Kick-Ass Women in Gaming

Sexism in Gaming Kick-Ass Women in Gaming

This has been a great year for gaming in terms of what we already have to play and in terms of announcements. Here in sunny South Africa we had rAge last weekend and though I could not attend I know from all the media and attendees with lunatic grins on their faces that it was a good show. The gaming community is getting better all the time and anyone regardless of who they are can get in on the fun… Or can they? Surely we are past things like racism, sexism and other nasty –isms?

Sadly we are not. The biggest issue I’ve experienced as a gamer this year is the shocking amount of instances of sexism and misogynistic views in our beloved industry. In SA we already have a huge issue with crimes against women like rape and other forms of abuse. It’s tough being a woman in just day-to-day interactions and it breaks my heart that a community based on escapism and having fun can be sexist. Games are meant to be fun for everyone who wants to pick up a ‘joystick’ and play.

When I started writing this piece the idea was to point out in great and righteously angry detail how stupid male gamers can be and to refer to cases like the reactions when Remember Me was first announced and people were freaked out that they’d have to play as a heterosexual female protagonist who is – surprise, surprise – sexually interested in men. I was going to write a rant about the nasty, misogynistic and plain stupid attacks on Gamespot writer, Carolyn Petit’s GTA V review. I’m not going to do any of that, instead I’m going to celebrate three amazing women who are in the industry and are contributing towards making our favourite pastime even more enjoyable.

I think this year’s Tomb Raider is one of the best games of the year.  (If you don’t happen to think so please don’t send the KKK to my house – it’s just an opinion.) One of the people on Crystal Dynamics’ brilliant team that we can thank for a Lara Croft that’s actually likeable and actually more beautiful because she has a personality is Rhianna Pratchett, who served as the lead writer on the project. Rhianna earned her stripes writing for games like Overlord 1 & 2, Mirror’s Edge and my other favourite of the year Bioshock Infinite.

If you attended rAge you would’ve seen Noelle Adams’ amazing Lara Croft cosplay. She has big presence in the SA gaming scene. She writes, blogs, vlogs, Facebooks and Tweets all things nerdy and for that we like her. She’s sort of like Wonder Woman really.

Pippa Tshabalala was the MC at rAge this year and has an amazing presence in the SA gaming scene, what with having hosted a gaming show, The Verge and teaching 3D animation for a while. She writes or has written for many online and print publications and contributes much to the gaming scene.

Even though our beloved industry has a lot of growing up to do it’s a great community and everyone should be welcome to contribute and enjoy playing games.

JoyStiq: Far Cry 3 XBox 360 Review

A Nightmare Get Away

There's a reason why first-person shooters are the most popular gaming genre and the Far Cry series is one of them. The original title blew our minds to teeny-tiny pieces back in 2004 with its amazing visuals and fun gameplay. The Crysis series may be Crytek's flagship series now but Far Cry was its heart. The guys over at Ubisoft Montreal are doing great things with the license though and Far Cry 3 is clearly a result of a labour of love. Someone over at Ubisoft Montreal's studio must have said, 'Guys, let's take all the best bits of Far Cry and Far Cry 2 and make a new game.' This simple equation works and makes Far Cry 3 one of the best shooters currently on the market. The game is set in a gorgeous tropical environment that's as dangerous as it's visually appealing. Add elements of insanity and drug induced delusions and you're good to go.

You play as Jason Brody as he tries to escape the clutches of drug dealing pirates lead by a charming and insane guy called Vaas, the game's primary antagonist. After Jason escapes he must survive and try and save his friends who were captured along with him. He goes about this task with the aid of the Rakyat, a tribe native to the island he finds himself on. The Rakyat are adversely affected by Vaas and his cronies' drug dealing activities and adopt Jason in order to groom him into a fierce warrior. While I never got too invested in the previous games' stortlyline Far Cry 3 makes you care about the people you meet and makes you despise many of them too. Vaas is an unstable individual and this makes him the most interesting person in the game. He is a lunatic and embodies the game's theme of insanity in terrible and twisted ways. There are moments in Far Cry 3 that make little sense because you experience them through Jason's drug addled state. This is executed well and the sense of disconnect makes playing the game more interesting. The story is similar to Lara Croft's escapades in Tomb Raider in that both stories are about survival and going from a normal person to a warrior capable of dealing out death. Where Tomb Raider is intense and focused Far Cry 3 is massive and allows players a great deal of freedom.

