Top Fives Part I – Video Game Characters

Right.  This is essentially becoming a video game blog.  I was listening to a Destructoid podcast (Potoid 41) last night, and they were discussing their top five favourite video game characters.  Always keen to borrow an idea or two, I thought this might be fun.  In fact, once I started thinking about it, I came up with all kinds of top fives.  If Nick Hornby is to be trusted, it’s a particularly male inclination.  

  

So, to start with, I’ll pick my five favourite video game characters of all time, from fifth to first.

5.   Roger Wilco (Space Quest)

I played King’s Quest with my father when I was barely old enough to read the dialogue.  Space Quest came quickly afterwards, and Roger Wilco became one of my all-time favourites, and the first video game character I ever really noticed.

The humour in Space Quest was fairly lame, really.  It’s tough to do in video games, and there’s always a level of corniness there.  The great thing about Wilco was that he was just so incompetent.  This by extension made you, the player, incompetent.  It’s such a contrast from being the ultimate bad-ass that most games hand to you.   

4.  K.K. Slider (Animal Crossing)

 

Also known as Totakeke, if you’re really in the know, K.K. Slider is a pretty cool cat, considering he’s a dog.  Animal Crossing has made me do a lot of things I’m not particularly proud of, thanks to the idea of running the game on a real-time clock.  I have moved plans on a Saturday night to later in the evening so that I could check out K.K. Slider’s set.  I went out eventually though.  I’m still cool.

I think I like Slider a lot not just because of his amazing musical ability, but also because of his ideals.  When a guitar-wielding dog tells you in a series of gurgled beeps that he doesn’t believe in selling out to “the man”, and you’re acting like it’s humourous but nodding furiously on the inside, that video game has achieved something pretty cool.  That or I just miss being more ‘intense’ about the flaws of the capitalist system.

3.  Dog (Half-Life 2)

 

When I first had the idea of writing about my favourite video game characters I assumed I would be all pretentious and list various characters with emotional depth that showed how far storytelling in video games has come.  After some further thought, I realised that I wouldn’t really be writing about the five characters that are closest to my heart.  I would also have a top five with four entries from the Half-Life 2 universe.

Dog survived the cull.  Despite being a robot, Dog is one of the few video game characters that I genuinely care about.  That is to say, Dog dying would not be cool. NOT COOL.  Even though, in the context of the video game, it’s a robot that the other characters can rebuild.  Even though, in real life, it’s a robot in a fictional universe.  We’ve come a long way since Short Circuit.

2.  B.J. Blazkowicz (Wolfenstein 3D)

 

Okay.  Some of you will say that Duke Nukem is cooler.  Thing is, they’re both essentially ripping off Ash from the Evil Dead films.  However, if anything, B.J. leaves more room for me to do the impressions myself.  There’s nothing better than a square-jawed do-gooder blowing Nazis away, if you ask me.  Add to this ridiculous initials and a battle with Hitler in a robotic suit, and I’m sold.

1.  Sonic the Hedgehog

 

Now, looking over this list you’d be forgiven for thinking that I’m drawn to video game characters for fairly superficial reasons.  That isn’t the case.  It just appears that way.  Sonic is the perfect example.  Sonic is my favourite character for a few reasons:  Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is my favourite video game of all time, the Megadrive was and is to this day the only electronic device that ever made me a ‘fanboy’, and, well, it’s Sonic.

It’s impossible to explain and still sound like a rational adult.  I just dig Sonic, I have done since I was a child and I will do so for God only knows how long.  The fact that Sonic has been in one good game since Sonic 3 has only solidified his position as my number one.  The more he hurts me, the more I come back, convinced in my heart of hearts that one day all the Olympic-themed disasters and 3D misadventures will fade away.  And then life will be good again.

Superficial? Not even a little bit.  I could have compiled a list of beautifully written, emotionally complex characters (and probably will if I write about villains soon) but these are the ones that really mean something to me.  Sonic rules! 

 

Music drives the games I play.

I’ve spent my day yesterday doing bits and pieces of work, watching football, and pondering video game soundtracks. 

I can understand that it’s not necessarily a cost-effective product, but surely in the days of online distribution it’s worth a punt?  Why can’t I find the F.E.A.R. score anywhere?  That game sounded absolutely fantastic.  

It’s really hit home playing Bully on the Wii.  Having never owned a PS2, I decided to join the game nice and late recently as a kind of soft build-up to the devastating effect GTA:IV is going to have on my free time.  A few hours in, and the biggest impression made upon me, on top of all the solid gameplay I’ve enjoyed, is that Shawn Lee did an amazing job with the score.  Playing this video game, the soundtrack hits you as something clearly superior to the vast majority of games, yet it doesn’t distract you at all.

