What I Found In The Leaves

Last August, as the lease to my apartment was about to end, the roof began to smolder until the place I lived was full of smoke. When all was settled and done, my apartment had no roof. My room was spared and most of my things were okay—this part of the story being set in late capitalism, I am required to assure you that the things I purchased were okay too—and I decided to leave New York City to return to New England with my family. One of the first things I did when I arrived was look at the sky and imagine I was up there. Falling or sailing or flying. It didn’t really matter. I wanted to touch a cloud, to feel the whipping wind.

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Guerrilla Radio

I look at Rodney Mullen and I see a kindred spirit. To hear Mullen speak is to go for a ride, the cadence of his voice rising and falling in unpredictable ways. Sometimes, he speaks at a hushed whisper. A low and pained utterance indicating a reverence and yearning that polite society eschews—if there’s one thing folks feel weird about it’s excess displays of passion. When he’s not quiet, Mullen is truly loud. His laugh is a barking chortle. Painful whisperings, awkward celebration. Mullen is a man of infectious extremes.

I play as Mullen whenever I boot up Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2, the recently released remaster of earlier games. There’s an option to create a customized, idealized version of myself and I could always play as the Birdman. I think they expect you to play as Tony for a long time; his toolkit is strong and stats are spread nicely. Those things matter less and less as you play. It’s easy to upgrade any character’s stats and customize their special tricks but Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 hardly explains itself outside of an optional tutorial. It is a game superbly confident in the fact that the player will play every portion of it including the menus. That’s a wise impulse; Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 is terrifyingly intuitive and always has been. How else could many of us fully complete it in our childhoods? Still, even though I could play as myself, I play as Mullen because I’ve never felt so magnetically pulled to an individual in my life.

To hear Rodney Mullen talk about skateboarding is to hear myself attempt to talk about games criticism. There is a core of a person that we might call “Rodney Mullen” and a layer of societal artifice built around it. There is a soul and a sort of clay surrounding it. It’s easy to understand that his soul is fragile. It requires a clear and powerful nourishment. For Mullen, that’s skating. Every quiver in his voice when he talks about a trick, every pause before he mentions his domineering father expresses the singular freedom he finds on a skateboard. I immediately recognize it as the freedom I feel on a page. I see footage of an impossible flip and synthetically equate it to a good metaphor. I see freestyle groundtricks flow into each other like tributaries into a large river, and I imagine a comma-laden ramble of a sentence. I feel something ineffable. When I watch footage of Mullen or other contemporaries like Daewon Song, something falls over me like a spectral blanket. What they find through ollies, grinds, and reverts, I chase every time I write.

Before I played Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2, I was already watching documentaries on my favorite skaters and looking at old tapes. I’m back with my family for a time in quarantine, and my father found my old skateboard. It’s an old Geoff Rowley Flip board. I was always a clumsy person; skating was liberating but I could never have found the expression that someone like Mullen or Rowley have. But I did find it in games, and in writing.

That sounds indulgent and quixotic but it’s true. I can’t explain how completely necessary writing is to me. Perhaps it would be easier to say that I’ve reached a point professionally where I never really need to write criticism again if I don’t want to. I survived the daily news grind, produced some things I liked, put up with some bullshit that I didn’t, and emerged on the other side in a new field. War’s over. Except it’s never over. I need to write.

Playing Tony Hawk, I see the process. Every level is a crash course in finding intense purpose in our surroundings. While the action of Tony Hawk occurs at a scale detached from reality, one where tricks flow into intense sequences and it’s commonplace to leap large rooftop gaps, the process of achieving a high score points towards a truth that any skateboarder can attest to: the world is different when you perceive it from atop a skateboard. Your streets become so much more than pavement. You observe what is before you with a keen eye and find a meaning and intentionality that isn’t immediately obvious.

Until Mullen debuted the flatground ollie in 1982—itself inspired by Alan Gefland’s technique for freehand aerial vert tricks—the street was less explored than parks and vertical ramps. Flat ground competitions were “freestyle” competitions full of pogo tricks and manuals. The ability to leap into the air meant there were new tricks that could be developed. Mullen pioneered further tricks like the kickflip and the impossible entirely because of the new freedom the ollie offered. But the ollie wasn’t just a foundation for new tricks; it opened up the streets to exploration. Skating could move out of the parks. This proved an essential step to keeping the sport alive.

This widening freedom constitutes the core of Tony Hawk’s gameplay. Although there are plenty of vert tricks and Hawk himself is classified in game as a vert skater, the majority of each level’s gameplay is devoted to exploration. Finding hidden video tapes, jumping over parked cars, wall-riding to destroy schoolyard bells. These objectives are about navigating real spaces albeit ones that are somewhat exaggerated. It is contingent on the player to observe the world through the eyes of a skater. Tony Hawk doesn’t capture the realistic mechanics of skating but it does capture the creative sentiment. In order to complete objectives and also achieve high scores, they need to think like a skater.

To hear Mullen talk about developing tricks and the ways in which skating expanded in the 80s, you’d think little revolutionary was happening. For Mullen, tricks were about expression. These various flips and techniques weren’t about pushing the boundaries of skating. They were, first and foremost, the ways in which a shy kid from a strict Gainesville home expressed himself to the world. They were about asserting his value as an individual and expressing the ineffable parts of himself that he could not express any other way. That individual desire fed into a larger ecosystem where his tricks could be adapted and integrated into an ever-evolving language. The personal became conversational. The conversational became foundational. 

I think about these processes and apply them to my own field, although I wonder if I can even call criticism my home anymore. I didn’t write about games because I thought there could be a career in it. I didn’t write about games because I saw starting my blog as a pathway to outlets or studios. I wrote and still write because it is the only way I have as a still-lonely kid from New Hampshire to express something fundamental about myself. I write because it is the only way I’ve ever felt like I’ve been heard. Let me be clear: this is the comparison I’ll make between myself and Mullen. I’m not implying that I’ve done anything so important as he has. When I see Mullen, I see someone who can’t stop. Because stopping means moving back into a silent space. 

