The gameplay for COD Advance Warfare hit E3 and it seems my Halo got mixed with my COD. Your super soldier has a suit (well I guess they call it an exoskeleton) that endows the soldier with the ability to jump really far away. Now I haven't seen the other advantages to the suit ( though I've heard it can be treated like armor and so on), but just from seeing the jumping ability, I became very skeptical of the fluidity of the gameplay. Call of duty play style is very slow compared to other shooters like TitanFall. The game is meant for a duck and cover system where you scurry through a map, looking for enemies, then proceed to kill those enemies without your own cover being blown. Sometimes you'll engage in full on fire fights, but often in COD the enemy kills you before you even know the enemy is there. Perks such as Marathon and lightweight allow you to move quicker, but even that speed is a brisk walk compared to the sprinting found in Titanfall. I'm not saying COD should be Titanfall, I'm just using Titanfall as an example of a game that uses superhuman capabilities to make for a thrilling game play experience. You haven't lived till you walked on a wall to the other side of the map, promptly falling behind the enemy sniper that tried to pick you off several times, then proceeding to snap his neck, while hitching a ride off your buddy in a Titan. It's euphoric. Something tells me that COD won't be having those kinds of acrobats in its core gameplay. So my issue becomes one of practicality. Why would I use my ability to jump high if it will blow my cover immediately? And it's not like I have significant armor (unless they's what they're adding, which may be the case), so chances are if the enemy sees me froffing about in the sky, my exoskeleton is about to become swiss cheese. Halo/2/3/Reach were fun games because you had significant armor that allowed you to take risks. You could potentially jump in the air, exposing yourself to multiple sources of fire, just to land that perfect sticky grenade. Is that the route COD is going? If it is, then good for them I suppose. I'm unsure if that's what they're fans want, but I feel we've had enough realistic shooters for this decade. Time to get all futuristic. Also, did anyone see Splatoon? It looks awesome.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Thursday, May 22, 2014
The flaws of Jade Empire
Jade Empire is a Bioware RPG consistently finding itself on the top 50 lists of RPGs of all time. Unfortunately before its release, it was hyped to be one of the best RPGs ever made. So what happened? Well there are a few critical mistakes I think were overlooked when developing the game.
1. The vastness of the Empire was never established-
The driving mechanism of Jade Empire is twofold. The first driving mechanism stems from your own personal quest to find out your fate as a spirit monk/help your peers achieve their long term goals as well. The second mechanism is to save/rule the empire. When you reach the end of the game you essentially decide whether to save the empire or rule it. Unfortunately while the game tried very hard to convince you to care about the Empire and prove how large it is (think of the progression of areas, small town, to medium size city, to large city) it doesn't provide you a diversity of culture one would expect with such a large place. We need to go to the Prosperous East or the North to view how the Empire is from the eyes of others. The fireworks ending of the people applauding your victory is only sweet if you actually believe you saved something massive. The sheer scope of the Empire is never proven to the player, making it hard for the player to leave the game with chills when they finish it.
2. The moral scheme doesn't work-
Now there has been a series of critiques placed against morality schemes in general, especially when it works with the good/evil (open palm/closed fist) dichotomy, but barring all those critiques the morality scheme still falls flat in the game. That's because being good is favored in terms of character relationships. What I mean is that the characters in your entourage tend to all lean to either morally good or morally ambiguous backgrounds. The only real "evil" companion is Ya Zhen and he is literally counter balanced by Chai Ka, making most of the companions not very willing to support your heartless lifestyle. I know you can turn some of your companions to the darkside, but most of their background stories just don't make that kind of switch coat behavior plausible. Sky: saving his daughter Sagacious Zu: on a journey of repentance Silk Fox: Concerned with Father and Country. The rest of them are either clearly good (e.g. Dawn Star, Wild Flower, etc.) or ambiguous leaning on the side of good (e.g. Whirlwind, Hu). The point is that as a player you grow with these characters and the thought of treating them like shit the entire game makes no sense. It makes no sense that they stick with you and it makes no sense for you to have them around you. We face a similar dilemma in KOTOR 1 (Gasp did he just criticize KOTOR 1, blasphemy!). Nobody in your crew seems inherently bad except for maybe Canderous and even then that's dispelled to be a tough guy on the outside, soft on the inside ruse (HK is just an ass). KOTOR 2 is far more accommodating, allowing various companions who are both good and bad to join you. The point is I don't like being bad in JE because then I look like an ass to my companions.
