Increasingly, I am growing tired of the predominance of combat in games. Specifically, RPGs.

In some genres, it’s necessary — even the point. What’s a first person shooter without combat? Or a real time strategy game? But even with genres where it’s more of an aside, like RPGs, combat is becoming more and more the main focus. No longer is story and character what people want from an RPG, but now a unique, interesting, most of all new combat system. And what for? So they can spend untold hours grinding away in dark dungeons to get a high enough level to take on the next boss that has little to do with the actual story.

In reality, for RPGs, combat is a game-lengthener. Obviously, it is a gameplay mechanic that people seem to enjoy, but really, it is a way to artificially increase the length of the game to the designer’s wishes. Persona 3 is a 100+ hour game, but if you took out Tartarus (the only combat field), it would be around 40 hours. And believe it or not, that’s fine with me. Every time I stepped into combat in that game, I cringed. The characters were so interesting, the story so engrossing, that I felt angry and jolted every time the game told me I had to set it all aside to level up. What’s wrong with having 40 hours of a story, without beating stuff up?

I know I am in the minority when I wish all combat would disappear from RPGs, but I can’t help but see what a colossal waste of time it is. A story you will remember for a lifetime. How long after you beat that beetle will it stick in your mind? There are very few RPGs where the combat didn’t bother me; two, actually, come to mind. Ar Tonelico, and Mass Effect.

Ar Tonelico did it right — it knew the otaku playing it were really after the dating sim aspects of the game…the parts where you dove into your Reyvateil and experienced a deeper understanding of her. So they tied the combat system into that - only by fighting were you able to obtain Dive Points, which were the only way to advance on your psychological ‘dates’. The combat was similar to every other turned based system, but I fought almost every random encounter and loved it, because I was guaranteeing I could date my beloved Misha.

Mass Effect handled it differently — combat was part of the atmosphere. No shattering screen transition, with a different combat engine loading up…it was all in the same view. You could talk to a smuggler, then pull out your rifle and blow him away. Similarly, there was absolutely no grinding in that game….events happened fluidly. You leveled, you got experience, but you did it naturally…never did the game want you to go back through fifteen levels fifty times over to get enough experience to go on. It was intelligent, and you were always at a ‘just right’ level. So combat became part of the story, another way to show the kind of life the characters were living. Not a bit of it was forced.

And that is the type of combat I actually hate — unnatural combat. In RPGs, you are following a set group of people who most likely are trying to save the world. Would they really spend 30 hours (who knows how many hours/days/weeks/months in game) destroying killer bunnies in a field so they could learn Super Double Death Strike, the only way to get any damage on the Sewer Grate monster that’s blocking the way to the underground passage to the next town they have to go to to gather clues on where the main enemy is?

I’ve often been told, if I hate combat so much, why am I even playing video games? I should be watching movies. And while that may be true, movies have always lacked the interactivity, longevity and depth that I love about video games….which brings me to the genre of game I loved the most of all of them. Adventure games.

Those were the days….combat didn’t ever really exist in adventure games (I ignore King’s Quest VIII). It was about unfolding an intricate, deeply woven story filled to the brim with believable, fascinating characters that always left you wanting to do and see more. You didn’t grind for gold or experience or items. You explored, and learned, and solved puzzles, and experienced. But for some reason, such an unmanly genre threatened gamers, who decided it was way more fun to shoot each other in the head and call each other fags.

I don’t hate combat in every game. I enjoy first person shooters; Half-Life and Team Fortress 2 are two of my favourite series on the planet. I love real time strategy games, and shooters, and turn-based combat games, and virtually anything else with a gun. I have the action part of my mind to enjoy blowing something to bits, and the patience part to relish a game novella. People used to be able to do both as well…so why did we all get so dumb and impatient that the idea of an hour of story without killing someone was the most boring thing imaginable? I have no problem with combat, I have a problem with what combat has done to our mindsets. We don’t want to listen to how the aliens arrived on the planet, why they’re hostile, or what will become of a six-year old we could briefly see in a 15-second action cutscene, face plastered against the glass, eyes wide open. We just want to pick up a gun and shoot the fuck out of all of them.

Parodius - PSP
I finished it!! One of the five Parodiuses that are in this pack, anyhow.  It might have been Sexy Parodius, because at the end, the final boss consisted of watching some bulbous creature wiggle his way up a loose-fitting sheet on a half naked woman, until he popped out of her asscrack. Then, I beat the game! This might be normal behavior for Parodius games though. Now I only have four more to go, but I can’t even really remember which is the one I just finished, so I’ll probably happily and stupidly keep playing the same one over and over again. Actually, who am I kidding, I just want to see a potato shoot out a woman’s buttcrack again.