That space is painful. I do not make friends easily and struggle to keep them. I am awkward and have, in my life, only found a handful of people who I believe have ever seen the person I truly am. Writing, then, is a way to shed layers and layers of confusion and performance in favor of something authentic.

When I navigate a Tony Hawk level or watch a tape of my favorite skaters, I see the writing process spread before me. To engage in criticism is to find yourself in a new space every time you play a game. There are a variety of potential objectives and angles that you can seek out and achieve. In order to do those in a sensible fashion, you need to explore and familiarize yourself with the space and then perceive the spaces where you can move, combo-like, from one point to another. In-between, you add flourishes and tricks that express something not only about the space you are in but the person you are. Done well, you show that the metaphorical school-yard is far more than a school-yard. It is a playground, it is a battlefield, it is an unexplored land fit for mapping. A writer, like a skater, perceives certain spaces differently. A Metal Gear military installation becomes a metaphor for self-delusion. The world of Dark Souls, whether in the meanderings of the first entry or the broken spaces of the second, expresses something fundamental about the nature of memory. The violence of The Last of Us Part II (and who chiefly suffers in that world) speaks to the biases of the writers.

There’s a catch though. A difference between what Mullen is talking about and the current reality of games criticism. Where Mullen speaks of his individual expression flowing into a communal effort where skaters are engaged in a wider conversation, games criticism has rarely felt so cohesive. It is a balkanized space where writers are often separated from each other. Mainstream writers hardly read the important fringe spaces, academics ignore anyone without their pedigree. There is a lack of institutional or history knowledge because there’s no real tradition of mentorship or places where that history is documented satisfactorily. In journalistic spaces, writers burn out in the face of institutional failures that have led to shoddy reportage and a lack of protection against a reactionary games culture. There is also no pathway for fresh faces to slot into the leadership spaces that could actually address structural issues. Critically, while there’s hundreds of YouTubers and other content creators bringing criticism to the masses, there’s few times where critical terms or concepts carry over into the broader culture. We do not have the same degree of literacy amongst players as, say, films do among film-goers.

This is not to say these things are completely absent. I’ve seen moments where the isolated spaces of games writing interact. When academic writers like Frank Lantz and Ian Bogost wrote about narrative in 2015, a cadre of alt-space writers directly engaged with their work in a debate that helped to solidify understandings of ludology and narratology even further that what had been expressed by writers like Gonzolo Frasca. Writers like Stephen Beirne and Durante Pierpaoli coined the terms ludo-fundamentalism and ludo-centrism to better codify schools of thought that dismissed holistic criticism in favor of games systems analysis. Yet, this is not something widely remembered either by academics or players. And while it’s tempting to self-critique and say that I’m overplaying the importance of that moment because of my proximity to it, I think it’s illustrative of the critical sphere’s major failures. 

Conversations come and go in flashes, very little is integrated into the whole, and we largely forget everything that’s come before in favor of repetitious debates and torturous re-litigations. Beyond this, there’s very little discussion between writers. There’s less letter series and response pieces and very little sense that any real conversations are taking place. Writing might be the realm of individual expression that that expression hardly feeds into a larger pool where concepts can be iterated on. This is, more than anything else, the biggest failure of games writing.  I have found deep personal expression in my writing and yes, there is a community. But what about our processes are communal? Perhaps nothing at all.

In addition to Tony Hawk, my current gameplay indulgence is Pathologic. The two could not be more different. One is accommodating and celebratory. It gives the player ample ability to navigate a level and express themselves. The other is oppressive and continually stymies all attempts at progress. Yet, as I play Pathologic I pause. My character, the surgeon Artemy Burakh is approached by the Kin, the tribesmen and women who occupy the steppe outside his home-town. Artemy is a “menkhu,” a group of surgeons and steppe-folk who perform vivisections. They are architects of the flesh. It is said that they are “Those Who Know The Lines.” 

I load up Tony Hawk and play a competition map at a skate-park in Chicago. In order to succeed and get the gold medal, I also search for the lines. I’ve always been searching. With every game, with every word I search for the lines. Mullen needs to skate.  Artemy needs to heal the sick. I need to write. 

Idle Thoughts On Games During Pandemic Times

I’m in an interesting position as I write this. Since I’ve written here I have moved out of journalism and towards the dev side of games. Good news! I’m happier! Bad news! It can feel weird to have public opinions. 

That said, I miss writing and I’ve had some thoughts about games I’ve played (mostly major titles) that I want to share. I’m keeping them loose and I hope folks will allow me the indulgence. Here we are!

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Final Fantasy 7 Remake: Thoughts and Ramblings

Surprised to dust this off but I want to collect my thoughts quickly now that credits are rolling on Remake:

In general, I enjoyed it quite a lot. As one of many players with a unique relationship to the original (I first “played” it watching a childhood friend over the course of several sleepovers before playing on my own and occasionally returning to it) I was skeptical. I’ve express some of that skepticism at Kotaku , a website I write at. Remakes and remasters sometimes fall short or deviate in strange ways. Remake forges its own path and I’m grateful for it.

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Overwatch Journal: March 2, 2018

Less preamble here. I’m trying to get in matches every day and I took time tonight to gain some familiarity with Roadhog and train better habits with Soldier 76. Today was a weird day and even playing Overwatch, my mind was a bit distracted. Nothing major but I guess that’s something to keep in mind. Finding a way to relax before booting up the game, be it music or a small bit of personal writing to clear my mind, could be a good idea.

1. Warm Up

I stuck with some McCree aim training to start off and found myself in a comfortable place, albeit one with plenty of room for improvement. Yesterday, I noted that movement combined with aim helps compensate for my difficulty tracking. Today, I focused on staying still and refining mouse movement. I’ll probably continue this and add in a slightly different tracking exercise tomorrow before moving to bot training.

I spent the other half of my warmup testing the range of Roadhog’s hook. It’s a 20m range, which is more distance than it looks. I still need to play around with it more but understanding that the hook is comfortably mid range helps provide a baseline. It’s double the distance of my most effective range with Tracer, a roundabout but useful way to remember how much room I have.

