Under the Radar - 2013

Under the Radar – 2013

This article is the result of a sort’ve spontaneous decision, a random happenstance. Anyone who knows me also knows that I’m a sucker for Valve’s annual holiday Steam sales. I’ll often buy games simply because they are on sale at ridiculous prices, but never play them (a sickness I fear afflicts far too many of us). But this year, there were two games in particular I was itching to play and I knew, if I saw them at a reduced priced, that I must purchase them and that I would play them. Those two games are Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and Papers, Please.

Originally released as an XBLA downloadable during Microsoft’s “Summer of Arcade” event, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a charming little platform/puzzler from Starbeeeze Studios, developers of The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, its sequel Assault on Dark Athena, and one of my favorite games of all time, The Darkness. Papers, Please on the other hand is a retro-style puzzle game published and developed entirely by one man, Lucas Pope, wherein you play as a border patrol inspector for the fictional Soviet-inspired country of Arstozka. Both games were released in 2013, and sadly I have only managed to play them just recently. But having done so, I felt inclined to tell the world about them, because had I played them sooner, they both could have easily been selected as some of my top games of 2013.

I’ve already briefly discussed why I felt Rayman Legends was the most underrated game of the year, and I still feel that way even after playing both of these games. But where Rayman is a fairly popular, longstanding franchise that went criminally underplayed despite every attempt by Ubisoft to put it in the hands of all types of gamers, Brothers and Papers, Please had very little support to begin with, largely due to Microsoft’s incompetence at marketing for Brothers, and Pope’s near-impossibility at advertising his own game to great effect.

   

First up, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. It’s a rather interesting concept that can best be described as a single-player cooperative experience. It requires a controller, but you assume the role of two brothers: one, the older, stronger of the two, and the other, the smaller, nimbler one. With the left analog stick and left trigger, you move and perform actions for the older brother; with the right analog stick and trigger, you control the younger brother. Those are all of the controls the game gives you, and throughout its roughly three-hour long story, you will use them all to varying degrees.

It’s a rather somber tale that begins almost immediately with the death of their mother. How it happens is rather tragic, and greatly affects the younger brother, as the scene opens up with him sitting at her grave. Soon you are tasked with an unenviable dilemma – your father is gravely ill, and the only cure that can save him is from a magical tree in a faraway land. Thus, your adventure begins. It’s a fantastical world filled with giants, trolls, and massive castles. Think Fable on a much smaller scale, but far more realized. Dialogue is entirely made up of a fictitious gibberish language, akin to Shadow of the Colossus or Ico. Through a character’s facial expressions and body language, you’ll learn to understand and empathize with their plight.

  

The puzzles themselves are rarely difficult, but are presented in such a way that demands some pretty tricky fingerplay, often requiring simultaneous button pushes and stick movements in a timely manner. It’s a game that wants you to finish it, so don’t expect to be stuck in an area for too long. There is no combat in the traditional sense, although “boss” fights do appear and can be bested through environmental puzzles rather than with brute force.

What lingers the longest about Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is its presentation and the emotional journey of these brothers. It’s a gorgeous looking game: the world is vast and colorful, with some truly extraordinary vistas, and the music is apt and poignant. The lack of true voice acting gives each brother a unique personality, because you learn to understand them and see them grow through their actions alone. The younger of the two is a prankster, possibly trying to hide his emotions from the loss of his mother, while the older brother is stoic and blunt. The way these characters grow throughout their journey is quite special, considering the lack of dialogue.

It’s a rather amusing game, as well, but make no mistake that it is also a mature one in the most sincere use of that word. It is a game about death and experience, about growing up. It is essentially a coming of age story for the younger brother, and truly he has his moment to shine. It is also the only game that I can recall that facilitates the use of its control scheme in service of its story. It isn’t just a neat gimmick that lets you control each brother independently, but make it to the game’s climax, and your entire experience throughout Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons will culminate in a rather powerful gameplay moment.

Shifting ever so slightly to an equally bleak and affecting game, Papers, Please is a bureaucracy simulator, but to leave it at that would be a tremendous disservice to the level of intricacy and depth it has to offer. On a foundational level, you play as a border patrol inspector whose task it is to decide who can and cannot enter the fictional country of Arstozka. Sounds simple enough, and in truth it starts out that way. You’ll inspect passports and stamp either “DENIED” or “APPROVED” on it and send the person on their way. But you’ll quickly see that things get far more complicated after the first day.

