With Dark Souls III behind me, and while I wait for the inevitable time-eater that will be Civilization VI, I wanted to go back through my backlog of smaller games. Papers, Please is a simple little indie title that has been out for almost three years (at the time of this writing), and has been sitting in my Steam library, unplayed, for quite some time. Now seemed like as good a time as any to rectify that.

I just paid to go to a second job that I don't get paid for

Papers, Please is a funny little game in that it is so dedicated to its theme that the game actually does start to feel almost like a real job. You have to click and drag to open up documents, sort through papers, check dates, make sure the document was issued in a valid city, and so on. It's a lot of mundane work, and if you miss any little detail, then you have an omniscient boss who will print out a citation. I quickly came to anticipate the sound of a citation being printed with a Pavlovian anxiety after sending applicants through, even for the ones whose documents I thought I had thoroughly checked. You get two warnings before your omniscient boss starts docking your pay, which keeps constant pressure on you to try to be as close to perfect as possible. Paying for this game is almost like paying for a second job that you, yourself, don't get paid for. And it's kind of a shitty job, at that.

It's not just the potential immigrants' problems that you have to think about. You have your own problems. Every day, you go home with a measly salary, and you have to pay daily for rent, heat, and food for yourself and your family. Maybe you kids or wife get sick, and you have to spend some precious extra dollars on medicine that night. And if your pay gets docked for letting in people with invalid passports, then you might have to go that night without food or heat or medicines, which will just make your family more likely to get sick.

Hooray! A game in which I get to shuffle paper work and perform bureaucratic government functions!

You'll also have people with invalid documents begging to let you in to the country so they can be re-united with their families, or because they're political refugees who will be killed if they go back to their own country...

Not having a GameCube meant that I unfortunately missed out on some pretty high-quality games. Probably the most notable ones were Eternal Darkness and the remake of Resident Evil, neither of which, by itself, was enough to sell me on a console. I've since been able to play through a friend's copy of Eternal Darkness, and I had started on Resident Evil, but never got around to finishing it. When the HD remaster showed up on PSN, I was hesitant to buy it, since I knew that I could just play it on my friend's GameCube eventually.

Best of both worlds at the tip of your thumb

However, something in the previews really intrigued me. And that was the compromise that Capcom found for the never-ending conflict between the tank-style controls of the original PSX game and the analog control of newer games. Since I grew up with Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and other survival horror and similar adventure games, I've never had a problem with tank controls. They tend to be the lesser evil when dealing with static camera angles that change unpredictably (as in Resident Evil), and they are perfectly serviceable for behind-the-back or overhead cameras (as in the outdoor areas of Silent Hill). This ensures that the controls remain consistent during camera angle changes, since they are always relevant to the character rather than the camera.

But apparently, some people hate that control paradigm. They criticize it for making the characters feel too slow and lumbering, and that it lacks precision. The controls have oft been cited as one of the reasons for Resident Evil's declining popularity after Resident Evil 2, and supposedly ditching them was a major factor in the "renaissance" that was [supposedly] Resident Evil 4. But let me remind you that Resident Evil 4 had the exact same controls, and the character was just as slow and lumbering (if not moreso). The only difference was that the camera was moved to behind-the-back, and the gameplay switched to an action shooter rather than a more adventure-puzzle kind of game. So really, your problem was never with the controls...

The original Resident Evil was criticized for how its controls and camera lead to frequent blind corners,
wasted ammunition, and cheap kills. The critics were right, but it wasn't game-breaking...

Regardless, analog control has its own baggage train of problems. Pressing the stick in one direction can cause the character to make sudden changes of direction if the camera suddenly changes. This can be mostly avoided by locking the character's movement as long as the player doesn't release or rotate the stick - and the HD Remaster does implement this. But this still leads to sudden turn-arounds when the player needs to move the character around a corner, since you sometimes have to move the stick to the exact opposite direction that you were pressing. And in cases in which the camera angle changes at the point where a change of direction is required to go around a corner or navigate an obstacle (which happens often), then the character can easily get lost in a cycle of spinning around between the two camera zones.

So there is no perfect solution to the problem of static cameras, but I tend to prefer the tank method due to its guarantee of consistency - even at the cost of some slow turning speeds. In any case, advocates of either paradigm should find exactly what they want in this remaster, since both configurations are implemented in the remastered game's default control scheme! Capcom's clever (and elegant) solution was to simply map the tank controls to the directional pad, while leaving the free analog movement on the analog stick. Players are, thus, free to alternate between whichever control they prefer without even having to go into a menu to change it. You can even alternate between them, on the fly, in the heat of the action if the situation warrants it, because I can definitely see how the analog movement could work well in some of the [rare] larger, open areas of the map (particularly for boss fights).