Furthermore, one might argue well Closed Fist does not equal evil. And theoretically that'd be true. And philosophically that'd be true. But your normal closed first interaction proves otherwise. Honestly all I do is pick the option that results with more people dying and that's how I get my closed fist points. Sometimes Closed Fist even leads you to senselessly killing people. Bladed Thesis' ghost makes it pretty clear that Closed Fist isn't senseless evil and must have purpose. But often it just feels like as long as you act like a complete ass, then you will consistently get closed fist points. A good way to demonstrate the nuance of the morality scheme would be to bait players into doing things that removed Closed Fist points. All of a sudden you can't kill willy nilly, you need to be purposeful in your evil deeds.
3. Broken Gameplay-
The gameplay in JE is tons of fun, until you realize how easy it is. The game tries to make combat difficult, but when you can jump out of any enemy attack, block nearly every enemy attack and do twice the damage of any potential enemy, then the game becomes a joke. By the time you reach the halfway point you're pretty much indestructible. Also, the lack of styles is pretty apparent. I guess a wider diversity of everything would have made this game better.
Jade Empire felt like a trailer to a much better game. I'm unsure if they ran out of space or simply wanted to cash in, but the game was clearly rushed out too early.
1. The vastness of the Empire was never established-
The driving mechanism of Jade Empire is twofold. The first driving mechanism stems from your own personal quest to find out your fate as a spirit monk/help your peers achieve their long term goals as well. The second mechanism is to save/rule the empire. When you reach the end of the game you essentially decide whether to save the empire or rule it. Unfortunately while the game tried very hard to convince you to care about the Empire and prove how large it is (think of the progression of areas, small town, to medium size city, to large city) it doesn't provide you a diversity of culture one would expect with such a large place. We need to go to the Prosperous East or the North to view how the Empire is from the eyes of others. The fireworks ending of the people applauding your victory is only sweet if you actually believe you saved something massive. The sheer scope of the Empire is never proven to the player, making it hard for the player to leave the game with chills when they finish it.
2. The moral scheme doesn't work-
Now there has been a series of critiques placed against morality schemes in general, especially when it works with the good/evil (open palm/closed fist) dichotomy, but barring all those critiques the morality scheme still falls flat in the game. That's because being good is favored in terms of character relationships. What I mean is that the characters in your entourage tend to all lean to either morally good or morally ambiguous backgrounds. The only real "evil" companion is Ya Zhen and he is literally counter balanced by Chai Ka, making most of the companions not very willing to support your heartless lifestyle. I know you can turn some of your companions to the darkside, but most of their background stories just don't make that kind of switch coat behavior plausible. Sky: saving his daughter Sagacious Zu: on a journey of repentance Silk Fox: Concerned with Father and Country. The rest of them are either clearly good (e.g. Dawn Star, Wild Flower, etc.) or ambiguous leaning on the side of good (e.g. Whirlwind, Hu). The point is that as a player you grow with these characters and the thought of treating them like shit the entire game makes no sense. It makes no sense that they stick with you and it makes no sense for you to have them around you. We face a similar dilemma in KOTOR 1 (Gasp did he just criticize KOTOR 1, blasphemy!). Nobody in your crew seems inherently bad except for maybe Canderous and even then that's dispelled to be a tough guy on the outside, soft on the inside ruse (HK is just an ass). KOTOR 2 is far more accommodating, allowing various companions who are both good and bad to join you. The point is I don't like being bad in JE because then I look like an ass to my companions.
Furthermore, one might argue well Closed Fist does not equal evil. And theoretically that'd be true. And philosophically that'd be true. But your normal closed first interaction proves otherwise. Honestly all I do is pick the option that results with more people dying and that's how I get my closed fist points. Sometimes Closed Fist even leads you to senselessly killing people. Bladed Thesis' ghost makes it pretty clear that Closed Fist isn't senseless evil and must have purpose. But often it just feels like as long as you act like a complete ass, then you will consistently get closed fist points. A good way to demonstrate the nuance of the morality scheme would be to bait players into doing things that removed Closed Fist points. All of a sudden you can't kill willy nilly, you need to be purposeful in your evil deeds.
