Greg Wild

It was always going to happen. DRM's the hot topic in the world of PC gaming these days, and sooner or later I was going to try my hand at tackling it. Long story short, my opinion is the same as any right minded PC gamer. It's doing far more harm than good, doing nothing more than to affect the legitimate consumer and certainly not stem piracy. 

The first and most damning aspect - it does. Not. Work. Spore was pirately more than any other game I can think of - somewhere in the region of half a million people downloaded it, despite having measures to supposedly stop it from happening. A lot of those downloads were in protest of the DRM measures. So in effect, it has had the opposite result. I guess the only thing we can take heart in knowing is that the shareholders will very most likely be connecting the dots when what could be the biggest thing outside of World of Warcraft doesn't bring results... all because of DRM. Like the consumer, I guess we can only hope they vote with their wallets.

Second. It's cliched to hell, but you simply cannot stress it enough. It only affects the legitimate consumer. So honestly. EA, Ubisoft. Tell us. What's the point? What is the point when it does not work, and it drives away sales?

Lets turn to the devil themselves, EA's John Riccitiello:

"We're still working out the kinks. We implemented a form of DRM and it's something that 99.8 percent of users wouldn't notice. But for the other .2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it."

Kinks? The whole damn concept is one black-hole of a kink. And it's drawing PC gaming into its event horizon. 99.8% who don't notice? I'm sure they'll notice when their title fails to install in a few years time - right when the company will likely be loosing interest in supporting said title. My favourite bit though is "a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it". A cabal?! So we're somehow now an occult body plotting PC gaming's downfall or something? Actually conciously considering where we invest our money; being conscientious consumers apparently makes us some kind of feverant zealots? Thanks Johnny. I hope you're enjoying the hundreds of pounds I've probably given you over the years.

Next, he adds, "I personally don't like DRM. It interrupts the user experience. We would like to get around that. But there is this problem called piracy out there." I simply do not understand the man if he acknowledges it has problems. EA is made up of some very smart business people. They basically define the model for commercial gaming enterprise. But somewhere a long the line, their think tanks have failed them miserably here. It's really quite pathetic.

Thus, I reach the most important part of my rant. DRM and the crusade against the pirate boogie man is going to drammatically harm the industry if it keeps up. I'm not going to deny it: The industry is probably driven more by sales than any other mainstream media form. The only way they make money is by shifting copies. Again, our friends the shareholders will be thinking with their wallets here. Why on earth are they going to invest in an industry where its executives will blindly drive away sales with intrusive DRM?

And it's not just the publishers. Once respected figureheads of PC gaming - Cliffy B of Epic and Peter Molyneux and the like are equally to blame. By abandoning the PC as a platform simply based on the arguement that piracy is "rampant" in the PC market, their doom and gloom is likely to cause an exodus to the consoles. And you know the worse thing? That's going to damage the quality of gaming too. I hate to generalise and all... but honestly, console games, especially FPS's are becoming criminally generic. There should be laws against the development of "Halo-killers".

In summary of the bad then:

1) It doesn't work!
2) The consumer gets a bad deal...
3) While the pirate enjoys it DRM free. And free. And before us consumers.
4) The doom and gloom of developers could have more serious ramifications for the industry than piracy itself.
5) It apparently makes me some kind of Cabalist.

This is however, not to say that it's all bad. In fact, I would say quite the opposite. At least with Cliffy B content to keep his hulking cardboard cutout heroes on the 360, we might actually see the good developers shining through.

Secondly, there are other avenues of light. Steam is fast becoming my new love affair. It's got a perfect balance between price, community features, excellent download rates... and it does help stem piracy, and certainly eliminates zero day piracy, which is by and large the most damaging form of it. Noticably may I add, the 360 version of Fallout 3 couldn't make that same claim, while the PC version is joyously DRM free and still well away from pirate bay.

Third, the indie PC games industry is making some huge strides these days - Hinterlands, Multiwinia, World of Goo are triple AAA titles in every respect. We don't need EA or Ubisoft for this kind of excellence.

Lastly, I can't help but find it ironic that low or superior DRM titles such as those by Stardock and Valve are better supported, and that support is not something the pirate can easily attain either. So we're being rewarded for paying, and we get a better deal on the whole aswell.

Anyway. I'm done rambling for now.

My opponent stands opposite me in a corridor of rusting cargo containers, we're both frantically reloading for the next volley. He's ahead of me by a split second and looses the first shot. As the barrel of his gun flashes, hot lead flies towards me, I dive to the right at the last moment. In slow motion precision, I make my move. A single shot to the head, and it's over. Crimson splashes in contrast to the bright white snow, the hired goon's corpse twists in agony to the floor. Such are the moments of ballistic tension that Max Payne pulls off better than any game to date.

