the ramble dump

I'm not getting Halo 3. Not any time soon, at least. The reason is simple: I don't have an Xbox 360. The problem with following video game franchises is that they are so ridiculously expensive. If you're lucky, you'll get one or two games out of one console. Then the industry will have advanced enough to require the next generation of consoles, and sometimes franchises will switch which series of consoles they play on to make it even more complicated. This latter point is not the case with the Halo series, but it was with another favourite of mine, Oddworld. Either way, however, that's £30-40 dished out for each game these days, on top of the cost of whatever mercilessly progressing technology is required to play it. This may be a reasonable price for what you're getting, but that issue aside, the endeavour remains gorgingly uncheap.

I wish I was getting Halo 3. I want to splatter higher-definition aliens. I want to experience that familiar and solid gameplay at the next level, as well as enjoying all the exciting new stuff. I want to see how the story ends. In many ways, a post about Halo 3 is pointless, because I haven't played it and therefore can't praise or bewail things all that much. But I thought I'd share my reasons for why I liked the first two games, which I hope have made it through to the third.

Originally, I couldn't have cared less about Halo. I would happily have chosen a PS2 to get my hands on the next Tekken game, but my brother persuaded me that we should go for an Xbox because that had the next Oddworld instalment. On Christmas Day, I waited impatiently to play it, and was unimpressed with Halo and the Star Trek aesthetic of the people behind bland control panels in the Pillar of Autumn opening sequence. Captain Keyes placed his blocky fingers thoughtfully at the chin of his barely moving face in utmost seriousness, and I laughed.

But when I gave it a chance, it was a lot of fun to play. Halo succeeds as a solid game because it's not overly complicated - it essentially provides you with lots of aliens to eliminate - but what it does, it does extremely well. It feels well-rounded and the campaign battles feel well-matched and satisfying, with very few encounters that will spike your irritation too much. Depending on the level of difficulty, it's often challenging but almost always enjoyable.

The aesthetic of the game also contributes to this feeling of a happy balance. The universe of Halo is a clunky, colourful one; slightly cartoonish, but perfectly capable of introducing darker themes and creepy places. The best example of this is probably how the walls end up smeared in copious amounts of brightly coloured alien blood. It's a bit like the Harry Potter of the video game world (in more than just popularity and hype, although perhaps for the same reasons): it never ventures too far in any direction and is arguably not all that innovative in terms of its medium¹ nor of the story itself, but while critics have accused both franchises of a certain mediocrity in this respect, as I already said about Potter, I think this criticism sort misses the point: in what they're trying to do - creating an entertaining and immersive experience - they succeed. And, in Halo's case, I think it exceeds. Halo hasn't marched forward in innovation, but it has expertly refined its medium, striking a successful balance with all the things it deals with.

Given that many elements of the story are pretty generic, there must something else that gives the story itself some interest. Like a Potter book, the plot is immersive enough. The story in the games themselves is really a bare minimum, but in the franchise as a whole they have a pretty good mythology going. Without knowing the ending, I don't know if it all leads to a satisfying conclusion, but so far it's been intriguing. What I find most appealing about the story, however, is exactly how they go about it.

Amidst all the generic sci-fi stuff, coupled with its unusual aesthetic, the series' story does have a few of its own unique quirks that, if nothing else, serve to give it character. I'd highlight characters like 343 Guilty Spark and the mysterious Forerunners with the novelly cryptic nature of everything about them; and then the thematic use of religious symbology and imagery in everything about the Covenant. If the Halo series attempts to make a point, the most interesting one for me is how the Covenant, in their religious conquest, wrap everything they say and do in terms of poetic, religious language. The series may or may not have anything against the religions of our world per se, but they bring this aspect of religion - and general language use - to stark, transparent ridiculousness. It's not subtle (none of the thematic devices in Halo are) and it's an almost cartoon-like dimension of the Covenant, but it's still an effective view, if perhaps oversimplified (those Elites must be extremely gullible by nature), of how these things can work.

