1st Impressions

Crap, I haven't updated this in FOREVER. With my internship starting and still having to scrounge for a job I've been too exhausted or too busy to give this blog the proper attention it needs. In any case, it's time I talked a little bit about games seriously. Unfortunately, I haven't actually beaten - much less thoroughly played through - anything that I feel is really worth talking about, but at least I can post some 1st impressions of what I've been thinking about.

DREAMFALL

Dreamfall is what I would call a successful cinematic game, one where the gameplay procedure and algorithm has a narrative meaning attached to it. What do I mean by that? Well, in a game like FF7, which most ppl do play for "the story" and "the world", stats, menus, and combat exist in a sort of non-diegetic space apart from the game world of Cloud running around, talking to people, and moving through the story. the "Allies on one side and monster on the other" turned base combat is a algorithm of the game that is inconsistent with the battle narrative: battles in that "world" don't actually occur like that, but the combat space rather exists in a "gamic space". Dreamfall is another game where story and world is the main focus of gameplay, but there is a correspondence of gamic action and narrative action: interfaces still exist, but they trigger actions such that when you hit the command "pick up ticket" the narrative of the game follows that action. I wouldn't say that the game's action is purely like that, but it is to a much larger degree than FF7, Warcraft III... even Doom.

If I were to do a full post on this game, it'd definitely be about the game's "cinema-ness", and how it's really trying in some ways to imitate a previous medium but also does things that are unusual to both cinema and games. In a typical fantasy/adventure movie, minor actions hold no interest to the spectator, but in a game like Dreamfall it is the minor actions of picking up objects, picking locks, and flippant conversation that actually create the game, challenge, and delight of playing. In some way, it is the avoidance of combat and action, the fact that you are not a superhero going around beating everyone up, that is more fun about Dreamfall. Listening to a Japanese man's sob story and looting garbage for a torn ticket isn't good cinema, but it is good adventure gaming because of the involvement, control, and effort involved.

What this makes me think of though is how it relates to Mary Flanagan's idea of the Hyperbody in Tomb Raider. Dreamfall seems to exaggerate the Male Gaze even more than Tomb Raider does, in the sense we control Zoey like we control Lara Croft, we've also got a less of an association of "ourselves" as Zoey; when a player "commands" Zoey to examine an object, she tells us what she is thinking, as though we occupy the inside of her head. There's a lot I want to discuss about this, but I don't think Dreamfall is really as troubling as Tomb Raider is, and is in it's own way a sort of feminist game...

Shadow of the Colossus

I really want to compare this game to You Have to Burn The Rope, I just feel that academically and thematically they bring up the same commentary about gaming. Not only are there the superficial similarities, like being put up against a giant boss where the only way to defeat them is through a sort of puzzle-like weak-spot manner, but both game I feel are making the same sort of criticism. You Have to Burn The Rope is less subtle than Shadow, but there's a dialog in both games that's established between the players: In YHTBTR it's the text in the tunnel proceeding the Grinning Colossus (hey!) but in Shadow there are similar "hints" about killing the bosses, such as the glowing weak spots in the second colossus, or Nimrod's omnipotent voice telling you "You must scale the Colossus to reach his weak point" if you take too long trying to figure things out. Shadow is especially interesting because the omnipotent, all-powerful being is not only addressing the player avatar, but also to a degree you, the player sitting on the couch with the controller in hand. And again, the moments of peace and silence where you move through the empty landscape (which parallels to the tunnel in YHTBTR) is again a sort of dialogue with the player, stripping away things such as challenge, plot, enemies, and questioning: are these things really necessary in a game? What about just good ol' aesthetic beauty? Also both games have a useless attack that accomplishes nothing, but in most "typical" games act as the bread and butter of your character. Why would the Wanderer in Shadow have a sword swinging move if all you really do in the game is use arrows and stab the weak spot?

Open Source Games

I've got LinCity installed and plan to play a bit of LinCiv, but LinCity crashes in like a couple seconds every time I boot it up so really the only Open Source Gaming I've been doing has been Battle for Wesnoth. Still, Open Source Games have the potential, but really haven't gone out and innovated but instead try to imitate other games, which seems really contrary to the way Open Source culture has worked with Operating Systems and such.

Hopefully, I'll expand on all of these topics as I play through all these game entirely. Gnite!

EDIT: Fixed some spelling errors, etc.