I Love You, You’re Completely Imperfect for Me, Don’t Change: Silent Hill

It looks like the lines for Black Friday this year won’t be so long.

One of the dumbest things people do to themselves is to protectively harbor a preference for specific type of person that they find attractive. It’s as though after months of soul searching and meditation atop Mount Wu-Tang these folks have gotten to intimately know their innermost secrets and solved the dilemma of Betty v. Veronica*.

There’s this illusion that being open to all types of physical traits is “unkempt”, and that a being able to objectify the ideal of your sexual fantasies into short, quantifiable terms is the result of a well-developed palate. However, the opposite is true: knowing what you deep down and honestly like is as easy as standing at a take-out counter with an ornery queue waiting behind you. It’s not something you have to justify or explain; you just like what you like,

And just think: if you’re ever lucky enough to marry someone who has a finely-detailed list of physical attributes they expect in a partner for which you fulfill in every way, congratulations, you look like all of his ex-girlfriends.

Among putting down the toilet seat and learning to how to argue without trying to win, love is accepting your partner’s deficiencies. This isn’t to say that you can just love anyone, but that you’ll eventually have to confront your partner’s issues, just as they will have to confront yours.

It’s seems we’re all stuck with the pretense of assuming there’s such a thing as a perfect mate. Instead of taking the road towards greater intimacy by embracing limitations, we use superficial standards to define ourselves.

The Playstation debuted during the era when 3D graphics were still saddled with multiple problems: a limited draw distance, jaggy graphics, onscreen display limitations. Although some games pushed the limits of the technology to the breaking point, it still wound up falling short of a complete game experience.

On the contrary, Silent Hill (1999) embraces all the technological limitations of the Playstation like a wino finding the backwash he left in the very last bottle.

The “fog” that plagues other games is the defining aspect of Silent Hill’s creepy environment that prevents you from properly see enemies creep up on you. The short levels punctuated by loading screens prompts a feeling of dread as you immerse yourself deeper and deeper into the dread of Silent Hill. The inability to display numerous objects onscreen as once adds to the narrative of a creepy town that is eerily devoid of its residents.

Best of all is that as these effects are used to propel the story, so too does it contribute to the ominous atmospheric mood of the game. And for all the trappings that video games can offer, this is the most immersive quality it can offer.

“Doing more with less” is the hallmark of embracing limitations, and it really worked out well for this game. And really, we would serve ourselves well to not place unfair expectations upon things before accepting them.

This is, of course, outside the condition no one could possibly not find acceptable: small hips, big ass.

* “v.” designating that the proceedings were initially contested in a court of law

How far I got in 20 minutes: didn’t quite make it to the school yet.

The good: The “Silent Hill” in this story is “guilt”

The bad: Any less cheesy and it would take itself too seriously, but it could do with less cheese… although we gamers eat nothing but casseroles.

Will I play this game again once this year is over: Yes. And honestly, aren’t all hills silent in their own way?

Days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 33

Give Me a Stage, and I’ll Give You a Great Death: The Amazing Virtual Sea Monkeys

I think the most upsetting thing about this game is that the player isn’t an ominipotent god staring down at them in a fishbowl below.

Even though an audience may see the death of a character to be a sad occasion, it’s fantastic for the actor: you get close-ups you wouldn’t otherwise, and your dialog gets the poignancy only afforded to last words of the famous kind. Best of all, if you’re just some third-stringer paid to take pratfalls, the hero of the story will stop deliver lines long enough to pass the spotlight over to you.

And yet, not all deaths are the same. Deaths can be great for different reasons, or they can be terrible for just one.

The first way is to kill off a character that the audience loves. As it has come to be known, the unceremonious term for this has become known as “getting Joss’d” Blame Joss Whedon if you want, but he’s done it by creating characters we care about in the first place, one of the hardest things to do in fiction (the other is “Joss-ing” them, of course)..

For everyone else who lacks the writing chops, you can still cause a sensation with a character death in a story by making it a glorious death, or a practice familiar to your average slasher flick. You may not know these characters long enough to care about them, but they sure die in inventive ways that make you marvel at the human anatomy in a tourist kind of way.

