Should action games have quiet sections?

Does the boom boom go well with the shush shush?

Games are all about action, right? Swinging in to save the day, blasting through rooms of waist-high objects, murdering hundreds yet still calling yourself the goodguy and maybe even looking a little bit over your shoulder for the front cover. (But not too much over your shoulder, you have to maintain the plausible deniability that you don't care about the attention) But of course, not all games are about constant action and, in fact, even the one's that are sometimes might not show action all the time, sometimes there are careful balances to be struck between when a game goes full violence and when it lets the tempo rest up a bit. And when we're talking about games, with their length, we leave enough room for these experiences to be more flexible with their pacing than one might expect an all-out shooter to typically be at first glance. But should a game that is dedicated to action allow for moments of quiet and calm, or does doing so detract from the package of the game in general? And whilst acknowledging that every game is obviously going to be it's own case-by-case scenario: what effect does action and it's proliferation have on the experience of the player?

To provide an example of such an 'effect' as well as demonstrate the difference in approach I'm talking about; I want to touch on two great open world games. Sleeping Dogs and... well, any Rockstar game can go here, although I should probably stick to just the open world ones, as they all share the trait I'm about to discuss. Rockstar allows their open world games to have times of action and times of characterisation, either for the city or the starring characters, whereas Sleeping Dogs sets a mandate of at least one action scenario in every single mission. I find this keeps things moving for the easily bored, but conversely makes things incredibly predictable. In GTA you can genuinely have a mission where you are introduced to an area and important people you'll need to get to know, such that you could spend a whole mission talking or listening to exposition. In Sleeping Dogs, you cannot have a mission without either a car chase (or race), a gun fight or a fist fight. (Usually more than one of those, but it's always got to be at least one.) What this means is that it becomes really hard for the story to surprise you at any point with any development, because as soon as someone says "Can you take me shopping?" or "Would you like to attend my wedding?", you know straight away that something is going to happen that will turn everything on it's head. Predictability robs all power from spontaneity, which I think hurts the lingering appeal of a story. 

I pulled back on saying 'all Rockstar Games' because of the follow-up example of a game that is even more full throttle than Sleeping Dogs. Because you see, as an Open World game, Sleeping Dogs needs to not be throwing death and suffering at you at some points, there has to be open world no-action driving sections for the sake of simply going places. But an action shooter like Max Payne, nah that can be as action packed as you want. (Just as most action shooters are.) Barring cutscenes, you're pretty much always spraying lead at someone whilst diving slow-motion through the air and it captures a very action movie-esque sort of atmosphere. I personally always looked upon Max Payne 3 as the Die Hard video game we never got (that top-down abomination does not count.) The toss up is that it can make you desensitised to the explosion that is action, requiring the game to use other methods to keep players interested. Something which most games achieve by changing up the challenge (new enemy types, harder sections, increased stakes), and others fail at.

Then, to shift gears once again, we have a sort of game which is built around action but could contain plenty of other content in it as well. I've picked Fallout for this example, but pretty much any RPG title could fill this space. We're talking games wherein it's just as likely that you'll spend a play session chatting or walking to places, as you might spend it gunning down bandits in the wasteland. These games can, when handled right, still maintain that adrenaline which action brings even to the last stages of the game, just from how segmented the action moments are. A title I'm playing right now which is wonderful for managing this balance would be Death Stranding, which normalises it's robust delivery framework so much that when you go awry and bump into a Beached Thing, it's never a comfortable encounter that you're familiar with. And in entertainment being uncomfortable is preferable to being bored. 

But what about games where action is the very last thing you manage, and not in the way that Death Stranding does it (where action is a surprise which could be lurking around every misstep) but in such a manner that approach the conflict gameplay willingly but sparingly? Of course, I'm talking about the Persona games here, wherein most of the game is spent living the life of the protagonist and choosing where they develop their skills and whom they kindle friendships with. The latter half of the game is the RPG fighting, and though much of what you do on the outside does improve those duelling skills, the draw of the audience is more towards living these lives and getting closer to these fictional people. The drawback of games like these is that the core spine of the gameplay, the actual RPG fighting, can start to feel like a mere obstacle between you and progression, because that's just not what you signed up for. Balancing this with making combat fun and varied becomes even more of an issue than it is for the full action games.

