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  • Inside: Are those lady parts? – a review [VIDEO]

    Inside: Are those lady parts? – a review [VIDEO]

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    Welcome to The One Thing, a video game review series that does something a bit different. Rather than try to touch on all the features that make a game great, I attempt to distill a game down to a single element that I believe is integral to the experience of the game. This may not be the only thing that makes a game great, but if someone asked me to tell them why INSIDE works, I’d start with The One Thing.

    And what is The One Thing? It’s the…well, I don’t want this video to be censored because I mention anatomically appropriate body parts, so let’s just say, it’s the lady parts.

    Let me back up for a moment.

    Video games are inherently a perfect medium for the storytelling technique known as in medias res, which literally translates as “in the middle of things.” The idea is that you can begin a story in the middle of a scene, and that fundamental storytelling elements such as exposition and scene-setting can be bypassed, and instead these details would be revealed as the narrative progresses. It would be the difference between starting the fairy tale Cinderella with “once upon a time…” vs. opening  with the evil stepmother in the middle of yelling at Cinderella. Film noir movies often use in medias res. Law & Order, and it’s many spin-offs have used in media res as a series defining stylistic choice for years (bum bum). Shit, did someone just get murdered?

    With video games in medias res often serves to jump-start the sense of exploration that’s already central to video games as a medium. It’s a natural fit. But in medias res can be dangerous. A viewer, a reader, a video game player will only be on board as long as the promise of progression exists. Starting in the middle of things removes the narrative support that more controlled character development and scene setting can offer.

    So back to Inside. Inside begins in medias res, so the player is primed to hunt for contextual clues about the narrative. Then comes the stealth element which eases the player into accepting the game’s mystery. And the game developers (Playdead) are smart storytellers because they put us in the body of a child, the implication being that children by nature are innocent, so the world by default is mysterious. Playdead used a similar strategy with their previous game, Limbo. Also an amazing game.

    So we, as players, adopt that innocence and immediately being asking questions. Why are we hiding? Who are those guys trying to kill us? Why are these chicks following me? What’s up with those weird vapid people? We’re kept invested not only by these questions but also by the game’s design. The stealth elements transition to swimming, then to puzzles, then new enemy types, then more swimming but with a literal twist (the water is upside down…it’s a literal twist), and then, surprisingly–but not necessarily unexpectedly–you become a blob with a mechanic set that’s entirely different from your child character mechanic set.

    Inside is fun and it’s beautiful. But most importantly, Inside is brilliantly paced, which is something in medias res narratives sometimes have trouble with. All of these things mean we as players remain invested in the experience.

    As a player you are 100% on board with the mysterious narrative every step of the way. This is great, but when The One Thing reveals itself, that’s when the game does something really special. The game stops being mysterious and suddenly becomes…logical. The game makes you feel smart in a new way. When I recognized the use of in medias res, I recognized my own intelligence. When I recognized the use of a child protagonist to compliment the stealth and mystery elements, I again recognized my own intelligence. But when I recognized the vagina, I recognized the game developer’s intelligence, and by proxy, their insistence on making me, the player, feel smart. Making a player feel smart without dumbing down the experience is not easy to do.

    I believe the vagina was intentionally placed by the game designers as a way to put the analytical crowd at ease. “Hey player,” the developer is saying “you don’t need to think anymore. We’re telling you right now that we’ve used the human body, specifically the reproductive experience, as a blueprint to inform the level design of a 2D platformer set inside a very mechanical factory-like environment. Okay. From here on, just play.” In a world comprised of hard-edged mechanical surfaces, the soft folds of a vagina stand out. And the developers knew it would.

    But is Inside really that simple?

    The Internet is rife with theories attempting to de-tangle the game’s theme, trying to organize the logic of the industrial and organic motifs into a single, digestible intent. Some say the game explores how cancer affects a body. Some say it comments on depression with areas where you’re essentially shutting down serotonin receptors. And while, at first, I was eager to jump into that analytical crowd, seeing the vagina near the end of the game, caused me to step back. I found a piece of the puzzle, but importantly not a hidden piece.

