Junk Faced Kids

My love affair with Left 4 Dead

2009-03-02T13:39:00.002+09:00

Those who know me best can almost certainly attest to my massive, wet, and throbbing love for zombies. It’s probably no surprise that I love Left 4 Dead to point where I sometimes think that it was made for me, and me alone. Narcissism aside, the thing that truly makes Left 4 Dead such a great experience is the fact that you have to co-operate with other living, breathing human beings. The second only one team mate is not on point, your whole zombie massacre death squad can come crashing down in a matter of seconds. This applies equally in the versus mode where a well co-ordinated team of infected can take out a team of survivors in 30 seconds flat. In some ways Left 4 Dead can be compared to a fighting game, despite not having all that much content on paper, it is almost infinitely replayable with every one of the scenarios playing out differently every time on account of the AI director. This is despite the physical spaces always being the same. Also like a fighting game you can play it on the side of another much larger game such as an RPG, being enjoyed in smaller bite sized “rounds” for those times when you don’t feel like getting deep into some massive over world.

Now you may be thinking “Hey, Left 4 Dead is just about instant gratification”. I realise that I have spoken against the level of insane violence that is in games today, and that developers and publishers alike have been relying on it as a crutch. I do understand that if every game was as pretentious as Braid, then it would lose all context much in the way that violence has lost all context now. We probably need titles that make young males say “cool” when they see heads explode, just not so many. Not nearly so many. I’m not saying that I’m not glad that Left 4 Dead gives me that feeling. The thing that makes me most glad about it, is that Left 4 Dead seems to be changing up to shooter space a little bit, as most titles in the genre seem to focus on you being this unstoppable bad ass, while in the zombie apocalypse you are one very vulnerable human being in a team of four, who are ultimately trying to survive; killing every last “living” thing is simply not a practical option.

I just want to add that Left 4 Dead is also NOT about the super charged machismo that is found in games like Call of Duty, or Gears of War, the stuff that personally offends me and a lot of others adolescent males. The characters feel like they were just regular people with normal lives until the zombie apocalypse happened. We need more games featuring just regular people, on a broader aspect of emotions.

What’s up with Japan??

2009-01-26T14:03:00.005+09:00

Developers are living in the past, their games are obscure and boring; they just aren’t relevant anymore - or so I hear from the press and gamers alike. This is an argument I see presented in some way shape or form almost everyday. It seems so common it could easily be the prime reason your life is awful and everything in it sucks! In fact I find this reaction presented without context and in need of some perspective. There is more to this then “Japan only likes terrible games like Resident Evil, Metal Gear and Final Fantasy... which means they're stupid and just don't understand how awesome Guitar Hero, Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty 4 are as a universally communal recreational activity and social high.” I pulled this quote from an actual gaming message board, just to give you an idea of the general attitude.

In conclusion there are a few points that I wanted to add, one of them pertaining to handheld games being the norm over console games here in Japan. I see evidence of this in my everyday life, when I get on the train at my local metro station every morning to go to work. There are masses of people all around me, spanning all ages both male and female, all being sucked into their own world of triumph and defeat. Here, in a bite sized package, is the definitive twinkie of the video game culture, bite sized and ready to go. Even cell phones are used by the average Joe and Jane to spend 10-20 minutes at a time in a world where they might not be so average. What these people make me think about the most, while they shake back and forth in a subway car under bright florescent lighting, or huddled over the scraps and leftovers of their lunch in some smokey coffee shop, is that the average “hardcore” gamer in the west might be surprised to realize that this wide spread appeal of bite sized storytelling might be norm for all games in the future. They could well be left behind with all of the shallow tendencies that come with instant gratification.
This may be considered controversial by many, but to me it seems painfully obvious. To the many who claim that Japanese developers aren’t relevant, can they not see the influences portrayed in western titles, are they so blinded by the pride and insularity to declare that everything that comes from western companies must at least be lightning in a bottle if not the second coming of Christ. The most obvious of all these influences would have to be that of Resident Evil 4 so pervasive is the over the shoulder style of 3rd person gun play in so many games today. Although it seems to have been unanimously agreed that this style of game play was created by Gears Of War, despite the lead designer Cliff Blezinsky attributing most of his inspirations to Resident Evil 4. If developers on this side of the Pacific are seen as really not making anything worth playing, then I don’t think developers in the west would still be looking to them for inspiration. They are simply not operating within the same culture. Are there things that they could be doing better? Of course, but so could many western developers, and they could learn a lot from each other. Perhaps in a perfect world they could even collaborate together and overcome the sense of stagnation and over saturation that lives in both markets.

Style over substance.

