61 Frames Per Second : half-life

Gordon Freeman's Prank Call

Bob Mackey — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:00:00 GMT

As gamers, we possess a relentless amount of trivia and information about the hobby we've invested so, so many hours into; and to those uninitiated with the world of video games, said knowledge is baffling and mysterious at best. So what, exactly, are we supposed to do with these brainfulls of data--aside from alienate our poor family members who wonder just what the hell we do with our free time?

Strangely enough, it turns out our vast wisdom on the topic of video games can be best put to use through the lost art of the prank phone call. And if you're still skeptical, all you need to do is listen to one of the greatest video game-related prank calls in recent history. Allow me to set the stage: the following events take place on the syndicated radio show Coast to Coast, where host George Norry entertains the delusions of his clearly insane callers--and they range from stories of bottomless pits to tales of secret garden gnome societies. But what happens when a savvy gamer calls in and recounts the story of Half-Life as the game's protagonist, Gordon Freeman?

The answer, of course, is hilarity.

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Black Mesa: Source: Oh Right, That Still Exists

Bob Mackey — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:00:00 GMT

In honor of the first Half-Life's 10th anniversary, I've been thinking of replaying the original over my long-awaited Christmas break. But now, I may hold off a bit longer after seeing the trailer for the Black Mesa: Source mod and nearly pooping myself. I just gave you fair warning.

If you've been anticipating this mod as much as I have, then you'll know that seeing this much content is pretty big news. I'm no programming genius, but I imagine it takes quite a bit of work to remake an entire game--and a pretty big one, at that--in an entirely new and more powerful engine. The Source engine may be beginning to show its age a bit, but there's no denying this is a major step up from Valve's previous attempt to give Half-Life a minor graphical upgrade with their own Half-Life: Source. For now, this entire production is fan-made and free, but it wouldn't be too strange for Valve to pull another Willy Wonka (as they did with the Portal team) and invite the Black Mesa: Source folks onto their team. As of now, this thing legitimately looks like it's worth money.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go chug a bottle of NyQuil. When I wake up months from now, I should be greeted by both Black Mesa: Source and the Policenauts fan translation. Cheers! (Tell my friends and family it was an accident.)

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A Decade of Gaming Excellence

Joe Keiser — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Just like Mackey, seeing that Half-Life is only a dollar on account of it’s ten years of being awesome brought back plenty of wonderful memories of late 90’s gaming. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that 1998 was not a great year, but the best year for the medium in its history.

I think this is easy to prove. Below I’ve listed just a handful of 1998’s most well remembered games, and many of them continue to represent the best-in-class of their respective genres. Think about all the changes that have happened in gaming since these came out: high definition came to fruition, the Wii changed the rules, all those idiots you muted on Xbox Live last night were born. And yet, these titles endure:

Thief: The Dark Project – Between this and a much more memorable game we’ll get to, stealth gaming was born this year. Thief made sneaking great fun, something most developers following it couldn’t figure out.

Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War – I don’t care what anyone says, this and its sequel are the best space simulators ever made, period, no discussion. It certainly helps that the genre died immediately after FreeSpace 2 came out, but that’s just a detail.

Grim Fandango – Ten years later, and Tim Schafer’s noir tale of murder and intrigue in the afterlife is still the high watermark of adventure gaming. At this point, there’s a good change it will stay that way forever.

Resident Evil 2 – Capcom Studios 4 eventually rewrote the genre with RE4, but for years this was survival horror’s defining title, and the best game in its franchise. It feels pretty old these days, though.

Tekken 3 – I knew two guys in college who literally played this every moment I saw them, and that was years after it came out. Look past the blocky graphics, and this one actually holds up pretty strong.

Unreal – Before this game, Cliffy B’s claim to fame was Jazz Jackrabbit. Now he makes games where men pair up to contemplate flowers through the sniper scopes of their chainsaw shotguns. Or something. In any case, Unreal was the turning point.

