Portal 2 vs. Stacking or The Evolution of Puzzle Games

I recently completed two fantastic games.  Both are crowning achievements for their respective developers.  Both feature fantastic writing and unique visual aesthetics.  Both use what could be generically defined as "puzzles" as their gameplay challenges.  Still, these are two vastly different games.

Certainly Portal 2 is the more popular of the two by leaps and bounds.  As with any Valve release, buzz was palpable.  It also has the benefit of using possibly the most impressive and mind-bending piece of in-game equipment around - the portal gun.

The crux of Stacking's gameplay is nothing to scoff at though, as entering other characters' bodies has never been handled by a design idea that was this simple, or this ingenious, before.  And there's always going to be a reasonable amount of interest in whatever Tim Schafer is working on.

Portal 2 has been getting universal praise for being an improvement over its predecessor in every aspect except, of course, originality.  Most gaming publications have deemed it the best game released this year.  I would go so far as to say that it's the best game Valve has released, combining the single-player mastery that made the Half-Life series so polished and the teamwork expertise that keeps people playing the Team Fortress and Left 4 Dead series.

Stacking has gotten good reviews as well, but not to the same extent.  For all its originality and charm, some still take issue with paying fifteen dollars for a game that can be completed in three hours.  But I argue that in Stacking, a puzzle game, that short length may also be one of its greatest strengths.

The separation between these developers' approaches is clear.  Double Fine likes working on widely different projects; the results have been mixed.   In addition to Stacking, I liked Double Fine's Psychonauts, but other releases haven't been as relevant to me.  Valve are perfectionists, not innovators.  Every major Valve release since Half-Life 2 has used the same engine.  The reason Portal was so well-recieved is because it offered something truly new, which was especially impressive considering the developer it came from.  Valve had an innovative idea, but wouldn't invest in it until it proved itself successful - thus Portal 2 is a "real game" rather than a two hour experiment with new technology.  But what does this mean for the gamer, one like me who may play these games at the same time?

Portal 2 has its foundations laid in gameplay that goes all the way back to the first Prince of Persia (and probably further) - you enter a room, examine the way it hinders your progress, and attempt to maneuver through.  There is one solution and you make attempts until you discover that solution.  Portal 2 is the pinnacle of this kind of puzzle game design, and as such the player is often cursing themselves for not realizing the way through a room that, in hindsight, seems obvious.  Well, there's something interesting.  The player reaction evoked from spending too much time on one particular puzzle is one of self-condemnation.  I muttered the phrase, "Wow, I'm dumb" more times than I'd care to admit to while playing Portal 2.  No matter how much difficulty a player might have, the developer never gets the blame.  Valve avoids too much player frustration by stripping the rooms down to little more than what is necessary to complete them.  This often translates into a player reaction equivalent to a lolwut.  How should one progress a stage that doesn't have a floor?  How is one to avoid perfectly placed turrets?  There's always a way, but these things take time.  That's the crucial aspect here, time.  Some players have reported seemingly fake completion times for Portal 2, while I'm sure some are still working on it.  I'm sure that if I mentally muscled my way through all of Portal and Portal: Still Alive without any help, I would have been perfectly equipped to complete Portal 2 in five or six hours.  On the other hand, I'm suggesting a friend play the first Portal before attempting this game or its co-op component.  With less emphasis on quick shooting or precise jumping, success in Portal 2 depends almost wholly on one's thought process being in line with the level designers'.  This is classic puzzle design, but games like this only succeed when they're as interesting as Portal 2 is, and have a developer behind them as good as Valve is.

Stacking presents things differently.  The mindset here is that the developer provides a world with a lot to see and do, and the player decides how much of this world to partake in, with very little participation absolutely necessary for completion.  Scott Justner wrote an excellent article on Stacking's design and its effects for Popmatters that points out the strength of this approach.  Stacking is a game where confusion and frustration have been pre-emptively eliminated by requiring only one of several solutions for each of the games challenges, as well as implementing a hint system that encourages making a couple guided attempts before giving in and getting told the solution to a puzzle.  My experience with Stacking was similar to my experience with Braid.  I completed Stacking over the course of a handful of play sessions.  Some days I felt like exploring and messing around with stuff, others I just wanted to progress the narrative.  The end result is that the pacing of the game was always 'right'.  You can't hit a slow spot, and if you want to slow down, you won't run out of stuff to do.

