Monster of the Week

Welcome to Monster of the Week, a Monday feature that looks at a monster from a game we really love. Whether you have to shoot at it, knock it out of the park, punch it in the face or RUN AWAY!, it'll be in this column if it impressed us. There might be spoilers in here, so if you haven't played the game, you have been warned.

Week 1: Closer, Silent Hill 3

Ah, Silent Hill 3. You were so short, and even on Hard, you were at least doable. I plan to talk about all the Silent Hill games at some point in this blog, but I thought I'd give the special honor of our first Monster of the Week to this ...thing.


Location: Around the mall, amusement park, anywhere they can fit.



Audio: It sounds like someone slurping ramen while fighting a rabid lion...IN HELL!

Kill?: There's one cutscene in the game where Heather kills one of these things; it's feasting on the remains of Harry Mason, I believe (poor guy). Heather uses her newly-found handgun on it but honestly, it looks like a toy against it with its two meaty appendages and tall, tall frame. At least Closers are no match for the Heather Beam! Every other time you encounter this thing holding a melee weapon, you're in for a losing fight. Considering that killing every enemy in the game results in losing points, and puts you in a defenseless position, it's best to run past these things. They're in the game to serve as blockades that can kill you, so it behooves you to simply run past. Of course, that doesn't mean you can't derive pleasure from killing one now and then.

Other: Few games can boast having personalized, intimate and terrifying monsters that are more than the requisite baddies that pop out of pipes. You can bet I'll cover other Silent Hill monsters in this space but what I'll really love about it is that the meaning/design will change every time.

One of the possible interpretations I have for the design and meaning of this monster (shh--let's not pretend it was in Silent Hill 2!) is from the child Alessa's memory: adults in the hospital tending to her incredibly burned body must have seemed very tall. As this thing has no face or even a mouth, I'm guessing it could stand for the internalized shame and helplessness (maybe the desire to disappear or be faceless) Alessa felt while dependent on machines and nurses. (It explains the skirt!) As the monster's name implies, these things tend to move (FAST) towards where you are, and do their brand of damage. There must be a warped sense of intimacy feeding the design: the care and attention paid to a small child demands closeness, yet the feeling of self-hatred and disgust twists even the best of intentions into something horrible and inescapable.

Your thoughts?

Li'l T out.

A little reprive!

Happy Tuesday, my gametes! Well, I was poking around on Digg and found this article, which talks about the retarded way games are critiqued and rated.

Restaurants, hotels, cars, Olympic performances, and earthquakes (to name a few) all have rating systems: established, criteria-based scales reviewers/judges/instruments use in evaluation. You'd think that reviewing games would be an easy shoe-in to the world of reviewing, but lately I've been more rankled at how game sites and publications handle their ratings.

Before I start arguing with the three friends I know have an opinion on this, let me state: I realize reviewing a game is much like reviewing a movie or a book: any entertainment, successful execution and the artistic value is so completely subject that unless we readers agree with how the reviewer thinks (at some point), our opinions are rarely swayed. Why? Value is a hard thing to get a bead on, to pin a prize on. Different people look for different things.

Or should they?

The excerpt below pretty much states my own opinions on game ratings:

[A perfect "10" rating] is something that should be given out relatively rarely, and only to those games which are truly deserving. It shouldn't be given out everytime the developer throws money at us, or just because it's part of a franchise that has previous garnered high scores. Yet it should also not be tucked away like some sort of emergency score, only to be used in case of the videogame equivalent of the Second Coming.

Ms. Game and Watch is comprised of opinion pieces and like the article I'm referring to, I don't expect you to agree with what I or Anthony at Destructoid think but if you disagree, I would always request a good reason backing your difference.

I go to a restaurant for an experience. Sometimes I go out to eat things I am perfectly capable of making at home. When I go out for say, a burger and fries, I'm relishing in the experience of eating in a place different than my dining room. I hear other people or ambient music, I see people on the street or other diners, I feel the weight of unfamiliar cutlery and take everything in: this is gestalt in its truest form, my friends! A critic gives consideration to every part of a restaurant experience; the food itself is the centerpiece.

