I've been playing Batman Arkham Underworld, a fun little clash of clans app that has you, as one of Gotham's would-be villains, storm the city with your thugs and hired supervillain. At first I thought I wouldn't like it, but I'm being sucked in. The Dead Rabbits will crush the Bat! Or words to that effect, anyway.
That's not what I'm going to talk about. There's an in-game mechanic whereby you can speed up the build time of a room or item, or just get more in-game currency, by watching video adverts. I'm interested in advertising in an amateur know-thy-enemy way, and I'm just as fascinated by advertising done poorly as I am by well-crafted attempts.
Make no mistake, this is bad, bad stuff.
It's not that the mechanic doesn't work. It does. I often set up a room to refurb in, say, a couple hours, turn on a few of the ads to get it done in a couple minutes, and then get on with my day. From a game perspective, I get what I want, and the game maker gets the ad revenue. So we both benefit, but as soon as I set up the ad view I walk away. I don't absorb the content, and that's because it's really poorly targeted.
The game must already know my age and gender, from the data already available on the device. I would be amazed if it only knew my age and gender. So why is it trying to sell me a match-three garden building game? Or a dating sim? Why, when it targets me with a spokesperson, does the ad use a girl who looks all of sixteen spouting a load of old wank about dragons?
Why advertise Facebook, at all? Surely everyone with a mobile device knows what Facebook is by now? Doesn't it come pre-loaded on Apple tablets and phones, and probably most if not all the Androids?
It's as if the game either doesn't know my age and gender - which is utter balls - or it doesn't care. I suspect the latter, but it means a lot of people are spending a ton of money to no purpose.
At least trying to sell games is understandable. All the games are either pay up front or freemium, which means they're heavy revenue earners. But even then the ad could do a better job selling me the product.
Take the story sims Episodes and Choices, both of which seem very similar in style and content. In each case the app tries to sell to me using romance ads. Why? Both apps also have mystery stories, danger stories, fantasy plots, and any of those would have been a better ad choice than romance.
Or take the Facebook ad. It makes perfect sense to sell me something that isn't a game. After all, there's a ton of products out there I might be interested in. Yet of all the products in all the world, it has to walk in with Facebook? Sure, Facebook's probably one of the few non-game vendors interested in putting ads on the Apple game store. But if this is how Zuckerberg's spending his ad buy, the guy's much, much stupider than I ever thought.
Somewhere west of Laramie there's a bronco-busting, steer-roping girl ... who knew how to sell cars. Advertising's an art, and I often think there are no artists in advertising any more. God knows what happened to Don Draper's grandkids, but they lost the knack of making sales when they went all-in on the internet. I'm constantly being told that advertisers are collecting everything up to and including shoe size and pet's sexual preference in order to better target me. So why do I feel as though I'm not being effectively targeted?
I first became interested in using adverts in-game when Cyberpunk 2020 was still a thing. Now there's a genre that believes in style over substance. Its Chromebooks were essentially lists of in-game stuff your character could buy, and as with any list of stuff in RPGs the whole point is to get better stats and improve your efficiency at in-game tasks. But the Chromebooks made it interesting by pitching each item with its in-game ad buy.
Want to buy clothes that boost your stats or which provide better armor? Sure, but you're not just buying a leather jacket with better SP. You're buying a Ruf Tread(tm) combo bodysuit and jacket. 'If it can stop a round and won't embarrass you to wear it, it's cool,' says a satisfied customer.
You have a need for speed? Try the Ares Combat Bike. It uses the patented Brennan cycles Gendarme chassis, making it one of the most durable cycles on the road. Maybe it comes with its own steer-roping girl ...
Ultimately it's all about world building. Cyberpunk sold itself that way because it wanted to create the kind of world cyberpunk could flourish in. It wouldn't feel the same if the Chromebooks were just a list of stats, and nothing else. Whereas the old D&D equipment guides were often just a long list of glaives, guisarmes, guisarme-glaives, glaive-guisarme-glaives, guisarme-guisarme-glaive-glaive, old MacDonald bought the farm, ee ai, ee ai, critical hit. It didn't try to sell the gamer on the game world because it assumed it didn't have to, in its first incarnation. Its subsequent iterations have become much more savvy.
