I’M STUCK IN THE WALL! HELP! I’M STUCK IN THE WALL! Am I talking about the episode of Angel where Cordy moves into an apartment haunted by the ghost of a boy who was bricked up inside a wall by his mother for snogging the wrong girl? Am I talking about someone trapped in a 14 year old boy’s bedroom just after he’s bought his first Pink Floyd record? Thank the little lord baby Jesus no, not that. I’m talking about FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS. And in particular, the scenario when you try to get through a door, and find yourself blocked up against a polygonal wall. You rotate the joystick desperately to get back out but all there is is that DARNED WALL on all sides of you, you’re claustrophobic, you’re panicking, and oh look, you’ve just been shot in the back. GRATE.
Popular press (hem hem if you call EDGE magazine ‘popular’) maintains that one of the best games of all time = Goldeneye for the N64. You play A SECRET AGENT huzzah, and run about with a gun. You see THROUGH THE EYES of the agent in question, so like in all first person perspective games, you have a ludicrous GUN pointing out in the middle of the scream like a metallic WINKLE pointing erectly round every corner ready to SPURT OUT it’s bullets of DESTRUCTION to the blooming enemies who just won’t leave you the heck alone, will they? Maybe it’s because I’m a gurl but FIRST PERSON PERSPECTIVE IS RUBBISH. You have no idea what’s going on behind you (NB I guess this only matters if you play rotters like ME who keep shooting you in the back), confusingly and horrifically rendered walls and surfaces mean you could keep running about in circles in a narrow alleyway for you have NOWHERE TO LOOK to get any perspective of where on earth you could be and those guns!! Ludicrous!! Perfect Dark for the N64 has a particularly ludicrous “loading the gun” animation, complete with BEEFY ARM MUSCLE action, oh yes, it’s like I’m IN THE GAME NOW, yeah right. But confound it all – I think I’m never going to see what the popular press (see earlier disclaimer) prosetylize about with Goldeneye et al, and that frustrates me! A viewpoint to a game shouldn’t be such an overriding flaw that I simply cannot get to grips with it!
Anyway, this is all the fault of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and the f#cking Gerudo guards. It’s not ONLY that I can’t find the last prisoner, it’s the sheer amount of fanny dangle with the guards in the courtyard – stealth in games is ALSO rub, but seeing as no-one has made me play “Metal Gear Solid” (WHAT DOES THAT MEEEAN?) recently I’ll save that for another post. Cheers all!