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I Think I Hate Everyone.

I guess this will be rant-ish, but I really don't care. My babbling will be based on all current information I've read regarding the Uncharted movie. Maybe it won't come to fruition (I'd convert if God helped me out on this one), but as of right now, it seems like it's going to happen. I know that about 8,000,000 people already shat their pants over this shit, but, again, I don't care.

Oh, how I sometimes loathe this stupid world we live in. It's apparently a world where Mark Wahlberg plays Nathan Fillion's video game alter-ego; a world where the director of the movie doesn't even know who Nathan Fillion is. Excuse me? This fucking guy has to have had his head either buried in the sand or shoved up his own ass for the past few months to not know who Nathon Fillion is. I have to wonder if he knows what the internet is, or if he gives a shit about 2nd or 3rd party creative input. Someone, somewhere, must have told him at some point how shitty an idea this is. It's like Pluto's orbit around the sun - we've yet to experience a full rotation, but we know how long it takes. In other words, it's a mathematical certainty. It's also a mathematical certainty that the Uncharted movie is going to suck a long, hard one. Not only is Wahlberg playing Drake, but Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci are going to be in it as well? I think they must have gotten confused and mistakenly signed up for this instead of Goodfellas 2. I'm sure Ray Liotta's already cast and paid for. In fact, I'd pay to see that shit way before I'd ever pay to watch the filmic abortion that will be Uncharted.

What's my beef, you might ask. If the movie sucks, it sucks...no big deal, right? Well, it depends on how you look at it. One could simply chalk it up as another shitty video game adaptation, but at this point, it's a lot more than that. Assuming this thing gets made as it's being reported, I really think it stands a good chance of retarding the game industry, not forwarding it. Think about it: how would making this movie advance our medium? Uncharted is already as close to a film-like experience you're going to get on a console, but I guess that's not good enough. I guess we also have to have a premise that totally ignores everything in the games, and a cast that resembles a musical super group or that Lakers team that had everyone and their mother on it yet still managed to never win a championship. It's not about how many A-listers you can sign up for a project; it's more about setting up a winning situation. Hey, the producers forgot to cast Megan Fox as Chloe and Scarlett Johansson as Elena. Or maybe they didn't, who knows. I'd honestly rather watch Doom again. At least the game it's based on kind of sucks already.

To illustrate my point a little better, I have another question. Out of all the people (a considerable amount) who saw the Prince of Persia movie, how many of them do you think walked out of the theater saying, "Oh, wow! I simply must run out and buy every Prince of Persia game in existence. That movie was exquisite, and I think I shall now become a gamer and learn how the medium embodies interactivity." The answer is probably close to zero, in case you're seriously trying to come up with a number. The whole point of playing and experiencing the games is lost in translation. I don't care how close it looks to the game. I don't care how Chesty Jake looks while jumping from wall to wall with swirling sand around him. The fundamental experience of Prince of Persia is gone, and it's replaced by something that could have been siphoned from any number of stupid, big-budget CG fests. What's the point? If I had any respect for the games, I wouldn't be caught dead watching this bullshit. I haven't seen the Prince of Persia movie yet, but I'm going to give it a go on Netflix. Maybe I'll write up something on it after I watch it, but I doubt it. I'd just be reiterating a lot of what I'm saying now.

In any case, an Uncharted movie would suffer the same basic flaw, in that Uncharted is not a movie. It's a game, and a damn good one at that. The series prides itself on using a cinematic style to tell its story, and it does it just about as well as any game could ever hope to. If emulating a movie was Naughty Dog's goal, they definitely succeeded. So, again, why make a movie? It would literally be a translation of a video game that was already a translation of a movie to begin with. That's just fucking stupid. Let's make a Heavy Rain movie, while we're at it. At least the guy yelling "Jason!" would most likely be more convincing.

Bunch of dicks. Whatever.

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Developers Shouldn't Use Cliff Notes.

Right off the bat, I should say that I'm really enjoying Castlevania: Lords of Shadow so far. I've only just started chapter 2, but I'm currently appreciating the slow-burn of both the game play and story. Be that as it may, I've already found my first brow-furrowing moment in the game. Ever heard of Shadow of the Colossus?

