Short Shrift: Resistance 2

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been woefully disappointed at the lack of coverage Resistance 2 has received from the folks I tend to read. Even the podcast circuit seems to have passed on Insomniac Games’ second first-person shooter for the Sony PlayStation 3. Yes this is a bountiful season, but, seriously, hasn’t ANYbody made time for this thing? I’ve seen and heard some fairly dismissive reviews of the single-player campaign, though that’s only a tiny percentage of what’s on offer. While it’s true that Nathan Hale’s story can’t stand quite so tall as, say, Gordon Freeman’s, Insomniac has nevertheless managed to add a few especially interesting narrative innovations.

I’m speaking, of course, about the unparalleled cooperative mode.  Sure, folks have generally thrown it a bone, but I’m of a mind to say this game type deserves a lot more attention. I haven’t played it since the beta, but I know I had a damned fun time. Anyway — the Big Deal, at least in my opinion, is that co-op play enhances the solo story. They may not dovetail in any significant fashion, but, at least from what I’ve seen, one builds upon the other in order to create a larger and more complete setting. What’s more, this carries over to competitive skirmish.

Bottom line is, few shooters connect their multiplayer content so convincingly to the core story. “Scale” was the big buzzword surrounding this game’s development; Resistance 2 manages to nail a universe so huge it boggles the mind. In other words: if you haven’t played Insomniac Games’ latest, I heartily recommend giving it a try.

Realizing the Promise of Realism

I’ve long been a proponent of highly sylized video games. This probably has much to do with the fact that I cut my teeth during the NES era. After all, visible pixels don’t exactly lend themselves to realism. But now that the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 are on the scene, everything’s beginning to change. The extent to which recent games have approached reality (speaking in terms of both art assets and physics engines) has been quite astonishing. Though even some of today’s most valiant attempts still fail to deliver in one respect or another, gaming may be on the verge of a new golden age. Or perhaps it’s just me coming around to something others have known forever. In any case, over the last few years, I’ve tended to appreciate fanciful, interpretive games. Stuff like Beyond Good & Evil or The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.  But throughout 2008, I’ve begun to see real merit in attempting to closely model reality.

Games Blogger’s Block

Ever get the feeling we’re all just saying the same damn thing?

“I Am Jack’s Smirking Revenge”: Games as Expression and Performance

Play. What is it, exactly? Let’s make this an “according to Webster’s”-style moment and find out. 

Oop. I used the über-convenient Dictionary.com instead. They define the word in an astonishing sixty-two different ways sans idioms and verb phrases.

Fourteen of these definitions rely on an understanding of the concept of performance. But not a one even so much as mentions expression, which is defined as an “indication of feeling, spirit” or “character…as on the face, in the voice, or in artistic execution.”

“Storytime for the rest of us.”

Lately, many games writers have been striving to define what Brainy Gamer Michael Abbott terms “the design and direction of narrative video games.” Abbott characterizes this fruitful convergence of minds as an emerging collective manifesto. The various points of view that he profiles are wildly exciting, and I’ve been thinking about each of them for what feels like quite some time. More recently, I’ve considered Mitch Krpata’s excellent piece, “Give me good writing,” in which Krpata laments the fact that “thoughtful, incisive” video game journalism is rarely “accessible to a general audience.” Surprisingly, all these ruminations finally came to a head last night when my wife handed me an article from the August 2008 issue of American Libraries. It paired acute observations on game stories with a highly approachable style. Needless to say, I was more than a little impressed — in fact, it pretty much blew my mind.