After Pressing Start: Animal Crossing

Written by Alois Wittwer on June 1, 2012 at 7:16 am

Who needs someone telling you what to do all the time? You can do what you want, when you want, where you want. Yeah, living on your own, being free. It feels great.

You can’t help but giggle at first. A super-deformed dog called K.K. Slider introduces you to the world of Animal Crossing by muttering navel-gazing nonsense about freedom and getting out into the world. Slap a guitar in his hands and you’ve got a recipe for an obnoxious musician spouting platitudes. Your eyes glaze over because what he’s saying is linked to an unattainable dream: the life of a carefree artist who only lives to create. If you look a little deeper though, K.K. Slider is really talking about the Japanese spatial concept of Ma.

In Japanese, Ma roughly translates to “pause”. Ma suggests interval. The rough approximation of Ma in English is Negative Space, a restrictive term typically used in painting and photography. Ma refers to an awareness of space dependent on the human imagination, it’s about the gaps in between where form and non-form come together as a unifying whole. It’s why Japanese animation is distinguished by such a rhythmic pop: the classic image of a samurai …

A Strange Tale in the Cracked-dirt Desert, Part I

Written by Greg Saw on May 30, 2012 at 12:36 pm

A Tale in the Desert crossed the nine-year mark and there was no celebration. Rather, its inhabitants seemed unhappy and flustered in a time that should have reminded them of Tale’s solidarity in the MMOG genre. It’s a strange game, after all – one that doesn’t focus on the tropes of individual growth so much as it emphasizes group development – where a large portion of the game is spent investing resources (like lumber and stone, tirelessly gathered) into Universities so that other players are provided with free skills. In general, it’s something most of us aren’t accustomed to in our Western world, let alone in MMOs.

In the past few months, I’ve scoured reviews, features, op-eds – anything having to do with Tale or its standoffish lead developer, Andrew Tepper. Across the board and all the way back to its ‘03 inception, it was hailed as a marvel of social experimentation in MMOG form and Tepper was always its fireplace philosopher.

Tale, people say, is about creating a society. Players run around ancient Egypt and build pyramids and guildhouses and petition players to join their various causes. They impact the landscape with pollution and overbuilding and then pass laws about zoning …

Waiting to Respawn: Don’t Take The Story Out of Multiplayer

Written by Mike Barrett on May 29, 2012 at 11:49 pm

Last week, Bitmob staff writer Rus McLaughlin pondered the usefulness of narrative elements in multiplayer modes in his piece “Multiplayer Doesn’t Need A Narrative.” You can probably guess his stance from the title.

McLaughlin admits that certain games have incorporated stories effectively into their multiplayer concepts, like Max Payne 3’s evolving conditions for each session of Gang War mode or Assassin’s Creed: Revelations’ use of unlocking cutscenes. Overall, however, he finds that the structured, linear nature of most multiplayer match types seriously bogs down their ability to extend a title’s life towards infinite play.

That’s the core argument he postulates – single player is a finite experience while multiplayer is an infinite experience. Both have merits but ultimately serve different needs in selling a game, and thus, don’t really need to intermingle very much.

But are they really that different? Can you really label any part of a game as strictly “finite” or “infinite” in terms of subjective enjoyment when the features drawing in players range so wildly?

Stories and scripted events imbue us all with wonderful moments to enjoy and tell our friends about. Everyone remembers climbing the Throat of the World in Skyrim, seeing Aeris’s final moments in Final Fantasy 7, or …

Crysis, The Almost-Sandbox-Style Shooter

Written by Adrian Navratil on May 29, 2012 at 12:00 am

Last week I went skydiving with my friends.

We were headed towards the tropical Lingshan Islands, to be specific. After a brief pep-talk on the plane, we took the inevitable leap of faith and plummeted through the night sky. Some turbulence split me from my buddies on the way down, ensuring that I landed alone in the island’s crystal clear waters. Damn. I went for a brisk swim before eventually trudging myself up towards its pristine beach in search of my friends.

On the way a cute little turtle having a sandy midnight stroll caught my eye. I named him Squirt as I picked him up, if you were wondering, before deciding to carefully throw him back into the water to be with his pals. The impact from hitting the ocean somehow killed him–but life goes on. After a short period of mourning for my shelled acquaintance, I crawled under a rocky arch and proceeded to an already-lit campfire jubilantly crackling away. Without question I crouched down on an already-made bench at the fire–not sat, genre conventions wouldn’t allow for that, you see–and happily listened to the lapping of the water against the sand and the nightly cacophony of tropical wildlife.

