2012: Year in Review

2012 was marked by the sense of developers digging deep into gaming's past to build its future. Some of those attempts reinvented old genres and titles, marrying old with new, while others stumbled half-drunkenly into the treasure vaults of nostalgia, hoping to fool us by appealing to a past without a future. Here is a list of what is not necessarily the best (though in most cases, they are), but better than 2012 gaming alternatives.

Max Payne 3, Hotline Miami > Hitman: Absolution

Rockstar's best game in years and a masterpiece from a new voice in gaming both tackle violence in games. Max Payne 3 sees that violence as both disgusting and divinely cathartic; the paradox that violence is and why it means so much in modern society. Hotline Miami isn't really concerned with violence itself, but with player interaction and interpretation of violence.

On the other hand, Hitman: Absolution has violence in it. Fetishized violence, in particular.

But wait, doesn't Hotline Miami do some of that in its very cover art, featuring a man grasping a half-naked woman who is covered in blood? The difference is tone and presentation: Absolution wallows in "sexy" and sexual violence. Its most striking image, present in its trailers, is that of wholesome nuns stripping off their habits to reveal leather bondage gear and machine guns - naturally, this links the violence that follows to kink.

2012: The Year of Dreaming Dangerously

In 2011, we witnessed (and participated in) a series of shattering 

events...it was the year of dreaming dangerously, in both 

directions: emancipatory dreams mobilizing protestors...and 

obscure destructive dreams....

-Slavoj Zizek,  

The Year of Dreaming Dangerously

from http://pensamiento-critico.tumblr.com

2012 was our year of dreaming dangerously. For video games, yes, but also for their players, their journalists, their crafters.

The "emancipatory dreams" arrived from the ability to subvert publisher rules via Kickstarter, thanks to Double Fine Adventure. Increased publicity for Kickstarter from Double Fine-onward means more Indie games by small teams have potential to produce quality work. 

Throughout the year, game charities and individuals collaborated to raise untold masses of wealth for sick children and other noble causes.

On Twitter, there was a revolt a few surges away from the Internet-connected Egypt protests of 2011 in the form of #1ReasonWhy.

Kickstarter is a casino

Kickstarter is a video game casino. That's the appeal, really, when you dig down into it. But hold your stones: my job here isn't to judge, merely to question. Like a casino, Kickstarter isn't good and it isn't evil, but it does affect us. We need to be aware.

A Kickstarter fever has seized the minds of gamers across the Internet. Gaming news outlets are hooked on Kickstarter failures, successes, drop outs. No simple fad, the word refuses to slip off of our public lexicon. Not after Double Fine Adventure or Wasteland 2 or Project Eternity or Barkley 2 or a thousand other games worth thousands of millions succeeded.

On one level, fans hold onto it as a new mode of publishing. On another, nostalgia works to bring back old genres like the ARPG and the space sim for one last hurrah. But a simpler thing keeps us hooked.

Max Payne 3: Divine Terror & Social Responsibilty

Featured on Critical Distance.

One bizarre moment in Max Payne (2002) has the titular protagonist discovering that the Inner Circle, an X-Filesesque conspiracy of shadow men who offer him help, has hands in every major political event of the American century. With voice actor James McCaffery sounding unimpressed, Max rattles off vague lists of their deeds before moving on to his revenge. A narrative shrug, some might call it, but it’s the first hints of what the Max Payne trilogy is now about. 

Belts & Chains: DE-accessorizing Tetsuya Nomura

If J-Pop can be embodied as a game in the way that Suda 51’s No More Heroes embodies punk, Tetsuya Nomura has already designed it.

Nomura’s games and character art inhabit a weird spot between genre fantasy and urban Japanese fashion trends. Gross exaggerations of real (and almost-real) styles and products, they are often off-putting to the critical circus and a majority of the gaming population.

Yet his games are also successes, engendering a cult niches of fans and solid-to-blockbuster sales: Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy VII-on, and The World Ends With You are just some of those that present Nomura’s unique thumbprint.

On a basic level, Nomura excels at his craft. The silhouettes of his characters are simple and discernible from one another, but, in the wake of Final Fantasy VII, intricately detailed. Not a bit of space on Sora, Lightning, etc. goes to waste.

Turn to Nomura’s break out, Final Fantasy VII. Every major character is simply designed, but iconic in their simplicity. Reduce them to silhouettes, and most are still immediately recognizable: Cloud Strife has spiked hair that slants diagonally and a man-sized sword, Barrett is inhumanly large and squat with a Mr. T hairstyle, and even Tifa and Aeries appear separate (despite being two long-haired women with vaguely similar builds) due to their poise. Aeries has her hands drawn in, awkward and shy, while Tifa is confident with her hands posed on hips.

top left and center image courtesy of finalfantasy.wikia.com

This is key character information rendered simply in an expressive, unique hybrid of styles.

Why, then, is Nomura so rejected?

New articles soon

"Where have you been?" you probably want to ask me, like one of those parents who waits by the door when their son is three hours past curfew and reeking of booze.

To answer your question, dad and/or mom, I've been working on freelance writing and a normal person job, which doesn't leave me much time to work on the blog. I've been tired, not inspired, and not playing much that really makes me want to write about it. (I don't believe in writing just to write, or you become one of those Internet Reviewers who has a lot to say about jack shit.)

But I've also been working on something else: a backlog of articles for Gone to Strange Country.

Between now and November, I will have built up enough to release one every week between now and 2013. Every week, there will be at least one new article--not always a 5+ pager, but at least a few coherent thoughts. That's my promise to my readers out there: I'll be in early next time.

In the future, you will witness and shock at:

-Resident Evil 6
-Max Payne 1-3
-Tetsuya Nomura

Thanks,
Andrew

It's a Fight: Silent Hill & Narrative Combat

Fight or flight. Human instinct. All basic.

The instantaneous decision of whether to flee or face up to your predator runs in us all, and the Silent Hill series mines that as another source of its tension. This is less about the monsters being "hard," than the very idea of facing them. The unpredictable nature of the world of “Hill” 1-4 are such that venturing anywhere might lead you some place uncomfortable.

all derive from silenthill.wikia.com

Paradox: horror gamers want to be scared, but try to avoid being scared. Fight, or flight.

A common complaint from reviewers not cogent of how to review is that the series features “bad” combat.

Or, as IGN puts it: "If this is your first time playing Silent Hill 2 or 3, you will instantly notice how outdated the combat system is, even for a PS2 game. The melee is slow and clunky, and the firearms auto lock on the monster's torso."

Technically, this is true. In a creative vacuum, compared to current actioners Gears of War 3 or Call of Duty: Black Ops, this is true. But in the standard that matters—that of coherency of communication and narrative—the combat excels.