So why a retrospective, and why now? Well, first up, it's on Steam at criminally low prices, and I managed to score it and its sequel for £6.40 during one of Steam's excellent bargain weekends. Secondly, the Mark Wahlberg starring film based on the license is set to hit cinemas later this month, and finally, news of a Rockstar produced sequel in the works appears to be picking up.

Released in 2001 after a somewhat protracted development period, Max Payne told the story of its titular protagonist; from the death of his wife at the hands of designer drug pumped junkies to the moment he finally takes the finger off the trigger, an obscenely high body count of mobsters and sinister corporate power players dead in his wake. Film noir and graphic novel sensibilities, laden with Max's relentless narration of metaphor barrage drive the story, while slow motion gun-fu creates some of the most spectacular shoot-outs gracing gaming history. It was a grim, angst and death ridden tale of blood, betrayal and bullets. All to the setting of New York's worst snow storm in history.

Max Payne's story is perhaps unparalleled in gaming. The crucial plot points are unveiled through graphic novel style slides; oozing with Max's biting sardonic wit. Excellently, you can review the story so far at any time by hitting F1, which is essential given the twists and turns in the plot. Max's crusade against those responsible for his wife's murder is a domino trail of death, destruction and desperation, each shot fired bringing Max closer to the truth, a new twist and adversary rearing themselves just as Max works his way up the syndicate. It's a genuinely tragic tale. Max is constantly haunted by his loved one's deaths; survivors guilt from this and the ever growing body count eating away at his sanity. Max is supported by a cast of superbly written characters; Lupino for example, a mob boss gone mad on power and drugs turns his gothic mess of a club into an occult den. The trail of letters, phone calls and dialogue leading up to Max's encounters with the characters builds them up in a way which I think has only been matched by Bioshock's audiotape expose'.

 

 

The dialogue is deliciously self aware: The dream sequences, though suffering from serious deficits in the level design department, contain one of my favourite pieces of dialogue in any game ever: Max realising first he's trapped in a graphic novel. Second that he's in a video game. Throughout – hoods talking about how cool bullet time would be for example, or Max thanking you for taking out the speaker spewing cheesy music in a lift - such touches are masterful strokes of humour, and demonstrate critical awareness of its own art that lift it above the tired machismo dominating lesser games dialogue. Simply put, Max Payne's narrative depth and intricacy alone quite rightly raises it to the heights of gaming aristocracy.

 

Max's brief critical evaluation of the game mechanics don't quite do it justice, yet sums them up perfectly. Max spends a lot of time shooting, diving and causing spectacular explosions, in glorious slow motion, yet repetitive this may be, it never seems to get old. Diving round the corner, duel Ingrams blazing is only matched in gaming coolness by landing an M79 round smack in the middle of a bunch of suits, limbs flailing. In slow motion. Environmental damage, despite being pre-Havok is similarly entertaining. Bullets that don't connect with hoods bleed plaster from walls or shatter glass. And at the end of a fight, you can't but help to revel in the field of death you've caused. You'll reduce Noir York's snow white back alleys to a mess of corpses and casings; early on, a bank becomes strewn with battle scars and blood.
 

The control mechanics feel superb, they feel right. I don't think there's a third person shooter out there that manages to quite strike such a chord. I still feel to this day that no other third person shooter can best Max Payne in the perfect balance of kinetic finesse and total control. Max is right; you really do control his every step.
 

There are some minor detractions – some dodgy level design can infuriate for example. Some of the locations do feel somewhat forced; a maze of locked doors haunts some levels, and you do get the sense that the developers tried to squeeze as many corridors as they could out of some locations, leading some bafflingly unorthodox ways of getting around them. What do you mean the lift is out of order? They all seem to be. Why can't I just take the fire exit? Enemy placement can infuriate, and you're often given no warning as to when you're going to come across gun toting hoodlums – and thanks to Max's relative fragility, you do find yourself coming to rely on endless quick saving a little too often. It's no chore to look past these issues when there's so much brilliance to Max Payne however. You just can't give up on it when the narrative is this good, the set pieces so precisely balanced and brilliant.

Max Payne nearly 7 years on is still a game any true gamer simply must have played at least once. It's a benchmark in story telling, in games as art. Developers could certainly do a lot worse than to take cues from Max Payne's strong sense of aesthetic flair, story telling and explosive action. If you didn't play them before, they'll prove as playable as any modern title. If you did, now is the perfect time to revisit them.

I'll bring the second half of my Max Payne retrospective soon enough, as I'm now playing through the sequel. I'll also spend some time looking to the future of the series with Rockstar, and what they need to get right in my opinion.

 

 

  Will Wright is possibly the closest gaming can get to a god. Other's have come close, but normally let themselves down at one point or another. Black and White 2 comes to mind. Peter Molyneux, you muppet. Will Wright has never really had this kind of failure; he's kept that aura of brilliance and mystique that keeps them up there between Buddha and Jesus. And like and kind of prophet or deity, he has those who perhaps don't quite see the products of his vision in the way he does. Only some will like the Sims, but no-one will deny its impact for example. Thus, Spore has for its protracted development been a different game for anyone who has read previews or watched videos of its pregnancy. The ultimate result of this, is that upon its release, a lot of people are going to be disappointed. And this does in no way affect what is a fundamentally innovative and engaging game.

