Ad-Libbing

“What’s this thing?”

The attenuated insertion of endorsements have become significantly prevalent in modern media over the past decade. Jack Bauer utilising a particular make of phone, Olivia Dunham driving a specific vehicle, Simon Cowell sipping some pretentious beverage–it’s almost unavoidable. With the positioning of the investors product visibly discernible to potential consumers, generating increased revenue for the already wealthy proprietor its difficult not to feel aggressively beset by commercialism. Instances such as these have become an informed rhetoric for both TV and Film, with this monogamous fidelity presenting affable leverage for both recipients. A television show that has received limited backing from a network, with the aid of product placement can invigorate their frugal retainer and extrude a more healthy production expense. Advertisers in turn for their generous donations can receive further visual recognition for their products, and if implemented fastidiously can retain a sense of continuity without a scene feeling like obvious subterfuge, or at least a measured integration of self-awareness. Of course this does mean the highest bidder preserves the exclusionary right to advertise a conglomerates specific product, and as a result James Bond will invariably be sipping a Heineken as opposed to the traditional shaken Vodka Martini. As a consumer I should feel averse to these subliminal intrusions, abashed at the flagrancy of such evident greed and duplicity, but the tonal moderation doesn’t offend me as much as it should. I personally feel that such incentives compensate the production of a feature, and you have to admire their resourcefulness as I can understand entirely why they invest in popular shows for further visibility, I mean how many people actually watch commercials now anyway? I also feel that allowing genuine products adds legitimacy to the context. For instance if someone purchases a carbonated drink, I want them to buy a Coca-Cola, or Pepsi or Tango. I’m personally more irritated by arrested pay walls in games!

I don’t however possess omnipotent credulity to their invasive forays, particularly the specious portrayals of gaming. One commercial for an unspecified furniture company (the one that’s an acronym) depicts a rather rotund gentleman presumably imitating a “hardcore gamer” by flinging his upper-body and extremities around with embellished accord, like an excitable toddler duplicating his parents driving, with inaccurate steering of his paper plate, but with a PS4 controller. Because we can all associate with flinging our bodies around the room, grimacing at every button press, and completely ignoring the shoulder buttons. Oh and much like the individual exhibiting our mannerisms, we are also clearly too stupid to turn the controller on. Because despite he’s lustrous excitement, it’s quite apparent that the controller isn’t switched on! I know its only a moderate misinterpretation, but because of the association with gaming I somehow feel violated, and it got me thinking (sorry I really have digressed) but as much as I can placate such intrusive marketing in film and television, I really don’t think I could tolerate such wilful desolation in games. Mobile games are already fraught with vexatious irritating ads that aren’t hesitant in bombarding your phone or tablet, prompting with such sporadic regularity that they actually trick you into clicking onto them. Gaming has become an incredible resource for such exploitation, but how long will it be before it infiltrates more contemporary console gaming?

“Want a better form of protection from unwanted pregnancy? Then try….wearing your trousers!”

Recently playing The Last Of Us I discovered subversive nods and odes (or Easter Eggs) to past acquaintances which are all humorous as well as intentionally nostalgic; plush toys of Jak and Daxter, an uncharted board game and even a PS3 console lying destitute in an abandoned electrical retailer (a sad reflection of the last gen perhaps?) even a recording device had Sony etched onto to its exterior. These real life references profess these fictitious events into something startling real, as though its simply a matter of time before the structural fragility of  humanity crumbles. But is this just harmless nostalgia, or something more insidious? Though these instances are innocuous and largely benign, you would have to start asking serious questions if a series of button configurations began to appear as you engaged in a crude, rather inappropriate sex act between Ethan and Madison in Heavy Rain. “Wait Ethan, don’t you have a condom?” “Of course Madison, their ribbed for you pleasure!” Durex: If You Can’t Protect Your Kids, At Least Protect Your Sperm. It’s also worth noting games that have relished in the received refusals of commercial endorsements due to the nature of their content. GTA for instance has endured many glaring commercial exclusions, presumably because the likes of Ferrari don’t want to be associated with excessive narcotics and drive-bys. So as an indifferent retaliation to car companies rescinding their specific models, as well as American provinces and cities equally reluctant to be featured, despite the glaring similarities has provided one of the most hilarious satirical lineages in-spite of the latent residency of factual endorsement. I particularly enjoy the RockStar have openly mocked companies such as Facebook (Life Invader) and iPhone’s (i-fruit) parasitical rise to affluence. This type of deliberate belligerence and parodied character or business assassination’s are acceptable, unless of course you Lindsey Lohan, but I can’t imagine Trevor pausing briefly in the middle of flushing severed appendages down a toilet and asking “Are you covered in a random vagrants congealed blood? Then you need Vanish stain remover. Eliminates even the most resilient residual bone marrow the way I remove your teeth and digits!” Perhaps this usurping hysteria is an illusory fabrication refined by my own pessimism; but I can’t help wondering how long until subliminal messaging becomes a far more hermetic influence in gaming?