It’s really simple: a character’s death needs to either provoke an emotional response in its audience or be a spectacle that will melt their eyeballs. As caring human being, I’m all in support for no one ever dying again, but as an audience member, I need characters to die well, and for a reason—otherwise, don’t kill them at all.

And that’s the problem with The Amazing Virtual Sea Monkeys, a video game very much like the Lemmings franchise except the player is embedded within the sea monkey world as a their personal protector. Problem is, it’s hard to care about saving these sea monkeys, and it’s even more difficult to find a reason.

It’s hard not to have a preconceived notion when approaching this game. “Sea Monkeys” were a comic book mainstay from the 60’s onward that were an aquatic version of the art farm. With most of us smart enough not to buy into such an obvious scam, a modern video game is the perfect opportunity for the public at large to delve into the secret world of raising sea monkeys, otherwise known as brine shrimp that are “brought back to life” from a condition that allows them to survive drought conditions of little to no water.

It’s the advertising that most comic book readers are most familiar with: a royal family of sea monkey, replete with crowns, setting up their castle in the humble surroundings of your fish bowl—who wouldn’t want that? Who wouldn’t care about raising their own team of bright-eyed monkeys?

However, the video game is as much of a scam as the original product. While The Amazing Virtual Sea Monkeys is not a simulation where you get to care and nurture this leftover pop culture fad, the reality is not much of an improvement. It’s an extended glorified escort mission in which the player must serve as the sea monkey’s protector level after level. Too dumb to think for themselves, the survival of the sea monkeys as well as your progress through the game depends upon the player repeatedly saving their worthless brine shrimp asses.

I won’t hide it: I expected a sea monkey aquarium simulator. Barring that, I wanted to care about these sea monkeys once I discovered what this crappy game is about. Barring that as well, I wanted these sea monkeys to die in glorious, exceptional ways for my entertainment. And even there, I was barred from setting up grandiose, complex murder plots with which I could do away with these damned, dirty apes of the sea.

It’s simple: just suspend a grand piano with a rope and pulley. It’s kind of a cliché, but maybe you’d need to read comic books to appreciate what I’m talking about.

 

How far I got in 15 minutes: I got to the crab level, and then I thought, yeah, I like crabs more than I like sea monkeys, so I stopped.

The good: As per canon, the female sea monkey is wearing a clam bikini.

The bad: A submarine under the ocean that isn’t yellow? What is this, an alternative universe in which Elvis Presley didn’t die?

Will I play this game again once this year is over: No. And no more X-Ray specs, either.

Days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 32

The Film Version’s Deleted Scenes Restores All the Power-Ups: Fear Effect

Hong Kong’s use as a location for a cyber-thriller means that it’s a dump in the present.

Cinema is “cinematic”: the former is the predominant art form of the 21^st century, while the latter is its “essence” that can be borrowed by other media like TV and video games. But for all intents and purposes, art media are uniquely distinguishable from each other.

Even though movies have come to the point where they’re now borrowing from videogames, videogames have already borrowed many cups of sugar from its more developed neighbour with varying amounts of success. But to what end? To make video games that are more like movies, or movies that are more like video games?

The difference between those two choices seem to depend on whether you enjoy sitting through an unskippable cutscene, but in the end it doesn’t matter. No matter how cinematic video games become, even to the point of becoming “movies you play with a controller in your hand”, it’s still a video game—one that depends on the player to give it life..

Fear Effect (2000) is a video game inspired by the controls and cinematic angles from Resident Evil (1996) to give the player an experience not unlike watching a movie. Whereas an action game usually provides a full, unobstructed view of their hero, Fear Effect trades spatial awareness for intrigue and style.

This is a mature game. It has cleavage in it.

And even though it’s a game about sneaking around and getting into gun battles, Fear Effect is surprisingly contemplative. Despite its great action, the Resident Evil-control scheme slow things down to help you get outside your head—that is, simultaneously get its player to act as a spectator who comments “That was cool” as well as the game’s hero who makes the assertion “I did that”*.

Fear Effect has a different context and than Resident Evil, but both games disable the freedom of movement for different purposes: Resident Evil has its players panic and they frantically try to flee for their lives, while Fear Effect allows for the aforementioned dichotomy as a player/spectator so they can better appreciate the game’s cinematic qualities.