2009-01-17T11:44:00.011+09:00

I was strolling home from my morning job when I decided to browse the Playstation 2 shelves of import stores located in the Akihabara district; being that my 360 had recently been stricken by that inevitable plague of red lights. I stepped into a tiny shop stacked up to the fifth floor of a poorly maintained building that smelled of moldy air conditioner. I was in search of something familiar and nostalgic when I came across a gem hidden amongst the aisles of disposable obscurity. “Jesus god!” I exclaimed out loud, causing the owner and others to glare at me with steel cutting glares. “I couldn’t find this thing after months of searching in Toronto”. The title in question was Okami, a game that I never had the chance to play the first time it came around as I have only owned a ps2 since last August. Without hesitation I plunked my hard earned cash down on the counter like some junky fiend unable to contain himself grasping for his next fix.

If you have made it this far into the article then you are probably wondering what this has to do with either style or substance, and so I suppose I should get to the point. You see a game like Okami is like some kind of wonderful mutation of something that could never even be considered for mass consumption. The market that exists would not consume it on a mass level. Oh no, stunning visual realization and action based around a kind a loving individual are far outweighed by the simple and instant gratifications that come with disembowelling another human being. Another ps2 title that I was a late comer to was Shadow of the Colossus, and by God what a towering example of how a minimalist narrative can be the best friend of an interactive form of artistic expression; especially when most people assume that if a person doesn’t understand then you need to continually shove more down their throat. Both of these titles are on a console that is no technical powerhouse and yet I find them more profound and beautiful than almost any current gen hype festival of masochism with all of their high tech shader technics and hyper realistic lighting.

Now I’m not one of those people who thinks that games were only good back in the days of yore, when things were simple, everyone was monocultural and all houses had white picket fences with a dog house for fido out front. For the most part I have actually really enjoyed the majority of the games I have played on this most recent cycle of consoles birthed into the world. I just feel that the titles have been relying far to much on their fancy presentation to deliver the experience. The amount of fun I have had is probably incalculable since this generation started, but rarely have they been thought provoking in any way whatsoever. Even these mega blockbusters, where the player engages in some kind of sick and depraved mass genocide with arab nations seem like missed opportunities. They have the chance to reach millions of people in this get it first consumer culture where the game is snatched up seconds after release into the foaming mouths of Geeks and nerds. Instead we are endlessly presented with recycled plots from cold war era James Bond films, and characters who seemingly have 24 hour erections for cold steel and the blood of almost anyone foreign. I assume that publisher executives have seen the midnight launches in which people line up in droves, almost like cattle to the slaughter. They certainly understand that they could put any damn thing they want in terms of content in the title provided that the game play is the same; or perhaps not.
I use to think that the publisher was the enemy of creativity; after all they have all the money and call all the shots, but now I feel as if it’s some kind of symbiotic relationship between publisher, and end user; feeding off each other like E. Coli on fine Canadian beef. If you have ever spent considerable amount of time of any game related internet forum as an observer then you may; as I have, concluded that the end user, the audience, seem to base their decisions around recycled opinions and justifications penned by the publisher's PR staff and pass it off as their own point of view. There is also a tendency for demonstrating a double standard combined with a unique brand of anti intellectualism. These gamers self segregate into almost fanatical sects that essentially equate to nothing more than “my E penis is far superior to yours”. They especially hate having their hobby being critiqued by an outsider. The London Review of Books recently carried an article considering whether or not video games can be constituted an art form. Perhaps because the publication probably has a reputation among gamers (assuming many of them have ever heard of it in the first place) as something for high brow academics, many posters on a resulting internet forum concluded that the writer was old, so therefor his ideas are old and will die with him. Such self centered arrogance.

The publishers must love this sense of controlled madness happening amongst the tubes of the internet. It allows them to be positive about what their consumer wants, breaking them all down into cashflow statistics and ensuring that they will almost never have to take a chance, so long as young men stay interested in guns, breasts and frivolous competition to ensure their alpha male egos are finely lubricated.

A big fat welcome/1up network, UGO take over.

2009-01-10T20:01:00.006+09:00

In the event of the new year, I decided that I would start a blog mostly dedicated to the hobby that I enjoy most, Video Games. I had originally planned to make my first post at the beginning of January, however I was away from Tokyo visiting family, and had a wicked case of food poisoning. But now since that is over and done with I present to you Junk Faced Kids!

I just wanted to add to this that even though I am very sad, angry, and even bored (as I now have no shows to watch/listen to) I understand that if this deal had not gone through, the damage to the 1up network could have been much more devastating, and that in retrospect this needed to happen in order for the site to keep going.
These are tough times we live in, and I'm sure that laying you guys off was not an easy decision on the part of UGO; it's just business. You guys were probably my biggest inspiration for even starting this blog in the first place, so I only find it fitting for it to start, where you so suddenly stopped.
Take care, and best wishes!!

Alan Out.

On a side note, I will try to update this blog as often as possible, with at least one video post a week, as long as there is a readership!