Today, I want to talk about a particular game. This game is something I appreciated for its artistic and gameplay merits when I first played it and more recently have come to appreciate for the amazing themes that run throughout its length. The game I am talking about is Shadow of the Colossus, Team Ico’s second game for the Playstation 2 released in 2005. I don’t want to discuss the gameplay, or the visual style, or even the unfortunate technical problems. This post will focus entirely on the (what I feel it is, at least) main theme of the game.
In Shadow of the Colossus, you play as a character named Wander who has travelled to a forbidden land to revive his lover Mono, chasing a legend that proves to be entirely true. A powerful being named Dormin inhabits the temple that he arrives at in the beginning of the game, a being that tells Wander he can return the soul to the one he loves. Of course, nothing so against the laws of nature can be accomplished without a price and the being even warns the protagonist against performing the task this feat requires, not being specific but stressing the dangers nonetheless.
Like any other fool in love, Wander can’t help but immediately set out on the task: kill the sixteen Colossi that inhabit the strange land. Several of these beings are entirely harmless, not attacking the player unless attacked first. It is the player inhabiting Wander that is forced to initiate combat against these more passive Colossi, taking their lives to return another’s. The game makes sure to show the player the results of their choice, making these moments sad and heart-wrenching when they should be feeling uplifted by the victory.
As more and more Colossi fall to the player’s blade, Wander begins to change. It is subtle at first but by the halfway point of the game, his hair and face grow darker as his skin gets paler. By the end of the game, he becomes completely pale-skinned and sprouts two dark horns from the top of his head. It is also at this point that Dormin explains the true meaning of the task the player has just undertaken; each Colossi was a piece of himself and by killing them all, Wander had absorbed the power into himself. Dormin is now able to inhabit Wander’s body, transforming him into a malevolent force, the embodiment of all the violence he had just performed to save the one he loved.
No game (at least that I know of) treats violence in the way that this game does. There are no fodder enemies for the player to mow down on their way to the bosses; there is nothing but the bosses. Each kill in the game is immensely meaningful both to the story and to the player. In any other video game, killing something has become a completely meaningless task, just another point or one step closer to the next level. Shadow of the Colossus manages to put such emotion and importance into each of its sixteen kills that it gives me hope for a future where games invest in putting meaning into death instead of just trying to rack up the body count.
As you have probably heard on numerous gaming sites today, Nintendo plans to drop its Nintendo 3DS price from $249.99 to $169.99, a whopping 80 dollars, on the very close date of August 12. Additionally, early adopters of 3DS will receive a whopping 20 games (10 NES classics and 10 GBA games), half of which (the GBA games) supposedly won't be sold at a later date to others (I'm calling bull on this already). Why would Nintendo do something like this when it never has in the past?
It's simple, really - the 3DS wasn't really doing too hot. Nintendo also reported earnings for its last fiscal year and they confirmed that sales were abysmal, losing millions of (projected) dollars. How did this happen to a company like Nintendo, a company that released the Wii, the nearly impossible to find system for over a year? There are a few reasons floating around the Internet that stuck out to me in particular.
The first idea floating around is the crappy marketing Nintendo did for its less-informed customers. Tell me, if you heard a new handheld called the 3DS was coming out with no other information, wouldn't you assume it was an add-on to the original DS? The other revisions to the original DS hardware all got fancy names - DS Lite, DSi, and the DSiXL - so why wouldn't the pattern hold? Nintendo barely even mentioned in its marketing that the system was actually a generational step up for the power of the handheld, only focusing on the new 3D elements in its ads. To them, the name was more important and they took a gamble on it, one that didn't exactly pay off.
Most troubling is the eerie similarities to the way the Wii U has been handled so far. When showing the new system at E3, there were several people I saw that thought the new controller was the whole thing! Would you really blame them? Nintendo didn't really show much of the small box running the games in the background, focusing entirely on the new controller and its capabilities. Add in the very similar name (an identical name grab) and the system could run into the same problems. Hopefully Nintendo pays attention to the earlier mistakes and markets this thing right.