Well, the dudes at Konami sure have. The first boss fight in the game is, well, a rip-off from SotC. I don't say "complete rip-off" because the experience of actually fighting it isn't anywhere near as awesome as every encounter was in the PS2 classic. The fight in Castlevania is a dumbed-down version of the structure SotC used, but with a couple ground attacks thrown your way every now and then. Tell me if this sounds familiar:

First, you have to wait for the titan to slam his fist hard enough into the ground so that it gets stuck. When that happens, you run over to his fist and grab onto it, holding down the "grip" button so as to not fall off. You then proceed along the titan's body until you get to the round, glowing symbol, so that you can stab the shit out of it. Repeat on a couple more parts of its body, and you're done.

Yea, it's basically the Cliff Notes version of fighting a colossus. I could assume that someone on the development team just wanted to pay homage to a great game, and that would be relatively fine with me, I guess. But if you're going to steal from something, STEAL from it. Don't do a half-assed job.

A big reason the titan fight feels like a rush job is because your hand is held the entire time. Right when its fist gets stuck in the ground, the part you're supposed to latch onto starts glowing. Just as you begin holding the "grip" button, the titan's arm raises up and the next section for you to jump to glows like the last. There's not really any exploration or figuring out how to get around on its body; it's a shame, since those moments really stood out in SotC, and probably could have in Castlevania.

I ultimately came away from the fight with a better understanding of why no one has tried imitating SotC before now. It's hard to do well, and is made even harder by the fact that SotC isn't concerned with a lot of things other games are concerned with. SotC relies on atmosphere and implication for narrative; Castlevania's story is told in a similar vein to other action games. SotC's main game play mechanic involves giant, moving puzzles for the player to solve; Castlevania has multitudes of enemies, levels, combat, and bosses to take into consideration. What it all boils down to is the fact that such a boss design should at least be on par with its source material, or we're all just wasting our time and effort. I could go kill 15 other, better ones instead of a shitty retread.

I'm still enjoying the game, so I'll try to talk about some of the stuff I like next time. There's actually quite a lot.

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Cheap Thrills - Alan Wake

I recently reviewed Alan Wake for a school paper, so I figured I'd throw it up here. It's lengthier than most of the stuff I normally write, so be forewarned. I actually didn't get to address everything I wanted to because of length, so I might put up a separate post talking about those things. This one's worth it, though, because it's fucking awesome. Enjoy.


“But nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear.” - Stephen King

Alan Wake, a psychological thriller developed by Remedy Entertainment for the Xbox 360, opens with the above quote by Stephen King, and the titular character narrating what seems to be the central theme of the game. According to Wake, the “Why?” is never as important as the emotions one goes through during a horrifying experience. There’s nothing wrong with that sentiment. In fact, I mostly agree with it. But Alan Wake forgoes the “Why?” almost entirely, in favor of nonsensical exposition and repetitive, tired shooting mechanics that would be more at home in Max Payne 3 than something rooted in psychological horror.

Alan Wake is a writer. After a string of best-sellers, he feels burnt out and ready for some rejuvenation, so he and his wife, Alice, retreat to the small town of Bright Falls. It’s a typical, if extraordinarily beautiful, mid-western American town, replete with trailer park communities and neighbors all on a first name basis. Bright Falls would normally make for the perfect getaway destination, but when Wake and his wife arrive, they quickly find something more sinister and violent lurking about the otherwise peaceful surroundings. His wife soon ends up missing, and the only clues to her whereabouts come in the form of torn manuscript pages from a story he doesn’t remember writing, but is obviously penned by him. As the game progresses, it’s made evident that whatever is written on the torn pages actually comes to pass. Armed with this knowledge, Wake tries desperately to find and save his wife from whatever is holding her captive.

Alan Wake’s premise was one of the things that caught my attention early on when the game was first announced. I figured the mountainous and woodsy terrain would make an excellent backdrop for psychologically-themed horror. Playing the first chapter of the game, which takes place inside one of Wake’s nightmares, communicates a world full of unique and scary situations. The very first enemy encounter is simply a man with an axe, but it’s not the weapon he wields that makes him terrifying. While blindly swinging the axe back-and-forth, the man assaults Wake’s fragile psyche by calling him a fraud and a horrible writer. The threat of physical harm may be obvious, but barrages of mental abuse, especially within the context of a nightmare, carry much more weight than wood and steel ever could.

