#games

When you’re young, everyone is very eager to tell you that you’ll lose your strong opinions when you get older. I’m still waiting.

What actually happened to me is that I realized that it is impossible to have a strict rule – of law, moral, or any other kind – without many exceptions. Sometimes so many that it’s better to turn the rule on its head (from “it’s good unless” to “it’s bad unless” kind of thing).

I’ll use games as an example.

Let me put it this way, I’m not fun at parties: if you say to me “hey, remember that cool game?” I’m going to remember that it was published by a company that thought it was a good idea to advertise on 8chan, or that the developers were harassed and crunched a lot, or that despite having, like, two female characters, the game was both sexist and transphobic.

I also never thought that games were better back then, or that they ruined it, or anything like that. I felt like I evolved with the games, more or less. (To be fair, that has changed a bit in the last, say, 5 years or so, where I feel there are not enough games that challenge me with something new, but that is another story.)

Basically, what I’m saying is that I don’t do nostalgia. I don’t put old games on a pedestal. I rarely replay games.

But.

I spend about a week replaying the Quake II campaign, and playing all three mission packs, old and new, for the first time. I can’t deny that there’s a pleasure, a comfort in that experience. Q][ is my Doom. I played all the versions – PC, Nintendo 64 and PlayStation. I found excuses to replay it a few times, like playing it with a Steam Controller.

Nostalgic? Sure. Old? Definitely. Replay? Absolutely.

I’ll talk about the re-release in the monthly summary, for now I’ll just point out that I have complicated feelings about it. There’s a lot not to like about the game, and I can’t really come up with an argument for someone who’s never played it to give it a try. I don’t think there’s any undeniable value in it. But I like it, I still do.

I’m not writing this to make excuses. I’m not writing this to say that it’s okay to have problematic faves. I still believe there are hills to die on, and I have plenty of them. I’m writing it to say that you can only hope – I can only hope – that you have a decent grasp on those very fuzzy good and bad things and can apply them as best as you can. Because I’m pretty sure there is no alternative.

While Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom shake up the open-world formula, Horizon: Zero Dawn proves that if you have a good checklist, icons-on-a-map, classic-style open-world game, I probably still like it.

And to call it just classic is unfair: it aptly borrows some gameplay from the Monster Hunter games, and while the story isn’t entirely unique, it has plenty of its own takes on post-apocalyptic genre tropes. Is it Nausicaä-like? Without a doubt!

But the game is not without its flaws: unfortunately, it borrows very heavily from indigenous cultures. I’m not the best person to go into the details, but there are plenty of articles about it. It is doubly unfortunate, because it does good representation too.

Speaking of which, I finished reading the Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind books and rewatched the movie. The difference between the two is quite significant: sort of like between the pilot for the TV show, with an early version of a script and a different take on the characters, maybe even different actors, and said TV show.

The whole thing is kind of huge – and maybe this is my only complaint about the books, that some of the storylines are a bit complex, and some stuff can be cut down without much loss – so I just want to mention two things that I particularly liked.

First, while Nausicaä is a very proactive character, she also inspires other people, but not through words, but through actions and just being. I am not sure how intentional this was, but this is what I get from sociology: this is what changes people’s minds, not arguments or debates, but the existence of people with different opinions.

Second, is it’s take on nature. There are a lot of people who use words like “fix,” “repair,” and the like in relation to climate change. But that attitude is what got us into this mess in the first place! We must learn to be part of nature, not above it. Including the things we have already broken, they are already part of it too. Pretty big topic to go into right now, but yeah, people should read the Nausicaä books carefully.

The completionist in me forced me to finish the original Twin Peaks. By social osmosis, I knew it was weird. Now I know that it is weird. There’s some cool stuff, a lot of bad stuff, overall kind of pointless, both as a show and as a story. In other words, I have no desire to see a movie or a third season. The completionist in me is fine with that.

I can’t really say that Fuel is a good game and I recommend it. It is mediocre or decent, depending on how generous you are. So I’ll just explain why I finished it and enjoyed it.

