Contrarian Corner: Gears of War 2

Date: 24th November, 2008
Publication: IGN UK
Author: Michael Thomsen
Link

This careful, insightful critique of Gears of War 2 is not only the best thing I’ve read on IGN but also one of the best pieces of writing about the game available anywhere.

It sits within a new (to my mind, at least) feature slot on IGN UK, dubbed Contrarian’s Corner. While that moniker suggests it’ll be some sort of antagonistic polemic, in truth it’s fairly orthodox criticism that unpicks the laughable juxtaposition between the game’s Mature/ 18 age rating and its immature themes. The following excerpt in particular is brilliant:

(Stay away, a long and happy way away, from the comments thread if you know what’s good for you.)

The game pushes even further with its self-seriousness in Dom’s tragic quest to save his wife. She’s been kidnapped by the Locust and her last know whereabouts lie conveniently along the path that Marcus and Delta Squad are pushing down to eliminate the Locust once and for all. There is no stronger narrative element to introduce in a game than a man trying to save a woman. From Shadow of the Colossus to Super Mario Bros., this has been the Freudian cookie trail that’s drawn players through some of the greatest games ever made. In Gears 2 it’s a side dish, used mechanically when the pacing dictates it’s time for emotion. There is no fundamental difference between Dom from the first Gears and the one that appears in the second. He remains cocksure, quippy, and eager to chainsaw a Locust when occasion allows. In cutscenes, he is suddenly possessed by the ghost of a soap opera actor as he stoically stares into the camera lens with tears welling in his eyes…

…When Dom is finally reunited with his love, she stumbles out of a metallic incubation pod, initially appearing as her old, beautiful self before morphing into the scarred and emaciated zombie she has become in captivity.

Her skull is riddled with scars and her eyes are glazed over in a lobotomized haze. Dom is crushed, but after some coaxing from Marcus he puts her out of her misery and moves on with the more important task at hand: fighting mutated sea slugs and saving a city from a giant worm.

Afrika

Date: 18th September, 2008
Publication: Eurogamer
Author: Ellie Gibson
Link

Gibson’s one of Eurogamer’s most popular writers. I imagine that she’s often commissioned to review mainstream Wii games for the site because her wit and irreverence draws readers in to pieces that they would otherwise leave well alone.

Her award at the GMAs earlier in the year was well-deserved because she inspires people to read about things they’re not naturally interested in. That is, without doubt the hardest job for any writer or journalist, no matter what their field. This review of Afrika, a Japanese-only PlayStation 3 release best exemplifies that skill.

“Can you run over small animals in this game? i read somewhere that later on in the game you can drive yourself around, so they better make it realistic so you can run over a lion or something or break its legs off.” – Forum post by “contempt456″ on GameFaqs.com.

Dear contempt456,

Bad news, I’m afraid. No, you cannot run over a lion in Afrika. Nor can you break its legs off. Nor can you tie an elephant’s trunk in a knot, cut off a giraffe’s head or inflate a hippo till it goes pop. You can’t even make a monkey wear an embarrassing hat.

So Afrika is probably not the game for you. In fact, Sony has decided it’s not the game for anyone outside of Japan – at least not enough people to make a release commercially viable. If you want a copy, you’ll have to import one. And unless you can understand Japanese, you’ll spend the first hour or so turning to websites like GameFaqs as you try to work out what’s going on.

This isn’t too tricky, as there’s not an awful lot going on. You explore pretty African landscapes and take pictures of animals. That’s about it. Tedious? You may well think so, if breaking the legs off lions is your idea of a good time. But give it a go and, like me, you could find playing Afrika to be a relaxing, rewarding and enjoyable experience. Even though at no point do you so much as get to give a zebra a Chinese burn.

One More Go

Date: 18th September, 2008
Publication: Offworld
Author: Margaret Robertson
Link

Offworld is, next to Fidgit, my favourite new videogame site of 2008. Like its parent, Boing Boing, it acts as a clearing house for cute, interesting and terrifying things. Unlike Boing Boing, these are limited to the world of videogames.

Editor Brandon Boyer has done an excellent job in establishing a unique and readable tone and he’s drawn in some ace columnists to provide back-up, including ex-Edge editor Margaret Robertson. Her theme is ‘games that I can’t stop going back to’, and the column kicked off with the DS title New York Times Crosswords, in which a videogame trivia mistake sets up a whole alternative historical timeline of the medium. While her own blog is rarely updated, it’s worth subscribing to for those times it is. Today’s update in particular is useful.

And suddenly, with a single, trivial oversight, the New York Times rewrites gaming history. Suddenly, instead of Pong, Nolan Bushnell unleashes a stark, monochrome rescue challenge on the world. AVOID MISSING PRINCESS FOR HIGH SCORE burns itself into the brains of a generation. A couple of sequels expand the world of this strange new hero and, keen to bring its popularity to bear on the 2600, Atari execs strong-arm Warren Robinett into populating Adventure with mushroom monsters and making the green dragon friendly.

The new franchise becomes so popular, that – at the last minute – the decision is taken to stop development on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and instead divert full resources to Mario’s Revenge, a hypnotic shooter in which the plucky plumber must shoot fireballs through a dazzling, kaleidoscopic barrier while dodging Donkey Kong’s laser-barrels.

Mario’s Revenge is such a huge hit it leads to the Great Videogame Surge of 1983. With its vast resources of cash, Atari bring forward development of its revolutionary Lynx handheld, which – thanks to the popularity of Mushroom Kingdom Games, which features goomba-skimming, piranha-plant-vaulting and dinosaur racing – outsells the Game Boy ten-to-one. Nintendo, resources depleted after losing successive court battles, drops out of the videogame industry.

