Brothers: how Riddick saves the writing

Or

How mechanics can enrich a story, foster relationships and underwrite an entire experience

PLEASE BE AWARE OF THE SPOILERZ WOT FEATURE HEAVILY IN THIS PIECE OF WRITING

My mum is, thankfully, still alive as of this writing. If she were to die I’d be terribly upset. She brought me up, fed me, clothed me, drove me places, steered me in the right direction, supported me, let me drink in the house as a teenager because I’d “do it anyway, so may as well do it safely”: she sorted me out basically. My dad did all these things too (‘cept the driving), but he doesn’t work as well within this situation, but he’s still a very upstanding chap. If my mum were to die it would be pretty horrible for me. ‏You, however, wouldn’t really care. I don’t hold that against you, you simply don’t have any of the necessary context (see above) for it to concern you. Likewise, that’s why the one-two dead mother and a dying dad opening of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons didn’t wash in my house of unflinching cynicism. By the end of the game, however, I was invested in the characters and their plight, to the point where I genuinely cared about where everyone ended up. That’s not to say that the writing resonated with me any more than it had when it went whizzing past my mark at the beginning, it just means that there were other bits of the game that filled the emotional-investiture deficit.

Extrasolar is free-to-play wot I get (i.e. it makes sense)

As a rule, I’m really poor. I live in London (England) and currently visit the ‘bottom ten percent of earners’ club on a daily basis, where we pass round boxes of Asda smart price jaffa cakes, slowly sip weak (Tesco value) orange squash and sing wartime ditties to maintain morale: it’s still the most effective way in town, such is the relative vapidity of anything Modern London. Despite working in the med-ya and personally generating literally millions of pounds of revenue a year for a titanic corporation, I still can’t afford to wash my (lovely) hair on a daily basis, nor eat venison sausages very often, let alone buy video games. That’s precisely why I’ve been eyeing up a lot of free-to-play, or f2p as they say up Stoke Newington, and thinking a lot about playing, but not paying, them. There’s this one called Extrasolar, which I think might have finally found a way to eloquently justify them pesky energy bars wot constrain or enjoyment of and ability to, well, actually play f2p games. 

Darksiders II isn’t sure whether the Internet exists or not. Sorry, it does.

In an entirely unintentional turn of events, I have an addendum to my previous piece about Darksiders II being too long for its own good. I of course appreciate any and all irony surrounding this occurrence, even if the below is not explicitly a continuation of that subject.

There is a ‘wholly optional’ dungeon within DS II called the Soul Arbiter’s Maze, which is essentially a wave-based survival mode wherein the player is tasked with besting an increasingly deadly collection of the game’s foes. What is interesting about the area, like much of the game’s core design, is its juxtaposition of videogame ideas old and new.

I want to be stereotyped/ I want to be classified: This week I like microtransactions in my games on my phone

Those words right at the top there are the opening lyrics of Suburban Home, a song by punk band Descendents .In many ways it’s the archetypal eighties Californian hardcore/punk track; a biley swipe at the status quo emanating from a group of disaffected young people. They don’t like the stagnation of consumption-driven Middle America. They don’t like society’s attempts to constrain them. They don’t like talking frankly and often prefer the shield of sarcasm to carry their sentiments.

This type of anarchic protest runs through every era of American punk. I tend find it a little more interesting, however, as bands get older and begin to reflect upon their once-youthful selves. Instead of outright dismissal, we’re often witness to more thoughtful examination. This can go anywhere from simply exploring topics in a more objective manner, to harshly critiquing one’s very attitudes as a youngster. It’s this spirit of weary self-reflexivity that finds me compelled to re-evaluate them ‘orrible money-grabbing phone/browser games and wot I fink of them. 

Saints Row IV is the loveliest game ever made (and it loves you more than you’ll probably ever know)

The fourth entry in the Saints Row series sees The Video Game shed its mortal trappings and ascend to a higher place. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that in Saints Row IV we finally have the greatest example thus far of the video game in its purest form. While it is by no means perfect - it does regrettably give over a little too much time to characters and exposition - I see it as the closest humanity has yet come to unfettered goal-orientated mechanical perfection. To call it merely a video game is almost an insult, for SR IV operates on a plane far out of the grasp of its contemporaries. It is in fact closer to the likes of chess, cricket or professional wrestling: instances where rules and mechanics dance around one another, momentarily coalescing to create beauty, amazement and pure, magical, inconceivable beauty.