inFAMOUS

So I've sadly been living in the stone age recently and have been without anything approaching a proper internet connection for about two months. But I'm back! And the game that has caught my attention most in this interim period has been a rare beast of a PS3 exclusive, inFAMOUS. At first, it seemed to be a fairly generic sandbox adventure game, with echoes of Crackdown etc.

Once I played on however, and the game drew me in, I started to realise that inFAMOUS is, despite it's silly capitalising, a bit of a masterpiece. It plays almost like a greatest hits set of the best games from recent years, with the acrobatics of Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed, the open world mission based gameplay of GTA and the range of superpowers from The Force Unleashed. But it becomes more than the sum of it's parts. What it reveals to you is a broken city, destroyed by an apocalyptic explosion, which only you can help save. The feeling of taking back parts of the city and watching it regenerate, is genuinely satisfying.

There are a couple of problems, there probably isn't enough variety in the missions, and some of the powers are a little pointless, but none of that really matters when you are gliding along a power cable between two islands of the city, hurling bolts of electricity at baddies. This is a fun game.

A Shot In The Dark

So, after a few short hours headshotting my way through Resi 5, I think I have to say it's been one of my favourite gaming experiences that I can remember. The co-op mode just works so well, it leaves me wondering why 2 player was the domain of sports games and beat em ups exclusively for so long! I haven't played it single player yet, or co-op online, so I'm basing this opinion purely off the splitscreen mode. 

Initially, the splitscreen annoyed me a bit, because it's not a traditional bisecting line, rather two staggered rectangle boxes, leaving a lot of the screen unused. But after a (very) short while, it became my zone, and nothing else existed outside it. There have been some lovely uses of the co-op dynamic in the 30% or so I've played, the mines being a highlight.

While I hear the moans from a certain element of the resi fanbase with regards to the upping of the action and the lowering of frights, I don't really agree with it. Resident Evil has not been about horror and scares really since the first one, it's always been a more action oriented, goal driven game. Get the key/emblem/crest, headshot a few zombies with your shotgun and watch the ammo (and inventory space). That's the formula, and it works. And Resident Evil 5 is the most honed, refined version of that formula, and it's barry.

From the Age Gap

So I have been thinking recently about the emerging age gap that can be seen in videogames at the moment. An age gap is not really something has ever been present in gaming, because it has always been seen as a very "youth" medium. But now those "youths" who started gaming 20, 30 years ago, are grown adults, and are still gaming. This brings up the issue of how people who have been gaming for years digest the games they play when compared to younger, less experienced gamers. 

It's a common sight to see a teenager (or older) flicking around TV channels, see a black and white movie, and instantly move on, disregarding the movie as unwatchable because it is in black and white, from a different era. So what reaction might we see if a young gamer is presented with a classic point and click adventure perhaps, a gameplay device that is now all but redundant. Would there be the same reaction as the teenage movie watcher, unable to watch the black and white film? The thing is, while people can go back and listen to old records, or go back and dig out old films, games are different. Because you can go back and listen to music from a different era, and people do, the whole consumption and production of music has a somewhat cyclical nature, where there are waves and movements, often based on things that have happened in the past, and a similar thing happens with movies. But a game can't just be reissued on a new format, like a CD or a DVD. So much of gaming history is so time specific because of the way the industry works, with consoles and machines that are redundant every 5 years or so. I understand the emulation argument and I am aware of the rise of "reissues" on Playstation Network and so on, but in general, much of gaming's mythology and history is unavailable to younger gamers, and as such, they have a much narrower frame of reference of where their games come from, as opposed to their music or films.

So is there space for games to even become "classics"? Games that are referred to as classics, like Final Fantasy 7, Monkey Island, System Shock 2 etc, must seem like myths or legends to younger gamers with a proper interest. If they can't play them, can't find them in shops...how can anyone play through a history of games? How can games have a proper lineage?

Midnight Club

I've always stayed away from games like Need for Speed and the like because I never thought they would have anything to offer me. Not being a driver, and certainly not being the type of person who spends all their expendable income buying widebody kits for their punto, I just gave them a wide berth. The closest I came was a few lusty months with Gran Turismo all those years ago, but the passion quickly waned as I got bored thinking about carbon flyshafts or whatever they are called. And that was that. Until I had a shot of Midnight Club: Los Angeles, which absolutely floored me. Despite buggy gameplay, a paper thin plot and repetitive missions, I cannot stop playing this game. The sheer speed, thrill and exhilaration of steaming through LA at 180mph is a sensory delight I have not felt for some time.

The pace of the races and the added calamity of the traffic makes for seriously eyes-glued-to-the-tv gameplay. Then there is the "kevving up" of your motor. Now, I am the furthest from interested in cars, but the joy I have felt by taking a VW Scirocco up against Nissan Skylines and winning is unmatched. I found it strangely emotional when I had to sell up t buy something superior too. And then....racing for - and losing - cars is easily one of the most heartbreaking things any game can do to you. Hours of work, tens of thousands of dollars....gone. I nearly cried.

So what is it about this game that has got me so, given I have no interest for any of the subject matter? Perhaps it's like crossover albums in music, when albums of sufficient quality break out of their genre into the mainstream, like say... Nevermind breaking out of the grunge scene, to use an obvious one. Is this the case? Or have I just gone mental?

Flash in the pan?

I have, in attempting to distract myself from the actual work I need to do, fallen in love with flash games. I've played flash games for a number of years, but they were always fairly limited in their scope and imagination, more often than not rip-offs of more famous puzzle games. But over the past year or two, flash gaming has exploded into a worthwhile platform of it's own. The fantastic flash gaming site Kongregate even has it's own achievement and reward system, and a feature where you can tip game developers if you think their game deserves it. 

