It’s hard not to be cynical about EA’s Dante’s Inferno. A game that scrambles its source material so hard conventional terms like reboot and retcon fail to do it justice. A game with a marketing campaign which hit most of the Deadly Sins.

But when Tor released the Longfellow translation of Dante’s Inferno as a tie-in, complete with cover art based on the game, did anyone expect this?

From Aramis, a local librarian:

Something amazing happened last Friday. I’m still not sure what to make of it.

I was at the library Reference Desk ready to answer questions and help people find stuff when a teenage boy came up to me looking for Catcher in the Rye. I checked the catalog for Salinger and didn’t see any hard cover copies available so I walked the kid over to the uncataloged Classic Paperbacks. His mom followed behind us and while I was browsing the S’s I overheard this incredible bit of dialog.

‘Hey, Mom! See this book?’ He grabbed a copy of Inferno, the first book in Dante Alighieri’s trilogy The Divine Comedy. ‘Remember that game you bought me? This is the book it was based on, but this book is even sicker the game! It was awesome!’

This blew my mind completely. It’s like something out of a marketer’s wet dream. A ridiculous video game induced a teenage boy of average coolness (he had a skateboard and was sporting a Bieber) to read not just a book, but a classic allegorical, epic poem written in the 14th century in which an Italian poet and a dead philosopher traverse the afterlife to find the poet’s deceased girlfriend and possibly meet God in terza rima (three part rhyme).

What do you guys think? Is this a thing™ or more of a fluke? Also will “literary” games become the latest trend replacing sandbox and/or post-apocalyptic casual zombie tower defense MMORPGs? What classic book would you like to see made into a game?

The Supreme Court decided yesterday to review Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) v. Schwarzenegger putting video gaming on the highest court’s docket. This case stretches back to 2006, when Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law criminalizing the sale of “ultra-violent” video games to minors and requiring retailers to separate Mature-rated games from games intended for children and the posting of signage explaining the ratings system used by the industry.

Finding fault with the state’s definition of violence and opinion-based labeling, the 9th Circuit Court upheld a lower court’s decision to overturn the law before it was enacted. This prompted Schwarzenegger to head to the court of last resort.

“By prohibiting the sale of violent video games to children under the age of 18 and requiring these games to be clearly labeled, this law would allow parents to make better informed decisions for their kids,” said Schwarzenegger, adding “I will continue to vigorously defend this law and protect the well-being of California’s kids.”
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The Needles’ Lighthouse from Keyhaven, Hampshire
Charles Tennyson Turner (1868)

The downs and tender-tinted cliffs are lost,
And nothing but the guardian fire remains –
That crimson-headed tower on the rough coast,
Whose steady lustre ceases not, nor wanes
Till sunrise from the east reveals to us
The mightly Vectian wold, and tawny tract
Of shingle, seen through bowers of arbutus,
Like some fair corn-field, mellow and compact.
How that deep glow the deepening gloom attests!
How much is by that noble lighthouse taught!
Mine eye rests on it, as the spirit rests
In sorrow, on some holy, ardent thought,
The sole beam in our darkness! Those who dwell
Near these great beacons are instructed well.

_____________________________
According to Roger Ebert, one of these isn’t art.

If you were disappointed by 2008’s Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, blame the guy who decided back in 1995 that a lightsaber mod for Dark Forces would be really cool.

Dark Forces was a first-person shooter set in the Star Wars Universe. History lesson: back in 1995, the term “first-person shooter” didn’t exist. Games like this were called “Doom clones.” But Dark Forces fought the clone wars, presenting innovative features like looking up and down, ducking and jumping. Yes, in 1995 simulating movement of your character’s neck, legs and spine were breakthrough accomplishments.

In Dark Forces you played as pixilated mercenary Kyle Katarn who went on secret missions for Mon Mothma – black ops stuff the main characters couldn’t handle. Need the Death Star plans? Done. Crix Madine needs rescuing? Done. The Empire rolling out a line of Dark Troopers? Done.

