I’ve been musing for a bit about how to put this nicely, but when I saw this article about Ubisoft demanding a “very good” review of Assassin’s Creed 2, I decided not to hold back. To put it in terms that these companies should understand, “game reviews are broken and they need to be rebalanced”. Today I’m going to lay out what I’d like to see in a high-quality game review and how to go about putting one of those together. Keep in mind that this is just one woman’s opinion – but it’s an opinion heavily influenced by my experience in the world of game development.

First – and most importantly – we need to stop focusing on how things look rather than how they play. I see a critical misunderstanding of the elements of game design in many of the reviews I read, and I’ve essentially reading most of them for this very reason. Ultimately, it shouldn’t matter how a game looks or sounds – the combination of the mechanics and the general play of the game are the important parts. The visual style certainly makes a difference (look at Borderlands for a recent example), but it if the game was god-awful, the visual style wouldn’t matter at all. Borderlands certainly isn’t the first game to look like this, after all. Besides, people still play graphically “inferior” games like Starcraft and terminal-based games such as Nethack!

Game reviewers need to have more than a history of playing games. This is imperative – just because you’ve played a lot of games doesn’t necessarily mean that you have the critical analysis skills necessary to be a good reviewer. On the other hand, if you have those critical analysis skills, playing a lot of games will certainly help. The most important things to look at are the mechanics and the overall way the game comes together. An example of questions I ask when I review games are the following: “What are the mechanics of this game? Are they interesting? Are they well-executed? Is there room for improvement? How well do all of the components of the game fit together – does the visual style match the gameplay elements and the audio? Are there graphics and audio that don’t feel well put-together? Why do I think certain design choices were made? What did these choices influence?” Of course, the questions I ask will vary from game to game, but I’m sure I’ve made the point clear here.

We also need to strip out the broken scoring system that most sites use right now. Games and film are not the same medium (and I make that point because many people treat them similarly), but we should be borrowing from film review to understand how to score our games. As analysis of games improves and reviewers aren’t just saying “this is cool”, I hope that this begins to evolve as well. We only need one score for game reviews, and this score does not always need to be high. A good film critic is not afraid to give a 1 star rating, and a good game reviewer should not be afraid either.

Scoring a game’s individual components does only one thing: get away from the main point. Games are about interaction, much like how films are about narrative. There are a number of things that make up this interactive experience (animation, audio, controls, story, etc), much in the same way that film tells a story using video, audio, camera shots, and visual storytelling techniques. Yet in a film review, you’re not apt to see a separate rating for “Special Effects”. Wouldn’t that just feel ridiculous? Film reviews tend to talk about that sort of thing in the overall discussion of the film, and I propose that high-quality game reviews should do the same. I don’t need my important information lost in the noise surrounding it.

Finally, the large game companies need to stop attempting to strongarm the reviewers. The link above shows one example, but I’d also like to point out how reviews have been steadily inflating over time. These days it seems that anything below a 9.0 is almost unacceptable. That may be partially due to fanboyism regarding a franchise in addition to industry pressure, but that’s a whole different article. The pressure comes from that fact that review scores have almost become binary; above a 9 seems to mean “good” and below a 9 seems to mean “bad”. If your game gets below a 9, its sales tend to suffer – and that’s never a good thing.

It’s going to be difficult, but these things need to change. The system as we have it now is broken, and the only people it helps are the mindless masses who want to be told what to play. I really wish I could come to trust reviews, but unfortunately I can’t bring myself to do so right now. And trust me, I’d really like to.

Also, reviewers? Get rid of fractions of a point. They don’t really mean anything.

I feel that a topic like this one is immensely fitting for this site, and I'm proud to be the one to bring it to you. Today I'll be referencing two major upcoming games I had the opportunity to play at GameX this past weekend to talk about what we're starting to see sexually in AAA games these days and how to use the topic of sex positively rather than negatively. If you've been following gaming news at all recently, you might guess that these two games are Bayonetta and Dante's Inferno – and you'd be right.

I'll start with Bayonetta. While I was initially put off by the hypersexuality of the main character and the blatant use of sex in the game's tone (the demo, according to the title screen, is subtitled “Foreplay”; the character Bayonetta's finishing moves are titled “climax” on-screen when you have the opportunity to use them), I quickly grew not only to accept the character and her actions, but even to appreciate them in ways a good little girl certainly should not. There are some things I can just ignore, such as how absurdly far out her hips swing when she's walking rather than running, and some things I'll never be okay with. Things in the latter category tend to be camera locations and poses; for instance, at least one cutscene bit was unabashedly angled from below to get a good look at her breasts. There's a specific pose I couldn't care for during the boss battle of the demo level, but it's better seen than told. I'm fairly certain most of my audience will appreciate it!

