AVP

I am looking forward to the new AvP but since when did a "marine" become it's own species. What the fuck is going on with so-called gaming journalists? They can't even use their own brains to determine that the marketing shite they are presented with is wrong. Humans are a species but a marine is not.

cya

Due to a lack of interest from readers I am going to stop writing cyncial gamer. To be honest, it was a less than average blog anyway.

Enjoy your gaming.

The Games I Play - February 09 - Zombified

Games Purchased This Month:
NHL 3 x 3 Arcade (Xbox 360)
Left 4 Dead (PC – Steam)
Dawn of War 2
Civilization 4 Complete
Race Pro (Xbox 360)
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (Steam)

Games Played This Month:
Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts
Golden Eye (Nintendo 64)
Unreal Tournament 3 (Steam)
Dead Space (Xbox 360)
Lost (Xbox 360)
NHL 3 x 3 Arcade (Xbox 360)
Far Cry (Xbox 360)
Left 4 Dead (PC – Steam)
Wii Bowling - Multiplayer
Wii Tetris
Dawn of War 2
Don't Shit Your Pants (Flash Game)
Mario Karts (Wii) Multiplayer
Team Fortress 2 (Steam)
Race Pro (Xbox 360)
Beyond Castle Wolfenstein
Streets of Rage (Megadrive)

Games Finished This Month:
Dead Space
Left 4 Dead (PC - Steam)

Mr Cynical wasn't happy with my post from last month. He actually had a rant about my need to compare games to other forms of media. As far as he is concerned games are the superior medium and, as such, there is no need for it to be compared to any other. I tried to make my point that if gaming doesn't acknowledge other media then developers are destined to make the same mistakes. He did not care. He got sick of communicating the fact that he did not care via short messages so he is thinking of setting up a forum that just the two of us can use. I think this way he can justify losing complete control of his rational thought process in order to make a point. Sometimes I think that playing games and communicating on the internet have broken the way he thinks, or, he is just like every other forum troll (I can read – Cynical).

Just to prove Cynical wrong there is an excellent fan made short film that was released in the last month called Escape from City 17. If you haven't gathered from the title it is set in the world of Half Life 2. This is one of the best pieces of fan fiction I have seen (sorry Red Vs Blue … you are now second). The production values are extremely high and the story is just as non-explanatory as Half Life 2. Sometimes the fiction that we involve ourselves in inspires us so much that we can find no other way to express ourselves other than to start exploring that fictional world with our own characters and under our own terms. This does not always result in the greatest works, but it provides further life to these places for hardcore fans. Star Wars, Warcraft and even X3 have created spin off worlds for their fans. Star Wars probably has one of the most diverse and far reaching bodies of work. It must be noted that Tolkien was probably one of the great writers who contributed the most to his own fictional universe. There are more books based in Middle Earth than I care to count. Then there are also further academic explorations as well. If you can't get in to Tolkien's fiction then you can always read Cassandra Claire's The Very Secret Diaries for a different take on the characters from the films.

Most people will never spend any time exploring fan based fiction but for those who need further stimulus then there are plenty of opportunities to do so.

Could it be that games such as Dead Space are just fan fiction with a massive budget and industry talent? The problem is that there is generally a negative perception associated with fan fiction. A feeling that these things are low budget and poorly produced. However, in their most literal form film adaptations of novels are really just works of fan fiction. Hollywood, in this regard, is also driven by the want to profit from something that has been successful in another medium. Because fan fiction doesn't make money that we call it fan fiction and not legitimate work in its own right. Dead Space has taken willingly from the genre in which it has placed itself. There are references to science fiction writing in the story and in the characters. There are many similarities between the game and the movie Solaris as well. The fact that the game attempts to drive it own narrative in its own universe means that we don't classify it as fan fiction but as an independent work in its own right. Surely, the line between these two must be pretty thin when the work is so similar.

