Nalabox Dislikes: Alan Wake

But I enjoyed his nightmares.  

There are already a few reviews of this game on the internet so I won’t really be adding any new sauce to this well grilled game. Excellent story largely let down by gameplay.

Want to know what I shouted the most while playing this game?

“Alan man just fucking *…*”
*shoot
*dodge
*run
*JUMP
*ANYTHING!!!!
*HURNGHH!

Created by Me with imgflip.com

I felt compelled to compare Alan with my interpretation of the Lara-split syndrome (totally a thing I just made up) apart from where as wor lovely Gameplay Lara is the bidness it seems Alan Wake suffers from the reverse…. Cutscene Alan is at least slightly clued up about his situation but Gameplay Alan is just… lifeless. He’s a monotonous drone that compelled me to think he deserved his fate to be honest. Also there was no mention in the games features that Gameplay Alan would be vulnerable to the Daniel-from Amnesia-style freaking out and dodging TOWARDS the thing that scared him. GAME. UGH.  Alas, Cutscene Alan, I wanted him to reach the end, find his love and escape the evil that consumed him. 

A True Bro.
Pic Cred: Alan Wake Faceybook Page

Barry.


Barry was mint. I felt there wasn’t enough about him in the first game and I’m glad you got a chance for some closure in American Nightmare, for him and some of the other characters. In fact, the only character I wasn’t very interested in was Alan himself. He was a bit of a dick to everyone around him, even more so in American Nightmare: making all those choices to affect the lives of those people and not really giving it a second thought whether they would continue to exist or not. Emma Sloan for example. He fails to save her more than once and she’s forced to remember a horrific tragedy over and over again. We only come into that reality after he’s already faced Mr Scratch so how many times has it really been? Mr Scratch has already caused trouble for some period of time to have affected reality to the point it made it possible for Alan to break through in the first place.

Emma Sloan. This is how I felt when seeing Alan too hun
Pic Cred

I get these games were meant to make you feel his desperation, the loneliness, being self-alienated and possibly what it’s like to know the truth of something but no one believes you. They think you’re crazy.  It attempted that anyway. I’d played “The Cat Lady” shortly before the Alan Wake games and I think that raised the bar for me in regards to the emotional depth of a character and feeling what they feel. Damn that was a good game. You know I didn’t realise how much it had disturbed me until a few weeks ago when I was telling a friend to play it. *Shivers* [I will replay it and share what I mean with you in the near future]

I tell ye what though, Gameplay Alan and Cutscene Lara deserve each other. Stick ‘em in a boat and ship them off to Diver’s Isle and fecking leave them there to jump over the logs that are capable of inflicting mysterious psychological damage and they can sit there and cry about it.   

Gurges

­I get Gurges. 

Game urges. 

I get inclination to play games that I've played and completed before. Nothing really remarkable about that right? 

However, I've noticed that I want to play the same games around the same time I did the year before. Recently, it's been Mass Effect 3. But you know you can't just play 3, you have to go through them all to get to 3. 

Thanks to a little social media app thingy it tells me I had the same desire to indulge myself with Femshep the same time the year before and the year before that. Is there anything to this? Does anyone else go through the desire to play games the same time of year? I wonder if it's because we invested so much time in a new game when it was fresh and glorious our brains remember "hey you felt really good this time last year, thanks to that new gaming experience, maybe you should play it again so we get that same rush again". 

Shuggah! /Pic Creds

I’m not a Scientist nor am I very technical so forgive me for any mistakes I may make in these next few sections. Most of this was not common knowledge to me before I started writing.

I decided to look in to why this may be the case and wondered if it’s something to do with how your body responds to stimuli from its environment, like in Seasonal Affective Disorder, and how your brain records that experience. There is such a phrase as ‘Body Chemistry Memory’ or 'Cellular Memory' which is somewhat on the Skepticism list and I feel it doesn't quite capture what I am trying to define/answer. Chemical reactions don’t “remember” how to react, they just respond depending upon the factors involved. When those same conditions are met each time the response would be the same right?

