Hallowe'en Pumpkins by *Spider-Shadowz on deviantART

Our autumn issue is coming in time for Halloween and accordingly its theme is horror. We delve deep into the dark world of fear & phobia and meet some impressive people during our journey. The creator of Deadly Premonition, SWERY, was kind enough to answer our questions about the game and share some information about his future projects. We were very happy to be able to ask the master himself what was his masterpiece meant to be and were very pleased with the answer. Anyone who is a die-hard Deadly Premonition fan like us would appreciate the opportunity to read SWERY’s take on the game.

Another great interview we did for this issue was with game developer Chris Pruett, who I think is fair to be called a specialist when it comes to horror games. Chris is on a mission to play every horror game ever and has been blogging about his progress for years. In issue Three he shares his experience and tells us what he thinks is the creme de la creme of the genre.

We made a little list of scary Christmas presents for horror geeks, which may be a wonderful addition to your holiday shopping list on Amazon.

Apart from the excitement around Deadly Premonition, the making of this issue was very special to me for another reason as well — it contains wonderful illustrations of pumpkins! I have been a huge fan of Halloween for the past few years and always wanted to celebrate accordingly. Ctrl+Alt+Defeat Three was the best way to do that

You can always check out the latest issue of the magazine here

We try to centre each issue around one main theme — for the first it was war and for the second we chose heroes. We got in touch with a number of game critics, journalists and developers and asked them about their favourite game heroes. We got a lot of great opinions and inputs from Gameranx.com news editor Ian Miles Cheong, Jeff Vogel from Spiderweb Software, Leigh Alexander from Gamasutra, Brad Gallaway from GameCritics.com & PNWJournos.com, Mathew Kumar, publisher of  exp. Magazine, Kirk Hamilton, San Francisco features editor at Kotaku, Chris Dahlen, Editor-in-chief of Kill Screen Magazine, Game designer Nels Anderson and Denis Farr, Editor of GayGamer.

As the heroism theme is not usually discussed in relation to games I felt some explanation was in order.

There are many who question video games as works of art for various reasons and also many who argue games have a lot to do with art. I think one thing which brings the games closer to being art are the heroes they create. Just think how many people love Lara Croft or Jill Valentine, dress like them and dream of being them. Same thing with the Prince of Persia or Nathan Drake. I’ve heard people quote game characters just like they quote characters from movies and literature.

Game heroes set examples, they are loved, hated, criticised and praised just like the heroes of ancient Greek legend. In some cases Greek mythology is even “enriched” with new modern heroes like Kratos, whose story is a mix of old tales and modern-day stories.

Can game heroes be compared with the heroes of ancient Rome or Greece or with the heroes in books or movies? Check out our answer in the new issue of Ctrl+Alt+Defeat.

Check out Ctrl+Alt+Defeat Two

Although I expected to like the game, I really struggled to keep playing it even as long as I did. Frankly, if so many people haven’t said so many nice things about it, I’m not sure I would be continuing to play Uncharted.

I’ve seen very little of the story, but I found every bit I saw cringe-worthy. It’s all one Indiana Jones cliche on top of another Indiana Jones cliche. Normally, I would shrug this off; but the “fantastic writing” in this game has been praised so much and by so thoughtful individuals that I really had a hope it would be better than the usual fare. (Though, to be fair, it was a slim sliver of hope: Vanya had already told me they were all wrong.)

But the bad writing is not why I found myself reluctant to play Uncharted. This honour goes to two other aspects of the game. One is the way the levels are peppered with hidden collectable treasures, forcing Nathan Drake to check under every bush, climb every rock and generally run around in circles like someone who is urgently looking for a loo. It doesn’t help that (reason number two) he literally runs around: it’s the default mode of movement except when danger is imminent.

Compare that with the way characters move in Heavy Rain, which I just finished playing and loved. To be sure, the controls are a bit sluggish and unresponsive, and it can be hard to position yourself where you want; but in Heavy Rain people generally walk at a speed that fits the situation they find themselves in. Not to mention that they walk in a straight line from where they are to where they want to be: nothing is secretly tucked away in the corners of their world.

