Apparently all you need to do to attract me to the previously hated activity of achievement whoring is add an arbitrary experience system to it. I don’t play RPGs any more based on the fact that there’s actually other things I do with my life these days and just don’t have the time, but apparently my inner dork is still in there and kicking away, the same force that compells N4G to proudly announce that’s it has successfully copy-pasted over sixty press releases in one day when they could be having a beer.

That’s essentially the thing about trophchievements. They’re supposed to be bragging rights, but my brain has developed the ability to translate the number of points or bronze trophies you posess into a rough formula involving the amount of time you took NOT licking pussy or doing things that ultimately lead to said event.

And now I’m one of you dorks again. I don’t know if it’s because I’m dating somebody and have settled into that bilge drain that everybody in a relationship eventually gets to, or if my earlier assessment about the PS3’s level-up parameter is accurate. Either way, I don’t care. Whoever is responsible; thanks, jerk.

Bioshock

Does not age well with half-assed ports. Don’t get me wrong, the game is definitely worth a spin, in that “Let’s open a little window into System Shock 2’s formula, write down what we see, and run like hell” meets Steampunk aesthetic. But it’s hard to return to a game when it relies on a classic shooter approach and we’ve seen much more engrossing systems in use. Maybe if I had the benefit of a little more time and distance, I could come back to this game and get that initial kick out of it all over again, but something’s gone a bit stale in the meantime.

The graphics are probably to blame. Constant blur effects don’t really mask the fact that BioShock is already aging visually… granted, the pace technology is going, the Orange Box is already pretty much last-gen crap without Portal, but there was obviously no work put into the PS3 port. The visuals are fairly acceptable, and the effects are still crisp, but pretty much any texture will start to pixellate upon a decently close examination. It’s not like the blurry signs in Turok, but a game released this close to 2009 should have had a bit of a facelift.

What really rocked my world about BioShock was the depth that was unexpectedly given to what was otherwise a pretty basic shooter. Like its bastard father, System Shock 2, this game lets you be a smoking gun badass or a sneaky hacker. Actually, it lets you be both, because unlike SS2 or Deus Ex or any number of Warren Spector-inspired games that jerked off into the test tube labeled BioShock, there’s no skill progression and no need to choose what kind of character you want to be. You can do anything from the get-go and you can acquire every upgrade in the game in a single play, if you’re diligent. It’s nice that you can hack pretty much any machine, or upgrade your weapons, or learn new and exciting forms of pseudo-magic.

But I did all of that in my first playthrough, and it’s all old hat in the second, isn’t it? There’s no need to go back and explore the Rambo path; When the subtle approach failed, I already had it to fall back on.

It’s still a fun game, but they kneecapped most of the incentive to go back through it. The gameplay and unique atmosphere (reasonably unique, when you consider it’s a return to the Von Braun… except underwater. And it’s 1960) was definitely enough fun for a single play. Now it’s getting a bit tedious.

Since we don’t have a rating system and won’t have one until I get around to contacting gamerankings.com in an effort to join the whore race, we’ll apply the classic drinking game of Fuck, Marry, or Kill? to these essays, paralleling rent, buy, or murdering the GameStop employee who tries to get you to buy it. BioShock is a pretty strong one-night stand, as it’s authentically well-designed, lengthy, fun, and has a great atmosphere. But it’s not a great repeat offender, so you probably should just hit it and quit it.

Uncharted

This pulled the opposite move on me. I had played Uncharted through about three times when I first got it. I loved it, obviously. A love I usually only reserve for true New York-style pizza, redheads, and the car wrecks that inevitably happen every time it rains in Los Angeles. And after beating a game three times, I tend to be pretty much done with it.

I have to swear off the calzones, because blocked arteries mean less blood for the brain. One fresh patch install of trophies and Dual Shock 3 compatibility later, I was in love again like it was the first time. Uncharted’s blend of lush scenery, tight animation scripting, and challenging enemy AI that spastically jerks around during a firefight make a winning game. It’s like Gears of War with a much tighter combat system, barrels more charm, and a complete lack of homoerotic undertones. I know I’m going to get mail for that one, but the characters are flawlessly written and charismatically performed. They actually talk and respond to each other in cutscenes, to say more than “I’m pissed” and “That was fun” (the last bit referring to a slaughter, which they couldn’t include in the dialog as it had two entire syllables).