Will gaming *Go* become compromised *Buy* by advertisement in the future *Bacon*? Let me know your thoughts on this and on how finger licking good this article is. Cheers.

Gaming; It’s All About Sex?

Sex. Now if you’re a Ken doll and lack the necessary equipment or worse, married, to which your anointed marital vows has subsequently withered your once fertile genitalia into abated reflection of human twiglet, then you may not be familiar with this ritualistic diversion. Allow me to elaborate. *Clears throat* You see when one gaming character loves another games character very much, then they light some scented candles, casually distributing fragrant rose petals across their sumptuously innate bed. With the lights dimmed, the candles flickering delicate light across the bohemian décor and the drapes laced with fine embroidered velvet. The reticent ambient light emitted by the candles arouses placid aperture through the blanketing darkness and the redolent scent that derives from the wicks extraneous vapours, contracting their nostrils and reducing their inhibitions to their most intimate. With the sensuous compliment of Marvin Gaye reciting lurid notations with suave his larynx generating the palpable, audited sense of rhythmic ecstasy. Their sudden erratic cavorting sends the richly emblazoned cushions, insulated with goose feathers tumbling like iridescent rain drops to. They whisper barely audible flattery and……

Well lets not embellish the sensitivity too perversely, because we already have games that to exacerbate these mostly salubrious activities for us. Sex scenes in games has become somewhat of a sustained thematic with previously ambiguous heroes suddenly possessing indomitable propensities. In GTA, excluding the infamous “Black Coffee” mini game, the inclusion has remained justifiable and often subverted behind anecdotal insinuation. Vehicular transgressions with vagrant prostitutes implies that a sexually lurid activity is being conducted, as the cars suspension groans in synchronised unison with the ethically illiterate companion. But even persistent deviance to manipulate the camera to a more dastardly accommodating perspective, only reveals that the inhabitance of Los Santos possess such seminal fluidity and vaginally infiltrating proficiency, that even the woollen stitching of clothing is not a restricted construct. Commander Shepard is similarly afflicted by the need for sexual congress, and is capable of fornication with almost any crew member regardless of sexual orientation, species or even the probable restriction that many of his crew’s reproductive ambiguity are capable of facilitating such intimate *cough* accommodation, or adequately endowed to accord contributive insemination. Ew! I don’t even want to think about the intimate liaisons between Commander “In space nobody can hear you hump” Shepard and the appropriately named Krogan, “Grunt”. Imagine the various solvents and anal lubricants needed?!  Perhaps the dispersal of human venereal disease could be the real acumen behind the Krogan Genothage?

“To insert penis, hold L1, R1 and press left, right. Left, right. Left, right…..”