StarCraft – Oh, Blizzard went from normal game developers to legendary game developers in 1998 too! The world’s useful productivity has been in a downward spiral ever since.

Metal Gear Solid – Prior to this game, Hideo Kojima…was making the exact same type of inscrutable, self-referential meta-games he continues to make now. But MGS made this brand of madness a sensation.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time – TOOT turns ten tomorrow, actually. For a fun exercise, contemplate the simpler, happier time this game represents for you. Then turn on cable news.

Fallout 2, Panzer Dragoon Saga, and Gran Turismo also came out this year (though GT only kind of counts, as it just managed to eke out a Japanese release before the end of 97). Okay, enough reminiscing. Go to the Steam now.

Now At Your Local Dollar Store: Half-Life

Bob Mackey — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

It may be hard to believe, but Half-Life, the FPS that redefined its "shoot your way out of hell while grabbing card keys" genre, is already ten years old. Actually, since 1998 was such a monumental year of our little hobby, a hell of a lot of games turned 10 this year: Metal Gear Solid, Starcraft, Ocarina of Time, Gran Turismo, and quite a few I'm probably forgetting. But out of all of these titles, only Half-Life can be had in these frightening modern times for the low, low price of 98 cents. That's right; if you have a dollar in the bank and a Steam account, you can experience one of the best games ever made for less than the cost of most McDonald's menu items.

There's one catch, though; this deal is only good until this Friday at noon PST--after that, Half-Life reverts to its original Steam price of $9.99 (still a good price).

I'm not the biggest PC gamer of all time, but I have a gigantic man-crush on Steam. I didn't think much of the service until it allowed me to get the entire Orange Box plus a Half-Life version of Peggle for only 40 bucks last Fall. It also warmed my heart when I typed in the registration code on my 10 year-old Half-Life CD and found that Steam let me download it, and also every single product tangentially related to the first Half-Life for free. Now, if only there was a way to pry those old Bullfrog titles from the sticky hands of EA...

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F.E.A.R. 2 and Crafting the Bigger Sequel That’s Actually Better

John Constantine — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:30:00 GMT

It was F.E.A.R. that pulled me, for the first time in twenty years of gaming, into first-person shooters. Like everyone else, I played my fair share of id’s shooters throughout the ‘90s. But being a console gamer, my time with turn-of-the-century FPSs, games that saw the genre evolve into a serious creative force and not just “Doom clones”, was always second-hand. I downloaded the demo for F.E.A.R. off of Xbox Live just looking for something to play and was entranced. The scares weren’t exactly gripping. Spooky little girl walks down the hall and *GASP* disappears! Walk into a room that’s covered in bloooOOOoood and then *WHOA* it’s not! The action, though, was unlike anything else I’d played up until 2006 thanks to the game’s still-impressive enemy AI. Walking down a hallway with the barrel of a shotgun jutting from the base of the screen was something I was used to. Bad guys jumping through windows to avoid exploding grenades and cursing at me wasn’t. Every single encounter was dangerous and forced you to consider how you moved through the mundane office cubicles and hallways that made up the bulk of the game’s setting.

Unfortunately, F.E.A.R. was a classic example of how a game needs to have more than just an excellent set of fundamental rules to be great. Despite the incredible programming that made the baddies so interesting, there wasn’t much else to F.E.A.R. Every environment was the same, the story too vague to ever really hook you. After nine hours of wandering through identical hallways and realizing I was only three-quarters of the way through the game, I shelved it, opting to watch the ending on YouTube rather than finish it myself.

