Quickie Thoughts

I don't have time to write my full thoughts on some of the games I managed to finish since September, but here are the quick hits.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade
I haven't technically finished the game (two more endings on each character to go...) but after putting in the 15 hours on each character, I feel like I just need to come back to this some time down the line.
There are really two points I wanted to touch on: First, there's no Christianity in the game. It's pure Japanese mythology and religion... and I'm sure it was a difficult decision for Vanilla Ware to make a game that is so foreign to western audiences because it limited its potential in the West, but for me it was just refreshing to see a game deal with Buddhism in a serious manner. Also, the fact that there were no crosses and resurrection isn't limited to a Christ-like figure (since everyone is reborn after all) just got me more excited to play through the game that I otherwise would have if this was set in medieval Europe or some hybrid Japanese-Western fantasy setting.
Second, the difficulty settings. I'm just not good at action games, but easy mode is extremely trivial while the hard mode is extremely difficult (let's not even talk about the one hit death mode). I'm sure they wanted to appeal to the two extremes - the people who might just want to finish the game and the people who want to experience the agency of being a sword master, but they probably should have had a more balanced mode for people in the middle.

Halo 3 ODST
There's not much to talk about here... the single player is an average campaign with a story that isn't all that great... but the standout again is the collectible videos spread throughout the game. Not only is Sadie's story just more interesting (an African girl trying to find her father in the midst of an alien invasion set in the far future? An outstanding premise on its own), but the way it is incorporated into the game's narrative is clever as well.
Essentially, the Superintendent, an AI that runs the city of New Mombasa, guides you to terminals that contain pieces of the collectible videos by manipulating the environment. Since "he" is able to control all the vehicles, the lights and street signs, when you are near a terminal, the signs will point you in its direction and any sirens or cars around will start blaring. It's a nice way to indicate that a collectible is in the area (unlike other games which just produce a glow around the object or some other conceit).
Collecting them also changes the story very slightly, as a guard in the final level will turn hostile toward you as you try to collect to last video. It's another small touch, but it helps conclude Sadie's story in a satisfactory manner and bring a story that you can only experience through these videos into the game itself.

Uncharted 2
There's not much to say about this one. It's like the first game but greatly improved - the gun mechanics and the platforming are just much easier and the frustrating elements are limited to the ending boss and the train sequence.
That said, while I love the characters and the cutscenes... the game does absolutely nothing in terms of trying to tell story through gameplay. Perhaps the only time it tries is during the short sequence where you have to carry Jeff through a battlefield to safety and even that section is only a few minutes long.
While Kojima was self-indulgent with his cutscenes in MGS4, at least he tried to do some clever things with the game play and level design. Uncharted 2 doesn't do much of that unfortunately.
I still love the game - I "Platinumed" the game and played a lot of the multiplayer. It's just unfortunate that something so good tells a story in such a pedestrian manner.

Borderlands
In terms of story, there's nothing here at all. It's not that kind of game and I really don't have anything to say about it. It fulfills the promise of Hellgate London - a first person Diablo shooter - and that's all it needed to do. It probably helped that the game was 40 bucks (as opposed to Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, which I'll probably never play again any time soon).

All that's left this year is Dragon Age - which I won't finish any time soon - and Call of Duty 6/Modern Warfare 2. I'll be back then!

Oh right, Infamous
I stopped half way through and I'm not sure if I'll get back to it any time soon. The gameplay is fairly interesting, but the morality system is so shallow that it serves only as a conceit for power differentiation - almost like the Jedi/Sith powers in the old Jedi Knight games. Perhaps the only good thing is that the game forces you to make a choice early... it's just too bad the choices themselves are so thinly veiled you don't give it a second thought.

Persona 4: Friends Forever!

I’ve already done a bit on Persona 4 in a post on Bitmob.com touching on some of the issues of sexuality, so I just wanted to focus on some of the other more “gamey” issues in this post.

I suppose I could start with the irony that in a game which wants you to take away the message that making connections with people is the only way you can succeed is an extremely isolating experience that can take anywhere from 60-100 hours to play, but that’s too easy.

I will say that the game does all it can to impart this lesson through the gameplay. Essentially, the game is a “life simulator” that wants you to balance everything from making money, studying for exams, improving your “characteristics”, spending time with your friends and running into dungeons. Each of these aspects of the game are interconnected, so you can’t ignore any of these aspects of your character’s life if you want to get the most out of the game.

So, making friends isn’t as simply as easy as just spending time with the person. You might need to have a talent for “Understanding” in order to be able to properly listen to one of your friend’s problems. Or, doing well at your exams (and you’ll write exams several times throughout the game) will impress your friends and improve your relationship with them.

