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Swallowing Crap

Started by Nik Drou, July 02, 2010, 10:49:30 PM

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Nik Drou

I was in a Game store the other day, seeing if they had significantly marked down any preowned copies of BlazBlue, or Super Street Fighter IV, or anything else on the PS3, when I saw this trailer on one of their screens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVtXac6if14

Now, it could very well be a great game.  It's been long in development, plus there certainly seems to be a bit of money and effort thrown at it, but I just couldn't help but slightly despair.  Cigar chomping, musclebound anti-hero in a big, stupid metal suit with an equally stupid gun, all rendered with an absurd degree of love and attention, as though it was self-evidently both really cool and really important.  He has the cigar in his helmet with him?  That's incredibly stupid.  Also, after a spot of research, the race of alien antagonists he's up against are called the Zerg.  The bloody Zerg.

Are we still in an age where stuff like this is cool?  Aren't we generally done with action movies about muscled, cigarry twats?  Granted, there's The Expendables coming soon, but that's very much a throwback.  A large part of the videogame industry seems to be labouring under the apprehension that everything from about 20 or so years ago is all still very much in vogue.  I suppose what concerns me, and is the general crux of why I started this thread, is that I have very much enjoyed and am currently anticipating games that are guilty of this.  'Infamous' on the PS3 is a marvellous game, probably the best 'superhero simulation' you're going to find on the next-gen consoles.  The story is shit though, the ending is terrible and the main character is an unsympathetic, gravelly-voiced bore. 

Gameplay is always going to be more important than story or presentation, but after recently completing Assassin's Creed II I've started to feel a bit different.  In many ways, the game is very good.  There's great attention to detail, plenty of gameplay elements and things to do.  But subsequent to the end of its story, it occurred to me that I had spent almost every evening for nearly two weeks being exposed to its pretentious, incoherent mess of a plot.  Badly acted, terrible dialogue with lots of dubious Italian stereotypery.  Why did I let that happen?  I actually felt a bit stupid afterwards.

I didn't want this thread to just be about games, though.  Perhaps it's a sci-fi show you stick with despite the bad CG.  Perhaps it's a comic book where you ignore the cosmic reboots and general ducking of consequence.  Perhaps it's pop music where you overlook the almost violent amount of vacant hedonism and the word 'baby'.

What kinds of crap have you voluntarily swallowed in popular culture and why?

pk1yen

Starcraft is a real-time strategy game ... not that the trailer represents this very well (or at all).

QuoteCigar chomping, musclebound anti-hero in a big, stupid metal suit with an equally stupid gun, all rendered with an absurd degree of love and attention, as though it was self-evidently both really cool and really important.  He has the cigar in his helmet with him?  That's incredibly stupid.  Also, after a spot of research, the race of alien antagonists he's up against are called the Zerg.  The bloody Zerg.

It is really cool and really important, because the original Starcraft came out in 1998 and still remains one of the most popular online games (according to Wikipedia). It is very important in terms of gaming history.

Your criticisms are definitely valid for a whole host of new games, but not Starcraft 2.
It'd be like criticising a trailer for Mario Galaxy for having 'too many cartoony characters'.


In terms of actual crap ... I'm struggling to think of an example. I started Dragon Age: Origins today, and while it's certainly not crap ... I'm struggling to differenciate it from literally any other fantasy RPG so far. But I'm sure I'll get into it.

I'm starting to wish that I didn't have enough free time to warrant watching The IT Crowd, I suppose. It's not awful, it's just pure averageness, with the addition of an excitingly geeky set and a few jokes.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

The bad guys are still called the Zerg though.

QuoteIt'd be like criticising a trailer for Mario Galaxy for having 'too many cartoony characters'.

To be honest, I dislike both sides of the coin. I never really got into Gears of War because of how ridiculously steroid-injected everything looked. Likewise I dislike Marios cartoonyness. I realise that's part of the appeal for certain people.


Consignia

Starcraft (at least the first one) isn't really of the Gear's of War vein of machoness. Some of the human grunts are parodies of Gung-ho miltary types, but in general there's no real "fuck yeah, let's kick zerg ass baby" stuff. I'm not sure how the second game will pan out, but hopefully it'll not have inherited the action sci-fi tropes of recent shooters.

pk1yen

I can't think of any specific examples of this gung-ho machoness in sci-fi (although I try not to play bad games, I tend to avoid ones completely that have negative reviews, just from a cost perspective) - but yet I still have it hanging around my brain that there's loads of this 'metaphor-for-US-masculinity' stuff.

