To me it seems that complaining about Activision producing Band Hero is a bit like complaining about Walkers making Cheese & Onion crisps because you only like Ready Salted. Or it’s like complaining about Ferrari making cars in yellow because you think they only look good in red. The fact is that if you’re moaning about Band Hero then it’s probably because it’s not aimed at you.

Nothing about the way the game is marketed would make anyone think it has been produced for the consumption of your average rock fan. Band Hero (unlike the other spin-offs based on Metallica, Aerosmith and Van Halen) is targeted at a completely different audience. They really should’ve called it Pop Hero, but I guess that was a little too close to a certain TV show’s title. Band Hero is squarely aimed at people who haven’t played Guitar Hero or at those that have bought one of the original titles even though they don’t particularly like rock music (and so end up playing the same three songs again and again).

Band Hero isn’t the product of a “lazy” developer or a particularly greedy publisher (in this one instance Activision isn’t guilty of that). It may have been developed concurrently alongside the latest Guitar Hero, and share its technology, but it’s a proper game in its own right.

For starters it features a full complement of sixty-five songs. That’s less than the eighty-odd in most of the main Guitar Hero games but considerably more than the 40-50 tracks in the other spin-offs. Does the tracklist justify its own disk? Couldn’t it just have been downloadable content? Perhaps, but it would have weighed in at over eighty pounds at current DLC prices and putting it on a retail disk makes it more accessible to the game’s target audience.

There’s also nothing wrong with the way Band Hero plays. It’s based on the very solid Guitar Hero 5 engine, a game I much preferred to the awful Guitar Hero World Tour. It features all the regular features such as full band drop in/drop out play, multiplayer modes, on the fly song difficulty and instrument selection.

What about the criticism that the music doesn’t fit the game because it’s not guitar orientated enough? I’m not completely convinced that you can argue that hitting buttons on a pretend plastic instrument somehow fits the sound from a guitar any more than it does that of a keyboard. You don’t have to play guitar on each track anyway. If the song hasn’t got a strong, or fun, guitar part then you can simply switch instrument! Most of the songs have decent drum or bass parts and you can always choose to sing. Even without instruments, Band Hero is a perfectly decent karaoke game. Yes, it may retail for over twice the price of a Singstar title but it’s also got over three times the content in terms of the tracklist alone.

In my opinion Band Hero is a perfectly decent game and one that a large number of the expanded game audience would be better off buying than the regular Guitar Hero. Real heavy rock fans shouldn’t hate it. They just shouldn’t buy it. In a way they should be glad that Activision commissioned Band Hero. Having two distinct game series, catering for completely different musical tastes may stop them further watering down the soundtrack in the main Guitar Hero games. Then again, looking at the poorer sales figures for Band Hero, it may be too late for that. I imagine we’ll be seeing songs like ‘Agadoo’ and ‘Shaddup You Face’ in Guitar Hero 6.

Microsoft may have popularised in-game achievements but reward badges, both in single titles and across multiple games, have been around for ages. My first proper full-blown obsession with a reward system was in the game City of Heroes.

City of Heroes is a superhero-themed Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game that launched back in April 2004. Its badge system arrived several months later as part of the second free update of the game. It was a seemingly minor inclusion at the time, alongside the more headline grabbing embellishments such as power re-specification, the much requested inclusion of capes and two brand new game zones, but the reward system was arguably one of the most important additions ever made to the game.

City of Heroes’ virtual badges are handed out as rewards for a whole host of different actions. They can be earned through zone exploration and the completion of key missions. Some are unlocked by defeating specific types of enemies, by taking a lot of damage or by healing others. There are also special badges for completing task forces (a long series of linked missions requiring several players working together) or by reaching character level milestones. Although most badges are just for show, a few do grant the player access to special powers and abilities. Unlike Microsoft’s achievement system there is no overall “gamerscore” although a player might choose to boast about his or her overall badge count. If they’re particularly sad, that is.

What was pretty much universally laughed at, as a concept, on the game’s forums quickly became one of City of Heroes’ most popular features, particularly as the MMO was “loot free” at the time. Whole communities and websites based around the system sprung up and in-game chat channels and groups were formed, dedicated to working together to earn rewards. People hacked into the graphics files to find undiscovered badges. They created online databases and ancillary programs that helped record player progress.

The system initially launched with a small collection of badges that has been built upon and added to over time as new game features have been introduced. There are now awards to show how long you’ve been playing the game, badges for crafting and trading, rewards for producing and playing user generated missions and medals for taking part in special seasonal events. There are currently almost 700 different awards to obtain on hero characters and over 600 rewards for villains.

The success of badges in City of Heroes showed how a reward system could not only encourage gaming but, for some players, could actually become a game in its own right; the game within the game. Badges kept many users interested in playing as it gave them mini-targets and goals to work towards, especially at the time when new content updates to the game were few and far between. It extended the game for those who had reached the level cap. It promoted grouping with others, particularly higher level characters teaming with lower levels, and rewarded those players who took an active part in teams.

