Disbonored

Good morrow fine sir/madame, prithee, look upon my Dishonored review with good taste. I just felt like introducing my review that way because everyone in Dishonored wears frilly shirts but sports the drabbest of American accents. When will someone make a Downton Abbey video game where you can play Jack the ripper and kill everyone with a samurai sword carved from Edgar Allen Poe’s bones?!

Dishonored, the bastard child of Thief and Bioshock but to be honest I think Bioshock should get a DNA test because it looks a bit more like fable than Thief, but hey I like Fable too so maybe we can leave Jeremy Kyle out of it for now.

You play Corvo a rubbish bodyguard turned misunderstood magical assassin who seems to have misunderstood the meaning of the job title ‘assassin’ since you have to not kill anyone to get the good ending but the bad ending isn't that bad anyway so who cares?

First impressions of the game it looks like an old pc game, I'm not usually the graphic nazi type, I think complaining about graphics is something that is reserved for the elite class of pc gamers and eight year olds, and the average gamer has bigger things to worry about like game-play and storyline. Nevertheless the game looks a bit ‘rough’.

Anyway, moving on; So yeah Corvo is this bodyguard who for some reason is returning from a holiday somewhere doing something vague. Just in time to be framed for the ruthless shishkebabing of his employer. Within the space of a minute the plot is painfully obvious. It’s the basic power struggle; evil dude wants to be the new king of everything so has to kill the present king of everything to rule with an iron fist... (in Morgan Freeman’s voice) ‘a plot line as old as time’

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So Corvo is banged up because as a silent protagonist who doesn't sign, his defence case didn't have a leg to stand on. So after being bashed on the bonse you wake up in prison and we’re meant to believe he’s been there for a substantial amount of time to justify butchering all his prison guards.

 Bingo bango he’s been head-hunted to join a group of exceptionally uninteresting and lazy rebels as the man who goes on suicide missions while they sit in the pub all day thinking up new ways to get him killed. They give you a shiny disappearing sword and a really subtle mask that says ‘I'm just going about my daily business officer’. Although I don’t really see the point of the mask since everyone and their mum attacks you on sight anyway as if them knowing who you were would make a difference.

The game play is pretty fun it does feel like Bioshock with a bit of climbing thrown in. You also get like a steampunky pistol that is oddly satisfying to fire because it has a great noise and big puff of smoke like a musket or something but this hurts the ebb and flow of a stealth game a wee bit. I like the little things like the magical disappearing sword that he hold front grip in combat and reverse grip while stealthing.

As a magical assassin you might not be surprised to hear Corvo can pull a rabbit out of a hat then shove it up someone’s arse. He can also teleport, possess living things, summon rats, see in the dark, stop time and.... make....wind!?

Ok so teleportion; probably not the best word because it’s just line of sight dashing really you can’t travel through matter you can’t even go through a fence, but it will be the power you use the most as most of the time it’s the only one you can afford because all of the good powers take too much mana to use.

Onto possession, this was the most promising power and it’s the reason I was interested in the game but like ten minutes in and I’m reading a loading screen that’s telling me when possessing someone all you can do is open doors and walk about.... so what’s the point!? All that hype and it’s just a less effective version of 47 changing clothes. Also you don’t even get to possess people until later so you spend the first part of the game just getting close ups of rat arses.

Summoning rats is pretty cool if a little specific, you summon a bunch of rats to distract/eat everyone while you go on your merry way. It’s a pretty cool power but I didn't end up using it very much since the rats once summoned don’t seem to want to eat anyone that isn't directly in front of them. They don’t even want to eat the zombies in the game (Yeah the game has zombies too, spoiler alert*) a task you’d think they’d be perfect for because they all huddle together and there’s lots of them but no, these rats seem to be connoisseurs and only the freshest of douchbags will do.

Seeing in the dark is pretty self explanatory and you can also see through walls and see their cones of vision, the wind power is just that you create wind, it’s magic not rocket scientist most things in front of you won’t be in front of you when you use that power.

The best power is probably the time slowing/stopping power but of course time powers in games are treated like fire from mount Olympus ‘Man is not ready for such great power! We must regulate it and make them rely on drinking lots of potions and only allow them to stop time long enough to make it completely useless.’

Why do games these days give us ultimate power but only a teaspoon at a time? Whatever happened to magic meters recharging? Deus Ex would have been perfect if the main character wasn’t completely dependent on chocolate bars. There have been games about stopping time and possessing people on much older consoles that were awesome, so I can only assume games are getting gradually worse.

