A Question Of Sanity

Insult Swordfighting points to two posts questioning the portrayal of mental illness in Batman: Arkham Asylum.  I can’t fully agree with these complaints, with one important caveat.  It seems to me that the Batman universe actually gives rise to their cause, and if you accept that universe then I think you also have to accept its implications.

Justin Keverne feels that the image of “those patients who are contextualised as being mentally ill” is problematic, as those patients are manic and charge Batman on sight.  It’s hard not to sympathize, as these patients are so far gone as to be depicted as almost sub-human; unlike the other characters in the game, these patients are incapable of speech or reasoned action and don’t interact with Batman so much as act as human obstacles in the Asylum’s exterior.  Travis Megill goes a bit further: he complains that because the patients are generically classed as “lunatics,” rather than being specifically diagnosed, they are stigmatized by the lack of context. 

The issue, I think, is that the world which Batman inhabits is one that posits mental illness as an extricable catalyst for criminality.  Although I suspect the idea that a relationship exists between the two isn’t a particularly surprising one for most people, Batman takes it a step further: every villain in his world turned to a life of crime after some traumatic event that spurred a break with reality.  In most cases (the Joker, Two-Face, Bane, Clayface, and Poison Ivy, among others) became criminals after they were disfigured by some other individual.  Others, like Killer Croc, the Riddler, or The Penguin , were victimized by others and retaliated against their rejection by society through a life of crime.  A final category (consider Mr. Freeze or Dr. Strange) are depicted as seeking valuable goals in a criminal way through a psychosis-like disregard for the rules of the modern world.  In every case, however, the criminal is absolved of agency for his actions with the understanding that others - whether “society” or a specific person - caused them to go insane.  In the Batman universe, It’s inconceivable that someone could simply be “evil.”

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Disturbing Batman Thought Of The Day

I find Mark Hamill’s performance as the Joker in BTAS and Arkham Asylum to be much more compelling than anything he’s done in Star Wars.

Why Does Arkham Asylum Work?

I’ve played Arkham Asylum, and it’s good.  In fact, it’s so good that IGN has dubbed it the “greatest comic book game of all time.”  I’m inclined to agree, but that begs the question: why does it work, when so many other licensed games have failed so miserably?

It’s not the gameplay.  I don’t mean to disparage the game in any way by saying so, but the core gameplay of Arkham Asylum is a solid, professional stealth action game.  It’s a strong entry into the genre, but it’s not breaking any new ground or adding anything that can’talready be found in similar games of that type.  Rather, AA is unique in that the license is the key element in making it as good as it is.

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The JRPG As Genre

I share Michael Abbott’s fond recollection of Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy IV (III in the US), so his post got me thinking recently about the JRPG.  The stagnation and repetitiveness of these games are undeniable, but the JRPG actually interests me the most because it seems to have carved itself out a niche as an actual discrete genre, separate from the RPG as a whole.

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Pint-Sized Playability

OK, one more brief thought on Shadow Complex while I’m on the subject: one of the most common recurring themes in game reviews for the title is that SC represents a “great value” because it includes a full-sized game in an Xbox Live release.  The thought occurs to me, however, that this might not be a good thing for developers.

The basic problem, as I see it, is that if Xbox Live simply becomes an arena for discounted AAA titles, it hurts everybody.  Developers will be forced into an arms race to produce cheaper but high-quality games, essentially lowering the starting price point for new games and squeezing their profitability.  Gamers who, like Michael Abbott, are drawn to “bursts of [streamlined] fun,” will have a harder time finding the more casual titles they treasure, because they’ll be sandwiched in between more premium titles.  And hardware manufacturers, who responded to this issue first with the Wii and Live/PSN, will find themselves in much the same predicament as they did before the current generation.

I’m hardly one to bemoan getting more for less.  But I do become concerned that the more we blur the lines between the delivery of AAA or hardcore games and casual titles, the more we actually end up hurting ourselves.  Definitely think of this more as a thought experiment if this trend were carried to an extreme, rather than a complaint about Shadow Complex, which I like quite a bit: is it possible that segregating our games by type and channel is actually beneficial?

Orson Scott Card And Shadow Complex

I’ve been following the semi-debate about Orson Scott Card’s involvement in scripting Shadow Complex with some amusement for the past week or two.  For the uninitiated, Card has expressed strongly conservative political views on a whole range of subjects, including homosexuality (he’s not a fan); Card is a Mormon and is opposed on religious grounds.  As a result, some gamers have expressed the view that SC should not be purchased as a form of protest against the involvement of someone they view as morally unsupportable.

