Preemptive Retaliation

I scrolled through my steam library for a good five minutes before remembering it was near the end of the month. If I wasn’t between games then I might have missed out on two new years resolutions instead of one.

Last month I finished reading The Sirens of Titan pretty much bang on the end of the month, finishing the two books I should have for January. The first book, Pregnancy for Men was supposed to be more functional than anything but turned out to be fairly entertaining. Plus I’ve never had a book fill me with the same amount of existential horror and anxiety about the future (except, well, maybe Infinite Jest). Sirens was something special though. I don’t know why I continuously find myself surprised by Vonnegut’s work. The first thing I read of his was Breakfast of Champions and I think I fell for his self-deprecating-self-insert of Kilgore Trout. Each time I pick up one of his books I think of a crazy, wild haired man with crazy wild haired ideas, and each time I am staggered by the themes and messages of his books. Sirens picked up on an idea I’ve been playing with for years now; predetermination and lack of free will. I won’t go into that here, but suffice to say that the book got me thinking about it all again, especially the character the knew the entire history of the human race yet still seemed to inflict his agency on them.

I think it was a mistake then, to go from someone as heavy as Vonnegut to, well, anything really. Maybe reading Zone One by Colson Whitehead was always going to be doomed to failure. According to Sirens, reading or not reading Zone One was an inevitability so I shouldn’t feel about it either way, but that’s unfair to drag Sirens into this again. The book was sold to me as a zombie story but smart, plus the author had won the pulitzer last year which must’ve been a good indication. And the thing is that the book was good, and it was very clever in the way it was written, but it hasn’t taken with me so far. Maybe part of that is that I noticed that some of the turns of phrases were pretty clever, and then I started seeing them everywhere and realised that the author was feeling pretty clever when he wrote them… which took me out of it all too quickly. When I start imagining the author behind the words it loses all appeal to me. 

Another thing I gave up recently was Civ VI. I got the game out of a sense of nostalgia for Civ V. Civ V  was one of the first games I played after building my own computer and I remember the nights of succumbing to the one-more-turn meme that was more sinister than funny. I racked up what I thought was an impressive amount of hours on it (until I played later games for far, far longer) and genuinely had a good time conquering and skirting the borders of others land. I thought that Civ VI would be more of the same, but it turned out to be more of the… more. The sheer amount of additional options that were presented to me was overwhelming, and I found myself struggling to juggle them all at once. Sure, the basic dopamine hit of clicking a button and watching things change was still there, but I found myself lost in the different strategies and ways to get ahead. It took me six hours to realise that I wasn’t really enjoying the game, and that was that.

So instead I jumped over to Aragami, which was a fun looking game I picked up in a sale a while back. It seemed promising to get into – stealth or kill your way round the dark shadows – and I did get into it for a while until its flaws became too much. The game felt more than a little janky. There were some parts of it that were good, but more often than not I felt as thought I was exploiting flaws in the game to help me succeed. The corners I hid in weren’t actually all that well hidden, but the guards couldn’t quite see round them. The way the character could flash to different areas meant I could get an angle and bypass any difficult section with ease. There’s something called Game Juice, described as a series of design choices that give a certain oomph to the game, and this didn’t have it. Everything felt floaty and slow to respond. And I know that I never finished it, but the hidden reveal that the cute ghost who you’re trying to help is actually the bad guy was so obvious. 

I just checked it on wikipedia. Super obvious from the beginning.

All in all, I was enjoying it but everything that was wrong with it became too much and I grew bored of noticing them. There are other games that do it better and I would have much rather played them. Mark of the Ninja to name one, which is a game I might actually go back and replay.

I think that Aragami, Civ VI and Zone One have made me rethink what it is I do and what I enjoy, and think on whether I actually have the time to do things I don’t like any more. The answer is “of course not” but it’s nice to be reminded now and again.

Speaking of replays, I reinstalled Papers, Please after watching the short film based on it. It’s such a fascinating, tense game, and I find myself falling into the trap from the first time. I keep wanting to undermine the system, to rebel, but I want to do my best. 

My detective story which is no longer a detective story is still coming along. Slowly, in drips. It feels like a leaky tap, with bits coming out at strange and random intervals, waking me up at night. Eventually it’ll come out in one long gushing torrent, but it hasn’t yet.