I hate Battlefield 3. I hate Battlefield 3 so very, very much. So many people love it, including many of my best friends. I hate it with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. Why? Oh, where to begin...
Well, let's start with the single player, as it will take the least amount of time to talk about. Why did they even give this game a single player, much less and entire disc of single player? The story, from the few minutes I played of it, revolves around a terror plot that the Secret Service agent from "24" and some other guy are trying to get out of the player character through boring flashback sequences. It's like Call of Duty: Black Ops, but with even less heart. Everything looks so generic that I just couldn't find a way to get into any aspect of it. Hey, that building's blowing up. Isn't that pretty? Look at those particle effects. Boring.
Now for the reason this game exists; multiplayer. There is nothing less satisfying that spawn-killing; for the killed and, I would hope, the killer. Say what you want about Call of Duty multiplayer, but I have yet to be spawn-killed once in the four games or so since the first Modern Warfare. Not once. On the other hand, I have been spawn-killed at least once in every match I've played in Battlefield 3. Camping is also the order of the day, with snipers lurking in every dark corner of the map. I am in the small camp of people who legitimately believes that camping is a legitimate strategy. However, it makes the game really annoying. I don't camp because running around stabbing guys or blasting them with shotguns is significantly more fun. I just enjoy the twitch shooter, or at least the shooter that allows for both camping and speedy fun, over fifteen minutes of bullets flying into my skull from across the map.
Speaking of maps, do you like the same two maps over and over again? Well then you're in luck! Every map in the game seems to be smaller portions of the same two maps; a European city and an industrial area filled with crates. That's all you get. Every other game in existence in this first-person shooter style has at least three maps, usually significantly more. How lazy can they be? And don't even get me started on the menus in this game, which may feature the worst game lobby ever made. When a match is over, you can't mess around with your loadouts, I don't think you can invite friends to your match and you most certainly cannot quit from the match without quitting out of the entire game and going to the dashboard. I don't understand how this could be screwed up. I just don't understand the thinking.
At the end of the day, I hate this game because of what it stands for and how it was sold. I'm so tired of these modern military shooters that I'm actually pining for a good ol' fashioned WWII shooter. At least you got some interesting history out of those. These clandestine modern games set in fake conflicts that tend to simultaneously wish the Cold War was still on while figuring out a way to demonize as many different kinds of brown people as possible. Battlefield's the worst because they try to make it seem realistic, which brings us to the way it was sold. How many times did you hear the phrase Frostbite 2 associated with this game? Hell, they actually have Frostbite 2 alongside DICE, the developer, in the opening credits. Does anyone give a rat's ass about an engine? Video games are an interesting crossroads between art, entertainment and technology, but Battlefield 3 almost seems like a really long tech demo at this point. Everything was so poorly thought-out and executed in the game that I get the feeling that all of the work went into their stupid engine. And you know what? It looks ok. The particle effects are pretty. I like the lighting. However, why does it matter that a game has the capacity to be good-looking when the level design is so boring and generic? Frostbite 2 might make some great games, but this isn't one of them.
So why do I hate this game? It's soulless, boring and against everything I stand for as a gamer. It doesn't feel polished. It's not fun. There's just nothing to enjoy. Single player is stupid and multiplayer is one of the most annoying experiences I've ever had the misfortune of getting myself into. Then there's the little things, like the stupid glitch effect they use when transitioning between menus, or the stupid menus themselves. If you're going to play the game, play it online with a friend because it's really the only way it's fun. Otherwise, please ditch this game and support innovation rather than an inaccurate and boring war sim.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Limbo
The more I write these reviews, the more I am beginning to realize that it is damn near impossible to complete a game in a week. If it was all I did, maybe. However as it stands, I have a life outside of video games that seems to prevent me from totally finishing most of the games I play, especially when there are holidays and families around. I can still pick apart the flaws of a game and get a good sense about of its merits, but I am missing out on chunks of the game and I will try my very bestest to play more in the future. Are we good? Good.