If the demo of F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin I played today is indicative of the entire game, I think I’ll be finishing the whole thing this time out. It seems I wasn’t the only one fatigued by the repetitive environments of the first game as the first thing associate producer Eric Studer pointed out was both the variety of the game’s levels and the development team’s emphasis on an expanded color palette. Visually, F.E.A.R. 2 has more in common with the over-saturated primary colors of Monolith’s Condemned 2 than its predecessor, to its benefit. The second big change in the sequel is the more explicit narrative. F.E.A.R.’s story was told through voicemail recordings and other incidental environmental finds, and while it was an interesting touch to make the exposition an optional part of the game, it was far too easy to miss these bits of information. It’s hard to care about a plot if you have no idea what’s actually at stake. F.E.A.R. 2 takes a page out of the Half-Life playbook by letting you play through cutscenes (albeit in a limited capacity) and actually giving this outing’s silent protagonist a name and history. The game’s first level, picking up thirty minutes before the end of F.E.A.R., is immediately engaging. Play wise, the game felt at home with the Xbox 360’s controller, sticking close to the usual triggers-for-shooting, analog-sticks-for-moving that act as the standard for most FPS and the enemy AI was cagey as ever. I was actually treated to a look at two of the game’s new enemies as well, Specters and Remnants (disembodied human souls and soulless bodies respectively.) They’re an interesting change of pace from the militaristic opponents that populated the first game but I wasn’t able to tell from the demonstration whether they have the same versatility as AI’s that the soldiers do.

All told, F.E.A.R. 2 looks like everything a sequel should be: a dramatic expansion and improvement on the original that does away with its failures. Bigger, for once, may actually be better.

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The Videogame Ages, part 2

John Constantine — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:00:00 GMT

In part one of The Videogame Ages, I discussed the inadequacy of “generation” language in gaming, and laid out The Golden Age of gaming. In part two, I look at the Silver and Bronze ages before taking a look at the modern era and the future.

The Silver Age – 1983 to 1996
8-Bit, 16-Bit, Early Handheld, Early 3D, Advanced PC and Arcade

The silver age of games is defined by expansion, in not just playability but breadth of experience. When home computers became affordable and home consoles began diversifying, games started transforming from immediate, single-mechanic experiences into more lasting forms. Silver age games were still about escalating challenge, but high scores ceased being the goal, replaced by definitive endings. Games started becoming more explicitly narrative-driven, as aesthetic justification on consoles and as the focus of many PC games (see the entire adventure game genre.) Portable gaming also started to rise to prominence during this period, early single-screen LCD games replaced by multi-game consoles like the Game Boy and Atari Lynx. Arcade and PC game technology pulled far away from home consoles, but all games were shifted from the rough visual abstraction of golden age games, into more aesthetically recognizable presentations – albeit still cartoonish impressionistic rather than realistic. The rise of polygonal 3D graphics, both real-time full 3D (Yu Suzuki’s Virtua series) and pre-rendered (Myst, etc.), at the end of the silver age marks the transition to bronze. In 1996, with the release of Mario 64, Tomb Raider, and Quake, the silver age comes to a close.

The Bronze Age – 1996 to 2006 (maybe)
32-bit, 64-bit, 128-bit, Death of Arcades, PC Equalization

While golden age games’ boundary was a single screen and silver age games were largely confined to movement from left to right or down to up, the bronze age is the birth of 3D space as gaming’s chief concern. This isn’t to say that games that take a place on a 2D plain ceased being important or a valid medium for experimentation (though they certainly became marginalized on consoles, PCs, and in arcades.) But creating spaces with depth similar to the physical world took center stage in design. This push toward realistic spaces is mirrored in game aesthetics. Nearly all the technological benchmarks of the bronze age have come from creating as lifelike a facsimile of real life as can be achieved on any technology. PC games typically set that high water mark, though by the end of 2006, home consoles had largely caught up to PCs, much as they did with arcade games during the first few years of the 20th century (arcades are close to extinct now.) Game narrative started heavily borrowing from film’s storytelling language, relying on scripted scenes voiced and acted by digital characters in an attempt to tell deeper stories, but games also started developing there own unique storytelling language during this period, some games allowing the player to always be immersed in drama through play (see: Half-Life.) Multiplayer games no longer required physical proximity with the rise of online play on both PCs and consoles, and portable gaming started offering richer, longer play experiences, akin to those found on consoles.

