The Cthulhu Mythos Isn't

I hate the concept of "The Cthulhu Mythos." There, I've said it. And I'm not taking it back. This might seem a little backwards, because anyone who knows me is well aware of the fact that I'm in love with H. P. Lovecraft and his work. I have my reasons, though, and I think they are sensible ones... so I'm going to tell them to you (it's a blog, after all.)  Follow me through the gates of the silver key and meet me at the mountains of madness.


For the Un-Initiated


Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American horror/science fiction writer who toiled in obscurity during his life but gained a cult following after his death. The ideas and devices in his stories have been borrowed, adapted and built upon almost to the point of becoming cliche, and modern horror owes him a tremendous creative debt. That's the short biography.

In H. P. Lovecraft's fictitious New England, characters discover information concerning dark truths about the world we live in. Humankind lives in comfortable, blind ignorance of the true horror that existence belies. There are ancient alien monsters (the "great old ones") buried beneath the sea, waiting to be awakened, and hordes of depraved, daemonic cultists who use dark rites and rituals to attempt necromancy and the resurrection of their evil gods. There are ominous mountains, sinister dark woods and brooding abandoned houses always seeming to contain crypts locked away below them, hidden. Often, knowledge of these nightmarish realities alone is enough to drive most of our protagonists insane, and the few who actually encounter some trace of the horrors that exist in this world perish, or turn out much worse for wear.

Think I Can Do It?

     My Xbox 360 gamerscore is currently 14,280. Without cheating and while still having a (semi) functioning social life, do you think I could get my score above 100,000 points by this very time next year? 


     We begin the journey to find out tonight. I'm trying to beat and achieve the full 1000 points in Darksiders tonight. To minimize my time with the game (although it is fun, I'll have some observations sometime) my very first play-through is on apocalyptic difficulty setting. This game is basically Zelda on steroids like everyone online says, but I don't think that's a pejorative!

Thoughts on Batman: Arkham Asylum

     (I know I said I was going to post something about Bethesda effectively utilizing graphics in Oblivion to convey ideas about the gameplay, but i got sidetracked. Sue me)

    Okay, this game has been out for a while, but I just got my hands on it last night. I have to say, without attempting to provide any sort of review for the game, it's quite good. Now, keep in mind that i haven't finished it yet, so I'm only speaking from the half-or-so of the game I played, but here are some of my thoughts:


1)     A while back I played a demo for this game in a Best Buy or something like that. I have to say, i thought it looked pretty slick graphically (which is always a good way for a game to ingratiate itself with a potential buyer) but the gameplay seemed pretty stale to me. All I remember was being in a dark, dank room in Arkham Asylum playing as Batman beating on the Joker's random Thugs. I played for a few minutes, bashed in some skulls, and put the controller down. It honestly gave me the impression that this game was a Ninja Gaiden or God of War style beat em up game. Except, while games like Gaiden or GoW, are slick, fast and filled with a vast array of moves (Gaiden especially) Batman felt kind of slow and tank-ish to me. I prefer my games to have some flow to the control, and I just didn't get that from the demo, so I lost all interest.
       But boy was I wrong! First off, I had no idea that this game contained so much exploration of the asylum as it did. You have an array of Batman's famous gadgetry at your disposal, and it allows you to wander around the moody, gothic grounds of Arkham, gliding, climbing, grappling and (of course) fighting as you go. Batman is equipped with a special visor that puts you in "detective" mode, to help you sniff out clues to figure out where to go and what to do. There is also a lot of well executed stealth scenes too. Batman does not fare so well against guns, so it is often required of you to slink around in the shadows, hanging from gargoyles, and nabbing enemies silently and knocking them out cold. It really makes you feel a hunter stalking prey, like you're in the middle of the dock scene from Batman Begins. It's very cool.
      The straight up beat-em-up brawl segments (and there actually aren't as many as you would think) are much more fun than the demo led me to believe, as well. Granted, the combat isn't incredibly nuanced, but the combo's really come from mixing up punches and kicks (the same button, just repeated in time) with counters and special moves you unlock with experience points. As you unlock more moves (take-downs and throws) the combat becomes much more interesting. Batman still is a bit of a clunker, but if you actually understand the combat system (which in my 10 minutes with the demo I couldn't really do) its a lot of fun.

