Gaming Maladies, Part Two: Plot Apathy

Gaming Maladies, Part Two: Plot Apathy

In this installment of Gaming Maladies, I'm going to examine a phenomenon that has resulted in me putting down far too many games, never to return: simply not giving a shit.

And by "not giving a shit," I don't mean that I don't care if I win or lose, or that I don't care enough to put the time into the game to get better if I get stuck on a difficult part. I mean, more specifically, that I find the characters or plot (or both) so boring, annoying, or completely average that I literally don't care what happens. If every major character suddenly burst into flames, and the in-game world was revealed to be made entirely of cheese curdled from the fetid milk of Yog-Sothoth (is Yog-Sothoth milkable? Does it matter?), I would be no more interested than I was before I put down the controller. Mainly because I totally saw that coming.

So what I'm saying is that I have stopped playing games for the same reason other people stop reading books. Obviously this does not enter in when I'm playing something like Tetris or Peggle (what is the unicorn's motivation, anyway?!), but if a game wants me to "inhabit" a "character", while he or she does "stuff", then either the character or the stuff needs to be interesting. I prefer both, but I am realistic. I have forgiven shoddy gameplay in the interests of plot (Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth), and I have sat through mind-leakingly bad plots because the game was fun (just about everything Capcom releases). But I have occasionally encountered plots so bad or boring that it didn't matter how fun the game was, I just had to walk away. These include, but are not limited to:

1.) The Darkness - I knew there was going to be trouble the first time I saw and heard the main character at the same time. If you've never played this game, the guy looks like Bradford Tatum in The Stoned Age, but sounds like Michael Madsen doing an impression of Joe Mantegna. These two things do not go together. Now the gameplay in The Darkness is not bad, by any means (although I have a bit of a soft spot for games in which your character has tentacles, and I think this will be reflected in the game I am currently developing, Cosmic Squid vs. The Octopods), but the plot did not grab me. I'd try to describe it, but the only thing I remember is that Hell is World War I. It's a pretty bad sign for a game when I realize that I'd rather just go back and watch the rest of To Kill a Mockingbird.

2.) Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - I did finish MGS4, but this is one of the few games I actually regret finishing because the payoff was so small (hi, Jak and Daxter). By the second or third ending I was wishing everyone would die, and I'm pretty sure that's not what Hideo Kojima was going for (or was he?! Actually, no, it isn't; he only wants you to think he's a postmodern genius. It turns out he's just a Butt Guy). Honestly, I was hoping that everyone would die in the first ending, both because that would have kept the next five endings from happening and because that would have been a pretty effective way to end the series. But sadly, Kojima loves his characters too much to let them die. So much, in fact, that he renders Meryl and Akiba essentially bulletproof. Seriously, they get shot like forty times each and live. That's bullshit.

3.) Jade Empire - I only remember two things about Jade Empire: there were demons that looked like horses but walked like men, and there were no lightsabers. Other than that, I'm going to go way out on a limb and guess that you were trying to save the world.

What I'm getting at with all of this is that plot is becoming a more important component of videogames, and it's gotten so that we can discuss games like we used to discuss books or movies, but with more dead hookers. Or fewer, depending on what you read. But I think that we've reached a point at which plot is at least as crucial for certain genres as controls and handling, and I think developers would be stupid not to devote equal attention to both. For every Uncharted, there are five Gears of Wars (Gearses of War? That's tricky), and I hope one day it becomes the rule that gameplay and graphics are nothing without a meaningful context.

But I am realistic.

Next week: Save-itis.