Although the impact of the badge system was overwhelmingly positive there have been some negative aspects associated with its introduction.

Any reward structure is open for exploitation, by those looking to cheat or bend the rules, and there are plenty of potential “shortcuts” to earn badges in City of Heroes. Popular activities have included healing farms (where players set up their characters to attack and heal each other while they’re away from their computer) and damage boosting (which usually involved finding a suitable mission with a lava pit and leaving a character in it for hours). They’re the same sorts of activities you’ll see in many other MMOs and similar shortcuts to ones you see people trying to find in Microsoft’s achievement system.

The introduction of badges also increased the tension between different factions of the player base; provoking squabbling between those who loved the rewards and those who couldn’t see the point. These conflicts could become particularly heated in the game’s free-for-all zones where those hunting for badges were forced into direct contact with those specifically interested in player versus player combat.

Badges did demonstrate that they had the power to unite good and evil, though. The arrival of the companion title City of Villains in 2005 saw new villain rewards introduced, the majority of which couldn’t legally be earned by characters on the hero side. Of course that didn’t stop a lot of obsessive badge collectors coming up with clever ways of obtaining them.

The most impressive example of players working together involved the badge that was awarded for defeating Longbow. At the time, Longbow were an NPC group that could only be encountered by heroes in one specific Player vs Player combat zone. Unfortunately, from a badge hunting point of view, they couldn’t be attacked by heroes as they were fighting on the same side. Obtaining the badge on a “good” character therefore involved convincing a friendly villain (with a specific type of character) to cast a confusion spell which would, extremely briefly, allow the hero character to target and kill the Longbow as enemies. This very time consuming process required a lot of effort and coordination between large groups of players and was made all the more difficult as PvPers in the zone were happy to treat all the “badgers” standing round as potential targets.

Just like the rest of the game the badge system has evolved and changed over the past five years in response to the actions and requests of its audience. A way was granted, for example, for hero characters to officially earn the Longbow badge without using the glitch described above.

The recent arrival of the Architect Entertainment System, which allows players to create and publish their own missions, added a large number of rewards but also introduced a large number of potential exploits. Many players created missions just to farm the new badges, which clogged up the mission search system in the same sort of way that trophy missions first swamped Sony’s Little Big Planet. Players formed badge cartels, ganging up to rate each others missions as five stars in order to quickly earn certain badges, which artificially inflated the rating on poor content and made it difficult to find some of the really great, imaginative user stories being created.

This provoked a decision from the City of Heroes developers to not only remove a large number of the new badges that were being exploited, but also rethink what they wanted to achieve with their 5-year old rewards system. They decided to avoid adding any “count” badges in future that required repetitious tasks, aberrant play styles or gave the illusion of “grindness”. Instead they will be adding badges for one time accomplishments and achievements that they say will be obtainable by the majority of players. In Issue 16, the latest content update of the game, a selection of older awards have had their requirements reduced in line with the new ethos.

Overall though, the badge reward system introduced in City of Heroes, and copied by other MMOs, has had an extremely positive impact on the game and has undoubtedly helped extend its life. The badges still have a slight hold on me today, even though I rarely play the game any more. Each content update sees a new collection of rewards I’ve yet to earn; tempting and trying to lure me back in.

Perhaps as a reflection of how popular City of Heroes reward system is with its core group of players, the developers are rewarding loyal active COH users, who didn’t jump ship during the launch of rival super-hero MMO Champions Online, with – yes, you’ve guessed it – exclusive badges!

Games like Crackdown, Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Faction: Guerrilla have all featured large, expansive playgrounds as have RPGs like Oblivion and Fallout 3. Titles such as inFamous, Prototype and the outings of more traditional characters like Spider-Man and The Hulk have been set in sandbox environments to more effectively showcase the super-powered abilities of their protagonists.

The developers of these games have tried to create worlds without walls. Of course virtually all game spaces are finite; there are always some obstacles or boundaries that prevent you from falling outside the game world into the abyss. Open world games, though, try to give the player realms so vast, so detailed and realistic that they forget they are inside a digital cage.

But the bigger the developers make the worlds, the emptier they can potentially feel, particularly from a narrative point of view. Open world games bring a whole host of problems when it comes to storytelling.

Too often, in my opinion anyway, open world games tell their stories by letting you experience events in a very linear, pre-determined manner. You might have the freedom to go anywhere and do anything in the city but often you have no real influence on the path of the story. The game world might be open but the story is anything but.

One way developers try to add both an illusion of choice and also attempt to fill up the empty narrative landscape is by including additional story arcs. The open world Spider-Man titles, for example, have always had a main storyline, following whichever film each game was based on, mixed in with several other comic-inspired side stories.