The difference in experience between these two games was pretty drastic for me.  Portal 2's level design is great, but there were a series of rooms that just didn't click with me.  I think it makes perfect sense that these rooms involved the new gels that serve as the biggest change in the gameplay outside the inclusion of the co-op mode.  I had a lot of practice with how the portals of the Portal series work.  These gels were new though, and accordingly frustrating when I first had to use them for anything past the simplest of puzzles.  By the time I got to the end of the game I understood, for the most part, how to use the gels in conjunction with the portals and had little trouble.  That said, there were still quite a few times I needed youtube guides for levels in Portal 2.  There's a great sense of failure when you admit your own unwillingness to make any further attempts at something in a game, and much of my Portal 2 experience was dowsed in that sense of failure.  I didn't have to consult any outside help for completing Stacking, and, even better, was able to complete all sorts of extra-curriculars without any frustration.

These differences reflect the evolution of the industry through the lens of the puzzle game.  Games used to be about repeated attempts, deductive reasoning, and mastery.  The direction we're moving in is toward a fluid experience, user-determined solutions, and completion.  This new direction leads to player having less negative experiences while playing a game, making them more likely to purchase the now-standard DLC.

The reasoning behind the reception for each of these games makes sense.  Portal 2 is one of the best things to come out of the tried-and-true puzzle game paradigm.  Stacking is far less about polished or perfect design as it is about presenting that design in a more player-friendly fashion.  Despite their flaws, they're both excellent.  Since games are separated between disc-based releases and downloadable games for awards, I would say that these two titles earn the top spot in their respective categories.  The possibility that these games could get knocked from their top spots is largely irrelevant - gaming's infamous summer slump is coming, and these are certainly the most advisable choices for filling that time.  Unless, you know, you wanted to read, or something...

Doing DLC Right

I'm a little late to the Stacking party, but it seems like my slacker attitude is going to pay off.  I'm already at 33% completion after a few relatively short gameplay sessions, but the DLC, The Lost Hobo King is waiting for me.  Stacking is an odd case in that I'm genuinely excited to dive into the DLC immediately after finishing the game.  I usually consider Game of the Year editions if they're available, but often I end up in one-and-done situations.  I'll finish the game with no desire to try any of the extras, or I attempt to play extra content, only to stop out of boredom or indifference.  More Challenges in Arkham Asylum?  Adding co-op modes to the competitive arenas of Uncharted 2 or Battlefield: Bad Company 2?  Extra characters whose locations and interactions have a clearly 'tacked-on' feel in Mass Effect 2?  I'll pass on all of them.  The problem with all of these examples is that they use the mechanics of the game to go about content that it was not originally designed for.

The original set of Challenges in Arkham Asylum is in place mostly for the presence of a competitive multiplayer experience by way of leader boards.  They also served as a place to stick the PS3 exclusive Joker playing.  Modes like this have worked for some games (I completed all of the arena challenges in God of War 3) but for the most part they're bound to be an inferior addition in place simply to bolster the hour count for a game.  Arkham Asylum wasn't about the combat.  It was a complete package.  Because this is the case, any successful extra content would have to take advantage of every aspect of the original adventure to be successful.

The rise of online co-op DLC is pretty disheartening.  There's a big difference between the Zombies maps that Treyarch includes in its Call of Duty games and the co-op modes of Uncharted 2 or Bad Company 2.  Zombies has maps and gameplay mechanics specifically designed for the mode itself, and even though I don't personally care for the mode, I know good design when I see it.  Meanwhile, Uncharted and Battlefield take the gameplay from their single player mode, make it harder to compensate for player count, and offer it up as something worth paying for.

Mass Effect 2's DLC wasn't too far off track; you use the all of the gameplay mechanics of the original game, and the new characters and quests are on planets that were in the original game.  The problem stems from the lack of depth when compared with the original game.  Zaeed and Kasumi are interesting both in aesthetics and personality, but the lack of in-depth dialogue with said characters interferes greatly with the immersion the Mass Effect universe offers.  If new characters are added to Mass Effect 3 after the release, I hope they get the same treatment that the original cast gets.

