Violent Video Games – Again
A few weeks ago, there was horrible incident in Newtown, Connecticut. If you haven’t heard about the Sandy Hook shooting, it’s about time to start. It’s horrible, I won’t say it’s not. And with the internet, all these incidents seem close to home. That is not my problem. My problem is that the blame for the psychopath is falling to games again. A senator, a word which seems to mean less nowadays, proposes, quite subtly, I’ll say, a bill to make the National Academy of Science to study the effect of violent video games on real world violence (available online). Which is something that has never been done before, of course. And they keep doing this, instead of looking at gun laws or education or mental health. And the most annoying thing, the NRA, the fscking NRA, is condemning violent video games as the cause of the shooting. In plain English, the organisation who carves it on their flag the freedom to put weapons in every hand that wants one is saying that mass murders and shootings are because of violent video games. Only in America. At least one guy acquired some sense.
Posted in Gaming, Humanity, Thinking Out Loud, Weird by Eran with comments disabled.
Length of Games
There is an ongoing debate in games in general, and now more specifically. How long should games be? And even considering that different genres should have different lengths, how long should each genre be? It starts with the usual complaint by gamers that games are too short and too expensive. I usually tend to agree with the latter but debating the former is difficult. Every game I play, I really try to make it to the end. Even when I know a game is not that great, I have to know how it ends. And, like books or movies, I pride myself on being able to say that I can count on one hand the ones that I started and didn’t finish. And I do consider it a great insult to a book if even I started and couldn’t finish (It’s even weirder when one of those books is lauded, but this is not the subject here). But if you ask around, or if you look at some Steam games achievement lists, you can see how people drop off the game by the percentage that complete story achievements. And it’s sad to say but most games don’t do much better than a 20% completion rate. And that could be really depressing. Especially for developers. And what exactly is the problem? Besides the fact that gaming is a new venture, only a few decades old, and things still need to be learned. Today, most AAA games, especially first person shooters and Continue Reading →
Posted in Gaming, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 2 comments.
Face Value or Sub-Text?
After finishing the Mass Effect Trilogy and filling my head with the Indoctrination Theory, I kept thinking about the idea of the face up value vs sub-text. A lot of games that are available today are simple games, what you see is what you get. Monsters are overrunning the Earth and you need to kill the Devil, ok no problem. Seems pretty simple. And you can find some games whose stories takes a few twists and some things are not as they first seem, for example… [SPOILERS AHEAD! If you see the name of a game you don’t want spoiled, skip it! But there is another section after this.] Portal 2 – One of the more obvious examples when you start out fighting your previous villain only to discover you’ve helped a worse villain. Star Control 2 – You start out thinking you’re fighting to stop this evil race only to find out that they are doing what they are doing because they were burned pretty badly in the past, burned so bad that galaxy wide domination or annihilation is the only choice. Borderlands – At the beginning, the vault is this huge treasure trove but at the end you realise it was a prison. Knights of the Old Republic – You go hunting for a malevolent Sith Lord only to discover that you were the villain that lost his memory. One Must Fall 2097 – You fight through all the tournaments to face the big boss and he’s not piloting his robot, he is his Continue Reading →
Posted in Gaming, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with comments disabled.
Imagine if there were no pirates…
NetFlix will have to write their own subtitles… Ubisoft will have to disable their annoying copy protection on their own… They will also need to convert their own audio files… Artists will have to be sought out for their music… It will be a tragedy. On the other hand: Music sales will go up… People everywhere will pay to watch TV shows… Authors will be much more well known for their work… And every form of media we wish to consume will be readily and easily available… It will be a utopia. (Hint: No, it won’t).
Posted in Gaming, Less Interesting News, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 3 comments.
