Thoughts on Depth Hunter - A world devoid of meaning

• Biart
• Simulator, First Person Shooter
• Release: Jan 18, 2012 (US)
• Platforms: PC

Some projects feel as if they were created without purpose or direction. They stumble along with no idea how to achieve their goals, because their goals never really existed in the first place. To my great disappointment, Depth Hunter is one such title. As a diving game (or is it a shooting game?), it had a unique niche of the gaming world to explore; it sadly left it empty.

Depth Hunter touts itself as a "Spearfishing Simulator." This is sort-of true; you always have a spear gun with which you can shoot fish underwater, which you then attempt to haul in by managing the tension on the line. This is trivially easy if the fish is within about 8 meters and impossibly difficult outside of that. The problem is that there is no real reason to kill these fish. The game has a campaign mode of sorts, in which you are placed in the water and given tasks to complete. These tasks come one after another without context; you will be told to kill two fish of a certain species and then you will be told to kill as many fish as you can with a certain time frame. Sometimes, the tasks aren't fishing related at all. The player might have to find certain "treasure" objects on the sea floor or photograph a certain number of moray eels. The photography tasks are particularly bizarre; the player must find a correct angle that changes an on-screen number to 100% before the screen capture will count. All of these tasks take place over two of the game's three locales.

In short, the campaign lacks direction, which makes it astoundingly uninteresting and painfully boring. It injects arbitrary tasks into the player's exploration of the game world, seemingly because it is undecided as to whether it wants to be a linear, goal-oriented game or an open-ended, environmental-exploration driven game. It therefore does neither well, despite having ample opportunity to do something unique with either. By injecting a goal-oriented game mode, it suggests a narrative and character for the player. Indeed, the players boat sits on the surface of every level. I was profoundly disappointed that I could not get out of the water and into the boat. Aside from the potential as a fast-travel mechanism or a place to change your loadout like you would expect for a simulator, it would have allowed the game to create a real character motivation. The game could have, for example, given the player a back-story to motivate the tasks; that narrative could have uniquely explored any number of subjects, such as the economies of traditional fishing cultures, the impact of tourism, or even just a competitive sport-related theme. But the game does nothing, and the tasks appear pointlessly.

One might note, however, that a narrative is not essential to a game. In a game-world, the environment itself might construct meaning and engagement. And it very well could have here. A fully realized ocean environment could provide more than enough content. It could act in an educational fashion, for example, elucidating the mysteries of reef environments or the perils that they currently face. Alternately, the game-world could simply create wonder in its audience with a truly beautiful, detailed, interactive world. Before beginning my playthrough, I hopefully recalled the under-appreciated Mini Ninjas (dev. IO Interactive, dirs. Jeremy Petreman & Henrik Hansen, 2009), a narrative action-adventure game that sometimes slows to encourage calm wonder at the beautiful, stylized environment as the player-character floats slowly on rivers while fishing. Such moments are not attempted by Depth Hunter.

Depth Hunter is too poorly realized to pull off any of these things. The few types of fish in the world have even fewer behaviors. Big creatures (manta rays, sharks, moray eels) don't react at all; they swim in a fixed pattern or sit stationary. Small fish either swim back and forth or swim away if approached too close. It's good that they swim away if you get close, because the models and textures aren't particularly detailed or convincing. They are far better than the repetitive, plastic-looking ground textures, though, which are decorated by the same piece of coral thousands of times. The whole art design is just far too simplistic for the environment it tries to capture, so none of it works. Perhaps if it had attempted a more stylized design, such low detail could have worked, but the game attempts a veneer of realism that clashes with what it actually achieves. Couple that with the total lack of interactivity, and there is simply no content in the environment to drive the game.