 In psychology we are taught that through experience we develop schema, a kind of framework in which we use each time we encounter that situation. (Enter a Library= must be silent. Wait for green man to cross the road otherwise you’ll die etc). That is what is stored in our brain, so, now bare with me here, when our bodies react to our environment they would produce a physiological and psychological response simultaneously that the brain retains, yes? So when those conditions occur again our brain recalls that information and gives the same response “oh hey the last time this happened we responded like this so that means we have to respond in the same way” now it does this regardless whether we responded to the experience in a positive or negative way. I’d imagine similar to SAD when the body is overwhelmed by certain environmental conditions that it doesn't produce the appropriate response. 

How does this relate to games? Haad on man, I’m getting there!

KA-ME-HA-ME-CONTRA! /Pic Creds

Countless studies have been conducted on the effects of video games on behaviour but I only found a few actually relating to brain chemistry. Mostly, researchers have focused upon negative stimuli presented by games, i.e violence and how that affects the person afterwards. In one study, that has been cited in various places, but the original source from a Japanese news website eludes me, monitored the Beta waves of folks who don’t play videogames (they exist!) and people who play them an awful lot (like me and you). Beta waves indicate frontal lobe activity which is responsible for emotions and creativity. Seems us gamers have zero beta waves and no signs of our brains in a resting mode while we are playing games and this doesn't change or revert to a “normal” level after the game is switched off. The original researcher suggested this is the reason people who play videogames for long periods of time are prone to personality and anti-social behaviour. Another writer talking about this study mentioned the possibility that the brain perceives the games as real hence the behavioural changes and the brain not being in a “rested” mode so playing games to relax is simply not the case where our brains are concerned! The latter I agree with, however the original study, and many others like it, didn't measure the participants’ predisposition to anti-social behaviour or anxiety or even to violent behaviour. They would have had to monitor those who never played videogames and ask them to gradually increase the hours of game time and record brainwaves to really say if it was the game that contributed to the behavioural changes.

SCIENCE! /Pic Creds

Most videogame research is based around the effects of violence and mature content in games and how that possibly contributes to a person being violent themselves. We all know by now that ALL media exposes us to these same things every day. Videogames are blamed for desensitising people to the violence of war and criminal acts but we are seeing more and more of these images being broadcast by the news and in some cases glorified by other media. They used to block out images of dead children and bloody missing limbs you know. They don’t now. That shit sells. It’s constantly happening around the world and we are shown these images all the time it’s almost becoming the norm.

I did find a gem of an article (while finding the above pictures so it's the same link) about the BENEFITS of gaming to help treat psychological disorders as our brains are “trained” to grow bigger during play. Best quote:-


“These brain regions are involved in functions such as spatial navigation, memory formation, strategic planning and fine motor skills of the hands. Increasingly, the level of connectivity between brain areas is being linked to higher intelligence and consciousness.”- Christopher Bergland 2013

You guys and read more here and the source is here (journal link) if you have access to the journal. I don’t so I’m a little disappointed I can’t read the full thing.

What I can’t seem to find is anything relating to videogames and Happy emotional responses. I suppose because that subject is not in vogue and parents and officials want something to blame for anti-social and pathological teenagers.

Clicky for Snippet on one such study/ Pic Creds same source.

If our brains perceive the game as a real experience and increases fear, anxiety and paranoia when playing violent/war/horror/shooters that continues to last after the game has been switched off then surely it would mean that games that make you feel happy/elated/inspired/successful should also continue to last after the game is switched off?

Why would the brain, if it perceives the game as a real experience, want to experience it again? Especially since most games are a creator driven narrative that the player can’t change the outcome. Even the desire to play those violent war/shooter games constantly, why would the brain want to experience what is essentially a traumatic experience?

Apart from when this happened. Sorry Moira/ Pic Creds: Me!

Where does the desire to play the game again possibly come from? A basic response to seasonal associations? Not necessarily to do with the seasons in the weather sense, but our psychological associations to a period of time in our lives. Again, studies showing the negatives and connections to Seasonal Disorders (Winter and Suicide for example clicky) but not much on positive seasonal associations. Maybe because it’s not much of a social phenomenon to warrant investigation?