But no matter how much they borrow from movies, videogames aren’t movies—they depend on interactions to continue the game experience, and so will always be telling a separate narrative from the game’s story, that being of the player’s own motivations and success.

Fear Effect is a cool cinematic videogame, but it’s not a videogame I’d like to see translated into a movie. I don’t need to watch the entire procedure of obtaining keys and keycards that is the heart of Fear Effects gameplay.

Needs a keycard, huh? Guess I’ll just kill someone for that.

As much as video games and movies borrow from each other, each is fundamentally different from the other. Movies will get to the point of a scene much quicker for an emotional payoff, while video games immerse a player in the details of completing every single task in order to complete an objective.

After finishing a complete run-through of Fear Effect lasting several hours and uncovering its true story, it could be that its story could make a cool movie. However, in order to become a 90-minute theatrical release, that movie will excise everything that is video game about it.

We often wonder why videogames don’t make for good movies, but then the stories of video games are just a placeholder context for a player to compete in. This is why the very best videogame movie to have ever been made—Edge of Tomorrow—isn’t based on an existing video game property, but upon the essence of videogames itself.

Meanwhile, stop and smell the roses of the lush cinematic world of Fear Effect by stumbling your way down corridors, not knowing how to walk in a straight line.

* Bruce Willis in Die Hard 4

 

How far I got in half an hour: Found a machine gun, but wasn’t able to shoot four guys in the back. I know, the shame.

The good: I love the fact that the cinematics and the game play graphics are more or less the same.

The bad: The path to victory is to shoot guys in the back. Can’t I stab anyone, you know, like a normal sociopath?

Will I play this game once this year is over: Absolutely. I have to know how the movie turns out.

Days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 31

Respect the Institution of Doublethink By Adding to its Hypocracy: Destruction Derby 2

Remember, gentlemen: tip you hat after making contact with another driver.

Rednecks have got it all figured out by turning their greatest weakness into their greatest strength. If you use “redneck” as an insult, they’ll take it as a source of pride.

And in keeping with this group doublethink, this should mean that any further revelations of redneck culture to be crude and inferior will act to strengthen redneck culture and increase redneck pride.

So for these people who have appropriated their own ignorance as their greatest pride, it must be made known that there is no difference between a demolition derby and a stock car race. One is a celebration of destruction, while the latter is a celebration of performance, but whatever—they’re the same thing to their appreciative audiences,

That’s according to Destruction Derby 2 (1997), a game smart enough to making both modes available to play in the same game. And while they have different goals, be they to become the last man standing or the first one past the checkered flag, the key to success to both these motorsports remains the same: cause your opponents to crash and keep driving fast.

This is, frankly, a relief to us cultural outsiders who have had to refrain from pointing out that stock car racing is just an excuse to watch car crashes, making it a demolition derby you have to politely wait to happen. Now that this game sets the record straight by establishing a corollary from one to the other, we can all respect rednecks as the simple car crash enthusiasts they are.

Rednecks love them their Cubist Picassco; that blue period is too liberal.

 

Unlike the reward system in Burnout where players are given high-octane fuel for doing incredibly stupid/dangerous/fun things such as driving in oncoming traffic and narrowly avoiding collisions, Destruction Derby 2 provides no such videogame mechanics. Instead, it follows the simple rule of smash or be smashed, making this a life-like facsimile of what racing would be like if it completely complied with the wishes of its fans.

Yes, in the idealized world of the redneck, drivers of crashed cars don’t receive immediate medical treatment. Instead, the husks of these battered cars litter the race track as the poignant reminders of their failure, while also serving as obstacles you need to avoid crashing into. This way, these useless wrecks improve race conditions for the remaining drivers—for more crashes, of course.

Redneck culture is truly an enlightened culture, and to help the player accept this irredeemable fact, Destruction Derby 2 provides a commentator whose role is never made clear. However, this isn’t an announcer who calls the entire race, and it doesn’t represent the player, who can be several different people in the game. Instead, this person reacts to whatever you do as though they are with you in your car, sitting behind you, being a jerk.