I played Limbo this week, a haunting and beautiful 2D side-scrolling platformer from Danish developer Playdead. Platformers, if you don't know, are classically console games in which the player jumps around on platforms to reach some kind of goal. Platformers were all the rage in the 8 and 16-bit eras of gaming with Mario and Sonic games leading the pack, but they fell out of favor with the advent of 3D gaming. However, with the recent indie-gaming boom, 2D platformers with 3D backgrounds and setpieces have made a major comeback, and Limbo is easily the best I've played so far.
In the game, you play a boy who is traversing a bleak landscape to do...something. I've heard that the boy is looking for his sister; a development that is undoubtedly revealed past the choke-point on which I've been stuck for too long to say. Any kind of traditional narrative doesn't really matter in this game, though. Like minimalist films such as Meshes of the Afternoon, the story itself isn't the point of game. The game attempts to establish a mood and an emotion in the player. For all intents and purposes, this game is simply about a young boy trying to avoid death in a perilous environment.
The gameplay is as simple as can be. I bought it on Steam for my PC, so the controls for me were the left and right arrow keys to move side to side, the up arrow for jump and the control key to grab things. Those are really the only mechanics. However, much like the many uses for the portal gun in Portal, this simple gameplay leads to astonishing variety when combined with a physics engine. Pulling and jumping can only get you so far, unless things fall, slide and generally act in a way that is somewhat close to the real world. For instance, chains swing like they would in real life, so if a beam that you can pull is attached to a chain, you can pull it and use it to swing to a ledge or something. This opens up so many avenues through which developers can create fascinating puzzles.
Also, I can't move on without mentioning the beautiful art style of the game. Everything is in black and white, with varying shades of grey and strange depths of field creating a very dynamic environment. The visuals go so far in creating a sense of mystery and loneliness.
It's just so creepy and beautiful it's hard to explain. I don't know how Playdead made this game, but it is simply glorious.
One of the interesting and truly genius things that Playdead did in Limbo is make the player character a child. Ask anyone, especially Steven Spielberg, and they will tell you that children in danger will instantly cause the audience to pay attention. This is not a children's game. This is a very dark and very violent game. I don't know how many times I watched that boy impale himself on a spike because of a bad jump or fall off of a cliff. The interesting thing is that every time it happened, it hurt a little. I cared more for this character, who never speaks and has no real motivation, than most of the speaking characters I've encountered in dozens of other games. It's because I'm playing as a child, as well as the fact that the violence is so brutal and pervasive and the environment is so engrossing. This game hurts to play, but in a good way. It is a very simple story of survival, but also a very powerful one.
One of the most noticeable things in the game is the boy's eyes. They glow brightly and seem to always be the whitest thing on the screen. At first I thought the game developers threw that in there to make the game even creepier, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that they're a symbol for life. Whenever the boy dies, you can see that light drain from his eyes. It's heartbreaking. There are other people in the game, but they don't have the bright eyes that the boy does. He's a pure, wide-eyed child in a very dark and scary world; something everyone can connect to.
This is one of the best games I've ever played. It's simply stunning. I love the minimalism of the whole affair, from the visuals to controls, and how they evoke this feeling of dread, mystery and even excitement. There are some small problems, such as some inaccurate jump mechanics and the boy's tendency to hang onto boxes even when it causes him to drown or electrocute himself. None of that matters though and I suggest everyone buy it. It's beautiful, it's affecting and it may be one of the best games of all time.
I played Limbo this week, a haunting and beautiful 2D side-scrolling platformer from Danish developer Playdead. Platformers, if you don't know, are classically console games in which the player jumps around on platforms to reach some kind of goal. Platformers were all the rage in the 8 and 16-bit eras of gaming with Mario and Sonic games leading the pack, but they fell out of favor with the advent of 3D gaming. However, with the recent indie-gaming boom, 2D platformers with 3D backgrounds and setpieces have made a major comeback, and Limbo is easily the best I've played so far.
