Metroid Prime 3: Corruption screenshot from Retro Studios and Nintendo

In Round 1 of our Vs. Mode exchange on Bioshock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, which is also being posted on Totilo's blog MTV News: Multiplayer, both Totilo and the Level Up staff praised Bioshock's central moral dilemma: whether to rescue or harvest the Little Sisters. In our second installment, Totilo disputes our claim that many videogames don't have memorable openings, then goes on to examine why sequels often rob players of the abilities and/or weapons they had in the prior game, forcing them to start levelling up all over again. For our part, we defend our assertion about game introductions and nitpick Totilo's reflections on game empowerment by pitting him against one of his game developer heroes before taking issue--at length--with the manner in which the makers of BioShock chose to privilege Rescuers over Harvesters. Some excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: Empowerment is not the top of every song or movie or book. But I'd wager that the majority of long-form single player video games are. Halo, Final Fantasy, Castlevania, Pokemon, Call of Duty...all these games present the empowerment fantasy. They advance the player through an experience that leaves the player-character more powerful and more capable than they began. Sometimes the improvement the player achieves comes from repeated action and gained skill. Sometimes the improvement comes from how the games are programmed: the more you do in the game, the more powerful the designers make you. For better or worse, and as shallow as it can be, I love this. In fact, despite my gut instinct that BioShock is the better game (it's more original, more thought-provoking, more heavily populated with awesome Big Daddies), I've been more thrilled playing Metroid Prime 3.

N'Gai Croal: Speaking of missed opportunities, another criticism I'd make of is BioShock that while it gave me a great deal of moment to moment choice and freedom, the only high level choice it offered me was whether to harvest or rescue the Little Sisters. That's understandable, because for a developer to create a proliferating series of choices that truly pay off is often prohibitive. But there was a perfect place in the game for a terrific choice or set of choices to happen: after the player kills Ryan. "A man chooses, a slave obeys," the game has just told us through Andrew Ryan's mid-martyrdom mantra₂. Yet from that moment forward, BioShock still gives us just one path to follow: hunt down and kill Fontaine. We don't have a choice. We're given no alternatives. How can we become men when the game continues to enslave us? In other words, BioShock's structure betrays its theme at a critical juncture, and while there are still high points to come, it never quite recovers sufficiently to properly fulfill the promise of its late-game revelation.

To read Round 2 in its entirety, follow the link below.

In the span of time during which Level Up and MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo conducted our Vs. Mode debate of BioShock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (which is also being posted on Totilo's blog MTV News: Multiplayer), we occasionally instant messaged each other to discuss some of the finer points of both titles. Two of those IM exchanges were interesting enough that we decided to present them to our readers as sidebars to the main event--hence the title Vs. Mode Gaiden. In today's installment, the Level Up staff's slow progress through Metroid Prime 3: Corruption prompts a discussion of the challenge of navigating Metroid Prime 3's 3-D environments--and its 3-D map.

Totilo: Full disclosure: backtracking is back!!!!!!!!

Croal: But will I ever track my way to the backtracking?

Totilo: I doubt it. I'm skeptical that you're going to get very far. When you get a chance, let me know where you're stuck

Croal: I'm stuck on the morph ball path on that same planet. Time keeps expiring before I can get to the end.

Croal: http://www.destructoid.com/big-daddy-day-care-provides-nothing-but-tlc-for-your-little-girls-40745.phtml

Croal: I've been playing lots of Jeanne d'Arc!

Totilo: At least you have your priorities in order

Croal: 2-D design > 3-D design

Totilo: Survey says: wrong!

Totilo: Or are Ken Levine and Retro both just bad at designing levels?

To read the rest of our exchange, click on the link below.

 

Having weighed in on the subject of whether or not videogames should be considered art on several occasions, we at Level Up are loath to do so again. But when we read the following story from the Washington Post--our sister publication, for those who like full disclosure--we felt compelled to return to the scene of the crime. In the article, Post tech columnist Mike Musgrove discusses the experience that his colleague, Pulitzer prize-winning book columnist and sci-fi fan Michael Dirda had playing 2K Boston/Australia's recently released BioShock. Implicit in the piece is that Musgrove wanted to see whether the 58-year-old Dirda would consider BioShock to be a work of art. As Musgrove writes:

Given that the game has been widely acclaimed for its stylish setting, its moral complications and its invoking of Ayn Rand, it's entirely understandable that Musgrove would use this game for his experiment. But when he returns to Dirda, having given his fellow Postie a couple of weeks to play the game, he finds that his plans have hit a snag. Dirda is stuck in Neptune's Bounty, the third section of the game, because he keeps getting killed by one of the enemies and he can't figure out how to use the first-aid kit to, uh, save his life.

1. OOH...Halo 3 conclusion, leaked? Boo.
2. GPU...Intel's purchase of Havok, explored
3. MTV...correct pronunciation of "Ubisoft," explained
4. WoW...Blizzard looks towards the future
5. RIP...Colin McRae, you will be missed
6. GOW...David Jaffe: thumbs down on "Kong"
7. VSM...Gamer vs. book critic on BioShock--fight!
8. RND...The world's only "normal" director speaks