Well, that was disappointing wasn't it? After weeks of hype over the reveal for the the new Xbox, what we finally got to see was a shiny black breezeblock that is seemingly aimed at American college frat boys. An NFL linkup, EA sports and Call of Duty. Whoopee.
Sure, Xbox One. One box for all your entertainment needs. I get it, but I don't think a Tivo with gaming features that seem to be just tacked on is really what I'm looking for. Where were the games for your games console, Microsoft? Last night's presentation showed us a box of tricks seemingly designed by a committee that has forgotten that it was games that got the Xbox brand to where it is today. Announcements of Forza 5, Call of Duty and new EA sports titles were inevitable. The only gaming surprise of the night was the new Remedy title.
What we got instead was voice control, multitasking and multimedia. Skype integration is admittedly cool and the Halo TV series will whip the franchise fanboys into a big foamy frenzy. There's what looks like a TV tuner, which to my mind is a bit pointless. My TV has a TV tuner in it, and I don't have to run two devices to use it.
There was an announcement that next gen Xbox live will run on 300,000 servers. Impressive, but in the end, it's a number. I don't really care how big the number is, I just want my games to work when I want them to.
Then there was Microsoft's continued flogging of the Kinect dead horse. I really would like to know why MS are persisting with tech that, with the exception of Dance Central, has near completely failed as a method of controlling a game. Yes, Kinect has shipped millions of units, and voice control is cool, but how many of those units are just gathering dust? The tech has evolved however and the body tracking is now supposed to be much more nuanced. In a new and slightly Big Brother-ish twist, Kinect can now detect your heart rate, and will track your mood via facial recognition. What's the bet on the same facial recognition tech being able to identify you personally and feed back data on the media you consume to help target advertising? MS have also stated that the new Xbox won't work without Kinect. I may be slightly paranoid here, but if that is the case, am I right to assume the camera is always on when the console is in use? We don't have to worry about the government putting cameras in our homes anymore. We're paying tech companies to do it for them. Paranoid rants for comic effect aside, if the camera is always on, I'm not sure about how comfortable I am with that.
Questions around always online, second hand games and lending to friends were obtusely answered. According to Edge, a publication whose coverage of all things gaming I trust implicitly, Xbox One apparently requires an Internet connection, but doesn't have to be always on. Is it just me or does that last sentence contradict itself? Also, there may or may not be fees surrounding second hand and lending games out to be played on a console other than your own. Specific scenarios haven't been worked out yet. For me, lending will be a sticking point. Swapping games among friends has been a major part of how I play games since my first Megadrive. Restrictions around that are likely to be a sore point for many others too.
Still, it wasn't all bad. There's finally a re-engineered D-pad on the new controller and Call of Duty has attack dogs now. Happy day! Though in seriousness, the new controller does look like an improvement, and I like the idea of haptic feedback in the triggers.
At the moment, Sony's ideal of a console designed in conjunction with developers and aimed at gamers appeals to me more than what I saw from Microsoft last night. I'm trying to reserve outright judgement until both consoles are on the market and there are reviews on the web. It's a given that my 360 will be replaced at some point, but the question of what I'll replace it with is still up in the air.
Wednesday 22 May 2013
Tuesday 14 May 2013
Imagination-Land
This post first appeared on readyplayertwo.co.uk.
Playing so much Bioshock Infinite of late has led me to a rather surprising
conclusion. The level to which I connect with a game is in almost direct
correlation to how fantastical or unusual the setting is. Put it like this.
What sounds more appealing? Grey first person shooter set in a gritty rendition
of modern day northern Waziristan or primary coloured first person shooter set
in a sunlight flooded flying city circa 1912. Of course, I'm talking about
Battlefield 4 and Bioshock Infinite, and for me, since games are all about escapism,
my natural choice would be the game set in the early twentieth century flying
city. Let's try another one. A racer featuring real world cars racing on real
world tracks or a supersonic hovership racer running on tight rollercoaster
tracks set in a bright post scarcity future? Forza or WipeOut. I own and enjoy
both, but I only utter the L word about one of those, and it's not the one with
the real world cars.