I’m not totally convinced that the bronze age has ended yet, but the telltale signs of gaming’s latest age-defining shift have been popping up with some frequency over the last few years. The argument can be made that the Heroic Age of gaming is one of community via online networks and MMOs, user-generated content (see: Spore, LittleBigPlanet, Halo 3, Boom Blox, etc.), and experiential gaming. Experiential gaming is a big one whose mettle has yet to be tested, whether or not broad physical activity, from waving a Wiimote to playing fake musical instruments, will catch on. It’s certainly a dramatic shift to see experiential gaming leave its one-time home, the arcade, and transform into a driving force of home gaming. Then again, who knows? Maybe the golden age of gaming has only just ended, and its now, when players can finally build games themselves inside of other games, that the silver age has begun. Let me know, dear reader.

Part 1

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The Videogame Ages, part 1

John Constantine — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:30:00 GMT

This past Friday, I tried to slip a little piece of language into a discussion about game emulation that I was wary about using at all. At this point, the go-to boundaries for discussing videogames’ admittedly small history is console-technology generations. We say 8-Bit or 16-Bit because these are easy identifiers based on competing, contemporary technologies. But the language “The 8-Bit Generation” doesn’t account for arcade technology, PC games, or portable gaming. Now that Bob Dvorak’s Tennis for Two is officially fifty years-old, I think we can finally start applying broader terms to gaming’s evolutionary eras. Obviously history is fluid, and chances are these classifications won’t hold true in 2050, but for now they work. The Hesiodic ages, as laid out here, consider games on every platform; the rigid parameters of home consoles, the advanced nature of PC and Mac gaming throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, the fast strides made by arcade technology throughout that same period, and the predominantly inferior technology available in handheld gaming. Unlike Hesiod’s Ages of Man, however, the videogame ages are (mostly) a positive progression. Please note: these are not strict definitions. This is a discussion, and I want everyone to make their opinions heard in the comments section. Now then, onward to the Golden Age.

The Golden Age – 1958 to 1983
Dvorak, MIT, Early Arcade, Early Home Console

The golden age of gaming began in 1958 and was, for almost a decade and a half, almost exclusively concerned with tennis. It took Nolan Bushnell getting clever for us to start calling it Pong. Tennis for Two, Magnavox’s Odyssey, and Bushnell’s advice to “avoid missing ball for high score” was pretty much the only game in town until the mid-70s with some notable exceptions. The second videogame ever made has a more recognizable legacy in today’s games. Steve Russell’s Spacewar!, started in 1961 as a side-project of the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT (history’s first hackers, dontchaknow,) shares the two-player, two-object dynamics of Pong but the gameplay focused on actually destroying your opponent in a science-fiction setting. These games set the standard for the golden age: individual play mechanics presented on single screens. By the late-70s and early-80s, as Atari and other early consoles that could play multiple games were becoming common, games started expanding in both scope and ambition. Adventure, Pitfall, and others introduced continuity in their worlds, while Pac-man and Donkey Kong made the first stabs at introducing narrative. On the technology end, 1980 saw scrolling action in Defender and the larval form of 3D play, vector graphics, in Battlezone. The game industry crash and the release of the Famicom in 1983 mark the end of this period.

