Might as well, I guess. My opinions certain games. Probably wont stick to just games. I'll start with Spec Ops: The Line, since it's the most recent new title I've played.
So, let me say this before things get spoilery. Buy the game. It's a great example of storytelling through gameplay, especially since the story is reacting to what would happen if some jackass in real life started acting like a gamer does in a video game when handed a gun. There's a lot of furked up shit in this game, some great imagery, and some great characterization. The gameplay is pretty samey but I took that as being part of the story. You've all done this in a game before, this is what it would be like if you did it in reality. And, y'know, were capable of healing several bullet wounds. I think it's a great example of story through mechanics. If I had one complaint it would be that I seemed to never have ammo, but that can probably be said to be part of the story too.
Spoilers from this point on. Seriously, do not read forward from this point. I will ruin the ending.
Well, holy shit. That ending. I loves me some psychopaths in fiction, and that may make me biased towards the Fight Club-esque ending, but here's a funny thing. At the end, as you all probably well know, I had grown decidedly hateful towards my character. The black guy (who's name escapes me, but so does the rest of the cast. Captain Walker is the protagonist?) was the only character I actually liked, and the way he went out, so hateful and suicidal... Well, that was the point when I started hating the enemy and my character equally. Your other squad mate, who I disliked, him dying made me have to restrain myself from killing the civilians who did it. Let that sink in, I actually restrained myself from murder in a video game.
But here's the point. At the end I hated my character, and when you learned what a crazy fuck he was and had the option to kill yourself... I didn't do it. I'd resolved to do it when whatshispersonalityface pointed the gun at me, but then came the countdown. I made it to 4, dammit! Then he had to ask "is this what you really want?" When he said that I pulled the trigger. Turns out, loathing and all, I'd managed to project a little onto the character. That hasn't really happened before. The final decision of the game, suicide by soldier after the credits, I decided to live. I wanted this psychopath to live, and hopefully get better.
This game strikes me as a great example of storytelling through gameplay, and the great part is that they didn't do anything new with the gameplay. The story was crafted for a video game, specifically this sort of shooter. We play tons of 'em, and in all of them we do horrible shit to people who don't deserve it without thinking. Killed a soldier? No worries, we've got millions. Hell, that character model will be back next level. Mow down a shitload of human beings? Eh, no worries, they're bad guys dumb enough to go up against the shredder of men.
You kill two types of people in this game. US soldiers, from your US, from your army. And civilians. As in these poor jackasses lost their homes and now you're taking their lives. I don't think you actually spend more than a mission or two with the same faction, you're just the lone gunman making sure to finish the job that mother nature in her sandy fury could not.
Early on it tries to make you seem more human, when you're running through and commenting on how this jackass, I think his name was Gould, was throwing civilians with weapons against trained soldiers. And then they ask you to save him or civilians! Naturally I saved the civilians, it was the slaughter of desperate homeless people that made the decision for me. And then you go on a mission with only half the plan, fished out of Gould's mouth, and wind up killing a shit-ton of civilians. I only learned later that they would have died one way or another, and all that really happened was that I saved the three civilians from the Gould choice (I think) when otherwise they would have died with Gould and the civilians in the fire. But at the time I got angry. The game had made me kill them. I knew they were there when I pulled the trigger, or at least I suspected, but the game had done it and your character reacts the same way. "They made me do it". Maybe that was the moment I felt a kinship with the protagonist, I honestly don't know. I didn't know about the kinship until I'd decided to let him live.
The game was great, plain and simple.
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