Half-Life 2: The Anatomy of a Classic - Part One

"Wake up and smell the ashes."

These words from G-Man, spoken just moments after Half-Life 2 begins, resonate throughout the game. There are plentiful theories as to who this man is, who employs him, and what his relationship is to Gordon. But Half-Life 2 is not one of the greatest games of all time simply because the G-Man speaks such mysteries with his halting voice, but because it is so thoughtfully assembled and thematically consistent.

Of course, a few thousand words isn't enough to express what makes Valve's masterpiece so enthralling. I have much to share with you--so much, in fact, that I want to close out Video Game History Month with a multipart analysis. My dissection isn't intended to speculate on the story elements that give rise to so many wonderful theories and extrapolations. Instead, I hope to look at its various mechanics, narrative devices, and map designs--to explore the anatomy of Half-Life 2. And its birth begins with a gaunt G-Man's call to action, and a train ride to City 17's rail station.

One Man, One State

Once the opening credits conclude and you disembark, you immediately understand that you are not an aggressor--and that the Combine soldiers are in control. Should you draw too close to a soldier, he will shove you backwards, and it's hard to forget the soldier who later asks you to pick up a soda can and drop it into the nearby wastebasket. This is a small touch, no doubt, but it's a great example of how gameplay and story can be merged in a single interaction. Mechanically speaking, the game is teaching you how to pick up and drop objects, if you haven't already figured it out. Narratively speaking, the game is reinforcing who is truly dominant--and it isn't you. This is a theme that Half-Life 2 returns to time and time again, and one that allows it to stand proud among shooters a decade later. Where the majority of modern shooters make you the aggressor, Half-Life 2 is no power trip. In fact, you spend a good while without a weapon in your hands. That may sound boring, but Half-Life 2 keeps your attention by giving you a number of sights, sounds, and events to ponder and analyze.

A still from a German television production of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. Note how One State's citizens, like City 17's, are clad all in blue.

Consider, for instance, the vortigaunt you glimpse within a station. He is sweeping the floor and closely watched by a nearby Combine grunt. The alien may look odd, but he is performing a mundane duty. Note the collar and other hardware attached to his body. You immediately understand that the vortigaunt is either subservient or enslaved, and in one small stroke, Half-Life 2 casts these aliens not as threats, but as allies, or at very least, victims of the Combine. All of this exposition occurs at your own pace. Half-Life 2 does not introduce you to these concepts by having one of the nearby residents catch you up on current events or explaining the circumstance in an opening narration.

Instead, Half-Life 2 remains a masterclass in environmental storytelling. Dr. Wallace Breen's "welcoming" telecast is particularly noteworthy not just in how insincere his words sound, but in the kind of language he uses. The word "benefactor"--the word he uses to describe the faceless ones who have seemingly imprisoned humanity--is a not-so-subtle attempt to characterize these beings as benevolent (clearly, they are not), but also harks back to Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel We, which is largely considered to have inspired Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, to which Half-Life 2 is occasionally compared. We is one of the first depictions of a dystopian future that satirized the author's culture--in this case, Soviet Russia. Its world is presided over by a man known only as The Benefactor, and its citizens are known only by numbers.

City 17 and We's One State are different, of course, and the plots of these works aren't particularly parallel, but the similarities are worth noting, particularly in light of the Combine propaganda on the walls. Consider the poster featuring Breen looking off into the horizon in a pose long associated with an individual facing a brighter future. Soviet propaganda often depicted Stalin and Lenin in similar poses, as you can see below, and given the Cyrillic text on these posters, the references to Soviet Russia seem obvious. Half-Life 2 doesn't take place in Russia, most likely, though City 17 is assumed to be somewhere in Eastern Europe. I'll let devoted Half-Life 2 theorists debate about City 17's exact location; I am more concerned with how these small details communicate totalitarian ideals without the game expressly spelling out the backstory. If you're an American, particular one that lived during the height of the Cold War, the Cyrillic text communicates the kind of otherness you were taught to fear. We'll visit this subject later as we rush through the canals and make our way to Nova Prospekt.

Fact: Men in beards cannot be trusted.* *Not actual fact.

Of course, systemic oppression wasn't the exclusive domain of Soviet Russia. Consider Breen's own words: "And so, whether you are here to stay, or passing through on your way to parts unknown, welcome to City 17. It's safer here." Safety versus freedom is a frequent theme in an age where we are taught to fear terror by a government that would violate our privacy in the name of security. With the jingoism of Call of Duty and Battlefield finding more prominent roles in modern games, Half-Life 2 provides a vital counterpoint.

Basic Instinct

Freedom? Not quite.