Part 2

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Left4Dead: The Most Important Training Simulation You Will Ever Play

John Constantine — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:00:00 GMT

I am not embarrassed by many things. For example, when I invite a delightful young woman over to my apartment for a romantic liaison, I know full well that one of the first things she is going to see is a gigantic vinyl Godzilla. It sits on a mantle over a television surrounded by seven videogame consoles. The fridge is empty save for countless individual packets of soy sauce, a pitcher of water, and a lonesome bottle of Miracle Whip that may or may not have been there when I moved in. There is a framed map of Zebes from Super Metroid hanging in my bedroom. These are not things that label me “a catch.” I am also not embarrassed to admit what a terrible cliché I am. Like countless other men of my generation, raised with a nigh on religious devotion to media, I too have a Zombie Plan. The plan details what I will do during the initial weeks of the zombie apocalypse, that is to say, when my urban home is overrun by the brain-hungry undead. The plan is multi-tiered and incredibly thorough. I have this plan because it is important to be prepared for zombies. I also have it because I enjoy daydreaming about the zombie apocalypse. I am not embarrassed by this, and apparently neither is Valve, makers of Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, and this fall’s Left4Dead.

Left4Dead, a four player co-operative FPS built on Valve’s Source engine, is like a training simulator for zombie plans. The game plays out over four “films”, each one broken into five chapters and the goal of each is to move across city streets, dilapidated buildings, and other locales infested with zombies – 28 Days Later-style speedy zombies, not Romero-esque shamblers – to reach safe rooms. You load up on ammunition and healing items and then you go back out and you always, always stick together. There is no surviving the zombie apocalypse alone. The game plays with the same speed and immediacy of all Valve’s games, foregoing a realistic feeling of character weight in favor of brisk play. It is awesome.

I got to play Left4Dead’s split-screen co-op today, which only allows for two players, though you can still invite an additional two to join you via Xbox Live. At first, I felt like the game was just Half-Life 2 with head-crabless zombies. That was before I went into the apartment building and a horde of almost twenty sprinting corpses flooded into a single room. Since I was using a shotgun, one of only a handful of weapons available in the game, I found myself having to bludgeon zombies away to give me enough time to load just a single shell and blast them away. This was all while still looking around to make sure my companions weren’t getting overrun or in my line of fire. It was an intense and unique moment, unlike anything else I’ve played. I was equally impressed with the unscripted nature of Left4Dead. While the rush in the apartment was triggered by walking through a door, I accidentally brought on an onslaught of zombies outdoors because I accidentally set off a car alarm. If I hadn’t gone to see if the environment was fully interactive (read: Can I break this car window?), our trip through the level would have been much easier.

Of the many, many exciting games coming out this fall, Left4Dead might be the most important. Yeah, it’s fun. But it’s also educational. After all, no zombie plan should go into effect without being tested first.

Related links:

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Trailer Review: House of the Dead – Overkill
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Google to Buy Valve?

Cole Stryker — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Still a rumor, but what does this mean? Mashable's Stan Schroeder thinks its an odd choice, but the value of Steam would make it a worthwhile purchase.

With Steam, Valve has managed to do what no one else has: they’ve made it so easy and simple to download games that users are actually willing to pay for it even when they have a choice of pirating the same content for free.

Of course, Google will likely rebrand the service and offer online distribution for many things other than games. I wonder how will this affect the development of games like Half Life. Obviously, if Google's going to buy Valve as a company rather than just the Steam platform, they are going to also take over the development studio. Is Google looking to delve further into the gaming industry, perhaps as a means of beefing up the lackluster Google Lively? I suppose they could always sell Valve's developmen arm if not. Maybe they are simply looking for ways to weasel their ads into games.

Neither Google nor Valve have confirmed or denied this rumor. Look for an announcement at this week's Game Developer's Conference.

(via Mashable)

Love-Hate: In Defense of the Cutscene

Cole Stryker — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:00:00 GMT

As a follow-up to yesterday's post about the intersection of passive and active media in games, I'd like to defend the humble cutscene, for when used in moderation, cutscenes can enhance the experience of play. The way I see it, Blizzard has mastered the cutscene. They are brief, infrequent, and they pack a wallop. For example, the epic scale of the battles truly comes alive here:

Wow! Look how huge that battle cruiser is! Did you see that zergling rush at the end? Here we are given a dramatic representation of what presumably goes on behind the familiar sprites during the game's core play experience. We see the panic in our soldiers' eyes and the callousness of our generals. The film does more than just further the story, it enhances the game. It grants players a sense of empathy by creating an emotional connection. It's much easier to relate to a marine than before, when all we've seen of him is this:

This sort of cutscene plays the same role as the elaborate, lavishly illustrated booklets that sometimes come with games. Thing is, today's technology has all but eclipsed the need for this sort of pre-rendered 'fleshing out' of the virtual world. Half Life (and more recently, Bioshock) didn't need cutscenes to tell a dramatic story. There are increasingly few excuses the existence of cutscenes.