Just to address the portrayal of religion in general: it's not clear to me if any other point against it is being made. With the story drenched in so many references and symbolic allusions, especially with the Covenant, you'd think maybe there might be, but if this is so, really everything is too morally black and white (aliens vs. humans) to be an accurate representation or allegory of any one religion or of religion as a whole. The Covenant is categorically and blatantly evil - even when the Arbiter is introduced in the second game, that's really only to chronicle his escape from the Covenant's illusions and mental clutches rather than to balance their portrayal. Thematically, at least following this particular line of thought, while it offers some simple, effective illustrations, you can't go very deep with Halo before you hit that cartoon factor again.

I think the structure of both the narrative and the gameplay was better in Halo than it was in Halo 2. The first game has garnered many accusations of being repetitive, and a good portion of the levels are done backwards later on in the game. Gameplaywise, this didn't bother me much, because I thought the rearrangement made it fresh enough. Storywise, it gave the narrative a nice symmetrical structure. It begins with the escape from the exploding Pillar of Autumn, and the game ends with a return trip to the ship's creepy ruin, made all the more creepy because we'd seen it before in better conditions (then, of course, followed by an amazing countdown finale). The unexpected appearance of the Flood in the middle of the game really adds to it in this way, transforming both the story and the gameplay despite the level repetition.

Halo 2 was a bit messier. The introduction of the Arbiter's storyline was interesting, but I don't think it quite worked in some ways. For one thing, I always found the Elites more menacing when they weren't speaking English, and while this might be narratively important for showing some sympathy towards Elite-kind, they seemed like more of a threat during gameplay, somehow, in the previous game. I felt there was generally a slight increase in the cartooniness of the proceedings, especially with the appearance of the Prophets and Gravemind. Halo 2 also lacked the narrative structure: the ending wasn't half as interesting and was, of course, notoriously abrupt. The opening attack and the appearance of the Flood had been done before, and though I did like the civil war stuff, and it was generally a solid game, it didn't achieve quite the same balance as its predecessor.

Despite some slight shortcomings, however, the sequel shared many of the original's positive attributes, and both games are excellent. In gameplay, they're good--extremely good--at what they do. Combine this with Halo's quirky (albeit slightly cartoony) character, and it makes for an appealing series of games. Probably some of my fondness for the series comes from the familiarity I gained when I chose to explore it for that certain parody, but weird sentimentality aside, Halo has a lot going for it. If anyone wants to buy me a copy of Halo 3 along with an Xbox 360, feel free.

See also: Master Beef vs. Master Chief 2007.

¹ Halo is a pretty straightforward shoot-'em-up; Rowling's writing is technically nothing amazing in any artistic or linguistic sense, but as an entertaining and absorbing read, it's very successful.

Labels: halo, harry potter, i am the ramblemaster, language, morality, oddworld, tekken, the aberration, videogames

# posted by Chris @ 2:10 PM 0 comments

About a week ago, I bought the game Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath. It is now one of my favourite games ever, possibly even beating Halo and Halo 2. Those of you who know me and know how much I like those game will probably be quite astonished to hear that. I've decided to share just exactly why I enjoyed this game so much. This is my first full review of a game, and this blog seems the perfect place to post it.

To start with: some slightly sentimental background. Feel free to skip it.

In 1998, my brother and I got a PlayStation. I got two games, one of which was Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, a 2D platform game, the main aim of which was to save as many Mudokons from the greedy corporate cluthes of the Glukkons as possible, with 300 in total, a million secret areas making this task especially difficult, and you being a Mudoken yourself. If these names make no sense to you at all, go look them up. You, Abe, had to do all this by getting through various situations by jumping, rolling, creeping, running away from and generally avoiding things like mines, drills, Slig gunfire (Sligs being one of the best video game characters EVER), and getting eaten alive by the world's various inhabitants. You could also chant, to open portals so that Mudokons could escape, and to allow you to possess nearby enemies, who could kill and sometimes control other enemies.

