Extra Credits just released a video about music in games. As is to be expected from those chaps, it was very well thought out and made some good points. The key one being: embrace simplicity.
It was great, though, listening to them reel off a massive list of music they consider to be classics. I think the Americans must have grown up with consoles in the same way my friends and I grew up with PCs. What are the pieces of music I most fondly remember from the 80s? That's easy.
You start HERE with a game from the BBC. Go through Jazz Jackrabbit, hit the 90s with Doom.
What was interesting, though was how much the boys (and girl) at Extra Credits were talking about old themes (Zelda et all) updated to be played by orchsestras.
I hate orchestral music. Years and years of bad hollywood films has made most orchestral themes blend together. They played the Halo theme and I honestly heard nothing to seperate it from the music of films from Johnny Nemonic up to From Paris With Love.
In all fairness, that's not the games fault, it's my own prejudices. It does interest me, though, that what I consider to be a great piece of game music strays so far from what they were talking about. Take the Deus Ex theme synthesised yet modern. Isolated from the Vampire Bloodlines soundtrack beautifully summs up the slightly unnerving new world you step into playing the game.
I also love some updated themes. Take Command and Conqor: Red Alert, A fantastic, thumping rock song. The updated version is even better...
The point about simplicity is a very good one. Blueberry Garden is, by all respects, a pretty bad game but its music is so fucking good it pretty much turns the game into art by itself. And I surely don't need to mention Braid or World of Goo.
To their credit, Extra Credits did mention Portal at the end, which is probably the most iconic bit of game music we've had in the last ten years but other than that, I do love how there is no real overlap between their opinion of iconic game music and mine. Console gamers are from mars, PC gamers are from venus...
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
Strong Women in games
The Gamer Overthinker recently did a video about Metrod: Other M, which apparantly has been getting people all hot and bothered about Samus Arran. As someone who only knows this character from the Smash Bros series, most of it went over my head but it did get me thinking about some of the points he raised and had me returning to the age old question of... are there any really great female characters in games?
Yes. Of course there are. Just not as many as I'd like.
If you want strong female characters, you just have to go to the RPG's. Mass Effect 2 has Jack, Miranda, Liara, Tali and Shepherd herself if you chose to play as a girl.
Vampire Bloodlines has Teresse and Jenette and VV (although how much you consider her to be a strong female character depends on how you feel on the whole Sex As A Liberating Weapon thing).
The Witcher has Triss and Shani - who are both really great, strong, empathetic characters.
Dragon Age has too many to count.
The thing is, RPG's main strength is in charcter and story so it's not surprising that they should have many great female characters. When you look at other games, though, things are much less favourable.
Let's look at First Person Shooters. The game equivelant of a Hollywood Action film.
I've just had a quick look through my Steam Library and this is what I found:
Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena has an excelent female villain. The fact that she was played by Admiral Cain probably helped though.
There's Alyx Vance in the Half Life 2 saga.... I never really saw her as a character, though. She professes her love for Gordan in one of the games and it just comes across as silly. This is maninly because Gordon never says anything which was still one of Valve's stupider ideas when making Half Life 2. The thing is, she does do a fair amount of stuff - getting you through barriers etc. but I really struggle to say she has a *character*.
There's an old way of telling if a character is good or not: Describe three of a characters attributes without mentioning anything physical about the character. I struggle to do this with Alyx. Really badly.
I have the same problem with Zoey and Rochelle in Left 4 Dead 1 and 2. They're both better characters than Alyx but the time spent on characterisation is understandably low. They get as much as the men, though, which is at least even handed.
And finally, we have Unreal 2's Aida. Aida was one of gaming's great characters anyway. I feel a bit ashamed about this, actually, but I was mentally compiling a list of great female characters before writing this article and I completely forgot about Aida. Stupid me. Granted, the game is nine years old but Deus Ex is older than that and I've memorised almost every frame of that...
So, from my steam library of 106 games, I've managed to find 16 good, strong female characters. And that includes the RPG's in there.
That's pretty damn terrible.
Yes. Of course there are. Just not as many as I'd like.
If you want strong female characters, you just have to go to the RPG's. Mass Effect 2 has Jack, Miranda, Liara, Tali and Shepherd herself if you chose to play as a girl.
Vampire Bloodlines has Teresse and Jenette and VV (although how much you consider her to be a strong female character depends on how you feel on the whole Sex As A Liberating Weapon thing).