    

See, you have a family to support. You recently moved to this country and could only find residence in this shady, rundown apartment complex. Rent is high, you have a child, and your family has needs. It’s also 1982, so the pay scale is a far cry from what it is today. You are paid based on how many people you let into the country, not how many passports you stamp. And yet it is your job to approve only legitimate immigrants. You are allowed up to a maximum of two violations per day, before subsequent ones deduct from your pay.

The rules are slow and steady at the start. At first all the travelers need to show are passports. Analyze it to determine its legitimacy and approve or deny from there. But after a scripted event early on, the rules begin to change. Now certain citizens from neighboring countries must be examined. Then those traveling for work must provide work visas. Soon, it becomes a game of examining and identifying handfuls of documents of these people before allowing or denying them entry. But this is where Papers, Please is truly fascinating.

  

You’ll sometimes be presented a scenario where a husband and wife are in line together. The husband’s passport checks out and he is allowed entry, but the wife’s does not. Do you use one of your warnings to let her in, knowing full well that it is a violation, or do you do your job, deny her, and save that warning for when you truly make a mistake and might need it? It gets very tricky very quickly, and the more situations like this that you are presented, the more you start to ask yourself these kinds of personal questions: “Do I willfully neglect my duty to support my family?”

You have a lot at your disposal to attempt to do your job properly: every day you are given a new set of rules, or laws, based on some of the previous day’s occurrences. These are actually represented in a newspaper headline you see at the start of each day, letting you know the outcome of some decisions made previously. You also have access to a separate rule book, which contains all of the pertinent information on what is required for someone to be allowed entry. There’s also a regional map, which, for a game like this, normally would not make sense, but is in fact more useful than maps in most games. Passports from foreign countries are issued by a select set of cities, represented on the passport itself. Opening the map allows you to verify if the issuing city is indeed part of that passport’s country, as missing this would be grounds for a citation.

  

The retro art style and washed out colors are intentionally dreary, to give the game its oppressive feeling. There’s tons of gray and black and red, and though the setting never actually leaves the border patrol office, you get the feeling that outside of those walls, Arstozka is a country where it never stops raining. Like Brothers, there is no voice acting in Papers, Please – not even fake voice acting; just mechanical sounds and booming Soviet-inspired percussions and bass to emphasize the gloom.

These two games typify something that I have mentioned on this site before; that the age of the independent or downloadable game is upon us. Even looking at my Most Anticipated Games of 2014 list, three of the seven games listed there are independently produced. Two of my Top 5 of 2013 are also indie titles, and one of them is even free to play. It’s getting to the point where we can’t look down upon these kinds of games just because they don’t have the same AAA publishing push behind them from studios like EA or Activision. We have become far too spoiled by the blockbuster style action game over the last few years, mystified by the dizzying spectacle of sights and sounds, when the real heart and soul of the industry lies with the independent scene.  

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and Papers, Please are two sides of the same coin: both tell affecting stories about family, albeit through different means, and both are presented in unique and distinct ways. Whether you’re running across a troll’s arm to cross a massive canyon or allowing an illegal citizen into a communist country just so she can be with her husband, there’s one question that links it all together: “What would you do for your family?”

Best Game Trailers of the Generation

Best Game Trailers of the Generation 

You might not realize it, but a trailer can make or break a game (at least as far as sales go). Whether it’s the game industry or film, a carefully constructed trailer should endeavor to entice the audience just enough to encourage them to spend their hard-earned money to experience the entertainment. A proper trailer does not spoil; it does not reveal the big twist at the end or the death of major characters. It simply ignites a passion, an interest in those seeking adventure into faraway worlds where dragons roam, or alternate history where an assassin is king of the meager.

The best trailers are good enough to excite even the disinterested: a shooter fan may become an RPG fan, or a sports fan may become a strategy fan. The best that this medium has to offer begins with the building blocks of a well-made trailer. It has become the cornerstone of any decent marketing campaign within the last two generations, and today, people anxiously await the release of new trailers for their most anticipated game. We live in a time when a simple mash-up of clips and music can satiate the hunger for a game still a year away from release.

