A Belatedly Busy Week

Blog post concepts have been billowing in my mind for the past week, since I neglected to update last weekend due to sheer busyness. One thing working full-time does, almost immediately, is make you perfectly aware of the weekends and learn to cherish them. Especially when big games come out all at once, like these past two weeks.

While I'd love to ramble on about something, much of my rambling likely has to do with what I've been playing lately, so I'm going to skip to the middle right away.

Weekly Gaming: PersonaShock Prime 3

Are these headers starting to get too cheesy? I don't know, but it's kind of amusing to play with them. Anyway...

The Fall & Winter tend to be the biggest seasons for hot game releases. It still is, especially concerning the massive onslaught of A+ games set to arrive for all three major consoles later this year. However, the storm has begun early with the release of three of my most anticipated titles of the year. The first of which being Persona 3.

The prelude to this is that I've always wanted to be a MegaTen fan, from the first days I ever set eyes on the concept art for Persona 2. That morbid surrealist in me just ate up all the weird and odd references peppering the franchise as a whole. But the one thing that always staved me off from the games were their admittedly harder-core-than-I difficulty and tendency to involve tedious grinding. Of course, since then I've gotten involved with MMOs, so there's really no excuse now to be adverse to grinding. But, in a single player game (especially one that's slightly clunky on the PSX hardware) it was more than I could take. Regardless, I loved the "real life meets surreal fantasy" vibe that all MegaTen games have presented, and especially Persona 2's curious detective story.

Then, enter Persona 3. There's nothing that pleases me more than a game developer that can take criticism, adapt their game, and still retain its core feel. That's what P3 feels like to me. Everything that I ever disliked about P2 got totally revamped and transformed, not unlike the formation of a certain tower named Tartarus. The story admittedly takes a bit of a back seat position once things start rolling in the game, but it's much more than just the main adventure. I don't think it would be at all adverse to call P3 the Japanese take on a Harry Potter like situation. Instead of an English boarding school as a basis, you have a coastal Japanese high school. While there is a large story at regular intervals throughout the game, there are also scenes that simply develop the school life of these teens and their relationships, much like how Harry Potter was more than just a series of books about a wizard. It was as much about the school and its history, students and teachers as it was about the main plot. I could probably  muse about the battle system and persona fusing, but I do have two other games to write about after all!

Chronologically, the next game that crossed my desk of playitude was none other than the oft-discussed BioShock. I'm not sure if there's anything that hasn't been said about it, but I can provide some insight from my first impressions for what it's worth.

I think the very first thing that crossed my mind when the game started up its introduction was, "Holy shit... this is actually running on my computer?" It really does look that good. Considering that I originally built my PC to play hardware-greedy MMOs, I had never realized how well it would handle a "next gen" PC title. Now I know the answer to that. And yes, I didn't pick up the 360 version (mainly because I don't own one). But I also really prefer the traditional keyboard+mouse setup for this game, probably because it's so deep in its mechanics that with all these shortcuts at my fingertips, I feel more in control of the game.

But at the same time, similar to how each Half-Life began, it's hard to feel that it's a game you're playing until various mechanics are introduced to you in a very real and intuitive way. As everyone knows, if they've played the demo, the game starts you off in the water and wreckage of your plane having crashed miraculously in front of the lighthouse-esque entrance to Rapture. What follows is like a self-directed ride as you have no UI other than the immersive sounds of your character as he struggles to realize what's going on. Film reels, scratchy intercom voices, and menacing splicers then slowly unfold a narrative in your eyes and ears that conforms much to the "show, don't tell" theory of storytelling that games such as  ICO and Shadow of the Colossus have nailed.

Since I won't be doing a section on music this week, I do also want to briefly cover the game's soundtrack. It was recently made available to download from the game's official website, at a somewhat unfortunately short length. Though, I imagine the reason is because of the quantity of classic pieces from the 40's inserted into the game in one of the most fitting uses of licensed tunes. However, when present, the orchestral score is one of the most haunting and contemporary scores a game has ever been graced with. While many western-developed games are now using film scoring tactics for their orchestral soundtracks, they're often still very tonal or rhythmic when you break them down. However, the music in BioShock dares to delve into the world of atonality in a way that I previously only heard in college, studying modern "conservatory" composition. Some of the techniques and effects used in the orchestral scoring remind me strongly of Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. It is, in my eyes, one of the most disturbing pieces of music ever written... And how fitting that BioShock's composer references it for reflecting on the disturbing nature of humanity's obsession with vanity and utopia presented in the game's themes.

Before I dive too deep into metaphor however, I'll wrap things up with the third game I've been playing this week. And it's actually one that not many have been playing... because it's not publicly released yet. One of the benefits of working for a gaming company is definitely the fact that we have access to games a little under a week prior to their official release date. And in conjunction with those perks, I've been playing the hell out of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

For weeks, after having tested countless games that do nothing for me, I've always said that the Wii has yet to host a game that really sold me on the system. Something that provided an experience that I couldn't get anywhere else. Moreso than Zelda, Smash Bros and Mario, I think that Metroid Prime 3 does the job extremely well and is the first proper Wii game I've played that convinced me in the console's virtues as a serious hardcore gaming device. Yes, it's cute to make mini-game collections using waggle (and touch-screen, as there's many analogous games created for the DS), but what I love to play are deep adventures that keep me engaged for hours. MP3 does this.

The first thing to come to mind, of course, is how much it begins not like other Metroid games. Many journalists have ran the line that the game begins very similar to the original Halo, and they're not wrong by any means. The intro is a full-fledged two-part siege on the Galactic Federation by the armies of the Space Pirates. Both on the beginning's space cruiser, and on the nearby planet's surface. Unlike the first Metroid Prime, the game doesn't begin properly once you land on a planet. Instead, it uses a series of other planets as its main staging point. The main difference here is that while the original Prime focused on vertical exploration, constantly moving throughout the planet's depths, Prime 3 focuses on a more horizontal exploration. The big draw is that you have full control over your ship and can land at many points on the planet's surface. This leads to more of a, dare I say it, Zelda-esque exploration scheme. And surprisingly, several boss battles feel very similar to a certain green tunic'd adventurer's encounters.

But beyond all the differences, is it still a Metroid game? I say yes. Why? Because, more than ever in the series, you are Samus. The Prime sub-series has no issue with presenting the fact that it is about immersing yourself as the character. With Prime 3, you feel more like the character than ever. Having people talk to her, react to her, flying and commanding her ship, physically ripping things off the walls and enemies... It all builds into the experience, and by the time you're on your main adventure, the sense of isolation kicks in strong. While you are working with rather set goals, there is a mystery there where things aren't quite as they should be. And once things get rolling, you are still Samus, the solitary Bounty Hunter that gets things done.

That's it for me this week. However, I'll have a special entry either later today or tomorrow, as I'm going to be going to Penny-Arcade Expo today! Expect impressions and stories. I'll hopefully have something interesting to say.