Just Sayin’.

Bitch, yeah.

Boobs Don’t Make The Character.

My friend Aimee linked me a blog post with a comment, “I hate feminists.” The reason for this comment? A post on a Game of Thrones blog about the upcoming RPG game based on the series. The author has decided to boycott the game as your only character choices are male.

Once I’d read through the blog and consulted Aimee, we’d come up with this response:

“Really? You’re going to make a big deal out of this!? Considering most of the main characters in the TV series are male, it’s no surprise that the main characters of the video game are also male. Why would you be upset by this? It only goes to show how immature women who play games are as immature as some of our male counterparts.

If you’re going to boycott this, why not boycott every game where you play as a male character only. There are a lot of games out on the market where you can’t choose the sex of your avatar. It’s not oppression or sexism. It’s just a load of code.

If you want to talk about rampant sexism in games, why not talk about how Lara Croft is still a highly sexualised woman or something relevant and quit making mountains out of mole hills.”

As mentioned in the response, there are a plethora of single-player games available on the current market where the main character’s sex can’t be decided and is generally defaulted to male. The author of this blog doesn’t seem to have a list dedicated to games she’s going to boycott just because she can’t be a woman in those, so her issue is conditional to the source material. She does make mention that Grand Theft Auto only has male characters, but that’s okay! It’s not based of A Song of Fire and Ice (Game of Thrones). It seems odd to pick and choose your feminism nitpick, but okay. I’ll roll with it.

The author then makes mention of how women are portrayed in the game with a few screen caps. The screen caps (Which she named Boobies and Boobies2) show two women clearly dressed as hookers.

I’m pretty sure prostitution is one of the oldest professions and there are some pretty clear references to sex workers in the TV series and the books. In the time period the books are emulating (ye’ olde England, if you’re not familiar) women were too busy being raped and murdered and being doormats to actually have a proper career unless you’re Brienne the Beauty. So, George R. R. Martin and the developers of the game aren’t portraying these women in a light that doesn’t reflect their roles accurately, so why is it such a big deal in the game?

In fact, she seems to be picking apart the publicity side of things to add evidence to her agenda. Quoting lines from developers, “It is really important for the player to feel he is the master of the destiny of his characters.” Her key word in this is “His”, making mention to how the female fans weren’t catered too.
I don’t know how much more I can post about this without picking her argument apart and sounding like her but I will add one thing. Haven’t we moved past this? Why are women gamers still identifying themselves as “girl gamers” and then continuing to moan on about how they aren’t accepted in the industry or community?

As a gamer who just happens to have a pair of knockers, I’m disgusted that I’m having to defend a game against someone who thinks that her gender needs to included in the game because she’s a girl. I thought that went the way of men paying for a meal because they’re the male or are we living in a really futuristic 1950s with a bitchin’ internet connection.

And like Aimee says, “Man, bitches be crazy…”

(If you want to read the original post, the link is here)

Blizzard Honour Diablo 3 Pre-Orders made through Game

The GAME saga continues today with the release of Diablo 3 (colour me surprised it didn’t break street date). It’s now well known that the unfortunate souls who pre-ordered Diablo 3 won’t be getting their box of goodies as GAME aren’t honouring pre-orders as they plunge into debt, but the developer Blizzard have come through and made a bad situation a little less bad (and got some wonderful publicity at that.) An announcement on the Diablo 3 forums from Lylirra says

We’re aware that some Australian GAME customers have been left out in the cold on what should be the hottest night of the year — the launch of Diablo III. To help with this situation and get these players into the game as soon as possible, we’ve put the following process in place.

Australian GAME customers with a valid preorder/prepurchase receipt dated before May 15, 2012 can do the following:
1. Purchase the digital version of Diablo III from http://www.diablo3.com now or anytime before May 21, 2012.

2. Download and start playing when the servers go live!

3. Submit your GAME Australia preorder/prepurchase receipt to us before June 30, 2012.

4. Receive a credit from Blizzard, for the amount you paid in advance to GAME Australia for Diablo III. This credit will be applied to the payment method used for the digital purchase.

We’ll post further details here on how to submit your GAME Australia receipt to our customer service team as soon as possible. Stay tuned, and we look forward to seeing you in the Burning Hells!

So there you have it! While it’s unfortunate that GAME can’t honour their customer’s purchases, Blizzard are doing a very nice thing. How often can you say that about a games developer?

GAME Australia goes into Administration.

The Australian gaming industry took another blow today with brick-and-mortar store GAME announcing it’s going into administration. Sending emails to their stores and confirming the story with Kotaku, all the speculation about whether the Australian arm of the company would follow its UK brethren who entered administration earlier this year. While it looked good for the brief period between GAME UK’s march store closures and now, it’s clear that we won’t see pretty purple signs in our shopping centres for much longer.

It was good while it lasted.

Send Rade to E3!

Hey guys!

If you follow the Facebook page, you’ll have noticed I’ve been somewhat excited about a competition I’ve entered to go to E3! So there’s two parts to it.

