I was idly shambling around the internet the other day, and I came across this.

This the best written article of all time. It started an obsession, which I will now impart unto you.

Boy meets girl over world’s most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game, boy romances girl with his PvP videos (may I remind you, his main means of romance still the world’s most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game), he a “rogue class hero”; she, presumably, some other class and not a hero. What a fucking Fonzie of a motherfucker. This guy is golden. He picks up chicks with videos about how his avatar interacts with another avatar (there is no mention of whether there is fighting, perhaps there is just polite conversation). He has picked up a lady merely by reaching his internet tendrils across and twiddling her /love macro button. (Too nerdy? After this recent delve into the magical otherworld of World of Warcraft I have been educated.)

The skill of this blogger, “Ming” is just out of this world. It is superb fracking writing to describe this guy as a “rogue class hero” – just like “working class hero”! That is textbook wordsmithery. It’s like witnessing Eddie Izzard come up with a joke, watching this article unfold before me. It is a symphony of awesome thing after awesome thing. It’s like some amazing sentences got together and had a party. There are amazing ideas being flung around like balls at a throwing convention. Have I told you how awesome this article is? WTB Temazepam.

From Ming’s master storytelling, I imagine our hero and non-hero hook up in what must have been an orgy of PvP, roleplaying, and rogues do it from behind jokes. They live together for a year (“plus”!) in domestic World of Warcraft bliss. More jokes, “WTB epic wang” et cetera, et cetera. Possibly some cries of “Leeroooooooy!” at poignant moments. Our legendary host Ming concludes that this relationship “should have been one of the most inspiring stories of our generation, a rogue class hero setting a great example for the rest of the community” [my emphasis].

Ladies and gentlemen, Ming the Merciless keeps drawing this “rogue class” to the fore, as if it were particularly remarkable that such a World of Warcraft class be capable of human emotion, nay, love. Ming pleads with us to notice that not only has a World of Warcraft guy got a girlfriend, but a rogue class player has managed to do so.

Let us look at these so-called “rogues” and their inability to love. I took the liberty of doing some research on “rogues” since it has been about six years since I’ve even looked at World of Warcraft (to tell you the truth I thought it was dead but turns out people liked the game – I thought it was an asshat simulator). Oh, dear readers, it was like delving into another world – imagine that – another virtual world, where people care about stuff that I’ve never heard of but when reading I feel like I should care about too. Like, what is DPS? I want some. I need some now. I feel inadequate because I don’t have any. Or do I? I don’t know. Also, I came across some nice forums, where it seems like no one has been taught the difference between “there” “their” and “they’re”. Behold the thread “Rogues Suck”.

There is something highly incendiary about these posts that makes me get a bit excited. Even more excited than I was before. I want to take up the game so I can post on these forums. I just want to get on this thread and start being dickish. Look at that second guy’s reply. “Good double post” he begins with. He begins with that cockwithering comment. “These asshats got heart,” I think. Teach me more about rogues!

So, Mr Rogues Suck begins:

“In PvP combat I have noticed that rogues have had an unfair advantage over other classes. This is due to the fact they hit really quickly and are very likely to dodge. Now im not saying those are unfair im just saying rogues take advantage of those abilities by running in circles around a player and running in to strike really fast and darting out.”

Is it possible that rogues have commitment problems? They come in quick, are likely to dodge, they take advantage of playas and they run in circles around their poor prey. I met a guy like that once! He too had an inability to love. He’d swoop in for the kill, kiss the girl quick and then when she opened her eyes he’d be nowhere to be seen. And then he’d appear out of nowhere and slap her ass hard. And then be nowhere to be seen again. And then slap her again.

Commitment. Phobic.

And then there is that saying, “Rogues do it from behind.” Is this because they have issues with looking the person in the eyes when they’re “doing it”? Classic self-confidence issues. Perhaps trust issues even. Wow. Rogues. I’m getting a bit upset for you.

However, on the forum there is a massive resistance to rogue commitment issues being improved or addressed in any way. “Lachrymose” states that “Rogues aren’t the problem”, implying YOU are (you knobface), and some guy named “Marvinlous” states “Rogues are fine. Leave rogues alone.” These people are in denial. Rogues have serious issues if our guy from the first article is the only rogue who can sort out his life and find “true happiness”. And even that magnificent man had to break up with his girlfriend “over text messages” once in their relationship.

I want to finish by quoting the heartfelt remarks of a commenter on Ming’s blog. Someone found a picture of the lucky girl who is the heroine of the romance; the anonymous commenter replied gracefully, “I wouldnt **** her with your dick for 50 bucks.”

What a wonder the internet is.

I think it is clear who wins.

Recently a friend (Sir Daniel of Hesford, esq.) brought something to my attention: an argument that was always going to be started by a critic with a significant reputation; an argument that I guess I have been less and less inclined to participate in the more that people lambast and rail against the medium of the videogame. I guess if you’re interested in art or games at all, you’ll have read Roger Ebert’s “Videogames will never be art” schpiel.

