Mayniac

I've been playing a series of adventure-horror games called the 'Chzo Mythos' by Ben 'Yahtzee' Crowshaw (yes, that one.)

They're relatively brief - about an afternoon's worth each - and very well written. As with most things, it gets exponentially better - art-wise, story-wise, characterisation-wise, gameplay-wise - with each installation in the series. It's interesting as a fan of Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation to see how he fares designing his own games. Its also interesting as I haven't played a good horror game before, and it's quite a revelation to see it done well.

Some of the puzzles - like the first game's 'salty-bear-on-a-stick body-finder' (I wonder how modern Yahtzee would treat the idea of a teddy-bear dowsing-rod in one of his reviews), and the second game's 'grab-an-inconsequential-towel-rail, wait-in-an-arbitrary-patch-of-shadow-and-then-blat-the-baddie-on-the-head-while-he's-looking-away' reek somewhat of arbitraryness, but these are trifling concerns in comparison to the rest of the series.

The games themselves are, in playing order: '5 days a stranger,' '7 days a skeptic,' 'Trilby's Notes' and '6 days a sacrifice,' also known as the least logical possible method of arranging those titles into a sequence.

You would think that interactive media would make the best possible platform for horror, but for some reason, they usually fall short of the mark. In other words, they suck. I played F.E.A.R, which qualifies for the worst implementation of horror in a game ever. What passed for scaryness was that the big bad of the game was a little girl who occasionally popped out of the shadows, or dark corners or whatever. The problem was that she always did so out of the way of where you were looking, so the music would crescendo into a bloodcurling screech of violins while you were staring at a soft-drink machine. Then a bunch of piss-weak bad guys would pop out and attack you, so you had to put the scary on hold in order to shoot them all in the face with a spike-cannon. It was a horror-FPS that got the memo wrong on what scary was, leaving just a horrible-FPS.

Every thing that traditional horror stories emphasise as being scary - helplessness, solitude, confusion, impending doom, the inexplicable and, in more modern cases, gore - all are perfectly suited to being portrayed through immersive, interactive mediums. The feeling of being forced to do something repulsive, or being made to make questionable decisions come naturally from games, because designers can make it so there literally is no choice but the bad one. And I can tell you from experience that well written games can make you repulsed very easily.

In the holidays at the beginning of year 11, I played Jade Empire, an RPG by Bioware based in mythical ancient pseudo-China. As a game, it's quite shallow, with repetitive combat - but stunning scenery. The game is worth it just for the backdrops and that is a fact. A more subtle indicator of the quality of the game is the characterisations and voice acting - features notably dropped from most games in favor for MOAR DAKKA.

At the climax of the game, there is a big choice to be made; your nemesis throughout the game, Death's Hand, an incredibly powerful dude in dark armour, turns out to be psychically enslaved and in constant agony. He is at your mercy. His help would be much appreciated in the final fight against the evil emperor, but he refuses. The choices are to free him (at which point he dies, happy to be free at last and something-something kept alive by his imprisonment something-something,) fighting the emperor without him; or to use the same powers as the emperor to enslave him yourself. But if you choose to enslave him, all the other characters in your party - even the morally bankrupt ones - disagree, forcing you to enslave them as well if you are to proceed.

In my first playthrough, I played the good side, freeing the guy and being disappointed that he then decided to give up the ghost literally and entirely. So in my second playthrough, I played all the Ancient Chinese Jerk choices - up until the end.

Because in the end, I simply could not make myself go through with the psychic enslavement of the characters I had just spent 10+ hours getting to know. Call me weak, but the choice I was given was just so sickening that I couldn't go through with it. Games that are capable of doing this - making the player unwilling to proceed with ethically confronting choices even when pursuing the 'bad' storyline - deserve to be made: well, expensively and in great quantities. And games that take advantage of that very same mechanic - the idea of making the player do something against their will, of giving them immersion and interactiveness but removing all choice - that is a game that I think needs making.