Games have an ability, unique in pretty much all media, to immerse you in the impossible. Titles like Fez, WipeOut and Antichamber can even take you to places beyond what a layman like myself would accept to be the normal laws of physics, let alone beyond the average imagination. And while a mega budget 3D movie can show you the impossible, only games can let you experience it.
It makes me sad when some games seem
to squander the worlds they're built in. Take Gears of War as an example. It's
set on what's assumed to be another planet, it's antagonists erupt from the
ground and sink entire cities in their wake. Yet despite all this, it's still
for the most part a gritty urban shooter in which you're surrounded by burned
out cars, lumbering tanks, helicopters, crumbling neo gothic architecture and
lots of brown. Take away the locust and it could be a war zone in any European
city. All of the Gears games are great and I've enjoyed every one of them,
particularly the third, but it says a lot about a series' sci fi setting when
it's most memorable moment (at least for me personally) is also practically the
only nakedly sci fi set piece of the entire series; the section in which you
kill a giant city devouring worm from the inside out. It's easy to forget,
during the moments you're not chainsawing Locust, that Gears is set on a
different planet at all. Conversely I find, Spec Ops: The Line's gorgeous sun
drenched rendering of Dubai really compelling. Spec Ops' developers took the
usually mundane idea of a modern day city, drowned it with a sandstorm and then
seemingly made every reflective surface out of gold. It's a look and a location
that is pretty much unique in gaming at the moment. The result takes what
should have been just another brown shooter and polishes the brown to a
blinding sheen, which is what gives Spec Ops' realistic setting such a kick.
What I'm trying to get at here is that a game can be much more interesting if it's framed in a way that's not often seen. Admittedly, Gears' success did set the formula for the brown shooter, but I've seen so many brown shooters since, that when Spec Ops came along wrapped in sand, bathed in blinding sunlight and drizzled with gold it felt like a breath of fresh air.
Thankfully, once you've pulled your
eyes away from Call of Battlefield, you don't have to look too hard to find
game worlds lavished with a wealth of creativity. It goes without saying that
if you want to see the most creative and original games available at the
moment, then you need to look at the Indies. Titles like Fez, Antichamber, Bastion,
Dear Esther, Machinarium, To the Moon, Dust or even Minecraft are unlike almost
anything you'll find in a box on the shelf of your local games shop. But even
if for some strange reason you only limit yourself to boxed games, there is
still a wealth of creativity out there. There's the aforementioned sun drenched
turn of the century vintage futurism of Bioshock Infinite, or the
deep-as-the-ocean green tinted decopunk of Rapture of that game's progenitors. Don’t
want a dystopia in the sky? Then why not tour the bright yet totalitarian city
in Mirror’s Edge. If you want to pass on dystopias altogether, then try a post
apocalypse. If you think every end-of –the-world is the same, then might I
point you in the direction of the criminally under rated, and exceptionally
leafy, Enslaved or Naughty Dog's forthcoming The Last of Us. Alternatively if
like your post apocalypse a little bit grimmer, yet still crave something that
feels fresh, then may I present to you 4A Games' Metro; bleak and dark as the
Moscow underground that shelters the last remnants of humanity in all its
tunnels. Too dark? Perhaps we can lighten the mood in the collapsing
laboratories of Portal 2. Too light, or not escapist enough? How about a visit to
the charmingly English land of Albion in Fable, or the icy blue tundra of
Skyrim. Too much fantasy? Then why not visit the crumbling, and entirely
fictional, yet surprisingly plausible whalerpunk city of Dunwall, the place
that accounts for at least seven tenths of what makes Dishonoured so great. If
you're feeling more adventurous? If you haven't already, look no further than
the Uncharted games, whose fabled lost cities, once they are revealed, dish out
the most lavish and awe inspiring vistas of this generation. What if you want
the fabled cities but less of the shooting and more of the journey? Obviously
you want to visit the golden deserts and the desolately beautiful crumbling
lost civilisation of the genuinely moving Journey. I could go on and on.
And I haven't even mentioned Final Fantasy yet, whose designers, Square, are
the undisputed masters of creating richly imagined worlds. Worlds dense with
culture, history and story, that feel lived in and are a pleasure to inhabit.
