Oh? I'm using hashtags now instead of gawker tags.
On Protectionism
So, here's our yearly butthurt over Japanese devs bemoaning their lack of relevance to the global market. I'm going to give a quick analysis of two titles that I feel merit some discussion.
Exhibit A: Quantum Theory
First of all, it's a pretty fresh dev team and working with Tecmo. Trying to enter the shooterspace. Well, this could have been a great chance, were it not for a few massive issues. It's great that you, smalltime dev, are trying to make a Gears of War clone--seriously, new ideas are always welcome. But the controls are too different: making sprint and wallglue on two different buttons, wat? Cursor acceleration (that can't be turned off?) WAT. Using action-game controls (X for light melee, Y for heavy melee) instead of Gears-friendly B and holding B? Listen, games that do this (looking at you, Call of Duty and Bad Company), piss us off. Even Bayonetta did this, but those we learn to adapt by remapping internally. Even if this were a Japanese action title, this would be unacceptable.
Exhibit B: Lost Planet 2
Sigh. You were fun, sort of. You thought that its failure was "Americans don't want Monster Hunter with guns." Are you shitting me? We WANT MONSTER HUNTER WITH GUNS. You delivered something very short of that premise. It didn't go with the cycle of 1) stock up, 2) locate, 3) tag, 4) combat phases. If you, Capcom, released this experience as value-priced DLC, copies of LP2 will be selling at full retail again.
I think this points to big problem with Japanese devs across the board. Your definitions of Western gaming are completely wrong.
1) You see big dudes with big guns, we see an insertion / empowerment fantasy (something your RPGs do quite well).
2) You see over-the-top violence, we see a victory well-earned.
3) You see FPS-centric mechanics, we see agency and intentionality.
You see our titles from the lens that made yours successful, so why not look at the ones that we eat up without any localization efforts? We love shmups and fighting games because of tight controls. We love visual novels and Persona because it facilitates insertion. Japanese and Western gamers have very similar core motivations with a few nuances. I'm going to attribute this wave of cultural insularism to an unwillingness to blame yourself for your failure as cultural observers. Or, at the least, blame your fucking market researchers.
On Rivalries
So I own both Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2. I clearly enjoy both, and will purchase Black Ops and Bad Company 2 Vietnam when they come out. (Medal of Honor hasn't been able to capture me but that's a nerdrage for another day). BC2 talks a lot of trash to MW2 in its narrative, specifically referencing characters and setpieces. However, it clearly doesn't note the similarities. Both have a team of English-speaking men fighting the Russians. Both pit you against a singular boss who has a history of backstabbing. Both contain gratuitous violence against helicopters. Both deal with EMP-like weapons systems. And in a nod to MW1, the final playable scene in BC2 is a close-quarters fight on an aircraft. I can vaguely hear Michael Bay cackling in the background during the end credits for both games.
As Art
A lot of people have offered their opinions on MW2, so I'll just stick with new material. I can see where the development process sort of fell apart. The campaign was based on a handful of powerful vignettes that probably had great target renders. MW1 had parallel arcs that came together (something we see in virtually all CoD titles). However, the narrative of MW2 has no direction and attempts to create anger at Makarov and Shepard (with only Shepard receiving a cathartic resolution) rather than make any effort to develop characters and explain motivations. It missed a golden opportunity to turn Price into a villain, but instead opted to keep him around for a sequel. Financial expediency trumping narrative quality, huh?
On Escalation
Play Bayonetta. Just when you think shit just got real, shit gets realer. Then play on Hard mode. Ninja Gaiden 2 would get rock hard over Bayonetta. This game has nearly infinite replayability.
On Promises
I bought and played Civilization V. It's great. It does culture somewhat well, with mutually exclusive tech trees. Touche.
On Copycats
So, Alan Wake is great. Its pedigree really shows, as the ending and 1st DLC really explore the metaphysical on top of the psychological. This game is basically built on top of the idea of foreshadowing--Remedy has really taken the narrative style of Max Payne and have tweaked it nearly to perfection. The gameplay should be familiar, your flashlight knocks down shadow and the bullets damage flesh. You're basically playing Halo. The rock concert showdown will draw inevitable parallels to Left 4 Dead 2, not that I think anyone will complain. Each episode is timed at around 1 hour and has a pretty fitting ED song. Alan Wake would have troubles as a weekly TV show, as the pacing is far more deliberate and has a clear sense of escalation. Still, I had a great time.
