Maroon and Gamer: Understanding the Reviewer (Part 2)
Just as I did with Gears of War 3 back in September, I’m going to give a brief summary of my experiences with The Elder Scrolls series, developed by Bethesda Softworks.
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Just as I did with Gears of War 3 back in September, I’m going to give a brief summary of my experiences with The Elder Scrolls series, developed by Bethesda Softworks.
A typical trope in video games this generation is the element of choices. While it may seem like a common thing to include in a video game, they are literally two-dimensional. Moral choices appear in such games as: Grand Theft Auto 4, inFamous 1&2, Red Dead: Redemption, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Bioshock, Mass Effect 1&2, Dragon Age 1&2, etc. The latter two examples are developed by Bioware and have prided themselves on the importance of moral choices. An example that pops into my head, from Mass Effect 2, is that a teammate of yours wants revenge on someone who betrayed his team and got nearly everyone killed. His lust for vengeance puts you between him and his target, as you are the bait to lure the defector out. Yet, when you see and have a dialogue exchange with the target, he tells you how he can’t eat and has nightmares about his actions. The game asks you: Do you stand between your friend and his target or do you let your friend kill the man? The only problem is that these are the only options and they are clearly outlined as being good and evil, respectively.
The title of this piece is very direct and curt but it really focuses my opinion like a laser beam. First person shooters, or FPS, games have taken a wide range of settings and plots over the years. Doom, in 1993, had us going to hell with a double-barreled shotgun. In 2001, Halo: Combat Evolved had players explore a derelict ring world that would potentially obliterate all life in existence. And Bioshock sunk us below the sea in 2007 and let us explore an art-deco city run by an objectivist business magnate. But with the profitable success of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare released in 2007, FPS have consistently settled on the setting and game play of modern warfare.
Reviews are simply defined as an individual’s subjective opinion about any selective works whether it be video games, movies, music, etc. But nowadays, reviews carry more weight, especially in video games, due to the economy being in the state that it’s in and the $60 price tag to newly released games. No one wants to waste his or her money on a product so we often look to reviews. However, when we let reviews solely make decisions for us and reduce a complex human opinion numerically, the lines of reviews get blurred and the system is viable for corruption.
Last week, I discussed games removing control from the players and creating a cinematic feeling similar to that of Hollywood films. I discussed how removing the control from the player results in less of a game and more of a movie and a blurred line between the two visual mediums. Well now, I’m going to play devil’s advocate in this special Halloween-themed blog about horror video games and what they need to do to succeed in frightening the player.
A recent trend in video games is the use of a code you get when you buy a game new just so you can play online. It discourages people like myself from renting or even borrowing these games because I cannot try the full experience of the game and become a potential buyer. This was put into practice because the money from a new copy of a game goes to the publisher. When you buy a game used, however, the money goes straight to the retailer. But now we have a game that has no multiplayer and content is being locked out to those who do not buy the game new.
In this generation of video games, whenever I show people a trailer, from actual gameplay for a new video game, the most popular response I get is, “That looks like a movie!” And while I smile and grin on the inside that games are now being looked at with the same awe as movies, a part of me wonders if all of this cinematic flair is making video games less “game-y.” It is an analysis that is debatable due to all games giving you an interactive experience but my stance on games being too cinematic is the blurring of lines between movie and video game.
Developing a video game is not a simple process. It requires tens of thousands of man-hours, an outrageous amount of money, and sometimes multiple development studios to create a game. There is so much going on behind the scenes of each video game these days that it can really make your head spin. The average development time for a video game is usually two to three years and that’s only if the publisher, the company giving the money, sees the end result as profitable. After all, the video game industry is run by businesses trying to make more money than the other guy.
Other than getting a better deal, it doesn’t matter where you buy a book, a DVD or even a pair of shoes to get the complete package. You walk into a Barnes and Noble or order on Amazon, you pay and then receive your item. The transaction is complete with you getting what you paid for. A straightforward process if there ever was one. But in the video game industry, it matters a great deal where you buy your game and even when you buy a game. The “when” is usually in a two-day span of the game’s release. This leads to a lot of confusion and controversy among consumers about a recent trend of pre-order exclusive incentives.
Remakes and reboots are nothing new to people these days. In the past, present and future there have been several hundred remakes of movies in the theaters. But only until recently has there been a surge, in the video game industry, for High Definition remakes of video games. All around the discussion boards, the community has been clamoring for more remakes of classic video games. God of War, Sly Cooper, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia have all been remade. Even the Nintendo 3DS’s biggest titles are just remakes of old Nintendo 64 games.
What happens after you see a movie that you really enjoyed in theaters? You might be inclined to purchase it on DVD or rent it and re-watch it. Maybe you want to buy the Director’s Cut or the “Ultimate Collector’s Edition” if it was a set of movies you enjoyed. But once the credits roll, the movie is over. The gaming industry has recently found a way to extend the life of a video game long past it’s finale. They do this through downloadable content or DLC. How DLC functions is that once you finish the game and you enjoyed it so much, you want more. With a few more dollars, ranging from five to twenty dollars, you can buy more of that game to enjoy. So then what is the problem?
