samuel kite ate my copy of fallout 3

I've been playing lots of Fallout 3.  I actually had tried it once before, but it crashed on my computer despite my attempts to get around its well known issues with multicore processors.  This time, however, I realized that my workaround failed because I had altered the property files on my giant hard drive, not realizing that the game installed itself on both that drive and my SSD.  Hilarious, Bethesda.  It's a fun game, but not something I really felt worthwhile talking about.

But then I checked actionbutton, and glory be, here is Samuel Kite talking about how much he hates Fallout 3 and Skyrim, even more than he hated Kingdoms of Amalur under the auspices of a review of Dungeon Defenders.  I say "under the auspices" because literally less than 1% of the review is actually about Dungeon Defenders, and the remaining 99% is "god I hate modern video games."  It also, despite being written in June, had exactly one comment (that I couldn't access because maybe they're moving servers).

Maybe it was because of that one comment, but I did something I rarely do for actionbutton articles: I read the entire goddamned thing. Well, the entire thing minus the opening five or so paragraphs talking about the cultural exegesis of game design or something that maybe Ray Kurzweil could translate. And you know what?  It made me think a little.  I mean Kite is a terrible writer, but congrats dude, you compelled me to think for about an hour whether I was actually enjoying Fallout 3 or just being tricked by evil game overlords, ala some fat dude with his over a crystal ball as I kill my three hundredth raider.  The answer is that of course I was being tricked, but...

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Now you may have clicked my link and gone "oh hell no I am not reading all this."  Don't worry, because since this is an article inspired by NEW GAMES JOURNALISM, the points actually presented can be distilled to about a hundred words.  Here's the fivescore for this review:

"I enjoyed older games where I genuinely roleplayed.  However, as gaming has changed into a widespread cultural phenomenon, the notion of gaming, especially rpgs, has become soulless repetitive tasks without a complicated system because it's easier to make money from these.    Skyrim and Fallout are bad because they are particularly emblematic of this problem, going into an infinite series of rooms where you have a chance of getting junk that really doesn't matter.  Instead, please look at Axis and Allies for an example of good games, otherwise we are becoming social media in everything we do, and this is very scary.  vibio gaems." SO.

So the biggest problem I had with this review was his argument that Kingdoms of Amalur was a better role playing game than whatever Bethesda has pumped out (though still shitty, of course).  His reason for this was: "KoAR is exhilarating to run through. It’s a large world but when you head for the horizon and push the sprint button to start trucking, you don’t feel like frustrated like you won’t get where you want to go before you’re bored–you feel excited. Exploring is interesting. Perception of movement speed is a real thing."

When I was growing up in Arkansas, my house had like ten acres of relative wilderness, full of hills and trees and even a stream.  I used to come up with lots of stories and adventures around these things.  My soul died awhile ago so that no longer exists, but I remember enough to say that anyone who thinks that Kingdoms of Amalur was "exhilarating to run through" compared to Fallout 3 is either full of bullshit or lived in a Bioshock style bathysphere until they went to college. His reason (I think) is that the main character in Amalur moves his legs really fast, even if it's just an illusion, and that means that it seems fun.

Really?  This is why "serious" video game criticism is such a gigantic joke.  It's like if Cahiers du Cinema wrote an article on how Patch Adams was a better film than Ms. Doubtfire due to the steadily receeding hairline of Robin Williams providing a simalcrum of empathy with all the balding manchildren of the world.  But I'm digressing, and unlike certain people, I consider this a bad writing habit.

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To be clear, his criticisms of Fallout 3's hollowness aren't wrong.  I felt a sense of shame at his pointing out how incredibly dumb the endless amount of checking every Metal Box, Box of Ammunition, and Medical Box is and how antithetical it is to actual gameplay.    Alot of modern video games have fallen onto this bizarre idea of having a billion little containers in their open world, 1% of which containing stuff actually useful  in your journeys and the rest being utter bullshit items that flaccidly attempt to convey the illusion that a society existed, or once existed, in this random gas station.  Fallout 3 at least has the forethought to make most of the dumb items components in random crafted items, or the means to make money in repeatable quests, but it's still incredibly empty.

On the other hand, isn't that pretty much how all video games are?  Kite really liked Left 4 Dead, and I do too, but what's the meaty substance of that game?  That is to say, aren't these hordes of zombies basically existing in the same distracting, meaningless roles of Fallout 3's containers?  I open a Metal Box and find a piece of scrap metal, I shoot a zombie and watch it explode, maybe with three other people watching in an attempt to create a sense of community.  Kite doesn't even mention V.A.T.S., which is sort of strange since it's the most perfect parody of our facile attempts to "control" video game action ever created.  Video games are by definition stimulus-response, and attacking Fallout 3 and alot of other modern games because they're a little more honest and cynical about their attempts to addict you makes you seem less like being "a shrieker of terrifying holy truths" (an actual quote, jesus christ) and more like an old man who doesn't want to admit that video games have and always will be at their core a gigantic con.

Or maybe he thinks that.  I can't tell, because despite what some people will try to tell you, writing like this isn't stream of consciousness, it's a sirocco of fearfulness, specifically the fear of having genuine opinions about things as opposed to coy blase whining about everything.

While thinking about all this, I loaded up Fallout 3 to explore a little more of Washington DC.  It's easily the worst area of the game, since it's filled with obnoxious Super Mutants that take a million hits to kill for little reward.  Also, rather than just letting you just walk around the streets and admire the landmarks, almost every intersection has unpassable debris, forcing you to use the subway, which is a linear series of the same three rooms filled with zombies and more Super Mutants.  Eventually, I figured out how to reach the destination I was trying to find to turn in a quest reward, and while I was trying to find the entrance, some guy with a loudspeaker started yelling at me about worms and the sun influencing John 3:16.  I wandered into an alley, where suddenly everything exploded and I died.  I tried the other end, where some random guy was hiding from the same dude, and telling me he couldn't move because he would blow up the alley.  Thanks to my incredible charisma (6 out of 10), I convinced him to run into the alley and talk to him.  Both people promptly exploded.

I still like Fallout 3.