I'm currently only partaking in one DLC experience and it's going really well.  Borderlands takes place in a setting that's initially intriguing, but quickly deteriorates.  The first of the DLC's for Borderlands solves this problem by giving us a setting to explore that's a stark contrast to the vast deserts and ghost towns of the original journey.  Gearbox knew what they did right (the mmo-style gameplay and pacing) and offered more of it in a new setting.  I have hopes that the Borderlands DLC's will all be better than the original game - Gearbox has taken they're gameplay model, changed nothing, and simply allowed the player to exist in areas with more and stronger enemies with better loot at the end of the corpse trail.

This is what excites me about the Stacking DLC - more of the same.  If done wrong, this method is viewed as lazy, boring, a rip off, etc.  But Stacking has something going for it that the aforementioned games are missing, genuine charm and originality.  When a world is unique, you want to explore it further; when characters are funny, you'll talk to everyone.  Usually searching aimlessly for an item (or in the case of Stacking, more dolls) upsets me.  "I'm already wasting time playing this game.  I don't want to be wasting time inside the game too."  Its an old standby for me, but in Stacking, I've abandoned the complaint.  In Stacking, you're constantly rewarded for just wandering around trying stuff out.  They've packed the game with content, but it's not spread over too large an area.  The result is that you're in constant mini-adventures, all of which will at some point give you something to laugh (or at least smile) about.  The appeal of The Lost Hobo King is that the player is playing what's essentially a sequel story.  New worlds, new dolls, and new stories await.  There's nothing 'tacked-on' about it, because it's essentially a whole new game, simply using the same mechanics.  This wouldn't work if players got bored with the world of Stacking by the end of the original story, but as we know, boring isn't what Tim Schafer does.

A Few Thoughts Had While Anticipating Heavy Rain

One of the freshest games to be released this generation is Heavy Rain.  Many say that Heavy Rain is a sort of 'next step' in interactive storytelling.  This is countered by my former roommate.  He gave up on the thing after one or two gameplay sessions.  A seasoned veteran had met his match.  I have no doubt that he could have completed the game, but not without something he hasn't had to deal with in a long time - not knowing what to expect.  The beginning of the game didn't grab him, but that happens all of the time.  Here though, Heavy Rain is at a distinct disadvantage.  If you've played an FPS you can pretty well gauge how the campaign will progress.  How can anyone, even a seasoned gamer, predict how Heavy Rain will progress?

Even though Heavy Rain is seen as a high-water mark of this generation, it too is part of the problem.  Many don't remember Indigo Prophecy, (or Fahrenheit, as it was known outside of North America)  but my brother was an avid fan.  I played much of the game, but didn't finish.  Still, it was a truly unique game.  The gameplay mechanics weren't always the most enjoyable, but they were also new.  There wasn't a game that Indigo Prophecy played like.  It was on its own.  This isn't true of Heavy Rain.  Heavy Rain plays like Indigo Prophecy, albeit a far improved Indigo Prophecy.  Heavy Rain has a lot more going for it, but as soon as I played a demo, I knew it was by the team behind Indigo Prophecy.  The controls aren't actually carried over from Indigo Prophecy, but the feeling is almost identical.  It's based heavily in narrative-progression sequences, the controls are explained to you in-game as you need to use them, and maybe most importantly - being good at other games has almost no bearing on your ability to complete either Indigo Prophecy or Heavy Rain.  Comically they even share the weather elements.

Jeez this Quantic Dream really loves their precipitation. 

Word is that developer Quantic Dream is not going to work on any sequel to Heavy Rain.  This seems appropriate, as they now have an image as visionaries to uphold.  My worry is that the next Quantic Dream game will fall into the same patterns as the two aforementioned games, even though it's said not to be another murder mystery.  Heavy Rain saw financial success despite its seeming lack of mainstream appeal.  The challenge for truly visionary development teams is to continually release products that beat the odds the way Heavy Rain did.

Pokemon: beating a dead Ponyta, err... Blitzle

One of the best examples of classic (stale) Japanese gameplay is Pokemon.