The Far Cry series has the reputation of setting graphics benchmarks for games and Far Cry 3 doesn't drop the ball in this regard. The Dunia 2 Engine gives Crytek's CryENGINE 3 a run for its money in producing a lush tropical setting that's stunning to see. I think we've come to that point in gaming where great visuals are standard in any game. Far Cry 3's visuals are still exceptional though and the manner in which the tropical setting, characters, fauna and flora are presented is amazing. Far Cry 3 is a sandbox game and its beauty makes its open world fun to explore; experiencing the sounds, feel and general atmosphere of the tropical jungle. The animals are spectacular in how they look and behave and it's possible to interact with almost everything in the game's open world.

Vaas, the face of insanity.

Far Cry 3 is more than just a shooter, it has some RPG elements in that you can level up according to three skill tree options: the Spider, Heron and Shark. Your progress is depicted on your arm in the form of tattoos, which is pretty cool. You can approach combat situations stealthily like a spider would, attack from long range much like a heron or go in guns blazing and use aggressive tactics like a shark is more inclined to do. The combat is rather difficult to get used to, even on a lower difficulty setting and it’s frustrating. The game has a steep learning curve to players new to the genre. Once you get the hang of it combat is fun and you can use the environment to assist you in eliminating enemies. You can use elements like fire to flush enemies out of hiding or even set loose captured wild animals to take down bad guys for you. You pick up and buy guns and ammo as you progress and can upgrade your weapons. The in-game economy is your usual FPS fare. Most of the fun lies in the sheer amount of things you can do. The side quests are fun – whether you’re hunting animals for their pelts, taking down pirate encampments and turning them to safe zones or just transporting medicine. The game world is massive and you can spend 30+ hours just on the single player campaign.

Far Cry 3 offers great value for your money in terms of how much it has to offer. There are two multiplayer options: co-op and your usual free-for-all mode. Both modes are loads of fun to play but the co-op mode stands out. You can embark on a campaign with up to three of your buddies helping you out. It’s definitely a case of ‘the more the merrier’ as the campaign can be hellishly difficult.

In an on-going spirit of saving you money you can pick up Far Cry 3 for as little as R550.00 if you browse through most of the local e-tailors. This is a great thing for our struggling wallets.

Far Cry 3 is a great game but got relegated to the background with all the big releases we’ve been seeing lately. It’s one of the most solid games on the market today though and its large scope means it will keep you busy for a good while. It does get buggy but that’s easily overlooked.

A Nightmare Get Away

This game is well worth any serious gamers’ time and is very satisfying to play.

JoyStiq: Tomb Raider XBox 360 Review

The new Tomb Raider has landed and it’s made a big splash in the process. Lara Croft has been rebooted and given a new origins story but it’s always a hit or miss affair when you take a well-known and beloved character like Lara Croft and remake her. Fans are not too forgiving if you get a reboot wrong. The fact that the last Tomb Raider games have been rather lacking in luster adds more pressure to the expectation from a new game in the franchise. In this case it’s good that we’re in a period where fans will give a franchise another chance to reboot if it’s been mucking up a little – it’s a clean slate of sorts really. With Rhianna Pratchett having written the story and created the new Lara Croft’s personality things are already looking up. Developer, Crystal Dynamics also doesn’t go wrong with the game mechanics.

