Nope, not going crazy. First of all, in my latest Kotaku feature, I explain how the wildly fantastic Infamous 2 helped me loosen up a little and learn to be the bad guy.
I've always been kind of uncomfortable with pointless violence in video games. Not because I think it makes people violent, or because I think it's immoral, or because I think it's "making a statement" of any kind on the real world. It's just because, when I think of all of the possibilities in interactive entertainment, and the incredible things we can do with games -- it's a way to play, something fundamental to human nature, that can't be emulated in any other medium -- it's always just kind of seemed weird to me that all we want to do is shoot things. Shoot people.
In that context, the content out there and the way some people play often perplexes me, even occasionally grosses me out. I feel uncomfortable with games that look too much like real war, for example. I dislike that developers sometimes utilize sensitive real-world imagery or events to create "impact" for their shallow, repetitive, cheez-ball cover shooters. Like, if you're going to leverage real horrific imagery, real suffering, at least do something creative with it.
Right now, though, for once, I am wrecking the shit out of New Marais. I am a little bummed at how far my Serious-Critic thinking cap has taken me from that kind of pure, mindless joy that can keep you playing video games for hours.
These days, when I write, I feel responsible for encouraging people to ask for more than what we've got, to create more than what there is. But I used to love that pure chaos, the freedom to wreak havok. Loved it about Grand Theft Auto games, too, far more than the ponderous storylines or the missions, most of which I would avoid or let someone else play for me. Until the fourth one. It took itself too seriously.
Then it kind of hit me. In order for unadulterated destruction and killing sprees in games to be fun, it has to be funny.
Its context must be so absurd that you can't possibly take it seriously even if you're trying. In Vice City, I, advocate of respect for women in games, passionate evangelist for games as more-than-toys, blah blah blah, was "that player" -- yes, the one who would beat up a prostitute to get my money back, as the old adage goes. I mean, I literally did that.
Because Vice City was flipping hilarious. It was a perfect illustration of absurdist Miami excess, an excellent satire of what was "cool" in the 1980s, and its humor was, very wisely, an indictment of an entire culture and era.
I mean, do I feel awesome explaining to my non-gamer friends about how I had fun running over everyone whose outfit I thought was too tacky? Is that what I want them to think of when they think of video games? Probably not, because they would then glaze over in the middle of my "satire... indictment... so canny" whatever apologia that I break out whenever I talk about GTA.
And I would be bummed if every game were like that. But Infamous 2 -- granted, much less crude and overt in its opportunities for violence than GTA -- is reminding me that it's okay if some games are just there to pretty much let me explode buildings and cars and people and whatever.
Infamous 2 is not a smart game. I have been playing it every free minute I get for the past four days, and I've done a ton of missions and I still don't really know what the plot is. Something something Ray Spheres, powers, this lady, a different lady, science, powers, a guy named Bertrand, powers and powers, that's about all I got. Cole McGrath is such a douchey cliche that he has to be less annoying as a bad guy than as Mr. Hero Helperton. The voice acting makes me climb the walls (although I do go for that gravelly-type voice Cole has).
The citizens of New Marais dodder around awkwardly like weird little scarecrows, wandering into one another and into firefights; I'm in the center of town throwing vehicles at some giant monster and the cars continue driving around, beeping at me because I'm standing in their way. They say stupid things, or sometimes they just run around in screaming hysterics.
But the game world -- you know, the things I need to climb on and jump off of -- is beautifully made. The game feels brilliant. All the important stuff is perfect, and everything else should stay just the way it is. Because if it were less funny and more real, maybe I wouldn't feel so awesome about ripping it all apart.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to massacring as many civilians as possible to evolve my rank from "Outlaw" to "Infamous." I mean, that's what the game is called, so it seems like that's what I ought to do.
15 comments:
For me, I reached that point with Prototype. It was not that good of a game. The plot was dumb, the hero was terrible at being a hero, and the ramp-up in boss fight difficulty was as badly tuned as a 1985 Yugo.
Nevertheless, there was something extremely cathartic about grabbing cars and throwing them into pedestrians, or pounding on buildings and bystanders alike. For the first time in a long time I stopped paying attention to story and game balance and agency and instead gave myself over to the flow of being recklessly bad.
GTA lost me when it started thinking its story should be infinitely more serious than its gameplay. That's why I've had much more fun with the Saint's Row games - they embrace the ridiculousness of it all, and focus on even more ridiculously chaotic gameplay.
Seems to me, then, that Saints Row would be the perfect game. Those are the only games where I feel OK with being a terrible, terrible person.
Amen. That's why I, and a whole lot of other people, have very fond memories of Carmaggedon and especially Carmaggedon II. It was absolute mayhem, but it was a blast. Knock a pedestrian into a wall with an ice pattern? "Artistic impression" bonus. Knock off just one limb, but leave them alive? "Cat and mouse" bonus. It was all so absurd, and just a fun game to play, especially with the greatest soundtrack of any game, ever.
Have you played Just Cause 2 at all? I've only played the first Infamous, about 2/3rds of the way through it right now, and I think there are a lot of similarities between the two. There's no explicit "evil" path in JC2, but the number of innocent civilians you kill in the name of destabilizing the government is non-trivial. But the explosions are AWESOME.