Fallout 3 does its optional missions particularly well. An arguably disappointing main story is bolstered by the inclusion of a multitude of interesting side quests. The missions in Fallout 3 work well because they add to the overall story of the game world. They also allow players to forge their own path through the content of the game. The overall destination is always the same, they have little choice about the actions in the main quest, but the freer choices in the additional tasks allow players to personalise their game experience.

inFamous, on the other hand, does its side missions quite badly and they quickly become extremely repetitive. Obviously gaming is a pretty repetitive activity anyway, but the side missions in inFamous are also repetitive from a story point of view. To give an example, several of the side missions early on in the game require you to go round and destroy infected water towers. That’s the exact same task you’ve just done and completed in the main story, where it looked like you’d eliminated that particularly threat. These missions don’t actually add anything to the tale or your appreciation of the game world and, if anything, they just weaken the overall narrative.

Another way developers try to make their open worlds seem less empty is by shoe-horning in mini-games. You know the sort of thing; point to point races, timed treasure hunts, random destruction or escort missions. Tasks pretty much unrelated to the main narrative. Some games successfully manage to explain the mini-games existence in the game world but too often they just feel false. Unless the environment is pitched as a playground rather than a narrative space, such as in Crackdown for example, the mini-games just spoil the illusion of the world the developers have tried so hard to create.

Of course, if your game is built around a single, strong story arc then does it really need to be an open world game? Some developers seem set on creating a sandbox experience whether it’s the best way to deliver their narrative or not. There are other ways of telling the same story.

Fable II, for example, has the feel of an open world game but you’re only really getting selected chunks of the world to walk through. Peel away the environment and you can reduce the game world into a series of carefully designed paths and tunnels. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You can have more focussed storytelling and less empty spaces. It ensure the optimum use of the developers time as virtually everything they create will actually be seen and used by players. Compare that to a title like Oblivion where whole chunks of the landscape, including any associated missions and other content, will be unexplored by most that play the game.

Even the developers of inFamous realised the advantages of a more traditional level based approach over an open world environment at some points. Any time they wanted to do something really dramatic in the story you were transported to a hemmed in area where they could control the tension and action a lot easier than out in the open city.

I’ll end this random collection of thoughts with a plea to developers. If you’re determined to produce an open world game then please make sure you create enough story to fill it. In a big city there’s a story to be found on every street corner. In an open world game it should be the same.

My name is Strident and I’m a badgeaholic. An achieveomaniac. A trophy junkie. Whatever you want to call me, I am obsessed with reward systems in games.

I wasn’t always the same. In the old days, in the time before achievements and trophies, I could quite happily play games just for sheer pleasure alone. Now I’m older, my time seems more precious and those on-screen notifications of each new accomplishment allow me to kid myself that I’m doing something productive when I’m gaming; even though those points and trophies have no real-life value. So why do gamers get so obsessed with accumulating virtual rewards? Systems, like Microsoft’s Achievements, speak to the inner collector in many of us, prodding our hunter-gatherer instincts into life.

As a child you spend your time being constantly rewarded, or at least being asked to seek rewards from society. Good behaviour earns stickers and treats. Outstanding or landmark performances bring certificates and awards. Whole organisations, like the Scouts, are based around completing specific targets in order to work towards badges. After just a few years of life you quickly amass a collection of paper, cloth and cardboard that forms a physical representation of your accomplishments.

It’s not long before most children find themselves looking around for other things to collect. Whether it’s pens, thimbles, beany bears, paper weights, soaps, rubbers (erasers to our US friends!), stamps or coins. It’s not just hobby of the young, though, even in adulthood people still obsessively collect. As a species we seem to have some strong innate impulse to gather together objects, although different types of collector are motivated by different things.

To some, the quantity rather than the quality of items is important; they just want to have as big a collection as possible. Others are completists and obsessively try to collect everything, a feat that’s pretty much impossible in areas like stamps and coins. Some people are solely attracted by rare items and prefer to build collections of unique or hard to find objects.

To community collectors the draw of a group of likeminded individuals is often more valuable than the actual act of collecting itself. Then there are the investors, those that collect for future financial or personal gain, and the curators, those seeking to produce a record for future generations.

Just as there are a whole range of different motivations for collecting real-world items there are also a similar selection of reasons why people enjoy obtaining trophies and achievements. You can see the behaviour of collectors mirrored in the gaming community even though the reward badges being collected only exist virtually.

The quantity collectors are represented by those who are always striving towards a bigger Gamerscore. They determine their position in the pecking order of their community by the sheer number of points or trophies that they have obtained.

The completist collectors of the gaming world are those that try to finish one hundred per cent of every single game they own. The unique collectors, who get their buzz from collecting rare items, are the ones that particularly enjoy chasing the really difficult or time-consuming achievements.

Driven by their desire to help others, the community collectors are the ones running and contributing to the gaming help sites. Writing a decent guide, to help others collect achievements, is just as important to them as collecting those rewards themselves.

The curators, in gaming reward system terms, are those who collect achievements in order to document their play. To them, their trophy list is like a diary. It helps them record the fact that they beat a certain boss or aced a specific challenge.

