I was a child with a vivid imagination. I spent many hours in my backyard tree, defending my kingdom from invading nasties. My custom-built Lego spaceship took me far into the galaxy and back again, always with many stories to tell of battles with aliens and treasures uncovered. These fantastical adventures spawned from a special place inside my head, a place of joy and comfort but also a place where I was the winner. I controlled the fantasy and thus I knew that no matter how dire the circumstances, I would come out on top. I would win the day. I do not believe that such an experience is uncommon during our lost childhood years and I think this is why many videogames take a certain form.
Playing as Faith I will save my sister.
Playing as Mario I will defeat Bowser.
Playing as Darsil, the stealthy Dunmer mage I will fulfill the prophecies and defeat Dagoth Ur to save all of Morrowind from his cult-like Sixth House.
Or maybe I won’t but that is because I have made my own quest, that will be fulfilled on the streets of Liberty City.
There are so many points when we play videogames that we know we will win. They exist to make us feel good, to get lost in a world like our childhood fantasies. To end in victory. If games are an extension of our imagination then they will carry that assumption of success unless deliberately exorcised by conscious thought. It is because of this that I feel the game industry as yet cannot bring itself to make a good piece of horror gaming. The escapism that so many gamers find is equivalent to the catharsis provided by classic moments of horror cinema where the audience might just scream out loud. We have no need to be cast adrift like the audience after Psycho’s shower scene no matter how many times Infinity Ward designed AI kills your floating gun portal to it’s world. We will be back in that world, connected and fighting on to eventual victory. There might be some twist, we might even die. But we will not lose.
Horror is about feeling out of control, accepting that the world might be a place where you cannot win and where you might not be able to escape. By referencing the many audio and visual artifacts of the cinematic traditions games can create unnerving moment after unnerving moment, repeated over and over. But this ends with your escape, alive and successful, no less empowered than the triumphant return of Abe to Rapture Farms to liberate his fellow Mudokan. We need to source another segment of our conscious experience in order to create true pieces of horror gaming. If games come from our imagination where we are in control then maybe we need to search our experience for something altogether different. Maybe we need to remember our nightmares and what it means to have one. Those moments of our dreams we are out of control and yet still on an amazing journey.
I cannot understate how important the Monteriggioni Villa is to my enjoyment of Assassin’s Creed 2. It provides a virtual home within the game. A place that anchors down all I have done and all I will do during my with Desmond as Ezio. My first encounter with the Villa and it’s surrounding wall town left me quite depressed about Ezio’s situation. Much had been lost at this point and I couldn’t help but notice the dilapidated building that was my base of operations. But Monteriggioni has developed alongside my own growth within the world that Ubisoft created.
All the items I gain in the game are linked back to this villa, on display to remind me of their existence whenever I return. My ever growing art collection is punctuated by largely empty rooms, set aside for weapons and armor. This reminds me of how I have chosen to progress in the game. The game has three collectibles items, feathers, codex pages and seals of your ancestor Assassin’s. It is not enough to simply retrieve them, they must be returned to the villa in order to contribute to that magical counter. I am reminded of the narrative justification for collecting feathers by the perpetually catatonic form of Ezio’s mother as I deposit them in her room. I am reminded of the importance of finding all the Codex pages, a feeling reinforced when I place them amongst those already gained and as the Assassin’s seals unlock the gate to the ultimate final reward I feel motivated to explore just one more tomb.
The Villa at Monteriggioni at it’s most simple is a virtual trophy room, one which continually reinforces a holistic recollection of my gaming experience. When I equip my Condottiero War Hammer and Iron chestguard I cannot help but remember the common sword and leather armor that served me well during my early days in Florence. My anticipation of gameplay to come is increased by the memory of gameplay now past. Beyond a trophy room it is a benign region of Ezio’s world that provides for moments of practice and experimentation. With each new building upgraded, I gain access to the treasure chests that taunt me through their presence on my map. I practice many a jumping puzzle before needing those skills for the real challenges that I face in the greater world. I refine my combat reflexes without consequence or fear. The need to return to the Villa to collect income means that whilst you might not need the safety net that it offers you are most definitely aware of it.
The open world genre can simultaneously intimidate and excite by the wealth of options for play that they offer. The inclusion of an area like the Monteriggioni Villa takes away much of the anxiety of being let loose in such a world that does not force you to participate in the authored narrative. It provides a virtual home, a safe place to exist in the world as well as an anchor for your memories of the game. This is a vital element that is missing in many open world games that often provide rich emergent experience but provide no means to hold onto them, leaving them to fade away with the next cool brush fire, assassination or car crash. When my time with Ezio is finished the Monteriggioni Villa and town are restored and alive with colour and movement. My trophy room has expanded out and every step through this place is a reminder of the things I have done and the fun I have had along the way.
