuing fight. Just scroll back up to the top where more Darkspawn appeared in the same area that looks the same as all the other places so far.

After you’ve killed enough of them, a big dragon appears and then swoops down killing a bunch of Darkspawn in cutscene mode. It then transforms…

…Into a medieval stripper’s nan?

Or Flemeth from Dragon Age: Origins with an Ultimecia makeover. Your allies recognise her as the Witch of the Wilds and you chat a little bit. Turns out she came down on a whim to see who had managed to kill an Ogre.

And you know from Dragon Age: Origins that she has to fly back to her hut in the forest, change back into her normal old lady clothes (and face) to await the Warden and pals next visit for her grimoire.

Finally! A dialogue option that totally represents what I want to say!

Hawke: You could show me that trick of yours. That looks useful.
Flemeth: [Laughs] If only a clever tongue was all one needed.

Then she changes the subject and I don’t get to say “No, seriously. My sister is a mage, you could totally teach her. If we had a dragon, we could just fly away from the Darkspawn!”

Having decided to leave the country of Ferelden and travel to Kirkwall, we ask for the witch’s help. She offers to help us, provided we deliver something to someone in Kirkwall for her.

Note the investigate option above does not give us the option to ask why, what or to who.

After we are railroaded into agreeing to do this (choices!), she specifies a name, a place, an amulet (which could literally mean anything in generic fantasy world) and utters this line:

Flemeth: Do as she asks with it and any debt between us is paid in full.

Naturally, you are allowed zero follow up questions in response to this comically ominous statement.

Flemeth turns her attention to our useless Templar buddy and his ‘corruption’. He’s apparently going to die painfully from getting Darkspawn blood in him or something. All the many blood spattered characters have somehow avoided this.

We finally get a choice that involves actually doing something. Either let Avellone mercy kill her love. Or basically shove her out of the way and insist he has to die when you thought clicking that option would just be offering out of kindness to her.

He takes out a knife and, in this case, his ladyfriend rather than Hawke takes his hand with the knife in and pushes it into his heart.

Which is weird because one camera angle later, you can see that his chest is clearly protected by a big piece of metal that is totally unscathed.

Anyway, Flemeth spouts ominous warnings and starts to exit. There’s a pretty cool transition back to the interrogation.

I notice that I don’t think anyone ever says Hawke’s name, even though it’s set by the game. In the interrogation they only refer to ‘the Champion’, I can’t tell if this is down to a changed design midway through development, or it’s foreshadowing the plot twist where it turns out Hawke’s mother is the Champion.

Anyway, there’s another narrated cartoon telling us of Hawke’s travels to Kirkwall. Now, we’re going to a city and they couldn’t fit a whole city in this already oversized (2GB) demo. But maybe we’ll get more dialogue, story, choices or anything interesting in there.

Then there’s a specially cut video for the demo showing them meeting Varric and going to a bar.

In the bar they meet the pirate Isabela – a minor character from Dragon Age: Origins, who has changed skin colour and somehow grown massive fake pornstar boobs. Kirkwall surgeons must be way ahead of the times.

She asks Hawke to back her up for a meet she’s concerned about. This demo timeskipping video ends and we cut to said meeting where the following happens:

No conversation here, just cue gameplay. Which is of course, the same boring combat against what might as well be the same enemies. Oh, and it’s not like you just fight those three, pairs of goons seep out of every corner in the area. So much for choices.

New armour, weapons and stats, but it takes about 12 cuts from Hawke to kill one of the ‘raiders’. Even though he’s using a sword that’s bigger than the men he’s fighting. And even though the animation clearly shows this gigantic weapon going through them and spilling blood. At least 12 hits to take them down.

Afterwards, you follow Isabela around a corner and fight another six unnamed bad guys. Then you head into the local Chantry after the man responsible.

The leader of the raiders, with a cartoonishly evil cockney accent, chats with Isabela about her freeing slaves and costing him money. Because he’s a bad guy and she’s a good guy, get it?

They exchange words about some mobster boss and a ‘relic’ that he’s after.

Naturally, I try to take the peaceful option and negotiate my way around the situation, if only to avoid yet another fight. The following screenshot sums up everything about Dragon Age 2 for me:

Which is what Isabela says before hurling a dagger into the chest of one of the villain’s henchmen, which of course, forces us into combat with 6 guys as 3 more spawn in behind us midway through.

After the battle, the final conversation with Isabela and of the demo, ends by teasing the player with the promise of either a fetch quest or cutscene sex. Seemingly all this series has to offer.

But that expression of linearity, lack of choice, mandatory, boring, non-stop combat and hilarious breasts…I think that is Dragon Age 2.

“How was the movie?”
“The movie?”
“The Facebook movie.”
“Uh, it’s pretty good, but immediately smacks you in the face with Sorkin dialogue.”
“Sorkin dialogue?”
“Yes.”
“As in Aaron Sorkin?”
“No, as in one of the many other famous Sorkins working on the film.”

I actually enjoyed the quick and cutting dialogue that is Aaron Sorkin’s brand – it is the very fine spine of this film. But the few nitpicks I have tend to emanate from his work. There is an implied immorality that seeps into everything he writes and that’s not a political thing.

Then there’s the accuracy. Even if you can enjoy the ‘dramatised’ parts of the storyline, when audience investment is so heavily rooted in the ‘based on a true story’ label, you can’t help but feel betrayed when you come to separate the fact from fiction.

Despite a premise we all scoffed at, Facebook: The Movie turned out to be a pretty good film. It has good writing, good acting, good music, it’s well shot and it does not waste your time. Between Inception and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, this trend of quickened pace is more than welcome.

Let’s just hope it doesn’t win any Oscars or those awards might actually gain some credibility.

Ben Affleck’s The Town is sort of the opposite of The Social Network. The premise and the story are good and have a lot of potential, but there’s poor execution on every front. Including some of the worst editing I’ve ever seen in a motion picture.

It’s too long, it drags on scenes that don’t matter, it succumbs to so much cliché that it makes the ending feel forced, while skipping intriguing possibilities with the tattoo or Jon Hamm’s interesting and woefully underused character.

The gunfights don’t usually make much sense, and for a film that seems to want to be Michael Mann’s Heat – they are some of the quietest gunshots you’ve ever heard. On the positive side there is one cool car (or ‘cah’ in that Boston accent) chase that felt like it was ripped straight out of Grand Theft Auto IV.

Despite my many complaints, The Town is not a terrible film. It’s just not a good one. The few positives can’t outweigh the flawed mediocrity that isn’t worth spending two hours of your life on.