Like most things discussed by the online right video games are treated with a degree of hysteria. People often come out very strongly against them to present an image of seriousness and like to mock and denigrate men of any age who play them. On the other side large sections of the online right were in fact partially radicalized by Gamergate. This was because they were video game fans and the obvious slide into woke nonsense that was impacting their main interest. To be quite honest I’ve largely stayed out of the majority of ‘discourse’ or shit slinging about videogames. I wasn’t allowed a game console as a child and so they never featured as a strong childhood memory or experience. I did of course play some PC games as those grew in popularity and began to enjoy videogames in my teen years on that platform. This slightly different path to videogames has meant I don’t really get some of the nostalgia baiting around Golden Eye or Mario or Pokemon (Gameboys were also not allowed). For me it was an entertainment form I just came to slightly later than most.
Videogames to me are not inherently wrong or bad. They are an escapist form of entertainment that is perhaps slightly more addicting than others. In truth I think of videogames these days as akin to reading a Tom Clancy or Clive Cussler novel. Airport fiction. Often it is a pretty fun and entertaining story that has a bit of depth, some technical geekery and of course good and bad guys fighting it out. It’s not high literature but it has a place. It’s the same reason I enjoy reading some of the Warhammer 40k novels still. A lot of very serious people seem averse to having fun or the natural need to escape into a fictional reality from time to time. We don’t need to live there permanently but we can visit and recharge. That being said like anything in life there are seasons of things and videogames have definitely featured less at times. Now I do own an old console and on occasion when time permits I try to play something. Frankly there is not much out there that really takes my fancy and I certainly don’t have the money to invest in a nice PC to get access to Steam or the like.
For me I do quite enjoy an element of narrative in my games. A friend of mine had raved in the past about Metro 2033 as being a compelling universe and game. It was on sale recently and so I bought it and just recently finished the game. Wow. I did not really expect this game to be as good as it was. Firstly the setting is a cool one. Metro 2033 is set in Moscow after the nuclear holocaust has cleansed the world of all (nearly all) poz. The survivors live below ground in the remains of the Moscow Metro. You experience this world through the eyes of Artyom who’s home station has come under attack by ever increasing hordes of mutants. You are sent out on a quest to the largest station to get aid for your somewhat backwater station and deliver a message from a ‘Ranger’. What follows is a blend of a shooter and survival horror game in the depths of a post apocalyptic Moscow. This game is all about atmosphere and whilst you are not that free to explore the stations where people are living there is clearly an entire world built out here.
This game stood out to me in a few ways. Namely it didn’t really tell you that much. The tutorial was basic and rudimentary. There was much left to discover. That’s a difference between the hand holding element of many contemporary games I’ve tried. There wasn’t even a controller map in the settings to fully see what each button on your controller did. I’m embarrassed to admit I was about 3/4 of the way through the game when I worked out I could throw sticks of dynamite as grenades! It’s not all shooting though, there is stealth. You can sneak around confrontations and in some levels it’s basically required. In an age of open world games this is a pretty tightly scripted course of events, you’re moving through the subway system pretty quickly. We encounter the Reds fighting the Nazis for control and so human enemies are almost as much a threat as the supernatural mutants that hunt us. There is a good amount of tension sneaking around with your night vision but I wouldn’t say this is really a stealth game. The subways and the rooms surrounding it lend themselves to this linear game design and keep the story very focused. Cut scenes are important and bar a few moments at the end are free of quick time style events that are annoying and tiresome in most other games.
This though is much a game of narrative escapism though as gameplay escapism. That goes back to part of the Vidya question. Some people want in depth narratives and huge worlds to explore and quest in like The Witcher 3 and others tend towards the spiritual successors to Counter Strike 1.6 in the online world. Some are pick up and play, others ask investment of you. Most however are certainly infected with woke. I recall a friend telling me they tried to play a fantasy Bioware Game from the Dragon age franchise and seemingly every leading commander at the start of the game was a woman. It was just ridiculous and immersion breaking. Sci-fi games get a bit more leeway with muh female badasses but in the fantasy realm running around with a sword like a Hollywood Viking bad gurl. Stupid. Metro 2033 seemed to dodge most of those issues. This was a game where it was clearly the men fighting. Though I think the sequel gives us some girl power as a sniper perhaps we can overlook that as the Soviets certainly did employ female snipers. This game though was free of such womanly nonsense. Old school. The narrative was also not without mystery and intrigue. The game doesn’t explain everything. The weird dream sequences with the Dark Ones are just that, weird and mysterious.
This game was a nice kind of escapism in that it didn’t spiral. Some of the more negative videogames out there like World of Warcraft in part pull people in because they create a permanent sense of escapism. Metro 2033 was like the book it was based off. You had chapters and were going towards an end. Sure you can replay it but it felt more like a novel, you may reread some years in the future. A lot of the vitriol directed towards videogames confuses me a bit because whilst I have memories of some highschool friends opting to play WoW instead of come out for drinks it pales in comparison to actual young men I know who’ve had their lives totally ruined by cannabis. Excessive escapism of any kind is bad. Anime weebs who consume every season or the weird romance novel women who finger themselves to softcore written pornography. It’s an age of extremes all around, though in the latter example I’m confident in just saying definitively that kind of romance is complete trash and there are no exceptions. It’s a narrow field vs the wide field of ‘videogames’ which can encompass Metro 2033, Max Payne 2, right down to Bejeweled that the fattie on your flight is playing nonstop.
Metro 2033 is a fun couple of hours spread out over a month. The chapter like levels lend itself to the narrative story it is telling. The gameplay is both a mix of fun shooting with interesting weapons and tense survival horror with some jumps as you bumble about the mutant infested Moscow subway system. In terms of the vidya question it’s hard to not come across as the “just let people enjoy things” but some of the haters out there are just totally off balance. The mark of a healthy man is discipline and balance. If you are able to exert both and enjoy the odd videogame it really isn’t that different from a trash tv show or a Tom Clancy spy novel. The brain needs some turn off time, life is about living and enjoying it. If you’re autistically obsessed with leveling up or playing games though at the expense of life then log off but far more people seem to have a news or X addiction these days than a vidya one.