Final Fantasy VII wouldn't have been the worshipped game it has become without
that kind of imagination. It takes a special kind of mind to come up with a
concept as out there as the Lifestream, but without it there would be no Mako,
no Shin-Ra, no Soldier, no Materia, no Cloud, Sephiroth, Avalanche. The
Ancients, with whom the Lifestream is intrinsically linked, would not have
sprung from the mind of Yoshinori Kitase and with no Ancients, there would be
no Aeris. Without the Lifestream, Aeris wouldn't have died, because she would
never have existed, and a whole generation of gamers would not have experienced
'that' moment. You all know the one. Square still have that wealth of
creativity. Say what you like about Final Fantasy XIII as a game, you can't
deny that the twin worlds of Pulse and Cocoon make for one of the most
compelling gameworlds of this generation.
Games are always better when game designers can let their imaginations run wild. That's why so many indie games are so great. With fewer concerns about shareholders or appealing to the mass market, indie devs can really cut loose. But there could be more of this sort of thing if the publishers were daring enough to indulge the experimentation of developers. Would it not be great if publishers weren't as commercially cautious? I like to think that if they weren't, we would begin to see fewer gritty modern world war games, less dystopian cyberpunk and less stone-faced post apocalypse. Of course, every now and then a game will appear that will turn your expectations on their head. Spec Ops' Dubai proves there is room for maneuver in the modern day shooter and the forthcoming Remember Me's Neo-Paris does some really interesting things with cyberpunk.
Personally, I'd like to see more of
the punk suffix flying around. Bioshock-the-first may have been first out of
the blocks with decopunk, but there's a lot more that can be done within the
realms of 1920's art deco futurism. In fact there's more that can be done with
retro futurism all round. For instance, who wouldn't love to see something
based around Retropolis? Or
how about an adaption of Philip Reeve's
far future world of Mortal Engines?
Whilst the novels are not strictly steampunk, their vaguely Victorian cast iron
and brass aesthetics, rich back story, airships, unstoppable ancient warrior
cyborgs and predatory mobile cities (yes, you read that right) could make for a
pretty compelling experience. Steampunk has become almost a subculture in
itself, and is pretty ubiquitous at a certain kind of real world convention,
but I'm yet to see a full blown steampunk game. Dishonoured came close, but it
wasn't quite there, which is why I knocked together whalerpunk to describe it
instead.
If all that seems a bit overused already, then there is also dieselpunk and atompunk to check out too. The best way to describe these would be to tell you to watch Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and check out the Ratchet and Clank series' various robots. Or I could just say that it's futurism that respectively focuses on the aesthetics of the thirties and the fifties. Or you could check out the Wikipedia page here. I'm barely scratching the surface really.
Games tend to focus a lot on sci fi and fantasy, and all this punk stuff is just my own narrow vision. There are hundreds of talented game designers out there with incredible imaginations whose ideas are broader than mine will ever be, who can produce out-there concepts that I couldn't dream of. The games that come from that kind of imagination are the kind that I always love most. I’m hoping that the success of Bioshock Infinite can convince the cautious corporate sorts who have the say in the game industry that a triple A game doesn't have to be grey, brown or a combination of the two to be successful. Hopefully they'll begin to allow those designers to set their imaginations free. The results could really be spectacular if they do.
 |
| The right Bioshock Cover |
Games have an ability, unique in pretty much all media, to immerse you in the impossible. Titles like Fez, WipeOut and Antichamber can even take you to places beyond what a layman like myself would accept to be the normal laws of physics, let alone beyond the average imagination. And while a mega budget 3D movie can show you the impossible, only games can let you experience it.
 |
| This shot sums up the mess that the Spec Ops soldiers have gotten themselves in to. |
What I'm trying to get at here is that a game can be much more interesting if it's framed in a way that's not often seen. Admittedly, Gears' success did set the formula for the brown shooter, but I've seen so many brown shooters since, that when Spec Ops came along wrapped in sand, bathed in blinding sunlight and drizzled with gold it felt like a breath of fresh air.
 |
| One of the most iconic shots in Dishonored. |
And I haven't even mentioned Final Fantasy yet, whose designers, Square, are
the undisputed masters of creating richly imagined worlds. Worlds dense with
culture, history and story, that feel lived in and are a pleasure to inhabit.