Just after Barney arrives, dressed as a Combine soldier, Valve raises the fear factor, showing you glimpses of presumably violent interrogations occurring behind closed doors. If you're worried, you needn't be, of course: Barney uncovers his friendly face just moments later, and you soon emerge into City 17. It's a fantastic reveal for its immediate impression of openness, followed by the realization that the Combine are watching, documenting, and imprisoning as much as possible. That freedom-versus-confinement dichotomy plays out in a number of ways. You see buildings in the distance and the Citadel rising above you, but the Combine's blockades confine you. A hotel and souvenir shop greet you, but they are boarded up and abandoned. It's the nature of most shooters--and games in general, for that matter--to provide a sense of a greater world while limiting your freedom, but Valve finds a way to make this gaming convention make sense in its world. The Combine have a vested interested in limiting your movement. There is no control when you cannot leash your subjects.

Before you emerge into City 17, however, listen to Breen's second telecast in which he responds to a supposed letter written to him about overcoming instinct, the instinct in this case to reproduce. No surprise: he is once again echoing major themes of the Soviet era, in this case espousing the concept of the "New Soviet Man." Here are some of Breen's words: "Instinct creates its own oppressors, and bids us rise up against them. Instinct tells us that the unknown is a threat, rather than an opportunity. Instinct slyly and covertly compels us away from change and progress. Instinct, therefore, must be expunged." Compare them to Leon Trotsky's words in Literature and Revolution: "Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman." The New Soviet Man's goal was to triumph over his own instincts.

Superstition, which lies at the root of ritual, must, of course, be opposed by rationalistic criticism.

Leon Trotsky, The Family and Ceremony

Let me remind all citizens of the dangers of magical thinking. We have scarcely begun to climb from the dark pit of our species' evolution. Let us not slide backward into oblivion, just as we have finally begun to see the light.

Dr. Wallace Breen, Half-Life 2

Gordon still has no offensive capabilities, but he is absolutely capable of taking damage. The apartment escape sequence initiates Half-Life 2's primary narrative arc, which begins with a vulnerable Gordon on the run, powerless to fight back, and ends with him at the forefront of a revolution. These moments leading to your first encounter with Alyx Vance are self-explanatory, but they provide an effective glimpse at the lives of City 17's citizens, who live sparsely, and in constant fear. Alyx's introduction, however, is notable for how it subverts the common damsel-in-distress trope, with Alyx in the role of savior, and Gordon in the role of victim. Of course, Gordon is this world's true chosen one (more on this later), but Alyx is a leader in her own right, and it's a shame that she doesn't earn more screen time.

Dr. Kleiner and Alyx have obviously been very close for a long time. Note the little construction-paper cutout signed by Alyx near the bottom right of the corkboard. Adorably, it looks like she didn't spell 'Kleiner' quite right.

Now that Alyx has brought you to relative safety and you've been reunited with Barney, you collide with the telling traits of lean storytelling: there are few activities or lines of dialogue that don't have purpose. The upshot to lean storytelling is that you spend less time listening to other characters telling you about the world and more time seeing it for yourself. The downside is that you can infer future events from minor details. Every line of dialogue or story event either moves the plot, develops a character, tells a joke, or foreshadows the future. "I still have nightmares about that cat," says Barney, and Alyx replies with slight panic, "What cat?" We now know not only that the teleporter is unsafe, but we can presume that Gordon's transfer to Eli's facility will not go according to plan. The shenanigans of Lamarr, the de-fanged headcrab, occur just afterwards. Hmm--could it be that Lamarr is going to disrupt the transfer?

Well of course that's what it means, but at least you get to play around a little beforehand. Check out the miniature teleporter against the wall with a cactus in it. Not only can you transfer the cactus from one point to the other, but you can remove the cactus and replace it with other objects lying around the room. What a nice touch: the current key story element is also presented in a simple interactive form. You also get to put on your HEV suit before stepping into the teleporter. Putting on the HEV suit is an interesting moment, not only because we see more of Gordon's body than we ever do, albeit only his arms and hands, but because it's accompanied by a musical riff that now plays during the introductory credits of every Valve game. Half-Life 2 is, overall, a musically quiet game. Music is reserved for the most vital moments, rather than being a crutch to communicate tension, as it so often is in games and film. When Half-Life 2's soundtrack kicks in, it's telling you to pay attention.

In any case, the teleportation doesn't go according to plan and your scrambled brains get a peek inside Breen's office. He recognizes you, of course, but I'm more interested in the Combine prisoner pods you see to Breen's left. It's easy to miss them, but they, too, provide a very early glimpse of the future. Again: Valve rarely puts something into its games just to have it there. Remember the glimpse of your first strider back in City 17? That wasn't for show: that was Half-Life 2's version of Chekhov's gun. Those pods mean something, and while you may not consciously notice them, they become part of the game's narrative tapestry. Chekhov would have been proud of Valve's ability to keep narrative elements relevant. Valve also applies Chekhov's principle to gameplay. For instance, in Half-Life 2, you don't get to take control of a mounted gun if there's no reason to use it.