I like games where you travel. Fuel has a huge map, one of, if not the biggest one. I just did races – there are some cool ones, but a lot of them are just a chore – so I could uncover collectibles, and then I would drive around while listening to a podcast or a video.

This other part is debatable, but from this game I get vibes of what I call quiet apocalypse. The first paragraph of the plot of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō on Wikipedia explains it very well, and it is easy to see why something like this can actually be not terrifying, but comforting. It is also the least spoiler-y example I can think of. No, Fuel is not Nausicaä-like :)

I also finished Sudocats. The developers found their thing (their company is called Devcats), very subtle), it’s not a bad thing, but there is not much beyond that. Also, in this game I just switched to working with numbers instead of cats, you know.

/i\ Slight spoiler for the story of Tears of the Kingdom and Skyward Sword.

I finally did it! I finally beat Picross S9! Oof.

So, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, huh? Some things still good, some things got better, some things got worse.

Looking at the gameplay as a whole, without going into too much detail, it falls into the “still good” category. Tweaks, additions, replacements are good, but some things got, if not worse, then maybe more annoying.

Story is an area that I feel is clearly worse than in Breath of the Wild. Not only did we lose the simplicity and some, dare I say it, bold choices of the previous game, we just went back to the magical bullshit that is a dime a dozen in fantasy games.

Or, another way of looking at it, Skyward Sword did it better.

And Zelda is still out there somewhere, doing important things, I promise. It is no longer Nausicaä-like either.

When looking at changes from one game to the next, it is interesting to try to figure out if it was something the developers themselves saw as a flaw, or if they were listening to criticism. One area of particular interest is representation. I haven’t counted, but my general feeling is that there are more characters of color, even in species that used to be “monocolored,” like Gorons. They at least tried (not for me to judge if they were successful or not) to address the Gerudo situation. We may even have a gay character, gasp! But they keep hiring white voice actors to voice characters of color, so it’s still a mixed bag at best.

In the end, I can’t say that TotK is better than BotW, and there’s no reason to ever go back to it. And I can’t say it’s worse either, far from it. If I try to be objective, it’s a sequel, through and through, that I enjoyed very much because it’s a sequel to a game that I also enjoyed very much. But if I’m honest, I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t get at least one significant improvement in at least one area.

I don’t know what it is about most point-and-click games that makes them so repulsive to me, while The Case of the Golden Idol is so brain-ticklingly delightful. To say “moon logic” is unsatisfying: what is logical to me may be illogical to someone else. Anyway, I liked the deductive challenge of this game. The story is the least interesting part. On the one hand, this is understandable, since it should be simple and familiar enough to have as few logical leaps as possible to avoid said “moon logic”. On the other hand, I think it should have pushed more boundaries, so to speak, “dudes being dudes” is boring.

I also finished Zodiacats a small puzzle-ish game, just to relax.

As I said, I wanted to find Nausicaä-like games. And I found plenty, but before the big release¹ I only managed to finish two.

Light of Alariya is a The Wind Waker-like game where you sail the sands and solve some puzzles on islands. It takes a bit of imagination to see the similarities to Nausicaä specifically, but it is certainly in a similar vein. There is some junk in controls and performance, but it is free and quite short.

Without spoiling the Wavetale story, the premise alone – there was a war, then a catastrophe, now the world is covered in gloom, etc. – is quite similar. With spoilers – even more. It’s not one-to-one, not at all, but it can easily be qualified as a Nausicaä-like. The gameplay is fun and breezy, especially because of the fluid movement. Not a long game, just the right length helps too.

I’m still reading through the Nausicaä books, so that also might be a theme to return to.

¹ – Picross S9, obv.

(!) Content warning: Nazis, phrenology, amputation, body modification.

I wrote this years ago, not because I wanted another BioShock game, with or without that asshole Ken Levine, but because I thought it would be an interesting exercise to imagine how to fix this deeply problematic series. I don’t think you can, at least not easily. And I don’t think anyone should. But since they are going to try anyway, the question got stuck in my head.

