New Games Journalism piece

Just posting this to my blog since lots of people did. Also, my blog for sex in games is preceding this one.
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I stood over the edge the ship's wing, watching as my opponent toppled 300 feet to the ground below.

"Honor before reason." I thought. "Honor before reason."


I enjoy first person shooters as much as the average person. I'm not hardcore about them, generally; one can only gun down so many terrorists or biogenetic mutants before his finger gets calloused from pulling the trigger. Consequently, I usually just try a shooter out for a week or so, play a bit of multiplayer, then shelve the game and go back to Virtua Fighter or Tekken. However, Battlefield 2142, the futuristic game in the Battlefield series, grabbed me and held me for months before I gave it up. Something about the game grabbed my attention, wouldn't let go, and I found myself engaged in nightly battles for control of Conquest points, a never-ending war that I was all too willing to partake in.

I speak with no false ego that I feel I was pretty good at the game. I was a passable tank-buster with the engineer class. I wasn't patient or steady enough to be a good sniper, but I could perform acts of sabotage and espionage with the best of them, once I unlocked the cloaking device for my recon class. I wasn't a fan of being a living gun emplacement with the Support class, so I found far more success controlling space and tight areas with combinations of a sentry gun and my shotgun. I was a decent squad leader, as I could follow orders without being so inflexible as to not realize when a better objective might present itself.

By far the role I served my team best with was as a combat medic. I prioritized reviving teammates over all else, to minimize ticket loss in game. Not to mention I gained plenty of kills with concentrated assault rifle fire. Even so, the assault class wasn't the real root of my fun.

Blade-to-blade, I was what in layman's terms could be considered "Unfuckwithable."

The usage of the knife in a game genre dominated by firearms is a very difficult task, and as such a very prestigious one. I'm not going to lie and say I could rush a squad of rifle-armed soldiers and come out alive. No, my skills with the blade were honed and recognized under a specific ruleset.

In Battlefield 2142, a players must choose a server to join before playing, that basically sets what the map-list and game parameters are. One day I was intrigued by the existence of 24/7 knife servers. I joined one, and found a new game experience. In these servers players fought with knives and defibrillators only, and I find it liberating in its confines. There was a whole different set of skills to to be had in knife combat. One had to have a subtle flick of the wrist to follow an opponent's lateral movement or an attempt at a diving slash. One needed to predict an opponent's movements, to know when to crouch to avoid counter-slashes and take out his knees. One had to know how to divide and confine a crowd so as to come out of multi-man battles alive.

I learned to master these techniques. I lived to hear the game's raking noise as my blade cut through armor, and see their collected dogtags on my screen. I ran headlong into groups of the enemy, and put them all down with subtle adjustments and quick slashes. Frequently I ended up on the top of the leaderboards of these knife servers, and with good reason. I was a machine.

The habits I gained from the time spent in these servers started leaking into my normals games, and it is through these lapses I found my most memorable experience. Normally in the game, when you see an enemy running at you with a knife, you pull out your gun and ventilate him for being foolish. Not for me. My instincts now were so ingrained that when I saw an opponent pull a blade, I drew mine in kind.

During the middle of one drawn out battle for control of a canal, I found myself and one other foe without our respective squads, with the only thing separating us time and about 30 meters of open ground. As we spotted each other, one of the two commanders saw fit to drop an orbital strike on our position. Me and my enemy were alike in two respects now. One, we were about to be dead anyway in about fifteen seconds. Two, we were both aching to use not our ammo supplies but our blades.

Our knives came out, and with the first rocket falling on our position, we sprinted to each other, and with blades flashing, matched our knowledge of one of the game's most underused skills.

I swung, overshot my mark, and cursed as I had to whirl around to face my opponent. My avatar screamed in pain as splash damage from a rocket took his health down. He was coming in fast, and I stepped back, making his counter-swing miss by millimeters. Two more rockets exploded to our flank. The damage was fleeting as we continued our dance. The environment was a choir, singing our praise. The resonant explosions of the artillery strike were the baritone, the screams of pain from our avatars the tenor, the swishing and metallic swiping of our knives the sweet soprano.

My knife found a home in my opponent's spine a beat later as he overshot a step and maneuvered around him. For a second I was sad, almost wanted to cry. Here was the death of an opponent that desired what I did; a little more sense in this chaotic world, a chance to prove himself, and a new set of dogtags to add to the collection. I stood over him in peace as one more rocket dropped on me, finishing off what was left of my health. I was serene.