Submerged amongst the lucid maligned tones of isolation, the morally empathetic trauma sustained by emotionally stunted father Ethan Mars of Heavy Rain. Who despite the loss of a digit, the moral ambivalence of killing a drug dealer, pirouetting over electrical currents as well as the frenetic, often hopeless search for his kidnapped son, who remains incarcerated in a perpetual aquatic tomb. Ethan, in-spite of his crippling degenerative psychosis, still acquired enough time for matrimonial infidelity. But it wasn’t the levity of the of the intimacy, the abstract symbolism of removing an a love interests shirt by holding L1 and thrusting the nob…I mean stick…I mean the controller thing up, nor the unnecessary elongation of kisses that made them look like two malnourished Rottweilers chewing the same toffee. But it was the precision at which Ethan was able to liberate her breasts from her cleavage with just simple tap of a button! Seriously, it takes the average male roughly 10 minutes to loosen the bonding fastenings of a ladies brassiere, and ample dexterity to successfully achieve such an emancipating accolade. But this demeaning venture fades in comparison to the verbose exposition that culminates in some of the most farcical depictions of eroticism since Vern Troy’s sex tape (no! Don’t look it up.), courtesy of Dragon Age: Origins. With sequences consisting of negligible connotations, optimised by alluring expressions such as “We must share our blessings”, harmonic musical compendium appropriated from some 70’s pornographic feature and interactions that were rigidly contrived and so nonsensical that I half expected a plumber to announce his visitation to the proceedings (and the last thing you need is Mario indulging his sexually repressed libido).

So what has activated gaming characters to engage in nocturnal entreating? What’s the catalyst for their sudden carnally robust epiphany? To exemplify their maturity? To attract the attention of adolescent teens desperate to depict scenarios of fornication between lesbians? I don’t know. But the lack of foreplay, cuddling and belated cigarette to mark the occasion is just negligent. What kind of message are we sending. Won’t someone please think of the children!

QTE’s: A “Heavy” Burden

I have never been adversed in asserting my often hollow ramblings, advocating specific games vitality or condemning another’s deficiencies. My brash, often stoic posture has generated wide-spread condemnation from the wider gaming faculty, generally bored by my platitude sense of my own pomposity, typically provoking individuals with my well versed and fastidiously documented antagonism towards Call Of Duty and FPS’s in general. Not everything I scribe is coherent, reliant or even relevant in the increasingly expansive world of technology, but I’m nothing if not passionately vocal in my appreciation for content that is truly original, no more so than the cursory surmise of QTE’s. There are suggestions that this divisive element is a mandatory deterrent to many purists, negating the legitimacy of their implementation into an industry that clearly doesn’t resemble the habitual methods rigorously applied to traditional gaming. Rebuked as some form of audacious fascist, evading the ambivalent sterility of an industry remedial as it is static with its provocations. QTE based content offers less pervasive continuity and perhaps even the dynamic urgency that attracts the wider community, with fallacy consensus that seemingly implies these types of genres will only be appreciated by the more rigidly aloof and conceited populace, gesturing to their butlers to remove the infantile aggression of GTA so they can stroke their chins in a fashion of arrogance for their proud pomposity. But QTE’s provide more immersive intricacies than any other games.

“This seemingly elongating corridor was symbolic of the extensive, tortuous journey you undertook.”

Heavy Rain for instance offers such broad, provocative scope for intimacy that you never believed would be relevant. Admittedly despite the provocative noir style detective drama, the narrative becomes very benign, convoluted by the intertwining story arcs with clear consensus on the multiple choices that directly influence the finality rather than plugging the gaping chasms that service in its plot. But there is still a measured integrity that binds these loose-fitting sentences, meandering objectives and circumstantial evidence gathered by a highly conspicuous authority agency that compels you invest in these very humanised characters, with the literal elements befitting the distorted ambiance of an almost monochromatic composition, that seeps into the pores of the recipient community. This was a game that succeeded because of its reluctance to abide to the conventional architecture established in most games, and provide a piercing emotional conduit between simulation and our own lives with simplistic ethereal control.

“One of the toughest QTE’s I’ve ever faced. I PRESSED THE BUTTON DAMN IT!”

With the addition of simplicity comes an immersive cohesion to the story. The vast majority of the game consists of tenuous remedial exercises such as starting up a car, placing food substances in microwaves or even basic food preparation, but despite the oblique pervasiveness of the conduct it all feels decidedly critical to the progression of events. There’s a retort of satisfaction you can’t help but emit through these seemingly regulatory exercises with real cathartic resonance from these domesticated stints, somehow becoming enveloped by the sterility of ascending stairs slower than a maimed tortoise, or the strangely methodical dexterity requisite to ascend from a lateral to vertical stance? Every ponderous activity feels prodigious and it’s through these pedantic methods that elevates the intensity of volatile provocations with more riveting substance. You become versed in a characters mannerisms, observe the personality and are conscious that one displaced button press will result in a characters demise. You observe with mute reverence the platonic love Ethan has for his sons, wretch in hopeless resignation at his sons tragic death and grimace in accordance with the intense imagery constructed, as the caressing nudge of the right stick assists in mutilating Ethan’s digit.

