PC game review: Should be condemned!

I was originally planning to slot a few comments on Condemned: Criminal Origins in a post, but ultimately decided the game merited a post all to itself.

That is not a compliment.

What's just wrong with the game could fill a whole treatise on How to Write a Bad Videogame and Dress it Up So No One Will Notice. It's a bit like painting your crappy primary school art project green and brown, then telling everyone it's your abstract impression of a tree; everyone will come away impressed, until they actually buy it and see what it's really worth.
The story dangles a great opening hook--FBI agent investigates murder, his colleagues are murdered with his gun, and said agent ends up framed for the killings and goes on the run, clearing his name as he goes.
Condemned throws the scares at you in spades; this isn't F.E.A.R.'s one-hit-one-kill ghosts we're talking here, but truly homicidal zombies, humans and everything in between. Oh yes, the same evil force is responsible for birds... OK, I won't spoil the connection by revealing it here, but trust me, there isn't much to spoil.

For me, I found three great things about Condemned:

1. It's got a great narrative at the beginning.
2. It has nice, horror-movie graphics: "Hey Mom, I'm in a horror movie!".
3. It ends quickly.

Three good qualities OK? All right, now for what really scared my pants off.

The idea of horror is NOT to throw weird phenomena at your audience and then say, "Hey, dummy! This seems to be (insert supernatural influence here), but we're not telling." Condemned mounts up to something truly sinister, with not-quite humans and rage-filled maniacs charging at you with whatever they can get their hands on (including you; there's a frantic "break free" move). But the more I played the more I realised these guys have absolutely no idea how to tell a story.
It's like someone asked what frightfest cliches he could think of: killers with a taste for taking body parts not their own, animals going mad, spirits within some shadow-world in your head that damage you in the real world... and then forgot he'd put them in. The result:

1. Have your lab partner tell you a location that the baddie uses, that so happens to be decaying and falling apart.
2. Suspect all this is connected to a crime wave sweeping the unnamed setting. Gather evidence with forensic tools while on the run.
3. Find out some crazed drug addicts, street people and bums got there first, fight your way through them.
4. Have a hallucination of creatures that actually do you real-world damage.
5. Escape.
6. Repeat steps 1-5.

One word: Boring.

Plus the fact the writers thought it a good idea to hide all the causes behind the horror slowly enveloping you until throwing in an explanation you have to see to believe. And in a game where players' willingness (and ability) to believe is constantly pulled beyond its limit, I was left not just disappointed, but angry at the writers and their stalling tricks.
To me it just smacks of lazy work. Please write some good stories for your games, Monolith. I know you guys can do it.

Narrative-wise, my opinion ends here. FINAL SCORE: 4.3 (upon 10)

In short, Condemned's presentation is fine, but storywise, it's a wrecked house to be condemned, torn down and started over.

SPOILER ALERT: "C'mon ZP, it's just a game!" Some stuff I found ruined my ability to just
enjoy the game for its own sake:

1. Why does Agent Thomas stand like he's at an awards ceremony? His weapon swings would be more powerful (and realistic) if he could pivot at the waist, and keep one leg in front of the other for balance. If the coding's that hard just make his legs invisible!

2. Agent Thomas cannot crouch. When the baddies are hitting or shooting you, you crouch behind cover. How obvious is that?

3. Killing enemies is just hit, block, kick. I doubt that qualifies someone to join the FBI in the first place. And why no flexibility in the act--I mean, The Godfather and many games before it have already perfected this! For a melee-combat-based game, this is simply unforgiveable.

4. I've saved the best for last: Why doesn't the Bureau track Thomas by his cell phone signal?

END OF SPOILERS

Till Tomorrow: a Parable

“Hey ZP, do something for me, will ya?” His voice was pretty friendly, and I had a little time, so why ever not?
“Sure thing. What’ll it be?” I asked.
The Editor paused. “Nothing much,” he said finally. “A column on procrastination—holding off till tomorrow what you should be doing today, that sort of thing. Needn’t be very long, even. Just get it ready.”
“Deadline?”
“Soon as possible, thanks very much.” The Editor smiled gently. “Let me know if you need any help. As for the words you write… not to worry. I’ll handle the changes, get it through the works.”
“No problem,” I grinned. I hadn’t any intention of ticking the Editor off—after all, he’d let me work in his publishing house, take in whatever manuscripts I could churn out. “That’s all wrong, ZP, that’s all wrong,” he’d smile, reading through my latest effort. “But,” he’d always add, “I can fix that, if you like.”
And he would. Sometimes it felt good, knowing the Editor was in charge. Other times it sickened me to the core as he slashed deep into words and hooks and meanings, ripping out what he didn’t like, chopping whole paragraphs, eliminating flaw after flaw I’d never noticed.
Then he’d step back. “It is done,” he’d announce. I’d watch as he unfurled it, showed it around the press office—had it even been my own piece at all?