I've touched on world-building using background noise before. However it's worth going a little further with the concept, because everything you do here helps your players envision the kind of world they're in, and therefore the kind of environment they can help you create.
Let's take Bookhounds of London as a starter, and add in a bit of Dorothy Sayers.
Sayers once worked in advertising, and used this as the background for her mystery Murder Must Advertise. In that story her detective Lord Peter Wimsey disguises himself as his alter ego Death Bredon and works at ad agency Pyms to uncover a dope ring. While there Bredon becomes fascinated by advertising and invents a campaign for Whifflets, a cigarette brand. The idea is this: each time you buy Whifflets you're given stamps. On their own they're worth little, but if you collect enough of them you can exchange them for free goods or services, anything from a tea set to a trip to Portsmouth. WIFFLE YOUR WAY AROUND BRITAIN screams advert banners on a bus.
'The only thing you cannot get by Whiffling is a coffin,' Sayers remarks. 'It is not admitted that any Whiffler could ever require such an article.'
This happens in 1933, if the novel's publication date can be considered the actual timeline. That means Bookhounds will get the full force of the campaign. So what do they smoke? Do they collect Whifflet coupons? If so, what are they saving up to get? Can they use a Whifflet obsession to ingratiate themselves with an informant? Can they use Whifflet coupons as a Bargaining chip?
Expand that and see what happens: ask yourself what they drink, wear, drive, where they go on holiday, what's in the cinemas right now. Remember that you can make all this up as you go along, and consider that you're trying to enforce a particular aesthetic, be it Arabesque, Technicolor, or Sordid. So taking Sordid as an example:
A long line of cinemagoers eagerly await their chance to see Hitchcock's latest murder chiller, their blue clouds of Whifflet smoke snaking up into the iron sky. They stand not ten feet from the spot where a flusher was found frozen to death, next to a sewer grate, with a diamond in his hand. Billboards shriek every way you turn: Lovely Day for a Guinness, Are You Whiffling Too?, Nutrax for Nerves. Winter bites through your coat and down to your bones, and you light up in a reflex action to ward off the cold. One of the cinemagoers asks if you're going to save your Whifflet coupon ...
No fellow feeling here, no inquisitive stares at the spot where a man died. The only spark of human interest is in the Whifflet coupon: an extra touch of covetousness in a world drowning in greed.
Of course all that's before we even consider the possibilities of subliminal advertising, which would be perfect for a Night's Black Agents game. Imagine a world in which vampires and their crowd-controlling products and messages could only be detected with special sunglasses, or in which a particular targeted ad could drive your brainwashed black program badass nuts.
Subliminals also work very well in an Esoterror context, for much the same reason. Picture a world in which the videos in your YouTube feed propagate Membrane-shattering messages, or a shadowy media corporation uses hidden messages to influence a crucial presidential election. The newly elected president then goes on to enact policies and force through budgets that completely shatter what little protection the Membrane has, and so on.
But that's enough from me today. See you next week!
Showing posts with label Batman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Batman. Show all posts
Sunday, 19 March 2017
Sunday, 25 September 2016
Not Quite Review Corner: Batman (Telltale, iPad)
Batman took off as a video game property back in 2009, with the release of Batman: Arkham Asylum. There had been Batman games before, but no company before Rocksteady succeeded so thoroughly in making the player feel like the Dark Knight, in an adventure exactly like one of the Caped Crusader's grimmer tales. Not quite Alan Moore, but a passable Alan Grant. It spawned a succession of solid sequels, most of which - even the bad ones - were well received commercially.
Back in 2012 Telltale Games, a company that made a decent living but no significant reputation with episodic adventure games, confounded all expectations with The Walking Dead, an adaptation of the comic series by Robert Kirkman. Like Arkham Asylum, The Walking Dead shot to everybody's Top Ten or Game of the Year lists on release. It also spawned a ton of sequels, most of which were solidly put together even when they didn't match the emotional pull of the first game. Since then Telltale parlayed its newfound glory into a string of impressive hits, not least of which was The Wolf Among Us, an adaptation of a hit DC Vertigo series, Fables.
