Christwire.org: Is Skyrim Teaching Your Children How to Perform “Rim Jobs” and Other Homo Erotic Sex Maneuvers?
If you are a responsible parent, then the world of MMORPG first person shooters should be something of a foreign language to you. In games like Skyrim, players are teleported to a far way lands that are cream filled with demonic spell crafting, violent shirtless blood shed and exposed not only Satanic critters, but bombarded with gay under tones of fecal fornication.
In the land of Skyrim, the player starts off as a captured terrorist, who has been caught plotting to destroy the golden empire by using dragons. Before the player gets to take control of his avatar, they are asked to create a character, which is purely the liberal’s way of teaching out kids that modifying and gender changing one’s self is fun and normal. Once the player has decided if they want to be a female wood fairy or an black ogre from Stormwind, they get to take control of their hell spawned fictitious demon.
Complex.com: The 10 Most Emo Games
By Justin Amirkhani
The chief argument in the games-as-art debate seems to be that if games can produce emotionally evocative experiences then they have to be considered art, as that’s the definition of artistry. We may all get a rush facing down a Zerg brood or pulling of a slick 360 no-scope, but these are basal emotions that the medium has always excelled at.
What takes real finesse is for a game to deliver an experience that makes us feel something other than the blunt thrill violence, and there are few titles that do it well. They may be a little more abstract than your usual linear titles, but these are the games that make the best effort to let their player get in touch with their feelings.
Gamepro.com: 5 Great (Unexpected) Songs in Video Game Trailers
By Tom Price
The music in the GTA V trailer blew our mind, and got us thinking of some of our other all-time favorite music in game trailers.
Killscreendaily.com: Things I Ate in Skyrim
By Gus Mastrapa
Descending a sunlit mountain path just after exiting the cave at the beginning of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, I found myself at a crossroads. I could follow the stony trail toward Riverwood, the game’s first village, or I could take the road less traveled. That’s when I noticed the lovely insect floating above my head. The butterfly lit upon a large rock, then took to the air. I looked up, plucked the creature out of the air, and checked my inventory. I’d already plucked its wings from its body—presumably to be mixed into a potion. Rather than waiting to find a use for this strange reagent, I ate the wings. A golden aura swirled around my body and I discovered that butterfly wings can restore health. It was then that I decided to push west and eat everything in Skyrim that I could get my hands on.
Oedipal Crises and Hysterical Neuroses in Arkham City
Batman: Arkham City Review
Batman, for me, is a crazy person who did not get enough attention as a child, and, truly, it is hard to get attention when your parents are dead. I understand why he is the way he is. Right at the climax of his desire for his mother, the thing he desires the most and the function which is supposed to introduce him into the world of sanity are killed; and so his adjustment toward culture is a little impaired—and by impaired I mean he walks around wearing a cape and wastes his money on gadgets, only to, of course, let killers and robbers escape from prison after their capture, so they may kill and rob again. This is the paradox, the symptom of Batman: He does not finish the job because he enjoys the job, even if he scowls about it all the time, with his signature brood. This is, after all, what Joker has been telling him in all media all of a sudden: Batman needs him, for Batman is trapped in this sort of sexual, libidinal enjoyment involving being all angry, and fighting criminals, and pretending to not like what he does, that it is so difficult. He pretends it’s work, but it is actually sex, done to satisfy mommy, because what else would mommy love more than her little superhero saving the day in the dark…
In Arkham City, Bruce Wayne is captured as a political prisoner for speaking against the new super-prison, which is an enclosure within Gotham that houses all the former inmates of Arkham Asylum. The Joker is sick, and he injects Batman with his blood so that Batman will find a cure. Mayhem ensues. Arkham City, while rendered beautifully with characteristic darkness, in terms of lighting and atmosphere, is really quite dead and desolate, save for the occasional political prisoner predictably being abused, which you must predictably save, though the venues in which Batman goes to do his adventures are just as fulfilling to traverse as in the previous installment.
Most of the fun comes from using your gadgets to scare enemies into chaos and knocking them unconscious one by one while a supervillian complains about their incompetence over the PA system. It is especially entertaining when only a few is left and they have gone completely paranoid and crazy. Batman, of course, does not kill any of them. Instead, he knocks them all unconscious, with the fighting system which is fluid and complex, utilizing a variety of moves, techniques, and gadgets. It is enjoyable beating people up as it is picking them off from the rafters.
A lot of Batman rogues gallery favorites also make an appearance (Mr. Freeze, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, The Riddler, and you even get to play as Catwoman in a parallel storyline, if you pay to redeem some code or whatever; there are also about a dozen I have never even heard of), with my personal favorite, The Penguin, which, thankfully, is not rendered as some deformed Danny DeVito. Most of them appear through side-quests, which are so well formed that they are more like alternate main storylines, rather than mere extra distractions from the entire point.
The game is well crafted, which, in large part, means it is not overdone. There is a certain unity to it all, a certain attachment for the necessary parts which work well together, rather than for the frivolous entertainments of less refined video games. The gameplay is also much longer than the first installment, with substantial content to which one may return after finishing the main story.
My only complaint, really, is that the storyline could have been much more than this simple entanglement of schemes and twists. The previous installment inquired upon Batman’s psyche, but now it is just people stealing from each other and doing bad things. For me, the ultimate point of interest is not really how Batman beats people up, but why, exactly, he is so crazy, why he is so paradoxical and inefficient in the ways that matter, but efficient in the theatrics. For me what is interesting is not so much the story as it is, secretly, the story of how poor Bruce still loves Mommy.