Unfortunately, such a promising concept is all but abandoned shortly after the end of the first chapter. Gone are the venomous projections of Wake’s personal demons, and in their place are slews of non sequiturs about working at lumber mills and pumping gas. Part of who these people used to be is still inside them, but they are now owned by whatever entity is plaguing Bright Falls. That may sound intriguing, but by replacing the focus on Wake’s internal strife with random, nonsensical shouts about small town living, all the tension and fear is instantly siphoned away. Coupled with uniformly featureless faces and pitch-black appearances, the enemies in Alan Wake directly mirror the game’s inability to differentiate itself from countless other horror-themed experiences.

And at no time is that exemplified more than during a point about mid-way through the game, when Wake finds himself a guest in a local psychologist’s mental institution called “The Lodge.” Wake opens his eyes to the doctor peering down at him, telling him that he’s been a patient of his for some time. Wake’s wife died a long time ago, and he couldn’t handle the stress and grief, or so the well-meaning doctor informs him. This section of the game could have contained its most probing character study, but instead devolves into the predictability and repetition that plagues the entire work. Instead of Wake questioning his own sanity, cooped up in a loony bin with all the other fine patrons of the establishment, he never second-guesses himself. Within ten minutes, the doctor’s ruse crumbles against Wake’s underwhelming scrutiny. Once he decides to expose reality for what it is, all it takes is a trip to the main office, where records clearly exonerate him of his “fragile” mental state. Of course, after this information is obtained, enemies begin appearing, and Wake has to shoot his way to freedom. It’s also worth mentioning that once he makes it to the outside grounds, Wake must navigate through a Shining-esque hedge maze in order to escape. No, he doesn’t freeze to death while screaming “Danny!”, but that would have at least been unexpected.

The more contiguous narrative problem goes back to Wake’s declaration that “Why?” is not a necessary component of effective horror. In the case of Alan Wake, its believability hinges on that question being answered. And to a degree, it is. Throughout the course of the game, the moment-to-moment narrative is explained well enough, but the bigger, game-spanning question of “Why?” is almost never even addressed. If the whole game takes place after Wake writes a story, then why are characters and situations he’s yet to encounter present in an unrelated nightmare before he even goes on vacation? Why is only his manuscript capable of changing reality? Why can demons that appear out of nowhere be killed with guns when light is supposed to be their weakness? Why does the evil entity even need Wake when it seems capable enough of destruction on its own? Why can’t Wake just write the happiest ending imaginable at any point during the game? All those questions are perfectly reasonable to ask, but they’re sidestepped in favor of vague premonitions or visions that don’t make much sense, even after the game is over.

Perhaps even more disappointing than the story are the mechanics. This might sound like a snarky question, but it’s an honest one: What the hell has Remedy been doing for 7 years? Their last game, Max Payne 2, released at the tail end of 2003, and they’ve been silent since. I could brush that aside if there was a reason to, but the core game play doesn’t feel like it’s changed much since their previous efforts almost a decade ago. Wake aims a flashlight at enemies, shoots them until they’re dead, and then does it again when necessary. That’s it. There’s really no finesse to speak of, and nothing interesting, evolutionary or innovative has been added to the static formula of most third-person shooters. What that boils down to is the unfortunate fact that I could have played this game 7 years ago and been fine with it. But at this point in the lifespan of the medium, to only require such a rudimentary and rote skill set speaks volumes as to the mindset of the people responsible for implementing it. Enemies never change, and neither do the tactics for dispatching them. If there are too many to handle, just pop a flashbang or use a flare gun to thin the crowd. Always aim for the head, and reload often. Those tips shouldn’t be applicable in the slightest in a self-proclaimed psychological thriller. After all, shooting everything that moves seems pretty physically thrilling to me. In any case, Alan Wake’s game play is a textbook case of wash-rinse-repeat, only in the blandest way possible.