Leaving the actual merits of those positions aside - I don’t think they’re relevant to the discussion - I have to come down on the side of those opposed to the boycott, for both practical and philosophical reasons.  First, boycotts tend to work only when they can clearly target a specific individual: regardless of whether or not you agree with Card, he was hardly the only person involved in Shadow Complex and boycotting the game hurts a ton of people who probably don’t share his views. 

Similarly, it’s difficult to conclude that boycotts on political grounds make a ton of sense for a game that isn’t political: the world in which Shadow Complex takes place is apparently based on a politically-tinged series that Card has authored, but as far as I can tell, the game itself avoids inserting itself into the debate.  As a result, it’s tough to see where you would draw this line: if you start boycotting products with any connection to people whose ideological views you find objectionable - even if those products don’t reflect those ideological positions - you begin to stifle free debate rather than protect it. 

I should be clear that there’s nothing wrong with freely expressing one’s personal views on any range of subjects, and this one should be no exception, no matter in which direction those views tend.  However, I don’t see a game boycott being a useful or appropriate outlet for the expression of those views.

Castlevania’s Soul

Is it just me, or is Lords of Shadow looking an awful lot like God of War with a Belmont?  I don’t really have a big problem with that, but it seems to me like Castlevania has somewhat lost touch with its roots of late, the SotN-style adventures overtaking the erstwhile linear style that marked the first four games in the series, but the newest iteration looking like neither. 

I have liked almost all of the games to date, but it makes me wonder whether or not there’s really a core “Castlevania-style” gameplay any more, or if it simply involves a main character, Death, Dracula, and some other enemies.  I think there’s a good case to be made for a remake or some other title that tries to define more clearly what a Castlevania game really means, before the brand tries to be everything to everyone.

Natal Project Natal

Natal is still nascent, but reading this IGN preview suggests that it may have some difficulty in fulfilling much of the promise that was initially offered by the Wii.  The latter console, while quite a bit of fun, unfortunately was less of an accurate motion sensor than initially believed.  Similarly, IGN indicates that Natal, while fun, has many of the same problems: accuracy that is somewhat questionable at best and which, when compared with the lightning reactions that gamers expect from their controllers, falls considerably short. 

I recall seeing fairly accurate motion sensing technology at Epcot Center some 10+ years ago.  Why it hasn’t come further is an interesting question.

An Embarassment Of Riches

I should really leave the country more often.  The summer is ending with a fresh load of new games that I’m excited to try out, from Shadow Complex and Arkham Asylum to Overlord II and Civilization Revolution on my iPod Touch.  I’m also intrigued by Voxel Kingdom, which seems reminiscent of Super Mario RPG on the Super NES.

I’ve often written about what I consider to be a glut of solid games around the summer and Christmas periods, which I think crowds out smaller, newer, and often more innovative titles in favor of high-profile sequels.  However, you’ll note that only one of the above games is a sequel, which is a refreshing change of pace.  I don’t have the aversion that many people do to sequels, since they wouldn’t be made if people hadn’t liked the originals.  But it’s still nice to see so many smaller games getting such a warm reception.

Skepticism And Marketing

I’ve spent enough time around marketers at this point to have a healthy skepticism of a sector that is notoriously difficult to track with any degree of accuracy.  A lack of solid data, reliable and accurate metrics, and a heavy reliance on correlation over provable makes me somewhat dubious of claims that marketing campaigns have been the most important factor in any game’s particular success.  So like Tracey John, I don’t doubt that the RE5 campaign had a lot of effort behind it… but I think I’m a little more skeptical than EEDR appears to be that it was the deciding factor in its popularity.

RE5 has sold about 5 million copies worldwide, including 2 million in the US.  But if you look at sales figures for RE4, which was the most recent breakout title in the series, you can see that it sold 3.6 million copies, despite being released on just the Gamecube and, much later, the PS2.  Needless to say, the GCN didn’t have the greatest reach in the world, while the late release for the PlayStation meant that it was obscured by newer and higher-profile titles.  There was enormous publicity around RE4, which no doubt spurred a lot of awareness of the series’ new direction at the time.

So it doesn’t seem like a huge reach to say that a large-scale and simultaneous release of the next game on the 360 and PS3 should probably get a boost as well.  The fact that it was reasonably high profile probably helped… but the increase doesn’t seem that improbable when accounting for the above, even without a brilliant marketing campaign.  I don’t want to minimize the efforts of Capcom staff, but Resident Evil wasn’t exactly a sleeper series.