The Transphobia At Atlus Needs To Stop

Written by Skyler Moss on May 28, 2012 at 11:49 pm

Trans characters have little of what could be considered a history in games. There are examples, here and there, but they’re very clearly the exception. They’re obscure cases to be looked for. However, Atlus is fairly unique in being one of the few developers with such a history. Given the state of the industry, it comes as little surprise that it is not a good history.

This history begins with Persona 2: Innocent Sin. It recently reached US shores for the first time via PSP port, though some English speaking fans had played it sooner thanks to a fan translation. It’s not a prominent example, there’s an instance where the player can have a brief conversation with a female-to-male trans person who happens to be wearing a skirt.

In other words, their identity and one element of their presentation are in conflict. In and of itself, this is fairly harmless. It’s arguably even an example of throwing the gender binary out the window, which would be awesome. The issue is what else accompanies this moment. Eikichi, a heterosexual male, looks at the NPC from afar and says, thinking the NPC a girl, that “she looks cute.”

In essence, the scene relies …

That joke isn’t funny anymore

Written by Tom Auxier on May 28, 2012 at 1:40 pm

Video games aren’t good at making you laugh. They aren’t because, in a video game, you’re supposed to make yourself laugh.

Sure, they can have lines that make you chuckle. They can employ absurd sight gags. But the games that are funniest are often the ones that aren’t trying to make you laugh. They’re at their best when they’re telling jokes.

Here’s a video game joke: in Super Mario 64, lead Mario to the highest point in Cool, Cool Mountain. Jump and have him dive in the air, landing in the snow. Mario takes no damage, but his feet flail about in the air.

The Weight Of Failure: A Close Reading of The Darkness II

Written by Nolan McBride on May 26, 2012 at 6:31 pm

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[This discussion centers around the ending of The Darkness II. Spoilers aplenty. Proceed at your own risk.]

Doctor Vic says, “You die here, you are really dead. It’s over.”

A disgruntled Jackie Estacado stands at the edge of a rooftop, poised to jump. Doctor Vic, Jenny Romano, and an orderly block the stairwell leading back into the mental hospital from which Jackie has just escaped. Doctor Vic employs logic and reason to coax Jackie away from potential fatality. Jenny tries emotion, pleading with sincere worry for Jackie’s welfare. A fall into the courtyard spells death for Jackie; resignation signifies a different variety of finality—indefinite incarceration within a mental hospital.

How Video Games arrived

Written by Tom Auxier on May 26, 2012 at 2:40 pm

Some may say a lot of gamers are like me: a varyingly unemployed twenty-five year old who grew up on X-Men cartoons, Super Nintendo video games, and fruit roll-ups. As a generation we saw movies like Clerks and we envied Dante and Randall their lives, so devoid of anything breaking the surface of meaning.

Today, everything has become meaningful. We’ve left the 90′s world of precious boredom and entered into a world where we’re obsessed with ensuring internet freedom, war in countries whose names no one knew in 1998, and health care reform. Instead of having to go out and change the status quo, we’ve been given one that we’re coming to realize is pretty fucked up.

After Pressing Start: On the Docks of Shadow Moses

Written by Patrick Lindsey on May 25, 2012 at 11:36 am

The Metal Gear Solid series is widely known for two things: its excessively convoluted storylines and themes, and presenting those themes in incredibly obtuse ways. Its longwinded, feature film-length cutscenes and often overwrought dialogue are frequently lampooned for being far too complicated for people to ever really be able to understand what’s going on.

In spite of the fact that Metal Gear Solid is so widely decried for its abysmal game-to-cutscene ratio, what playable portions there are are expertly crafted to efficiently communicate the core attitudes and aspects of the game, resulting in an incredibly well crafted stealth action game.

Don’t believe me?

Convoluted story aside, one thing that’s practically axiom is that Solid Snake is a badass, and you want to be him. Fortunately, from the moment you emerge on the docks of Shadow Moses, Metal Gear Solid is leading you, teaching you to be a better FOX-HOUND operative. Not only does it flesh out the game’s controls, but the opening segment also serves to emphasize what the game’s tagline (“Tactical Espionage Action”) really means, by forcing you to play with patience, precision, and caution.

Nightmare Mode Video: StarCraft, the Sport?

Written by Joshua Calixto on May 25, 2012 at 2:19 am

For the inaugural installment of Nightmare Mode Video, we took a look at Starcraft II as a professional sport – complete with coaches, tournaments, and even ego. In this world, sports and video games collide, but how well do they mix? Check out the video after the jump.

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