E3 Sensory Overload

Obligatory E3 post begins now:

So I"ve been playing Splatoon recently and I'm happy to announce that Nintendo didn't mess this one up, though was there ever any doubt? As the companies first foray into the third-person shooter they've been able to add their own twist to the genre - namely the fact that you score points by covering the ground with ink/paint with much less emphasis on killing everything on screen. Ok, I know that has nothing to do with E3 but truth is I was away from internets for the whole show and I've had to play catch up. And you know what? It's exhausting. Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Bethesda, Square Enix, EA and Ubisoft all have presentations that are more than an hour long. But I digress...

Has anyone played Animal Crossing: New Leaf? A friend bought me a copy when I was in hospital and recently I've been getting a lot of enjoyment out of it. People normally conflate "Nintendo" and "traditional" but here is a game that is anything but traditional. It's much more like a zen garden that you're meant to tend to daily that ultimately ends up as an expression of how you've been playing the game so far. Security Blanket/10. Nintendo's conference was actually the first one I watched and it had everthing needed to make the fanboy in me squeal with delight. Odds are you've probably heard most of the announcments already so I don't see the need to list everything here.

Star Wars: Battlefront looks excellent. It's amazing how well the game has held up after all these years. It's hard to believe that it came out 11 years ago. Still, it's definitley still worth playing but it is a shame that it's only local play is two player. But if you need a more recent shooter to fill that hole in your soul then EA has got you covered: Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare. In it you can play as a sunflower with a gun. How is that not awesome? Answer: it isn't.

Ok, I'll try to stay on track. Ubisoft's conference was probably the most awkwardly funny to watch. I can't believe that executives believe that a hall full of dedicated gamers want to see a full 10 minutes dedicated to announcing the new Just Dance. Plus their show was full of anecdotes about how much their feeling were hurt when people said their piece of shit game Assassin's Creed Unity was a piece of shit. Poor Ubisoft, it much be tough having the job that everyone in that audience would kill for. Let's feel sorry for them.

Let's...

Let's play...

Do people still watch Game Grumps? I love the new Grumpcade crossover thing they're doing, especially since they had my favourite Youtuber, the Completionist, on. Sure they played Sonic and Knuckles which the Completionist had already done a Let's Play on, but the man is just so talented I watched that whole series anyway.

It's really hard for me to stay on track today. Ok, here we go, what I actually thought of this years E3:

Same as the last, plenty of stuff to get excited about.

The End.  Thank you for reading.

Explaining the Unexplainable

Congratulations, dear reader! You've decided to embark on this epic quest with me and you don't even know what I'm going to talk about. Don't worry because neither do I. But that's ok because that's the point. Do you ever play a game and find yourself asking why you bother? Maybe you watch other people, rolling your eyes as they seemingly try to accomplish impossible tasks, while at the same time they pretend to be an elf or an orc. Deep down in the core of ourselves we understand the futility of playing games. And I'm not just talking about video games. The loud and drunk people in the corner of the pub, glued to the screen and cheering whenever their team does something that they deem cheer-worthy. Even they know that anything that happens in a game will have no impact on their real lives. Nevertheless, those sport stars are paid millions to do what they do and video game companies have no problem taking money from people who know what they purchase is a meaningless distraction. The act of playing seems innate, as we know children play all the time. But most gamers aren't kids. In fact, the average age of a gamer is 31 years old. And even animals can play games of their own. Every time we look for an answer, we'll find more questions.

Maybe this is because we are dealing with a paradox. This can be examined if we ask, "Why do we play?" We play for fun of course. That answer opens up a can of worms, but we'll leave it for now. Let's accept the preposition that we play for fun. Video games are classified as entertainment products so that answer makes sense. Just like movies and books before them, video games provide an outlet for enjoyment. But are we really enjoying ourselves? Is it fun to die and restart from a checkpoint thirty minutes ago? Is it fun for that to happen five more times in a row? No! You're more than likely to throw your remote through the TV if that's the case. So even the basic premise of "games for fun" doesn't add up. We generally avoid failure, video games can make failures out of us yet we continue to play even though we're exposing ourselves to something we'd normally avoid. Maybe we're all masochists. But Jesper Juul in his book The Art of Failure sees "a paradox that stems from the way we are torn between an immediate desire to avoid failure and a longer-term desire for an experience that includes failure." That's why he has multiple books and gaming credits and I only have this blog. It seems as if we play for the experience, to say that we did it.