My first instinct when reading Ebert’s criticisms was to latch on to his honest statement that of course he is “hopelessly handicapped because of [his] love of cinema”. It was my first instinct to hold onto this like it was a zombie’s dismembered arm in Dead Rising and use it to beat his argument senseless. And then perhaps stick a showerhead in the back of its neck and watch the blood spurt out satisfyingly. Of course anyone who has spent their life in cinema, spends his time writing about cinema, and who has a deep love of cinema will always think it a better medium than anything else. It is a matter of taste, and you can’t argue with taste. No matter how much I expound the virtues of The Smiths to Mr Chris Tough of Westhill, Aberdeen, he’s still going to think Morrissey is an arse and his music is shit. He is entitled to that clearly batshit crazy opinion, and he can go back to listening to his Prog Rock with a smug self-satisfied look on his face like he always does.

I think perhaps it is slightly unfortunate for Ebert that he sounds like he’s never actually played a videogame at length, did not grow up playing videogames, has never had an emotional attachment to a game. Because my experience is different from his, and when I was a child I thought games were naturally as fascinating as cinema. I love cinema. I really love it. And I indulge in it far more than I do videogames. But some of my fondest life memories are of videogames and the stupid shit I did in them, sometimes stuff I know that the makers probably didn’t want me to do, but I did them anyway because it was fun. I spent hours parking yellow taxis on the rail track in GTA because I had a specific grudge against them for being a boring car and it gave me pleasure to see the train come along and create an almighty massive effing explosion of a pile of those yellow frakking bastards. No one at DMA Design probably concieved of my developing said obsession and carrying out my taxi pyrotechnics, but goddamn they made it possible. I salute you, sirs.

But that is not to say they are art, is it? Even Ebert doesn’t actually decide on what he thinks is art. The argument has become all fluid and wibbly. My brain unravels trying to think about what we are both trying to say.

However, as any philosophy student will tell you, ad hominem arguments (arguments which attack the person’s credentials rather than addressing the issues or content of the argument) are useless and create animosity that simply does not need to exist between those people taking part in debate. What is being said can still have value, even if the person is mental. For example, if your name is Johnny and you own “Johnny’s Ice Cream and Decapitation Parlour” and you claim that decapitation is horrible and mean and messy (just like ice cream) and should never take place – that doesn’t necessarily mean you are wrong, it means you are a hypocrite. So Johnny’s argument has value, but Johnny clearly needs to be in a straitjacket (for thinking ice cream is a good idea). So I’ll side away from saying that Ebert is a self-important prickface and look at what he is actually saying.

Ebert is essentially arguing with a nice lady whom I have never heard of before, but she has the audacity to believe that games are art and are impressing the shit out of people, and touching people’s lives, already. The weird thing for me is that I cannot imagine a videogame not being art. I know this sounds naïve. I know if you look at a fricking blob going back and forth across a screen and compare it to Michelangelo it’s not going to look good. But if you think of all the things in the Tate Modern – I think Pong could be in there. Seriously. Someone designed that well – there is a simplicity of purpose and creative thinking that went into that programming. If art imitates life, Pong does it extremely badly in a very creative way, made with the best tools available at the time. If you need an emotional reaction to it – how about the feeling of effing shoving it down your brother’s throat that you won and he didn’t, haha what a retard I am the bestest of all suck it?

Okay, that is a very simplistic, some would say juvenile, way of putting it. So is looking up a quotation to try and prove your point, like

Contrary to popular belief an artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs. – Edward Varese.

This picture inspires no emotion in me whatsoever.

But it’s odd to me to consider videogames as not art, when these days at least there is clearly an art department employed to make the environments in big budget games. These environments can be beautiful, detailed, fascinating, realistic or fantastical. One of the most talented artists in the business works at Rockstar Games – whose concept work I would pay to put on my wall. In titles these days there are often character artists, who design what entities (humanoid or otherwise) look like, and animation artists, who make them move realistically, or not realistically depending on what you want. There are voice artists and people who design the sound and music, all of which changes the atmosphere in minute and wonderful ways. Today, it is becoming more and more common to have a dedicated game writer, who writes complex dialogue and story – not only for one narrative, but sometimes multiple narratives, which branch off depending on choice. How could a team employed to make these complex, creative decisions not make something that is, just for one second, somewhere, art? How could these flights of imagination, laid out in game narrative form, not be, at one point in one of their forms, art? Think about the dystopian underwater Art Deco city Rapture, in Bioshock. Is it not a beautiful work of art, comparable to Bladerunner’s neon city? And you can not only look at it, but do things in it as well. How can that not be art? I cannot fathom how it cannot be art; to be able to travel through these virtual worlds is for me at least, a symbol of what humanity’s imagination can do.

But Ebert wants complex ideas, emotions, a reflection of society, a greater meaning. I believe those are there, but it would be really feeble to try to convince him personally otherwise. Before I go further, I guess it would be good to remember that cinema has had almost ninety years to build its claim to the “art” throne. Videogames have had about twenty and are making more money than movies now, which is causing a lot of resentment – and a reason to degrade videogames and their worth. And how about these new movies with 3D animation? Is that art? Cos I hear they are using that right now to make movies – videogames were using it years before and still being compared to a fucking cave painting. Oh wait – people are still comparing games to cave paintings.

