Postmodern Self Awareness in Saints Row: The Third

• Games Played: #10
• Title: Saints Row: The Third – Steam Page
• Time Played – 12 Minutes
• Total Time Played: 14 Hours

Hurray! Ten games down. The topics at my disposal with Saints Row: The Third are numerous. I could talk about that mission. You know; the one with the unconventional ‘driving section’. However, that’d be too easy. So would discourse on the sandbox genre’s return to lunacy. Parody’s already been done - Tron, Die Hard, the Limitless trailer.

Self Awareness? Many games have tried, many more have failed. That last title which managed self awareness was 2011’s Shadows of the Damned. Saints Row knows it’s a game and revels in the fact.

The real world’s a bad place. That’s a fact. There’s no escaping it, and understanding this depressing concept is the dawn of your adult life. Life’s eternal daily grind has the potential to be soul destroying so the average person uses games to escape life’s trivialities.

Anything But A Saint

However with games it seems the more we progress towards virtual reality and photorealism - a term unconventional within itself - the closer we move in the direction of a virtual grind.

After all, the scenarios presented in games might be escapism, but their foundations, (war, history, simulation) are often grounded in fact. This is where Saints Row excels; it legitimises ridicule, parody and unconventional experiences that aren’t possible in reality.

Beating people with a giant pink dildo? Sure. Hoverbiking though a zombie infested city where cyber-teleporter gangsters jump through gravity? Of course.

All this is delivered in a package that refuses to accept it as truth. There’s no shame in being a game; that’s the argument at the heart of Saints Row. Let the player know the intention to entertain rather that fail to disguise the fact you’re shooting virtual bullets in a fake battlefield.

The more games take into consideration their exact art form and existence, and the more likely they’ll shed the shackles of realism, monotony and expectation to succeed.

You could argue Saints Row: The Third is one of few true postmodern games. A cosmopolis akin to DeLillo, filled with technology, running on technology and parodying technology. Realising this is evidence of self awareness and it doesn’t half let you know the intelligence at work. There’s no escaping it.

Breaking Down Genre Barriers: Orcs Must Die!

• Games Played: #9
• Title: Orcs Must Die! – Steam Page
• Time Played – 47 Minutes
• Total Time Played: 47 Minutes

So we move from musical discovery in Chime to the relentless Orcs Must Die!

Orcs are an intrinsic component of high fantasy – a game without them is stunted and peculiar. It’s not necessarily wrong to not include them, but having been burned into the conscious of the gaming public, developers often fall back on their warm embrace.

As crucial to fantasy as overly busty women in corsets, the green hordes often form the foundation of a RPG. They’ve been pestering heroes since the genre began and this is unlikely to change any time soon.

The team behind Orcs Must Die! obviously recognised this, choosing to base an entire game around the concept of orc slaying. What’s particularly interesting about Orcs isn’t the satirical tone, but rather its reimagining of the tower defence genre. Played out from ground level, controlling a cocky apprentice tasked with the defence of a fantasy realm is fairly unique.

Zooming in on the action provides a needed breath of fresh air - yes various FPSs have utilised the concept already and Gears of War certainly definitely got there first, but past examples are different monsters to Orcs.

Orcs is instead built entirely around the concept and includes everything you’d expect - barricades, traps, chokepoints. It’s tower defence reinvigorated. Obviously the healthy dose of tongue in cheek helps, but it’d be just as competent without the humour.

This prompted me to look at a couple other iconic games to see how they’d cope from a different genre perspective. We all know how well Command & Conquer did with the conversion FPS, but how about two below hypothetical examples?

Counter Strike: X-Com

X-Com provides the obvious inspiration for this. Counter Strike is an example of perfect level design, but could you imagine zooming out to an overview perspective? Thinking tactically would be an interesting shift (obviously the best players do this already). A bit like Metal Gear Acid, Office, Dust and Italy could be expanded into huge complexes with the real maps featuring within the mini campaigns.

Valve, you can have this on me.

Call of Duty: Total War

Massive campaign map? XP used to level up troops? Company of Heroes style strategy? There’s little chance of it happening, but it would be intriguing to see how the franchise would cope. Halo Wars tried to reverse the FPS, but a Total War scale was lacking. A modern map-based strategy game with real time battles would be exciting and something that’s missing the current market. 