Trailers have only become a fairly recent commodity. As the industry expanded, the need for these marketing devices rose. And so in this list I’ll sign off on some of my favorite trailers from the last few generations. These trailers do not necessarily represent the quality or success of the game, or my opinions of them, but they were simply so good that they got me excited to play. 

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

The song has absolutely nothing to do with the context or themes of this game. In fact, that’s a common thread you’re going to find for most of these trailers. But there’s just something about putting together a well-made montage or cutscene with an excellent piece of music. Puscifer’s “The Humbling River” is an amazing song that shows off Tool-frontman Maynard James Keenan’s more tender vocal potential, and when you have the backdrop of giant sentient machines killing each other, it just makes for one hell of a spectacle. 

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

While not the best in the series, Revelations did have one thing going for it that every other Assassin’s Creed game has yet to match, before it or since: an outstanding trailer. “Iron” by French neofolk musician Woodkid captured the tone of the presentation so well. It was dark, yet anxious. A weary and fatigued Ezio, whose age has finally caught up with him, journeys to the burial place of Altair, his ancestor. The words “A million miles from home/I’m walking ahead/I’m frozen to the bones/I am/A soldier on my own/I don’t know the way” so perfectly encompasses Ezio’s saga, I can’t think of a better song to introduce this game. And that is the mark of an excellent trailer. 

Dead Island

Everyone remembers this one: that soft, somber music; the effective use of playing the whole thing in reverse; and a zombie game that had a whole lot of promise and potential. It’s unfortunate that the final product didn’t deliver on what was a superb setup. 

Borderlands 2

I’m no fan of dubstep, but if there’s any game that could make it work in a trailer, it’s Borderlands. The off-the-wall outrageousness of the series perfectly marries the uncontrollably and often schizophrenic pace of a typical dubstep “song.” The icing on the cake is Claptrap. It’s always Claptrap. 

Gears of War

The word “sadvertismenet” didn’t exist until this trailer. Gary Jules’ rendition of “Mad World” had already become semi-relevant nearly 5 years prior as the accompanying song during the dénouement of Richard Kelly’s sci-fi end of the world thriller Donnie Darko, but it was its use in Gears that really sold it as an extremely depressing track. And it actually fit. Unfortunately the machismo of the series and its fascination with over-the-top violence belied what could have been an interesting post-apocalyptic setting. 

Bayonetta

The queen of hack-and-slash deserves a trailer of equal majesty. La Roux’s “In for the Kill” wasn’t just catchy synthpop-techno babble, but it represented the equal parts class and chaos of the titular character. 

Lost Odyssey

Often overlooked simply because it was a jRPG released in the early years of the Xbox 360, Lost Odyssey wasn’t just a modern classic because of its heartfelt “1000 Years of Dreams” segments, but because the launch trailer was so bizarre and so tantalizingly at odds that it only made the game that much more interesting. Who would have ever thought Grace Slick’s “White Rabbit” would have been used for anything other than an Alice in Wonderland game?

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Deus Ex is a touchy subject with many people who have fond memories of playing it when they were younger. So when they announced a modern-day sequel, fans were understandably uproarious. But once this trailer came out, many of those fears were subdued and replaced with pure excitement. 

Dark Souls

When you think dark fantasy RPG, you usually hear loud, operatic-style chanting, orchestral music, and dark, brooding tones. So when Dark Souls publisher NamcoBandai decided to use folk rock band The Silent Comedy’s “Bartholomew,” most people were shocked at how ingenious it was. Not only did the song have coherency with its lyrics, but in a sort’ve obsessive, analytical kind of way, even captured the Dark Souls experience, which is one of unexpectedness and surprise. Leave it to Namco, then, to release a follow-up trailer featuring another song by The Silent Comedy called “All Saints Day,” this one of equal quality. 

Sony’s “Michael” Ad

And just for fun, while not strictly a game trailer, I’d feel incredibly disingenuous if I didn’t at least acknowledge Sony’s brilliant marketing commercial during their “Long Live Play” campaign.