When it comes to the genre called 'action', I feel it's always important to maintain and develop the core of the action gameplay, but that doesn't mean it can't be just as important to have other dalliances too. The sorts of games that aren't focused on creating rounded experiences like that need to really nail their action premise in order to not feel vapid and empty, something which the Far Crys of the world can fall short of. I think that might be why we can have a game as beautiful and pulsing as Cyberpunk 2077, and still feel like we're walking around an unfinished Alpha. Life is more than just constant conflict, and though games are an embellishment of the life experience, avoiding the calm before and after the storm is an easy way to disconnect the audience from the world you've built. Again, unless the game is specifically designed to meld around that design, such as with your average FPS game. 

That being said, I do understand people who don't like any deviation from the straight action of the game as they feel it's just a waste of time. Red Dead Redemption 2 has it's detractors for that very reason, where time spent not shooting things and rocketing through the storyline can be aggrieving when the game is asking you to soak in atmosphere and enjoy the arcade-simulation of cowboy life. As such it largely comes down to taste, and that can be different for everyone. Some people like to spend as much time in these fictional worlds as humanely possible, whilst others want to power through at a break-neck pace so that they can onto the next one in no time flat. The only question is which kind of gamer you want to be.

I think there's always a place for quiet in action games, as the very concept of disparity is inducive to competent pacing. Even all out action first person shooter games, with all their chaos and explosions, can sometimes be best served with their moments of peace, or even just quieter variations of that action. (Such as how in 'Halo: Reach' one of the best missions is the stealth one) For me, the ability to take your audience on a journey is the prerequisite to all great entertainment and pacing is the key instrument through which you can work this magic, which is why no matter where I am in life, how busy everything else is, how little free time I personally have, I'll always make space for the Death Strandings and Red Dead Redemptions on my play docket.

Gotta go fast!

"Ka-Chow!"- A sentient demon car

Today I decided to focus on something outside of my traditional wheelhouse; the ever-so-humble racing game. I'm usually a player who likes to take their time, as indicated by my favourite genre being; Stealth games, so you'd imagine that a game which tasks me with speeding about a course would the absolute opposite of fun to me. Not so, it would seem, as I always come back to the noble sport of racing now and then. Not that I'm good at it, oh no, but I always give it a shot whenever I get the opportunity. (Maybe it's the masochist in me.)

Games that simulate racing go back a long way in video gaming mythos, all the way to the original home console: Atari. (Discounting all those portable Pong machines that were developed.) Who remembers 1982's 'Pole Position'? It was an F1 racing game with some of the best graphics that the system had to offer, you can genuinely make out what the game is. I'm not even being facetious here, compare what this game had to offer to the original Mario Bros, the difference is night and day. (It seems that visual fidelity has always been a hallmark of racing games.)

I have always held a huge amount of respect for racing in videogames, when done right they can be some of the most creative games on the market. I suppose it comes from the need to differentiate oneself in amidst a library of seemingly identical games; You either become the best at making racing games, or pick one heck of a gimmick that people won't soon forget. I harbour love for both of these choices as even the roughest racing games can have some little charming glint that manages to touch my stoney heart.

Unlike modern sports games, the leaders in the racing market seem to actually dedicate passion behind their craft to amaze audiences with either ingenuity or fidelity. I suppose that is what attracts me to games like these without being a huge car nut myself; I'm just drawn in by the undeniable talent under the hood. Somehow, despite never definitively learning what it means to 'drive stick', I have developed a history with racing games throughout my gaming life, and therefore I have just enough incidental knowledge to take you through a few of my favourites from over the years.