Crowbar and Sickle

A collapsing bridge may seem old-hat now, but this was really something back in 2004.

Action! Physics! The journey is finally underway, but your crowbar isn't much help against the Combine soldiers firing at you in the distance. Fortunately, it isn't long before you grab a pistol, though even after you've taken down a few Combine, there's always something even more powerful suppressing you, such as the gunship that dogs you as you travel to the canals. As phenomenal as Half-Life 2 is even today, there are elements of it that come across as rather quaint, such as the insanity of the ragdoll deaths and the all-too convenient placement of explosive barrels. (What are those barrels doing there?!) Even with the action underway, Valve continually sends the message that Half-Life 2 is not primarily about shooting. Luckily, it's not just about stacking cement blocks either. (Does anyone like that puzzle?)

A few notes about this level before moving on. First: the introduction of barnacles is handled incredibly well. A barnacle's tentacle pulls up a crow and draws it into its maw. You know in 10 seconds what a barnacle does and what makes it dangerous without the game having to cut away to a tutorial video to show you. Moments later, you discover that a barnacle will latch on to anything, even if it isn't edible. Again, you are being introduced to an important behavior without Half-Life 2 making a parade of it. Second: Valve is very good at designing levels that subtly draw your attention to enemies and point of interest. Barnacles are often placed on ceilings next to lights, for instance, ensuring that you notice them.

Soon after begins the oft-discussed and oft-criticized Water Hazard level. It's important, however, that this sequence exist in the game where it does. While we have had glimpses of the resistance, and how the One Free Man symbolizes their struggle and future emancipation, Gordon is not yet entrenched in this group, and their safe havens are few and far between. "Run, Gordon, Run" would have been an apt title for the next few hours of the game, which reinforce Half-Life 2's lengthy narrative and gameplay arc showing Gordon slowly gaining control.

Throughout this arc, Gordon Freeman is a man who doesn't make things happen so much as he's a man to whom things happen. That may seem like an unlikely attitude in a genre in which shooting people is your primary goal, but it's not so uncommon in fiction, and science fiction and fantasy in particular. This is the nature of the "chosen one" narrative: the chosen one has not decided upon his or her own path. Sometimes it's a deity making the decision (The Stand's Mother Abigail); sometimes it's a prophesied destiny (The Wheel of Time's Rand al'Thor, Harry Potter); and other times it's luck, circumstance, or the sheer force of social upheaval, as is the case with Doctor Freeman. (As G-Man says, he is "the right man in the wrong place.")

Valve, in turn, underscores its Chosen One narrative with several sensible storytelling and presentation decisions. Gordon doesn't speak, we never see his reflection in a mirror, and we don't even see his arms and hands when he pilots the airboat. The Half-Life series occasionally receives flak for the inert nature of its protagonist, but Gordon's silence is a vital artistic choice that emphasizes his lack of agency. Alyx and Barney both have a little fun at Gordon's expense before the teleporter incident, pointing out his muteness (as well as his MIT education), but Valve is wise in this case to acknowledge their storytelling choices and move on, allowing those choices to coalesce into the greater Chosen One tale.

In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their own powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes toward a great avenger and liberator who someday will come and accomplish his mission.

Vladimir Lenin, Why Marxists Oppose Individual Terrorism

Unsophisticated minds continue to imbue him with romantic power, giving him such dangerous poetic labels as the One Free Man, the Opener of the Way.

Dr. Wallace Breen, Half-Life 2

An apparent weakness notable in Water Hazard and the few chapters beyond is that the Combine don't represent much danger, which runs counter to the understanding that Gordon is not a soldier. The HEV suit itself provides some counterpoint, offering protection from both physical harm and radiation, but Half-Life 2 is an easy game on default difficulty, and it seems implausible that Gordon would so easily mow down these grunts with a pistol. The upside is that the initial ease allows Valve to stick closely to a predictable but understandable gameplay arc in which the tension, difficulty, and combat enjoyment crescendo over time.

The early rhythm sets up this arc extremely well. You spend the majority of these levels not shooting guns, but speeding through canals, avoiding gunfire, and occasionally disembarking to solve a few physics puzzles and explore a few structures. This may sound boring, but Half-Life 2's pacing is masterful, finding new ways to diversify the adventure, and establishing itself not as a straight-up shooter, but as a first-person adventure.

