Favorite Articles - Share and Talk

[NewClassic_v1legacy]

Hey there folks.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm NewClassic: forum mod, excitable conversationalist, and sometime writer about stuff. I personally find there's a great deal to talk about in media, not just in things like games, but also novels, movies, short stories, and the various technical aspects of all of the above. I find there's a lot of fascination hidden in the margins, and I'm always excited to hear from the more learned in various fiddly aspects about things I already enjoy.

As a result, I'm always on the hunt for new articles to read, not just about the newest game, but about people's favorite concepts and applications. I love getting to read new approaches to stuff I'd already thought I knew, in addition to comfort reads about topics I may otherwise know exactly nothing about.

So, thusly, I'd love for people here who enjoy reading the articles, and discussing them, to post their favorite article link, and talk a bit why it's such a good article for them. In part to share an article they love, but also to get a chance to discuss it if it's something they wouldn't have a chance to otherwise. So, to get the ball rolling, I'm going to suggest my favorite article from one of my old Escapist friends:

I Don't Dance [http://www.haywiremag.com/features/i-dont-dance/] (Note: Bioshock Infinite spoilers.) has to be one of the better articles I've ever read on any subject. In part because it manages to touch on the sort of player-character disparity I've always enjoyed picking on. Games, as a result of having limited options, have always been somewhat fiddly for personalization. A character cannot simply develop traits to better align themselves with a player's wants, needs, and interests. There is some procedural work, like that found in the Silent Hill PT, but it largely uses pre-defined metrics in a very limited scope to establish a non-verbal communication with its player. A game like Fallout: New Vegas or Mass Effect 3 couldn't hope to achieve the same result because the scopes are so beyond the scope of our technology that being able to interact with players in a non-scripted way, at least in as far as being able to model a protagonist on the player's interests, is out of reach.

The option to fiddle enough that games like Shenmue can emerge, but giving the player that much agency tends to distance the narrative. After all, dicking around playing arcade games isn't going to help Ryo Hazuki track down his killer, regardless of how fun it is to play Space Harrier until you're broke.

However, there is still that inherent interest in play that seems to underline games. It builds, froths, and crescendos constantly for the player. Every option, every mechanic, every quicksave is just another chance to see how the game reacts with the player smashes it with a wrench. Or, if not a wrench, then a squeaky hammer set to the same resonant frequency as the nearby birds. Or at least a box of eggs. And, credit to the article, manages to come across as heartfelt, interested, and observant all the while about human nature, both as a player, and within play.

So, for me, it's a good article to open the floor with.

 

[Fat Hippo]

Indeed an interesting article, and it highlighted (one of) the reason(s) Bioshock Infinite didn't really work for me. In the original Bioshock, you're in a place that has already fallen to pieces, so it makes sense that your first instinct is to fight and kill everything you see and salvage everything that isn't nailed down, as it's a matter of survival.

But here? Even before things get dangerous, you're already rummaging through drawers and stealing money. Even though this is still a more or less intact and functioning city, inhabited by many people. And all throughout traversing this beautiful world, your only interactions are stealing shit and killing shit. This should've been an RPG, not an FPS.

As for recommending articles:


Butchering Pathologic [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/10/05/pathologic-review/#more-239027] is probably my favorite article about a video game, ever. It makes a few factual errors, but it does a grand job of capturing the spirit of this strange, mysterious, broken, terrible, fantastic and utterly fascinating game. It also contains spoilers, but since most people aren't going to ever play it anyway, which I understand very well, I don't consider that all too grave a sin.

I was however motivated to play it, and even though it's probably been 4 years or so since I did, no game has been stuck inside my head in a similar fashion. Hardly a week passes by that it doesn't at least cross my mind. Which makes me all the happier that Ice-pick Lodge is doing a remake, since for all its greatness, the translation was just god-awful. It oscillated between perfunctory, barely intelligible and strangely poetic. Which rather added to the mystique, but knowing what I'm supposed to do is also very nice.

 

[NewClassic_v1legacy]

Butchering Pathologic [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/10/05/pathologic-review/#more-239027] is probably my favorite article about a video game, ever. It makes a few factual errors, but it does a grand job of capturing the spirit of this strange, mysterious, broken, terrible, fantastic and utterly fascinating game. It also contains spoilers, but since most people aren't going to ever play it anyway, which I understand very well, I don't consider that all too grave a sin.