3. Broken Gameplay-
The gameplay in JE is tons of fun, until you realize how easy it is. The game tries to make combat difficult, but when you can jump out of any enemy attack, block nearly every enemy attack and do twice the damage of any potential enemy, then the game becomes a joke. By the time you reach the halfway point you're pretty much indestructible. Also, the lack of styles is pretty apparent. I guess a wider diversity of everything would have made this game better.
Jade Empire felt like a trailer to a much better game. I'm unsure if they ran out of space or simply wanted to cash in, but the game was clearly rushed out too early.
Video Games and Intertextuality: Paradise Lost in Fallout 3
Time for my English major side to bleed into my interpretation of games and this time I have an excuse, we're talking about literature. Now every good Easter egg hunter knows that games make sly references to classical literature all the time. Hell, some guys are essentially video game versions of classical literature (e.g. Dante's Inferno [however regrettable that may be]). But when video games embed classical literature (or any literature for that matter) into a game, it opens up an interesting interpretative question. How does the game change the way we read that particular text and how does text change the way we experience that particular game. The theory of video games is a young one, but the literature seems to be in some sort of agreement that the difference between interpreting a video game and interpreting a piece of literature is in how one perceives the medium. We do not "read" games, instead we interact with them, making the action of "play" the central focus of a game. Now narrative structures can relate to play insofar that they embed meaning into our actions. For example, the entire Final Fantasy franchise uses narrative to make what is at best a lackluster turn based combat system meaningful. It's also the reason why games like Modern Warfare were given such high praise: shooting at people is far more gratifying when you know why you're shooting. But what happens when we work in reverse? How do we change the way we read a text given its new intertextuality within a game. Do we read it in a hierarchical sense, meaning we interpret the text in solely in the context of game? For example, the mere mention of the word "paradise" in Fallout 3 has huge connotations. Paradise is the yearning for all residents given the post apocalyptic setting. However, quite literally, the Capital Wasteland represents a Paradise that was lost. Furthermore, the Eden creation kit shows a yearning to regain paradise, much like how Adam and Eve wished to stay within Eden. Furthermore, the action of accessing the text requires you to gain "bad karma", so the text is turned into taboo for the player. What does it mean to read Paradise Lost as a text that is taboo? Do we continue down this line of interpretation, drawing parallels between the vault 101 wanderer and Adam/Eve or do we work from the opposite direction? We can examine the interpretations of those passages and then ask how does this change the meaning of the game (or reinforce meaning). Or perhaps we can use the interpretation of the passages as the organizational structure for our interpretation of its intertextuality. What I mean is if we take a critical lens to the first excerpt from Book 2, anyone who has read Paradise lost knows this is one of the angels that followed Satan in the war against God. Book 2 serves as a role call for all of the demons in hell and Moloch specifically is cited to be deceiver. What does this deception mean in terms of the game? Who is the deceiver? Are you deceiving people within the game.? The questions are endless and there is a fruitful literary and video game oriented conversation to be had. I unfortunately am no longer a college student who has the time or resources to explore these questions (ehhh I probably have the time and will probably look into it more myself), but had I been allowed, this would have probably been my senior honors thesis for English. Soon our classics will be embedded in code, used to serve as foils for a new non linear story. The quicker our scholars recognize that, a new life of interpretation will exist for video games and literature.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
League of Legends: Where is the proxy?