When I mention having 'pride in your craft' I think that few games personify this as perfectly as the Forza franchise. Ever since 2005, Turn 10 Studios have been creating newer renditions of Forza Motorsport to wow the public. Each game, alongside all the the racing game industry leaders, manages to exploit the latest in tech to be one of the most beautiful games of their time, much in the same way that you find in system launch titles. The difference comes from the fact that system launch titles are generally more of a tech test, whilst Forza Motorsport never skimps out on the gameplay either, despite how tempting it must be to do so in the modern age. Nowadays, Forza games play like a more accessible racing Sim, with all the complexity and fidelity of a dedicated simulator mixed with the fantastic controls and handicap tools that one would expect from a pick up and play game.

Turn 10 have also spent their time working on the Forza Horizon spin off series since 2012. This is a game that is all about revelling in the beauty that comes from racing cars in some of the most visually arresting locations in the world (Like England! but mostly France, Australia and Colorado.) Horizon is certainly more of a game for hardcore car enthusiasts who want to spend their time taking screenshots of their favourite supercar plowing through a cornfield as the light hits in the perfect angle, but that core Forza codebase makes the game a blast to play for anyone. I have my own grips about the subtly insidious nature of the story behind the Horizon festival, (I'm not joking, but I'll get into in a dedicated blog.) but none of that takes away from the blind fun of a dedicated racing game.

Earlier I said how I like racing "Whenever I got the chance". Well, that isn't just in reference to my available play-time but to indicate that I will race whenever the game offers it. Many open world games have tried their hands at providing racing mini games, even when their driving mechanics may not be as solid as dedicated efforts. Grand Theft Auto has displayed some degree of racing in it, for years, ever since the original. (Although in that game you were racing against a time limit.) San Andreas was the first game to turn this into a fleshed out mode, however, even instituting a mini tournament in one city.

Other open world games have jumped into the mix since then. Sleeping Dogs has some great driving mechanics that work towards a street racing mini game for players to do when they're bored of slamming Triad members into fish tanks, Far Cry 3 and 4 (and probably 5, I haven't played it.) have some clock racing minigames that force you to dash around the map under some thinly veiled pretense of story; and Watch Dogs 2 manages to spice things up with go kart racing (Because apparently that's a thing in San Fransisco) and yatch racing, which certainly takes some patience to get to grips with.

Wait a minute, did I just mention go-karts? Well there is only one logical place to go from here, and that's to the world of Nintendo for their storied competitive racing game Mario Kart. Since 1992 Mario and his friends have been at the forefront of online racing games through their unique blend of fun imaginative map design and power-up based gameplay that has the potential to shift the balance of any race. Fans come back to this series time and time again for it's accessibility and timeless Mario style that is forever immune to the rest of the industry's death march towards fidelity.

And now I get to pull my wild card. On behalf of those wackier racing games that I mentioned earlier, as well as to pull a gaming deep cut, I direct you to one of my favourite PS1 games from back in the day; Micro Maniacs. In this game you played as one of several distinct racers (who, in hindsight, look somewhat horrific) that appear to be pintsized test tube monstrosities cooked up in some evil genius' lab. (I never followed the story.) In the vein of that premise that I may or may not have made up, the player is then tasked with racing across little 'mouse maze'-esque courses that have been built over table tops and work surfaces. This means that you'll spend your time dodging pencils and erasers as you hoard boasters and fire powerups to get ahead. My favourite element of all this, however, is the fact that the racers come without vehicles, the manics must run with their little spindly legs and a satisfying momentum mechanic to win out at the end of the day.

Racing games are one of those staples of gaming that's been around forever, and when you look at the games that the genre has produced, you can see why. Unlike some other genres' (Sport) racing games have never started to relent on quality and the pursuit of improvement. Although, that has meant that we have fewer wacky titles, (No more Split/Second or Burnout) it does mean that racing game fans are rarely without a high quality effort to sink their teeth into. I may not be the die hard racing fan that some others are, but I remain interested enough to follow with curiosity and a little bit of passion. Now, if you excuse me, I've just noticed that Red Dead Online has horse racing...

The Rise of the undead

Braaains!

