When Gears of War came out in 2006, critics praised it as a fine video game but found the plot rather shallow. This is from a Gamespot review: “The lack of exposition feels like a missed opportunity to make the characters and the setting even more compelling.”
Playing it back then, I had the same inkling. I loved the cover mechanic and the branching paths within the level, but I felt that ultimately the game was an excuse to blow stuff up. Then I read the Tom Bissell piece on Cliff Bleszinski in the New Yorker. It’s not a perfect article. He tries to delve into a game that isn’t deep and stretch out its meaning over 5,000 or so words.
This could be a dangerous thing like a grown man jumping head first into a kiddie pool, but Bissell manages to dig through Bleszinski’s past and finds that Gears of War’s autobiographical quality makes it deeper than it appears to be.
I got an interesting text messages the other day from my cousin. Out of the blue, he asks: “How’s the online community for COD5?”
Because of what I do, I was assuming two things: A) He was thinking about buying Call of Duty: World at War and B) More importantly, community was an important factor for a game like this. It’s an interesting concept — community.
Go back 10 years ago and community wasn’t in the top 10 of factors you consider before buying a game. There would be graphics, sounds, gameplay and maybe story but community? Ha, fat chance.
Now, it’s creeped up in the top 5 and could be No. 1 as user-generated content becomes more of a factor in video games. In the future, it won’t be how good the graphics are or what the sound is like; instead, people will be wondering how intense the community support will be.
With user-generated content, the people who play have never been as important. Take a look, for example, at Guitar Hero World Tour. Here’s a game that offers custom music from its players. Certainly, it sounds like a good idea, but if you actually, go through GH Tunes, you’ll find that a lot of the stuff isn’t very good and the stuff that does get the most acclaim are either copyright violations or riffs off old 8-bit games like Mega Man. More on the jump
If you hadn’t heard, the place is going to hell in a handbasket, and it looks like things aren’t going to get better any time soon. With this conflict going on, I can’t help but think ofFar Cry 2 and how it has an uncomfortable prescience.
It takes place in a nameless African country, where two factions are brutally killing each other out of spite. One side is called the Alliance for Popular Resistance and the other is named the United Front for Liberation and Labour. Playing the game, you naturally want to see one side as good and the other as evil. But smartly, Ubisoft doesn’t paint them that way.
Working for both groups, players will see that there isn’t a good side or bad side but two muddled evils that strike at each other out of jealousy or strategy. When the Alliance for Popular Resistance has something like say medicine, the other group, the United Front for Liberation and Labour, doesn’t like it and asks you to destroy it.
If one group posses clean water, the other group wants you to destroy the pipeline that carries it. All of this grinds down an increasingly despondent civilian population. Playing the game is a worthwhile experience just for the fact that it actually points to something real and says “Hey, you should pay attention to this.”
Post-Game Thoughts is a new featurette where I discuss some ideas that couldn’t make it to my reviews. Most of this is odd marginalia that I write down while I play. Last week, I took a look at Fable 2.
I never really considered the politics behind Fable 2 until I was talking with the Casual Games Maven the other day. I was discussing bigamy in the game and how funny the dog was when she asked me: “Can you have more than one dog?”
I told her no.
“But you can have more than one wife?” she asked. I confirmed that but added that you could be a woman with multiple husbands. “Sexist” she said and that fact made me realize the quirky politics behind the game. This is an RPG where players can be unfaithful to their wives but they stay in a monogamous relationship with their dog.
Albion is also a place that allows gay marriage when the state I live in (California) has unfortunately banned it. When you dig deeper in the game, the world of Fable 2 is actually more progressive than San Francisco. There are quests that let you find a date for a gay man (You get purity points for that one.). Players get an achievement for orgies. The hero gets more purity points for lower prices at his shops so that more people can afford his goods. This is only game I know where family planning and safe sex can actually benefit you.
If you were to play Fable 2 as a conservative, you would undoubtedly be evil. The game undoubtedly leans left. As a business owner if you believe in a free market and raise prices at a stall, you’ll get corruption points. If you want to help a certain “church” reform the Las Vegas-like town of Bloodstone, you find that the organization is corrupt. If you believe in the policies of self-interest, then you may end up aging an innocent woman later in the game.
But through it all, politics doesn’t get in the way of enjoying the game. Playing off those conceptions, the more liberal achievements and quests actually make the Fable 2 funnier and fresher. It’s an attempt at politically charged humor that sort of works.
Soulja Boy’s deep and insightful analysis ofBraid has been on the Web for a while but I just saw it and found it hilarious. Apparently, all the digitial ink spilled on the game was a complete waste of time. The real reason for Braid? It’s a great game to play when you’re high.
But when you think about it, there are some pretty trippy moments in the game. *Warning video does contain some profane words that can be found toward the end of Harry Potter Book 7*
At Gamester, we’re trying to do something different and mix it up a bit. So I’m writing an essay on Braid. I’ll be analyzing plot, character, gameplay, etc. and tell you what it all means. This post contains spoilers so if you haven’t finished the game, you probably shouldn’t check this out. Read at your own risk.