Final Fantasy VII wouldn't have been the worshipped game it has become without
that kind of imagination. It takes a special kind of mind to come up with a
concept as out there as the Lifestream, but without it there would be no Mako,
no Shin-Ra, no Soldier, no Materia, no Cloud, Sephiroth, Avalanche. The
Ancients, with whom the Lifestream is intrinsically linked, would not have
sprung from the mind of Yoshinori Kitase and with no Ancients, there would be
no Aeris. Without the Lifestream, Aeris wouldn't have died, because she would
never have existed, and a whole generation of gamers would not have experienced
'that' moment. You all know the one. Square still have that wealth of
creativity. Say what you like about Final Fantasy XIII as a game, you can't
deny that the twin worlds of Pulse and Cocoon make for one of the most
compelling gameworlds of this generation.Games are always better when game designers can let their imaginations run wild. That's why so many indie games are so great. With fewer concerns about shareholders or appealing to the mass market, indie devs can really cut loose. But there could be more of this sort of thing if the publishers were daring enough to indulge the experimentation of developers. Would it not be great if publishers weren't as commercially cautious? I like to think that if they weren't, we would begin to see fewer gritty modern world war games, less dystopian cyberpunk and less stone-faced post apocalypse. Of course, every now and then a game will appear that will turn your expectations on their head. Spec Ops' Dubai proves there is room for maneuver in the modern day shooter and the forthcoming Remember Me's Neo-Paris does some really interesting things with cyberpunk.
 |
| This is London on wheels, note St Pauls perched at the summit. |
If all that seems a bit overused already, then there is also dieselpunk and atompunk to check out too. The best way to describe these would be to tell you to watch Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and check out the Ratchet and Clank series' various robots. Or I could just say that it's futurism that respectively focuses on the aesthetics of the thirties and the fifties. Or you could check out the Wikipedia page here. I'm barely scratching the surface really.
Games tend to focus a lot on sci fi and fantasy, and all this punk stuff is just my own narrow vision. There are hundreds of talented game designers out there with incredible imaginations whose ideas are broader than mine will ever be, who can produce out-there concepts that I couldn't dream of. The games that come from that kind of imagination are the kind that I always love most. I’m hoping that the success of Bioshock Infinite can convince the cautious corporate sorts who have the say in the game industry that a triple A game doesn't have to be grey, brown or a combination of the two to be successful. Hopefully they'll begin to allow those designers to set their imaginations free. The results could really be spectacular if they do.
Thursday 2 May 2013
Blasphemy!
If saying you dislike Mario Kart 64 is some kind of gaming blasphemy then I'm going straight to hell. I won't pass go, and I won't collect £200, because it's something I say almost as soon as it's name is mentioned within my earshot, which happens surprisingly often. Mario Kart 64 is just one of those games I never gelled with. I never got used to the handling and I find its selection of tracks frustrating. Consequently, I'm so rarely any good at it that when I miraculously make it to the front of the race only to be blue shelled into last, it makes me think that the game is designed to punish you for being any good at it. It's not of course, and this is the point where the people who love Mario Kart 64, i.e, everyone in the world but me, start shouting that my criticisms are dumb, and that it's one of the best multiplayer racers ever made. Those people are right of course, and I agree with them. What makes my dislike of Mario Kart 64 so weird is that I'll quite happily play, and have fun with every other Mario Kart game ever made, particularly the Wii and GBA versions.
It's probably the most significant example I can find of my seemingly irrational ambivalence towards some titles that many gamers feel are sacred. It crops up so often that sometimes I start worrying that I might be going off the concept of fun. I'm not (hopefully), but it feels that way. There are others too. Concerningly, two of the other series I just cannot get on with feature also Mario in one way or another. Let's start with the Mario Party series, which for me is a collection of genuinely fun mini games that are utterly ruined by both the boardgame segment that needlessly drags the length of the game out, and possibly the worst way of deciding a game's winner ever devised. Of course, I'm referring to the detestable star system that means no matter how many of the damn things you've collected, you're almost guaranteed to be knocked off the top spot when the game arbitrarily awards stars on the results screen to other players for seemingly no other reason than that they've participated. Just thinking about it gets me riled up.