Halo has always received a lot of credit for its soundtrack in developing the atmosphere, though personally I wasn’t a big fan of much outside the choral chant stuff.  And it’s not exactly something that you put on at parties.  The GTA games have had excellent soundtracks, but the strongest impact in those games comes from licensed music. 

Maybe soundtracks are hard to find because they’re only starting to become independently relevant, as film scores have been for years.  The Bully soundtrack suits the game completely but can still stand apart, at least according to my personal taste.  Don’t get me wrong: I think the music made for the Mario and Sonic franchises, for example, was fantastic.  However, due to the technical and genre-related limitations of the time it was very much ‘video game music’.  I will always love the Zelda theme, for personal and aesthetic reasons.  I just don’t see myself commuting with that song in my headphones.

Richard Jacques is someone I tend to associate with ultra-SEGA Sonic music, a genre with which he has had huge success, to the point that inspires pretty strong feelings in some people.  He has also been very successful in less ‘video game music’ type stuff, as with Massive Effect and Headhunter. 

So, does this fit into the argument over whether video games can count as art?  Video games are a form of entertainment that incorporates artistic expression, and the best examples display the best artistic work. I’m not convinced in the merits of arguing for video games as an art form. I’m not sure that it’s an argument that needs to be had.  I challenge you to watch Norbit and argue that film is always art. Art does have a place in the creation of games though: better art makes video games better.  That’s good enough for me.

Destructoid, I second that emotion.

I saw this. And I got so excited it took all I could to ‘borrow’ the image from the very same story.

A reminder of why I love the Wii so much.

And I do love it, despite the fact it’s not the Nintendo Revolution, as we all had hoped. Today I spent 800 ‘Wii points’ on a game I’m not sure I’ll play to the end, seeing as the end is about 40 or so hours of sitting in front of a TV away.

I love you Sega.

Remember when game box art looked like this?

And the game that it contained looked like this?

I’ve played a bit of Phantasy Star Online, offline, laughably, but never got around to playing any of the early Phantasy Star games. I’ll probably play this to the finish although with all the work I have lined up and other, slightly more technically impressive, games on the way, it might take a while.

But I will uncover the truth behind Mother Brain.

Technology rules my life.

Yes, it does.  It has for a long time really. I used to blame my time living in Taiwan for my utterly irrational technojoy, and far too many dollars, cents, and other units of currency have been spent on gadgets. 

The last few days, however, I have indulged in guilt-free technojoy!! Software!

Now, I’ve never been up on these things, because they just change too fast.  I’ve always been more of the slightly-too-expensive-gadgets-that-require-no-expertise kind of guy.  You know…. Essentially reliving the dreams I had as a boy watching Back to the Future Part II.

So basically, none of these things are news to anyone.  ANYONE.

But first of all, my new favourite thing in the universe is: Vienna!!!

I never used RSS readers because I never did much reading outside three websites but now it turns out that on top of reading blogs I’m sick of checking the Guardian for the twentieth time in a day when I could just wait for it to show up on my reader!! This is sweet!!!

Secondly: Adium!!

The big thing about Adium, apart from the exceptional duck motif, is the fact that I can use my MSN and Gmail accounts SIMULTANEOUSLY.  This is very exciting.  I had been using Mercury but had to launch them in separate tabs.  This is a big deal for me.

And finally: Muxtape!!!

I am probably the last person with an internet connection to hear about this, but what an idea.  It reminds me of the really cool book Mix Tape that Thurston Moore wrote, that I read a lot at work in Manchester but never bought.  Awww.

Finally, Ricky Gervais in Grand Theft Auto IV?  Ok, I am officially excited.

 

If only I’d been nerfed.

Last week I was invited to a sports day, a la primary school, or this thing Americans do called “church camp”. In fact, you can read all about it here

It was a really fantastic day and made me feel very happy to be where I am. In life that is. And geographically too. There was just one problem. I had been promised nerf. And there was no nerf.

Now, I didn’t know much about these things, but did you know how cheap these foam-projectile projecting handguns actually are? Really cheap, that’s how cheap. Unless you get the huge one with the scope. I wonder if that even works?