Maybe two months after that, I was playing a heated game of Titan (a game mode wherein two teams attempt to destroy the enemy's titular giant airship), and after the enemy's shield had been brought down by repeated surface-to-air missiles, I was trying to take an escape pod up to the ship. The shot was good, for the most part, but I found my calculations were slightly off as I landed not on the broad back of the thing, but on the wing. As far as I knew, I was stranded, and was about to parachute off when one of the enemy, who must've seen me land, jumped onto the wing with me.

I was about to put a burst into him when I saw he had no weapon about but his knife. Again, any normal player would shoot the fool and punish him for thinking about grabbing dogtags, but by this point I've made it clear I'm not normal. My blade came out, and I met his advance in kind.

Rarely do moments like this happen in games. Here were the two of us, honorable warriors engaged in single combat, perched precariously on the wing of a ship surveying the world from sky. It couldn't have been more epic than if an orchestra had started up.

My opponent had done this before, and as we circled I admired his technique as he no doubt admired mine. We were predators, stalking, waiting, testing. A quick strike by me was met by a sidestep and return strike; any lesser player would have only been so much meat by now. We edged closer to the end of the wing, not noticing how close we were to mutual oblivion.

My knife bit flesh in a gambit; I rushed forward, braving his line of sight to make him miss his timing. His avatar collapsed, and; obeying the laws of gravity, fell to the ground below. Again I felt sadness. The warriors such as these, willing to set aside the vulgarity of firearms for a moment, were a rarity, and here the encounter was over as quickly as it began. I wished there'd been a button in the game to strike a salute; I would have sent my warrior brother off properly.



"Honor before reason." I thought. "Honor before reason."

Sex,

It's fun living in a country whose origins are rooted in Puritanistic, prudish values. Something is refreshing about a group of people so uptight who, as soon as you see a nipple in a video game, are up in arms about it ruining the moral fabric of society. Something is relaxing in knowing the infrastructure of a country can be turned on its ear so easily.

Why do movies and televison get away with so much more nudity and sex-related content? One wonders if moral crusaders have never caught their kid accidentally watching an HBO t.v. series (Hung, a new series I love watching, has scenes bordering on porn at times). I guess the article on sex in video games we read for the week http://www.whattheyplay.com/features/sex-in-video-games/?page=1 is more or less right in people still, for some stubborn reason, believe video games are just a toy at this point. God forbid a parent read a rating label and actually make a judgment call for once.

I work at a game retailer, and it bothers me not that kids get violent video games, but how parents will not buy a game for them with sexual content. I blatantly want to ask a parent sometimes, "Would you rather your kid have sex at 12, or shoot someone in the face?" Because that's where I feel the thought process is going.

Instant Replay.

"Beyond that, my analysis is: limited but simple mechanics that require a great deal to master seem to be the key to making casual games for the hardcore."

This is the question posed by James Portnow in his article on casual games. Having proclaimed myself several times to be a gamer being born of the arcades, one can imagine I squee'd with schoolgirl like joy when I found arcade games the focus of one of our class readings, found here: http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/04/opinion_redefining_casual_for.php

Having spent at some two or three years worth of weekends in an arcade playing DDR, I can tell you that this idea of limited but simple mechanics is tantamount to this idea. in Dance Dance Revolution, there are four buttons. Just four. The music plays, you hit the arrow when it reaches a point on screen to the music, and repeat. Simple. Addictive. Every weekend I saw the same group of people play it, with new people always trying it just because the machine, however intimidating it was, was intriguing. The game was casual because it was simple, and you could play one game and walk away. Unless you were addicted.

The same goes for light-gun games, or racing games. There's not so much a large number of buttons to learn. Pull a trigger, push an accelerator, turn a wheel, it's all obvious and intuitive.

However, I have one more idea that could be put into a game for it to truly give a hardcore as well as casual appeal, and that's a hidden depth that can lead to competitive or least high-scoring play. DDR has (as well as other rhythm games), along with those who come in and play a couple games a month because they happen to be near a machine, a very large competitive scene, where people try to obtain the highest scores possible and best their opponents. There is a wealth of lingo, slang, and techniques utilized by the elite of the community, as any other competitive game does. From personal experience I can say this community can be as difficult to penetrate as other competitive gaming communities, if not more difficult (no one wants to help someone else be a potential attention-stealer, to this I can attest).

When I further consider it, this might just be part of Portnow's point that these games need replayability to appeal to a hardcore gamer. A competitive aspect might be just one way to obtain that.

Wet

There comes a time in a gamer's life when they must consider their loves, their priorities, what games truly mean to them. An electronic crossroads, if you will. Playing Wet, a new shooter made by the people who brought us the Elder Scrolls series and Fallout 3, brought me to mine.

I'm all for artistic masterpieces of videogames, magnum (opuses? opi?) of truly epic caliber that provoke thought and help to further the legitimacy of the medium. I'm a fan of excellent stories, of gripping character development, of clever gameplay. I feel games need to be taken forward as technology advances and gamer tastes change.

