mesoscopes

thisgirlgames:

Y U NO?! - Assassin’s Creed style.

Game Reviews: My personal rubrics

I love games and reviewing them would be a great pleasure. And just like any other people, I have my personal take on the games I play and reviewing them will of course reflect my personal tastes. So how will I review the games I play in the future? Here are my guidelines:

I will follow the grading system of my university:

4.0 A     92% - 100%
3.5 B+   87% - 91%
3.0 B     83% - 86%
2.5 C+   79% - 82%
2.0 C     75% - 78%
1.0 D     70% - 74%
0.0 F     below 70%

In my reviews, my final grade for the game will be expressed in its letter grade. Then I will be grading the components of my review on a scale of 0.0 to 4.0. The percentage equivalent is there to guide you readers the weight of each letter grade and numerical equivalent. 

Moving on, my review is divided mainly into two (2): (1) potential (20%), and (2) actual game (80%). Why the former? I have seen a lot of games carry a lot of potential but their implementation is what sucks. I staunchly believe that games are forms of literature. The idea may have been wonderful but the way it was written is not worth reading it, or in this case, not worth playing at all. Or the idea was common but the gameplay is so unique and proves to be a cut above the rest and the leader in that genre. So much for that, let’s break these two main components down:

Potential (20%) 

Thesis (5%) - The thesis of the game is the whole point of the game. Say, save the world from bad guys. If this is the thesis statement of the game, there are many ways to make such a game, many ways to make a wonderful game or an ugly games. I will be looking at the quality of the thesis because the thesis alone can predict if the game will be ok or not. However, my perspective on the thesis will not directly influence my perspectives on other components marked under Actual Play. The thesis of Pokemon is shared with Digimon and other games as well. The thesis of Pokemon is actually simple and that makes other games (except Digimon) who share the same thesis of ‘gather a bunch of monster friends and learn about yourself’ not so fascinating to play. However, while the thesis of Pokemon is rather simple and not epic for me, it is Pokemon’s very high rating in my other components that make it a wonderful game for me. 4.0 for a game with a unique, stellar, and out-of-this-world thesis, 0.0 for cliche and cookie-cutter ones. 

Story and world-view (10%) - A thesis statement can be shared by games but the whole story and world-view cannot and should not. The story is the folklore that holds the whole game - from possible settings to possible characters. The story shows how the game wants you to envision its world. High quality stories have a lot of potential to create sequels and prequels, spin-offs, etc. fully expanding the enterprise and enticing fans to play and play. The Warcraft games prove to be an excellent example of a game with an A-level story and world-view.

Characters (5%) - Who plays and who exists in the story of the game creates a lot of potential for a game, a potential to make it a winner or a loser. If it is another ‘save the world from bad guys’ game with a story set it land masses above the clouds, and you still get to play humans and elves, the game is gambling a lot. It has to create stellar gameplay mechanics to actually pull off a game with the said potential components. A game will get a great rating in this component if I can find that they have actually put some though on who the characters will be. Most Japanese RPGs (esp. the Persona series and Shin Megami Tensei) are excellent in this where even the names of characters have meanings relating to the whole storyline. Assassin’s Creed series will also garner an A from me in this component.

Actual play (80%)

Gameplay (30%) -  This is the thesis is the name of the food, the gameplay is the food itself. There are many ways to cook kare-kare but not all are stellar in their taste. The same can be said regarding games. Gameplay for me pertains to the whole mechanics of the game. Gameplay is about implementing the thesis and weaving into the thesis, the story and the characters. If it’s about saving the world from bad guys, you can either have a shooting game (like the Touhou series) or your usual RPG and many other ways. Then if you wish to have your usual RPG, it is a dungeon crawler, a sandbox game, or whatnot? An excellent gameplay allows you to make the most of the thesis, allow you unprecedented control on the game, and fleshes out the best in the story and characters. Pokemon’s gameplay is what makes it a stellar game. But it’s beyond mechanics and implementation. A good gameplay is an easy gameplay. You may have added ways to maneuver through your world but if its tad difficult, never mind, like Dragon Age.

Graphics (15%)  - So what if you have an excellent gameplay when you have an ugly world. Graphics add up to gameplay in bringing out the best out of the game’s potential. Skyrim is a wonderful A-level example.

