Metal Gear Solid 4: No surprises here

I've been sitting on a couple of my Gamefly games for several months now. It's really quite frustrating because at this point my rental fees are more than the used game price of Starwars: Force Unleashed and Metal Gear Solid 4. Anyhow, they're both going back in the mail tomorrow.

I talked about SFU in a previous post. I basically got stuck about an hour or so into the game and wasn't compelled enough by the game to Gamefaqs.com a walkthru and continue on.

I tried MGS4 for several hours over the weekend and lost interest as well. Truth be told, I've never been able to get into this series: There are too many movies and not enough game play for my liking. Although I imagine that many diehard fans of the IP really enjoyed the 8 minute long movie of Snake smoking a cigarette while some bizarro install process took place (I hope this isn't where console gaming is heading), it left me mostly frustrated and bored.

In terms of core game play, MGS4 was simply too convoluted and frustrating for a relative newb to the IP. The control scheme was overly complex, and not layered on or paced in ways that made it fun (or possible) to learn:

• There were no opportunities to practice core game play controls and mechanics in safety.
• Too many movies broke up the opportunity to rehearse and master controls.
• Controls were not layered on in any sensible way (e.g., start with one or two items, then slowly add more items of the same category, and then new categories of items). I never really understood how to use any of my "items" and found my weapons hard to equip and aim.
• The stealth game play HUD seemed even more complex than the one in Assassin's Creed. I was never sure what the various color codings of my Stealth Gauge meant, nor could I understand how the health bar depleted or what changes in Snake's stress level meant.

These issues were compounded by frustrating UI and game flow:

• I could never figure out how to set my camera correctly. There were three places to select vertical camera (invert or normal) and I could not figure out a way to get my in-game camera to be inverted while NOT also inverting the map-scroll camera. And, yes, I did try all 8 permutations (3 binary choices).
• Although almost all UI options did have help text, the help text was inevitably jargonistic and not very helpful in terms of explaining what changes to each option meant.
• The "Drebin Store" UI hurt my brain in multiple ways. It was unclear what the "receipt" option did, how I could sell off equipment to get points to purchase new equipment, and what the various highlight colors referred to.
• The minimap was quite confusing: It contained a large arrow (which did not denote the direction you needed to go in), a red marker (which did not indicate enemy presence), and a hard to read "N" (which was supposedly the north compass point).
• Weapon and item selection was confusing. I tried to choose the "cycle" option, assuming that tapping the shoulder button would cycle me through available weapons/items. Nope. I couldn't figure out what that option actually did, so selecting the weapon/item I wanted to equip was a constant chore.

The game clearly recognized that users would have problems with learning and mastering the game. As such, it provided a log of helpful descriptions you could read about things you could do in the game (usually involving a lot of holding L1 and pressing R2 it seemed). The problem is that these hints were not context sensitive and thus weren't taught and practiced when players needed to acquire these skills in game.

The game also provided a training mode where you could walk around and shoot silhouetted targets. There didn't seem to be much of a purpose to the mode -- it didn't have scenarios that helped teach tactics and strategies, emphasized differences amongst the various weapons, or provided opportunities to learn more about the use of camoflauge and subterfuge (like dropping a Playboy magazine in the right place to distract a guard).

The final nail in the coffin for me was the fact that save game did not work at all like I would have expected. You could save anywhere, which seemed great. However, whenever you died you would be taken back to the last auto-saved checkpoint. Frustrating? You betcha!

I've played (and worked on) Japanese games with bizarre story lines and plot twists. I tend to like some of the RPGs (as long as they have fun turn-based combat) and some of the action adventures (as long as they are more similar to God of War and Otogi and less similar to Tenchu Z). But I just can't seem to get into the MGS series, or for that matter, the Devil May Cry or Resident Evil series. I can understand the promise and appeal of these games, but they just don't seem to play in ways that I enjoy.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune... Initial Experience

So far I am liking, but not loving Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. I guess I've always been more of a Ratchet & Clank guy than an Jak & Daxter guy -- the Insomniac games folks just have me better figured out than the Naughty Dog folks do.

The game feels a lot like a mashup between King Kong and Tomb Raider with elements of Prince of Persia. There's a strong narrative, and the game switches me between traveling with a buddy, getting separated from a buddy, and then meeting up with the buddy again. I really do love the "hints via your buddy" system that these games employ (e.g., they stop and look at things; they talk to you; they trigger events that move the plot forward). As an aside, I really must give props to King Kong where the character played by Jack Black carried a movie camera around and actually pointed the camera at the things you were supposed to look at. Both meta and clever at the same time.

I generally prefer female leads in third person adventure games for the extremely shallow reason that if I'm going to be staring at someone's butt for 15-25 hours, it may as well be an attractive female butt. That said, the character I play is entertaining (in terms of dialog) and really reminded me of Mal from Firefly in the opening game sequence.