I was watching one of the League "spotlights" and as usual a typical "gamer woman", who is fashioned to capture what riot considers to be the "gamer dream girl", greets me and everyone else in the community as "summoners". At that moment I realized that the player is transformed into a new person when they are playing league of legends. No longer am I Raymond, but instead I'm a summoner, specifically one named ablindleader. The character I control isn't me, yet I'm still in the game as a character. This brings up interesting questions of proxy and who is the proxy in this game? Just for a refresher, the proxy, according to the random semantics I've been using on this blog, is the placeholder or connection between the player and the game world. For example, in the game Legend of Zelda, Link is your proxy. He allows you to interact with the world and morph the people and places around him. One might be tempted to simply call your champion your proxy, but if we're truly following the lore or accepted premise of the game, the summoner could very well be someone in game, you are unknowingly controlling, who in turn controls the champion. This is really amazing when you stop to think about it because the summoner is a mystified version of the player himself. But one might be tempted to burst my over analytical bubble, claiming that she addressed you in the video, meaning you're the summoner and this fictional person doesn't exist. But how do we know? We create our own simulacra with our username. When I play my name isn't Ablindleader, its Raymond. Ablindleader is someone else, who does what Raymond tells him to do. Proxy theory, specifically how proxies are used to connect and disconnect a player from the game is incredibly interesting to me. I feel the denotation of us as "summoners", while seemingly insignificant was a very intelligent decision made by riot. For isn't that all a player is? A summoner, who starts up the world of the game and then supplants the proxy into that world. Perhaps the game of LoL doesn't start with a match, but instead starts when you login.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Legend of Grimrock
Legend of Grimrock
Overall: 3.0
Nostalgia: 3.5
Graphics: 2.5
Gameplay: 2.8
Welcome to Legend of Grimrock, the game that can only tout how nostalgic it is. Legend of Grimrock is intended to be a nod to the dungeon crawlers of old. A modern Hexen, taking the indie sphere by storm with dungeon crawling goodness in the form of an Elder's Scrolls format. At this point one might think that this game sounds perfect. Hexen and Morrowind combined into one game? Those were both excellent games, so this must have been a great game. Well, not really. Legend of Grimrock certainly has a lot of potential and it feels like the dungeon crawlers of old, but it doesn't play modern. And that is the biggest issue. Why would I play Legend of Grimrock for nostalgia if I could easily just pop in my version of Hexen and indulge in the nostalgia of actually reliving the past. For Legend of Grimrock to be successful, it needed to have a modern flare that took the old school gameplay I used to love and made it more accessible for younger gamers. Let's pick apart why it doesn't feel modern.
What went wrong
The Legend of Grimrock gameplay is your typical dungeon crawler affair. Kill monsters, explore rooms, solve puzzles, repeat. However, the monsters you kill are actually quite boring. When the first monster you fight is a slug, the intensity of a battle kind of dies out. This is when an epic opening boss battle could serve to really frame the entire journey or set the mood for the player. Also, using a keyboard for the methodical left, right, up, down, while making camera angles dictated by the keyboard as well, makes the game play very mechanical. This is frustrating because the game makes allusions to games like Morrowind and I can't help but make the unfair comparison between the two when playing. While playing I find myself asking, "would I be having more fun playing this in 3-d with a wider variety of items and better controls?" The answer is always yes, and then I proceed to put in my Morrowind disc. I know it's completely unfair to expect Grimrock to match up to the likes of Morrowind, but Grimrock doesn't do anything to differentiate itself from Morrowind. The stories are near exactly the same, barring the dungeon and the expansive world and the gameplay is very similar. The game makers should have realized how similar they were and asked themselves, "how are we going to make this gameplay experience unique to Grimrock?" I feel the developers accepted that this was a game that was simply going to play on the nostalgic tendencies of the indie community and didn't even bother to add anything to the genre.
Conclusion
When working in an old genre, the line between homage and plagiarism is a grey one. A developer needs to either improve or innovate. Sure, Grimrock isn't a carbon copy of Morrowind, but when a game feels identical to another game and it doesn't significantly improve anything then one begins to question the purpose of playing the game in the first place. I'm sure dungeon crawler junkies out there would really enjoy Grimrock, but for everyone else who is just looking for a nostalgia trip, I'd suggest you pop in your favorite old dungeon crawler and play that instead.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Cave Story
Cave Story
Overall:3.4
Narrative: 3.0
Platforming: 3.8
Characters: 2.8
Weapons: 3.8
Aha! I bet you guys didn't think I'd get through Cave Story. Well if that was your suspicion, then you're completely right. Cave Story, while certainly not a horrible game, didn't really do it for me. And unlike some games, where I find myself so engrossed in the plot that I lose track of time, responsibilities and showering, Cave Story was never quite able to really captivate me. But I have reason! Sweet reason that explains where Cave Story really shines and where it falls off. So let's go spelunking through Cave Story (see what I did there).
Narrative
I often treat the title of a video game like the title of a poem, I consider it to be the door that I have to open to get inside the piece. And when I see something titled "Cave Story", I have pretty basic expectations. I expect there to be a cave and some semblance of a story that has to deal with said cave. Luckily Cave Story delivers on both of these targets. There is indeed a Cave and the entire game takes place in it, playing out what seemed to me, an incredibly basic storyline.