Sounds/Voice (10%) - Changing your weapons with a klang sound effect should be enough to notify you that you did change but should not be distractive. Game sounds make the game intuitive to play. When you are inside a very beautiful world, you do want to get notified of important gameplay effects. Notified not alarmed or pestered. A good game also has a soundtrack so good you want to download it to relive you epic gaming moments. Suikoden II gets an A from me for this.

Replayability and end-game perks (10%) - Each story has an end. But games can prove otherwise. Really really great games make me attached to it and parting with it is dang hard. And because some game developers know this, they add stuff that makes you not part with your game! The Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series get an A for this with their usual New Game+ where you unlock endings you might have missed and you do this without the usual hassle you did as with your regular playthrough.

Story and character development (15%) - And finally, since I think games are forms of literature, I love games who are great in developing their stories and character development. Some games have good stories but developing them is another thing. If its simply this faction gaining control again over this faction, what is so special about it when I can predict the ending? I love to see not only the characters grow but the setting as well.

That’s it! I hope you read my game reviews in the future :) Buon giorno Amici! 

fabulously-nerdy:

According to AC2, Ezio came up with the idea of putting milk and sugar in coffee.

I’m sticking with that theory.

The Creed in Assassin’s Creed: Existentialist

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

This is the Assassin’s Creed. To people who do not know the game, or have not played the game deep enough, the Creed sounds like an anarchist philosophy. Bring havoc to everything if you want since you cannot ascribe to a set belief. There is nothing to argue that there is a greater truth since nothing is true anyway. But to understand the Creed, let us quote some lines within the game that expound on the Creed.

Laa shay’a waqi’un moutlaq bale kouloun moumkine. 
These are the words spoken by our ancestors - that lay at the heart of our creed. 
Where other men blindly follow the truth, remember…nothing is true. 
Where other men are limited, by morality or law, remember…everthing is permitted. 
We work in the dark, to serve the light. We are assassins. 

-Creed pronounced in the ascension to being an assassins

To say that nothing is true, is to realize that the foundations of society are fragile, and that we must be the shepherds of our own civilization. To say that everything is permitted, is to understand that we are the architects of our actions, and that we must live with their consequences, whether glorious or tragic

-Ezio Auditore

To recognize nothing is true and everything is permitted; that laws arise not from divinity but reason.I understand now that our creed does not command us to be free. It commands us to be wise.

-Altair Ibn La’Ahad

All in all, these quotes show the inherent existentialism of the Creed. Existentialism’s main tenet is that we do not have a pre-existing essence, a design we follow. Instead, it is humankind who decides on his fate. Man exists first before his essence is designed. Nothing is indeed true. We decide on what is true for us. And most importantly, the Creed is existentialist in Jean-Paul Sartre’s sense where existence precedes essence includes: (1) anguish, (2) forlorness, and (3) despair.

The Assassin’s Creed is one of anguish. For Sartre, anguish means that humans are forever vexed by the fact that their actions are not solely their actions. Their actions are part of the whole web of interactions and can affect other people. If I decide to do something, I say to the whole world that it is the right thing to do. And this is precisely what Ezio meant regarding the creed. In such that our existence comes first, such that nothing is to be held fully true, we decide on what actions are possible. And this causes everything to be permitted however the outcomes are our responsibility.

The Creed is one of forlorness or abandonment. Simply enough it means that there is no God who we can blame for the results of our actions that this our actions are our responsibilities. I think the Creed, and moreover, the game itself, says a lot about this already. Indeed, we are the architects of our actions.

And finally the Creed is one of despair. Despair means for Sartre that we move based on assumptions we can hold. But since nothing is true, there is no God or whatever religion or belief to follow or to rely upon in case things fail, we just have to commit in our decisions and actions. And commitment requires that we act on it.  If we find our lives in need of something, we cannot hope for the true to give it to us, rather we commit to work to get to that something. This is precisely why the Creed entails the sacrifice of the left ring finger or the branding of it to ensure commitment to carry out the Creed.

But all in all, existentialism is humanism. It trusts human freedom. It trust that we can do good as much as we can do bad. It tells us that we shape ourselves. It trusts our ability to decide. This is exactly the point between Assassins vs Templars. Where the latter wants Pieces of Eden to control human minds and follow a set order to bring them to an ideology of development. But Assassins, following the  Creed,  trust humans to be the shepherds of their civilization. But indeed in so doing, it is not just about freedom, but the wisdom that we cultivate in the existentialist tenets of anguish, forlorness, and despair.

Boun Giorno Amici!