I had to write a 500 word review on an Xbox Live Arcade game from a small pool of games. As there were only 4 games (Trails: Evolution, Bloodforge, Fable: Heroes or Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition), I went through and read a little about each game.

Trails: Evolution didn’t appeal to me at all since it’s a racing game and I’m not that into them. Fable: Heroes looked okay but I don’t like the Fable games much. Minecraft: Xbox 360 edition was what I choose to review until I saw that it wasn’t available for some reason. WTF?

So I went with Bloodforge, a pretty typical hack-and-slash game that’s visually appealing. I only played about an hour of the game before writing my review since I felt I had learnt everything I need to know about the style, controls, storyline and characters. I knocked that out pretty quickly and sent it off to Seth! Seth had a small accident and through no fault of his own couldn’t return an edited version of my review so I did the best I could and edited it myself.

The second part was the harder part. I had to record a 2 minute video of why I should go to E3. I’d recorded that video a dozen times or more before I settled on my submitted work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0I7xW8dhUc&feature=youtu.be

The Top 5 are meant to be revealed around May 17th-18th and they it goes to a vote. If I make it till then, I’ll be asking everyone to help me get there. Voting, sharing it with your friends, spamming everyone you know. Bribery won’t be looked down on as long as you vote.

Thanks for all your support!

Review (XBLA): BloodForge

The newly released hack-and-slash game BloodForge features Crom, a war-weary warrior who gave up the days of battle to settle down with his beautiful wife. Based around the Celtic mythology, you find references to Gods, deities and folklore of the age.
When you’re introduced to Crom, he’s out on a successful hunting expedition and stops to rest being woken up by the terror his nightmare instills in him. Racing to his village, it is being pillaged by demons sent by the angry Celtic gods.
Since hack-and-slash games are based around fighting, they need combat that flows easily from one enemy to another. BloodForge does this well, making high combo scores an achievable goal. It also doubles as a button masher. As X is your main combat button, it’s easy to spam until everyone is sliced into neat little packages. You also can use the power of the Gauntlet to improve your fighting abilities. While you do have access to a long-range hunting bow, without the ability to aim, it seems pointless to use unless approaching closer enemies.
The most amazing thing about this game is its graphics. BloodForge has dark gritty visuals and when you combine that with the crimson blood that enemies seem to be giving away, it’s a mix of beauty and terror. The floor under Crom’s feet become almost artistic once you’ve finished with a group of foes.
The game is a visual gore-fest and I think that the almost comical use of blood and the art style are trying to make the impact of dismembered bodies and limbs less of a shock. It works to a degree. It’s certainly something I wouldn’t let a young person play even if the violence isn’t made to be realistic.
Celtic mythology is incredibly interesting and diverse, but it seems to be more of a gimmick than anything else and the story seems to be just thrown in. This isn’t a bad thing since I don’t normally play games like BloodForge for the story. These games tend to have a story thrown together and jammed in to make it work.
BloodForge is visually wonderful and fun to play. It feels a little rushed with some glitches presenting themselves at the most annoying times, but they’re easily overlooked when you’ve achieved a 40+ hit combo. Not a game I’d play for the story, but after a hard day at work, this game will scratch the itch that will distress you.

Daniel and Alan Give Me Nightmares

I’ve been on a horror games kick for a good part of this month and while I don’t have a lot of knowledge in the area, I’m starting to understand what I like and don’t like about the genre. To me, it comes down to how the game presents its terrifying self. For this post, I’ve got two games lined up to go: Alex Wake and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Both are classed as horror games, both isolate the main character, both are making me scared of the dark. While they share those common denominators, they’re quite different games. Let’s start with Amnesia.

Amnesia sees you start your terrifying journey as Daniel. Not much is known about Daniel since he doesn’t seem to know much about himself, hence the title. (See what they did there?) There are clues into Daniel’s past through diary pages you find scattered throughout the game.

Amnesia starts to build its atmosphere from the moment you start the game. During the setup, the game suggests you wear headphones, play in a darkened room and so forth. I’ve ignored BOTH those suggestions and I’m still quivering like a spineless git.

The idea of Amnesia is that your imagination does all the work. There’s an unconventional health metre. Instead of using the traditional “Not dead/dead” bar, your sanity is slowly chipped away as you explore the darker areas of your surroundings. You can remedy that by standing in the light, but that means you’re easy pickings for monsters, which by the way, you can’t kill since you’re unarmed. The great thing is that you go through quite a lot of game play before even glimpsing as a monster and then your brain is on hyper drive to scare the pants off you. You’ve seen something, it’s probably coming after you and the only sensible thing to do is run your crazy-ass away.

Daniel is a strange reflection of what the game is doing to your psyche. Spending more time in the darkness avoiding your monster mob eats away at your sanity, which is exactly what happens in real life. You find yourself being a little more concerned at every creak, crack or other unknown sound that happens to spring to life at an inopportune moment.

I decided that I didn’t want to be scared by hidden monsters, so I bought Alan Wake, another survival horror game, hoping that the things that go bump in the night are more obvious in their intentions.