In the game, you play a boy who is traversing a bleak landscape to do...something. I've heard that the boy is looking for his sister; a development that is undoubtedly revealed past the choke-point on which I've been stuck for too long to say. Any kind of traditional narrative doesn't really matter in this game, though. Like minimalist films such as Meshes of the Afternoon, the story itself isn't the point of game. The game attempts to establish a mood and an emotion in the player. For all intents and purposes, this game is simply about a young boy trying to avoid death in a perilous environment.
The gameplay is as simple as can be. I bought it on Steam for my PC, so the controls for me were the left and right arrow keys to move side to side, the up arrow for jump and the control key to grab things. Those are really the only mechanics. However, much like the many uses for the portal gun in Portal, this simple gameplay leads to astonishing variety when combined with a physics engine. Pulling and jumping can only get you so far, unless things fall, slide and generally act in a way that is somewhat close to the real world. For instance, chains swing like they would in real life, so if a beam that you can pull is attached to a chain, you can pull it and use it to swing to a ledge or something. This opens up so many avenues through which developers can create fascinating puzzles.
Also, I can't move on without mentioning the beautiful art style of the game. Everything is in black and white, with varying shades of grey and strange depths of field creating a very dynamic environment. The visuals go so far in creating a sense of mystery and loneliness.
It's just so creepy and beautiful it's hard to explain. I don't know how Playdead made this game, but it is simply glorious.
One of the interesting and truly genius things that Playdead did in Limbo is make the player character a child. Ask anyone, especially Steven Spielberg, and they will tell you that children in danger will instantly cause the audience to pay attention. This is not a children's game. This is a very dark and very violent game. I don't know how many times I watched that boy impale himself on a spike because of a bad jump or fall off of a cliff. The interesting thing is that every time it happened, it hurt a little. I cared more for this character, who never speaks and has no real motivation, than most of the speaking characters I've encountered in dozens of other games. It's because I'm playing as a child, as well as the fact that the violence is so brutal and pervasive and the environment is so engrossing. This game hurts to play, but in a good way. It is a very simple story of survival, but also a very powerful one.
One of the most noticeable things in the game is the boy's eyes. They glow brightly and seem to always be the whitest thing on the screen. At first I thought the game developers threw that in there to make the game even creepier, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that they're a symbol for life. Whenever the boy dies, you can see that light drain from his eyes. It's heartbreaking. There are other people in the game, but they don't have the bright eyes that the boy does. He's a pure, wide-eyed child in a very dark and scary world; something everyone can connect to.
This is one of the best games I've ever played. It's simply stunning. I love the minimalism of the whole affair, from the visuals to controls, and how they evoke this feeling of dread, mystery and even excitement. There are some small problems, such as some inaccurate jump mechanics and the boy's tendency to hang onto boxes even when it causes him to drown or electrocute himself. None of that matters though and I suggest everyone buy it. It's beautiful, it's affecting and it may be one of the best games of all time.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Pure Laziness
I've been a lazy son of a bitch this week. I've been playing a bunch of games on and off for the expressed purpose of-gasp-having fun. I've been going back to Shogun, which is interesting to me, and Skyrim mostly. I bought Blue Dragon because it was exceedingly cheap and I want to do a JRPG at some point, but I am really not in the mood right now. I also bought Amnesia: The Dark Descent because Steam is going crazy with sales and my girlfriend wants to watch me play it, but I may kill myself if I ever have to open another goddamn drawer. There are a few others I could play, but now I don't have enough time. Really, what this boils down to is that motivating yourself during winter break is tough and making yourself play video games you aren't necessarily that into does not make that job easier. Still, it's what I've chosen to do, so I should have followed through. Next week, you will almost certainly have a new review. Hell, you might have one tomorrow, we'll see. I hope it suffices to say that I will be back soon and we will just call this my winter break from blogging, even though I'm writing this message now. This was all over the place, but there you go. Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, a most splendid Kwanzaa, festive Festivus and whatever other celebrations there are out there.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Alpha Protocol
Alpha Protocol, developed by Obsidian and published by Sega, is a game I'd heard absolutely nothing about. I don't know how it escaped my radar, but the game was a complete non-entity for me. I borrowed it from a friend of mine a month or two ago for the sole purpose of reviewing it, and it has been sitting on the cluttered table which holds my TV ever since. Between borrowing games I actually cared about from other friends and buying games I actually cared about from various retailers, there has been simply no room for Alpha Protocol on my docket. Then, I woke up on Tuesday morning and realized I didn't have a game to review. So Alpha Protocol it was.