One of the most egregious examples of Alan Wake’s stale mechanics again takes place at “The Lodge.” Once Wake finds the evidence of his still-reigning sanity, he has to get out of the asylum as fast as possible. But first, he must do battle with inanimate objects come to life - a notable Stephen King trope - in order to get outside to safety. Floating couches and barrels might be scary in a movie or book, but when “defeating” them entails the exact same shooting mechanics employed against human enemies, I have to wonder why the game even bothered to include them.

After having valiantly and courageously struck down a possessed Art Deco ball sculpture, Wake heads outside, where the aforementioned hedge maze awaits him. What kind of surprises could be hiding in the bushes? If you guessed “shadow people,” you might have a job opportunity as a Remedy scriptwriter in your near future. Just like every other encounter in the game, Wake is tasked with putting bullets into people while running forward (technically in a zigzag pattern). But what stands out the most in a long line of miscalculations is the decision to turn the psychologist from the beginning of the chapter into just another faceless goon. A potential story-defining character is reduced to acting out enemy behavior whose redundancy knows no bounds. There is a clearing at the end of the hedge maze, and in the middle of it stands the good doctor, patiently waiting around for Wake to show up. Once he does, the doctor reverts back to the supposedly antagonistic cries about work-related situations that have already grown tiresome. Such is the cure-all in a game more able to deal with the illusion of fear, rather than the reality of it.

There are some great environmental effects, such as the trees and wind looking as if they’re being perpetually rewound in a VCR, and gigantic trees crackling and buckling for seemingly no reason, only to fall directly in your path with a deadening thud. But those effects are wasted when the whole game consists of the same few tricks repeated ad nauseum. If having explanatory power is antithetical to the poetry of fear, then predictability should be a cardinal sin of writing horror. Even when certain plot points are explained at the end, the only thing that I came away with was the fact that an even bigger mystery just supplanted a smaller one. Ambiguous endings have their place, and when done well, they can turn befuddlement into a praise-worthy event. Without giving anything away, Alan Wake basically ends with “…and you thought THAT was weird!” As a matter of fact, I did, and I also realized that there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of similar experiences in different media that far outweigh this game’s blind repetition and reluctance to explain anything of importance. If the devil’s in the details, Alan Wake is as angelic as it gets.
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Level 3.

No, that's not the name of the game pictured above. Instead, it's how far I leveled up in Fragile Dreams before I decided to shit-can it from my collection. Why? It's quite simple, actually: the combat really, really sucked. Like, really. "Oh, but if you can muster enough strength to power through the combat parts, the rest of the game is a lot better," some might say to me. Sorry, but I shouldn't have to muster the strength to get through a game. If I'm not convinced I should even be holding the controller, it's a safe bet I shouldn't be. It's a shame, though, because everything besides the gameplay was working for me. The atmosphere was foreboding and desolate; the score hit all the right notes; the story had a lot of potential; and yet I traded it in after only about two hours of game time. Sad day.

OK, so, the combat. Not one aspect of it did anything for me. I started off with a stick, and I hit some dogs over the head with it. Fair enough. But then I hit some floating jellyfish with it. Then I found a bamboo sword and hit some dogs and jellyfish with it. Then my bamboo sword broke, so I switched back to the stick. Then it broke, as well. As it turns out, a broken stick was the last weapon I was able to wield before I gave up, and that doesn't sit right with me. Oh, well, I guess, because maneuvering around borderline-retarded enemy A.I. that have the worst dodging abilities known to man or computer didn't really make me want to find a better weapon. Take the dogs, for example. When you hit them, they automatically jump backwards, no matter where they are. So my main plan of attack was to always angle my swing towards a wall or object in the environment, that way when they jumped back, they didn't actually move. Instead of the dog leaping out of harm's way, it just backwards-dry-humped the wall while I beat it in the face. Not how I would like to go out, but I'm not a post-apocalyptic canine that appears into, and disappears from existence whenever a human being walks past me.

