I've been having a hectic few weeks. Spent a lot of time on various Pacific Islands really exploring myself. It's been eye opening. Oh, and traumatic.
But I've survived. And I'm different now. I'm not sure if that is in a good way.
At least... that's the general idea.
The truth is, I've been "busy" scraping through some survival games, both quite similar in nature. Unprepared white, young, Westerner gets trapped and stranded in uncharted lands (and yet neither game was Uncharted), forced to do desperate and horrible things to survive the attentions of crazed psychopaths and their hired goons.
Farcry 3 and Tomb Raider.
The short and succinct review is that I had a lot of fun with both, and that's all that really matters when it comes to these things, really.
And they got me thinking, which is another good thing, but I've been thinking about this whole survival thing, as it's obviously a big deal now. People want to scrape out of a hole having come through the ringer and ending up fulfilled. A metaphor for life. But playing through these stories has left me contemplating a big issue in all modern gaming: How hard can you make a game in this day and age?
Because if there is one thing I realised in playing through Farcry 3 it was that, for a survival game, it was jokingly easy.
I was really up for it. I was dropped into a hellish position and I was totally ready to fight and claw my way out. Then, my reality was utterly shattered when my first friendly contact was a cheery fellow in an army shirt, cargo shorts and black-rimmed glasses called Dennis. Now, don't get me wrong, Dennis was a bit of a dude. But he wasn't a survivor. I didn't get the impression he had been living the life of the wilds, on the verge of insanity. Rather, it seemed more likely that I had been rescued by a guy who had just come out of Starbucks with his MacBook in his Cambridge Satchel. I want to feel like I am constantly in peril, so throwing "The Tribal Hipster" at me kind of broke me out of the fantasy.
Ne'ertheless, I continued, taking my first steps in a game that rapidly became no longer a fight for survival but an exercise in performing a coup d'état on the resident criminal overlord so you could take his place. My first case-in-point being my first encounter with the native wildlife, a rather angry rattlesnake sat between me and my first
And then... nothing. The red mist faded, my rapid pulse slowed and I stood, perfectly happy but for a puncture in my arm and a small chunk of missing health. But that was it. And so, I came to the conclusion that I was clearly invincible to have resisted what was clearly a venomous snake with no ill effect. And then I proclaimed how stupid that was.
And that's the general point here. You pitch the consumer the term 'survival' with the promise of nail-biting terror and flittering about the edge of death for an entire game. And then give us immunity to poison, disease and ferocious tigers. And fire, let's not forget fire. Many is the time where, having actually, for once, on rare occasion, run out of ammo, I resorted to C4 to deal with dangerous foes, burning down half of the jungle with me still in it. And then just patted my arm down and got on with things. And then I bought some more ammo with the thousands of dollars I was able to gather from the island's various jobs and gambling dens. Despite fearing I would need every last cent I could scrape from the enemies that fell in my sneaky, jungle native wake, it actually became a constant bother as guns were constantly becoming free to buy, you could make all the meds you needed and armour was just lying in random huts along the beach so that I had no need for money other than the odd bit of ammo and unnecessary secret maps, leaving me with the constant warning that I had no space in my wallet anymore. I would chase down sharks just so I could get more space for the literal fortune that was clearly to be found on this "den of nightmares."
There wasn't even a decent boss fight. No king of combat that would stretch your abilities with rifle and knife. The focal antagonist; an amazing character, wonderfully performed, who adorns the cover of the box, is removed from the story almost by a stage hand with a shepherd's crook and a 'wah, wah, wahhhh' soundtrack. The big boss, crow-barred into the story near the end, is felled by the dreaded quick time event, as is every notable villain in the game. By the end I felt thoroughly tired from being constantly dragged through important plot points rather than being dropped in and left to eek my own way out.
Tomb Raider was often guilty of exactly the same things as Farcry. Near the beginning, you are instructed to hunt down some food, presumably so that Lara doesn't die of starvation, and left with the assumption that this will be a regular occurrence. But, I don't think I hunted down anything else in the entire game, other than for something to do. I didn't really see that it was integral to Lara's survival, and I completed the game fine without it.
This was on hard mode, which only really seemed to apply to combat, and which roughly equated to a multiplier on the number of enemies faced in a given encounter. This wasn't so much survival as churning through gunfire to the fun, runny-jumpy-climby-puzzley bits behind. Once more, supplies were in plentiful supply; I don't think I went 5 steps without seeing a quiver of arrows, and the fire sources needed for much of the exploring and puzzle solving were never too far from hand, although a number of the set piece rooms early on were played quite well with convenient waterfalls sat between you and the most accessible brazier. But this was quickly snuffed out with the acquisition of an ignition device strapped to your torch and, later, a zippo from a dead pilot. Like they didn't want you to be too worried about surviving when all that beautiful scenery was there to be looked at.
I want to end this by saying that I genuinely did enjoy both of these games, although I did start to get worn out with Farcry once Vaas was removed. But I loved Tomb Raider and am really excited for the future titles. It's good to feel like playing a Tomb Raider game is no longer an act of shame. But, at the same time, I liked these games for reasons outside of what, to me at least, came across as the main selling point. The 'survival' aspect. Bar a few set pieces in both games, I didn't feel exactly stretched by the situation. And, the rare moments that I did, my hand was being held the entire time with QTEs. And it's disappointing. I can't be alone in wanting a real challenge of survival gaming skills. The success of Dark Souls and its sequels attests to the demand for difficulty in games. So lets see it. For the next survival title, I genuinely want to feel like I only just made it out alive. Make me work for my endorphins. Make me guess what buttons I have to press to get out of trouble. Otherwise, I may as well be playing some bizarre version of Guitar Hero.
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