And so in keeping with the proud culture of rednecks, Destruction Derby 2 has provided a backseat driver to help the player by saying simple suggestions and observations like “Hey, watch it!” and “Yeeaaahh!” to every move you make. And to especially helpful, the makers of Destruction Derby 2 have made it so you can’t mute this voice without turning off the sound to the game completely.

Destruction Derby 2 is a wholehearted affirmation of redneck culture. The obvious next step is to develop a redneck interactive fiction video that celebrates ethnic diversity by pointing out all the “funny ways them foreigners is strange” with branching story paths that always trace their way back to the same tree trunk.

Please… after you, I insist.

How far I got an hour: I almost completed a championship course

The good: It’s a compelling way to race, that’s for sure

The bad: Things don’t blow up, least of all in a “blowed up real good” way

Would I play this game once this year is over: Yeee-haw! This is more fun than a letting a jackrabbit and a possum duke it out for the turnip in my pants

Days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 30

If Videogames Can Teach Children to Shoot Guns, They Can Also Teach Them to Fly Fighter Jets: Bogey Dead 6

Dear US Air Force,

I have played through a copy of the videogame Bogey Dead 6 (1996), and would like to be considered a candidate for your exclusive Top Gun fighter pilot school as popularized by the movie of the same name.

I realize that playing the licensed Top Gun videogame based upon the real deal, the 1986 movie starring Tom Cruise, would better serve to qualify me for contention, but I am sure that the US Air Force is equal in its opposition towards enemy threats that include Communists and international crime organizations amassing a military-sized force, just as depicted in the Playstation jet fighter simulator Bogey Dead 6.

In addition, I have played many other videogames that attest to my prowess as an ace fighter pilot: I have completed flight school in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and performed a barrel roll in StarFox. If any prospective duties call for me to serve in outer space, I have completed many levels of Asteroids as well as Lunar Lander, should there be a need to land a space ship deep within the caverns of the moon.

My ability to handle pressure while taking enemy fire is proven by my ability to dodge enemy bullets in Raiden, just so long as they remain slow-moving orbs that are uniformly colored orange. As well, since I am equally proficient at using the Playstation and Xbox controllers, I will be comfortable in the cockpit of a billion dollar fighter jet so long as your technology utilizes thumbstick control.

I prefer the F-35 because it has a place where I can put my drink.

I personally don’t have any practical experience at flying, least of all a fighter jet, but if the media has taught us anything, it’s that videogames can teach its players valuable skills usable in the real world.

As responsible adults who believe everything you read, I am sure you have heard of the media theory which demonizes videogames as a bad influence, but if videogames can teach bad skills, they must certainly be able to teach valuable skills of benefit to society.

So if videogames can teach players how to properly use guns, they can also teach them to be race car drivers, espionage agents, and ninjas, which coincidentally are other professions that I have also sent out letters of proposal for, as long as we are being honest with each other.

I have settled upon becoming a jet fighter pilot because I think it would be a more rewarding profession than a rollercoaster tycoon, the mayor of a simulated city, or to serve as the god to a lower caste of idol-worshipping simians. The pay might not be as good, but the explosions are a nice side benefit.

I look forward to working with the US Air Force to put my immense talent to use, but would like to first like to make a small demand: to provide me with the right amount of immersion, I would like to request 80’s rock music with distorted guitars as the musical accompaniment to my saving the world.

sincerely,

pithany

***

How far I got in 15 minutes: I have no idea how to shoot missiles and attack enemy aircraft in this game, but I’m assuming there will be a tutorial when I join the US Air Force
The good: So much cock rock
The bad: no volleyball competition means no reason to take your shirt off
Will I play this game again once the year is over: No. I’ll be flying real fighter jets by then, if media logic is as consistent as it is insistent
Days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 29

A Lost Masterpiece in Search of a Frame: Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure

Looks like an ideal place to live, but you can only get one bar on your cellphone here.

Remember Christina Aguilera? She basically took over for Britney Spears when she went crazy, and has had the dignity to ride out her falling star of fame with far more grace. And while she’s eased into a mentor role on The Voice, there was a time when Christina Aguilera tried to instantly achieve immortality.

