Silent Hill: Homecoming First Impressions

I suppose it's time to accept that my Playstation 3 is faulty. I bought it on eBay because I just had to have a 60gb for its backward compatibility, so I'm screwed as far as warranty goes. I bought it, along with LittleBigPlanet, back in November. LittleBigPlanet has periodically frozen during gameplay ever since. But I played a DVD, a PSN game and a PS2 game with no problems, so I assumed it was the game and got a replacement from GameStop. I bought Silent Hill: Homecoming on this same trip and it's frozen during a few loading times between scenes. I removed the information bar, deleted game data, and disabled the internet connection, as suggested by some people on a game forum (and had already done a System Restore when I was first having the problem). That seemed to help, but it froze again after 2 hours or so of gameplay. It's something I'm thinking, for now, I can live with, but I can see it happening in the future right after beating a really hard boss or something and that's a big fat Do Not Want. I'll probably roll over and pay the damn $150 for Sony to fix it eventually.

I figured something like this would happen, which is why I wanted a Wii from the very beginning, but I'm stuck with Sony if I want to play the games I actually like cannot live without (Silent Hill, Final Fantasy, Fumito Ueda's eventual third game).

Speaking of Silent Hill. I'm finally in the middle of Homecoming, the game I spent so much time looking forward to; the game I remained so hopeful about for so long; the game I defended against the many fatalistic fans complaining that Pyramid Head was renamed Bogeyman and that the presence of a creepy child was played-out (what, it wasn't tired by the third time Team Silent did it?). There was a lot of fear that Double Helix understood the appearance of Silent Hill but not the emotional gears; sadly, I find that fear pretty much realized. There are a lot of "clues" in Homecoming that seem present simply to announce to us that they've at least seen the other games in the series– look, here's a TV with white noise! Here's the protagonist sticking his arm in a dubious hole! Here's a mannequin! Forcing rotten Easter eggs down our throats is not going to convince us that the game is anywhere near as good as the game being not-so-subtly recollected.

According to what little I've read, mostly by accident, I haven't even gotten to the bad part yet.

But I won't completely dismiss this game yet. Months ago, I came to terms with the fact that there never was and never will be another Silent Hill 2; after that, it was much easier to embrace Homecoming, and I believe I've been able to really appreciate the things it did right. There are some great things in it, namely the details and settings. The embers drifting up from the floor grating during the opening Otherworld scene? Brilliant touch. The sounds? As tense, uncomfortable, and downright nerve-wracking as any previous Silent Hill's has been. I'm not going to pretend this game hasn't successfully creeped me out so far. The environments, even if the things inside them aren't spectacular, are interesting. I'll take the Homecoming graveyard over the Silent Hill 4 graveyard any day. And Alex's house is successfully depressing– bleak, foreboding, eerie, and a general emotional drag to explore (yes, that's a good thing!). The set-up of the first encounter with a Smog monster is horrifying, even if the actual design of the Smogs is a bit ridiculous, excluding the fact that they seem to be sizzling, which was a great idea.

There's also the fact that I'm way more inclined to play Homecoming than LittleBigPlanet, which has enjoyed much better critical reception (LittleBigPlanet has been a LittleBig let-down so far– more on that later). So that has to mean something.

At this stage in the game, I've decided that Homecoming was a great opportunity for Double Helix, and evidence enough for me that they could create their own really good original horror game. In many ways, the addition to a cult classic series was an even bigger undertaking that setting their own rules– they couldn't be too much like older games, because then fans would call them uninspired. And they couldn't be too different, because then everyone would complain that it "wasn't Silent Hill." I believe, if even Team Silent wasn't able to live up to the crescendo of the Silent Hill series, perhaps no one else should bother trying. I'm as reluctant as anybody else to see it go, and I can't say I don't want more, because it's become a twisted little town of nostalgia for me. Even if Silent Hill: 0rigins, for example, wasn't as wonderful as SH2, it was good enough that I got my Silent Hill "fix" from it. But I guess I would rather see creative people looking for what's beyond Silent Hill. It's too bad we have to leave...



(Then again, surely there are enough creative people in the industry that I can have both, right? Maybe, one day?).

Some quick, unorganized thoughts on Rapelay

If you haven't heard already, there's been a lot of controversy surrounding Amazon.com's decision to ban the Japanese hentai-game Rapelay from their site.

My initial gut reaction? Good for them. I've been dreading the day that Japan's gruesomely sexist porn games* find a market over here, and the farther away that day seems to be, the better.

I ran across a thread about it on 1Up and opinions were pretty divided. Most people who supported the existence of games like this are in the slippery-slope camp whose slogan is, "If we start banning child-rape, what's next?! They'll be taking our GTA!" I think these people are as ridiculous as conservatives who believe that legalizing gay marriage will lead to people marrying farm animals. I don't believe it has to be so black and white– that you either ban all illegal activities in any game, or you ban none. I don't think it's wrong to draw the line somewhere.

Of course, that gets you into the debate of "Which is worse? Rape or murder?"