You know, when it comes to cheerfully and comically wreaking havoc on everything and everybody, it's hard to top Katamari Damacy. ;)
I do agree with you, I mean, I also like stupid games and just having fun with them.
But I also feel a little like your post belongs to a not so distant (I hope) future when "serious" games are the standard and not the absolute exception. We still have so many FPS flooding the market and I can't wait for this to end (I have HATED FPS since times of Doom).
Also, as a resident of the "third world" (as the "first world" likes to say) I find the portrayals of war on these games quite offending at times.
So let's keep on asking for more deep meaningful games for now.
Please??
I can relate. It took me a while to put my finger on why some shooters/action games made me squirm a bit, so to speak. While others, would have me in stitches at the sheer silliness of its "mature" content. Others still would give me something of a buzz when something visceral happened. It's all in the tone of the game for me.
Doesn't always work, but when a game can "do it right" as I often would say, it can be a blast.
Even so, I gravitate towards games that have an aesthetic that captures my imagination or have interesting narrative elements and are thought provoking in general. And still will roll my eyes at games that are going for "dark" or "gritty".
But sometimes, its just a load of fun to sit down and chainsaw dudes, which is the only reason I played, or might still consider playing, a Gears game.
Even people I've known who were, or seemed to me, squeamish about game violence would, at first, gasp but then laugh for several minutes afterward the first time I showed them that particular animation in the first Gears. A few wanted to even try it themselves.
Question: when you throw a car , do you: A. look for a parked, empty one, or B. grab the nearest one even if it has someone in it?
And this is why I like the Fallout games which, regardless of format (FPS or top-down, turn-based hex-grid) deliver on absurdism on many fronts - and yet retain that grim, seriouser-than-serious anti-violence message (oh, the irony). Too bad you can't get the Child Killer karmic value anymore. Of course, you'd have to be able to kill children. Not that you'd necessarily want that rank. It came with a very stiff penalty.
GTA IV, as serious as it may take itself, was still a grand theft auto game at heart. Even if the aiming system actually works. It just didn't have chainsaws, miniguns or a dildo for every colour of the goddamned rainbow.
I think it's great that many intelligent games also let you be stupid. Even the Elder Scrolls games (barring Redguard and Battlespire) have room for random acts of "whatever". Although robbing merchants and selling all their stuff back to them was nixed after Daggerfall. That sucked.
There is a fine line, though. I mean, all Crackdown boiled down to was enhancing your abilities, more or less. And after you killed off the gangs, there wasn't a whole lot left to do other than throw cars at braindead civilians, and it more or less devolves into Grand Theft Auto 1 - 3 where the only thing really fun about it is pissing off the cops and killing sheeple.
If that's all that was needed to make a great game, State of Emergency wouldn't have sucked.
If you want pure chaos, Mercenaries 2 is really good for that...with cheats so you can unlock all of the heavy, heavy stuff. Nothing makes chaos like WMDs and a warzone.
You should see how I play games.
I don't know, I suppose I'm personally still burned out on the violence aspect, but then my brain is wired strangely in that respect. A science officer talking intellectual pseudo-philosophy in a film can get me to sit up in my chair, but the moment an action sequence bursts onto the screen I start falling asleep.
I have, in fact, passed out due to how bored I've been by an ongoing action sequence and slept through the rest of that film, feeling somewhat conned.
Since then, I try to distract myself with thinking of other things whenever I'm presented with an action sequence just to distract myself until something interesting starts happening again. I suppose that on some level I realise that it's all about potential. With anything other than violence you have the potential for something special and interesting, with violence you have just the potential for death and only death. That's that.
I don't glorify death or victory, I find them painfully dull concepts. I'll either die in a bed or in some Universally stupid accident. And that's death, really. It either occurs naturally or it's stupid, and often the death-dealer is equally foolish. A life was lost because someone was irresponsible or lazy, and that's that.
That's that.
But if you can solve a situation with puzzle-solving, talking, detective work, romance, archaeology(??), or what have you, that then has the potential to go somewhere. You can build a plot off those things.
I've always felt that it's more cowardly to kill than to do anything else. Because if you kill a foe then you'll never have to face them again. They're dead and that's that, and their story ends there. You'll never talk to them again, you'll never be hassled by them again, and you'll never have the chance to work out your differences. They're dead and that's that.
That's why I tend to view killing as a last alternative, and if any game gives me a way to proceed through it without taking a single life, I'll do it. Often the process will be very masochistic, but I'll do it and I find it strangely rewarding. It's compelling and thrilling in ways that killing people has never been, at least for me.
Perhaps it's because I was raised on Doctor Who, and the recent seasons sort of continued to drum in the conditioning that running is better than killing. But I feel a bit like the good doctor when I'm on the run and even trying to save people in the process. I know that my foes won't stop... so how do I save my foes and the prey of my foes? How do I keep everyone alive?
