The Cross-Platform Conundrum

Depending upon where you stand as a gamer, you already know that this time in a console cycle is either very exciting, or completely numbing.  The arrival of a new console is heralded with unprecedented media coverage, gamer fanfare, and usually a degree of hyperbolic rambling that make the new machines seem powerful enough that they could be ushering in the Singularity.  Of course, this same level of fervor can be looked at with a certain degree of bemusement too.  After all, when all is said and done, gaming consoles facilitate your enjoyment of gaming, they don’t create it.  The same way that a set of golf clubs allow you to enjoy golf (if that’s your thing), but by definition, the clubs are not golf.

So then, outside of the mire of information that is flooding our mutual hobby at the moment regarding the ‘new’ consoles, much of what people want to see is reviews of games.  And this is where I’ve had a huge problem this week, and yet again realize why I have ever dwindling faith in the journalistic musings of much (not all) of the mainstream press.  With the Xbox One launching tomorrow, a lot of gamers are probably still trying to figure out which machine they want, and this decision is made very difficult by the lack of cross-platform reviews.

I fully expect that over the next few days, we’ll slowly start to see reviews for specific games getting published, but the fact remains that the reviews should largely be up by now.  Consumers want to be able to look around and figure out what console will work best for them, and without specific software reviews I think that initial decision can be very difficult.  How can you compare Killzone: Shadow Fall and Ryse: Son of Rome?  Quite simply, you can’t.  Certainly, you might privilege a particular genre over the other, but at this point, the fact that many media outlets and Microsoft do not seem to be allowing direct game-to-game comparisons is problematic.

To some, this problem might not be a problem at all.  Some people prefer Sony only franchises, others Microsoft.  That’s fine.  This issue isn’t about those people, in all likelihood they’ve already made up their minds.  No, this is about the people who want to see the best gameplay performance out of titles that appear on both machines.  Which in and of itself is also an understandable choice.  The problem I have is that it seems it’s a choice that (for whatever reason) people are being kept from making.  Sony for their part have had a fairly strong launch since last Friday.  Their first-party software lineup has been arguably mediocre, but third-party support has somewhat made up for that.  Much of that third-party library has also been reviewed.

On the Microsoft front, only the exclusives have been receiving media attention.  In fact, when I was looking at the launch review coverage of one of my own trusted sites, the Battlefield 4 review linked back to the PS4 version.  That didn’t fill me with confidence, and nor should it you.  It is not unreasonable to expect a review to be tweaked to include platform specific performance information.  What is unreasonable (and more than a little suspicious), is that it isn’t available now.  Now, I don’t know any specifics regarding the current embargoes that Microsoft has in place regarding Xbox One coverage, but the mainstream media should certainly be resisting any pressure they might be encountering in order to remain as editorially impartial as is appropriate.

Now, talking about impartiality, I’m sure some readers might be wondering where mine currently lies.  I certainly seem to be lauding Sony and blasting Microsoft, but the truth is, I want them both to succeed.  The best thing Microsoft can do now is let the Xbox One freely compete with the Playstation 4 within the realm of the mainstream media.  If they are confident in their product, chances are gamers will also find that positivity for themselves.  However, if they keep their product cynically outside of the realms of fair (and expected) critical comparison, they haven’t learned as much since their lackluster E3 showing as we may have initially thought.

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Dead Rising 3 and the Potential of Next Gen

Now that we are little more than a week away from the beginning of an entirely new generation of gaming consoles, even a cursory glance at the launch lineup for either machine will likely instill a feeling of familiarity.  While there are a couple of new games that could conceivably represent the start of successful new IPs, the rest can’t help but convey a draining sense of franchise fatigue.  Of course, this fatigue is nothing new, it has now been upon us for several years, and will likely be with us for many more, given the industry has embraced a model of yearly or bi-yearly franchise releases.  It was of great surprise to me then, that one of the games that most appealed to me on a personal level was exactly what I was most disappointed to see – a franchise title.

An important thing for me to note here is that one of the reasons the game caught my eye, is quite a simple one.  The inability for it to exist in the form it does on a current generation console, and as such, this small detail led me to thinking about the five reasons Dead Rising 3 shows great potential for the next generation of gaming.  So with the specific game in mind, let’s get to the list.