The way weapons break in Fragile Dreams is just about the stupidest thing on the planet. Apparently, there's no formula to follow or weapon HP to keep track of. Shit just breaks sometimes. And I can say from experience that my only two weapons (which sucked anyways) both broke shortly after about an hour of playing. If the developers wanted to force people to use different weapons, hey, I'm all for it. But they can't make it happen by random chance. Theoretically, then, it could break after the first time I used it. There's no strategy or brainpower needed to play along with that scenario; it's called shitty design. And compounding the brain-dead weapon system is the fact that it can be overly-cumbersome to aim and successfully hit enemies sometimes. If I press down on the nunchuk, I would normally expect my character to turn towards the camera. Oh, no. Not in Fragile Dreams. It works similarly to Silent Hill: Origins, only less-so. I had to maneuver the flashlight with the Wii-mote in order to face the enemy I wanted to hit, and it got obnoxious pretty quickly when I was whiffing half of the time, only to get hit for 50 damage from a fucking jellyfish. Why are there floating jellyfish? I don't know. And I didn't mention this before, but why are there person-less pants with blue flames instead of upper torsos laughing at me? I don't know, but whatever.

The main point I want to drive home here is that the first few hours in a game are arguably the most important. And with a game like Fragile Dreams, I was looking forward more to the adventuring aspects than the combat. What I found, however, was that the world made me want to push forward, but the game itself kept holding me back. It's one reason I can't stand most JRPGs, but I thought this one could have been different. Sure, it could have been, but the gameplay is sadly but surely stuck in the same boring and tedious level-grind mentality that plagues pretty much all the games I hate. So, in the end, hate wins out again. This is one giant victory for hate.


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John Marston is the anti-Niko Bellic.

Really, it's true. And it's a funny thing that Dan Houser wrote one of the absolute worst video game characters in history and also one of the best. I think Rockstar was trying to create a John Marston-type of character when they made GTA IV, but for whatever reason they failed miserably. The 2nd time was a charm, however, because Red Dead: Redemption accomplishes everything narratively that GTA IV tried to.

The first, and most glaring issue with Niko Bellic was his motivation. Namely, he had none. Why did he continue to murder, steal and be an all-out asshole in the face of his repeated lamenting of that lifestyle? Beats me. As far as I can tell, he's just a poorly-written dick. He came to America with the hope of starting fresh; killing was a part of his past, but he tired of it and wanted to be a better person. That's what we're supposed to believe, anyway. But as the story unfolded, I couldn't help but shake my head at the horrendous dialogue and situations Niko put himself in, and for no reason. The whole game is done a huge disservice by having the main character make absolutely no sense, and it's one - but not the only - reason I'll never bring it up as a high or even interesting point in gaming. It's just a big, sloppy mess.

Fast-forward a couple of years and we have ourselves a masterpiece in Red Dead: Redemption. Is the game perfect? Not at all. Does it erase all the past mistakes of Houser's writing? I don't know about erasing them, but it sure as hell washes the bad taste out of my mouth (interesting fact: epic fail tastes like the ass-end of a chicken). John Marston is basically the same character as Niko Bellic, only with real motivations, a believable moral code, and a surrounding game world with much less disconnect between the player and the "reality" presented. All of those things combined to make a more engrossing experience, and also stop me from puking in my mouth a little once I finished the game. I was pretty grateful for that last part.

But why is Marston more believable? Well, the premise of his single-mindedness is simple: he had to track and kill people or his family would die. In the changing world of the early 20th century, the newly-formed U.S. government was totally fine with resorting to thuggery to get a job done, and Marston was the perfect pawn for their plan. And in a stroke of narrative genius, Houser made sure Marston never got too caught up in other people's problems. Sure, he helped out a lot of people and even felt bad for some of them, but he constantly reminded the people he was helping exactly why he was doing it. And there were some folks Marston absolutely hated, and it was during those moments that the player became privy to his darker side. Marston, at his own admission, wasn't a "literary person." He was, however, someone who tried to start a different life and got savagely pulled back into the one he already left. The difference between him and Bellic, in this regard, couldn't be any more stark.

There's a lot more about Red Dead: Redemption to talk about - and I've only scratched the surface in terms of Marston's character - but I'll save it for future posts. I think I'll just end by saying I have renewed faith in Rockstar as a developer, and for game writing in general. I think it might have a bright future after all.

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Red Dead has blurred the line between games and film

We all know by now that Rockstar Games "Red Dead Redemption" is out and enjoying universal acclaim from fans and critics so there's no point in reviewing this absolutely must buy title. The only thing I care to add at this point is that RDR will stand proudly beside the best western films that I have in my DVD collection. It is that damn good.