2)     During combat, the camera will often zoom in and the game will slow down to focus in on a brutal, knock-down blow from Batman, usually delivered to some poor bastard's face. At first, I thought this was a little annoying. I changed my mind pretty quickly though. It really puts you into the middle of the action, and never actually messes up your combo chain or anything like that. In fact, it actually gives you time to take a quick breather and plan your next strike, so it can be pretty useful. I think it also ties the game to its comic book roots. Those close-ups of Batman laying down some hurt remind me of those classic "POW! fist-to-the-face" panels from the comics. Neat.

Why Do We Enjoy Games? Part 1

So why do we enjoy games to begin with? I started writing another article the other day that I intended to post today, but I kept getting lost in it. I was talking over and over about developers using tricks to help immerse us (the players) in their games. Immersion, I assumed, led to more enjoyment of the game. But does it? It seems like it would, but it’s not logically a given. So really, what leads us to enjoy our games?

It would be convenient to just say, “the whole package.” Obviously, a game with great graphics, memorable music, good gameplay, and an effective story is going to be a quality title. But I think the real reasons we enjoy games, and the things that allow us to differentiate between fun games and poor games are a little more subtle and nuanced than that. Lets try and break it down, starting with graphics.

Graphics have always been a big selling point in video games, and it’s pretty obvious why. The graphical presentation of a game is the most immediately apparent way to judge a game’s quality. Graphics are right there in our face when we turn the game on. Hell, even when you see a video or a picture of a game, flashy and polished graphics can be really impressive, and maybe even convince you to purchase it. Even graphics that don’t exactly push the limits, but are instead highly stylized or unique can be a big draw.

But graphics aren’t just a flashy attention-getting tool. They are the primary way that games communicate with us. We use the visuals presented to us to figure out where to go, what to do, and sometimes even how to do it. The graphics allow us to center ourselves in the world. They can let us know in an instant whether the area we have just entered is dangerous, mysterious, or safe, or even deliberately confuse our judgment of such a thing. Graphics can give us a particular feel for a game, and how we are allowed to play it. (More on this tomorrow)

On the other hand, extremely poor or glitchy graphics can put a real damper on the experience of a game. A character’s hand clipping through the wall during a cut scene here and there isn’t really a problem, and can sometimes be kind of charming, in a way. But when muddy graphics obscure our ability to figure out where to go or what to do, or if visual glitches become distracting, it can really ruin our experience with the game. If graphics frustrate or impede a players ability to function within a game world or become immersed in a game, then an otherwise promising title could be ruined. Gamers who are willing to struggle through these flaws might still find a good game underneath obvious defects, but it would be hard to label a game “great” if the most immediate way it communicates with us were flawed.

A Brief Introduction

     The Internet is flooded with blogs about video games and the video game industry. There are blogs previewing games, blogs reviewing games, blogs churning the video game industry rumor mill, and blogs relentlessly hyping the next big game. Most odorous of all are the sites that offer little else other than space for fanboys to have flame wars over which console/game is better than which.

     That’s all well and good, but I feel there’s a significant bit lacking in the discourse over video games. It’s fine to get hyped about upcoming titles (I do it constantly, trust me) and even fanboy debates can be amusing for a while, but whenever I talk to my closest friends about video games, conversation inevitably turns to the past. My friend Matt and I can only talk about the upcoming Bioshock Infinite for so long, as our knowledge of the game is obviously scant, and clearly we haven’t played it. But get us going on Bioshock, and prepare yourself for a long discussion of its themes, its best moments, how it made us feel.

     To be clear, I don’t think what’s missing from the video game discussion is nostalgia. In fact there are a ton of great trips down video game memory lane online (Angry Video Game Nerd is a titan, if you ask me). I feel it’s a lack of critical analysis (to be clear, not review style criticism, there is plenty of that) of games and gaming as a whole that’s truly missing online and in print. Now, I know that this is somewhat of a generalization. IGN, for example, often has opinion pieces written by editors, which I find quite refreshing. Michael Thompson recently penned a rather lengthy essay titled The Miseducation of Mario: Galaxy 2 and Limbo  that discussed the difference in how both games felt to play. Essentially, this is a discussion of tone. I felt like I was reading an essay or op-ed for a literature class in college, except the subject was not modern vs. post-modern, Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald, but rather Limbo vs. Mario Galaxy! This kind of discussion fascinates me.