I am a sucker for the modern day fascination with zombies. I love George Romero's movies. The original Dawn of the Dead is one of my favourites. I saw an interview with George Romero where he attributes the original Night of the Living Dead movie to have been inspired by the book I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. Funnily enough there were two other movies inspired directly from this book. One of them bearing its name and featuring Will Smith. The other was called Omega Man and was pushed along by the man himself, Charlton Heston. Neither of these movies managed to capture the anxiety of the book. And both of them, effectively spin offs, were nothing more than big budget fan fiction. (The book by Richard Matheson actually features zombies and vampires, although the reader never knows that they are such.) At their best zombies are indicative of the intelligentsia's attempts to distance themselves from the “unthinking” masses. At their worst they just make for a good splatter horror flick (Have you seen Zombie Strippers? I love that movie – Cynical). Splatter films featuring zombies are the best way to create guiltless rampages against a human form. No need for any emotional baggage when you bag a zombie as they are already dead. I also like the ironical ramifications of the elitism inherent with understanding the metaphor of the zombie plight. By assuming that the unthinking masses generally don't have the capacity for independent thought we believe that, as a thinker, we are separate from this life of the living dead. However, as participants in consumer based society (which is what zombies are really indicative of) we are just as brain dead as everyone else. The good thing is that gaming has managed to pick up on all of these themes. Dead Rising is a bit of a cult classic and Left 4 Dead is pretty much an instant best seller. Both of these games cover the spectrum as far as zombie metaphor goes. Dead Rising attempts to emulate the George Romero classic. Left 4 Dead is a splatter flick. Perfect cross media pollination.

When I say that I have completed Left 4 Dead I mean that I have played through the campaign mode on both Xbox 360 and PC. However, there is still plenty of gameplay left in this title. Left 4 Dead is one of the few shooters that you can pick up and play without having to worry about game saves or mission progression. I originally purchased this game on the Xbox 360, however, I wasn't happy with the controls. Left 4 Dead is a true twitch shooter. There haven't been many games made like it. As a gaming mechanic console gaming slows down gameplay due to the nature of the input device. Twitch shooters just don't feel right on a console. Steam recently had a sale where Left 4 Dead was half price. This meant that I could pick the game up on the PC at what I thought was a reasonable price. I don't think that the full retail price of these games is reasonable in Australia. This gave me the opportunity to play the game on both formats. My feelings about the game were right. The free flow of the game is much better suited to the PC.

Having played the original Golden Eye on Nintendo 64 in the last month I have to say that FPS on the consoles have come a long way. I may even say that the auto aim implemented in Golden Eye was compensating for something. The developers had to do this because Mr Bonds input technology was just not up to scratch. It's not that it wasn't big enough, but evolutionary a little way down the tree. This is due to the single joystick controller. All decent console controllers come with dual sticks now. This makes aim move and shoot much more organic than with a control pad. You can run Golden Eye with dual controllers, and I have tried this, but it still feels unnatural compared to the shooters of today. Essentially the controller input you choose can reduce the reaction time of the gamer. A good case in point is actually my dad. My dad has his own Xbox 360 console. Return to Castle Wolfenstein is his favourite game. I have let him know that they are working on another one and he is a little too excited. Having come to gaming late dad doesn't have the same manual dexterity in his opposable thumbs as most other gamers. As a result he adapts his gameplay style to his limitations. He prefers sniping. Slow movements and crouching. He has been known to get lost in games at times as well which doesn't help. Unfortunately, games such as Left 4 Dead don't allow gamers to adapt in this way. The game induces a pace on the player which requires relatively quick reflexes. There are definitely times when you can snipe, but most other times you are struggling to survive. This is the pace that makes this game different from other shooters. Should they change this pace or implement a more intrusive auto-aim function to cater for the differences in the console controller? To do these things would fundamentally change the game.

The other question this raises has to do with the review process. Gamers are seeing more and more reviews are written after the reviewer plays only one version of the game. Often, with multiplatform publications and websites, this review is universally applied to all formats of the game regardless. Sometimes, you might see an insert or a note which says that there are slight differences in gameplay, but the reviews remain the same. I find it interesting that we will see different reviews of games from country to country (as happens with IGN). I could understand this happening if the cultural differences between Australia, the UK and the US were so different that we required but this is not the case. Yet we see the same reviews applied across platforms. I can understand that editorial staff want to keep their overheads down and their writers working on new material, but it is not really doing gaming any justice. As a case in point go to metacritic.com. Open up two tabs and check out the IGN UK review for both PC and Xbox 360. They have not managed to make a comparison between the formats.