Now I thought “soon as possible” constituted “yesterday” but as it turned out I got neck-deep in my own work for the next two weeks. Sure, I did get scribblings in here and there, but sitting at a computer and actually typing out something on procrastination… it seemed the day I got enough free time at a stretch would one day come.
“Tomorrow. I’ll make a note, get it written tomorrow,” I told myself one day in the Resource Office where I work, ten hours a day, five days a week. “At least other writers have their own computers,” I told myself. “When I get home…”
When I got home that day, well, I was so tired I had my dinner, played F.E.A.R. (I’ve to wind down, I decided) some, showered and went to bed. “Tomorrow,” I murmured, “tomorrow it’ll all come together. I’ll show why procrastination is so damned bad, like how about this sentence, “The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing, but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat.” (Proverbs 13:4)
As my camp only has restricted Internet access, and I could only write at home, I decided Mondays were too much of a pain to write on. “After all,” I reasoned, “I’ll be too down in the dumps, knowing my week’s only just begun.”
I returned home late that Tuesday. “I’m so tired,” I thought, “all those guys doing their in-processing, working on that proposal for my boss… maybe I’ll take Tuesdays to refresh myself, keep everyone in prayer, y’know, take stock.”
In NS, they make you stay the night when you’re on duty. Wednesday I sat at my desk and scribbled. “When I get home,” I told myself, “I’ll key all this in.”

Thursday dawned, bright and early. “When I scribble I can’t go back and make changes without a hell of a lot of trouble,” I grumbled—why had I even accepted the assignment in the first place? I threw an idea on my foolscap pad, let it fester… then there was a call from the door. “Lu, print these for me, will you? They need it before out-processing.”
“When?”
“By tonight. I think 300 copies.”
I worked late that night.

Friday? I needed to catch up on my reading. Friday evenings are long, office hours are short… what better time is there?
“The words will pour on the weekend,” I promised myself. “The Editor will understand—he knows how busy I’ve been.”

A few more minutes and I’ll be done, I thought, charging up Red Beach Two, Tarawa Atoll. The date was November 20th, 1943—as I peered down the sights of my Thompson submachine gun the assignment lurked at the back of my head. The Japs were everywhere. “Suppressing fire!” I yelled, running for cover. Jap in the way—I cut him down, hit F5 to quicksave before anyone popped up and hosed me down with his Nambu H92 gun. “Move! Move! Move!” my squad leader called, and I did. A few more minutes, I resolved, again and again.
“Zhengping, come down for dinner!” I heard.
Darn. I quit the game, ate, read a little more, and didn’t get to the computer till it was time for bed.

“I—I didn’t have the time,” I sputtered, several Sundays later. The Editor was behind his desk, fingers drumming on the table. “I mean, I was so busy at work, my brothers were around all the time at home, I can’t be on my own—”
“Would you hold off something I asked you to do?” he asked. He didn’t sound angry, annoyed or upset. He just asked. “If I wanted you to typeset something I wrote, when’d you do that?”
“Right away, sir,” I stared at the floor.
“I was going to add your name,” he sighed. “Add it to my bestsellers’ list. But I never found the time.”
I gulped.
“When I taught you to think, to read, to write,” he went on, counting on his fingers, “what did I plan for you? Lazing? Hating to sit, to put words on paper? What did I tell you about your office work? Everything you do, in fact. Word or deed.”
“It was in your Directives, sir. I read them—do it all as if I were—as if I were…” the words caught in my throat. “… doing it for you.”
I’d been caught out. There wasn’t anything to say. I couldn’t even look at the Editor.
“Yet you presume you can work in my publishing house, Zhengping. I keep thinking…”
You keep thinking what? That I’m a liar, deluding myself into thinking I can write a bestseller? A hypocrite, waiting to tell everyone holding off till tomorrow is as deadly to your life as a time-bomb, all the while clutching it to my chest? A nervous servant hiding his talent in the ground? A layabout ready for the sack?
“… thinking, well, I always include a note in each rejection slip. I’m sure you’ve seen it yourself.”
“I’m sorry,” I choked. “Can’t remember the last time I saw it.”
I dared not try to hide anything. You couldn’t lie to the Editor—he looked as if he knew us inside and out, taken us in despite all he could see in our pasts, presents, and futures.
“Take another look, ZP. That’s an order.”
I complied, pulling the slip from my pocket. It had been in there so long, I barely remembered it. No words for weeks, no submissions. No submissions, no rejections. My eyes ran over the page:
I am the vine; you are the branches. Apart from me you can do nothing.