Now that I'm a few hours in, I have a few points to make re: Initial Experience:

• The difficulty setting was kind of catchy: All options were displayed (not hidden behind a spinner), with the default being "normal". There was also "easy" and "hard" and a locked "crushing" difficulty setting. Cheeky -- yet not at all confusing.
  
• The game seemed to take a while to load and I worried that this would be a problem. As it turns out, loads are really pretty fast in this game which is great because there is a reasonable amount of dying during some portions of the game (more on this later).
• While the writing, mocap, VO, and acting were quite good, there was a little bit too much of it in the first 15-20 minutes. Normally this is when I would want to start familiarizing myself with basic game play mechanics, but instead my learning and practice kept being interrupted by more cut-scenes.
• The first major "dang" was that I was immediately dropped into a firefight without having an inverted aim and look. Whoops. This was (as per usual) very disorienting and not the kind of thing you want to learn while not under heavy fire. I await the day when the industry standard will be that all games that allow you to aim/look using the right thumb stick will include include in-game calibration (like in the original Halo). Interestingly, Uncharted supported independent horizontal and vertical inverting (as opposed to other games I have railed against for either not offering horizontal inversion; or worse tying horizontal to vertical inversion). However, they also differentiate between "aiming" and "camera". While this is very cool (in some games I actually do want normal camera and inverted aiming) I messed up at first because I only adjusted the aiming and not the camera. I initially thought I had exited the options screen without saving my preference (because the camera was still "normal") and only after some fiddling did I realize that I needed to set both to inverted (actually called "flipped" in this game).
• I died during the first battle (5 minutes into the game). At first I was a little aggravated, but the game is very good about save points for the most part and quick loads are lightning fast. Learning by dying is actually OK in this game for the most part -- but, personally, I'd still rather not have the player die in the first hour or so.
• The initial puzzles seemed overly artificial. In some ways I'm sure they were done this way in order to teach the basic world interaction and puzzle solving mechanics.
  

Other usability/playability notes:

• The game really has a nice state of the art hinting system. At the L1 level my partner shouts out useful commands, investigates points of interest, and triggers sequences that progress the action forwards. On the L2 level, there are occasional on screen button icons suggesting that I interact with the world (triangle button) or with the diary that I found (select button). On the L3 level, whenever there is a pause in the action and the game is waiting for me to go somewhere in specific, the game will periodically flash the L2 button which directs my attention to the next location I need to reach.
  
• Also, the autosave system is excellent. Not only do checkpoints seem logical and forgiving, but the load times are so quick that dying frequently (which happens at the occasional choke point) isn't as frustrating as it can be in other games. I'm not opposed to learning by dying. I am opposed to being penalized for dying.
• Weapon combat is reasonably fun. It's very much in the Gears of War mode (run for cover; shoot from cover). There was also a bunch of attention paid to cool animations -- it's hilarious to watch my female companion blindly reach around a pillar and fire her gun blindly at the enemy.
  
• Some other cool things about combat:
• They added an interesting twist on aiming. By clicking the left thumb stick you can switch which shoulder you aim over. This makes it easier to see around things and seems especially helpful when targets tend to be grouped on one side of the screen because you can focus more of your attention on the more threatening side.
  
• The AI and combat/level design make it so that while you can turtle a bit, it's not an effective strategy. There are enough variants of "baddie" such that they present a challenge when they attack as a mixed force. Some are much more gung ho and charge while others sit back and plink away. And, of course, if you turtle too much you'll get grenaded.
  
• Two slight improvements to combat I would love to have:
  
• Better audio feedback when I kill someone off screen or that is hard to see (Half life 2 did an awesome job of this).
• Better music/visual cues when the combat sequence is over and it's safe to explore again.
• There are a couple of downers, though:
• I'm having a tough time with the hand to hand combat. The combos should be simple, but I can't seem to execute them correctly even though it should just be a matter of tapping square-triangle-square. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I tend to get slaughtered when I'm in close quarters.
  
• Death by ladder. I managed to die a couple of times while trying to climb down a ladder. This isn't unique to this game, but I figured I'd mention it.
  
• The Load Game interface isn't up to snuff. Load game slots contain no useful metadata at a glance. You need to hover over each slot and wait for the data to load -- there's no way to look at all of the saves at a glance and decide which one you want to select.
  
• Stupid 6-axis controller. I'd rather have a controller that felt beefy and had rumble functionality then a gyroscopically controlled "leaning" mini game when I walk across logs.

Game polish notes:

• I know I've said that the health bar is dead in another column. Uncharted recognizes this and does a great job of desaturating the world and playing up audible cues like grunts and gasping for air when I get hit.
  
• The U-boat exploration mission was cool. In order to simulate the narrow and claustrophobic feeling of being in a submarine they used a very Resident Evil-like camera and control scheme (e.g., camera close, but stationary; controls are screen relative). This was augmented further by adding custom animations to my character whereby as he maneuvered through narrow walkways and port holes, he would grab or push or touch things in a very human way. It was a neat way of making a fairly linear journey seem pretty immersive and cool.