When I finished Braid the other night, I couldn’t help but think of Amy Bender’s The Rememberer. The short story reads almost as a companion piece to the ins and outs of Jonathan Blow’s exquisite puzzle platformer.
If the Princess were to write a response to Braid, then this could justifiably be the message she writes to Tim. In the story, the narrator Annie has a problem: Her boyfriend is devolving. He has turned from a human into an ape and now he has become a sea turtle. Soon, he’ll become a salamander and then a one-cell organism.
It’s a cryptic story, but that’s par for the course for Bender, an author who writes magical realism. The Rememberer uses the idea of reverse evolution as a metaphor for Annie’s relationship with her boyfriend, Ben. His body turning into different animals is a way of explaining a painful experience of two people quickly going their separate ways. It’s showing distance using time (and evolution) on a grand scale.
In a similar way, Braid is a magical realist game. At its heart, both center on break ups though Tim’s separation is more severe. But in the case of Blow, he uses the power of reversing time as a metaphor for remembering.
We now take a break from the Spore Creature Creator coverage to bring you Grand Theft Auto coverage.
Cracked posted an article by Robert Brockway of I Fight Robots this morning on the five reasons GTA IV is terrible despite being great. His overall point is that Rockstar spent so much time and money making a brilliant immersive environment that they forgot to include great gameplay, citing things like the collision detection and the repetitive missions.
It’s insightful and funny, so if you can’t put your finger on why you can’t stand GTA even though you’re pretty sure you love it, give it a read.
At Gamester, we’re trying to do something different and mix it up a bit. So we’re writing up a series of essays critiquing the story of Grand Theft Auto IV. We’ll be analyzing plot, character, gameplay, etc. and tell you what it all means. This post contains spoilers so if you haven’t finished the game, you probably shouldn’t check this out. Read at your own risk.
4. Climax and Denouement (Explaining GTA IV’s ending)
The worst thing to be in Liberty City is a hypocrite. In a world, where gangsters, crooks and drug dealers are commonplace and accepted, that says a lot. Society, there, knows that bad things happen on the streets.
But it seems as if Rockstar reserves a special place in its hell for those who don’t abide by their own principles. It’s where a lot of Rockstar’s satire is based. It skewers officials and seeming hypocrisies in government, religion and finance.
It’s what justifies the killing of Francis McReary, and it’s also one of the factors facing Niko Bellic during the climax of the Grand Theft Auto IV – the confrontation with Darko Brevic.
This is the man who instigates the whole adventure. He is what brings Bellic to America. (Our Eastern European thinks the one who betrayed him resides in Liberty City). Brevic is the man Bellic blames for making him a monster.
And through his contacts with the Gambetti crime family and the U.L. Paper Company, he finally gets the man he wants. With Roman, his cousin, beside him, Bellic confronts Dark and the player is faced with the biggest decision of Bellic’s life.
At Gamester, we’re trying to do something different and mix it up a bit. So we’re writing up a series of essays critiquing the story of Grand Theft Auto IV. We’ll be analyzing plot, character, gameplay, etc. and tell you what it all means. This post contains spoilers so if you haven’t finished the game, you probably shouldn’t check this out. Read at your own risk.
3. Big Decisions (Justifying Niko Bellic’s choices in the game)
When it comes to decisions, there are big ones and small ones in Liberty City. A small decision is something like drinking and driving. Niko Bellic can get drunk at the bar and wreck his car on the way home or he can simply avoid all that and hail a cab.
Rockstar even makes doing the right thing easier because the developer gives Niko a cellphone to call a ride. Still, with all that convenience, Bellic has the freedom to do the wrong thing, and he can suffer the consequences.
On the other hand, big decisions in Liberty City are few and far between. They’re not new to the series, but the execution is done in a more meaningful way. As Bellic goes on certain missions, he’ll be able to choose the fates of different characters. His actions don’t have a profound effect gameplay-wise, but they do set up internal conflicts within the protagonist and player.
With each big decision, Bellic’s principles are tested and players can either see growth in his character or a willingness to stay trapped in a world of violence.
At Gamester, we’re trying to do something different and mix it up a bit. So we’re writing up a series of essays critiquing the story of Grand Theft Auto IV. We’ll be analyzing plot, character, gameplay, etc. and tell you what it all means. This post contains spoilers so if you haven’t finished the game, you probably shouldn’t check this out. Read at your own risk.
2. Family Matters (Why does Niko Bellic like the McRearies so much?)
Revenge is the weight that’s heaved on Niko Bellic at an early age. It’s what fuels his criminal past. It’s what makes America no different for him than Eastern Europe. It makes him do some despicable things.
The worst act Bellic takes part in is the murder of Aiden O’Malley, a convict that he and Packie McReary free in order to kill him. It’s not the death that bothered me. It’s the way it came about. Imagine yourself as O’Malley and being freed seems almost miraculous. You’re obviously grateful to your benefactors and you start asking about who they are.
The saddest part is his hopefulness. He’s a happy man on the most unfortunate day of his life. He’s walking to his death smiling. The whole situation reminded me of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Pierce. (It was also a great “Twilight Zone” episode.)