 

    Depending on what you were expecting from the game, each stage - or maybe all – will come off as being banally simplistic or utterly brilliant. The first, the Cell stage plays out like Pac Man with spikes in primordial soup. Its brilliance lies in its fluidity. In order to advance, it's kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. This is survival at its most basic; apt for the stage of evolution it represents. On the downside, there is a limited number of combinations – but then again, how many variations on it can you really get when you're dealing with such tiny, simplistic organisms? It's a stylised, simple, streamlined introduction to the game. Great so far.

 

    The next stage, the Creature stage was a disappointment for me. I was personally hoping for a more detailed ecosystem – less like a set of cat-walks for peoples creations; however excellent some of them are. For me, the problem in this stage was not a fundamental lack of complexity, since I think any huge amount more of controls or tasks would have been overkill for a game with such an open target audience, but it lacks depth. It would have been excellent to see flocks of peoples herbivores interacting with one another, with carnivores skulking the plains. Instead the creatures for the most part simply sit at their nests, waiting for me to sing to them or slap them in the face till they fall over. Over and over and over. The interface is way too much like every other game too – it felt hard trying to express a creature when its personality comes down to a choice of buttons. I'm not going to defend this stage as being part of Wills vision, I truly did think it was awful. It – or rather the nature of the rest of the game – does somewhat redeem itself by show casing some genuinely brilliant player created creatures in game. Particularly the puppet master. Easily my favourite creature so far.

 

    Okay. Next. The Tribal stage. A marked improvement, and for me, it's a satisfying departure from the overly interface ridden creature stage. Here your tribe's personality is governed by actions rather than tool bars, and it feels on the whole a lot more natural. Watching your tribe of frogs holding other frogs attempt to take down a giant beer tankard is infinitely amusing too. It's also genuinely interesting how your creature's attributes govern the way your creatures go about their tasks. You gave them wings? They'll glide about. Stealth masters? They'll manoeuvre themselves into position carefully before striking or raiding the enemy. Where before the creature stage manifested its procedural generation features in fairly basic terms, quite simply dictating what weapons or social tools a creature had, the tribal stage takes the creature and its attributes, and gives it personality. Brilliant.

 

    Once again however, the Civilisation stage is a bit of a mixed bag. All the developments in the previous stage is reduced to simply dictating which superpower you are assigned on the get go, and the type of “attack power” the units of your first are assigned. Imagine a world where the whole of human development produced nothing more significant than a single invention by which the whole of civilisation is determined. That's essentially what you're given. On the other hand, you are given chance to define your creations in new ways of expression. The building and unit tools, like the creature tools, offer immense variety. Using these tools you make up for the lack of depth of involving game mechanics, by simply creating your own societies. I'm particularly proud of my aforementioned Tall Frog race. Between the various editors, I've created a society where by the rich are literally carried by the poor. The poverty stricken class are mostly paid by the rich to carry them about. As a consequence the rich have evolved differently; their legs having withered and become incapable of carrying them. Their buildings are similar; the administrative centre being “Tall Street”. Their houses? High rise blocks of flats where the rich live in penthouses, the poor in squalor below. Now tell me a game where you have the kind of power to let your imagination fly?

 

    Finally, we reach the Space stage. I've complained throughout till now that the game tends to throw out all your development in the previous stage in introducing the new. The space stage is no exception. But it simply does not matter. The universe is vast. Skipping from planet to planet, collecting equipment, you unlock the potential to let your imagination run wild in creating designer societies and planets. There's restrictions – planets have to be terra-formed in order to attain the correct “terrascore” to support increasingly higher numbers of life forms, but once you get the hang of this, it becomes a joy in itself. There are balancing issues; and the empires you build, thanks to some disturbingly high numbers of attacks (I've since downloaded mods to lessen this), it can be a pain to administer, and just enjoying the sandbox style features can be hard as a result. The level of depth in this stage entirely makes up for it though. Creating an empire in one game allows you to visit them in another – maybe even reduce them into the ground if you can bring yourself to destroy your children..

 

    What I would say of Spore, is that it is not for the unimaginative. I would say that those looking for a game with complexity and depth all the way through will simply not find it if they don't know how to fully appreciate the tools at your disposal with regards the editors and various community functions – and I'm sure many of those I've heard being critical at it are those who never actually bought it, thus lacking these features. Many will also find some of the stages as I did, somewhat lacking. But honestly, you simply cannot appreciate the game if you do not appreciate what the game's vision really is: To give the player the tools to create their own societies from the Cell to Space. If you can, you will love it, despite some distractingly disappointing stages or balance issues.
 

Score: 89%