I find it odd that I started my rant with complaints about the story of Uncharted, when Heavy Rain‘s was by all measures abysmal. Yet, I thought it was a fantastic game and never doubted the need to see it through. If Uncharted was really the games writing masterpiece people made it out to be, would I have minded the haphazard to-and-fro of the protagonist? Or has Heavy Rain changed my perception on how a game character should move, if not for good, at least for as long as to need a readjustment period?

Commander Sheppard by ~Hunter198 on deviantArt

I am currently addicted to BioWare games (Mass Effect 1, 2; Dragon Age) and almost every time I mention how much do I like them, Dilyan says they are using the same engine and it is basically like playing the same game over and over again. His argument — a little has changed since Neverwinter Nights in terms of gameplay. My question – how much does that matter? Is a game less appealing just because the gameplay is the same as in another game before it?

I have never actually paid much attention to what buttons do I use or whether the spells/abilities of the characters are different in a new RPG game. I care about the story and do not care whether my mage is using a spell called Fireblast or Fireball, or whether I choose from a radial menu or a drop menu. I actually prefer to have similar or the same controls, abilities, menus in several games, because then I can focus on the story from the beginning. Any sort of confusion or delay in the initial hours of gameplay always annoy me. Thus, I am happy when I do not have to get used to a new set of controls or some changes to the interface. I do admit some of the changes can be very useful (in case of Mass Effect 2 the changes made from the first one were amazing), but I would be happy even if they did not change much.

Of course, I cannot expect everyone to agree with me and I accept that. However, I needed to ask the question how many people actually see the similarities in gameplay in ME 1,2, Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights as a negative thing? Is that something many gamers expect from a new game — to give them a chance of exploring new ways of playing, new abilities, spells, character specifics?

I actually do not see so much similarities to the games BioWare makes, so as to say their products are good, but it is the same shit with a new design.

Yet, it is over-hyped. It was impossible to go on all these years after its release without constantly coming across Braid in the critical blogosphere. Together with Flower and Ico, it has become one of the favourite pieces of evidence for the “games are art” bunch. And in that respect I found it lacking.

(Minor spoilers for Braid ahead, as well as a big one for Shadow of the Colossus.)

To me, Braid is a very cool package of expressive visuals, hauntingly beautiful music and a thought-provoking story. The way the game plays, with its constantly evolving mechanics that never grow stale, was mostly fine for my taste, although it was a bit too hard in places. Overall a very strong offering and quite deserving of praise.

But art good enough to rival the best other art forms have to offer? I don’t think so.

Great art?

A lot has been said about the meaning of Braid’s mechanics and the way its levels play out. One example is the “Donkey Kong” level. In it, what — to me — look like pinecones with faces run down several tilted platforms in a level layout reminiscent of the iconic Nintendo classic. Tim, the game’s apparent protagonist, has to go through that level multiple times, but in each iteration time behaves differently. On one occasion it stops when Tim stops, moves forward when he goes to the right and backward when he goes to the left. The setup is inspired by quantum mechanics, which state that time has to abide by the same rules regardless of the direction it runs in.

The reason this link to quantum physics is known to us is that creator Jonathan Blow has said it exists. I doubt that anybody would have been able to take away that relation from simply looking at how the level works. And that is why I think Braid is fine, but not great.

Art is always inspired by something, but the best works of art don’t require their creators to make the inspiration explicit so that it can be appreciated by the public. A masterpiece is able to communicate something that has stirred its creator to other people in a manner that stirs them as well. Braid achieves that in the way it looks and sounds and through the story it tells, but not through its mechanics. The actual game bit in the whole experience is the part that is by farthest removed from being art.

Great art.

Consider for instance Francisco Goya’s The Shootings of May Third 1808. It was painted as a commemoration of the Spanish resistance to Napoleon’s occupation of the country. It’s about war and horror, and perhaps heroism. But you don’t need to know all those details in order to understand it and feel the impact of its emotional force. All you have to do is look at it and it’s all there.

