Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Stoic Loners and playing as people we'd hate.

You've seen them before. You've played as one before, or, they were a supporting character somewhere along the way. And, if you're lucky enough (or not), you've seen them in real life (hint: they're probably wearing black, because they do so almost exclusively). What I mean by "Stoic Loners" is, of course, the people who keep to themselves, are usually pretty quiet, supposedly hate everything and everyone, are usually angered easily, don't easily cooperate, are usually in any given situation for themselves, but occasionally say or do things that are worthwhile.

Think about the qualities that I've just described; if you met this person in real life, what would think of them? You would think they are selfish, arrogant posers. These are, for the most part, bad qualities. They're certainly not going to get you anywhere in the real world. Job interviews would suffer from them not answering any questions and saying how much they hate the person. When someone asks you to get a report filed in or to clean up your area, the last thing you want to do is tell them to go die (especially in a bad economy). Long story short, being a dick in the real world just doesn't cut it.

Then you look at games. Playing second fiddle to the effeminate hero in JRPG's, the Stoic Loner is usually one of your most valuable party members, and usually gets all the cool-looking powers and equipment. They're usually also invaluable to the story, because for whatever reason, someone has given someone who hates everything one of the most important jobs. They get lots of respect for supposedly being cool, and sometimes act as a guide for the hero, giving them life lessons to live by, and of course the hero listens, for whatever reason.

These people don't usually make good role models. When you don't talk to someone because you don't like them, that's fine. It's natural to do so. But when you hate everyone, and don't talk to anyone, that's a problem. These types of people are looked down upon and generally considered either insane or lame by everyone. Except in games, where not only are they glorified by the games themselves, but are also lavished by fanboys/girls to no end, which begets developers to create more of these characters, who are in turn again lavished, and so on, creating a never-ending cycle of "cool".

And this extends even beyond the imagined cliche-riddled world of JRPG's; Niko Belic is certainly not a person most people could get along with, and certainly not someone like Kratos. Marcus Fenix might also not like you very much. But here we are, playing as these people, admiring these characters' ability to kill and maim, even knowing they'd probably hate us for doing so.

And it's not like that's all that gaming has to offer. Plenty of games have positive role models to get behind. Link, while the epitome of the quiet hero, is a very kind person who helps out townspeople in need (even if he's mostly doing it for some reward). Nathan Drake is also someone that you could get along with in an everyday sense, even if he might annoy you at times. Professor Layton is definitely someone whom I'd like to hang out with.

So why do we happily play as people who we'd avoid in any other circumstance? Is this part of our desire to play into a "power fantasy" experience, where we play roles that are so outlandish that we could never take them on in real life? Why is it that the Stoic Loner character is such a fan-favorite? What sorts of characters would you and would you not hang out with? I'm sure the answers will surprise me.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Backlog trackback #2 - Playing Rambo

Continuing my trek through my backlog, I'm beginning to think I may be doing this too quickly. Sure, there are some games that may warrant a look in the summer months, so maybe that will help me, but even then I'm hoping that I don't have a gaping hole of time where my time is spent being productive, or, someone forbid, reading something. There are some games in that pile that reward extended periods of play, the time that one would only have, say, now. Other games, though, you could blow through in an afternoon, assuming you're dedicated to it. So over two weekends, I played:

MadWorld: You wouldn't even have to dedicate most of an afternoon to MadWorld; my first run through the game took me about 3 and a half hours. That alone does not make it bad, though. The game has a pretty unique story (which is the equivalent of a "B" movie), presented in stylish comic book style. The entire game is in black and white, (save for a few instances of other colors like blood and sound effects) which definitely separates it from the crowd of vibrant and rainbow-puking colors that dominate the Wii library. The voice actors all do their jobs pretty well, and they all are all certainly believable, even if some of them overdue it sometimes.

Hamming it up is appropriate for MadWorld, though; the whole game seems to be doing so. The main character has a chainsaw for an arm, enemies come in spades and spew double their body weight in blood when you slice through them with said chainsaw, and the bosses are equally extravagant characters. The setting is a game called DeathWatch, where sponsored fighters kill each other for the title of champion among killers. Also, there's a character who calls himself the Black Baron, who is as stereotypical as they come, and most of the women in the game are equally objectified. It's really hard to tell whether Platinum Games is being ironic or not (though I presume it's the former. I hope.)

Even with such over-the-top action as its main attraction it can't help but be bad in bad ways (and not in the ironic sense that it's trying to be). The animations for characters are on par with some of the early-to-mid PS2 games, with characters simply moving their hands over keyboards quickly to simulate typing, heads bobbing and mouths moving for talking, and a general sense of underproduction. This could all be on purpose, in which case the joke is on me, but it doesn't exactly make it a better product. And while it's presented very nicely, the story is pretty basic Game of Death stuff with some government conspiracy thrown in. The production issues killed some of the joy for me, but it was still a pretty nice thrill, even if it was brief.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune: Another game with lots of enemies to kill. The difference this time, though, is that there is also other stuff to do. Namely, platforming. Perhaps I've been spoiled by Assassin's Creed, with its all-natural and enjoyable landscapes, but by comparison, Uncharted feels phony. Every ledge you can climb on feels fabricated, you know where they all are, you know which ones will fall off and when you need to turn the camera around to look at where you're supposed to go. It's very straightforward stuff, so, for the most part, you know where you're going. However, even it is phony and linear, it's still fun; it's always a good feeling when you jump a gap on the side of a wall to get to the next protruding rock. The puzzles are pretty rudimentary, but they do some interesting stuff towards the end and, should you ever get stuck, Drake has a handy guidebook to help you out. As a "my first platformer", it does its job well.