Like I said 5 paragraphs ago, Alan Wake and Amnesia have a lot in common but their differences are what make my decision about which game I prefer so much easier.

Alan Wake is named after its thriller-writer protagonist who is suffering from writer’s block and near-crippling sleep deprivation which is understandable as the first level you play through is a nightmare involving one of Alan’s characters in his book.

Like Amnesia, the atmosphere of the game is amazing. While you don’t have books falling off shelves, the dark woods have great lighting with the moon peeking through clouds and tree tops and heavy fog crawling over the ground. Lighting is also used against your enemies to defeat the Dark Presence infecting the characters. The difference with this game is the combat element meaning that there is one. You start with a revolver and a flash light to disperse with enemies. You slowly build up an arsenal to eliminate your foes.

Alan also narrates the game like you would be reading his book which can add to the atmosphere as well, but I find it oddly distracting when you’re trying hard to make sure you’re not being stalked by some shadowy nightmare creature. The running commentary sounds like its being written by Captain Obvious and not a novel.

Both these quickie reviews are very premature since I haven’t played more than two hours of either game and I’m sure that when I grow a backbone I’ll be able to make a more informed decision but I honestly prefer Amnesia over Alan Wake. The lack of a combat system speaks more about the type of game it’s trying to be but both are worthy of belonging to their horror genre.

The Sound of Music

There are a lot of elements that go into a game but there are a lot of things that are over-looked because of gameplay or scripting. The thing that I find drawing myself into a game is music.

Games like Bastion and Mass Effect are praised for their musical score and for good reason. You can have amazing graphics, deep characters and amazing scripting but if you don’t have something to tie it all together; your audience may just miss the message. And sometimes, music just happens to take over.

Take the aforementioned Mass Effect. It’s not a secret that I wasn’t a huge fan of the series until lately and even not I’m still not entirely sold on the game but something I adored was the effort that went into the soundtrack. Mass Effect 2 soundtrack was composed by a guy named Jimmy “Big Giant Circles” Hinson and for me, the sound made the game. In addition to the work that made the game, he’s released unused music for Mass Effect 2. (Available here)

After a while, music speaks louder than the game. Your memory allows you to re-enact the level just by listening to a certain track of your favourite OST.

One thing I’ve found in my years of gaming is that not all OST’s hit the right note. Borderlands OST, for example, doesn’t always make me want to get right into the action. Since I’ve invested more about 70 hours into my favourite game, I’ve done a lot of research for what does get me in the killin’ mood. It has to match the level or your experience.

My Borderlands playlist consists of Jay-Z (Don’t judge me), Cage the Elephant, AC/DC, The Grates, NIN, Muse, Queen, Phoenix and more. There’s a lot of different sounds working there.

I issue a challenge to my readers: Go through your music list and try to make something that suits your favourite game. Comment back telling us of your achievements or failures (depending on what you listen to.) You’d be surprised how easy it is.

The Dark Descent (Or, why I’d be the first person killed in a horror movie)

For my 21st birthday, my friend from The Netherlands gifted me a game on Steam. From my extensive wish list, he picked Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I’d only played Amnesia once with a friend for about 5 minutes and we were terrified! Amnesia has a long history of being able to make you poop your britches with very little effort.

Samara: The First 3D TV experience

I thanked my friend for his gift and wondered if he got kicks out of the fact he knows I’m a wuss.

In fact, when I was 14 or so, I watched the American remake of The Ring. My mother had forewarned me that it was probably too much for my brain to handle. Being the know-it-all teenager I was, I ignored her, brushing off her attempts to protect me. I’m 21 now and I’m *still* slightly worried that Samara is going to crawl out of the television and mummify me.

I’ve played 42 minutes of Amnesia and it’s fantastic. It’s so fantastic that I don’t want to play it out of sheer terror. The atmosphere is the real winner in the game. You’re told from the beginning that should play alone, have headphones so you can hear all the minute details and the shading on the screen needs to be just perfect. That’s just on the outside. Inside the game, books have fallen; winds have blown through the halls I’m travelling down and I’m yet to see another living soul. There is so much emphasis on the fact that you’re alone and unable to defend yourself that you find doing a 360 turn to survey the room is essential, even if nothing is there.

It’s a game I’m doing to have to finish in the middle of the day, with all the lights on, while clutching my teddy bear, I don’t see myself finishing it otherwise.

The Walking Dead is in Dead Water

Here’s an interesting titbit: Telltale Games has announced that it won’t submit a console port of its game “The Walking Dead” to Australian classification boards. A staff member confirmed the decision was due to a lack of R-rating for games in Australia. However, the game is available on Steam; the PC Game distribution company.

Clearly available for purchase in Australia

As it’s been said time and time again, the people who oppose the R-rating say that the medium differs from others due to interactivity, taking control of the main character and making their decisions. I can understand that logic, but since it’s being released on PC and not on consoles, I suspect there’s something else going on here too. I could just be over thinking things too. Australia is in the final stages of getting our long deserved rating and The Walking Dead could be submitted after it’s been achieved.