Mario's core platformers also do absolutely nothing for me. I've tried so hard to love him, I really have, but I just can't bring myself to care that I haven't beaten a single Super Mario game. Not one. Not even Super Mario Bros on the NES. In fact I haven't touched a Mario game since Sunshine, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I've decided to just stop trying now, even though I know I'm denying myself the opportunity to play Super Mario Galaxies 1 and 2, which are renowned as two of the best and most innovative platformers of recent times. Worst of all, unlike Mario Kart 64 and Mario Party, I'm completely at a loss for a way to explain why I don't 'get' Mario's platformers. The control is always tight, the level design is always clever, the worlds are full of personality and the game mechanics are almost always innovative in one way or another. These are all things that we all look for in a good game, and Mario games are never hailed as merely 'good' games. In fact, the only legitimate criticism I can level at his games is this; the story is a bit naff, and since when has story ever really mattered in a Super Mario game?
The cynics amongst you will dismiss this as just another round of Nintendo bashing, but the thing is, I think most of the stuff they put out is fantastic. I've played every Zelda game since A Link to the Past and I've loved them. I rate the Metroid Prime series as one of the best console FPSs ever made. I've racked up months of play in the three Smash Bros games. I played F-Zeroes X and GX until the cows came home. I caught all 251 Pokemon in Gold and Silver and battled them in Stadium 2 on the N64. While my town thrived in Animal Crossing, I've commanded Pikmin, adventured with Kirby, got hooked on WarioWare. And despite everything I said about Mario above, I've visited and liked Super Mario World 2, with it's cute crayon aesthetic and it's cuddly Yoshis.
So it's not just simple Nintendo Bashing. Besides, I have trouble with some of gaming's other sacred cows too.
Sacred cattle like Metal Gear Solid 4. The more I play it, the more it makes me rant about it. I'm trying so hard to persevere with it because I know about Shadow Moses and I want to wrap up the story I started in the first Metal Gear Solid all those years ago. I know what it is about Metal Gear 4 that turns me off it and I'm trying to work around it. I've loved every other Metal Gear I've ever played, and I'm used to pointlessly long cutscenes and campy plot nonsense. It's part of the fun after all, but I just can't get on with the fourth instalment's wonky pacing. It seems you can't take more than a dozen steps without getting a discourse on PMCs, proxy wars or how war has changed. Then there are the half hour movies between missions aboard the aeroplane. I just want to sneak past soldiers and take down giant robots Hideo-san, why won't you let me? I will finish Metal Gear 4 before this generation is out. I need to find out what happens to Old Snake. I might eventually enjoy it too, but I'm not getting the feeling that I'll find that an easy thing to do.
Then there is the whole Call of Duty/Battlefield/Halo thing. I love first person shooters. I've spent hours gushing about Bioshock, Half Life, Metro and Unreal Tournament but I just can't bring myself to play any of the triumvirate of shooters that dominate the current console landscape. I've played a bit of Halo 3, but not since Bungie took Rocket Race out of it's online mode. I played the first Call of Duty not long after I completed Medal of Honour: Allied Assault on the PC. Call it war game fatigue perhaps, but CoD did nothing for me, and I've ignored them ever since. I know the Modern Warfare series is a thrillride, but most of what I've seen of the single player modes seems to involve holding down the fire button while you strut down a corridor to the next explosive setpiece. Frankly it looks dumb, and it doesn't get any better in multiplayer. I saw ten seconds of the now infamous CoD Rage Montage on youtube and decided that I'd been avoiding these games for a good reason. I don't want to be associated in any way with that kind of gamer. I'm a peaceable kind of guy. This mainly results in me being looked at like I've got some kind of horrible facial disfigurement whenever it comes up in conversation.