Ultimately, I suspect that Depth Hunter was conceived as a something like a tech demo for its game engine, and that no one really thought about how the game should function. Its disparate elements (spearfishing, photography, explorable underwater worlds) never cohere, and none is done well enough to be anything of note on its own. I applaud Biart for taking an uncommon premise to production, but that is about the only praise I have to offer. I wish a game would really run with the underwater exploration conceit; sadly, Depth Hunter does nothing but botch it.




Technical note: I hate having to discuss mundane software issues, but it's worth noting that Depth Hunter validates your serial number on every start up. About a quarter of the time, however, it seems to fail, at least on my machine. I'm not sure if this is some sort of broken, local check or if it is trying to connect to the developer for validation, but it is annoying nonetheless. Restarting the game usually corrects the problem, at least until the next time it goes awry.

Thoughts on Mirror's Edge

Back when Mirror's Edge came out, there was a flurry of writing about it in the online gaming criticism community. I didn't get around to playing it until it recently, so I'm a bit late to the party in posting some thoughts on it. So I'll start by rounding up the existing writing on the game before offering my thoughts.

What People Have Said

• First of all, I wrote a normal consumer-advice-format review here, in which I praised the game.
• Fraser Allison discussed how the game creates immersion (PDF).
• PixelVixen707 enjoyed the game and Faith's character design, despite some lapses in realism. [Update 2014-04-20: Link dead; no known accessible archival copy.]
• Andrew Vanden Bossche discusses the game's memorable gameplay and not-so-memorable story.
• Brinstar praised the game's art and character design despite some flaws, discussed the inclusive nature of Faith's character, and lamented the tacked-on feel of the story.
• One of the developers of the game was "bummed" by some objectifying fan art.
• Cineris took a more critical view of the game and Faith, commenting on some interesting similarities to cinematic trends.
• Kris Ligman initially compared Mirror's Edge's protagonist unfavorably to that of Portal, before backing off a bit. Brinstar also commented on this comparison.
• JBurger looks at the flaws in the gameplay.
• Will Tiddy wrote a "semiotic analysis" of the game, but ultimately I found it a bit simplistic.
• State of the Comic Art has a nice little review/analysis of the game. [Update 2014-04-20: Link dead; no known accessible archival copy.]
• In a very interesting post, Ben Medler argues that Mirror's Edge is modernist, while games like Assassin's Creed are postmodernist. [Update 2014-04-20: Original link dead; archival copy available here.]
• Iroquois Pliskin thinks the game is "so close" to being great.
• The Runner is a whole blog about various aspects of the game, and it's written in a very nice sort of prose. [Update 2014-04-20: Original link dead. Some text and images archived here. Text without images archived here. Some posts can be seen in complete text+images form at this archive - filter the results by typing the number "1913" in the filter text box. See also this article about the disappearance of this blog.]
• Richard Terrell compared how the game functions in 2D vs 3D: Part I, Part II, and Part III. [Update 2014-04-20: Links corrected.]
• Over at "the earth is dying and we do not notice it," there is a piece looking at the architecture of the game. [Update 2014-04-20: Link corrected.]

Some Thoughts From Me

I can't say too much about Mirror's Edge (hereafter ME) that hasn't already been discussed (I'm just not that original compared to some of these fine folks!), but I want to bring up Faith's role as a female lead again. It seems to me, especially given the developer's stated disappointment at the objectifying fan art, that the game was something of a conscious effort to address the role of female characters in gaming. Personally, I thought the game made some good forward progress in that respect, despite also making a few missteps, so I want to do some brief (and very incomplete) analysis of the game as a whole in that vein. Others have written about how well (or not so well) Faith herself works to address femininity in games, but not too much writing has looked at potential interpretations of other game aspects with respect to the state of female characters in the gaming world. I'll point out just a few things in the game that seem to comment on that topic, mostly in a simple allegorical way.