Which brings me to a larger point. If games are capable of creating such strong moods - of horror, of affection, of wonder - then why is it the brainless shoot-em-ups like Call of Duty 5: Modern Warfare 2 that get the big bucks. Games are immersive experiences, and these experiences are now being infused with much more cinematography, acting ability, money, and money than ever before. But all this ability, cash, artistry and cash is going towards making the same-old same-old.

Or, to put it another way, most of the gaming industry is like the second half of Avatar - big, loud, roaring and rocketing fun. What is missing is the first half: beautiful scenery, astonishing and imaginative surrounds. I'll leave questions about characterisation and plot out, because they conflict with my metaphor.

Every set in Jade Empire is like an interactive painting, with its own contemplative, serene atmosphere. I am remembering the shadows of a grate at the Tien's Landing camping site; the Fox Demon's realm, with its floating chunks of ground, multiple and fanciful rainbows arcing between mists and clouds, with its breathtakingly colourful, marvelously oversaturated texures. These are the settings and scenes that cinematographers and directors yearn for. Amelie was built around shots of Montmartre, about the beer-stained filter that every second of the film was seen through, about the wistful shots and tiny glances. Why can't every game seek to pull heartstrings? Why can't any game move beyond the colour brown?

Pretty much the only thing stopping me from going out and getting the good arty games on the market is that my computer is wheelchair-bound, decrepit and senile, slowly losing acuity, memory and speed; but even this didn't stop me from buying Braid, which is another get-it-right-now-and-don't-stop-playing-until-your-face-falls-off-or-you-finish-which-ever-comes-first game.

This all comes about because as I type this, I've just come from playing the final scene of the final game in the Chzo Mythos series, which ties up all the narrative ends in a story 12 hours long in total in a very chilling way - a way that only would have worked in an interactive medium, and in order to make you do as I say (play it), a way that I will not divulge.

TL;DR, some games have the capacity to evoke moods and emotions beyond the thrill of killing foreigners; Yahtzee's Chzo Mythos is one of them, especially the later titles, although they make no sense without the first titles in the series so go play them all.

*****

Oh, there's lots of controversy at the moment about games being art. Roger Ebert disagrees because nobody can mention a Shakespeare of video gaming. That's about the sum of his argument - the rest of his post being a point-by-point take down of an argument that they are with no substantiative replacement for their claims. Mr Ebert, in short, makes a very poor debater. But I'm sticking clear of the actual argument myself, because there are (at time of posting) 3,800 long, well written and well reasoned posts saying exactly why, how, and to what extent Ebert is wrong, not to mention the flurry of posts written everywhere else on the internet. Almost as common as the art proponents are the people who raise the question 'who cares?' That in my opinion is the wrong idea. I deeply respect Roger Ebert as a writer and critic, and his point - although not well substantiated - is well and truly valid.

Just because you disagree with your opponent doesn't mean that his point shouldn't be raised. The fact is that just by someone putting forth their opinion, a huge storm of debate has been raised that needed to be raised, and will almost certainly end in growth for the industy. Roger Ebert's post has forced the gaming community to justify itself in the same way the American Civil War forced the North to justify slavery, or how the Second World War stamped out not only German imperialism but to a large extent all imperialism.

Fighting for a moderate point - that Slavery should not be spread, or that medieval-style invasions of other countries for simple material gains is wrong - ended up justifying a larger ideal, as people who would have otherwise ignored the issue reasoned it out to its logical end: why is slavery bad in Kansas but not in Louisiana? Why is the Nazi occupation of Poland worse than the British occupation of East Africa? Why are only some games artistic, while others are plotless shooters? (The analogy isn't perfect, but then again, no analogy ever is.)

*****

These little critters eat and crap out the same hole, have three genders, and don't fit into any classification system we have. They aren't just an unknown species, they're an unknown phylum. We don't know where they came from, we don't fully know how their reproductive cycle works, and their women turn into eggshells after their purpose is done. Awesome.

*****

This chess game makes me feel like God must feel smiting heathens, except when God smites heathens, they know when to give up and aren't limited to one strategically crippled individual who must not enter any zones of danger. And God generally doesn't withhold himself from smiting so he can smite later in a much more humiliating way.

People with a good working knowledge of the Bible, feel free to disagree!