And finally, because the internet loves lists:

The 6 Commandments of Cutscenes

a list by Cole Stryker, conceived in 10 minutes.

Always let me skip through.
Never resort to a cutscene when you can accomplish the same thing in-game. See Half Life for examples of how a ton of information can be conveyed in clever ways. Show, don't tell.
Cutscenes should be short. If I can make myself a sandwich, cut 'em down. Pacing is key.
Never use cutscenes as an excuse to show off pretty special effects, only for scene setting. See Fallout.
If cutscene development comprises more than 10% of your overall budget, especially in today's world of machinima, you are copping out.
Never try to make up for your boring cutscenes with 'quick time events'. This feels like punishment.

Feel free to add more in the comments.

The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History, Part 3

John Constantine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:45:00 GMT

Sonic the Hedgehog - Green Hill Zone

By the time the original Sonic the Hedgehog came out, Super Mario World had been out for six months in Japan. In almost every way, Mario had the edge on Sonic — more levels, more power-ups, more variety, more gaming. But there was one thing you couldn't take away from Sonic, and that was the sheer dazzle of starting up the game and entering Green Hill Zone. To this day, Green Hill Zone looks spectacular, with its sparkling ocean, lush vegetation and abstract geometry — not to mention Masato Nakamura's unforgettable music. Mario had a lot to offer, but in terms of pure physicality, most of Dinosaur Land seems awfully drab next to Green Hill Zone. (Plus, it was 1991 — "zones" were just cooler than "lands", for Chrissakes.) — PS

Shadow of the Colossus - Valus

Shadow of the Colossus’s opening moments are less mysterious, and therefore less grand, than the opening moments of Ico. As players, we are given exposition and context through narration (however vague it may be) and the game’s protagonist Wander states a clear goal while an evil god tells him how to achieve it. This is a far cry from the confounding and almost entirely silent internment of a horned boy in a decaying castle. But Shadow of the Colossus’ first level, toppling the colossus Valus, is a singular moment in gaming history. Valus stands at one end of an enclosed valley opposite you and, at first, it doesn’t seem that big. Then you run towards it, feeling the ground shake through your controller, the music swells, and you jump on its enormous leg, searching for a handhold. It is, in the truest sense of the word, epic. Even God of War 1 and 2’s opening battles against the hydra and the Colossus of Rhodes seem miniscule in comparison. — JC

Metroid Prime - Space Pirate Frigate

To fully appreciate the beginning of Metroid Prime, play through the beginning of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Both openings teach you how to play the game, but Twilight Princess teaches you like you're in the remedial class, instead of someone who (knowing Nintendo's fan base) probably has a doctorate in Zelda. It takes hours of cat-placating, monkey-placating and goat-herding to even get a sword. Prime takes it easy on you, but you never feel condescended to. Its tutorials are thoroughly skippable; expert players can finish the Space Pirate Frigate in five minutes flat. But beyond that, it's a beautiful, self-contained introduction to the game's spooky atmosphere. Every console Zelda after A Link to the Past has started you out in a village full of whiners you have to coddle before you get to adventure. Prime throws you into a dark, eerie spacecraft where something horrible has happened. Get in and get out before its orbit decays and you die. Chills. — PS