If we start from the premise (a mere hypothesis for the sake of this thought experiment) that ME is a commentary on female characters in gaming, it might be worth considering the ME universe as being symbolic of the gaming community. I don't think it's a stretch to assert that no artistic medium can really mature as an art form as long as it inherently excludes large segments of the human population. Gaming, in many critics' eyes, still suffers from this problem to a large extent, though a handful of games have dealt with gender and sex in a more balanced way. In a way, the art design of the ME universe at the largest scales is much like that state of affairs. It is rendered bland by it's lack of color, with only a few bright spots that stand out, not unlike how a medium is rendered ineffectual by lacking inclusion, save for the few developers that manage to do something different. Faith literally bounds from highlight to highlight, as if struggling to find meaning in a world that is otherwise hostile to her.

The gameplay itself argues for a rejection of the most common gameplay mechanic out there: combat. While the player is capable of fighting, it is a decidedly underpowered mechanic, so Faith's running ability and agility are favored in most situations. Even in combat, most moves don't kill but merely disarm. This is an implicit rejection of most games out there, which often rely on combat alone. Mindless aggression is a common stereotype of the male persona, so such a rejection is a comment, albeit a simple one, on male dominance in games. Just as gameplay mechanics are more interesting when fully developed into multiple modes (Faith still can fight, it just isn't her only move), games as a whole are more interesting when they embrace the whole of human experience, including that of other genders.

The character development of ME presents a bit of a bigger challenge in this interpretation, and I think that is because the developers missed the mark to a degree as far as the story, and thus character development, goes, as many reviewers have noted. Faith is the obvious one. Refreshingly, she is a strong female lead that, in this interpretation, serves as a proof of concept for a successful female character driven game. She is modeled more like a real woman, in contrast to the heavily objectified and sexualized characters that populate so many other games, and that helps to make the game inclusive and appealing to both men and women. While she is attractive, she is not sexualized simply for the sake of the male gaze. For the most part, I think Faith is a tremendous step forward in character design in games, but she's not without flaws. In some respects, the developers have simply made her a bit of a parody, by having her physically overcome hugely strong men. She's relatively skinny and lacking in muscle, and there is no way such a person could do some of the things she does. To some extent, suspension of disbelief works, but on the other hand, it seems that the developers were having her act like a man while looking like a woman. Still, she works overall.

There are other characters in ME. I was particularly intrigued by the janitor, arguably the most minor of characters. He (we know he is a he from a note on a computer screen) is unseen, but he leaves notes and objects throughout the levels of ME. He is characterized comically as rather dumb, and he is friends with his pet rat, seen throughout the game. To me, he seems to represent ignorant, but not malevolent, gamers that tacitly support the status quo. They, and he, do this to some extent through expectations for how a game should look and function. An action hero is surely a muscly man, as the janitor assumes in a drawing of the mysterious character who has been knocking down all the red doors. Still, the janitor senses that things aren't quite right, as is seen in another drawing featuring a rat in a cage, surrounded by watching eyes and armed men. Yet another drawing (inside the truck in the level, "The Boat") shows many featureless faces with one unique dark-haired individual, all surrounded by question marks. Perhaps this is the janitor's shock at catching a glimpse at the real main character of ME. I surely missed some of the little details regarding the janitor, as most are barely noticeable, so there is likely a good deal more subtlety in this regard.

Ultimately, ME seems to take a hopeful view of gaming's future ability to be inclusive of female characters and mature into the art form we all hope it will become. This hope is most elegantly expressed through the beauty of the city. It's grey and, in spots, ugly if you look closely, but upon backing up, you notice that there is a great deal of beauty about it. Indeed, in the final scene we see the city at twilight for the first time, and we see, amidst a sea of colorful blue lights, that it is capable of lighting up. That is one of the lessons of ME. While games are quite imperfect, including ME itself, there is great beauty there now and even more in its future, as long as we keep running forward against the odds.

Thoughts on Homefront

• THQ, Digital Extremes
• Action, FPS
• Release: Mar 15, 2011 (US)
• Platforms: PC (version reviewed), Xbox 360, PS3

Homefront is an encapsulation of the problems that plague many video games. While it has the polish and technical prowess of a top of the line, AAA gaming experience, it falls totally flat due to its inept conception.