I have a game recommendation for you dear reader. I know it might be hard to drag yourself away from your game of Left 4 Call of Assassin’s Age: Origins 2, trust me I am thankful that you even have the time to read these first couple of sentences. If you will indulge me further then take this piece of advice: give Devil’s Tuning Fork, the 30 minute play through it deserves. This free independent PC title reminds me of my experience with Mirror’s Edge because of two key similarities.
- Devil’s Tuning Fork is a first person game that does not need weapons to achieve it’s aim. It leverages the potential for engagement that a first person perspective holds without the explosions.
- The visual style of the game is intimately tied to the player’s engagement with the world.
In Devil’s Tuning Fork you are a child who is exploring his/her own coma state which you fall into at the outset. You must explore this space using a Tuning Fork to send out sound waves which move across all surfaces illuminating their moving textures briefly. It is a simple mechanic that creates some amazing visual set pieces all as a result of the your own actions. The sound waves have a functional purpose in lighting the path you must walk, highlighting false floors that cause you to fall and activating chimes that engage moving platforms allowing progress. Each soundwave reveals a dynamic moving world as if you are trying to kickstart your brain, to shake off the darkness of the coma. The moving walls when briefly illuminated are sometimes disorienting, giving a false sense of movement, the jarring moments as you try to force your way out of this mental prison.
The story elements are thin on the ground which combined with the visual effects provide a nice frame to fill in the gaps and make of this world what you wish. The crescendo of effects in a game such as Left 4 Call of Assassin’s Age: Origins 2 might result in a complex and visceral experience begging to be analyzed and thought about but I feel, dear reader, that a simple game with simple ideas can be a memorable one as well. Devil’s Tuning Fork is one such game, and it is not something I feel I will forget soon.
Take the time to explore Devil’s Tuning Fork, I am sure that there will always be time for Left 4 Call of Assassin’s Age: Origins 2.
Around me are the sounds of battle: gunfire and explosions, near and far away. The objective, a mortar team up on the hill is harassing our armor and needs to be neutralized. How we will get up there has been on my mind for the last 5 minutes. We creep carefully closer so as to avoid the line of sight of the enemy. A lapse in concentration results in the machine gun emplacement opening up on our position. I order a fast move to the cover of a scattered pile of rocks. I take a bullet in the leg in the time it takes me to ensure my men make it to safety. Bullets zip past my head as I hit the deck and crawl to where my men are waiting. An explosion ruptures my existence, a grenade, possibly, all I see is dirt through blurred vision. I keep on moving. I make it to cover, taking a moment to assess the situation. Every glance out of cover is met with more fire from the enemy. I order my men to flank left where other scattered rocks will cover their approach. I inch out of cover to lay down a suppressing fire, allowing my men to move forward. The enemy fires again, less accurately this time. Things are looking up, I steal a moment to check on my men. They are moving to the obje….
The screen goes black, a stray bullet had struck me in the head. I am dead
The moment to moment action in the new Operation Flashpoint game, Dragon Rising is what makes this game an amazing experience. There is an ever present possibility of death, independent of choices made and you never feel the hand of the developer in these events. They have set up the base conditions and your presence is what causes the scenario to play out. Dragon Rising provides the intial (and expected) escapism and empowerment on a videogame letting you play soldier. Your actions are shown to be integral to each victory, you are the active force in this world. But you also inherit the realistic chance that as a soldier, your death is only one bullet away. Operation Flashpoint avoids many other gaming traditions aimed at reminding you of your empowered existence. There is no swell of orchestral music when you order a charge and no canned character dialogue for when a team member dies. The game succeeds because it does not try to elicit emotion or reaction from me in any way except through gameplay and given the large open nature of every mission, and unscripted AI, this comes at unexpected times. I do not need a large explosion or vista to reward me for being successful, overcoming the challenge of the game is it’s own reward. When a mission is complete there is no cutscene to form my character’s story, there is only the things I have just done, the moments that have just passed. The screen simply fades to black until I next take up the role of the soldier and define my experience by actions. The game does not try to force feed the empowerment fantasy to the player, anytime you act in a way that results in feelings of agency they feel earned and are much more effective.