They'll kick your ass if you don't watch this movie.

I know many people disliked the movie adaptation of Doom, an endeavour so ill-fated that it was almost inevitable. Sporting a lamentable 5.2/10 on IMDb (lower than Terminator 3; lower, even, than Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within), the popular sentiment seems to have been echoed — games based on movies invariably suck. Well, pull up a chair, because I’m going to tell you why I think Doom is worthy of redemption, and moreover, an entertaining no-brainer flick for those of us willing to disengage the grey matter and let our eyeballs run on autopilot for a while. But first, let me take a moment to indulge myself and go through the weaker points.

I’m a big fan of the Doom series of games — I played the original two back when I was a young teen, and while I wasn’t as enamoured with the third in the series, at least it held true to Doom’s original principles; that is to say, all hell has broken loose in the most literal possible meaning of the phrase, and a (more or less) nameless Marine in the service of UAC — the Union Aerospace Corporation, who started the mess in the first place — is all that stands between Satan’s armies and the destruction of mankind. It’s a solid storyline for a game series that revolves around slaughtering hundreds of horrific abominations, and for a no-brainer “dick flick” like this one, it seems it’d be hard to go wrong.

Recurring themes: Dark rooms and dead people.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when I discover that the entire theme of Hell’s armies being unleashed from Mars was casually thrown away and pounded into the dirt, replaced instead by an obnoxiously generic excuse of the classic deus ex machina bullshit of “it’s a virus that mutates people” (well, genetic modification actually, but close enough). The presence of the UAC is limited to mere logos in the background, as if in a vain attempt to appease fans. While the visuals of this movie are possibly the best silver screen rendition of Doom 3 one could hope for — complete, naturally, with the iconic B.F.G. 9000 — the storyline could just as easily be ripped straight from 28 Days Later, only replacing flesh-eating zombies with… uh… flesh-eating mutants. Yeah. Even the “lone Marine versus the armies of Hell” theme has been ripped away and urinated upon, though I suppose I’ll concede that point — with only one character, it wouldn’t make for a terribly interesting movie.

“But wait, Grave, didn’t you say you liked this movie?” It has its flaws, but there’s certainly a charm beneath the surface, yes.

The movie begins with what I was lead to assume was an elite commando team (despite one member being a frightened rookie who acts like he’s never seen combat), whose job is to go through the “Ark” — an interstellar gateway leading to Mars, built by a long-dead alien civilization — to investigate what happened to a group of scientists working on the base, even after we — the viewers — are shown them being brutally murdered by unseen foes. In the fashion that even a child could have seen coming from a mile away, it all goes awry and we’re launched into a visceral journey of both murders and dissections, as the paper-thin plot of the movie is spooned out in most transparent terms.

He doesn't like you. I don't like you either.

The acting is adequate enough and the characters — while shallow — have enough personality to be likable; in particular, “Sarge” (played by none other than The Rock), “Duke” (Razaaq Adoti), and Dr. Samantha Grimm (Rosamund Pike) stand out the most, and it should say something about the depth of this experience when a character played by The Rock could be considered one of the most interesting. But therein lies the beauty of the experience, and I hope by now my point is beginning to take form: Because of the unashamedly testosterone-driven, brick-to-the-face nature of Doom, the shallow characterization and weak storyline can easily be pushed aside, leaving a macabre ride which alternates between sinister and action-packed, and leads to what I believe is one of the greatest pieces of work in action movie history.

I’m referring, of course, to the first-person sequence that attempts to mimic the style of modern FPS games, complete with “look, Ma, no hands!” aiming and ridiculously exaggerated reloading, a sequence which every neuron in my brain was screaming at me that I should find ridiculous, and yet I was unable to shift the painfully wide smile that had taken up residence on my face, unable to resist the sheer, unrefined amount of badass present in this scene. I would go so far as to say that no man (or particularly masculine woman) is complete without having experienced it, and that alone should make the bargain-bucket price tag all the more worthwhile.

And that, good readers, is exactly why everyone should experience Doom — at least once — because despite its flaws, if it can bring even an elitist prick of a pseudo-intellectual myself to such a level of joy, then the rest of you have no excuse. Shut down your brain, lock and load, and get ready for the uncompromising — albeit inane — experience.

So here I am, sick as a dog, coughing up the spawn of Nurgle and wishing doom upon whatever foul miscreant carried this plague to fruition before carelessly spreading the filth in their general vicinity, like the meatspace version of an AoE. My frame of mind is snide, my love for the human race is at an all-time low — sounds to me like the ideal time for a rant. The topic today, dear readers, is that of loopholes in game design, and how far is too far?

I always tended to favour the tank builds. This probably says a lot about my mentality.

Let me take you back to a lesser-known Xbox 360 game, Chromehounds, a spiritual successor to the Armored Core series of mech simulators. Chromehounds was at least fairly original in that it allowed the players a great deal of freedom when constructing their own mechs — while it was still a Lego-like experience of fitting pieces together, there were various add-on blocks that served no purpose other than as hubs to connect pieces together in unusual directions. The gear available was moderately varied, with everything from the slow, steady quad-legs base (intended for artillery and other weapons of massive scope), all the way through bipedal, caterpillar tracks, and even the fast-yet-frail wheeled approach.

