Month: May 2019

That Dragon Cancer – Hard hitting tales that need to be told:

Posted on by in Gaming

Just a warning before I start talking properly, this article is about That Dragon Cancer. For those not familiar with it, it tells the story of a family and their struggles against cancer. They share memories of their son, Joel, such as when he went into remission, to their last few days with him. It is a heart-wrenching tale of love and loss, especially to anyone who has lost a loved one to cancer. If you have lost someone and that wound is still fresh, I suggest not reading this article. I know personally how painful those reminders can be, and I do not wish to cause that pain in others.

If you haven’t experienced it, I’d play it yourself first. I cannot put into words the strength of the emotions it induces.

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To those of you who are still here, let’s talk. In the UK, one in two people will get cancer in their lifetime. Nearly everyone has either lost someone to cancer or knows someone who has. It has become one of these things that we just accept as inevitable, like taxes or rain. Yet, the devastating impact it can have on every aspect of your life – as either as the sufferer or an observer, isn’t something we should roll over and accept.

In the early summer of 2015, I lost my grandmother to cancer. Though I only really got to see her a couple of times a year due to the distance between Edinburgh and wherever I was living at the time, she had a profound impact on who I was as a person. To this day she remains one of the kindest people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. I see her in the birds in the trees and the squirrels roaming the Cardiff parks, I hear her encouragement whenever I struggle, I see her in my mum’s eyes and in my own. It doesn’t feel like four years since I last saw her, yet the calendar doesn’t lie to me.

It’s not all sad though. My grandmother beat cancer once. Breast cancer tried to beat her, but she conquered it. I’d never have gotten the chance to get to know her otherwise. I have so many warm memories of her – encouraging me to pursue computing even though she had no idea what I was talking about, helping me finish a puzzle on the floor of the living room. When she knew she couldn’t beat cancer the second time, she made the decision to live out the rest of her life the best way she knew – with her family. I didn’t get to spend those last days with her, I wish that I could’ve, but I was in the middle of exam season, blissfully unaware of what was going on.

Race For Life is one of many events that raise money and awareness about cancer.

The last memory of someone is the one that sticks with you the most. We visited her in the hospital just before Hogmanay (it’s New Year’s for Scotland basically). Even now I can still recall every sign on the doors I passed, every passing conversation between the doctors and nurses, even the smell of disinfectant lingers in the back of my nose as I write this. Though my gran was all skin and bone at this point, the light in her eyes hadn’t faded. I don’t think anything could’ve broken that woman’s spirit; not whilst there were still birds to fade and nature to explore.

She could see how nervous I was, so started chatting away about what I’d been up to and what comics I was reading, drawing me out of my shell slowly. I remember leaving the room clutching a piece of paper, on which I had drawn a diagram of the code I was working on and she had drawn a rough sketch of an old piece of farm equipment she used to use, back when her, papa, my aunt and my mum all lived on their chicken farm. I don’t know what happened to that drawing, I think it might’ve gotten lost in a suitcase or mixed up with some paperwork. I wish I still had it, as a reminder.

They’re never truly gone. They live on, in our hearts and our memories.

That Dragon Cancer isn’t like any game I’ve ever played. You go into the game knowing what will happen, knowing that Joel isn’t going to make it and you are an observer, looking in and catching glimpses of tidal wave of emotions that the family goes through. It is a tale of love and loss, joy and hope, pain and fear. It’s not there to provide a moral or some philosophical point to ruminate on, it’s just there to tell you the story of Joel and his family, no matter how hard it may be to hear. Of course, you root for them, praying that somehow, they will triumph and find their happy ending, smiling wide at every happy giggle that comes from Joel and every peaceful moment the family get amidst the storm that rages around them.

The scene that hit me the most, one that I feel everyone should play through or at least watch, is the doctor’s office scene.  For any of us who have ever had to sit in a doctor’s room and hear the words that they wished would never be spoken, this scene speaks volumes. You start by spinning a toy that makes different farm animal noises and jokes, to make Joel laugh, a bittersweet feeling when the doctor begins to speak. You hear how the chemotherapy has failed, how this wonderful little boy has so little time left to live, and that toy becomes a vessel to hearing the tormented inner monologues of each person present – from the doctors to the suffering parents.

