In the spirit of protest (in the loosest sense of the term), I decided to write about some games that I found this year, or found interesting, and not about the latest and greatest. Each game represents a unique point in time for me. Since it is 2010, I will mention 10 games.
Trauma from Krystian Majewski
So, as I have slowly made my way through mapping out the indie scene in video games, I came upon Trauma. Later, I somehow ended up doing a Podcast with Krystian about Monster Hunter but that is a story for later.
Honestly, I was sort of amazed at what the game was trying to accomplish and I was shocked that I felt like I did the first time I played Myst when looking at preview videos for it. Who was this woman, why was she there, what is up with all these dreams, are they dreams? All these puzzles. Unlike Myst, this game really reminds me of the thing I do like about new games based on older models, they have a chance to make them better. Sadly, not many do, but this game has really impressed me. I am generally uneasy while playing it. This is a really great feeling!
Along with Krystian, who is making the above game, and SocialDissonance who makes videos for this game, Monster Hunter Tri has made a really stupendous impact on how I view video games and what they mean to me. I initially started playing this game as a way to distract myself from a very personal situation my fiance and I were going through at the time. Her father was dying. At the time, a friend and I had started playing this game. We later found SocialDissonance and a couple other players through Internet-Relay Chat and formed a really solid group that didn't fall apart until the situation I was avoiding actually occurred.
It changed my perception about games in a few subtle ways. I view games as a construction of culture. Mechanics and Narrative construction occur using the same building blocks. In this game, the 3rd (5th) Monster Hunter game, Capcom actually removed a lot of content, a lot of complex mechanics, and tried to reboot the series for world consumption instead of Japanese / Korean consumption. While it didn't necessarily accomplish its task, it did manage to make a few things clear for me about the imbalance of success of games internationally.
- In general, Japanese and American gamers have very different tastes that are very complicated and intertwined. These tastes are based on lifestyle, age appropriateness, commute traditions, and historical developments.
- While those tastes coincide, the culture of origin present in a game's mechanics (bundles of rules) does not matter as much as the culture of origin of the game's presentation (which is a type of mechanic).
- American gamers will take some games that come from Japan and place them on a pedestal insomuch that it actually restricts a game's proliferation inside American culture.
- Attempts to by-pass this typically end in frustration on all sides.
Monster Hunter Tri is, by and large, a great game. However, it is only a great game if you have friends to play it with. Monster Hunter, like other Capcom Games, reflect a general sense of "the climb," but do so brutally. While Monster Hunter Tri is a reboot and much easier than the others, it is still impossibly hard for someone who hasn't played these games before. The success of these games in Asian markets combined with the elitism of the type of gamer who traditionally likes Japanese Games because they aren't popular in America, present an impossible intersection of gaming and culture.
I should probably develop this further in a different post.
Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (not my video but it's the best I could find)
I suppose this would be considered cheating but I ended up getting myself a PSP Go for Christmas. This was one of the first games I purchased for it (the others being Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker and Tetris). I have probably played about 100 hours of this game (it boasts over 500). Unlike Monster Hunter Tri, this game is brutally hard. On the first mission, I died. On the second mission, I died. I kept dying until I managed to hobble together a suit of armor and a really defensive weapon in order to deal with the harsh world I was just in. The sense of empowerment a person feels when they finally down a really difficult wyvern in this game is powerful. I really feel like the world is just a little easier than it was each time the end music plays and the phrase, "Objective Complete!" appears on screen. The uphill climb is a general reset to 0 over the course of 3 different phases of the game (low rank, high rank, and g-rank).
The first mission of each rank reminds you that the world your character lives in is much more brutal than you thought. This is a game more about your will versus a computer's will (in the form of wyverns). I feel compelled to keep trying until I can outsmart the computer or simply outlast it.
I played through this game in a weekend and had tons of fun doing so. I then bought the original Mike Tyson's Punchout (without Mike Tyson) and was reminded why my childhood frustration with the game existed. I still can't beat Mike Tyson.
Nostalgia in this game is like some sort of crazy thrill ride. Each of these characters has grown up in a way that Nintendo kids can identify with and that most people who play the game will be able to understand. I really wish that more game reboots and remakes would manage to capture the feel of this game.
At one point, I was reading somewhere on the Internet about a bunch of games that physically did things to a person's computer or game system. The most obvious are games like Eternal Darkness for the Gamecube or Metal Gear Solid 2. Nier also ends up being like this. So, this game creates a series of txt files in a folder on your computer. It doesn't tell you it is doing this. I recommend this game for a lot of what happens in those text files. It is pretty unique.
I think most people probably know what Metroid is at this point. NES Games like Metroid are, by now, legendary. When I was researching something on the history of women in video games, I came across the instruction book to this game: here. That Samus wasn't revealed as a woman until the end of the game is something of a wonder to me. Reprints of the game, and those instruction manuals, took a gender neutral tone. The implications for this, and all arguments for and against the reasoning for it, are vast.
This game is one of the first fan-translations I had come across while it was in its infancy. How it managed to get finished is sort of a blend of SomethingAwful's Let's Play community and the people who had started doing it. The amount of crowd-sourcing and effort that went into this is nothing short of amazing. The game itself is most definitely worth a play. Hideo Kojima can, even if you don't like his games, make games that are unique.
This game is really intense. You have 30 seconds to stop a person from casting a spell to destroy the world. There is also the Princess 30. A princess with a 30-second curfew that has to do various tasks to save her Dad. I think the game really shines as an example of something that has bothered me about games.
Games do not have to be based on reality. A man could, if programmers wanted, subscribe to female stereotypes. Or, this princess could have a 30-second curfew set by her parents but still manages to go out and beat down a whole slew of enemies with her army, accomplish a task, and run back to the castle. The ramp-up of this mode really has me enjoying this game.
Earlier this year, I started work on a co-authored book chapter about overt and 'color-blind' racism in games. I met a lot of interesting folks doing interesting projects along the way. So, for this project, I had to play through a significant portion of Saints Row II, a game I wouldn't normally play because, by and large, I am not a fan of open-world games. However, this game had some pretty unique things to it:
- I could create a male or female character with a male or female voice. Transgender characters were possible.
- While making a character, increasing chest size ultimately results in the model being censored while a shirt or bra is rendered.
- The messages in this game were extremely poignant in terms of race relations.
This game really left me wondering about how the gender and ethnicity issues of gaming today will be addressed: Will same sex relations, fairness, and equality ultimately be overcome because it is cheaper to do so programmatically? I expect i'll write about this more this year.
I think most of the issues with gender equality are present in this scene. The game makers spend a lot of time establishing the generally good quality of character of Sgt. Paul Jackson. He then decides to go against an evacuation order "rescue" the only female character seen in this game. The only reward for this action is that all involved die. This scene is sadly squashed by the events in Modern Warfare 2 and all notice of it is probably out of the public eye.
The end of the year new year resolutions
I spent a lot of December trying to get into hardcore gaming and I am trying to resolve this in the new year as an end goal. I have learned more this December than I had the previous 11 months. Until now, I have only managed to get through a few games in this manner (100% complete, mastery, etc). My problem has long been that I tend to go all over the place with games. As I finish the research on my thesis, I have managed to hit a stride in games unlike anything that i've really been able to do. This excites me and I think that my comprehension of games now is more clearly formed. I will probably not post very much about my thesis until it gets closer to being finished.
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