Monday Night Live: Now Showing on Hard Mode

Alex “Malakian” Hayes is a Mode 7 Games associate and one of Determinance’s lead testers.  This is a picture of Uwe Boll, who is not him.

“It’s quite apparent nowadays that video games are in a different world from the prison of the 1983 Nintendo microchips, but apparently more and more of that world is being poked by the big screen. I’m not talking about the dimensions of the PSP nor Ian’s dear Uwe Boll here, but the fact that nowadays I seem to feel like I’m playing the latest Hollywood production before it’s a Hollywood production. I guess I should start by saying the two games I’ve completed most recently are Resident Evil 4 and Gears of War. At least one of these is new enough for me to be considered vaguely up to date.

Anyway, I enjoyed both of these games. They were both quite good. But they got me thinking about how these and many other modern games really are cinematic to a fault. In Gears of War you play an ex-soldier let off a prison sentence for desertion, as the planet’s impeding doom is quite plausible due to the masses of insectoid baddies climbing out of every gap every which way. Yeah, it could easily be a B movie premise. It plays and looks like one too, with every detail down to the sequel-inducing ending tailored to look like you’re making a considered effort to navigate the plot of Starship Troopers. This wasn’t cool by me. It had some darn fun multiplayer tactical elements, but moving from one side of the room to another didn’t have to look like one of Stallone’s final lunges when it’s completely empty. Resident evil 4 probably boasts the most pathetic little challenge: hit the right buttons when they flash during a cut scene. As you probably know or can guess, it’s going one of two ways anyway, and isn’t very satisfying when you know you’ve just let the cut scene carry on how it’s already planned out to be. It’s like making you pick yes or no to your character dying mid-cut scene, but making you do it very attentively.

A huge issue for me is that as the cinematic flavour has increased in video games, the change this seems to have brought hits their soundtracks as well. The eerie non-diegetic swells of horror movies, the electric guitar techno of right about when Vin Diesel starts to get really pissed off about something or other, chaotic horn arpeggios, or the wailing strings accompanying the loss of a great comrade – they are all here a lot, and they never seem to have any panache. One of the great things about Determinance’s soundtrack, in my right opinion, is that it manages to pull off an odd mix of quirky innovation (trance) with traditional gamey tunes and memorable loops. GoW and RE4 are both toting scores that could well be backing a film. Now there’s nothing wrong with this as such, but I personally think a games identity can be formed by the tunes. Creating atmosphere is one thing, I know, but Castlevania II on my fossilised NES had up-tempo tunes that were not only memorable, but perfectly captured my mood, which was readiness for killing some vampires (NB: especially ‘malkavian’ vampires.) and chewing some bubble gum. The lack of anything musically memorable really added the quality of dull. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney could teach a thing or two on that front.

The monotony of your enemies colour was also annoying practically, especially in Gears, as my good comrade and I were struggling to discern members of our squad from the alien scum from Hades. This was quite obviously an over-emphasis on the cinematic look of it. In a video game, I want to know who I’m ploughing down instantly by them being quite clearly part of a menacing green skinned horde. Instead, they are mostly looking like mercenary Goths. Commander keen never had to put up with this shit. Basically, I think often lately filmic conventions seem to be poking their heads up in video games quite a lot. I’m not sure I want to say this is a terrible thing, but I know that I would have liked these two games more had they not tried to make me think I was playing a movie. Can’t say I’d object to a convergence of the price tag, though.”

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Monday Night Live. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Monday Night Live: Now Showing on Hard Mode”

1. Paul:

   § January 30th, 2007 at 1:59 pm

   “Commander Keen never had to put up with this shit.”

   Best t-shirt ever.

2. malakian:

   § January 31st, 2007 at 12:18 am

   SO tempted to make said t shirt happen

3. Paul:

   § January 31st, 2007 at 12:01 pm

   Well, do it then…http://www.spreadshirt.com/

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