The Graveyard Shift

Yorick the Gravedigger, so yes it does have some relevance here.

What the hell is it about staying up late? It’s a habit that I can’t seem to shift. Now before someone decides to dedicate their life to finding me and wearing my colon around their ankle for asking such an inane question, hold up a sec. I’m reasonably good at rationalizing my problems, at least to the extent where I don’t just sit in a pile of my own faecal matter, scratching my head in complete ignorance. I know that a combination of studying and too much free time contributes pretty heavily. Boil that rationale down a bit further, and the truth is that without a job I don’t have any seriously pressing constraints on my sleeping habits. The 3am to 3pm shift isn’t a scheduled thing, if I feel like I need to mix that sucker up with I don’t know, let’s say a Back to the Future marathon, then hell yeah I can do just that. 

This is the point where people start shaking their head and turning off the main power switch because I could obviously do with a little bit less time welded to my computer chair. I get that, I’m sure most gamers do, but there’s something inherently addictive about videogames and the internet. For starters, videogames are developed as a means of entertainment, their sole purpose being to unashamedly engage, immerse and capture the undivided attention of their audience. The recreational and informative side of the World Wide Web attempts to do the very same, and unfortunately for my sleeping habits, neither of these mediums ever turn off. We live in an age of accessibility; technology can deliver fun, facts and food straight into my living room, assuming that I’m comfortable with letting the Pizza delivery guy through the front door. I can’t blame the medium’s, they’re doing their job perfectly. 

If I look through Geralt of Rivia’s journal I’m pretty sure I won’t find a quest titled “Keep Jim awake until he hears his flatmates getting up for work and has to sneak back into his bedroom before anyone can ask him an awkward question about bandwidth consumption” So it’s an issue of self control then? Switch off the PS3, pour the coffee down the drain and go the fuck to bed. What if it’s not that simple? Videogames have a nasty habit of engaging my brain and giving me a rush of energy far more effectively than a movie or a book ever could. You know that moment, when the words begin to blur under your nose or the couch cushion gradually starts looking more attractive than Kate Beckinsale does on-screen. Try pulling that same nodding-off bullshit mid way through defusing a bomb on CounterStrike, sound farfetched? That’s because it never happens. I’m not some sort of burlier Edward Cullen though, I don’t want to be a vampire and I sure as hell don’t sparkle in the sunlight. Existing that far outside of regular sleeping hours just feels weird, like I’m a rebel without a cause, railing against the bars of social convention by napping into the late afternoon and scaring schoolchildren with my skin-tight underwear and freshly-woken scowl.

Definitely not what I look like when I
wake up and another reason to hide
my blog from your dad...

I like people. I like my flatmates. I don’t particularly like seeing them for a measly five hours before they go to bed and leave me to my YouTube trawling lonesome. Or maybe I don’t like people. People just interrupt when you’re trying to stream Jack Conte’s new single, or they barge into your room with a platter of warm muffins, distracting you with the smell of pumpkin and chocolate and causing you to look away just long enough for the Titanite Demon to land its power attack and send you screaming back into the abyss for the umpteenth time. Most likely, I’ve just got a mild sleeping disorder. Hell, it’s not all bad. Let’s just say that poor old Mr Jiang across the street has been having serious problems with his weekend paper delivery, that being the Sunday Star Times, the one that doesn’t arrive around 5.18am every Sunday morning.           

Escape from Blogging Bay (Part 2)

A Riddickulous Realization

One hour from midnight and I’m sitting at the kitchen table, the fire needs wood and I should probably turn some lights on but I’m too busy looming over my laptop with a sheen of sweat across my forehead as Riddick stalks his way through a gloomy vent. I’m lost as shit and the in-game map is cruder than bathroom graffiti. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, my journal is still loaded with random side quests but I have a sinking feeling that my current route is leading me further down the main storyline. It’s that infamous one-way street, no U-turns and no more detours. I’m sour as hell and you could rock climb up the furrows in my brow. What would Riddick do? The realization hits me like a Stone Cold Stunner. Riddick would haul ass the hell out of Butcher Bay. He would stop dicking around with side quests and shiv every jumped up inmate who insisted on trying to pressgang him into smuggling drugs or picking up their dry cleaning. All of sudden it made perfect sense to be lost. Butcher Bay is for all intensive purposes - a shithole. Venturing down into the mines, lurking through cramped crawlspace after cramped crawlspace, corridors and rooms set out like a filthy rat warren. Pluck me from the main track and its conveniently unlocked doors and I’d go missing in no time. Butcher Bay is an architectural nightmare and if Riddick can barely scrape out a half assed escape route then how the hell am I supposed to know where I should be? For me Butcher Bay exemplifies two staple ingredients needed in any successful Sci-fi/survival horror goulash –

1. Claustrophobic environments which are all too easy to get lost in and
2. Intuitive level design which will keep players moving even when they barely have the faintest inkling as to whether they’re on the right track.

Ever since I played that steaming pile of disappointment called Rage, the very thought of sidequests in a survival horror/FPS game has left me feeling a bit queasy. Butcher Bay was sure its diversions fit into the main story context and that every move Riddick made on and off the beaten path was for a damn good reason. As long as the game kept flowing under the pretence of a man fighting for his freedom through any means necessary, then my mate immersion and I weren’t going anywhere.

Don't let your homophobic father catch you reading my blog now...