Her sex appeal, though, it put to very good use through one of the game mechanics: as a witch, she uses her hair to inflict major damage using fancy animations. And if that wasn't sexy enough for you, it turns out that her hair forms her skintight leather-or-maybe-PVC jumpsuit. Yes, this means that if she's using her hair for an attack, her clothing fades away. (To be fair, though, she ought to show off those curves with that kind of body!) Surprisingly, this actually adds to the game rather than taking away – even though it's absolutely absurd, it's charming in its implementation. I'd rather see something creative like this rather than some sort of generic excuse to rip her clothes off.

It's also no surprise that this game just oozes sex all over the table. Women who can effectively wield guns tend to be considered extremely “hot” in Western culture, and this one has four guns on her person that she uses interchangably. Surprisingly, two of these guns are actually part of the heels of her boots. But in case you thought that she might become too scary, she creates butterflies when she lands from a height and can actually summon butterfly wings to perform a double jump.

Dante's Inferno, on the other hand, is the “bad cop” to Bayonetta's “good cop”. Before I talk, I'd like to point out that I'm explicitly talking about the “Lust” level being shown around at conferences. I can't speak for the rest of the game, but note that Lust is one the earlier circles of Hell and that most if not all players will reach it.

There's two main points to bring up here: the level design and the marketing. I was playing Bayonetta when my colleague returned from the massive EA structure stating something to the effect of “God dammit EA, was it necessary to use penis columns and stick vaginas on the wall?” That's right – penis columns. In this set of rooms, the player fights a female-looking monster with a large slit down her torso. Out of this slit emerges a long phallic tentacle which she tries to grab the character with. This is blatant sexualization, much as we saw in Bayonetta – but is executed in a poor fashion. It's not negative so much as it is gross and over-the-top, and it just feels ridiculous

To make things even better, the boss of the level is a giant topless version of Cleopatra. Yes – you do see her breasts namely the entire time – and yes, they do bounce. This is the first time I have ever felt like I'd seen mandatory porn in a AAA title. Out of her breasts, of course, emerge demon babies in a spray of...something. I'm certainly not sure what it was. Needless to say, this is not a positive example of sexuality in games. I'm all for mature content in games as long as they're rated properly and the big stores – I'm looking at you, Gamestop – work with the parents to educate their children and uphold said ratings, but this isn't the kind of thing I'd really stand for in a movie either. Frontal nudity of a woman in a sexual scene or one in which it makes sense is one thing, but gratuitous tits for the sake of tits is really just porn.

In addition, many of you remember Liana K's article on our very own site about the “Sin to Win” competition EA held back at Comic-Con in San Diego this year. This is a definite example of the bad sexualization. Treating people in this way is offensive and it absolutely should not have been tolerated. While the character of Bayonetta is certainly what we might consider “eye candy”, she isn't a human being with actual feelings. Booth babes, on the other hand, are very real. And guess what – they have emotions too! Judging by the deluge of email I received and the media explosion about the competition, there's a good chance this marketing ploy lost them a bunch of sales rather than gaining them some.

I don't think I'd let my young children (if I had any) play either of these games. I'm not sure why – I'm constantly saddened by the way the United States in particular has this culture of shamefulness around sex, and I try to fight it whenever I can. Maybe I'm just growing up and having a change of heart, or maybe as a woman I'm just more uncomfortable with the gratuitous sexual scenes I've looked at here. Dante's Inferno is especially awful in this regard: yes, it is the Lust stage, but the boss's breasts don't really need to be bare and bouncing around. That scene in particular is porn – plain and simple.

Even then, I'm glad to see mainstream games utilizing sex in this fashion just like the movies. We just have to remember how to do it right. While it's easy to say “Bayonetta good, Dante bad”, consider why that's the case. With these examples, it's that Bayonetta is handled in a mature manner while Dante's Inferno is handled in a manner I would expect from a group of teenagers.

Regardless, I know which game I'll be buying on release day – and which one I won't.