The Witcher has Triss and Shani - who are both really great, strong, empathetic characters.
Dragon Age has too many to count.
The thing is, RPG's main strength is in charcter and story so it's not surprising that they should have many great female characters. When you look at other games, though, things are much less favourable.
Let's look at First Person Shooters. The game equivelant of a Hollywood Action film.
I've just had a quick look through my Steam Library and this is what I found:
Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena has an excelent female villain. The fact that she was played by Admiral Cain probably helped though.
There's Alyx Vance in the Half Life 2 saga.... I never really saw her as a character, though. She professes her love for Gordan in one of the games and it just comes across as silly. This is maninly because Gordon never says anything which was still one of Valve's stupider ideas when making Half Life 2. The thing is, she does do a fair amount of stuff - getting you through barriers etc. but I really struggle to say she has a *character*.
There's an old way of telling if a character is good or not: Describe three of a characters attributes without mentioning anything physical about the character. I struggle to do this with Alyx. Really badly.
I have the same problem with Zoey and Rochelle in Left 4 Dead 1 and 2. They're both better characters than Alyx but the time spent on characterisation is understandably low. They get as much as the men, though, which is at least even handed.
And finally, we have Unreal 2's Aida. Aida was one of gaming's great characters anyway. I feel a bit ashamed about this, actually, but I was mentally compiling a list of great female characters before writing this article and I completely forgot about Aida. Stupid me. Granted, the game is nine years old but Deus Ex is older than that and I've memorised almost every frame of that...
So, from my steam library of 106 games, I've managed to find 16 good, strong female characters. And that includes the RPG's in there.
That's pretty damn terrible.
Saturday, 4 September 2010
Mafia 2's story
I've been thinking about the plot of Mafia 2 and I've got a nasty suspicion that it doesn't actually make any sense. There are a fair number of incongruities... None of them exactly ruin it, they just don't quite work and hint at a development team making plot twists for their own sake. Spoilers follow:
1) The cops show up during a drugs run
So you and some mates are going to smuggle some drugs. You've handed over the money, picked up the drugs and OH NO! The cops show up. About thirty of them. You think you're screwed but one of your mates notices their shoes - they're very clean and well made. WAIT! They aren't the shoes of a cop, they must be a rival gang! A firefight ensues.
The problem is, we're never given any explanation for who these people are. Given that no-one was supposed to know about the deal, it doesn't quite work.
2) The fed
One of your mates turns out to be a fed. This is fine, he's been infiltrating your group. The problem is, this mate a few chapters before he is revealed as a fed had planned, initiated and been the primary driving force behind a massive cocaine distribution operation. I really don't get why a fed would do this. It's not as if he hasn't got enough evidence to hang everyone in the game. It could be the money I suppose but he's a fed, they're not supposed to be after the money. As far as I see it, it's an incredibly dangerous thing to do which can (and does) blow his cover for very little reward. It doesn't quite work.
3) A friend who you helped disappear pops up at the end.
So you're supposed to kill this chap but you help him escape. He disappears, never to be heard from again. But he turns up at the end to help you out of a bind. This one does sort of work... helping out old friends and all that, but there are an enormous mesh of co-incidences at the end including a triad leader who this guy somehow knows and has agreed not to kill you for reasons never fully explained. Other than loyalty, which is a bit tenuous considering your characters actions during the last act of the game, this bit really doesn't ring true.
As you can probably tell, Mafia 2's plot isn't exactly bad. There are just a lot of bits that, on closer examination, make you go "hang on a second...." much in the same way Inside Man did...
1) The cops show up during a drugs run
So you and some mates are going to smuggle some drugs. You've handed over the money, picked up the drugs and OH NO! The cops show up. About thirty of them. You think you're screwed but one of your mates notices their shoes - they're very clean and well made. WAIT! They aren't the shoes of a cop, they must be a rival gang! A firefight ensues.
The problem is, we're never given any explanation for who these people are. Given that no-one was supposed to know about the deal, it doesn't quite work.
2) The fed
One of your mates turns out to be a fed. This is fine, he's been infiltrating your group. The problem is, this mate a few chapters before he is revealed as a fed had planned, initiated and been the primary driving force behind a massive cocaine distribution operation. I really don't get why a fed would do this. It's not as if he hasn't got enough evidence to hang everyone in the game. It could be the money I suppose but he's a fed, they're not supposed to be after the money. As far as I see it, it's an incredibly dangerous thing to do which can (and does) blow his cover for very little reward. It doesn't quite work.