Buy ALL THE THINGS!!! /Pic Creds

Steam Summer Sales, Big Summer releases, Publisher and Dev conventions, Big Christmas releases, highly anticipated titles, teaser Downloadable Content, Half-Life 3?! To us gamers, these are positive seasonal associations. That rush of excitement to play a new release after waiting so long (I’m looking at you Mass Effect 3), that level of elation continues as you play the game which doesn't dissipate after you switch it off. Your brain takes that experience, if we assume it perceived the game as real, and produces a physiological and psychological response. Remember that from earlier? I said that a while back… So even though the game came out a few years ago my body and brain retain that experience and want to repeat it.        

The answer to this, I think, it is because our brains are addicted to their own juices.

Jooocie/ Gif creds

This concept is not new in relation to videogames. The prime framework of gaming addiction theory is the role of endorphin's in gamers. I know too well the consequences of that fine line of enjoyment leading to consumption. When getting to that next level is the briefest euphoria and it all but consumes you like quicksand and you’ll spend money and time to keep your head up just to feel that rush again, but it gets fainter and fainter each time. Until it consumes your life or even takes your life, in extreme cases.

I often liken it to a hollow orgasm. Your 4^th never quite feels like your first, huh? Even for guys I’d imagine it feels similar. That’s the only metaphor I can think of to describe what it’s like, well for me anyway. 

I've tried to find research that wasn't related to the after effects or negativity that surrounds this topic but it seems not many have picked up on this fact that the target groups in these studies are addicted to the chemical produced by the brain as a result of playing instead they focus/blame the game itself. As I said earlier it’s still “in vogue” to use videogames as the scapegoat to explain away behavioural problems in young people. 

It seems fellow gamers and bloggers know what I’m talking about all too well as they have quoted the same guy (clicky) but the academics who study us just don’t want to broach the subject, or maybe they've tried to and their work has been “held back” by the publishers? Or I just can’t find it?

Idunnolol /Pic Creds

I have explored some answers to my questions but I’m still not fulfilled.

I guess some things I've found can explain why I play games repeatedly but not the same game especially where I cannot change the outcome of the narrative or explain why I feel the urge to play it around the same time of year?

I have discovered that it’s not only Endorphin we’re addicted to but a few of its friends too:-

The Happy Chemicals join your party!

Dopamine, the guy who makes you want that next level, the Warrior,

Serotonin, the guy who makes the imagined real and the real imagined, the Mage,

Oxytocin, the guy who makes you emotionally invested, Priest,

And lest we forget;

Endorphin, the guy who makes you euphoric and numb, the Bard.

end. /Pic Creds

Nalabox In Complicated Relationship with: Tomb Raider (2013)

Bet y'all thought I'd say I hate it right? Well, I do.

And I sort of don't.

Me and Lara have had such a turbulent partnership from the outset even before I started to truly play the game. She was to be my first YouTube video upload! But it was not meant to be. My PC, the program I was using and my internet connection was against us from the start. But first impressions aren't always to be taken as they are. You must always give people the benefit of the doubt. I'm nice like that. I played the intro of this game repeatedly for 2 weeks until I got it to work. I was already sick of that damn beach, but I wasn't going to let it stop gaining any positive experience of the game, that was just outside factors preventing us from being together.

One of my many distractions. Val @ 3months Old.

I've never played a Tomb Raider game before and thought this would be a good place to start chronologically. Sense made?  

You all saw my moments of joy and rapid escalation into rage at certain points. We all know this game is broken, those gods damn quick-time-only-work-within-certain-pixels-events were a joke. That creepy way she would appear on puppet strings would pull me out of the immersion that we were experiencing that island together. Was that the intention of the game makers? To make us feel like, we are not only witnessing the transformation into the Lara that you all know and love, but that we are experiencing it alongside with her or we are her? I have no idea. Oh boy did I experience that place. It was a very emotionally involving game but not for the game play but the bloody frustration just getting past those glitchy-as-fuck-events. Again, that's not the game really is it? that's the design of the thing messing with me, yes it's a factor as part of any review but it still didn't deter me from playing the game. You guys know I've uninstalled games quicker for a lot less shit happening. It also wasn't realistic for a Survival game either as discussed in a previous blog post clicky here clicky. Yet I still wanted to play it.