You’ll also have to learn to speak to each person’s personality. For most characters, being nice is the best way to improve your relationship with them. But some people only respond to you if you are straightforward or disaffected. It’s a nice way to break up the “nice = good” equation that most games suffer from. For example, one character will tease your character by flirting with him and the fastest way to improve your relationship with her is to resist her advances.

So how does the “dating sim” part of the game line up with the actual gameplay? First and foremost, improving your relationship with your party members enables to provide several in combat bonuses and ultimately upgrade their abilities. Similarly, fusing Personas – the key to unlocking better abilities in the game – is made much easier if you have a close relationship with certain people in the game. Simply put, if you manage to improve your relationship with as many people as possible, the game becomes much easier.

Of course, the game also ties the theme of friendship into its narrative. Perhaps in a moment inspired by Super Metroid, in the final battle of the game and before you are able to strike the winning blow, the boss suddenly gains the ability to instant-kill your character. However, before the boss is able to kill you, each of your party members steps in to take the fatal blow. Of course, when all your friends are dead, there is no one left to save your character and he finally succumbs to the inevitable.

However, rather than get a game over screen, you are tossed into a cutscene. The game reminds you of all the friendships you have forged throughout the game (which seems to be procedurally generated based the actual progress you made) and you are resurrected and given one more chance to defeat the boss... which, like Samus in Super Metroid, you do with no problem.

I admit I’m not really doing the scene any justice and I was at the point in the game where I was expecting this exact ending to happen, but when it happened I did appreciate what the game was trying to do. It was a nice payoff for spending all those hours fostering your friendships with the other characters in the game and, as much as this can be said for ANY game, you really have to experience it yourself in order to appreciate the climax of the moment.

I’m starting to find that this is very much a Japanese trope in game design. There are many RPGs where you are in the middle of a battle in which agency is removed from the player in order to advance story. As I mentioned before in my FF4: TAY write-up, there are battles where you are simply meant to lose. I find it interesting that Western game design tends to go the other way – you’re locked into a certain path, but you always have some sense of control. Even in the “nuke” moment in CoD4 or the “forced” ending of Prince of Persia (2008), you’re still in control of the moment as the player.

It makes me wonder if it’s cultural. Clearly, I don’t have enough sociological knowledge of Japan (or even America, to be honest) to make anything but broad generalizations (otaku like being told what to do! Japanese people are afraid of choice!), so I won’t. It’s just interesting to see this “fork” in design philosophy, as subtle as it seems to be. I only wish I was qualified enough to attempt to draw any kind of real conclusion.

Before I begin to just ramble on too much, I just wanted to point out some examples of game design choices meant to limit the player that I noticed.

First is the SP system and it’s worth noting that this mechanic appeared in FF4: TAY as well. The game gives no real SP recovering items early in the game, forcing you to jump out of dungeons the moment you run out of SP. Of course, this becomes mostly irrelevant in the mid-to-late game as you’ll have various ways to recover SP fairly easily, but it’s still an interesting way to prevent you from endlessly grinding (which is unfortunately the natural action most people take when playing JRPGs).

Second is the fact that even after you max out their S-links and evolve their personas, Teddie and Yukiko are still weak to fire and ice respectively. Every other character develops a null or reflect to their weak element, but not the two healers. My thinking is that the designers made this decision to try to keep the boss battles interesting. The fact that your two healers could be vulnerable to death at any point in the battle forces you not to take them for granted – you could lose your healer at a critical time, which in a worst case scenario might lead to your death and a game over screen.

I’ll just conclude by saying that the biggest hook for me was the fact that it was set in contemporary Japan and not some generic fantasy world with elves and mages. Sure, there were a lot of clichés associated with teen life in Japan – onsen antics, school field trips, the school cultural festival, the o-bon festival – but seeing how a typical teenager would experience a complete school year was a nice refreshing break from the standard RPG setting. I know that I’ll definitely go back and try Persona 3: FES whenever I get bored with generic fantasy or science fiction.

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (WiiWare) - You CAN go back home again...

(This post will be based on the first two chapters that were available at launch and may be updated as new chapters are released)

I remember hearing about this sometime ago... and I imagine it must have been on 1up when Shane Bettenhausen was still on the show or during an episode of Retronauts.

Originally released as an episodic cellphone game, Square ported the code to WiiWare and gave us shameful Westerners with our antique and quaint "iPhones" a chance to play the game for ourselves.

First of all, what is it? Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (henceforth shortened as TAY in this post) is the second "mainline" Final Fantasy game to receive a true honest to god sequel (I'm looking at you, Compilation of Final Fantasy VII) that brings back most of the original cast for an all new story. And as a sequel, it does not shy away from its original roots. I really don't know much about making a 16bit game, but I wouldn't be surprised if Square went back into the archives and dug up the original artwork from the FF4 for use in TAY. They've also reused most, if not all, the music cues from the original game, meaning that you probably shouldn't be coming into this game thinking that you'll get a completely new experience.