At first, I was excited. Again, I had heard nothing about this game and the prospect of finding a hidden gem is always intriguing. However, from the second the title screen came up, I knew this was going to be bad. You cannot get more generic than the title on a three-color screen with a glitched-out theme song playing that sounds like it wants to be a Street Fighter song when it grows up. After I got past that screen and started playing, I realize that Alpha Protocol can best be described as Mass Effect without the squad, the sci-fi setting or the polish. It's a third-person action title with some RPG elements and dialogue options (but now in quick time!) Mass Effect in the real world isn't a bad idea, but everything in this game is executed so poorly.
The story is that your character works for the government and then the government betrays said player character because a weapons manufacturer said so. There may be more to it, but I stopped caring the second I realized that this game was going to be told in flashback. Telling an entire story in flashback is annoying, especially when it is so horribly written. Oh and video game writing does not get much worse than this. Besides the plodding plotting and an espionage story that feels more Michael Bay than Ian Fleming, the dialogue sounds like it was scraped off of the bottom of a giant vat of cliches that went bad in the 60's. If you try to be a stand-up guy, you sound wooden. If you try to sound casual, you sound like a smarmy prick. To be honest, I never went aggressive because...why? They say that being too nice might be a bad thing at the beginning of the game, but I never saw any proof. Maybe at the end of the game it becomes a factor or it affects what missions you you can play, but that isn't a punishment really. It's just silly.
Then, once you get past the ludicrous story, you've got a nice smorgasbord of technical problems to gnaw away on. In the interest of setting the mood, I can tell you that I was in the middle of a mission to do...something. I can't remember what, but it doesn't matter because the storyline and all of the situations are so generic that it seems like they just replaced nouns in other spy fiction to create their story, like the developers just filled-in a book of Mad Libs : U.N.C.L.E. Edition. To get back on topic, I was trying to get out of a room. This sounds simple, but there just didn't seem to be any way out. The room was a slightly more complicated box with seemingly two exits, but one was blocked by a gate I couldn't open and the other was just a big black spot on a wall in an area of no consequence that just looked like a door. After more time than I would care to tell, I realize a big black area that looked like a simple alcove was the way out, but I fell through the floor into a space I couldn't escape before I could finish the mission. I was pissed. This is just the most glaring in a series of technical problems. For one, the core system of the game, the upgrades, seem kind of pointless. You can put points into stealth, but sneaking is so hit or miss that you can crouch in plain sight and have NPC's miss you one minute and then have them spot you from across the map the next. The gun upgrades don't seem to do much, both in the character upgrades and the upgrades on the guns themselves. I've been told that martial arts are the most fun because you can simply run up and kick-punch the world into submission. Speaking of martial arts, the character animations are just too damn silly for a game like this. Hand-to-hand combat looks stupid, and whenever the player character is in sneak mode it looks like he is doing a weird version of the running man. Also, I don't like that game gives the player conversation choices, but times them and forces an answer. It's not a bad idea necessarily, but its handled poorly and showed me just how much I rely on conversations as natural bathroom breaks in Bioware games. Mix in poor graphics for this stage in a console's lifespan, very hit or miss shooting (no pun intended) and a general lack of polish and you've got a nearly broken game.
