[caption id=“attachment_6344” align=“alignleft” width=“478”] Chell from Portal[/caption]

Gender is a pretty interesting concept when it comes to video games. Putting aside “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, video games are unique in that the players are active in constructing the narrative. Some games, like puzzle games don’t REALLY have a narrative (but that doesn’t mean my brothers and I didn’t come up with the “story” behind what was going on in Tetris - paragraph seven) But the rest have stories and put the play on a spectrum from games like Mario to games like Mass Effect and all the way to the The Sims franchise in which you have complete control of the narrative through player agency over all the characters in the house.  (See here, here, and here) As the player plays, the player takes the character’s story onto him or herself. This is at least partially the rational for the dearth of female protagonists. Everyone “knows” that not only are all the gamers male, but they also couldn’t stand the idea of playing as a female. Off the top of my head the only top tier female protagonists I can think of are Laura Croft and the girl from Heavenly Sword. There’s also Samus Aran, but that’s also a bit of a cheat since she’s nearly always armored and the reveal that she was a woman was one of video games’ first huge reveals.  But I know this is untrue - at least among the video game aficionados I know. Dan, members of the Giant Bomb Squad, and others who write about games online played Mass Effect as a female Shepard. Ryan or Jeff (or both, I can’t remember) of Giant Bomb plays as a female every time a video game gives him the option.

[caption id=“attachment_5240” align=“alignleft” width=“150” caption=“Team Fortress 2”] [/caption]

Civilization V (75 hrs) - What can I say about this game that I haven’t said already?  This is the series that made “One More More Turn…” famous and it still works today.  If I were to start a game tonight, I would not go to bed at a reasonable time.

There was a time when I loved video games.  I subscribed to EGM and EGM2.  I trolled the nascent World Wide Web looking for video game news.  I read IGN religiously.  The most powerful systems out there were the Nintendo 64 and the Playstation.  Then I discovered girls and dropped the subscriptions.  Most of the video games of that time period were still very arcade-y in nature.  Or they were platformers like Mario or Tomb Raider that had the flimsiest excuse for a plot.  Yo, the princess got kidnapped again.  Run through a bunch of levels to get to her.  No exposition or reason for anything going on.  You just needed to complete these tasks to unlock the final boss fight.  Of course, games were starting to have cut scenes between levels to keep the narrative going.  And I remember the great FMV flame wars that caused.  Were you just working to unlock expository videos?  This was better than the Mario case, but there was still just a small correlation between what you were doing to get through the level and what was going on in the story.  The biggest exception was the movie tie-in game, but those tended to have gameplay elements that were full of suck.

Final Fantasy X (36 hrs) - I started playing this game again to get away from computer games.  It was hurting my back to sit at the computer.  I could just stand in the guest room, where the PS2 is. I hadn’t played for months or maybe even a year, but I hadn’t gone that far in the game, so I wasn’t too lost.  (Unlike when I finished FF7 and didn’t even remember what the point was) I’m still not done, but it’s already knocked Assassin’s Creed II from long-time position as my #6 most played game raptr.  It’s already taken me longer than Final Fantasy IX.  There’ll be a review once I finish.  I’m so close, but the final boss keeps kicking my butt.  I may need to do some more grinding.

If I have to sum up Portal 2 in one word: brilliant!  I really enjoyed the first Portal a lot.  The sense of not knowing what’s going on and GLaDOS’ obvious demented nature made for a dark video game the likes of which I’d never experienced.  It was an artform as much as any other movie or book.  And the puzzles were great fun and really got my brain going.  But I wasn’t hooked.  In fact, there was a two year gap between when I started and finished the game.

Civ 5 (70 hrs) - In March I fired up Civilization V for the first time since 16 Nov 2010.  What was the catalyst?  My wife asking what happened to all the enthusiasm for the game when it first came out.  Well, as I’ve mentioned before, right after I got the game I played it for a week straight.  Then I went on vacation to the Grand Canyon, to NYC for Halloween, had Thanksgiving and Christmas at my house, and a stronger focus on my webcomic.  Her question reminded me of how much I loved the Civilization franchise.  So I started playing and was reminded of why I loved it so much.  It took me most of the first game to get back into the groove with Civ 5’s new quirks, but I really appreciated the improvements to AI.  Civ V is now my most played game with 117 hours.  (Finally surpassing Civ 4)  Most of that time was added in March as I got sick and spent a few days home.  The achievements in Civ 5 really played a key role in keeping me interested over so many hours.  I did things I never would have done in order to get those achievements and now I have a much better understanding of how best to use those Civilizations.

Don’t worry, this blog isn’t about to become some weird fan tribute blog to Braid.  It’s more of a case of trying to make sense of the game I’ve just played.  There’s really no reason to make sense of The Beatles Rockband.  You are one of The Beatles playing music.  There’s nothing to “get”.  But finishing Braid has left me with more questions than answers.  Braid has the potential to leave you frustrated in the same way you may end up frustrated at a particularly dense painting where you see that there is a table of objects, but can’t figure out the significance of the objects.  It just looks like a cluttered table until the docent explains that the book with a skull on it represents that man will never understand his world until he dies.

This song is awesome and, best of all, it’s been released under a Creative Commons license, so I can share it with you all without fear of the RIAA breathing down my neck!

I first heard Code Monkey on a recent episode of Linux Outlaws. It’s a song about a code monkey who is having a hard time with his boss and with unrequited office love. It’s a tale any code monkeys will find familiar. You can either download it at this post or, if that takes too long, off of Jonathan Coulton’s blog. His l ast.fm page says he came out with a new song a year for a whole year, so check that out. There may be some other really awesome ones.