What I’ve Been Playing Lately, 5.9.08

Not much of anything, really. I tried to pick up Marathon Infinity again, and lasted about twenty minutes before I got tired of running around hitting switches. I hate hitting switches.

In the spirit of being a responsible race and video games blogger, I decided to try to get into GTA: San Andreas. Maybe I’ll try again someday soon, but I got tired of getting killed on the goddamn bike in the beginning of the game and having to trek across town to get back to the mission. Gargh. I’m not cut out for life on the streets, I guess.

I’ve been listening to Airman ga taosenai a lot, I guess. That’s almost like playing a video game. Back to Urban Terror for me, I suppose.

pat m.

Designing Games That Highlight Race

I’ve decided to take my own advice and try to bring the Race and Games conversation into a more positive place; having attained my goals of “Ranting About Resident Evil 5 Two Weeks Longer Than Everyone Else”, and “Becoming the Number One Google Search Result For ‘Shooting White People’”, I think this blog could use some more creative thinking.

About a year ago I wrote a short post called “Race and Player Characters” that talked a bit about the need for a player to “project” themselves upon the player-character, and how making characters racially ambiguous a la Jade from Beyond Good and Evil was not the way to do anything other than stunt the growth of a video game’s potential to tell a story.

Frankly, I think making a completely nondescript player character is in most cases lazy writing. To be sure, there are places in games for less detail; the Security Officer in Marathon and Master Chief in Halo (both Bungie titles) are both shrouded in mystery, Crono from Chrono Trigger never speaks, and the Vault Dweller in Fallout gets no details beyond what you write yourself. But the anonymity of the first two becomes a major plot point, the Vault Dweller gets his or her personality from your decisions as a role-player, and Crono’s purpose is basically to highlight the rich characters around him. The thought that characters like JC Denton from Deus Ex (great game, horrible character) are what designers ought to strive for to make a game better, however, is just wrong.

When I think about it, it seems like there are plenty of existing game mechanics that could be used to further explore race and racism, precisely because even in the most vaguely defined player characters, there’s always something that sets them apart - after all, that’s why you’re playing as them and not one of the random schmoes you steamroll in your quest to save the world or whatever. From there, it’s not a stretch to see how existing game dynamics could begin to explore race, gender, and other kinds of axes of stratification.

I’ve been playing The World Ends With You a bit lately, and I’m really digging it, except for the fact that the protagonist is painfully emo (this is what character designers are afraid of, I guess. Good thing the rest of the game is awesome). Instead of walking around and talking to every passer-by like a typical RPG, though, Neku can scan the minds of everyone on-screen and see what people are thinking about, generally yielding things like “XYZ is so cool! Why doesn’t he notice me?” or “I wish I could afford the 300 yen instant noodles!” But what if our “Neku” was a young black man walking through a lily-white neighborhood? I’d love to play - or hell, design - something like that.

I could go on like this forever. A dating sim where you’re a young Asian American man in high school, negotiating the model minority myth and coming to terms with the popular media image of Asian men as impotent. Phoenix Wright and the problems with trying to win over a jury of your “peers” when you’re not-white and everyone else is. An FPS that puts you in the place of a Native American warrior resisting colonization and subjugation. I’d play ‘em all. Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments!

pat m.

The Hottest Man of Gaming, In Color

At long last, the moment you’ve been waiting for! But first, allow me to make a few brief remarks.

It wasn’t easy wading through folders full of images of men. Hot, young, sweaty men. Asian men, black men, Latino men. Kickboxers, commandoes, ninjas, special operatives, wrestlers, vicious criminals, mystical voodoo warriors, and so on. Men with lithe builds, men with bulging muscles, men with special powers, men with big guns - how could I only pick 13? And once I decided upon the men, it was even harder to try to rank them, as if a number could truly express the boundless depths of sex appeal that mere images could express. Somehow or another, though, I did it - and, at long last, we’ve got our winner, taking home the Token Minorities Sexy Man Crown: give up for Dudley of Street Fighter III: Third Strike!

Of course, Dudley wins an obscene amount of points for subverting a stereotype: yes, he is black, and a boxer, like a few dozen other fighting game characters out there, but he’s not a practically illiterate thug (shame, Balrog!); no, he’s a classic dandy British gentleman, through and through.

But we couldn’t talk about Dudley’s sex appeal without discussing his ineffable sense of style,

or the class with which he conducts himself as a gentleman boxer. He even throws roses!