To all the doctors and nurses out there, who have to give bad news to people. Your strength is phenomenal and your compassion is amazing.

The music and the visuals in this game are what ties it together. They can each be harrowing and beautiful, perfectly encapsulating the emotions of the scene and drawing you into it completely. You forget for a time that you are playing a game, instead living the tale of Joel through the eyes of his family – allowing their hope, joy and grief to become your own. For those of you who have lost someone, it feels like an echo chamber, reflecting all those feelings back at you. Your memories dart in, between piano chords and scene transitions.

The game reminds you not just of the loss, but of the joy and happiness that those we have lost brought to us. This is a lesson that I feel can apply to more than just cancer, be that loss through accidents or mental health conditions or just old age. Losing someone does not diminish their impact on the world and on who we are. I wouldn’t be studying computing now without my grandmother. Birdsong wouldn’t make me smile; I’d never pause to smell the freshly bloomed flowers. I am who I am because of her and because of all the people I’ve lost, as well as those who are still such a major part of my life.

Although it is a narrative piece, involving little “gameplay” on the part of the player, there are little minigames that you can play in each scene – such as steering Joel away from the tumours. One scene has you wandering through a hospital reading the messages sent in by the game’s supporters, telling their stories of love and loss and fear and hope and grief. If you spend any time with this game, I guarantee that most of it will be spent wandering those hallways, reading every card possible and catching a glimpse of the lives of those touched by this disease. This game’s power doesn’t just come from Joel’s storyline, it comes from the fact that this story is not uncommon. So many people experience their own version of Joel’s life, be that with their siblings or grandparents or close friends.

An adorable minigame, until you realise that the timer is the time passing and the collectables are all the treatments and medications Joel had to have.

I can see myself in the shoes of Joel’s family. Sometimes, I’m the dad, trying desperately to fight back against something so much bigger than myself, falling deeper into the dark ocean when I fail. Other times, I’m the mother – praying that some higher power will realise that this disease needs stopping, that so many good people could be saved if someone just intervened. In these situations, we fight for control over something we can never control, grasping for a sense of purpose or something, anything we can do to make it better. We try to fight an enemy that we feel we can never defeat.

Joel fought and won time and time again, despite all the tumours and the pain, he kept fighting and winning. Yet, he couldn’t win forever. After a long time of fighting, the little warrior was given peace. Despite all the pain and the grief that the Green family went through and are still going through, they chose to make a game. A game that highlighted the amazing moments Joel brought to their life and the devasting impact the disease can have on a family. They chose to raise awareness, to create hope and to remind people that cancer can be beaten. Hopefully, in the future, we will find a cure. We will be able to stop any family going through the agony of losing a child to this monster, allowing a little boy like Joel to grow up happy and healthy – as all children deserve to.

To anyone going through this, you are not alone. To anyone who knows someone who is, be there for them. Sometimes when we feel as if we are drowning, we need to be thrown a rope, to pull ourselves out of that abyss before it consumes us. If you can, donate to cancer research, take part in the Race For Life (like my wonderful mother did last weekend 😊) or just be a shoulder for those who need it.

Thank you to Joel and his family, for telling your story.

– CaitlinRC

Detroit Become Human – Robot Revolutions:

Posted on by in Gaming

For those of you that know me, you’ll be aware that I am a computer science student studying at university at the time I am writing this. For the past six years of my life, the computing industry and more specifically, Artificial Intelligence, has been a key interest of mine – touching my literary interests, my career ambitions and even my choice of video games. Obviously, I am nowhere near an expert, but I always enter games based on computational theories or methods, with a sceptical mind. This means that hacking minigames or games based in future dystopias containing robots, tend to turn my head and not always in a good way.

So, where do I come down on Detroit Become Human? Well, David Cage games and I have never really gotten on, especially considering the portrayal of their female characters – such as Maddison from Heavy Rain being limited to be a romantic interest to protagonist Ethan or attempting to force Jodie into several relationships in Beyond Two Souls. So, walking into Detroit Become Human, I was worried, to say the least.