Perhaps our problem here lies with the fact that we unavoidably end up comparing videogames to cinema, when they are very different from each other, and fulfil a different need. They are both visual mediums, capable of affecting us emotionally. But one is a very passive medium. Cinema, no matter how much critics claim you can “participate” in a picture, is just some flickering lights on a wall that you have no choice but to receive. You take the director’s vision, or you can get stuffed. With games, you as an “audience” can have a limited creative input too. Most of the time you are playing the game the way the designers intended, but you can do things that they never did, and you can experience things they never intended to happen too. Depending on how much freedom the designers give you, you can have free creative choice on a canvas they gave you. The interpretative freedom you have with a movie also happens with games, but on an exponential scale that depends on your own imagination. Within a game’s framework, your own curiosity about the game’s workings and environments play a huge part in your understanding of what is going on. Of course, this means that if there is a specific vision intended by the designer, you as a player can spectacularly arse it up. But I think for me, that is part of the journey, part of the art. And I think for most gamers, it’s not specifically the winning that we like, it’s the journey. Otherwise, why buy a narrative lead RPG when you can play an FPS and win by kills? People even demand a narrative with their FPS these days. Imagine that.

What is important here, is to remember that games are just different. They are different than any creative medium we have had before. You wouldn’t expect a literature critic who had never seen a movie before to have an in depth grasp of the finer parts of understanding film. Likewise, if you had only seen Uwe Boll movies your entire life, you’d be forgiven for thinking that cinema is a shit medium and that movies cannot be art. I conclude that it is therefore stupid to make an absolutist statement about the status of anything as art. Even Uwe Boll could make a good movie in the future that you thought was “art” even if that is as likely as me turning into a lesbian and shacking up with Natalie Portman and her nice little Yorkshire Terrier Charlie.

That dog is the shiz.

If I were to try to convince Ebert of the error of his ways, which I know I could not, because he has made up his mind, here are the games I would cite. I’d choose Half Life 2, which for me has more of a ring of Orwell’s 1984 (in parts, I’d say it’s better) than almost any other game I’ve played, and it boggles my mind when I try to address the creative vision encompassing making it. I’d choose Portal, again another Valve game, which not only examines the way we look at science and experiments, but also examines our emotional attachments to things, specifically, why do we get emotionally attached to inanimate objects? (You know the one I mean.) I felt sad and alienated when playing Shadow of the Colossus, and the landscape is unequivocally a beautiful work of art. I was pretty moved by Aggro’s drop to the depths below. Bioshock’s examination of Ayn Rand’s work Atlas Shrugged was vivid and thought provoking, even if the moral choice mechanic was a little clumsy.

Ebert ^ LOL

All of these games are pretty sophisticated. There are probably ones I have forgotten, which you will of course remind me of. Having spent most of my higher education studying classical literature I feel like I understand what is art, even if I don’t actually. And I think games have always really been art, simplistic or not. Perhaps in the future, cynics will change their minds, but right now I find it pretty hard to care about persuading non-gamers or cinema critics to put games in an ivory tower, because I feel like they are already there, and their place there is completely unthreatened by people like Ebert. This idea that games are art will only get stronger, and in time people will wonder why on earth people bothered to rail against the idea. There are institutions who have included a serious study of games as art for years now. And may I remind you, that every medium has been looked at snobbishly by others in every time period, and sooner or later, someone has to eat their words. Although, it is my strong personal opinion that women should not read novels. It overheats their brains.

Last week you could have boiled a kettle off me.

I told you we could reclaim the word “geek” with a little work! Holy shit, is that MC Hammer?

Can we all stick to ogling the Evangelion babes for free? (Taken at last year’s Tokyo Game Show).

You might have to blame Mr Tim Rogers’ influence at Kotaku for today’s long rant. His disposition has infected me. But it’ll be an interesting read because I have never posted an article in the midst of this kind of bloodlust. Get out of my way! I have something to shout at you.

I haven’t met many maladjusted gamers. In fact, they seem particularly well adjusted. They work in every profession and are some of the kindest, funniest , most outgoing people I’ve ever hung out with. My own gaming friends, for example, who accompanied me on my liberal coffee-drenched way through university, are now doctors, lawyers, network administrators, writers, secondary school teachers; one guy works for the government in some sort of James Bond job that I’m pretty sure he’s not allowed to talk about, one for Google, others I know are dotted around the world. Some of them went into the videogame industry, which, I should point out, also takes incredible smarts, smarts technologically and creatively (which they’re now handing out BAFTAs for). These people are you and me. These people are people we see every day in the pub or at work. I am one of these people too. You can’t mistake us. We are intelligent, normal people.

Imagine then, my disgust, at every time it is implied that someone who plays videogames is a social recluse, someone with no social skills, someone who is unattractive or somehow socially inferior. It’s not always directly implied; sometimes it is very subtly but cuttingly indirectly implied. It can be seen in some the faces of the older generation, for example, when I tell them that I work /worked for a videogame company.

“Isn’t it full of nerds?” they ask, looking in amusement at me, like they are bringing me in on the joke.

For the sake of politeness, I take it with a smile and a laugh, but this is not the sort of reaction you’d get from the same person if you told them you worked in other avenues of media.

“Do I look like a nerd?” I ask.

“Of course not,” they say. “You look normal.”

This answer always gets me. (Not least because I am a stunning beauty.)