Quick Play Match #1

Defense on Gibraltar. Soldier 76. I’ve logged the most hours with Soldier since he can slide into a lot of comps. (This is why I like Tracer so much as well.) I’m comfortable with my movements and did my best to make sure, as per my coaches notes, to really make use of my sprint. That worked out well as did being more self conscious of my position. Another note I received is that I should always be doing something. In this case, if I’m not attacking, I should be heading to the best possible position. I kept that in mind and even used a Helix jump once to get where I wanted to be. This mostly meant high ground, reminding myself (with mixed success) to play it further back from the ledge to rob enemies of easy body shots. Added focus on audio cues helped me shut down a Tracer and Pharah who kept trying to attack my positions.

Less impressive was my awareness of the objective. Because I was focusing so much on picks, positioning, and sound, I zoned out during the first push and had to scramble to adjust. I failed to stall the cart at the end because I was playing it a bit too far away from the objective. That was a problem. Also a problem? My aim. It’s not the worst but I wasn’t really getting the elims I wanted because I was missing the shots that would seal the deal. This can just improve with play but I think I want to take time to really get a sense for the length of my bursts.

Notes:

• Hey! Your positioning wasn’t brilliant but you were thinking about it, and you remembered audio cues. Good job, Heather.
  
• Remember the objective and know the fastest path to it. If you know your exits, you can adjust to contest the point or fall back to a healer.
  
• On the subject of healers: pay more attention to their location to make it easier for them to do their job. Help them help you.
  

Quick Play Match #2

Attack on Numbani. Soldier again. I was once again pretty mindful of positioning but I wasn’t really getting the elims I should have considering how much the enemy was playing into it. Part of this issue comes from my use of Helix rockets. My coach advised to use them to finish off targets and I’m not always holding myself to that. I think I can justify using them to crack armor on targets like Bastion or Orisa sometimes but I really should be using them when I know I can get the kill. This match was good though, with a big ultimate at the end of the round. Made sure the D.Va wasn’t around and shut down the defense.

Notes:

• Keeping to the high ground in a map like this requires some smarter jumping and maybe even some helix jumps. I should spend some time to practice movement so I can avoid dropping down too early.
• My ultimate went well but it was my *only* ultimate. I shouldn’t be afraid to use my damn ult from time to time. I’ll build it back up in time for another fight.

Quick Play Match #3

Eichenwalde, Defense. Roadhog. Not going to lie, I’m a bit tired and this post has taken a while. This match was the best of the night though. I was on fire for a lot of it and only died once or twice. Target prioritizing was pretty good too although I’m still not great with Roadhog positioning. Made sure to watch multiple angles and hallways. That paid off even if my hooks didn’t always work the way I wanted.

Notes:

I should be more mindful of my ammo with Roadhog so I can really time when I’m putting a lot of pressure and avoid crappy reloads.

Somewhat related to saving ammo, I should use my melee more often after landing a hook. Combined with a first shot, I can get some cleaner follow ups.

That’s it for now!

Overwatch Journal: March 1, 2018

Last June, I moved down a rank in Overwatch from Platinum to Gold. A mixture of increasing player skill among the playerbase and my own inability to consistently play the game helped drive me into the lower tier. Overwatch, like anything, it a skill you develop and nurture with continued exercise. It’s easy to forget good habits and to have raw mechanical ability atrophy over time. It’s perfectly common to drop a tier under these circumstances but I, ever the perfectionist, felt disappointed. I wanted to get my rank back and I wanted to become a smarter player in the process.

I started working on and off with an Overwatch coach, a high tier player who runs me through a variety of drills and critiques my performance in matches. It was beneficial but my time was limited and our sessions slowed down in frequency. This week, I started my lessons again in preparation for a feature article. My coach wants me to get in a certain degree of play time each day and I thought it would be interesting to write daily logs about what I learned or noticed in the process. For some people, these fact might be readily apparent. That’s not really the point. The goal is to turn my note-taking into process you can all enjoy. Let’s get started.

1. Aim Training

I decided to keep it simple today and spend my warmup in the training range. I chose McCree and went to the section with moving training robots. From there, I gave myself a challenge: one shot for each target. Only headshots count and i I miss, I move on to the next target. As expected, my aim was originally rough even though I did some training last night with my coach. I was jumpy and the challenge was learning how to relax. 

First, I added movement to shots. Standing still to shoot can be helpful but practically that’s not how many matches go. Combining my movement with aiming lead to improvement. This was something I established last night as well but even small side to side movement meant I didn’t need to overcorrect with my mouse anymore. Second, I focused solely on my accuracy. While reaction time and moving from target to target is an important skill, it was getting to many body shots while trying to snap back and forth. I fired only when I was comfortable and was slowly able to pick up the pace. Setting a realistic goal and expectation created a baseline that I could build upon. Seeing those improvements play out in real time was good.

Last: I opted to increase my mouse sensitivity considerably. I doubled it to 8.56 although I left it at a lower 7.78 for Tracer. Briefly training with Tracer, I testing tracking my shots after blinks. The slightly decreased sensitivity prevented me overcorrecting, as side a small realization that I could lock aim faster after blinking behind a target by turning to the side nearest the one I passed during the blink. In all, I felt confident and ready for Quick Play.

Quick Play Match #1

I dropped into an in progress map on Volskaya on defense. The team comp lacked damage so I slotted into Tracer quickly. The match felt good. I tried to be mindful of positioning, engaging targets in the backline like their Widowmaker and Zenyatta. When taking those fights, I was able to reliably do damage and get eliminations. At times, I make the wrong pick. In particular, I committed to fighting their Soldier more than I should have. It’s a bad match up, even if it is winnable, because his self-heal increases TKK and he can finish my quickly if he fires Helix rockets. My aim was a bit less encouraging and I had some trouble tracking if characters juked too much. Figuring out proper places to aim and making sure I keep to a 10m range should help. 

Notes: 

• Work on target prioritization as Tracer. Stick to squishes and don’t overcommit. Harass harder targets and move in only when you know you can get the kill. This can be improved with callouts and communication. Seriously, Heather, it’s okay and optimal to focus on easy eliminations.