Where Halo is concerned, I just find it really reductive, with it's recharging health and two guns only multiplayer. After spending my formative years with Unreal Tournament and Quake III the slower pace and slimmer weapon choice of Halo sucks all the fun away for me. Some of the best moments in UT came from surviving an encounter by the skin of your teeth, then scoring a double kill with a lucky shock combo while you were hanging desperately on to that last sliver of health. Recharging shields have put an end to that. Also, I liked being able to grab the rocket launcher and not have to worry about whether to drop the flak cannon or the shock rifle, because you could carry all the guns. Older multiplayer shooters made me feel like a hero, Halo doesn't. On the single player front, Halo frustrates me because Bungie has created some really, really rich lore for their sci-fi universe, as evidenced in the enjoyable (and much better than they have any right to be) Halo novels. But all that story seems to get pushed into the background when you play it. I can remember a whole lot about the story of Half Life 2, yet I honestly can't remember a single plot detail of Halo 3, such is the poor quality of Halo's storytelling.
All of this makes me sound like some kind of mop topped holier than thou indie gaming hipster, punching this out on my laptop from behind a set of thick rimmed lensless NHS glasses, and I'm really not. I mean, I like Fez as much as the next person, but there's nothing out there that scratches the itch like a really great triple A blockbuster. Indie might be where all the imagination is, but triple A boxed games are where the big thrills lie. I like to think there's room in my life for both. Maybe it's age, my tastes growing more fickle as I edge nearer to thirty. Perhaps there are others out there who have the weird gaming pet hates of their own but all I know is this. I seem to have an irrational disconnect with some of gaming's most respected names, and you can try as hard as you like to convince me to give them a chance, but you probably won't change my mind. If you can't understand why I have these problems with certain games that are supposed to be beyond criticism, don't worry about it, because I'm not so sure of the reasons either.
If I ever work it out, I'll be sure to let you know.
It's probably the most significant example I can find of my seemingly irrational ambivalence towards some titles that many gamers feel are sacred. It crops up so often that sometimes I start worrying that I might be going off the concept of fun. I'm not (hopefully), but it feels that way. There are others too. Concerningly, two of the other series I just cannot get on with feature also Mario in one way or another. Let's start with the Mario Party series, which for me is a collection of genuinely fun mini games that are utterly ruined by both the boardgame segment that needlessly drags the length of the game out, and possibly the worst way of deciding a game's winner ever devised. Of course, I'm referring to the detestable star system that means no matter how many of the damn things you've collected, you're almost guaranteed to be knocked off the top spot when the game arbitrarily awards stars on the results screen to other players for seemingly no other reason than that they've participated. Just thinking about it gets me riled up. Mario's core platformers also do absolutely nothing for me. I've tried so hard to love him, I really have, but I just can't bring myself to care that I haven't beaten a single Super Mario game. Not one. Not even Super Mario Bros on the NES. In fact I haven't touched a Mario game since Sunshine, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I've decided to just stop trying now, even though I know I'm denying myself the opportunity to play Super Mario Galaxies 1 and 2, which are renowned as two of the best and most innovative platformers of recent times. Worst of all, unlike Mario Kart 64 and Mario Party, I'm completely at a loss for a way to explain why I don't 'get' Mario's platformers. The control is always tight, the level design is always clever, the worlds are full of personality and the game mechanics are almost always innovative in one way or another. These are all things that we all look for in a good game, and Mario games are never hailed as merely 'good' games. In fact, the only legitimate criticism I can level at his games is this; the story is a bit naff, and since when has story ever really mattered in a Super Mario game?
The cynics amongst you will dismiss this as just another round of Nintendo bashing, but the thing is, I think most of the stuff they put out is fantastic. I've played every Zelda game since A Link to the Past and I've loved them. I rate the Metroid Prime series as one of the best console FPSs ever made. I've racked up months of play in the three Smash Bros games. I played F-Zeroes X and GX until the cows came home. I caught all 251 Pokemon in Gold and Silver and battled them in Stadium 2 on the N64. While my town thrived in Animal Crossing, I've commanded Pikmin, adventured with Kirby, got hooked on WarioWare. And despite everything I said about Mario above, I've visited and liked Super Mario World 2, with it's cute crayon aesthetic and it's cuddly Yoshis.So it's not just simple Nintendo Bashing. Besides, I have trouble with some of gaming's other sacred cows too.
