I have just watched the latest (first?) Fragile trailer, courtesy of the Kotaku newsfeed and YouTube:
Fragile is a game I've been looking forward to since I saw my first batch of screenshots. It's for the Wii and it's very pretty. In aesthetic, it resembles the sort of beautiful desolation I enjoy in everything from the anime Kino's Journey to the manga Yokohama Kadeshi Kiko to Steven King's The Dark Tower, coupled with shojou character designs straight out of CLAMP. There's really nothing there I don't like. I don't understand a word of the dialogue spoken but I'm looking forward to listening to more of it, with English subtitles. Using the Wii remote to direct a flashlight while exploring environments worthy of Misty Silent Hill but without Silent Hill's oppressive atmosphere it something I can buy into.
Or could.
Pay attention to the, oh, four seconds of video starting at the 1:31 mark.
I think I see a protagonist standing mostly in place and flailing rather limply against huge numbers of slow-moving and unresponsive identical low-poly enemies -- low poly enough that they look out of place in those beautiful environments. Given that he's using his flashlight, directed in the rest of the gameplay by the Wii remote, I'm guessing it's waggle-controlled, too.
I've played enough mediocre 3D platforming games with combat mechanics like that to know I don't want to play another.
I could, of course, be wrong, though since we're only a month away from the game's Japanese release date I doubt that's an alpha version of the combat. The game looks promising in other ways; God knows Ico didn't have very in-depth combat mechanics and it was great.
Still. Four seconds of video, and if most of my enthusiasm is, if not shattered, at least cracked.
I'm getting pretty jaded, to have expectations that fragile.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Thursday, December 25, 2008
No More Tears
So. Cry On has been canceled, apparently.
This is good news.
Here's the thing. Creating a game, as in many endeavors, requires many different skillsets, and they don't always occur within the same person. In the same way that someone who's good at drawing comics is not necessarily good at writing them, someone who's good at convincing an electorate to vote for him isn't necessarily good at governing a nation, and someone who's good at plotting and producing space adventure movies isn't necessarily good at scripting or directing them, someone who's good at creating compelling gameplay is not necessarily good at creating compelling narrative.
Unfortunately, like the comics thing, the politician thing, and the George Lucas thing, being good at creating compelling gameplay is often a good way to put yourself into a position where you're in charge of narrative.
This causes problems for creators who are good at creating gameplay, bad at creating narrative, and much more interested in the latter than the former. I will submit Hideo Kojima as Exhibit A -- I like Metal Gear Solid 4, but still admit it's full of stupid bullshit. The same stupid bullshit was in MGS and MGS2; it was just less visible in the former's case because the technology didn't allow for as much extravagance, and possibly because Kojima wasn't big enough at the time to operate without oversight.
(For Exhibit B, see Xenosaga. For Exhibit C, see Too Human.)
You get the same thing with a lot of authors. They get big, editors stop being strict with 'em, and suddenly you have the late career of Robert Heinlen and the middle Harry Potter books. Joanne Rowling seems to have learned this lesson, and so the late Harry Potter books have better editing than the middle ones, but lots of authors don't.
Cry On was to be Hironobu Sakaguchi's next big Xbox 360 Mistwalker project after Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, my reviews of which can be found here and here. Now, since I didn't like Blue Dragon and did like Lost Odyssey, one might expect me to have had quite high hopes for Cry On. I didn't. Lost Odyssey is a decent game, but it's flawed, and notable for how it's flawed.
It's slow. In a few respects, such as the long text stories of the protagonist's life as a wandering amnesiac immortal, it's just slow enough, but in most ways it's too slow -- this includes such things as the length of the game's animation for seeking treasure in pots.
What's also notable is the way it insists on players experiencing it on its own terms. That pot treasure animation can't be skipped. The game's boss battles are hard, and the game's experience curve is set up so grinding to overlevel a hard boss fight is almost impossible. Lost Odyssey is has no interest in accommodating players who wish to experience it on anything other than the way its designers' envisioned. They've created something cool and meaningful and you will watch it and not interrupt, damnit!