• When aiming, find a spot you can comfortably hit for now. The enemy’s neck and shoulders is a good choice, as I can shift up if I’m comfortable with my tracking but if not, the spread on my weapon will still ensure some headshots.
  

Quick Play Match #2

Defense on Anubis. Played as Roadhog, since I wanted to work on tank play. This match went really well. I spent a lot of this match on fire, which was gratifying. I kept with my group and very rarely flanked. I was liberal with my hook, dragging in feeders or trying to separate enemies from their healer. This mostly worked but I think I can work on target prioritizing here as well. The biggest problems came when I got greedy. Fishing for hooks over chasing low targets were the primary cause of death here. This match felt good, which I’ll take as a sign to spend more time with Roadhog.

Notes:

• I never felt too confident using my ultimate. Communicating with my Ana and getting nano’d first would have seen better returns. In one case, I panic ult’d after getting booped off point by a Lucio into the thick of the enemy team. It would have probably been better to delay from there until I died so I could have the ult when I came out of spawn to clear the point.

• Learn your hook range. Time spent in warm up beforehand could have ensured more hooks and prevented overextending. Run drills until you have a sense, then run some more.

Quick Play Match #3

Attack on Junkertown. Picked Orisa, who is usually my go-to tank choice This was a disaster partially due to team composition. I was the only tank and we only had Zenyatta for a support. Part of me wonders if there was a better pick to make here but I’m not entirely sure since I think we really needed a shield. The initial push went well. I kept my shield on the cart and used my right click to draw in weak enemies. I tried using it to pull enemies down from ledges but that never really worked. Eventually, we stalled and I often found myself getting zerged by the enemy team. I tried to be cognizant of my shield, moving in and out from side to side. It never really clicked and we handily lost the match.

Notes:

• I need to use Fortify more often. If there was one huge sin for this match, it was not using that ability and not keeping track of my cooldowns.

• Shield placement and resetting after getting eliminated felt sloppy. Some of this was lack of team coordination but taking extra time to relearn sightlines will help me be more confident in my positioning. 

No big conclusion here. I’m just keeping track as I go. We’ll experiment with some heroes tomorrow and look for at least one match to improve Tracer or Roadhog. See you then!

Final Fantasy XV: Thoughts and Ramblings

I’ve just finished a more detailed playthrough of Final Fantasy XV. There’s plenty to talk about but today is strange and my mind is scattered so I thought it best to keep things loose. It worked for Infinite Warfare. My general takeaway is that I like Final Fantasy XV more than I should. It is a broken, shattered game but one that managed to win me over in spite of itself.

THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS POST

1. Let’s start positive here. FFXV has one of my favorite game worlds and settings in a long time. This is impressive given how surprisingly little of it we really explore in detail. There’s essentially two major cities in this game, with a handful of minor locations. Whereas other Final Fantasy games are globe trotting affairs, FFXV remains relatively local until the latter end of the game. 

By this point, you’re no longer dealing with an open world design however. For all intents and purposes, FFXV’s largest gameplay chuck takes place within the nation of Lucis and its various regions. The map isn’t dense with things to do but strong art direction and environment design gives ever location an air of believability that most games do not manage. It isn’t on the same level as The Witcher 3 but FF XV is chasing after the great Western open worlds and does so admirably. The world is fun to be in and feels steeped in a larger history and lore that feels suitably epic and magical.

2. The core cast of characters are enjoyable and memorable as well. The four party members banter and have clearly developing relationships. It adds a lot to the experience. There are weak links in the chain; Gladio tends to be far less personable than we are meant to believe and Ignis’ traits remain fairly static until a major bit of action in the plot physically handicaps him. These are minor complaints considering how well the group dynamics flow. By the end of the game, the four protagonists feel like true brothers.

The secondary cast is pretty fun as well. Iris is a charming and likable character who honestly should have accompanied the party longer than she did. Aranea makes for a memorable rival turned frenemy, and while we don’t get to spend too much time with Cor Leonis, his gravitas served the initial parts of the game very well. 

On top of this, we have one of the most memorable antagonists in the series history. Ardyn is charismatic, intelligent, watchable, and when the times demand it, he can become truly sinister. There are the subtle hints of true depth for this character; he feels complicated and worn. The plot fails to investigate his highly interesting history but he still manages to make an impression. I’ve not had this fun with a Final Fantasy villain in a long time.

3. A lot of these characters draw strength from strong vocal performances and animations. Ray Chase gives a shockingly good turn as Noctis, a character who starts petty and fairly unlikable grows into a commanding presence. Darin De Paul gives an outstanding turn as Ardyn, oozing charm while slipping into more sinister vocal ranges when needed. 

One of the best performances in the game actually comes from Robbie Daymond as Prompto. He brings a wonderful energy to the chipper gunslinger but also imbues him with a raw sense of vulnerability. The voce work merges well with quality animations. In particular, there’s a moment where Luna tells Ardyn that redemption is in his reach if he were to choose it and the facial animation manages to communicate an astounding range of thoughts and emotions within around five seconds. It’s great and shows how important the interplay between multiple disciplines are when creating digital performances.

4. Combat can be frustrating but I found that there’s a nice sense of push and pull to the entire affair. It’s not as technique heavy as Episode Duscae implied. Instead, the challenge is finding times to maintain your offensive actions and your defensive dodging stance. With larger groups of enemies, you will get tossed around from time to time and it can be frustrating. But after a while, you’ll find yourself slipping through guards to deliver big hits, performing strong combination attacks with your bros, and warping around the battlefield to perform deadly, magical acrobatics.

5. The game starts with an amazingly interesting core conceit that I think gets squandered. The road trip angle is given a new weight when Cor makes it clear that for Noctis to succeed against the empire, he needs to reclaim the power of the past kings of Lucis. Awesome. That sounds like a neat quest set up. But the game only has Noctis recover a few of these relics during the plot, sometimes without intending to. This then gives way to communion with the various gods around the world.

