Matt Heston

As I have said before, the idea of A-list actors voice acting in games is a point of curiousity for me. I’m not sure what I’m missing when game commercials use 50 Cent or Vin Diesel or Samuel L. Jackson or some other celebrity as a selling point. Some people I talked to suggested that game-buyers might go for a game with a celebrity because of their talent as an actor, or some similar reason. I might be more inclined to believe that if there were some good actors in these games (actually, close inspection reveals there are a few exceptions, Patrick Stewart voiced a few lines in Elder Scrolls IV, and Ron Perlman did the opening for some of the Fallout games).

And yet, I am a hypocrite.

Brutal Legends is an action/adventure game made by Double Fine. The first trailer for it basically showcases Jack Black voicing the protagonist. Despite the “Look, look! We have Jack Black in this game! You guys like him, right?” feel I got from it, I was still quite excited. Yes, excited. Double Fine is led by Tim Schafer, who has made cult classic games like Pyschonauts, Grim Fandango, and The Secret of Monkey Island. Any snob who has an inflated opinion of the artistic merit of video games knows and loves this guy.

My dilemma with this game then is despite the cartoony aesthetic and overdone voice acting of Jack Black, the designer’s track record is platinum. It’s like if Steven Spielberg, immediately after recieving his Oscar for Saving Private Ryan announced he would be directing a family movie involving a cop dressing as a fat black woman.

Watch this as I have:

Wheelman, as I suspected, is being widely panned as a bad game. However, the interesting thing is that it stars, let me repeat, stars Vin Diesel. To me, this represents an another interesting step that Hollywood is taking to capture the electronic entertainment industry and another step awkward step in blending movies with videogames.

When I first saw the trailers for Wheelman, I wondered, “How does this game benefit from having Vin Diesel as the protagonist rather than just a character rendered on a computer?” It’s not that he can growl out the voice for a badass mercenary driver better than anyone else. Micheal Hollick’s barely a B-list actor and he portrayed Niko Bellic amazingly in Grand Theft Auto IV (and I bet he got paid a whole lot less).

50 Cent did this too by making 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand where he goes from overpaid rapper into terrorist killing badass with biceps the size of small trucks.

Both games confuse me with just their premise. Am I supposed to have fun with this game, or do I, like, experience it, like I would a summer blockbuster movie? Granted, the question is moot anyway because neither game was very good, but they are certainly intriguing indicators as to the cinematic potential of the games industry.

One thing I do NOT like about this concept of stars in games, though, is they probably steal the player’s sense of accomplishment. For 10-20 hours I can only imagine Vin Diesel telling me, “Oh, did you blow up that truck with just the right timing? No. You didn’t. I did. Vin Diesel. I blew up that truck, and you should feel lucky you were there to be a small part of how badass I am.”

In honor of GDC (game developers conference), I thought I’d share some of my observations and insights into the games I’ve been playing recently, namely Fable 2 and Resident Evil 5. This isn’t a review, though. Everyone has already done that. Twice.

Peter Molyneux (pronounced molly-new), the designer of the fable series, promised Fable 2 to be so much you’d think it was some sort of glorious hybrid of the mona lisa and a colecovision. Not to say that it’s bad, I just really, REALLY wanted those tough moral choices he promised. In my first playthrough, I saw the plot points that were supposed to be tough to get past, like choosing between hundreds of people and your family, or listening to a prisoner beg for food while you try to maintain your cover as a guard in the bad guy’s dungeon, but they all felt too forced to me. I could go right or left, but nowhere else. That was boring to me.

Though, the real fun of the Fable games was never about the story. Rather, it’s how your decisions indirectly affect the people around you. I could make the townspeople cower in fear if I had committed evil acts or crowd around me if I did the opposite. I could bolster the town’s economy by frequenting the shops, buying houses and selling houses, or getting drunk at the pub. On the other hand, I could send the people into abject poverty by buying their houses and charging exorbitant rents. On a more personal level, I could also have a family and a dog. This feature can be touching if you let the plot control how you build your family or hilariously wrong, as you can have a family in each city and become a secretive bigamist if you so choose.

Peter Molyneux’s Fable 2 did get me to question my choices, but not exactly the way the designer planned it.

Resident Evil 5 has been my first in the series, and it didn’t disappoint. What it lacked in horror and subtle pacing, it made up for in tension and seamless cooperative play. Unlike Halo or Gears of War, you can’t plow your way through the level, shooting at anything that moves. Resident Evil 5 gives you very wisely chosen handicaps to keep you in delicious, delicious peril. The ammunition is sparse, your partner is always getting surrounded by zombies if they’re controlled by the AI, and whenever you shoot, you need to stop and line up your shot.

I found that being forced to stop in order to shoot was an ingenious gameplay mechanic. You have to watch as mobs of zombies inch their way towards you. With limited ammo, you never can afford to waste bullets, especially with that creeping feeling that the boss is right around the corner. Distance is the scary factor in this game.

As for the stink people were causing about the racism in this game… it’s not there. There may be some sexism in the game though… your partner, Sheva Alomar, is smoking hot for an anti-terrorist operative. I can’t help but relate her to Lara Croft- super capable and dangerous, but the creators and the buyers only seem to care about her tits.