Scribblenauts has been out for a couple weeks now, and I'd like to muse slightly on the topic. While I don't believe that it's the legend it was made out to be at E3 this year, it's still an interesting game and definitely very fun. The mechanics of “write whatever you want and watch the interactions!” make each play a unique experience, and Scribblenauts becomes more about these experiences than about the puzzles themselves.

Like certain other games, such as Morrowind or Oblivion, Scribblenauts will likely be remembered fondly by many for the stories that come out of it. Every time I hear somebody talk about it, it's some sort of elaborate story about solving a puzzle – and because the creativity involved means that it becomes very personal. Think about the early videos that released about Scribblenauts: the one that everybody remembers is the skateboarding God vs. Cthulhu video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB1Wnbhlzrs) Why? “Because it's cool.” But more importantly, because that story of that one time that you got God to fight Cthulhu is awesome – and you can embellish it each time so that it becomes more awesome! But how many people remember which puzzle they were trying to solve? No, that wasn't during the open-world title screen – it was during the “get the star out of the tree” puzzle.

Scribblenauts definitely challenges a player's creativity, but its mechanics are simple. You can move the character around horizontally and you can create anything you'd like. Objects can be used in many different ways by touching them, and these interactions depend on what the character has. For instance, putting a shotgun in the player's hands allows the player to click on something and “shoot”. Of course, this can have dire consequences for either the shooter or the shootee. But then again, Scribblenauts has a strong feeling of cause and effect associated with it. Most of the things you can makes something happen, and the conflict that happens so often is what makes for good storytelling.

It's really up to what the player wants to happen. The game helps to drive the player to perform different actions and use different words by rewarding different uses. Each level has a challenge that can be completed that requires the player to solve the puzzle three different times without using the same words a second time, and this is a Very Good Thing, as it helps to keep things fresh. One time I may be able to use a tornado to do what I need to, while another time I may use a zombie or a ninja. Maybe the third time I can solve the puzzle solely with a shotgun. (This last one is a personal challenge I enjoy taking on myself!) Cleaning up trash? Most people would say that qualifies as a boring task – and yet in Scribblenauts, it becomes humorous and fun. I could never justify cleaning up a room by shooting all of the contents with shotguns in real life. Moreover, people react well when I tell these stories, driving me to do my best to one-up myself on a regular basis.

Despite all that, I can see Scribblenauts becoming boring soon. There really are only a limited number of puzzles, and I have very little desire to complete them each three times. I find myself trying different things and then quickly falling back on the old standbys – pull out a shotgun and shoot things, whip out a black hole, or use the old wings / helicopter / UFO and a rope technique to drag something somewhere else. Too many of these combinations are overly powerful, and they work for so many of the puzzles. Perhaps some people are more creative in their noun choice than I am, or perhaps some of them have more time and are less easily frustrated in their games, but this is the main reason I didn't buy Scribblenauts on launch day like I'd originally planned. (That and I was in Austin at the time – hah!) That's not to say that I don't enjoy the game – believe me, I do. I can definitely feel a lot of limitations of the game, though.

What I'm really hoping Scribblenauts is able to do is to help the children. I'm hoping that a new generation learns to spell properly (Scribblenauts has a very rudimentary “did you mean x, y, or z?” spellchecker if you input a word it doesn't know) and learns more words. I can see Scribblenauts being modified into an education game where you learn homonyms, synonyms, and antonyms. I suppose it could also be used to teach foreign languages – what better way to learn the word for “shotgun” in Korean than to write it in Hangul. Repetition helps to formalize concepts in our heads, and this can be used even to teach new words in English. I've already seen plenty of people learning new words from misspelled suggestions in Scribblenauts (“What's a barouchette? Oh, okay!”), and I can definitely see this being put to good use.

It's the execution of Scribblenauts that makes it a fun game, though. If there were less words to choose from, it would fall apart – the concept of “type in anything” is the major draw. These words are what allow people to be creative in what they type, and these words are what allow the stories to be made. While these stories aren't as robust as those provided by the world of Morrowind or Oblivion, which I personally feel are some of the best games out there for individual storytelling and world ownership, they're still a lot of fun and bring people together. I hope, though, that 5th Cell can realize Scribblenauts' potential as an education game as well and help to educate and enrich a new generation of tech-savvy children.