At the beginning of Braid we learn that Tim has made a mistake. The obstacles he has to overcome on his quest to find the Princess can be seen as penance for that mistake. However, we never know what the mistake was. I’m not advocating being literal, but this knowledge is important — I think — for the understanding of what is going on. Is Tim being punished too hard or unfairly? Is he simply getting what he called for?

The figure of a devastated protagonist who is doing the wrong things is used to a much better effect in a game like Shadow of the Colossus. Realising the gravity of Wander’s mistake at the end of the game unleashes a veritable volcano of emotions, the stronger because the player, by controlling Wander, has become complicit in his crime.

It will be some time before the “are games art” issue is finally settled and some games are really taking great strides towards recognition. Braid is a very good platformer, but it isn’t one of those games.

Word cloud of 5 Fallout intros. Click for larger view.

War, war never changes. It is one of gaming’s best-loved catch-phrases. But what does it mean? In what sense does war never change? Certainly, warfare — the ways in which a war is fought — has changed dramatically in the millennia leading up to Fallout’s fictional 2050s. Weapons, tactics, scale: every aspect of conflict has undergone transformation. Fallout’s world is not that dissimilar to our own and we can safely know as much.

Death and destruction are a staple of war but their scale differs vastly from conflict to conflict. Even the most advanced of energy weapons found in the wasteland is a relic from a past that is being forgotten and a far cry from the nuclear war that caused all the desolation. The game’s primitive, back-to-basics setting also suggests that the presumably constant factor may lie much deeper and closer to the roots of conflict than something as superficial as tools and means.

Why do people go to war? Perhaps there is a single fundamental reason underlining all conflicts.

Let’s examine war in the Fallout universe. (And let’s not go into wondering why a world that has perfected nuclear energy to the point where it is used to power armour suits and mini-guns should be quarreling over petroleum; let’s just accept the “facts” as they are.)

It all begins with the Great War, which in turn is the culmination of a prolonged conflict known as the Resource Wars. Having consumed oil voraciously, the superpowers of the Fallout world compete for the last remaining drops of it. Tension escalates until the inevitable dramatic resolution: in two brief hours of nuclear bombardment, the world is changed forever. So far, so straightforward from a textbook on classic economic theories of war. Then, things get more nuanced.

There is no dominating conflict in the first half of the original Fallout, but in the second half events unfold against the backdrop of a threatening super-mutant invasion against which the last remnants of humanity must defend. Gone is the economic pragmatism of the war for resources from a century earlier. It is replaced by an aggressive ideology: the belief that super mutants are a superior life form and deserve to dominate Earth. The analogy with Nazism is quite crude, but real life does not actually provide us with a better reference than that; and super mutants are too intelligent, purposeful and organised to be classed in the same category as other non-human threats, such as predators.

In Fallout 2 there is no organised large-scale conflict to provide the setting for what boils down to a personal war waged by the Chosen One against the Enclave. While having lots of similarities with organised wars, personal wars are a separate beast as individuals are motivated differently than nations or organisations.

Fallout Tactics sees the Midwestern Brotherhood of Steel, a more liberally minded and open split-off of the secretive technology-obsessed faction, pursue territorial expansion out of Chicago with the ultimate goal of capturing Vault Zero where hi-tech is believed to be at its pre-war best. On their way, they battle all sorts of adversaries, from rag tag bandits to robots.

Moving the set to the East Coast, Fallout 3 tells about a three-way war between the super mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave. While the inter-species conflict is framed in the same terms as the one in the original Fallout, the rivalry between the two human factions is about clean water, which has become a scarce and dear resource.

Another change of scenery later, Fallout: New Vegas is again a tale of a three-way struggle. This time around, however, it is the New California Republic and Caesar’s Legion who are at war with each other, while New Vegas, led by the mysterious Mr. House, is struggling to retain independence from either. The roots of the conflict are ideological, with the pro-democracy NCR fighting the slavers of the dictatorial Legion. In an apt reflection of real-world war theory, the NCR is much less hostile to New Vegas, supporting the claim that democracies, even if they are rivals, do not go to war with each other. To be fair, New Vegas is not exactly a democracy; but it is vastly more liberal than the tyrannical Legion.

So in just the two centuries framed by the series’ narrative the motivation for war meanders between deeply and substantially diverse options. What is the elusive constant?