In fact, I would argue that most of the charm of the game comes from the fact that we're playing a brand new sprite-based RPG in 2009. It's a game that exudes nostalgia, in a way that the fourth Act of Metal Gear Solid 4 did with its flashback, taking the player back to the early 90s and reminding them of the fun (or frustration) of playing the original back on the SNES with an oldschool gamepad.

And I think it succeeds completely at that invoking my wistful longings for a simpler time. I found myself enjoying the grind because the battle animations were short (unlike the longwinded animations of modern 3D RPGs) and even though the music is just a series of endless loops, I found myself humming along to them out of habit. In many ways, I think I prefer TAY to the DS remake of FF4 simply because I much prefer the sprite-based art to the Playstation era polygon-based art that the DS version produces.

But is there more to the game than just its art assets? Certainly.

I appreciated the way that it invoked nostalgia with flashback scenes. When you travel to a location that was important in the original game, you will often flashback to the original scene. The game suddenly applies a sepia filter, plays the "sad" version of the main theme (I'm not really good with names of songs from FF games unfortunately), uses the original character sprites from FF4 and replays the original cutscene. In a game whose art design already invokves nostalgia, they managed to find a way to make the game even more nostalgic. And for me, it excused the recycling of old locations, simply because it meant that I could go back to many of these old towns and dungeons and remember the original game.

Story-wise, the game relies on that old trope of aging the original characters and introducing their children. Personally, I've only experienced this a couple of times - The Anne of Green Gables novels and the Allison to Lillia anime - so I don't have a lot to compare this to, but I think it works relatively well. It gives you a chance to relive the consequences of the original game (what happens in the first chapter of the game is almost ripped out of Persona 4 where Kain must fight his true emotions - being on the losing end of the Cecil-Rosa-Kain love triangle - made manifest in a "shadow"/evil Kain that you must battle) while also giving you a chance to explore the world from a completely new perspective (through Cecil and Rosa's child, Ceodore).

Rydia's chapter plays out the same way, as you can play Rydia and Luca - you explore Rydia's issues with her lineage from the first game while seeing the Underworld from Luca's relatively unexplored perspective. I have to imagine that all the chapters will be designed in this manner - an old character to tie the game to the old story and a new character to provide a fresh perspective.

It's a nice way to keep the game from devolving into complete fanservice by having the old characters simply relive their old issues without introducing anything new and I think it works relatively well.

Pacing wise, it appears that the game will take a page from Rashomon and have all the chapters happen concurrently, telling the story from several perspectives. This keeps in line with the fact that the game has to be sold episodically (which was probably how it was originally sold in Japan). By introducing the characters in their own episodes rather than have a single chronologically continuous story that you have to play in sequence, you don't really have the problems of serialized fiction (what happened last week?) and you might even sell the subsequent chapters to people who aren't interested in the entire story but like a particular character. I might have preferred that the game was released in one complete package, but this is a fair compromise.

There really isn't much to say until the final chapter comes out and I finish off the game. As it stands, it's all very familiar in terms of gameplay and storytelling. I still think it's clever that the game manipulates the battle system in order to impart narrative (in the form of battles that you will inevitable lose), but that's so old hat now that it's not as special as it was back in the 90s. But, you're not playing this to be blown away... you're playing this to be taken back to the past (very much like the Angry Video Game Nerd!).

One final note though. I honestly don't think any other game franchise could have pulled this off. Most companies simply remake games (like Bionic Commando: Re-armed) or just re-emulate games (pretty much everything Backbone makes) and even those just sell for 5 or 10 dollars. But TAY will cost nearly 40 dollars when the game is fully released and I don't doubt that the many older fans will be perfectly willing to part with that obscene amount of money just to play through the entire game (myself included). I look at it this way. The Penny Arcade Adventures games are brand new experiences for 20/15 dollars each and I just couldn't bring myself to buy them. With TAY, there was absolutely no hesitation. I guess it just goes to show that for a certain generation of people, the Final Fantasy name is still extremely important to them.

Books I have borrowed

Books I have borrowed - May 2009. Just for reference!