The whole game design screams of self-indulgence on the part of its creators, much more than Blue Dragon did.
With Cry On, Sakaguchi's explicit goal was to create a game so emotionally affecting that it brings the player to tears every twenty minutes. I have never heard a more self-indulgent-sounding game premise when I take into account Sakaguchi's history as a designer and the progression of his proclivities from the Final Fantasy series to Blue Dragon to Lost Odyssey. Cry On was always doomed.
Hironobu Sakaguchi is a talented game designer. He invented Final Fantasy, and by extension the JRPG. He saved Squaresoft from bankruptcy and put it where it is today. But he bought his own hype and lost sight of where his talents lay. Like so many creators, he lost the ability to self-edit even as he grew out of a position where anyone else could edit him... except, as it turns out, he didn't. Because Cry On has been canceled. He was edited.
This is a good thing. Hironobu Sakaguchi can make good games again, but not to put too fine a point on it, first he needs to get over himself. Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe the cancellation of Cry On is a great tragedy, but I think statistics -- the number of creators who go through the same process I see in him -- say I'm right. With luck, this setback will inspire in him some of his previous humility of ambition. I'm looking forward good Sacaguchi-produced games in the future; I just don't think Cry On could have been one of them.
...
My New Year's resolutions are to post more and, appropos of nothing, to draw for half an hour every day. Also, to watch my own self-indulgence. This post was pretty bad for that.
This is good news.
Here's the thing. Creating a game, as in many endeavors, requires many different skillsets, and they don't always occur within the same person. In the same way that someone who's good at drawing comics is not necessarily good at writing them, someone who's good at convincing an electorate to vote for him isn't necessarily good at governing a nation, and someone who's good at plotting and producing space adventure movies isn't necessarily good at scripting or directing them, someone who's good at creating compelling gameplay is not necessarily good at creating compelling narrative.
Unfortunately, like the comics thing, the politician thing, and the George Lucas thing, being good at creating compelling gameplay is often a good way to put yourself into a position where you're in charge of narrative.
This causes problems for creators who are good at creating gameplay, bad at creating narrative, and much more interested in the latter than the former. I will submit Hideo Kojima as Exhibit A -- I like Metal Gear Solid 4, but still admit it's full of stupid bullshit. The same stupid bullshit was in MGS and MGS2; it was just less visible in the former's case because the technology didn't allow for as much extravagance, and possibly because Kojima wasn't big enough at the time to operate without oversight.
(For Exhibit B, see Xenosaga. For Exhibit C, see Too Human.)
You get the same thing with a lot of authors. They get big, editors stop being strict with 'em, and suddenly you have the late career of Robert Heinlen and the middle Harry Potter books. Joanne Rowling seems to have learned this lesson, and so the late Harry Potter books have better editing than the middle ones, but lots of authors don't.
Cry On was to be Hironobu Sakaguchi's next big Xbox 360 Mistwalker project after Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, my reviews of which can be found here and here. Now, since I didn't like Blue Dragon and did like Lost Odyssey, one might expect me to have had quite high hopes for Cry On. I didn't. Lost Odyssey is a decent game, but it's flawed, and notable for how it's flawed.
It's slow. In a few respects, such as the long text stories of the protagonist's life as a wandering amnesiac immortal, it's just slow enough, but in most ways it's too slow -- this includes such things as the length of the game's animation for seeking treasure in pots.
What's also notable is the way it insists on players experiencing it on its own terms. That pot treasure animation can't be skipped. The game's boss battles are hard, and the game's experience curve is set up so grinding to overlevel a hard boss fight is almost impossible. Lost Odyssey is has no interest in accommodating players who wish to experience it on anything other than the way its designers' envisioned. They've created something cool and meaningful and you will watch it and not interrupt, damnit!
The whole game design screams of self-indulgence on the part of its creators, much more than Blue Dragon did.