It was only a matter of time before Telltale gave Batman the episodic game treatment, and once it did it was bound to come out for iPad just as its other titles have. It just did, and these last few days I've been giving the first episode, Realm of Shadows, a shot on my iPad Air.
There are two questions to answer here:
Does it work as a Batman title?
Does it work as an iPad game?
The short answers are Not Entirely, and Absolutely Not.
As a Batman title it flows well. It suffers from Too Many Characters syndrome, probably because it's trying to pump as much Batman cred as it can in a short play time. I finished the title in a little under two hours, in which time we met Harvey Dent aka Two Face - before his unfortunate accident - the Penguin, Catwoman, Carmine Falcone, Detective (not yet Commissioner) Gordon, Vicky Vale, and probably Scarecrow, though that last awaits confirmation. Fewer references would have made for a better plot. But there's a decent balance between action and thoughtful crime-solving, and it really benefits from focusing on Bruce Wayne rather than his caped alter ego.
As a brief aside: it's a mature title, but all that really means is occasionally Selina Kyle says 'shit.' Because maturity is all about the swearwords.
That said, the big problem is that if you know the series at all, any tension is immediately lost. Telltale has a habit of making you feel as though every choice you make in-game is important - even though it often isn't so - yet knowing who these people are and what happens to them robs all the decisions of any impact. You know that Harvey Dent will become Two Face, so you don't care whether or not you make nice with him; whatever you do he's still going to get his face melted and become a villain. Equally you know it doesn't matter whether you choose to help Commissioner Gordon or Vicky Vale, since both of them will be your ally. There's no chance that Gordon or Vale will turn on you, and it won't matter too much if you upset one by helping the other.
Spoiler territory: the best example of this is the Wayne problem. In the first episode it's revealed that Thomas and Martha Wayne may have been in cahoots with the crime bosses that run Gotham, Falcone in particular. As a plot twist it seems powerful: Batman gets his whole motivation, and the money he needs to fight crime, from his parents, and if they turn out to have feet of bloodstained clay then the whole thing's upended. But you know full well Telltale will never stick to that, and even if it was tempted DC would pull the plug. No; the Waynes will turn out to be the sainted martyrs they've always been. My money's on the Wayne Corporation executive who turns up briefly at the Dent fundraiser, and later at the Arkham Asylum ceremony.
Personally as far as long-term plot goes I predict something like this: Penguin set Falcone up for the fall, using Catwoman to do it. Either Penguin or Falcone brought Scarecrow on board - hence the peculiar psycho gas that turns up in the crime scene - for reasons as yet unknown, but probably unpleasant. Penguin seems to be the long-term opponent, but things could change.
Moreover there are very few opportunities to be Batman. There are moments when you leap into action, but the game's rigged so that you never really fail. In only one instance does a bad button press result in Game Over; usually it just means you're not quite as cool as the real thing. Telltale's strength is in emotional strife, not combat, and it shows.
Which is why it doesn't work as an iPad game either.
The iPad touchscreen controls just aren't precise enough to make for a really compelling combat sim. More often than not the button prompt will come up for the quicktime event, you'll stab the screen like a chimp on a caffeine high, and your response will be off or mistimed or whatever it may be. End result: just not as cool as the real thing, just not as cool as the real thing, just not as cool as the real thing. Again and again and again. I don't doubt this worked like magic on consoles, but the iPad doesn't respond well to the chimp stab treatment.
Dishearteningly, it doesn't matter what you do. You'll still win. Granted you'll feel like an idiot and the little Bat-meter at the bottom of the screen, which does nothing except shatter your ego, will not fill up. But you'll still win. For a game all about power wish fulfillment, it robs you of power while at the same time fulfilling no wishes.
Is it worth getting? Ehhh ... if you're a Batman completest, sure. If you're just looking for some iPad fun, pass. I'd recommend The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us over this any day of the week.
See you next Sunday!
Back in 2012 Telltale Games, a company that made a decent living but no significant reputation with episodic adventure games, confounded all expectations with The Walking Dead, an adaptation of the comic series by Robert Kirkman. Like Arkham Asylum, The Walking Dead shot to everybody's Top Ten or Game of the Year lists on release. It also spawned a ton of sequels, most of which were solidly put together even when they didn't match the emotional pull of the first game. Since then Telltale parlayed its newfound glory into a string of impressive hits, not least of which was The Wolf Among Us, an adaptation of a hit DC Vertigo series, Fables.
