Videogame History Part 1: Half Life And Counterstrike

This kicks off a new series here called Videogame History, where I'll be replaying and talking about some old videogames, and recounting some old war stories. I've been playing a lot of Counterstrike: Source recently, and it made me a bit sentimental for the original, and all the fun I had with the old Half-Life engine. Getting all misty-eyed, I decided to dust off the first Half-Life and give it another play-through, and recount some Counterstrike memories.

Half-Life

I've been playing the hell out of the original Half-Life. I had it back in the day, but on my pentium 166 (overclocked to 200!), I had to run it in a tiny window. Imagine playing an entire game in somebody's animated gif avatar for a forum or something, and you basically have it. Of course, I've played Half-Life 2 semi-obsessively, and by semi I actually mean ridiculously. I've gone through much of the game switching to noclip mode over and over to check out the surroundings and overall level architecture. If I ever get a pet dog I'm going to name it Robot.

Anyway, while playing the original Half-Life, I had some initial difficulty dealing with the look, having become accustomed to Source and its delicate, understated beauty. As you can guess, I like the Source engine, but I got used to the original Half-Life and its modified Quake engine again pretty quickly. The gameplay still holds up really well. The feel of movement is awesome, except for the horrible time I had trying to grab some ladders, which I believe may have been a change to the engine wrought later on, perhaps for the multiplayer part or something. Overall though, the shooting, running, and jumping are all fun. There is also a decent degree of physics implemented fairly well.

The game takes you through some interesting situations. Although the massive, chunky architecture, due to lack of polygons, unsophisticated textures, and pixellated static backdrop images make it a bit of a harder sell than modern games, the game still does a great job of immersing you in the locations, and the story which unfolds through non-compulsory character speech and the occasional scripted event is actually really awesome. Being Gordon Freeman kicks ass. Inexplicably, at one point in the game I found myself all of a sudden thinking the phrase "it resembles nothing more than a crystalline beef processor." It was probably around 5am when I thought that, but it made no fucking sense even to me, and I was the one thinking it.

I've been playing the game in hard mode of course, and this shit is HARD. I usually have to replay each encounter, and then cleverly engineer the situation ahead of time, rigging different spots with trip-mines and moving boxes to create cover. It almost makes it into a puzzle game, because some of the enemies just attack too rapidly and devastatingly for me to fight off in pure, simple combat.

All of the set pieces are still cool, and you can really see how Half-Life 2 grew out of this. Similar to many HL2 scenarios where the Combine soldiers are getting their asses kicked by antlions, or the rebels are fighting Striders, you'll often come upon battles in HL where you can wait for the military and Xen forces to wipe each other out, sometimes giving you control of a cannon to kick a little ass of your own with. You also get nice scenes like fleeing from the giant creature long enough to call in an airstrike on it.

One retarded thing, playing in retrospect, all of the security guards have Barney's voice, and many scientists have Dr. Kleiner's voice. It actually doesn't bother me as much as it may bother others, but it's like I'm playing with a cast that consists of a vast collective of clones of just those two characters from HL2, and they are horribly slaughtered over and over for my enjoyment.

Another problem, I have to turn off my damn bit-torrent downloads to log in to Steam to play. It's fine to turn back on later, but executing the game runs like its setting up a server and then you log into it. Also, maybe due to the fact that I downloaded this iteration on Steam, I got all these weird bugs, like occasionally loading a new map only to have it half load, leaving me either stuck in place staring at half-formed crap or running through a level without some vital creatures and objects spawned. There are some other issues as well, like the fact that the last few levels are pretty crappy. Also, sometimes I'll be riding elevators and just get stuck in them, and the vehicles are mostly buggy pieces of crap, although hilarious and fun as hell to use. I owe hours and hours of my life to the buggy Half Life vehicle code, but I'll get back to that in a bit. First, I have to talk about the most important mod ever created.

Portal to Xen

Counterstrike

Everybody knows about Counterstrike, it's the greatest mod for any game ever made. It's still got more players than Counterstrike: Source, and it's been the main event at videogame tournaments for years running. The first game to take a realistic approach to bullet damage and burdened movement, Counterstrike raised the bar on competitive gameplay for first-person shooters to a degree that Source couldn't even surpass. Up until version 1.4, where the jump lag that is the bane of my existence was implemented, no online shooter could possibly compete with CS for purity of control and balanced combat. Before World of Warcraft, CS was the original online destroyer of lives.