Having illustrated the unified whole that is evaluation of enjoyment, let me transition to how I think games should be rated.

A scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 gives us a quick picture, a cursory glance and a snapshot of what we should expect. My rub is that if you play a game for the first time--even if you spend ten minutes with it--you're going to form some opinions on different components. One single-digit score shouldn't satisfy your need for evaluation. What about say, 30 different number ratings on the same game? I think it'd be a better model to work from. Yes, games need to be evaluated on a "metacritic" level; not just the opinions of one guy who was told by his editors to have a final draft in his hands title a month and a half from now. A publication that gives out an "A" to every game that doesn't suck in an obvious way is really giving out a "B". A's, I think, should be incredibly rare, and should draw almost unanimous approval from consumers and reviewers alike, such as with games like Okami, which got rave reviews at its E3 premiere...or Bioshock, which everyone loves. Yes, these games are not perfect, but they deserve A's--not this or this. This toes the line, if for no other reason than the only thing different from CoD3 was the much needed and improved multi-player feature. It should have probably been titled CoD 3.1.

In discussion, I eked out a lifecycle I think applies to game production, consumption and resurrection: If we become more critical about what games we buy (look at several reviews, not just one, consider the reviewer as a person with individual tastes and opinions), we become more selective. Our selectivity and refusal to buy a game that has a franchise name slapped on it, with franchise sprites stuffed within, with crappy programming/dialog/sound/graphics help these types of games being made. I'm sure you've been privy to the desperate pleas of some video game reviewers who protest that the only reason they have to review the latest iteration of say, a crappy Naruto game, is because companies know that anything titled "Naruto" featuring the characters (or even perhaps 'From the makers of...', as films tend to do) will bring in money. "If you stop buying these shitty titles", they caution, "they'll stop being made. And that makes [us] suffer a lot less!"

What then?

Better games start being made. Developers (in an ideal world) realize that cheap flash-powder and smoke-and-mirror gimmicks won't work for a segment of the population. They'll realize that games don't belong to a gender, but they do to an age group. Rather than attempting to lure us to an 8-bit Mario sprite (extending from a tentacle sprouting from that ugly anglerfish that is nostalgia), they realize that innovation is always possible. Where new creation is not possible, they eschew tactics that play on our character affinities in the most indulgent of ways (i.e., having a Smash Bros. for the Wii is awesome! Making it just like the other iterations is ...pointless? For people like myself who sort of missed the hype the first time, it's not the most welcoming of experiences, but that's another post.) but still give us something we find much enjoyment in.

To illustrate my point: The first Mario Kart: genius. The first Smash Bros. Brawl: genius. Every iteration gets more tired, even though they change platforms. Feel free to disagree. This isn't to say I got a kick out of say, Mario Kart DS or Smash Bros Melee but it was kind of like the same food in the same cafeteria but on a different day. Sometimes the meatloaf is too salty, sometimes it's not salty enough. The potatoes were a little watery today but they were decent last week. If you're smart, you'll bring your lunch once in a while, or even go out.

Be a smart consumer. Read, read, and re-read all you can before you get a game. Once you're used to reading reviews, you know what to look for. You see that reviewers are like you: they have certain likes and dislikes. They have more experience with certain games than others. They can be fannish and they can be wary of change. Sometimes they can even be in denial (ergo the perfect 10s I see for crappy, run-of-the-mill games). Kirby is cute, I agree, but he is not excluded from the possibility of being in a terrible, waste of time title. Money talks, and it works both ways. Popular crappy games ensure more popular crappy games. Well-made games indicate gamers want more well-made games. This is what we're about!

The Good, the Bad, and the Lovely: Hana Tsu Vachel (Fear Effect and Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix)

"The Good, the Bad, and the Lovely" puts female characters under the microscope and then injects a healthy dose of feminism. I'd like to start with one of the favorite female protagonists of my Playstation-crazed adolescence:


Hana Tsu Vachel was the heroine of the Kronos developed action game Fear Effect and its prequel, Retro Helix, which were released for the Playstation near the end of its life cycle. Along with her two comrades- the portly and psychopathic Aussie, Deke, and the sufferer of the perpetual five o'clock shadow, Glas- Hana undertook secret and deadly operations which usually to lead to unexpected and supernatural places.