I then go on to explain, attempting to be sarcasm-free, that there are quite a lot of “normal” people who make games and play them. In fact games companies are almost entirely populated with these “normal” people. I explain that games make more revenue than their beloved Hollywood (which, too, had to fight to get its artistic recognition). That gamers are now on average thirty years old with a mortgage and well-adjusted, Viva Pinata-playing kids. I often get a blank look, or a smirk, as if to say, “Talk as much as you like, love, I don’t believe you. Game companies are full of social recluses and spotty geeks.”

When I go out of my way to explain that I too, play games, there is another reaction that goes on that I sometimes get from my fellow sisterhood, especially from mothers, which never fails to make me feel disappointed in my ovaries’ inability to control my unruly temperament.

“That’s horrible,” they say. “How can you play games when they’re so violent?”

There is always a definite undertone of but you’re a girl going on here. A kind of weird you are the lifegiver thing with a gesture towards my biology. As if my maternal instinct is anulled by my interest in war games or adventure stories. There is the assumption that by virtue of being female, I am somehow better than men, that I would have a better, more moral stance than men. That I would have better “standards“ on my entertainment. How insulting it would be to my male friends if someone suggested I had a better moral compass than them just because of my femininity.

Then, when I ask them if they’ve ever seen a war movie they reply in the positive – without a hint of irony. “But I wouldn’t watch it with my children around.” Brushing aside the touchy subject / assumptions that people make about videogames and violence – surprisingly I too, do not look at violent images with a kid in the room, would never give the controller away willingly to one, would never buy an 18 rated game for a kid. I don’t know a male my age who would either. And I play a variety of videogames, thank you very much. There are “genres”. And violent videogames make up a very small part of those genres.

Personally, I’m fed up of people stereotyping what I can and cannot do, and stereotyping male gamers as soap-dodging reclusive freaks, when they clearly are as awesome, and as goddamn “normal” as I am, as much as anyone can be normal. The assumption, too, that games make us violent is completely unproven. I played Grand Theft Auto through my formative years, and there’s nothing I’ve done in my life that would make anyone think I was maladjusted, socially reclusive, or for want of a better word, a mental. And I cannot stand people looking at men who play videogames as being so either. Give us ten to twenty years, dudes, we’ll all be running your social security with the compassion it is due. This goes for you too, Titchmarsh. …Grudgingly.

I’m not entirely absolved of blame. By virtue of engaging these stereotypes, I am legitimising them, forming them, making them malleable. There are no pretenses behind the name “Game Fatale”; the irony is not lost – we are engaging these age-old stereotypes for exploitation, getting our own back almost, on a label that has become cliché. I personally also have a kind of “take the word back” relationship with the word “geek” (Weezer are freaking cool geek chic and I’ll throw a rum/coke at anyone who says otherwise); but how else are we supposed to look at these labels if not the way the world constantly pushes them at us? I have no specific beef with the word “geek” itself, just the implications it has in tone when applied by some people, which we can change. If you apply the word “geek” to a girl, it is different to if you’d done it to a guy. Why? Why is being a girl geek ever so slightly “cooler” than a guy geek? Is it because girl geeks are sexualised and fetishised? Yes. And is it because guy geeks are ridiculed? Yes. Fuckin’ A! Both stereotypes are sexist; I’m mad as hell and I can’t stand it any more.

This brings me to the real reason I am writing about this. The trigger, if you will. These gamer stereotypes are so intensely ingrained into society these days that you can even make money from them.

Please look at this – it’s Kotaku’s report on the site called Game Crush. I couldn’t link you at the time of posting to the site, because it was so bombarded with hits that it went down a few hours ago. But I saw it. And it was a headache on a page.

There are three assumptions that this system works on. Firstly, that in order to get to play against a girl online, you have to pay one. Secondly, there is the assumption that male gamers cannot talk to a girl without doing it through videogames. Thirdly, there is the assumption that one of the reasons that people go online to game is to pick up chicks. Or that they wished that were possible.

Look. There are plenty of us girls out there playing games. As Matt Hickey at Crave says, rather getting to the point, “any real gaming girl would set her profile to “Hurty” and kick your ass” (his emphasis). The reason we all game is for enjoyment. We have fun doing it. You don’t have to pay us to be there. Girls actively pay Xbox Live so that they can game. There should be no other reason a girl logs in other than to play the actual game. I’ll get back to this later.

Second: As I have just mentioned, I do not know one male gamer who is this sad, lonely stereotype that Game Crush seems to assume is out there. This is sexist and stupid. It makes me angry. It should make you angry. I think the main demonstration that this stereotype doesn’t exist is the huge sense of bewilderment going on at the Kotaku message boards. The guys there are puzzled and insulted, the girls there think it’s a joke. Gamers who are boyfriend and girlfriend are on there illustrating the total lack of need for any kind of gamer prostitution. It’s humiliating for us all.

Thirdly, though I guess sex and the internet will always be linked, you have to wonder at people who want to hurl sexual absurdity over the internet at each other during a videogame. Personally, if I were forced to ever solicit someone over the internet, having to do it during a frenetic game of Halo would be the most distracting thing in the world. I’d rather get the Master Chief to corpse hump my opponent’s dead virtual body than bother trying to show my boobs to him over the internet. What self respecting gamer would use up the screen space anyway?