I've seen it too many times: a high schooler loves playing video games, doesn't know what to do with himself in college, and sees “Game Design” as a major at a school he or she is applying to. Or, worse yet, they tell their school counselor that their favorite activity is playing video games and the counselor suggests this particular degree. The kid gets into the school, arrives and starts going to classes. But wait – they're difficult. “There's lots of math involved!”, “I have to program?”, and “I don't have time to play games anymore!” are all common phrases I've heard a million times before. One of two things happens: either the student leaves for a different major or a different school, or he or she sucks it up and realizes that they're actually up for the challenge. (Note: this last one is very uncommon. Most of the student who stay realize that it involves a lot of work, and – in this case – a lot of programming as well.)

Too many people are drawn to this industry because the job title of “Game Designer” is up there with “Rock Star” in terms of the coolness factor. Ask a group of teenage boys what they want to do someday, and I bet you at least one of them will say “I want to make video games.” But how many rock stars or game designers do you actually know? Neither one of them is an easy job, and they're more glamorized in the media than they have any right to be. (Perhaps someday I'll explore the reasons why I decided not to pursue the rock star route after high school – I seriously considered it, but decided against it and I'm glad I did.) A lot of people don't really know what goes on in either of those jobs, and it's often not pretty when they find out.

It turns out designing games is especially difficult. If you read some of the more serious books out there, such as Salen & Zimmerman's excellent Rules Of Play, it's easy to see that games are essentially just a collection of formalized rules and systems. I'm not going to go too far in depth on this particular topic today, but this happens to be one of my particular interests, so it bothers me that so many people tend to ignore these facts. Many people think that being a game designer means that you sit in a room, think for a while, and suddenly tell people how to make The Sims 13. Instead, there's a significant amount of research and rule design that comes into play – all while keeping in mind that it still needs to be fun in the end. It's also a series of compromises – a game designer almost never has absolute full control over his or her game, and refusing to take others' input is a good way to get fired.

Other jobs in the game industry are equally as difficult. Artists and modelers have to balance the highest quality they can make with the limitations of how much can be drawn on the screen at a time, programmers have to constantly push the hardware and do whatever they can with it, audio designers have to worry about sound that either dynamically changes with the game or doesn't get tiring when played on a constant loop, level designers have to worry about the complexity and paths through their levels, etc. etc.

Even the most popular job for people who say “I like playing games!” – being a game tester, also known as working in Quality Assurance, isn't what so many people think. Rather than getting to play games early, it often consists of playing the same section of a game over and over and over trying out every possible combination of buttons, items, or anything else. Once you find something unusual, you need to make sure you can reproduce the bug, write it up, and submit it to the dev team. One of the worst stories I've heard about was for a well-known PC game, which required that somebody install each build on every type of hardware from the minimum specs to the highest, make sure it runs, uninstall it, and then reinstall it again – on every operating system supported. Sounds fun, doesn't it?

If the challenges for one of these sounds doable, congratulations! Now you have to fight tooth and nail to actually get the job. As awful as I've made some of these out to be, there's still a huge number of people who want to work in the industry and a very small number of jobs. Getting a job consists of a few things: your past experience, the connections you have in the industry who will help with a job in a company or vouch for you, and your portfolio. Some companies may require more or less, or you may get lucky, but usually it's a combination of those three. “Breaking in” – getting the first job – can often be the hardest, as you usually don't have much of any of those three. Those who do make it tend to have worked hard for the connections or the portfolio – or both. If you're applying to game jobs and you haven't done anything at all – not even indie games or even any work on your own – odds are you'll have a very difficult time.

You'll notice I didn't mention much about playing games in the past few paragraphs. That's because it doesn't really matter if you love playing games – playing games and making games are two very different things. And the sooner most people realize this, the better off everybody is – the industry has fewer people attempting to break in, and people may realize that it's not the right place for them. That being said, if it is right – by all means, go for it and don't be afraid! Just be willing to dedicate yourself and put in your all.

Somehow, on the path to becoming a professional game developer, I stopped playing games. That's not to say that I don't love games, but I just don't have the time. In some ways, it's counterproductive – I need to understand how complex systems work in order to develop some of my own. In other ways, I completely understand it – it's both the nature of my industry and the harsh demands of grad school.

When I say I stopped playing games, I'm full of shit. I stopped playing hardcore, AAA titles. I used to hate the casual market, but I've become enamored by quick sessions such as those I can get from Peggle, Boomworm Adventures, and even Spelunky. I have a literal tower of Xbox 360, Nintendo Gamecube, and Playstation 2 games begging to be played, but I return to shorter games instead.