Surely, though, there should be more worthwhile pursuits than saving the goddamn princess another goddamn time. Do video games actually offer us something in return? You may have heard the argument about surgeons who improved their dexterity with Halo. Plus, video games can offer a great chance for tangential learning - learning that happens beside the main action. Whether it's via creating a game world based on a real place a la the Assassin's Creed series or by NPC dialogue that introduces a new way of thinking for the player. Games such as Bioshock are great at explaining and dissecting complex political schools of thought even if most of the game is just running and gunning. Games clearly can offer as much as any other medium, but I'm looking for something that is intrinsically about gaming. 

Humans and animals both play games but only humans have created such complex systems to achieve such a basic desire. As technology increased its presence in our lives, our games migrated to computers but an understanding of the not-so-old way of sports and board games can help explain games themselves. Rules are important, in games and in real life. However, real life is incredibly complex and the rules not always so clear cut. They can vary from culture to culture, social situations or who you're having dinner with. Rules in a game can be much simpler. In fact, they had to be simple so that anyone could understand them. Football teams colour code themselves, and a game of Dungeons & Dragons has a Dungeon Master. These examples are humankinds attempts to introduce order into a world that often seems to have none. Before the rise of the console and single player game, people had to agree with each other on the rules and who would be the one to take responsibility for their enforcement. This highlights an important element that is so often overlooked when talking about games - the social factor. Humans are social beings by nature and play is one of the most harmless ways to achieve interaction. When we play we know it's all pretend, as if entering some sort of magic circle where the only rules are the ones of the game.

So today you've learnt that the act of playing a game is the paradoxical act of avoiding failure by exposing yourself to it. That existing in a game world can make you learn about Objectivism or American Exceptionalism without realising it. And that games have rules, like real life, and also like real life games can be very confusing. The trouble with titling a blog post "Explaining the Unexplainable" is that by its nature I can't explain it to you. All I can do is offer you words that may help you understand the concepts we grasp for every time you lose a game.

So one last word then: Autotelic; Having a purpose in and not apart from itself.

Two Youtube Videos for more on this subject:

1. Vsauce's Why Do We Play Games
2. Game Theory's Why You Play Video Games

Obligatory Social Networks:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/psykoticgamer
Twitter: @PsykoticGamer
Patreon: Coming Soon

The Psykotic Gamer Completionist Tribute: Super Mario 3D Land

Greetings my fellow human beings. It's been a while since I've updated and you may have noticed that all the old posts are no longer viewable. This is part of my learning process as when I look back at the older blogs I just want to crawl under a duna and never come out again. So it's back to the drawing board. Firstly and probably most importantly I had to buy a drawing board. Now that that's been taken care of, I'd like to relaunch the Psykotic Gamer with a special tribute to a personal hero of mine, Jirad "Dragonrider" Khalil aka The Completionist. For those who've never seen the show, look him up on Youtube. His is a show that focuses on 100% completion of video games and he's covered everything from Skyrim to Sonic 06. Inspired by this crazy, crazy man I set out to complete a game of my own: Super Mario 3D Land. Why this game? Because it's my blog and I do what I want.

Story:
Say what you want about Nintendo (and most people do) they don't change what works. With such a heavy focus by other game companies on dark serious narratives in games nowadays, I always find it super refreshing to turn on a Mario game and get straight to business by jumping on things. That being said I doubt a game about a dwarf Italian plumber chomping on mushrooms and fighting dragon-turtles would make it past many marketing exceutives these days.

