It's A Better Plan Than Exploding, Marginally.
I've been playing Portal 2 for the past few days and would highly recommend it! I don't think I've ever played a game that gave me such a strong sense of achievement before. The puzzles that frustrate me the most when I'm trying to solve them tend to be the ones I like the most in retrospect; it's so satisfying to have a sudden breakthrough just when you're reaching hurl-the-controller-through-the-window levels of exasperation.
I'm in a really videogamey mood at the moment, actually. EVERYONE GET INTO VIDEOGAMES AND THEN TALK ABOUT THEM FOR ME. This is such an exciting medium! It's changing and developing at an incredible rate! Nobody knows what it will do next! And yet the mainstream media still consider gaming a weird niche thing that people should grow out of, and that makes me really sad.
A few months ago, The Times had two articles in the same week over which I scribbled furious 'NO, YOU ARE WRONG' notes. The first was a report on the controversy surrounding Battlefield 3, in which the reporter expressed the belief that 'plots in video games are about as sophisticated as those in porn films', making it quite apparent that he doesn't play videogames himself. You wouldn't find a mainstream newspaper commissioning a journalist who had never been to the theatre to report on a controversial play; a piece on a controversial game should be written by someone who knows about games.
The second article was an extract from You and Me: the Neuroscience of Identity by Susan Greenfield, and contained the following:
When you play a computer game to rescue the princess, it is not because the princess is meaningful or significant to you - you probably won't care about her as a person - but because of the thrill of the process of playing and winning. Yet when you read a book, it is because you care about the characters, their relationships with others and their fates: their past, present and future and interrelations with other characters give them meaning.
There is indeed a game in which an essentially meaningless, characterless princess is kidnapped as a simple excuse for the actual gameplay. It's called Super Mario Bros, and it was released in 1985. That was more than a quarter of a century ago, and in the interval since then games have gone from looking like this (Super Mario Bros, Nintendo, Nintendo Entertainment System, 1985) to looking like this (Uncharted, Naughty Dog, PlayStation 3, 2007). Is it possible that game storytelling has become more sophisticated as well?
I've warmed a little to it now, but when I first started playing the Uncharted series I hated the combat system. I was terrible at it. I died all the time. Despite not liking a huge chunk of the gameplay, I carried on with the game, and I carried on with the game because I cared about the characters. In this case, I wasn't playing for 'the thrill of the process of playing and winning'; I was going through that process because I really, really wanted to metaphorically rescue the metaphorical princess.
Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII contain about ten hours of cutscenes each. If the story and character interaction in those games were conceived as a flimsy excuse for the actual gameplay, Square put in a frankly surprising amount of effort.
The ending of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days made me cry until I couldn't see the screen. Just listening to the final battle music afterwards could still make me sob. I can assure you that I wasn't crying because I was so thrilled to have won the game.
I'll happily admit that some games are focused almost exclusively on gameplay and don't give much thought to plot or characterisation, and that's fine, but dismissing games altogether as a storytelling medium absolutely infuriates me. I opened this entry by praising Portal 2 for its satisfying puzzle-solving gameplay, but even a game as gameplay-focused as Portal has a backstory and sharply-drawn characters. If you say that videogames have no plot, no soul, no characters worth caring about, you are wrong. It's as simple as that.
Well, that was an awful lot of ranting at people who probably aren't reading this journal! Something positive to finish: it may interest you to know that penny_lane_42 is hosting a fic-request meme for interaction between female characters. Enjoy!
I'm in a really videogamey mood at the moment, actually. EVERYONE GET INTO VIDEOGAMES AND THEN TALK ABOUT THEM FOR ME. This is such an exciting medium! It's changing and developing at an incredible rate! Nobody knows what it will do next! And yet the mainstream media still consider gaming a weird niche thing that people should grow out of, and that makes me really sad.
A few months ago, The Times had two articles in the same week over which I scribbled furious 'NO, YOU ARE WRONG' notes. The first was a report on the controversy surrounding Battlefield 3, in which the reporter expressed the belief that 'plots in video games are about as sophisticated as those in porn films', making it quite apparent that he doesn't play videogames himself. You wouldn't find a mainstream newspaper commissioning a journalist who had never been to the theatre to report on a controversial play; a piece on a controversial game should be written by someone who knows about games.
The second article was an extract from You and Me: the Neuroscience of Identity by Susan Greenfield, and contained the following:
When you play a computer game to rescue the princess, it is not because the princess is meaningful or significant to you - you probably won't care about her as a person - but because of the thrill of the process of playing and winning. Yet when you read a book, it is because you care about the characters, their relationships with others and their fates: their past, present and future and interrelations with other characters give them meaning.
There is indeed a game in which an essentially meaningless, characterless princess is kidnapped as a simple excuse for the actual gameplay. It's called Super Mario Bros, and it was released in 1985. That was more than a quarter of a century ago, and in the interval since then games have gone from looking like this (Super Mario Bros, Nintendo, Nintendo Entertainment System, 1985) to looking like this (Uncharted, Naughty Dog, PlayStation 3, 2007). Is it possible that game storytelling has become more sophisticated as well?
I've warmed a little to it now, but when I first started playing the Uncharted series I hated the combat system. I was terrible at it. I died all the time. Despite not liking a huge chunk of the gameplay, I carried on with the game, and I carried on with the game because I cared about the characters. In this case, I wasn't playing for 'the thrill of the process of playing and winning'; I was going through that process because I really, really wanted to metaphorically rescue the metaphorical princess.
Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII contain about ten hours of cutscenes each. If the story and character interaction in those games were conceived as a flimsy excuse for the actual gameplay, Square put in a frankly surprising amount of effort.
The ending of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days made me cry until I couldn't see the screen. Just listening to the final battle music afterwards could still make me sob. I can assure you that I wasn't crying because I was so thrilled to have won the game.
I'll happily admit that some games are focused almost exclusively on gameplay and don't give much thought to plot or characterisation, and that's fine, but dismissing games altogether as a storytelling medium absolutely infuriates me. I opened this entry by praising Portal 2 for its satisfying puzzle-solving gameplay, but even a game as gameplay-focused as Portal has a backstory and sharply-drawn characters. If you say that videogames have no plot, no soul, no characters worth caring about, you are wrong. It's as simple as that.
Well, that was an awful lot of ranting at people who probably aren't reading this journal! Something positive to finish: it may interest you to know that penny_lane_42 is hosting a fic-request meme for interaction between female characters. Enjoy!