Last night as I finished a major section and started a new one, Rockstar very effectively blurred the line between Hollywood and the digital realm. Just thinking about it still gives me goosebumps. I've played for several hours now and former outlaw John Marsten has formed alliances, gained new enemies, and explored just one section of a frontier that's bigger than most open world games. All of the friends he has made, and all the work he has accomplished simply vanish as he must now venture deep into Mexico to bring his former partner in crime to justice. He is alone, acting only off a hunch, and the thought of completing his task and reuniting with his family seem nigh impossible at this juncture. The sun was setting over the red dusty cliffs and an explosive display of orange and purples filled the sky as I steered John and his horse into uncertain territory. Then this song started playing (hear below) and immersed me into the character and game world like no other has done before.................or will again.


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Splinter Cell: Conviction or; How Not to Write a Story.

I didn't read too much information about Splinter Cell: Conviction before playing it. I also didn't watch a lot of videos. The bit I knew really intrigued me: Sam learned his daughter's death might not have been an accident, and he heard some names floating around. The interrogation bit in the demo certainly led me to believe he was on a personal mission of vengeance. Right or wrong, he was going to get the information he needed, the way he needed to get it. The premise was instantly thought-provoking. With a story like that, there are multiple ways to go about exploring themes, such as moral ambiguity, blind rage and the consequences of it, and learning to let go and move on with your life. As you can probably guess by the title of this post, the kind folks at Ubisoft decided to shit all over themselves.

I'll just get right down to it, because, frankly, I'm really pissed at what they did to the story. If you don't want to know what it's about, then stop reading right now.



So, it turns out his daughter is still alive, and she's initially being used as a bargaining chip to make Sam do some dirty work. Really? Because what that translated to was this game being just like every other Splinter Cell game ever made. The personal side of the story was totally squashed in favor of bland spy fiction theatrics, and that really made me mad. I was all ready to learn more about Sam's life beyond Third Echelon; maybe find out what his marriage was like or get to interact with a part of him that I've never seen before. Nope. "Hey, Sam, I know where your daughter is. But before you can reunite with her, go slink around breaking necks and figure out this conspiracy involving an attempted assassination of the President and EMP weapons smuggling with your former company." Ugh. Again, I ask, really? Sam's daughter goes from the center of his suffering to the backdrop for some boring crap about the President wanting to shut down Third Echelon. Since Lambert died, the new director apparently decided to take the spy group down a shadier path, and he wasn't very happy about the prospects of being out of a job. So he starts smuggling weapons into the country and conspires to kill the President and install the Vice President as their lackey. Basically. Oh, and apparently Lambert told Sam that his daughter was dead so that he would have the resolve to be a better Splinter Cell.

Getting bored yet? I am, and I'm having to use the brain power to write about this vapid shit. I can only imagine what the leisurely activity of reading it is making you feel. Anyways, Grimmsdotter knew the whole time, I guess, and decided to tell Sam about it so that he would help her take down the new Third Echelon director. OK, I'm done explaining. Who cares? I didn't, and I don't expect anyone else to, either. I only saw Sam's daughter, like, twice during the entire game. I'm telling you, she doesn't matter in the plot. Ubisoft could have replaced "they killed my daughter" with "they strangled my dog" and it would have had the same emotional impact to me. If it was the dog, there would at least be that heart-warming moment where Sam would have to bend over to pick up the puppy and be vociferously licked all over his face, while everyone looks at them, smiling and hugging as flowers bloom in the background and PETA guns down the bad guy in cold-blood. There could be the whole juxtaposition thing, with classical music playing while slow motion blood spray is going all over the place, slightly out of focus. What I got, instead, was the daughter "story", and my impatience with it almost sent me into an aimless, murderous rampage. What a fucking waste of time and effort.

It's really too bad, because there are elements in the game that do hearken back to the story that could have been. For whatever reason, the things that really worked, such as a flashback of robbers entering Sam's house as he's putting his daughter to bed; or a flashback to Iraq involving Sam and a war buddy, end up being one-shot deals in terms of the narrative structure. Overall, the game is nothing more than every Splinter Cell objective you've ever had to get through in the past. Why? Why did it have to be this way? Did they really want the story to be uninteresting and overly-elaborate? If they didn't, well, someone needs to ask Ubisoft if they can tell the difference between their ass and a hole in the ground. Read more...