Hop on pop : the politics and pleasures of popular culture / edited by Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson, & Jane Shattuc. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks E169.12 .H666 2002 Book Overdue: Due 05/20/2009

Bogost, Ian. Persuasive games : the expressive power of videogames / Ian Bogost. - WLU Book Shelves GV1469.34.S52 B64 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Taylor, T. L. Play between worlds : exploring online game culture / T.L. Taylor. - WLU Book Shelves GV1469.17.S63 T38 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Ludlow, Peter, 1957- Second Life Herald : the virtual tabloid that witnessed the dawn of the metaverse / Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. GV1469.25.S425 L83 2007 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Law, Kar, 1941- Hong Kong cinema : a cross-cultural view / Law Kar, Frank Bren ; with the collaboration of Sam Ho. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PN1993.5.C4 K37 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Wei, William, 1948- Asian American movement / William Wei. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks E 184.O6 W44 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Remapping Asian American history / edited by Sucheng Chan. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks E184.O6 R46 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Kitano, Harry H. L. Asian Americans : emerging minorities / Harry H.L. Kitano, Roger Daniels. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks E184.O6 K57 2001 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Fong, Timothy P. Contemporary Asian American experience : beyond the model minority / Timothy P. Fong. - WLU Book Shelves E184.O6 F66 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Ancheta, Angelo N., 1960- Race, rights, and the Asian American experience / Angelo N. Ancheta. - WLU Book Shelves KF4757.A75 A53 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Anderson, Craig Alan, 1952- Violent video game effects on children and adolescents : theory, research, and public policy / Craig A. Anderson, Douglas A. Gentile,

Katherine E. Buckley. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks HQ784.V53 A53 2007 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Visible minorities and multiculturalism: Asians in Canada, edited by K. Victor Ujimoto and Gordon Hirabayashi, with the assistance of P.A. Saram. - WLU Book Shelves FC106 .O6V58 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Hwang, David Henry, 1957- FOB and other plays / David Henry Hwang ; with a foreword by Maxine Hong Kingston. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PS 3558.W83 F62 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Hwang, David Henry, 1957- Trying to find Chinatown : the selected plays / David Henry Hwang. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PS3558.W83 A6 2000 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Hall, Kenneth E., 1954- John Woo : the films / by Kenneth E. Hall. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. PN1998.3.W655 H36 1999 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Woo, John, 1948- John Woo : interviews / edited by Robert K. Elder. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. PN1998.3.W655 J65 2005 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Bogost, Ian. Unit operations : an approach to videogame criticism / Ian Bogost. - UW Davis. Book Stacks. Main Floor QA76.76.C672 B65 2006 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Cinema of Hong Kong : history, arts, identity / edited by Poshek Fu, David Desser. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. PN1993.5.H6 C56 2000 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Cheng, Jim. Annotated bibliography for Chinese film studies / Jim Cheng = Zhongguo dian ying yan jiu shu mu ti yao / Cheng Jian. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. PN1993.5.C4 C442x 2004 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Bordwell, David. Planet Hong Kong : popular cinema and the art of entertainment / David Bordwell. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. PN1993.5.H6 B63 2000 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Meaning and culture of Grand theft auto : critical essays / edited by Nate Garrelts. - WLU Book Shelves GV1469.35.G738 M43 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm
Chinese films in focus : 25 new takes / edited by Chris Berry. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. PN1993.5.C4 C463x 2003 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Aureus, Leon, 1973- Banana boys : the play / by Leon Aureus ; adapted from the novel by Terry Woo. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. PS8601.U74 B35 2007 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm
Davis, Rocío G. Transcultural reinventions : Asian American and Asian Canadian short-story cycles / Rocio G. Davis. - WLU Book Shelves PS8191.S5 D39 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Hwang, David Henry, 1957- Flower drum song / music by Richard Rodgers ; lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II ; book by David Hanry Hwang. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. PS3558.W83 F58 2003 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm
Manning, Erin. Ephemeral territories : representing nation, home, and identity in Canada / Erin Manning. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. FC97 .M36 2003 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Casteel, Sarah Phillips, 1974- Second arrivals : landscape and belonging in contemporary writing of the Americas / Sarah Phillips Casteel. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. PR9175 .C37 2007 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Yoon, Jin-me, 1960- Jin-me Yoon : touring home from away / [guest curator, Annette Hurtig]. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. N6549.Y66 A4 2003 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Berry, Chris, 1959- China on screen : cinema and nation / Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PN1993.5.C4 B44 2006 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Heard, Christopher Ten thousand bullets : the cinematic journey of John Woo / Christopher Heard. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PN1998.3.W655 H43 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Zhang, Yingjin. Chinese national cinema / Yingjin Zhang. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PN1993.5.C4 Z49 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

New Chinese cinemas : forms, identities, politics / edited by Nick Browne ... [et al.]. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PN 1993.5.C4 N49 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Lee, Josephine Ding, 1960- Performing Asian America : race and ethnicity on the contemporary stage / Josephine Lee. 1997 - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. PS338.A74L44 1997 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