Sacred cattle like Metal Gear Solid 4. The more I play it, the more it makes me rant about it. I'm trying so hard to persevere with it because I know about Shadow Moses and I want to wrap up the story I started in the first Metal Gear Solid all those years ago. I know what it is about Metal Gear 4 that turns me off it and I'm trying to work around it. I've loved every other Metal Gear I've ever played, and I'm used to pointlessly long cutscenes and campy plot nonsense. It's part of the fun after all, but I just can't get on with the fourth instalment's wonky pacing. It seems you can't take more than a dozen steps without getting a discourse on PMCs, proxy wars or how war has changed. Then there are the half hour movies between missions aboard the aeroplane. I just want to sneak past soldiers and take down giant robots Hideo-san, why won't you let me? I will finish Metal Gear 4 before this generation is out. I need to find out what happens to Old Snake. I might eventually enjoy it too, but I'm not getting the feeling that I'll find that an easy thing to do.
Then there is the whole Call of Duty/Battlefield/Halo thing. I love first person shooters. I've spent hours gushing about Bioshock, Half Life, Metro and Unreal Tournament but I just can't bring myself to play any of the triumvirate of shooters that dominate the current console landscape. I've played a bit of Halo 3, but not since Bungie took Rocket Race out of it's online mode. I played the first Call of Duty not long after I completed Medal of Honour: Allied Assault on the PC. Call it war game fatigue perhaps, but CoD did nothing for me, and I've ignored them ever since. I know the Modern Warfare series is a thrillride, but most of what I've seen of the single player modes seems to involve holding down the fire button while you strut down a corridor to the next explosive setpiece. Frankly it looks dumb, and it doesn't get any better in multiplayer. I saw ten seconds of the now infamous CoD Rage Montage on youtube and decided that I'd been avoiding these games for a good reason. I don't want to be associated in any way with that kind of gamer. I'm a peaceable kind of guy. This mainly results in me being looked at like I've got some kind of horrible facial disfigurement whenever it comes up in conversation. Where Halo is concerned, I just find it really reductive, with it's recharging health and two guns only multiplayer. After spending my formative years with Unreal Tournament and Quake III the slower pace and slimmer weapon choice of Halo sucks all the fun away for me. Some of the best moments in UT came from surviving an encounter by the skin of your teeth, then scoring a double kill with a lucky shock combo while you were hanging desperately on to that last sliver of health. Recharging shields have put an end to that. Also, I liked being able to grab the rocket launcher and not have to worry about whether to drop the flak cannon or the shock rifle, because you could carry all the guns. Older multiplayer shooters made me feel like a hero, Halo doesn't. On the single player front, Halo frustrates me because Bungie has created some really, really rich lore for their sci-fi universe, as evidenced in the enjoyable (and much better than they have any right to be) Halo novels. But all that story seems to get pushed into the background when you play it. I can remember a whole lot about the story of Half Life 2, yet I honestly can't remember a single plot detail of Halo 3, such is the poor quality of Halo's storytelling.
All of this makes me sound like some kind of mop topped holier than thou indie gaming hipster, punching this out on my laptop from behind a set of thick rimmed lensless NHS glasses, and I'm really not. I mean, I like Fez as much as the next person, but there's nothing out there that scratches the itch like a really great triple A blockbuster. Indie might be where all the imagination is, but triple A boxed games are where the big thrills lie. I like to think there's room in my life for both. Maybe it's age, my tastes growing more fickle as I edge nearer to thirty. Perhaps there are others out there who have the weird gaming pet hates of their own but all I know is this. I seem to have an irrational disconnect with some of gaming's most respected names, and you can try as hard as you like to convince me to give them a chance, but you probably won't change my mind. If you can't understand why I have these problems with certain games that are supposed to be beyond criticism, don't worry about it, because I'm not so sure of the reasons either.
If I ever work it out, I'll be sure to let you know.
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