With Cry On, Sakaguchi's explicit goal was to create a game so emotionally affecting that it brings the player to tears every twenty minutes. I have never heard a more self-indulgent-sounding game premise when I take into account Sakaguchi's history as a designer and the progression of his proclivities from the Final Fantasy series to Blue Dragon to Lost Odyssey. Cry On was always doomed.
Hironobu Sakaguchi is a talented game designer. He invented Final Fantasy, and by extension the JRPG. He saved Squaresoft from bankruptcy and put it where it is today. But he bought his own hype and lost sight of where his talents lay. Like so many creators, he lost the ability to self-edit even as he grew out of a position where anyone else could edit him... except, as it turns out, he didn't. Because Cry On has been canceled. He was edited.
This is a good thing. Hironobu Sakaguchi can make good games again, but not to put too fine a point on it, first he needs to get over himself. Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe the cancellation of Cry On is a great tragedy, but I think statistics -- the number of creators who go through the same process I see in him -- say I'm right. With luck, this setback will inspire in him some of his previous humility of ambition. I'm looking forward good Sacaguchi-produced games in the future; I just don't think Cry On could have been one of them.
...
My New Year's resolutions are to post more and, appropos of nothing, to draw for half an hour every day. Also, to watch my own self-indulgence. This post was pretty bad for that.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
The problem with video game enthusiasm
Why is it that I can eagerly anticipate a given video game for up to two years, even though I know fully well that when it is released, I'll probably be done with it within days?
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Concerning Devil May Cry 4
Dear Capcom,
Thank you for Devil May Cry 4. Having now put sixty hours of play into the game in question, and having beaten every difficulty setting save for Dante Must Die and Hell or Hell, I can say with some certainty that it's very nearly everything I could have hoped for. I forgive you for re-using level geometry, since I know current generation games require truly ridiculous amounts of art assets. The strength of the game has always been in the combat, and you delivered on that.
I don't quite forgive you for the dice game, but I won't speak of it at the moment. There is one complaint I do, indeed, wish to speak of, however.
I know it's coming up to time for the super-duper bargain-priced re-issue edition, probably within a year or so of now. You did it for Devil May Cry 3, I see no reason to suspect you won't do it for Devil May Cry 4. DMC3's special edition included a new character with a new combat style. When you re-release DMC4, please address the following problem:
Dante's gameplay is ass.
Sorry, but it needs to be said. I'm sure a direct lift of DMC3's controls seemed like a good idea at some point along the way. However, there are only so many times I can attempt to switch to trickster style in order to teleport next to a far away enemy, throw the enemy into the air with Rebellion (holding the button down to follow it), switch to swordmaster to do three hits from the four-hit swordmaster air combo, then switch to dark slayer style to perform its two-hit air combo, switch to gunslinger in time to land in order to use Coyote-E's fireworks maneuver to clear away any nearby enemies, and then switch back to trickster to do it all over again with another foe, only to have some part of this process disrupted by a crappy D-pad switching me to royalguard instead of swordmaster or gunslinger, or to gunslinger or swordmaster instead of trickster, before I grow tired of the process.
Playing as Nero is much more satisfying.
When you re-release DMC4, please enable the following control scheme for Dante:
Right Analog: Camera
Right Analog (click): Center Camera
Left Analog: Movement
A Button: Jump
B Button: Trickster Maneuver
X Button: Gun
Y Button: Devil Arm
Left Bumper: Devil Trigger
Right Bumper: Lock-On
Right Trigger: Royalguard Maneuver
Left Trigger + B Button: Dark Slayer Maneuver
Left Trigger + X Buton: Gunslinger Maneuver
Left Trigger + Y Button: Swordmaster Maneuver
D-Pad Up: Next Gun
D-Pad Down: Previous Gun
D-Pad Left: Next Devil Arm
D-Pad Right: Pevious Devil Arm
Start: Pause
Back: Taunt
Got it?
Good. I'm glad we understand each other, Capcom.
Thank you for Devil May Cry 4. Having now put sixty hours of play into the game in question, and having beaten every difficulty setting save for Dante Must Die and Hell or Hell, I can say with some certainty that it's very nearly everything I could have hoped for. I forgive you for re-using level geometry, since I know current generation games require truly ridiculous amounts of art assets. The strength of the game has always been in the combat, and you delivered on that.