Androids are always a … interesting topic for games to focus on.

DBH follows a similar formula to other David Cage games, in that your decisions and responses to quick time events, have a significant effect on the fate of your characters. You follow three different androids as their stories unfold and intersect with one another, with whether they survive to enjoy a happy ending being entirely dependent on your unique choices. Out of the three characters, I feel that only one of them really is worth following the story of – that being Kara.

Kara is an android owned by deadbeat dad Todd and is responsible for looking after the house and Todd’s daughter Alice. Almost immediately after the game begins, Todd’s abusive behaviour towards both Kara and Alice, causes Kara to break from her programming and flee into the night with Alice in tow, protecting the little girl from her father’s abuse – potentially killing him in the process, depending on your choices. The entirety of her character arc, is mostly about learning to be free, protecting this little girl and trying to escape the society that wishes to scrap her for parts. It is eventually revealed that Alice is also a robot but your attachment to this little one is not affected by this revelation, in fact, considering how this version of America treats androids, you want to protect her even more.

Kara’s story makes you think about the ethics of Artificial Intelligence – a subject that has been highly debated since the topic was founded. Kara and Alice clearly care deeply for one another, with Kara putting herself in danger to protect the young android, showing she is capable of love and affection and fear and bravery, raising the question about whether she deserves to be free to live her life, just like any living, breathing creature on the planet. In the ending I got, Kara and Alice manage to escape to Canada alongside their friend Luther, to live their lives without the fear that followed you for the entirety of her parts of the game.

These two genuinely care for each other and it shows from the very first level.

Then you have Connor. Connor is a detective unit of android, designed to assist with the investigation of crimes and works alongside a human who thoroughly dislikes androids, who can slowly become more than just a “android created by Cyberlife” or can work to oppress his own people and ensure the androids never get the freedom that they are fighting for. Connor’s story can be sweet, his buddy cop relationship with Hank and slowly becoming more “human” is a joy to see but it doesn’t have the same emotional connection as Kara and Alice do, so it does have the better moral dilemmas such as allowing fugitives to escape or refusing to execute another android just to gain information that could help a case.

Finally, we come to Markus. He starts out as an assistance android to an old painter, who treats him kindly and they get along very well. However, disaster strikes in the form of the painter’s douche of a son whose actions cause his father to have a heart attack and blames it on Markus, resulting in him being destroyed and thrown onto the scrap heap. He survives, reassembles himself and goes on to become the leader of the revolution for android freedom. His choices can affect whether Kara escapes to Canada successfully or whether hundreds of civilians and androids die in the explosion of a dirty bomb. This use of a “minorities struggle” is where my problem with Detroit Become Human lies.

I love storytelling games, but the writer of Markus’s storyline is attempting to shove in a narrative about the fight for equality, be that in women’s rights, LGBT+ rights or the struggle that minority groups go through every day just to have something “edgy” to put on the back of the box. Normally, I’d support games that raise awareness of these issues, but this storyline doesn’t feel genuine. It feels forced in by a writer who clearly has never truly struggled in life or experienced true oppression, like so many communities in our world fight against. It cheapens the effect of this so-called “fight for freedom”, feeling more like a story gimmick than a genuine message about equality or freedom.

Oppression isn’t always obvious, it’s subtle. It comes across in the tone of someone’s voice or the subtle body language of the people you walk past on the street. It doesn’t wander around with a giant neon sign saying LOOK AT ME! We shouldn’t be taking such a critical issue such as minority group’s struggle against racism, oppression and prejudice, and turning it into a quick plot point in a video game. They. Deserve. Better.

The civil rights movement and other campaigns for equality such as Black Lives Matter, share very little except the aesthetic of “fighting for equality” with DBH. The only way the androids receive their freedom is by choosing peaceful solutions at every turn, even if it means watching as your fellow androids are gunned down for protesting peacefully. The fight for equal rights is not just about peace, it’s about people being willing to die for what they believe in such as Emily Davison diving in front of the king’s horse and becoming a martyr for the suffragette cause. David Cage claimed this game was not meant to be a political statement, meaning that the resulting storyline seems so much more shallow and makes the impact of the stories told in the game, seem worth so much less.