Unfortunately, there’s no kind of multiplayer. That pretty much doomed this one from reaching a wider audience, because if there’s one thing douchebag fanboys love, it’s shouting at other douchebag fanboys.

It’s a damn shame, too, because Naughty Dog routinely nails their fingers to the table one at a time to create games that make hardware scream like a bitch in the process of being crucified. Whatever time they spent not tailoring the game experience to attention whores, they definitely spent fine tuning an excellent engine. The scenery is lush, full, colorful (would the rest of you developers look at that last word carefully and look it up in Wikipedia, please?) and in constant motion.

Your character moves from action to action fluidly, seamlessly blending a jump-and-roll into a quick draw fire in a way that hasn’t been seen before or since. You can leap from one ledge to the next in a context sensitive way, releasing you from the chore of mastering another platformer’s arbitrary grasp of physics and leaving you to figure out how to cross the awesomely-detailed ruins of a former civilization.

And the story could have been the best Mummy movie to date, if they didn’t want to make a game with it. That definitely counts for something. I’ve seen it a few times already and I can still sit through it, thanks to some really crisp dialog and acting.

Fuck, Marry, or Kill? Marry the shit out of it. Then arrange a wife swap with the upcoming sequel.

Prince of Persia

Thank fucking god, somebody listened to reason. The first thing that will strike you about Prince of Persia is that there’s some good humor there. We open with a shot of the Prince leaping down a ravine at a height that would cause some impressive splatter. Of course, he’s going to stick his blade in the wall, backflip, and do any number of impressive aerobics to cusion the fall. But veterans of the Prince’s “I cut myself on my webcam” days on the PS2 will be mildly surprised and hopefully elated when he lands, followed momentarily by a shower of dirt and rocks.

The Prince is done with being some kind of early teen angstbucket that stays in his room, listening to Dragonforce with the volume all the way up on his tin box from Sears. Now he’s more like Madmartigan from Willow, which almost convinced me to buy the game all by itself.

Ubisoft paid attention to the sunny locales and bright dispositions of Uncharted, because they not only stole the main character’s personality, but also cast his voice actor, Nolan North. And it works, in part. While North isn’t quite perfect for the role of the Prince as he was for Nathan Drake, the character’s direction is charming enough in its own right to make it all work.

Unfortunately, Prince of Persia has one major flaw that tends to go across the board, from the personality to the gameplay; It gets repetitive damn fast. After being spoiled by boundary-pushing acrobatics titles like Mirror’s Edge, PoP’s repeating combination of wallrun, jump, scramble up surface, repeat get wearying after about an hour. There’s not much challenge in finding the proper way of proceeding, which is what catapulted Mirror’s Edge into prime real estate. Mostly it’s just all about the timing, a series of pinpoint walljumps being the entire apparent point of the game.

It’s broken up by the occasional one-on-one combat, which kind of makes the shallow engine a bit too obvious. It’s a rather basic fighting game at these points, where you have to use pre-determined combos to do the big damage. While the effects are damn pretty, the inclusion of a magic-using partner only effectively gives you another button to combo together with the basic attacks. It quickly begins to feel that your partner is there mostly to avoid having the Prince talk to himself.

He might as well have. After the opening hour, there are periodic bursts of story, and it can get interesting at points. But mostly you’ll be wallrunning and making the occasional, repetitive wisecrack.

On a side note, it’s kind of odd that the company that produced Assassin’s Creed -a game with crappy combat where the monkeying around and hurling yourself hundreds of feet from the air was actually loads of fun- produced this last-gen experience.

Graphics are also a bit of a letdown. The cel-shaded approach matches the tone, but it’s stuck somewhere halfway between the previous generation and this one, not quite belonging to either. Like I said earlier, the effects are fantastic, but the characters and scenery tend to be a bit underwhelming. Then again, sometimes the scenery will shift and you’ll be hit with something pretty awesome, so I guess I’ll dip into one of game writing’s gigantic, ulcerous cliches and call it a mixed bag.

If I’m not cursing as much as I normally do, it’s because I’m a bit frustrated. This game really took a step in the right direction with the tone, and tried to put an interesting story in as well. But I’ve played this game before, and I paid twenty dollars for it. I can’t say I’d be willing to pay sixty.

Fuck, Marry, or Kill? Eh, it’s worth a rental. Enough people seem to like it more that it might be worth a purchase for some.