It is nowhere to be found, it appears, other than in Ron Perlman’s unfalteringly brilliant delivery from chapter to chapter. If the Fallout series is good at one thing, it is its ability to hide obvious discrepancies behind emotionally fraught narrative, oh so casually creating pop-cultural icons along the way.

Soldiers by ~dariozo on deviantART

Our world is divided by wars, our destiny depends on their outcome. Millions of lives are lost in an effort to save billions of others. Wars unite nations and divide with equal strength. Wars are fought to keep people save, to deliver them from evil, to give the oppressed a chance to be free. Wars need strong, good and just men and women to wage them and complete them, to bring peace and happiness in lands where those things have long been forgotten, buried under the dust of bones and overflown by rivers of tears.

Wars are won by patriots, people who love their countries and trust their leadership, people who believe the world should be purged from evil.

Sounds wonderful, and I get a really warm feeling writing those words. I’d like to believe they are true but I can’t. The reason: recent history.

There are no good wars and their aftermath is always devastating, especially for the people who are left behind.

I’ve never experienced war first hand, but as a journalist I’ve had a chance to see what war does to the people who are supposed to be saved through it. For over a year I worked with war pictures from Iraq and as the captions editor I was given uncensored material. When your work involves seeing victims of roadside bombs every day, your view on war changes. I was lucky to get out of the captions department quickly and was rid of the nightmares, but the memory stuck. I will never forget those pictures and every time I watch a report about the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, or listen to the news from Libya, I remember how I felt looking at them.

My first reaction when I actually started to get what war means to the world, to people I know and to me personally, was complete rejection. I wanted to get rid of all wars everywhere, but this not something one person can achieve. Now, I don’t believe it’s possible to live in a world with no wars. It’s a difficult topic to discuss and there is not one right answer to all my questions.

Is there a right moment to start a war? Are the reasons for having a war always good reasons? Do all soldiers believe they should fight? Is it justified to kill for the sake of freedom? What is freedom? Do they know how to end a war when they are starting it? When is a war really over — when all troops have left or when all bullet holes in the walls have vanished? Is the war ever over for those who fought it?

Playing the Mass Effect games is like exploring a whole new history of wars and trying “to fight the good fight”, be a paragon in a world which expects from you to save it from evil.

The game provides a lot of information about the history of the galaxy and the player has many opportunities to learn more about the members of her crew or the people she meets around the galaxy, either through conversations or via Codex updates. The creators of Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 have obviously spent a lot of time on creating the history of each race and its position in the galaxy. The fascinating thing is how it’s all connected to old wars, memories of past battles, old scars on young faces.

The quarians are the creators of the geth, which should have been helpers not enemies, but in the end a bitter war forced the quarians away from their homeworld. Now they are travelling the stars on a giant flotilla with no place to call home, leaving their planet to the machines which they had once hoped would make their lives easier.

Who is wrong here?

The quarians want to reclaim their planet. They see themselves as victims, because living on the flotilla for that long has made them vulnerable to diseases and forced them to wear environmental suits to stay alive in the outside world.

Even a slight damage to their suits could send them to hospital for weeks. The quarians lose more soldiers to diseases during battle than to the attacks of their enemies. Close combat is out of the question for them and they always seek opportunities to attack from space.

The geth are united and live as one being, which, as every sapient life form, wants to survive and defend its existence.

Were the geth wrong to attack? Who knows! If they wanted to be free from their creators, wouldn’t their war have been justified? Why should they be slaves forever?

The krogan were liberated by the salarians to fight a war against the rachni, but after they defeated the insectoids, the salarians created a powerful bioweapon, the genophage, to stop the krogan from spreading as they were too violent and unpredictable. Then the turians fought the krogan and are still seen by the latter as archenemies even though the war was centuries ago.

The krogan are one of the most interesting races in the Mass Effect universe. The sole purpose of their existence seems to be to go to war. They worship strength in its most brutal form and regard their honour as the highest value. Not only are they able warriors, but they are also proud and brave. The flipside is their aggression and natural hostility towards others. The krogan are only loyal to their clan and its leader and are ready to attack anyone else.