And Katarn accomplished all of this with a combination of blasters, detonators and – when necessary – his fists. Obviously, his fists were a fallback weapon; something only to be used when you’ve exhausted your ammo supply. But Katarn is still able to punch a Kell Dragon to death, if that’s what needs to be done. The point being that Katarn is just fine without a lightsaber and a Star Wars game is fine without a Jedi – up until some guy decides to mod the game swapping out a lightsaber for Katarn’s fists.

Suddenly, everyone on AOL was like, oh Dark Forces is so much better now that we have a laser sword! Nevermind that it was purely cosmetic, doing the same amount of damage as a punch making it the most underpowered lightsaber since Jedi Arena on the 2600. The budding franchise experienced a shift and people like me who always thought Han Solo was cooler than Luke died a little inside.

Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II came out in 1997 (trading pixels for polygons) and Kyle Katarn learns that not only does he have secret force powers, he also has unconvincing facial hair. Sure Katarn can still blast stormtroopers, but using his newly found lightsaber is more fun because you can run around cutting arms off and deflecting blaster bolts.

By the time 2002’s Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast came out, it’s a full-on lightsaber fest complete with mopey force-powered ennui. Oh no, I’m tempted by the Dark Side :( *cries* And – hey! – Dark Forces has been dropped from the title? What kind of naming system is this?

Then a year later, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy comes out – shouldn’t that be Jedi Knight III? – and Katarn is now some serene Jedi Master basically opting to make a cameo appearance in the series he launched.

Which brings me back to The Force Unleashed, which people should realize is actually Dark Forces V: Jedi Knight IV: People who don’t want to play as stupid Jedi III. Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with Jedi, but at this point every game has overpowered laser swords and magic powers. What the gaming world needs is a return to space opera themed first-person shooters – something we haven’t seen in 15 years.

This post was part of Blog Banter, a monthly video game discussion coordinated by Terry at Game Couch. If you’re interested in being part, please email him for details.

For other takes on this topic, check out:

Next Jen: X-COM
Silvercube: Looking For Ingenuity
Game Couch: Dark Forces

A teenager’s brutal murder brings the FBI to the small town of Greenvale. FBI Agent Francis York Morgan believes the murder is connected to a series of killings he’s worked across the country, but locals fear it’s the work of the Raincoat Killer – an urban legend who’s keeps citizens indoors on rainy days. To solve the crime, Agent York must convince the local police force to follow his unorthodox methods and he’ll need to survive terrifying encounters with Greenvale’s paranormal underbelly.

One of the joys of PC gaming was that I could buy a game I’d never heard of for $20 and have a fun gaming experience. However, development costs for consoles make budget titles a rarity. When I heard a survival horror game was coming out for the Xbox 360 and it would only cost $19.99, I was sold. Deadly Premonition is a quirky, compelling and scary horror game, held back by PS2-era presentation and a few odd design choices.

Among the many things established by the opening cutscene is that Deadly Premonition isn’t Alan Wake. The graphics are substandard; the draw distance is short and there’s a glaring lack of detail. Combine this with low resolution textures and a limited palette and everything looks muddy. I put this upfront because graphics can be a deal-breaker, but I encourage you to get past this.

33% of Deadly Premonition is an adventure game – its strongest element. Greenvale is an open world, letting you explore the town, visiting suspects at work and home – and peaking in the occasional window. Citizens keep to a schedule, so you’ll learn when they go for a morning hike or head home from work. But there’re some nuances: Emily goes to the bar after work, except on rainy nights when she stays in to make dinner. While not Oblivion’s Radiant AI, this system creates a living world.

The core of the adventure element, and Deadly Premonition’s most compelling feature, is its wide cast of characters. There are at least 30 voiced characters and Agent York will have meaningful interactions with all of them – either in scripted events or during one of the optional side quests (which are essential to appreciating the game’s narrative). It’s a small town so everyone knows (or is related) to each other, but what really comes across is how these people are connected to each other – and how, what becomes a series of deaths, truly shocks them.