It was only a matter of time before Telltale gave Batman the episodic game treatment, and once it did it was bound to come out for iPad just as its other titles have. It just did, and these last few days I've been giving the first episode, Realm of Shadows, a shot on my iPad Air.
There are two questions to answer here:
Does it work as a Batman title?
Does it work as an iPad game?
The short answers are Not Entirely, and Absolutely Not.
As a Batman title it flows well. It suffers from Too Many Characters syndrome, probably because it's trying to pump as much Batman cred as it can in a short play time. I finished the title in a little under two hours, in which time we met Harvey Dent aka Two Face - before his unfortunate accident - the Penguin, Catwoman, Carmine Falcone, Detective (not yet Commissioner) Gordon, Vicky Vale, and probably Scarecrow, though that last awaits confirmation. Fewer references would have made for a better plot. But there's a decent balance between action and thoughtful crime-solving, and it really benefits from focusing on Bruce Wayne rather than his caped alter ego.
As a brief aside: it's a mature title, but all that really means is occasionally Selina Kyle says 'shit.' Because maturity is all about the swearwords.
That said, the big problem is that if you know the series at all, any tension is immediately lost. Telltale has a habit of making you feel as though every choice you make in-game is important - even though it often isn't so - yet knowing who these people are and what happens to them robs all the decisions of any impact. You know that Harvey Dent will become Two Face, so you don't care whether or not you make nice with him; whatever you do he's still going to get his face melted and become a villain. Equally you know it doesn't matter whether you choose to help Commissioner Gordon or Vicky Vale, since both of them will be your ally. There's no chance that Gordon or Vale will turn on you, and it won't matter too much if you upset one by helping the other.
Spoiler territory: the best example of this is the Wayne problem. In the first episode it's revealed that Thomas and Martha Wayne may have been in cahoots with the crime bosses that run Gotham, Falcone in particular. As a plot twist it seems powerful: Batman gets his whole motivation, and the money he needs to fight crime, from his parents, and if they turn out to have feet of bloodstained clay then the whole thing's upended. But you know full well Telltale will never stick to that, and even if it was tempted DC would pull the plug. No; the Waynes will turn out to be the sainted martyrs they've always been. My money's on the Wayne Corporation executive who turns up briefly at the Dent fundraiser, and later at the Arkham Asylum ceremony.
Personally as far as long-term plot goes I predict something like this: Penguin set Falcone up for the fall, using Catwoman to do it. Either Penguin or Falcone brought Scarecrow on board - hence the peculiar psycho gas that turns up in the crime scene - for reasons as yet unknown, but probably unpleasant. Penguin seems to be the long-term opponent, but things could change.
Moreover there are very few opportunities to be Batman. There are moments when you leap into action, but the game's rigged so that you never really fail. In only one instance does a bad button press result in Game Over; usually it just means you're not quite as cool as the real thing. Telltale's strength is in emotional strife, not combat, and it shows.
Which is why it doesn't work as an iPad game either.
The iPad touchscreen controls just aren't precise enough to make for a really compelling combat sim. More often than not the button prompt will come up for the quicktime event, you'll stab the screen like a chimp on a caffeine high, and your response will be off or mistimed or whatever it may be. End result: just not as cool as the real thing, just not as cool as the real thing, just not as cool as the real thing. Again and again and again. I don't doubt this worked like magic on consoles, but the iPad doesn't respond well to the chimp stab treatment.
Dishearteningly, it doesn't matter what you do. You'll still win. Granted you'll feel like an idiot and the little Bat-meter at the bottom of the screen, which does nothing except shatter your ego, will not fill up. But you'll still win. For a game all about power wish fulfillment, it robs you of power while at the same time fulfilling no wishes.
Is it worth getting? Ehhh ... if you're a Batman completest, sure. If you're just looking for some iPad fun, pass. I'd recommend The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us over this any day of the week.
See you next Sunday!
