Monthly Archives: March 2013

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Tomb Raider Review: Journey, Loss and Discovery (Also on Xeawn’s Gaming Corner)

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a.k.a. Fear and Loathing in the Jungle!

Good day (or afternoon or evening or night or twilight or Frabjous Day, Callooh Callay!) to you all. I hope you’re having a groovy…time.  Today we’re going to talk about Tomb Raider 2013, and then I’ll probably post some adorable cat videos to make up for how dark Xeawn’s Gaming Corner has been the past week. However, before we do that, we’re going to descend into madness just one more time!

For those of you reading this on http://www.dragonhousestudios.org, well, you’re used to my more literary side by now, so, no cat videos for you! Okay…maybe just a few…

Tomb Raider 2013, man, what’s there to lead up to that I haven’t already? There was controversy. Kind of a lot of it. The men that were in the interviews constantly kept, well, let me begin with my history with Tomb Raider and then my rollercoaster of emotions in regard to the remake. Then we’ll talk about the marketing missteps. Also the one commercial they got right.

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Are Video Games Mature Enough to Deal With Truly Dark Themes? (Also on Xeawn’s Gaming Corner)

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And, are gamers? This is a follow up to my previous articles on a similar subject, and can be considered part three in the recent series of maturity articles. As y’all know, I don’t do short articles, so I figured I may as well break this up over the course of several days. This is leading up to an all day mega session with Tomb Raider that CainKarl and I will be doing next week (we did that already), and then Xeawn’s Gaming Corner will return to the generally more lighthearted articles you all know and love. As per the last two articles, please use your own discretion for your tolerance to topics that society has molded us to be uncomfortable discussing.
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Do Horror Game Stars Need to be Girls? (Also on Xeawn’s Gaming Corner)

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*DISCLAIMER!: This is part 2 in a 3 part series of articles that are more mature than the XGC norm; please exercise your own discretion when reading! Regular articles will resume after Tuesday’s Tomb Raider review!*

Maybe not just games either. I was thinking about that this morning (about a week ago now), or maybe it was last night (about a week ago now) because they both sorta ran together for me (about…well, no, that’s pretty normal for me…), as I began laying out plans for a few new horror novels that I’ll be writing. The star of the first pure horror story I started working on is a girl trapped in a castle she’s desperately trying to escape while a number of unsavory characters are stalking her for unknown reasons. Why did I specifically choose a girl? I unno’, I just did. Amelia was just right for the part.

A different story with strong horror elements stars a father trying to protect a little girl in a hellish nightmare realm where he’s unable to tell fantasy from reality and has a number of frightening demons to contend with. Why did Roy work for this story? I felt a father trying to protect his daughter worked better in this scenario than a mother and daughter; I wanted to hit fear on a different level. I wanted to work with taking away from men the largest thing that makes us feel like men, and that’s a sense of power and the capacity to protect what we care for. I wanted to force the man to be in a situation where not only was he helpless, not only was he helpless to protect a child, he was helpless to protect a daughter.
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Race in Gaming and Why the Internet Should Hush (Also on Xeawn’s Gaming Corner)

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So there’s a character in Borderlands 2 by the name of Tiny Tina. I guess some people are pretty upset about her? Apparently she’s a petite young (as in, probably twelve to fourteen) white girl who talks in stereotypical ebonics, or “Gangsta Slang”. I guess a lot of folks are really upset about that. Of course it’s the internet and a lot of folks aren’t too. And of course it’s the internet so we have a myriad of people insulting each other and arguing over the character in an exceedingly unintelligent and aggressive manner.

Now, I’ve got a personal policy to just not get involved in internet slap fights, because so long as people can hide behind the shield of anonymity they will 99% of the time continue to be rude, unintelligent and antagonistic. That’s probably the largest problem with the internet (y’know, aside from hackers and junk); when people have the option of treating you however they want to with zero consequences, unfortunately the overwhelming majority of people choose to be abusive instead of kind. Oh well, what are ya gonna do right?
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Are You a Hero or a Monster? (Originally featured on Xeawn’s Gaming Corner)

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I read an article the other day in which Hideo Kojima stated that Metal Gear Ground Zeroes might not ever be released, and if it is then it might be too controversial to sell well. He stated that gaming hasn’t done much to mature beyond “zombies and explosions”, and that he wants to push the limits and break every taboo that he can. He felt that it either would be too controversial for Konami to allow him to release it, or that gamers would be too put off by the controversy for it to sell.

I don’t know how I feel about that, as we’ve already had the capacity to see through a little girl’s clothing, take her out on a date, slap her around on said date and chase her while she runs crying in the last Metal Gear (Peacewalker), which cemented me not supporting the franchise any longer. Which is a shame, because up to that point even in spite of the whole “Every nation is evil except for Japan” thing Kojima had going on, Metal Gear was one of my favorite franchises.

Growing up, you were either a Metal Gear Solid fan or a Splinter Cell fan. The two camps didn’t mix. Oh, there were also those Hitman kids, but, they were weird and we didn’t hang out with them (*cough cough* Wilkie *cough cough*). I found Splinter Cell’s controls to be all clunky and junk and so I was a Metal Gear kid. Me and my friends would play for hours, discovering all of the easter eggs, the hidden cutscenes, deciphering the deep and intricate story, working out the best tactics, beating the game without being seen and without killing anyone, including bosses, it was great fun.

But, slowly and steadily the series started getting creepy. I never finished the second Metal Gear because…Raiden…but a friend that did clued me in on the creepiness that was Otacon. I’m going to give a disclaimer right here and say that this article and the next two in this series are going to contain some spoilers, and also are going to be dealing with some less than PG themes that might make some readers uncomfortable. Please exercise your own discretion going forward.
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