In addition to the regular map rotation in CS, dust, dust2, office, aztec, seige (at one point), assault, and a few others, eventually some custom user-made maps began to see some regular play. Almost any CS player is likely to have played fy_iceworld at some point or another, and probably scoutzknivez as well. These maps were and still are far more common than some of the original maps and playmodes implemented by the designers of CS, such as the escape missions. The real fun starts with the more rare custom maps, usually played on all custom servers.

In the climber maps, your job is to make increasingly impossible-seeming jumps

Nipper

Any true veteran of custom Counterstrike maps will be familiar with the name Nipper. An incredibly prolific map-maker, specializing in unrefined but conceptually innovative maps, produced such classics as crazytank, megacrazycar. All of them feature the buggy Half Life engine vehicle code at length. For those who haven't played crazytank, imagine the CT's starting off next to an enormous drivable tank with multiple floors, traversing a set path to the escape zone, including a cliff you have to drop down, versus a group of terrorists each with their own personal motorcycles and mounted turrets assailing the CTs as they are trying to escape. It was neverending fun. Half the time the tank driver would get you stuck in the walls and smash half of his own team, but the times I would slam my motorcycle over a ramp, crash headlong into the tank, infiltrate it and slaughter the entire enemy team from the inside stand out as some of the greatest times I've ever had playing any game in my life.

As the years following Half Life's original release went by, Counterstrike maps saw increasingly over-the-top retrofits to keep things fresh. I remember an entire 48 hour period straight my friends and I spent on one server that had ninja ropes that let you swing like spiderman across the map. On crazytank3, Nipper's third version of the legendary battle, the tank is placed on a giant boat that the CTs are trying to navigate through mine-infested waters. The Ts get smaller boats, but with ninja ropes the boats were meaningless, you were already totally free. Getting good with them turned battles into graceful airborne carnage.

Interestingly, Nipper still makes maps for CS:Source, much more refined in look this time, but still hilarious. His website can be found here. If anybody has any of their own crazy custom map experiences they want to talk about, hit the comments people!

Toys R Us Pre-Order Day!

So I arrived just before 7am at my local (30 minutes away) Toys R Us store, only to find the most hardcore of consumers already camped out with tents, chairs, blankets and the like on the sidewalk in front of the store. I was lucky number 13 in line, which I was half-expecting, and half disappointed to discover. Although the desire for these two consoles burned strongly within my heart, I was simply unequipped for late October camping in upstate New York (plus, I already have a Wii and Zelda preordered at EB). What I could do was wake up at 6:00 and get on the road, managing an average of about 85 mph to this conveniently located store. I was quite glad to avoid New York's finest on the way.

Shortly after my arrival, I was told that a handful of people had been camping out as early as 6pm on Saturday, only to be kicked off the premises around 1am. Security from the mall across the parking lot had evicted them from their cozy concrete homes, and the store director had taken thew names of the first six in line, telling them to return before 7:00 to guarantee their console.

I guess this turned out to be a good thing for them, because rain, wind, and utter frigidness attacked the night, as well as any hapless nocturnal wanderers. Moreover, it was REALLY good news for those people because this particular store had only SIX PS3s available, along with 15 Wii Systems. 13/15...I sure do know how to cut it close.


When it came time to let us in, I was very pleased with the organization of the 'event.' In a compassionate move, they allowed the first six iced-over customers into the store around 9:30 - a half-hour before opening time - to get their PS3 orders. They were let back on line, and Wii customers were ushered in five at a time. Everything went quite smoothly, with no rushing, pushing, or violence. The only annoyance was that Toys R Us had each pre-order customer sign an agreement that they would also purchase an insurance plan of either $39.99 for one year or $69.99 for two years at the time of pick-up, or else forfeit the reservation. Irritating...

Finally, I was in for a little surprise, because today also happened to be the day that the new Tickle Me Elmo arrived. Thinking in an eBay sort of way, I decided to grab one of them, too. After the video games were taken care of, Elmo customers came in 15 at a time, with a one-per-customer limit.

So, I managed to leave Toys R Us this morning with one Wii preorder, and THREE TMX Elmos...

Game as Art, Art as Revelation

For the past few days, I have been engrossed in a unique new game called Okami. Brought to us by Clover Studio, this fantastically stylish offering is the kind of game that seems to generate mountains of acclaim, yet build molehills of revenue at cash registers around the world. So far, I have heard that Okami is considered a failure in Japan, but after briefly consulting my friend the internet, I haven't the evidence to either support or refute such a claim. Maybe my partner in crime has a standpoint on this matter, considering he is the sole member of the Japanese branch of our little endeavor here. Brian...??