Some of this diversity arrives by way of subtle but expert storytelling. In one facility, you once again find a monitor broadcasting a message from Dr. Breen, but the message has changed, and he now warns the populace of imbuing Gordon with "romantic power," and suggesting that doing so is "magical thinking." (This speech, of course, calls to mind Breen's earlier speech in which he warned of instinct and "superstition." "Be wise. Be safe. Be aware," Breen suggests, again reminding us that the powerful would have us choose between security and liberty. Remember this broadcast when viewing future ones; Breen has yet to express the panic that creeps into his future speeches.

Other diversity comes within the action sequences themselves, many of which incorporate physics (crouch and push a cart down a walkway to avoid gunfire), put you behind a mounted gun (again, you do not see Gordon's hands actually grasp the hardware), and vehicular chase sequences. (Remember: Half-Life 2 heeds Chekhov's principles; if you can take control of a mounted gun, you must have a reason to use it!) Throughout all of these examples, the attention to pacing detail is superb. Consider the warehouse battle, which emerges as the game's first somewhat challenging sequence. The addition of the Magnum to your arsenal just preceding this fight is a judicious development decision.

Before we take this hovercraft ride to its conclusion and find our way to Eli, I'd like to again call out Half-Life 2's environments. The Eastern European setting has already been more or less established by this point, but your ride through the canals has drawn a more specific parallel: The Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Three years after Half-Life 2's release, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series would eventually face this disaster head on. The Chernobyl connections here are less overt, though rather obvious upon examination. Consider, for instance, the images below, which compare the tenements of Half-Life 2 to those in Pripyat, Ukraine, the town most affected by nuclear disaster. The game explores other Chernobyl parallels in the trainyard and at Nova Prospekt, and while the primary thematic connections are obvious--radioactive hazards are common in Half-Life and its sequel, hence the HEV suit--there's a less obvious theme running beside them. Namely, the secrecy of the Soviet Union's response to the Chernobyl disaster, which was almost Combine-like in its tight control over information.

The shadow of Chernobyl looms large in Half-Life 2. If this is the best humanity has to offer, perhaps it's best that Breen surrendered.

Locals learned of the accident not because they were informed, but because they began to suffer from life-ending illnesses in a matter of hours. It wasn't until a Swedish nuclear plant detected the Chernobyl radiation that the Soviet Union issued their first statement, which came two days after the meltdown: "There has been an accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. One of the nuclear reactors was damaged. The effects of the accident are being remedied. Assistance has been provided for any affected people. An investigative commission has been set up." Half-Life 2's appropriation of the Chernobyl incident is chilling not just for recalling the horrors of a nuclear event, but for its subtler references to a regime dedicated to keeping the masses uninformed. Like the Soviet Union, the Combine keeps its citizens ignorant as a means of control. It's difficult to "be wise, be safe, be aware" when your wisdom is limited by your own government--and by a Stalinesque figure who presides over an entire planet's populace.

Your time with the hovercraft comes to an end when you reach your destination, but not without the first sign that Gordon might be able to lead a revolution he never asked to be a part of. I speak of the boss fight versus the mine-dropping gunship. The music kicks in when you leave the hangar after being granted your own vehicular weapon, which sets up the urgent minutes to follow, which include shootouts on land as well as on water. The concluding gunship battle does a fantastic job of bridging the gap between Gordon's early hours as prey and the revolution that will ultimately come. Gordon, the hunted, must avoid the mines and stay on the move lest he fall victim to the oppressors. Gordon, the hunter, must attack in return if the uprising is to succeed. His success, just he is about to meet Eli and Dr. Judith Mossman, is important to both researchers, though for very different reasons.

To come in Part 2: Playing catch, playing with gravity, and going to Ravenholm.

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Half-Life 2

PC

Xbox 360

PlayStation 3

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Battlecry Is Bethesda's Stylish and Gun-Free Shot at Team Fortress 2

Back in 2012, Bethesda Softworks established a new development team called Battlecry Studios. Two years later, we finally know what this Austin outfit has been up to with the reveal of Battlecry. The game. Not the studio. It's...the same name.

So what is Battlecry? In short, it's a free-to-play multiplayer action game. Now, if you're still reading this after that "free-to-play" bit, you have my profound thanks. I certainly can't blame anyone for losing interest over the idea of yet another major publisher dipping its feet into the world of free-to-play. But there's nothing about this game that strikes me as a cynical cash grab; it's actually pretty interesting. In fact, there are a few things about it that have me genuinely excited.

First, there's the overall aesthetic. Battlecry's creative director is Viktor Antonov, a talented visual artist whose work includes Half-Life 2's City 17 and Dishonored's Dunwall. Antonov's distinct touch was immediately apparent in the map I played on, an alternate-history take on an industrial English city that manages to feel both grimy and oddly beautiful at the same time. It's a run-down setting, but one rendered with a stylized, painterly quality that bears a strong resemblance to the bizarro Victorian world of Dishonored.