I don't quite forgive you for the dice game, but I won't speak of it at the moment. There is one complaint I do, indeed, wish to speak of, however.
I know it's coming up to time for the super-duper bargain-priced re-issue edition, probably within a year or so of now. You did it for Devil May Cry 3, I see no reason to suspect you won't do it for Devil May Cry 4. DMC3's special edition included a new character with a new combat style. When you re-release DMC4, please address the following problem:
Dante's gameplay is ass.
Sorry, but it needs to be said. I'm sure a direct lift of DMC3's controls seemed like a good idea at some point along the way. However, there are only so many times I can attempt to switch to trickster style in order to teleport next to a far away enemy, throw the enemy into the air with Rebellion (holding the button down to follow it), switch to swordmaster to do three hits from the four-hit swordmaster air combo, then switch to dark slayer style to perform its two-hit air combo, switch to gunslinger in time to land in order to use Coyote-E's fireworks maneuver to clear away any nearby enemies, and then switch back to trickster to do it all over again with another foe, only to have some part of this process disrupted by a crappy D-pad switching me to royalguard instead of swordmaster or gunslinger, or to gunslinger or swordmaster instead of trickster, before I grow tired of the process.
Playing as Nero is much more satisfying.
When you re-release DMC4, please enable the following control scheme for Dante:
Right Analog: Camera
Right Analog (click): Center Camera
Left Analog: Movement
A Button: Jump
B Button: Trickster Maneuver
X Button: Gun
Y Button: Devil Arm
Left Bumper: Devil Trigger
Right Bumper: Lock-On
Right Trigger: Royalguard Maneuver
Left Trigger + B Button: Dark Slayer Maneuver
Left Trigger + X Buton: Gunslinger Maneuver
Left Trigger + Y Button: Swordmaster Maneuver
D-Pad Up: Next Gun
D-Pad Down: Previous Gun
D-Pad Left: Next Devil Arm
D-Pad Right: Pevious Devil Arm
Start: Pause
Back: Taunt
Got it?
Good. I'm glad we understand each other, Capcom.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Halo 3 vs. The Orange Box
"The hours are good, but the actual minutes are pretty lousy." —Douglas Adams, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy
That might be a misquote; I can't find my copy of the book at the moment.
One of the problems with the way video game reviews work—and movie and book reviews as well, though I think the problem is worse with games— is that market forces exert pressure to release the review simultaneously with the game, but (at least for me, and I suspect for many people) the real quality of a game sometimes becomes apparent only after weeks or months of interaction with it. The video game industry is hardly mature in the same way that the movie industry is at this point, but we have had many years of observing game releases, and reviewers have become skilled at predicting whether a given game will have a lot of replay value or not, and gamers do need advice as to whether a game is worth perusing immediately upon release, a job reviews do serve, so it's not a big problem. But neither is it inconsequential.
I thought Halo was great, and found Halo 2 disappointingly lacking in replay value (though I enjoyed my first time through it). Upon Halo 3's release, I liked it a great deal—enough that I bought it, even though I'd completed it during a rental. In fact, I bought it before the rental was due back. At the time, I had no Live connectivity, so I didn't buy it for the multiplayer, and indeed from the time I finally got my free month of Live Gold working to the time my free month of Live Gold expired, I played no Halo 3 multiplayer. I bought it for the single-player campaign.
After completing The Orange Box (my fourth time through Half-Life 2 and my third through Episode 1), I began to look upon Halo 3 in a different light. I decided I'd given it too much credit. It was, I decided, a bit crap. Then I played through Episode 2 one more time and Portal four more times, which reinforced my opinion.
That was four months ago. So, since that time, what game have I keep returning to whenever I have fifteen minutes free and really want to play some excellent FPS action?
Halo 3, of course. Crow's Nest for preference, or the entire Arc arc. Special credit to the dogfighting with the hornets, and any sequence involving one or more scarabs or a room full of brutes and a lot of cover and variety of available weapons. Boo to the Flood.