The 1%

Date: 5th September, 2008
Publication: Rock Paper Shotgun
Author: Quintin Smith
Link

Planetside is a game I have no knowledge of or interest in. It was released for a system that I rarely play in a genre that I find, frankly, exhausting. It’s the power of the story, and Smith’s execution alone, then, that make this piece so compelling.

In simple terms it’s just a really neat war story, the kind that veterans reminisce years after the event, that happens to have been facilitated by a game world. It’s about camaraderie and comradeship, the drawing together of brave men to face insurmountable odds with hope and humour. So far, so Band of Brothers.

But in broader terms, it’s a story about how a never-ending game once came to end, albeit temporarily. Endings are important, and yet they’re almost never found in persistent game worlds. This is a story of how a tragic ending, by virtue of just being an ending, turned out to be a happy one.

I managed to push my way through the crowd gathered around the equipment terminal and get myself some landmines, then went sprinting out of the front entrance to the tower. The structure was located on a curling strip of land with our base in one direction and the sea in three others, so I could at least be guaranteed that the /most/ of the Vanu force would be coming from that direction. Goddamn hovertanks.

Already I could see the eagerest soldiers of that horrible purple army pouring out of the base and running in our direction. I armed mines with a few other engineers until the first sniper potshots at us arrived, then we ducked back inside. The fighting proper started when we were down in the basement, swapping our gear for heavier armour and bigger guns. On a whim I brought up my map. If this was a movie then our sanctuary would get unlocked again right about now, the cavalry would arrive through the warp gate not a hundred meters from us, and we’d all get enough medals to break our backs.

[pyrrhic] WE NEED ANTI ARMOUR RIGHT NOW

Course, if Planetside teaches its loyal subscribers anything it’s that war is not a movie and that war really, really fucking sucks for 98% of the time. So we didn’t get medals. Instead we got multiple incoming Vanu hovertanks, spawned fresh right out of the base we just lost.

Murder Incorporated

Date: 29th January, 2008
Publication: PC Gamer (reprinted on computerandvideogames.com)
Author: Tom Francis
Link

It’s an assassination story, one whose facts and details make for extraordinary reading. Ten months of plotting, infiltration and mass organisation by the group known as the Guiding Hand Social Club met in a single code word, “Nicole”, the trigger that would prematurely end the life of the Ubiqua Seraph corporation’s CEO.

If this crime had taken place in our reality, rather than in that of the MMO, Eve Online, it would have become a story passed from generation to generation, re-enacted in playgrounds for decades till its details faded to folklore. But while the murder and theft took place in-game, the 30 billion ISK of estimated financial damage it caused still translated to $16,500 US dollars in real terms. It’s one of the biggest in-game ‘crimes’ ever committed, one that’s brought to vivid life by Tom Franics in this feature.

By April 18th, the Guiding Hand had operatives in every level of Ubiqua Seraph’s organisation. Several were on the board of directors, and primary agent Arenis Xemdal “rose to a rank sufficient to challenge the CEO’s decisions.”

“Multiple vector infiltration is a trademark of GHSC,” Shogaatsu adds. “We feel one spy is rarely enough.”

It took extraordinary effort, meticulous planning, and one moment of spectacularly orchestrated treachery. Xemdal had convinced Mirial – referred to as ‘the objective’ by Guiding Hand operatives – to fly her ridiculously valuable Navy Apocalypse alongside his even more ridiculously valuable Imperial Apocalypse “as a show of UQS (Ubiqua Seraph) might”.

“The early-morning strike against Mirial’s battleship was fraught with concern.” Shogaatsu recalls. “One tense moment occurred when a pilot belonging to an unaffiliated third party hostile to UQS entered the system where our operatives’ trap for Mirial lay. Another came soon after, when Guiding Hand operative Uuve Savisaalo – tasked with assisting the kill on Mirial – was spotted arriving in system by an Ubiqua Seraph pilot. These events spooked the objective, who made a short jump before being set upon by Uuve and – in a moment of ‘Et tu, Brute’ if ever there was one – Arenis Xemdal’s Imperial Apocalypse.”

[Although this piece was originally published earlier than 2008 it wasn't until this year that it found a global audience online, so I think it qualifies nonetheless.]

So there we have it. Ten pieces of writing about videogames from the past twelve months that should be celebrated. This list could easily have run to fifty, a hundred entries, perhaps, because videogame writing in all its forms is a broad and ever-broader church with a skilled congregation.

As such the title of the list is misleading. I’ve not read all of the games writing in the past year and I’m certainly not wanting to present myself as the arbiter of its quality. Crikey, there are too many weaknesses in my own prose to assume otherwise. This is really just a list of neat writing and thinking about games and game culture that I’ve been struck by. I hope you have been too.

If you’re active in writing about games and weren’t mentioned (that’s pretty much the whole internet though, right?) then don’t be sad or annoyed. I could compose a list every week of the year and it wouldn’t cover everything good and interesting that’s being written about videogames right now. (That doesn’t necessarily mean that someone shouldn’t try though. More on that later…)

For now, thanks for stopping by. If you’ve a few minutes to spare then please have a poke around some of my own output this year which, from this piece on Al Qaeda’s entry into game development, to this one about hookers on Tetris, has been happily (but unintentionally) divisive. Onwards.

Part 1 of this article can be found here