Ten years after declaring Grim Fandango its Game of the Year for 1998, GameSpot has bestowed that same honor for 2008 upon Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

I don’t really want to get deep into MGS4 here, because there were some things about it I liked, but I was struck by some of the comments given by GameSpot editors in the video posted alongside the choice, at least for the minute or two of it I watched. Most of them had to do with the game’s storytelling aspects.

“It finds a perfect harmony between gameplay and storytelling,” said one editor. “Some people said, ‘I watched it as much as I played it,’ but that’s part of what makes it so incredible,” added another.

To me, MGS4 had less of a harmony between gameplay and storytelling, and more of a yo-yo. I find it somewhat sobering that in a decade of astonishing progress in rendering, physics, interface, scale, and complexity, the high watermark for video game storytelling (at least, according to one particular site, notable for being both highly ubiquitous and read, and extremely long-running in internet time) has gone from being exemplified by elegance, breathtaking creativity, and amazingly sharp dialogue to being exemplified by overblown melodrama, ludicrously cumbersome plotting, and cheap tragedy.

It’s probably also worth noting, since this is ostensibly about games, that measured either in terms of pure hours or more charitably as a proportion of overall game time, Metal Gear Solid’s non-interactive cutscene content (including bits where you just move a camera around) probably outweigh Grim Fandango’s by several times—and Grim Fandango is a graphic adventure game.

Just sayin’.

Just about all my free non-music time at home over the past two weeks has been dedicated to Rockstar North’s Grand Theft Auto IV, whose story I completed just seconds ago. As some of you know, I rarely finish games these days–in most cases, I really don’t feel most games actually have enough fresh, compelling gameplay to last the number of hours it takes to complete them. This makes my completion of GTA4 all the more impressive–it’s not just that I finished a game, but that it is such a massive game.

Everyone has said a billion great things about GTA4 so I’m not going to list them all off. Rockstar North indeed managed to create a bafflingly well-realized world with an impressive level of fidelity and life. It’s been said, and I agree.

For my part, the thing that impressed me most–and led to me completing the game at all–was how brilliantly Rockstar balanced on the midpoint between overexaggerated absurdity, believable mundanity, and genuine gravitas.

The first of those was established in the original Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2, laying the seeds for the crucial third entry; the second trait was most significantly introduced (perhaps moreso than necessary) in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas; and the third has been generally on an upward curve from III to Vice City to San Andreas; but it has not been until GTA4 that all three were so expertly set against one another.

Most appealing to me, perhaps unexpectedly, has been the mundanity. (more…)

I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed that BioShock–one of the most aggressively original games that has shipped recently–is so quickly becoming a full-on Franchise, with an 18-month (or so) sequel and a Hollywood sequel. It is inevitable, really–but that’s the most telling part.

Now, I have met a number of people working on BioShock 2, and honestly I think it would be difficult to find a group that is more talented and more suited to the material, so I don’t want to give the impression that I am ragging on that studio or its project, because I’m not. I can’t wait to see what they’re thinking up.

Similarly, director Gore Verbinski gave an interview that puts his enthusiasm for and knowledge of BioShock in an encouraging light. He and screenwriter John Logan have definitely skewed towards the more box office Hollywood blockbuster side of the cinematic experience, which wouldn’t be my first pick, but I can see the justification and necessity there.

Logan did write one of my favorite films of the last several years, Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, so that’s a plus–and I can see some parallels between the eccentric billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes and consummate captain of industry Andrew Ryan, both larger-than-life figures consumed by larger-than-life principles. Ken Levine is said to be involved; it isn’t clear to what extent.

So it isn’t that I don’t have faith in these projects. It’s just that I find it unfortunate that the video game industry is still so relentlessly hit-driven, in a way that hit-driven Hollywood isn’t even close to being, to the point that once somebody does find a hit you can pretty much draft up a map of commodification, effective immediately, with your eyes closed.

As some of you may know, I currently serve as Editor-at-Large at industry trade publication Gamasutra.  Today, we ran a piece of mine looking at the idea of subtext in games, with an examination of titles such as Half-Life, Grand Theft Auto, Ico, No More Heroes, Full Throttle, and BioShock.  Here’s an excerpt:

On the surface, Full Throttle is a badass neo-noir biker murder thriller with hard rock music (on that level alone it is already more novel than most game premises), but underneath it is a melancholy reflection on the American frontier and the inevitability of invasive industrialization.

If you have any interest in a dialogue- and puzzle-driven game, Full Throttle isn’t overbearing or preachy in the least, but there’s a lot to chew on. Its subtext is essentially literary, hinging on classic themes of American fiction.

If you like, go check out the whole thing.