East Main Street : Asian American popular culture / edited by Shilpa Davé, LeiLani Nishime, and Tasha G. Oren ; foreword by Robert G. Lee. - WLU Book Shelves E184.A75 E17 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Xu, Wenying. Eating identities : reading food in Asian American literature / Wenying Xu. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PS153.A84 X8 2008 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Li, Xiaoping, 1954- Voices rising : Asian Canadian cultural activism / Xiaoping Li. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks F1035.A75 L5 2007 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Nguyen, Viet Thanh, 1971- Race & resistance : literature & politics in Asian America / Viet Thanh Nguyen. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PS153.A84 N48 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Grice, Helena. Negotiating identities : an introduction to Asian American women's writing / Helena Grice. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PS153.A84 G74 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Khoo, Tseen-Ling, 1970- Banana bending : Asian-Australian and Asian-Canadian literatures / Tseen-Ling Khoo. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PR9080.5 K48 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Singh, Simon. Big bang : the origin of the universe / Simon Singh. - Guelph/Humber Collection -- At Humber College QB991.B54 S56 2004 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

First person : new media as story, performance, and game / edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan ; designed by Michael Crumpton. - WLU Book Shelves GV1469.17.S63 F57 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Sun, Wei. Minority invisibility : an Asian American experience / Wei Sun. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. P94.5.M552 U67x 2007 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Ono, Kent A., 1964- Asian Americans and the media / Kent A. Ono and Vincent N. Pham. - WLU Book Shelves P94.5.A762 U6 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Kane, Michael. Game boys : professional videogaming's rise from the basement to the big time / Michael Kane. - WLU Book Shelves GV1469.17.S63 K36 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

McCloud, Scott, 1960- Making comics : storytelling secrets of comics, manga and graphic novels / Scott McCloud. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PN6710 .M3325 2006 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Stokes, Lisa Odham. City on fire : Hong Kong cinema / Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. PN1993.5.H6 S76 1999 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Burton, David M. Elementary number theory / David M. Burton. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks QA241 .B83 2007 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Bogart, Kenneth P. Discrete mathematics for computer science / Kenneth Bogart, Clifford Stein, Robert L. Drysdale - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks QA76.9.M35 B64 2006 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Teo, Stephen. Hong Kong cinema : the extra dimensions / Stephen Teo. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. PN1993.5.H6 T46 1997 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Ghymn, Esther Mikyung, 1949- Images of Asian American women by Asian American women writers / Esther Mikyung Ghymn. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PS 153.A84 G47 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Asian American sexualities : dimensions of the gay and lesbian experience / edited by Russell Leong. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks HQ 76.2.U5 A75 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Ma, Sheng-mei. East-West montage : reflections on Asian bodies in diaspora / Sheng-mei Ma. - WLU Book Shelves DS13 .M3 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Second person : role-playing and story in games and playable media / edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin ; designed by Michael Crumpton. - WLU Book Shelves GV1469.17.S63 S43 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Screening Asian Americans / edited and with an introduction by Peter X Feng. - WLU Book Shelves PN1995.9.A77 S79 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Gee, James Paul. What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy / James Paul Gee. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks GV1469.3 .G44 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Computer games : text, narrative and play / Diane Carr ... [et al.]. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks GV1469.17.S63 C66 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

New media : a critical introduction / Martin Lister ... [et al.]. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks P96.T42 N478 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Flew, Terry. New media : an introduction / Terry Flew. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks P96.T42 F58 2005 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

New media book / edited by Dan Harries. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks P96.T42 N49 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Ty, Eleanor Rose, 1958- Politics of the visible in Asian North American narratives / Eleanor Ty. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PS8089.5 A8 T9 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Gendering the nation : Canadian women's cinema / edited by Kay Armatage ... [et al.]. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PN1998.2 .G46 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Versaci, Rocco. This book contains graphic language : comics as literature / Rocco Versaci. - WLU Book Shelves PN6714 .V47 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm
Wark, McKenzie, 1961- Gamer theory / McKenzie Wark. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks GV1469.17.S63 W37 2007 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Comics & ideology / edited by Matthew P. McAllister, Edward H. Sewell Jr., and Ian Gordon. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PN6714 .C645 2001 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Strips, toons, and bluesies : essays in comics and culture / D.B. Dowd and Todd Hignite, editors. - Guelph McLaughlin Book Stacks PN6710 .R83 2006 Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Fuchs, Wolfgang J 1945- Comics; anatomy of a mass medium [by] Reinhold Reitberger [and] Wolfgang Fuchs [Translated from the German by Nadia Fowler. - UW Porter. Book Stacks. 6th-10th Floors. PN6710.F813 1972b Book Renewed: Due 09/15/2009 11:59pm

Fox 2! Dancing with the Angels: Tom Clancy’s HAWX and Ace Combat 6

It seemed almost natural to play these games back to back, even if I didn’t intend to do it that way. I’m not quite sure why I dropped AC6 way back in 2007. Other things probably came up and it was just a tad too ridiculous for me to find it engaging. Fast forward to the 2009 release of HAWX, which as a general fan of the Ubisoft Tom Clancy franchise, I felt inclined to play. By the time I finished HAWX, I felt like I should give AC6 another chance.