5 – The game couldn’t exist on current generation hardware.  It’s okay, feel free to read that again.  It’s idiotically simple.  The one thing that most gamers will think about when the idea of a new generation springs to mind is that it represents a threshold of sorts.  New hardware represents a gateway to gaming experiences that just could not be created on previous machines.  Of all the franchises available on day one of the new console launches, Dead Rising 3 does not have a current generation version that can just be swapped out in a couple of weeks.  If you take a look at Battlefield 4, Call of Duty: Ghosts, or even Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, these are titles that (while technologically accomplished to varying degrees) are playable on almost decade old consoles.  So while I’m sure it makes great business sense to make your game available on every platform under the sun, it necessarily undermines at least an element of what gamers want to see out of their new hardware – games that push the boundaries of their expectation.

4 – Genre.  In the next generation, it is clear that we’ll begin to see new IPs pop up, but what we don’t see enough of is adaptation, or evolution of genre.  So while Dead Rising 3 IS in essence a franchise title, it stands apart from the other games I have mentioned.  There are several reasons for this, but perhaps above all is that Dead Rising exists in a genre almost entirely its own.  The kind of loosely narrated, time sensitive sandbox that the Dead Rising series offers has not been co-opted by other developers, and as such, its proliferation and familiarity has been kept to a minimum.  What the Dead Rising experience offers – it alone offers.  In terms of the next generation, I very much hope that the example set with this series by both Capcom and Capcom Vancouver (formerly Blue Castle Games) is more widely adopted by the industry at large.  Gamers want unique IP and more diverse genres in their gaming diet.

3 – Resolution and frame rates do not define an experience.  Anybody who is familiar with Press A to Start will know that I have posted frequently about the initial disparities between hardware performance of the next generation machines.  To clarify my position, I believe that any new hardware SHOULD perform significantly better than previous hardware iterations.  However, the issue is certainly more complex than that, and even though I would love to see all games display natively at 1080p and be frame rate locked at 60fps, an inability to meet those conditions doesn’t mean console gaming is doomed.  As such, number 3 here came to be.  It has been clarified within the last couple of days by the developer that Dead Rising 3 will run at a native 720p (hardware upscaled to 1080p), and be frame rate locked at 30fps.  While on paper these numbers don’t in any way indicate superior performance to even Xbox 360 games, advancements made to lighting systems, physics, even particle effects will help define the next generation experience.  I am a huge proponent of the games as art debate, and what you put on a canvas is just as important (if not more so) than what you apply it with.  From what Capcom have shown of Dead Rising 3 so far, it doesn’t in any way look as hindered as its specifications may indicate.  Its art style is great, lighting is atmospheric, and the 80s synth score seems sublime!

2 – A co-op experience.  While co-op is in no way a new thing, it is something that I hope developers continue to embrace and expand upon in the coming generation.  Within the Dead Rising series, co-op has been one of the most enjoyable ways to play, and it’s good to see Capcom Vancouver continue to embrace non-competitive multiplayer experiences.  It’s still somewhat under wraps, but I’m hoping that with the growing interest in asymmetrical mp, co-op will also begin to explore a more individualized form of gameplay.  Whether or not Dead Rising 3 brings anything to the table in this regard has yet to be seen, but it would certainly be welcome.  In the next generation co-op should be about exactly that cooperation, not just two slightly different avatars dropped into the same gaming world to wreak havoc.

1 – Loading, or not.  To date myself somewhat, I remember the transition from cartridge based play to disc.  What I also remember is that while the ability to have amazing quality sound in games was a huge boost, the downside of loading was a very bitter pill to swallow.  Even now, I will periodically play something and the jarring transitions between game and loading screen can completely ruin the immersive nature of a game for me.  As such, the one piece of info about Dead Rising 3 to come out of E3 this year was that the game experience would be seamless – no loading between environments.  Now, of all the things I have on this list, there’s a reason this is number 1.  It might be unrealistic to think that we are again approaching a time when loading could be a thing of the past, but it certainly is an exciting prospect.  After all, Naughty Dog, with many of their recent titles (on current hardware) have certainly limited it to a large degree.  If Dead Rising 3 could actually offer an experience unhindered by the dreaded loading screen, then that’s a next generation experience I could well and truly marvel at.

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The Imitation Game: Franchise or Forgery?

It sometimes feels as though the debate surrounding games as art is forever stuck in a cyclical mire.  For every game that indicates some transcendent shift toward the artistic, several more insist on dragging it, kicking and screaming, back to disposable hobby territory.  Though this cycle may seem frustratingly rote, maybe the process of advancement toward art form can better be observed through the processes of development, rather than the final (and singular) output of any given development cycle.  As I write this, Batman: Arkham Origins is sneaking its way into stores, and no doubt, many millions of PS3s and X360s.  With it though comes not just the excitement of a new installment in a beloved franchise, but also trepidation carried by the widely acknowledged shift in development duties from series custodians Rocksteady, to previously little known studio WB Montreal.