33% of the game is survival horror. Mirroring Silent Hill, Greenvale takes on a nightmarish façade with red vines suddenly overgrowing parts of the town. Monsters – somewhere between ghosts and zombies – rise up from inky pools, and Agent York can either gun them down (with a growing arsenal) or sneak past them while holding his breath. Greenvale’s undead are disturbing humans who grotesquely contort their body seeking to ram their arms down York’s throat while moaning, “I don’t want to die.” The survival horror sections are eerie, but their effectiveness is undercut by having the best scares take place during cutscenes instead of in-game.

34% of the game is spent driving between the adventure and survival horror sections. Greenvale is a small town on a large map. It takes serious time to drive from one location to another and the locations are so spread out you’ll often spend five minutes just driving along a twisty forest road. In-game conversations make this more palatable, but while Access Games probably strived for realism, it just feels like padding.

To its credit, Deadly Premonition plays like you’re living in this town. With day/night cycles, weather effects and an in-game clock which often feels like it’s real-time, Greenvale has a living, breathing vibe. Speaking of living and breathing, the game throws food and sleep meters at you, so picking up food at the Milk Barn, eating at the A & G Diner, and calling it a night at the Great Deer Yard Hotel becomes part of your daily routine.

Deadly Premonition draws comparisons to Twin Peaks, but I found it Lynchean in a greater sense. The game nails quirk with Agent York, who reads his fortune in mugs of coffee, spouts movie trivia and carries on one-sided conversations with his imaginary friend Zach. But the quirkiness is offset by increasingly brutal crimes and nods to small town S&M. The game plays with dreamlike imagery and recurring symbolism, hinting at multiple meanings from something as simple as a red seed.

I found this video over at Hawty McBloggy and it’s worth watching even though I disagree with Brian Schmoyer’s assertion that video games, as entertainment, have no lasting value. The short version is that after 30 years of gaming, the Schmoyer found himself “alone, overweight and divorced,” and he blames this on the time he spent playing video games.

Coming off of two Dragon Age playthroughs and one run through Mass Effect 2, I’m probably more sympathetic towards Schmoyer’s POV than a gaming blogger should be. I’ve basically minored in BioWare RPGs. However, I don’t think I could have made better use of that time so much as I would have made other use of that time — at the very least, I should have done more laundry.

Still, in between my tours of Ferelden and Masseffectium, I’ve managed to keep my approval rating high among my friends and family. Likewise, I continue to have a strong romance with my wife, which I attribute to the diversity of conversation options we have available. Finally, though my quest log is never empty, I remain a kickass Collection Development Librarian (it’s all about the graphic novels).

We always see fantasy worlds at their worst. Ferelden, the setting for Dragon Age: Origins, is no different. The darkspawn have again arisen from the underworld to spread their Blight. Once more the Grey Wardens assembled an army to crush them, but this time the confrontation ends disastrously — to the extent that the rightful leadership of Ferelden is now in question.

As one of the remaining Grey Wardens, it falls on you to end the Blight. Doing so will require unifying a country on the brink of civil war and convincing the dwarves, elves and mages to honor ancient treaties. How did you get to be so lucky?

Answering that question is one of Dragon Age’s strengths. After character creation — matching an elf, human or dwarf with fighting, thieving or magic using abilities — you begin your adventure along one of six paths. Whether starting as an apprentice in the Circle of Magi or running errands for Orzammar’s shadier citizens as a casteless dwarf, you get to explore your background before moving on to the esteemed ranks of the Grey Wardens.

Showcasing your origin story sets the tone for your character, and the choices you make here have ramifications throughout the entire game. This also makes replaying the game more palatable by bypassing the early level repetition of most RPGs. Even if you tend not to replay games, it’s worth exploring some of the other origins — side characters in one storyline are major characters in another and something as simple as a skeleton in a prison can take on poignant meaning.

After go from rookie to last, best hope, the game loses its rails and opens the world map to you. Here you travel by clicking on a location and watching the meandering path your party takes – punctuated by random encounters and scripted events (combat!).

