It looks like I’ll get a chance to put some editorial fingerprints on The Game Reviews, which ironically turns every mention of its name into an awkward sentence.

Kidding aside, I’ll be an associate editor, cleaning up news, reviews and features for the benefit of all. I got started by editing Brittany Vincent’s essay on the statement, “Nobody ever shed a tear over a video game character’s death,” by Orlando Sentinel film critic Roger Moore.

Vincent’s piece is drenched in sarcasm, as you’ll see:

How could one feel for what is being displayed on a television screen? What individual in their right mind could tear up over the death of marine Paul Jackson in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in his last few moments of life? Soldiers die all the time. To become misty-eyed over such an insipid attempt at storytelling is completely outrageous. Saving Private Ryan is much more deserving of emotional distress. Because you know, you sit and watch.

Personally, I’m more for calling out video games’ shortcomings (thus far) rather than unequivocally rooting for the medium, but I suppose a good backlash is always in order when some dreaded outsider comes around, spitting his bile.

Have I shed any tears? Hmm, can’t recall. When I stare at the screen too long, anyway.

Newman, Games as Art | No Comments »

Even before the dreaded September - Christmas AAA Video Game Rush, my gaming has picked up to a steady clip. Here’s where I’m at:

In:

Snatcher (Sega CD) - Big Tip of The Hat to Chris at The Artful Gamer for steering me towards this one. In this post-apocalyptic adventure game, you’re an investigator trying to root out Snatchers — a group of robots, origin unknown, who murder people and take over their host bodies. Added Bonus: early indications of Hideo Kojima as an auteur, in a game that isn’t Metal Gear. I’ll have more on this later.

Contra 4 (Nintendo DS) - My girlfriend recently bought me a Nintendo DS for my birthday (which fell in January), and I’ve been making decent use of it. Contra 4 is unashamedly derivative, right down to near zen-like timing and patience required to surmount even the first level. That the instruction manual and menu play up and celebrate the retro, balls-to-the-wall action, apparently in service of Contra’s 20-year anniversary, only adds to the giddy fun of slaughtering wave after wave of aliens.

Out:

Cave Story (PC, free download) - It’s been called a “work of art” by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, but really it’s just a solid, fun platform game delicately woven into a nice plot. There’s no advancing of the medium here, just a faithful take on a time-honored genre, truly pleasurable from start to finish.

Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360) - I may add some more complete thoughts now that I’ve (finally) felled the final boss, but for now I’m just happy it’s over. Life is hard on the lonely island of “20-Hour Games Are Too Damn Long.”

On The Way:

Two empty slots on my Gamefly account and three games in my queue. Tempting the fates with Eternal Sonata, Elebits and Dead Rising. Which lucky ones will arrive in my mailbox? We report, you decide. Rock the Vote. Save the Whales. See you tomorrow.

Gamefly, Games as Art, Playlists, Free games | No Comments »

Hooray for Google Analytics, reminding me that 3 months without any posts begets no visitors. If you don’t know me, you probably don’t know I am moving to San Diego in a couple of weeks. I already quit my newspaper job and will be heading across the country after a brief respite.

So, the arts department at the paper never got to publishing that GTAIV article I mentioned earlier, because I never got to writing more articles to prove that I was a consistently capable writer. (I guess they saw the blog. Sigh.) So here we are:
—

If I worked for a publication that exclusively covered video games, I’d probably be excited to review Grand Theft Auto IV. It’d be a chance to state an opinion that really matters, not just to gamers, but to all the concerned parents, casual players and culture junkies who might be reading.

So it’s not surprising that when reviews finally dropped for the latest installment in the series, which requires players to commit many felonies in the service of organized crime, out came the “games are art” argument and comparisons to Goodfellas and The Godfather. Perfect review scores abound on several gaming Web sites, and one critic for GameZone even called GTAIV “the masterpiece of this gaming generation.”

Look, I’m firmly in the “games aren’t second-class media” camp, but if you believe all the lavish praise, you’re missing half the equation.

Popping in the disc, I found the shimmer of the opening scene, the sweeping score, the dialogue, mesmerizing. When the plot advances, it seems GTA has matured, leaving behind the senseless violence and murder for which the series is known.

But when you’re left to wander the city on your own, it’s the old GTA. I needed to travel, so I stole a car. I’m not a great driver, so I hit a few lampposts — and people — along the way. Just to see what would happen, I shot a homeless person. The main character, Niko Bellic, who seems so likable in cutscenes, can also resemble the nameless, faceless, morally empty character that starred in Grand Theft Auto III.

I thought about criticizing Rockstar, the series’ developer, for giving us two completely different games in the same package before I realized it had to be this way. Without the version where you can blow up cars, shoot innocent people and jump off buildings, you could never sell the one where the characters talk about their feelings and develop relationships.

You wouldn’t have the media hype either. I know this, because my non-gamer friends know nothing of the games that really do have artistic merit. In a way, it works out; the mainstream media frets over the violence, sex and drugs and how your kids will probably do all those things because they played a video game, and the gaming press responds by pulling the “games as art” card.

If I were one of those critics, I’d probably do the same.

Xbox 360, Games as Art, Player Choice, Violence, Late to the Party | No Comments »

The Internet (or at least the quadrants I run in) is abuzz with news that Target, the major retailer, is carrying a line of T-shirts with logos from experimental video games. What’s more, each shirt comes with a copy of the game.

Kevin Allen Jr. (who I linked up there) points out that the shirts are made by EGPApparel, which seems related to the Experimental Gameplay Project. I was vaguely aware of titles like “Tower of Goo” and “Gravity Head” before, but this should prove the catalyst for me to check them out while supporting the cause. To Target!

UPDATE 4/26/08: I went to Target on 225th Street in the Bronx the day I posted this. There were no shirts and the few employees I spoke to had no idea what I was talking about. Figures.

Indies, Games as Art, Free games | No Comments »

Well done, Grand Text Auto, turning a blog post into a set of branching paths (isn’t that what blogs already are?).

Here, they’ve linked to three “choose your own adventure”-style cultural artifacts, none of them video games. There’s a play whose plot branches according to the actors’ whims, a 500-page book that plays like an adventure game complete with collectable inventory, and a CD (remember those?) whose liner notes encourage the listener to choose their own track order.

Roger Ebert, noted detractor of player choice as art, is really not going to like this. Funny thing is, video games usually require less choice and branching plots than any of the above, but that’s a whole other issue.

Meanwhile, I might purchase that book…

Games as Art, Player Choice | No Comments »