The Douglas Adams quote isn't entirely accurate. The Orange Box's hours are great, but I'd never call the actual minutes lousy. They're pretty good. Still, Combine AI has nothing on Brute AI; there's nothing like braving a bit of fire to take out a pack leader, then watching pack cohesion fall apart while I mop up the underlings. While the hours of Halo 3 aren't great, the minutes are excellent.
So which is the better game?
Well, by what standard? I have, in the past, enjoyed The Orange Box much more than I've enjoyed Halo 3, but I will, in the future, enjoy Halo 3 much more than I will enjoy The Orange Box. Halo 3 is more valuable to me at this moment, but if someone asked me which of the two to rent, having played neither, I'd say rent The Orange Box. Compounding this problem of which to recommend, I'd never suggest Halo 3 to someone who hasn't enjoyed the first two, but someone who has enjoyed the first two almost certainly is going to seek out the third already and doesn't need any recommendation from me at all.
Putting numerical values on them is like comparing apples and, er, orangess. See, the apple is Halo 3 because the Master Chief's armor is green, and the orange is... never mind.
Mainstream reviews stand forever, because you can access their archives alphabetically. Forum posts and blog entries are dust in the wind. (Er. By the standards of the fast-moving game industry, anyway.) Months after a game is released, people will still go to the reviews published in the days following the game's launch to see if they should check it out, yet by that time, those reviews are obsolete, and the reviewers may have completely changed their opinions in retrospect.
The amount of effort it would take to fix this fault in the review apparatus is, I suspect, far greater than the pressure that exists to fix it, assuming there's any pressure at all and I'm not just tilting at windmills. And I still don't know which of Halo 3 and The Orange Box is the better game.
That might be a misquote; I can't find my copy of the book at the moment.
One of the problems with the way video game reviews work—and movie and book reviews as well, though I think the problem is worse with games— is that market forces exert pressure to release the review simultaneously with the game, but (at least for me, and I suspect for many people) the real quality of a game sometimes becomes apparent only after weeks or months of interaction with it. The video game industry is hardly mature in the same way that the movie industry is at this point, but we have had many years of observing game releases, and reviewers have become skilled at predicting whether a given game will have a lot of replay value or not, and gamers do need advice as to whether a game is worth perusing immediately upon release, a job reviews do serve, so it's not a big problem. But neither is it inconsequential.
I thought Halo was great, and found Halo 2 disappointingly lacking in replay value (though I enjoyed my first time through it). Upon Halo 3's release, I liked it a great deal—enough that I bought it, even though I'd completed it during a rental. In fact, I bought it before the rental was due back. At the time, I had no Live connectivity, so I didn't buy it for the multiplayer, and indeed from the time I finally got my free month of Live Gold working to the time my free month of Live Gold expired, I played no Halo 3 multiplayer. I bought it for the single-player campaign.
After completing The Orange Box (my fourth time through Half-Life 2 and my third through Episode 1), I began to look upon Halo 3 in a different light. I decided I'd given it too much credit. It was, I decided, a bit crap. Then I played through Episode 2 one more time and Portal four more times, which reinforced my opinion.
That was four months ago. So, since that time, what game have I keep returning to whenever I have fifteen minutes free and really want to play some excellent FPS action?
Halo 3, of course. Crow's Nest for preference, or the entire Arc arc. Special credit to the dogfighting with the hornets, and any sequence involving one or more scarabs or a room full of brutes and a lot of cover and variety of available weapons. Boo to the Flood.
The Douglas Adams quote isn't entirely accurate. The Orange Box's hours are great, but I'd never call the actual minutes lousy. They're pretty good. Still, Combine AI has nothing on Brute AI; there's nothing like braving a bit of fire to take out a pack leader, then watching pack cohesion fall apart while I mop up the underlings. While the hours of Halo 3 aren't great, the minutes are excellent.
So which is the better game?