Half-Life 2 – City 17

“Wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up, and smell the ashes.” As Gordon Freeman, your journey through the bleak streets of City 17 begins a mere sixty seconds after the game’s title has faded to black. The mundane environment tells you everything you need to know about how life works in a world where civilization has crumbled; tired and scared citizens mutter in the corners of a train terminal, Combine soldiers threaten and abuse, and rare familiar faces urge you to escape immediately. Half-Life’s greatest success has always been keeping the player in constant control of the action while still herding them along a set path. Half-Life 2’s opening level, Freeman’s arrival in City 17 and his flight from the Combine across the city’s rooftops, engages and informs in equal measure while providing an immediate thrill through play. It’s remarkable that a first-person shooter’s most memorable level is its first, a level where not a single shot is fired. — JC

Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 2

Previous Top Tens:
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels
The Ten Greatest Fire Levels

The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History, Part 2

John Constantine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:30:00 GMT

Metal Gear Solid 2 – The U.S.S. Discovery

The opening level of Metal Gear Solid 2 is the finest Metal Gear game ever made in-and-of itself. Forget Hideo Kojima’s cinematic pretensions for just a moment and think about the raw play available in this self-contained prologue scenario. The tools of MGS’ trade may not be available to Snake in their totality here, but every inch of the tanker acts as a playground for the series' most fundamental mechanics. You can sneak through without ever being seen or you can kill every Russian soldier you come across. There is an expertly paced boss fight. There is skin-mag related humor. It’s all here. Now layer Kojima’s cinematic pretensions back on top of all that considering they are at their best (read: most restrained) here and you have a beginning that is, arguably, superior to anything the follows or precedes it in the entire series. — JC

Mega Man X - Awakening Road

This is not your father's Mega Man, says the opening stage of Mega Man X. Or it would, if it had a voice — but instead, it's got a brutal snare roll leading into a heavy rock instrumental. It's got a crumbling highway, complete with fleeing commuters (the latter of which ground the action in a more inhabited world than the NES Mega Man games ever featured.) And it ends with X almost getting scrapped by a mech-riding Boba Fett ripoff. Whatever our love for the classic Mega Man series, it never had this kind of drama. — PS

Einhander – Imperial Capital

Shoot ‘em ups, both vertical and horizontal, are usually gradual experiences. Gradius set the standard: an opening level that acclimates you to both the game’s challenge and its setting, you are the aggressor, going into a place to reach its center where defenses will be strongest. Also, excluding rare exceptions like 1942, shmups are fairly fanciful in scenario. More often than not, you’re fighting aliens, robots, monsters, etc. Einhander doesn’t start slow. Your ship flies into the middle of a bustling metropolis, literally crashing through neon billboards before racing through its ruined foundation. It is a human place and you are fleeing it, your first enemies police in pursuit. There’s a lot about Einhander that’s memorable, from Kenichiro Fukui’s techno soundtrack to its genius weapons system. But nothing sticks with you like the Imperial Capital. — JC

Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 3

The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History, Part 1

John Constantine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:15:00 GMT

First impressions are important, in videogames as they are in life. The first moments you spend with any art can define your experience of it. They compel you to dig deeper, to more carefully consider the work or the hand that crafted it. Other times, they can be so startling that everything that follows is diminished. This week, 61 Frames Per Second looks at the ten greatest opening levels in gaming history. Stick with us past the first one though. They’re all great. — John Constantine

Prince of Persia 2 - Rooftop Chase

The original Prince of Persia was a unique and wonderful game, but it wasn't much for setting. Half the game takes place in a monochromatic dungeon, and the other in a monochromatic palace. 2 quickly makes up for it; about to be executed by the Vizier's goons, the Prince leaps through a window, and from there it's up to you to guide him across the palace rooftops, into the marketplace below, down a long pier, finally leaping into the hold of a departing merchant ship — all with those guards on your tail. The stage is a real nail-biter, and all the more memorable because the rest of the game is comparatively subdued. — Peter Smith