Dragon Age: Origins uses a real time battle system. While you can switch between the four party members to micromanage them in combat, it isn’t required. Each character has several default profiles (which balance aggression against self preservation), but you can tweak the profiles to get the responses you want.

It’s an amazing level of control ranging from simply telling characters to heal themselves to ordering one of your fighters to drop everything and stun the enemy attacking you. It’s a bit of a learning curve, but it’s also the game’s best feature.

While your party is doing what you’ve programmed to do, your own actions depend on your character type. On my first playthrough, I was a rogue who lured enemies into traps before picking them off one by one. The second time around I was a mage who launched fireballs into crowds and summoned blizzards to freeze my enemies. Customization extends beyond the three main classes with specializations you can learn. Fighters, for instance, can range from noble Templars to demonic Reavers.

Overall, I was impressed with Origins’ controls. Most of your character’s abilities can be mapped to the face buttons and lesser used abilities and inventory are easily accessed from a radial menu which — thankfully — pauses the action. Although the combat is real time, I found it often required a level of strategy reserved for turn-based games. And it helps to maintain that tactical level of thinking, even when an ogre lifts your character off the ground and starts pummeling him.

Unlike Bethesda’s RPGs which are exploration-driven, BioWare’s are quest-driven. I prefer the immersive feeling of Cyrodiil, with its day/night cycles and Radiant AI-powered NPCs, but none of Dragon Age’s 60-hour play time is consumed by simply walking from one town to another or stopping to enjoy a sunset over a lake. Every area in Dragon Age is packed with content and filled with dialogue.

I was amazed at how quickly events could turn, based on my conversations. While recruiting the Circle of Magi, I reloaded an earlier save after a poor choice of words led my party to go Order 66 on them. Yes, Alistair, even the younglings.

Gathering elves, dwarves and men to face the forces of darkness may sound a bit Lord of the Rings to you, but Dragon Age earns points for its focus on Fellowship. As you progress through the game, you gain followers. Each character has a different motivation for joining with you and not all of them are there willingly.

Instead of opting for the traditional good/evil meter, Dragon Age tracks how much your party members like you. On the surface, good actions make them like you more, evil actions less – but Dragon Age throws significant moral quandaries your way and you’ll find that you can’t keep everyone happy. I’ve had party members abandon me, challenge me in combat and betray me.

Of course there’s also love. Taking an interest in someone’s life, giving them gifts and fulfilling their wishes (side-quests) may lead to romantic opportunities. I’m talking about sex – or what passes for sex. It’s really a short montage of partially clothed erotic (or homoerotic) poses. A minute later and you’re ready to hit the road again.

Dragon Age: Origins has amazing music (composed by legendary Inon Zur) and ambient audio brings life to environments which are visually stagnant. If you find yourself emotionally affected by the game’s events, it’s due to the superb voice acting. The cast is literally a who’s who of notable voice actors and almost feels like a Star Trek: Voyager reunion. The amount of dialogue in the game is stunning, both in terms of writing and delivery.

Graphically, the game is a disappointment. Textures are muddy. Environments are lifeless. Faces are unexpressive. And there is no convincing facial hair anywhere in the game. Now I’m not usually a graphics whore, but since BioWare elevated digital acting with Mass Effect, I came to Dragon Age with high expectations. Main characters have their beards sink into their chests. Armor digs into characters’ heads during conversations. Characters will be spattered in blood for no reason and will appear in several different outfits during a single cutscene. Most egregious is a major cinematic at game’s end which is so poorly compressed it’s like watching something on YouTube. It comes down to a lack of polish.

This lack of polish carries over to an overly complicated menu system which keeps poor track of quests and an ever expanding codex. You shouldn’t have to hit three different tabs to find all the information you need on a quest. With the level of content in the game, bugged quests are expected but I was happy with the overall stability in the game and the fact that game breaking bugs were rarely encountered.

Swap Grey Wardens for Spectres, darkspawn for the geth, and the Dalish longbow for the HMWA VII Assault Rifle and you might wonder what BioWare is doing here that they didn’t do in Mass Effect.