This brings me to my main point – these girl gamers at Game Crush? If they really liked (or were good at) games, wouldn’t they just be gaming for free? Yeah but, you can make money from it. Sure – and it’s cool while it’s their choice. But they are fetishizing the real girl gamers, and they are exploiting the hell out of men.

Let’s drop the illusions. As a woman who plays games, I am not your entertainment. I am not here for you to look at. I am not here for you to attempt to flirt with. I am here to win, to lose, or to get all your bases to belong to us. If you are here to flirt, you are going to get your distracted ass kicked. Because this is a gaming arena. It is not a bar or a club or the pulled-back seats of your Camaro.

The most insulting thing about the service that these girls provide is that it is purely a pretence. They are attractive women who uphold a pretence that they like to play videogames. If you have to pay them, then it is not a real “like”. It is a transaction. They pretend at pleasure from games, and from talking in this manner. For this reason, you will never get these women into bed, and you will never be satisfied from interaction this way. It’s like going to a strip club: they pretend they are aroused, but really, they are not. If you want to pay for this hollow interaction, feel free, I guess.

Alternatively, find yourself a girl who genuinely does want to play games, who gets a real kick out of playing them, whom you are attracted to, and she is attracted to you. Because that is why you find girls who play games attractive. Because they have something in common with you. Then, when you find her, put the games aside and do something far more fun than exclaiming at a fuzzy image U R SO HOT LOL THIS IS AEWSUM. It would save money, anyway.

PS http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20030526

To quote Max Payne 2: “The rain was comin’ down like all the angels in heaven decided to take a piss at the same time.” It’s storm season in Kagoshima, Japan it seems, and it’s always when I’ve got to go to the gym or Iaido practice that the angels really need to go.

It’s been a while, and since my last post many games have gone by. But let’s have a look at the heavyweight shall we? Heavy Rain.
Heavy Rain is like the soul mate you knew was out there but you didn’t quite know when they would arrive. And then when they do arrive, they bring a great thriller movie with them as well as the next best thing in videogames.

I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I’ll avoid talking in detail about the plot as much as possible. Unfortunately the plot is where the meat is. Perhaps I should begin by a few early observations, let my mind wander over the idea of storytelling in games, and then follow through with my opinion of the game as a whole.

I guess the first thing you notice about Heavy Rain is that it has beautiful graphics. Everything, even up to the gore and grime, is kind of beautiful in Heavy Rain, and everything has a sharp focus that makes you curious about the environment. It is obvious they spent a long time on getting you creeped out, unsettled, and on edge – and part of this is provided by how detailed and in focus your environment is. You play several different main characters which switch between chapters. These characters (it’s 3rd person so you can gaze endlessly at the main characters’ perfectly formed butts) also move convincingly and organically and look beautiful at the same time. That in itself adds to the weird creepiness.

The second point of note, even in the beginning, is that the atmosphere is overbearingly weighted with apprehension. Even from the first scenes in Ethan’s idyllic family house you wonder if a piano is going to come crashing down on his head. I think perhaps this was the first signal to me that Heavy Rain knew exactly how to engage my feelings and twist them for all it was worth.

Quantic Dream is good at hooking an audience and unloading tense situations on them, but last time they made a game that seemed to have great storytelling promise, I felt a little betrayed.

It’s not something that I’m proud of, but doubt about Heavy Rain’s ability to follow through started to creep into my mind about the time that I noticed its ability to get me emotionally engaged. I unfairly judged Heavy Rain by its vastly inferior predecessor, Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit started out engaging me like this; except that halfway through the game it was obvious that not only was the main character schizophrenic, but the game was too. And not in a good way.

The problem with Fahrenheit? They set the game up in a fantastic way, and then bottled telling you the story that you really deserved; the one that they promised. I think in literary terms this is called breaking the “Author/ Reader contract”: in the beginning of a narrative, certain obvious gambits are employed by the author that indicate the way the story will pan out. An author fulfills his or her “contract” by satisfying the readership’s expectations of a logical, satisfying ending, and treating the reader as an intelligent and active reader – especially in mystery stories. In return, we as readers give up time, money and suspend our disbelief in an act of trust.

Unfortunately this trust was broken with Fahrenheit. I think I’ve complained before to many people that games claim to be made for adults these days and then end up treating us like we’re children before long. Any suspension of disbelief that I did have for Fahrenheit was broken by the sheer out of the blue ridiculousness of some of the plot twists.

In Fahrenheit, you end up having to battle an Evil Anthropomorphic Internet Artificial Intelligence (which seemed to base its appearance on eighties fashion), when you thought you were on some sort of gritty noir-style plot line. There was no indication that this Tron-inspired AI nightmare was going to happen; and it made even less sense to the plot that we were going there. Combined with an ill advised delve into ancient Mayan history (or something), and a fortune-telling granny with an overly pivot-happy wheelchair (we span her around madly, cackling for hours at the bizarre lack of animation and the hilarious imagery before us), Fahrenheit descended into farce. Ironically, in the early scenes they were trying to make it look like the main character may have lost his mind, when really it looked like halfway through the game development the designers had lost their sanity instead.

But as I said, I was unfairly prejudging Heavy Rain.

