Army of Two and the Question of Moral Evaluation in Video Game Criticism

Gamers among the Bostodelphia readership are probably aware by now of Electronic Arts' Army of Two, released a couple of weeks back:




Your friendly deadly sandwich learned about it via banner ads placed on SciFi.com. While I'm not much of a gamer, I do like following thematic and mechanical trends in games. Army of Two's promotional material had my interest piqued enough to read SciFi's review of the game this week.

First off, yes, we've been critical, maybe a bit overly harsh on SciFi in the past. That said, I've never doubted SciFi's basic integrity as a source for genre news and criticism; and it's good to see Eric T. Baker's B- review of Army of Two as further evidence of SciFi as a resource not beholden to its sponsors.

What interests me in Baker's review is not so much his evaluation of the mechanical play of the game. He's thorough on that front. I've never played Ao2, just seen the commercials; but having read Baker I now got a "feel" for it. What's interesting about his review is a premise guiding him about what might be called the "role playing aesthetic" or "ethic" of the game:

Despite the many attempts to differentiate them through gameplay and graphics, first-person shooters always have been and always will be about who the player's character is and about who it is shooting. So right up front, Ao2 has a problem. Because however much fun it is to use one character to boost another character up onto a balcony, it is hard to get behind the idea that it is better to kill al-Qaeda terrorists for cash than it is to do it as a sworn soldier of the U.S. military. Somehow the mix of a real-world enemy, a real-world war and two unkillable mercs in hockey masks just isn't as compelling as, for example, Call of Duty 4. The two games have similar plots, but CoD4 has the player killing for something besides the money to buy gold plating for his guns.

Baker likes to engage in first-person shooting play under the pretext that said shooting is being done for "noble ends." U.S. soldiers fighting for American geo-politcal hegemony freedom, Jedi fighting the Dark Side, etc. Nothing wrong with that premise in game preference. However as a general criteria in evaluating a video game, I don't think the notion of a morally righteous protagonist is by any means universal to the first-person shooter genre. In fact, I'd argue it tends to be more often the opposite.

Sure, sequels to Doom had something of a "save the world" theme to them, but they grew out of game whose theme was more desperate survival in a very hostile environment (and yes, that game was derived from a game that was premised on escaping a Nazi stronghold). But exactly where was Duke Nukem's moral rectitude? Those examples and the tendency for players to want to explore "Dark Side" powers and Sith lightsabers in Star Wars games are admittedly flung too far into the an imagined future or a mythic long time ago in a galaxy far away to foster much moral reflection in terms of contemporary reality. Still, is being on the side of right the motivation for players engaging in practically anything published by Rock Star Games? To move from the incredibly popular and lucrative Grand Theft Auto streets to the military context where Baker's more comfortable running and gunning with the sanction of the U.S. flag, games where characters with military backgrounds are involved in conflicts projected from the real world isn't new to video games. In fact, Baker's claim called to mind one of my favorite game commercial campaigns as a counter example:





Army of Two may well be a very mundane game with an interesting collaborative mechanic that doesn't quite overcome the game's genericness. However, Baker's claim that there's something objectionable in the moral nature of the characters players assume in game doesn't seem to speak to the broader culture of first-person shooter players. I'd go so far as to argue that players are drawn to games like Ao2 precisely for the opportunity to dwell in their own cynicism. There's certainly a market, and I'd have to explore this further but I think it may be a good thing.

Sci Fi Gives A Quantum more of Quantum of Solace Coverage

So a few days back I bemoaned SciFi.com's reveal of the title for the new Bond film under production, Quantum of Solace. While the Fleming-erudite knew that the title is indeed taken from the print fiction Bond catalog, to the casual fan it sounded a bit off. Sure SciFi warrants some kudos for breaking the story to the fan community, but I can't help a lot of us would have appreciated a bit more elucidation on the title's origins (something you'd expect SciFi to be able to cover better than the initial AP source).

In a correspondence the next morning with SciFi.com, a good editor there pointed out to me that, while they haven't offered much explanation of the title's significance in Fleming's Bond output, they had shortly after my post posted video highlights of the title reveal's press conference. While not exactly the content I sought, I think it's a pretty classy act to point out follow up content that may have escaped my notice. Thanks, SciFi.com.

New Bond Title: Quantum of Solace (wha?)

Scifi.com picks up an AP wire revealing the next Bond film title will be Quantum of Solace.

Quantum

of

Solace

Wha! That can't be right. Quantum of Solace sounds like the working title either Solaris or The Fountain was shot under until someone with a sense of audience sent it back for a rewrite. Quantum of Solace sounds like it doesn't really stand alone, but rather should following somethin glike Harry Potter and the, or The Chronicles of Narnia:, or The Golden Compass II:.

It does not say James Bond.