I didn't get very far in it for a while, what with having no memory card and all, but when I eventually managed to make some progress with it, one of the things I really liked about it was the rich story, with all the various creatures and characters and all the different places you went. It had a perfect balance of darkness and humour, and incredible backdrops everywhere you went.

The next Oddworld game, Munch's Oddysee, was how my brother managed to persuade me that getting an Xbox was a better choice than getting a PS2. He wanted Halo. I didn't know anything about Halo and I didn't care. Oddworld called, now in 3D! It was a good game, but it lacked the same feel to it - it was much more cartoony, and despite its potentially darker storyline, it wasn't all that dark. The breathtaking aspect of the environments was lost in the change to 3D, and a lot of the textures were repeatedly and obviously tiled.

At the start of this year, in a moment of renewed interest what with the imminent release of the new game, I grabbed a copy of Abe's Oddysee, the first Oddworld game, off Ebay. It was the first of the 'Quintology', with Exoddus being a bonus game and Munch being the second. It had all the amazing art of Exoddus, but being an earlier game, was a little more restrictive in the various things you could do, and due to the lack of 'quicksave', it was much harder. The humour wasn't as present, but it was equally as dark.

Now onto the actual Stranger's Wrath review. Stranger's Wrath departed from the Quintology and its characters, but it saw the return of all the qualities that made the previous Oddworld games so good. You start the game off in an Old West-type environment and make your way up the Mongo River as the game progresses. For a while you're a bounty hunter, needing 20,000 Moolah for an operation. As you make your way through the various towns, each one has a list of outlaws that they want you to catch, dead or alive. To make it interesting, it's easier to catch them dead, but they're worth more alive. Each outlaw you go after is a boss of a group of outlaws, and the same applies to every single one of them, making the gameplay much more interesting. The final battle with each outlaw is set up differently, maintaining this interest.

One of the most talked-about feature in all the reviews I read was the ability to switch between third- and first-person views, with the running around and meleeing done in the third-person, and when you switched to first-person, how it became a proper first person shooter. The other strongly-advertised feature was that the ammo you use is literally 'live'. Throughout the places you go, usually just before a battle or confrontation, you are given an area where your ammunition is flying around in the air or bouncing along on the ground, and you have to hunt it: fire at it and take it. You can buy ammo in a general store as well, but it costs. You can get explosive Boombats, hard-hitting Thudslugs or rapid-firing Stingbees, to name a few. As the game advances, upgrades become available. You can load up to two types of ammo at any time onto your special crossbow, which appears in the FP view. It all gives the game character, one which I personally find really appealing.

I was very sceptical about an Oddworld FPS at all, because it was such a departure from the other games, but it really works. The different types of ammo are needed for different situations because of their various functions, perhaps more so than other FPS games. The strategy and having to work out how you're going to go about getting past certain parts is also still present to some extent. Use a Chippunk to draw an enemy to the spot where you want them, fire Fuzzles around around a doorway so as soon as someone steps through it they're ripped apart, fire a Zapfly at switches to activate mechanical devices.

The most striking thing about the whole game is how spectacular the environments are. The industrial areas are dark and creepy, the mystical natural places are even creepier. The detail is outstanding. Forests feel like forests, snow looks like proper snow, dust clouds blow through the streets of the towns... everywhere you turn you see something visually appealing. At one point early on in the game I remember being in a spot with a few plants and some seeds or something floating around in the air, and Thudslugs buzzing around... and the world felt real. It's an incredible improvement on Munch's Oddysee, and I haven't seen environments like it in any other game.

The gameplay remains interesting throughout the bounty-hunting stage, but gets really interesting, both in gameplay and story, roughly halfway through, after a brilliant twist in the tale. Here you really see some classic Oddworld, with the perfect balance between dark elements and humour that was seen in Abe's Exoddus. But I won't ruin that for you. Go buy it and see for yourself.

Labels: oddworld, videogames

# posted by Chris @ 3:16 PM 0 comments