Anyway, in terms of general game design, Okami, when stripped down, is a basic action-adventure game in the vein of Zelda and the like. If I was here to write a typical review, I could tell you all about every aspect of the game, from combat mechanics to plot nuances (and I will probably touch on much of what lies in between, anyway), but those reviews are a dime a dozen these days, and can be had twenty times over with as little effort as a couple of mouse clicks, so I will let you filter through that pile as you see fit, for now.

=========================================================================================

What I would like to talk about today is the idea that the medium of the video game is much more than it has ever been in the past. It is evolving into (and in my opinion, has already become) a fine art just as legitimate as any symphony or concerto, novel or poem, statue or sculpture, fresco or portrait. As such, the video game is a prime candidate for study and analysis in academia or the general public arena. Of course, not all selections will carry the same weight in terms of underlying meaning or intellectual significance, and there will always be mindless entries into the extensive and growing library of interactive entertainment, but with ever-increasing frequency, titles are released that offer much more to the mind than point-and-shoot.

Okami is one such project that seems to offer more depth for the gamer to swim about in, not necessarily in game mechanics, but in provocation of thought and 'blossoming,' as it might be, of ideas. And these 'ideas' I refer to are in stark contrast to what the likes of Jack Thompson might try to preach to the nation about video games. Nearly every action, represented in brush strokes similar to sumi-e ink wash paintings or the art of Bernard Buffet, carries a positive message and uplifting imagery. (Buffet's art: Example 1, 2, 3)

An overarching theme that is quite apparent in Okami is the restoration of natural beauty. Early objectives in the game include the revitalization of withered trees, which when revived bloom wildly in an explosion of bright, pastel-colored leaves and flowers. This eruption doesn't stop at the branches, either. It flows over the countryside on a wave of light, vivifying large areas of previously "cursed" land. Scattered about the game world are many smaller areas tainted by similar clouds of unsightly purple smoke. These must be restored by drawing flowerbeds over them, after which they burst back to life in the same grand fashion as described above.

Parallels can be drawn between these cursed areas and certain aspects of the real world. An obvious connection would be to the issue of pollution, with the metaphor meaning "clean up the environment to make the world a better place" or "take care of nature's flora and nature will reciprocate." While this may be the most clear of comparisons, my contention is that these cursed zones can be expanded in scope to represent any of the world's ills: elements that must be treated in order to restore harmony.

What makes Okami's actions so meaningful, however, is the way many are performed. By holding R1, the action can be stopped and the screen will tilt into a sort of canvas, above which is suspended a a large paintbrush, wielded by no one but the gamer. The celestial brush, as it's called, allows one to draw on the screen the result he or she desires. Filling in a section of land sprouts a bed of flowers, encircling a gnarled and bare tree grants it a lush canopy of leaves, dotting the ground sprouts new saplings, etc. This sort of interaction is a way of absorbing the player into the game world, making that world, as well as the changes made to it, more tangible. "It is by my hand that these results are borne," says the subconscious mind.

Even the color palette chosen by Clover seems to have significance. Rather than the drab earth tones of many modern games, the bright pinks, greens, and blues communicate a sense of hope to the gamer. It is as if the game is implying that even in a world marred by darkness, attention to nature (which is considered of the utmost importance) is paramount to achieving happiness or success.

Another deed encouraged of the gamer, and likely performed quite often, is to feed the many animals encountered during the adventure. There are 4 different types of feedbags available to the main character, Amaterasu, and when she runs into any wild animal, there is an option to feed it. The better a match to the preferred diet of that particular species, the more "praise" the player will receive. Praise is actually Okami's unit of experience, accrued and then allocated to different attributes, allowing for growth throughout the game.

Basically, without praise, Amaterasu is weak. praise = happiness ... praise = success.

Praise serves as a reward not only for feeding critters, but for all of the actions mentioned earlier, as well. Incentive is always there for the player to do right by mother nature, even if the magnificent displays of art in each short cutscene aren't enough motivation. So, if all of the good deeds in Okami garner praise, and we already know praise equals happiness and success, then by the law of syllogism, performing those deeds clearly equals happiness and success. This is the game's take-home lesson.

One last point worth noting: in Okami, with every act of destruction comes new creation. Every time an enemy is defeated, flowers sprout from the spot where it met its demise. Every tree that is cut down returns to its former glory shortly after, and often bears fruit for Amaterasu. Every explosion yields not flame, but confetti and fireworks. Even when breaking jars, pots, boxes, and the like, Amaterasu has foliage sprouting from under her feet. As a matter of fact, this happens wherever she runs at all. With all the violent imagery people consume on a daily basis (which, for the record, I'm not necessarily opposed to), this subtle touch is quite refreshing.

Refreshing. Certainly a good description of Okami as a whole, and absolutely applicable to any game presented in a similar fashion - as a fine art form.