For our first confession, I’m playing Dead Island from my pile of shame. Here are the first two episodes – the first one is a bit long, as we’re still playing around with the format.

The marketing around this game claims there are no quick time events. This is a goddamn lie. Killing zombies seems to be a process of mashing ‘q’ a few times, then ‘e.’ You know when to do this because of a prompt that appears on the screen. It looks like you want to be quick with your response, less you get zombified. If these aren’t QTEs, I don’t know what is. I didn’t play Jurassic Park, but I understand they’re trying to distance themselves from that game. So maybe this is a different style of QTE, I can’t honestly say. I took a look at a gameplay video for Jurassic Park, and I can say it looks really similar.

Assuming the $25 gets you all five episodes (roughly ten hours of game) and the quality of the game stays as high as this initial 30 minutes, The Walking Dead seems like a decent value proposition. I’m looking forward to finishing Episode One this week.

A quick look around YouTube reveals the game’s true art style. I’m a bit let down that the first thing that came to mind was ‘Farmville.’ Here’s that video.

On 9/27/11 Paradox will be doing a live demo at 3pm. You’ll be able to watch that for yourself here.

I’ve long maintained that video games have the potential to be an amalgam of all other story-telling media. While the actual story Alan Wake tells is of a caliber you might find on expanded cable, the way it delivers it is masterful. It’s hard to wrap your head around how it all fits together if you don’t have an appreciation for the individual pieces.

I’m most familiar with literature, so let’s begin with the way Remedy works the written word into the game. As you progress you find pages from an unfinished book scattered about. Narratively they serve two purposes: it provides the reader with a reliable voice and it constantly foreshadows. In Alan Wake you are told not to trust the other characters. The story also does a decent job of casting doubt onto the reliability of the protagonist as well, but the pages always tell the truth. Some pages will tell you about the developments other characters are experiencing, which is something books have always been able to do well. So the pages serve to keep the story cohesive by providing all the information you need clearly without splitting your focus. Compare that to your memories of the Snake/Raiden/Gekko/Vamp scene:

The pages also serve to fill in missing spots of the story. For example, there’s a sequence where Wake is incapacitated and he found himself in a mental clinic. During his escape, Wake coldly damned the doctor to a painful death. I felt it was a bit out of character for Wake, and an extreme punishment for a villain with such undefined motives. A few minutes later I found a page that detailed the methods the doctor used to get Wake into his care, and what he was doing to all of his patients. I retroactively felt proud of taking the doctor out of the story.

The way Remedy handles game elements also assists in story telling. You get metroided a lot  in Alan Wake. Every hour or two (and sometimes more frequently) you lose your entire arsenal. Since becoming more powerful isn’t really the player’s goal, I never felt like I was being forced to starting conditions. These ‘player resets’ typically follow a dramatic story element, which leaves the gamer with a heightened sense of tension. I never knew what to expect while empty handed. In one instance I was given a gun and limited ammo, so the segment was tense as I waited for the exact right moment to attack my enemies. In another I was given a ton of weapons, ammo and random lights (which doubled as a weapon, checkpoint, and health station) while waves of enemies attempted to overrun my position. It played out like a high-adrenaline action scene. In yet another situation I was separated from my partner. He wound up with all the weapons, leaving me to run through the woods completely unarmed with no safety in sight. I felt defenseless, hunted, and terrified.

Finally there are the cut scenes and dialog. This is the element that most closely resembles the television shows the game pays homage to. With the exception of Barry, you’re never exposed to a character enough to see how two-dimensional they are, which helps lend credibility to the cast and setting. The random lines enemies throw at you are so common place you could almost suspect the speaker of suffering a psychotic break — except for the Delightfully Disturbing Distortion™ sprinkled throughout each sentence. This makes the bad guys equal parts sympathetic, pitiful, and horrifying.

Using a small amount of education in cinematography, I recognized several cleaver uses of the camera during cut scenes and even a bit during scripted sequences. Typically a game’s camera will pull back during a triggered event, so the player can see exactly what is happening – but this isn’t always the case with Alan Wake. One time I entered a cabin and the camera swooped low, which made my perspective as small as possible, while the doorway and the roof’s A-frame loomed over Wake. As soon as the shot snapped into place and registered in my brain, the cabin began to shake violently. I think Hitchcock and Carpenter would approve.

While this isn’t the best example of how all of these elements come together, I think it will give you a feel for it:

Taken as a whole I think Alan Wake succeeds at pushing the limits of narrative as an art form. I’ve never seen this combination of methods before, and I feel they performed exceptionally well together. If this game were a painting, it would demarcate a new school of art. As a game player I’m elated to be alive right now as the pieces start to come together. Welcome to the future of story telling.