Saturday, 26 October 2013
Not Quite First Impressions Corner: Batman Arkham Origins
To begin with: yes, I write for the Escapist, no, this has nothing to do with the Escapist, it's entirely my own thing, and no, this isn't a review. I've only been playing Batman Arkham Origins for about 4 hours on Hard difficulty; I've penetrated Penguin's lair, and am currently fighting Deathstroke.
If someone were to ask me, right now, whether or not this was a good buy, I'd have to say no. Wait for a sale.
I don't have that option - video games never go on sale down here, particularly console versions - and besides, I enjoyed the first two episodes, so I didn't mind shelling out for this one. The first two were made by Rocksteady; in 2009 Arkham Asylum put that studio on the map, and in 2010 Warner Brothers bought the studio. City followed soon thereafter, and was a huge success. Then something odd happened. Though a sequel to City had been announced in 2012, there were mixed messages about its content - was it Silver Age, was Paul Dini attached as writer, who would voice Batman and the Joker? - and in February 2013 it was announced that Rocksteady would not be the developer this time out. Instead, Warner Brothers Montreal would be the folks in charge. Perhaps it was thanks to talent drain; a Rocksteady developer lamented in February 2012 that an unfriendly business climate at home was forcing UK developers abroad. Be that as it may, from Feb 2013 to its release that October, Montreal was in charge, and to my mind, it shows.
After four hours, I haven't seen anything here that I didn't see in City. The environment's the same, since every outdoors location so far - and again, it's only been four hours, so that could change - has come from City. That same covered mall which was sprinkled with mines and a pain in the Bat-side to sneak around in City, is where I just foiled Penguin's gun deal in Origins. The same environments and rooftops I glided around in City, I'm gliding around now. The only thing missing is that bloody great wall, and Strange's armed thugs; but if early gameplay teasers are any indication, SWAT will be playing the role of Strange's Tiger teams. No doubt as soon as they appear, so will the choppers I remember spying on me in City. At least the wall hasn't been built yet.
The interior locations are a change of pace. Blackgate didn't really stand out. I'm enjoying Penguin's floating casino, though it seems a little small for what it is, and I can't help thinking that the basic premise is much the same as Penguin's Museum base in City. There are signal jammers outside, so deal with them first. Bust in to Penguin's lair, find your way to the fight pit, have a big fight, have a mini boss fight, move on. The Electrocutioner first appears in Penguin's lair, and what a big bag of wind he turns out to be, but the character that wins my 'least enjoyable' award so far is Tracey, Penguin's secretary. I've heard better Mockney from Jamie Oliver. The writers didn't dare say Fuck, but Bugger's ok, is it? Numpty? Have the 1970's returned, and nobody's told me?
I don't think Tracey's from the books, but I haven't followed comics since I was in uni, so I can't be sure. I hope, if she is, she gets better treatment there. Her biography doesn't say one way or the other, which is a departure from the other games; Rocksteady was always pretty good about telling you who first appeared where, and when.
The boss fights are interesting, but really not significantly different from previous outings. Killer Croc, who you fight early on, has broadly the same tactics as the Titan-boosted thugs found in both previous titles and the minor boss Siamese twin goons seen in City. He's quicker, but that's about it. Stun him, hit him, and keep hitting him. There's a really annoying Hit A Repeatedly QTE half-way through; I hope you have strong thumbs. But the bigger problem in that fight is the camera, which whooshes around like a drunk on a spree. You don't see enough of the Electrocutioner in his first fight to really test his mettle. Deathstroke has a curious block-block-hit him thing going on, but if you remember Ra's al Ghul's fight in City, you'll see a lot of similarities. It doesn't take place in a dream zone, but other than that, it's a very familiar fight.
Speaking of fights, yes, they're just as you remember them, and just as fun to plow through. The upgrade system is very odd. You get experience, much as you did before - hit things, smash objects, do well in predator encounters - but before you can buy any fun combat upgrades, you have to buy all the armor upgrades first. I've just bought the Blade Takedown, which will help deal with those pesky knife-users, but I had to fully upgrade my close combat armor first. Other combat moves are specific to bullet resistant armor, which I haven't fully upgraded yet. I'm not sure what difference that system makes to gameplay, but it did make me feel as though I was being forced to upgrade the way the developers wanted me to, rather than as I wanted to.
