a whirlwind of emotions encased by desolate beauty. not sure why this is a bit embarrassing to me, but new vegas was THE game that got me to appreciate games as much as i do today. new vegas is good, i love that game (probably, i havent played it since i was 15), but fallout 1 is very special to me. the rugged controls and graphics have aged well in its dilapidated world, making each interaction born out of genuine curiosity. piecing together solutions from scrounged bits of ammo or investigative conversations made the quests feel incredibly organic. not one bit of exploration is falsehood. you are truly lost in the wastes and must dig yourself out. new vegas is similar but fallout 1 has you tread across new california to seek guidance or stumble upon what you need. youre told "yea we need a new water chip, good luck," given a handful of supplies, and propelled into a hateful world of dust. the self-autonomy of saving a whole people, a whole community's world, is daunting yet so marvellously enticing. it's almost like youre 'the chosen one' (i know thats fo2's protag, but thats not what i mean here), given an insurmountable task to complete. yet what differs here is that you arent a godlike figure, youre just an average joe that knows nothing about this fucked up world, making each success so much more triumphant. standing over the corpses of raiders and irradiated horrors never felt so good.

granted, combat is obtusely brutal. "You miss. You miss. Raider hit you for 300 fuck-ass damage. FEEL THE PAIN. The scar looks kinda neat though!" if youre specialized less for combat, each encounter feels more like a roll of the dice. especially in the later game, when otherworldly horrors become common foes. it's a gambling addict's wet dream; trying over and over to finally hit it big and win a lootable corpse. not that it's wholly unfair, but at times you will be one shotted. it's unavoidable. lady luck fucking HATES you. but with the right equipment, maybe some companions, and perseverance, you can topple the mightiest of giants. "You hit for 12 damage. You miss. Raider critically misses and shoots themselves in the face for 800 damage!" the cartoonish violence is a dopamine farm. watching a raider liquefy into a puddle or a deathclaw get its head ripped clean off, you want to conquer more and more of this insufferable wasteland.

but nobody plays fallout 1 for the action. nobody, in their right mind, plays fallout for the action. i guess fallout 4 and 76 are the outliers, theyre more of a sandbox than anything. fallout 1 is a good story, one that i struggle to even explain to anybody. the writing is fantastic with funny as hell dialogue, amazing world building, and evil as fuck villains. throw in some sympathetic characters and investigative quests, and youve got a decent summation of a fallout game. yet, what i found most interesting about this games story wasnt the writing, but rather the gameplay that surrounded it. you constantly make treks and inquiries to secure the future of vault 13. what the main quest boils down to is just living through the world like any other survivor. you arent given priority or special treatment, youre a nobody to everybody you meet outside the vault. youve gotta muster up the courage to get any progress done. along the way, you get tidbits of dilemmas and philosophy. adytum's fascistic regulators, the hub's hellish economy, junktown's feud, necropolis' occupation by mutants, the followers of the apocalypse's existence, so much shit that just begs you to ponder. humanity is diverse in beliefs and cruelty. thats really what makes fallout, as a series, so interesting. it's not the world-building or rpg elements (which are really good), but more so the exploration of different beliefs and violence that humans are so good at conjuring. to see the extremes of every side of humanity, to quell or partake in them in a post-apocalypse, makes it so enticing. really that is just fiction in general, but fallouts american setting and premise hone in on real-world parallels, compelling me more to join on its experiment.