If you're also looking for action, there are the aforementioned people to kill. And well, Uncharted simplifies that as well. You have two weapons, grenades, the targeting is really simple (THERE IS A CIRCLE SHOOT THE BAD GUYS WITH IT), you have a simple cover mechanic, and your health is indicated by how faded the colors on the screen are (black and white means you're about to die). So, if there's a sense of trying to reach a wide audience, why is actually killing these people so frustrating? You'll usually encounter no less than 5 of them at a time, and their aim is usually dead on (especially with grenades). You can change the difficulty on the fly, and I did so to put the odds in my favor (as one usually does), but as far as I could see, this had only the minor effect of changing my health and theirs. The shooting itself is pretty satisfying, I would've just preferred that there was less than half a pueblo to fight throughout the course of the game.

The really interesting part about the game, though, is mostly everything else. The tropical island of wherever they are looks fantastic, the characters and facial expressions are realistic, and there's very little to distract you from that. The story wreaks of Indiana Jones/Tomb Raider, but it makes good use of it. Drake himself is a very well-written character, with some snarky dialogue that makes him a likeable guy without making him feel marketed and idealistic. Over the course of my 8-and-a-half hour run through the game, I found myself playing the game just hear Drake talk some more. The game itself is pretty ordinary as something you play, but with just enough interesting narrative factors, it feels like it's much better than that.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Backlog trackback: #1 - Preferred Templates.

I haven't been writing as much as I should be, and I won't be using the "life is getting really busy" defense because it isn't (and I wouldn't lie to you, readers!). It's mostly because I haven't found much worth writing about, and writing about business deals and NPD numbers doesn't appeal to me, and it seem pointless to write about news, because let's face it, this isn't likely your primary news source. There also isn't much in news that I'm interested in writing about, with one exception. I've been spending most of my time plowing through my backlog, and it's building up for a pretty good while, so I'm spending the lull between Resident Evil 5 and Infamous to see if I can't wring some good times out of these things I've been ignoring for some time. And hey, It gives me an excuse to write (even if they are old games you're all most likely tired of hearing about by now). So yeah:

Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode Two: Episodic gaming seems like an idea still in its infancy, even though it's been around for a pretty long time, probably because high-profile episodic games are few and far between. And when they do happen, they often don't see the end of their plans, mostly because funding dries up for a variety of reasons, and then the developers are unable to finish the games. That said, I really hope PA: OTRSPOD gets to wrap up its dev cycle, because I'm really enjoying the series. The first episode had some really good ideas, but got a little bogged down towards the middle, when you had to go around chasing down questlines that go a little hard to follow. Episode Two does a lot of cleaning up, and in tidying up makes the game more fun to play. Blocks are now more easily executed, or at least more easily visible, which becomes inconsequential when I'm not paying attention. There's still backtracking, but it usually occurs only when you're headed back there with a purpose, not looking for something you've overlooked.

The dialogue is still Holkinsic (Holkins-esque?), with the worldplay and characters still up to par from what we've come to expect from Penny Arcade. Between the adventure game template and the RPG-lite gameplay, this is something that I was at first interested in, and am now genuinely in love with. The writing only marginally trumps the combat as the primary reason I enjoy this game, and with that I'm saying that both aspects are good. The final boss battle is nowhere near as much of a setpiece as it was in Epiosode One, but the rest of the game is fundamentally better. It just troubles me that there is no word yet on Episode Three, (just like with Half-Life 2...) because I fear that this series won't be able to reach its natural conclusion.

Shadow of the Colussus: I am very late to the party on this one, and perhaps that will tamper with my appreciation for the then-astounding graphics that it presented. The new format which it uses, though, isn’t affected by the fragile passage of graphics over time. This is often cited as a poster boy for the “games are art” argument, but regardless of whether you believe in the merits of interactivity to be something that is “subject to aesthetic criteria”, what it does is definitely different. It has something that many games today lack: a sense of calm. This calm comes between often exhilarating boss battles, to be sure, but this alone is rare. There aren’t any filler enemies that are just a nuisance. Focusing on only the 16 bosses as your enemies of the game likely gave team ICO more time not only make them better, but also evokes a feeling of isolation not found in many games (Portal comes to mind when trying to think of other examples).

The Colossi themselves are very well designed, each of their bodies acting like a puzzle rather than an object to mash B on until death occurs. They are their own levels, and finding out how to beat them is a bigger part of the battle then hitting them (which also feels good to do, after a 30 minute session of “how do I get on this guy?”). The bosses-only format is something I think other games could benefit from (No More Heroes could’ve been a much better game if it had stuck to something like this).

I could go on listing merits of such a format, but it’s important to point out that I do have some problems with the game. For all the intents to make it feel like a real horse, the horse controls like utter crap. The many times this stallion prevented me from getting where I wanted to go didn’t add to the sense of immersion; it made it feel more like a game. I could’ve steered that horse much better in real life (and don’t ride horses at all). The camera suffers in small areas, to say the least. These sound like minor complaints, but the moments where they affected play are strewn about the game, and it ultimately lead to a lot of frustration.

The game is still fantastic, though. And in this first segment of making my rounds through games I’ve missed, I’m glad that I’m still finding games that do something new, even in this far into games as a form of creative expression. I’d use the word art, but I grow less and less fond of that word the more we compare it to games.