It would have been a perfectly acceptable and desirable plot to have Noctis seek out the power of kings and gods with the Empire hounding him along the way only for Ardyn to betray everyone near the latter half. In fact, that structure seems fundamentally etched into the structure of the game as an open world experience. And yet, the game abandons the quest for the king’s power, makes it unclear why Noctis is even seeking the gods (or rather, if they are seeking him), and the game totally abandons the Empire. 

The best example of this is Ravus. He’s the commander of Imperial forces, a skill swordsman, Luna’s brother, someone with a personal (if misplaced) grudge on the kingdom of Lucis, and all around bad dude. He was even in Kingsglaive. In FF XV, you encounter him once before he is blamed for the disastrous events in Altissia, turned into a daemon offscreen by Ardyn, and killed in one of the game’s most lack luster bossfights. This is frankly unacceptable from a series that managed to make me give a shit about villains as minor Scarlet and fuckin’ Heidegger but Ravus is basically Beatrix by way of Char Aznable and he’s completely misused. It’s downright sinful.

Similarly, the Emperor has a single scene. If the game took time to build him up, we might have had a betrayal as memorable as Kefka’s when Ardyn usurps power and tosses the realms into chaos. No such luck here. We also only see Minister Verstael for a single cutscene but this is the dude who runs the empire’s weapons program and manufactures MTs using knowledge gained from Ardyn. He’s also, technically, Prompto’s father. There’s loads of potential here that is also wasted because the game hits ludicrous speed after Altissia and never slows the fuck down. As the result, I feel like I’m missing a significant portion of the game.

6. In keeping with the botched story elements, we have the biggest missed opportunity when Ardyn basically creates and eternal night that lasts ten whole years. The world is plunged into chaos, daemons reign supreme, humanity is hiding in a few final bastions of resistance against the hordes. And yet, when we awake into the World of Ruin, we’re not given a new variation of the game map to explore. Instead, we get an expositional dump by Talcott before easily reuniting with out companions.

Yet, in the intervening ten years, a lot of stuff has happened. Ignis has become a badass blind warrior, Aranea has gone from Imperial mercenary to champion of the people with an entire army at her command, Iris, working alongside Cor, has become so awesome that she’s known as “Iris the Demonslayer,” and Talcott, the young boy we knew from years before, has become a veteran hunter in his own right.

Why do I not see the characters again? Imagine if I woke in the World of Ruin with only Gladio to greet me, ever faithful for years as guardian of the Crystal. Talcott joins us as a temporary guest character as we journey from settlement to settlement, helping restore order while also reuniting with our friends. We could help Cindy in a brief story sequence that reunites us with Prompto, we could encounter Aranea and Ignis as they search ancient ruins for information of how to defeat Ardyn, we could reinforce Cor and Iris at Gladio’s request in a battle against daemons attacking Lestallum.

 The set up is right there in the background but instead, we get an exposition dump, no satisfying reunion scene with the gang, and we’re able to immediately head to Insomnia to fight Ardyn. If the first half of the game is missing the Empire, the latter half of the game is missing basically everything.

8. In spite of these obvious oversights and missteps, the ending made me cry. It’s well done. I even think it could have been more dramatic. As it stands, Noctis gives up his life for the people of the world and the fates of his best bros feel ambiguous. I think they should have doubled down even harder on the heartbreak here and showed their last stand. If this is a game about gradually assuming responsibility, that needs to extend to the other protagonists in order to be thematically complete. 

I also think that while Ardyn should have died, there was no need to have the strange moment with him in the spirit realm. If we had someone gotten to understand Arydn’s past in more detail, perhaps during the time Noctis spends in the crystal, it would have been enough to land the final blow on him and wish him peace in the next life. The ending is good but I can’t help thinking it ought to have been great.

9. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I think this game needed a codex. The world is full of amazingly interesting history that I’d gladly read about. Imagine walking into a dungeon and walking away with ancient lore you discovered on old tablets or spending time in Altissia with some type of tour guide and getting a beefier codex for it. As stated, the world is amazingly interesting. Lestallum is a city run by women, Titan is holding up a perpetually falling comet in the middle of Duscae, the Empire and Lucis had major wars, the tombs of old kings litter the land. This is interesting stuff I want to know more about

Say what you will about how FF XIII made the codex necessary to understanding I actually know the religion in that world and the cosmology. In FF XV, I still don’t quite understand what an Oracle is and that’s literally the profession of one of the (ostensibly) most important characters in the game.

10. Speaking of Luna, she suffers from the same issue as her brother; we don’t get to spend time with her. Occasionally, we see flashes to her life and her side journey but this is a powerful character. Instead, she is relegated largely to the sidelines until Altissia, where we reunite with her just long enough for Ardyn to kill her.  

Luna is a  prophet, mage, and priestess who can stare down literal gods and heal magical blight. FF XV could have easily given us moments where we play as here or structured itself such that we actually get worthwhile perspective cuts to what she was doing for much of the story. It would have made her death actually mean something.

11. This game has one of the best soundtracks of the series. It is a powerhouse and Yoko Shimomura nails just about every track. Shimomura has always done very well with strings and piano. Here, that strength aptly bridges the gap between the more realistic aspects of the setting with the fantasy. I don’t have an in depth analysis here. It’s just very good. 

In general, the biggest issue with FFXV is that is is fractured. The open world is great, if lacking in variety. But I forgive that because of how enrapturing it is. The characters are wonderful but the plot misuses them or ignores them constantly. I genuinely like this game but I know that a better scenario designer could have gotten something much more coherent. That’s the biggest problem; this game just falls apart by the end and even if it manages to hit a strong emotional climax, you’re let with the overwhelming feeling that while it was a good time, it could have been genuinely great. 

Infinite Warfare: Thoughts And Ramblings

Yesterday, I streamed the entirety of Infinite Warfare’s campaign and while I found it compelling enough to press onwards towards the end, I think my overall impression of the game are negative. Make no mistake, this is still one of the better Call of Duty games but that’s not necessarily a difficult achievement with the bar set so low. Series like Black Ops and standalone titles Ghosts are mediocre titles while games like Modern Warfare 3 and World at War are flat out awful. There’s plenty to talk about here and I think it is worth the rambles. Let’s get started.

THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS POST

1. Infinite Warfare cannot deliver on the ambitions of its gameplay. It wants to be a fast shooter full of wall running, gun akimbo, variable tactics, and explosions. There are two major issues at play. The first is that the game is an absolute chore to control. Perhaps I have been spoiled by Titanfall 2′s controls but Infinite Warfare is far too plodding to achieve the transcendent gunplay it clearly wants to offer. 

Everything is off by half. Wall running is only partially automatic; if you release the control stick, you unceremoniously snap off the wall. Sliding is counter intuitive. What should be a simple combination of running and pressing the crouch button is made clumsy by requiring players to hold down the the button. You will run and plan to slide past an enemy only to take a knee for them and get blasted in the face. Additionally, sprinting is limited. You get fatigued if you sprint too long but the encounter design seems built for continuous movement. What might have been a game dominated by swift movement has a considerable amount of pauses.

The game offers plenty of tactical options: you have a wrist mounted ballistic shield, autonomous drones, the ability to hack enemy robots, and a variety of grenades. You will not use these very often. The game can be played like any other title in the franchise. In the rare cases you pull from your bag of tricks, it is a fleeting affair. A hack here, a quick shield there as you move from cover to cover. None of these options feel completely integrated into the gameplay. The exist in an ether, pulling out occasionally like a party trick before being shelved. The end result is a game that wants to do seemingly everything but achieves virtually nothing of note. 

The game is ambitious but merely ends up competent. 

2. The major exception to this are the space combat sequences. They are a furious affair full of missile locks, flares, cannon fire, dogfights, and blinding speed. In these sequences, Infinite Warfare becomes a dazzling and genuinely awesome science fiction bombshell.  They are Wing Commander. They are Strike Vector. In any other franchise these battles would be the basis of an entire game. And while these affairs are somewhat over produced, they are integrated well into the main campaign and never outstay their welcome.

3. The move to a future setting held a lot of potential. Infinite Warfare squanders this with an incredibly reductive top level narrative. This is UC Gundam without any of the potential ambiguities. The villains (the Settlement Defense Force) are space separatists with no clear motivation except wanton destruction. Why are they rebelling? Do they have significant cause? We never know. It’s “Ultranationalists” all over again. There’s no nuance here and no context. They are evil because the story needs a villain. No more, no less.

Infinite Warfare’s villains lack any semiotic importance. They point towards nothing. Kit Harrington’s Admiral Salen Kotch is a non entity, spouting Social Darwinist rhetoric but never achieving menace. Say what we will about Modern Warfare 2′s implausible campaign but the main antagonists represented very real anxieties. General Shepard was the military-industrial complex at its worst, a manifestation of a machine and system that could not let go of conflict. Makarov was the looming specter of highly competent domestic terrorism; the modern fear that you might stand at an airport and be gunned down by men with nebulous agendas. 

Modern Warfare’s Zakaev and Al-Asad lacked any real story presence but this only highlighted the confusion of modern conflicts. You will die on a distant battlefield fighting villains you never see, hiding behind armies and militiamen. They were ghosts of the past, created through failed interventionism and given extreme power through the unchecked proliferation of weapons.

Advanced Warfare’s Jonathan Irons represented a different fear. The rising power of private military forces and the sinister plotting of the corporate elite. War turned into domestic business. Elon Musk with guns, smiles and rhetoric.

I am wary of giving those games too much credit but at a bare minimum, I will point out that these antagonists are in touch with their respective zeitgeist. Infinite Warfare settles for Saturday morning level of sophistication. You might as well be fighting Commander Cobra here.

4. Infinite Warfare is a game written by writers, goddammit it. There’s very clear bookmarks, a trite but underlying theme, and plenty of attempts at emotion. I say attempts because while they elicit plenty of reaction from the protagonist, Reyes, they never manage to affect the the player. 

At its core, the game wants to be a parable about sacrifice and the burdens of command. You are outgunned and will get increasingly desperate to defeat the enemy. You will lose nearly everything in service to your people and you will only will be accepting the fact that these sacrifices are necessary. By the end of the game, one major character survives. The majority of Reyes’ crew are dead, including Reyes himself. I watched over and over as soldiers did heroic things, dying in the process. I barely got to know any of these people. They were names, not characters. Bodies to be thrown away in service of the narrative. 

It is to Brian Bloom’s credit that he manages to imbue Reyes with a surprising degree of humanity. I liked Reyes in spite of the narrative and while I never felt the same burdens he did, they were aptly communicated by his actor.  Yet, for all of the emotion on screen there was never a moment that communicated or captured these feelings in game. One sacrifice near the ends comes close, as you watch a valued ally die through their perspective but there has already been so much loss at that point to devalue the moment’s weight.

 This is a game that wants you to feel a chill down your spine with every sacrifice. It plays recordings from all the fallen over its credits. Sons reaching out to distant fathers, mothers assuring their children that they died for a good cause, robots finding their humanity, and stern career soldiers letting their guard down in private moments. You are meant to mourn. To ponder the nature of service and bravery. Battlefield 1 veers into the maudlin from time to time but never becomes half as desperate for your emotional approval as Infinite Warfare. It craves your sentiment but never manages to earn it.

5. Infinite Warfare does hold one mission of true excellence. It is an extended stealth mission that contains a slow, quiet journey through an asteroid field. All Ghillied Up by way of Mass Effect. Bounding through zero gravity, you ponderously make your way towards an enemy cruiser, sniping patrols and slipping behind tumbling rocks. Boarding the ship, you dart from shadow to shadow, slipping behind enemies for stealth kills as you find the right position to open fire and launch your assault in earnest. It culminates in a dizzying space battle. It is brilliantly paced and captivating throughout. 

It is also a side mission that many players will skip right over. The game is partitioned such that you can select to attack various targets of opportunity or move on to the next story mission. Some of the best missions are push off the side, essentially divorced from the main campaign. The ability to choose your next objective might underscore the player’s role as a ship commander but I’m honestly shocked by the amount of well crafted gameplay is completely skippable. 