However, sometimes I just wanna shoot people in the face and look awesome while I do it.

Wet isn't going to wow generations of gamers with a unique control scheme and gimmick, or a fresh take on its genre as a whole. Wet rips stuff off wholesale that worked in other action games before it, and revels in it. Bullet time? Check. Acrobatic, physics defying stunts? Check. Impossibly cool guns that never run out of ammo, hell, never need to be reloaded? Check and double-friggin' check.

I should probably explain the game's premise, because it does give the little bit of unique feel that it does have. Like the movie Grindhouse as directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino and the game The House of the Dead: Overkill on the Wii, Wet is itself a parody of the grindhouse movies of the 70's. The entire game is shot in a grainy, 70's style filter that gives the impression that it's a movie running on a damaged film reel. When you die, you're treated to a quick cutscene of film strip breaking as the "movie" grinds to a halt. Cheesy old style rock blares throughout the stages that have music, and (my favorite part) occasionally between levels the player is treated to video of anything from trailers of classic movies to clips urging you to go to the snack bar.

Protagonist Rubi Malone's personality fits the pace of the game well; she's a ruthless, uncaring mercenary who wants jobs done, and of course, doesn't take crap. Her usual method of problem-solving is to squeeze off a couple rounds with her matched pair of revolvers or cut it apart with her elaborately decorated sword. The game gives the player a plethora of moves to complete these tasks, from the classic "leap through the air in slow-motion while shooting everything" to more interesting ones, like the ability to slide on her knees while, of course, shooting everything. You're given style points for chaining together kills in as elaborate and acrobatic ways as you can, and in turn you can use these style points to purchase new moves and upgrade Rubi's life bar and weaponry. The plot involves something about being sent in to grab the son of a crime boss you saved by stealing a donor heart in the first section, but again, it's not really important. For one thing, it's based on grindhouse films, which weren't known for being much more than a thin rope meant to tie together a bunch of gratuitous violence and action scenes, and for another, it's not really meant for the player to care, at least I think.

Let's get one thing straight. This game isn't breaking down barriers. It isn't pushing the graphical limits of anything, it isn't bringing anything new to the table. It's just....fun. Not worrying about stats, or where I go to push the script forward, or how much pushing little Timmy over and stealing his money pushes my arbitrary karma meter down is refreshing. Sometimes knowing you're only going in a straight line and all you need to do is kill everything is relaxing. Sometimes I don't want choices, or things to even think about.

The game has faults, but that's to be expected from a game that knew what it wanted to do, and for all intents and purposes unapologetically did it.

The graphics, even keeping in mind the 70's filter on the action, isn't the greatest. Memorably at one point I died near the camera, and it clipped clean through Rubi's face to give me a nightmarish glimpse of the inside of her skull. All the mooks of course look the same after awhile, but hey, they're supposed to be faceless so you can shoot them by the dozen. I don't need to know the backstory and sympathetic leanings of "That Guy I Shot, Number 252". And hey, Rage mode, where certain points of the game see Rubi go into a murderous, bloodthirsty, well, rage, annoys the crap out of me, as it makes everything hard to see with the blood-red filter it drops over everything, and looks almost like a rejected graphic design for Killer 7. And no doubt, once this game's worn out it's welcome, I'll find it repetitive and will have no more reason to own the disc than as a drink coaster.

Until then, I'll enjoy it. Until then, I've got blood to spill, mooks to kill, and death to bring.

I say Try It. This kind of game isn't everyone's thing, probably isn't a lot of people's thing, but if you want some good, mindless action with an occasional laugh, a rental wouldn't hurt.

New or Hard?

The topic of New Games Journalism finds me torn between both factions. I'm an English major, and a Journalism minor. I write stories for the sake of entertainment, love reading well-written pieces, but I've also been working on the campus newspaper for around two years now and find a necessity for hard, journalistic coverage of video games, however soft the topic itself might be.

Do I think someone writing a literary critique or an experiential analysis of a video game is too pretentious and heady of an undertaking for a topic such as video games? It really depends on the writer, but for the most part, I feel that it's not. People have been doing such things for books and movies, why should games be any different? Entertainment evokes experience, and the value of a piece might benefit from a person's chronicling of that experience. The article Always Black gives me a little insight into a code of honor that is unique to Jedi Knight II, and as such, I feel that's an important thing to be chronicled.

However, as detailed in Games Journalism needs Games Journalists, the industry needs a group of people who take it seriously enough to give us insight into the inner workings of the industry, to see why certain companies do well, to know why games are getting axed or pushed around. In short, Games Journalism needs people trained in the art of the inverted pyramid, lead-hunting, and interviewing as much as it needs those with a more artistic bent.