Zombies. Few pop culture tropes have as ardent staying power as the rotting undead. Stories of reanimation go as far back as Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and Richard Matheson's I am legend; heck, you could even argue there is a bit in Homer's Odyssey, depending on how broad your criteria is. However, is isn't until 1930's Hollywood where storytellers really became obsessed with the concept. There were a spate of earlier voodoo related films such as; 'White Zombie', 'I walked with a zombie' and 'Voodoo island'. After that, we started to see the tradition zombies of today; not those under the influence of unclear magics, but those who were once the recently deceased. I'd imagine most are familiar with these movies; George A. Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead',  'Dawn of the Dead' and 'Day of the Dead'.

Modern video game's tend to mirror that second incarnation of zombies, revelling in the creatively grotesque monstrosities that can be produced thanks to the magic of animation. And due to the absolute craze that zombies have become, and somehow remain to be, in pop culture, we have many examples to choose from when we decide to look at their fiction representations. I find zombies to be a fascinating concept given how they've managed to grow past their film horror roots into a trope that seems capable of proliferating into any genre. Films and TV may still like keeping them around for simple 'boo' moments, but video games have gone above and beyond in taking the concept as far as it will go, stretching the zombie mythos from high fantasy to the apocalyptic far future and even to space. I intend to cover as many of these permutations as possible as we dive head first into the topic today.

First lets start with the classic. Dead Rising owes a lot of it's concept to the classic Romero movie 'Dawn of the Dead', so much so that the MKR Group ltd. tried to sue them for copyright infringement. And when you compare the two stories, it is easy to see why they thought they had a case. Dead Rising takes place in the small fictional American town of Willamette in Colorado, after an outbreak of the zombie flu hits. You play as journalist Frank West (He's covered wars!) as his helicopter pilot drops him off on top of the town's jewel: The Willamette mall. What follows is a three day adventure wherein the player is tasked with either unravelling the secret behind the zombie plague or playing dress up in all the stores and figuring out the silliest way to murder a corpse. Dead Rising is silly, arcadey fun that sends up to 'Dawn to the Dead' but is devoid of all the overt social-political commentary of the Romero films. (Which, incidentally, is the reason that Capcom won the lawsuit.)

Dead Rising zombies are your a-typical Romero-esque zombies. Greyish skin, a little bit of blood on the clothes and glowing eye at night. (Okay, Capcom may have pioneered that last one.) For these games, the zombie focus was less on the fidelity of the individual model and more the amount of models that could fit on screen without the console exploding. The first game had a limit of approximately 800 (That's on Xbox of course, the Wii version that I played was certainly a lot less) and Dead Rising 2 could, reportedly, display up to 6000. By the time of Dead Rising 4, the game could display so many zombies that it stopped being an impressive marketing gimmick so they don't even brag about it anymore. The reason that Capcom were able to improve on the tech behind producing zombies and touch up their fidelity a bit along the way, is because they completely neglected to work on the AI. They completely leaned on the fact that zombies are often portrayed as dumb in order to worm out of complicated AI development. Consequently, you'll often find the fourth game to be just a challenging as the first. (Or less so considering how much more capable the main character has become since then.) "Don't hate the player" as the expression goes.

Some properties envision zombies in only the loosest form, adapting the concept but none of iconic visuals of past interpretations. In these instances we got to see some genuinely imaginative ideas. Although, it is true that Viceral's Dead Space does hold more in common with 'Alien' then your typical zombie flick. Dead Space takes place in the year 2508 aboard a planet-cracker vessel called the USG Ishimura; once manned by nearly 1500 staff, now completely crew-less. You are put in the shoes of engineer Issac Clarke as he works to perform general maintenance around the ship whilst trying to track down his girlfriend somewhere on the ship. Oh, did I mention that the whole place is infested with terrifying undead nightmare fuel? That's happening too.

