Walking Dead: Season 1

Since Halloween is around the corner, I’d like to say that if you haven’t played The Walking Dead: Season 1, you should stop what you’re doing now and play it immediately. Seriously, don’t read past this sentence.

I never played said game until last week since it just got released on PS4. And boy do I feel like an idiot for waiting this long. Regardless, I’m nearly done Episode 4 and I can safely say that the game gets better and better the more you play through it.

The driving force is the dialogue, and I treat The Walking Dead: Season 1 more like an interactive graphic novel than a game. It’s basically a point and click adventure game. Besides this, you’re also forced to answer questions with limited time, and this affects other characters’ responses. I believe the end result in the story is the same, but the dialogue itself makes the journey with the cast worth it.

In the end, you make choices and I often found myself thinking if I truly made the right choice. I don’t think I can name another game that had me stop and think about my actions. Maybe BioShock? Even then, BioShock gave more of a “Good vs. Evil” vibe; The Walking Dead on the other hand isn’t as black and white. You often think you made the right choice, but the reactions from other characters aren’t what you expect. Some characters like getting sort of lied to, while others like a direct or brash approach.

In the end, you learn how to speak to these characters. I know many gamers that feel like they made mistakes with their decisions and restart at the previous checkpoint. I’ve been very tempted to do the same several times already, but so far I’ve avoided second guessing myself. What’s great is talking to other gamers about their decisions and their logic behind it.

If you haven’t played The Walking Dead: Season 1, I urge you to spend the couple of dollars for a truly great experience. It’s more than a game and that’s for sure.

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Bring On All The Feels

Alright, how about we delve into a bit of gaming psychology this weekend. Countless amounts of people record gaming sessions, review their favorite titles or simply enjoy an all-nighter with a good game and their preferred brew. However, what makes one gaming experience different from another? Sometimes you'll come across a player killer in your favorite RPG who fowls your entire night. On the other hand, sometimes you'll run into the friendliest of company who make your gaming day. Perhaps you find yourself raging in a Call of Duty match but, you find yourself overjoyed when you pick off your nemesis for the third time in a row. Players come across moments that overflow of euphoria and we don't focus on them as much as we should. Let's change that this weekend while I recount some of my favorite gaming moments that sparked a sense of jubilation in me.

One of my fondest moments is probably amongst my most embarrassing in my gaming history. I never fancied myself as a big first-person-shooter gamer. I was never very good at them and never bothered to invest time into them. People raved about COD and Battlefield and when I played with my buddies, I seriously sucked all kinds of rubbish. Furthermore, I received COD Ghosts for Christmas and figured that I should give the online mode a shot. Surprise, Surprise, I was still the worst player ever. I was so bad that I wished people reversed their K/D scores. I started to really invest myself and got a few kills, like four kills coupled with twenty-five deaths. It was an abysmal attempt. COD Ghosts has a bit of customisation and I remember really wanting the wolf emblem and looked up how I could possibly obtain it. I need a ten kill killstreak. YEAH RIGHT! As if I'd ever be able to obtain it. Safe to say, I grabbed my favorite shotgun and went on a rampage one day and nabbed nine kills. My face should have been filmed; I was so nervous. I need just one more kill but I had a shotgun and I couldn't just risk running around. Therefore, I planted my butt in an entrance of a building and waited for my prey. When someone, possibly worse than I, ran into the building and got a face full of lead I leapt with pure joy. I felt like the king of the world, a king who just wrecked some nubz. I may have dropped my glass of rum and shattered it on the floor in that scenario, but casualties happen when you kick online ass! Rum and I have reconciled and we game better than ever.