I love Lara but I can't stand Lara.

There is a duality to this game. There are in fact two Lara Croft's.

Gameplay Lara and Cut-scene Lara.

If you focus on only one of them you in fact are playing a completely different game. You are presented with a completely different character. It all starts after Cut-scene Lara kills that nameless shouty man. That rapey man. That's the moment when Lara's whole psychology separates to a one where she takes that experience and internalises it and a one where she takes that experience and intensifies it. 

Gameplay Lara is competent and adaptive to her environment. She, or maybe it was me driving the character, is capable of smart survival.The only thing that holds her back is the progress of skills that get unlocked during the game, which I found to be too late to when you would actually need them. Melee weapon. First thing any character in any game is capable of wielding. She had the climbing pick attached to her leg the entire game but couldn't use it to defend herself, she could only dodge but not actually puncture anyone with it or climb certain walls until after certain events that Cut-Scene Lara had to overcome. But she was seemingly perfectly proficient in such skills BEFORE Cut-scene Lara had to learn it. This Lara's character development has been the most engaging and the most complete, in my own honest opinion, that would lead to the persona of the previous games' Lara Croft.

Cut-scene Lara is the portrayal of Lara that upset a lot of people, not only the fans of the previous games but also those who get upset about the portrayal of women in videogames. This Lara is a frilly dress short of the princess in the castle but she's no longer the physically unrealistic woman. I cannot compare this Lara to either of those things as I don't have experience with the previous games and I only learned of the feminist outrage after I played the game for a few hours. We were told this would be a different Lara and that they made her more gritty and believable but this Lara, again in my honest opinion, hasn't developed enough, well she has. but not anywhere near the persona of the Lara Croft's that came before her. She's the alternative reality Lara, who didn't really save herself in the end, I feel like *I* was the one to save her. Our experience of that island was not a shared one, but a one in which I had to drag her skinny little ass up that damn mountain so Gameplay Lara could take care of bidness. 

I did feel like Cut-scene Lara was the person and Gameplay Lara was the split personality. You'd think it would be the other way around apart from as you get near the end of the game some aspects of Gameplay Lara have finally been accepted by Cut-scene Lara and that's when we see actual character development on her part. You can't repress parts of yourself that only causes internal conflict so once she became self aware, competent and we finally had enough XP to buy the skills we should have had hours ago, that Gameplay Lara was clearly capable of, she was no longer a burden for me to trudge along with just to finish the game but the strong independent stereotype-shoving woman they promised us!

Or did she just become the "man" and saved her own Princess? As pointed out here

We've all had a game like that. You go past caring and blank out the glitches and the plot holes and the impossible gameplay just to finish the damn thing and never play it again.

Well I did finish it. I actually finished it months after I was still bringing out videos for it. My PC messed up and I had to play through it AGAIN to catch up to where the videos left off (I lost my footage). Slightly cheaty of me, but that rage and frustration for the River sequence and Mountain village buildings falling down was all real. Extra real because I knew I had to do it again, and again because I'd have to do them again if I wanted to bring out more vids. After my last vid "Glasgae Kiss" an update meant I lost that particular save for some reason and I nearly lost my reason. So I finished the game proper, off camera as it were. It's kinda killed my desire to post videos. Hence the hiatus. You can't enjoy doing the YouTube thing if you don't enjoy the game you're playing. I couldn't face that damn beach again.

I don't know what really to say about those views who say She's a worse portrayal of women in videogames, than her predecessors, because it's a pretty dire situation she's in and yes the element of the princess was there but who could say they would have done any better if put in that same situation? Did she turn into a man as most of the strong male characters were killed off or were bad guys? I don't think saying that is accurate really. She didn't "become the man of the story" as each Gender is capable of expressing characteristics of masculinity and femininity, you don't just switch from one to the other but rather maintain a balance. (society likes to tell you otherwise but that's a whole different debate). In some situations it's more applicable to assume one of those roles in order to respond to it. Maybe the game makers intention was to present a Lara that could balance these aspects but forced us to watch her struggle to get to that point. We all experience every emotion. Regardless of what sex you are. 