There has been talk about how reward systems, such as those implemented by Microsoft and Sony, are bad for gaming but it’s important to realise they can add a lot of value and an extra level of interest to the hobby for some people. There are lots of different reasons why achievements and trophies can be important to those that enjoy collecting them, it’s not always just about trying to obtain a bigger Gamerscore than everyone else.

Video games are regularly criticised for their depiction of women. All too often female characters are simply over-endowed, empty-headed eye-candy; there to be gawped at or act as the swooning love interest for the muscle-bound heroes.

I guess it’s not really that surprising. Video games as a medium are still in their infancy. The majority of titles are, at their heart, action-adventures aimed at a largely male audience. Strong female characters weren’t exactly a feature of many “blockbuster” action-adventure films back in the day.

In fact current video game writing reminds me very much of the James Bond films of the sixties and early seventies especially when looking at the way female characters and ethnic groups are treated. You could probably write a whole article comparing elements of the recent Resident Evil 5 game with the 1973 Bond film Live and Let Die.

So how can we develop and write strong female characters? How can we lift videogame writing out of the 1960s? Strangely enough a trip back to the 1960s could be what’s needed. A journey back in time to look at an old TV programme, originally broadcast in black & white in the United Kingdom called The Avengers.

You’re probably familiar with the name but hopefully not just from the absolutely awful 1998 Movie. I’m talking now about the original Avengers series, the long-running “spy-fi” show that started back in 1961.

Originally envisaged as a vehicle for British actor Ian Hendry it quickly became more of a double-act with two male leads; the stereotypically English, bowler-hat wearing super-sleuth John Steed (played by Patrick Macnee) and Hendry’s idealistic medical practitioner Dr David Keel.

Actress Honor Blackman (who’ll be more familiar to James Bond fans as “Pussy Galore”) came onboard The Avengers in its second season. She played widowed anthropologist Dr Cathy Gale, one of several irregular replacements for the departing David Keel character and due to her popularity with the viewers, quickly became the only permanent co-star in the third series of the programme.

Cathy Gale was a complete breath of fresh air, blowing away the other stereotypical female characters depicted on British TV at the time. She was intelligent, independent and quick-witted. She was skilled in martial arts and actually a fair bit older than supporting actresses on typical action-adventure shows. Yes she was fond of wearing tight-fitting leather but even that costume decision was a practical necessity (due to the large number of stunts and fight sequences Blackman was required to take part in).

Cathy Gale held her own with Steed. She was very much his equal on every level. Yes there was some flirting between the two, but you got the impression that she always had the measure of him. She was the perfect example of a strong female character and both Gale and Blackman were huge hits with the British public.

So, how did the Cathy Gale character manage to break the mould and defy the usual stereotypes of the genre? Cathy Gale’s strength is rumoured to have come from the fact that many of her early scripts had been originally written for Dr David Keel. Honor Blackman was basically given the chance to play a role equal to that of a man because she was literally taking on the mantle of the male lead. Cathy Gale had the same importance to the stories and the show that Ian Hendry’s male character originally had.

So what’s a character from a fairly obscure 1960s TV show got to do with modern video games? Well, I think Cathy Gale is a good blueprint for developers looking to create strong female characters. In fact, I’ve already come across characters that have been created in a similar manner.

Some of my favourite gaming women have featured in titles from the Canadian-based RPG developers Bioware. Games like Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire and Mass Effect featured plenty of strong, interesting female characters that had a real role in the story and played an integral part in your adventure.

But one of the most important, and defining, features of Bioware’s games is that they give the player the chance to actually cast a woman in the lead role. My Commander Shepard in Mass Effect is female. She’s a three-dimension, believable character. She’s intelligent, strong, assertive and professional; sensitive to the feelings of others but determined to get the job done. There is no doubt that Jane Shepard is just as good at saving the universe as John Shepard.

Whether it’s Mass Effect, Jade Empire or The Knights of the Old Republic, Bioware’s games treat the male and female protagonists equally. They give them the same sort of options, freedoms and influence in the game world. Yes, they do speak the same basic lines (although there are some differences in the story and their relationships) but the female leads never come across as mere re-skins of their male counterparts. Part of the reason is, I think, that Bioware casts talented voice artists in the roles and really lets them bring the dialogue to life.

So developers… here’s my suggestion. If you’re having problems writing good, strong female characters then try taking a leaf out of The Avengers’ book. Write a decent, realistic, believable human being. Then cast a good female actor in the role. It’s not a bad way to start.

I don’t spend hours chuckling at grown men running around in plumber costumes on You Tube. The Super Mario Bros theme tune isn’t set as my ringtone. I don’t get warm fuzzy tingles when I see pictures of crocheted mushrooms and knitted turtles on the Internet. In fact it takes a Wikipedia search for me to find out I should be calling them Goombas and Koopa Troopers.

I understand why you guys love him. I really do. It’s just a passion that I’m completely and totally unable to share.