I had an interesting experience during the month. Not the type of interesting experience that you find yourself in after consuming a lot of alcohol and then inexplicably calling a taxi the next morning in an attempt to escape shamefully from some unknown stranger's house. Unfortunately, as a geek, these experiences don't happen often enough. It was more the type of interesting experience that comes from sensory recall. I was driving to work and had my mp3 player set to random when the Audioslave song “Your Time Has Come” played. Immediately, I had sensory recall of playing Flatout. I have played all of these games and, at the time, I couldn't place which one I was recalling. What I had was the overwhelming feeling that this song had placed me in that game at some point of time and that, for the moment while the song played, I could not think of anything else because the recall felt that strong.

This is not something that is uncommon for me. There are some specific things that give me this kind of memory recall. The Crowded House album, Temple of Low Men, instantly places me at cadet camp in Puckapunyal. The feelings of rain, mud, camping and orienteering are associated with the songs from this album. The smell of diesel fuel always reminds me of the desert. I have made a number of trips through the desert and the smell of diesel fuel always places me back in those memories. The smell of fire reminds me of camping. I have other, less romantic and happy memories too, but these are probably better left unsaid. It astounds me, that considering the amount of time during my life that I have spent gaming, that so few moments of sensory recall create definitive gaming related memories. I can certainly remember different gaming moments but these come from making a conscious effort to remember them. This doesn't create the unknown spontaneity of having one of your senses create instant recall. Sure, the tune from Mario reminds me of Mario but it doesn't necessarily remind me of playing Mario. The tune is more like an advertising jingle that is played ad infinitum and has forced itself in to my memory in order to influence the way I think rather than bringing on happy moments from times past. Why is it that gaming doesn't create these moments in people's lives? My first thought is that they are not a complete sensory experience as yet. There are no smells associated with gaming that aren't environmental. Many ingame soundtracks are either jingle based, as in Mario, or poorly conceived soundtracks that have no particular relevance to the games we play. While Doom 3 was openly criticised by many gamers Trent Reznor's soundtrack is one of the best created for any game. The soundtrack is good in the way that Nine Inch Nails music doesn't make me think of the game. They are completely independent of each other.

Ultimately, these moments are etched in to my memory because they hold special importance for different reasons in my life. I wouldn't go over the top and say that Flatout was a defining time of my existence. I admit that I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game. I feel a bit disappointed that more games don't feature more in this type of sensory recall. Mainly, because I love those places that have been created. Exploring Cyrodiil and Vvardenfall for the first time are, by far, some of the most enjoyable and awe-inspiring gaming experiences that I have had. Yet, I can't think of any moment during my game time in these two worlds that would have created any basis for sensory recall. Essentially gaming doesn't appeal to all of our senses. Certainly there are moments in games that we will never forget but the limitations of the way we interact with these places mean that they are etched in to our memory in a certain way. Sensory recall is, in many ways, a very sentimental occurrence and maybe gaming is more about passing the time rather than creating long lasting memories. It has to be said that there would be time while gaming that I am glad that I don't have the sense of smell. I don't think I would want to smell the decaying flesh of a zombie or the puss-filled beak of a head crab. Imagine the smell of Lara Croft after her adventures in the archeological underworlds. No one wants to know that a gaming sex symbol smells of body odour after an hour of intense “game play”.

I have had a reader request in the last month. That means that in the last month I have increased the readership by 100 per cent. (Zero to one isn't one hundred per cent. Zero is nothing so how can you get 100 per cent from nothing? How about if you increase the readership to two next month then we'll consider that a 100 per cent increase. Otherwise, “That's great kid, don't get cocky”- Cynical) However, I feel that the question that I was asked to discuss was a somewhat loaded question as the reader knows that I am not a fan of World Of Warcraft. The reader asked if I could discuss the social impacts of Wrath of the Lich King on relationships. Considering I think of World of Warcraft as Facebook for geeks then I think the social impacts are somewhat positive. Even though there have been reports of a teenage boy playing himself to hospital after a 24 hour World of Warcraft session I think this is bad parenting more than anything else. But like everything else we have learned from America people are not responsible for their own stupidity. We blame consumerism for that. This is the one thing I don't blame consumerism for. And he only lasted 24 hours. Surely his friends must think that he is a little on the weak side considering some sad gamers binge for days on end. I think, more than anything else, the social impacts of World of Warcraft are very positive as it is, in essence, a social game. It is just that Facebook is free and World of Warcraft you have to pay to play … every … single … month. While the social impacts may be positive for the player, if you find yourself around people in the real world who don't play World of Warcraft then their perception of your gameplay will be negative because they are not included in the activity. As with so many games released now multiplayer is an important part of how the game is made and marketed. World of Warcraft just turns this in to an effective business model where many others have failed. One aspect of gaming that is not socially acceptable, and not limited to World of Warcraft, are gamers who say “lol”, “rofl”, or “lmao” instead of actually laughing. What is wrong with these people?