I realize I'm being hard on this game, but playing it is so infuriating because it could have been better. Obsidian promises choice, and in a lot of superficial ways it delivers. You can choose how you talk to people, who you let live, what guns you want to shoot, what to put on those guns, etc, but in the end it just doesn't matter. My friend played with pistols, fully upgraded them and said his character was never good with them. If you give someone a path like that, you need to let them succeed in that path. If you're pitching choice as the core aspect of your game and you allow players to choose to use pistols, then there should be doves flying around the screen from how much the game resembles a John Woo film. If they want to sneak around and be a debonair boss, like I did, then they should be able to, like I couldn't. Choice is a brilliant thing to have in games, but not delivering on the promise of choice is like shooting yourself in the foot. Yes, the shooting isn't totally broken in the game, yes the story is kind of fun in an extremely stupid way and you can certainly choose a lot of things, but when none of those choices really have any bearing on the game that has a myriad of technical problems, a forgettable story and atrocious voice acting (I forgot to mention that everyone in this game sounds like they were voiced by someone with a lobotomy), I have every right to be a little harsh.
At first, I was excited. Again, I had heard nothing about this game and the prospect of finding a hidden gem is always intriguing. However, from the second the title screen came up, I knew this was going to be bad. You cannot get more generic than the title on a three-color screen with a glitched-out theme song playing that sounds like it wants to be a Street Fighter song when it grows up. After I got past that screen and started playing, I realize that Alpha Protocol can best be described as Mass Effect without the squad, the sci-fi setting or the polish. It's a third-person action title with some RPG elements and dialogue options (but now in quick time!) Mass Effect in the real world isn't a bad idea, but everything in this game is executed so poorly.
The story is that your character works for the government and then the government betrays said player character because a weapons manufacturer said so. There may be more to it, but I stopped caring the second I realized that this game was going to be told in flashback. Telling an entire story in flashback is annoying, especially when it is so horribly written. Oh and video game writing does not get much worse than this. Besides the plodding plotting and an espionage story that feels more Michael Bay than Ian Fleming, the dialogue sounds like it was scraped off of the bottom of a giant vat of cliches that went bad in the 60's. If you try to be a stand-up guy, you sound wooden. If you try to sound casual, you sound like a smarmy prick. To be honest, I never went aggressive because...why? They say that being too nice might be a bad thing at the beginning of the game, but I never saw any proof. Maybe at the end of the game it becomes a factor or it affects what missions you you can play, but that isn't a punishment really. It's just silly.
Then, once you get past the ludicrous story, you've got a nice smorgasbord of technical problems to gnaw away on. In the interest of setting the mood, I can tell you that I was in the middle of a mission to do...something. I can't remember what, but it doesn't matter because the storyline and all of the situations are so generic that it seems like they just replaced nouns in other spy fiction to create their story, like the developers just filled-in a book of Mad Libs : U.N.C.L.E. Edition. To get back on topic, I was trying to get out of a room. This sounds simple, but there just didn't seem to be any way out. The room was a slightly more complicated box with seemingly two exits, but one was blocked by a gate I couldn't open and the other was just a big black spot on a wall in an area of no consequence that just looked like a door. After more time than I would care to tell, I realize a big black area that looked like a simple alcove was the way out, but I fell through the floor into a space I couldn't escape before I could finish the mission. I was pissed. This is just the most glaring in a series of technical problems. For one, the core system of the game, the upgrades, seem kind of pointless. You can put points into stealth, but sneaking is so hit or miss that you can crouch in plain sight and have NPC's miss you one minute and then have them spot you from across the map the next. The gun upgrades don't seem to do much, both in the character upgrades and the upgrades on the guns themselves. I've been told that martial arts are the most fun because you can simply run up and kick-punch the world into submission. Speaking of martial arts, the character animations are just too damn silly for a game like this. Hand-to-hand combat looks stupid, and whenever the player character is in sneak mode it looks like he is doing a weird version of the running man. Also, I don't like that game gives the player conversation choices, but times them and forces an answer. It's not a bad idea necessarily, but its handled poorly and showed me just how much I rely on conversations as natural bathroom breaks in Bioware games. Mix in poor graphics for this stage in a console's lifespan, very hit or miss shooting (no pun intended) and a general lack of polish and you've got a nearly broken game.