On the idea of 3rd rate

Last week, I went to the Malacanang complex for a job interview. It was my first time in the area by foot and so I decided that taking a stroll would be fun and nice now that I am done with my interview. Unfamiliar streets, unfamiliar faces, unfamiliar bridges. I got the chance to prove that sense of smell is the most upfront, most confronting of the five for it is the sense that takes over you even before getting upclose to the object of inquiry itself. The estero was screaming that it is already summer, a smell that a majority of the urban poor and those who decided to truly go down the hill has to grow accustomed to. But as I continued walking, the smell was masked by a familiar scent, a scent from a long and distant yet pleasant memory. 

Burger Machine. It’s not that I was deprived. For the longest time, I just didn’t have the chance to stop by and eat at the burger joint. The smell reminded me how good it tasted despite its wonderful price. For that merienda I decided to order a double burger with cheese.

But as I digged into the wonderful burger, I noticed that something was off. The ketchup is a banana ketchup, and no longer the tomato ketchup that my memory remembers. The smell I caught from afar was indeed from the patties, the same patties, only thinner. But because the ketchup was integral to the whole burger, I felt that somehow, the burger joint had to cut costs to adapt to the buy-1 take-1 schemes. I felt that it was a backward development. 

Backwardness. How familiar. But guilt possessed me after resenting my order, after calling my order 3rd rate. To call it backward was unfair. I of all people should have known that it was not a backward change. I realised that it was a change for the better. It was not the burger that was 3rd rate, but I the consumer. The burger joint was responding to culture. Around the archipelago, the use of banana ketchup is standard for the majority, its taste is definitive for the majority. It is sweet, matching the ideals of the majority. While indeed there is economics to the situation, where banana ketchup is indeed cheaper, that economics ensures that consumption of banana ketchup by the majority, but it is also cultural. To use banana ketchup in dishes like spaghetti and many others, culture shapes the demand side of the economics. The burger joint was adapting to this. I may have not been happy but as I was finishing the burger, a father buying a buy-1 take-1 burger requested for more ketchup. It was for his son. And the son was very happy with the burger. Now that is not a backward change.

And with that it reminded me that there are things in popular culture that are very important in understanding development. But in my experience in the university, this was very unexplored. We may say that we have done a lot of studies regarding the majority but have not studied the elite minority. But I say that those studies are usually economical or about life cycle phases. Philippine cultural studies should delve to what the majority want. And that we may find the Philippine culture is not 3rd rate per se, but it is us, the consumers, that are.

Immodernity and Magic in Chabet’s White Table and Amorsolo’s Portrait

I once brought my girlfriend to the Ateneo Art Gallery’s In the Eye of Modernity, Ateneo’s permanent exhibition of modern art. She wanted to analyze one painting for an EU subject and so I helped her choose the cubist Isda at Mangga by H.R. Ocampo, though I am initially drawn into Roberto Chabet’s White Table. Indeed she asked, what makes these painting modern? Perplexed and unsure, I coldly answered, “they belong to the same era.” In retrospect, I am definitely wrong. First if it is simply because of era, then it negates the author’s choice of style. And second, it reifies a unified time – how Western of me - in which some do not particularly share despite the lately reminders of globalization’s shrinking of spaces and times . Indeed, the classification is neither because of the time of production nor the time of the subject of the author. Perhaps, a better way to approach the question is to ask, how come both Chabet’s White Table and Amorsolo’s portraits belong to the realm of modernity?

If indeed E.B. Tylor is correct that modernity is an outcome of evolution , we arrive at Freud’s suggestion, in his review of animism, that indeed this is the “omnipotence of thought” .  Jung would say otherwise for our dreams do not sufficiently manifest continuity. I shall analyze both paintings within these lines of thought, between the lines of magic and archetypes, in hopes to prove or even disprove the modernity in these outputs.

What perhaps signalled the beginning of modernity, above anything else, is the Industrial Revolution. It has ushered the questioning of authority based on divine right, the eminence of rationality – that fixity and positivism of indeed being sure that one can be sure because one holds onto something – may it be science , verstehen , etc. It is in this fixity and positivism that makes both Chabet’s and Amorsolo’s works both modern. It is explicit in their work that through their choice of technique, they have captured the subject and indeed objectified. Chabet’s rationality latches on the power of the negative, a seeming dialectic determinism in his powerful play of negative space, positioning, layering. One can be sure that he’s sure he has captured the subject by allowing his own rendition to surface. Meanwhile, it is the realism of Amorsolo that makes him sure that he has capture the woman’s image. One can be sure that he is sure he has captured the subject by copying it as near as one can. 

