felis_ultharus

So in my continuing series of reviews, I thought I'd tackle Bioshock, the anti-Ayn-Rand video game.

The short review: brilliant. I mean, I would've played anything that allows me throw lightning bolts and bees at well-dressed Objectivists. But it also had a brilliant story, and (dare I say it for a game?) cinematography. It has a very Orson Welles feel to it. An anti-Atlas Shrugged meets Citizen Kane, 20,000 leagues under the sea.

( Review continues, with mild spoilers only. )

So, yeah - nearly perfect. I'm looking forward to the sequel. I hope the anti-Objectivist stuff continues, though I've barred friends from spoiling it for me. So who knows? Maybe the archvillain will be Alan Greenspan? He did his part in crashing the world economy with Ayn Rand as his co-pilot, so if anyone deserves to be covered in psychically-generated bees, 'twould be him.

On a completely note, here's the best use of stop-animation ever - the last 14 billion years, summarized. Ray Harryhausen, eat your heart out. This must've taken a decade to produce:

I promised a review of the Persona 4 game awhile ago, seeing as I'd just beat it. The only problem was that I hadn't. A long story, explained below.

For those who haven't played it, Persona 4 could best be described as a combination of Final Fantasy, Silent Hill, and The Sims. It's the story of a serial killer whose weapon of choice is the repressed emotions of their victims. The killer hurls his victims into a world inside the TV, where everything a person hates about themselves takes physical form and kills them on a reality TV show. And everybody's watching.

( Review continues, with only minor spoilers )

I tend to focus on the negative in my reviews, but except for the points mentioned above, it's a very solid game, and yet another entry in the video-games-as-art tally.

That's a rapidly-growing category, but there's barely a word about that in mainstream media. In newspapers, TV, and radio, video games are portrayed the way novels were three hundred years ago -- anywhere from frivolous to a threat.

It's been a quiet few days.

Writing progresses. This heavy edit is about 70% of the way through. I've heavily altered the tone. There's a couple of characterizations of secondary characters I'm not entirely sure about, and the dream sequences are always a sticking point, but I notice there haven't been any massive structural changes in the last two re-writes.

I don't think there will be any more full re-writes, just more edits.

Otherwise, I've been reading Drawing Down the Moon. I also finished the video game Okami, a strangely beautiful Japanese game in which the hero is the sun goddess Amaterasu, and the style of art is drawn from traditional illustrations of Japanese myth.

It's funny -- if a game like Okami were made here with Christ as its protagonist, or in the Muslim world with Mohammed, the studio's main offices would get bombed. In Japan, you can use Shinto's chief deity this way without fear.

And in spite of the game's many little irreverences and its playfulness, it proves to be very pious in its own way by the end -- an update of myths rather than a negation or parody of them.

Now I'm playing another game frequently mentioned on people's lists of video games that can be considered high art -- Shadow of the Colossus. And it is a sweet little jewel of a game, almost eerie in its unclutteredness, and more a lyric than narrative. It has a very Ursula LeGuin feel to it, and something of a dream, while being disturbingly realistic in all the ways that count. Here's the opening scene.

It's such a strange game, though. The RPG genre is usually so cluttered. This is an RPG with no levels or stats or menus or magic or lines of attack or random encounters or limit breaks or stores or money or treasure or towns. Just a teenage boy who can't do much of anything you can do, except maybe use a short sword passably well, and ride horseback. His only magic is a sword that points the way to things.

So I was listening to an interview from last week on a show called Spark -- CBC Radio's internet-culture and new technology program.

And they had this man named Tom Armitage on it talking about how the next generation of world leaders will all have been raised on video games, and speculating on what video games might have taught these future leaders. The tone was very optimistic.

As a life-long gamer myself, I thought I'd compile a list of things future prime ministers and presidents and chancellors might have learnt from video games that might be applicable to the world situation. To wit:

Military

• The only defence necessary is a three-foot wall around your country. No one can jump over that.
  
• Ammunition is a useless expense. Even if your guns aren't the kind with infinite bullets, clips and rounds can be found scattered about the landscape.
  
• The best training for new soldiers is massacring rabbits.
  
• All outposts and research centres must be designed as a series of barely-jumpable platforms interspersed with occasional treasure chests, and sometimes chicken legs concealed in the bricks of the walls.
  
• Wars aren't won by armies, only by small ragtag troupes of two to eight members who each have their own distinctive skill set, uniforms, and hair style.

Health Care

• It's not necessary to set residency spaces or hire doctors. By the mere act of picking up a medical kit, anyone can instantly heal the most grievous bullet wounds.
  
• Death is a minor inconvenience.
  
• All hospitals will eventually become battlefields, or haunted by zombie nurses wielding lead pipes. In other words, don't build any.

Ecology

• If a species is made extinct by overhunting, it's only necessary to zone out two screens away for them to re-spawn.
  
• If the land is becoming desert and the water turning poisonous, it's merely necessary to find the four crystals and drive out the fiends.

Demographics

• Homosexuals only exist in Japan, or among space aliens. If from Japan, they are probably vampires.
  
• In nomadic tribes, military troupes, and even whole cities, it is very common to only find one woman. All the women are in the lost amazon tribe.
  
• It is unnecessary to ever perform more than one survey or census. People just keep saying the same thing over and over again. It is often "Welcome to Corneria."

Political Systems and Elections

• When on the campaign trail, remember -- eating the mushrooms makes you tall, and eating the leaf means you can fly. Wearing a teddy bear costume makes you immune to all harm. Actually, this all probably only applies to politics in British Columbia.
  
• There are no bad monarchs except usurpers. Anyone in a direct line of royal blood is pure-hearted and excellent in battle, and have special swords that only they can use. Elected officials, by contrast, are corrupt.
  
• That said, there's no point in actually having a monarchy, constitutional or otherwise. When the time comes to get royal assent on any legislation, no matter how hard you look for her your princess is in another castle.

Feel free to add your own.