while being able to directly interact with the different philosophies, politics, and levels of violence found across the game, fallout 1 has a sort of disconnect to it. from what i remember with new vegas, you are very linked into whichever factions you support and whatnot. yet in this game, you can help all sorts of groups, commit terrible crimes for mob bosses, and yet you can move on. you're a middle man, a contract worker, helping with a very specific task but not a designated member of a group. while being able to join the brotherhood, youre free to leave and, basically, do whatever you want all because youre an outsider. fallout 1s dilemmas and quests feel more like windows into all sorts of walks of life than commitments. this isn't terrible, i just found it very interesting. this isnt also true to every decision. some acts will lock you into a position a group may hate you for, but most of the time you are a passerby. it feels like a road trip in a sense. you explore a dead america and experience its new frail life, allowing you to believe whatever you want to and feel however you want to. pretty much every conversation with a talking head npc and quest npc has the option to provoke violence! fuck getting to know people, i want blood. all the more to show how much of a jack-of-all-trades mediator you are. true to only you and your vault and nothing else. youre paid to do a job, and you leave because you have more pressing matters like saving the world.

and its all for not. a futile endeavor where youre gloriously praised and thanked. youve accumulated powerful equipment and skills, but you never could return to your old life. a fatalistic ending to shatter your pride and fill in the cracks with a bleak despair. ultimately, it was the impact you had on peoples lives, not the grand goals that vault 13's overseer bestowed upon you, that had any significance. seeing how your actions shaped the land, whether you brought prosperity or ruin, the stops you made on the way mattered more than the destination. revel in the fruits of good deeds, or wallow in crippling societal collapse.

you deserve rest. youre a hero to some and a cretin to others. but you must leave. never come back.

i love this game, cant you tell by the rambling?

The Value of Spin-Off Titles: Understanding Video Games Through Other Games

Spin-off games are always an ambivalent proposition. At worst, they are nothing but a cheap marketing stunt, a simple act of slapping the looks and sounds of an already lucrative IP onto what would otherwise be a completely unrelated experience. In their best instances, however, spin-off titles are not only good games in their own right, but can also offer unique insight into the main series they’re based on that is as valuable as any written or video analysis of these games. Given that almost every mobile game falls into the former category of half-assed corporate branding, it is all the more remarkable how elegantly Hitman GO achieves the latter.

The premise of Hitman GO is that Hitman can naturally be adapted as a turn-based puzzle game because the core experience of the series has always been akin to puzzle solving anyway. The same can actually be stated for most other stealth games. Both genres generally share a principle of pull game design, where the game initially rests in a passive state that can be manipulated by the player character. In both cases, the world usually does not act independently from the player, its elements only change in periodic time loops at most until you interact with them. From this perspective, there really isn’t that much of a difference between figuring out the routes of patrolling guards and, say, the functioning of a control room puzzle. Both behave in an entirely predetermined and predictable manner, which the player is encouraged to carefully observe before making an informed decision about how to influence them to their advantage.

The main differences lie in how you are able to collect the information and how the games react to your mistakes. In stealth games, information gathering is already part of the same hide-and-seek dynamic that characterizes their progression system as a whole. Players are bound to the limited perspective of their character, which can be expanded by all sorts of enhanced movement capabilities or item usage. Abilities, that also often put them at risk of discovery, in which case the game shifts gears to a push dynamic that puts the player at a disadvantage until they manage to escape detection again. All these elements are not present in most puzzle games, but they also aren’t equally relevant to all stealth games, and I think that Hitman GO is right to argue that they are an expandable part of the Hitman series. Though the games have always provided you with a surprisingly large array of lethal options, they also clearly incentivize you to play in a specific, non-confrontational manner. Every good Hitman level has one or several ideal methods of assassinating your targets that make their deaths look like accidents and that require a deep understanding of the level design to work out. A perfect rating further requires you to execute the whole plan without any casualties or getting spotted, like you were never even there in the first place.

All the guns and melee weapons offer less of an equally valid alternative, and more like something to keep players entertained until they have figured out a more optimal method (hence their inherent ability to generate slapstick moments), or as a last resort brute force approach if they can’t. This is why the multiple film adaptations feel like such a grotesque misinterpretation of the games they are supposed to be based on. As if the filmmakers only bothered to engage with the most surface level promotional material of a menacing looking bald guy with dual wielding pistols, the perfect protagonist for any generic action film. Hitman GO instead gets to the core of the experience, by adapting the basic progression structure in its level design.