As for the gameplay, I can really only speak to the level design. I’ve discovered that I hate bombing missions. The one good thing about old Space Sims is that by the very nature of the setting, crashing isn’t even a consideration. You can just focus on dogfighting other fighter craft. HAWX on the other hand emphasizes bombing – and while the bombs themselves are fairly easy fire and forget type weapons, it’s still a pain to try to hit a target while trying to avoid smacking into terrain. There’s even a mission where you’re forced to fly under a certain altitude through hilly terrain for the majority of the mission. High pressure? Sure. It’s just not quite as fun as trying to chase down an F-18.

As for AC6, while the bombing is relatively simplified because of the option to use fire and forget bombs, they’ve replaced the frustration with the classic Star Wars trench run. Fly down a tunnel in a jet while being shot at by turrets and aiming for a target that you only have one chance to hit. Again, the tension is ratcheted up but since the margin of error is fairly low (especially on a higher difficulty), there is a large potential for frustration.

But, as Yahtzee said in his review of HAWX, there’s something satisfying about chasing down another plane and blowing it out of the sky – even if it’s boiled down to pointing and clicking – and there are more than enough missions in both games where you do just that.

In terms of story conveyed through gameplay and level design, both games rely on scripted sequences to try to inspire what I would tentatively call “cinematic moments” or more specifically, the type of climaxes found at the height of action sequences in war films. The turning point in HAWX is when Artemis, the PMC that your character flies for, switches allegiances against the United States because the enemy (a generic separatist terrorist organization) has offered them a better contract. In the game itself, this is represented by an Artemis fleet suddenly appearing on the map after the completion of a mission, demanding the immediate withdrawal of American forces. With patriotic fervour, your wingman declares that he can’t fight against Americans and suddenly you’re tasked with destroying the Artemis flagship in order to save an American carrier group.

For what it tries to accomplish, I suppose it’s perfectly adequate. But for some reason, it just wasn’t all that inspiring. Now, one thing to point out is that most of the Tom Clancy games are now made by Europeans or Canadians (a fact that Tom Clancy himself might find ironic in between dips in his gold plated pool filled with thousand dollar bills), and I suppose this is just a twisted view of nationalism and patriotism that non-Americans seem to believe that Americans are consumed with. It’s a far cry from the type of story found in American war films or even Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4. Alternatively, it might just be horrible writing and presentation – and given that Ubisoft doesn’t publish credits for the games anywhere online, it might not be fair to place the blame on Ubisoft Romania.

Speaking of presentation, one of the lauded features of the game was that it takes place during Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 – and indeed, the first mission in the game has you flying into Juarez in order to support Captain Mitchell. It’s a great concept that I was really looking forward to, simply because the moment referenced in GRAW2 is one of the better uses of the “cinematic moment” in games to this day. Unfortunately, the actual mission in HAWX has nothing in common with the mission in GRAW2. Then there’s the fact that they didn’t even bother to hire the same voice actor to play Mitchell. Sure, gruff American soldier is a generic voice that anyone can do... but if you’re going out of the way to reference a character that you’ve used in other games, at least have the foresight to hire the same voice actor as well.

Ace Combat 6’s “cinematic moment” comes late in the game and it’s surprisingly similar to the one found in GRAW2. You’re tasked to destroy some biological weapons, which is fairly simple it itself, and then you are told to pull out and return to base. As you begin to fly home, wave after wave of enemy fighters begin to engage you and you soon begin to realize that the odds are against you. And it’s for this reason that I found the moment in AC6 to be more engaging and emotionally affecting than the one in HAWX. Speaking for myself, when I saw that I had to somehow take on a dozen or so fighter jets with just a single wingman for support, I thought I was going to “die” (or at least, lose the mission). It’s a classic manipulation of the sense of agency that a player has when playing a game. Barring survival horror games, typically a player has a tremendous sense of power over the game world and by suddenly overwhelming the player, the designers are hoping that – at least for a brief moment – the player will feel overwhelmed and become anxious.