A cursory glance at the current review scores seem to indicate that, as many probably suspected, the game in some ways fails to meet what series fans want or expect.  Perhaps more interestingly though, is the general consensus that the game seems to, at least on a technical level, be as sturdy as anything that Rocksteady delivered during the campaigns of Arkham Asylum, and subsequently, Arkham City.  So where then does Arkham Origins stumble?  A good starting point to look then would seem to be the creative aspects of the game.  Several review sources indicate that many of the little touches Rocksteady imbued the previous game with are absent, making traversal of the new game's open-world seem less inviting.

This does in fact seem an odd thing to quibble over, if as it implies, little touches, are indeed so little.  If you played Arkham Asylum for instance, when you moved through the G.C.P.D morgue, did you get to see Ra's al Ghul's 'dead' body?  Maybe you did, maybe you didn't.  It doesn't add anything to the game's greater narrative.  The kicker though, is that if you did see it, you more than likely noticed later that the body was gone when you traveled back through the same room.  So other than the creative nod to D.C's larger universe, does it matter that Rocksteady added something so small, or even changed the easter egg part way through the game?  Ultimately, no, it doesn't, but it does profoundly alter the textural richness of the game.

As such, it is here that our beloved hobby of gaming, if not yet ready to fully be embraced as art, is certainly beginning to (in some curious ways) parallel one of its greatest banes - imitation.  Now, to clarify, I'll make no attempt to talk about Company A, imitating Company B's game - that's not the point.  It has also been talked to death, by gamers and media alike.  Instead, I'm talking about imitation born of a company attempting to succeed its own product.  The accelerated development processes of which are increasingly seen as robbing our games of texture, while still being able to deliver technically proficient (even superior) facsimiles of our franchise expectations.  Yet, in spite of the fact the games we are seeing are maintaining technical cohesion, often (and arguably necessarily), they are offering diminishing returns creatively.

To strike a parallel in the world of art forgeries, a copy will often contain several elements which an artist is known for, in order to be considered either a previously unseen work, or a rare prior version of a famous work.  In essence, a composite containing enough artistic dna to recall to mind the work of an original master.  It is this very dynamic which is now beginning to impact the games we love.  A new franchise game might be technically proficient enough, and contain enough creative dna to be representative of what has come before without profoundly understanding the entirety of depth and nuance that a series lives or dies by.

Is the newest Batman game a travesty then?  No, not even close.  In fact, it seems to have been quite warmly received.  However, much of the praise it is receiving pivots on the fact that it contains the elements you expect, but doesn't contain the confident brush strokes of its true creator.  It has done then what it should, as opposed to what it could.  It has largely convinced people it is a fun Batman Arkham game worth picking up - it has an impressive and verifiable provenance, but it is not a master work.

Of course, it is not entirely the fault of the developers that the game seems to have fallen arguably short.  No creative endeavor is intended to be lacking, but there is a cautionary tale here.  Games are not the sum of their technological parts.  Game engines, physics, rendering pipelines, they are no more than a fitting canvas upon which to lay out the intended work.  Convincing gamers that a game is special takes more than that.  In a game built with confidence, the prevalence of the little details is of the greatest importance.  They can be the difference between a masterpiece and a competent, though somewhat clinical, imitation.

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Small Steps or Giant Leaps? The True Next Gen Battle

Now that E3 is finished for another year, the show has left us with a blur of new information regarding the coming year. There were some new Ips, some long dormant franchises are being resurrected, existing series’ are being continued, but this was no ordinary year for E3, it was a transition year. The big news from the show was a more formal detailing of the next generation consoles – Microsoft in one corner with their Xbox One, and Sony in the other with Playstation 4. While the reveals of new consoles and their software are usually an even to savor, much of the spectacle this year fell flat. People didn’t seem to be wowed by executive’s espousing the ways in which the leap from one generation to the next will transform the way we play (and experience) games. No, people seemed to find awe in the smallest of details…

Maybe the big draw for gamers moving into the next generation of consoles won’t be the amount of polygons being thrown around on screen, or even expressly the visual fidelity at which our new games are going to be rendered. Instead, maybe the big advantage of next gen hardware will lie in the ways in which they circumvent both our expectations regarding how games provide us with visual feedback, but perhaps more importantly, sidestep the technical limitations of aging hardware whose interference with our gaming immersion is so common to the core experience of playing games, that we can barely consciously register their interruptions anymore.

