(!) 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.
First by accident, then on purpose, I played only cyberpunk games this month. Mostly. This was a pretty good idea, as it narrowed down the selection even more and allowed me to finally play games I have wanted to play for years.
Sludge Life – ‘tude the game. Great style and music, simple (collect-a-thon-y – if you want) gameplay. Mostly vibes, really. Is it cyberpunk or something else distopian? Eh, cyberpunk-y enough. Bonus points for how gender selection is implemented. Not going to spoil it :)
Retro cyberpunk? Why not! Quadrilateral Cowboy is a puzzle game with proper command-line interface. It is not a hardcore programming game, like some other games that hurt my brain, that part is easy. Add classic Brendon Chung style and you have a pretty good time being cube, doing crimes.
I said that Metroid Prime: Hunters was a bad idea, but what I did not mention was that I played Liberation Maiden before and loved it. I even went back and replayed some levels to get unlocks, because I liked the paint-and-shoot gameplay. Not sure if it is called that, but it is an apt description.
Warp Shift is a neat puzzle game that kinda lost me in the end, so I finished it with a guide. It is on me, because I got anxious every time I played it for no reason. Weird brain stuff, it happens.
Claustrophobia and loneliness, visual style and music aged quite well and were tastefully updated for Metroid Prime Remastered. But there are clunky parts, no doubt about it. I am not sure how much of that is due to age, and how much of it is due to the specific task the developers had in front of them: translating Metroid from side-scrolling 2D to first-person 3D. I wonder if Prime 4 is in a similar situation: knowing Nintendo, they will probably fight against any conventional and quality-of-life change that goes against what they perceive as tradition. But let’s all agree that changing weapons and visors is no fun.
Loading Story is short and free and, um, sad, question mark.
What if you just want to shoot some dudes? But do it in style, you know? Severed Steel is the answer! And what an answer it is: shoot, jump, slide, destroy the level itself, and all that in stylish slo-mo. What not to like!
Neon Struct: Die Augen der Welt is not an indie Deus Ex. It is more of an indie Thief set in a cyberpunk world. There are some elements of an immersive sim, but it is mostly a stealth game. What I did not expect is that there are a lot of social areas where you can walk around, talk to people, and do the occasional side quest. And there are also consequences to your actions: it is not a deep system, but the game acknowledging what you have done is a pretty cool touch.
Unfortunate name aside, I bet if Master Reboot was been released today, it would not have those action scenes. Puzzles, jump scares, sure. But first-person platforming? Nah. It doesn’t ruin the game, far from it, but I know that I didn’t get the whole story because I was annoyed and didn’t go back to find more collectibles.
In the end, I really liked having a theme for a month. There are still a lot of cyberpunk games I want to play, so I will probably come back to this theme. But for next month, something else.
The Spirit and the Mouse is a nice little game about, you guest it, a mouse that helps a spirit helping people with problems caused by a recent thunderstorm. Kind of a puzzle-platformer, except you don’t jump, you climb and fall. The mouse is female, by the way.
I think I collected everything in Lunistice, which means it is not a super hard game. I had about 40+ deaths in one level, but I finished it anyway because it felt mostly fair. Mostly because there is still a problem with precise jumping in 3D platformers, so some failures are clearly not on me. That minor annoyance aside, a pretty good platformer.
TOEM is just lovely. Running around, taking pictures to solve quests. Neat. Not sure what else to add, but I want to highlight it anyway.
Mythic Ocean is a visual novel with some exploration. It’s hard to explain why I liked the story, partly because I don’t want to spoil anything, and partly because it’s a bit dreamlike: mostly fantasy, with a pitch of sci-fi, and some alegory thrown in. Just slightly fuzzy, you know, in a good way.
I’m also a good indicator of point-and-click adventures: if I can complete one without a guide, there’s no “moon logic” in the game. She and the Light Bearer is a good one of those, quite beautiful with a nice story.
I wanted to check out the Mario Kart series, so I chose Mario Kart 7: it is relatively short (if you want to “finish” it in a sense) and you can play as Princess Peach. Pretty good, but I can’t say I loved it and want to play more or the 8th one.
The in-fury-ating thing about Super Mario 3D World: Bowser’s Fury, is that all other characters with costumes and animations and whatnot are right there, so why are we stuck with just the mustachioed stereotype again? Other than that, I think this open-world structure is my favorite for games like this. Super Mario 3D World itself? Nah. I bet I’d love Odyssey, I just don’t want to! :/
Can you finish Tetris? I played through all the stages of Tetris Effect Connected, so *shrug*.
On the other hand, I did something that I almost never do: I stopped playing a game before the official end, but still consider it finished, with an asterisk. Dragon Quest Builders makes enough changes to a Minecraft formula, and some of them are pretty good and should be stolen by other games in the genre, but ultimately there are enough bad or pointless changes that I can’t justify playing another, what, three chapters? I backed up my save so I can return to it or, most likely, just play Builders 2 at some point. Or not.
It is not for me to judge whether stories like The Suicide of Rachel Foster should exist. What is a fair question is why only stories like this seem to exist? Why is it that almost every narrative game with a female protagonist is about that protagonist’s suffering, almost always at the hands of a man? Again, a valuable, very valuable story, but where are the alternatives that are so abundant for male characters?
Beasts of Maravilla Island, Behind the Frame and Paradise Marsh are in a category of games that, if you want to play something like that, that’s fine, they’re fine games. Fine. Really. But none of them grabbed me and actually reminded me that we’re way, way past the time when these cool, quirky, beautiful, unique indie games were a rarity and would have gotten a lot more attention just for existing. That’s kind of cool.
Finally dipped my toe into the Metroid series. Decided to go by timeline chronology rather than releases. Also chose remakes over originals. Which means I finished Metroid: Zero Mission on my, ahem, liberated 3DS. Minus the stealth part, a pretty good game overall and a great introduction to the series.
Been playing the Picross S series on Switch. Finished all E’s and S1 on 3DS a while ago, and now S2, S3, and S4 on Switch. Perfect podcast games. BTW, as a colorblind person, I can attest that their Color Picross variant is quite good.
A Plague Tale: Requiem is in the “was a sequel necessary?” category, but is pretty good, so OK.
There are three last levels in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker that broke me, and soured the overall impression a bit. But otherwise a great game.
You play as Toadette for half the game. And the traditional kidnapping is presented as not really a kidnapping: Wingo wants a star, it’s just that Toad and Toadette can’t let go of their capitalistic nature and that star. Does that give Nintendo a pass? Not really, but I think it is a good example of Nintendo being less evil and more traditional to a fault. They would stick to a structure, but be willing to work on the periphery or in new areas.