Strider – Saint Petersburg

I won’t lie. There was a time that I watched that glider fly low over terrible Slavic church spires to a brief fanfare of synthetic horns and I believed, for a moment, that I would never leave Eurasia alive. Then I realized that Strider Hiryu’s sword was practically the length of the screen and it could literally make people explode. Strider, as a game, has not aged well in the past twenty years; the control is wonky, you can’t really tell when you’re even hitting something, and there are times when stuff in its stages blows up for seemingly no reason. But that first level remains an incredible spectacle, coated in color and character, a place where robot tigers will scale towers and entire Russian parliaments will turn into hammer-and-sickle wielding robot dragons. Fighting robot apes and hordes of half-naked amazons a few levels later just seems pedestrian after that. — John Constantine

Final Fantasy VII - Assault on Mako Reactor #1

Presumably your retinas have just detached as a result of your vigorous eye-rolling. Re-attach those suckers and hear me out here: no matter how bloated, overrated and over-fanboyed Final Fantasy VII might be in retrospect, its opening is masterful. Up until that game, RPGs never started fast. You loaded up your neophyte warriors with whatever cloth armor and rusty dinner knives you could afford on your starting wage of ten gold pieces, and then you sent them out to the local forest to get their asses handed to them by killer squirrels until they could upgrade to some new silverware. Final Fantasy VI was a step in the right direction, with its haunting approach to a frozen, gloomy northern town. But VII's opening is still a dramatic highlight of the series, segueing from a lyrical vision of a flower girl in the streets, to a full view of a vast futuristic city, to a tense assault on a huge power reactor, all to the strains of the Blade Runner-esque suite that is Nobuo Uematsu's immortal "Opening/Bombing Mission." Put that jackass with the Sephiroth tattoo out of your mind, and take a minute to appreciate the scope and excitement of this sequence. — PS

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Click here for Part 3

Whatcha Playing: Another Slice of Cake

John Constantine — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Having never been much of a PC or Mac gamer, I’ve come into Valve’s games far later than most. I experienced the original Half-Life second hand through my college roommate and only played through it myself last summer, on the PS2 of all things, in anticipation of the Orange Box’s fall release on consoles. When I finally did play through Half-Life 2 and its subsequent episodes, I was more than impressed. Valve’s reputation as peerless storytellers is more than deserved and despite being four years-old at this point, Half-Life 2 remains a high-water mark for game making free of the language and tools of film narrative. Writer Eric Wolpaw’s most impressive work in the Orange Box, however, is the widely lauded Portal, a perfect mix of Half-Life’s menace with the humor of his work on Psychonauts.

Up until last Sunday, I’d been waiting for a chance to race through Portal a second time for months. This wasn’t possible since my copy of the Orange Box had ended up in Korea. Damn roommates. Portal is a strange experience when you return to it. The shock and impact of antagonist GLaDOS’ quiet threats and the seamless integration of story and physical progress through the game’s space is lost, replaced by a comforting sense of familiarity. It remains funny but the tension is gone. The actual mechanical play is a different story altogether. Portal’s central mechanic of creating dimensional shortcuts on any surface lends itself to improvisation and creativity so there’s a natural impulse to try things differently. What struck me during my return visit was not just how flexible the game is but how inflexible I am as a player. Even when given the tools, I rarely push a game's boundaries. I can’t stop myself from taking the fastest, most efficient route. By the time I was hearing the inescapable catchy chords of “Still Alive” at the game’s conclusion, I was starting to wonder if there’s something I’m missing whenever I play through a game. Am I satisfied with the presented sense of adventure and discovery? Is the empowerment of success enough to keep me from finding different ways to succeed? Am I playing the game or am I allowing it to play me?

I didn’t come up with an answer and one week later there still isn’t one readily apparent. However, I’m now hungry for the open world of Bethesda’s upcoming Fallout 3. Maybe this time, I’ll be able to find a way to play differently. Here’s hoping.