This scene is so emotional and this moment is well done, just a shame it was a small glimmer of good in a pile of mediocre.

In conclusion, I feel that DBH had real potential. Even the portrayal of artificial intelligence made sense in the context, though was not entirely accurate (I’ll let them off, it is a video game after all). However, the storylines they chose to follow let down their entire premise, seemingly jumping on a bandwagon of including revolutions and fights for equality in media, instead of following its own unique blend of storytelling and the consequences of our actions. Maybe next time get writers who have experienced those events, to tell the story, instead of doing it yourself Cage.

Sorry if I seem a bit harsh this week, I thought I’d go for a more realistic approach to a game that I did have hope for. Can’t always be nice after all.

Thanks,

CaitlinRC.

Spiderman – The Freeing Nature of Superhero Video Games:

Posted on by in Gaming

Everyone at some point in their life has dreamed of being a superhero. This fantasy of ours tends to manifest in moments of fear or despair – where we have no control over the situation we face and are helpless. Therefore, we dream of a situation where we can do the impossible and stop others from ever experiencing that sense of helplessness that we had to live through. Be it flying, visions or super strength, we’ve always lived in awe of superheroes – no matter how dark some of their actions can be (looking at you, Batman).

I grew up on superhero movies and have had a steadfast obsession with mythology (I’ll talk more about that when I cover God of War), so tales of people doing the impossible have always fascinated me. Out of all the superheroes, Spiderman was one of the most interesting to me. Putting aside the overplayed origin story – Uncle Ben, bitten by a spider, endless on and off again relationship with MJ etc, he has always been more appealing to my generation, partly due to the fact he is still in education in most of the stories surrounding him and partly due to his abilities. The reflexes alone would make sure you never dropped a plate again!

All hail Spider Man, our web swinging hero.

When they announced Spiderman for the PS4, I was both ridiculously excited and terrified. There hadn’t really been a good game about our web-slinging hero for a long time, with Spiderman 2 released in 2004 is called the only “good” Spiderman game. For a Spiderman game to be deemed good by both fans and critics, it must nail three different elements – web-slinging, combat and personality. He’s a funny guy, being able to mock his enemies with sharp quips in the middle of a battle – even whilst hurling them across a room.

So, first things first, is the web swinging good? The answer to that is a solid yes. About thirty seconds into the opening of the game, you immediately start swinging through Manhattan, watching with awe as our masked hero flips and twirls effortlessly through the air, changing direction and increasing speed in immediate response to your input as the player. Unlike a lot of games, that restrict your powers to specific scenarios or only enable you to climb specific rocks (looking at you Horizon Zero Dawn), the web swinging is your main mode of getting around the city. Yes, you can unlock fast travel to the different police precincts and key locations in the world, but you rarely want to. If I know anything about video games, if you are rarely wanting to use fast travel to get from mission to mission, then you have done something right as a developer.

Swinging across the city is the most satisfying thing possible. It’s slightly addictive if I’m honest.

Next up, combat. Spiderman as a superhero isn’t what you’d call a “head-on” fighter. His insane agility and reflexes enable him to dodge smoothly past the flying fists of his enemies and strike before they are sure what hit them. The developers at Insomniac Games have done an incredible job of incorporating the verticality aspect of Spiderman’s combat – after all, if you can swing on a web at high speed, why not be able to boot an enemy combatant off a building? You can swing in and out of combat at any time, launch yourself off walls and hurl basically anything that isn’t tied down at your enemies (including other enemies).

Then there are the gadgets. Spiderman is most well known for designing his own gadgets – from web bombs to drones to electric webs, the game doesn’t hold back in providing you with endless tools to add to your combat repertoire. It even encourages you to experiment with different combinations, as seen in the endless challenges presented to you by the infuriating Screwball, some of which restrict you to only using two or three gadgets to take out waves of enemies. For example, if you manage to electric web several enemies and then throw a web bomb at them, you can catapult a handful of them into the wall, effectively removing them from combat.

