Somebody in Capcom's offices has a mountain of undeserved hate mail in his inbox. If the frequency and causticity of online discussion is anything to go by, Resident Evil 5's Controls Guy (technical term) has surely become the target of office vandalism, or at least a wall full of passive aggressive post-it notes. In case you hadn't heard: Implausibly beefy protagonist Chris Redfield can't move and shoot at the same time. Nice going, incompetent Controls Guy!

Ignoring this minor incongruity with the survival-horror's commitment to plausibility and sturdy logic, I think a lot of the discussion has merit, especially in a genre which has done much to modernize itself in the last year. There is one sticking point in this move-and-mow-down debate, however: Poor Controls Guy has nothing to do with it. Leave him alone!

If there's one thing the year 2008 has proven adept at, it's polarizing players with titles that seem to generate more discussion than actual sales. Much like Assassin's Creed before it, Ubisoft's Prince of Persia has been viciously yanking people off fences, this time with simplified controls, Open-World Lite™ platforming and sassy, cel-shaded protagonists.

The game's difficulty (or supposed lack thereof) has also come under scrutiny, with some tough-guy gamers lamenting the Prince's newly found and quite convenient resistance to death. I don't wish to argue with the complaint ... but I do want to pluralize it. "This game is not difficult," and, "You can't die in this game," are two very different accusations, and one of them is more than a little unobservant of modern conventions.

I hate to break it to you guys, but death has been pushing up daisies for years.

Presenting Branching Dialogue, a weekly, wordy and often worryingly pedantic discussion of video game genres, trends and err ... stuff I didn't think to put in this introductory line.
In his thoughtful review of Mirror's Edge, Eurogamer's Christian Donlan calls it a game "that's easier to love than like." He's quite right. DICE's first-person parkour platformer doesn't hold up to objective scrutiny, often coming apart under a reviewer's bit-by-bit examination. The discordant ratings are testament to that, if not to the claim that Mirror's Edge exudes a boldness and brilliance that's hard to capture in words, let alone numbers.

You can certainly try lobbing several comparisons at the game's gestalt ("It's Sonic the Hedgehog meets Montezuma's Return!"), but its evocative nature really comes through when you have the controller -- and the life of a runner -- in your hands. For as much as Mirror's Edge is about relentlessly pushing you through an urban obstacle course, it's also about capturing a gripping, breathless exhilaration. It's an unfortunate consequence of the mechanical and very deliberate design of games: doing exciting things with an on-screen proxy rarely feels as exciting as it should.

Alright, that's it. After starting, deleting, undoing, regretting and then restarting this opening paragraph numerous times, I'm just going to write things as they tumble out of my brain and work their way down to my fingertips. Far Cry 2 is a struggle. Narratively, mechanically, stylistically, everything about the game is a to-and-fro tug-of-war. And for me, Ubisoft's open-world shooter is a struggle to decode, to disassemble in my mind's eye and discover that one piece that makes everything click into place. But I think I've found that critical cog in the machine -- the relatively limited save system.

Why? Well, now that I've saved that paragraph for the last time, I'm just going to have to figure that out as I go along.

Presenting Branching Dialogue, a weekly, wordy and often worryingly pedantic discussion of video game genres, trends and err ... stuff I didn't think to put in this introductory line.
Though the latest survival-horror scare pair, Dead Space and Silent Hill: Homecoming, are unlikely to be praised for oozing INNOVATION! out of every pore, both games do a lot to improve and streamline the genre's traditional gameplay. So much so, in fact, that some of the contrivances I would have vigorously defended before, passed off as "misunderstood" by run 'n' gunners, no longer seem worthy of the effort.

But which genre staples can be safely torn out without leaving the design document in tatters? Well, there are two in particular which I'm glad to be rid of.

Presenting Branching Dialogue, a weekly, wordy and often worryingly pedantic discussion of video game genres, trends and err ... stuff I didn't think to put in this introductory line.
With the debut of a brand new IP and the return of an over-the-hill franchise taking place in the space of a few weeks, fans of survival-horror have undoubtedly felt relieved to find their genre considerably more alive than many of the frightful creatures that inhabit it. Counting myself among them -- the fans, not the creatures -- I've eagerly been spending my evenings roaming the sinister streets of Silent Hill: Homecoming, as well as the cramped corridors of Dead Space. While they shamble towards the subject of scariness in remarkably different ways, both highlight the same, inherent contradiction that lies at the still-beating heart of the genre: A good survival-horror is one you don't enjoy playing.

There's an element of self-deception at work here, one that willingly sets you up for the scare and the relief that comes when you realize that, oh, none of it's real. Of course it isn't, you're playing a game! But a good survival-horror will make you forget that critical fact, long enough for you to question what's around the corner and frequently enough to have you gasping at the sight of polygonal blobs leaping through the windows. It is -- and should be -- a stressful experience, a constant source of worry and unanswered what-ifs. Are you anxiously counting your spent bullets? Do you hesitate before ambling down a suspiciously long hallway? What a weird way to have fun.