Game and Punishment

It wouldn't be far wrong to assert that; game designers in game worlds have more power than governments in real worlds. If they didn't want you to steal or murder they could just make it impossible to do so. So although we live in a state with laws that we are inclined to obey with the use of coercion. In a game world laws become natural laws like gravity but of course games can be just as coercive if not more so. For example moral choice systems often give you the option to commit atrocities, which is fair enough. It’s not strictly telling you to commit atrocities, it’s just made it possible for you to do so. Like a mad scientist making some sort of death ray, telling you how to use it, pointing it at France and leaving the room. You don’t have to do anything but you are given the option and the means to. This is why I find it slightly hypocritical when games like Infamous give you the power to make choices like this but then criticise your decisions. For instance you fire the death ray and France lies in ruins the scientist comes in and gives you an ear full. When ‘but for’ his actions my choice would not have been possible.

 The choices you make also affect the way the character looks in Infamous, it’s the same in Fable, perhaps it’s a visual metaphor for how the character sees themselves and thus how the character is perceived by others. The choices you make affect the types of powers you gain or the amount of power you gain so for example you become more powerful by committing mini-attrocities like in Bioshock.  In some games the moral choices we make effect the company we keep and the people that will follow us like in Fallout 3; bad people like to hang out with other bad people, shock horror. Maybe to justify their own actions or to mirror each other or maybe just talk about raping and pillaging on their days off. Personally I much prefer Prototype because you’re so monstrous all your actions are a massive grey area even eating people as health is just something a malevolent god just does.

 Although we’re given the option to be bad, games still deem it necessary to punish us and coerce us in hopes that we will eventually do the right thing. We chose to be bad because it was easy and fun and we were curious and now we get the bad ending and we’re left with a bad taste in our mouths. The fear of the bad ending, and all the in game characters disliking you for your actions is how a game coerces you into its idea of acting in a moral way.

Which is actually a lot like how morality works in the real world, we’re good because we want people to like us and we want good things to happen to us. We want the happy ending because we want to be happy, and we believe negative actions result in some form of retaliation from the game universe. So in this respect games are just as coercive as the real world but sometimes being bad and/or hated is still fun in a place where it has no consequence.   So the reason we obey laws is not because we’re obligated but because it ensures our future happiness. If you were a hedonist or a utilitarian and believed happiness were more important than law, you would agree that happiness should not be sacrificed for rule worship. In other words laws should not be obeyed if they don’t serve the purpose of making the most people happy.

 Utility undermines the political obligation to obey the law as you obey not because you want to but because the state has great power over your happiness; you obey because they basically have a gun to your head. It reminds me a little of the morality system in Bioshock as although you believe you're making moral decisions, it's just a subtle coercive tactic to make you believe you have power when in reality you have none. Games on the other hand are supposed to facilitate your happiness not dangle it in front of your face like a carrot on a stick, but what is happiness and who deserves it?

 T.H Green believed that moral ideals were more important and fulfilling than pleasure, he proposed that pleasure was in fact an accidental occurrence. We don’t play games necessarily for instant gratification it has to be more than that because otherwise why not just have sex and eat chocolate constantly? It’s not fulfilling enough for pleasure to be your only objective pleasure is a side effect of good living (Green), perpetuating moral ideals or stamping all over them. So in a game the fun doesn't necessarily come from just the swing of a sword or the firing of a gun (although some of it obviously can; in Max Payne for example, there's just something innately fun about jumping with two guns going 'ahhh'). the fun comes from, defeating the evil wizard and saving the village, or doing the opposite and raping and pillaging the village. Both are fun because in one you save the day and in the other you don’t. It’s all about fulfilling specific roles; it’s an extension of the fantasy of being someone else.

Law in regard to the spread of disease would be ineffective if those laws did not in fact stop the spread of disease, so it would be okay to break them. In the same respects if a law does not prevent crime then what is its point? The law has to contain ‘good advice’ for it to be observed and obeyed. If it costs more to obey a law than it actually benefits you, you should not obey the law.

 For instance I’m drawn back to this idea of obeying the speed limit or rather not and going on killing sprees in Grand Theft Auto. The laws in that game are pointless because they don’t stop real crime and they don’t have any permanence. They have no value as a deterrent against virtual crime because you’re just fined. Since there’s no other use for money in that game other than buying more guns to commit more crimes and get more money to pay more fines, it's redundant.

 So the whole game is about funding lavish killing sprees when all the storyline is pushed to one side. What do you do at the end of GTA (or any other games that let you continue on after the end for that matter)? I usually turn it off but the game allows you to continue somehow assuming that I want to wallow in the success or failure of all my crimes and cry and/or go on a killing spree in my fancy helicopter, it’s just so anti-climactic.