Holy Shit, You Have a Nice Ass!!!!.......Ummm, Sorry Miss....

So, I promise this isn't just me cribbing from Kotaku's post about Lost Planet's female character models. I watched the Youtube clip they made available (which I will, as well, after the jump), and I couldn't help but think about Heavy Rain. Hah, not where you thought this was going, was it? Sucka!

First of all, I most certainly don't expect a game like Lost Planet 2 to depict females (or anyone, for that matter) in a realistic manner. I'm not a moron. However, it made me think about my time with Madison Paige while I was playing Heavy Rain. The first time I took control of her character, I felt uneasy and vulnerable. That feeling didn't last the entire game, but it started a train of thought that, oddly enough, has ended up here. I want a game with a female lead that portrays them as an actual person, dealing with very real, very personal problems. I guess I want to play as a female in this situation because in real life I'll never get to know, in any real way, what it's like to be in the shoes of the opposite sex. After all, one aspect of playing video games is role-playing and escape from reality, is it not? What better way to do so than strapping on a dress and experiencing things from a girl's perspective? Mind you, the ideas I have for this kind of character-driven game could actually be done with either a male or female lead, but it's the role-playing aspect that's getting a lot of value here.

When I said personal problems, I didn't mean when it's that time of the month. I meant playing a very adult drama, where, perhaps, the main character is a rape victim who has to come to terms with what happened to her. The game could be about that character having to learn all over again how to interact with other people without freaking the fuck out and shutting down emotionally. It could be a mix of genres, with some horror aspects due to the traumatizing nature of the crime perpetrated against her. Drama could come from her meeting a guy, and getting to play through the steps necessary to form an interpersonal relationship with someone. I don't want a dating sim, where the goal is to get whoever to kiss you or like your outfit or whatever. I'm talking about adult relationships here. Something that would resonate with me, having been through a serious relationship before that ended up not working out. It's interesting stuff to think about, especially when I look back at the history of games. There's really not much out there when it comes to concepts like this. Be it technological constraints, creative ineptness, or just a lack of interest, these kinds of subjects haven't been treated correctly, and, in my opinion, need to be properly handled in this medium for games to be looked at as a true art form. But that's just how I see it. Or, we could just have some more space pirates showing tits and ass. Hurray for tits and ass!!




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Well, Now I'm Just Creeped Right Out.

I think I just experienced the first real "should I be doing this?" moment in my game playing history (with qualifiers, if asked). So I'm playing Heavy Rain, and I take control of Madison Paige for the first time. She wakes up in the middle of the night, apparently after falling asleep on the couch. The t.v. is still on, which I turn off. I have her look at her watch, and it's almost 3am. She seems frustrated at the late hour, so I figure she could use some freshening up. I start walking around the apartment looking for the bathroom, and I find it soon enough. But once I enter it, my mood changes from curious to thoroughly disturbed. I've never played anything like this before, and that includes Indigo Prophecy or any other narrative-driven game.

Once inside the bathroom, I head straight for the sink. I turn it on, and she splashes water on her face. Mission accomplished so far.

I want to quickly digress to make a side point. The Uncanny Valley is a very real thing, and it's no more evident than with Heavy Rain. Everything looks so authentic and genuinely impressive that it's the little things that stand out. For example, as Madison goes to the sink to splash water on her face, she turns the faucet on and water comes out. So far so good, but when she cups her hands and motions toward her face, the water disappears. Nothing actually splashes her, and her hands don't make contact with her face. Things like that are instantly noticeable when everything else is so incredibly detailed. I'd venture to say this could be the best-looking game I've ever played as far as believable, real-world environments and characters go, but it's evident that true photo-realism is still a little ways off. However, the strides that have been made toward that goal are immense, and such efforts will only get better with time.