No matter what anyone says, Pokemon Black and White are the same games as Pokemon Red and Blue.  Every Pokemon game is a re-imagining of the past games.  I find this problematic.  Playing a new Pokemon game, for those of us in our late teens and early twenties, is a nostalgia experience.  We know we're not getting anything new.  We just want to see the new Pokemon, catch the cool ones, grind for hours on Pokemon that we deem to be lesser, and wreck the tough trainers at the end of the game.  The only reason that there are any changes is that it's now easy and economically feasible to make them.  Think about how ridiculous it is that there are 'remakes' of Pokemon games.  Fire Red?  Soul Silver?  What you're buying is more up to date gameplay mechanics paired with the classic creatures you love.  I haven't played the Pokemon remakes, but I admit there is some significant, albeit illogical, appeal.  Part of me wants to believe that I'll have an equally memorable experience as when i first played Gold.  There's no chance of this since the 21 year old me has less time to get an Evvee happy enough at night time (and doesn't that sound sexual to the 21 year old me?) to evolve it into an Umbreon.

The most common opinion of Pokemon fans is that Generation I (that's when Pokemon exploded) had the best Pokemon.  Generation II had a lot of great creatures and enough gameplay tweaks to warrant the purchase.  Generations III, IV, and now V all have some decent designs but many are often lacking, and seldom is there ever a new Pokemon that replaces a classic creature in the eyes of long-time fans.  Game Freak Inc. could have kept putting out games with monsters of deteriorating design quality without any complaints - if they kept the gameplay fresh.  The release of Black and White saw an improvement in battle pacing and surprisingly, story line.  I no longer have to turn off battle animations just to get through a fight in a reasonable amount of time.  This is a huge improvement, as one spends about half of their gameplay time in fights with wild Pokemon and trainers, who have hilarious things to say to you both before and after battle.  Team Plasma's "animal rights" approach is probably the most realistic aspect of any Pokemon game ever and made me finally care about the motives of the enemy.  

Complaining about games is pretty widespread among all players.  Sometimes they complain about things that are unreasonable or unchangeable, but my complaints against the Pokemon series are so elementary I feel completely justified in making them.  All of my areas of complaint are intermingling.  I want new controls that take advantage of every button on the DS (and now 3DS); I want better use of both screens; I want menus that are streamlined.  Not being able to flip between sub-menus with the L and R buttons is pretty much unacceptable.  Often there is a completely blank screen when one is in use. Getting on your bike isn't a one button affair.  These are all negative aspects of the game.  It's not that these ruin the experience, but little things add up.  Pokemon fans could be having such a better time if they didn't have to back out of their "Deposit Pokemon" menu before choosing which Pokemon they wanted to take from their "Withdraw Pokemon" menu. 

I've sometimes thought that getting an upgrade to carry 8 Pokemon at a time would be helpful, since there are so many more types of Pokemon than when the series started, but this isn't unforgivable and adds to the challenge significantly.  I'm not so foolish as to really expect leaps and bounds in the graphics department from a Nintendo game, but lets hope the sprites aren't so pixelated on the Pokemon series' 3DS debut.

Despite the way this post probably reads, I really don't like to trash-talk the Pokemon games.  Its probably the game series I've been playing the longest, and there's a chance the total hour count I've put into these games is among the highest of all the games I've played.  Almost everyone I know has a lot of fond memories from this series and I think it's been good for gaming in general.  Problematically, as I've aged, my tastes have changed.  As Pokemon has aged, it's stayed for the most part the same.  The formula works, and I don't foresee major gameplay changes happening in the main series (see unsuccessful Pokemon spin-off games) but sometimes I wonder how much better Pokemon could be if Game Freak Inc. had made the maximum amount of changes with each new release, instead of the minimum.  I'm still playing (and often loving) Pokemon White, but what's a blog without rants?

Name Explanation (and an introduction to the first series of posts)

Other than the obvious reasons, like liking Pavement, or seeing that crookedgames.com is dead, what's the meaning behind this name?  The meaning I want to convey is that gaming, in general, is off-course.  There's a lot of progress being made, but we still have to suffer through 14 iterations of the same gameplay model across multiple series before we get the 15th game that "changes everything."  "Everything" in most cases means one significant change in the controls, a graphical improvement that impacts gameplay, a story element that had remained untapped until then, or something of the like.  The gaming industry mirrors politics – there are liberals like thatgamecompany, who deliver games most of the market isn’t willing to spend money on, and conservatives, accounting for many Japanese game developers that continually deliver similar, albeit satisfactory, gameplay experiences.  Forthcoming are a few posts about specific examples within the industry, and my thoughts on those games.