Yes, I understand the film is supposed to be a direct followup to Casino Royale and, like that movie's slightly deeper or more honest portrayal of Bond (where even Bond realizes at some point killing people with your bare hands is a bit messed up) will obviously have to deal with some matter of remorse and drive for revenge following the death of Vesper Lynd; but it just doesn't strike me as the title of a Bond film.

Ah, crap. Turns out "Quantum of Solace" is indeed a title in the Fleming fiction oeuvre, actually appearing in the short story collection For Your Eyes Only. So much for illiterate knee-jerk reactions. "Quantum of Solace" has indeed said James Bond, from the creator's pen no less.

OK, given that the story "Quantum of Solace" is apparently the most un-Bond of Fleming's Bond work (according to the wikipedia article Bond learns the lesson that "Bond's adventures pale in comparison with real life drama"), and the reinvention of Bond marked with Casino Royale, I have a little bit more faith in the studio to crank out another solid flick.

Now I'll deflecting my embarrassment to anger at SciFi. After all, it has been a while since SciFi.com's been our whipping boy. I dunno. It just seems to me that SciFi's "SciFi Wire" should supplement whatever they pull from the AP with a little fanboy explication. Yes, the most erudite Bond fan will know where the title comes from, but give us slightly more casual Bond fans a bit of a clue too! What's the point having such a "specialized" news channel if it doesn't give us any deeper insight than what's provided by the mainstream press? SciFi.com makes me sad, again.

Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage Mode: Off.

SciFi.com Afraid of Atheism?

Cod's mentioning of the Repub's Jesus pushing/pandering reminded of something in the pop culture world I wanted to take up last week. Last week's SciFi.com poll asks:

"Some Catholics say The Golden Compass is anti-church; the filmmakers deny it. Will you see it or avoid it because of this?"

Fair question. The Golden Compass has indeed got a lot of well publicized grief from lay Catholic groups (to my knowledge no ordained Church official has issued any announcement). However, the responses the poll allowed made some pretty clumsy assumptions about potential movie goers, particularly the sort who would frequent SciFi.com:

1.) I'll see it and make up my own mind.
2.) I know the books are anti-religion, so I'll pass.
3.) Depends. How different is the film?

Where in this poll is something along the lines of "I'm aware of the implicit attack on establishment religions; and as an atheist, agnostic, or a believer in spirituality unfettered from the dictates of established religions, I have no problem with that position. In fact, I welcome such an 'advanced' idea within a mainstream media offering"?

This poll implicitly embraces the notion that atheistic perspectives are somehow damaging or problematic. Even what I'd call the "progressive" option, which the majority of pollsters selected, implies a decision must be made whether The Golden Compass is indeed dangerously anti-religous or "safe."

Really, the science fiction audience includes a not insignificant portion who have been exposed to atheistic perspectives in their pursuit of science fiction. In fact, quite a lot of science fiction , fantasy, and horror (including most recently the much SciFi.com-hyped The Mist) pretty openly declares that excessive God-fearing, not non belief or heterodoxy, is the real problem in our world.

I suppose soft-pedaling the surfeit of atheistic and a-religious perspectives within the genre from which SciFi.com gets its name may well be buckling to the market pressures of perceived "mainstream audience" sensitivities. Still, going back to the notion that some of the best works of the genre strive to appeal to an audience that "knows better" than those sensitivities, I couldn't help but feel SciFi.com was insulting its audience's intelligence in this instance.

I saw BSG: Razor

However, since Cheesesteak is hopping up and down to post his thoughts on it, I will let him get 1st post on a review.

Now, back to listening to Antibalas...

Battlestar Galactica: Razor

Saw it. Perhaps before this week's Weekend Fanboy Report I'll get to a spoiler free review of it, with a spoiler open one during its broadcast weekend. I'm going to see if I can figure out how to do cuts within blogger so no one need glance over spoilage unless they want to.

Overall, I'd say it warrants a "B" in comparison to the overall series' "A" grade.

Late Saturday Morning Fanboy / Weekend Fanboy

Caught a much put off screening of 30 Days of Night Friday night. I’ll give it a B- overall. I went into this familiar with Niles and Templesmith’s comic, so I was concerned having that knowledge might dilute the experience for me. That wasn’t really the case. The first shot sequence with its soundscape really got my expectations up. The make up department did an amazing job capturing the likeness of Templesmith’s illustrations in the film’s vampire cast, though I think the make up needed some adjustments in the climatic conflict as I think the lighting change threw off the persuasive job it had been doing up till that point. Someone should have noticed that and compensated for it. The effects crew should also pump their fists, so to speak, for the final blow Eben dealt the lead vampire.