Hitman Drabsolution. This time it's personal! sort of.

‘Hmm well if half the effort that went into the menu went into the game should be up for a lovely murderous romp.’

Voila, witness my above average Hitman Absolution review, in which Hitman Absolved to murder lots of rednecks…. Huzzah!

Ok intro; can’t say I liked seeing 47 topless, he’s always been a merciless killing machine not really the pretty boy type, to see him sexualized was slightly stomach churning, and I get the distinct feeling that they're trying to crowbar feelings into is stern visage, well onto the game.

First impressions; love the look, lighting, not really a graphics whore but they were nice. The intro was a little square. I think we've reached an opus where some off camera voice just telling you how to play the game just doesn't cut the mustard. I think tutorials should be entirely immersive because they’re sort of your gateway into the game, Alice wasn't told to tap X to enter wonderland, tutorials are important they shouldn't be just tacked on, you should almost not notice them.

What I like about it so far is it seems a lot more plot heavy than the previous games. Whether you’re familiar with the previous games or not it stands to reason that a game about a hired assassin won’t entail much plot as the whole purpose of hiring an assassin is to have a professional who has no connection to the victim so there’s no link to the client. The odd thing about the previous games were that they still worked because they were laden with sub-narrative; every room told a story and then there was an overarching plot happening in the background building until the climactic ending. This game seems a little Hollywood for my tastes, I mean I hate to say it but it’s the basic Mario ‘Save the princess’ plot-line  (in the voice of Morgan Freeman) ‘a plot as old as time’ and the whole game is based around padding that out.

Although the plot is a bit hit and miss there are some really great new game-play features which are mostly ripped off of other games but who cares? 47 has this sort of vats, time stopping shoot everyone power now like fallout 3, but Splinter Cell Conviction already ripped that one off so it’s no big deal, why shouldn't 47 be able to walk into a room and shoot everyone without much input from me, maybe I should just sit this one out and catch up on my word based puzzles.

There’s also a new stealth system, long story short if you dress as a guard all guards are going to be suspicious of you so you have to avoid them, so the trick is to basically find the one person who is meant to be there but that nobody knows and you can wonder around freely. It makes a lot more sense than the previous games and I think it’s very clever… also they ripped off Assassins Creed lacing the game with hiding spots… but who cares?!

As side note, 47 has acquired the ability to hide a sniper rifle up his ass, I liked how in the previous games you couldn't hide two handed weapons unless you had a suitcase because it’s realistic and makes it more of a challenge to smuggle weapons into areas if you can hide a M60 in your pants it takes the sport out of the whole game. Also one thing I loved about the previous games was that there was always people frisking you (not that it’s a fetish of mine) or metal detectors or things like that so improvising or sneaking in weapons was really important. 

Whereas in this game they seem to let any Tom, Dick or Harry in with an AK under his arm. So although this game makes a big thing about improvised weapons, like using a brick or a bottle to kill someone it’s just sort of style over substance really since you can just use a gun or fiber-wire that 47 has all the time or his bare hands which he can do now. I mean I like the idea that you can kill them from the front with a screwdriver but there’s not much point to it.

The levels seem a little less well structured since this game isn’t about him carrying out a series of well orchestrated assassinations it’s just him basically killing anyone he fancies really. I often found myself reading the objective screen because I’d get half way through a mission with no idea why I was strangling and/or dropping things on all these people.

Don’t get me wrong I love Hitman, it’s one of my favourite games series, I've been waiting for this game for ages and I can’t say I was that blown away, I enjoyed it but it just didn't have the same clout as the other games, it was just missing something, it felt a little rushed, like I’m given all these nice set pieces to play with but I don’t get enough time to faff about with them. The systematic nature of the levels just drained the game of fun and to be honest I've always hated the scoring system on Hitman. I just think giving people targets like that destroy the natural flow of a game, to an extent it almost puts the game on rails, taking all the spontaneity away.

When you compare it to something like Max Payne where your jumping around firing two guns prematurely ejaculating bullets all over the place it almost makes murder boring, trying to make it as neat and economic as possible and when did the Hitman series become so xenophobic? In Contracts and Silent assassin 47 went all over the world, in the last game he spent most of his time in the south of America killing hillbillies then he went to Vegas and in this he just splits his time between Chicago and Dakota… killing hillbillies again. All games are set in America, I am seriously bored of America and I get the distinct feeling Hitman hates Americans, especially rednecks.

My only other little niggle is the addition of a cover system, it just destroys me to think that there are people playing this game as a cover shooter chest-high-wallfest and not as the methodical murderfest that it is. Also QTE?!.... in Hitman!? What were they thinking!?.... Nuns?