It was a long while before I could look at him again. I expected him to punish an errant charge, come down hard, fire me before I became a liability.
Instead he stood. “Your computer, my stories,” he said. “Don’t wait.” As he turned and came to my side, I couldn’t believe my eyes. He held out his wrists, crushed and horribly maimed by crude, six-inch nails.
The mark of cruel rejection.
“I believe you’ve already been fired. Which means you need a job and I can hire you, right?” His logic didn’t make sense, but then it didn’t have to. With that he consulted a book on his desk, pointed at my name amidst a sea of print. It was still there, darkly inked as ever.
“Your file’s right here. Gabe?” he called. An assistant came running. “Go get his docket for me, will you?”
Before my heart finished its leap he turned to me and smiled. “You start today.”

"I was raised (insert religion here)..."

OK, how do you feel when someone admits they had a particular faith during their upbringing but discarded as they got older, like some kind of jacket that tightens as you grow and then you throw off? (Parental restrictions are a little like that too, but shh...)
Me, I get bummed... for all of five seconds. If you care about this sort of thing, you'll want to know, why? And you'll have a fleeting sense of sadness that one of the flock has turned away, if the faith rejected happens to be yours. More than one author has admitted to some kind of Christian upbringing; question is, did they simply subscribe to some intellectual idea, or actually walked the walk it demands (down the Via Dolorosa no less)? Some observations are in order:

1. It's none of your business. As Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia tells Lucy in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, "I tell no one any story but his own." He echoes his real-life self in John 21: "What is that to you?"
Yeah, sure. But I want to know, why? Fine, ask them. But don't make it a goal in itself--it is when you go to secondary sources, gun for info whenever you can, make such an issue of his eternal life you forget your own.
In short, if God wants you to know, He will let you.

2. It's all of their business. Islamic zealots aside, I don't believe you should go beyond your normal routine. Sure, bring up the gospel now and then--in fact, a person who has been going to church all his life and decides to stop because he genuinely does not believe what is said from the pulpit may be closer to the spirit of Christ than he ever was before (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity).

3. It's a caricature. George W. Bush may be pictured as a six-shooter-toting cowboy with slit-eyes, a large nose and larger ears, but no one in his right mind would think that was a true-to-life picture of the American president. In fact, I think the "I was raised..." syndrome has the person seeing such a caricature--"That can't really be the President!"--but that is not the same as "The President is not George W. Bush because someone drew a bad picture of him."

4. It's the Lord who saves, not you. Of course, get sad. But shake it off--unless the rejecter is someone intimately related, someone whom you'd love to spend eternity with. After death (which quite unfortunately may be around the corner) it will be too late!
Pray. For wisdom, for protection--the Lord is willing that all should come to repentance. When is not so important as how.

Guyyat Komputa: Mindblank

Which is pretty much how I feel. :(

PC game review and post: How evil can you get?

"It's gonna be like f***ing Doom."
-- Heard from one of the Columbine High shooters, c. 2000

I've always frowned on gangster games, to be honest. The line between good and bad is already murky enough without needing any EA, Take Two, etc. making things worse. In 2006's The Godfather, you represent the iconic Corleone family in sixty hours' worth of gameplay... all of it whacking people, threatening businesses, and the odd elimination of targets. Add to that dozens of assault and execution moves, and you've the coldest-hearted game EA seems to have done to date. (BLACK, anyone?)

What makes me sick isn't that this happened in the real world. What does is the way we're reliving it. I played the game (no, don't pick up your stones yet) and enjoyed it (those bending down, WAAIIITTT!!!), but let me clarify, I DID NOT LIKE THIS GAME. In the real world, you read about similar crimes and see clearly as ever "the face of pure f***ing evil" as the game describes a rival gang. Yet when crimes like this go reported outside of Computerland, we take no trouble to cry foul and punish those involved.
How far out of reality can you go before wrong becomes right, before our hearts begin imitating those of our virtual alter egos? Though all action and consequences take place in a digital realm, are they any less real?
I have no easy answers. Do you?
As the characters in The Godfather would say, "Don't worry. It's only business."

Final Destination: Kranji

Just a suggestion to any movie producers who think they need mega-budgets and exotic locales to make a compelling point: here's a tip.
I've seen the intersections and locations of pedestrian crossings around the Yew Tee area, and if a multi-car pile-up occurred there and some cute young teens escaped... well, let's just say they'll have a hard time escaping. I'd parody the poster, but I've neither the software nor the legal clout. Bummer.