My life has become so very busy that I can't justify sitting down for a block of time that I know will be more than an hour or so. I used to play JRPGs all the time – a topic I'll probably revisit in the future – but those tend to take forever to play. I'm constantly amazed that I find it so difficult to sink more than 10 or 20 hours into a game – but I'll play anything with a short session and say “Just...one more round.” Sadly, I almost always play more than one round.

There's a reason the so-called “casual market” has been growing so much that doesn't have to do with women in games or new target markets. A number of gamers are finding that they have the same problem I do, and many of them have turned to games with shorter play sessions as well. Some have found solace in the indie games community, where due to development restrictions games often release in the lengths of “short”, “shorter”, and (on certain rare occasions) “immense magnum opus”. Indie games can often get away with these shorter lengths due to the price point (often low or free, but as always there are exceptions) and the fact that indie developers often rely on having a larger body of work than some of the major companies out there.

I'm not at all excited for most of the AAA titles coming out anytime soon with the exception of Brutal Legend. In fact, there are very few games on the market right now at all that I'm interested. Oh, sure, there's a number I can get new or used that I'd be interested in, but so little of it appeals to me that I'm not quite sure what to do. Most of my “must-buys” from a retail shop are DS titles, which I find appeal to me because I can simply close the screen and walk away. The DS is made for shorter play sessions and immediate pausing, which I love. Conveniently for me, this has also created a context of allowing the player to save games pretty much anywhere at any time.

Maybe I'm being too harsh on some of these games, but even the DS can't hold my attention for a long period of time. Ultimately, I want shorter games, not shorter play sessions. This is one reason I find roguelikes so fascinating: I can play a full game in a few minutes if I'm bad at it, and (depending on the roguelike – I'm thinking more of Shiren the Wanderer on the DS rather than Nethack) a couple hours if I'm good. And I'll be honest – the procedural content helps a bit there. Still, I'd rather play some strange little innovative indie game on my computer than any major release I've seen in a long time. But everybody has their own tastes.

Of course, I have to play these games to understand them, so it all comes full-circle in the end. Whether or not I “want” to, I'll play a number of these major titles. I'll even try my best to get excited about one at some point. Arkham Asylum is the next on my list (and sitting on my bed) under recommendation from a friend whose choice of game material to study is impeccable. I'm sure there'll be a bunch of really cool things coming out at some point in the future. And I'm sure I'll like – or even love! – some of them. But I haven't finished a lengthy game in a while, so we'll see what happens. I'm going to go back to my Nethack now, and you can let me know the cool things coming out...

I'm over at GDC Austin right now, so I'm going to be relatively brief today. If you haven't been to a GDC before and you're even remotely interested in game design (not playing games), you should try to make it to one. Currently, GDC comes in five flavors – the original Game Developers Conference (GDC) now in San Francisco, GDC Europe, GDC China, GDC Canada, and GDC Austin – and they're consistently some of the most amazing experiences I've ever had.

GDC Austin tends to be smaller than the regular GDC. It's a more “distilled experience”, as I've heard one person put it, but the content is still beyond anything you would find anywhere else. This year, GDC Austin is focusing in particular around topics about social games and MMOs, and the first keynote this morning featured John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment, speaking about their recent MMO aimed at a younger audience: Free Realms. Many of the other sessions at the show will be on other relevant topics. There are also four summits going on here at GDC Austin, which personally helped me to make the decision to come here: the Independent Games Summit, iPhone Games Summit, Game Audio Summit, and the Game Writers Summit. These are a collection of sessions aimed at a particular audience with a particular background – and a great opportunity to meet a number of people in the same profession. The highlight session of my trip so far has been one on small footprint audio, which gave me some fantastic tricks for my audio work that I never imagined to be possible with midi.

But there's more to GDCs than just sessions and people. Each show has an expo floor as well where a collection of companies and groups set up booths and show off their latest technology. I've worked at one of these booths before, which gives me a much higher respect for the people working at these booths. It's worth it for the companies, though – if you remember March's huge announcement by OnLive about their product and technologies, you remember something from the GDC. And, of course, companies recruit at these booths as well, because a good portion of the talent of the game industry attends these shows.

If you're a game developer, you should be at a GDC at some point. It's not for everybody – and unfortunately, the cost is very prohibitive – but I find that it never lets me down. I'm absolutely certain that there is something here for everyone, and that anybody could take back a positive experience from the conference. An added bonus is the fact that game developers are tons of fun – GDC nights can be even more exciting than GDC days. But I won't go into that now.