In an interview I read recently with the creator of of kongregate, Kim Greer, (can't remember where I read it, so sorry, no link!) he said that a few developers were now making their living solely on the tips and advertising revenue they received from Kongregate, and that the were looking for more non-intrusive ways for developers to get paid (as everyone else is). Now, this got me thinking about the tradition of the one-man game. In the days of the bedroom coder, it was more common than not for games to be made by one person. And some fairly legendary games were made this way. But as game companies grew bigger, and budgets grew higher, the one-coder game pretty much died. But now, thanks to flash, PSN, Xbox Live and Wiicade (or whatever it's called) smaller games are enjoying a pretty serious boon, and this might have more of a positive effect on games than may initially seem obvious.

The big problem that the  film scholars of the french new wave had when trying to establish the discipline of film studies was that it was considered a collaborative medium, and one for entertainment, not art. Because, went the argument, if there are so many people involved in the process of making a film, how can it be said that a film reflects one person's artistic vision? The french new wavers,like Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Andre Bazin set about proving this theory incorrect. By studying sets of films by the same director, they found stylistic imprints, or hallmarks that marked each film as being by that particular director. Directors that worked in this way, exercising total control, were labelled auteurs.

Now, could today's small game developers be the auteurs of the videogame world? Some people consider the likes of Kojima, Miyamoto, Meier and Molyneux already to have auteur status, but the same collaborative, entertainment-based argument goes against them. Games like Braid (sorry to keep going on about it) and, to a lesser extent Inquisitive Dave both inspired more thought and reflection than the last film by so called auteur Quentin Tarantino, so who is to say which is the more worthy? Surprisingly, the concept of the videogame auteur is understudied in the academic world, which I find strange, because for me, it could be the key issue in the future of videogame studies.

Sorry, I didn't really want to get into the "can videogames be art" question because I think much of it is a question about semantics. The definition of art itself is very hazy, so I'm not sure what the whole point of the debate is. The argument about videogames being dumb is funny though, because as we all know nothing can be considered art until has been "dumbed down"!

Home?

Today I had my first play about on Playstation Home, which is available as a beta on the PSN. Home was something I had been mildly excited about for a wee while, as the little information that was doled out about it made it sound like a huge cityscape where you could have an apartment and your friends could come over and what not. From those tidbits, my imagination ran away with me and I imagined skyscraper apartment blocks, elevators with search fields, full customisation and design of your apartment etc. So when I logged on (after several c-931 errors) what I found was rather deflating.

First you are sent to the wardrobe to pick from a very limited selection of free clothing, and then you are plopped into your ridiculously beautiful apartment with a harbour view and bland furniture. There is literally nothing to do there, so I quickly dashed out (after downloading it) into Home Square, the hub of the world. What I found was many people dancing at each other, some watching trailers of (sony) games and some playing a mangled version of pool or bowling. 

The whole thing sort of felt like an emptier SecondLife (which I abhorred) and wasn't the step towards consolidating Sony's online community that I hope it would be. I was hoping for a genuinely intuitive hub where online games could be set up and friends could meet. I may be judging it prematurely as it is still in the beta phase and hasn't been opened up yet. I admit there is the possibility of some cool stuff happening there, provided developers get the freedom to experiment and don't go too hard at selling stuff. 

This was the major bugbear with Home for me. Being charged to 59p for a cowboy hat for my avatar to wear and £5 for a new house is faintly ridiculous in my estimation. I imagine Sony have priced clothing items at 59p so that users think "ah, it's only 59p, and my character would look ace in those cargo shorts!", and that all those casual 59ps add up to a sustainable revenue stream but it just seems cynical and downright cheeky to me. So I think I'll just stay in my real home, where I can wear what I want - for free.

The difficulties of Prince of Persia

The new Prince of Persia game has attracted some comment about it's difficulty, or lack thereof. There have been articles concerning the fact that it's just so easy, and whether this is a problem. 

It's true to say that the feeling of beating part of a game that has had you stumped for days is one of the parts of gaming that makes it so fun. However, is there now space in this post-Wii, broad gaming market for more mature and complex games than the likes of Wii Sports that can be completed by almost anyone?

This harks back to the great argument in videogames of narrative versus interactivity. Because by making PoP as easy as it is, Ubisoft Montreal are implicitly weighing down on the side of narrative, because making it easy allows everyone to reach the conclusion of the story. Yet it does try to position itself in a specific area of gaming - the artgame. Your companion, Elika, and yourself form a relationship very reminiscent of Ico and the whole game itself is structured much like Team Ico's other masterpiece, Shadow of the Colossus. The watercolour graphics owe much to Okami and Braid. So the game wears it's "artgame" influences on it's sleeve, yet it can never help feeling like a Hollywood remake of an independent film. The cheesy voice acting, the exciting chase intro and the tutorial all make it feel like a big game with a big budget, trying to do things things those smaller, beautiful games do so well.

But none of those games were particularly easy. I certainly took a week or so to finish off the final Colossus, and got pretty frustrated with Yorda in Ico, so why make PoP so easy? Perhaps the decision was made for corporate reasons - to broaden the appeal, maybe for artistic reasons - so people see it to the end. Whatever the reason, I think there is certainly a place in the market for easier, yet satisfying games such as this. It's something we will definitely see more of - the casual mode in Gears of War 2 for instance. Whether it will have an effect on the overall difficulty of games however, remains to be seen.

Hello World

Hello world!