If I could toot my own horn for just a bit, I'd say that I think I'm pretty good at turn-based strategy games. I spent countless hours playing Civilization III, I recently extolled the virtues of Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, and if one were to take a look at my save file on Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, he'd see a totally golden menu, signifying complete domination over the game.

In Advance Wars 2, I S-ranked every mission in the hard campaign, and made that game beg for mercy. So naturally, going into the critically acclaimed PS3 strategy-shooter, I felt pretty confident in my abilities.

But then the skill ratings started coming in. B-rank on the tutorial mission. C-rank on the next. D-rank, D-rank, D-rank. "What am I doing wrong?" I thought. But after some more consideration, I think the real question is, "What is this game doing right?"

What Valkyria Chronicles does that contrasts it with Advance Wars is so simple, it's impressive how much it changes the game. Rather than the nameless, faceless forces that each AW commanding officer has in tow, all of the soldiers fighting under Lieutenant Welkin have unique names, faces, voices, and personalities.



It originally appears as a throwaway feature in a game about war. The player can set up his squad from a long list of recruits, and he can view short bios on each unit. From there, the brilliance really begins to show. As Welkin fights more battles with a particular soldier, that character's bio page gets updated with more and more information. It implies that while this team is fighting together, they are also talking to one another, sharing with each other their lives, hobbies, dream, and fears. Giving a name to each soldier makes the player feel as though he has not only handpicked this team, but that he needs to take care of them as well.

Gameplay-wise, there is little penalty for losing a soldier in battle. They can be replaced with others of the same class after a battle, with nearly identical combat ability. The only real penalty of losing a nonessential character to the enemy's fire is the weight of guilt on the player's conscience.

After coming upon this revelation, I realize now some things about other games I've played in the past. A more apt comparison to the Advance Wars games is the Fire Emblem series, and yet, the one key difference of permanent character death in Fire Emblem has kept me from finishing the game on two separate playthroughs, while I have beaten three of the Advance Wars games, each two times over.

It has been said that a great military leader is not only one who can win a battle and bring back all of his men, but one who knows when to sacrifice his team to win the war. But if my soldiers have names, I cannot be that man. I am no general; I cannot lead my men to death.

But as I continue through the game, earning my C-ranks and D-ranks, I will take solace in knowing that although I am a poor military leader, not a single member of Squad 7 will be left behind.

So, an RPG, a turn-based strategy, and a puzzle game walk into a bar. There they meet some spiffy, yet slightly generic manga-lookin' characters. Everybody has a grand old boozy good time, they go home together, and the result of a night's worth of debauchery is this game. Now, it could have turned into a royal mess, but by some stroke of luck (or more likely, due to Capybara Games's development prowess), Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes got all of the best traits from each of its parents.

Seriously, if you own a DS and like puzzle games and/or turn-based strategy and/or RPGs, then you want to go and buy this game right now. But I suppose I should elaborate.

Hamza's preview of the game, while informative, doesn't really do it justice. (Plus, that's from six months ago, and there hasn't been any mention of it on Destructoid since.) While everything he mentions is true, he was not able to spend enough time with the game to really understand its intricacies. What initially appears to be a simple match-three puzzler very quickly becomes an extremely satisfying battle of wits.

The overworld exploration is kept to a minimum, with the player traveling between nodes, a bit akin to the travel in fellow puzzle-RPG Puzzle Quest. Hamza dumps on this in the preview, but it feels perfect for the game because despite how our hairy friend feels, this game is not about exploration, it is about battles.

The battles occur with the player's army on the bottom screen and the opposing force on the top screen. Each army has "Core" units that take up a 1x1 square, "Elite" units that require a 1x2 area on the battlefield, and "Champion" units that fill up a huge 2x2 portion of the screen. Most of the battle involves matching up three Core units in either a column for attacking, or a row for defense. The actual unit movement occurs in a Critter Crunch-esque manner of moving the bottom-most unit in a column to the bottom of any other column. And of course, pulling off moves that create several rows or columns at once reward the player--in M&M:CoH, the reward is more moves per turn to set up attacks.