Dead Space's undead monsters, known as Necromorphs, are a disturbing amalgam of human bodies twisted with rapid alien genetic engineering to create something as ugly as it is deadly. Head's pop, extra limbs grow and fairly normal office staff become hulking death monsters with extra claws sticking out of their shoulder blades. They make for a very striking visual which very much fits in line with Dead Space's atmosphere as primarily a horror game. Viceral used every trick in the book to set the mood for space horror, creepy sound ques, lighting tricks, red herring noises and later down the line they start delving into psychological horror too. As players progress deeper into madness they start seeing even more gruesome monsters until they end up face to face with one so big that I honestly wonder how we didn't see it hanging off the ship when we came in to dock. I would argue that it is the strength of the core Necromorph design, alongside the expertly placed atmosphere, that made Dead Space the horror titan that is was before EA shut down Viceral. Since then nothing has come close in terms of creeping space horror save for 'Alien: Isolation' itself.

Sometimes we get a unique look into how supernatural entities are portrayed in other cultures, just look the horror-themed DLC for Sleeping Dogs; Nightmare in Northpoint. Okay, Horror-themed is perhaps a bit too strong, more like Halloween-themed; as a lot of the aesthetic focuses on the cheesier aspects of horror.As one would expect from the stereotypical action movie turned video game called Sleeping Dogs. In Nightmare in Northpoint, the protagonist Wei Shen is thrust into supernatural action after an the undead villian: Smiley Cat, raises Chinese zombies from the dead and kidnaps his girlfriend that he only knows as 'Not Ping'. (Look, Sleeping Dogs is a weird game, okay. I can't make it make sense.) Wei Shen then drinks some mystical tea or something and then becomes the ultimate undead-sealing hero who must save the world.


The real star of this DLC was not it's silly premise but rather United Front Games' dedication to bringing their Chinese zombies to life. The Jiang Shi or "Stiff Corpse", look pretty distinct from any other video game zombies given the fact that they walk around dressed like traditional Manchurian officials with their long robes and cone hats. Their movement is even noteworthy, the Jiang Shi have to conduct a strange hopping motion in order to move because of their rigor-mortis; a hopping accompanied with a little ringing noise as though they have bells attached to their head. Needless to say, these are not zombies as you or I know them. Wei Shen doesn't even need to decapitate them in order to end them either, he merely needs to place an amulet on their head and watch them dissolve. This portrayal of Jiang Shi lends heavily from Hong Kong cinema as elements of the main game did, honoring the games' setting whilst delivering something wholly unique to their gaming audience. They may not have been particularly scary but they were an interesting bunch.

Now we move back to more traditional zombies with Techland's zombies-in-paradise simulator Dead Island. In this game, players are put in shoes of one of four guests to the fictional island resort of Banoi. There players are met with everything they would expect from a luxury resort; sun, Palm tress, expensive hotel rooms and flesh eating monsters. As you have likely assumed, one day a zombie virus breaks out and absolutely decimates the local populace. (Rather quickly, I might add. The entire island went from living to undead over the space of one night.) Players are then tasked with going on a co-op RPG-light adventure from the beaches to the heart of the jungle in order to get a helicopter ride out of there. No saving the world from the zombie outbreak in this game, just pure self preservation. (Finally, video game protagonists I can relate to!)

Techland had a task ahead of themselves when it came to designing their zombies. Whereas Dead Rising and other games had their players take on a third person perspective, Techland intended for Dead Island to be entirely first person. This meant that the Zombie models had to look incredibly good up-close. A lot of care and work went into making the resort zombies look like folk recent killed by a viral outbreak. You see zombies sporting boils and rashes as well as blood and cuts. Then there are the special variants that all appeal to different styles of zombies. There are the big hulking ram that are dressed in straight jackets, the gross wrestlers who have half their intestines hanging out and the forearm-less butchers who look like something out of silent hill. Where Dead Island was lacking in character and charm they made up for in zombie diversity.

Not all zombie games focus on the act of decimating zombies, just look at Undead labs' State of Decay. Besides having one of the more clever names in the zombie genre, Undead Labs sought to differentiate themselves from the competition by focusing on the act of surviving a zombie filled world rather then fixing or escaping it. Players find themselves dumped into a random fictional town somewhere in middle America in the shoes of randomly generated survivors. They are tasked with founding a community and persisting as long as possible with them even as resources grow increasingly scarce and the looming threat of the zombies grows. In the sequel, players even have to start worrying about the threat of opportunistic survivors and disease in the form of 'blood plague'. State of Decay ultimately provides management style gameplay in a post-apocalyptic zombie setting. A surprisingly unprecedented offering.