Part of the problem is that I didn’t own any sort of console until I purchased a PS2 and I didn’t have a Nintendo console until I bought a Game Boy Advance. I don’t have misty-eyed memories of the NES or SNES and I’m unable to look back fondly, with or without rose-tinted spectacles, at the legendary N64. Money was tight, when we were young, and was spent on other things.

“But that’s okay, Strident” you might say, “There are plenty of poor, deprived, misguided people in the world like you. But you do know that you can play most of the Mario games on your Wii and DS?”

Well, yes I do and, in the past, I have tried to play several of the Mario games on the systems I currently own. I’ve really tried to give them a chance and learn to love them the way everyone else does.

The thing is… I don’t like 2D platform games. I know that’s a pretty big genre to just dismiss with a sweeping statement but the reason is pretty simple. I am absolutely, totally, utterly, completely rubbish at playing them.

Back in my youth our family computer, the ZX Spectrum, was blessed with a wonderful plethora of platformers… and I was useless at all of them. Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, Auf Wiedersehen Monty, Starquake, Chuckie Egg, Dizzy … all great, enjoyable games that I completely failed to get very far in. I just can’t play anything that requires pixel perfect jumping or memorising the movement of multiple enemies.

So what about Mario’s 3D adventures? Surely I can enjoy them? Recent gaming experiences have led me to believe that I don’t actually enjoy platforming games that much anymore. That’s a little weird since one of my favourite game franchises is Tomb Raider which involves a large amount of 3D platforming. It dawned on me, playing the two most recent editions of the series, that I find the climbing and jumping parts of the game quite tiresome. I’ve always been more interested in the puzzles, the locations and the characters.

So his 2D games and his 3D platformers aren’t going to win me over. What about Mario’s appearances in other games? Surely there’s something in the huge collection of titles he’s appeared in that’s more my cup of tea?
Well yes and no. I like Mario Kart. I enjoyed playing it on both the DS and Wii. The Mario Kart series of games are great. The thing is, though, as far as I’m concerned you could chuck anyone in those carts and I’d be happy. Even that blue guy with the spikey hair.

I know I’ve already lost what little gaming street credibility I had with this article but don’t get me wrong. I can understand why Mario is popular. I can even see why his series of games was influential. But love Mario? No. Like him? Not particularly.

Now I’ve got that off my chest, I’m going to go and listen to the latest Big Red Potion episode which discusses which is the best Mario game… or, perhaps as far as I’m concerned, the least worst. Mind you, if anyone can make me appreciate the inner beauty of the moustachioed plumber it’s Sinan and Joe. Maybe they’ll tempt me to really get into Super Mario 64 and I’ll be singing its praises in a few weeks time. I probably wouldn’t hold your breath.

It got me thinking about how I’d personally define what a video game is. I suppose, like Big Red Potion, I should start by thinking of a good definition of a “game”.

For me, a game is ‘play’ within the boundaries of rules. These rules could be agreed beforehand by the participants, exist already as part of their shared culture or arise and develop organically through the action of play.

A football on its own isn’t a game. It’s a toy. You can certainly play with it. You can kick it against a wall, bounce it on your head or dribble it around on the ground. But your interaction with the ball only becomes a game if you start to set goals or challenges for yourself. If, for example, you decide to repeatedly kick it against the wall or see how long you can bounce it on your head.

Just like a football, we could regard a collection of action figures as toys that can become components of a game if you play with them in a more structured way. For example through re-enacting or creating a narrative.

The introduction of a second participant automatically turns free play into a game because you need a set of regulations to govern the way you will interact with the toy. You need a shared vocabulary to define the specifics of your play together.

Even without actual physical toys or props, a group of children exploring a story in a playground quickly develop a set of rules for acceptable play. Roles are allocated, boundaries are set and the path of the narrative is dictated by the dominate members of the group.

So that’s my attempt at a definition of a “game”. Let’s try “video game”. I guess that a natural definition would be “a game played using an electronic device such as a console or computer”. How well does that description fit with some of the more unique or unusual titles out there, though?

One of the interesting examples mentioned in the Big Red Potion discussion was Noby Noby Boy, a pretty experimental title produced by Katamari creator Keita Takahashi for the Playstation Network. You could argue that Noby Noby Boy is a toy rather than a game, or rather that it was originally designed as a toy.

You can stretch and contract your avatar, in a manner similar to Play-Doh or Plasticine, moving it around the digital landscape free from the shackles of objectives and goals. The enjoyment was meant to come from experimentation, from creating your own amusement however two things spoil this pure play experience. One of which seems to have been a design decision, the other was imposed thanks to current Sony policy.

The first game-like intrusion into Takahashi’s toybox is the community target. Individual players are awarded points for how far they stretch their avatar. These scores can be submitted online and the cumulative total dictates how long the community avatar Noby Noby Girl stretches. The combined efforts of players worldwide cause Girl to stretch across the in-game solar system, with new play environments unlocked for all players when she reaches different planets.

