Playing War

Children Playing War - Marc Awoday

I finally got around to play Modern Warfare 2 last week, about an eternity later than everyone else on the planet, and I can now make an informed critique about it. I didn’t touch the multiplayer for two reasons; the first is that I rarely play online games on Xbox or any other consoles for that matter (blame the kids) and the second is my fear of catching on of those crazy bug/glitch/hack that are spreading around like a bad flu.

The single player campaign took me a few hours to complete, one or two of those hours due to my bad habit of dying, and I can resume the plot with one word: ridiculous. Of course, was I to expect some Shakespearian storytelling and deep meaningful talk about the nature of war and humankind? No. But I wasn’t expecting snowmobiles and boat chases either.

Right now I must be beating a record by spending two paragraphs not talking about the now infamous “No Russians” mission. I will fulfil my duty as a blogger and give my opinion about it. Actually, let me resume my opinion first with one more single word: Bullshit.

Apart from the ridiculous setting-up to the mission where you go from being a soldier shooting rebels in Afghanistan to an undercover agent who is strangely the new best friend of a Russian terrorist (and you go from A to B in a day, can you smell the trap), what really kills me about that mission is the amazingly awkward tonal shift between it and the previous and following missions.

Seriously, five minutes before that mission you are jumping ravines on a snowmobile, something straight out of a James Bond movie, and five minutes after said mission you are gunning your way through small Brazilian streets and rooftops. And stuck in the middle of those two scenes that could come from a Michael Bay movie you are asked to “sacrifice a part of your soul” to arrest a crazy Russian (news flash, the cold war’s long over) terrorist.

The scene by itself, and with a good story around it, could have been a very poignant moment of interactivity where you are tasked to do something you would normally never do. Something that goes directly against the notion of the war-game FPS where you most avoid civilian casualties at all cost, something that goes against your very cognitive response. You could have dropped the controller afterward and ask yourself “What can bring human beings to do such a thing in the real life?” But no, it didn’t happen.

Badly handled, it became a shock tactic. Sure, it sets up the remaining of the story but at what cost? You just spent five minutes slowly walking through hell only to get killed at the end in a mildly ironic way. Great, IW took a page from Bioshock and made you feel like a puppet. What now? I’m supposed to go back into the game like nothing happened, back to some kind of high adrenaline military shooter where I shoot evil Russian soldiers and mercenaries. Oh and some Americans at the end for good measure.

This is one of the worst tonal shifts I’ve seen in a long time in any kind of medium.

That being said, if you listen to the word around the blogs and some less than scientific surveys, two out of three MW2 players will never touch the single player campaign, preferring the competitive side of the multiplayer. Fine by me. Not everyone’s into games for the same reasons.

I’ll make a quick mention of the defensive arguments some fans of the game gave to some criticisms like mine. The goldmine probably is the comments section on Tom Chick’s brilliant take on the issue at Fidgit.

I can detect three kinds of defense, the first being the now infamous “it’s just a game” defense and any of its multiple variation. I won’t go back on why this argument is completely bogus; a bunch of more intelligent people than me already did it a bunch of times already. The second is “It’s rated M so stop whining”. Being rated M is not a license to be dumb and shocking for shock’s sake. If anything, it undermines the idea of M for “Mature”.

At the last one is the beautiful “If you don’t like it don’t play it and stop talking about it”. A whole three pages post could be dedicated just to that single argument but I’ll cut it short. People can have opinion and express them. I don’t know why some gamers have that insane fear of talking about games in a mature and critical way. Maybe they are just afraid that they couldn’t keep up.

50 to 60 hours long ! Sorry but I have a life too.

You know what kind of games I used to like? jRPGs. Back in the days (10 years ago or so I guess), I loved to play those long lasting RPGs, be it FF4/5/6, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and many more. I have fond memories of those times. I was also 12.

I just saw on Kotaku that the new FF13 (confidence: I never played beyond 6) will be a massive 50 to 60 hours long to complete. How true is that? I don't know and I really don't much care.

You see, the last RPG I completed was Lost Odyssey. A great game; very touching, nice cinematography, nice classical gameplay, but a quite clichéd storyline. It really threw me back to my younger days where I would sit in front of the TV and carefully select the attacks of my characters. I guess I was a boring kid.

Do you know how long it took me to finish this monster of a game? 40-something hours. Do you know how spread those 40 hours were? Over a full university summer vacation; from May to September.