Each of the five main levels takes the shape of a board game that represents a specific location – usually an expansive mansion –, in which two red targets are placed as figurines to assassinate, one at the halfway mark and one at the end point of the map. The progress of your figure through this overworld is marked by a linear path with fifteen steps, mimicking the actual route of infiltration a player might take in a 3D-environment – entering from the garden across the pool house to the tennis court for the first kill, then sneaking their way through the greenhouse into the main building for the second, for example. Every step takes you to a different sub-screen of the individual puzzles, with a more detailed illustration of the current area, but this time your goal is behind multiple branching paths, patrolling guards and various items. This subdivision also perfectly captures how Hitman levels are never just free-roaming open worlds, but a complex series of subsequent or interlocking stealth challenges with restricted areas within restricted areas. In fact, the developers were even able to directly adapt two levels from the main games into additional boards later on, both of which translate beautifully into the new formular.

The puzzles themselves are as close to stealth gameplay as a turn-based board game can be, save for the aforementioned aspects of information gathering and improvisation under detection. You always have perfect information about the position, movement, and possible interactions of every element on the board, to the point where it is theoretically possible to solve most of the puzzles in your head before you even make your first move. There is absolutely no ambiguity or chance involved in the outcome of every turn: If you move onto a field in sight and proximity of a guard, you lose. Detection is equal to immediate failure. These conditions might feel restrictive for other stealth games like the Metal Gear series, which puts a much higher emphasis on improvisational tactics and emergent gameplay (the turn-based card gameplay of the Acid games definitely offer a more apt interpretation here), but they are a perfect fit for Hitman.

The completely formalized spacial and temporal interactions on the puzzle board actually correspond to the natural tendency for abstraction that differentiates stealth games from the majority of 3D genres. Where most games try to immerse you in a believable world, stealth encourages a more detached analytical perspective that pays attention to the structure behind the appearance. For instance, lighting becomes less of a tool for generating atmosphere and more an indication of save areas. And while the question of light and shadow is not particularly important to Hitman, its disguise system arguably offers an even more radical example for the same principle. It makes you incentivized to see every character not as an individual but merely an anonymous avatar playing a social role, who can be perfectly imitated and replaced at all times. Is there a better way to emulate the point of view of a cold-blooded assassin?

As such, the Hitman series was only ever interested in simulating social situations insofar as they communicate a clear signification. Hitman GO even manages to capture this aspect in its twofold implications. On the one hand, the guards on the board all behave in a specific manner determined by the color of their uniform. Some always rest in the same position until distracted, others turn around every turn or patrol along a linear path. Circumventing these obstacles mainly revolves around questions of move order and timing. On the other hand, there are civilians on the side of the boards, freezed in different tableaux vivants that display snapshots of social configurations: a gardener resting in the shade of a tall hedge; or a man all alone in the backrow of a wedding ceremony, burying his face in his hands.

I would even go as far as saying that Hitman GO was crucial for getting the series back on track after the confused mess that was Absolution. Square Enix Montreal certainly had a deeper understanding of Hitman than IO Interactive at that point. Still, in spite of all my praise for how Hitman GO interprets the games it is based on, one central part of the puzzle is missing. A crucial factor of the perverse appeal of the Hitman series is that you have to perform the process of abstraction yourself. Every new level sure looks like a natural environment at the start, until you peel away its different layers of artificial reality to the point where there is nothing left but a perfect clockwork leading your targets to their ultimate destiny. You almost feel like a sort of sadistic god of fate at the end, enacting a twisted higher judgment on your victims. The final execution is only the last part of this process, and not exactly the most engaging one as it usually involves a lot of waiting for every piece to fall into place. Hitman GO already strips away too many layers of social artifice for you. What is left is a series of good, but not great puzzles that have more to say about one of the best series of my favorite genre than they are able to speak for themselves.

__________________
More puzzle game reviews
Chants of Sennaar
Cocoon
Mole Mania