One more thing: if you ever attend, for god's sake, please follow the rules I laid out last month. Please.

A man walks through a door, wearing only a fedora and a brown leather jacket. He feels like he has done this a hundred times before, but he never has a sense of déjà vu. “I hear snakes...I hate snakes!” he says as he leaps down from one ledge to another. Rocks and pots fly as he throws whatever he can at the cave creatures trying to eat him. Suddenly he hears a woman wailing – what could she possibly be doing down here? Realizing that she is literally inside the wall, he lights one of his bombs and drops it to save her. But he wasn't careful enough – the bomb blows through both the wall and her body. Ashamed, he runs into spikes without looking and accidentally impales himself. He has done this many, many times before.

Spelunky, an Indiana Jones-inspired platformer/roguelike blend is one of the most innovative and popular indie games to release in a long time – and it's free to download. It recently hit a very official-sounding 1.0, though it was certainly playable before, and the creator, Derek Yu, has just announced an upcoming XBLA port. This is a Very Bad Thing, as Spelunky is more addicting than it has any right to be. Hours are easily lost to this game – mostly due to a combination of its quick pace and its high difficulty. It's not an unfair difficulty, though – most deaths leave the player with with thoughts such as “oh no, I could have avoided that!” rather than “that was so unfair!”

Even when you're decently equipped and experienced, the game still isn't very easy. There was a bottomless pit in this level...)

If you haven't downloaded and played Spelunky yet, you have no excuse. Most games average under five minutes and even a long game shouldn't take much more than half an hour, which is a striking difference when compared to other roguelikes. But like other roguelikes, randomness is an important factor. Levels are randomly generated (with the exception of some pre-determined rooms such as a room holding a golden idol or an altar), which makes every play new and unique. It also means that it's nearly impossible to be “stuck” at any one point.

Spelunky plays as a platformer, though, rather than the turn-based strategy of a traditional roguelike. It is more reminiscent of 2D games such as the original Mario Brothers or Sonic the Hedgehog, but the traditional roguelike idea of moving from one level to another (usually a physical descent, such as in this game) remains, as does the idea of the player's inventory. A selection of items are considered to be in constant use, while another category are items that are held in the player's hands. These tend to be weapons; anything held in the player's hand can be used as a distance weapon, but a number of them (such as the shotgun and the bow and arrow) fire projectiles rather than being thrown. A notable exception is the teleporter, which teleports the player in the chosen direction when fired and can only be dropped, not thrown.

What? She doesn't really mind being thrown around..

Another concept taken from the platformer is the idea of a player's health.

Unlike most roguelikes, which feature a level system and a health bar of ever-increasing size, players of Spelunky begin with 4 hearts. A heart can be acquired from a kiss from a damsel, which can be bought in a shop (you dirty person!) or earned by bringing her to the exit door of a level. Health, of course, is important – and like most roguelikes, health can be conserved by thinking before acting.

While the appearance of items is certainly randomized – as are shops where they can also be purchased – Derek Yu decided to throw away the roguelike tradition of having to identify everything before using it. This was the right move to make – knowing what things are immediately makes it much easier to justify purchases, especially when a given round's playtime is so short. It also makes the game much more accessible to new players, as roguelikes typically have an incredibly large learning curve, while Spelunky simply doesn't. It's certainly a lot less complicated, for instance, than Nethack is – which is a good thing for most audiences.

You'll see “Game Over” a lot.

Save Spelunky for when you have some time – you're going to need it. It's very easy to say “just one more time!”, but before you know it an hour has gone by. The next time you look at the clock, two hours have gone by. This is just the beginning.

Oh, and good luck.

I mentioned in my last post that I can do a perfect Turbo Tunnel run. If you haven't played the game Battletoads, you probably don't know what that means. Battletoads is a 1991 game originally for the NES legendary for its brutality. Still widely considered one of the most difficult games ever, Battletoads is both loved and reviled for its difficulty.

The Turbo Tunnel is specifically the first point of this difficulty. The first two levels of the game are easily accessible to an NES gamer; they consist of beat-em-up action in both horizontal and vertical level designs. A Battletoads player worth his or her salt will usually use these first two levels to rack up as many lives as possible in order to deal with the insane challenges the game throws at them later. Once they hit the third level -- the Turbo Tunnel -- they're often SOL.