Presentation:
This game being on the 3DS means that of course it will be playable in 3D. In my books 3D doesn't nessacarily make a game (or movie) any better, though there are 3 or 4 little puzzles that take advantage of the system capabilities. Good luck using a 2DS though. The colours are very vibrant and level design impeccable, Nintendo having perfected this in the Galaxy series. That being said, the game overall feels very safe and doesn't really push the envelope to make this game stand out from its bigger brothers on the consoles.

Gameplay:
Super Mario 3D Land has been described by Shigeru Miyamoto as a blend of 2D and 3D Mario level design. That being said, the game plays very much like a 3D platformer with Mario having all his old jumping abilities like the wall kick, long jump and even a new move: rolling. While rolling doesn't shake things up much, it will allow you to perform an even longer jump (patent pending). Each level has a time limit for you to traverse the obstacle course and reach the flagpole at the end of the level - mechanics carried over from the 2D games. This game also sees the return of the Tanooki suit, last seen in Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES but that came out before I was born so there was no nostalgia trip for me. You can also grab the upgraded suit which is gold and lets you be invinsible for the duration of the level. If that sounds a little game breaking to you it should. The powered up suit will only appear when you die a certain amount of times on a level and you don't have to use it if you don't want to. It's more for unexperienced players who Nintendo has been catering more for in the recent years.

Final Level:
So you guide Mario through 8 worlds stomping on Goombas and Koopas alike to reach Bowser. Oops, should have put a spoiler warning there, but really if you play a Mario game you already know how it ends. The final boss battle is actually pretty exciting as it does away with the 3 hits and your dead idea and instead we get a fast paced platforming section as the King of Koopas breathes fire and throws barrels at you. When I first played this game I felt like a proper badass for beating Bowser and the fight is actually pretty difficult. I'd say it would be a contender for number 1 in my favourite Bowser fights.

In the end I feel like this is actually an incredibly easy game. Maybe all my years of gaming just means that some games are now beneath me... unless...

Completion Bonus:
For me this is where the real game starts. After beating the final level, you will unlock the special course - 8 more worlds filled with even harder levels. The difficulty here is turned up to 11 and the game is actually better for it. Without these levels this game would hardly deserve a recommendation to the more avid gamers out there. The special world is also where you unlock Luigi who can jump higher than Mario, but has less traction that his plumper older brother. For completionists you have to beat all the levels with both brothers while also collecting three hidden star coins. And after all that you have to make sure to touch the top of all the flagpoles. Once you're done, you have to redo your final fight with Bowser to 100% your game. On your game start screen your save will have 5 twinkling stars to prove to your friends that you're the best.

HOWEVER, if during your travels the golden Tanooki suit appears it will be impossible to get the twinkling stars. That's right, even if you never use the suit you lose the chance for twinkles. Sad face. One way to remedy this is to do a soft reset. If you see the suit, close your game and restart it. The game saves once you finish a level so you'll be put back right where you were. Unfortunatly, I didn't know about this rule until too late, so even though I did everything in the game and never used the suit once my stars will never twinkle. I mean, I guess I could just start the whole game over again but that's just too much wasted time.

Wrapping up this game is really, really, really great. Don't let that hiccup of a completionist bonus put you off because this is the best handheld Mario to date and well worth the time of any 3DS owner. While it does seem like that one design issue could have been avoided this is nevertheless a solid game. For those of you interested, there was a quasi-sequel to this game for the Wii U called Super Mario 3D World which fixes that one problem and also has better level design in general, if only because 3D Land was so cautious. You can also play as Peach and Toad in that one which is neat too. If you want, you can head over the the Completionist channel and watch his review of that here.

With that in mind guys, this game get my Psykotic rating of FINIPETE it (Finish it or Complete it).

And if you're still here I cannot stress enough how cool Jirard is. Seriously check out his channel. Plus he actually completes games fully, even if there is stupid shit in the way like a bloody system where you can't beat the game if you die more than 5 times on a level.