Well, by what standard? I have, in the past, enjoyed The Orange Box much more than I've enjoyed Halo 3, but I will, in the future, enjoy Halo 3 much more than I will enjoy The Orange Box. Halo 3 is more valuable to me at this moment, but if someone asked me which of the two to rent, having played neither, I'd say rent The Orange Box. Compounding this problem of which to recommend, I'd never suggest Halo 3 to someone who hasn't enjoyed the first two, but someone who has enjoyed the first two almost certainly is going to seek out the third already and doesn't need any recommendation from me at all.
Putting numerical values on them is like comparing apples and, er, orangess. See, the apple is Halo 3 because the Master Chief's armor is green, and the orange is... never mind.
Mainstream reviews stand forever, because you can access their archives alphabetically. Forum posts and blog entries are dust in the wind. (Er. By the standards of the fast-moving game industry, anyway.) Months after a game is released, people will still go to the reviews published in the days following the game's launch to see if they should check it out, yet by that time, those reviews are obsolete, and the reviewers may have completely changed their opinions in retrospect.
The amount of effort it would take to fix this fault in the review apparatus is, I suspect, far greater than the pressure that exists to fix it, assuming there's any pressure at all and I'm not just tilting at windmills. And I still don't know which of Halo 3 and The Orange Box is the better game.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Thoughts on Zelda
(Man, I need to remember to update this thing.)
So. Twilight Princess.
For many reasons, I found this game unimpressive enough that I stopped playing it shortly after picking up the first mask, or shadow, or whatever those things Midna's telling me to collect are. Fused shadows? The gorons were the breaking point (they seem superfluous, being newcomers to the franchise that just kept showing up again and again after their introduction), but really, it just felt done. I liked Wind Waker. Wind Waker was full of things no Zelda game has done before, amongst them the end of Hyrule. The ending impressed me a lot, not just because Badass Pirate Zelda was a participant in the boss fight but because the king of Hyrule decided it'd be egotism to try and bring his kingdom back at the expense of the folk above and their not-very-Hyrule world. More and more I've become fond of stories that end, and Wind Waker works well as the last of all Zelda stories. Seeing the series return to ground thoroughly covered years ago was depressing.
After I put down Twilight Princess I picked up the original NES The Legend of Zelda on Wii Marketplace, and it made me realize Shadow of the Colossus is the best Zelda game I've played in years. Hear me out: large, empty landscape to explore; horse; kid in green with sword. Obviously it's not actually Zelda, but it's a lot closer to the sort of Zelda game I want to be playing than anything Nintendo's doing, and in a few ways that appeal to me, it's more faithful to the original Legend of Zelda than any of the NPC-rich sequels. Miyamoto famously doesn't care about story, but if your game is going to have minimal story then I'd rather play through a good story minimalistically told than have to deal with a bunch of cruft optimized for exposition-laden storytelling without any story that makes wading through the cruft worthwhile.
I figure this post about marks the point at which I should give Twilight Princess another go, so maybe I'll have to eat a bunch of crow in a big "I was totally wrong and should have stuck with it for longer!" post next week or month or whatever.
The one thing I'm looking forward to is more Midna. There's something appealing about taking the annoying quest-giving NPC who's always telling you what to do and making her fully cognizant of how annoying and bossy she is, so she can revel in it. But then, I don't identify strongly enough with Link to feel anything more than amusement at his misfortune.
So. Twilight Princess.
For many reasons, I found this game unimpressive enough that I stopped playing it shortly after picking up the first mask, or shadow, or whatever those things Midna's telling me to collect are. Fused shadows? The gorons were the breaking point (they seem superfluous, being newcomers to the franchise that just kept showing up again and again after their introduction), but really, it just felt done. I liked Wind Waker. Wind Waker was full of things no Zelda game has done before, amongst them the end of Hyrule. The ending impressed me a lot, not just because Badass Pirate Zelda was a participant in the boss fight but because the king of Hyrule decided it'd be egotism to try and bring his kingdom back at the expense of the folk above and their not-very-Hyrule world. More and more I've become fond of stories that end, and Wind Waker works well as the last of all Zelda stories. Seeing the series return to ground thoroughly covered years ago was depressing.