When people say "rape," they often get accused of being an uptight American with prudish attitudes toward sex. I really wanted to respond to that with a bold, all-caps post saying RAPE =/= SEX.

And then there is the argument that, since Japan has low rape statistics (lower than American's, anyway), the saturation of their porn market with non-consensual scenarios must be a good thing. I'm, of course, more than willing to acknowledge that watching rehearsed or animated rape scenes is better than actually raping someone. I'm less willing to agree that throwing rape porn at latent rapists is the secret answer to the problem, especially if the implication is that Western porn should be more depraved and sexist, when it's already so hard to find porn in which women play a positive role.

From what I've seen, there are a lot of misogynistic elements to Japanese culture and Japanese porn. A lot of people brush this off as a cultural difference that we must ignore and tolerate. The fact that the less willing the female is, the "sexier" she is; the expectation of a meekly beseeching "No" from a woman even if she really wants to have sex with you; all of this is cultural and therefore above criticism.

Fuck that.

Do you expect, in a culture where modesty and chastity is considered sexually attractive (as opposed to Western culture where a virginal woman is "marryable" but not sexy), that women will report rape and sexual assault as often as they do in a country where women actually organized a movement to empower one another?

Japan is a country that had to segregate women from men on subways because sexual assault had become such a big problem. Somehow I'm not convinced that the more bizarrely sexist the porn is, the lower the rape count.

I wanted to articulate my arguments about this, but I knew I couldn't do it on 1Up forums (or perhaps any other gaming forum). I'm still trying to work out my feelings about game censorship and hentai games. I don't support censorship in general, but I know that I do not look forward to the day when Japan's more depraved porn products start crawling into our markets. Perhaps I'm an alarmist. Perhaps it has to do with being a woman and being afraid so often of sex crimes just because of my gender.

Either way, the arguments I've seen for Rapelay remain unconvincing and often sexist at heart. One guy on 1Up even said that we view Rapelay as worse than Call of Duty because of sexism against men– something about how women are less expendable because they can give birth. Give me a break. If that's the case, how come most sex crimes are committed by men against women?


* Note that the porn aspect of these games is not what I have a problem with. If we lived in a culture in which a Porn genre of games could exist without becoming a bunch of misogynistic bullshit, I'd be more happy than is probably "proper."

Life of a Hardcore Casual Gamer

There are three particular upcoming PS3 titles I'm really excited about, which will condemn me in some parts of the gaming community to the Level 1 status of Casual Gamer: Flower, Aquanaut's Holiday: Hidden Memories, and Africa. These games look innovative, beautiful, and relaxing. As a long-time controller-thrower, I think cruising the savanna and taking pictures of gazelle will be a breath of fresh air (tinged slightly by the scent of rhino dung). But what I think is most exciting about them is that they're different, part of the baby-steps toward revolution that have gotten me so excited about this generation of games. Though the Wii promised a new era of gaming (and was even called the Revolution in its development stages), nothing I've seen from it so far has impressed me– more games for younger kids (almost always based on movies), Wii Sports, which sticks to one of the oldest genres of gaming, except now you swing your arm instead of pressing A, and Wii Music, which might not have ever been created if it weren't for the massive success of Rock Band. Meanwhile, there's no U.S. release date in sight for stuff like Capucine, which looks actually innovative and unique. I'm not writing this with the clannishness of some Playstation or XBox devotees, but with sincere disappointment. I objected to the high price of the PS3 for a long time and rooted for the Wii to become the overcoming underdog– which it did, from everything I've heard about sale numbers, and it's probably thanks to the Wii's popularity that I got my PS3 for $400).

But, while I'm glad that Wii lured in the non-gamers, I haven't seen much from it for people like me, who are familiar with the gaming tradition and are tired of seeing so many games recycling themes, gameplay, and genres. Flower, Aquanaut's Holiday, and Africa, though, represent the fundamental change in gaming philosophy I've been hoping for. Of course, all of them came from Japan, where creators are just more ambitious, where people are thankfully much more likely to say, "What the hell, let's make roads that sing! Or a video game where you're wind collecting pollen!" Considering all the great titles I've seen left overseas (I was totally depressed when I discovered Homeland, then discovered that I'd never be able to play it unless I learned Japanese and rigged my Gamecube), I'm pretty excited that the Halo-dominated American market actually let these games sneak in.

I get tired of references to casual gamers that seem to imply that "hardcore" gamers are people with high World of Warcraft levels and "casual gamers" are people who like anything that isn't World of Warcraft. I've been playing games for about 15 years, have spent a huge sum of my hard-earned money on games, and put in hundreds of hours. But I feel some would still brand me a "casual" gamer because I would rather play Animal Crossing than Grand Theft Auto. It's not that I find the status of "hardcore" gamer to be particularly enviable, but the "casual gamer" label often seems to come with this sense that casual gamers are irksome freshmen interrupting the peaceful (read: violent & bloody) world of shoot/slice-'em-up gaming. To me, the differences between "casual" and "hardcore" seem to be not based on experience, but on violence. Call of Duty is a "hardcore" game, Brain Age is a "casual" game, regardless of the difficulty of each (though, admittedly, it does sometimes seem like game difficulty increases with gore).