6. This series has ever escaped the shadow of September 11th. It still finds itself enamored with images of property destruction, civilian death, blood in the streets, and the utter devastation of the domestic. It never reaches the lunacy of Modern Warfare 2′s suburban combat but the game still falls back to evoking 9/11 in order to impress the severity of the conflict to the player. 

In many ways, this series has been an ongoing attempt to allow players to find some modicum of control in an increasingly muddled world. It is a distinctly America game series, anxious of attacks on the home and disruptions to blissful domesticity. The enemies shift from game to game but the tone remains the same: we are at war and will always be at war. Even in the far distance future, barbarians will be knocking on the gates of Rome. Deadly vipers lay in the shadows, ready to destroy our way of life. Take up a gun and shoot the monsters. Find reassurance in your dominance of the enemy. And there will always be enemies. 

If there is a single reason why this franchise feels tired, it is because it never has found the right panacea for this anxiety. The panic attack has lasted nearly a decade.

7. If there is one thing that this game manages to successfully pull from science fiction, it’s found in how diverse the game’s cast is. Your crew contains prominent women and people of color. Various nationalities are represented and there is at least one gay character. There’s also a very likable robot, for whatever that is worth.

8. I feel a slight hypocrisy here criticizing the game’s vapid depiction of war while also taking time to talk about the guns but I do want to note that the game’s weapons feel far more like something out of Perfect Dark than a modern military shooter. There’s still a lot of focus on the tech of war, that same romanticizing of weapons. But there’s also a strangely playful attitude as well. 

I’m unsure what to make of this. If there’s been one other problem with the series, it is how much it really loves the tools of war. People are always eager to point out how subversive Death From Above is. But whatever critique exists in that mission is fundamentally undercut by the fact that the game seems genuinely enamored with the gunship’s power. Infinite Warfare is no exception. These guns are designed to be cool and it is difficult to take the game’s vague lamentations of war seriously when it also wants me to sit in awe of the very weapons and mechanisms by which war are perpetuated. 

That’s all I got for now. This game tries very hard but cannot escape the DNA of what it was built upon. It is clumsy on all fronts. In gameplay, in narrative, in themes, and in tone. It wants to be so much but ends up feeling like nothing. 

Uprooting, The City, and Progress

I have been told I apologize too much and my favorite critical writer once told me to avoid starting with an apology but I must ask your indulgences as I write. My mind is swirling with no particular direction and a public sieving of thoughts seems a productive way of engaging with them. I always find that the challenge of writing and communicating with others often allows me to consider my thoughts more intimately than I might manage otherwise. 

(I’ve also been told I am too verbose. I think the above sentences has confirmed that assessment soundly. As will the rest of this post)

Yesterday, I moved into Brooklyn. I drove with my family down from New Hampshire. They helped me move in, we walked the neighborhood, and we parted ways. If this seems quaint, all I can say is that you’d be correct to call it such. In some ways, my adult development has been severely arrested by anxiety, personal traumas, and my own ambiguous place on the spectrum. Plainly put, I have a hard time with practicalities. I feel far more than I ever think, which is unfortunate because the real world is built by the thinkers. Taxes, paperwork, protocols, routines, and other unspoken societal rules daunt me. It’s always been a bit like this. Which means I fall back on my family a lot. And I’ve been fortunate that they’ve supported me unconditionally in my endeavors. 

I mention this because I have traded a quieter, suburban life for something more active. It has been jarring. (It’s also been beautiful in a short time. I will get to that in a bit.) I’ve long since learned that the paralysis I often feel is not foisted upon me by outside systems or agents. It is the paralysis of freedom. Of knowing that I can leave my apartment, choose a direction, and walk. What freezes me in place is not knowing with direction to face or if I should walk at all. Here I am, able to walk where I might if I want to yet woefully unprepared to any path. Literally and metaphorically.

No one prepares you to get older. No one takes you aside and gives sage advice. The currents of time and other invisible forces push you. You either adapt or you drown in those tides. But no one teaches you to swim in them. I’ve had to learn to swim very fast and I mostly dog paddle in the rapids. Make no mistake: I do not begrudge my successes. I count myself as deeply fortunate and aim to work hard.

But there is no denying the difficult of leaving home. There is a pace to the city that I have not learned. How could I have yet? It’s been a day. Still, you can see it and feel it. People walk different; they have a drive to their step that is filled with confidence. The pace is faster. There is more noise. My eyes wander and always find something worth noticing. Each street corner is a country. Or so it seems. I feel small.

I take care to check myself in moments like these. It would be easy to read too much exoticism into the city around me; such a thing would disrespect this community. Yet, I cannot deny a true magnetism. I already have an affection for my neighborhood, as little of it as I’ve truly explored. Scared as I am, I watch the confident people walk about and believe that I, too, could learn to walk like them.

I’m thinking a lot about why I’m here. I’m here to work. Now that I’m here, I’m starting to think of what that means. What the fuck does that even mean? I have no good answer. Not yet. The reality is there there’s a divide between where I was before and what I do now. Things are different. There are new responsibilities and challenges. I worked a day job when freelancing, which allowed me a certain freedom to write critically on choice things.

That’s still part of my reality but it’s mixed in with obligations to responsibly cover topics of interest to readers or even to cover developing stories. These things shift daily, to an extent. Topicality is always king but when your work becomes more than just criticism and edges to reporting, it is even heavier on the scales. 

I think about how we make progress in this sphere. Not professionally but culturally. How do we talk about games as art? How can we popularize criticism? For some, this is a distasteful question. Criticism need not be popular! If that is true, it must at least become more egalitarian. Not common in quality but certainly less baroque. We cannot rely solely on academics nor can we hope that the loose coteries of critics might pen a grand manifesto that will reach enthusiasts broadly. It cannot come from any one vector.