Again, this is a first impressions, not a review. I will play through to the end - I may even tell you what I thought of it, once it's done - but so far, I'm not impressed. Arkham City felt completely different to Asylum, right out of the gate. Origins feels like City's warmed-up leftovers. That's not necessarily a bad thing - City was a brilliant game - but it's not great for WB Montreal that my initial thought, as soon as I see the outdoor environments, is 'hang on, Rocksteady was here first - and Rocksteady was better.'
If someone were to ask me, right now, whether or not this was a good buy, I'd have to say no. Wait for a sale.
I don't have that option - video games never go on sale down here, particularly console versions - and besides, I enjoyed the first two episodes, so I didn't mind shelling out for this one. The first two were made by Rocksteady; in 2009 Arkham Asylum put that studio on the map, and in 2010 Warner Brothers bought the studio. City followed soon thereafter, and was a huge success. Then something odd happened. Though a sequel to City had been announced in 2012, there were mixed messages about its content - was it Silver Age, was Paul Dini attached as writer, who would voice Batman and the Joker? - and in February 2013 it was announced that Rocksteady would not be the developer this time out. Instead, Warner Brothers Montreal would be the folks in charge. Perhaps it was thanks to talent drain; a Rocksteady developer lamented in February 2012 that an unfriendly business climate at home was forcing UK developers abroad. Be that as it may, from Feb 2013 to its release that October, Montreal was in charge, and to my mind, it shows.
After four hours, I haven't seen anything here that I didn't see in City. The environment's the same, since every outdoors location so far - and again, it's only been four hours, so that could change - has come from City. That same covered mall which was sprinkled with mines and a pain in the Bat-side to sneak around in City, is where I just foiled Penguin's gun deal in Origins. The same environments and rooftops I glided around in City, I'm gliding around now. The only thing missing is that bloody great wall, and Strange's armed thugs; but if early gameplay teasers are any indication, SWAT will be playing the role of Strange's Tiger teams. No doubt as soon as they appear, so will the choppers I remember spying on me in City. At least the wall hasn't been built yet.
The interior locations are a change of pace. Blackgate didn't really stand out. I'm enjoying Penguin's floating casino, though it seems a little small for what it is, and I can't help thinking that the basic premise is much the same as Penguin's Museum base in City. There are signal jammers outside, so deal with them first. Bust in to Penguin's lair, find your way to the fight pit, have a big fight, have a mini boss fight, move on. The Electrocutioner first appears in Penguin's lair, and what a big bag of wind he turns out to be, but the character that wins my 'least enjoyable' award so far is Tracey, Penguin's secretary. I've heard better Mockney from Jamie Oliver. The writers didn't dare say Fuck, but Bugger's ok, is it? Numpty? Have the 1970's returned, and nobody's told me?
I don't think Tracey's from the books, but I haven't followed comics since I was in uni, so I can't be sure. I hope, if she is, she gets better treatment there. Her biography doesn't say one way or the other, which is a departure from the other games; Rocksteady was always pretty good about telling you who first appeared where, and when.
The boss fights are interesting, but really not significantly different from previous outings. Killer Croc, who you fight early on, has broadly the same tactics as the Titan-boosted thugs found in both previous titles and the minor boss Siamese twin goons seen in City. He's quicker, but that's about it. Stun him, hit him, and keep hitting him. There's a really annoying Hit A Repeatedly QTE half-way through; I hope you have strong thumbs. But the bigger problem in that fight is the camera, which whooshes around like a drunk on a spree. You don't see enough of the Electrocutioner in his first fight to really test his mettle. Deathstroke has a curious block-block-hit him thing going on, but if you remember Ra's al Ghul's fight in City, you'll see a lot of similarities. It doesn't take place in a dream zone, but other than that, it's a very familiar fight.
Speaking of fights, yes, they're just as you remember them, and just as fun to plow through. The upgrade system is very odd. You get experience, much as you did before - hit things, smash objects, do well in predator encounters - but before you can buy any fun combat upgrades, you have to buy all the armor upgrades first. I've just bought the Blade Takedown, which will help deal with those pesky knife-users, but I had to fully upgrade my close combat armor first. Other combat moves are specific to bullet resistant armor, which I haven't fully upgraded yet. I'm not sure what difference that system makes to gameplay, but it did make me feel as though I was being forced to upgrade the way the developers wanted me to, rather than as I wanted to.