I refer to the level by its name due to its infamy. It begins much like the first level, lulling the player into a false sense of security. Once the player defeats a few rats and Space Invader-esque creatures that directly steal life points, all hell breaks loose: the main part of the level begins. The player gets on a bike and is forced to deal with all sorts of insane obstacles at incredible speeds.

At first he or she just needs to move up and down to avoid the blocks in the way. They flash before showing up, so it seems reasonable, right? The level designers introduced an alternating pattern that they quickly deviate from, but at these speeds the player still has reaction time to deal with the blocks. A short block is soon introduced across the entire play area, forcing the player to jump. Finally, the player is introduced to the third mechanic he or she will have to deal with in the Turbo Tunnels: ramps. The level gets trickier as time goes by, forcing the player to occasionally jump for a ramp or -- even worse -- not jump in order to dodge a midair block. And just when the player thinks he or she is done, the two last parts surely drove even the most hardcore player crazy for a while: one section requires jumps from island to island without ramps while the other involves incredible speed.

Were the level designers crazy? This is downright simple compared to some of the later levels (one word: snakes), but it's certainly very mean. However, it's a distillation of the philosophy of the time period: "repetition and memorization are key". If you don't believe me, look at some other games of the era. The original Mario Brothers, for instance, is not at all a long game by today's standards. Instead, it relied on difficulty and the inability to continue indefinitely for replayability. Battletoads, of course, took this to an extreme -- so far, in fact, that they toned it down for the later Genesis release. If you watch the following clip, you can easily see that it's slowed down. Comparing the times (around 2 minutes and 20 seconds for the NES version and 2 minutes and 40 seconds for the Genesis version) shows that the Turbo Tunnel bikes were slowed by nearly 15%. That's not to say the Genesis version is easy, but I was able to pass it with no problems on my first playthrough after consistently being able to finish the NES version.

The NES bike section of the level.

The slowed down Genesis version. Which one seems more sane to you?

One thing that I absolutely love about this level -- and the reason I bring it to your attention -- is the way the designers really pump up your adrenaline in this level. I always find a rush in the Turbo Tunnel, even though I've done it so many times that it's nothing special to me anymore. You can hear in the clips that the audio is very fitting; for the NES it would be considered a "pounding beat" and very powerful. The sound effects of the blocks as they come toward you are reminiscent of speed; it would likely sound similar if you were to drive close to these objects at a very high speed in a car. They also provide a beat, which is the most important part. The bikes speed up slowly as the player careens toward a checkpoint, and hitting a checkpoint is a sigh of relief that visibly slows the character down. The faster movements are tricky to perform without an audible cue, though -- because each set of blocks comes at you at the same speed within a segment of a checkpoint (you'll notice that the blocks are separated into batches within each segment), a player with a good sense of rhythm can just let go and instinctually dodge the faster parts. I'm not at all certain I could do the last checkpoint without sound.

But don't think that the visuals aren't important here. While part of the challenge is the ever-increasing speed that everything comes at the player, everything speeds up. This is how the checkpoints can be used as a quick break: the entire environment slows down and then speeds up again. The strange balls underneath the player move faster and faster as time goes by, and the blocks flash for less and less time as the speed increases. On the last segment, the music actually speeds up as well, which really gets the player's heart racing.

If this level is so hard, though, why do players bother with it? For some, like myself, it's a badge of honor. (In fact, one of these days I will beat Battletoads without the use of any tools such as save states.) For others, difficult games are a thrill; these are the same people who had top scores on arcade machines. They enjoy playing them over and over again, and the fact that the game is so difficult adds a strong sense of replayability where most people would just give up. This is a mostly dead mentality; put Battletoads in front of a gamer who hasn't been outside of this generation of consoles and odds are they'll become quickly bored. However, that's an article for another day.

Will we ever see the return of the Turbo Tunnel? It actually reappeared in the SNES sequel, and the sequence there is just as brutal. (Another of the NES version's vicious levels, the Rat Race, returns there as well.) But the Battletoads series hasn't been heard from in 15 years, so it's very possible that it has bit the bullet. I say "good riddance"; while I love the Turbo Tunnel, I certainly wouldn't want to inflict that on anybody in this day and age! And, selfishly, I'd rather not have to memorize yet another series of blocks. I've had enough of them for my lifetime.

