If a service like that existed, fans thought, it surely couldn’t live up to the Netflix comparison. The thought had long lingered out there… a “Netflix for gaming” sometimes even seemed like an impossibility. Game Pass has got to be the success story this generation for Microsoft and perhaps even the console market as a whole. In this two-part article series, we’ll be taking a look back at what Microsoft and Sony did right and wrong this past generation. Over this time, remarkable games have been produced, business strategies have been formulated and executed upon, and each mega corporation finds themselves confidently staring down the next generation of consoles. These games all have in common, a complex control system that can be put to use in imaginative and creative ways to get the edge over your opponents.It’s hard to believe that both Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One launched nearly seven years ago back in November, 2013. Or it could be learning the complex move lists in a game like Street Fighter. Maybe it’s learning the perfect combination of angles and trajectories in Videoball. Or, perhaps, it’s using the limited running and jumping slightly better than other players to get a win in Fall Guys.
This might be understanding how the propulsion of your car lets you take to the air and hit a perfect shot in Rocket League. Whether you rise through the league tables, or just improve compared to your family, the satisfaction or getting to grips with something so monumentally challenging is really satisfying. Rather than offering assistance, these games leave you to it. Rather than relying on the stats of your character or player, you have to execute the moves yourself with timing proficiency and instinct. Whereas many games simplify getting around, these games make the complexity and depth of their movement systems part of the joy of playing them. There are a small group of games that hone this challenge down to the mechanics of moving around the environment. It takes time to understand their systems, mechanics, objectives and worlds.
When someone plays a game too much it’s easy to think they are taking an easy route to something entertaining, like junk food. Games offer us challenges on many levels. In video games, we step into other bodies so we can better understand our own and those of the people around us. In travel, as Andrew Soloman says, we go somewhere else to see properly the place where we have come from. More specifically, to use body therapy language, games offer us a chance to discover the inviolability of our bodies, personal autonomy, self-ownership, and self-determination.
Whether this is into the awkward teenage years of Mord and Ben in Wide Ocean Big Jacket, the grandparent-escaping Tiger and Bee in Kissy Kissy, the fractured heartbroken body in Gris or the haphazard movement of Octodad we have a chance to reassess our own physicality and how we respond to and treat other people's physicality. Stepping into the shoes of a vulnerable, small or endangered character can help us understand for a short while some of what it is like to be someone else. This is not only an enjoyable way to escape the reality of daily life but a chance to reflect on and understand ourselves, and our bodies, better. Whether we step into the powerful frame of a trained marksman or brave adventurer, while we play we have a different sense of our physicality. Video games offer an opportunity to inhabit another body.
0 kommentar(er)