Heavy Rain is through and through gritty, wholesome noir with a great deal of thriller and a splash of horror thrown in. Gone are any references to megalomaniac AIs from the eighties; it seems like they really got on their “game” (so to speak). The story is solid, the characters believable, and there are some little corners of the game, although entirely incidental to the main plot line, that are completely delightful. For example, one encounter with a crying baby can lead you to change its nappy and feed it (should you choose), simply because his movements and sounds are so damned lifelike. And believe me, I have a real phobia of becoming a mother. When the thing giggles after feeding you almost feel kind of proud. It kind of leads me to think that they really did mocap the baby. (Does “Mocap the Baby” sound a bit like an 80s rap song to you? No, me neither.)

I was blown away by the power Heavy Rain had to string me along, addict, and bring the story to a satisfying, believable close. The most satisfying thing about this game is the story, and this time, the trust is never broken. It’s engaging, it’s scary, it’s full of tension and intrigue – it has twists that are genuinely surprising and still don’t break that authorial contract. You’re in safe hands.

Some of the voiceovers are dodgy, yes, and occasionally the lines were so cliché my toes curled in on themselves – and sometimes, the sheer “emo” vibe (“Emoitude”? “Emocity”?) that constantly radiates from it made me think the makers were going to segue some Fallout Boy into the soundtrack … (SPOILER: There is no Fallout Boy! /wrists) But these things are insignificant compared to the developers’ achievements.

Heavy Rain uses its videogame format to bring the kind of involvement in a story that a movie can’t provide – it’s difficult to come out of the bubble once the game sucks you in. Any main character can die during the span of the game, obviously dramatically changing the way the story plays out; and you can miss vital clues or choose to alienate other characters. I really dislike Quicktime Events in games that put them in just to punctuate the experience – but this game has developed them to a fine point so that almost all your gameplay is done through a mixture of button choice and split second reaction times. It works very well. I highly recommend it if you like your movies erring on the side of the thriller, or you miss the old school point-and-click mystery. All in all, a seminal gaming experience. Also, Madison’s arse was very finely crafted. And I want to steal her jacket. (Any ideas where I can purchase it? Thought not.)

P.S. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you want to get a copy of Fahrenheit just to battle the Evil Eighties AI and wheel a granny around. I curse you all!

You can commission a guy to make one for you I hear

My word.

My friends, I’m truly sorry we’ve all been away: our respective lives have been unforgivably busy. One of us even got engaged, which I am hoping is a good enough excuse to absorb even my own laziness. Actually, I’ve just been visiting the far mystic corners of Japan, which basically warrants a tongue-lashing because I could have written novels on the amount of bullet-train time wasted.

I again visited the Tokyo Game Show this year, which, if I am so diligent, may feature in a future post. But for today, we’re going back through the mists of time…

Since we’re heading back to the Old School Shizzle these days, what with the return of a) Monkey Island, b) Tim Schaefer, and c) the Steam re-releases of Everything That Was Important In Adventure Games Ever (apart from Thrillville, which Lucasarts themselves know is shit and are putting it in for laughs), I thought I’d cast a critical eye over a favourite. It is indeed, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

Through the wonders of my R4, shrewdly bought before retailers realised that the R4 was the perfect medium for piracy (thanks Hong Kong!) I managed with a little help (see: Jack Potter) to get the SCUMM engine working on the amiable DS platform. The DS, by the way, is perfect for Lucasarts point-and-clicks. It seems like it’s just built for it. Indy in a queue, Indy on the plane, Indy on the train, on the bus, on the toilet, in class, up Tokyo Tower, on the Osaka subway line… Away with the mouse! Grab your stylus and listen up: the bottom screen is full screen Indy, where of course you can click stuff, and the inventory appears there too with the commands, as usual. But the top screen is a zoomed in version of the game, so you can seek out those pesky little clickable things that the small screen is obscuring from you. It’s perfect, and it means you don’t have to stay in the same darkened room all the time getting frustrated because you haven’t seen sunlight for days. (My childhood.)

The first thing that struck me about Fate, which, although it’s probable I played when I was a kid, I can’t remember any of it, was how stunningly in-keeping with the Indy movies it is. The plot is impeccable; it fits in with everything we know about the movies. The dialogue is witty, punchy, ironic even. Sometimes the lines even make a dig at the movies. The situations created and locations evoked are all classical IJ – you can imagine a movie in which this stuff happens (although without all my stupid mistakes). If only Spielberg had asked Hal Barwood and Noah Falstein to write IV huh? (Please ‘Bergy, don’t let Lucas write anything again.)

Allow me to embroider. The way the opening of the game is constructed creates a ring of the cinematic, even though it’s a blocky adventure point-and-click that no one even back then got really excited about. When the title swings up and John Williams kicks in, even though it’s in horrific midi form you get a swell of the sentimental. The way the game reaches for, and mostly bullseyes the spirit of our favourite archaeologist is really admirable. Dropped into Barnett College, I felt like I was being treated to an Indy I’d only see backstage – the place where Indy is Dr Jones, and that kind of brought a nice (if totally geektastic) thrill to the exploration. The idea that the College could have an attic full of forgotten artefacts was and still is a cool idea.

The lines. Oh, the lines. Some of my favourites include Sophia’s “We’re not dating Jones; this is not a date, if it was a date, I would’ve stood you up!” And a nice nod to the Last Crusade when, looking at a battered old cup, Indy remarks, “It’s no Grail.” And at one point, after Indy has received much injury, Indy kisses Sophia by surprise (a lovely mingling of skin coloured pixels) – Sophia, surprised remarks: “What was that for?” Indy replies, “To ease the pain.” It merits a demure chuckle even when in public.