What disheartens me the most about Cave Story is how basic, yet confusing the storyline of Cave Story is. You never really understand why you're doing something. The beginning of the game has a lot of mystery, which I concede had me pretty curious, but when almost all of the mystery was lifted by the middle of the game, I just found myself confused and kind of disinterested with the entire premise. The basic plot is that there is an evil scientist, who wants to do something to a tribe of bunnies, but these two other bunnies, who apparently are from somewhere else, wants to stop him. Where I fit into this as a player I have no idea, but it seems everyone is incredibly trusting of me seeing that they send me on quests, which the entire future of their tribe hinges upon. I guess they didn't really have a choice. Also, there is definitely a scenario of imperfect information going on in the game. What I mean by this is that everyone in the game knows I'm someone from the surface and that I'm a soldier. I was also called a robot at one point. Since I have no idea what this means in this universe I don't really know what to make of the significance. There's also some random hooded dude, who seems content with just chilling and being incredibly wise. Perhaps he's just the bard figure being intermittent in the game.
All this imperfect information eventually leads me to the one glaring issue with the game, my character is completely devoid of any personality or purpose. I don't know who my character is, how he's supposed to act or if he represents me or a unique character. This makes it hard for me to become immersed in the game because I'm consistently reminded that I'm just playing for playing's sake. And there's nothing wrong with that, but when one is on a busy schedule a game needs to bring something to the table to compete for my attention. The game didn't even need to develop the character. In fact having this everyman transverse the story would have been fine if I at least had the basic tenets of a purpose. One might argue that the arbitrary tasks assigned to the character would be the purpose or that I should as a person inherently feel compassion and want to help the cause of the bunnies, but I really don't buy into this. Mostly because aside from a few baddies (who I made quick work off), I don't ever see a real present threat. I hate overusing this example, but Chrono Trigger is the perfect example of motivating a character (and by extension a player) to want to complete a game. The beginning of the game is simple, rescue Marle. Then that switches to a visual depiction of the Earth being destroyed that you must prevent. All I ever see from Cave Story is a bunch of secret experiments, which people tell me are pretty bad, but I have no reason to believe that's the case. They're eggs, why didn't they just have one of the eggs crack open, letting out a monster that completely destroyed me, thus setting up motivation for me to want to destroy the monster in another encounter and adding validity to the claims of awfulness that the bunnies have been harping on about.
Gameplay
The gameplay to Cave Story is platformer meets scroll shooter and it's fun. I mean there's just something cathartic about gathering weapons, leveling them up and using them to more efficiently defeat monsters you were initially having trouble with. There are a variety of guns, which are distinct in the way you have to use them in the game. This is a refreshing change from what most shooters do (i.e. increase the damage on the next gun). The platforming itself is actually pretty flat in my opinion. I've never been a huge platform game lover, but I know the difference between intuitive level design and tedious challenges. Mario bros had intuitive level design that allows players to explore new facets of the stages with multiple play throughs. Cave Story is about execution of incredibly tedious jumps and timing mechanisms. This can at times leave me stuck in an area for 20 minutes at a time, attempting the same jump about 20 times. And since I'm not really captivated by the story, I find myself inclined on quitting rather than continuing with this pointless display in tedious timing. If someone enjoys this facet of platforming, then perhaps you should pick up Cave Story, but I'll pass on that funny business.
Cave Story isn't a bad game. It's a game that is paying homage to the old super nintendo games and shows that you can still make a compelling gaming experience without amazing graphics and other perceived triple A necessities. But still, just like many triple A games, Cave story simply doesn't deliver on narrative and with what truly something that has been done so many times gameplay wise, there's really no reason to go out rushing to download this game.
Overall:3.4
Narrative: 3.0
Platforming: 3.8
Characters: 2.8
Weapons: 3.8
Aha! I bet you guys didn't think I'd get through Cave Story. Well if that was your suspicion, then you're completely right. Cave Story, while certainly not a horrible game, didn't really do it for me. And unlike some games, where I find myself so engrossed in the plot that I lose track of time, responsibilities and showering, Cave Story was never quite able to really captivate me. But I have reason! Sweet reason that explains where Cave Story really shines and where it falls off. So let's go spelunking through Cave Story (see what I did there).
Narrative
I often treat the title of a video game like the title of a poem, I consider it to be the door that I have to open to get inside the piece. And when I see something titled "Cave Story", I have pretty basic expectations. I expect there to be a cave and some semblance of a story that has to deal with said cave. Luckily Cave Story delivers on both of these targets. There is indeed a Cave and the entire game takes place in it, playing out what seemed to me, an incredibly basic storyline.