Christina Aguilera once made a music video that took place in an anachronistic version of the roaring twenties. It featured Aguilera as a stripper/flapper hybrid with updated sass so that today’s modern woman can properly judge her sexuality as a show of power and independence.

However, my friend Tom’s assessment was much simpler: Aguilera styled herself on an era from nearly a hundred years ago in this music video to achieve a timelessness that will never go out of style, unlike anything else she produces during the 00’s.

Tom wasn’t pointing at me when he said this, but I remember vividly what he said because it made so much sense: Aguilera’s video borrows all the spectacle and solemnity of the twenties without getting bogged down by all the downer filler you watch on Downton Abbey.

A feeling of timelessness is also something you can find in videogames, perhaps best epitomized by Shadow of the Colossus. It’s a masterpiece, sure, but it separates itself from any of its peers by lacking any references to date it: outside of technological requirement, it looks like it could have been made anytime.

Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (2000) is another game that achieves this timelessness, and while this game isn’t as successful as Shadows of the Colossus, it’s successful at becoming a videogame free from being dated. It’s fantastic to play now, just as it must have been when it came out fifteen years ago.

No. Why don’t you tell us how you REALLY feel.

Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure is a beautiful game to behold, but it’s not just art direction that gives a game this elusive quality. Rather, it comes down to two main things: older technology and taste.

The state of videogames is always changing. Graphics that were considered “mind-blowing” yesterday will soon become surpassed by tomorrow’s releases in a constant game of keeping up with the Jones’. However, putting your game on the cutting edge of technology is to try out untested technology that may not become the industry standard, vulnerable to the march of time.

On the other hand, what won’t fall out of fashion is that which is not in fashion to begin with. Linear Japanese RPG’s had already worn out their novelty by the year 2000, but Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure embraces the limitations of its system and genre in order to deliver an RPG that updates old elements without discarding them.

Every scene of Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure looks like a lush, pastoral oil painting. Playing this game isn’t so much to follow the story as it is to delight in seeing the next scene. And yet, this game uses 2D sprites for its graphics, something that fell out of fashion compared to the 3D graphics of many of the Playstation’s bestsellers.

It’s due to this that Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure remains one of the better looking games of the PS One to this day, an honor it shares with fellow 2D acolyte, the fighter Darkstalkers 3.

However, using outdated technology isn’t enough to achieve timelessless, because you’ll need a phenomenal sense of taste as well. There’s so much to choose from when looking back into the past that a savvy game designer knows what elements to borrow and what to steal outright.

It’s really too bad that this timelessness may be difficult to discern when a game first comes out. We don’t know what the future will be like 15 years from now, but we do know that 15 years after it came out, Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure still looks like a dream.

How far did I get in 15 minutes: Got to my first battle. Tactical RPG, eh?
The good: I can’t think of another RPG where you start off as a precocious young girl…
The bad: …an obnoxiously cute, precocious young girl. Also, puppets are involved.
Will I play this game once this year is over: I get the sense that I’ll be saying this to many of the RPGs, but yes
Days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 29

Video Games are Games Because They’re Played by Players: Pandemonium

When this isn’t a video game level, it serves as a quaint bed and breakfast; a little out of the way, though.

I really wanted to be like everyone else and love the critically-acclaimed Half-Life 2 as the best game ever made at the time of its release, but something ruined it for me. I was snapped out of the game’s immersion during the escape sequence at the beginning of the game when someone had the forethought to lay down a plank between two rooftops in order to facilitate my escape off a roof with no other exit.

It infuriated me.

The awesomeness of a gravity gun notwithstanding, the greatest conceit of Half-Life 2 (or any video game, for that matter) can’t be ignored anymore: we, its players, are the most important part of the game.

Video games create detailed worlds with no purpose but to allow gamers a context to succeed in. Again, this is fine if it’s just to provide us a working environment in which we can reuse the same saw blade over and over again on those jerk-ass Combine cannon fodder. However, this is not acceptable if video games are ever going to graduate to become something other than games to be played for the purpose of winning.

