Descent Into Madness (Suggs To Be You)

Very rarely do I find games that get to me. This isn’t through a lack of trying; I primarily look for strong and engaging narratives when purchasing games, though very few of them tend to register with me on a mental or emotional level. However, when a video game does get to me, it seems to have to have just as powerful an effect on me than if I was watching the story as a TV show or film, if not more so. Now I don’t mean to sound pretentious when I say that because for something to register with me, I only ask that it have some lasting effect and I don’t instantly forget about it after I’ve finished, which I think we can all agree is the measure of an experience being worthwhile. For example, I would say Psychonauts has registered with me in the same way Monty Python and The Holy Grail has because I haven’t found a game as genuinely hilarious. The tongue-in-cheek, surrealist humour of both of them has definitely had an influence on me as a comedian, yet in terms of mental or emotional resonating with an audience, video gaming as a medium has distinct advantage due to it being an interactive medium; especially when it comes to empathising with a protagonist’s descent into madness.

Just needed to get this joke out of my system. Last one, I promise.

I recently played through Spec Ops: The Line. For those of you who haven’t played it, Spec Ops is a 3^rd person shooter that follows a special operations task force into storm hit Dubai to save any of the remaining survivors and  investigate what happened to the decorated American Platoon of Soldiers, the Damned 33^rd. The game is loosely based on the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and is an examination of both the Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder that soldiers can experience in action and how removed actual video games about war are from the real thing. After a few hours of game play, there is an incident that involves white phosphorous that made me as a player feel physically nauseous and incredibly guilty. Why? It was because it was the player who causes the incident. That simple fact alone means that the player is more invested in the narrative. They’re not passive watching it on a TV screen for the main character to deal with as if it was a film. Having watched Apocalypse Now last weekend, a film inspired by Heart of Darkness, the horrors in that didn’t get to me as much as Spec Ops although it is based on nearly identical themes.

The game finds subtle ways to break the fourth wall to remind you what you've done. (Until that moment where all the characters look directly to the camera and call the player a dick.)

From that point onwards, the player watches the main character try to cope with the things he is doing to survive while also trying to comprehend what he has done; thus allowing the main character’s self-awareness to be that of the audience, making them feel guilty about the horrors they are committing. There comes a certain point in the game when the battlefield changes in a sudden flash to look like a hell on earth before transforming back, which is both symbolic as well as representative of the main character has losing a part of his sanity and being scared forever. Needless to say, Spec Ops: The Line got to me.

I find this altering of the pre-established reality as a way representing the main characters diminishing mental state at its most effective in video games because you are able to actively observe it at your own pace. We all remember the Scarecrow sections of Batman: Arkham Asylum for doing this masterfully to give us both an insight into Batman’s psyche and a unique way for him to battle the Scarecrow. For those of you who have played Eternal Darkness, you will recall how well the game was able to mess with the player in a variety of ways when the sanity meter was low and made them think their TV was broken.

World's worst Pic 'n' Mix salesman ever.

Not that all video games get this right. The desert section from Uncharted 3 is a test in patience at best. I find the key to getting this to work effectively is to use it both sparingly and subtlety. The best uses have those moments where the player isn’t sure what they have seen and are able to doubt themselves. It is a good way of re-enforcing a theme or an idea in the games narrative. Of course, not all games need to incorporate this to be a good game or to give a deep and meaningful experience.

I am a firm believer that video games have the potential to have a more powerful effect on the audience than film and TV. While there will always be shining examples of masterful story telling in every medium, watching a character walk through hell on earth and having the choices you actively made be the reason he is there are two completely different experiences altogether (and I know which one will stay with me for the longest). Now I’m going to play some Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time to remind myself there is still joy in the world.

You don't need to understand what's going on in Kingdom Hearts. Nobody does.

Sorry to make a lot of people feel old (or alienate a lot of young readers at once) but It's been at least ten years since Kingdom Hearts came out on the PS2 which was a lovely idea on paper where Disney characters and their associated worlds get smushed together with cameos from Final Fantasy characters and other original content from Square-Enix. It was awesome, taking on the role of Sora... or someone, you got to team up with Aladdin to smash Jafar with a key-sword... or something to go on an epic journey with Donald Duck and Goofy to track down the legendary Kingdom Hearts... or somewhere.

Whatever was happening in this game, it was awesome.

So after having a magical journey fighting The Heartless through Alice in Wonderland, Halloween Town and Neverland among others I ended up in a location called Hollow Bastion and then some stuff happened involving some guy called Ansem, who wasn't really a guy called Ansem as it turned out because of events that transpired in Kingdom Hearts 2, which is actually the third game in the series as a matter of fact, which explains why "Organisation XIII" consisted of only four people due to the rest of them being thoroughly dispatched during the events of Chain of Memories on the Game Boy Advance, which people understandably mistook for a spin-off title instead of a fully canonised, core story title. The Kingdom Hearts series then became a kind of equal opportunities campaign for gaming platforms, having a main series title appearing on smartphones, microwaves and the long since defunct Neo Geo Pocket. 

This fight, of course, being the turning point of the entire story... eventually.

So when I bought Dream Drop Distance for the Nintendo 3DS I was worried that I would be completely lost having not followed the series in its entirety whatsoever. Turns out that although this was true (Who or what is Braig?) it turns out that you can just sort of power through and get to the business of twatting stuff with keys on sticks without having to worry about why you're doing it. It turns out that these games have a habit of saving all their inter-game lore for five minutes at the start and half an hour at the end, leaving plenty of time for good clean Disney related fun for the thirty hours betwixt.

Also, Sebastian becomes the size of a goat in the GBA title. Fun!

Twenty Keyblade (or chi-blade) Masters? Fuggedaboudit you can just concentrating on having fun with Quasimodo! What on earth is Master Xehanort up to? Who gives a shit because... Tron. The series is certainly self-aware of it's own uncontrollably burgeoning plot and makes up for it by being lots of fun to play and very pretty to look at. Just pick up a copy of whichever title is easiest for you to acquire and get to the happy business of speculating whether Disney will be including Darth Vader and Wolverine into Kingdom Hearts 3 due to wealth of real world corporate stuff that has happened since ancient times when Kingdom Hearts 2 (3) was released. Of course, Kingdom Hearts 3 will be closer to Kingdom Hearts 10 at this rate for anyone keeping count but if you've learned anything from my article today is that it does not matter one bit.