And therein lies the root of the issue. Grinding for experience or being assigned fetch quest after fetch quest is the natural enemy of immersion. Some game genres suit that style and it is an unfortunate staple of many RPG designs but that doesn’t necessarily make it a good thing. Its robotic, it’s boring and it creates the sort of OCD moments of madness that I mentioned earlier. Butcher Bay didn’t do that, I did. I panicked and briefly misinterpreted a small section of side missions as a harbinger of terrible RPG game elements to come. In hindsight, all it really did was pad the game out and give you an effective taste of Butcher Bay’s prison atmosphere by coercing you through sections of depressingly gritty level design and great voice acting. After I left that strange psychological barrier in my dust, Butcher Bay really came into its own. “Who the fuck designs a prison this poorly-lit, bleak and maze-like?” I don’t know because I’m a bloodthirsty escaped convict, not an engineer. “Whoops! I just missed a pile of shot gun ammo, maybe I should go back and pick it up?” Screw that, I’ve got places to go and people to butcher, and frankly bullets kill too slow. I’ll happily reiterate the fact that Butcher Bay is a great game but I don’t think all the immersion comes courtesy of Starbreeze Studios. I’ve naturally got a lot in common with Richard B. Riddick. Escaped convict and mass murderer? Ahhh not so much. Tall, well-built, handsome and bald? Well I don’t mean to brag, but let’s just say that if I shaved my head, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Diesel and I were separated at birth. 

Escape from Blogging Bay (Part 1)

So I'm writing this on my first semester break, unnervingly far away from the internet and any subsequent online addictions e.g. Reddit, Redtube and League of Legends/Lagers. Just like my summer holidays, this tends to result in me catching up on a few sorely missed hours of singleplayer gaming. I transform into the epitome of an antisocial, curtain closing, beard-farming, stinking assed slob. The fact that I live a hop and a skip away from a river and a beach, and I’ve still managed to cultivate a healthy/unhealthy beer belly is testament to just how slobbish I am capable of becoming. I’m also a media whore. You’re gonna hear that from me a lot. When Hollywood makes a movie, I watch it. When Ubisoft releases a game, I chew the disc into a fine powder and then rub the dust into my eyes because that’s just how fucking fast I want to absorb all of that gaming magic. So by that token, when Starbreeze Studios develop a spin-off game based on Vin Diesel’s “Riddick” movie character, you can bet your ass that I’ll eventually get around to playing it at least five to seven years after the release date. And damn if I won’t enjoy it.

That last part wasn’t a joke, just in case you still can’t tell that when Sally Sarcasm says no she actually means no. When I describe myself as a media whore, I simply mean to suggest that I’m prepared to give the overwhelming majority of media products a fighting chance. To be fair, I also have a habit of dredging up whatever redeeming qualities I possibly can from the dross that I often subject myself to. On that note, I’m not here to argue semantics, but I bloody enjoyed the two Riddick movies – Pitch Black and Chronicles. Credibility be fucking damned! I’m a firm believer that movies and games are made to entertain, and frankly, I found Riddick to be the incarnation of bad ass. The modern Rambo if you will – less brood and more cheesy dry wit – less misunderstood good guy and more sociopathic antihero. Not that Butcher Bay needs me to spew excuses and stammer out some sort of half assed validation. I’ll bleach these muddy waters right here and now, it’s a damn good game.

Less rant and more write. I started enjoying Butcher Bay right out of the gate. It definitely helped that I’m one heavy night on whiskey away from getting Vin’s shiny bald head tattooed on my back, but the fact remains that he has just the sort of speak-when-your-spoken-to, wise-cracking type of charisma that is perfect for a modern FPS protagonist. The game kind of saunters through the first few sections on Riddick’s reputation alone, assuming that we won’t take his radiating ass-kickery for granted. I could mention the combat and star-studded voice acting, the unnervingly bare-bones stealth mechanics that seem as startling and unpredictable as shit, but these aren’t what really stood out to me. The realization that I was really enjoying myself hit me like a hammer to my unkempt head, when I noticed that I didn’t mind being lost. I know right, what the hell does that even mean? Well bear with me here for a few moments. You know that feeling that you get when you’re playing an RPG and you’ve just entered a new town and all of sudden you find yourself getting mobbed by all the local NPC’s, pounding you with fetch quests and kill orders like you’re some sort of hitman who moonlights as a courier. It starts to get pretty overwhelming and you begin vetoing the main questline, giving pride of place to Joe Nobody and his psychotic desire for seventeen Ogre scalps. Alright Joe, you crazy bastard, I’ll get you your Ogre Scalps, but if you don’t reward me with a sack full of loot and Jimi Hendrix’s re-strung guitar then I’ll be keeping the scalps and a chunk of your ass jammed on the end of my boot. 

Lucky for me they didn't make left handed guitars back then.

Your progress grinds to a screeching halt as you’re stuck in the same bloody area. You’re too scared to move on in case you lose a few worthless reputation points or Joe really does pull through with Jimi's restored git-fiddle. You check your journal every five minutes, agonizing over the workload like it’s some sort of urgent school assignment. Every monster, farm animal, tree and shrub which you rape for quest items, gradually turns the surrounding landscape into a desolate post-apocalyptic wasteland. Its scorched earth on a scale unheard of since the Kraut’s levelled half of Finland. But that’s alright, because you won’t have missed any important story content or quest rewards. You’re worse than a headless chicken. At least that poor bastard gets to die when all the running around is done.