I was however motivated to play it, and even though it's probably been 4 years or so since I did, no game has been stuck inside my head in a similar fashion. Hardly a week passes by that it doesn't at least cross my mind. Which makes me all the happier that Ice-pick Lodge is doing a remake, since for all its greatness, the translation was just god-awful. It oscillated between perfunctory, barely intelligible and strangely poetic. Which rather added to the mystique, but knowing what I'm supposed to do is also very nice.

There's a bit too much second-person writing in there for me to be entirely comfortable with it. I tend to have a pretty odd perspective on games, so I can't imagine the various "you" statements in there mesh well enough to keep me sitting comfortably in the writing. There is a lot of interest there, but I've never been comfortable being spoken to in the second person that way.

For what it's worth, though, Pathologic really looks like one of the games I could really enjoy in the right setting. I'm big on atmospheres and aesthetics, so this looks like a title that is certainly in my wheelhouse. Especially given the somewhat atypical narrative structure that seems like its being formed there. That said, I get the feeling a lot of the charm could get buried in the details, and little too busy trying to be loose and abstract to really let the player as in on the fun as it could be. Admittedly, I tend to like my narratives a little more out in the open rather than closely guarded, but still looks like an interesting game.

Thanks for the suggestion, article was certainly enlightening.

 

[Fat Hippo]

There's a bit too much second-person writing in there for me to be entirely comfortable with it. I tend to have a pretty odd perspective on games, so I can't imagine the various "you" statements in there mesh well enough to keep me sitting comfortably in the writing. There is a lot of interest there, but I've never been comfortable being spoken to in the second person that way.

For what it's worth, though, Pathologic really looks like one of the games I could really enjoy in the right setting. I'm big on atmospheres and aesthetics, so this looks like a title that is certainly in my wheelhouse. Especially given the somewhat atypical narrative structure that seems like its being formed there. That said, I get the feeling a lot of the charm could get buried in the details, and little too busy trying to be loose and abstract to really let the player as in on the fun as it could be. Admittedly, I tend to like my narratives a little more out in the open rather than closely guarded, but still looks like an interesting game.

Thanks for the suggestion, article was certainly enlightening.

Heh, Pathologic is the first game I would nominate for a discussion about whether a game needs to be "fun" to be "good" or not. The experience can be downright painful at times. I think it really needs to get its hooks into you to somehow pull you through to the end, but in doing so, you experience almost something like a classic catharsis.

Either way, if it has done enough to pique your interest, I would recommend waiting for the remake they got kickstarted, or maybe checking out the kickstarter page, as it is just as strange as the game is.

 

[NewClassic_v1legacy]

Heh, Pathologic is the first game I would nominate for a discussion about whether a game needs to be "fun" to be "good" or not. The experience can be downright painful at times. I think it really needs to get its hooks into you to somehow pull you through to the end, but in doing so, you experience almost something like a classic catharsis.

I haven't played too many games like that, but I did recently fiddle about with This War Of Mine that really hit the right notes for me. It was the sort of game that scratches at your insides, and gives you little respite from the whole thing, but does so in service of really hitting the message home. It is an incredibly sobering experience, but one tempered with the kind of quality that makes it enthralling, even while it is soul-wrenching.

 

[Fat Hippo]

Just read something interesting on RPS, an interview about a game called Her Story [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/23/text-lies-and-videotape-her-story-interview/#more-265065]. I don't really know whether the game would be up my alley or not, it sound highly experimental anyway, but the interview is worth reading in the context of the discussion about "True Crime" in the wake of "Serial" in any case.

Personally, I've always found True Crime an almost perverse genre, voyeurism taken to its absolute extreme, with an added element of harsh judgmentalism. And despite making a game which fictionalizes and emulates, rather than recreates this kind of media in the form of a video game, he seems to share these same concerns. It's actually the reason I've avoided listening to Serial, despite how obsessed people became with it, for exactly that reason. It just feels wrong somehow, to turn this very recent story of people's crimes and suffering into a form of entertainment, and not necessarily with any objective of social commentary, as you might see in a war movie, but for entertainment alone. And when people start obsessing over ongoing criminal cases, making premature judgments, condemning people, it even sickens me a bit.