Whether you’re male or female, if you’ve been to a gaming convention you’ve seen them: nerdy girls who are present for a variety of reasons. Most of the time, they’re there for the exact reasons you are: to have fun, enjoy themselves, and likely to play some games. They’re not the booth babes – though they can be just as pretty – nor are they just there to be a trophy for a gamer guy. I have some insights to share for both the dudes and the ladies reading this. Listen carefully, because what I have to say could save your (sex?) life at a con someday!

Girls, I’ll start with you. There are a few things that you’re just going to need to accept. First, you will be hit on. There’s nothing you can really do about that, as the guys at these conventions may be interested in everything and anything you can or will do. Think going dressed as a zombie will save you? Nope, somebody will be into that. You’re much better off spending your time doing what everybody else is there to do: playing games. You wouldn’t be at a gaming con otherwise, would you? Now, if you’re into nerdy guys, that’s a nice benefit – there will be plenty of them there, and they’ll love it if you pay attention to them. But don’t forget that they’ll often take that as a sign to attempt to hit on you more, in which case you may need to step up your counter-nerd measures a bit more. Recommended courses of action include the male friend who can act as your boyfriend, very obviously displaying interest in another, or the worst-case scenario of snappy responses. Be aware that this last choice very possibly may make him stay away from you forever and should only be used in an emergency.

Outside, of such encounters, don’t feel that you need to be a representative for your gender. It’s much more important to be yourself in whatever way you feel appropriate. At a gaming con, it is 100% appropriate to play the games you want to and check out the booths you’re interested in. If you start to kick ass at a game, be aware that there’s a good chance you’ll intimidate some of the males around you. Those who are intimidated may become docile, but don’t expect special treatment. They’re gamers just like you, and it’s not fair to expect them to treat you differently just due to your body. Keep in mind that many of them simply aren’t around women who are interested in the same things they are; you’re like a holy grail to them and that’s why you’re so desirable.

 

Boys, now it’s your turn. Take a look at what I’ve said to the nerd girls and try your best not to be that douchebag. Just because we know that we’re going to be hit on doesn’t mean that we like it. If you sincerely think that you have a chance based on how she’s reacting to you, it may be worth considering, but she’s probably just there to have fun rather than to score. (On the flip side, I do know some exceptions, and I’ve met a number of cute gamer boys out there at cons.) However, that doesn’t mean stay away from us – we don’t want to feel like lepers. Gamer girls especially typically don’t bite unless you’re rude or obnoxious, and women tend to be social creatures.

But don’t ever insinuate that as women we have no right to be there. I can, among other things, do a perfect Turbo Tunnel run. I don’t expect a good deal of the people at a gaming con to even know what I mean, let alone be able to match that. If you try to one-up me (and I don’t mean with a green mushroom!), I will retaliate as best as possible. There’s no reason to assume that I lack skills based solely on my gender, and this is a great way to piss anybody off. Unfortunately, gamer girls have a history of being marginalized in the gaming world, so we’re especially sensitive to people telling us we don’t know what we’re doing. And yes, it’s still awful if other women are telling us this – it doesn’t matter where we’re coming from. Regarding trash talk during games: “You suck because you’re a woman” is not acceptable. “You suck at this!” may be. Understand that blaming our gender is a bad thing and a generalization – and to quote Clerks, “I’m making a broad generalization.” “No, you’re making a generalization about broads.”

Do you think you’ll get lucky at this con? So does every other single gamer boy who is there. It’s probably not going to happen, but I’ll be honest – there’s a small sliver of a chance. That chance is the reason your brethren become reviled: they think that it’s much higher, and they think that by hitting on every woman present that their odds go up. Unless she’s specifically looking for a hook-up or more, she probably isn’t paying too much attention. Do me a favor and try not to ruin her experience – it’s not a lot of fun to have to constantly avoid certain guys because they won’t leave you alone. I’ve been in that situation before, and I’m certainly any other girl who has been to a gaming con has had to deal with that as well. Women are more likely to show up if it feels like a safer, less threatening environment, so do what you can to help out.

Remember, these are not hard and fast rules. Everybody is different, and I’m certainly pandering to the stereotypes here that I’ve seen in my experiences at gaming cons. Other cons can and will have a completely different feel and attract a different type of person; for instance, anime cons are a whole different beast. Just remember no matter who you are that we’re all people and we all just want to be respected. Nerd girls are people too!