My hope is that it will become harder to say "I don't like video games." It already irks me a little to hear people say it– how can you dismiss an entire medium when games like Manhunt, LittleBigPlanet, Tomb Raider, Lumines, and Silent Hill are all a part of it? Games like Flower and Africa excite me because in them I can see a future in which video games have just as many genres as films & music and there are no more "average gamers" (i.e. the teenage boy population that gaming has catered to for far too long).

Pandora's XBox 101: Who I Am & Which Games I Could Play Till 3 in the Morning

While I'm waiting on my Playstation 3 to arrive in the mail, about to make the leap to Next-Gen (which I have delayed until now due to resentment, indecisiveness, and lack of financial enthusiasm), is probably a great time to start a gaming blog!

I'm not sure why my need to talk about video games is strong enough to warrant a whole blog separate from my "regular" online journal. It probably has something to do with the fact that I spent a long time trying to find a video game forum that was perfect for me, and I've decided there isn't one. Epidemic immaturity and sexism in the gaming community is one of the biggest reasons, but another is the fact that I'm not very "hip" and tend to be one generation (or two, or three...) behind the games that earn all the busiest threads. While everyone was playing Mass Effect, I was playing Fantastic Dizzy (quirky SEGA platformer featuring a population of egg people called Yolkfolk, and inventory items like "small pygmy cow"). For a long time I was comfortable on the 1UP.com forums, then one poster too many threw around his stupidity and/or bigotry, waiting for people to be impressed with the callousness and un-PCness he was able to display from behind his computer's LCD sheild of anonymity. Then 1UP collapsed all their forum factions into one big category called simply "Games," so one had to swim in the pee-yellowed cesspool in order to hang out on the side and talk to the grown-ups. So I wandered off. I found Womengamers.com and unfortunately almost instantly ran into people just as sleazy as the 1UPers, who seem to be just there to flirt with the girls. The atmosphere at WG is also very silly and cliquey. I love silliness, but when combined with cliqueyness, it's almost impossible to become a part of the community. I love the Iris forum, but it's so quiet.

So I thought I'd just make a blog, where I can babble about games until my fingers are jammed without the pressure of impressing or following the interests of a community. I'll start by a little analysis of myself and type of game-player I am.

I think there are roughly three kinds of gamers: 1) Aggression-expressers, those who enjoy video game violence and the opportunity to experience gore or harm without consequences (either because they have those urges naturally, or because pop culture encourages the notion that being cool and successful means being a James Bond-type assassin or a dangerous drifting Vin Diesel); 2) Escapists, who tend to find this world in some way unsatisfactory, boring, or unaccomodating, or just enjoy a different environment, with unrealistic, atypical possibilities to explore; and 3) Good-Time Havers, who are probably my favorite. People like this are open-minded and will typically try anything they think will be fun. They'll have a few beers and play Mario Party, or they still really like Tetris, or will play Turtles in Time for nostalgic value if they somehow come across it again.

I'm a number 2, who is very wary of number 1's, but is always excited to meet a number 3, but not nearly as excited to meet another 2, since 2-ness does not foster physical interaction at all unless we're on a Final Fantasy forum talking about which character is our favorite and why.
I really like quirkiness in games. Some of my favorite games to play are those with their own "Wonderland" settings, in which developers really strove to create a unique environment– American McGee's Alice, Oddworld, Fantastic Dizzy, Napple Tale: Arisia in Dreamland, and the original Mario video games. I don't think Super Mario World even needs mentioning when it comes to Favorite Game Lists. It's just a given. Like many, it was my induction not into video games, but into an addiction to video games (though I'm thankful no game since that one has consumed me so completely, to the point of not wanting to do anything else; for a year or so after the Christmas I got my SNES, I was a very boring child).

Otherwise, my favorite games are Silent Hill 2, Ico, and Shadow of the Colossus. I could write essays about any of these three (and maybe I will in a later blog entry), but in the interest of keeping the subjects of this first entry more evenly discussed, I'll just say that they're the most thought-provoking, involving, artistic games I've come across.

The systems I play are the SNES, Dreamcast, PS2, Gamecube, and very very recently, the PS3. The darlings of my video game collection are Silent Hill 2, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Zelda: Collector's Edition, Zelda: Twilight Princess, Final Fantasy X, Animal Crossing, Parasite Eve and Phantasmagoria. So all my game paraphernalia together isn't nearly as vast as some's, but it is starting to become a slight space problem, with wires and controllers always spilling out of my entertainment center.

So that's me, and my self-indulgent reasons for creating a video game blog. I'm easily classifiable as an RPG nerd, but I'm really just an AoIIFA (Advocator of Innovative, Interesting, Fantastical Atmospheres). As games become more and more advanced and diverse, I'm finding more of my interests turning into games, which is a phenomenon I'm definitely looking forward to.