It's OK to hate these red-headed step-zombies

Most of the changes introduced in the GameCube remake serve to add further challenge. The most prominent display of this is the new "Crimson Head" zombie mechanic. If you kill a zombie and didn't manage to get lucky enough to blow its head off, you must burn its body in order to prevent it from resurrecting later in the game as a more dangerous "Crimson Head". These red-headed zombies are faster and more damaging than their precursor form. They can rapidly run across a room and grab you before you even realize they are there. They are also very well-tutorialized, since most players will probably encounter their first Crimson Head while attempting to retrieve the Armor Key from the hallway trapped with suits of armor on rails. The previous hallway includes a dead body that (if you didn't go out of your way to burn previously) will resurrect at this time. This hall has a system of mirrors in place that allow a tremendous degree of visibility from virtually every camera angle, meaning that whichever door you enter from, you'll have an opportunity to see the Crimson Head coming after you. It's a frantic and frightening moment!

Bodies that you don't burn will resurrect as faster, more deadly "Crimson Heads"
that are difficult to avoid and require a second investment in resources to defeat.

Almost any zombie in the game can potentially turn into this more dangerous form. Destroying their head with a lucky shot or burning their bodies are the only ways to permanently ensure that they can't attack you...

Is Frictional Games working on a new IP? I'm a bit curious as to why they outsourced development of the aptly-named A Machine for Pigs to the third-party developer The Chinese Room. Frictional's staff did stay on as "producers" for this game, so I'm sure that the final product is still consistent with what Frictional would have wanted if they had developed it themselves, and I think the overall story was still written by people at Frictional (but I could be wrong on that account). In any case, the change in development team has certainly had a dramatic effect on the way that the new game plays. The very core gameplay of exploring a linear dungeon with a flashlight is retained, but all the mechanics and the underlying feel of the game are completely different than its predecessor. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as Amnesia: the Dark Descent wasn't perfect.

Once again, the underlying premise that sets up Amnesia: a Machine for Pigs is that your character wakes up in a mansion with no memory of who he is or why he is there. Your early exploration of the mansion reveals some vague threat, and you are forced to descend into a deep dungeon in order to discover who you are and resolve the threat. Along the way, you'll encounter deformed creatures and collect notes and documents from your former self explaining the situation, as well as have the occasional hallucinatory flashback as your memory slowly returns. But if you're worried that this sounds too much like the previous game, then fear not: A Machine for Pigs takes an entirely different approach to the gameplay and has a totally different feel to the entire experience.

Since Silent Hill Downpour failed miserably to scratch my survival horror itch, I’ve been looking for something else to fill that niche. I picked up Amnesia: the Dark Descent on a Steam sale for pocket change, and am very glad that I did.

Mainstream game companies don’t seem particularly interested in releasing good survival horror games. It’s a very niche market and difficult to find mass-market appeal. Modern horror games mostly ape off of Resident Evil 4 by being designed as an action shooter first, and survival horror game second (if at all). The genre is dominated by fast-paced "boo"-scare games like Dead Space and F.E.A.R., and gone are the days of the deliberately-slow-paced psychological games like Silent Hill 2 and Fatal Frame. The "survival" element has mostly fallen away since resource management is widely regarded as too tedious, and the "horror" is usually just represented with difficult combat.

But where mega-publishers and AAA developers have dropped the ball, the Indie market filled in the gap 3 years ago (Sept 2010) with Amnesia: the Dark Descent.

Amnesia goes to the opposite extreme as Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space. This game is not an action game.

I've heard that a lot of players are complaining about the save system of Capcom's new Resident Evil 6. I haven't played the game yet because RE5 sucked, and the demo for RE6 sucked, so I can't comment on that game. What I can do, though, is take a moment to reflect on the genius of the classic Resident Evil save system.

Most of my readers know me as a Silent Hill fan [boy], so it's uncommon for me to heap praise upon Resident Evil. But I actually am a big fan of the original game (it was one of my favorite PlayStation games). Maybe some day, I'll get around to writing about how Resident Evil 4 killed my interest in the franchise...

Resident Evil took a unique path in terms of it's save-game system. I'm not sure if it was the first to use this particular style of system, but it was definitely one of the best implementations that I played!

During the PSX era of the late 90's, game saves generally took one of 3 forms:

• Level saves: games like Devil May Cry and many level / mission-based action games and arcade fighters required the player to complete a whole level or mission before being allowed to save. This broke the game up into distinct segments and create natural stopping points.
• Pause menu saves: games like Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII (in the Overworld), and most sports games gave players the ability to save in the pause screen (or other menu). Sometimes there would be restrictions, such as not being able to save when enemies are present, but this is generally the easiest save system from a player's standpoint. Unless you forget to save...


Ico allows players to save by making the characters rest on these magic couches. Both Ico and Yorda must sit in order for a save to be permitted.

• Save points: many RPGs and action/adventure games such as Ico or Silent Hill required the player to activate a specific item located in the game world in order to save. This had the advantage of giving the player a visual reminder to save, but limited the ability to save and forced the player to backtrack if you wanted to save before reaching a new save point.

Resident Evil falls firmly in that last category, but with one significant (and game-changing) caveat: in addition to only being able to save at pre-defined locations, the ability to save was also tied to a consumable inventory item!