Rather ironically perhaps, the second element that disrupts the pure play experience of Noby Noby Boy is the inclusion of Sony’s trophy system. Trophies add concrete objectives and targets to the game and allow some players to get to the point where they can say the experience has been “completed”. I don’t think that was Takahashi’s original intention.

Of course, any definition of video games does start to creak a little bit when you start to look at some of the stranger titles like Noby Noby Boy or some of the newer, community driven titles that are appearing on the market.

Take for example, Little Big Planet. How much of that is a game? Well, a fair amount obviously, as the platforming levels of the story mode are video gaming in its purist form.  But arguably half of that title is more of a creative software application than a game, a set of tools for constructing your own levels. Also consider Forza 2 which is, at its core, a fairly straightforward racing game but for a small number of people it’s nothing more than a painting package. Their only interaction with the software is to create custom liveries for cars.

If the lines between player and creator become blurred, through games like this, with some people playing games as gamers and others as creators then video games will quickly outgrow the terms we currently use to describe them. Maybe, the problem is not the definition of “video game” but the fact that it’s the wrong term to use to encompass all the software we would now consider to live under that umbrella.

Maybe the term “video game” is just too old and out of date? The medium has gone beyond the individual definitions of those two component words. How about we use “interactive entertainment software” instead? Okay, I know it’s not quite as short and snappy as “video games”. Oh, and don’t ask me to define it, either.

Anyway, those are my quick, incoherent thoughts on the matter. Why not download episode 15 of Big Red Potion, hear some slightly more focused opinions and join in the discussion yourself?

Back in the early nineties, when all the cool kids were playing with their Amigas and Atari STs, I was still well into the adventure game scene on the ZX Spectrum. These were proper adventure games. No flashy graphics (in fact, usually no pictures at all) but lots and lots of highly descriptive prose.

Back then classic text adventures, such as Will Crowther’s Colossal Cave Adventure, Infocom’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Magical Scrolls The Pawn and Melbourne House’s The Hobbit were filled with more head-scratching puzzles, devious mazes and slimy monsters than you could shake a pointy stick at. Most of the games tagged “adventures” these days are a walk in the park in comparison.

In a text adventure your greatest enemy was usually the software parser which attempted to translate your two or four word instructions into something the game would understand. Many hours could be spent attempting to come up with the right “verb noun” combinations. Did you have to OPEN BOTTLE or UNSCREW LID or perhaps PRISE TOP? It was certainly a good way to build up your knowledge of synonyms.

Thanks to two wonderful pieces of software by a company called Gilsoft players were able to become writers and take on the big name adventure developers. With a bit of imagination and (sometimes apparently optional) basic spelling ability you could use their Quill or Professional Adventure Writer packages to produce your own, fully-fledged, standalone adventure games.

Some of the games crafted with these tools went on to be distributed by mainstream companies but the majority were the wares of home-grown publishers beavering away in their bedrooms, duplicating cassette tapes and photocopying inlays down their local libraries.

I was never the one stuffing the jiffy bags but I did write some of my own “amateur” text adventures which were fairly well received by the small, but enthusiastic, Spectrum adventuring community. Twenty years on my +3 disks with the game code are packed away in a box somewhere but thanks to the wonderful World of Spectrum archive I’ve not only recently been playing the games but I’ve also been able to read the reviews from Your Sinclair and Crash!

It was the first title I wrote that was provoking the strongest memories. Written seventeen years ago, it now seems an amazingly self-indulgent homage to all the things I liked and disliked at the time, capturing a snapshot of the home-grown Spectrum adventure scene and full of so many pop-culture references that the whole thing is pretty dated and embarrassing… rather like an old photograph.

I had no idea, back then, that I was creating some sort of personal time capsule. That, in my mid-thirties, I’d be looking back one day at the game and using it to remember a time when I should’ve maybe been a little more focussed on revising for my A-levels.

So what can you learn about the eighteen year old Strident by playing the game? Well he had very dodgy music tastes that’s for sure, with French electronic musician Jean Michel Jarre making a cameo appearance in the game (complete with laser harp). His status as a geek was firmly confirmed by plenty of references to Star Trek, The Hobbit and Doctor Who. Young Strident also had a pretty warped sense of humour which evidently came from listening to too many Goon Show radio episodes. A love of puns meant that many of the puzzles were based around homonyms. For example, smash a television showing a game of football and you’d be rewarded with an item that could set objects on fire.

It was nice to be reminded of some of these things about my teenage self that I’d forgotten. The mentions of so many magazines and computer personalities of the day (Your Sinclair, Mike Gerrard, Sinclair User, Crash, Zenobi etc.) also helped me remember just how great the old ZX Spectrum was.

But do you know what the worst bit about this excursion into my adventuring past was? I found myself getting stuck at certain points. There were times when I had no clue what to do next and even when I did I was often unable to figure out the required inputs to accomplish each task.