What they’ve done is reworked the party dynamic so your fellow adventurers are more than mindless followers. They’ve given gamers a compelling reason to visit and revisit the game by offering multiple starting points and a wealth of paths to explore in-game. And they’ve taken what could be a generic fantasy setting and infused it with hundreds of years of its own history. Dragon Age: Origins is another impressive example of BioWare’s world-building even if the world feels unfinished. Let’s call it a Large Flawed Ice Crystal.

Xbox 360 version reviewed. Also available for the PS3, PC, and Mac.

A Canadian lumber mill takes the place of a South Pacific island, zombie mercenaries stand-in for hulking mutants and Jack Carver has a German accent, but enough connects the movie to the game to call Far Cry a fairly faithful videogame adaptation. Fans won’t be pleased, though, since notorious director Uwe Boll is at the helm.

Charter boat captain Jack Carver (Til Schweiger) takes journalist Valerie Cardinal (Emmanuelle Vaugier) to an assignment on a remote island. Of course the island hides a secret lab where an evil scientist is creating an unstoppable army (X-Men comics warned us about Canada’s scientific villainy). Valerie is captured and Jack’s boat is blown up so Jack enters reluctant hero mode.

In a series of set pieces, Jack dodges explosions and kills mercenaries, while escaping capture and rescuing the girl. If you’ve seen Inglourious Basterds, you’ll remember Schweiger as the badass Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz. Schweiger is a credible action hero making Far Cry a credible action movie. Uwe Boll seems to be aiming for a 1980s action movie vibe – elevating Valerie to love interest and pairing Jack with a comedy relief providing sidekick (Boll regular Chris Coppola as the tagalong “Food-guy”).

While Boll is usually reviled for his directorial choices, most of Far Cry’s flaws stem from what looks like a Syfy level budget. The game was lauded for its stunning visuals; the movie, not so much. Jack Carver’s trademark Hawaiian shirt looks sorely out of place in Vancouver and it’s hard to be menaced by a villain that whose secret lair is a sawmill.

Far Cry
Directed by Uwe Boll
Starring Til Schweiger, Emmanuelle Vaugier, and Michael Paré
DVD released: Nov 24, 2009

The original Marvel: Ultimate Alliance was punctuated with wow moments. Whether it was facing off against Galactus on the Skrull homeworld, fighting alongside Thor in Asgard or playing a life or death game of Pitfall, the game took a standard brawler and entrenched it deep in the Marvel mythos. Sadly Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 (Xbox 360, PS3) is a decidedly earthbound affair.

Taking the reins from Raven Software, Vicarious Visions structures the plot against Marvel’s epic Civil War event. A series of disastrous choices by the superheroes has led to the Superhuman Registration Act – a law which puts metahumans under government control and threatens the security afforded by their secret identities.

It’s a move which pits hero against hero and forces the player to side with Ironman’s pro-registration forces or Captain America’s underground anti-registration movement. Now three years out, the Marvel Universe is still dealing with fallout from Civil War so in terms of dramatic pull, it’s excellent source material. But Alliance 2 pulls its punches, leading to a final boss who appears from left field and an ending which rings hollow.

Setting the plot aside, Alliance 2 delivers a great co-op multiplayer experience (two to four-player online or off). Not counting the DLC, the game offers a 24 character roster to form your four-member team – of course, depending on who you side with, not everyone will be available. Playable characters include recent Marvel movie stars Spider-man, Ironman, Hulk, Wolverine and Deadpool, as well as ones off the radar like Luke Cage, Penance and Songbird.

When you’re talking superheroes, you’re talking superpowers and this is where Alliance 2’s RPG system comes into play. Each character has four key powers (either buffs or attacks) which are mapped to the controller’s face buttons. As you gain experience, you can level these powers up along with some passive abilities which improve your combat performance. The majority of the characters do what you’d expect them to do: Hulk smashes, Spidey webslings, Mr. Fantastic stretches. Standouts include a formidable Susan Storm and Songbird, who has interesting variety to her powers.