We therefore have now a dialectic and a realistic interpretation of reality as one can latently lift from the said paintings. Both exemplify humankind’s control – humankind’s dominion over nature. For these men were able to make their subject their own – thus the signature below. They are modern for their positivism and that man’s triumph over nature. This dominion over nature is the same triumph of man in the Industrial Revolution . But how can one be sure that something is antithetical to a thesis or how can one be sure that he has been copying the real sufficiently? The otherwise omnipotence of thought can be derailed by such a simple question of sureness. Just as any other realist painting, how can one be sure that they have copied the harvesting scenario . Were they even there? Perhaps, no. Should they even be there to be granted the license to paint such a scenario? Not at all, because one can freely imagine. But do we even see these scenarios? Perhaps, no longer. Perhaps, this is a reference to a past, just like an epic of a hero who does not exist at all. If that is the case, asking how real is a realist painting is not much different from asking how real is the seeming realism in an epic? However, what is central also to many epics is humankind’s subjugation by otherworldly forces beyond one’s control. 

Perhaps, the same can be said over these paintings. Perhaps, these paintings are manifestations of humankind’s attempt to subjugate the otherworldly forces beyond one’s control into his own control. Animism would show us that modernity is the illusion of this control: these paintings are forms of magic.

In Chabet’s White Table, homoeopathic magic is evident . As he captures the metaphysical breadth of a white table in his canvas, he mimics the same breadth in the evident parallelograms that abound the painting. It is a display of contagious magic in the sureness that the white table exists in the praxis of the breadth of a white table as Ricoeurian mimesis 1 or subject . It is in the power of his creativity and technique that he is able to make the mimesis 1, contagious in its mimesis 3 (or audience’s re-rendition of what is seen from the mimesis 2 or the medium itself, in this case, the painting). 

In Amorsolo’s portrait, we see the same forms of magic. Perhaps, Amorsolo was confident in the homoeopathic magic of using the same amount of light and colour that he sees such that it will allow him to capture the mimesis 1 to his mimesis 2. And it is contagious enough for us to actually think that this is a woman, an existing person. 

A closer look at both also reveals different birtuds or sensibilities. Chabet’s work seems a lot more modern as his abstraction is almost the same as Western painters. Such is a homoeopathic effect in us! Meanwhile, Amorsolo’s work seems less modern, more traditional. Perhaps because it mimics a different birtud – the birtud of pagpupuno  we see in other traditional “Filipino” medium. E.g. the many ingredients for a sinigang in contrast to the pumpkin soup of the West, or the many embroideries of the malong in contrast to the Americana.  Though we have obtained this pagpupuno also in our Hispanization, as in the paintings of Luna (1884) whose negative space is smartly positioned and allayed in the use of red, or the sahog in a Paella, the concept of negative space as used by Chabet is rather new and very foreign – indeed this is very far from the best example of pagpupuno – the fiesta. 

In summary, Chabet’s White Table and Amorsolo’s portrait of a woman in the gallery are both modern as they both capture humankind’s dominion over nature, whatever their techniques might be. However, it can also be said that they are not modern enough for indeed magic still plays an important role in both the process of painting and the process of consuming the painting as an audience. Furthermore, they also refer to two different sensibilities making one of them seemingly not modern enough as the other. In the end, perhaps, we are not modern enough, we are always asymptotic to that as long as we manifest the survivals of the past and perpetuate them unconsciously in our decisions and perceptions.

(Written 15 March 2011)

Spatial critiques on Philippine churches and masses

Because we practice that the Church is a representation of familial space, split-level catholicism is possible. Because the sense of the individual is not present in the Church, children can easily be brought where their noise can ruin the whole sanctity of the mass. Also because we consume the space of the church within the itinerary of the family day, i.e. families are going somewhere after, and because the church is spatially positioned in proximity to shopping and trade centres, the family day is possible and the mass is only an event in the itinerary of the family day rather than a holy activity as a whole. And finally because we were more concerned in the representation of the church as a space responding to euro-western standards, thereby making the church a space of western representation, we failed to connect indigenous architecture with the sanctity of the mass even if indigenous architecture grew out of practicality. This makes our churches a bed of heat and thereby not conducive for masses. 

These are only some of the reasons why Filipinos have a shallow understanding of our faith because the central practice of catholic faith, the mass, which is held in the Church, are not enjoined in conducive spaces.

What do you think?