And just as suddenly and unexpectedly as the game removes agency from the player, the game returns it to him in the form of allied forces appearing in the map to provide support. It’s quite literally the game version of the cavalry appearing from the distance to save the protagonist in the nick of time (such as at the end of Saving Private Ryan when American forces arrive to stop the German advance). By returning the power that was temporary removed from the player, the game is able to manipulate the player into feeling a sense of relief as he realizes that he is no longer in any imminent danger. Hearing an ally tell you that he’s here to help you is as cliché as refusing to turn on one’s homeland, but the way it is executed in AC6 allowed me to temporarily forget that I’ve experienced this moment many times before – in games and in other media. Running in my head was the thought that I was glad I wasn’t going to “die” and have to repeat the mission, which is probably as close as a game can come to replicating the danger of real world combat.

Moving on to the actual stories of both games... they’re both fairly obnoxious in terms of how shallow they are, but for very different reasons. I don’t want to go into any real detail because plot summaries of both games are available on Wikipedia, but I will say that if I had to choose which one I liked more, I would have to go with Ace Combat 6. The story in HAWX was just pure bullshit that makes Metal Gear Solid 4 seem like a well considered white paper on the precipitous future humanity faces as private military corporations begin to capitalize on the everlasting demand for soldiers and weapons. Just like the current season of 24 (season 7), for some random reason a PMC wants to destroy the United States... but there’s no real compelling reason why they’d want to take over America or what they’d even do if they actually succeeded. And even then, most of the footage they used for the “cutscenes” (or over-glorified Power Point presentations) in between missions was recycled from other Tom Clancy games. I think they probably shouldn’t have even bothered with a story at all.

Ace Combat 6 on the other hand is disappointing in that the storytelling is so heavy handed. It would almost be an insult to anime to call this story anime-inspired, even though it’s clear that’s where the game is drawing its inspiration. Essentially (and quite like Valkyria Chronicles) a country is invaded by an unprovoked aggressor and you have to fight to save your homeland. But as the story unfolds, it’s clear that this is an anti-war story. I think I’ve touched on my feelings about Japanese anti-war stories in my Valkyria Chronicles post. While it’s strange seeing an anti-war story from the Japanese perspective (for a variety of reasons – the most notable one being that the game received assistance from JASDF), at least they’re trying to do something “more meaningful” with the story than their Western counterparts.

That said, it just seems that Japanese game writing seems to be clunky as hell. While the narrative is split amongst several characters, let’s focus on Melissa Herman. When the game opens, we find out that her husband is a pilot in the air force that you yourself fly in. A typical war movie would just be happy with having the character discover that she is a widow through a messenger or another soldier. Not Ace Combat 6 however. No, Melissa finds out that her husband has died when she walks by the wreckage of her husband’s jet on her way out of the city. And of course, there’s the “Go Dance with the Angels!” line that is used throughout the story. It’s supposed to be an elaborate way to curse someone (dancing with the angels implies that one should be shot down by pilots) but it just becomes a joke by the time the game ends. I have to assume that it was better in Japanese and the translator/localizer did the best they could when trying to come up with an English equivalent. Either way, Japanese game companies should simply hire anime writers/directors to work on the story for their games to avoid problems like these entirely.

Finally, I just wanted to touch on the music. Wikipedia lists Tom Salta as the composer for HAWX... which is slightly disappointing because I think his work on the Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter games was excellent. Unfortunately, no tracks really stood out this time. The Ace Combat 6 soundtrack on the other hand works well with the game. The track that they used for the trailer (the “Invasion of Gracemeria” theme) is probably one of my favourite pieces of game music. In fact, I’m not surprised that they went all out and released a 3 CD OST in Japan.

There was some other minor point that I wanted to write about... but it's long since left my head unfortunately. Hopefully it'll come to me again some time in the future.

Valkyria Chronicles: I hate Nazis and You do too!

A sequel to Sega’s Viking:  Battle of the Asgaard?  No, not quite.  It just seems that non Judeo-Christian mythology is back in vogue again and I for one am perfectly happy to indulge in this new trend.  No more crosses, please!

Anyway, let’s go through the game in brief.  It’s a half real-time and half turn-based SRPG – which in itself seems like a crazy idea but it injects some life into an old genre.  You control each character in real time from a third person perspective, almost like a TPS.  There are also quite a few nuances with the combat engine, the best example is that if you move into an enemy’s cone of vision you will expose your characters to a free attack, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

I’m also not going to dwell on the eye-catching art style that they chose to use – everything looks like a watercolour painting or a pencil sketch.  I have no idea how the technology works, but it needs to be seen in motion to be truly appreciated.  In a world where every other game has is the plastic look of UE3, anything that takes a different approach should be commended.

What I really want to focus on is the story and the story telling.  So it’s been a while since I’ve watched a full anime or manga series mostly because I don’t have the time or self-dedication to devote myself to watching something that will take months to get through (the heady days of the 90s, with Initial D and Sailor Moon and GTO, are behind me) but Valkyria Chronicles is the most “anime” text that I’ve experienced in a long time.