“The sudden emotional distance between father and son is lamentable, as well as provocative.”

You’re the manipulating accomplice, employing the same apprehensions, adopting similar anxious convulsions to the depicted emancipating tribulations. Without the emotive stimulations presented that coerce your resolve, every flick of the controller is just a means to an unsatisfactory finality, but something I don’t think could be achieved with contemporary methods. The lack of control and sudden accelerated pace composes more seductive events, by allowing only accessory, instinctive guidance and this isn’t solely attributed to *sigh* “Interactive Drama’s” but other celebrated series lying adjacent to Heavy Rain’s methodical direction. In Resident Evil 4–despite successive, regurgitated endeavours–it still forced me to sit upright in rigid preparation for a QTE, acting on impulse rather premeditated reactions and frantically press the corresponding button. Perhaps this is a representation of my own ineptitude as a gamer (likely), but there is certainly something so engaging from the pragmatic subtlety of minimal contributions that make QTE’s such compelling additions to gaming. Though I’ll concede that there certainly isn’t enough room for them in Call Of Duty, they are additions I still want to see implemented in the future. Only QTE’s could transform the seemingly mundane task like dispensing a packet of crisps to a your son and shift it into a poignant reflection of the morose relations between father and son. I tip my figurative hat to you. *Holds L1, R1 and adjusts right stick 90 degrees*

Hold do you feel about the inclusion of QTE’s? Good or Bad influence? Let me know. Cheers.

Cloudy, With A Chance Of Gaming.

We’ve all been there; waking early with an odious propensity for your roused physicality and a yawn of humility, shaking your diaphragm furtively as you stretch your arms aloft tempered by your appendages lack of elasticity and by the lethargy of the previous nights longevity casting a forlorn, precarious sense of consciousness, you peer incredulously through the blinds, maintaining distant vigilance from the darkened, melancholic environment bathing the exterior with enveloping blackness and the accompanying downpour. Your immediate mannerisms are ones of quite resignation to the elements; slumped posture, dejected sigh of dissatisfaction and sudden realisation of your forced isolation from any external activities….before a broad, curled smile distinguishes your features in cathartic joviality! Why would the ambient deterioration be a prosperous I hear you mutter with contemptuous paucity? Because with persistent downpours and visibly corrosive environment persist with intolerable impunity, the resulting coercion to nomadic seclusion means that the severity of the climates deterioration allows for more fortuitous provocations, namely the tangible coveting of my PS3.

“This is how the rain should be enjoyed.”

I’m not especially adversed to the nurturing, though limited dispersal of increased ambient temperatures afforded by the suns arresting spherical presence, because believe me frequenting an island perennially impoverished by astronomical deficit of solar activity, a population suffering from pronounced vitamin D deficiency and where draughts are as common as Putin demonstrating jovial satire, and I enjoy revelling in prosperity of environmental continuity. But meteorologists predicting increased saturation and accentuating gusts mitigating any extraneous activities into entropy doesn’t compel me to mediate my time between gaming and incontinent, curricular tasks. There’s a redemptive duality that escorts the specified designations, are halted by the degenerative effects of the weather, forcing into your repressive dwellings for ample, hedonistic gaming. Now I’ll concede that this is hardly a constructive or ambitious musings and that desiring such protracted weather conditions for the sake of extended renditions of gaming represents a segregated callousness for the rest of the afflicted community. I’ll also accept that I would much prefer to be wakened by the suns celestial rays piercing through the curtains, gazing wistfully at a beautiful sapphire vista, complimented by interspersed clouds that cover small portions of oceanic canopy glowing brightly above, their tenuous coverage symbolic of a proposed affluence with its methodical mobility the only suggestion of which direction the earth’s momentum is guiding us, and conveying a sense of prevailing equality, stabilised humanity, and prosperous serenity.