I left the text mostly intact, just cleaned up a few mistakes and typos, and decided to make a post. After all, why have a blog if you can’t put your bizarre and useless thoughts on it. 😁

Huge caveat: you would need an amazing, diverse, brilliant, clever, knowledgeable development team to pull this off without stepping on any landmines, otherwise don’t even bother – I don’t want another game that mishandles a serious issue.

So, problem. BioShock is kind of like taking an already bad idea, turning it up to 11, and watching it collapse, right? Fascism eats itself because it can’t function without enemies. So here is the setting: World War II is over. A bunch of Nazis flee to, say, South America (and I’m not going to go into details here because I don’t think I’m qualified to be on a team that can pull this off). They discover a very well hidden plateau (you can play with ideas from The Lost World here, but not too much: no dino fights or anything like that). At first they kidnap the locals to build them a city, but very quickly they say “we are Nazis, we don’t want to see anyone non-Aryan!” Their solution? First, they introduce a “purity” rating. If you are a 1 (highest) you can be in government, if you are a 5 you can have an office job, and if you are a 10, well, somebody has to drive cars. Second, robots. You have to have some techno BS there, right? And those two things create a conflict: on the one hand, you have people trying to be very “pure” through plastic surgery and gene manipulation. On the other hand, people would say, hey, you can’t even count the bumps on my head if I’m just a brain in a metal body. Cyborgs, baby! And on the third hand, you’ve got people who can’t afford the first two solutions. Conflict, war, collapse, ruin. The setting is set.

Protagonist. Local woman, anthropologist, archaeologist or something. Gets a rumor about something weird, gathers a team, goes there. Strange lighthouse (there’s always one, blah-blah-blah…), seems to be automated with strange technology. Oh, right, by the way, you need some time to build a city, prosper a bit and then collapse, at least 30 years after WWII, so the game is set in the 90s or later. You follow a fuel pipe, it goes underground, through some caves, and then very high up, and boom, you are in the ruins of a Nazi city in the jungle. You’re still with a team (instead of talking to Nazis, you get missions from your teammates), you build a camp. The exit collapses (sabotage?), so the goal is simple: get out. The next day you are attacked by some robots, they hurt you, your team takes you to what they think is a hospital (no one speaks German), there is a strange machine that looks like it should heal you… and it does, by replacing your arm with a metal one! So instead of plasmids or tonics, you can have upgrades to your arm that give you not only combat abilities, but other stuff too. Maybe you can crush locks and get into rooms. Or use zip lines. Or even have a hook shot! With a camp that you return to, it can be cool to have Metroidvania elements. So you go on missions, explore stuff, fight Nazis, metal or not, maybe start to learn a language so you can understand more and more of what happened here. The usual BioShock stuff.

Twist. Hm. Not sure if it’s a good one, since it kind of undermines the “Nazis are going to eat themselves”, so you have to be careful when implementing it. So you start to find evidence of communication with the outside world. Someone from Europe. USA. South Africa. Russia. Etc. Basically, rich people all over the world were supporting this city by sending resources. There are Nazis everywhere, shocking, I know. But when they realized that all the promises – “We are totally gathering the army here to take over the world, you guys!” – were BS, they stopped sending ships, and then the city collapsed because it wasn’t sustainable, because Nazis suck at everything. So if you gather enough evidence before you leave, you’ll get a good ending where you expose all these rich fascists. If not, then you start an underground group (there are enough people who believe you) to fight them. So even a “bad” is still pretty good, because it’s a power fantasy and because fuck Nazis.

Looking back, there are some things that need to be massaged into shape, sure, but overall it is a decent start, if I may say so myself.

Also, my position seems to have been if you want to be political – remember how Infinite tried to be “both sides” but was really just racist? – go for it. Hire a diverse group of people, do extensive research, be careful, but go for it. If the rumors about the setting of the new BioShock are true, they don’t want to do that. Well, I could be wrong, but choosing another remote location, where they are trying to create a very sanitized version of a topic they want to explore, is telling.