Equally stylish are the game's competing factions. See, Battlecry is like a military history lesson as viewed through the lens of a graphic novel--and without the slightest regard for historical authenticity. You've got the Cossack Empire, looking as though it has tumbled right out of an old propaganda poster, as well as the Royal Marines, all decked out in the reds and whites of the 18th-century British army. But the class-based characters are what really stand out. You need look no further than the Royal Marines' brawler, a bald, mustachioed brute who looks like what old-timey boxers would look like if they had mechanical arms with which to better pummel their opponents.

In fact, there are no guns at all in Battlecry. This is an alternate history where nations have signed a peace treaty outlawing the use of gunpowder, leading to a proliferation of slick melee weapons and the occasional electrical super move. Therefore, there's a lot of up-close and personal combat, whether you're playing as the tanky enforcer who employs a massive broadsword, or the DPS-focused duelist, who can dash in and out of a fight with a handy cloaking ability. The exception, of course, is either team's tech archer, who is the ranged character of the bunch.

Those are pretty basic archetypes, but the type of stuff you generally find in role-playing games rather than competitive online action games. Add in a fluid movement system that lets you zip across big swaths of the map using a grapnel gun, and you've got a game that doesn't feel like all the shooters and multiplayer online battle arena games that have come to dominate the free-to-play space.

Now, it's still got a ways to go. In the handful of matches I got to play, the combat system tended to feel like more of a rugby scrum than a battleground. Anytime I ran into four or five players in close quarters, it immediately became a frenzied mess of blood splatter and dead bodies. Maybe that's just what happens when you've got people playing for the first time, but I hope battles wind up feeling a little less chaotic and a little more duel-like.

The other thing that bothered me was the way that none of the game's visual character transferred over to the audio side. The world is so striking and the characters so lively that I would expect the game to sound a bit more interesting than it did. There was nothing wrong with the score; it just felt sparse. Battlecry feels like a game in need of an announcer or some clever banter between characters, but as is, the audio is merely serviceable.

There's still plenty of time to fix that stuff, though. Battlecry won't be going into open beta until 2015. I'm curious to see how it comes along, because I definitely enjoyed what I've played so far.

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New Hitman skipping E3, but here's some concept art

IO Interactive's in-development Hitman game will not be on display at E3 2014 next month, the developer confirmed in a post on the game's website today. The studio said it would rather keep working on the game than "divert valuable resources" to show the game before it's ready.

"We've seen a lot of people talking about what we might be bringing to E3 this year. We know the worst thing is to hope for something that doesn't turn up; so we wanted to let you know that our next Hitman is going to be under wraps for a bit longer," the studio said. "We're focusing all of our time and efforts into creating the best possible Hitman game. That's our number one priority and we don't want to divert valuable resources to show something before it's ready."

IO Interactive also provided a status update on the new Hitman game ("We're making great progress," the studio says) and released a piece of concept art that shows off a location in Central Europe. According to IO Interactive, you'll be able to explore the entire building you see in the image, inside and out. For context, IO Interactive says this building by itself is larger than any location in 2012's Hitman Absolution.

Finally, IO Interactive teased that Square Enix Montreal is "pretty close" to announcing not only new updates for mobile game Hitman Go, but also a new Hitman mobile game altogether. "We've been playing it here at the studio and it's a lot of fun," the studio said.

In addition to a new Hitman game, FOX is moving forward on a Hitman movie reboot starring Homeland actor Rupert Friend in the lead role as Agent 47. Friend takes over for Paul Walker, who died in a car crash last year.

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E3 2014

Hitman: Absolution

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PlayStation 4

Xbox One

Io Interactive

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Meet the survivors of Left 4 Dead’s arcade game

Valve and Taito, a subsidiary of Square Enix, are currently collaborating on Left 4 Dead Survivors, a version of Left 4 Dead redesigned for Japanese arcades. We've seen brief glimpses of the game before, but now we know that it will not feature the groups of four from Left 4 Dead or Left 4 Dead 2, but an entirely new cast of survivors.

The game will still take place in the United States, but the characters are seemingly designed to appeal to a Japanese audience. According to Arcade Heroes, Kudo Yusuke is a Japanese university student visiting the U.S. when the outbreak starts, as is Haruka Hirose, a Japanese high school student, and Kirishima Sara, a travel guide. And then there's Blake Jordan, the token American and hotel bartender who previously served in the Navy.