The Mass Effect Finale
[SPOILER WARNING!] Every thing in this post is under a heavy spoiler warning. I am discussing Mass Effect in its entirety from start to finish but mostly how the trilogy ends. If you ever want to play it with out bias and haven’t yet, close this tab right now. However, if you haven’t played it yet, or just not the third one, there is a suggestion for you at the final paragraph. You should check it out. There was some hubbub on the internet regarding the ending of Mass Effect 3. I haven’t played the game with out the Extended Cut and from this I understand that there were some problems with it. But most of them have been solved to some extent. For me, looking at the endings according to the Extended Cut, I think they were good. There were some problems with them, I didn’t expect the “Fuck You” option to be the “You Lose” option and the added slideshow at the end really seems tacked on but I still thought the ending was epic. Honestly, throughout the second half of the game I was hoping it would get a Star-Control-2-Class ending. And I’m glad to say it did. Really. Beautiful. There were some hitches I can snag on but overall, I liked it. But after you step away with a sweet and sour taste in your mouth, you go online to see discussions of the endings and the entire trilogy and you come across the Indoctrination Theory (The Full Continue Reading →
Posted in Gaming, Reviews, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 2 comments.
Mass Effect: Books, Gender, Emotions
I’m not gonna write a review for Mass Effect 3. I don’t think I need to. If you care about it in any way, you probably heard all you needed to hear if not already played it yourself. And if not, what will it matter anyway? I do, however, wish to impart some thoughts upon it and the Mass Effect universe in general. So today I will stress three points: The Books, Shepard’s Gender and Why it Matters, and How This Game Triggered Some Serious Emotions. The last part contains what are probably heavy spoilers for the third game and at least minor ones for the second so you can skip it if you don’t want that segment ruined. I am talking about after the second Priority: Citadel. The Mass Effect Books. There are currently three Mass Effect books (The fourth has been pulled for serious inconsistencies): Revelation, Ascension and Retribution. It’s always a problem when you adopt a property from one medium to another. You rarely get it perfectly right. The books do get the benefit of having one of the writers of the game (not the lead one, though) writing them so that is something. And I listened to them – and read the comics – because the universe was so awesome I didn’t want to miss anything. Same reason why I go for every mission I can find in the game. And I was hoping for some extra info on the universe that maybe explains some things that Continue Reading →
Posted in Gaming, Reviews by Eran with comments disabled.
Portal 3 Anyone?
I was thinking, Portal 2 ends with “Want You Gone” and it has the line. “You have you short sad life left. That’s what I’m counting on.” That is, it’s like GlaDOS is counting on Chell not being a problem for very long. So, here’s an idea. Portal 3: Lots of years in the future, Chell’s granddaughter is the first one to take her grandmother’s story seriously. That is, after she finds the age old portal gun in the attic. And she has her grandmother’s persistence and is even more proactive. She follows the parts/serial numbers/sales receipt back to Aperture Labs where she finds an advanced GlaDOS, an advanced testing program, more gizmos, more weird stuff, a better portal gun (that works on more surfaces), adversary robots (Hello, Atlas, P-Body and friends) who try to foil her with their own portal weapons, and where she might need to stop GlaDOS from consuming the world with her testing initiative. Valve… Here’s your pitch. Go.
Posted in Gaming, Geekdom by Eran with 4 comments.
Syndicate Reboot Didn’t Work
That’s the quote from a release made a while ago by an “EA Boss”. No, you idiot EA boss, I’ll tell you the nature of resurrecting old IP. You need to make the same game but with newer tech and a new story; Not to completely change the fundamental aspects of what made the previous game awesome. You just can’t take a tactical cyberpunk game and make it into a 3D shooting gallery. As was previously said: Those who aren’t familiar with Syndicate will stay away from it, afraid they won’t get it. And those that are will be extremely disappointed with the new game because it’s not the old one. So you can just admit you already had the game and were afraid to venture on a new IP so you took the Syndicate name and a few gimmicks and called it a game. Gibeau further explained that EA has “numerous brands” that he finds worthy of making a comeback. He did not say what any of these properties were, but said it’s possible these franchises could be reborn on next-generation platforms. Translation: As one of the biggest gaming companies on the planet, we own a lot of your childhood memories and will feel free to rummage through them in search of names that will trigger your insatiable nostalgia and then we will make a 3D shooting gallery out of them just to spite you. And they aren’t the only ones committing this sin. But you know what the worst Continue Reading →
Posted in Gaming, Less Interesting News, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 2 comments.