The different types of units introduce an interesting dynamic, in that Elite and Champion units do more damage than Core units, but they take more time to charge their attacks and are more difficult to maneuver due to their size. I personally found myself avoiding the Champion units in favor of Elite units because although a fully charged Champion unit typically spelled defeat for the enemy once launched, the five or six turns required to charge was frequently enough time to win without them anyway, so at that point, they were just taking up space on the battlefield.

All in all, the battles in Clash of Heroes are superbly satisfying. Combining more advanced techniques like linking attacks (launching two or more of the same color units at once) or fusing units (stacking identical attacks to double power while retaining the shortest countdown) can sometimes lead to a blitzkrieg assault that feels like a symphony of destruction. There were times when I couldn't help but show my friends. "Look at this work of art I just created," I'd say, just before I was about to completely obliterate the CPU with an expertly planned offensive. Sadly, without much experience with they game, they could not truly appreciate it.

With a DS collection pushing 60 titles at this point (legit boxed cartridges, not R4), I consider myself somewhat of an authority on the platform. And it is without hyperbole that I can say that Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is one of the best--if not the best--DS game I played in 2009. I bought it on the same day as Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, and despite the typical quality we have all come to expect from the Zelda pedigree, I have already put at least four times as many hours into Clash of Heroes than Spirit Tracks. You owe it to yourself to try this game out.

Whenever a new game comes out that purports to offer the player moral choice, the comments blow up with one of two types of comments. People either come in with the hope that this new game will actually offer the interesting choices they crave, or they cynically have resigned to the idea that moral choice in games will never be a worthwhile endeavor.

One has to ask. What does everybody want from their games with moral choice? Is it presenting choices within a moral grey area? Is it causing deep introspection in the player? Is it forcing consequences for the player's actions? I'm here to say that all of these exist today, and moral choice in games gets an undeserved bad rap.

Defense Force mobilize!

[It should be noted that this blog contains spoilers for 2006's Splinter Cell: Double Agent, 2007's BioShock, and 2008's Fable II. Read at your own risk.]



Several games have come out this generation with interesting takes on moral choice. The recently released Dragon Age: Origins is said to exist largely in the morally grey area, but not too long ago I played a three year old game that featured a single choice in the morally grey that made me really think, and actually made me feel regret. That game is Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

SC:DA puts the player in the shoes of Sam Fisher, but unlike previous games, has him working as a double agent in a terrorist cell called John Brown's Army (JBA) in addition to his normal position with the NSA. For most of the game, the player is given a set of objectives from both organizations, and a limited amount of time so he has to choose which ones to complete and which to ignore.

These choices aren't particularly thought provoking, but they lead up to a doozy. If Sam is diligent with his secondary NSA objectives, he learns a fair amount of background information on the key players in the JBA. If the player pays attention, he learns that one of members, Enrica Villablanca, is in her position because she fell in with the wrong crowd, but she seemingly stays there for fear of the JBA's leader, Emile Dufraisne.

Sam is later given a mission to blow up a cruise ship. After completing the mission to arm the bomb, he is given three choices: either let the bomb explode, causing hundreds of Mexican police officers to die and the NSA to lose trust in Sam; jam the signal to stop the bomb, causing Dufraisne to murder Villablanca in a fit of rage, and the JBA to lose trust in him; or stop the launch with Enrica's access codes, framing her for it, causing no loss in trust from either organization, but again, the death of a kind-of-sort-of innocent woman.

When I first made the decision, I didn't know Emile would kill Enrica for the second choice (though I was pretty certain he would for the third). So I went with that one, in an attempt to preserve as much life as possible. In the following scene, with Emile shooting Enrica in the face, I experienced something that I can't remember ever having felt before or since in a videogame: regret. I immediately reloaded my save and went with the choice to destroy an entire cruise ship and hundreds of faceless law enforcement officers, in order to save a woman working for a terrorist organization.

It almost seems like a simple formula for introspection. By presenting no clearly "good" choice, I am forced to decide which of the three is the lesser evil. After consorting with my fellow pretentious jerk Anthony Burch, I learned that he would have chosen one of the other options, highlighting that there is indeed no correct choice.

What is perhaps even more interesting about this sequence is that a less diligent player might not take the time to snoop through Enrica's stuff to learn enough about her, and he may see framing her as the obvious best option, as it doesn't negatively affect his standing with either organization, saves hundreds of lives, all at the cost of a terrorist. On the other hand, I was rewarded for my completion OCD with a real moral quandary, one that I still think about to this day.