Crimes Committed Backwards
Video Games and Teleology
I finished Ghost Trick a few days back, and I realized that for a story about a ghost trying to find his identity involving national intrigue, betrayal, deadly Rube Glodbergs, and so forth, it could have only occurred in what Leibniz famously called “the best of all possible worlds.” This is to say, there would have be a god in this particular universe and it would have to be a god so good that is it vulgar. For the coincidences within the story to have taken place, there should have been a clear final cause in the mind of this crazy demiurge, from which the events of the game would have been traced backward until the game’s beginning wherein all the conditions would have been entirely perfect, such that no door that leads to the end will be locked, no stray bullet will cancel all efforts, and so on.
It is actually for this precise reason that all video games are inevitably utopian and most occur backwards; this is to say, the divine hand which guides the almost-impossible events of the video game could be seen as the reversing of a video of a complicated maneuver: Consider a video of a round bullet which enters the barrel of a gun. How was this almost-impossible act done? Simple: It was the gun which shot the bullet, but it was played out backwards, in reverse.
This is precisely the reason why Grand Theft Auto IV, more than in its Imaginary dimension of representation—of storyline, characters, etc.—is subversive in the Symbolic dimension in that the existents within the game possess attributes of their own whose interaction is not strictly governed by teleological processes, such that each event or mission may be handled in a variety of ways. There is a goal, but the elements of the game do not point to it directly. It is up to the agency of the player to find a way to use the autonomous elements such that the goal is met. In this precise sense, Grand Theft Auto IV is anti-teleological. This makes it easy to conceive why it may be charged with nihilism. There is no final cause. Even if the plot of the game ends, the world will continue to persist precisely because there is no “ending” to which its elements merely needed to reach, and upon its consummation its reason to exist will be nullified.
Consider, for example, in Ghost Trick when the playable character, who, as a spirit, may jump from item to item to reach a certain destination, spots a tea pot on the floor, thus allowing him to make out a path toward the basement of the building, we can see very clearly that this tea pot was placed there authoritatively by the game’s authors so that the video game’s goals may be met. This is to say, the placing of the tea pot was teleological. It is as if, as with the example with the gun, the end, the final cause, was first thought out and that the rest was designed backwards.
We know that in reality, it does not occur this way. There is no “final cause.” What seems to be a smooth chain of cause and effect is actually retrospective meaning-making. The universe is fundamentally absurd, and what we make out to be meaningful results are actually contingent accidents. Evolution, for example, is thought to be teleological. Upon closer inspection, however, we can see that the very mechanism of evolution—natural selection—depends upon millions if not billions of years of accidents which, in its clumsiness, will eventually be enough to instill another fundamental error which will allow further accidents to take place. Is this precisely why we still have a tail bone, though none of us have tails? Its exclusion is not the deliberation of an intelligent mind or mystical cause. It was the result of a beneficial accident.
The Imaginary chaos of the Grand Theft Auto series, therefore, is supplemented by a far greater disorder beneath this Imaginary, a Symbolic chaos which makes it truly subversive. Its elements do not cohere into an organic whole. Perhaps this is how the series should be read: Rather than a commentary on contemporary capitalist society, or on the profound absurdity of violence, perhaps it speaks of a fundamental nihilism where, as Sartre put it, humanity is condemned to its freedom precisely because there is no final meaning. It is precisely when you strive to be nothing that you finally realize you can do anything.
CNN.com: The 10 best video games of 2010
By Scott Steinberg
From an explosion of social games and iPhone apps to the rise of motion controls, cloud computing and retro revivals, 2010 has been a year of surprises and revelations for gaming enthusiasts.
But it’s also been a generous one to PC and home console owners, with dozens of gob-smacking titles available for almost every system.
Between the launch of long-awaited epics such as “Gran Turismo 5” and “BioShock 2,” and the return of heavyweights such as “NBA Jam” and “GoldenEye 007,” choosing the year’s top 10 titles is a Herculean task.
It’s doubly so when you consider how subjective every player’s list is, with one man’s “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm” another’s “Fallout: New Vegas.”
That said, here are the 10 games that most captured my attention this year, whether through technical innovation or sheer thumb-waggling goodness.
Which ones make your own personal best list? Be sure to write in and let us know in the comments section below.
Gamasutra.com: Gamasutra's Best Of 2010: Top 5 Cult Games
By Brandon Sheffield
Continuing Gamasutra’s 2010 round-up, Brandon Sheffield presents our top 5 cult hits of the year, a eclectic mix of games from the B-movie esoterica of Deadly Premonition, to the pressures of running a professional game dev sweatshop.
Eurogamer.net: Are Facebook Games Getting Better?
By Andrew Webster
The biggest gaming platform in the world has 500 million users and zero respect. Traditional gamers and developers bemoan the lack of complexity of Facebook games and the shady business practices of those who create them. It’s not uncommon to hear the word “evil” tossed around during discussions of social gaming giant Zynga. But that’s changing.
Once the domain of farming simulators and text-based gangster games, Facebook is now home to in-depth role playing games, full-blown MMOs and some of the biggest names in game development. Names like Ubisoft, Electronic Arts and Square Enix.
Sid Meier is crafting a new version of Civilization specifically for the platform and indie developers are creating unique experiences you can’t find anywhere else. There’s more to Facebook games than just FarmVille.