You may recall that I mentioned my brother's friend the wannabe game developer last month. I have decided to test his theory, I mean, a wise man once said that theories are like arseholes, everyone has one. I don't plan on testing that theory, someone with a rubber glove and a notepad can do that, but the one where open world games are all about hitting old grandma's over the head with a baseball bat. I have been playing Far Cry 2 this month. I am pretty sure that this game is categorised as an open world game. So far I have not hit a single grandma over the head with a baseball bat. The thing that concerns me is that I have not even managed to find a single baseball bat in the game, or a grandma for that matter. It leads me to believe that I must be playing the game wrong. So, the tally is Theory 0. Games 1.

I figure you can see in my games played list that I have played and purchased Dawn of War 2. I did mention it last month as one of the games I was looking forward to. So, I should give it a mention. Mr Cynical has provided me with a caveat to my job description and said that I cannot openly criticise games as it might spoil his potential to get advertisers. I think, considering I have two regular readers, that this won't be an issue for him for a long time. What I will say about Dawn of War 2 is this, at least base building gives me something to do before the inevitable occurs. I can pad my game play with the ability to build a base, admire its beauty, and then watch it get destroyed. Dawn of War 2 takes this pleasure away from the notion of traditional RTS and leaves me no where to hide my poor strategy gaming skills. This is not a new concept. The original Command and Conquer games used this concept as a means for story progression. These were my least favourite levels in these games as well. For some reason I had managed to delude myself in to thinking that Dawn of War 2 would be different from these levels. That it would be new. Fresh. Something that managed to push the genre forward. Instead, I find it to be that Command and Conquer experience strung together into one, long and repetitive single player campaign. I was never one for constant repetitive tasks. That's why I fail at work so often. I don't have the supreme patience to work on a production line. I have not enjoyed my Dawn of War 2 experience. I expected something to be revolutionary. Something that felt new. Instead, we see the convergence of several genres to create a completely watered down gaming experience. I have no affinity with my character to push the scope of levelling up in to the realm of RPG. The weapons have no direct substance on the gameplay experience to make the game comparable to Diablo 2. Yet, these are meant to be features of this game. Instead, I find myself pushing through the same types of cover over and over again. Junglist did mention this in Good Game and Kotaku have mentioned this as well. Yet, the game still reviews extremely well. Why is that? Good Game, at least, had the decency (and fore thought) to break their score in to single and multi player totals. Where they rated the single player lower than the multi. Why don't we see this more often? So that those who don't want to play online can make a better buying decision. Sounds too much like hard work for the so-called industry of gaming “journalism”. (Edit from here … ENOUGH – Cynical)

Looks like Mr Cynical has cut this months post short. He said that rants were only meant to be posted in forums because that was a victimless crime. One thing that I forgot to talk about, it may come up again in a later post, but why is it that the guards in Golden Eye go to the toilet with their AK47s? Is this some kind of weird gun-man-love-thing? Or, are they just really committed to their job? Did John Howard and his banning of semi-automatic weapons manage to erase this from our national psyche? The need to take our weapons everywhere. I don't think that I can answer these questions. Ever. Maybe I should just resign myself to the fact that the limitations of creating in game virtual worlds means that short cuts have to be taken in order to simulate reality. Just because these characters take their guns to the toilet doesn't mean that people do in real life. Except, of course, if you live in America where it is perfectly acceptable to (and in some states illegal not to) do so.