Halo, as one of my favourite game series, doesn't really seem to have it. Yes, there's Johnson's banter and general soldier whoop-ass dialogue, but it's not really 'macho', considering it's (until now, excluding the Dead Or Alive cameo) male cyborg super-soldiers vs. alien threat. Or maybe it is, and I'm seeing it through fanboy-tainted glasses (and having read all the novels too).

This said, the character models are what put me off most about Gears of War.

QuoteLikewise I dislike Marios cartoonyness

The thing about Mario, is that the 'style' becomes almost irrelevent once you get involved in the gameplay. Miyamoto is all about the gameplay, and very little else (it went so far as another senior member of the team had to slip in extra story details into Twilight Princess because Miyamoto didn't think it was important at all).
Whereas with a sci-fi realistic-graphics game, no matter how much you try to focus on this, the characters and story are always going to drag the whole thing down if it's just macho douchbaggery.

But as I say, I'm struggling to think of many examples, just because Imake sure games are good before I buy it - £40 is too much to spend for 20 crappy hours of uninspired cliche.

Mister Six

Quote from: pk1yen on July 03, 2010, 12:35:07 AMIn terms of actual crap ... I'm struggling to think of an example. I started Dragon Age: Origins today, and while it's certainly not crap ... I'm struggling to differenciate it from literally any other fantasy RPG so far.

Dragon Age actually has one of the most interesting and well-developed settings I've seen in a fantasy game, but you have to play it a bit before these things become obvious. Ghettoised elves and wizards who are treated like walking bombs rather than champions of the people are only the start.

Nik Drou

It's not strictly just about games that have 'macho' characters.  It's more about how in any medium, inbetween or during the aspects you enjoy, you're often bombarded with trite ideas, lame dialogue, bad acting etc that you grit your teeth and bear with for the sake of the good stuff.

In the case of Starcraft II, I said it's probably going to be a great game.  It doesn't stop the plot from being tired, or the trailer irritating me with its unintended dumbness.  Similarly, I couldn't help but wince at the recent Sony press conference at E3, where they proudly announced that 'Killzone 3' would be their tentpole release for the PS3 next year.  I'm very sorry, but 'Killzone 3'?  Come on, you really ought to be ashamed of yourself, or at least a bit embarrassed.


Little Hoover

I feel like Killzone is just a series everyone pretends to think is great, so that the PS3 can claim to have some Halo equivalent or whatever, although I assume I'd find Halo similarly tedious. Against all instincts I decided to try Killzone 2 thinking that maybe there would be something in it. So utterly devoid of anything interesting or creative. It has to be the most bland generic game I've ever had the misfortune to play. There's no excitment, tension or atmosphere. No creativity, charm or humour. Everything in the game has been done a millions times before. The game's an 18 but I find it hard to imagine why anyone over the age of 12 would get excited about it.


Ignatius_S

Quote from: Nik Drou on July 08, 2010, 12:55:17 PM
...In the case of Starcraft II, I said it's probably going to be a great game.  It doesn't stop the plot from being tired, or the trailer irritating me with its unintended dumbness..
Bottom-line is that most gamers prefer how a game plays rather than how amazingly original a plot is – these guys certainly won't be too concerned about plot:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/07/excellence-of-execution-video-of-starcraft-mastery.ars

With Starcraft II, the Terran campaign – the bit you're referring to - is in keeping with the feel with the first game, which I suspect the fanbase will be happy with. Anyway, Tricia Helfer is doing the voice of Kerrigan, which is good enough for me.

Ignatius_S

Double-post due to idiocy.

Nik Drou

Quote from: Ignatius_S on July 08, 2010, 02:38:51 PM
Bottom-line is that most gamers prefer how a game plays rather than how amazingly original a plot is

Oh sure, I'm one of them.  It's just recently I've been a little more questioning of it, particularly in games that have hours and hours of plot to get through.  I could have spent a fortnight getting though this Kurosawa boxset, or Inland Empire, or these Ghibli dvds I have.  Instead I was part of some convoluted, bollocky conspiracy to assasinate the Knights Templar (though I spent most of it killing innocent archers just to save time by going on rooftops).  It's my fault, of course, but at least I got to
Spoiler alert
stab a pope
[close]
.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

QuoteBottom-line is that most gamers prefer how a game plays rather than how amazingly original a plot is

Highly narrative-led games render the quality of the story of higher importance.

These days I think the need is increasing. I think I'd be quite put off by a ridiculously hackneyed story even if the gameplay was quite good (depends on the particular game, mind you), because most of the time the games I play are quite good.

