I am a very shooty kind of guy, I used to think. I like being plonked in the first person view, seeing my burly forearms and wrists, and shoot things that move.
If it looks angry, shoot it. Heck if it moves, shoot it. You know the sort? I always thought that is what I am. I prided myself in knowing exactly why mastery of control and craft lies in the hands on Valve and Infinity Ward, and no one else.

Nothing I knew about myself has been proven wrong, exactly. But I AM thoroughly surprised by why so few people have not mentioned this: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is rubbish.

RPS’s analysis of the No Russian level is bang on as far an analysis of a controversial level goes, but really, they didn’t come out and say this. Or maybe I missed this. In any case, the truth is that I really, really feel that the game is rubbish.

Of course I am only talking about the Single Player campaign here. The multiplayer is a thing of beauty. glitches aside, the crack of shooting things that move to get better and unlock better things to shoot people with is as addictive as ever, and works phenomenally. I could berate it for being too small (9v9? in 2009?), or lack of features other modern shooters have (no cover system, really? Are they still living in 2002?), but that would be unfair. They didn’t set out to make that game that eclipses all features. They knew what they could do well, and delivered a polished experience. It’s insanely fun, this multiplayer game, honestly.

But really, what were they thinking when they set out to make that single player game? First off, it completely robs the entire series of gravitas by going all James Bond on us. It was the same issue that could have been leveled at MW the First, but that game still kept intact the sense of being part of a bigger whole. Modern Warfare 2? That is not a nasty war business. It is jumping off a ski slope on a snowmobile shooting people in the face. It is infiltrating a Russian prison, killing all the guards, and escaping on a zip line while rockets fire all around you. It’s not war in it’s emotional gravity – it’s a Michael Bay movie with no consequences.

Which would probably have been fine by itself. But they wanted to bring that emotional depth despite not having the backbone to support it. So they created the cipher of a level that is No Russian. There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t been said about it – it’s vacuous, and has no heft to it as a storytelling device.

Not that the storytelling has anything to it that would need clever devices. It’s downright stupid. Insulting, even. One entire mission has you take command of an SAS team trying to infiltrate a prison to rescue a “guy” who the arch villain apparently hates. Really? That’s your incentive? The enemy of my enemy is my best bud? The last act twist is so asinine that it actually, honestly makes no sense.

The gameplay is sweet, admittedly, but purely on a controls-mechanics-events level. The craft is solid. The design is barely there. At 5 hours of play on Normal mode, I would have expected more from the game experience itself. It’s nothing, it’s faff. The worst part? No one’s called IW’s or Activision’s bluff, though, and I am doing it now. For 74 Dollars, it literally is a rip-off, and a sub par game. There is no doubting the production quality, but the game just isn’t up to snuff. The multiplayer redeems the price point, but it does not redeem the single player experience.

Consider your self finger wagged at and chagrined, Infinity Ward! My not-read blog has chastised you.

(Bah. Humbug.)

A good narrative is built up of superbly crafted moments, and a structured, well honed pace. Sure, there are many more things that make a good movie or a game – tone, characters, heck even songs. Yep, the much maligned narrative tool that is the Indian movie staple is a tool of such precise measurement in the right hands, few people realise it when done right. Sholay for example – the pacing and sine-perfect undulations of the narrative are nothing if you take the songs out. Whether it is to build anticipation or to provide respite after tension, there’s a reason the quieter moments, or in this argument, the songs exist.

A good narrative is only as good as it’s pacing.

So confident are developers Naughty Dog of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and the narrative/gameplay structure they have created, even they can’t resist the item number. About 2/3rds of the way in, protagonist Nathan Drake has been double-crossed, blown up, continuously shot at, been in a train wreck, and come within inches of dying by falling off of the Himalayas. He has also murdered two gunships. After the wreck, and after he has been saved by death from a bullet wound and the cold, the game allows you to simply be – you take a stroll in a little Tibetan Village stripped off your running and acrobatics – with the game lavishing it’s details upon you quite matter of factly.