Pandemonium (1996) is a glaring example of a fabricated world that exists for no reason other than to be a series of levels to be completed. As with games of the era, Pandemonium is a sidescrolling platformer that featured 2D gameplay with a 3D background. The resulting “2.5D” effect is jarring when the path our jumping protagonists is following is wide enough to circumvent an enemy obstacle, but the gameplay won’t allow it.

However, the ambiguity of the 2.5D effect disappears when the game environment challenges you to make your way through a narrow set of platforms hovering in mid-air, but this just emphasizes the original point: that video game worlds have no purpose except for a player to complete the challenge set by it. What’s fine for a 90’s era video game has become a cliché that constrains the current development of video games.

Are you an artist that wants to use the amazing world of video games to tell your story? Barring a technological or cultural breakthrough, you’ll be decorating your story environment with the well-worn video game tropes of conveyor belts, crushing slabs that operate on a timed sequence, and elevator platforms without any safety guardrails.

When they order out for pizza, this is the path the delivery guy has to take, and yet they’re stingy tippers, go figure.

It’s obvious that a game world require these kind of conceits to facilitate gameplay for a player, but then that’s all it will ever be: a game. Twenty years from now, the future equivalent of present-day video gamers will be running around the most hyper-realistic environment in order to find extremely lifelike wooden crates in order to smash them open for the spinning power-ups inside.

Regardless of the inability of the medium of video games to fully blossom into the realm of being a fully-fledged art form, gamers are still playing the same games as they were twenty years ago. The linearity of Pandemonium is like that of many video games now, it’s just that developers have gotten better at hiding invisible barriers and paths.

It remains that video games are games because they’re played by players. These players have specific requirements, and it’s this limitation that is holding back the evolution of video games—well, whatever they’re supposed to be called.

How far I got in 30 minutes: Got to the castle with its crushing vertically-arranged pillars
The good: Good level design. For a game.
The bad: Enough with the Celtic rock, at least whip out the bagpipes.
Will I play this again once the year is up: I can only accept so much chaos and disorder in my life, you know.
Days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 27

My Date Will Have the Crow, and I’ll Have a Glass of Water: Largo Winch

Good thing this game is controlled by a third-person camera, or else I never would have seen that guy.

Eating out at a restaurant in China can be difficult for an expat.

Menus are almost exclusively in Chinese, and the staff rarely speak any English at anywhere but the most upscale of places. And if there is English written on the menu, it will be a phrase already wrenched through Google Translate* to become a disjointed description that never sounds appetizing.

Expats being what they are, it’s fortunate there is a fool-proof way to allow anyone to order anything they want.

Even though food is the universal language, pointing at a picture of a dish in a menu is the simplest non-verbal method of ordering your dinner. But despite even the best of intentions, not even this can provide a guaranteed result of satisfaction (indeed, what can in China?).

Even if an expat recognizes a dish from the picture and knows all the ingredients that go into that dish, and the dish arrives and it looks exactly like the picture, an expat can still wind up on the losing end when the dish turns out to be nothing like he expected and taste like crap.

Likewise, Largo Winch is everything I could ever ask for in a spy video game. You can look around corners and get the drop on guards by incapacitating them from behind as you sneak around the secret hideouts of super villains. You can hack computers, defuse bombs, and even shimmy into first-floor open windows.

You can do all this and more in Largo Winch, but it’s not the spy game I want. Despite clearly showing what kind of game it’s going to be from an extensive tutorial, Largo Winch turns out not to be the game it’s supposed to be.

Largo Winch has all the right ingredients culled from a recipe that should ensure a winning formula for a spy game, but as a video game it’s just half-baked.

Joy is such a downer. This is why no one likes you. .

A game ahead of its time, the ambitious gameplay features of Largo Winch aren’t implemented well at all. Sure, you can sneak up on a guard whose back is turned, but you’ll have trouble trying to take him out, surely the point of all this sneaking around unless this is a game about pretending to work as a hired thug but without getting any of the perks.

As you stab repeatedly at the “subdue” button in frustration, the guard will patiently stand there like the highly-paid employee he is until you elapse the window of opportunity for backstabbing shenanigans. The guard will then turn around and immediately start his attack animation upon realizing that a super spy had been standing behind him all this time, his life that was hanging precariously in the balance saved due to improper gameplay implementation.