When the most well known game in an bundle is made by two people and the largest is published by a c tier company, you can’t make a case that you’re fighting the power like a technocrat Hugo Chavez. Stealing the Humble Indie Bundle is as disgusting as Bob Dylan selling tacos, only Zimmy will still leave behind a legacy of innovation and hard-earned rebellion from the status quo. It’s not even like they were inflating their prices in an effort to sucker would-be hippsters into coughing up significant chunks of income. You could pay whatever you wanted, down to $.01. One cent doesn’t even register as actual currency in Europe, and still you bastards needed to pirate it.

The worst of it is the proceeds of this sale were going to two very important charities. Child’s Play is literally working to provide a glimmer of relief to children caught amidst the most Lovecraftian horrors modern society knows.  Because 25% of the PC populace with expendable time has douche bag contests with Jenny McCarthy, hundreds of children will stare into the abyss without the small comfort of escapism. If that weren’t enough, these imbecilic Narcissuses work against their own interest by denying funding to the only group crafty and daring enough to defend their actions. The EFF stood to take in money that would have been used to help net neutrality, fight the DMCA, promote free speech, and protect the consumer’s digital rights.

So who are these belligerent, child hating, freedom wrecking fucktards? ICP Fans.

Of course that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.

1. No more elevators. Some people consider this a good thing; those people are assholes. Now instead of hearing the galactic news and off-cuff dialog between characters I get to look at vector graphics. Load screens are plentiful, but now I don’t have a distraction to keep me occupied through it.
2. It’s a little predictable at spots. Shepard and some of the key party members I’ve picked up so far are busted up from all of the crazy awesome things they’ve been up to since we last met. Even the scientist I recruited is secretly a bad ass ninja assassin with light sabers coming out of his nose. So far the most normal member of my crew is a former decorated soldier-com-terrorist. I guess I’m not going to see another rugged street cop or common field archeologist caught up in the chaos of a world they never made.
3. Seth Green does not have enough lines.
4. SCANNING! Good fucking god that’s boring. Look, I’m all for making my space opera as realistic as possible, but should it really take 10-30 minutes to check a planet for resources? Should doing that be integral to the upgrade system? Was there no way to bend the fiction a bit to at least point out where on the planet’s surface a mineral deposit might be?
5. The “Spoiler Spoiler” Site. You know, the one where you put down that statue and look over the result of the opening cinematic? Yea, that better not be the pinnacle of the content offered by the Cerberus Network dlc, because if  it is I don’t think they’ll sell a lot of it for $10. I realize it’s free to people who buy the game new, but let’s be honest here, that’s not everyone.
6. The solution to the complaints about inventory management is one I did not see coming. They removed inventory all together. You select which guns you want to use before you leave the ship, all mods are equipped all the time, and only Shepard has different sets of armor. It works, but I feel like I’m giving something up.

I do want to clarify that I am having a great time with Mass Effect 2. I hope to be deeper into the game by Friday so I can elaborate on what I think the game is doing right without spoiling too much.

The smart king puts a small bounty on lots of low-level creatures initially, so the adventurers get a chance to level up and earn some gold. Then you kindly provide them with an outlet to spend their gold (seriously, they give it right back to you through shops) and send them off again for increasing danger. I won’t go into a lot of detail about the campaign or humor because I think it is worth the $29.99 and I want you to play it for yourself.

The reason I’m bringing this overlooked gem up is because they just announced the expansion. It’s due out in the first part of this year, and I’m afraid it’ll be overlooked again. Majesty 2 is an example of the experimental, quirky design you’ll only find on PC, and I feel obligated to support this kind of behavior.

Comparisons to Eve jump to mind. The combat system is fairly similar in that you have to approach your target and be within range to attack. So far I have not noticed an auto-attack feature, so my fingers got tired really fast. The new feature to combat is the 4 quadrants of shielding. Shields that are fully charged prevent more hull damage than those that are damaged, so it’s in your best interest to rotate around your attackers.

The other main similarity to Eve is pacing. In order to communicate the vastness of space it really takes a long time to get anywhere. Warping will get you into a star system (although I’m not sure it’s randomized like Eve), and then you’ll spend 3-4 minutes navigating through void to reach your destination.

I was taken back by the textures at first. The game looks really good for MMO standards. Then I decided to fly my ship into a large asteroid/small moon to try to land; my ship bounced off and all illusion was broken.

The closest reference point I have for the ground missions is Tabula Rasa. The combat isn’t terribly interesting to me, but the npc ‘away team’ does hold some merit. In the tutorial my crew and I rolled up on some wayward Borg. If I were extremely patient they would have killed all of the enemy for me; however it was far more effective to use them as flanking props. Flanking deals roughly 50% more damage, so I’d get my team engaged, run around the group of enemies then proceed to positively pimp slap those fools.

What I haven’t seen yet is a crafting system and player driven economy. The Star-Trek universe is primed for a merchant class. When I was asked to rescue a cargo freighter ship in an early mission I had hoped I’d get to keep it and begin playing intergalactic markets. Unfortunately that was not the case.

I’m going to spend some more time in the beta this week, hopefully I’ll discover the features that would hook me then. For now, my would-be preorder cash will wait in my Nexus-One fund.