Over the past couple of decades, Hollywood has been trying to adapt videogames into feature length films. This usually comes at the detriment of the actors in the roles, directors involved and the franchise the film was based on. Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros., BloodRayne, Postal, House of the Dead, Dungeon Siege etc, are only a handful of films based on videogames that have met with mixed and often very negative reception from critics and fans. But why is it so difficult to make a videogame movie? One reason could be that video games are often longer than their film counterparts and have more time to discuss and explain what is going on for the player. The casual moviegoer probably doesn’t want to sit and watch something that is the equivalent, in length, of watching a Bollywood film
The Gears of War franchise and I have had a complicated history. Those of you who read last week’s blog know that I loved Gears 1 but there were some problems with Gears 2 that really affected my view on the series as a whole. It seems that Epic Games heard, not only my complaints, but also those of their fans, and improved on the Gears of War formula. After playing Gears of War 3, I can safely say that this takes what was good about Gears of War 1 & 2, refines them and takes out what made Gears of War 2 such a poor iteration for the franchise.
On Sept. 14, it was announced at the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) that Ninja Gaiden III was going to include a multiplayer mode. Team Ninja, the developer of the Ninja Gaiden series, refers to this mode as a “world of ninjas.” For those who do not know, the Ninja Gaiden franchise has been a single-player game franchise since day one with the exception of Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, which included a cooperative mode. Single-player refers to games that involve the player, a world and a story that the developer is trying to tell. Multiplayer is where real people compete against each other.
Recently I was given the “green light” to review two video games for my blog: Gears of War 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I want to give a background blog so that my readers understand my bias and my opinions. I also will not be giving a numerical score for either game. I am a firm believer that you cannot quantify a complex human opinion numerically. This also prevents the reader from just skipping to the bottom for a number score. I have a history with both of these game franchises and video game companies so without further delay.
No, the Nintendo 3DS itself has not been redesigned. It still creates 3-D images and plays video games in 3-D with the use of a slider and not with glasses. This article is more about the recent attachment that Nintendo has unveiled, an additional second analog stick. Not only is this second analog stick built into a cradle like device, it does not take from the 3DS’s power source. While this 3DS circle pad attachment gets released in Japan on Dec.10, as reported by joystiq.com, it’s also being sold at 1,500 yen ($19.50). While this second analog stick may have seemed like a good idea months after the handheld’s launch, it makes me think that once Nintendo announced a device that could play 3-D games without glasses, they wanted to get it out to the consumers as quickly as possible. This caused a price drop (see previous blog) and now this second analog attachment.
In the beginning of September, “Dead Island” was released in North America. It received good reviews and high commercial success, shipping two million copies of the game by the end of this week already. But what is “Dead Island?” “Dead Island” is a first-person game crossed with role-playing video game conventions, with stats and skills to upgrade your character. You take the role of one of four tourists on the fictional vacation spot of Panoi. This island is populated with the walking dead and your task is to help the survivors and investigate why zombies have appeared on a tropical island.
In May, Team Bondi developed a game called L.A. Noire in which the player interacts in the 1950s as an upstanding detective named Cole Phelps. This is more than a period piece as gamers were forced to read the facial expressions of characters, through a breakthrough in motion capture technology, to evaluate whether a character was telling the truth or lying. The studio that funded this project was Rockstar Studios, the same studio that developed the Grand Theft Auto series and Red Dead Redemption. Many were unsure about how a game like L.A. Noire would sell but luckily it sold very well, moving 899,000 units in the United States alone.
“Deus Ex: Human Revolution” sure loves the spotlight a little too much. Last time, it was a mishap with GameStop and the Onlive codes that caught journalists’ eyes and ears. Now “Deus Ex: Human Revolution,” developed by Eidos Montreal and published by Square Enix, jumps into the racial caricature hot seat. When playing “Deus Ex: Human Revolution,” I, and hundreds of thousands of other gamers, encountered a character in Detroit who is now referred to as Letitia the Trash Lady. This African American woman, existing in the year 2027, refers to the main character as “Cap’n” and comments on his augmentation by saying “Serif done fixed you up good, ain’t he?”
About eight days ago, “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” was announced to have same-sex relationships. “Skyrim” is a massive role-playing game that allows the player to do battle with dragons while existing in a believable world with micro-detail on the smallest of flowers and macro-detail of the mountainous region. The appeal to “Skyrim,” as was with past Elder Scrolls games, is that if you can see it, you can go there. When I first heard about this news I remember saying aloud, “Wow! That’s really cool, they are letting you play a role in the world as you see fit.” But as I thought about it, I started noticing a trend when it came to role-playing games.
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