It’s a frustrating shame. No one wants the game to succeed more than the player, but it seems this broken game doesn’t want the player to succeed at all.

Largo Winch has everything it needs to be a good game… except it was conceived ten years too soon. It would have been a great game on the Playstation 2, where its sneaking features were better implemented in Metal Gear Solid 2 and Manhunt.

Instead, since it wandered beyond the allowable scope of the technology of its time, Largo Winch has became a lost delicacy for those that can be satisfied wholly by the ambitions of its consumers.

* Chinese version is Baidu Translate.

How far I got in 30 minutes: I made all the way to the end of the first level where you have to defuse a bomb… but was never able to defuse anything because I couldn’t find it. I wish I had paid more attention during spy school.
The good: That is one awesome sneaking animation
The bad: this game is apparently based upon a cartoon, but now I have no desire to see it
Will I play this game once this year is up: I’m interested to play it, but it would be to see how far the wreck goes rather than to enjoy the non-existent tight gameplay
Days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 26

Art Criticism–More Eloquent than a Shotgun: DOOM

They’re used for what? I always thought lumberjack were people who jacked lumber for a living.

The Mona Lisa is art. It’s a classic oil painting created by Renaissance master genius Leonardo da Vinci. It’s a exemplary example of the painting style and techniques of the time, a portrait with a subject that continues to mystify and enthral audiences today. It’s a work that takes its place among the greatest works of art in the world in the Louvre in Paris, France.

The Lambourghini Countash is art. It’s a sports car that exemplifies the epitome of design and performance. Prized as a possession, worshiped as an icon, haunted as an obsession, it became a mainstay of bedrooms everywhere as a poster so that even people who will never make enough money to buy one can still appreciate it for what it is: the highest achievement of human engineering.

The Fountain, a urinal turned on its side and simply signed “R. Mutt”, is art. As scandalous as this artwork was in 1917, it came to revolutionize the very notion of what art is by deliberating provoking its audience. This Dadaist work has become a seminal influence on later generations by breaking down the concepts of what we consider to be art.

So, in line with any three of these models, it’s an unmistakable truth that video games are art. It’s a no-brainer, and with that realization, it’s also not some kind of endorsement. Rather, it’s a responsibility, one that now must be burdened by video gamers themselves.

Since video games are art, then they should be treated as art. Although some people may choose to appreciate video games as art by placing mint-condition copies into shrink-wrapped hermetically sealed bags, there remains a history and tradition of appreciating art that can now be applied to video games.

I always ask my valet whether a double-cotton blend would be better on overcast days.

Having now joined this exclusive club, gamers are no longer indebted to the chore of just treating video games as consumer products to be purchased. Since video games are now art, like the Mona Lisa, Lambourghini Countash or the Fountain, it’s time to talk about them in a way other than ranking them out of ten, deeming it worthy of purchase, and wrapping up a review with the words “will appeal to fans of the genre”.

Take DOOM (1995), for example. It’s a classic game, basically launched the first-person shooter genre, a defined a generation of gamers on its fast gameplay and appealing horror themes.

It’s also bad art that, when removed from its trappings as a great game, is bereft of anything to say. DOOM has nothing to say about the existential angst of being the last remaining human alive except to use it as a premise for a last-man standing challenge. DOOM has nothing to say about a horrifying netherworld populated by demons except that it is awesome to shoot them with a shotgun.

There is no discussion in DOOM beside the busy chatter of your minigun. There could be so much more to this story since it proves the existence of god (or at least a goat-headed devil), but the basic nuance is that technology will triumph over evil (in the form of BFGs and chainsaws) despite the fact that technology is what caused this in the first place (in the form of portals). The deepest you could ever delve into the DOOM message is that what first arose from irresponsible meddling by egghead scientists will be ultimately solved by guns and a “Hell, yeah!” attitude.

The bonus potions I understand, but I’m not sure how I’m supposed to balance all those helmets on top of my head.

Of course, there’s more to art than just discussing it, but it’s the fun part. It’s almost as good as wine tasting, something that you can be terrible at doing, but always wind up drunk by the time you’re done.