Everything that confuses and bewilders me about anime is in this game.  For a game set during a brutal war, it feels strange to have 14 year old characters being shot at by soldiers who are essentially SS troopers.  I know that the genre often features characters that are extremely young – but imagine if the cast of Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan were all teenagers.  It’s just an odd convention that takes a bit of getting used to. 

Then there’s the other anime convention that has always confused me – are these characters white or Japanese?  It’s set in a fictional Europe that they’ve so creatively dubbed “Europa”, but the characters are drawn exactly the same way that characters in other anime series are drawn.  What makes it all doubly strange is that there are “black” or at least “dark skinned” characters, so it’s not as if race doesn’t exist in the convention of anime.  I just don’t know enough about Japanese culture or the conventions of manga/anime to know if this is just an art style, some form of deep-seated wish fulfillment or even just the typical privileging of whiteness.

Taking out the mythology of the “Valkyria” and the steam punk nature of the technology, the game is basically a retelling of the Second World War – including the holocaust (the Darcsen being locked up in concentration camps, use as forced labour and then being executed as their overseers abandon their posts?  It's not subtle at all).  Now, I don’t want to attribute the qualities of one game to an entire nation, but given the role that Japan took during WW2, it seems odd that there is a romanticisation of the European front of the Second World War.  Perhaps the only interesting divergence from real world history is that the “Allies” in the game’s fiction are almost as evil as the “Axis” powers in the game’s fiction.  I just wonder what the game would have been like if it was set in a fictional Asia, with the “Korean” country trying to resist a fictional China and Japan.  Again, this is just one of those odd socio-cultural aspects of being Japanese that I'm not sure I'll ever understand.

As for how story is presented in the game itself, it’s typically Japanese – long cutscenes intermixed with bits of gameplay.  I was mostly caught up in the story, as clunky as it could be, so I didn’t mind it so much but I can understand how someone might be totally frustrated with having to sit through hours of videos and text bubbles in order to actually play the game (it's better than Metal Gear Solid 4 thankfully).  That said the way they presented the story is probably one of the cleverest ways I’ve seen someone do a menu screen since Psychonauts. The game is set up so that as you play through the game, you are essentially reading a book about the war aptly titled The Valkyria Chronicles, with each chapter of the book being a mission in the game.  When most games simply use a text menu to select cutscenes and missions, it was just nice to see someone take the time to integrate the menus into the fiction of the game world.

While I wished that they took some of the thought that went into designing the menus into figuring out ways that they could have told the story during gameplay, I definitely appreciate the game for what it is.  Yes, it’s undeniably a Japanese game but it is also innovative enough that it becomes a standout in a genre that is somewhat stuck in old conventions.

(Now if I could only finish Persona 3... or Persona 4!)

Oh, and here's an interesting picture I found on NeoGAF that apparently comes from 4chan that pretty much sums up the weirdness in the game:

Saints Row 2: Even Rower

Okay, so that’s not the subtitle... but it seems in keeping with the spirit of the game.  Yeah, there’s really nothing spectacular about the game’s narrative or story – Volition has gone out of its way to tell you how pretentious and boring Grand Theft Auto 4 was – instead opting to make a game that was simply fun.  Your character isn’t a conflicted ex-soldier trying to find a better life – s/he is just a “gangsta” who wants to own the city through any means necessary.  Sure, there’s satire, but it feels more genuine and less contrived than Rock Star North’s particular brand of extreme Americanism.

And you know what?  In an open world game – that just works for me.  There is no narrative dissonance when I run over people or shoot down a police chopper with a wire guided RPG.  There isn’t an overwrought cutscene trying to convince me that the main character is more than what s/he is – a psychopath who likes to blow things up.  It’s completely unapologetic and it’s much better for it.

With a very thin plot then, what is there to talk about?   I just wanted to point out that if there was ever a game about ergodic/ludic/emergent “game telling” experiences, this is it.  The game is as fun as you want it to be and Volition went out of their way to make it accessible to as many people as possible.  In mission checkpoints, regenerating health, the ability to recruit CPU players to help you on missions and a Gears of War-like revival system in co-op – it’s a game that wants you to finish it.  Even the cars handle much easier, relying on a more arcade-like handling model that lets you do hairpin turns on a dime.

For all my talk about narrative in games, I just needed a reminder that games can just be “fun” and that I shouldn’t feel the need to apologize for the fact that I find it amusing to run around suburbia with a septic truck spraying raw sewage on people in order to lower property values.  As I make my way through GTA4: The Lost and Damned, all I can think is that I hope Volition is working on Saints Row 3.