Again, this is a first impressions, not a review. I will play through to the end - I may even tell you what I thought of it, once it's done - but so far, I'm not impressed. Arkham City felt completely different to Asylum, right out of the gate. Origins feels like City's warmed-up leftovers. That's not necessarily a bad thing - City was a brilliant game - but it's not great for WB Montreal that my initial thought, as soon as I see the outdoor environments, is 'hang on, Rocksteady was here first - and Rocksteady was better.'
Monday, 30 April 2012
I'm Batman
I bought Arkham City when it came out, and played it to death. I didn't go as far as Perfect Knight; that seemed far too fiddly, but I did want to get all the Riddler challenges done and that I managed. Grinding his smug face in the dirt was very satisfying! Plus, unlike the previous game Arkham Asylum, there was a good reason to get the Riddler, since he kidnapped several innocent civilians and threatens to kill them unless you solve his puzzles. Along the way you, as Batman, have to figure out several hundred riddles, beat individual challenge rooms, and finally confront the green weasel in his lair. It's one of several potential side missions in which you track down leads to solve the mystery before it's too late, and while some of those (like Zsasz) are more acrobatic, the Riddler missions are about 50/50 brain power to gadget use.
I spent a chunk of Sunday playing it again, since an Xbox blowout reset the game. All the Riddler challenges reappeared, giving me a second chance to knock them down again. Tracking down those clues was a big part of the fun for me the first time around, and it's been just as enjoyable the second time running.
However it made me think about clues in detective-style settings. The classic of course is Holmes' inductive reasoning, as follows:
My eyes tell me that on the inside of [Watson's] left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey.
Which is fine as far as it goes, but it relies on two assumptions. First, that the parallel cuts can only have been caused by a boot-scraper. That's something the modern reader has to take on faith, since few people now living really know what a Victorian era boot-scraper is or why it would cause parallel cuts as opposed to any other kind. However if there is any other way that parallel cuts of that type could have been caused, the boot-scraper theory is in danger of falling flat, which may mean the vile weather theory is flawed. Second, it assumes that a Doctor's boots can only have been scraped by his servant. That's likely, of course, but it's also possible they were scraped by the Doctor, his wife, or a third party - particularly since as a Doctor he's likely to be visiting other people's houses, and dealing with other people's servants. As it happens Holmes is right on the money, but it could easily have gone the other way.
Which is the big problem with fictional detectives. Agatha Christie alludes to this more than once, using her character Ariadne Oliver as a mouthpiece. Oliver is a detective story novelist, and frequently grouses at how stupid she was to make her main character a Finn when she knew almost nothing about them, but she also has a lot to say about the perils of clue creation. A novelist can make a blowpipe one foot long even though it really ought to be four and a half foot. A novelist can tell lies to help the plot along, by insisting that a clue is a clue when in fact it means nothing, or the opposite of its apparent meaning. Dorothy Sayers does much the same thing with her character Harriet Vane, particularly in Have His Carcase. In that novel Harriet is supposed to be working out a plot for her own mystery novel when she stumbles across an actual murder, and Harriet spends a lot of her writing time grumbling about getting the timetable right for the trains in her novel, for fear that any mistake will be picked up on by nitpicking readers.
The bigger problem is this: the reader expects a Clue to be a Clue, to have a definite meaning in and of itself. There can be no shades of grey. It's all part of a larger puzzle, and if the pieces are put together in the correct order then the puzzle can be solved. It's a genre convention that's wide open to parody since it assumes a kind of story structure that's almost impossible to envisage in real life. Real life is messy. Trains don't run on time. Blowpipes can be novelty sized. Mysteries can't be puzzled out through inductive reasoning alone, though inductive reasoning may certainly help.
In the Death Investigator's Handbook, it's all about procedure. Evaluating the crime scene isn't even the first point on the checklist; it's under section C, where A is about establishing the perimeter and B is about contacting the necessary responders. Examining the body doesn't happen until way, way down the checklist, where in a novel it would be the very first thing the detective looks at. I'm not even sure the word Clue is ever used in that book; I can't be certain since there isn't an index in my 1993 edition. It's all Evidence, and one piece of evidence in itself means nothing. It's the totality that means everything.