The other, more obvious reason why the 3DS probably failed was the lack of quality games released for it in the four and a half months of its life so far. Other than a few stand-out games (Ocarina of Time and Street Fighter IV), most of the titles have been either terrible or inconsequential. Nintendo announced a very exciting lineup of games when they announced the date at E3 last year but have only delivered a few of those games so far. Most people I know who wanted a 3DS decided to wait for more games to come out before they got one, including me. A console won't sell without games to make it a worthwhile purchase and the 3DS's most promising title so far is a game that has been played to death already.
This sudden price drop was a surprising move from Nintendo but one I feel will help them the most in the long run. By lowering the price right around the time when games start to come out in droves again, they may lure a lot more people in on the promise of a new shiny toy.
Today, on GameSetWatch, an indie game called GlitchHiker was discussed. In this game, each death of the player character introduces a glitch into the game world. As the player dies more and more, the world becomes filled with these obstacles. An unheard of idea for a game, it actually gets harder as you try again and again. Instead of rewarding the player for their death with knowledge of what is to come, the world changes to get in the player's way even more.
As I read this, I couldn't help but wonder if this could even work as a game today. Compared to some of the early NES games, today's games are fairly forgiving with checkpoints at nearly every turn and some games even offering to turn down the difficulty if you die too many times at one point. In the NES days, developers needed to make their games hard so players wouldn't get bored so quickly, since the games were relatively short (a lot of them, anyways). Nowadays, most games are 5-6 hours + and the focus seems to instead be on experiencing the world and the story over the actual challenge.
An extreme example is something like Prince of Persia, the 2008 reimagining of the franchise. In this game, any missed jump or failed encounter resulted in your female companion, Elika, saving you instantly. You then return to the point right before you fell, almost removing any penality to messing up. Some people thought it was an interesting move but even they admitted it made the game extremely easy. If the game had been any shorter than it was, many more complaints would probably have been lodged against the developer.
Quite a few games have a simple pattern; you try an area and you either succeed or fail. If you fail, the area tends to be easier the next time because you know what to expect (enemy placements in a shooter, boss mechanics in an RPG, etc.). The player either has the skill or luck to succeed the first time or learns from their mistakes. There are a few games out there that aren't so straightforward and have a bit of flow to their challenge. The Halo series is a good example, including enemy A.I. and placement that makes it possible for the same encounter to be different every time you play it. While it isn't radically different, it can be enough so that the player must adapt more on the fly instead of simply learning the right way to do it.
Would going all the way in something like this truly work? What if every time you died in a shooter, the level randomized its layout and more enemies appeared? Or what if dying in an RPG changed a boss' fight mechanics and gave him more health? Instead of rewarding the player for trying again, you instead make it less likely that they succeed in the game. This is why I don't think it could ever work. Most people aren't going to appreciate the ramp-up in challenge; they will simply stop playing the game and not buy any more like it. We depend too much on games being something we can learn to beat for a mechanic like this to be overly prevalent.
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Everyone plays video games for different reasons. Some play to escape the reality of the world. Some play for money, whether it be as a professional gamer or as a journalist. Most, however, play games simply because they are fun. Unlike a movie or a book, by playing a game, a person is able to fully step into a world completely different from our own, by being an active participant as a character. It really is no wonder that video games have grown to such a huge audience, since they have become magical (and accessible) enough for people of all types and ages to become enthralled by them.
Why do I bring this up? I've been reading a lot about game journalism lately, trying to soak up everything I can. By reading about so many people's experiences, I am starting to build my view on the world of video game journalism and understand what it truly is. One thing that really started sticking out to me is how many of these journalists talked about a video game fatigue, a point where they just don't enjoy playing games anymore.
It makes perfect sense when you think about it; game journalists are often given games to cover that they don't wish to even look at but are forced to for work. Even the games they play because of actual interest must be broken down and analyzed intently, something that can possibly take the fun out of even the best games. It's a sad thing to think about and one I'm trying to take a stand against right now.
Currently, I play games in a very particular way. I own maybe 30-40 games that I want to complete at some point, that list ever growing as new games come out (something that makes me move that much faster through a game). As each game is finished, the next one on the list is selected and I play it. Sometimes, I'll play some old games for a change of pace (just did Mass Effect 2 on Insanity, for example). Unfortunately, this has led me to a very irritating and boring pattern in which I complete goal after goal in each game, almost asleep from the autonomy with which my body moves through them. A deep-seated urge to reach the end of my list of games to beat constantly pounds in the back of my head and I find it very hard to silence sometimes.