In 2006, Taito released Half-Life 2: Survivor for Japanese arcades. As you can see in this video, it added flashing arrows that point you in the right direction, points, and other elements that would complement a quicker arcade experience.

If you're waiting on a proper Left 4 Dead sequel, there's good reason to believe that one is on the way. According to Counter-Strike co-creator Minh Le, Left 4 Dead 3 is in development and is coming along well.

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Left 4 Dead 2

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Get Thief, Batman Arkham games, Tomb Raider, many more for cheap in Amazon’s Mayhem sale

Amazon is currently holding its huge Digital Games Mayhem sale.

The sale will last until the end of May, and offers as much as 80 percent off of many of its PC game codes and downloads.

Some good deals you might be interested in include Thief, down from $50 to $25 (or you can get the Master Thief Edition for $27), Tomb Raider, down from $20 to $8, and the Batman Mega Bundle, which includes all three of the released Arkham games, down from $90 to $22.50.

Other highlights include Sleeping Dogs, down from $20 to $6, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, down from, $60 to $30, and Just Cause 2, down from $15 to $4.50.

You'll need either Steam, Origin, or Uplay to run most of these games, and Amazon will let you browse by your DRM of choice if you want to stick to just one of them.

You can find over a 1,000 items already on sale here, and Amazon says that it will introduce even more promos and bundles before the sale ends.

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Papers, Please dev announces his next game, Return of the Obra Dinn

Lucas Pope, the developer behind the award-winning indie game Papers, Please, has announced his next project; Return of the Obra Dinn.

In a post to TIGSource, Pope explains the game will use the first-person perspective and take place on an East India Company merchant ship named the Obra Dinn, which sets out from London for "the Orient" with over 200 tons of trade goods.

"Six months later it hadn't met its rendezvous point at the Cape of Good Hope and was declared lost at sea," Pope said. "Early this morning of October 14th, 1808, the Obra Dinn drifted into port with sails damaged and no visible crew. As insurance adjustor for the East India Company's London Office, find means to board the ship and recover the captain's logbook for assessment."

Pope said that his goal for the game is to challenge himself to experiment with rendering, story, and a few technical features, so it will be very different from Papers, Please and his other previous games.

The game will be built with Unity 3D, and will aim to emulate the look of old, black and white games for the Mac Plus, Pope's first computer.

"I'm hoping to capture a compelling mystery with suspense and twists in the limited space of an old merchant sailing ship," Pope said. "It won't be the typical 'collect items and look for clues' structure. There's a slightly cool gameplay hook but I won't go into details on that until much later."

Pope's Papers, Please won this years Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the Independent Game Festival, as well as the Excellence in Narrative and Excellence in Design award.

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Apple removes game about growing marijuana from App Store

Apple has removed a popular game about growing marijuana from the iTunes App Store.

The game, Weed Firm, is just one of many on the iTunes App Store that feature marijuana in some way, and you can still download a number of apps that can help you locate where to legally buy marijuana in states like Colorado, review different strains of the plant, and much more.

According to a statement (via Adweek) from Weed Firm developer Manitoba games, its game was pulled because it was more popular than others. "This was entirely Apple's decision, not ours," it said. "We guess the problem was that the game was just too good and got to number one in All Categories, since there are certainly a great number of weed based apps still available, as well as games promoting other so-called 'illegal activities' such as shooting people, crashing cars and throwing birds at buildings."

As indicated by the iTunes App Store guidelines, the company reserves the right to reject or remove any app for content or behavior it believes is over the line. This usually refers to adult content, but we've also seen Apple pull an app about plastic surgery reportedly aimed at children, and the mobile version of Wolfenstein 3D from the Swiss and Austrian app stores for featuring swastikas.

Manitoba Games promises that Weed Firm will return to the iTunes App Store after it's been "censored a bit to comply with Apple's strictest requirement since they are going to be looking very attentively at what we submit from now on."

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iPhone/iPod

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Star Citizen funding hits $44 million milestone

Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts' Star Citizen has just reached yet another funding milestone. The game's widely successful crowdfunding campaign has now raised a staggering $44 million, up from $43 million in late April.

In a letter to the community, Roberts said that his team is hard at work on Arena Commander, a small, multiplayer-focused dogfighting mode that should launch on May 29. "Getting to dogfight in deep space is going to make Star Citizen real for a lot of people," Roberts said. "But I also know that everyone who has supported us to this point already understands. Thank you for getting us here!"

To mark the occasion, Roberts shared a piece of concept art for what he calls the "negotiation room," a place in one of the games' ships where traders can meet with other players, display their cargo, and make deals.

All backers who contributed to Star Citizen before this point will get an additional "Stellar Cartography" room added to their hangers once the modular room system launches. This room will serve as a kind of map, featuring a 3D holographic representation of the game's universe that will get more detailed as you explore it.