A great idea in theory, but sadly, poor planning and some issues which could simply not have been forseen came into play, and the game degenerated into what I can only describe as a festival of bullshit. Three core builds emerged, each crowning themselves the king of Chromehounds — the Gator, which used connector blocks in such a way to obscure the cockpit with guns, something that was never intended; the Quad Cannon (more commonly known as QC), perhaps the least cheap of the trio but still annoying in its own right, and the game-breaking Double Double (DD build), which abused the quality of reverse-joint bipedal legs — sniper legs, meant to support the high-recoil sniper cannons — to field not one, but two battleship-sized double cannons, providing enough firepower in four barrels to annihilate almost any other HOUND in a single attack. What was intended to be mounted alone on a slow, unwieldy four-legged beast was now being used deux fois on lighter, faster, more mobile machines, and the quality of the online experience swiftly dropped with it.

I wish I could say this was an isolated incident, but unfortunately such behaviour is troublingly prevalent in the sphere of online gaming. Penny Arcade recently ran a strip expressing the distaste that I think many of us feel about the recent abuses on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, where players take a specific set of “perks” (character customization options, to allow for different gameplay styles) to become literal ninjas, rushing about the battlefield armed with nothing but a combat knife — or the double shotgun build, which while somewhat more plausible, is still squarely in the same ball-park. In a game based around — as the name would imply — modern warfare, there’s something almost mildly insulting about seeing assassin-wannabes rushing hither and dither with nothing more than sharpened metal sticks, doubly so when their iniquitous endeavours succeed.

I could throw out a dozen more examples, but I think my point stands: At what point does manipulating game mechanics — to the extent that, while not “cheating” per se, players are using tools clearly in an unfair way that they were not intended — stop becoming “tactical”, and start bordering on the grim badlands of the harrowed exploit? Where, indeed, do we draw the line, if one is to be drawn at all?

The combat is pretty much the same as in the original, with a few minor improvements.

It’s 2007, and gripped in my sweaty palms is a rare treasure indeed: Assassin’s Creed, a game that promised so much and — despite its flaws and the abysmal press it received from some of its more staunch critics — I felt delivered superbly, if one is willing to be a tad lenient and forgive some of its bumbling flaws. From the stunning visuals to the thrill of the hunt through dark alleyways and across sprawling rooftops, to the re-imagining of the fast, silent and deadly ninja archetype into Altaïr Ibn La-Ahad, an eminently likable character if only because his disposition reminded me, in a way, of myself. He was brash, arrogant, over-confident, and could climb up the side of a building in seconds. In short, I was enthralled. Garrett has nothing on this guy.

Cut forward to 2009 and, late on the ball as always, I finally pick up a copy of the long-awaited sequel. It turns out to be somewhat of a mixed bag: On the one hand, Altaïr is lamentably gone and replaced by Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a noble/assassin/asshole exploring the beautifully-detailed world of Renaissance-era Italy. On the other hand, he now sports two of the iconic hidden blade weapons that redefined neck-stabbing as an entertaining and rewarding pastime, and I think this fact alone redeems any viable complaint one could have about the game. While any could enjoy the gorgeously-rendered vistas and cityscapes, the refined and highly enjoyable gameplay, and the surprisingly decent storyline which both carries on from and expands the original game’s universe, the most joy is gained from the fact that you can stab two people at the same time.

What of the rest of the game? Well, I wish I could say all of the original’s flaws have been fixed, but unfortunately that’s not the case — and the sequel comes with a host of new issues of its own. Allow me to pause and mention that, overall, I adore both games and consider them both superb pieces of work, but one would be a fool to not accept their shortcomings. The issue of repetitiveness that plagued the original — something that did not trouble me greatly, but vexed many a gamer — as well as the obnoxious hunt for flags have both been fixed, in a way. The flag-hunting is replaced by equally abhorrent feathers hidden about the world (one would be forgiven for wondering how they don’t simply blow away), and while there are dozens of treasure chests hidden in each area, they become almost tediously easy to track down after buying a treasure map from a local merchant, which costs about the same as the contents of a single box.

Unlike his predecessor, Ezio can actually swim. This adds little to the gameplay, but avoids frustration from unfair deaths.

Moreover, the fluid agility of the free-running element that so defines the series has been pushed a little too far; there are many cases where it’s starkly obvious that the designers created certain buildings (usually view-point areas, used to gain a view of the surrounding land) as agility puzzles of a sort, requiring a fair amount of tedium while one figures out the exact route intended to scale said building, with usually almost no variant allowed in the ascent. Worse, the assassins’ tombs dotted about the world, which are necessary for reasons I will refrain from spoiling, are simply large, highly annoying Prince of Persia wannabes which involve — again — a fixed route through a series of increasingly difficult jumping and agility puzzles, while Ezio ascends towards his goal. A far cry from the free-form nature of its predecessor, these sequences feel stiff, forced, and largely unfulfilling.
With that said, the rest of the game is fairly polished and highly enjoyable; the world is painted beautifully in a much-improved graphics engine, the gameplay is (mostly) as slick and fluid as one would expect, and what Ezio lacks in the iconic nature of his forerunner, he makes up for with style — which is further flexible, as his appearance changes depending on the weapons and armour purchased and equipped, as well as a fairly wide variety of clothing dyes which provide further customization. There are dozens of other things I could mention, but alas, would take too much space: The ‘upgradeable’ stronghold town, the variety of weapons and ability to even use a foe’s dropped blade against his allies, the much-improved notoriety system (merely running down the street will no longer necessarily attract cries of, “Assassin! Keel heem!”), and so many more.

Overall, I’d say Assassin’s Creed II is a worthy successor to the original, though likely something I’d only recommend for fans. If you liked the first game, then despite its flaws, you’ll enjoy stalking and murdering through the streets of Venice, but given that it carries on where the original left off and barely explains the events of the former game, I’d suggest first-time players look in the bargain bin for a copy of the original before considering this sequel.