I don't want to talk about it

The other day I was reading Sexy Videogameland when a particular part of one of Leigh’s articles grabbed my attention. “Sometimes I wish "people in the real world" were more interested in video games, so that I could talk about 'em with them. Other times, I wish they'd never talk about them ever-ever.” I found this very amusing because I’m the same way. I love talking about games, but I’ve found as I get to know more and more about them, who is making what, new trends and gameplay experiments, and what’s on the horizon that I’m less and less inclined to talk about games with the casual audience.


Anytime anyone new wanders into my living room, which happens fairly often, I have three roommates and a no knocking policy with all my friends (we’re too lazy to get up just to let our friends in), they immediately see two things. One is the giant mural of Hedonism Bot on the wall, whom I aspire to be someday. The other is my game setup, there’s a large TV sitting above all three current gen consoles and a giant receiver, which immediately tells the person that someone residing in our home likes to play video games. The first question out of their mouths, assuming it isn’t related to Hedonism Bot (he’s kind of distracting), is who owns all the gaming stuff. Once informed they proceed to tell me all about how much they love Call of Duty 4, or Halo, or whatever one game they play incessantly. This is great, I’m glad more and more people are discovering video games as a form of entertainment, but the gaming conversations I crave are generally not of that nature.

I’m not entirely sure how to continue this article without sounding like a pretentious gamer nerd, but we’ll give it a shot. As I’ve gotten more and more obsessed with gaming and its culture I’ve found fewer and fewer people to converse with about it. I suppose that goes with the territory of being knowledgeable about anything, but with games it has gotten to the point that I only know maybe one person that isn’t from the internet that can hold their own in a conversation. I’ll be damned if I ever run into another person in close proximity to me that knows what ludonarrative dissonance is all about. Well, that one is pretty damn abstract, I’m not even sure Slevin and Squash know what the hell that one is all about, but my point still stands. I’m so desperately lonely! ;)

Seriously though, it’s gotten to the point with me now that I just sort of tune out and let whoever is excited about Call of Duty ramble on for awhile and then we talk about something else. Even my local gamer friends, most of which have now moved away, tended to rely on me for their gaming news and weren’t all that interested in anything but the fun.

At the risk of sounding anymore elitist, I think I’m going to cut this article short. Let’s just conclude it with it being a good thing for the internet otherwise I’d probably never have found people with the same sort of common interest as me. Ironically, without the net, I can’t imagine I’d have ever even discovered the very thing I’m interested in. Without it, I’m sure it’d be another couple of decades before an intelligent discussion of video games became prevalent in academia and the published world.

“Why do stealth games have to suck?”

I’ve been playing plenty of games lately, but I’ve been having trouble coming up with things to write about them. I was considering raging about Star Ocean, but realized Squash already did that months ago and I should have reread his thoughts before submitting myself to it's horrible everything. I thought I could rant about The Conduit’s horrendous level and encounter design, but the internet is already full of that and no one really cared then. I really liked ‘Splosion Man and wanted to gush over it a bit, but I don’t think I had anything terribly meaningful to say. Saying how much I liked it doesn’t lead to a very interesting read. I’ve also been playing Aion with a bunch of my friends. It’s refreshing to actually play an MMO with a group of real life friends rather than making them along the way, but the game is basically just World of Warcraft with wings and I don’t really want to write about that. I started Batman: Arkham Asylum the other day though, and it’s piqued my analytical bone a bit. It’s a fantastic game, albeit a few strange storytelling/immersion techniques, but what got my attention is its approach to stealth gameplay. I’ve never liked stealth games in the past, but this and the new Splinter Cell have completely changed how it’s done and I’m very excited for it.

Like I said, in the past I’ve generally avoided the stealth genre like the plague. I’ve always found them tedious and boring, but lately I’ve given them a bit more of a shot. I finally tried the Metal Gear Solid series a couple years ago and love it, but I played them as aggressively as possible, always opting to run in with a shotgun when the opportunity presented itself. I also dabbled with the multiplayer mode of one of the Splinter Cell’s of last gen, but never once even started the single player campaign. I thought those games looked incredible, but definitely not for me. I also checked out Velvet Assassin a few months ago and well, here’s what I thought about that. It basically summed up nicely all that I hated about the old stealth genre. Arkham Asylum on the other hand seems to be the start of a new one.

The stealth sections of the game allow you to move very quickly, drop in and down a foe then grapple out before anyone else realizes what happens. They give you a myriad of ways to take down foes as well, multiple types of batarangs, triggered explosions, glide kicks, inverted takedown from fixtures above, and the good old fashioned punching in the face. These tools really allow you to not just take out your enemies, but to toy with them. For instance, you can string a baddie up in the air, and then chop him down with a batarang in front of another enemy for the sole purpose of freaking him out and seeing what he says afterwards. All these options combined with the ridiculously versatile grappling hook allows for so pretty amusing and most importantly fast paced stealth sections that are like nothing I’ve seen before.

Batman isn’t exclusively a stealth game, it has one of the more interesting and visually impressive combat system I’ve ever seen, and some brief platforming sections. All three are fun, but after around the halfway point of the game I started to notice that they could all be a little more robust. Still, they are good enough that I am glad they decided to leave them all in rather than take out one to really focus on another.


Now the Splinter Cell series is known for being incredibly tedious, requiring meticulous planning after several trial and error sessions to learn an area. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s an insanely popular series, it just never interested me. Ubisoft’s newest addition to the series however is taking it in a very new direction. It is still very much a stealth game, but it now focuses on a similar style to Batman. Drop in, kill a target or two using the new mark and execute feature and then break line of sight and do it all over again. There’s obviously a lot more to it than that, but that is the essential change that I’m so excited about.

Both these games took the genre that required you to sit in the dark for three minutes working out a bunch of dumb guards set paths and turned it into something fun and awesome. By allowing players to have a much more fast paced and offensive approach to stealth they have made something very enjoyable, that is completely different than just about everything else out there. I am thrilled by the new direction and can’t wait to see what others do with the mold. As the speaker for the Splinter Cell: Conviction presentation said at PAX, “Why do stealth games have to suck?” I wholeheartedly agree.