You see, I am not 12 anymore. I work, I write, I study, I read, and I watch movies. Sure, I also game, but my gaming periods are pretty much spread thin. I'm currently at the end of my term and the only gaming times I get are on Thursday when I'm back to my parents house (to refill on food and clean clothes) and when I'm not burrowed under papers.

My brother bought Assassin's Creed 2 on launch day. Most of the gamers that did the same finished the game by the end of the same week. It's been 3 weeks and I barely touched Venice. See, that's why I don't play jRPGs (or much wRPGs for that matter) anymore.

Where would I put 50 to 60 hours of game and still have time to play anything else ? What I'm going through happens to a lot of older gamers that are starting to have less time for gaming as they have other priorities or interest.

Don't get me wrong now, I still love video games with a passion. It's my domain of interest. But when it comes to leisure time, my gaming will either go to games that pikes my interest (the reason I play AC2 is because of my interest in history represented through games) or games that will give me a quick satisfaction.

What used to be a major selling point to me, as it is for most gamers, just became a sort of a warning. It's not about replayability anymore. It's about whether I will get to finish the game or not.

I'm sorry FF13, but unless your story touches the subjects of traumatic memories, collective history, Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, or actual historical events, I guess I will have to pass and invest my time in writing my papers.

I just noticed the irony of writing this instead of my actual papers.

I've got a plan.

My plan is simple. Each week until IGF 2010, that's about 16 weeks if my calculations are alright, I will make a review of one of the 306 entries for this year's IGF. And I may even try to get the GW community to get interested in indie gaming by making them participate in some way.

I guess I'm putting this together pretty quickly but I needed to get a post out here to at least force me to actually make it. I'll iron out the details this week but I have a name: The Road to IGF 2010.

Machinarium and Kill Screen

First thing first, my review of Machinarium is up on GW. Check it out dudes and gals.

Second thing, thanks to the lovely Leigh Alexander (birthday girl today), I found out about the upcoming new gaming magazine Kill Screen. Looks like someone is finally making the kind of gaming magazine that I've always been looking for:

"We were asking "Why doesn't something like this exist?" We talked about games all of the time but there wasn't something that met the bar, both intellectually and aesthetically, for this genre. That's not to say there aren't lots of lovely blogs that write wonderful things about games and their obvious cultural import, but we wanted something we could hold. An artifact. An object. It had to be beautiful. The sort of thing that stays on your shelf and you pass on to your children. We wanted Kill Screen to be an heirloom."

The only gaming magazine I was ever subscribed to was (shamefully now that I look back on it) Nintendo Power. I will now have to look for a place to store all those old mags to make place for the new ones if they, hopefully, make more than one issue. Suffice to say, their vision was enough to sell me backing them up with a nice 50$. Can't wait for more info on this.

New review

A new review is up on GW. Enjoy.

Oh yeah, I had a blog.

After a few months hiatus of Press A to jump, I am back in force. I am writing a bunch of stuff right now and I may as well post what I do here. So here's a link to two reviews I did on iPhone/iPod Touch games for GamingW.

Enjoy

The wall

No, not the Pink Floyd one.

Allow me to direct you to an article I wrote for GamingW.net

Byebye holidays, hello school.

So, how was everyone's holidays this year. Mine were pretty good. The only gaming related thing I got was an old Megaman NES cartridge from my brother. Some kind of collector's item even if it isn't really one as of right now. As for gaming itself, it was pretty quiet. I went through Banjo-Kazooie at 100%, something I would never have hoped to achieve when I was younger. I played a lot of Saint's Row 2 to get some of the holidays stress out, played a bit of Pokemon Diamond on long car trips and enjoyed that Iphone/Ipod touch gaming jewel that is Rolando.

I never got to play Locoroco as I don't have a PSP. Rolando is, from what I heard and saw, the closest thing I could ever get. To quickly resume the gameplay, you tilt your Iphone/Ipod touch to move the little rolando, you drag your finger up on the screen to make them jump and you can use your finger to interact with on screen contraptions such as catapults and fans. The controls are simple and instinctive. Everything acts the way it should. The simple gameplay really makes Rolando an addictive and very fun game. The colourful palette is also a nice change from the usual grey and brown tones most games are giving us these days. The music is mostly forgettable but at least won't fall on your nerves. A definitive buy for anyone searching for a nice little game to make time pass.