The Broken Contract

Not even a year into my illustrious career and already we're digging things up from the vault. Less for the best-selling hardcover collections, but I think I'll manage.

But first, a foreword. I got into a number of decent discussions over the piece from people who bothered to read it instead of jumping onto the dog pile, which thankfully prevented this thing from being a complete wash. While I stand by the critiques of Dys4ia and Lim I make here, I wholly realize these games are important works by sheer virtue of their existence; I even had the privilege of watching their well-deserved lionization in real-time with the announcement of the IGF finalists.

But I'm not interested in all-or-nothing criticism and analysis; merit can be found in failures, and flaws can be found with success. I felt that these games were important steps into the future, but not the attainment of that future. Anna Anthropy disagrees with me; if she thought something was wrong, she would have made her game a different way. We come from wholly opposite viewpoints on the nature of games and what their strengths as a medium are, and that's where dialog happens. All writers inherently forward an agenda, and I felt like blanket approval didn't serve mine. Busting chops and being all edgy isn't my thing, and most people who make it a habit are hacks, but there still needs to be room for measured praise.

Okay that was all boring but this is my blog damn it I DID IT FOR ME. Okay here it is.

Transmissions From Another World

Have you ever wondered what entries in the modern slate of AAA titles might look like if a different genre of game had been triumphant instead of first-person action-shooter-RPGs? No? Well, now you probably are.


Read along to the accompanying audio for enhanced effect. Multimedia!

TAKE IT TO THE LIMIT... ONE MORE TIME  

review by Ryan "Bingo" Milliard (@GLRyanM)

[WARNING: Heavy spoilers to ensue.]

As I pressed Start and created my save profile for the conclusion to this highly lauded tetralogy, I could only anticipate what kind of staggering finale was in store and the closure it would bring. It had been less than a year since I last donned The Captain's regalia, but that only served to keep my memories crisp. As the intro cinematic played and that familiar orchestral refrain surged to the fore, I immediately felt at home. Still, for all my expectations, the rewards that lay in store for me could never truly be predicted.

---

The save-reading wasn't as blissfully perfect as I had envisioned, but the sense of continuity was more than well-preserved. My allegiances remained intact; while years had passed since The Captain's tragic accident, familiar faces rightfully brightened or glowered in response to my bittersweet homecoming. Hushed whispers of those in my crew who had passed away wafted quietly through the garages and watering holes which too had seen their share of changes. For instance, since my Captain had chosen the more violent response to the infamous "urinal confrontation" scene of the last game, the bathroom of the Boost Pad bar had been remodeled… save for the same blood-spattered ceramic tiles in the texture. Brilliant.

Fun & Games, Pt. 4

We've spent our fair share of this series considering games from a design perspective, and where games big and small, lauded and loathed, have betrayed their narrative-heavy stylizations. But what about "fun"? Can a game be judged on it as a criteria? What do people really mean when they talk about it? Are in we in need of some kind of system to categorize different "fun types" and determine how a particular video game delivers each?

Fun, in the most general sense, is enjoyment. When someone tells you a game is "fun", they are articulating their appreciation of the overall experience, even if they cannot particularly put their finger on or elucidate why. It could be they are engrossed by the plotline and cutscene; it could be the draw of visually and audially rendered splendor; it could even (perish the thought) be the mechanics and interactions of the game itself. What's certain is that the word, for all its value as a common term, is useless when trying to operate critically, analytically, or descriptively. The number of times I've seen "it's just fun" as the beginning and end of someone's defense of a game is just staggering, to the point where I have to assume that people who use it are, at least some of the time, avoiding having to admit they like a video game for its shiny colors and/or pulpy romance subplots.

You know... for kids!

Fun & Games, Pt. 3

Okay, okay, okay; one more case. Along with some other stuff.

Case #4

Name: Casey Hudson

Game: Mass Effect 3

Fault: Illusory player agency (among other things)

I'm not here to decry this game as the nadir of modern gaming; the game is... mostly well-crafted as far as what it intends to be. I'm not here to stoke any flames or dog-pile on the poor, beat-up, downtrodden multi-billion-dollar publisher; the business practices surrounding the game are a separate issue altogether.  I'm not going to get too deep into the lack of structural interplay of the dialogue trees from the FPS sections; I've done that before. This isn't even about the conclusion of the game/series; the fault in question here goes far beyond the specific bizarre endings that were chosen as the capstones of a major video game "trilogy". (Let's face it, they're probably halfway done with #4 and drafting storyboards on 5 and 6 right now.)

This Shepard is based on Bjork. I like Bjork.

Why Games Shouldn't Want To Be Art

There are currently a lot of phrases you should avoid when discussing video games in 2012. "Ludology" might be well on the way to being one: in a time where the upcoming slate of well-hyped AAA games include Mass Effect 3, Bioshock: Infinite, Halo 4, Max Payne 3, and Grand Theft Auto V, the "narratological" approach to games as easy and direct parallels to better-established forms of media (primarily film and theater) is enjoying a notable vogue. It speaks volumes that phrases like "the 'Citizen Kane' of video games" have been bandied about seriously in recent years with little to no humiliation on the speakers' behalves. This is turn points to the persistent hand-wringing over whether games are "art" or not; some still prickle at Ebert's original take from nigh on six years ago that they never can be.

But what does all this fervor point to? Where does the necessity to proclaim games as an high art-form, as a "legitimate" medium, stem from? And is it possible that he is not only right… but that it shouldn't matter?