'What were the victim's activities, how was the victim selected as a target, and what was done to the victim are three areas of consideration. The significance of the scene, how it was selected and the evidence it has provided are other courses whch need to be developed . . .'
It's nice to pretend to be Batman for a while, but Batman is fiction, and the puzzles he faces aren't tied to reality in any meaningful way. That's not why they're there. They exist to provide an intellectual challenge in an artificial world. All Clues are like that. They provide a challenge, but they oughtn't to be taken too seriously.
After all, they're only make-believe.
I spent a chunk of Sunday playing it again, since an Xbox blowout reset the game. All the Riddler challenges reappeared, giving me a second chance to knock them down again. Tracking down those clues was a big part of the fun for me the first time around, and it's been just as enjoyable the second time running.
However it made me think about clues in detective-style settings. The classic of course is Holmes' inductive reasoning, as follows:
My eyes tell me that on the inside of [Watson's] left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey.
Which is fine as far as it goes, but it relies on two assumptions. First, that the parallel cuts can only have been caused by a boot-scraper. That's something the modern reader has to take on faith, since few people now living really know what a Victorian era boot-scraper is or why it would cause parallel cuts as opposed to any other kind. However if there is any other way that parallel cuts of that type could have been caused, the boot-scraper theory is in danger of falling flat, which may mean the vile weather theory is flawed. Second, it assumes that a Doctor's boots can only have been scraped by his servant. That's likely, of course, but it's also possible they were scraped by the Doctor, his wife, or a third party - particularly since as a Doctor he's likely to be visiting other people's houses, and dealing with other people's servants. As it happens Holmes is right on the money, but it could easily have gone the other way.
Which is the big problem with fictional detectives. Agatha Christie alludes to this more than once, using her character Ariadne Oliver as a mouthpiece. Oliver is a detective story novelist, and frequently grouses at how stupid she was to make her main character a Finn when she knew almost nothing about them, but she also has a lot to say about the perils of clue creation. A novelist can make a blowpipe one foot long even though it really ought to be four and a half foot. A novelist can tell lies to help the plot along, by insisting that a clue is a clue when in fact it means nothing, or the opposite of its apparent meaning. Dorothy Sayers does much the same thing with her character Harriet Vane, particularly in Have His Carcase. In that novel Harriet is supposed to be working out a plot for her own mystery novel when she stumbles across an actual murder, and Harriet spends a lot of her writing time grumbling about getting the timetable right for the trains in her novel, for fear that any mistake will be picked up on by nitpicking readers.
The bigger problem is this: the reader expects a Clue to be a Clue, to have a definite meaning in and of itself. There can be no shades of grey. It's all part of a larger puzzle, and if the pieces are put together in the correct order then the puzzle can be solved. It's a genre convention that's wide open to parody since it assumes a kind of story structure that's almost impossible to envisage in real life. Real life is messy. Trains don't run on time. Blowpipes can be novelty sized. Mysteries can't be puzzled out through inductive reasoning alone, though inductive reasoning may certainly help.
In the Death Investigator's Handbook, it's all about procedure. Evaluating the crime scene isn't even the first point on the checklist; it's under section C, where A is about establishing the perimeter and B is about contacting the necessary responders. Examining the body doesn't happen until way, way down the checklist, where in a novel it would be the very first thing the detective looks at. I'm not even sure the word Clue is ever used in that book; I can't be certain since there isn't an index in my 1993 edition. It's all Evidence, and one piece of evidence in itself means nothing. It's the totality that means everything.
'What were the victim's activities, how was the victim selected as a target, and what was done to the victim are three areas of consideration. The significance of the scene, how it was selected and the evidence it has provided are other courses whch need to be developed . . .'
It's nice to pretend to be Batman for a while, but Batman is fiction, and the puzzles he faces aren't tied to reality in any meaningful way. That's not why they're there. They exist to provide an intellectual challenge in an artificial world. All Clues are like that. They provide a challenge, but they oughtn't to be taken too seriously.
After all, they're only make-believe.
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