In the end I had to refer to a hint sheet. A hint sheet for my own flippin’ game! What makes it worse is that even when I was “cheating” I still got caught out by some stupid game breaking bugs (or bad design decisions).

Unbelievably, my eighteen year old self was actually flummoxing me! I can just imagine him sitting there laughing at how out of practice, stupid, and slow I’ve become! The spotty git.

It’s worth pointing out that the 360 version was my first experience of the game. I liked it a lot. Although I’ve always loved the idea of racing games I’ve never been any good at them. Burnout Paradise was different. Here it didn’t matter whether I crashed or not. In fact, a lot of the time it was encouraged. I also didn’t run up against the same gameplay brick walls that I hit in other titles. There’s always that one race which stops me from progressing any further. Here, I could choose my own path. I could do the events that I was good at. It didn’t really matter that I wasn’t any good at racing.

Burnout Paradise was a revelation, a title that I totally enjoyed and kept going back to. I even spent quite a bit of time playing online, something that’s very unusual for me. The whole way that my offline world seamlessly transitioned into a multiplayer experience, and back out again to my own personal game world if necessary, removed a lot of the barriers that usually prevent me from venturing online.

Many months later, when I purchased my PS3, my love of the game encouraged me to purchase a copy from the Playstation Network store. At the time the price was about the same as it would’ve cost me in the shops and I liked the idea of the additional convenience of having it on the hard drive. I also wanted something to play on my nice shiny new console.

I honestly didn’t expect to spend as much time playing it on the PS3 as I ended up doing, though. It was devoured hungrily, as though it was a completely new game that I’d never experience before. Even when I bought other PS3 games, Burnout Paradise was the title I kept going back to again and again.

Why was this? Well, it undoubtedly helped that I’d already played, and improved my skills, on the Xbox 360 version. This meant that I instantly knew what I was doing and sailed through the early challenges in the game. Even so, this was a title I’d already spent weeks playing on another console. Why was I really enjoying it so much?

Trophies. Much has been written about the achievement systems on the 360 and PS3. I’m a big fan of the way they allow me to build up a record of all the games I’ve played and also the way in which they drip feed you rewards and motivate you to experience a title fully. In general, aside from those games that just copy the achievements from the 360 version, I’ve found that the PS3 accomplishments are trickier to get and not always as well designed. It’s just what you’d expect really with developers getting used to a new system. (There was a similar problem when the 360 launched with achievements)

In Burnout Paradise, though, because Criterion Games were having to keep an existing group of players happy, who hadn’t had access to the rewards on launch, they adapted the criteria used in the Xbox 360 version of the game. They also had access to the Xbox Live statistics. They knew exactly how many players had obtained each of the goals in the 360 version and could adjust things accordingly. As a result the trophies, on the PS3 are a lot more, well… achievable.

The PS3 trophies are also better because they cover the new content, developed after the release of the game. This is something that the 360 achievements don’t do. On the Playstation there are rewards for the bike side of things and for completing the newer online timed challenges. You are also encouraged to try out the online marked man and road rage events.

The more open nature of Sony’s trophy system means that it’s also been really easy for Criterion to drop in additional rewards related to the new party mode and also all of the car packs. Traditionally, on the 360, developers have been limited to 250 extra achievement points for DLC. Criterion have used 50 points of this to reward Party Pack purchasers. You’d imagine that the rest is reserved for The Island content with maybe a few nods to the car packs when that bigger expansion hits.

Of course, Microsoft have relaxed their rules for DLC achievements in a few notable cases, namely Halo 3 and Fallout 3, so perhaps they’ll give Criterion more points to play with at a later date. At the moment, though, it’s the PS3 version that continues to reward the gamer for playing with all the DLC they’ve downloaded. Which is what I want. If I’m going to spend money on DLC then I want to get a little bit back in terms of trophies or achievements. They might not have any real-world value but I like adding to my gaming progress record.

So, for me, yes, Burnout Paradise is better on the PS3. There are other reasons why it wins, for example the way the more open system allows you to export and analyse your save game to find jumps and smashes you may have missed, but I’ve enjoyed the Playstation edition more simply because of the better designed reward system.

Fable II – Knothole Island

The undoubted star, of the Fable II DLC pack, is the island itself. Without giving too much away, the whole arc of this expansion is based around the weather and the island’s landscape has been superbly crafted to take advantage of this in clever ways. Considering the visually impressive external location created for the download, it’s a little disappointing that the actual missions are so run of the mill. With just a couple of exceptions, you’ll spend your time encountering the same enemies and doing the same sort of tasks that you did in the main game. Traipsing through generic looking dungeons filled with scores of “flit switches” just isn’t particularly fun.

Completing the new questline gives full access to the island’s Box of Secrets store. If you take part in a little scavenger hunt around the main game world you’ll be rewarded with a nice selection of unique, fairly powerful items. The content also gives players a chance to be reunited with a fallen companion, although they’ll need to be willing to sacrifice more than just their in-game morals.