At this point, it would seem appropriate to mention Ubisoft’s impressive demo of ‘The Division,’ a title attached to Ubi’s long-standing and highly regarded stable of Tom Clancy games. While the game was certainly noteworthy for its ambitious blending of single-player and multi-player modes into a singular mmo experience, many journalists and gamers alike were fascinated instead with the visual cohesion of the title as opposed to the ambitiousness of its larger design. Two common moments that were commonly seized upon were a sequence when a character slides along the side of a stationary police cruiser and closes the slightly ajar door as he passes by. The second moment came a couple of minutes later when the player is faced with a variety of pick-ups, and visibly grabs, and appears to take, a bottle of water. So why then, when faced with a variety of impressive design goals are we fascinated by two cool, but seemingly inconsequential moments? The answer might be more complicated (but far less trivial) than it appears – they directly contradict the tropes of game design that we implicitly adopt to suspend our disbelief in games. Not in the stylistic or narrative content of games themselves, but the technical shorthand developers employ that stands in the way of our full immersion within the experiences they deliver us.

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The Lesser of Two Evils

When Resident Evil was first unleashed upon the gaming world in 1996, few people could probably imagine the tumultuous struggle with identity into which the series would eventually descend. In many ways, Resident Evil was the quintessential product of its generation – a game whose design was very much informed by the technical limitations of Sony’s first Playstation. As the series and the hardware upon which it appears have evolved, so have the foundational elements of the series. The quality of the character models has risen significantly, fixed viewing perspectives have given way to a fully player controlled camera, and the detailed yet flat pre-rendered backgrounds have long since given way to fully three-dimensional environments. Yet despite the technological advances the series has adopted, Capcom’s design teams have become increasingly conflicted regarding just what constitutes an “authentic” Resident Evil experience, in terms of both gameplay style, and the genre within which it sits.

Anybody familiar with Resident Evil as a series will be well aware of the tropes of the older games; periods of exploration punctuated with the occasional boss fight, all leading toward the inevitable battle where the protagonist is provided with a weapon powerful enough to dispatch the end of game boss once and for all. It is an understated yet appreciable way for a game in this genre to progress, ultimately rewarding the player for being able to survive just long enough to have beaten the odds. As such, dramatic change has never really been needed, whether or not Capcom has attempted to implement it, yet change has been so rapid it has left the franchise without a discernible identity.

For some, it is the eloquent design and style of these early games (and the excellent Gamecube remake) that represent the pinnacle of what the series has to offer, both in terms of design and visual aesthetic; but for others, the fundamental changes to the control system, and the shift to third person combat popularized by Resident Evil 4 remains the defining entry in the franchise. Yet the juxtaposition of these two stages in the series’ evolution also highlight what seems to have proved the most troublesome issue for Capcom to overcome in developing Resident Evil 6. Should the franchise stay faithful to its roots, or should it expand and grow away from what has come before?

Arguably the biggest problem hampering the franchise with RE6 is its lack of oppressive atmosphere for which many of the earlier entries were famous. The most obvious manifestation of this is the continued implementation of cooperative play first introduced in Resident Evil 5. Though the Resident Evil series has always offered gamers a narrative that encompasses several primary characters, the limited nature of their interactions has allowed the series to remain focused on the player character, and their solitary explorations. However, the increasingly intrusive supporting cast members and their largely persistent presence onscreen alongside the main character (as seen in RE0, 4, 5, and now, 6) has been a largely detrimental element to the series. While cooperative play may seem to be increasingly valuable in a world of burgeoning multiplayer suites, tonally it is entirely antithetical to the style of the survival horror genre. The tangible sense of dread created by facing insurmountable odds alone is just as important to the genre as the gameplay mechanics – a fact that Capcom seems to have forgotten in their concession to the conventions of gaming modernity.

As a series which has been extremely cinematic since its earliest entries, it is unfortunate to see the horror aspects of the game eroded in such a way. The damage that an additional character causes to both the dramatic structure and the visual mise-en-scene of a survival horror game is twofold. Firstly, it can destroy the sense of loneliness within the exploration of the game world for which the series is famous. Secondly, it also lends a sense of empowerment that undermines the stressful nature of being that lone survivor trapped in a situation substantially bigger than them. It is precisely these kinds of deviation from the tropes of the survival horror genre which contribute greatly to the games conflict of identity. In the case of Resident Evil, a horror shared is a horror neutered.