MojoJojo

The GTA games, while generally being entertaing plot wise, always seem to force the player through something a bit crap. Up to SA, the gunshooting wasn't very exciting and the melee combat was rubbish. There would be some vehicle which would have shitty controls - which wouldn't be a problem if the game didn't force you to use it in some mission. And there always seems to be at least one mission which is ballachingly frustrating.

Haven't played IV, BTW.

chand

Quote from: Little Hoover on July 08, 2010, 02:36:15 PM
I feel like Killzone is just a series everyone pretends to think is great, so that the PS3 can claim to have some Halo equivalent or whatever, although I assume I'd find Halo similarly tedious. Against all instincts I decided to try Killzone 2 thinking that maybe there would be something in it. So utterly devoid of anything interesting or creative. It has to be the most bland generic game I've ever had the misfortune to play. There's no excitment, tension or atmosphere. No creativity, charm or humour. Everything in the game has been done a millions times before. The game's an 18 but I find it hard to imagine why anyone over the age of 12 would get excited about it.

Killzone 2 was relentlessly criticised for being derivative and generic though, that was the primary complaint levelled against it, and that's why places like Edge gave it 7/10. Personally I thought that while it was hardly a shining beacon of originality in terms of its setting, plot and characters, it was one of the few FPS games of recent times to eschew straightforwardly aping COD by going for a different control set-up, a cover system and a weighty, more methodical pacing instead of the more twitchy shooters that tend to fill the market.

Little Hoover

Quote from: MojoJojo on July 08, 2010, 04:26:53 PM
The GTA games, while generally being entertaing plot wise, always seem to force the player through something a bit crap. Up to SA, the gunshooting wasn't very exciting and the melee combat was rubbish. There would be some vehicle which would have shitty controls - which wouldn't be a problem if the game didn't force you to use it in some mission. And there always seems to be at least one mission which is ballachingly frustrating.

Haven't played IV, BTW.

Red Dead seems to have improved on GTA a little bit, but I've still got really tired of it's formula of "do several missions where you repeatedly risk your life for this incredibly evil person, that's obviously just using you, simply in the hope that he might give you a bit of information. "Couldn't they try some revolutionary new idea like giving some of these characters two dimensions instead of just one. I believe the Housers claimed The Wire was an influence on GTAIV which is strange because despite it's attempts at "moral ambiguity" most of the characters have none of this.

Zetetic

Quote from: Nik Drou on July 02, 2010, 10:49:30 PM
Also, after a spot of research, the race of alien antagonists he's up against are called the Zerg.  The bloody Zerg.
I'm not sure what you were expecting the Zerg to be called in a Starcraft sequel. To be honest, I don't really understand why you'd be particularly focused on the plot in a Starcraft sequel anyway. It's primarily a multiplayer game, where, if a narrative element is significant at all, it's that the differing sides require considerably different play-strategies. (Personally I loath the 'no mistakes allowed' nature of Starcraft multiplayer, but I do at least praise it for establishing the Zerg in particular as being psychologically and practically distinct so as to require different psychological processes in play. This is in contrast to World in Conflict, for example, where the sides are deliberately, and ahistorically, near-identical.)

But, granted, they are also pushing the singleplayer campaign as a selling point, and the plot of that appears largely derivative and, at best, cliched. But that's because it's a sequel to Starcraft. So it's going to be derivative of Starcraft, and draw on the cliches of a genre that, at least in the domain of computer games, Starcraft was instrumental in establishing.  I wonder if you'd complain that the presentation of the later Command and Conquer games were too campy? (Incidentally they were increasingly awful games and the plots arguably worse in terms of pointless complexity relative to their predecessors.)

There is arguably a weakness in modern gaming as regards this reliance on cliche, often (deliberately or otherwise) edging into parody. Where there are games set in, at least, compelling universes, such as BioShock or Halo, then the plot is often presented poorly or certainly no better than much older but comparable games (System Shock and Marathon, respectively). I'm not sure that, in computer games, anything has convincingly bested Deus Ex (now a decade old) at the combination of freedom, immersion and communication of narrative. And the story of Deus Ex isn't itself that defensible...

An even worse tendency has been games such as Braid (which is a very enjoyable game to play) which seems to me to revel in obscurantism and self-reference to its own medium, rather than any kind of compelling story.

So you're probably right to pick on games as starting point, even if, as other have pointed out, Starcraft was an odd choice and, as you say, games hardly the sum total of crap being swallowed today.