To be sure, he also breaks our sex-o-meter with his juggle combos, high-low mixups, and those tricky resets he’s got with his Hurricane Upper. Honestly, though, it’s his backstory that’s got us enraptured: he entered the Third Strike tournament because Gill stole his father’s antique car. Seriously. No one messes with the Dudley and gets away with it, least of all some red-and-blue-naked-carjacker-punk. Dudley’s got class in spades, especially when it comes to his automobiles - and, what’s more, he’s even got two different cars in his intro animation, depending on whether he’s player one or player two. It’s this kind of attention to detail that gets Dudley first place. Congratulations, Dudley, you truly are a sexy man of color among sexy men. I’d let you Corkscrew Blow me any day.

pat m.

The 13 Hottest Men of Gaming, In Color, Part 3

Eddy Gordo of Tekken infamy opens up big for us today at 5th place; honestly, there’s no way that the impeccable grace and, uh, muscles of a well-trained capoeirista weren’t going to make it somewhere on this list. The fact that his moves are kind of hard to get used to blocking, and his penchant for juggle combos has the dubious honor of being acknowledged in a Dane Cook standup are really just icing on the cake. Props to Namco for giving us the dopest Brazilian character ever to grace a video game, and shame, shame, shame on Capcom for giving us Rikuo (a fish-man), Blanka (a green headbiting monster) and Sean (like Ryu and Ken, but he sucks). Seriously.

Coming in at fourth place is Rico Rodriguez, from Just Cause, also known as the game I had never even heard about until I started looking for Latino video game characters. (That’s “Just Cause” as in, a cause that is just, not ‘just ’cause I feel like it’. Common mistake.) As far as I can tell, it plays like Grand Theft Auto mixed with a liberal dose of CIA insurgency. Wikipedia tells us:

Rodriguez has been described by developers as being “the child of one thousand comic books and action movies. He is James Bond, Mad Max, Jason Bourne, El Mariachi, Wolverine, Punisher, Rambo, Tony Montana, Han Solo and Vincent Vega all rolled into one. With a touch of Enrique Iglesias to top it all off!”.

That’s pretty sexy. I guess I’m a sucker for classic bad boys, though I’ll admit that he’d be even hotter with some Marxist revolutionary leanings. Oh well - everyone needs a project.

Third place gives us another bad boy who needs no introduction; it’s none other than Carl “C.J.” Johnson of GTA: San Andreas fame. A gangbanger and a mama’s boy, a street hustler and a legitimate businessman - all classically sexy. That he’s the star of a sex scandal second only to Paris Hilton’s - the legendary Hot Coffee saga - only cements his legacy. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether C.J. is down for the Boondocks-style (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QmO2m15WAc) thuggin’ love, however.

We’ll wrap up today with our second place finisher: Nick Kang, from True Crime: Streets of LA. The renegade cop approach is perpetually sexy, as is his penchant for martial arts, fast driving, and gunplay. What’s more, he’s voiced by Russell Wong, complete with the same sense of style - gotta love the sunglasses - that we saw him show off in Romeo Must Die. As much as it breaks my heart not to be able to give everyone’s favorite hapa policeman first place, though, the fact is that most of his appeal really just isn’t HIS - see the image for the uncanny similarity to Chow Yun Fat’s character in The Replacement Characters. Still, Kang’s a high-scoring homage to all the bad-ass Asian men out there, and really, once you see who our Sexiest Man of Gaming is tomorrow, you’ll understand there’s absolutely no shame in taking second place.

pat m.

The 13 Hottest Men of Gaming, In Color, Part 2

Yesterday saw Token Minorities get more traffic than it’s ever had before. Nice to know that no matter how many people I piss off about Japan, or Indigo Prophecy, all it takes is some straight up old-fashioned objectification of hot men of color to bring in the hits. So! Today I’m going ahead with the next installment of the 13 Hottest Men of Gaming, in Color: 9th-6th place. Brace yourself for The Sexy.

The Paladin from Blizzard’s Diablo II takes the 9th place crown away. I might as well admit here that I have a weakness for tall, dark, and handsome, but the offensive and defensive aura skills, which benefit the whole party, indicate that he’s a pretty giving guy in the sack, and even better - he’s a team player. Also of note: Zeal means fast hands, and Conversion could make for some kinky mind-control fantasies. I don’t really want to think about anything that involves Fist of Heavens, however - that just sounds uncomfortable. Unless, you know, you’re into that kind of thing. Rock on.

Guy leaps out of the crime-ridden streets of Metro City, in Capcom’s Street Fighter Alpha and Final Fight series, to snatch 8th on my list. Ninjas are sexy, and ninjas with unconventional running high-low mixups that are hard to use and get used to are sexier. If that weren’t enough, Guy is so sexy that he got an SNES game practically devoted to him - Final Fight Guy - because his lithe, wiry body couldn’t be contained by an SNES cart with notorious honkies like “Yeah…I went to prison” Cody and Haggar the Wrasslin’ Mayor.