This deviation from genre is not helped in the least by the numerous vehicular sections that Capcom have woven throughout the story. At best, these additions offer short breaks from the series typical gameplay, at worst, they make it difficult to suspend your disbelief in the narrative, when sequences such as these have been seen and done before, in a variety of other modern titles. While car chases, motorcycle getaways and fighter jet battles might seem appropriate in a globe-trotting viral outbreak adventure, they merely serve to further distance the game from survival horror, and plunge it into the clichés of the action genre. The levels of visual excess on display during some of these set pieces are sadly representative of the scope of mimicry present in the gaming industry at large. In a world where games like Call of Duty and Battlefield struggle for the dominant market share, it makes sense that Capcom would try to capture elements of what gamers find so appealing about the modern shooter. Unfortunately for Capcom, the irony here is that they seem unable to recognize in these other (more successful) franchises exactly what they are trying to break away from with their own series – familiarity. Most of today’s popular games have never attempted to reinvent the wheel (nor do they seem to have this intention for the future), they merely continue to grease it when necessary

I have no doubt that Capcom, with enough determination; can reclaim the survival horror crown that they so successfully forged in 1996. Unlike the awkward melding of styles on display within Resident Evil 6, the franchise’s future success will pivot on a unified vision for the series. Reduce the narrative scope, once again letting players creep through the nightmare alone, and most importantly, have confidence enough in your own product to resist reproducing elements of other popular genres. If future developers on the series can do this, then horror (and the gamers that appreciate it) might, just might, once again begin to reside in the mansion that Capcom built.

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Press [A] to Start is live!

Press A to Start. What does that phrase mean to you? Maybe it represents the anticipated first step into an exciting journey? Maybe it doesn’t do much more than conjure up a variety of good memories spanning the lifetime of a beloved hobby. Maybe it represents something different altogether. To me, it represents the beginning of a dialogue – a conversation between myself, friends, and just as importantly - the digital realization of all the hard work by any given dev team. In fact, some of my most cherished gaming memories involve talking about games, just as much as playing them. But what then does the conversation revolve around? Gameplay? Sure, that’s a part of it. Narrative? That has a place too. The truth is, games can spawn any number of topics, from a variety of different perspectives.


When I set about creating Press A to Start, I was unsure where I wanted to begin – the way in which the internet has allowed bedroom journalists to self-publish their own thoughts regarding the gaming industry has provided a daunting cacophony of voices. Though in many ways, a large majority of people still tend toward the expected tropes of this field – previews, reviews, and the most antiquated element of the form – the final score (whether numeric or a ‘witty’ adjective). As such, I feel as though my own place within this space needs to be somewhat different, and I fully intend to remove as many arbitrary and stagnant elements as seem appropriate.


I have no personal interest in delivering previews of upcoming titles, as there are more reliable sites for delivering this kind of dross – which to all intents and purposes does little more than keep the wheels turning for the pre-order machine. Is it important to know about a game before it comes out? Possibly. We may have personal interest in seeing or hearing something about our favorite franchises, but beyond that the preview is redundant. It is of little relevance how it appears a game is shaping up, and of paramount importance how the finished product performs – you know, the one that sits in your hands after you buy (or rent) it.


Though my disdain of the preview is obvious at this point, I feel that the basic form of a review is still relevant. However, any reviews that I conduct will focus specifically upon my experience with the title. In looking at the state of modern gaming journalism, one of the main elements I find lacking is a sense of authenticity. To clarify, I consider authenticity in this sense to pertain to the user-end of the experience, and whether a wonderful piece of new software fulfills its obligations in relation to both its initial cost to the purchaser, and also the amount of time the specific product will likely keep someone entertained. In recent years, I have found myself on more than one occasion condemning a “professional” review for not only what it said, but perhaps more importantly, what it failed to.


In regards to the extremely antiquated ‘final score’, it is an element that I am determined to remove from my own writings. To spend as much time with a game as people like myself do, I find it tragic that the entirety of the experience which is poured upon the page can be so easily bypassed in favor of the final 8/10 or ‘AWESOME’. If people choose to frequent my page and read my work, I truly hope that they can engage with my writings, but ultimately use it solely as another viable perspective – not as the dominant one which drives their purchasing decisions. That is pressure I absolutely don’t want, and authority I do not deserve.

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Coming soon

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