I realize I'm being hard on this game, but playing it is so infuriating because it could have been better. Obsidian promises choice, and in a lot of superficial ways it delivers. You can choose how you talk to people, who you let live, what guns you want to shoot, what to put on those guns, etc, but in the end it just doesn't matter. My friend played with pistols, fully upgraded them and said his character was never good with them. If you give someone a path like that, you need to let them succeed in that path. If you're pitching choice as the core aspect of your game and you allow players to choose to use pistols, then there should be doves flying around the screen from how much the game resembles a John Woo film. If they want to sneak around and be a debonair boss, like I did, then they should be able to, like I couldn't. Choice is a brilliant thing to have in games, but not delivering on the promise of choice is like shooting yourself in the foot. Yes, the shooting isn't totally broken in the game, yes the story is kind of fun in an extremely stupid way and you can certainly choose a lot of things, but when none of those choices really have any bearing on the game that has a myriad of technical problems, a forgettable story and atrocious voice acting (I forgot to mention that everyone in this game sounds like they were voiced by someone with a lobotomy), I have every right to be a little harsh.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Total War: Shogun 2
Strategy games are interesting. On one hand, they make you feel like a god. The Total War series is especially good at this, allowing you to fly above massive battles that you control, at least one side of it. You are sending thousands of young, virtual men to their deaths and you feel all-powerful. However, this feeling only lasts as long as you are winning. The second you start losing, you realize just how bad you are at strategy and why it's a good thing that those virtual men dying because you just cannot forgive something the leader of the Yamanouchi clan said are not real men.
Total War: Shogun 2 is something of a homecoming for the series. It started in feudal Japan and is now back with pretty graphics. I'm going to come out and say that I am truly terrible at this game. I am about as good with strategy as Ambrose Burnside; repeatedly sending my troops forward to meet the enemy head-on. That being said, it's still really fun. The battles are so dynamic and engaging that one can't help but be entertained by the massive slaughter.
The game is set in the mid-1500's, which is really when any game about samurai should be set. There are a few clans to pick from who all specialize in something. For instance, the Hojo specialize in buildings and firebombing people, the Oda specialize in using peasants and the Tokugawa are master diplomats. The goal of the campaign is to take over Japan and...that's it. Really you just need to capture twenty-five provinces, with some specific provinces that are assigned to each clan that must be taken, and you're done. Of course, this is more difficult than it sounds. This is only the campaign however. There are also historical battles like the one at Sekigahara or Kawanakajima (the fourth and best Kawanakajima, to be specific) and multiplayer. I haven't gotten into the multiplayer yet as I expect it to be like playing Starcraft online; I will instantly have my ass handed to me.
The game play in the campaign is an interesting mixture of a real-time strategy game and a turn-based strategy game. The turn-based stuff is all empire building, with the player deciding which provinces to attack, building up their provinces and castles, building units for their armies, setting tax rates, going into diplomatic discussions and a million other little things that one would expect from a game such as this. They even allow the player to marry off members of their daimyo's family (the daimyo is the leader.) Then, when two armies clash the real-time strategy takes over. The battles were really hard for me to get the feel for, but I also just got my computer a few weeks ago. It may be totally intuitive for everyone whose carpal tunnel-ridden right hand was born for a mouse. Still, even with my inexperience, I was lining up my armies and marching them toward victory in no time. Of course, by victory I mean I seized the shogunate and immediately quit the second everyone clan in the game turned on me. I'd won, in my mind.