Fallout 3 – Operation: Anchorage

On downloading this, the first of at least three mission packs for Fallout 3, a new radio message comes through your Pipboy directing you towards a group of renegade Brotherhood of Steel members who are investigating some old technology.

Part of the pack takes place in the main Fallout 3 world but the majority of it is delivered through a series of Virtual Reality missions. This means that you don’t have access to all your existing kit (although your perks and skills still work) but it does take you away from the dreary landscape of the Capital Wasteland.

Not that the frozen expanses of Alaska are particularly more appealing. This pack seems to have been designed for die-hard fans of the Fallout series; those that are really into the game’s lore and actually care about key events in the history, such as the Chinese invasion of Alaska during which these VR missions are set.

Although it’s enjoyable, I personally found the content a little too “shooty” and I guess, from the comments on the interwebs, that these are also not the type of quests that other people wanted either. It’s quite interesting to be working as part of a squad, for sections of the game, rather than alone but pitching it as a shooter just further highlights the shortcomings of the combat system.

Like the Fable 2 content, the Fallout 3 pack probably gives you most value if you’re about midway through your game experience as the best thing about it is the cool kit you’ll receive as a reward. It’s a little bit ironic that the characters who will struggle the most with completing the DLC (those built to avoid conflicts where possible) will actually find one of the rewards really useful for their style of play.

Star Wars The Force Unleashed – The Jedi Temple Mission Pack

I wasn’t a huge fan of The Force Unleashed but, as I felt it was a little short and lacked replayability I thought I’d give the DLC a try. Rather appropriately this DLC pack is also really short and also completely lacking in replayability.

Consisting of a single level set in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, a location dropped from the game in pre-production according to Lucasarts, it does feature some nice puzzle elements. It is, though as I’ve said, extremely short and features the same enemies you’ve spent your time smashing in the main game. There’s no real reason to play it more than once but the developers force you to do so at least four times if you want all the additional Gamerscore on offer.

Considering Lucasarts short-changed us once already on the value front, charging 800 points for a single level is absolutely disgusting.

Burnout Paradise – Party Pack

The Burnout Party Pack is a harder piece of content to appraise. It’s actually little more than a flashy menu system that presents you with carefully selected challenges from the online game.

In many ways this, for me, has the least value of the bunch as I’m unlikely to spend much time playing offline “pass the pad” multiplayer with real-life friends or family.

I think that the Party Pack is overpriced and has been designed mostly to boost the value of the retail re-release for offline users. However, we had so much free content from Criterion last year I don’t mind paying for this first paid release. In fact, I almost feel guilty… like I should buy it. It’s amazing all the good will they generated with last year’s freebies.

But 800 Points.. It’s Too Much for Any of This Stuff, Isn’t It?

Value for money is a very personal thing. In many ways it depends how much you like each of these four games and how much you think it’s fair to pay to extend your gaming experience.

Some might say it’s too much to pay 800 points for this sort of content. Is it? What is 800 points actually worth both on Microsoft’s marketplace and in the real world?

800 Points is*…
£6.80 in real money
or
16 x old dashboard themes
8 x iTunes music tracks
5 x Rockband songs
4-8 x “standard” priced picture packs
3 x premium NXE themes
2 x XBLM video rentals (SD)
1.5 x Halo map packs
1.5 x XBLM video rentals (HD)
1 x “standard” XBLM title
1 x “real world” adult cinema ticket
1 x 7” Chicken Feast Pizza from Dominoes UK
½ of Tomb Raider Anniversary (bought as an expansion to Legend)
1/3 of Oblivion’s The Shivering Isles expansion
1/6 of a reasonably priced new retail game
*approximately the same.

So for 800 points I’m personally looking for about the same length of entertainment as I’d get by going to the cinema or for as much enjoyment as I’d get from a dial-a-pizza.

I think, for me, the Fable II and Fallout 3 packs work out as fairly good value. They give you short term entertainment, in the form of new missions that will keep you busy for several hours. But they also give you some long term value through new equipment that you can use in the main game and any further DLC expansions. Which is best value out of those two? I’d personally go for Fallout 3 as I felt the rewards were more interesting and I know that, with more content packs coming, I’m going to be getting plenty of use out of my hard earned (and paid for!) kit.

In some ways I think that people would feel they had got better value out of the Fable II and Fallout 3 content if they’d been packaged up in a bigger collection of material, like Oblivion’s The Shivering Isles. The beauty of smaller packs like this, though, is that you can pick and choose whether you buy these extra missions depending on whether the story or rewards interest you.

The Force Unleashed content feels like a complete and utter rip-off. It’s short enough that it should’ve been completed and included in the retail game, especially as the original campaign was content-light as it was. The only reason to buy this particular DLC is for the extra Gamerscore.

The Burnout Paradise Party Pack works out as being worthwhile if you regularly have friends over to play or if several of your household enjoy going head to head on the same console. It’s not really of that much interest to me but Criterion has plenty of content in the pipeline to keep me happy this year.