Anyways, back to the reason for this entry: me being creeped out. After splashing the water on Madison's face, I look around the bathroom, and move her towards the toilet. I've had two other characters use the bathroom so far, so why not her? Well, that was the first wrong move. As she was sitting down on the toilet, the camera switched angles multiple times, and some of them were wide shots of her sitting. It felt invasive and weird to watch her, and I wished I had skipped that action almost immediately. But once that was over, I had her walk around the other side of the bathroom near the shower. She has a big-ass shower, by the way. Three nozzles in a row, even. So I decide to have her take a shower, and that's when I started really feeling like I was doing something inappropriate and sleazy. For starters, there are two contextual actions: moving the analog stick up, or down. When moved up, Madison takes her shirt off. When moved down, she takes her underwear off. Then she immediately walks into the shower and turns it on. There are gratuitous close-up shots of her breasts and ass, and multiple camera angles from which the show continues. It goes on for what seems like forever, and once she's finished, I had to manually put her clothes back on again. I wasn't sure at first the reason I felt so uneasy about this. After all, I've seen hundreds of movies with this exact same scene before, and I'm not sexually repressed, so what's the big deal?

The big deal is agency. I had to take her clothes off and get her to take a shower, and I sat there and watched while she did it. It felt like a huge, huge invasion of privacy, and also manipulative. It was exactly like all those movie scenes I've watched, but with one big difference. I actually felt like I was preying on her in some strange way; like she just didn't know I was watching her every move. This brings up a very unique situation for me, and it's one that I wish more games were capable of handling. Heavy Rain doesn't feel anything like the countless fantasy or role-playing games I've played in the past. All those games had stories and dramatic character arcs, but none of them ever made me feel like I was watching and interacting with someone else's life. Heavy Rain does that for each character, and with Madison Paige, for the first time in a game I felt like I shouldn't be doing what I was doing. If she knew about it, she would be horrified.

There were other reasons for my unsettled nerves, though. As I said, it was almost 3am, and all the lights in her apartment were either off or very dim, and her waking up the way she did made me apprehensive about....something. Also, I tried putting some clothes on her besides basically a bra and panties, but I couldn't. I was forced to have her walk around a disturbing environment in what I deemed a vulnerable state, and I wasn't happy about it. Now, bear in mind that the opening scene of the game entails a man waking up and taking a shower (if you so choose, which I did). I felt none of the emotions I was experiencing with Madison, and for good reason. The character in the beginning of the game seems at peace with himself and his surroundings. Everything is nice and bright, almost idyllic. There's a beautiful back yard that's accessed by an awesome balcony, and I was able to have him lazily walk out and stare out at the nice, sunny morning. When I had him take a shower, there was nudity, but it was relatively quick and it just felt natural. He's in the shower, so he's naked. No big deal. But as I watched Madison take hers, the shots lingered, and I also had much more agency with her character. Couple that with the uneasiness of the surroundings and it's easy to understand the difference between the two scenes.

All these feelings came about before Madison started seeing things. As I sat her down to flip through a magazine, she suddenly looked up and became startled. Did something move? I wasn't sure, but I decided to have her walk around a bit. Once she made it to the other side of the apartment, I turned her around, and the fridge was open. I had literally just closed it, so I immediately wanted to get the hell out of the apartment. I tried to put some clothes on her but there was no option for it. Again, the vulnerable state of a woman by herself when something seems off started freaking me out. There wasn't anything really happening at this point; it was all just in my head. And to those who would say that I shouldn't be feeling like that because a woman can take care of herself, give me a fucking break. There are factual differences between men and women, and there are times when a woman is more vulnerable than a man would be in the same situation. This was one of those situations, and I didn't like it. Anyways, like I said, I've never played a game that presented me with something like this before, and I was really conflicted over how the overall scene made me feel. It was almost like I was the person stalking her, while at the same time acting on her behalf. I'm pretty sure the confusion was on purpose, and it definitely set the desired mood for what was to follow.

And this, my friends, is the nearly untapped potential of gaming. Agency can elicit all types of emotions, but up 'til now it's only given me a very narrow spectrum of samples to choose from. Heavy Rain looks to be significantly broadening the scope of what a game can be, despite some shortcomings I've noticed with certain characters. The voice-acting is really hit-or-miss, depending on who's talking. But when it's good, it's damn good. My hope, though, is for it to continue poking around inside my head, looking for different responses than I'm used to giving to a video game. And even if it can't sustain itself for the duration, moments like tonight will stay with me for a long, long time.

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