The promiscuous allurement of atmospheric sustenance is so emphatically vacant that when the sun does decide to assert its brazen visage, I lap it up like a dog licks up a discarded ice cream. But often allowing weathers preventative immunity to prevent me from battling senior citizens from their fascist courtship of reduced sheep loins at the supermarket, queuing extensively at the customer service desk over literal spilt milk or having your shins repeatedly run over by ignorant, carriage pushing parents or being repeatedly kicked by their adolescent spawns, then let the futility of rains invasive hostility continue.

Do you take advantage of poor weather conditions to game? edifice

Has This Been The Best Generation Of Gaming?

This generation has experienced quite a fluid advancement, one composed of graphical fidelity, controversial directives and competent attempt at maintaining the quality of substance, more acute to the variant degrees of fluctuating maturity of its recipients, while still inducting new, juvenile audience. This Generation has witnessed franchises adapt and dominate, comparable to Call Of Duty, and witnessed previously blossoming series falter under the shifting scope of transition (Resident Evil). But despite all the technical flourishes amongst the superfluous hesitancy and often embedded controversy, has been the catalyst for the most successful tenure of consoles? There’s certainly been a greater definition and transparency on economic stability, and an inverted reluctance to accommodate prejudicial exposure, with the collapse of economic balance, with the chronicled demise of the economy almost an incidental coincidence to the industries prerogatives, who are arguably concentrating specified directories on a succession of profitable, popular titles. Generating acclaim for one conceptually exclusive title, and of course the accompanying accolades by simply maintaining its success by receding into conceptual deficit of bereft ideology that seldom covets further ingenuity, with little appraisal to advanced revising of its mechanics. Just a simple application that maintains idle, annual profits.

“Resident Evil: Firing Blanks. The upcoming sequel”

When initially evaluating the still preceding generation of consoles I deduced few, significant bounds of cohesive progression, with only composite strokes of originality, with no broad innovations that bestowed this genesis with consummate progression, by simply limiting its directives with a consistent emphasis on cosmetic superiority. But a sharp, pensive reflection led me to reconsider these predisposed assumptions, as I began to realise the sheer volume of conceptually imaginative–and perhaps more significantly–the pertinence of new, original content. Arkham Asylum, Heavy Rain, Little Big Planet, Journey, Uncharted, Assassins Creed, Mass Effect, The Last Of Us, and many others besides, all of which are conducive additions to the prolonged longevity of consoles, despite the scarcity of activity of the overseers of the preceding era; with Resident Evil’s documented stagnation visibly clear and RockStar presumably omitting a quantitative lack of GTA titles, that promiscuously flirted with controversy. Both were the conventions of success on the previous consoles, accentuating their dominance against the increasing impoverished competitors, but have failed to capitalise similar prosperity on this formation.

“Batman; angry, disturbed and partial to Jaffa Cakes”.

Though there has been a dramatic emphasis awkwardly placed upon peripherals that incite consistent mobility and hand gestures to manoeuvre characters (not derogatory gestures) in an attempt to incorporate further energetic principality to gaming, with various degrees of success, as well as questionable directives in regards to three-dimensional technology. It’s also been an age where of digital critics are capable of distributing expressive analysis to extensive affiliates via social connectivity, that builds enthusiasm for specified games, propensity to express your concern for a games direction, or in reality producing all of the perpetual solidarity of a middle eastern separatist. The versatility of mobile gaming and its growing connectivity to consoles, the escalating consortium of female gamers and the expanding on-line community have all had an influence. But its the quantitative content that has truly defined this generation, and is still its most profitable equity. It’s gaming’s most viable, versatile, complicit commodity, whilst still maintaining its basic purity and has been disposed with the embellishment of dramatic, captivating narratives, complimented by immersive game-play has been its most evanescent quality. Has this been the most successfully progressive era? Well its a rationalised interpretation based of relative perception of its participating stick twiddlers, but for me despite its seemingly inanimate sterility, I believe that this gen has far exceeded its predecessors. But please, no more gaming influenced by movement. I’m just too lazy.

Has this been the best generation for gaming? Or has it lacked innovation? Let me know what you guys think. Cheers.