Alliance 2 ups the superheroics with Fusion powers. Two characters can use their powers in concert to clear rooms, devastate multiple enemies or deliver massive damage to a single foe. Thor and Human Torch create a fiery tornado. Hulk throws Wolverine for the fan favorite Fastball Special. The Thing hurls a massive boulder which Iceman freezes for extra damage. Each pairing creates a unique Fusion resulting in over 270 specialized attacks.

The Ultimate Alliance games can trace their ancestry back to 2004’s X-Men Legends and Vicarious Visions shrugs off a lot of the franchise’s baggage in this entry, simplifying not only how powers work, but also improving inventory management and letting players swap out characters on the fly. I see most of these changes as improvements, shortening the time players need to spend navigating menus, but I’m not happy that there’s now only one alternate costume per character and that the difference is purely cosmetic.

Instead of dropping loot, bosses now drop medals which add buffs to your team. There are still simulator discs to be collected which unlock challenge missions, but these excursions no longer recall famous comic book battles. Players can level their characters in-game, while the credible AI takes control of their character. Lastly, the trivia minigame returns albeit revamped for a multiplayer experience – which is curiously co-op instead of competitive.

The in-game graphics are an improvement, but level design falls short. As mentioned above, Alliance 2 isn’t as far reaching as the first game, but the linearity was surprising especially with promising locales like Wakanda. Graphics have taken a step back in the rendered cinematics. I fanboyed out my way through Alliance 1, which had one of the greatest opening cinematics of all time. However, more is accomplished in-game, especially during the numerous conversation options available back at bases. (Tip, characters with a shared history should always talk to each other.) And I loved the flashy intros for the boss characters.

There really aren’t enough four-player brawlers; especially ones which allow for in-person co-op play as well as online. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 is a big fish in this small pond – and there’s enough polish here to please even those who aren’t members of the Merry Marvel Marching Society – but compared to Ultimate Alliance’s first outing, this entry is less than marvelous.

The last racing game I spent major time with was set on Tatooine. When playing GTA IV, taxi riding-based achievements were the first I unlocked. In other words, I’m not really the target audience when it comes to the Need for Speed franchise — which is too bad because it goes out of its way to be accessible to players like me.

Need for Speed: SHIFT is designed for scalability. On one end of its spectrum is a realistic racer where die hard drivers can tweak their cars to get the performance and handling they desire. My end of the spectrum is more like a glorified Pole Position.

And that isn’t an exaggeration. My preferred perspective was an HUD-less third person one, not the realistic in-the-cockpit view where you can see the game’s physics engine punishing the driver.

After a test run found that I shouldn’t be subjected to realistic damage, challenging AI, or anything else which might hurt my racing self esteem (even down to shifting – so there goes the game’s subtitle), I started my racing career.

My first race out got to a bumpy start — which works since ramming other cars is a legitimate strategy. SHIFT has a leveling system where you earn points for precision or aggressive driving. So you can force opponents off the track or cleanly pass them while staying along a glowing guideline showing the optimum placement for your car.

Leveling your driver up opens up new car and race opportunities, but winning is all that matters since you want to earn stars to move to the next racing tier. The goal is to advance to the prestigious NFS Live World Tour. Along the way, you compete on a combination of real world tracks and ones created for the game across three continents. Doing well leads to special invitational events and you can always elect to do a quick race from the main menu or jump online.

The core racing experience is what I expect from an established franchise’s entry on a modern system. Tight controls, photorealistic graphics and accurate sound. With over 60 cars available and over 15 real-world locations, Need for Speed: SHIFT offers a complete experience.

And it’s an experience which doesn’t get repetitious. The invitational races often give drivers access to cars outside their tiers – and there’s more than just simple races available. Time trials, elimination races and duels against rivals offer great variety.

If there’s anything I didn’t like about the game, beyond slightly buggy replays which would occasionally cycle into an endless loop, it’s that impatient players can shell out real world dollars (via Microsoft Points) to purchase the cars they want instead of saving up in-game currency.

Xbox 360 version reviewed. Also available for the PS3 and PC.