A little on the game’s faults. Due to the action parts of the movies being pretty hard to recreate in point and click form, even the action-styled path of the story is a little shy of fights and is slightly repetitive (punch, kick, repeat, you know the drill), and so the game leans pretty hard on humour to carry you through. This works, happily, and served as motivation for play even when the going got tough.

Hello, pixellated puppies.

Of course the other hard thing, as always with these kind of games is the repetitive aspect and the difficulty of the puzzles. Picking up what seemed like a million batches of orichalcum in Atlantis (and getting lost on the way in the maze) was highly repetitive and annoying, which I’m guessing just served to give the game more length rather than enjoyment. I’m also not dumb (you can argue here, people have) but some puzzles took me freakin’ aaaaages to figure out, and more than once was tempted to ‘walkthrough’ it. Sometimes it was due to that wacky point-and-click logic – please refer to Discworld games for this – but sometimes it was just due to general click arsiness or not noticing something in the background. Both of the latter could have been because it was in DS format, but I had those problems on the PC point-and-clicks too. For example, on Full Throttle (PC) I think I missed several objects I could pick up because they were blending in with the background, like the ramp I was supposed to move into the road in one part of the story.

But those are completely forgivable, because the game is so damned charming, a bit like Indy himself.

My conclusionals. In comparison to SCUMM Indy, 3D adventures of Indy have lacked the kind of candour and spirit that Indy really needed (Perhaps you could argue that about the Indy IV movie? – ooooh controversial). I remember playing Infernal Machine and thinking it was a kind of even more terrible Tomb Raider. My inner child says: It wasn’t paced at all well, had no atmosphere, the gameplay was a jerkface… and Indy’s voice was stupid.

Fate of Atlantis’ voice (added later in life) on the other hand, is great.

I miss the character that this subgenre, adventure games, gave videogames at large. It is hard to see the wit, intelligent plot, and even pacing, of Fate of Atlantis in any game that came out in the last seven years, never mind this year. I think this is why we’re seeing a revival in irreverent writing these days, what with the fantastically written Ghostbusters, and of course the remaking of Monkey Island, Sam and Max, et al. A lot of games today aim for seriousness, grit and violence, though games are for most people, about play, not hard work. Where is the irreverence of these old Lucasarts games now? The rebelliousness against reality, the cheeky kick-in-the-crotch-and-run-away silliness is for the most part hard to find. We could argue that this is because gamers aren’t children any more, but don’t adults still watch movies like Anchorman and run out to buy games like Ghostbusters? The investment in good graphics these days is taking away time spent on story and character, and I’d say these are important motivations for a player to pick up a game, and are even more important for making a memorable game.

Ah… Fortune and glory kid, fortune and glory.

All right, a little pretentious. And what a pun! Ouch. Time for Carachan’s favs of the round up. Let’s start with something very sexy. Nothing gets me off like this video:

Aside from the, ahem, “omganother3DCastlevaniaomg” vibe you might be getting right now, you also get Patrick Stewart, Robert Carlyle and what I like to think of as Alucard reborn in a fantastic, rather buff 3D body. I smell a new entry in the game-characters-I’d-like-to-meet-in-a-dark-alley list (although I could have kept the old versions, I have imagination). And to boot, Mr Hideo Kojima is on board. Should be good, as long as he doesn’t make the damned game one giant cutscene. *Cough!* MG4! *Cough!* (Last year at the Tokyo Game Show I brushed past the tiny dude and meant to ask him where he hid the rest of the game.) Plus, did you see that tasty clip near the end of the video? You know the one I mean. The one where that guy is wrestling a huge fuck off thing with a chain in his mouth. I almost choked on my gin martini. That is the shizzle!

Also, there is a remake of Katamari Damacy on PS3! Shiny new graphics, and the freaking King of All Cosmos in said shiny graphics! Let’s hope we can still see everything via those purple tights. I can’t wait to relive those amazing lines… Let’s see… There was the classic, “This sky is not pretty at all. It’s rough and masculine. Possibly sweaty,” and the always charming “We broke it. Yes, we were naughty. Completely naughty. So, so very sorry. But just between you and us, it felt quite good”. Welcome back, King dude, to your original glory. Now show us those plum colour tights! And those creepy wandering hands…

Put it away, Cosmos, you're scaring the other hammerhead weirdos.

What I fervently hope Women's Murder Club looks like.

I distinctly remember reading somewhere that one male journalist’s low point of E3 was feeling castrated at the reveal of this game. Can I tell you buddy, I am female and I am feeling my ovaries shrivel just at the title. It reminds me of when Sony tried to BS us with that pink Playstation stuff (which I will never forgive them for, by the way). I came across this sentence in the promotional material: “Based on James Patterson’s best-selling Women’s Murder Club series, Women’s Murder Club: Games of Passion is the only Nintendo DSi™ and DS™ game that immerses fans in the mysterious and suspenseful world of the Women’s Murder Club.”

First of all, “suspenseful”, if it is really a word, should never be used ever again in promotional material as it is as ugly and stupid as the word “burglarized” (what’s wrong with “burgled” anyway?).

