Arkham Asylum/City : A.K.A. What Is Going On With Those Hips

The unthinkable has happened.  My blog has gone zombie and is coming back to life (or something like it).  Temporarily, at the very least, but still alive and...crawling.  Or something.

So I just finished Arkham City- and yes, I am well aware that I am way behind on my video games, but studying for the MCAT and taking nasty classes rather puts a damper on video game time.  Arkham City was an entertaining game, complete with a surprise ending (albeit a depressing one), and I definitely enjoyed playing it.  But I'm afraid the time has come to pick some nits with both this game and its predecessor.

Now let me preface this by saying that I have been playing video games since I was seven, and I am well acquainted with the role women usually fill in video games.  Granted, when I was seven, I didn't quite see to Lara Croft's torpedo breasts and what they represented the same way that I see them now, but that didn't stop me from playing Tomb Raider: Anniversary for nostalgia reasons.

Man, I thought those were the best graphics ever in 1996...

I'm not trying to pick a fight or start waxing poetic about feminism.  I mean, I get it.  Most men like breasts.  Some women like breasts.  I understand that breasts are an important marketing tool in an industry where the majority of consumers are men.  And that's fine.  But there is a point beyond which the character design just becomes laughably absurd. Case(s) in point: Arkham City and Arkham Asylum.   

So let's take Harley Quinn for starters.  The first time she appears in the Batman universe is in Batman: the Animated Series in 1992.  As a "harlequin" (oh ho, DC, you've just got me in stitches), her costume is reminiscent of a jester's outfit.  Completely form fitting, but also completely covered from head to toe.

They did keep the voice actor and the thick Brooklyn accent though, I will give them that.

And then she shows up in Arkham Asylum in this.  I can't possibly imagine what was going on in the mind of the costume designer... Oh, wait. Yes I can.  

NEED MOAR PROPORTIONS NOT OFTEN SEEN OUTSIDE OF PORN 

There was a slight costume adjustment in her role reprisal in Arkham City.  And while I don't like her costume by any means, it still looks a far sight better than that nurse mess from Arkham Asylum.

What?  At least I've got pants this time around.

But this is nothing new to the video game industry.  It's just one of the more recent egregious examples that I could have chosen to use, although probably one of the worst in recent memory.  And of course I'm not the first to notice it - the minute the game came out it was getting flak for sexism left and right (and rightly so).  Yet this isn't even the part of the game that is bothering me the most.  What is really disturbing is how these female characters walk.  Just take a look at this video of catwoman walking away from the camera.  Go on.  You know you want to.

Look at that hip motion.  Now for us women (most of us, anyway), we look at this and cringe.  Do you have any idea how much it hurts to walk like that?  That hip movement is not natural by any stretch of the imagination.  In fact, it looks more like a sign of severe hip dysplasia than anything else.  Now it's true that women tend to sway their hips more than men, partially due to a wider pelvic bone and the valgus position of women's knees.  But this is just absurd.  I just tried walking like this in the mirror. SEVERE PAIN ENSUED.

And the thing is, as graphics get better, this sort of thing is only going to get worse.  We've already gotten to the point of pseudo-realistic breast-bouncing physics, and while I can't imagine how many hours of programming were put into perfecting the movement of the female breast in motion (nor do I necessarily want to), I can safely assume that it was a lot.  

I have no delusions that the video game industry is going to drastically change the way that women are portrayed any time soon.  But sometimes, it would be nice to be able to play a game without being so disturbed by the hip motion of the female characters that I am compelled to rant about it.  

~Kathryn

Limbo: More Purgatory, Less Dancing

Limbo is an independent, single-player puzzle-platformer game available in the Xbox Live Arcade. This is a bit like saying Silent Hill 2 is a wacky Japanese puzzle-adventure game. Yes, I suppose it is - the kind that makes you want to huddle in the corner of your basement in a veritable prison of soul-crushing despair while your character is repeatedly forced into increasingly disturbing situations he has no control over.

In Limbo, you are a little boy in an artistically stylized black and white world where absolutely everything is trying to kill you. Unless you read the backstory, you have no idea who you are or where you are going, only that you must keep moving forward.

The atmosphere in the beginning of the game is fantastically eerie, diffuse with a kind of paralyzing fear that makes you want to drop the controller and curl up in a ball as your character is impaled by a giant spider leg for the eighth time in as many seconds.