    Again, the vagina tells the player to stop thinking. This directive to stop thinking is supported by the turn from a puzzle game to a game of simple fun now that you’re playing this amorphous blob, which I mentioned earlier. You get to literally destroy parts of the level, giving you a sense of catharsis against all of the obstructions you’ve carefully navigated up to that point. You don’t have to think anymore. Now you’re just supposed to have fun.

    You even use fire at one point late in the game. Fire is a very typical no-need-to-think game mechanic, the type of common element that Inside had consciously avoided during the entire game prior.

    Is Inside trying for a specific message, something about herd mentality and office work, as many of the prevailing themes discussed online would indicate? I don’t think so. I don’t believe the developers are hiding a deep message. I think they just wanted to make a cool puzzle platformer and they used the body as a blueprint.

    Let me know in the comments below what you think of Inside. What do you think it means? Did you notice the vagina, too, or is it all in my head?

    And please, if you like this The One Thing approach to video game reviews, let me know. When I get a thumbs up or comment notification on my phone, I seriously get giddy.

    Oh, and one last thing before I go. If you ever find yourself constructing a narrative and you decide to start your story in medias res, just promise me you’ll do so carefully, and that you won’t do it just to be clever…oh crap, that reminds me, Welcome to The One Thing, a video game review series that does something a bit different. Rather than try to touch on all the features that make a game great, I attempt to distill a game down to a single element that I believe is integral to the experience of the game. This may not be the only thing that makes a game great, but if someone asked me to tell them why INSIDE works, I’d start with The One Thing.

    Research/Sources/Credits/Inspirations (this is not a comprehensive list, as that would be impossible, especially the “inspirations” items)

    Music Credits

  • Is the Shovel Museum the Funniest Place in Nuka-World and Fallout 4? [VIDEO]

    Is the Shovel Museum the Funniest Place in Nuka-World and Fallout 4? [VIDEO]

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    My vote is that Wixon’s Shovel Museum to the East of Nuka Town U.S.A is the funniest place in all of Fallout. I won’t spoil too much of it for you. Just go there yourself for a good laugh.

    What do you think is the funniest place in Nuka-World, Fallout 4, and in any of the Fallout games?

    I recently completed the Nuka-World DLC, which marks the final piece of content I can experience in Fallout 4, which means I’ve poured countless hours into the entire Fallout 4 world, and I can say with confidence that I’ve found the funniest area in the entire game, and perhaps in the entire Fallout series.

    The Fallout game developers have built a reputation for being able to weave, pretty seamlessly, inspirations from the real world into the world of Fallout. A great example of this can be found right here in the Nuka World DLC, just outside Nuka World proper. The Grandchester Mystery Mansion seems to have been inspired by the real life Winchester Mystery House.

    The story of the Winchester Mystery House begins with Sarah Lockwood Pardee who, in 1862, married into the Winchester family, the very same Winchester of the Winchester Rifle company, the company that supplied soldiers with arms during the civil war.

    Sarah’s only daughter died in infancy, and her husband, William Winchester died prematurely as well. These events sent her down a depressive spiral that lead to her seeking the help of a Boston Spiritualist. This spiritualist informed Sarah that the deaths of her daughter and husband were the result of spirits who were angry about all the lives that Winchester rifles had taken.

    The medium continued by instructing Sarah to head west, to California, and build a mansion to appease the angry spirits. This became the Winchester Mystery House, and its architecture is every bit as crazy as the inspired Nuka-World building would indicate. Just like the Grandchester Mystery Mansion, the real life Winchester Mystery House includes hidden passages, doors that open to walls, stairways that lead nowhere and even a seance room.

    But back to my original point. Fallout weaves the real life story of this mansion into the world of Fallout by leveraging the haunted house atmosphere as just another Nuka-World novelty. Real life becomes Fallout life.

    But the shovel museum is different. Located East of Nuka Town USA, the shovel museum doesn’t try very hard to weave itself into the fabric of Fallout. Instead, it stands as probably the only instance where that fourth wall that separates game developer from audience breaks down to reveal a situation where, I assume, the developers just couldn’t take the real-life inspiration seriously.