So, starting today, I am going to (and I encourage each and every one of you to do the same) find the true enjoyment in every game I play. Instead of rushing my way through game after game, I will take the time to savor the looks or the music of a particular game, finding what speaks to me about each particular one and, most importantly, enjoying it. Of course, I will still look at each game with a practical eye too (what kind of "future" journalist would I be if I didn't?) but I want to stop and have a good time with each of them. Each and every game is an amazing accomplishment that took a dedicated group of people thousands of manhours to make; don't they deserve more attention for the games they've created?
I have several S-Ranks but have never bothered to try doing it on Playstation 3. The trophies always seemed way less interesting to me so I tended to simply play the game and stop when I finished. Today, I achieved my first Platinum Trophy with Infamous. Overall, it wasn't too bad, only having a few annoying ones like the stunts and high fall kills that made me grind some missions over and over until I got them.
The final trophy I had to get was the Blast Shards one and it started out really fun. I went by sections and pinged the map like crazy, eyes peeled for blue dots. When I finished my own sweep, I had roughly 320 of them. I wasn't crazy enough to seek the rest of them out alone and looked for a map showing them all. About an hour later, I had swept the whole map. Saving my game, I checked the count of Shards - 349 out of 350.
I couldn't help but laugh, knowing that it had to come down to this moment. Following some advice off of Infamous forums, I printed a copy of the map and searched through again, crossing off each and every one as I checked for it. The Bombcast kept me busy as I poked around again for two hours. Crossing the last dot off my map, I was sad to see that I hadn't managed to find the last Shard after searching the location of EVERY one of them.
Combing the whole city again didn't feel like an option, at least not one that I wanted to attempt. I frantically read some message boards, looking for tips on people missing that final shard. The first tip I read mentioned a very tall building near the bomb site that had a Shard at the top. This Shard wouldn't reveal itself until you were most of the way up. Eagerly, I made my way to the building and started to climb, holding my breath the whole time. I pinged the map and the beautiful last dot appeared on the minimap. As I collected that final shard and got my Platinum Trophy, I couldn't help but think "Now I have to do this again in Infamous 2..."
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I just finished Dragon Age Awakening a few days ago and had a really good time with it. Continuing the story of my Warden (who I had just finished the main game with, my second playthrough) was really neat and I feel that the story was interesting overall. Of course, for people who had their Warden die at the end of Dragon Age: Origins, it must have been irritating having the game retcon your ending and ruin that choice. Lucky for me, this playthrough was the one that I allowed Morrigan to make her demon baby and leave my party so it made sense enough for me. The actual points of the story were a little silly as well, what with the talking darkspawn and crazy Mother character.
I felt that this pack was WAY easier than the main game as well. My first playthrough was with a DPS warrior and I had a very hard time with a few spots. Most of it was probably me being dumb and not having strategies but the game kicked my ass pretty hard. I ended up changing the difficulty to Easy near the end of the game just to get through it. My second playthrough (this one) I decided on a tank and I also read a few more tips. Holy crap, was it so much easier. Being up in enemies faces with taunts let me gather things better and having two mages with Crushing Prison was a godsend. None of the fights in Awakening gave me nearly as much trouble as some of the ones in Origins.
The new characters are different and interesting. Of particular interest to me was Nathaniel, having greater importance to me as a Human Noble. Here was the son of the man who killed my family and took my life away and I had the option to kill him. I had to ponder this for a few minutes and think about what he had said. I decided to bring him along and see if he was like his father. Learning how Nathaniel didn't know anything about what his father had done and seeing him slowly stop blaming me for his father's death was great and made me glad I hadn't just killed him from the get-go.
Overall, I enjoyed my 15 hours or so with Awakening. The game moved at a much brisker pace than the original and the smaller map made the quests much more manageable and enjoyable for me. I actually finished each and every one of them, a task I wouldn't feel up to in Origins. If you've finished Origins, I highly reccommend playing Awakening. If you haven't even finished Origins yet, go do it now!
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