There’s criticism, and analysis, and historical and cultural context, but why would any of this concern a video gamer who only wants the prestige of having their favorite hobby earn the respect of being called “art” without any the responsibility of treating it as such.

And if it ever gets too difficult to explain the reasons why video games are art, just hang a poster of a Cyberdemon on your wall. It will be much more convenient than pointing at a appropriated urinal that have made the definition of art irrelevant.

How far I got in an hour: the third or fourth level, lots of shots fired and art criticism done
The good: it still plays as good as in my memories
The bad: The Brutal DOOM mod has kind of ruined me on vanilla DOOM, but hopefully the new DOOM will set everything straight
Will I play this again once this year is up: Yes.
Days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 25

Own your Own Adventure, Choosing is Obligatory: KISS Pinball

Remember Choose Your Own Adventure? It was an 80’s novelty that got kids to read: a story that offered readers different outcomes based upon the choices they made. You could wind up with a different ending each time you picked it up, something that made educators happy since it got kids to read.

But as stories go, a read-through of a Choose Your Own Adventure could be really crappy. You’d choose to walk down the cliff stairs rather than wander into a dark cave without a light (you could be eaten by a grue), a sensible choice until you’re informed that by making this decision, you slip and fall down the chasm to your death. That may seem like a cheap ending, but it’s the choice you made—these are narratives that exclusively used the secondary pronoun “you”, after all.

Far beyond this starting point of interactive fiction, modern video games have evolved to the point where they can offer realistic conclusions for the moral decisions a player makes. It’s a great empowerment of the player to allow them to choose their own fate, just as it is liberating to allow a player to roam free in an open-ended world, allowing them to progress in whichever fashion they please.

Of course, this means that the diary of the guy from Grand Theft Auto III would likely have multiple entries that read: “Today, I stole a car, drove around aimlessly, and fought some cops before I got killed.” Gameplay wise, this sounds like a blast, but it’s rather dull fiction that ends up being irrelevant all the same. The point of interactive fiction is not the story, but the choices–your choices.

They got it right the first time when it was called Choose Your Own Adventure, the operative word being “Your” and “Own”.

As awesome as interactive fiction has become, the advancement of storytelling techniques through user choices in video games is still premature to call an “artistic breakthrough” because what’s important to a player is not the quality of the story itself, but the satisfaction of making the “right” choices to continue a playthrough of the game.

It’s weird to hear gamers’ paying complements to a video game’s story when what they actually means is the adventure of their own choosing was good.

When it comes to video games, storytelling is dead. Story-owning is in. And here to prove this to us is KISS Pinball (2001).

If you still think that the point of pinball is to just keep the steel ball from disappearing through your flippers, get thee to a funnery (called an arcade in modern parlance). Pinball machines feature arching narratives that completely depend upon the players choices, which are made by whichever way the ball bounces.

If a player wants to progress to the next story segment, they’ll need to shoot the ball to a certain place to activate it. Upon accomplishing that, players will need to then shoot the ball to another designated area to completing that objective.

It may not seem like much of a way to tell an engaging story, but playing KISS Pinball will fulfill the dreams of any KISS fan: being able to cut a hit single with the group, get backstage with the band, perform a face-melting guitar and drum solo. We can see these stories animated on the pinball machine’s tiny LED screen, but we all know where the real story is because it’s where all the action is taking place: on the table of the pinball machine itself.

For video games, the story it tells is never as engaging as our own accomplishments to keep the game going by our skill and talent to solve all the puzzle, kill all the enemies, or in this case, always keeping the ball in play.

KISS Pinball demonstrates the importance of story-owning over storytelling in video games by being a literal manifestation of the process of decision making for a player and the end ramification they face: respectively, flipper banging and gutter balling.

The artistry of the pinball machine deserves a better description than that, but hey, this is a KISS Pinball we’re talking about.

How far I got in 20 minutes: tried out both tables, and can only say in response, “Lick it Up”
The good: if KISS the rock band doesn’t rock hard, well at least this table is hard
The bad: no KISS soundtrack? But how else will I rock and roll every night, and party each and every day?
Will I play this once this year is over: Zen Pinball games are so much better
Days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 24