    The Nuka-World shovel museum is blatantly a building with no other purpose than to make fun of the mere existence of a real-life shovel museum. And yes, one does exist. The Shovel Collection at Stonehill College’s Industrial History Center in Easton, MA contains over 755 shovels.

    Here’s how I imagine it happened. The Fallout design team were researching Boston for possible locations to include in the game.

    Someone said, “what about Walden Pond in Concord, that place poet Henry David Thoreau loved so much.”

    “Definitely, let’s include it.”

    “What about the Winchester Mystery House. It’s owner was from the Boston area.”

    “Is that the creepy mansion with the stairs to nowhere? Of course, it’s got to be in the game.”

    “What about the shovel museum?”

    “The what?”

    “The shovel museum. In Easton.”

    “Is it haunted?”

    “No.”

    “Is it the site of a brutal shovel-based murder.”

    “No.”

    “What’s so special about it?”

    “It’s got shovels.”

    “Ugh, gary, you suck. But, you’re Todd Howard’s wife’s nephew, so, sure, let’s include it.”

    So they did. And they had fun with it.

    I highly recommend you visit the shovel museum in Nuka World. Read the plaques. And be sure to check out the terminal on the top floor. Turns out one of the employees left the museum because he was offered a better job. But what could be better than working at a shovel museum, you ask? Only one thing. A mop museum.

    And to be clear, I’m not personally making fun of the The Shovel Collection at Stonehill College’s Industrial History Center. I respect a museum that caters to a niche, especially one that a lot of people may find pretty nerdy. I’ve been to the Video Game Museum in Frisco, TX, and sure video game appreciation is probably not as niche as shovel appreciation, but still, to drive 12 hours to be able to touch atari boxes isn’t something most people would do.

    Have you ever visited The Shovel Collection or the Winchester Mystery House? Let me know in the comments below. And also let me know what you think the funniest part of the Fallout series is.

    Research/Sources/Credits/Inspirations (this is not a comprehensive list, as that would be impossible, especially the “inspirations” items)

    Music Credits

  • Limbo: What Makes it Work? – a review [VIDEO]

    Limbo: What Makes it Work? – a review [VIDEO]

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    Welcome to The One Thing, a video game review series that does something a bit different. Rather than try to touch on all the features that make a game great, I attempt to distill a game down to a single element that I believe is integral to the experience of the game. This may not be the only thing that makes a game great, but if someone asked me to tell them why Limbo works, I’d start with The One Thing.

    The one thing is The grayscale color palette.

    At it’s heart, Limbo is a simple, relatively short, puzzle platformer. And all the elements that make a great puzzle platformer are here. Puzzles and platforming, of course, but also excellent control, a fair difficulty curve, perfect level design, and a protagonist that the player can connect with in some way. In this case, a human child, and I’m assuming most of you watching this were at one point a human child.

    Going into Limbo, all we as players know is that we take on the role of a child who is rescuing his sister.

    Other than that, the story of Limbo is vague, and has therefore generated a ton of player theories ranging from the main character falling from a treehouse to being killed in a car accident. Every theory involves death, by the way. The developer encourages the non-specific intent of the story by refusing to answer any questions about it.

    Before I dive into the game’s lack of color, I’d like to talk a bit about the title. Limbo. Not only does the title being a single word remove any additional contextual help for determining an absolute theme–it’s not called “a child’s limbo,” “Limbo Run,” or even just “The Limbo”–the term itself introduces the player to the idea of being “in limbo.” Casually speaking, being in limbo indicates a state of directionlessness, or more appropriately in the case of the game, an inability to either progress or regress, or perhaps the inability to know if you are progressing or regressing. You’re stagnant. From a religious context (I’ll speak specifically to Catholicism), Limbo refers to an afterlife state meant for unbaptized souls. The souls aren’t allowed into Heaven but also aren’t damned to Hell.

    I think the game honors both the religious and the causal meaning of the term. Are you dead and trying to escape Limbo? Maybe. Is the protagonist just as unsure about his progression as you, the player? Maybe. As a side note, a child protagonist is really the only protagonist that would have worked with limbo. The implied innocence of a child further conceals any concept of right and wrong, of black and white.