There is nothing to do for 15 odd minutes (5 if you’re impatient and are entirely missing the point, in which case might I direct you to your Haloz?) except move around the village, taking in the breathtakingly beautiful landscape, the immaculately detailed cottages complete with every household implement and embellishment (and I’ve spent my share of time in sub-Himalayan mountain houses to tell you the detail is indeed authentic), and interact with the scenery. Pat a yak, watch as the roosters flock around, and see a bunch of kids play football. Participate, and you are rewarded with a totally superfluous and yet utterly disarming scene of the kids blushing, giggling and holding on to the ball, unsure of what you are saying.

The game is a masterclass in pacing (everything else is fantastic, yes. The action packs a wallop, and the said murder of gunships is brill. The set-pieces are something Hollywood would aspire to.) and narrative. It is up there with Half Life in terms of how to tell a story, create characters and make you live them. On the face of it, it’s just some running and gunning with a few cutscenes. But the production values and presentation take it that one step further. If I was the kind of person who rated games on the IGNs or the Gamepots of the world, crassly breaking down each individual component, I’d tell you that the platforming isn’t thrilling throughout – the danger of falling off almost does not exist – but then I was too busy gaping at the bloody structure I was scaling. I’d tell you about the occasional animation glitch, but that would be remiss if I didn’t tell you how birds fly realistically away from you, and how snow makes real bootmarks and paths as you trudge along.

But talking about that would miss the point – rare is the film, comic, book, game that realizes the potential of a well structured narrative. Where every ebb and flow of tension, relief and thrill is maintained to keep you entertained and along for the ride, and where at the end of it, despite the foreknowledge of the formula, you care for the characters. Damned be the discussion about art, sometimes all you need is the craft at display. Uncharted 2 is the developer at the top of their craft.

Batman. Arguably the biggest comic book character, undeniably the most popular superhero, and a franchise with a varied and mixed mythology, with interpretations as many as there are different psychologies.
There is something that makes serious comic book authors indulge in their most psychologically out there fantasies when they write the bat. After all, aren’t they all answering the eternal question: what makes batman, Batman?
To me, Batman is defined by his acute neuroses, and the mad-attract-the-mad world he lives in. His inner demons make him relentlessly put the cape on and impersonate a bat – his outer ones won’t let him quit that cycle.
If being Batman means relentlessly pursued by the insanity of The Joker that makes you feel that everything is a trap, if it means knowing that the Scarecrow won’t rest until he has pervaded your mind, if it means you are sure of your physical prowess, and have fought the fight in your head even before it starts, if it means using the dark as your friend – not a stealth maneuver but a weapon of choice – until you have methodically taken out whatever thugs pose as obstacle between you and your ultimate prey, if it means being a panther like predator, and always being prepared, if being Batman means all those things, the new Arkham Asylum game from rocksteady has nailed it.

I am Batman.

The masterful voice acting by Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill starts you off in writer Paul Dini’s what they puport to be Batman’s Worst Night. The setting means you fight Harley Quinn, Killer Croc, Bane, Poison Ivy, Clayface and the Clown Prince of Crime one after the other, interspersed with some detective work. Being a detective, by the way is not only the only way to progress (following Gordon’s Cigar smell is your only pathfinder), it is also actively encouraged by The Riddler who keeps pissing in you ear about these riddles, the solution of which is usually a quick thorough scan of the environment away.

Then there’s the combat. There are no insane combos to remember or hajaar buttons to press. It’s all timing and direction, which gives enough depth, but also takes away the frustration. That it looks fantastic and the music is channeling Zimmer and Howard’s masterful score from the Nolan films is something you notice only when the game lets you stop for a breather, which is never often.

rocksteady has made the definitive Batman game, as well as the best comic book superhero game. Equal parts Metroid and Bioshock in its gameplay inspiration, this on stands out as one of the best gaming experiences I have had this year. Anyone who is a fan of anything should be playing this game.

