11/30 the Resident evil pad

So this is my final blog...Ryan has been making fun of me all night because apparently I have not improved my gaming skills since I started playing over a month ago. I find it really hard to aim, walk, shoot. Heck I find it really hard to do just about anything. I knew I was bad at videogames when I started this, but I decided to sit back and watch Ryan play for most of today's session. She's kind of the expert when it comes to videogames having played Shrek almost everyday for a year...I would compare our relationship of expert and apprentice to the one we saw in existenz. I am like jude law and Ryan is like the woman who invented the alternate reality game. Today we did a lot of messing around. For example, we went to a saved session in our game from a previous owner and we found ourselved (as Leon) with a new friend...a young girl! Knowing that the premise of the game was to rescue a young girl, we assumed that she is this said girl. Our messing around reminds me of the scene in Eternal Sunshine when kirsten dunst and mark ruffalo are dancing on the bed and messing around. The result, was Jim Carrey getting lost in his own memory. We notices that this girl was following us around wherever we went. so... Ryan and I decided it would be a good idea to try and kill this girl. We went down the line using all of our weapons. Each time we killed her, the screen said "mission failed." This was because the object of the game is to get this girl. With all that being said, this point in the game felt quite unrealistic compared to the rest of it. In the past, I said how scared I was. I didn't feel like I was in control of the game. At this level, I was in complete control and the fact that this girl was always following me didn't make the game realistic. She had no human like qualities and the roles of the two players seemed quite sexist. I like how the roles in Existenz were reversed. The woman was in control and was the pioneer of a major video game. That is how I felt. Like the game was mine and I could manipulate it however I wanted to. There were no zombies in this level and therefore no obstacles. I was also like all the other manipulators we have seen: Teddy, the people in Dark City, Patrick in Eternal Sunshine... etc. At the end, I still suck at video games and will stick to board games in the future.

11/27 @ the pad

I didn't realize it before, but today I thought up a comparison between MOOville and Resident Evil four. Like a player in Resident evil four, a person traveling through MOOville will realize a theme of the unknown. As you are going thru the ville, you will not know what is coming out at you or where you are heading in this space. As you are  Leon and travel thru the different settings, you do not know where you will be going next or what lies beyond every hill and obstacle. The zombies seem to come out of nowhere just like the robots in MOOville. The computer in MOOville likes to tell you descriptions of objects and your surroundings. The game also tells you what to expect and describes your current state in achieving your goal. If you click A for "check"in RE4 you will find out about your situation. If you type "look" in MOOville, you will get a description of your surroundings. In MOOville, you could travel through a very boring room and have nothing happen to you and in RE4, you can walk or run a while without having any interruptions. You can take things from rooms in MOOville and in RE4 you can take things from zombies after you kill them. It seems like I can tie Resident Evil four into many things we learned in this class. All the themes overlap in some fashion. The zombies are a lot like robots. The first few you meet all look basically the same, but are wearing different clothes and accessories. As you get more into the game, they start to change. It is like MOOville. When you first start out with a robot, it is a basic robot, but you can add to it and make it very complex. As RE4 continues, the zombies come in all shapes and sizes. Some can be mistaken for humans because they look so innocent and keep to themselves. This was one aspect that made the game increasingly hard. I was wasting ammo on things when I was not sure if they were bad or not.

11/20 Resident Evil is boring me...

I have to start this blog by saying that this game is way to hard for me and I feel like I keep getting stuck in the same places. I am so frustrated! Knowing this game is an alternate form of reality, you'd think it would be hard to die, but death works in mysterious ways in this game. At the beginning, I was only getting attacked by gunfire and I would die after getting shot about three times depending on where my wound was. As the game continues, I am encountering a variety of different weapons. I was killed once by a shield! I thought for sure I could get up from the blow, but apparently I was wrong. . It is also pretty cool that when I kill a zombie, it disentigrates into thin air. I wouldn't expect that to happen. At first it looks like a human death, but then it switches to zombie death after about 10 seconds of getting the final shot. The game strays from reality when the Leon talks. He doesn't speak very often, but when he does, he says the same thing. each time he kills a zombie he says, "god damn scumbags." It is interesting because he doesn't talk to anyone but himself. It is like the points in memento where Lenny is narrating but he appears to be talking to himself. I found another similarity to hypertext fiction...the game says "There is no time for resting" when leon is sitting. This really reminded me of when you do the wrong thing in a hypertext fiction game and it tells you that you don't want to do this thing. I find it quite annoying actually because maybe I do want to do this...but no, apparently there is no time for resting..what the heck. why not?

11/19 @ the Res Evil 4 pad...

I think it is interesting that the makers of the game chose a typewriter as the object to be the signal for saving the game up to this point. It is rather uncanny because you would not expect to see a typewriter in these settings, but lo and behold there is one there for you to interact with. I guess it is because you can type on a typewriter and have a hard copy of whatever you are writing. Another thing you encounter when walking through this game is doors. There are constant doors stopping you from reaching you destination. It is like the movie labyrinth. At one point  in the game, the screen actually has similar coloring and landscaping from a scene in the labyrinth. To top it off, I have to constantly turn around because the door stops me from getting closer to my goal.  Next thing I know, there is a zombie behind me with their beady red eyes and I die. Then I have to start over from the beginning. It is strange how the game can really make you feel so scared. I suppose the combination of the graphics, music, and themes seem so realistic that you forget it is "just a game". Freud describes the Uncanny as something frightening and this game does a good job at that. The bad guys are a kind of Sandman-like figure. I could see they gouging my eyes out at any moment.

The screen works like intertextural fiction. When you make a move that signals something in the game something in the screen pops up like "take" or "open" or "climb" or "jump". It reminds me of how making a wrong movie in intertextuality can signal clues that the game gives to you. The text itself is also very rudimentary like many games we have played. You say things like "turn on" or "take". This game also has an inventory like so many games we have played and mooville. The difference here is that the inventory consists of mostly ammunition.

11/19 Ryan's place

So I've figured out that it is ridiculously easy to die in this game. I am apparently the worse video game player of all time because I keep dying so quickly. It is really hard to aim my gun or my knife. For some reason it feels very unnatural to aim up or down. Both me and Ryan seem to want to aim in opposite directions. I never really thought about it, but when you die, something worth noting happens. First you fall to the ground, which is very realistic, then the screen reads "You are dead" in red, blood-like writing. The controller also shakes when you die which is an interesting feature that catches your attention immediately. It reminds me of Run Lola Run and how the screen would change in each of the three segments. The way she ran in the movie is also very similar to the way Leon runs in the game. I also think it is interesting that the name of the character I am playing as is "Leon". It is very similar to the main character of Leonard in Memento. I doubt that there is any connection there, but I can obviously come up with one.  Well, Lenny searches during all of memento for the answer to his wife's murder and Leon searches all the game for a girl he is trying to rescue. There. Apparently, I did a good thing which was to kill Krouser -- I have just been shooting away and not even paying any attention to what I am killing. According to the game, it was quite the accomplishment to get rid of him. It is also interesting that you can continue the game once you have died. It's as if I am immortal and have countless amounts of lives. I like the reference to reality as well.. when you die and come back to life you see a white light. Like how everyone says you see a white light when you die.