I don't really have a lot to say here because there really isn't a lot to say. If you dig the historical period that this game is emulating, you're going to love this game. If you are really into the strategic elements of games or warfare, give this one a shot. It's only thirty dollars on Steam, which is why I have it. That being said, there's no real story, the game play is simultaneously deep and simple and I have yet to go online, though I think I will do that and write about that separately in the next few days. All in all, it's a fun game and that's it. There's no meat for my wormy, psuedo-intellectual brain to feast on. If you like chess, the Japanese or the righteous high of sending men to their deaths, definitely give this game a shot.
Total War: Shogun 2 is something of a homecoming for the series. It started in feudal Japan and is now back with pretty graphics. I'm going to come out and say that I am truly terrible at this game. I am about as good with strategy as Ambrose Burnside; repeatedly sending my troops forward to meet the enemy head-on. That being said, it's still really fun. The battles are so dynamic and engaging that one can't help but be entertained by the massive slaughter.
The game is set in the mid-1500's, which is really when any game about samurai should be set. There are a few clans to pick from who all specialize in something. For instance, the Hojo specialize in buildings and firebombing people, the Oda specialize in using peasants and the Tokugawa are master diplomats. The goal of the campaign is to take over Japan and...that's it. Really you just need to capture twenty-five provinces, with some specific provinces that are assigned to each clan that must be taken, and you're done. Of course, this is more difficult than it sounds. This is only the campaign however. There are also historical battles like the one at Sekigahara or Kawanakajima (the fourth and best Kawanakajima, to be specific) and multiplayer. I haven't gotten into the multiplayer yet as I expect it to be like playing Starcraft online; I will instantly have my ass handed to me.
The game play in the campaign is an interesting mixture of a real-time strategy game and a turn-based strategy game. The turn-based stuff is all empire building, with the player deciding which provinces to attack, building up their provinces and castles, building units for their armies, setting tax rates, going into diplomatic discussions and a million other little things that one would expect from a game such as this. They even allow the player to marry off members of their daimyo's family (the daimyo is the leader.) Then, when two armies clash the real-time strategy takes over. The battles were really hard for me to get the feel for, but I also just got my computer a few weeks ago. It may be totally intuitive for everyone whose carpal tunnel-ridden right hand was born for a mouse. Still, even with my inexperience, I was lining up my armies and marching them toward victory in no time. Of course, by victory I mean I seized the shogunate and immediately quit the second everyone clan in the game turned on me. I'd won, in my mind.
I don't really have a lot to say here because there really isn't a lot to say. If you dig the historical period that this game is emulating, you're going to love this game. If you are really into the strategic elements of games or warfare, give this one a shot. It's only thirty dollars on Steam, which is why I have it. That being said, there's no real story, the game play is simultaneously deep and simple and I have yet to go online, though I think I will do that and write about that separately in the next few days. All in all, it's a fun game and that's it. There's no meat for my wormy, psuedo-intellectual brain to feast on. If you like chess, the Japanese or the righteous high of sending men to their deaths, definitely give this game a shot.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Organic Vs. Inorganic
Maybe some spoilers.
Gears of War 3 can be described as, at best, ham-fisted. It's a fun enough game, but it really falls apart when it tries to be emotional (ie the hilarious ending) or say something other than shooting aliens is good (ie the hilarious energy crisis message.) No one is playing Gears of War to be told that we are being destroyed by the very fuel we use to survive. Gasp. However, there is something in this game I found interesting, which I'm sure they never intended to be in the game. All of the enemies in the game are organic. Of course, the humans in the game are technically organic in that they probably have organs, but the Locust and especially the Lambent are all inextricably linked to living tissue and a world outside of technology. The Gears of War franchise seems to be making a statement against organic life, in some ways, or at least makes it a point to cast it in a bad light. Sound a bit far-fetched? Don't worry, baby, I brought proof.
