Cause the Game is Set in Another Postcode It's Not Cheating

Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas are two games which have, quite possibly, the best graphics of any game I have played. The frustrating thing is that they both have excellent game play as well. They are not just another version of Half Life 2, the prettiest thing on the block but with not much under the hood. They are smart, witty, and, more importantly, fun games to play. Gears of War is, stylistically one of the best games I have ever seen. The gothic nature of the world which Epic have created and the flowing story complement each other with an action packed adventure. Rainbow Six Vegas really couldn't do any wrong after Lockdown. Lockdown was one of the worst, on rails, shooters ever made and a complete disappointment to the franchise. Unfortunately, Ubisoft had decided to move Rainbow Six away from what it was (a sim-type one hit shooter) and turn it into an arcade type shooter. Gone was the strategy from the game. While some of these things have not returned to Vegas the game is much better than Lockdown. With a squad of two others Vegas requires that you think on your feet while you play. Using your squad becomes an important means in which to get through a level (especially on the hardest difficulty).

Both of these games have also done something else for me. They have let me play a linear shooter and actually enjoy the process. They are both relatively challenging, but also completely entertaining at the same time. Something which I felt a lot of linear shooters had managed to loose somewhere along the line in the last five years. It seemed that games were a compromise in some respects. You either had good graphics and a cliched story or a good story and bad graphics. Now we are starting to see a good mix.

Finally, when you manage to find a good game you want to spend as much time with it as possible. Sometimes we even manage to do this at the expense of real people or loved ones. However, it is a ten or twenty hour fling which, at the end, sees us all return back for a reality check. The excitement and action cannot last forever. Like all things we cannot remain immersed in someone else's reality without eventually having to return to our own. But that's what it is. A good game is like having an affair. You live life in a different way with a heightened sense of reality for a short period of time and then return back to reality and appreciate the things which you do have.

There are only a few games that have actually done this to me. Placed me in another world which managed to seperate me from reality. System Shock was probably the first narrative based game which did this. These are the games which you can't stand to be parted from. You want to devour them until they are finished. To explore and soak up every gory detail. The oringal Half Life would be another which did this. This is where gaming has changed from its original console/arcade beginnings. Games were originally a form of entertainment which were not immersive but just fun for a period of time. Then as technology developed narrative became an important part of games and helped to change the way games were played.

This is the mark of any form of good fiction. If it has the ability to literally take you to another time and place to the point where you are so absorbed in that fictitious world as to be ignorant to the goings on of the outside world. This is the very nature of escapism. It is the reason why so many people involve themselves in some form of fiction on a daily basis. However, it is only temporary and, at some stage, we have to face the reality of our own existence.

The next game to be released which will test this theory will be Bioshock. Hopefully it will manage to maintain the pace set by Vegas and Gears of War while creating a completely immersive and stylistic world in which to live for ten hours or so.