Yet, all of this is balanced by the fact that, like it or not, readers view our work as a cold and logical service. To report, to catalog. To inform. This is true no matter where we are writing. And often, that desire seems incompatible with more emotive or esoteric writing. There is an undeniable tension at play. It is romantic to think that there is one big critical piece hiding in someone’s mind that will mark a paradigm shift. Sadly, the truth is that change will be slow. Sometimes, you have to wait a bit because Sony’s having a press conference. It’s a hustle. A waiting game. Finding the moments and letting them add up.

I think that’s the job. And I think that it is is a climb; the culture of technologies, the strange tribalisms of gamers, and the rigidity of corporations turns it into a climb. You get closer by matters of inches. To some extent, you have to make peace with the fact that we’re dealing with progress by inches. And perhaps there will be maverick writers; we have amazing voices that are pretty far up the hill. But I think a large part of the job is existing and waiting.

Existing is the hard part, be it in the sphere or the city. I only speak for myself certainly but now that I’m here, each moment feels a bit like playing hide and seek. I’m more keenly aware of my gender performance. Everyone has their own fight and I guess that’s mine. But I feel it keenly any time I shave or make a phone call. More than I did before.

As you can see, this has been a mess of random thoughts and pontifications. All I know is that we’re climbing, all of us. And I think we’re making progress. I think there’s been no better time yet for games writing. On all fronts. But we just need to keep keenly aware that it is, without a doubt a climb. 

And yeah, I’m scared right now. But you keep going. You continue. And I think no one tells you that’s how it is because you have to learn it and live it. 

For me, right now in this moment? I gonna go out, eat some soup, head back to my apartment, sleep, and wake up tomorrow. I’m gonna go to work. I’m gonna continue and if I’m lucky, I’ll learn to walk confidently.

On Reach and Topicality

Note: Much of my thoughts here come as a result of reading Cameron Kunzelman’s “No One Criticized BioShock Infinite Before”. This is not a response piece. Merely, that was the jumping off point for my thoughts. 

I’ve thought a lot lately about what it means to be writing. Particularly of the responsibilities of writers. I write every day of the week; I have to come up with discussion topics and interesting content for readers on a daily basis. And yes, I hate the word content but that’s what it is. Said content can be personal, investigative, playful, or analytical however. In that sense, I tend to feel alright and hope that peers and readers find that I am not writing insubstantial work simply because I have to produce work. Yet, not everything can be esoteric or obscure. Writers, after a certain point, also have a vague onus to talk about what is happening around them in the moment.

But because there’s a need/expectation to talk about what is topical, there is the risk of running on well trodden ground. It is not a controversial opinion within the critical community, for instance, to say that Minerva’s Den is one of the best pieces of work to arise from the BioShock games. Yet, I can look at response to my writing to that effect and see that many readers (and therefore many players) are either not familiar with the game or are set in their assessment that anything related to BioShock 2 must be bad. Because the fan discourse around that game has been set: “Guys, we all know BioShock 2 is bad.”

When I write (and I daresay that when we all write), one hope is that the endeavor will function as an educational opportunity. This can be practical, like ensuring readers understand the difference between copyright and trademark. This can also be more abstract, like asking them to reassess those preassigned and unilateral assessments of games or their content. Simply put: if people still think BioShock 2 is bad, while that is certainly their right, it is also partially my responsibility to try to express my thoughts and see if we can reassess that judgement. 

Now, I’m obviously killing multiple birds with one stone. The reality is that a BioShock piece is topical and will bring in more readers. That’s the cold, sad truth. Writing, after a certain point, is a numbers game. Do you want to reach people? Well, you stand a better chance talking about Final Fantasy as opposed to Legend of Legaia or Ephemeral Fantasia. Additionally, targeted criticism tends to land harder. Abstract concepts are nice but, broadly, readers accept criticism far better if there is a referent to which your analysis points. If anything else, it helps them understand you better because they have a common entry point with which to connect to your broader ideas.

There’s a lot of reasons for this and many of them are not good. For instance, I would posit that the reason that targeted criticism tends to be more compelling to a lay audience is because of how inherently consumerist games culture is as a whole. Acquiescing to that culture and critiquing games as they are in the public eye only helps perpetuate the cycle in which games have an apex before players consumer them, both in gameplay and in analysis, before moving on.

In his piece, Cameron notes that the reason many people might maintained a stance that BioShock Infinite was not as heavily critiqued on release is a problem of reach and this is largely true. It is taken for granted by people who immerse themselves in game crit that criticism is ubiquitous. It is, after all, all over our Twitter feeds. 

But the average reader is not reading criticism and if they are, they are not finishing it. Thus, we come to a very real problem. Because readers are not reading the works as voraciously as we might hope, our impact is severely reduced. Hence, “No One Criticized BioShock Infinite Before”. 

We reach a few problem and a very keen one at that. If readers are forgetting or ignoring criticism, why is that? And if they have forgotten, is it not a responsibility to respond to continuing sentiments? For instance, even though many of us have spoken on BioShock Infinite’s flaws, is there an onus for us to speak of those things again? 

I do not know the complete answer but I do know that if I don’t talk about it again now when the HD remaster has just hit, I’m missing the chance to leverage a larger educational opportunity. To one end, I want to say that it is important to seize these moments while we can. To throw our punches while something is in the spotlight. To take advantage of this second opportunity.

The downside of this is to feed certain mechanisms of writing, journalism, and consumption. To tacitly suggest that something only matters so long as the public eye is on it. We know this to be demonstrably false; inspirational and strong criticism can come from some of the least likely of places. Good crit is good crit. It doesn’t matter if ten people read it or ten thousand. 

At this point, I’m rambling and lack a strong conclusion. If anything, we need to try to understand some of the realities and responsibilities that we face. Criticism is education, after all. It is elucidation and illumination. And while we write for ourselves and for our peers, chiefly among the work on any criticism should be the lay reader. I am unsure what considerations this means but I do believe that if we want to change the way that criticism is approached and the impact that it has, we need to reassess our goals and methods. 

More and more people are growing interested in critical work; we are, ever slowly, building some type of canon and, certainly, individual writers are building followings, patrons, and long standing portfolios of their own. Some things are taking root. The question now becomes how to we make things grow.