7th place goes to the woefully underappreciated Great Tiger, Champion of India in the arcade classic Super Punch-Out. Although he’s on the older end now (just turned 50, apparently), his lightning-speed jabs, affinity for cats, and the unabashed pride with which he rocks his turban in the ring ranks him right smack in the middle of our list. And really, winquotes like “I have purred long enough! Now hear me roar!” seal the deal. Rippling 8-bit muscles have never looked quite so delicious, though the ’stache is a little much.

Capcom’s got another strong finish in their 6th place contender from Super Street Fighter II, Thunder Hawk. Like Great Tiger, he’s one of the few strong men representing his people, and he does so in spades…in fact, his arms are practically representing right through that flimsy little jacket. Anyone looking for a denim-and-leather-clad-biker-bear of a man probably won’t do any better in the video game world than T. Hawk. Here’s to hoping he doesn’t get re-wardrobed when he makes his HD debut.

Tomorrow: 5th through 2nd place!

pat m.

Token Minorities Presents: The 13 Hottest Men of Gaming, In Color

Okay, so 90% of the hotness that people talk about in video games is generally about the female characters. Occasionally, however, we get a Hottest Men of Gaming list like the one mentioned in the last post. Never have I seen, however, in my eight years of writing about video games, even one Game Guy list that included people of color to any significant degree. (Girls of all races, creeds, and colors are ogled in the Gaming Girls lists. Hurray for color-blind sexism.) So! As Jay-Z says: this is history in the making.

Number 13 goes to a Capcom character by the name of El Stingray from the long-forgotten pro wrestling arcade game, Saturday Night Slam Masters. He is not to be confused with El Fuerte, the latest addition to the Street Fighter IV cast. (For shame. Luchadores do not all look the same.) El Stingray makes it on to the 13 Hottest Men of Gaming list for a handful of reasons:

• His butt looks great in spandex.
• Actually, he looks pretty darn good in general for being 16-bit.
• At 5′5″ and 163lbs he’s a catch for the men and women who like them wiry and muscled but not too tall.
• His arch-enemy, the Great Oni, is nicknamed “Pale-faced Devil”. Honestly, anyone who fights against pale-faced devils gets a standing ovation from me right there.

Wikipedia says he’s an “ultra macho ladies man” so guys, no luck there. On the other hand, he does wrestle in spandex with buff, sweaty men. Hmmm.

The #12 spot belongs to one Michael LeRoi, from the Acclaim game Shadow Man. Being of questionable living status doesn’t seem to stop people from wanting to have sex with Lucas Kane from Indigo Prophecy, so being an amnesiac-zombie-hitman-cum immortal-voodoo-warrior shouldn’t stop our Shadow Man from making it on the list. Maybe the zombie slave thing means he’d be more of a bottom than a top? His soul belongs to one Mama Nettie, a centuries-old voodoo priestess who inhabits the body of a woman in her twenties, and she has to have sex with him to maintain her eternal life. Older women, submissive sex, and a penis charged with voodoo energy - yum. Plus, apparently he was an English Lit major in college. I wonder how many times people have called him “articulate” or “well-spoken”.

Joe Higashi from Fatal Fury and the King of Fighters series won 11th in my heart and mind, partially because I have a soft spot for Thai boxers, partially because I gotta admire a character whose movelist changes probably no more than twice in the many games he’s appeared in, but mostly because he shows you his cute butt when he taunts.

Finally, Lieutenant Samir Duran of Starcraft: Brood War notoriety gets 10th place for his sexy voice alone. The fact that he can use Lockdown and Cloak only adds to his kinky sex potential appeal. He would have placed significantly higher if it weren’t for the fact that he is Zerg-infested at one point in the game, and I don’t want to find out of that’s transmissible through bodily fluids.

That’s it for today - tune in tomorrow for 9th through 6th place!

pat m.

The 25 Hottest Men in Gaming

So Bonnie over at Heroine Sheik posted an interesting breakdown of the “types” of men generally found in this (admittedly rather lackluster, this-post-is-worthless-without-pics) list of the “25 Hottest Men in Gaming”. Do you like your men brawny? Slender and effeminate? Pyramid-headed? And so on.

The assumption that both sites leave untouched: white. That’s right, the list in question is full of cracka-ass-crackas, something that no one else seems to notice. While the original list doesn’t have any pictures, I scrounged up a few pics of the individuals who seemed to have promise as potential non-whiteys. Behold:

Altair from Assassin’s Creed:

Hwoarang from Tekken:

And Iori Yagami from King of Fighters:

Even the ostensibly Asian guys, Iori and Hwoarang, look pretty white to me. Incidentally, I didn’t know that Iori played bass guitar. Nice.