However, and I politely argued this point with the counter worker at Showcase Comics Saturday when I picked up a reprint of the graphic novel compilation, something was lost in the translation from graphic novel to film. Yes, the story and the number and nature of most of the characters were truncated to fit movie conventions though still did justice to the original; and while the makeup did excellent work capturing the look of 30 Days’ vamps, the atmosphere the illustrations provided didn’t fully transfer. Cold and dark tones give the fingers frostbite when reading the graphic novel, at a number of points in the movie, it just didn’t seem that cold at all. When the film did try to assert the hostile artic climate, it came off half-cocked. For instance, a sequence where the characters are walking through a blizzard was transparently CGI and wind machine. The graphic novel consistently pulls you in, and chills you. Moments like the blizzard walk pull you out. Decent bloodbath, but the setting matter so much to the story of 30 Days in a way I think the filmmakers didn’t fully appreciate in their adaptation.

I’ll conclude my thoughts with my feelings that having the vampires speak “Vampire” and not English was annoying. Its only purpose I could see was to give an added, and admittedly successful, creep out factor to the “No God” scene:

Otherwise, it took away from what could have been some fun distillation of the vamps discussions from the comic. It also mars up potential for adapting the rest of the 30 Days mythos into film too, and adds a “huh” factor to the Prequel available on Fear.net. I mean, I can accept Vamps using the Internet without English; but the logistics of coordinating attacks in New Orleans and L.A. without any sort of need to “pass” among humanity struck me as off.

Past two episodes of Razor flashbacks on SciFi had a creep factor too. Kind of curious if Adama’s psychic contact with the hybrid goo is going to have any consequences in Razor or Season 4. I’m imagining the ship Diana is going to play a role in Razor, unless the test subject pool were a trick within a ridiculously Cylon plan labyrinthine plan. Hopefully getting to the theatre two hours ahead of the screening will secure me a seat. If I don’t get in as result of there just being a more hard core fanbase ahead of me, so be it. However I’m fearing some sort of Chinatown bus stop-style crowd control fuck up on Riverview's part, shafting me after waiting on foot for two hours. And I don't mean the pushing and shoving one by the WaWa on 11^th and Arch, I'm talking the logistical mess at the Canal St. stop in NYC.

Saturday Morning Fanboy: Young Bill Adama Mano a Vintage Toaster

Wow, that was cool. I’ll admit that after the first two BSG Razor flashbacks webisodes I thought we were in for a talkie, like the Resistance webisodes before season 3. Nothing wrong with that, I thought Resistance was a pioneering effort in supplementary web content, an effort acknowledging what I assumed were limitations of “really small screen” video, and capitalizing on them with a gritty low tech, limited perspective. My only misgiving re: webeps 1+2 of the Razor flashbacks was that the nature of the talkiness suggested the story was going for some sort of “Young Bill Adama in Love” type arc, cribbing notes from the romance subplots of Starship Troopers. Yes, we all know Admiral Adama’s a love machine, and was probably one back in the day too, at least I’m sure there are several volumes of text out there in fanfic land riffing off “Unfinished Business,” “A Day in the Life,” and every single look he’s shared with Rosalyn; but from what I hear there’s enough buzz around romance and sexual tension in Razor already.

Needless to say, webep 3 showed me they were going for something a bit more ambitious this time around: a whole battle set piece with not only the vintage Vipers BSG fans are used to, but vintage vipers facing off against vintage Cylon Raiders and Basestars. Frak yeah! I even dug the music during the battle sequence, which I think in some parts might have been riffing off the 70s score.

I’m sure at some point the continuity wonks will be trying to figure out what led the Cylons to switch from the “blue pulses of light” munitions used in the ep (and the 70s show) to the more conventional projectile weapons seen in the SciFi Channel show; and I think there was a slight flub on the sound design accompanying the destruction of the Battlestar Columbia (I think they were going for something like the radio traffic heard from that doomed B-17 that got cut in half in Memphis Bell amped up a 1000, but the performance struck me more like outtakes from crowd noise to Lionel Richie’s Dancing on the Ceiling video). That said, it still was a kick-ass sequence, even if we’ve seen the decapitated Viper plummeting cliffhanger before (besides, I like the idea that Adama’s been through everything Starbuck’s been through, without pouting).

Now yeah, given the nature and velocity of the collision that put them in freefall, Adama and his Cylon adversary trading shots as they plummet, then literally coming to grips with each other before Adama pulls his ripcord is ridiculously implausible. Still, it did give some legs to the “legend” of Adama as larger than life warrior. Plus you can in this sequence a rebooting of the whole over the top skydiving combat trope that’s gone stale since somewhere between the opening of Moonraker (where it was probably best done) and the finale to Half Past Dead (please). Young Bill Adama’s calling out Bond and Bourne here, maybe Indy Jr. too if Shia wants to get out from behind all those transforming robots protecting him.

I’ll be standing in line Nov. 12 hoping to see how these clips lead in to the full on Razor. If I can’t get in, anyone out there with cable mind a greasy sandwich stopping by a couple of weeks later to hang out and completely ignore you while I stare at your tv?