Moving forward, to another old game by Internet standards: BioShock. One of the most prominent complaints levied against the moral choice in BioShock is that it does not have an ounce of grey in it. Protagonist Jack either does good by saving the Little Sisters, or does evil by harvesting them.

The game itself tells the player that harvesting the Little Sisters results in more ADAM for Jack, and thus more cool Plasmids to splice, making him more effective in battle. But as the game moves on, it becomes clear that the delayed bonuses in ADAM given by Dr. Tenenbaum at least offset that which is lost in choosing to save the girls rather than harvest them.

Some cried foul upon learning this fact. "Why would we ever do the evil thing if it benefits us more to do good?" And to that I say, "Indeed."

As a man who likes the idea of karma, I don't quite get the notion that being a good person should make life difficult, and being evil should make it easier. Why not teach a valuable life lesson in your game? Doing the right thing should be rewarded in the end, not punished.

Or, in the (paraphrased) words of Aaron Linde, BioShock asks the question, "Is it okay for you to sacrifice the lives of these children in order for your own personal gain?" and then it quickly answers for you, "No, you stupid idiot, of course it's not okay. Why would you even think that for a second?"



And finally, a game that as released just last year: Fable II. Say what you will about Molyneux's overhype and the many black-and-white choices that exist in the game, but I personally think that Fable II presents multiple choices that not only cause one to pause and reflect, but possibly to agonize over a decision.

The most famous of these decisions comes at the end of the main story arc, after defeating Lucien. The Hero is granted a single wish, with the choice between one of three options. The first is resurrect the thousands of people who died at the hand of Lucien, the second is to resurrect the ones the Hero loves, including any family he has and his dog, and the third is unimaginable wealth.

Truly, there are only two viable choices here, as the Hero ought to have more gold than he can possibly spend at this point in the game, and has no need to choose the third option other than to net the Achievement for it.

But the remaining two options are difficult to pick from. The first is obviously the more virtuous of the two, but the second might hold more weight. I personally had three wives (though only one I cared about) and one daughter, and while the news of the murder of my families was a bit saddening, the real draw of the second choice is to bring back the Hero's best friend: his beloved dog.

The dog is there throughout the game with the Hero, and unlike husbands and wives in Albion, the dog will never leave the Hero, no matter how fat, corrupt, or evil the Hero becomes. But if the sentimental attachment isn't enough for you, the dog also acts as an irreplaceable asset with actual gameplay advantages.

Unlike the wish for unimaginable sums of gold, the wish to return the Hero's family provides something that the player cannot acquire by any other means. And because of that, I chose it, despite playing through the game making all of the obvious "good" choices.

And it got me thinking. Did I actually make the most selfish choice of them all? Was I playing a good character throughout the entire game, only to sacrifice the lives of thousands for something that truly benefits me and only me? Is it evil for me to have done that?



Another choice that had me contemplating it for days afterward appears much earlier in the game, but is interesting to me for largely the same reason. It sounds unlikely at first, but this came with the option to sacrifice people to the Temple of Shadows.

Now, I won't argue for a second that the whole Temple of Light/Temple of Shadows dichotomy in Fable II is particularly interesting in itself. Donations to the Temple of Light do nothing but augment the Hero's virtuous standing in the world, while sacrifices to the Temple of Shadows don't benefit the player enough monetarily to make them a logical thing to do for any reason other than to become more evil in the game.

But then, that isn't entirely true. I really can't commend Lionhead enough on the decision, but they also included an Achievement in the game for sacrificing ten villagers to the Temple of Shadows. There is no corresponding Achievement for donations to the Temple of Light.

Think about that for a moment. Fable II is offering real world rewards (insofar as Achievements are real world rewards) for evil deeds in game. By going for this Achievement, I get to permanently add a nice little 10 Gamerscore to my total, but at what cost? A little bit of my soul?

I like to think that in general, I am a good person, but with these two examples, Fable II has shown me that I am not as altruistic as I once thought. Twice in the game I chose to do something self-serving, at the cost of many virtual lives. And if this blog is any indication, I agonize over that fact.

