BioShock, from 2K Boston/Australia and 2K Games

In Round 2 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, Totilo explained why he finds Metroid more thrilling than BioShock: its well-paced approach to gradually empowering his character. For our part, we pouted over BioShock's almost-but-not-quite-subtle favoring of Little Sister Rescuers like Totilo over Little Sister Harvesters like ourselves (oh, the inhumanity!) and questioned why the game, despite its stated theme of servitude vs. free will, failed to give us a meaningful choice following the game's, uh, shocking revelation.

In today's installment, Totilo pokes fun at our temper tantrum before pointing out how BioShock's morality system could have gone much further, then swerves into an insightful discussion of how both games handle bosses. We similarly took a page from Totilo's book and seized the opportunity to play backseat game designer for a day, offering wholly unsolicited suggestions about how BioShock's moral choices could have been more firmly embedded in the game's DNA. And last but not least, we finally confessed our love-hate relationship with the entire concept of the Metroid Prime series as a 3-D first-person game. Some excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: Speaking of empowerment, one of the key abilities you gain early in Metroid Prime 3 is Hyper Mode. With the easily reachable press of the plus button, this allows the player to switch into a super-charged mode that displays the game world in black and white and multiplies the power of their weapon. The Hyper Mode boost is temporary. It is either exhausted after the player fires a few well-placed shots or it turns toxic, forcing the player to rapidly fire in any direction to expel the Hyper energy, lest the toxicity kill game's heroine Samus. This mechanic may well be a first for Nintendo games, which traditionally have allowed players to get a boost without worrying that such boost--a Fire Flower, a Donkey Kong hammer, a Master Sword--has a drawback. The Hyper Mode power comes with a price: potentially fatal overdose. (So maybe that's why Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto had a cool reaction to the FPS overdose game Haze at this year's E3.) I like the system. It adds a new strategic twist to Metroid Prime combat. Given how much we've been discussing game morality, I think you could also view it as a very light addition of moral gravity to the Metroid universe. It's a mild maturation of the common video game idea that every new pick-up is an instrument for good and that every new trick should be played without fear of consequence. It makes me think of my second-least favorite aspect of BioShock: the scene in the beginning of the game when the player-hero comes upon his first Plasmid updgrade. He spots a syringe sparkling with power and unquestioningly stabs it into his arm... and then gets a great power. Only in video games, people.

N'Gai Croal: Retro Studios deserves every bit of praise for its yeoman's work in transforming the Metroid experience into 3-D first-person. But for me--and I fully realize this is something of a minority opinion--I've always believed that there was something fundamentally misguided about the decision to rebirth Metroid in this manner. The mechanics that are at the heart of Metroid, most notably backtracking and scouring the environment for hidden passages, don't translate well to first-person gaming. I'm generally not a fan of backtracking in 3-D games, but that goes double for first-person shooters. (Yes, I know that the Metroid Prime series has been described as first-person adventures.) When I play an FPS, there are two cues I use to determine whether I'm headed in the right direction: if I see enemies ahead, or if I see a new area. It's all about forward movement, so having to backtrack throws me off completely. With the 2-D Metroids, I could much more easily maintain a mental map of where I'd been, so backtracking wasn't a problem. And if I ever got lost, there was a simple one-to-one visual correspondence with the games map. The 3-D Metroid Prime, unfortunately, compounds my backtracking difficulties with its 3-D map, which you yourself acknowledge is confusing in our first Vs. Mode Gaiden. And since Metroid is about steadily developing one's mastery over an environment that is not completely navigable at the start, Retro couldn't simply eliminate backtracking and design the game around a simple proceed from point A to point B. The end result is two great tastes that don't quite taste great together.

To read Round 3 in its entirety, click on 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 our second and final installment of VMG, Totilo's question about the reflection of Samus Aran's face in Metroid Prime 3 spawned a back-and-forth meditation on how developers handle expressing the hero or heroine's personality in first-person games.

Totilo: Snap judgment: do you like the permanent reflection of her face when you're in scan mode?

Croal: I don't have a strong reaction to it one way or another. If I had to think about it, I'd say that I liked the more infrequent reflection of her face in previous Metroid Primes.

Totilo: Would have been funny if you could see her rolling her eyes during boring briefings. Or winking at some of the soldiers or something

Croal: It would. But like 2K Bostralia, they seem intent on Samus being transparent rather than clearly defined, more avatar than character. They might get away with it once or twice, but the idea is they want us to feel like we are she. Your idea is better suited to Duke Nukem Forever--if it ever ships--or Serious Sam.

Totilo: My idea was a joke, too

Croal: It's an interesting idea, though, having characters who are that devoid of personality as expressed through voice or facial expressions. I was thinking about it on the train to work, and debating whether it was a good idea or not. Even Master Chief has a voice, if not a face, but BioShock and Metroid Prime 3 have opted for the Half-Life 2 route, in which all you are is what you do and how you're animated. I personally don't find that makes a game more immersive, but the flip side is developers being encouraged to create stronger characterizations through dialogue and facial expressions, something that many developers--particularly those making FPS games--haven't shown themselves to be good at doing.

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

1. EGO...trip: BioTroid Vs. Mode gets noticed 
2. MMO...Make your own online world, here
3. Wii...Super Smash Bros online, criticized
4. SUB...liminal messages in Mario box art?
5. PSN...PixelJunk Racers creator speaks
6. SDF...Sony Defense Force actually anti-Sony?
7. HMM...Mass Effect's bisextraterrestrial romance
8. WTF...Master Chief's ballet dance
9. PSP...this game will be ours, we swear
10. RND...Trying to avoid the sophomore slump