Once you’re over the initial wonder of the powers the game gets a little repetitive and there aren’t even that many powers, everything about it is borrowed, it has no original ideas or characters and no atmosphere whatsoever. The characters are wooden and boring and you’re supposed to care about the empress dying even though you only meet her for literally a minute before she’s killed. How do you care about characters when the game is so formulaic and leaves no room for character development?

The game claims to be like thief yet there is only one free roaming area you only visit twice which has like two sub-missions then it’s just one linear level after the next with a bit of exploration thrown in. Also what’s the obsession with whales all about?!  You collect whale bone runes to increases your powers and every machine in the game is powered by ‘whale oil’. Also why is the rune locator a heart that talks?! I thought that would be something to do with the main plot but it just seems to be random. Like it could just well have been a throbbing hamburger but that wouldn't have been as cool.

I don’t get what this game has against killing people you don’t usually see assassins trying to find alternative methods of conflict resolutions that aren't stabbing someone in the neck. The morality of this game makes no sense because the alternatives for killing people in the game usually involve fates worth than death, like being sold into slavery. This is the reason I hate morality system in games not because they’re a bad idea because morality in games is an important framework, it’s just usually implemented in the worst possible way.

 For instance; giving you the option to save or drown orphans then getting mad at you for choosing to drown them... YOU GAVE ME THE CHOICE!! I don’t see why you should be penalized for making a binary choice. Games designers just use morality as a tool to make you play the game twice, it doesn't matter to them if it makes sense.

Where I think it fails is it has no sense of humour, it’s trying to be like thief and fable but it takes itself far too seriously. It’s just blank and emotionless and it has no sense of fun or real character. It just thinks it can throw together a bunch of game elements stolen from other games, tack on a tired plot and away it goes, without any real effort gone into atmosphere or character development.

It also makes me laugh that games designers think they can put books in games to add sub-narrative and back story but don’t realise the game has to be interesting to make you want to learn the back story  why would you want to read more filler?!

I think if I made this game I would have taken more time to get to know the characters, I would have made the intro much longer like fable so the empress’s death was more hard hitting and so you could see the conspiracy slowly unfolding just short of actually stopping it. Also I would have made Corvo’s prison time playable. A) Because I love games set in prisons and (not because of the showers) B) because it would give Corvo more character because it just seems like he goes from heroic body guard to shadow stalking neck hater in the drop of a hat. Also more free roaming sections with sub-missions would give the city of Dunwall more character. I just think the game feels rushed and unpolished with a distinct lack of direction.

All in all the game is just a massive let down for me, I really had high hopes for this game as Bioshock , Fable and Thief are some of my favourite games and this game just failed to deliver that sense of atmosphere and immersion. It didn't take me anywhere it didn't do anything new or interesting it just didn't work it’s like putting all the best music in the world into a machine to combine them and then Justin Bieber moonwalks out and brings about the end of days.

Made World

What better way is there to better understand the world but to build a new one?

“We don’t want absolutely real situations in videogames. We can get that at home”

Steven Poole (Author Trigger Happy; The inner life of videogames 2000)

Games don’t have to be real, they just have to be consistent.

Enemies respawn, regenerate, you yourself as character get to retry. Isaac Clarke is torn limb from limb by a necromorph with spiked tits on its head, you just go back to the save point and watch it happen all over again. So really the only incentive you have for not letting the character die is progression of the game. Life on the other hand; has no reset button. Life in games is cheap because it’s not your own and it’s infinite. Games today don’t really have lives systems like Mario, no continues, you just keep going until it’s done. So the life of the avatar really means nothing, and even less so of the enemies as if you start the level again they just come back as if nothing happened.

Health bars are a division of real and unreal, real people don’t have health bars, if we get shot dependant on where we are hit we either die instantly or are severely injured. In most games regardless of where you’re hit usually the same amount of health is subtracted and this doesn't usually register in the characters movement or mannerisms but in the case of resident evil and some others upon reaching the limits of health the character may limp or something to that effect. Characters in games can go days without sleep, fall off cliffs with minor injuries, survive bullets to the head or use painkillers to treat death.

Soul calibur for instance as a fighting game is strange as the characters use weapons and a kick can register in the same amount of health lost as a strike from a sword.

Fallout 3 is quite a good evolution on this because you can get shot in the leg and limp or in the arm and it effects your aim or hit in the head and lose some sight or hearing. Although this is realistic, it still isn't real. I remember an Interview with Todd Howard the game director at Bethesda and he was talking about heads exploding when they were shot in Fallout he said something to the effect that when the heads explode the eyes get bigger and the idea is; it is gruesome but in a cartoony silly sort of way rather than an ‘I shot Marvin in the face’ pulp fiction kind of way. 