So if you say we have no interesting moral choices in games, then I must disagree. If none of these (or any of the many other examples out there) give you any pause, then you are either not thinking about them enough, or you have no interest in moral choice to begin with.

And I'm not saying that there aren't examples of uninteresting moral choices in games. When you're given the choice to murder a little boy's puppy or cure his leukemia, it's easy to write off moral choice as an unworthy endeavor. But even in this case, on the most superficial level, it gives the player two ways to play through the game, where a game lacking moral choice only has one. Sure, you might only play good or evil, but it's not like options are taken away from you with respect to games with more traditional narratives. In other words, adding elements of moral choice to a game can't possibly subtract content that would be present otherwise, it can only add.

So to complain about the state of moral choice in games seems silly to me. At best, it shows ignorance of some great examples of thought-provoking gameplay. At worst, it shows that some people want less interaction with a medium whose major defining characteristic is interactivity.

Your thoughts?

Like most everybody else here on Destructoid, I spend quite a bit of time thinking about video games. However, a good amount of that time is spent thinking specifically about how games can be powerful tools for education. And yet, despite their pervasiveness, few educators are capitalizing on the attention-holding capability of video games.

But that's a discussion for another time. For now, it got me thinking about what video games have taught me personally. Certainly, I've learned a lot of complex systems, I've gained a sense of rhythm, and I've even taken in a bit of history. But right now I'm interested in things that I'm pretty sure I can do, that video games have supposedly taught me, but that in reality, I probably can't.



Fire a weapon
I have never in my life shot anything more powerful than an airsoft pistol or a paintball gun. And yet, I am unreasonably confident that because of my experience with first person shooters (Modern Warfare, specifically), you could hand me a real firearm, and I would be able to load it, steady it, aim, and fire at a target with reasonable accuracy.

But when I think about it, there have got to be guns out there whose models I've never even seen, and even on the ones whose virtual representations I am intimately familiar, I don't even know where to find the safety, or anything else aside from the trigger.



Fly/land a plane
Remember back in 2006, when Snakes on a Plane came out, and Kenan Thompson's character attempted to land the plane having experience only with some made up PSP flight simulator? Everybody laughed and laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. But me? I was thinking, "That's not so far fetched."

Now, I have seen the dashboard of a small plane, and I know for a fact that I wouldn't be able to figure out what each and every dial, button, knob, and lever does. But a part of me (the part that played a ton of Crimson Skies, both Pilotwings games, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas) wants to believe that if I were stuck in a life or death situation that had me navigating an aircraft through a canyon (or perhaps a series of gigantic inexplicably floating rings), I know enough about pitch, roll, and yaw to manage it.



Skydive
This is a unique entry on the list so far in that it is something I have actually done. (Ask my girlfriend about the time she got a text message saying, "I'm about to jump out of a plane. I'll call you later.") But it was just the one time, and as it was my first jump, I was strapped to the chest of a man who (hopefully) had hundreds of hours of training to get where he was.

Still, much like flying an aircraft, I feel like my HALO jump experience from Pilotwings and the Ratchet & Clank games have taught me enough to be able to freely perform my own stunts during freefall, and to reliably control my parachute-aided descent and landing. Heck, I'm pretty sure I could land on a standard skydive target, given a few tries to do so.



Survive the zombie apocalypse
Of all the entries on this list, this is probably the most unrealistic. Not because it's unrealistic that the zombie apocalypse will come in my lifetime (it's only a matter of time before they get out there), but because I've never been much of a dog-eat-dog survival-of-the-fittest kind of guy.

When push comes to shove though, I'd like to think that I possess the necessary knowledge to live through the apocalypse. Left 4 Dead has taught me not only about zombie physiology (dismemberment is key) and ammunition conservation (automatic weapons burn through rounds), but about teamwork, communication, and even leadership. It has even taught me enough about situational assessment and heroism to know when to risk it all to save a friend, and when to cut our losses and let him die for the good of everybody else. When the apocalypse comes, I'll be mentally prepared, I'm sure of it.



Sing
Lastly, something I was never good at growing up. Even today, my singing is typically described as "entertaining" or "comical," but never specifically "good."