The genophage that plagues them is extensively explored in Mass Effect 2 and poses several interesting questions. Were the salarians right to use the genophage to curtail the growth of krogan populations? Can you ever decide to wipe out a species simply because they seem dangerous to you?

According to the salarians, simulations showed irrefutably that the spread of the krogan would mean war to the whole galaxy. So they created the genophage, the hole in the krogans’ armour. The only scenes when they seem vulnerable is when they are faced with the consequences of the genetic war. And it is sad, it is hurtful, looking at a soldier on his knees. On his knees but determined to stay in a facility where he most probably will be tortured and die because he hopes that way he would be able to save his people from that curse.

The genophage is interesting also from another point of view — war science. A valuable scientific discovery needs sacrifice and in many cases lives are lost on the way to success. Is it ethical to use science in that way?

Merc wars

In the Mass Effect games there are a lot of races which have had their home-world wars and are now fighting wars on other worlds as mercenaries. Many of them have made killing their profession.

The asari, aside from being long-lived and wise, are also shown as the toughest when it comes to battles. They are often seen as mercs working for various criminal organisations such as Eclipse.

The batarians are among the members of the most feared galactic gangs.

The vorcha, who like the krogans are seen as aggressive, cruel and unpredictable, are ready to fight for anyone who pays good enough.

The drell, enslaved by the hanar ages ago, have accepted a life as trained assassins — quiet, invisible and dead quick. Mass Effect 2 touches on an interesting issue with the drell: that the body of the assassin is merely a weapon in the hands of the person who hires him. The client is the real killer, because he is the one who wishes to murder and the assassin is just the weapon which kills but does not feel.

Saviour of the galaxy

In this chaotic world, where it seems everybody is fighting everybody else, the humans are the newcomers. Seen by other races as short-lived, short-tempered and probably dangerous for life across the galaxy, the humans are trying to find their place in it.

As Commander Shepard you are put in the position of being the face of humanity. You have to choose what example you will set for your people and you have to wage war against the enemy of the entire galaxy. Save it and you will be the hero.

The bad war and the good warriors

Good soldiers don’t follow orders without thinking in the Mass Effect universe. The whole crew of Commander Shepard is comprised of able soldiers who are fed up with listening to orders that make no sense or are running away from organisations which have become too bureaucratic to be called military any more. Some of them have also decided to join the crew because they have lost fate in the values they once believed in and fought for. A group of special creatures for a special kind of war. A war from which many of them believe there would be no return.

They are depicted as good warriors who have to fight a bad war. How can that be? How can you be good when you are going to kill someone? You do not want to, but you will do it to save lives, defend your way of living, help the weak against their tyrants. Some of that I can accept, but not all, because the bottom line is that lives are lost.

War lessons

When I first started playing Mass Effect I simply saw it as a very good and entertaining game and didn’t think much more of it. Over time it got under my skin and for the past two months I have been playing the sequel. I’m currently on my fourth play-through and have tried almost everything, explored the whole galaxy and had time to learn more about the story.

The galaxy, Shepard, the aliens: this is all just fiction, but behind it stands the knowledge and thought of the games’ writers who paint a picture of the wars in their own experience and share their own view. They give answers to some questions and ask others themselves.

In the history of each race one can see memories of our own wars and discover our fear of violence and the threat of annihilation as well as our hopes of freedom, happiness and salvation.

If there is one place in the games that symbolises a world at war, it’s Tuchanka.

The face of the endless war is depicted wonderfully on the planet of the krogan whose surface is literally torn to pieces from old battles.The krogan do not want to rebuild, they like living in the rubble of past victories, because this is where they belong. After the war there is only dust and cracked concrete, a sight reminiscent of Mogadishu, the capital of real-life Somalia. The city is in ruins, all buildings are damaged and people are living in the rubble. Some basements and some rooms on the upper floors are still intact and whole families live cramped together in fear of the rebels. They tend to move when the gunfights get too close to their homes. For 20 years those people have been living in a broken city, hiding in the niches, seeking shelter in buildings which have long not been suited to give one.

While we play game of war, other people have to live them for real.