3) A friend who you helped disappear pops up at the end.
So you're supposed to kill this chap but you help him escape. He disappears, never to be heard from again. But he turns up at the end to help you out of a bind. This one does sort of work... helping out old friends and all that, but there are an enormous mesh of co-incidences at the end including a triad leader who this guy somehow knows and has agreed not to kill you for reasons never fully explained. Other than loyalty, which is a bit tenuous considering your characters actions during the last act of the game, this bit really doesn't ring true.
As you can probably tell, Mafia 2's plot isn't exactly bad. There are just a lot of bits that, on closer examination, make you go "hang on a second...." much in the same way Inside Man did...
Spiderman is rubbish
I recently swore off comic book films. They're not grounded in reality and often don't follow the conventions of film, tv etc. Physics? Psh. Who needs physics. Realism? PAH.
But I thought there may be hope for the 90s Spiderman cartoon. I watched this in my teens and loved it. So a few weeks ago, the GF and I downloaded it and began working through it.
I quickly reached the conclusion that it's not very good. This may well be because of Sam fucking Rami. Since those awful spiderman films it's hard to ignore bits where Aunt May guilt trips Peter or Peter starts going randomly emo for no aparant reason.
My biggest problem was a bit of a revelation for me, though. I've come to the conclusion that Spiderman is a really shit superhero.
Austin Powers had a lot to do with this. Specifically this famous exchange from International Man of Mystery:
Dr. Evil: All right guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism.
[guard starts dipping mechanism]
Dr. Evil: Close the tank!
Scott Evil: Wait, aren't you even going to watch them? They could get away!
Dr. Evil: No no no, I'm going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying, I'm just gonna assume it all went to plan. What?
Scott Evil: I have a gun, in my room, you give me five seconds, I'll get it, I'll come back down here, BOOM, I'll blow their brains out!
Dr. Evil: Scott, you just don't get it, do ya? You don't.
Why is this relevant to Spiderman? Because he keeps getting captured. His captors always strap a bomb to his arm, want to hold him to ransom, try to reveal his identity or something that leads to him escaping in a really contrived fashion. Why does this keep happening? Because fake peril is a great way of concealing the fact that Spidey can't really do anything.
Let's run through Spiderman's powers quickly:
1)Spiderman can stick to walls.
This is.... fairly useful. I suppose. I can't really see many real world applications. The creators seem to be aware of this as well and have to create a load of flying villains and fights on rooftops to compensate.
2) Spiderman can shoot webs from his wrists.
This used to swing around the city. In much the same way as a normal person would use... a car. It's also used to tie up bandits. I suppose that's... sort of useful but most other superheros don't appear to need to do this. Admittedly, the webbing is often used to stop falling debris and things, which is the one instance where it does something that couldn't also be done by a normal person.
3) Spiderman is hyper agile
Know who else is hyper agile? Gymnasts and martial artists. Spiderman's hyper agility is never really portrayed as anything other than being really gymnastic. Although he tends to do a lot of pretentious flipping all over the place.
4) Spiderman can sense danger
This is a tricky one because it *could* be a game breaking power because depending on how you define "danger" it allows you to sense villains, bullets speeding towards you, people who don't like you etc. etc. The problem is sensing danger can't actually happen so it's not a power based in the real world. As a result of this, the writers of Spiderman pretty much make up what the Spider Sense can and can't detect as they go along. There's one bit where Venom blocks his Spider Sense because the Venom symbiote has bonded with Spidey previously. It doesn't block Spidey's ability to see him so why is it affecting this other sense?
Basically the only things the Spider Sense is ever used for is to notice when he's about to be shot at or a missile is about to explode nearby or something. In other words, this potentially game breaking power could be replaced by the Keeping An Eye On Your Surroundings power.
So, to sum up. Spiderman never really does anything useful that couldn't be done by a talented gymnast/martial artist other than catch falling debris with his webs.
Now.
As a direct result of this, all the normal people in New York are... kind of scaled down, competance wise. The villains always capture Spider Man rather than killing him (which they always have ample oppertunity to do.) Also, buildings always fall on people who never run or dive for cover, they always just look up at the building falling on them with a blank look on their face.