Despite not being the central focus, Undead Labs didn't skimp when it came to envisioning their zombies either. These zombies have a much more feral look and movement to them than zombie fans might be used to. They walk around all hunched over and tear into their food like animals as they prowl around looking for fresh meat. Despite that, most of them still stick to zombie tradition of moving at a walking pace or something resembling it. A few occasionally break the ranks and go into a sprint, but they usually end up falling flat on their face a few seconds later, so they end up their own worst enemies. When the blood plague comes into the equation we start to see the virus-like aesthetic take hold of the zombies. Plague zombies are usually covered in red and sport bubbling pustules. (Lovely.) They may not be the most graphically intense zombies in gaming, but their design conveys the 'de-evolution' approach appropriately enough.

Now let me focus on a game who's zombies started out as an Easter egg and are now an expected feature for every release. I am of course referring to Treyarch's Call of Duty: Zombies. Few expected Call of Duty: World at War, a game that was ostensibly about portraying the 1942 battles in the pacific, to feature a mode dedicated to Nazi Zombies, but they ate it up all the same. In said mode, players were put in the shoes of four oddballs as they fortified a position against waves of undead Nazi soldiers. As they killed zombies and built barriers, they amassed points which were then used to expand the play area, improve their arsenal and utilize traps as they tried to hold off against the endless, relentless onslaught of the undead. As the games went on the scenarios grew more ridiculous and surreal (Even having one game where the player fought a zombified George A. Romero as Sarah Michelle Gellar and Danny Trejo.) At some point, the mini games introduced a whole storyline  surrounding a little girl called Samantha Maxis, that was a trip. Now they've gone into ancient roman zombies and undead on the Titanic. (Something tells me that the Zombie mode is Treyarch's only opportunity to be imaginative.)

The Call of Duty: Zombies mode has persisted for eleven years now, but the zombies themselves haven't changed much beside the clothes they wear. Zombies have grey skin, yellow eyes and bruises and scratches everywhere. They do boast a lot more fidelity than Dead Risings offering but this is as much out of necessity as pride, because Call of Duty is a first-person franchise. The inspiration of classic Hollywood zombies also shines through in the slow, dragging way that they move; they prefer to overwhelm the player through shear numbers rather then aggressive force. These were also some of the first game interpretations to demonstrate characteristic zombie persistence, if you blew off a Walker's legs they would continue to pursue you by crawling across the ground.

At some point it became apparent that there was little innovation in the traditional zombie design. Despite the freedom of animation, most zombies stuck to the formula of discoloured skin and glowing eyes. It wouldn't be until Techland came back to zombies with Dying Light, that we got to see traditional zombies revolutionized. Dying Light introduced players to an unnamed city in a unnamed country. (implied to be Turkey.) Their player's had the opportunity to the see the effects of total societal collapse in new, middle eastern setting. With the much more cramped and vertical setting, came a robust free running system which made navigation some much more fun. Now saving the world from widespread zombie contagion could be conducted with parkour style.

But it is in the design of Dying Light's Zombies that Techland really impressed the masses. As though directly improved from Dead Island's models (Which they likely were.) Zombies had the boils from the previous game but also actual structural damage to the face and body, as though these bodies once belonged to people who suffered a seriously brutal death. Then there were the Volatile variant of zombie. These nocturnal monstrosities appeared at night sporting the same split face syndrome that Blade 2's vampires featured. This grotesque mutilation really highlights some of the body horror that one expects from the horror genre.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of video game zombies but it does cover so of the most notable ones through the evolution of the genre. Some gamers out there might have spotted a few notable omissions and to that I say, rest assured, I fully intend to finish the list in my next blog. I just felt that one of the games in particular deserves a full day's worth of dedication and focus. So until tomorrow when we dive into one of the biggest Zombie franchises of all time, I hope you're as ready as I am.