I wanted to beat up Screwball more than any of the enemies I faced during the game’s campaign.

Last but by no means least, the personality of the game and it’s characters. There is a tendency with voice acted games, for some of the character’s to not have as much “life” in them as we’d expect from a living breathing world. Yet, Spiderman takes the well-known humour of the web slinger and cranks it up to eleven, with hundreds of quips and sarcastic comebacks delivered with phenomenal comedic timing. The characters feel real, their relationships and emotions clear both in the voice acting and in the animation of their character models.

The city of Manhattan reacts to the events unfolding within it and the running commentary from J. Jonah Jameson provides a slightly different tone of humour to the game – the well-known Spiderman hater occasionally making a valid point about the state of the city they live in, alongside his ridiculous claims that Spiderman is eating pigeons. Also, as a big fan of the comics and older movies, it’s nice to see the occasional nod and reference to past instalments in the franchise, without restricting access to new players who have no idea about the rich lore of the Spiderman universe.

Jonah is one of the most well known characters in Spiderman, though we don’t always take him too seriously.

Despite a game with a focus on combat and the occasional stealth segment (if you don’t take the approach that I do and try to stealth web everyone to the wall), Spiderman is a relaxing game to play. It’s not a majorly long game, with the campaign taking about 20 hours, but I invested about 60 hours into the game – completing side quests, collecting the various tokens scattered around the city and stopping every crime possible.

I’m a bit of a completionist personally, striving to get that 100% on my save file and the ping of the achievement for collecting every little item possible. However, I rarely replay games immediately after finishing them. Normally, I wait a few months till I’m in the mood for the game again. With Spiderman, the moment I unlocked the game’s “impossible” difficultly, I launched a new save file, determined to conquer it once more and get every single possible achievement. When the DLC’s were released, I came back to the game again, seeking more story and enjoying settling back into the world that by this point, I knew inside out.

Any game that can evoke such a sense of replayability and continued enjoyment, even after completing basically everything it has to offer, holds a soft spot in my heart. It’s honestly one of my favourite games ever made and was my game of 2018 – beating even Red Dead 2 (sorry cowboys). If you haven’t given it a try or picked it up but never got into it as deeply as you could’ve, give it another look. The DLC’s are well worth it and even if you have already finished the story, go try out some of the new suits – which range from gorgeous to terrifying.

Till next week,

CaitlinRC.

Dishonored – The Temptation Of The Outsider

Posted on by in Gaming

The Dishonored series has always been of intrigue to me. It was the first series that I watched a full let’s play of on YouTube and a game world that fascinated me. I spent countless hours digging through the lore and dialogue, searching for answers and a deeper understanding of the events that occurred in the game. However, the concept of Dishonored is a bit hard to explain – especially considering its success and sequels, as well as the countless DLC’s.

In my mind, Dishonored is the result of locking Telltale, Assassins Creed, Hitman and Thief in a lift and refusing to let them out until they produced a profitable game idea. It is a perfect blend of assassination, stealth, chaos (looking at players like Mike Channell from OutsideXbox) and the consequences of player’s actions. It is these “consequences” that we will be focusing on in this article.

Every decision we make in our day to day lives has an impact on the world around us. For those familiar with mathematics, Life Is Strange or Until Dawn – the concept of Chaos Theory tends to be what springs to mind when a game warns us about our actions having consequences. It is a concept that tends to be beaten within an inch of its life in most forms of media, but some games do handle it quite delicately and Dishonored is one of these.

Until Dawn is a famous example of the use of Chaos Theory in video games.

In Dishonored, you are provided with special powers from the Outsider, who observes your actions through the world and judges you. He provides you with the means to bring the world around you to its knees, to bathe the streets with blood – or to silently slip past unknowing citizens, working in the shadows to achieve your goal without a drop of blood spilt. Kingdoms will prosper or collapse based on your decisions – will you let the rats consume the city in your quest for vengeance?