Lara, in the end, was just a human being that had a lot of bad shit happen to her and she had to respond to it or die. 

I don't think I would have made it past that first guy in the cave on that damn beach.

Funthrough! Tomb Raider Part Two!

Ha! Today I panic and argue with Lara in the Coastal Forest! 

Like I would have a clue really? About survival after a shipwreck or even being left on my own in the woods for a night. I should take some pointers from Ingo since he's had some training on the matter so I decided to Interview him:

Me: Okay so Ms Croft and I have washed up ashore on an island off the coast of Japan somewhere so that should give you a clue as to the environment, humidity etc. She's scruffy, wet, cold, been clocked in the head, tied up, fell about 50ft and landed on a bone shard which dug into her side, she's bleeding and exhausted. Me? I'm like her imaginary friend... So what should we do?

Ingo: Prioritise. I think even the most hardcore military trained survival nutcase would be more than a little shaken up by the experience and clarity of thought is a lifesaver. Concussion is in itself dangerous, but combined with the abdominal trauma just staying conscious would be a near superhuman feat. One, stop the bleeding. Ideally there I wouldn't be pulling a shard of anything back out of my torso. Looking at where it is, could be kidney, liver, punctured large intestine. Anything. Jamming my hands over the entry wound around the shard and whimpering to myself would probably be my main plan for the next half hour at least. I could assume from that half hour that I hadn't bled to death, and provided I hadn't also slipped into a coma from the head trauma it would be time to extract myself out of the hole I was in. Fans of 'Rambo' will reflect on the wince-inducing self surgery Stallone performs on screen, and while the reality would probably involve allot more swearing and crying, you really would have to make do with something similar.
      Controlling infection would also come to mind, and given the dire circumstances I think I would be trying to heat up some of the scrap metal that seems to be everywhere and cortorise AROUND the shard for the time being, probably while screaming and soiling myself. Then? stagger upwards hoping I'd done enough to continue living for the next hour or so, and distract myself by keeping a check on my breathing, internal bleeding being something that would make itself known now, best case being abdominal swelling and painful bruising, worst case either a punctured bowel leading to a septic wound and death, or bleeding into my upper abdomen/chest cavity and compressing my lungs. All happy thoughts. Assuming Lara is very lucky (and seriously mentally and physically tough) she could look forward to a very slow painful ascent through the caves. Out of the cave and on a tropical/temperate island, I would probably be both elated and worried. Tropical islands make for less harsh survival territory, providing water-shelter-heat-food needs (in that order) relatively easily. However, there's always something else, and in this case the humid climate would make it very very hard for me to keep my wound clean. I would stagger towards the beach and keep my eyes open for where water sources empties into the sea, this sort of outfall being ideal to find drinking water. Salty seawater would be great to irrigate and clean my injuries too, (winces) sore though. At this point, due to the concussion, it would be a real battle to stay awake. I'm inclined to say I would put a cold wet rag on my head wound, out of optimism that it would control the swelling, and pass out in the recovery position, hoping for the best.         

Me: One of the other characters told her to move towards his location but she hasn't got a clue where she is let alone how to navigate to him. Is this sound advice? What should people do in this situation?

Ingo: Madness. You're already in a bad way, adding 'lost and away from your little base camp' is suicidal. I remember a story about a pilot who was shot down, and by staying in the same quarter mile hiding from enemy patrols, an SAR (search and rescue) team was able to find him within a couple of days. If he'd wandered off he would probably have been impossible to find, and died of exposure before anything else. Unless you have a couple of landmarks that can be seen from miles away, you can use triangulation. for example, Lara is on the coast, so there's a reference point, and she can see a clifftop with a big broken tree on it that she estimates is four football fields away, and in the other direction she can see a trashed plane or something, and that's five football fields away, so marking those points and noting how far from her they are she could direct the other party to her (coastlines are pretty permanent so they would have a hard time walking past her location and out to sea) using this method to head inland... I'd be wary. we're still injured pretty badly. 