Let's start with the Locust, as the are the main villains of the series no matter what the last game says. The Locust, at first glance, are just like the humans. Well, ok, they look very different, but they use guns, are bipedal and even speak English so in the grand scheme of things they are very much like us. Yes, the ordinary Locust Grunt is very humanoid, but what about their heavy weapons. Where as humans use ships and artillery and all manner of technological achievements, the Locust fly around on Reavers and use giant plant-like creatures as AA guns. This is even more obvious as the series progresses, with the introduction of Blood Mounts and Gas Barges, both of which utilize organic life in their operation. It could be argued that The Locust then are subjugating these life forms, making them the real threat to organisms everywhere. However, it never seems that these creatures aren't choosing to help their overlords. The Reavers alone could easily turn on their masters and free themselves. Why not? They're huge, they fly and they're deadly. Nothing is stopping them except, perhaps, loyalty.
Even if you don't buy the Locust being a symbol of organic life, the Lambent have to be seen that way. Everything about them except for their guns is a twisting, writhing mass of tissue. The Stalks from which they are born are organic and die, the monsters themselves are these weird mutating pinnacles of evolution and even the Emulsion from which they are born is alive. Epic decided that the Emulsion, a fuel source, was actually a parasitic organism which was turning Locust and humans into Lambent. It seems to me that this is an unnecessary comment on the energy crisis, but it also would make Emulsion the single largest organism, or perhaps more appropriately the colony of organisms, of which humanity could know. The player alone has seen vast pools of Emulsion throughout the series. Emulsion and the Lambent kind of personify the idea of organic life. It is evolution sped up and given form. Of course it's parasitic and destructive, but organic life can be that way sometimes. It's just how the cards fall. The fact that everything about the Lambent expect the guns are organic makes it kind of difficult to ignore.
None of this would matter, however, if the humans in the game were...well...particularly human. If they showed more signs of being alive, it could be easy to see this as just a battle between two life forms. It almost seems as if Epic has tried their hardest to make them look engineered, though. Most of what you see of them are their suits because of the weirdly round back and the third-person camera that the game employs. Even when you can see their body, the proportions are so wrong that it's hard to identify with them as human. No human save the man who's arms exploded has ever looked like the characters in this game. Add on a robotic disposition and dialogue and you've got the makings of an automaton, even if they are technically human. It doesn't help that they are always employing tech. The Hammer of Dawn, the ships they live on, the lifeless cities they build; none of it seems very human. In the third game, you even climb into mechs despite the fact that The Matrix Revolutions proved that introducing mech battles into the third installment of a series is a bad idea. Of course, I've only focused on the Gears, I've neglected to talk about the Stranded. Stranded are civilians in the game who live in little communes. They have no technology, making them the most organic humans in the game, and they are total dickwads. They're always mean to the Gears for no reason; they're unhelpful, ungrateful and generally shifty. They are the worst characters in the game, and yet they're the only humans without a gun and who look like humans. It's a weird standard. The protagonists are murderous robots who barely count as people and the enemy are the almost too organic life forms who actually use their tissues as weapons.
Gears is not the first game to employ this strange motif, of course. The Necromorphs in Dead Space are like this as are the Zerg in Starcraft and zombies in the multitudes of zombie games. It's also appeared in movies like The Thing and most notably Starship Troopers. I don't know exactly why this is, but I'm not sure I like it. I get that it's easy to scale up enemies when you can make them small monsters or big monsters without having to worry about the difficulties of fighting advanced technology or something, but it's still a little Skynet-y to have a game tell me that living things are bad. Not all games are this way, obviously, and Mass Effect is actively opposed to this idea by making an inorganic life form the enemy. It's just a trend I'm noticing that seems odd.
As a side note, I love video games, but I will never be a traitor to organic life. Just wanted to make sure everyone knows that. Sorry Gears.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)