Not surprisingly, Hana is the typical temptress-assassin: she lures the men in with her sly, womanly charm and then strikes like a viper. She's all too aware of her feminine power, using her assets to her advantage when possible. This may or may not stem from her history as a prostitute for much of her young, orphaned life. Along with that history comes a detachment which allows her to accomplish kills effortlessly and battle to the depths of Chinese hell without being phased. Hana is also of Chinese-French heritage, but I won't go into the related notions of exoticness of her character because of race (perhaps another time, another article).

Fear Effect has much to say about the exploitation of women, whether it intends to or not. The game's initial mission is purely exploitation: the team wishes to procure a triad leader's missing daughter before she's found in order to ransom her. However, the bigger themes are that of prostitution and general sexual exploitation. Prostitution is not just Hana's history, but she's forced to confront it during a portion of the game which takes place inside a brothel. Ruthless as she is, Hana still has a soft spot for the plight of prostitutes and wishes to save young girls from the misery of such a life.

Sadly, this is not where the exploitation ends. In true action heroine fashion, Hana is subjected to skimpy outfits and near nudity throughout the games and also in the 'scandalous' girl-on-girl ads for the prequel game featuring Hana and her partner, Rain. The generous proportions and tight, revealing outfits are, unfortunately, expected. A real curve ball was thrown, however, during the second game (besides the tentacle assault against Rain during the first section) when Hana and Rain engaged in elements of a homosexual relationship beyond the campy suggestions of the game's advertisements.

I don't wish to downplay the importance of including homosexuality in what could be argued is a sphere of heteronormativity, but a homosexual relationship between Hana and Rain is problematic, at best. Hana's history of prostitution and "love 'em and kill 'em" assassination of men could implicate that the feelings she has for Rain are only possible because 1) Hana has been victimized emotionally and physically by men and 2) because Rain is a woman. Whether or not you like to believe it, there are certain members of humanity who truly think (with little or no evidence) that homosexuality is a result of sexual victimization of a person by a member of either sex. To my knowledge, it was never explicitly stated that Hana preferred one sex to the other or had any ill feelings about men in general simply because of prostitution, but it doesn't help that Hana's history of sexual preference or any misandry on her part is not clarified.

Another element of the Hana/Rain relationship is the exploitation of the girl-on-girl fantasy. Fear Effect is edgy and action-packed, so I never expected such games to be free of female objectification, but the team seemed to want to further push the exploitation by introducing scenes in which the women express lustful sentiments toward each other and act playfully about their sexual relationship in front of others. This game is all for the "male fantasy", D.E.B.S.-style action with two girls getting it on, but there is something to be said that there are very few pieces of media which portray homosexual relationships (or even just women in general) as being genuine, thoughtful, compassionate, and loyal. Fear Effect does nothing in the way of improving the portrayal of homosexual relationships in any medium.

Sure, the game is not out to make any great statements about feminism, female sexual victimization, or lesbian relationships. Instead it does what it sets out to do: present an edgy, futuristic, bloody, mature action-adventure with elements of mythology and folklore seeping into the modern-day grit of the underground. Hana is therefore everything to be expected from an action heroine, but it should still be conceded that her portrayal is not one which is always empowering or enlightening. The game is admirable on many points, especially including Hana as the biggest lead amongst two other male playable characters, but more could have been done in the way of female or lesbian empowerment with this character than the creators seemed willing to put forth the effort for.

Overall, I still highly recommend the games and have great esteem for Hana's character though she does fall short of the great female protagonist she could have been.

Just Stop: Amnesia Plots

"Just Stop" is a semi-regular feature which examines and picks on features prevalent in gaming stories, characters, and mechanics. The point of the feature is not to insult your favorite games, but rather to show how certain conventions could be improved or scrapped in favor of better ones.