The blame lies entirely on Rock Band. I've known for years that I'm a terrible vocalist. But Rock Band makes it very clear when I'm too sharp or too flat, and it even provides concrete overall feedback with which to compare my progress. Recently, I played through the entire Endless Setlist 2 on Expert Vocals. Could it be that I have actually gotten better? That I can actually sing now? Or is it just another of the things I'm pretty sure I can do because video games taught me, but in reality I probably still can't?

This will be a relatively short blog. It's mostly just a place where you can view the pictures we took.


MizzGothZ dressed as... I don't really know what.


Mid3vol drove up from San Diego, brought Knives and Rabite with her. She might have been dressed as Domo-kun, or she might have just been wearing a Domo-kun shirt.


Lv99ron showed up as Louis from Left 4 Dead. It works because he's black.


Knives came from Tijuana as Sim-Knives.


Travis (bleep) was Scuba Steve.


Forumkeeper Technophile came as a Hunter from Left 4 Dead.


My girlfriend Lib as employee of the month.


Zero Atma as a Heartless Bastard, and Jonathan Ross as a lazy bastard.


Naia-the-gamer as Daria Morgendorffer


Other Dave showed up as one of the Blues Brothers, and an inflatable slide orgy ensued.


Finally, Keener came all the way from the [b]east coast, dressed as his namesake. Chad Concelmo came as "guy who shows up late and brings the wrong games." Best costume ever?

There are a few other pictures, which you can see below in the gallery. If you're in the LA area and you missed out on this party, make sure you join our Google Group so you don't miss the next one!

As an application for a writing job elsewhere, I was tasked with playing some free-to-play, pay-for-premium-items games, and then writing up reviews on them. However, in a strange twist, (spurred by, I assume, the potential employer's desire not to spend hours and hours reading reviews) each review was limited to a hundred words.

As it turns out, writing a hundred-word review is tough! For instance, that opening paragraph is already over half the limit. Is it even possible to say everything that needs to be said in a game review in fewer than one hundred words? Read on to see how things turned out.

Pangya Delight
Pangya Delight is the free online version of the popular Japanese golf franchise that marries traditional golf video game timing gameplay with fantastic settings and RPG elements such as character progression, item creation, and guild functionality. It uses the relatively new free-to-play, pay-for-upgrades business model of games popularized by RPGs like Maple Story. As a golf game, it is only slightly more engaging than a more traditional game, where the bizarre courses and obstacles add a bit to the appeal. The most addictive element is definitely the character progression, and for completionists, Pangya Delight would provide hours of play.

Tales of Pirates
Tales of Pirates is a pretty standard MMORPG whose best thing going for it is its relatively unique setting. Rather than the usual knights and wizards, the characters are sailors and pirates. In practice, this doesn’t change much gameplay-wise. Players still click on enemies, watch attacking animations, and collect loot. Tales of Pirates does little to ease the new player into the game. Where other MMORPGs give clear goals, Tales of Pirates presents a very confusing, cluttered HUD, and doesn’t make the tutorial quests obvious. For an MMORPG fan, this game is okay, but for others, it’s not worth it.

Galaxy Online
Galaxy Online is an MMORTS that is simultaneously overly complicated and slow moving. Like the other IGG games, it lacks an intuitive tutorial system for new players, with difficult to find quests and unclear goals. Instructions are very text-heavy and are largely meaningless to anybody but experienced players. Luckily, the online community is relatively strong, and many existing players are willing to help. Regardless, one of the tutorial quests could not be completed, whether due to a bug or user error. The strategy gameplay moves more slowly than more mainstream RTSs, mostly due to the nature of its persistent world.

So as you can see, the answer is no. It's not possible to convey to the reader everything he needs to know about a game. I'll use this space as a bit of an addendum. If you are going to try any of these three games, definitely make it Pangya Delight, unless you are a hardcore MMO fan who is willing to wade through extremely user-unfriendly systems in order to get to the meat of either Tales of Pirates or Galaxy Online. But then, you can't go terribly wrong with any of them, given that they are free. Your only sacrifice for any of the three is download time and hard drive space.

As one final note, isn't it hilarious that apparently the only viable way to advertise your free-to-play online game is with scantily clad anime girls?