Roberts revealed that If Star Citizen hits $46 million in funding, backers will get an updated scanning software suite, which could provide them with information on where to find resources.

Star Citizen is due to launch in full sometime in 2015. A total of 453,429 people have backed the project so far.

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Star Citizen

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Hyperkin Retron 5 Review

A taste for the classics is on the rise, inspiring people to seek out old games and consoles, but not everyone wants to wade through flea markets or enter into a bidding war on eBay for a 20-year-old Super Nintendo. This is where a hardware company like Hyperkin comes into play. Its line of Retron consoles has given fans of classic games a new way to play NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis cartridges, and its latest console, the Retron 5, introduces support for Famicom, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games. Everything is powered by an embedded Android operating system, which opens the door for valuable features such as HDMI output, save states, and Game Genie-like cheat codes.

It's a great system with loads of promise, but it also has a few issues that need to be ironed out if Hyperkin wants to please enthusiasts. Luckily, the Retron 5 has an upgradable operating system, so these issues may be resolved down the road. But, as it is today, is Hyperkin's latest console worth the $140 asking price? Let's take a look.

The Retron 5 is a good-looking if unusual console. It has five cartridge slots, six controller ports, and a dock in the back for the included wireless controller. Like a lot of aftermarket consoles, it's outfitted with cheap-feeling plastic, but given its attractive design, it's natural to forget what it's made from and focus on how it looks instead.

The included wireless controller isn't quite as good looking as the console, or as well made, but as a functional piece of hardware, it's fairly sufficient. It communicates with the Retron 5 via Bluetooth, and has a battery that lasts up to eight hours. It would be great if the battery could recharge passively while the controller was docked in the back of the console, but in reality, you have to manually connect it to the system using a rather unusual micro-USB to mini-USB cable. Thankfully, the 10-foot cable offers plenty of slack so you can play games while the controller is charging.

Though it has a few nice features, the controller doesn't quite measure up to the quality of original NES, SNES, and Genesis controllers. Its convex buttons are made of hard plastic and emit an unpleasant, hollow, clicky sound. Instead of implementing a directional pad, Hyperkin opted to install an eight-way thumbstick, similar to what you would find on a Neo Geo Pocket. It works well for some games, but it can be a death sentence when playing difficult games with strict timing and movement requirements. It's also unfortunate that the system can't be turned on with the wireless controller; you have to hold down the power button on the front of the system for five seconds. It's a better controller than those Hyperkin has shipped with past Retron systems, but not by much.

The wireless Retron 5 controller is convenient, but also cut-rate. Stick to official controllers, if you can.

On either side of the system are three ports--one each for NES, SNES, and Genesis controllers. The Retron 5 lets you use any controller that's plugged into the system regardless of the type of game you're playing. So you don't need to unplug your Genesis controller when you want to play an NES game, for example. The controls for different systems remap automatically to other controllers, but you can also remap the button layouts manually within the Retron 5's OS.

Unfortunately, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games remain single-player experiences. Traditionally, you would have to link two Game Boys together via a link cable, and the Retron isn't currently capable of emulating that arrangement. Thankfully, it does simulate multitaps, so four-player games for every other console are easily arranged, regardless of the mix of controllers you've connected to the Retron.

A quick look at the back of the system reveals an SD card slot that's used for cheat codes, screenshots, firmware updates, and save-state files. There's also a mini-USB port for recharging controllers, an HDMI port, and the AC adapter port. Hyperkin has thoughtfully included outlet adapters for Europe, the UK, Australia, and China.

Most aftermarket retro consoles use problematic emulation methods to do the heavy lifting, which doesn't always work with games that use special chips and circuitry. The Retron 5 is no more pure, in the sense that it still uses emulation to get the job done. Though Hyperkin confidently asserts that the Retron 5 will ultimately support every officially licensed game for the consoles it supports, we found a few exceptions during our tests, including some games that worked perfectly on previous Retron consoles. These include Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the Super Nintendo, and the combination of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or 3 with Sonic & Knuckles for the Sega Genesis. Unlicensed games aren't officially supported, and when we tried to play Pier Solar on the Sega Genesis, it failed to make it past the intro screen. Again, these may just be temporary issues that Hyperkin can fix with a future firmware update.

Unfortunately, though the Retron supports multiple systems, for now, it won't operate if you put in more than one cartridge at a time. With the Retron 3, for example, you could keep a cart in every slot and manually select which one you wanted to play. Hyperkin has said that it's working on an OS setting that will allow you to do the same on the Retron 5, but at the moment, the system will report an error if you insert more than one game.