    So where does the grayscale color pallette come into play? Well, it’s obvious, right? Grey conveys a sense of emotional fluidity, happy to sad, angry to joyful. If white represents hope and black represents defeat, then the greys in between represent various states of indirection and confusion. And that’s what you are when playing Limbo. Confused and left without direction.

    Color and emotion is an inexact science. Earlier I stated it was Obvious that grey conveys a sense of emotional fluidity. But that hasn’t always been the case. Historically, grayscale was used in things like photography and television simply because it was the only thing available and later because it was cheaper to produce than color. Today, grayscale is an artistic decision, and like with any artistic decision (or what should be the impetus to every artist decision) the artist chooses a specific presentation based on an intended reaction. That reaction can be a marketing one, one driven by the need to highlight certain details (B&W photography tends to reveal greater detail than color, for example), but it can also be an emotional one.

    Modern game players (and media consumers in general) see grayscale as potentially a way to give gravitas to something, make it appear historical, for example. But I think we’ve also been trained to see it’s use as a way to convey mystery or uncertainty. Perhaps you’re familiar with trope about self-indulge art school film students using black and white to force a sense of intrigue and importance. This is what Limbo does…but not in a self-indulgent way.

    Can you imagine limbo with color? Well, you don’t have to. Dorkly made a great video about this. Link below.

    Research/Sources/Credits/Inspirations (this is not a comprehensive list, as that would be impossible, especially the “inspirations” items)

    Music Credits

  • DOOM: What Makes it Work? – a review [VIDEO]

    DOOM: What Makes it Work? – a review [VIDEO]

    Welcome to The One Thing, a video game review series that does something a bit different. Rather than try to touch on all the features that make a game great, I attempt to distill a game down to a single element that I believe is integral to the experience of the game. This may not be the only thing that makes a game great, but if someone asked me to tell them why a game works, I’d start with The One Thing.

    My latest obsession is DOOM, the 2016 release.

    DOOM is a lot of things to a lot of people. To fans of the original PC game, DOOM is a beautiful rendition of a game that likely defined them as gamers (it seems to have impacted most everyone who played it). To fans of first person shooters, DOOM is a fast-paced entry into a genre that’s lately been dominated by duck-and-cover shooters. To casual fans of pretty much any video game, DOOM is a refreshing change of pace, one that doesn’t require extensive knowledge of a specific genre and its conventions to enjoy. With such wide-ranging appeal, DOOM obviously has a lot going for it. But what is The One Thing?

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  • How are Bloodborne and Rainbow Brite connected? | 6 Degrees of Pixelation [VIDEO]

    How are Bloodborne and Rainbow Brite connected? | 6 Degrees of Pixelation [VIDEO]

    Today I’ll be connecting the Lovecraftian, adventure game Bloodborne to Rainbow Brite. Yes, that Rainbow Brite. This is another view request episode, proof that I do listen to my viewers. If you have an idea for a connection, leave it in a comment below.

    You know that social theory that everyone on earth can be connected to anyone else by no more than 5 intermediaries? They call that 6 Degrees of Separation. I do the same thing here, except I connect video game topics in strange ways using 6 Degrees of Pixelation.

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  • Thoughts On Why Supporters Go Silent

    Thoughts On Why Supporters Go Silent

    I offer a few thoughts on why people may stop caring about the stuff you create. Specially, the article that inspired this Thoughts On video (Why No One Wants To Hear About The Game You Just Finished Making) references video games, but my thoughts can apply to any creative endeavor where the end goal is more audience members (viewers, players, readers, etc).

    Further Reading

     

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  • Thoughts on full disclosure and what it means to be an ethical influencer

    Thoughts on full disclosure and what it means to be an ethical influencer

    I give a few thoughts spurred by an article in Game Informer, issue 281. The article is titled “Full Disclosure: Controversy Erupts Over the Ethics of Sponsored YouTube Influencer Videos.” It touches on some concerns with some YouTube gamers not disclosing their relationships to publishers who pay them to review games.

    Further Reading

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