Depending on your actions during a level, you are assigned a chaos level. This is given a value of either High or Low, with the previous level’s chaos factoring into the contents of the next level. For example, if you use your powers to murder many guards in several horrific ways (looking at you Devouring Swarm), then there will be more guards, more rats and more Weepers – making your next mission more difficult.

The ending you receive at the game’s climax is also decided by the total chaos you caused throughout the game. This chaos level is deemed by your choices throughout the game, for example, if you take the non-lethal route of dispatching your targets – such as wiping their memories or sending them to work in their own silver mines as slaves (I didn’t say the non-lethal options were better), then you will receive a lower chaos level than if you blew them up with a whale oil tank.

The Outsider – some argue that he is the villain, the enabler of chaos. However, he is just an observer. Watching you.

A big flaw in a lot of games that claim to be influenced by player choice is that it limits the player to two or three linear pathways that they can choose from. So, gamers tend to be stuck on one specific route for the entirety of the game, such as a “Good” or “Evil” run. Now, this would be ok, if all the enemies you came across were clearly evil. Then, you wouldn’t feel a great deal of guilt or remorse when you sliced your knife through their neck. However, some of the people you come across are just guards doing their jobs or plague survivors trying to make it through the day. Do they deserve to die?

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the plot of the Dishonored games, let me explain. In the first game, Corvo (you) is falsely imprisoned for the murder of the empress and the kidnapping of her daughter, Emily (who is eventually confirmed to be his daughter). You are sentenced to death but are broken out of prison by some people still loyal to you. You then proceed on a journey to find Emily and get your revenge against those who caused your downfall.

The second game sees Emily on the throne and deposed by a witch called Delilah, who turns either Emily or Corvo to stone (depending on who the player chooses to play as) and the remaining character goes on a journey to find those responsible for the coup and reclaim the throne. You as Corvo or Emily, have been Dishonored (roll credits) and seek to right the wrong against you. However, how you go about this is entirely up to you.

Dishonored 2 lets you choose between the young Empress or her father (the protagonist from the first game).

The chaos system in Dishonored is often considered a “punishment” to players, with many complaining about it restricting their gameplay options. However, this is not true. The Outsider acts like the Devil but instead of convincing Adam and Eve to eat an apple, he gives you the means to bend the world to your will – a tempting offer, especially considering how quickly situations can go awry. Yet as a player, you do not have to choose the evil path. In the second game, you don’t even have to accept the Outsider’s Mark and can play the entire game without any supernatural hijinks.

Throughout the game, you are offered opportunity after opportunity to take the easier, but the lethal route, yet there is always another path. Players who fall to the temptation, only have themselves to blame for the poor ending they get. As gamers, we have become accustomed to violence being the only route through a story, with games providing us with various weapons to mow down the countless enemies without batting an eye. Dishonored challenges this idea, actively rewarding or punishing you dependent on your actions.

That sweet little girl Emily you rescue from The Golden Cat? How she rules over her kingdom at the end of the first game, is strongly influenced by how you dispatch your enemies. If you use diplomacy and only kill when necessary, Emily will learn wisdom and insight. However, if you butcher all those who stand in your way – she will use whatever means necessary to get what she wants, becoming a ruthless dictator over innocent people. You are the catalyst that sparks the change in the game world, be that for good or evil. Dishonored gives you nowhere to hide from your actions and for that I adore it.

Emily Kaldwin – Who will she become?

After all, your actions in the real world have long-reaching consequences. If you commit a crime, you are punished for it. When you inflict pain upon others, society will judge you accordingly. As much as we tend to go to games for escapism, I don’t think we should be entirely free of consequences – an idea that the Dishonored series tackles head-on. The choices we make affect the world around us as well as our loved ones and our own psyche. Throughout the games, you can morph Corvo and Emily from being a wronged individual just seeking to reclaim what is rightfully theirs, to a horrific creature who tore through hundreds of innocents for no real reason other than bloodlust.

Anyways, that’s the Dishonored series for you. It hands you a knife and lets you decide what you use it for. What did you do? What other games would you like me to talk about? Leave feedback in the comments section, hit that follow button and follow me on Twitter @OurMindGames for all the updates!

Thanks,

CaitlinRC