So
in a couple of days I'll be handing over £30 pounds to my friend
Matt and getting an XBox 360, a couple of games and hopefully some
sort of waterproof container to transport it home in. I've rather sat
out the current console generation, which isn't unusual behaviour for
me. I'm what's known as a casual gamer, you see, and the casual gamer
is typified by short attention span, conspicuous lack of spending and
better things to do with their time.
To
show what I mean my favourite games at the moment are the Lego film
adaptations (Lego Star Wars, Lego Indian Jones, etcetera,.) and the
Sonic Rush games on DS. These are fun, light and easy to pick up just
for a half hour or so when you have a bit of time to kill. When I do
try something more substantial it's got to be something capable of
keeping my interest for a span of months during which I'll probably
play it once of twice a week. Final Fantasy games are favourite for
this because they're pretty enough they'll keep me coming back just
to see the next set piece or new environment but simple enough
plot-wise that I can pick up it up after a few weeks and still know
roughly what's going on.
Anyone
who thinks I'm being hard on Final Fantasy storytelling here should
please note that a) I mean it as a compliment and b) two decades of
superhero comics mean I've been trained to take in backstory and
intertextual connections the way the rods and cones in our eyes take
in light: without conscious effort and flipping it the right way up
to make sense of it as a matter of course.
But,
anyway, fourth paragraph and I should probably start relating this
back to the post title and talk about how I've viewed current
generation gaming from my current perspective: outside the window
laughing at the funny little antics of those inside.
You
want how much?
Like
I said I don't devote a lot of time to gaming and so I'm loathe to
devote any significant amount of cash to it, either. I play Warhammer
and I read comics, two activities that give me more enjoyment than
video games usually do so they get a larger claim on my disposable
income. I picked up my DS from a pawn shop for £40 and I literally
cannot remember the last game I bought new but I strongly suspect it
was for the Gamecube.
Second
hand XBones have started turning up in Entertainment Exchange and
they still want £500 for them plus another £40 if you want
something so decadent as a game to play on it.
And
then there's DLC, which is both grammatically as well as financially
offensive. Initials are usually taken only from the first letter of
each word, “downloadable” being but a single word, but let's
concentrate on the rip off. If I buy a game I want it to be finished
and I do not view this as an unusually prissy demand. I admit that
the fact after-market improvements can be made to eliminate bugs is a
good thing, no one's quality assurance department is good enough to
spot every flaw but I resent the idea of paying extra for, say, the
classic songs not included on the disc of Beatles Rock Band (most
people complain about the lack of Eleanor Rigby but I'm going to
point out Help a2 the most egregious one).
The
long and the short of this is I'll be checking out game reviews ahead
of time to see if there's any of that DLC malarkey going on because I
intend to avoid it like the plague.
Martha,
Git Yer Gun!
I
hate shooters. My God, I hate shooters but they seem to be the
emblematic genre of this generation as platformers and beat 'em ups
were for the 16-bit era. Yes, that was my generation, they heyday of
mutant hedgehogs, psychotic bandicoots and family-run Italian
plumbing businesses with strange uniform standards.
(By
that last one I meant the Mario Bros not a mafia front operation, by
the way, I just realised how that could be misinterpreted).
But,
my God, FPS has come into its own hasn't it with Halo, Gears Of War,
Medal Of Honor, Call Of Duty and it's all so, so gritty. I don't want
grit, I don't want realism and I especially don't want realistic
violence. No offence to those who do, the lack of opportunities one
gets to enact horrific consequence-free violence in real life is
frustrating to me, too but it's the industry-dominating ubiquity of
the genre that gets to me.
I
am buying Space Marine, though, because people can moan at me all
they like about it being a Gears Of War rip-off in every sense but I
will feel a bit better ignoring all those Space Marine knock-offs to
play an actual Space Marine with a chuff-off huge thunder hammer. If
I'm playing a Space Marine I want the works; bolt gun, holy rage,
nineteen stages of post-human implants and the extra motivating
factor of making everyone forget I was ever something as shit as a
Tenth Company Scout, not some rip-off pretending to originality
because they're wearing different armour.
Tits, Lots Of Tits!
This is not new, the over-sexualisation of female
protagonists dates back at least as far as Street Fighter. However,
it is extra galling in this case because advancing technology has
made visual realism more accessible to games developers and yet it is
ignored. It can't be incidental, either. In a comic a brokeback pose
is the result of an artist not understanding or ignoring the
realities of anatomy followed by an editor who either hasn't the time
or the inclination to get the panel redrawn (probably the former)
with an inker inbetween stages who's kind of stuck working with what
he's been handed.
In a computer game every panty flash, every cleavage
shot, every brokeback pose and every pair of slackly pouting lips has
been carefully rendered by an entire team of programmers over a
course of months or even years of work.
So once I have money for new games I should see if any
more interesting female protagonists have developed during my little
hiatus. I'm not holding my breath though I have had my eye on a copy
of Super Princess Peach for a while, just to see what they do with
her as something other than a peril monkey for her idiot boyfriend.
Exercise,
You Bastards!
I am not buying a Kinect. Ever. If I do you have
complete license, should you ever meet me, to slap me. There's a Wii
in our staff canteen and no one used it after a week once they all
realised how stupid they looked flailing about infront of their
extremely judgemental peers.
I do not look forward to the promised controller future
that's apparently on the cards. Maybe this is because the technology
really isn't there yet. There's still a time delay absent from
handheld controllers that makes things like combat a right bugger
using Kinects and Wii-motes.
Conclusions
One: Check reviews for information on whether it can be
played satisfactorily without being charged for extra content.
Two: Also check to see that motion control is not a
necessary part of the experience. I'm told it isn't for all but the
very last releases on the 360 but best to check, I suppose.
Three: People keep harping on at me about story-driven
games. Mass Effect looks nice so that'll be a nice place to start and
Sheperd can be a woman so I can also get a start on that idea of
investigating the portrayal of female protagonists in this
generation.
Four: Not buy a Kinect. I don't know anyone who would
want to sell one for peanuts and in any case computer games are for
sitting down and giving my body something to do while I listen to
audio drama.
Five: I need to get £30 out of the bank tomorrow to
actually pay for the bloody thing.