After I put down Twilight Princess I picked up the original NES The Legend of Zelda on Wii Marketplace, and it made me realize Shadow of the Colossus is the best Zelda game I've played in years. Hear me out: large, empty landscape to explore; horse; kid in green with sword. Obviously it's not actually Zelda, but it's a lot closer to the sort of Zelda game I want to be playing than anything Nintendo's doing, and in a few ways that appeal to me, it's more faithful to the original Legend of Zelda than any of the NPC-rich sequels. Miyamoto famously doesn't care about story, but if your game is going to have minimal story then I'd rather play through a good story minimalistically told than have to deal with a bunch of cruft optimized for exposition-laden storytelling without any story that makes wading through the cruft worthwhile.
I figure this post about marks the point at which I should give Twilight Princess another go, so maybe I'll have to eat a bunch of crow in a big "I was totally wrong and should have stuck with it for longer!" post next week or month or whatever.
The one thing I'm looking forward to is more Midna. There's something appealing about taking the annoying quest-giving NPC who's always telling you what to do and making her fully cognizant of how annoying and bossy she is, so she can revel in it. But then, I don't identify strongly enough with Link to feel anything more than amusement at his misfortune.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Thoughts on Abstinence 1
Golly, do I want to play video games. Any time I want to do anything else, I think "Well, I'll just go for a quick game first... wait, no."
Friday, January 4, 2008
Thoughts On Vice
The weird thing about the Vice Magazine game review gig is that it was offered to me just as Tycho and Gabe were examining the problems inherent in the conventional review format, and just before the whole Jeff Gerstmann thing (which went down as I was writing the first batch of reviews; and which I probably wouldn't even have noticed if I hadn't started reading up on prominent game blogs following the job offer). This was also shortly after the debut of Zero Punctuation, which... let us say raised the bar somewhat.
Vice Magazine game reviews are, of necessity, short, because Vice isn't dedicated to gaming . I was also given much leeway in what the reviews would contain. Now, I hate redundancy—the idea of writing abridged summaries of what other websites could offer never appealed to me. What I didn't want to do was write the sort of reviews readers could get elsewhere.
I knew this would attract negative comments from the folks who are angry at Gerstmann for giving Twilight Princess an 8.9. I understand the impulse to decry an 8.9 score on a Zelda game. If you're a Zelda fan, you want other people to play Zelda games, too, because they're awesome. If someone unjustly lowballs the score of a Zelda game, that's dangerous. It might trick a few readers into not playing that Zelda game, which would be a tragedy! What fans of Zelda games, who want other people to play the same games they enjoy, want to see is this: A lot of reviews that all say the same thing, so no counterargument has any weight. They want their own opinions validated (arguably a selfish desire) and they want others to have no fear of trying the things they, themselves, enjoy (selfish or selfless depending on how you look at it). I once felt the same way about low scores on Legacy of Kain games.
As it happens, I loved Wind Waker and hate Twilight Princess, but the article that explains why is bought and paid for by Vice, so you'll have to talk to them if you want to hear it. The unfortunate side-effect of work-for-hire is that I don't own my ideas.
So the philosophy behind my Vice reviews is this: I will try to say the sort of things that other game journalists aren't saying, or, at least, say it in a way other game journalists aren't saying it, not because I'm laying out the raw truth everyone else is too afraid to speak or some bullshit, but because, well, I don't need to say what everyone else is saying. They're saying it for me. So if my Vice reviews look a bit odd, if maybe my viewpoint seems skewed, if I skip over obvious points to dwell on trivialities and specifics, now you know why. I'm not claiming my writing so far has achieved the goals I've set for it, but I know what those goals are.
(Now you know why this blog has the title it does.)
The other philosophy behind my Vice reviews is that espoused by Penny Arcade: My views aren't special, and I'm just sharing my own impressions. My comments are not definitive, and it'd be folly to act as if they were. I lay no claim to authority on these matters.