Looks like my next feature is going to have to be hottest men of color in video gaming.

pat m.

Cranky Old Man Ramblings: Video Games and Free Time

Okay, so maybe I’m not really that old. But considering I’ve been playing video games since practically before I could walk, I think I’m entitled to take up the Cranky Kong position every now and then.

I leafed through this post at 1up called “Why People Don’t Finish Games Anymore” and figured I’d post on something I’ve wanted to write about for a little bit. Whether it’s generally true that people don’t finish games compared to the SNES days or not, I have no idea, but it’s personally relevant to me, for most of the reasons listed in the article - some games have too much content, others too much grinding, others simply don’t work, and I have more work (and more income) compared to the grade school days where I could reliably count on getting maybe five games a year - but less time to play them. Well said, Ms. Oxford. But for me that’s hardly where the discussion starts.

I tend to experience video games in one of two ways. If it’s a game that is ultimately skill-driven - something where I aim to get more technically proficient, usually in order to dominate my friends - then I’ll pick it up and play for as long as I feel like. These games are really where my heart lies, for the most part; I prefer the “game” part of “video game”. This isn’t just because I like winning, though - it’s also because the experience is, by its very nature, brief. If I’m by myself, I’ll mess around in Capcom vs. SNK 2’s training mode for 15 minutes or 50. I can play Bleach 2 DS on a train and not feel like I’m interrupted every time I have to turn it off and transfer. These kinds of games require very little of time to make an experience - I don’t have to make time for them.

The other category of games are largely plot-driven - while there’s skill involved in playing through something like Ninja Gaiden DS or Resident Evil 4, my end goal isn’t to get better at slashing up zombie ninjas or anything, it’s to finish the single-player experience. These games require a much more significant minimal investment of time for for me to “warm up”, as it were, and I usually try to finish these in 3-4 sessions if possible. (Incidentally, this is why I’ve sworn off most role-playing games, as most RPGs take at least 20 hours to complete these days, and most of the time I stop caring about whatever is going on after the first twenty minutes. I’m a fickle guy.)

The thing is, the average level of narrative quality still horribly blows in the world of video games. While there are plenty of moments where I sit down and relish a particularly well-designed level or game mechanic that does something that other media could never do to tell a story, those times are the 10%, largely upset by the 90% of the time where I’m either a) impatient or b) embarrassed by how abysmally bad the writing is. Over the past year or so, I’ve found myself watching movies more than usual just because the stories are usually more interesting and thought-provoking (even the bad ones!), and - and this is huge - the entire story can be told in under three hours. This is how I want my games to be. Hello, episodic content. (Also: why I love the Phoenix Wright series.)

To complicate the situation, I am no longer the video game blogging world’s Most Eligible Bachelor (I love you, Shiyuan!), which means that the time I set aside for story-telling is now communal time. There are some people who like watching their significant others play video games, but she is not one of them (and I’m glad, because most of those people are boring. Watching someone get a perfect FF7 save is NOT quality together-time). This means that, ideally, my games need to have a story that is digestible over the course of an evening, more or less, and be an experience that is worth playing and watching. Once again, one of the only games that manages this is the Phoenix Wright series - a case can usually be finished in 2-3 hours or so, and it’s something that can be played fairly easily together. There are some other games that fit here - I watched people play Metal Gear Solid long before I ever picked them up and played myself, and I think the Resident Evil and Silent Hill series might be feasible here too (babygirl loves horror movies; I get nightmares easily). I’d welcome more suggestions in the comments, because frankly, this kind of thing is what makes me slow to adopt new systems.

Incidentally, all of this is one of the major reasons I love my DS. Sure, the dual screen thing is neat, and the touch screen and the mic have their moments. But really, I love that, due to design restrictions or maybe just cartridge space, most games are designed in easily digestible chunks and can be finished in around 10 hours or so. That’s my sweet spot.

pat m.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates

Beat the story mode and can’t really be bothered to play it again. Too bad I don’t have anyone to play the multiplayer game with, I guess.

I was pleasantly surprised by the relatively strong emphasis on platforming; having played through a few action-RPG “dungeon crawlers” in my time, I expected it to be fairly rigid, particularly when it came to the dungeon puzzles. However, your different characters can pick each other up and throw each other around, jump off of each others’ heads, balance items on top of their heads while double-jumping, and summon all the other party members to their present location - all of which can be used to creatively solve the different puzzles without bothering to figure out boring things like how it’s “supposed” to be done. This is good, because I hate switch-flipping puzzles.  GameSpot called this a “12 hour game” in their review, but I finished it in just under 10.