I'm torn partially because I wonder how I should write my next review. Should it be a harder, straight review, or should I go on the New Games Journalism side and come up with something more akin to a story?

Slurs

Anonymity gives people balls.

As far as what the article "Bow, Nigger" and personal experience has taught me, is that online play gives a player some kind of mental pass that says, "Hey, I can be an asshole here, because no one will kick my ass for it!"

It's sad, of course. Kids who are probably half my age somehow feel they get to say a racial slur that has hundreds of years of baggage as if it's just something they learned on the internet sure as hell cheapens the social construct. I've been called it online before, usually because I'm winning at something,, and every time I want to hurt something. It's not just the word that's being said, it's the fact that the person using the word somehow thinks that saying it on the internet makes it ok, like anonymity is some magical cloak of invisibility that hides racist, or homophobic, and any slanderous remarks from the world.

Does the internet trivialize real life, or does it stay online? I really would like to know if the people saying these things are actually like this in real life or not. Maybe games keeps their tendencies from bubbling to the surface in normal situations.

Scribblenauts (Full Review)

Scribblenauts

Sometimes a game comes along that entrances people with promises of something new, something innovative, something so ridiculous in concept that it can't possibly be true. Scribblenauts for the Nintendo DS is one of those games, but stumbles once a player actually takes rein of the controls.

The concept of Scribblenauts itself is enough to turn heads. It's essentially a puzzle game where, by writing a word into the game's notepad, you are given almost any object you can possibly imagine to utilize. Want get a cat down out of a house? Entice it with a piece of cheese. Need to clear a cow off of a busy road? Attach a rope to a helicopter and airlift it out. Have some enemy submarines blocking you from imprisoned sailors? Drop depth charges on them. Scribblenauts is not thin on possibilities, though players are not allowed to put in trademarked words or profanity.

There're plenty of levels with which to flex your creative muscle as well, with 220 levels. Half are puzzle levels, where the player has to complete a task, which when completed yields the game's ultimate goal of the Starite (a small, starlike object). The other half are action levels, which play like platformers where, using whatever words necessary, the player guides protagonist Maxwell to the Starite.

The graphics are highly stylized, adorable caricatures that, while goofy, fit well. Maxwell lacks dialogue of any sort, but his character design, down to his "rooster hat" make for a memorable character nonetheless. The stiff, action-figure ball-and-joint way everything move adds to effect and the style, making the game enjoyable visually. Sound is similarly simple, stylized, and goofy, making for a cartoonish atmosphere that is fitting and charming.

While this game has done well in reaching its ambitious goals, some of the other important features may have been left behind in the process. Movement of the character is done by touch-screen. While simple at first, this control scheme can lead to problems when getting Maxwell to pick up objects, or having to make fine movements. More than once I've completed a level's puzzle, only to have Maxwell fall into a pit of lava or something similar and have to start over again. I can't help but feel this game would've attained a much greater success if I could just control Maxwell with the freaking buttons. There was at least one puzzle where I spent the majority of the time just trying to get an NPC to just grab a piece of rope so I could get the rest of my convoluted idea to work.

Scribblenauts should teach developers a valuable lesson in how an awesome concept can still be marred by poor execution in any part of the game, in this case, the controls. After all, how can I use all these awesome items I can summon out of thin air if I have to spend an hour trying to select them by tapping the unresponsive touch screen? The camera has problems as well. You actually control the camera with the face buttons, and can’t move Maxwell while you’re scrolling around. The fact that the camera snaps back after you’ve left it alone for awhile can make it difficult to plan ahead as you can’t SEE ahead for more than six or seven seconds.

Another issue one might have is with the fact that even though you have almost anything at your disposal, a lot of them have similar properties and functions, and it’s often a player might find themselves in a rut with their items. This might be attributed more to me and a lack of creativity, but I found myself doing similar things to solve stuff. Need to get object from point A to point B? Strap a rope to a helicopter and then to the object and fly it there. Need to get rid of some enemies? Half the time I’d summon a bear or other animal to slaughter them for me. Need to get up to somewhere? Wings, Jetpack, Grappling Hook, it’s always the same for me. For a game with 22,000 words and phrases, there sure doesn’t feel like there’s any sort of variety.

For anyone looking to kill a good amount of time with a new DS title, I recommend Scribblenauts as $30 well spent. The concept is pulled off fairly well, as long as you’re willing to grapple with some frustrating controls, and unlike me, are willing to pull yourself outside of your initial box and actually think of fresher solutions to some of the problems. I could see myself getting some real mileage out of the game, in between breaks of being frustrated at how the controls artificially ramp up the difficulty.

Rating: 7 out of 10.