I had a similar thrill like this in Morrowind quite recently. Running around and freeing slaves, except I didn't kill a single guard. There's one lovely skillset named hand to hand wherein one punches their foes until they fall down exhausted, but not dead. With a mod one can even loot the exhausted (they wouldn't be able to stop you, would they?).
It's surprising how much of Morrowind's content I've been able to do without taking a single life, and it has been an enthralling experience. When you make the conscious decision not to kill a single life form as part of your playthrough of a game, with the conditions of failure being a death that you could have avoided, theirs or yours, then it opens the door to all sorts of emergent gameplay.
(To be continued. Hooray for character limits.)
You should see how I play games.
I don't know, I suppose I'm personally still burned out on the violence aspect, but then my brain is wired strangely in that respect. A science officer talking intellectual pseudo-philosophy in a film can get me to sit up in my chair, but the moment an action sequence bursts onto the screen I start falling asleep.
I have, in fact, passed out due to how bored I've been by an ongoing action sequence and slept through the rest of that film, feeling somewhat conned.
Since then, I try to distract myself with thinking of other things whenever I'm presented with an action sequence just to distract myself until something interesting starts happening again. I suppose that on some level I realise that it's all about potential. With anything other than violence you have the potential for something special and interesting, with violence you have just the potential for death and only death. That's that.
I don't glorify death or victory, I find them painfully dull concepts. I'll either die in a bed or in some Universally stupid accident. And that's death, really. It either occurs naturally or it's stupid, and often the death-dealer is equally foolish. A life was lost because someone was irresponsible or lazy, and that's that.
That's that.
But if you can solve a situation with puzzle-solving, talking, detective work, romance, archaeology(??), or what have you, that then has the potential to go somewhere. You can build a plot off those things.
I've always felt that it's more cowardly to kill than to do anything else. Because if you kill a foe then you'll never have to face them again. They're dead and that's that, and their story ends there. You'll never talk to them again, you'll never be hassled by them again, and you'll never have the chance to work out your differences. They're dead and that's that.
That's why I tend to view killing as a last alternative, and if any game gives me a way to proceed through it without taking a single life, I'll do it. Often the process will be very masochistic, but I'll do it and I find it strangely rewarding. It's compelling and thrilling in ways that killing people has never been, at least for me.
Perhaps it's because I was raised on Doctor Who, and the recent seasons sort of continued to drum in the conditioning that running is better than killing. But I feel a bit like the good doctor when I'm on the run and even trying to save people in the process. I know that my foes won't stop... so how do I save my foes and the prey of my foes? How do I keep everyone alive?
I had a similar thrill like this in Morrowind quite recently. Running around and freeing slaves, except I didn't kill a single guard. There's one lovely skillset named hand to hand wherein one punches their foes until they fall down exhausted, but not dead. With a mod one can even loot the exhausted (they wouldn't be able to stop you, would they?).
It's surprising how much of Morrowind's content I've been able to do without taking a single life, and it has been an enthralling experience. When you make the conscious decision not to kill a single life form as part of your playthrough of a game, with the conditions of failure being a death that you could have avoided, theirs or yours, then it opens the door to all sorts of emergent gameplay.
The end result is that I have a character who'll lie, cheat, talk, steal, and punch his way to an end result that works for as many people as possible, and at least leaves everyone involved alive. It's sort of like Dread Pirate Robins meets Captain Picard meets Garritt from Thief meets Saxton Hale.
(I dislike character limits.)
And with the mods I have for Morrowind I can't even just run through a door either, I get followed, so if I screw up then things really turn sour.
The easy thing would be to just kill everyone. That would be the easy thing. But the worthwhile thing to do would be to try to keep to my ethos for that session and not kill anyone. That's when things get very tricky indeed. Especially if one ends up with a whole town after them.
'sides, if I killed anyone, I'd probably never be able to look Ahnassi in the eye as an equal ever again.
So whilst there's a lot to be said for games being stupid and fun, there's also a lot to be said for games really playing up to the potential of not having to kill things. I remember New Vegas fondly because there were hundreds of fights that I talked, conned, stole, cheated, and generally vagabonded (so to speak) my way out of.
And I look at Skyrim and I wonder... just how many mods will I require to enjoy that selfsame experience there?
My worry is that games are becoming too dumb and thus depriving us of choice. So in more recent games we can't even entertain the thought of trying to find a workable scenario for everyone, rather than just killing off one party. And what does that say about us as gamers?
That's an interesting question.
But wherever I can, and regardless of how game-breaking it may be, I will always, always take the challenge of not killing. Not a beast, not a person, not an insect. And I invite everyone else to give this a go too. It won't be easy and you may not even have the stuff for it, but still, I do encourage you all to try.
I disagree with you. If you know that it isn't real. You won't have problem. I know that it is quite hard to dissociate from that statements but it doesn't mean that you will believe that everything that you watch on tvs or movies are rea.
I certainly agree on the blogger, stupid games are meant for fun. Then how the hell would we enjoy the realistic games?
GTA series is very stupid and violent with a good mix of good old comedy. If you kill a civilian or I would say a cop. Then after killing them there is a court justice system and forensics. Now only it will be boring, it will make the game very long!
Just my two cents.
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