Notable Offenders: Many console Final Fantasies (automatically excluding X and XII for "I'm from another world" and "evil twin!" syndromes respectively) and other Squenix games, Lost Odyssey, Silent Hill 2, Fear Effect 2, Haunting Ground, Baten Kaitos, The Witcher, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Second Sight, Prototype, Arc the Lad II, D2, Baten Kaitos, Street Fighter (series story), Shadow Run, Xenogears, XIII, Shadow Hearts, Magna Carta, Sonic the Hedgehog (series story), and many, many others.

The chance of meeting a type of amnesiac in real life is extremely slim (unless you work in a field which would cause you to encounter them frequently), yet I'm willing to put money down that nearly every gamer has played a game which uses a form of amnesia in its plot. Are amnesia plots that interesting? Not terribly, and especially not when the forms of amnesia presented are extremely unrealistic. Amnesia is often used as a plot device in order to solve other common problems with writing- namely creating a relatable protagonist and introducing plot twists or complications.

There are several explanations frequently used for amnesia in games: psychological trauma, major physical trauma/death/near-death, and magic (and, yes, I am qualifying futuristic technology under magic). The disturbing thing is how few and far between believable occurrences of amnesia actually are. Instances of "I don't know who I am and can't remember my life up until some convenient plot point" are not only frequent, but unbelievable. If you can't remember who you are or any of your life then you are not suffering from amnesia, but it's possible you are suffering from a form of dementia.

Why is amnesia so frequent, then? Glad you asked. Loss of memory allows writers to withhold information from the player to make the story more interesting at some later point when they unveil the "what a twist!" a la M. Night Shyamalan: a fact which, until this point, was unknown and will change the player's outlook or interpretation of events. The problem with using amnesia to introduce complications to the story is that it's possibly the easiest and laziest way to make a story work. Don't want the players to know that all the main characters had met before they were introduced to each other in the game? Make all the characters forget their lives using some sort of magic (unfortunately, that scenario has happened more than once). It's painful to see so many great stories get nearly ruined when such a story telling cliché is introduced. Amnesia can absolutely ruin a good plot by making the player feel betrayed and patronized by the writers.

Having said that, there are several games which use amnesia to make great stories. The best use, I would argue, is by creating the unreliable narrator- a character who a player can sympathize with and trust until it is revealed that the character was lying (unknowingly) all along. Sadly, once amnesia has been successfully used once, it's hard to replicate and match that instance. Arguably, Silent Hill 2 has an iconic use of unreliable narrator that is difficult to surpass.

Removing the amnesia element from an already working story is a problem. In order for the story to be cohesive, a piece of information has to be willingly withheld from the viewer. If memory problems are forbidden, then a protagonist would have to willingly deceive other characters and generally be a jerk. Players are just not as sympathetic to heroes who engage in long-term deception and mind games with their party of trusted comrades. Imagine if Cloud was consciously lying to Aeris and Tifa about Zack and his (nonexistent) role in SOLDIER- it would make him seem even crazier than he already was. A player generally wants to believe that the protagonist is reliable because it makes for easier transition into the gaming world.

So what now? Writers should be challenged to avoid story telling clichés that have been used in practically all writing and mythology from the beginning of time. There's no excuse for defaulting to "It was my evil twin" or "I can't remember those first 17 years of my life" to create a plot twist for the player. Indeed there are games coming out all the time which can use plot twists without resorting to use of amnesia and hopefully there are many more to come.

FIRST!

Welcome to our girl gaming blog. We weren't really sure what to call this thing; a lot of good titles were taken. Also, calling a blog 'Feminist Gaming' is a little bit of a contradiction, since really hard-core feminists can find a million things wrong with any game...even Tetris... and we're not just going to use this as a bitching repository for how every game has offended us.

I mean, don't get me wrong. There will be plenty of bitching. But part of being a responsible feminist and a responsible gamer is to turn off FIGHT mode once in a while. I might rally against Cooking Mama once in a while but you know I still play that game because I demand gold medals for my omelettes and spring rolls.

Li'l T out.