On Inevitability
As of today, Halo Reach has eaten nearly 80 hours of my life. I'll steer away from the multiplayer aspects, as they're just as fun as ever. I'll start off by stating that I think content was cut that could have made the narrative more complete. The only character death that I really felt was Jorge's, it's personal, referenced repeatedly, and Noble in design. Kat's was pointless and drawn out with silence--I would've liked to see the team franticly attempting field medicine. Subtitles indicated that something was cut here. It was a wasted opportunity. Jun doesn't die, he just goes missing in canon. Carter gets a one-liner send off, a bit more time for the player to dwell and think about his sacrifice would have been appropriate. Emile, while your death was clearly badass (in a 90s action movie pulling a grenade and taking the enemy with you sort of way), the player doesn't have any sort of emotional response. It's like we're not supposed to care. As if he were placed there so we'd have a reason to go there later. But, I suppose all is forgiven with Lone Wolf. That one level alone is a very fitting end that meshes nicely with the prologue. This was quite possibly the first sequence to have been penned, and it's sort of a core idea that, sadly, doesn't play as a motif in the narrative. Dear Bungie, your audience isn't too dumb for an in media res plot. I thought ODST was probably the strongest story to date.
On Obsolescence
So I'm playing Splinter Cell Double Agent. Note that I've already beaten Splinter Cell Conviction (or, as I call it, Rainbow 6 District of Columbia--since I can beat it with unsilenced weapons, not using stealth at all).
1) Checkpoints pause the game. Wow, my hard drive isn't that slow. Seriously, there aren't that many variables to save.
2) Interface depends on OMGFUTURISTIC typeface.
This one is much worse than both Chaos Theory. I'm going to play just to try out the coop missions.
On Sympathy
I saw The Social Network and found myself strongly identifying with Mark. His conceptions of revenge really resonated with my own. His doe-eyed acceptance of Sean and the hedonist seeking of the frat lifestyle, not so much. Still, I've had the ending line, "You're not an asshole, you just try too hard to be one." thrown at me before. In fact, his attempt to reconnect with Erica also paralleled my life. This ending was sublime. The narcissist anti-hero had learned his lesson. He had fulfilled the moral criteria for audience acceptance. Luckily, Trent Reznor's contribution to the soundtrack was barely noticeable, save for the opening credits. The droning of the piano combined with a running guy in a hoodie seemed more at place in a horror film. I had heard that some felt that the dialogue was too "smart and witty" and that women were poorly represented. I disagree with both, I felt that the back-and-forth was right at home with my daily speech, and that the female characters had little to do with the narrative except for Erica, the casus belli for Facemash, and the barometer for Mark's internal struggle for perceived accomplishment. Asian starfucker girl only served to parallel the visual stress on Eduardo, who served more as an alter ego (sort of an anti-Tyler Durden) than a character foil. Go see this movie. I'll probably go see Easy A later, since it tries to parallel The Scarlet Letter along with the theme of a-scheme-goes-bigger-than-the-inventor-can-control.
Other Thoughts
Red Dead Redemption is pretty good. While the social commentary isn't quite extraordinary, it's well-delivered. Not a fan of spurring horses, though I suppose it's supposed to be fatiguing and would actually work towards a 1:1 of player action to pawn action.
GTA IV had a good ending. I fought it very fitting for Niko to make it to the Statue of Liberty. A culmination of everything the player has learned (combat, vehicles, chases) after all the trials and descents into worst the American experience has to offer, the protagonist is finally welcomed by the city's mascot as one of her own.
Blur should have a playlist just for Mount Haruna. We really miss the Initial D games here in the States.
The Event is not nearly as good as Lost. The latter would have episodic structure where the two parallel plots would share a common motif or narrative significance. This new show just thinks that mystery and cliffhangers will keep us coming back. You shouldn't have to have texts indicating timeskips. Both plots seem quite boring on their own. And together they barely manage to evoke a "meh'.
Hawaii Five-0 is quite good. The first episode establishes the signoff "Book 'em Danno", and the third establishes the team identity. They're not hamfisted, trying to force it to please fans of the original. But in terms of a police thriller, this does quite well--the chemistry of the two white cops is very entertaining, but it doesn't quite use the Korean star power to its full potential.
Shows from last season that were good: Highschool of the Dead, Mitsudomoe (is the new Minami-ke), Amagami SS (blows KimiKiss out of the water) (Shin over at Atarashii Prelude seems to enjoy this quite a bit) and Asobi Ni Ikuyo! (give it a chance, it's actually smarter than its premise will promise).
Lost Odyssey made me cry like a little girl. Not only is it an impactful character death, they just drag it on and OH MY GOD THERE'S A DDR CLONE FUNERAL PYRE MINIGAME WHAT THE FUCK. Had puffy eyes the next day.
You know what's a very competent stealth action title? Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. I don't have any particularly strong feelings about it, but I found it quite engaging. But a few bugs and random difficulty spikes make me just fucking give up more than once. Yes, a segue into a signoff. How pretentious of me.
Posts