Official Site: here

Update:

New screenshots and info in Game Informer, out now. Scans available on the interwebs here.

Somewhere between Edge’s Killzone 2 7/10 review and its impending release to the teeming masses, the intarwubs caught fire.

PSX extreme (in a turn of events too ironic to count, I refuse to link to ‘em), went ahead and published a piece admonishing Edge’s review as unworthy of the game, and their score an attempt at getting more publicity by being a contrarian. This particular article was also a subject of one of the best examples of fun games journalism in recent times by Destructoid’s Jim Sterling.

Long story short, a lot of people were upset, and thought anyone who thought Killzone 2 was anything short of life-changing was completely demented. Well, call me delirious and paint me monkey, because I wasn’t too impressed either.

Do take into account that I am the curmudgeonliest of gamers, and games like Gears or War 2 or Halo 3 have often felt my righteous and completely futile ire. My personal game of the year for 2008 would probably have been World of Goo or Professor Layton.

Regardless, I do love me my shooters. That I play almost all that come out is some bizarre fascination with the genre, or my complete lack of pragmatism. I did try on KZ2 with the same morbid sense of optimism that this is the next best thing in shooters. It’s not. It’s fine, by all means, in fact it’s pretty much exemplary in a lot of fronts. But it’s yet another shooter.

At first look it’s gorgeous, no doubt. The smoke, the explosions, it’s all sensory overload, and it gets the job done in convincing me that it is the best looking game I have played ever. Beatzo called me the other day asking about it, and I shared his enthusiasm about how good this game looked.

Then I looked at the little details. The plain geometry; straight edged and out of a 2004 era shooter. The shady looking rubbish sacks. The blurry, gray, ground and building textures. Wow. Almost didn’t see ‘em.

No doubt, the presentation is still rock solid. The NPC and NME models look great, the animation is wildly awesome. The effects are shattering in their execution. But is it the game that crosses all graphical boundaries and takes the medium to a whole new level? Hardly.

The gameplay itself is great fun. I loved mowing down enemies, and the fact that you die often meant I quickly learnt to take cover and make intelligent choices. The enemy AI is quite good, and moving from set piece to set piece, the adrenaline level is at a constant high. You love it too, if you learn to ignore the hokey and gutter mouth (at the same time!) writing.

And then lethargy hits you. The game shows you all it’s tricks within the first few hours. The default gun is indispensable despite the newer ones they keep throwing. The levels are linear as hell, and save a few moments, it’s all rote shooter territory. Cover, shoot, forward. Miles and miles of industrial interiors with nothing interesting to do or see reminded me of the misstep that was Quake IV.

I like driven, visceral shooting experiences, and Killzone 2 does not cut it. It’s good, but it’s NOT phenomenal. Making a shooter is not as easy as drawing a corridor, placing a few barrels and spawning 5 men with guns. Too often we are numbed into thinking games can be objectively measured in their quality by their graphics, sound, AI or whatever. The IGNs and the Gamespots of the world have taught us that games are a sum total of their parts.

This, I submit, is why the Gamespots and IGNs cannot help heaping praise on this game, calling it nothing short of a masterpiece. But for those old fogeys like me who understand that a shooter is the moodiest, trickiest genre to make games on, where the ‘feel’ of the shooter, the thrill of control is more important that purdy graphics, we demand more of a game purported to be the second coming. I demand more of you Killzone, not because you were my last hope, but because you said you were the new generation – the next generation even.

Valve still can’t be beat, then. I can’t describe the way the controls in Left 4 Dead felt when I played it last year. I could see it in the controls, the way ti moved and felt that this was a great shooter. I hate to side with the contrarians, but this game left me strangely unaffected. It’s good, it’s not great, and I think if a mature magazine reviews it maturely, I can understand their point of view.

I have no mercy intarwubs. I will fuel the fires with my little matchstick of a blog.