This spider will haunt your nightmares.

For a game that is completely devoid of color, the violence is surprisingly graphic.

Unfortunately, the more unnerving atmospheric aspects of the game decline as you progress, as the creepy forest is replaced by some sort of urban wasteland and the enemies are replaced by more and more puzzles. Puzzles designed to kill you, no doubt, but gone are the spider legs crawling slowly out of the sides of the screen, just waiting for you to come too close. The game is short, certainly, but I don't think that is it's greatest failing - rather, the loss of atmosphere around halfway through the game really ruins it for me.

The ending is abrupt, but in that sense, it fits well with the beginning. One can only suppose that the girl you see at the end is burying your body, and you have been dead the entire game. Unsurprising, I suppose, for a game called Limbo, but I thought it was a nice touch. Yet I got the distinct feeling that the developers were either getting bored or lazy during the last half of the game - parts of it feel like they are needlessly trying to extend it through extensively complicated puzzles. At the point the anti-gravity fields started to show up, it just seemed like they were grasping at straws. Beautiful art style aside, the last half of the game didn't really have enough substance to keep me riveted to the screen, nor was it worth the full 1200 Microsoft Points, which is a shame - the first two hours were fantastic.

And now for something completely different.

God of War III: Slaughtering the entirety of the Greek Pantheon one unfortunate deity at a time

When you're in the mood for visceral, unadulterated carnage, few game series do it better than God of War. And I am, more often than not, in the mood for visceral, unadulterated carnage.

Where else can you gouge out Poseidon's eyes with your thumbs? Butcher innocent bystanders for extra health? Snap Hermes' legs off to steal his shoes? Or beat the sun god Helios to a bloody pulp, rip off his head with your bare hands, and then USE HIS SEVERED HEAD AS A FUCKING FLASHLIGHT. This is the kind of game that forces you to kick puppies to continue the storyline. Don't tell me that isn't therapeutic.

Alas, poor Yorick

The plot of the series, such as it is, revolves around Kratos, a general in the Greek army who is well-renowned for being the very best at beating the shit out of everything. After he pledges his servitude to Ares to keep from being killed at the hands of some roving barbarian, he accidentally kills his wife and child in one of his many murdering rampages. Instead of dealing with this traumatic event by resolving to become a better person and abandoning his life of violence, Kratos immediately sets out to slaughter everyone and everything that gets in his way from that point onward. This includes and is not limited to: minotaurs, gorgons, centaurs, chimeras, satyrs, harpies, sirens, Titans, and most of the notable Greek gods and heroes. After finally killing Ares and becoming the God of War, he decides that the other gods are being mean to him, and rather than leave well enough alone, he goes on a god-killing spree which will only end when Zeus is pushing up the Greek equivalent of daisies.

I felt that the ending of the series was a bit disappointing, but I guess there really isn't anywhere else to go once you've killed off almost everyone on Earth and made the world completely uninhabitable through the power of hatred and wanton destruction. At least Kratos gives out one last "fuck you" to Athena before he bites the dust.

I do wonder what happened to Aphrodite, though, since she's the only deity Kratos runs into that he doesn't kill outright. Granted, after what Kratos does to the world, it's not like there's really anyone left for her to bone, but still.

summer daze

Yes, this is supposed to be a blog about video games. But alas, my penchant for procrastination has gotten the better of me. In my defense, my summer job is taking up the vast majority of my time. What is that job, you might ask? Working retail? Filing papers? Feeding the homeless?

None of the above. Instead, I'm spending this summer swabbing monkey vaginas. Every day I dress in full PPE (personal protective equipment), complete with face mask, hairnet, face shield, gown, shoe covers, and two pairs of gloves. Just in case that isn't hot enough when the weather is in the mid-nineties, the monkey houses are kept at a balmy 80 degrees with 70 percent humidity. And then I stare at monkey vaginas for hours. There really aren't words to describe how incredibly strange this job is. And to top it all off, macaques carry a strain of the herpes virus that is 80% fatal in humans, so I also get to worry about dying a lot. So forgive me if I have other things to think about besides bashing the newest installment of Final Fantasy.

Filthy, filthy herpes monkey.

And so it begins.

So I've decided to try out something new, see if the blogosphere is ready for me. Posts will probably consist of musings on video games (and maybe occasionally even life). So here goes...something, anyway.