What disheartens me the most about Cave Story is how basic, yet confusing the storyline of Cave Story is. You never really understand why you're doing something. The beginning of the game has a lot of mystery, which I concede had me pretty curious, but when almost all of the mystery was lifted by the middle of the game, I just found myself confused and kind of disinterested with the entire premise. The basic plot is that there is an evil scientist, who wants to do something to a tribe of bunnies, but these two other bunnies, who apparently are from somewhere else, wants to stop him. Where I fit into this as a player I have no idea, but it seems everyone is incredibly trusting of me seeing that they send me on quests, which the entire future of their tribe hinges upon. I guess they didn't really have a choice. Also, there is definitely a scenario of imperfect information going on in the game. What I mean by this is that everyone in the game knows I'm someone from the surface and that I'm a soldier. I was also called a robot at one point. Since I have no idea what this means in this universe I don't really know what to make of the significance. There's also some random hooded dude, who seems content with just chilling and being incredibly wise. Perhaps he's just the bard figure being intermittent in the game.
All this imperfect information eventually leads me to the one glaring issue with the game, my character is completely devoid of any personality or purpose. I don't know who my character is, how he's supposed to act or if he represents me or a unique character. This makes it hard for me to become immersed in the game because I'm consistently reminded that I'm just playing for playing's sake. And there's nothing wrong with that, but when one is on a busy schedule a game needs to bring something to the table to compete for my attention. The game didn't even need to develop the character. In fact having this everyman transverse the story would have been fine if I at least had the basic tenets of a purpose. One might argue that the arbitrary tasks assigned to the character would be the purpose or that I should as a person inherently feel compassion and want to help the cause of the bunnies, but I really don't buy into this. Mostly because aside from a few baddies (who I made quick work off), I don't ever see a real present threat. I hate overusing this example, but Chrono Trigger is the perfect example of motivating a character (and by extension a player) to want to complete a game. The beginning of the game is simple, rescue Marle. Then that switches to a visual depiction of the Earth being destroyed that you must prevent. All I ever see from Cave Story is a bunch of secret experiments, which people tell me are pretty bad, but I have no reason to believe that's the case. They're eggs, why didn't they just have one of the eggs crack open, letting out a monster that completely destroyed me, thus setting up motivation for me to want to destroy the monster in another encounter and adding validity to the claims of awfulness that the bunnies have been harping on about.
Gameplay
The gameplay to Cave Story is platformer meets scroll shooter and it's fun. I mean there's just something cathartic about gathering weapons, leveling them up and using them to more efficiently defeat monsters you were initially having trouble with. There are a variety of guns, which are distinct in the way you have to use them in the game. This is a refreshing change from what most shooters do (i.e. increase the damage on the next gun). The platforming itself is actually pretty flat in my opinion. I've never been a huge platform game lover, but I know the difference between intuitive level design and tedious challenges. Mario bros had intuitive level design that allows players to explore new facets of the stages with multiple play throughs. Cave Story is about execution of incredibly tedious jumps and timing mechanisms. This can at times leave me stuck in an area for 20 minutes at a time, attempting the same jump about 20 times. And since I'm not really captivated by the story, I find myself inclined on quitting rather than continuing with this pointless display in tedious timing. If someone enjoys this facet of platforming, then perhaps you should pick up Cave Story, but I'll pass on that funny business.
Cave Story isn't a bad game. It's a game that is paying homage to the old super nintendo games and shows that you can still make a compelling gaming experience without amazing graphics and other perceived triple A necessities. But still, just like many triple A games, Cave story simply doesn't deliver on narrative and with what truly something that has been done so many times gameplay wise, there's really no reason to go out rushing to download this game.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
What do you look for when you play a game?
When we play games, we often do so passively. What I mean by this is that we don't go into games expecting to take a particular thing out of it. Our requirements are pretty low: entertain us. This is very akin to the process some people take into reading books or watching movies. Not everyone goes into a book and movie expecting a search for meaning. And that's fine. I think the world has enough snobs like me, putting down movies because they aren't narratively up to snuff. Still, the flip side to this are the movies and books that captivate you over and over again. These pieces make it so that eventually you look for more than what you initially bargained for and as a result, enjoy the movie far more than you did before.