Obviously this is entirely tempered by the desires of my editor. Them what cuts the checks get input on the tone. No one has asked me to change anything yet, though.
Vice Magazine game reviews are, of necessity, short, because Vice isn't dedicated to gaming . I was also given much leeway in what the reviews would contain. Now, I hate redundancy—the idea of writing abridged summaries of what other websites could offer never appealed to me. What I didn't want to do was write the sort of reviews readers could get elsewhere.
I knew this would attract negative comments from the folks who are angry at Gerstmann for giving Twilight Princess an 8.9. I understand the impulse to decry an 8.9 score on a Zelda game. If you're a Zelda fan, you want other people to play Zelda games, too, because they're awesome. If someone unjustly lowballs the score of a Zelda game, that's dangerous. It might trick a few readers into not playing that Zelda game, which would be a tragedy! What fans of Zelda games, who want other people to play the same games they enjoy, want to see is this: A lot of reviews that all say the same thing, so no counterargument has any weight. They want their own opinions validated (arguably a selfish desire) and they want others to have no fear of trying the things they, themselves, enjoy (selfish or selfless depending on how you look at it). I once felt the same way about low scores on Legacy of Kain games.
As it happens, I loved Wind Waker and hate Twilight Princess, but the article that explains why is bought and paid for by Vice, so you'll have to talk to them if you want to hear it. The unfortunate side-effect of work-for-hire is that I don't own my ideas.
So the philosophy behind my Vice reviews is this: I will try to say the sort of things that other game journalists aren't saying, or, at least, say it in a way other game journalists aren't saying it, not because I'm laying out the raw truth everyone else is too afraid to speak or some bullshit, but because, well, I don't need to say what everyone else is saying. They're saying it for me. So if my Vice reviews look a bit odd, if maybe my viewpoint seems skewed, if I skip over obvious points to dwell on trivialities and specifics, now you know why. I'm not claiming my writing so far has achieved the goals I've set for it, but I know what those goals are.
(Now you know why this blog has the title it does.)
The other philosophy behind my Vice reviews is that espoused by Penny Arcade: My views aren't special, and I'm just sharing my own impressions. My comments are not definitive, and it'd be folly to act as if they were. I lay no claim to authority on these matters.
Obviously this is entirely tempered by the desires of my editor. Them what cuts the checks get input on the tone. No one has asked me to change anything yet, though.
Temporarily Setting the Activity Aside
I've decided to answer Leigh Alexander's request that others join her in abstaining in games for a week. I won't be playing video games until January 11th. I'll be talking about them and thinking about them and reorganizing them on my shelves, though.
First post!11one!
Hi.
I'm Stephen Lea Sheppard, I review video games for Vice Magazine and their website Viceland, I write freelance for tabletop RPGs, I moderate on the RPGnet forums and I played Harris on Freaks and Geeks and Dudley in The Royal Tenenbaums. I also drove an airport cart in a Mario Kart: Double Dash commercial once. You will note that my credentials for writing about video games are rubbish. That's okay.
This is my blog for talking about video games in all the ways I don't have space to do at Vice, because in my efforts to see how other game reviewers do things, I've discovered a few of them keep blogs like this. It's different from my other blog, Output, in that it's about games in specific. Hopefully this won't be a mere exercise in cargo cultism.
That should probably cover the introduction.
I'm Stephen Lea Sheppard, I review video games for Vice Magazine and their website Viceland, I write freelance for tabletop RPGs, I moderate on the RPGnet forums and I played Harris on Freaks and Geeks and Dudley in The Royal Tenenbaums. I also drove an airport cart in a Mario Kart: Double Dash commercial once. You will note that my credentials for writing about video games are rubbish. That's okay.
This is my blog for talking about video games in all the ways I don't have space to do at Vice, because in my efforts to see how other game reviewers do things, I've discovered a few of them keep blogs like this. It's different from my other blog, Output, in that it's about games in specific. Hopefully this won't be a mere exercise in cargo cultism.
That should probably cover the introduction.
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