Time For Some Musical Discovery With Chime

• Games Played: #8
• Title: Chime – Steam Page
• Time Played – 10 Minutes
• Total Time Played: 2 Hours

Chime is one of those games; an addictive mash up of music, geometry and colour. Think Tetris meets Lumines where your actions help create the music. Sharing a lot with Audiosurf, it uses pre-licensed music instead of a player’s musical library.

Its tagline is, “Place blocks, build quads, get coverage, make music,” – a convoluted strap for sure. What’s interesting about Chime is the way it appeals under so many monikers.  Some play the game for its puzzle qualities – others, its soothing electronica. For me it’s been a music discovery engine.

Thanks to Chime, this Moby track now resides on my iPhone. From the moment the auto tuned oohs hit my ears, I was hooked. It’s easily the firm favourite. It demonstrates the power of a strong soundtrack and how it can help both the game and the licensors. Sure, Chime is intentionally built around music – that doesn’t necessary mean it’s guaranteed to be a strong one.

I keep returning to Chime for that track. Music has become an active process, not a passive one. Joining shapes in time with the beat is limitlessly more entertaining than sitting in a room alone with music. It’s elongated the game’s appeal and kept me coming back. In a time-sensitive world where I have limited time for games, it’s an impressive feat.

For the music’s artist, they’ve profited with brand awareness (not that Moby really needs any) and money in the bank. Jose Gonzalez’s Far Away in Red Dead Redemption is another example. I went further on that occasion, becoming a huge fan of artist’s music and purchasing several albums. Music’s power is overlooked. Often, a game’s graphics, multiplayer and gameplay are what people discuss – not the aural feast on offer

Games have the power to be so much more than just visual entertainment. They, as Chime has demonstrated, can be a digital music store with interactive elements.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - The Waterfail

• Games Played: #7
• Title: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Steam Page
• Time Played – 2.5 Hours
• Total Time Played: 38.8 Hours

While this entry isn’t worthy of the main list, it shouldn’t make it any less important. I’ve already mentioned how Skyrim is a personal experience - the enjoyment you receive is solely down to you. It’s narrative is outlined, but the unscripted moments is where the real fun is.

For example, the included images show a huge waterfall. I was subjected to a bandit ambush, and after dealing with its leader, the final blow sent him sliding down the slope. His body ended up in the river, to great laughter, before it vanished over the edge. After looting the camp, I went in search, following the logical path and letting the current take control. 

Yes, I’ve already gone cliff jumping. Thankfully this time was without injury and/or death. Annoyingly, there was no sign of the body. What’s interesting is, because Skyrim’s a semi-persistent world - i.e. kill something and its body will stay there - the leader will most likely appear somewhere down river, hours later after the original event. 

I’ll be sure to let you know if I do come across the loot. It really does make you think just what the possibilities in Skyrim are. 

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Look Out Below

• Games Played: #7
• Title: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Steam Page
• Time Played – 4 Hours
• Total Time Played: 31.1 Hours

Things keep dying in Skyrim. First it was my companion, now it’s my beloved horse. While most people choose to reload their saves when things like this happen, I’m one for consistent roleplaying. So what did I do? I jumped off a cliff, that’s what.

Now, my intention wasn’t to join my loyal steed in the afterlife – life’s never that bad – but sometimes gravity works against your genius ideas. My actual intention was to speed up the journey time back to civilisation. If Ray Mears has taught audiences anything, it’s to stick by the river. Not only does the water’s current help navigating vast distances, but it’s also the easiest way to come across a fellow human being. Or Orc.

So heeding the words of TV’s survival expert, I looked for a safe place to get to the water’s edge. The catch? I was roughly 200ft up a cliff edge. As I lacked any rope, getting down would be fairly tricky. Knowing what the distance was would help, but estimating the fall’s amount would require some science!

What scientific object could help? The horse - it was to serve one more purpose.

You see, the time an object takes to hit the floor put against its weight should provide a rough distance. So that was that then. It was decided. Bye bye Whinny, you were good to me.

*Splash*

That was the sound of my corpse hitting the water. What went wrong? The maths was right, it was checking what was below that was a failure on my part. A massive boulder lay below the cliff edge and by the time I’d said goodbye to solid ground, it was too late.  

I was floating down river, but it wasn’t in the state I’d intended. Just another random incident that makes Skyrim so fantastically open.

For the record, I don’t fast travel anywhere. That’s why the above situation occurred.