Back in a tick, talk amongst yourselves.
Edit
And we’re done.
I’ve just seen a preview ad for the new game Far Cry 2, coming out in October, which has me simultaneously excited and slightly apprehensive. For a while, we’ve been approaching a tipping point where the idea of games with genuine, tough-to-make moral choices becomes an accepted reality rather than a ‘games are art’ pipe dream. Bioshock is the most obvious example, and the original Fallout games gave you incredible moral freedom a decade ago. While Bioshock is slightly black and white in its kill/save the ickle girls choice, it has something in common with the Fallout games - there’s little real emotional consequence of going down either route. In both cases, being ‘evil’ gets you advantages (more guns and so on) and disadvantages (characters treat you differently). But Far Cry 2 might be something a little different - a genuine moral grey area. Check out this quote from Clint Hocking, producer of the game:
“What happens is dependent on how each player approaches it, but somewhere in the second act you become so notorious and feared that the underground [of medics and priests] says that you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem, and stops giving you medicine,” says Hocking. The result is a twist on, or reversal of, Far Cry Instincts’ feral abilities. “As medicine is cut off you become sickly and grotesque, but still more notorious,” Hocking continues. “You transform from being this healthy guy that might occasionally shoot someone in the knee to somebody that’s literally dependent on being cruel and vicious, twisted and deformed and vomiting all the time. You invert your relationship with your own power – from being powerful because you’re healthy to powerful because you’re crueler than the enemy.”
Powerful and compelling stuff, especially in the completely open, non-linear world promised by Ubisoft. It really comes sharply into focus though, when you see a gameplay video that showcases an actual (and brutal) tactic of war as a gameplay mechanic - namely, shooting to wound, in order to draw out your enemy’s fellow soldiers. Grim stuff:
There’s a whole run of open-world FPS/RPG hybrids coming down the pipeline, from this to Fallout 3 and STALKER: Clear Sky. It seems the one thing they have in common right now is the chance to be a complete bastard, or try and survive in brutal fictional worlds through wit and charm and last-resort self defence. How do you play open-world games?
I haven’t been on holiday for the whole time, but for at least part of the time, I was here:
First Impressions, by Princess Valium
I’m now back in smoky ol’ London, but hey, that’s what holidays are for, right?
Because it’s a Monday, you needed cheering up, and I need to test Youtube embedding.
In common with a lot of folks my age, my first experience of multiplayer gaming was the ground-breaking console game ‘GoldenEye’. From the ostracism for the new boy who unknowingly picked OddJob to the wince at hearing seeing a curtain of red drop across my vision for the eighteenth time in a single game, it was a formative, incredibly fun ritual. We’d play for hours, usually with a beer or two, and between rounds and afterwards we’d chuckle together over that ridiculous snipe or rocket launcher death.
For the first time, shortly after GoldenEye came out, I had the slightly unnerving experience of feeling a very strong instinct to hug the wall and check corners for other players. At school. I kept expecting the tinkle of a grenade landing at my feet or the paff paff paff of a pistol being unloaded into my back. This is the point at which the anti-gaming lobby would throw up their hands in horror and claim my mind was irretrievably damaged, that blocky, pixellated headshots and a game that was way better than the film it took inspiration from, had turned me from mild-mannered kid into ticking time bomb. Sure, maybe if I was already halfway nuts then all-night sessions of GoldenEye may not have helped, but as a pretty well-adjusted kid with a great group of friends, I was exhibiting something much more harmless, and actually kind of cool - I had become immersed in the game.
At heart, we’re all pack animals, reacting to stimuli in the world around us, flocking in groups, constantly assessing and shifting in our relationships and hierarchies. The human brain has survived and prospered for so long precisely because it has an ability and aptitude for picking up new skills and patterns of behaviour. My mind was adapting to a new situation, learning new skills to help me ’survive’. You see it on sports pitches and in boardrooms every day - people learning the behaviours that get them through the day or game unscathed - why should gaming be any different? Especially when it’s the basis of comedy gold.
The learning and instinctive grasping of game mechanics continued, and not just in first person shooters or multiplayer blast-fests. I found myself automatically judging the speed and vector of approaching cars, ready to jack them, after months of Grand Theft Auto III. I wanted a flashlight and something hefty in my hand to enter dark spaces after Half Life 2. I learned the finer points of multi-tasking and developed a twitchy relationship with dealing with multiple inputs on a computer from micro-managing stockades across the New World in Sid Meier’s Colonization. All of these games succeeded in different ways, but they all shared a common factor - they were so good I played them at great length, and they were so immersive that they bled out into daydreams and odd moments during the day.
It’s continued of course. These days most of the games I play don’t even require a willing suspension of disbelief. With good headphones and the lights down low, the world of Rapture in Bioshock or a dust-blown street in Call of Duty 4 become incredibly real. Sound design, sharp graphics and realistic physics combine to create stunning virtual environments. It’s the reason I can’t bear to play the Condemned series - they set off genuine fight or flight reactions in me, and I can barely play for five minutes. I started to realise the power of this when sniping on Creek, one of the new maps released on multiplayer for COD4. I served in University reserve forces a few years ago, in an infantry unit. Years ago, I had actually lain on a hilltop with a rifle, scanning for enemy movement in the middle of a training exercise. In COD4, I did the same thing, waiting for the biological miracles that are my eyes to detect movement in the valley below, before snapping the rifle scope to my eye and blowing away another player. Two worlds merged - skills from life used in a game.
With Grand Theft Auto IV breaking new ground in immersive environments that invite exploration and experimentation, I’ll again be fighting the urge to jack the nearest car to get where I need to go or toss a grenade through a doorway before I enter, and every time I do, I’ll smile. Gaming is at its best when the borders blur, when strategies and memories and new ideas bubble up during our daily round. And its even better when we can stand up, turn off the gunfire and explosions and get a nice cup of tea.