If you're used to playing classic games through composite cables, you'll be impressed by how crisp and colorful they look with the Retron 5 and an HDTV, and with HDMI, you don't have to worry about PAL and NTSC incompatibility. Though some people will appreciate the sharp, hi-def pixels coming out of the Retron, you have the option of smoothing them out with a few distinct image filters. No one filter works well for every game, but it's a great option to have, and you may find that some games look surprisingly fresh when the right filter is applied.

Apart from playing thousands of games, perhaps the most useful feature of the Retron 5 is its ability to use save states. These allow you to save at any point during a game and restart right where you left off. It's a convenient feature that makes getting through some of the more difficult games a bit easier, and given that a lot of old cartridges have dead batteries inside, save states can breathe new life into a cartridge that's no longer able to store saved games.

Built-in cheat codes are another valuable feature, and Hyperkin is constructing a large database of codes that it will distribute on its website, but you'll need to supply your own SD card in order to use them. Our tests with an early version of this database were mostly positive, but there's still room for improvement in the cheat section of the Retron 5's UI. There's no way to automatically sort codes, or to activate and deactivate codes en masse, so it can be a bit of a chore when you want to find one code out of a list of a few dozen. Unfortunately, there's no way to enter new codes via the Retron OS, and there's no easy way to edit the cheat database on a PC without manipulating massive and unintuitive XML files.

Unfortunately, though the Retron supports multiple systems, for now, it won't operate if you put in more than one cartridge...

The Retron 5 emulates games after dumping them to local memory, which includes any saves that are present on the cartridge. Therefore, any new in-game saves you create are also saved locally, but you can also upload them back to the original cartridge. This worked in almost every case, with the exception of Super Mario RPG, but we also had an issue with a copy of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. In this case, the Retron looked as though it were rewriting save files to the cartridge, but it would consistently fail to rewrite one save in particular, which went mysteriously blank, resulting in an empty slot and a save file that remains in limbo on the Retron. Given that you're working with decades-old games with equally old batteries, there's always the inherent risk that this feature will be unreliable, but this is never explicitly spelled out in the OS.

Save states, cheats, and battery backups are tied to specific games, which are identified by cross-referencing the data on a cartridge against a database of known games in the Retron's local memory, which is supposed to account for the entire library across all supported platforms. Unfortunately, when a game can't be identified, you lose access to cheats, and potentially save states too. Oddly, the Retron 5 couldn't properly identify our copy of Super Metroid for the SNES, even though it's a well-known game. This might be due to a poor connection between the cartridge and the Retron, but there's no alternate method for accessing cheats and save states when this occurs.

Taking all of these features and issues into account, it's clear that the Retron 5 is not for everyone. On the one hand, it does things with real cartridges that could previously be accomplished only with PC-based emulators and ROMs. Unfortunately, the promise of a great system is hampered by minor incompatibility issues and half-baked features. The dependence on cart verification is too strict, and the fact that you can have only one cartridge in at a time is disappointing.

Speaking as an avid collector and retro-game enthusiast, I'm impressed with the latest Retron, but given its current limitations, it's not yet a full-time replacement for my original consoles. Still, it breathes new life into classic games, and despite its current issues, there are enough benefits to justify adding it to your repertoire of classic gaming hardware. It's currently the most expensive console of its type, but if Hyperkin fixes the issues with the OS and the internal emulators, $140 will be a small price to pay for the new gold standard in retro gaming consoles.

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VGHM 2014

Super Mario World

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EA testing Candy Crush Saga-inspired version of Peggle

Electronic Arts is currently testing a version of Peggle that has a lot in common with Candy Crush Saga and other free-to-play mobile games.

Like King's immensely profitable Candy Crush Saga, this new version of Peggle features a world map and common free-to-play monetization methods. If you lose all your lives, for example, you could either wait for a significant amount of time, or buy more via in-app purchases and continue playing immediately.

This version of Peggle is currently free to download from the New Zealand and Singapore iTunes App Stores. Mobile game developers often launch games or test new versions of them in smaller territories like New Zealand (Canada and Australia are two other popular testing grounds) and gauge the audience's reaction before rolling them out to bigger territories like North America.

Unfortunately, as Pocket Gamer reports, EA didn't only launch this new version of Peggle in those territories, but also removed the original game from the app store.

"We're exploring different ways to extend the fun of Peggle on mobile, and we're currently testing a free-to-play version of the game in Singapore and New Zealand," an EA representative told Kotaku. "It's important to note that we haven't finalized gameplay features or business model yet, and this free-to-play version of Peggle is part of a series of tests we'll be conducting in specific markets. We often test these experiences first to see if they resonate with our players."

The older, paid version of Peggle is still available to buy in other territories.

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Peggle

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