Me: Supplies are nil and Lara wants to go Deer hunting. How should you go about doing this?

Ingo: Seriously? eat some fruit if there's any you can identify as safe, drink any water you can make potable, make a sharp stick and go get some fish. I have no idea how you could just up and make an accurate bow capable of delivering enough poundage to kill a deer. If venison was my one and only option? I'd make snares, a lot of snares. While eating fish. probably use a lot of cabling from the wrecks as cordage. Even then though, snares are hard to use with any reliability  you have to put out a large number to get a little return. Dressing (butchering) a deer is tough too, if i was injured already it would be very difficult. I'd have to kill the deer, bleed it (black pudding anyone?), slit it open, scoop out the guts like I was Han Solo so it didn't spoil the meat, then have to move the carcass to where my camp was. Definately a daunting task if you're not 100%

Me: Lara finds a bow, and in the game takes a small bit of venison, leaving most of the carcass behind. 

Ingo: In that case yes, Deer can be on the menu, cover yourself in mud and moss to hide your people scent and go stalking. This would still be physically demanding and I would be worried about having enough water and energy to go on. As for taking a small amount of meat and moving on? no, no way, an a-frame litter could be made out of dead fall and lashed together with intestine. A carcass is definitely too good a thing to waste any of, and preserving the meat can be a simple as cutting it into small strips and using your a frame to hang it over a fire. Tasty jerky. Boiling seawater down to get the salt would be a good way to go too. As always though, if you can't find or make potable water don't eat, your body uses up a lot of water digesting food and its always better to err on the side of being hydrated over being fed in the short term.       

Ingo raises some very interesting points about hydration, the dangers of concussion and Lara being in need of serious medical attention. In short, she should be dead. Survival immersion can become tedious and desperate and then you remember it's just a game but is accuracy about this type of stuff important? Considering Video Games are blamed for violent crimes and anti-social behaviour can you claim to be realistic when it is riddled with bad advice?

So I decided to look it up and see what other helpful tips you should remember if you ever find yourself stranded. I found this list from gcaptain.com:

1. Shelter yourself. Exposure can kill faster than thirst or hunger.

2. Do not drink urine. Or sea water. Or bird blood

3. Do not eat jellyfish. Or fish that have spikes. Or fish that have parrot like beaks. OR that puff up like balloons.

4. Turtles are an easy catch and make for excellent meals. Their blood is a good, nutritious, salt-free drink; their flesh is tasty and filling; their fat has many uses; and the castaway will find turtle eggs a real treat. Mind the beak and the claws.

5. If a castaway is injured, beware of well-meaning but ill-founded medical treatment. Ignorance is the worst doctor, while rest and sleep are the best nurses.

6. Put your feet up at least 5 minutes every hour

7. Do not go swimming. It wastes energy. Besides, a survival craft may drift faster than you can swim. Not to mention the danger of sea life. If you are hot, wet your clothes instead.

8. As long as no excessive water is lost through perspiration, the body can survive up to 14 days without water. If you are thirsty, suck a button.

9. Beware of far-off clouds that look like mountains. Look for green. Ultimately, a foot is the only good judge of land.

10. Don’t let your morale flag. Be daunted but not defeated. Remember: the spirit, above all else, counts. If you have the will to live, you will. Good luck

Now the site says they're from the novel Life of Pi by Yan Martel some seem to be very sensible but others don't feel that legit to me. I agree with ignorance not being the best medical practice since you all know how much I favoured Dr Ignorance but I'm sure as hell you shouldn't just go to sleep if your really badly injured and if you're by yourself too! Treat your wounds first and try to prevent infection. Also do not fall asleep if you have a concussion! With that in mind, number 5 is a perfect example of well meaning but ill-founded medical advice. This is just an example from another fictional source so again I ask the question if you're going to publish content on survival shouldn't you make sure it's accurate?

Following that Ingo suggested use your common sense, Prioritise and try not to panic!

Also check out this guy, he knows his shit! Ranger Rick

                           Clicky Funthrough! Tomb Raider part 2 Clicky