Elvis Presley by ~dancingonthemoon on deviantART

I feel compelled to quote that verse from an Elvis Presley song when it comes to Japanese games.

I am currently playing Last Window: The Secret of Cape West and am once again amazed by the slow pace of the action and the endless dialogues. The characters say something, which could fit in two sentences, in ten. The explanation of very simple actions or emotions is discussed and analyzed in lengthy conversations that are truthfully boring.

Although I like the gameplay and somewhat tolerate the story I cannot get over my frustration about the dialogues.

Before Last Window I played Hotel Dusk: Room 215. It was a nice enough game, but same problem.

And those are not the only Japanese games in which I’ve noticed this kind of communication. I remember trying to play Okami and trowing it after I’d waited 30 minutes to actually get to play. For half an hour a “legend” was told in endlessly running subtitles and even though it seemed interesting I couldn’t bear just standing there, waiting for some action.

Even in action games such as Devil May Cry you can notice this characteristic inclination towards long conversations and explanation of feelings. I remember that before each boss battle in DMC 3 and in DMC 4 the bad guys just had to hold a long speech, saying how they would beat my character and how puny he is, how they cannot even imagine he had dared to challenge them, and I remember thinking “Shut up already!”.

Maybe it is some kind of cultural or communication barrier, but I cannot understand why Japanese games are like this. When I play I’d like to actually contribute to the story and not have to sit and wait for 15-20 minutes or more without doing anything. Moreover, I reckon if you wanted to sit and read a story, you would grab a book and if you wanted to watch an interesting story, you would choose to watch a movie, not play a game. I think this kind of communicating the story robes the game of its most important element, which clearly distinguishes it from books or films, and that is the player’s opportunity to take part in the action and the story, to be the hero.

Massively Multiplayer Epic by *Kirbopher15 on deviantART

I am wondering why people think it is easier to build teams in a few minutes online when it cannot happen in real life.

My husband Dilyan has become a World of Warcraft player and is a Hunter nearing level 79 now. Every evening when I grab the Xbox 360 controller to start up yet another Mass Effect 2 session, he sits on the PC for yet another WoW game . What I most often hear him say while playing is : “Why is nobody doing what they should do?” or “Why is that guy just standing there, not defending himself?” or “Why is there no order in this raid? Everyone is doing just what they want, nobody is in charge!” ect.

I have thought about online multiplayer arenas or battle grounds, where people have to cooperate in order to win, and literally cannot imagine why they are thinking it would go well without teamwork.

In real situations, to build a dangerous and efficient team takes weeks and sometimes, it takes months. I have a friend who is also playing WoW in a guild where everyone contributes and their raids are very organised and planned beforehand. This, of course, has better results than the randomised running around which happens in my husband’s game.

See, PvP I can understand, because the main goal there is to beat everyone else and you are practically asked to be mean and hostile to other players. What is your gain when you do that in a game where you have to cooperate with other people to achieve a common goal?!

As a whole, the idea of just joining a group of unknown people for 20 minutes and expecting great achievements out of that sounds a bit naive to me. For this to work you at least must have some rules and know your role in the group before you sign in. That is, if you don’t want to have spent your time in vain, trying to desperately turn the game your way, while five or more other people are opposing you.

It’s amazing, all gamers I know that are part of an MMORPG or another MMO game are very often complaining of the same things my colleagues at work are ranting about when they join a new team. I am surprised that nobody I know had seriously considered applying team building techniques to improve their multiplayer games.

Not long ago I wrote a post about the things that suck in co-op play. My co-op and multiplayer buddies have always been people I know and we have proved ourselves to be good partners online as well as offline and even so, there are things we have to settle when playing together. Although many people very angry of someone criticising co-op play (because it is so popular) I dare say that in many cases it does not work well, especially when you are expected to build a game with someone who has his own agenda and does not care for yours. What I don’t get is why would someone join a group to seemingly play together with them, but actually just hang around and do nothing or get in an argument with another play and ruin everyones game.

Actually I think everybody would be able to enjoy a co-op game with unknown partners if they all worked as a team, which would require a great level of compromise and understanding towards the others, which many such games seem to lack.