As my first order of business in the weekly act of avoiding using my Saturday morning productively, I checked mapquest and then spent an hour roaming the area surrounding the Arboretum and intersection of the 183 and Capital of Texas Highway. This is one of those parts of the world that really reminds you why capitalism is bad. You know, generating poverty alongside wealth at an uneven rate is one thing, but when I can’t find a Toys ‘r’ Us for all the Best Buys, Crate & Barrels, and yes, Ross Dress for Less stores, we have a problem. I mean, I don’t live in Dallas for a reason.

It was an unmitigated disaster. It was at this point that I angrily drove to Target and remembered that yes, they really do have everything. I passed my eye over the rather ludicrous options for the sniper assassin who likes to use foam to irritate rather than lead to kill, and got myself one of these bad boys:

I’ll never know how I walked out of there without the glow-in-the-dark microdarts. Trust me, the fact that we were going to gradually massage each other with foam shrapnel in broad daylight had nothing to do with it.

They glow in the dark. Why that would ever be necessary completely escapes me. But isn’t it fantastic? What an idea. I’m going back to my apartment to shoot darts at the wall. Every day I spend here I get weaker, while they get stronger. I want nerf!!!

The future is here.

No, it really is. What is going on?

Today is my first day of SXSW, having spent the last few days trying and failing to work. I’ve been building up to this by doing very little, confident in the knowledge that my considerably more local friends could look after me.

However, I have been invited to join in an experiment, joining in on audio posts on the very excellent poshdeluxe. Basically, I call a phone number, leave a message, and it turns up on a blog. On the Internet. With very little input from any humans.

This is it. The first step of the robots taking over.

No, I don’t want any ringtones.

Spam has discovered Facebook.

What am I going to do? I migrated from myspace for a reason, damn it. First, I saw a message on my friend’s wall from someone that was clearly a myspace-esque computer-generated mess. Because it said ‘what up’ and people don’t do that very often anymore, unless they’re being ironic and hilarious. People also don’t contact each other a lot regarding secret methods for getting new ringtones.

To be honest, it didn’t bother me. Until my own profile was stained with this mess.

This sucks. I can deal with the shameless lack of client privacy Facebook engages in, I can deal with the ‘feeds’ so creepy it makes me feel like I’m spying on my own friends, and I can even deal with having to turn down about ten invitations to join some crappy application a day.

But spam? On my wall? What is going to be done about this? Probably nothing. I’ll just stop using Facebook.

And then I’ll have to do work. Oh God.

Meanwhile, I saw Diary of the Dead the other night.

Awesome. That simple.

Romero has made a pretty cool film that almost never betrays the fact that he is really old (but still very cool), apart from a rather wonderful faith in the ‘kids’ and ‘blogs’. It was actually very funny. I often watch zombie movies and have the crap scared out of me and miss the ‘humorous’ bits that critics love to get arch about, but I was laughing out loud a few times in this movie.

I love the commitment to solid B-movie staples (drunken English professor, Texas blonde that knows how to repair motor vehicles), but it got a bit old a little part of the way through. The plot is reliant on one of the protagonists essentially refusing to put his camera down at any point. Twenty minutes in, I really wanted this guy to be eaten by zombies. I settled for encouraging his girlfriend to leave him instead. Yes, I know I have no control over the plot.

That was the one weak point, though, really. I was pretty happy, I didn’t know what to expect. And if we’re honest, after a good long look in the mirror, Land of the Dead was a bit crap really.

Oh what a fool I’ve been.

So I broke down today, and got myself a PS3.

Yup. I am that bad with gadgets. Although I did shed myself of one: the truly useless and disappointing PSP that had been occupying space in my bedroom is gone forever, along with every game I had for it. They wouldn’t take my Japanese version of one of the cartoony Megaman games so I just gave it to the guy in the store.

I also traded in a few games for the 360 that I just don’t play anymore, and never played longer than a few days anyway. I’ve always justified buying games outright all the time as a kind of collector’s right vibe, but really, I don’t ‘collect’ enough stuff to justify some of these games as anything more than rental material. Test Drive Unlimited, I’m looking at YOU.

Was it worth it? It’s an interesting mix of techno-joy elation and serious buyer’s remorse. But, I already see myself using it for media stuff that I never use the 360 for. And despite the fact it’s a little ridiculous with the size of the hard drive partition, I’m going to install Linux. So I can use it for work when I’m not playing Resistance: Fall of Man, Unreal Tournament, and….. um, yeah.

Speaking of which I tried to write this blog entry on the PS3 but I think the standard web browser has had some kind of awkward social experience with blogger.com and so keeps blanking out on me. But soon!! Soon….