I think I need to come to terms with just how much of an impact video games have had on my life.
My cousin recently brought his PlayStation 3 over to show me some of the games he downloaded. One of the games he showed me was called ‘Fat Princess.’ Before it even loaded I thought the title had negative connotations. I guess the object is to recapture the princess of the other side while trying to protect the one which you have captured. All throughout the map there are pieces of cake which you are supposed to feed to your captured princess so that she becomes harder to lift and be taken away. I recommended that the game would operate the same if it were a flag, because this a very basic capture the flag scenario, and I was told it was the same thing. “Think of her as an object,” he said. I think this situation speaks for itself. This is how our culture is entertaining itself?
My friend Alan has recently got me playing Warhammer online. To be blunt, it’s stuffed with very early colonial images of good and evil. One class that I started with was the ‘Witch hunter’. It’s supposed to be aligned with the side of ‘Order,’ but it’s abilities are named after Crucible archetypes such as ‘accusations.’ There isn’t even much room for a story between the Order and Destruction sects, like as to why the darker characters want war. The characters even go as far to say, “For evil! For Destruction!” Why evil and why destruction? I would like to know why these characters intentionally love evil. Is this what I want out of a video game? If you want a game where the conscious community is geared toward a very black and white war scenario, I guess you’ll enjoy this game.
Another game my cousin was playing was F.E.A.R. 2. The storyline was actually pretty neat, in a Silent Hill-meets-Halo sense. Although, when you step on medical syringes and your health bar goes up. When in the real world can you step on a needle and you feel better?
Google Wave is finally being publicly released. Is anybody else using this? I haven’t really jumped into it much, though. Pull me into some of your waves: commonfright@googlewave.com PS: I can’t figure out how to add people.
Stage Fright 