What he’s trying to say is that he understands that games have to have a separation of some sort from reality otherwise you could really be desensitizing people to actual violence.

I don’t imagine when games designers want to know what a head sounds or looks like when it explodes they go buy some cadavers and take them to the gun range. I don’t want to know what it actually looks or sounds or feels like to blow someone’s head off I just want to have fun without needing therapy after. This makes me think that games designers aren't necessarily trying to glorify violence, but moreover trying to make sense of it.

Part of that is just understanding that it is a game, if we went into a film under the pretence that everything that happened was real that could be really damaging; just knowing something isn’t real sets a barrier in our minds that protects us from mental harm.

The point I'm trying to make is the real and the unreal intersect in games but there’s always a line drawn, and we constantly draw back to that sense of what’s real and what isn't because otherwise we’d lose grasp of reality. Although games allow us to venture into the unreal we should always leave a trail of bread crumbs to find our way back.

Let there be Lightguns

Do games have a purpose? Are they harmful? Does it matter? I don’t think it does.

You can read a book or watch a film and feel a new zeal for life that’s purpose enough for entertainment or art, something, that re-evaluates your own purpose anything in regards to harm is down to the individual and the choices they make which has nothing to with games. This idea of utility versus harm is a base question you should ask yourself about anything (I'll be addressing this notion of utility vs harm in greater detail at a later stage). For instance you can look at fetishists and think does it have a use? Well yeah they like that sort of thing, does it hurt anyone? Not particularly, well then that’s all right, whatever someone does in the privacy of their own home, or garden, is their own business (Mill 1873). Why does someone need a reason other than that’s what they enjoy? Why do games have to justify themselves to anyone let alone their audience?

Videogames aren’t necessarily an intellectual pursuit all of the time but that doesn’t mean they don’t have the possibility to become one, it’s just the market that limits their intellectualism, although today’s games like brain training are quite popular it’s still just a gimmick and purchased mainly by people in serious need of a trained brain. I mean if you think you need a DS to train your brain or exercise your face muscles or whatever you need serious help. Games should be getting smarter and in some respects they are but they also have to appeal to a wide majority and that limits their intellectual content. Puzzles games are in that sense the way forward and those too can be ingratiated into other genres like resident evil and portal, where the games are puzzle/action hybrids.

When I think about purpose in games my mind is always drawn back to God games, where you take the role of a deity in a virtual world and you may play that for a little bit and think ‘this is fun... but what’s the point?’ and maybe it has no point or maybe that’s exactly what god thinks about us, we seemed like a good idea at the time.

What purpose do God-games have; Fame, narcissism, power? God games give you ultimate power to show you that you in fact as an individual have none.

 I know I’ve personally felt attachment to characters in video games through watching development of their character and slowly getting to know them but can you feel attachment for something virtual that you create? I think the answer could be yes and no, because when I write something or make something, that’s mine that’s me. When you write academically they want you to write objectively, they want all the information with none of the ‘You’. You are just a conduit for this collected information, you don’t matter, just the piece of work and I think that’s bullshit, what’s the point? Why make something that isn't you or you don’t have a vested interest in, why put any effort into something that really has no part of you in it?

When I write something you can feel me, my intention in every paragraph (Although I tend to waffle). I made that and I feel attachment to my creation but also I relish destroying what I create. I’ll play this God and I’ll make a vast city then rip it to pieces with a hurricane, why? Because I can.

 I tell myself it doesn't matter they’re not real, well then what was the purpose of killing them or creating them in the first place? Why kill anyone in a game when they were technically never alive to begin with? That’s covered in suspension of disbelief, we care because they matter to us but we don’t necessarily feel guilt for killing them because there’s no consequence for doing so.

The Tenth Art

Films, plays, ballets and operas have actors and soundtracks and set designers, they have awards and critics and fans and t-shirt sales and porn parodies and so do games. Who knows maybe in the future there will be no line between games and films and someone will be receiving an Oscar for their performance in resident evil 36 attack of the enormous load of shit. Games and films acknowledge each other, there are films about games like Gamer (2009) and eXistenZ (1999) (which was partially funded by sony I might add) just like there are games about films or that reference or try to be films like Max Payne or Heavy Rain and L.A Noire. There’s even a game by Quantic Dream the people who made Heavy Rain and Fahrenheit called Nomad Soul which was co-created by David Bowie, he also starred in it as two separate characters and makes up a large portion of the soundtrack.

