Conquering by Completion / Completion by Conquering
Finished UbiSoft's WATCHDOGS 2 last night: as a fan of the first game, I agree with the critical consensus of the second: an improvement on areas where the first game went wrong (main characters with no personality; Marcus, Sitara, Wrench, and Josh make for a fantastic group) with enough new elements to make the experience worthwhile. Nothing earthshattering or spectacular but at least it gave me my new favorite open-world activity: taunting the populace of San Francisco with my little foul-mouthed Monty Python RC Drone – and subsequently mourning its decimation by kicking.
Fascinating to me how – in my parlance, at least – the words used to describe the completion of a game have shifted: in a gaming nascency spent rescuing the 8-bit princess, my goal was not "to complete" but "to conquer” – to "beat" the game, not "finish" it. Perhaps this is simply a sympton of my own decrease in turtle/mushroom-stomping bloodlust, but speaking in broad generalizations and with wide leaps in logic (and, likely, in the same vein as Christopher Columbus "discovering" America), perhaps it's a signifer of the general transformation of gameplay from a competition/problem-solving one to a narrative one.
Most likely, however, this moment of clarity and reflection is probably of the "No shit, Sherlock" variety produced solely to meet my own requirements for a daily piece here that proves me once again late to the party. Nothing I'm not used to. Happy Thursday.
(Listening): KANKYŌ ONGAKU: JAPANESE AMBIENT, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND NEW AGE MUSIC 1980–1990.