Mostly, though, no-one ever does anything in the Spiderman universe other than Spider Man and the villains. No civilians ever push a mate out of the way when they're about to be crushed by a building. No-one else ever tries to tackle the Shocker (because if they did, they'd win. The Shocker is a monumentally terrible villain) no-one does... anything.
This was all sparked, by the way, by watching bits and pieces of Daredevil, who everyone knows is a terrible superhero. He's blind! He's so blind he can see! He has magical seeing powers! Oh, and he can... use sonar. I suppose. Which is sort of useful... I suppose.
Marvel superheroes are just shit, aren't they...
But I thought there may be hope for the 90s Spiderman cartoon. I watched this in my teens and loved it. So a few weeks ago, the GF and I downloaded it and began working through it.
I quickly reached the conclusion that it's not very good. This may well be because of Sam fucking Rami. Since those awful spiderman films it's hard to ignore bits where Aunt May guilt trips Peter or Peter starts going randomly emo for no aparant reason.
My biggest problem was a bit of a revelation for me, though. I've come to the conclusion that Spiderman is a really shit superhero.
Austin Powers had a lot to do with this. Specifically this famous exchange from International Man of Mystery:
Dr. Evil: All right guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism.
[guard starts dipping mechanism]
Dr. Evil: Close the tank!
Scott Evil: Wait, aren't you even going to watch them? They could get away!
Dr. Evil: No no no, I'm going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying, I'm just gonna assume it all went to plan. What?
Scott Evil: I have a gun, in my room, you give me five seconds, I'll get it, I'll come back down here, BOOM, I'll blow their brains out!
Dr. Evil: Scott, you just don't get it, do ya? You don't.
Why is this relevant to Spiderman? Because he keeps getting captured. His captors always strap a bomb to his arm, want to hold him to ransom, try to reveal his identity or something that leads to him escaping in a really contrived fashion. Why does this keep happening? Because fake peril is a great way of concealing the fact that Spidey can't really do anything.
Let's run through Spiderman's powers quickly:
1)Spiderman can stick to walls.
This is.... fairly useful. I suppose. I can't really see many real world applications. The creators seem to be aware of this as well and have to create a load of flying villains and fights on rooftops to compensate.
2) Spiderman can shoot webs from his wrists.
This used to swing around the city. In much the same way as a normal person would use... a car. It's also used to tie up bandits. I suppose that's... sort of useful but most other superheros don't appear to need to do this. Admittedly, the webbing is often used to stop falling debris and things, which is the one instance where it does something that couldn't also be done by a normal person.
3) Spiderman is hyper agile
Know who else is hyper agile? Gymnasts and martial artists. Spiderman's hyper agility is never really portrayed as anything other than being really gymnastic. Although he tends to do a lot of pretentious flipping all over the place.
4) Spiderman can sense danger
This is a tricky one because it *could* be a game breaking power because depending on how you define "danger" it allows you to sense villains, bullets speeding towards you, people who don't like you etc. etc. The problem is sensing danger can't actually happen so it's not a power based in the real world. As a result of this, the writers of Spiderman pretty much make up what the Spider Sense can and can't detect as they go along. There's one bit where Venom blocks his Spider Sense because the Venom symbiote has bonded with Spidey previously. It doesn't block Spidey's ability to see him so why is it affecting this other sense?
Basically the only things the Spider Sense is ever used for is to notice when he's about to be shot at or a missile is about to explode nearby or something. In other words, this potentially game breaking power could be replaced by the Keeping An Eye On Your Surroundings power.
So, to sum up. Spiderman never really does anything useful that couldn't be done by a talented gymnast/martial artist other than catch falling debris with his webs.
Now.
As a direct result of this, all the normal people in New York are... kind of scaled down, competance wise. The villains always capture Spider Man rather than killing him (which they always have ample oppertunity to do.) Also, buildings always fall on people who never run or dive for cover, they always just look up at the building falling on them with a blank look on their face.
Mostly, though, no-one ever does anything in the Spiderman universe other than Spider Man and the villains. No civilians ever push a mate out of the way when they're about to be crushed by a building. No-one else ever tries to tackle the Shocker (because if they did, they'd win. The Shocker is a monumentally terrible villain) no-one does... anything.
This was all sparked, by the way, by watching bits and pieces of Daredevil, who everyone knows is a terrible superhero. He's blind! He's so blind he can see! He has magical seeing powers! Oh, and he can... use sonar. I suppose. Which is sort of useful... I suppose.
Marvel superheroes are just shit, aren't they...
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