But sometimes we just don't know what we're supposed to be looking for. When it comes to books and movies, there are entire departments in universities, that devote themselves to answering the title of this post (except for their respective mediums instead). Video games, while appreciated by some places, don't really have a literature that sets up formal theory or explanation on what components of a game people should pay attention to. So we rely on critics and websites that are often ran by complete idiots. These people are in the business of selling games, making the integrity of their critique dubious (There are definitely some video game critics that I respect, but I think most of them are huge sellouts or sheep or both). So I've frequently needed to ask myself what should I be looking for when playing a game. This usually leads to more questions such as, should be I be looking for the same core things in a game? Does this mean that all video games have the same core components? If these components exist, then what are they and why are they so important to the video game process? The logical query goes on and on, but when I play games, none of these questions cross my head. Perhaps it's because my training as an English major kicks in. As an English major I find myself often dealing with text in a baptism by fire fashion. The best way to know what to look for is by jumping into the brisk waters of the uncharted and begin looking. If what you're supposed to find is somewhere in there, then if you look at every single detail you should hopefully find it. The life of an English major ( and basically anyone who does some sort of analysis) is the gathering of tiny strands of strings that may lead to a trap door or a dead end.
That was the short answer of what I look for when I play a game. I'm sure I have a less pretentious answer somewhere in me that would come shining through if you would ask me in person. But when thinking about it alone, I realize that often my answers to people in person are spurred by my insatiable desire to talk about video games with people. When I have to talk about this alone, I simply can't.
Games are rich pieces that can continually be analyzed. There is no right thing to look for and even if you're judging a game based on a small feature or simply on how awesome its soundtrack is, there is some validity to your opinion (if you can show evidence from the game that supports your claim about it). It'd do you an injustice for me to tell you what you should you look for.
I guess this begs the question of what the hell was the purpose of this post? It's to encourage all of you out there, who's willing to take the dive into playing games actively that they are not wasting their time. It makes me happy to take games apart and derive more meaning from them. Games can make me cry. They can make me laugh. They can make me shout out in anger and disgust. And I want to know why, just like how I want to know why I am so moved by the death of Dido or the triumph of McMurphy. So for all of you gamers out there that look for more, know you aren't alone.
But sometimes we just don't know what we're supposed to be looking for. When it comes to books and movies, there are entire departments in universities, that devote themselves to answering the title of this post (except for their respective mediums instead). Video games, while appreciated by some places, don't really have a literature that sets up formal theory or explanation on what components of a game people should pay attention to. So we rely on critics and websites that are often ran by complete idiots. These people are in the business of selling games, making the integrity of their critique dubious (There are definitely some video game critics that I respect, but I think most of them are huge sellouts or sheep or both). So I've frequently needed to ask myself what should I be looking for when playing a game. This usually leads to more questions such as, should be I be looking for the same core things in a game? Does this mean that all video games have the same core components? If these components exist, then what are they and why are they so important to the video game process? The logical query goes on and on, but when I play games, none of these questions cross my head. Perhaps it's because my training as an English major kicks in. As an English major I find myself often dealing with text in a baptism by fire fashion. The best way to know what to look for is by jumping into the brisk waters of the uncharted and begin looking. If what you're supposed to find is somewhere in there, then if you look at every single detail you should hopefully find it. The life of an English major ( and basically anyone who does some sort of analysis) is the gathering of tiny strands of strings that may lead to a trap door or a dead end.
That was the short answer of what I look for when I play a game. I'm sure I have a less pretentious answer somewhere in me that would come shining through if you would ask me in person. But when thinking about it alone, I realize that often my answers to people in person are spurred by my insatiable desire to talk about video games with people. When I have to talk about this alone, I simply can't.
Games are rich pieces that can continually be analyzed. There is no right thing to look for and even if you're judging a game based on a small feature or simply on how awesome its soundtrack is, there is some validity to your opinion (if you can show evidence from the game that supports your claim about it). It'd do you an injustice for me to tell you what you should you look for.
I guess this begs the question of what the hell was the purpose of this post? It's to encourage all of you out there, who's willing to take the dive into playing games actively that they are not wasting their time. It makes me happy to take games apart and derive more meaning from them. Games can make me cry. They can make me laugh. They can make me shout out in anger and disgust. And I want to know why, just like how I want to know why I am so moved by the death of Dido or the triumph of McMurphy. So for all of you gamers out there that look for more, know you aren't alone.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)