 Games are the tenth art (Alain et Frédéric Le Diberder 1998 l’univers des jeux video) they are a 'bizarre digital hybrid' (Poole 2000 Trigger Happy) that follow the same principles as films do; just like a film they include the arts of music and acting and design and editing but they add game play. ‘You’ are what separates games from films. This is why games have the power to be far more engaging than films or books or plays because you are a part of it.

 The difference between a book and a game is that a book doesn't need you, when you put the book down and leave the room the words stay on the page. The video game requires your input, without you to play it nothing happens, it ceases to exist. In the same way a film will play when you leave the room a game will not, you are central to its existence (Ludo Ergo Sum), it is a symbiotic relationship you share with the game. 

Although you could argue the same can be said for a book because it requires you to engage your imagination, but you cannot determine the outcome of the book you are still just an onlooker, you can only effect the story aesthetically, changing how the people look or their surroundings in the book, you have no power in the world of the book, you and the book are still separate.

Games tick all the boxes of sense experience of plays or paintings and push further into that realm of undiscovered pleasures. Video games are the new coliseum where someone can indulge in all the violence and implied sex their heart desires and until recently (as in the last 10 years or so) they were seen as a child's pursuit and now undoubtedly they are much more. Reaching down into hidden parts of our minds tickling our lizard brains and taking us to places we dare not go in reality. So why can’t they be art?

The level of work and effort that goes into them and the minds behind them, the music, the story, and the aesthetics are all as much a part of games as they are films, so what’s the difference? A huge amount of thought and creativity not to mention time goes into just one game, and today; acting talent as well, a la Heavy Rain and L.A Noire, the line is blurring. Still there is so much scepticism when it comes to acknowledging games as art.

 Art is all about sense experience yet video games are the masters of the senses taking us further than any film ever could. There's not a film on the planet that could hope to compete with the cold sweat and terror mixed with a biting feeling of loneliness and melancholy I felt walking through the streets of Silent Hill. The depth of despair and raw adrenaline cut with madness conjured in the mind of Max Payne. The awe struck by games like Shadow Of the Colossus when you come face to face with one or when you first set eyes on Rapture from the bathysphere in Bioshock. 

No block buster on the planet could ever come close to that feeling because you are there right in the moment, you feel everything whereas a film or a painting is a hand me down set of feelings it's the crumbs from someone else's sensory plate. You see someone crying and you should feel sad, you see someone smiling you should feel happiness the art world is full of all these signs telling you how to feel. Games sometimes signpost themselves like this in terms of moral choices but most of the time the way you feel about a game is purely subjective, the same game I rave about for weeks a friend of mine could turn around and say; "S'alright" and I just give a little smile and in my head I just scream "Uncultured wanker!" and walk away. 

The Spirit of an Age

“It is said that what is called "the spirit of an age" is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.” 
― Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

 Video games are fun right? but to a lot of people video games are dangerous. They fear the power video games have, they fear the privacy of the act of playing video games, most of all they fear change but really it’s just an extension of the oldest fear man has ever known; The fear of the unknown.

If there’s one thing I've learned about life is you can be sure that anything anyone finds fun there’s always someone trying to ban it for some reason. Video games supposedly will not only pollute the artistic minds of the future but also render other art forms obsolete. The reasoning being they believe that the public would rather play a video game than read a book or look at a painting and although as the author of this blog I would much rather play a video game than look at a painting or read a book it doesn't stop me from doing either. 

The libraries didn't all close when internet was born and plays weren't banned when they invented the tv. New art forms don’t replace the old, they just add to them or combine them, they cross pollinate and feed off each other, synergising; books become films become games. They don’t kill off their predecessors, they if anything; are monuments to the art that came before, because what this boils down to why art critics hate and fear and refuse to acknowledge games is because of a basic fear for their survival that is obviously completely irrational. Times and people change and video games are more popular than they've ever been but some things will never change.

People look at video games and think of a golden age where families talked and did things together and pretended to give a shit, go to church, make things, hate the same things, eat food that didn't come out of a microwave, listen to the radio, trust people, but its all bullshit. There was never a golden age of man, men have been killing each other and screwing each other over since rock met bone, and you think video games will make that worse or better? I don’t think it’ll make a bit of difference but who knows maybe it could, maybe video games could change everything. 

Time marches on we can never go back, no matter how many people want to go back before television and video games to a time where people were supposedly ‘better’ or more cultured, it just isn't going to happen and to block out the future will do nothing to impinge the mockery of the ticking clock.