The single player campaign finds the player's character, an American pilot, captive to the Koreans, who have invaded and conquered much of the United States in Homefront's near-future setting. Soon, however, he teams up with a resistance group, with whom the player endeavors to throw a wrench into the Koreans' plans by unleashing a whole lot of violence. As implausible as the premise sounds, that is not the game's problem.

Nor are the graphics. The game is powered by the Unreal Engine 3, and the developers have managed to adapt it to beautifully render some lovely, open, outdoor landscapes. Because the game centers around a American resistance movement, the setting is is a battered version of suburbia. The battlegrounds are neighborhood streets, the aisles of large abandoned stores, and the open spaces of parking lots and sports fields. It is a competent representation of the premise the story puts forward.

The control and mechanics work adequately as well. The gunplay holds it own with titles like Call of Duty, and there is no shortage of weapons with which to experiment.

So why does the single player campaign fail so totally? The answer lies in the story and how the gameplay was used to convey that narrative. These choices are at odds with the game's strengths. The appeal of the implausible premise and setting is the novelty of fighting for a world that attempts to be the some one that the player lives in. One gets to see the destroyed suburbia, and those fighting alongside you are normal, scared people like yourself. A game that makes the most of these strengths would allow the player opportunities for exploration of the environment, perhaps by providing multiple possible routes to achieve objectives. Such a game would develop the characters; their back stories would provide motive for the fighting while exploring how terrible situations change people. The prejudicial tension between Americans of Western European descent compared to those of East Asian descent given the invasion of Koreans could provide fascinating plot points to be explored.

Homefront, however, does none of these things. The gameplay is linear to a fault. There is frequently one path forward, and that path is always highly scripted in both time and space. You cannot climb a ladder or crawl through a hole until the characters with you go first, and, even then, you will simply press a key that tells the game to do the crawling or climbing for you. You cannot explore the neighborhoods that you must fight through. Only one path forward will be allowed, so there will be no opportunity to look in abandoned houses, stores, or other scenery. It is all merely a backdrop. The other characters, too, are merely a backdrop; though they fight alongside you, they are shallow, undeveloped shells of characters. The main group consists of a tough black guy, a scared woman, and a featureless, techy Asian. Each is an empty stereotype that is present only as a nod to diversity, and none contributes to the story. With no characters to care about, a world that feels tiny despite its large size, and no freedom to accomplish anything, it is very hard to care much about the game as a whole. As a result, there's not too much fun to be had, and there's nothing interesting to think about, either.

How about the multiplayer? It is highly derivative of the Battlefield series. The maps are pretty decent, and the different game types are standard of the genre. Homefront mixes things up a bit with the introduction of "Battle Points." These points are earned by doing things like killing enemies or achieving objectives. Then they can be spent on vehicles (tanks, trucks, etc), accessories (flak jacket, RPG, etc), or special abilities (like deploying a drone). This adds a touch of new strategy, but in practice it doesn't work too differently from just spawning the items at intervals. The vehicles seem underpowered in this game, and I think much of that issue arises from the non-destructible environment. In Battlefield: Bad Company 2, for example, a tank can force it's way through a flimsy wall or fence; in Homefront, on the other hand, the tank can do nothing to a flimsy fence and is thus easily trapped. This renders the use of vehicles fairly uninteresting. As a whole, the multiplayer can be enjoyable, but it is clearly inferior to several other games.

As a whole, there is much to learn from Homefront. Despite its high production values, it makes numerous mistakes in its construction of gameplay mechanics and its botched attempt to create an interesting narrative. Further, it has no idea how to combine that narrative with those mechanics, so each fails completely and separately. One can have some fun with Homefront, so perhaps players that simply want a different FPS to play will find enjoyment. But, ultimately, it's a shallow and unfullfilling experience.