And secondly and more importantly, no freaking shit is “Women’s Murder Club” the only game that puts fans in the Women’s Murder Club. That’s like saying ‘”Top Gun” is the only movie that lets you watch “Top Gun”…’ No shit Sherlock. What you meant to say is it’s the only stupid Murder Club game that’s been developed for the DS, which is not actually the most amazing achievement. …Do you really think girl gamers’re just sitting on their asses out here waiting for you to give them their next fix of lame pink videogame fluff? There must be renegade DS developers out there just fucking clamouring for the Women’s Murder Club: Douchebag Puns of Passion franchise, huh? (Today’s update brought to you by the letter F and an assortment of bad puns.) There’s something dirty about this annoying franchise scuttling off the PC and violating the DS. Anyway my mum is going to ruin all of this and buy it for her DS and then shun thoroughbred Hotel Dusk for hours of Women’s Club’s lame exclamations. As a result, my ovaries will shrivel 50% more and I will never be able to have that child with Brad Pitt.

This is what Brad Pitt looks like.

Pumped about the new Silent Hill reimagining, Shattered Memories – apparently your Wiimote is now a torch, and the game measures how long you look at things for a chance to freak you out more, and tailor your experience. That is really quite a terrifying concept when you think about it. I don’t want my games watching me, peering back out at me… A game self aware like the freezer in Spaced… Man that is chillingly creepy. …Actually… I really do want a game like that.

On the 360 side, Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2 are fairly meaty offerings, though, ahem, they both have Two in their titles which makes baby Jesus cry. I do look forward though.

And Carrie! I can’t believe you haven’t fallen off your chair already about the news from Guybrush Threepwood! Sadly Schaeferless, but with many of the old Lucasarts gang on board, they’re making a new episodic Monkey Island caper…

Spock out. There better be sandwiches in the future.

1. New ‘leaked’ gameplay footage from Beyond Good and Evil 2

I’m less than convinced that this is leaked gameplay footage. I mean, it would be fantastic if the whole thing was as great looking as this but given the almost-psychic camera and completely smooth glitch free movement it looks a little too good to be true. More likely it’s the second trailer for the game released just in time for E3 but look at it – running! jumping! being awesome!. It may well be even better than the first BGAE which, as I’ve mentioned before, would make it a very good game indeed.

2. The second Brutal Legend trailer

It’s due out in October, which I have no doubt will be renamed Rocktober for the occasion. I’m not entirely clear what the trailer is trying to say, to be honest, because I get distracted by the oddly physically accurate version of Jack Black and then again by the opportunities for attacking monsters with a giant axe. Anyway, I’m looking forward to this.

3. Muramasa: the Demon Blade

I loved Odin Sphere and Vanillaware’s latest offering, Muramasa: the Demon Blade, looks like it has a lot in common with its predecessor. It’s a side-scrolling 2D brawler. You fight enemies so massive that they often have to bend double to fit on the screen. It’s mythology based (although where Odin Sphere was Norse Muramasa is based in Japanese mythology). It came out in Japan last month and is due out for the Wii in Europe about this time next year. It’s a while away, but it does look like a lot of fun.

So, what upcoming games are you looking forward to?

Which brings me to Pokemon. A few weeks ago I was looking through the build-up to Pokemon Platinum being released in the UK when it struck me that Pokemon is a cultural juggernaut which has been going strong for a decade. With the exception of a (very tedious) conversation I had about nine years ago when one of my friend’s younger brothers took me through every one of the 151 Pokemon and their characteristics, and an admiration for the rock stylings of the theme tune to Pokemon: Advanced Battle, it has pretty much passed me by.

So I decided to remedy this by working through Pokemon Pearl. I got a Turtwig as my first Pokemon whom I called Tovey because I thought he bore a striking resemblance to Russell Tovey (of Being Human and that Doctor Who Christmas special a few years ago) who seems to come up in conversation with alarming regularity in my flat. Unfortunately since then my Tovey has evolved into some kind of gigantic mountain that walks and looks significantly less like his namesake, but he can destroy lesser Pokemon under his colossal mountain tortoise feet.

That was a month ago and Pokemon seems to have absorbed all my spare time since then. And what can I tell you about Pokemon, after weeks of research? Well, it’s great if you like grinding, or if you thought that RPGs gave you too many options when it came to fighting, or if you like to waste your time navigating badly designed and time-consuming menu systems and repeated conversations. At the same time it’s completely compulsive. I’m not sure what makes it so addictive – it may be the fact that you can watch your Pokemon evolve. Or the (just about) achievable goal of a complete collection hovering on the horizon. Whatever it is, I can’t seem to stop playing it.

I have seven gym badges (out of eight, thankfully). After Tovey I’ve collected another 111 Pokemon, which would be pretty good going if there were still only 150 to get. Unfortunately the Pokemon universe has been fairly fecund since I last checked in on it – apparently there are now 493 Pokemon to collect. In this expanded Pokemon Universe catching ‘em all is, so I’m told, no longer obligatory. Sadly even my amended ‘gotta catch a majority’ goal is looking like a fairly major undertaking. If I’m going to get into the sunshine at any point this summer I may just have to aim for catching the ones who vaguely resemble minor TV actors.