Gone is the plastic, large-breasted Lara Croft of yesteryear and in is an honest attempt at building a human being who evolves from someone young, appropriately attractive (and appropriately dressed), somewhat naive and very vulnerable into a hero. This is what this origins story is, a look at how Lara Croft becomes as tough as adamantium claws – what she has to live through to reach that point. Rhianna Pratchett points out that her Lara is a real woman and this rings true. Throughout the game the player learns what it takes to be a graduate, fresh out of university and to find yourself shipwrecked on an island occupied by cultists who aren’t very welcoming. Lara's journey from wide-eyed graduate to kick-ass survivor is a brutal one that would leave most people traumatised if they were to manage to survive at all. It's also a beautiful experience that speaks to the player about the resilience of the human spirit.

The visuals and game mechanics are powered by a modified Crystal Engine and they are stunning. Lara gets grimier and more bloodied as she makes her way through the breath-yanking island, surviving. The island is alive with vibrant fauna and flora and the weather conditions are wonderfully temperamental. The atmosphere is rich and heavy throughout. The island is a character in itself and exploring it is fun and scary all at once. The dangers are real but once in a while Lara makes it to the top of a ledge and the view is spectacular. Tomb Raider’s resounding theme is survival and Lara has to learn to do whatever it takes to survive and to save her comrades. She hunts and kills deer on the island and defends herself against wolves. This is somewhat reminiscent of Far Cry 3 and the bow she acquires is a low-tech version of Prophet’s bow in Crysis 3. This is actually one of the strong points of the game, the fact that it doesn’t try to recreate the action-adventure genre. It takes elements from Uncharted, Arkham Asylum and other games and blends them seamlessly to tell its unique story. The control scheme is a reiteration of what you’re familiar with and works comfortably well on the Xbox 360 controller whether you're shimmying across a ledge, sneaking up on a bad guy or find yourself in a gunfight.

The bow and its arrows is the stand-out weapon because of how versatile it is and purely how satisfying it is to make a kill with it. The grimy and rather violent takedowns prove to be a lot of fun once you get into the swing of things. Tomb Raider is not a celebration of violence just for the sake of violence but rather the player continuously embraces the independence and pride Lara feels at being able to defend her life in a very hostile environment. The bow also makes for great stealth kills and it can be upgraded as you progress through the game for better usage in all out fire fights. Other weapons are also upgradeable as you proceed through the island and salvage wreckage to add onto them. Fire fights get intense and it’s fun to try different ways of approaching enemies and other tough situations.The enemy AI is actually somewhat intelligent. Tomb Raider doesn’t do anything new in this regard but it does what it does well.

The island provides a great deal of exploring options in between shooting the bad guys. Lara Croft is an archaeology boffin and explorer after all and it’s very rewarding to look around, finding all sorts of nooks and crannies filled with cool items and information regarding the history of the island and the cultists occupying it. The island is steeped in history and just walking around it leaves the player with a sense of wonder at what stories broken statues and abandoned bunkers could tell. The very ground and air seem to be a memory of great and terrible things that happened there. Although Lara has to survive and progress through the storyline curiosity always results in some interesting non-linear play as the island begs to be explored in great detail. The island’s history is beautifully crafted and is hauntingly beautiful and ugly. This aspect of the game is what the Tomb Raider series is about and is the best aspect of Lara’s first outing as an archaeologist.

There’s a multiplayer option tagged onto the single-player experience but it doesn’t stand out as much as the main campaign, which proves to be very addictive. The multiplayer option does give you something to do when friends pop over or you’re looking for extra value for your money through some prolonged play. It's the sort of add-on that you wouldn't mind investing a few forgettable hours in purely because after the 12 or so hours it takes you to complete the main campaign you’ll want to stick around a little longer. I think Crystal Dynamics added it as an afterthought and only because people have come to expect some form of a multilayer mode with the release of AAA title.

At its heart Tomb Raider is a human story told particularly well using video gaming as a platform. The game mechanics and controls are solid but what really carries the game are the story (even when it fumbles), great voice acting and amazing setting. The folks at Crystal Dynamics have outdone themselves. I give it heartfelt thumbs up; it’s one of the best games to be released on the Xbox 360 in while.