Looking Forward - Most Anticipated Games of 2014

Most Anticipated Games of 2014

Pillars of Eternity
(Release date: Q4 2014)

This independently published, crowd-funded old school isometric RPG comes from the master craftsmen at Obsidian Entertainment, largely made up of former Black Isle Studios developers, the team responsible for some of gaming’s most iconic classics: Fallout 2, Icewind Dale, and arguably the greatest story ever told in this medium, Planescape: Torment. As Obsidian, they put out Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords, Neverwinter Nights 2 (and its expansions), Fallout: New Vegas, and in my opinion the most underrated game of the entire generation, Alpha Protocol. The pedigree is certainly there, and anyone keeping up with their weekly updates knows the passion these guys have for making this kind of game. When Obsidian is left to its own devices, something truly special almost always comes of it.

South Park: The Stick of Truth
(Release date: March 4, 2014)

Speaking of Obsidian, South Park: The Stick of Truth is a collaboration with TV show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone being published by Ubisoft. The fact that the game looks so damn much like the show itself is a testament to the artists and programmers working on it, and from what’s been shown off already, it looks to have the same unfiltered and raw sense of humor that the show has become known for, while combat is a zany turn-based style with some hilarious and over-the-top animations and spell effects.

Divinity: Original Sin
(Release date: February 28, 2014)

Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga, originally released as Divinity II: Ego Draconis, snuck up on me some time ago. This updated re-release, which included the expansion “Flames of Vengeance,” was a blissfully entertaining action-RPG with a lengthy story and absolutely thrilling dragon combat late in the game. I didn’t think much of it when it originally came out, but thankfully at the behest of several people, I bought this updated version during a Steam sale, and enjoyed every second of it. The developers, Larian Studios’, next game returns to the series isometric roots, much like Pillars of Eternity, and was similarly funded through the crowd-sourced website Kickstarter.

Transistor
(Release date: 2014)

I fell in love with this game from the minute I saw the trailer at this year’s E3. The music, the visual style, the cyberpunk/noir setting – all of it just fits so well together, which is no surprise considering Supergiant Games’ previous title, Bastion, was of similar ilk. Transistor will be a downloadable action game for PS4 and PC, featuring a sentient sword – the namesake of the game – and its crimson-haired protagonist, Red, who has mysteriously lost her voice as they battle through the strange and mesmerizing city of Cloudbank.

X (working title)
(Release date: 2014)

2012’s Wii exclusive Xenoblade Chronicles is one of my favorite games of the generation, and easily one of the best on Nintendo’s oft-berated console. The absolute massive scale of the world and vastness of each area, complete with gargantuan enemies and extraordinarily impressive draw distances, showed just what was possible with the Wii’s outdated hardware. The game utilized a free-roam combat system similar to the likes of Final Fantasy XII, and to some extent many MMOs. All of this looks to be returning for Monolith Soft’s upcoming Wii U exclusive, tentatively titled X, which is currently rumored to be a direct sequel to Chronicles, although there has been no concrete evidence to support this aside from the lookalike appearance of Chronicles’ main character, Shulk, at the very end of the game’s announcement trailer.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain/Ground Zeroes
(Release date: March 18, 2014)

I don’t think anyone really knows exactly what to make of Metal Gear Solid V quite yet, especially when it comes to The Phantom Pain and Ground Zeroes. Kojima announced that they will be separate games, but so far nearly every trailer for MGSV has shown clips that are reportedly from both. So is Ground Zeroes a prologue? A full-on prequel? Is it going to be a full priced game? Someone, please help me out here. Whatever the case, I’ll be looking forward to it/both.

Dark Souls II
(Release date: March 11, 2014)

If I had to pick one game I was most excited about next year, of course it would be Dark Souls II. Sure, I have my skepticism: a new game director, retail-exclusive pre-order bonuses, and a much more gung-ho marketing campaign that seems contradictory to the series’ humble roots. Namco Bandai is not known for their subtlety and graceful handling of games, but luckily most of my concerns stem from distrust with the publisher and not from anything that I’ve personally seen of the game or heard from the developers. The new engine that was used to design the game from the ground up looks remarkable, as character animations are much more fluid and exact. Some of the locations shown off in the trailers appear as menacing as ever, and of course the speculation that surrounds the game’s story and its potential connection to Dark Souls is one of the most heated debates about it amongst the community. I just know, come March 11, I apologize to any other game that may have wanted my attention, because you won’t be getting it.