By the same token, a story I find myself retelling often enough involves Montreal's Otakuthon. I used to attend Otakuthon a lot in my younger years. Sometimes I faced the crazy horde of anime fanatics with my buddies, sometimes with my gals, but I always investigated the gaming room. There was always an alley of game consoles set up to play the hippest 2D fighters. The year in mind, Blazblue was set up on a Ps3 and to my surprise, there was a dude wrecking the competition. I laid back with a good friend and watched as this guy tore people up. Was I impressed? No, not quite. The line up was about to loop back around to the first man I saw get his arse whooped so I looked over to my friend and said: Watch this, t'will be a joke. I interrupted the fellow just before he grabbed the controller and said if I could have but one turn. The "champ" smirked with arrogance as the other man kindly let me have the controller. He was playing Rachel, a short vampire girl who focuses on pressure plays and long combo chains. I picked Iron Tager, a slow but heavy hitting grappler. I barely touched my controller as I let him take the first round flawlessly. The crowd awed at the first round. Second round debuted with allowing him to damage me to about mid-health before I combed him into a special. KO for myself and the crowd took such intrigue in me. Round 3, I let loose on my opponent. I made sure to not allow him a single hit on my health bar. I built up meter for my special move which is a grapple that normally deals about half a health bar of damage. Since he had burst (a combo breaker that makes you more susceptible to damage) and used his ultimate, I backdashed (allowing me a frame of invincibility) and used my Genesic Emerald Tager Buster (ultimate Grapple) to end the match in a blaze of blue glory. I got up, said nothing and walked away as the on-looking crowd cheered. It felt amazing as my friend commented "You wrecked him". I probably ruined that guy's day but it was inevitable. If I'm having a good time, you're probably having an awful one.

All in all, I've had plenty of moments while gaming that really got me hyped. It's so easy to find yourself lost in rage when playing with others. Sometimes you swear yourself off of online games. Sometimes your friends refuse to play Blazblue with you because of mad Tager Skills, bunch of wimps. Just remember that games are meant to be a fun divertissement. Next time you're raging on Dota 2 because your team lost a tower, remember that the player who got that tower might be having a field day. Play the games like they're meant to be, for fun! Make some late night memories while you're smashed with buddies, play some COD a la strip poker style and prepare yourselves for the awkward madness that ensues. This is Charlie bidding you all some fond gaming memories and an adieu. Also, Rum and I are no longer speaking, he found out about Gin and I.

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Ohhhhh Brother

A couple of weeks back I managed to sit down and play through Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. The game, which should be experienced by everyone I might add, is singular and focused, and reminds me of why so many more ambitious titles often feel lacklustre.

Briefly, the player assumes the roles of two brothers, where the actions of one are controlled using the left analog stick and L2 button / left trigger, while the actions of the other are controlled using the right analog stick and R2 button / right trigger. The entire experience involves navigating the environment, often through a combination of platforming and puzzle-solving.

Most importantly, I felt very strongly connected to each brother. Occasionally, you would be tasked with controlling one brother while the other brother is inactive. These moments served to remind me of the connection I began to feel with both brothers as an operational duo. In other words the interface used to play the game to purposely connect the player emotionally with the artistry grafted onto the underlying codes used to give rise to the final product.

The entire point of this post is to point this fact out. Not only is it rare for a video game to purposively exist, it’s rarer still for one to draw me in using just a singular mechanic.

The last time I felt so utterly in awe by this complimentarity was with Spec Ops: The Line. It too needed to exist in video game format. By game’s end, I felt repulsed by the actions that I made throughout the game, and distanced myself morally from the avatar I was controlling. The result was a strange dissonance between what the developers demanded I do and what I very unwillingly was forced to do. Choice became a false dichotomy, and I became disgusted with the main character—even though by virtue of me playing as him, I was the one at fault for these machinations to begin with. 

Before that was the original BioShock, which served as a vehicle for discussing how little agency a player has in a story-driven video game.

Unfortunately, both of these titles were held back by occasional pacing issues, pedestrian combat, and a general feeling that, despite best intentions of bridging game mechanics with an overarching narrative, each of these games needed to be functional action experiences. In other words, these larger titles managed to create emotional resonance but failed to be consistently fun games.

Brothers did not falter in this manner. Brothers did no falter at all; period. 

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