Okay, I've gotten it out of my system. I promise I won't be frothing over Metal Gear for a while. This week's Aberrant Gamer went in-depth into why I feel it's so effective specifically as a war game. I had originally written a four-page treatise on why Snake is so hot and why I wish he was real so that we could get married and have healthy genome babies and then I could soothe his war pain and nurture his emotional health even as FoxDie ravages him to death and I cry huge CGI tears -- but decided against publishing it at the last minute. I'll leave it to you to guess whether or not that's a joke.Part of why I think that MGS is one of the few series that portrays war in all of its complex ambiguities is the absence of a stress on violence. I mean, you can do some pretty sick things to people in those games, and there's all kinds of brutality involved in the storyline, but as for the gameplay itself, it goes way beyond machine gun-driven blood sport. In the column's comments, honorary Videogameland archduke Jim Rossignol wondered whether some games aren't violent enough.
Though I've written in the past about why I feel it's necessary for us to watch closely our feelings around very violent play, I have to agree with him in this case. If an effective game experience hinges on what we can extrapolate emotionally from the images we see and interact with, maybe we're well-served by having games that depict the horror of war without shying away. Violence and gore don't necessarily equate, mind -- in that same comment, Rossignol offers a couple examples of vividly-portrayed human cruelty in the setting of a war game that would have evinced shudders and enhanced the environment even had they been bloodless. "Perhaps if games were more honest, as CoD4 seems to be, they would get more respect," he says.
There's definitely a fine line between effective imagery and shock -- even though real life is more horrific, sometimes, than fiction, there's nothing more I hate than a movie that does horrible things to its characters just to provoke a reaction. Do I respect it more because it's visceral? No, I respect it less for going overboard and trying to manipulate me. And given the way mass media still utterly fails, at large, to comprehend the value of game storytelling, especially when there are mature themes involved (blah blah Fox Mass Effect etc.) I think that going for that honesty, at this stage of things, might increase the unfair criminalization of the medium. But one could argue the onus is on us to continue doing our best to explain, focus on elevating and understanding the kinds of experiences we like best, and screw everyone else if they don't get it.
I almost never buy military FPS. If not for BioShock, I'd say it's been years since I even played anything close to an FPS. But based on acclaim from a few of my trusted peers for the way it handles these very issues, I picked up CoD4 recently. I sort of only play one current console game at a time -- I just can't divvy myself up much -- so I'll probably pick it up after No More Heroes, which, as you can probably tell by my new banner, I think is totally fucking rad. And violent, but in a funny way. Well, CoD4 might still have to wait until after Raw Danger, which one of my friends gave me for Christmas and I still haven't picked up yet.
Anyway, dig this week's column. I'm actually not that happy with it -- maybe too invested in the subject matter -- so I won't take offense if you tell me it's a bit dull.
Oh yeah, bonus content! I might have linked this on SVGL before, but in case I haven't, enjoy the greatest MGS fanbook ever, by Hal Akane. This crap is adorable.