I imagine the game is supposed to get progressively harder after multiple playthroughs, but I certainly don’t see myself doing that anytime soon. Managing a whole party in a boss fight is clumsy, but most of the time you don’t have to do much more than blindly hack away with the character you’re controlling to win the fight. I didn’t even bother with any of the special abilities, charge attacks, or myriad combinations of spells besides the stock revive and heal spells. Just slash-slash-slash away.

It’s worth noting that the reason I didn’t bother with any of the advanced high-damage stuff wasn’t because I didn’t want to, but because the stylus control is so damn awkward. In order to use most of the special combat abilities, you have to use the touch screen to choose an enemy to target. This means you have to take a hand away from the buttons or the control pad to fiddle with the stylus. It’s a total pain in the ass. Same goes for changing characters - you have to use the touch screen to pick who you want to control, even though the select button would have been a much-appreciated alternative option. This means that if I want to cast Fire 3 (to hell with the post-FF6 naming conventions for spells, by the way), I have to pick the red magicite (right hand - touch screen), select a location (right hand - X button, then d-pad to pick a location, which takes FOREVER), then pick out two other members with red magicite selected with the touch-pad. And if they don’t have it? Oops. No Fire 3 for me. I suppose this might be forgivable, since the game is presumably designed around the multiplayer, with the party controls added on afterwards, but it’s also the worst use of MANDATORY touch screen controls. Ugh.

Also of note: save points are fairly scarce, you CAN’T do any kind of temporary mid-game save outside of a save point (low battery? no luck.), and you can’t even PAUSE the damn game except for closing the DS. You basically have to play this one like you would any typical console RPG - that is, chained to a power outlet with long stretches of free time - because it isn’t designed to be played on the go.

Up next, a post on the moment I realized exactly how fucked video games are about race. Peace.

pat m.

Misc.

Finished Ninja Gaiden DS just in time for the English-language version to come out. Great. As far as I can tell, I didn’t miss out on much of a plot. The verdict: I had pretty low standards for a hack-n-slash on the DS, so I was pleasantly surprised by how well the input and the visuals worked. It’s pretty slick. Sadly, at about 7 hours or so for my first (and only) playthrough, it’s a few hours too long to basically do the same hacking and slashing against different backgrounds. Not enough variety. On the plus side, I’m ranked 210th on normal difficulty. Woooo.

Played a few minutes of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates. I’ve never played any of the FFCC games before, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Seems like it’s worth a little more of my time, at least - I just finished the second dungeon, and the level design seems to be a little more inspired than I anticipated. Certainly more inspired than that Dungeon Explorer DS game I sunk a decent amount of time into a few weeks ago. I don’t know what I was thinking. I loved Diablo II more than I’d care to admit, but Dungeon Explorer DS was no Diablo II.

In other news, a blog on Asian Americans and Popular Culture, which, as far as I can gather, is a class project somewhere, linked to my now-infamous discussions of Indigo Prophecy. I still get people coming in and telling me I’m too sensitive, racist, etc. on those posts. Anyway, the blog post had an interesting take on things:

However, I have a problem with this reading, since this reading rests on the assumption that Lucas Kane is a white male. You see, for the whole time I was playing this game, I was under the distinct impression that Lucas Kane was Asian.

It’s an interesting post, though I disagree with the reading - to be frank, it sounds to me like the author got stuck with a case of wishful thinking. (I hate to say it, but we Asian American men aren’t stereotyped as kickboxing rock gods quite yet. YET.) The writer also thought I was a woman named Pam Miller. Anyway, the really interesting part came in the discussion we had in the comments:

Because I was actually a French history specialist in undergrad, this game just struck me as quintessentially French in the way it handled race. The official government policy of racial equality means for them that race is rarely officially acknowledged.

It’s a huge controversy right now whether or not they would they will take ethnic statistics in the next census. The drive towards that is led by the right wingers under Sarkozy, who want to use it to clamp down on immigrants.

I know absolutely nothing about race in France other than Zidane’s legendary Headbutt Super Combo…

… so this struck me as another interesting example of how poorly one country’s racial common sense can translate incredibly poorly into another country. Or, alternately, as an example of how utterly ridiculous “colorblind” attitudes are.

pat m.

P.S.: Today we got a visitor who searched for “Why black people don’t like Resident Evil”. I never really asked myself that question, but frankly, if I had to guess, it would have to be related to a healthy aversion to white people with guns. That one I can understand.