Persona 3: FES - PlayStation 2
This game has been my reason for living for the past approximately 216 hours of my video gaming life. That is how long it’s taken me to get through 1 playthrough of the original Persona, another playthrough of the original Persona 3 (in FES), and the little bit I’ve done in actual FES. And it’s all ending too soon, in my opinion. However, I’ve hit a stump — I fully believe the FES add-on is 1 hour of incredible story and character introspection wrapped in 39 hours of dungeon crawling, and I hate it. So, tonight…..I loaded up my beloved high school dating sim that I spent so much time delving deep into, exploring other characters and the world - living, breathing it…..and I went grinding for levels.

And then I cried myself to sleep.

Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters - PSP
I got this game for my birthday, and have discovered two things. One, you can get some really good looking fun games on the PSP. Two, that fucking thing hurts if you try to play a game like Ratchet and Clank with it for an hour. Even so, I am very excited — it feels exactly like the old PS2 games, in handheld form. It’s also been a while since I’ve played a Ratchet game — it took me a little while to remember conservation of ammo is the last thing you want to do.

Lightning Warrior Raidy - PC
I hit a standstill in this game. After grinding for levels against fully naked enemies, I finally approach the floor’s boss (a coprophiliac…who says these games don’t have interesting characters?), only to discover after I save that I am too low level to beat her. Which means I have to restore to before I started leveling…bad saving habits on my part. Stupid crazy Raidy.

Team Fortress 2 - PC
During the free weekend Valve had for this, I downloaded and played Team Fortress 2 for the PC. So much better than the Xbox 360 version. I am not sure why Valve has not released any of the updates they’ve made to the PC version to the Xbox version….all I can assume is that they’re waiting to do it all in one big (paid for) upgrade. But in the end, you get a much better experience on PC. Upgraded weapons, better gameplay mechanics, more mature players, and way more games to choose from. The problem is, I’m used to the Xbox controller for it… a very strange feeling.

Battlefield: Bad Company - Xbox 360 Demo
Military shooters and I get along about as well as Master Chief and a well written piece of dialogue.  So I was a bit surprised when I actually liked Bad Company. Playing through the single-player demo mission first, I was so relieved that this game succeeds where so many other war-games fail — it doesn’t take itself seriously. Come on, guys! War is FUNNY! From the premise of the ‘bad company’ to the inane banter to the freaking smiley faces on the grenade pins, this game is a bit of fresh air in the stagnant world of shooters.

Favorite single player moment — accidentally backing my tank into a civilian’s house and ACTUALLY KNOCKING A GIGANTIC HOLE IN THE WALL. I later jumped out, crawled into the gaping cavity I made, and hopped up and down in their bathtub. Just like a real solider!

Multiplayer feels like it would take a while to get used to. I still wish there was some multiplayer training ground in these types of games instead of throwing you full in with no idea what the hell you’re doing. There’s a ton going on, and it’s difficult to keep track of it all. It didn’t have the magic that pulled me headfirst into Team Fortress 2, but hey…. maybe if Bad Company released a “Meet the Assault” or “Meet the Support” video set it would be better.

Favorite multiplayer moment — slogging through a river to the enemy base, when a random teammate drives up in an armored vehicle and stops, seemingly to let me in. I jump in, happy at being accepted in a multiplayer game (this totally makes up for all my years being picked last in gym class), and he takes off towards the base. I soon see an enemy, and let loose with my cannons — somehow in the process, blowing myself, my teammate, and our car to hell. There was a shamed “KittyCatPirates (tank kill) KittyCatPirates” burned into the screen.

I immediately logged off and cried.

Parodius - PSP
This is the perfect game to play right before bed, because I am too tired to care I can’t get past the third level. The PSP isn’t built for shooters though, since the whole system feels like it’ll break if you breathe on it. I still have no idea what the damned bells do, except add to the clusterfuck of moving objects on the screen so you have absolutely no chance of winning.

Mass Effect - Xbox 360
mog and I have actually finished this game about 4 times, but I picked it up again after a 2 or 3 month hiatus. I am still missing a few achievements — notably, finishing the game on Insanity, and getting a character to level 60. So what better way to do it than play through as my ultra-hardcore solider Bitch Shepherd, a woman who looks a bit too much like a nazi, has a ‘burn first and ask questions later’ mentality, and has a girly crush on whoever the nameless male love interest is. See? I can do complex characters!

The problem is, I stopped playing as soon as I got to the Presidium. I tell you, after 5-6 playthroughs, I hate that place so much. 3 months wasn’t enough to stop me from hating that place.

Orange Box (Team Fortress 2) - Xbox 360
I love bitching about the lack of teamwork in Team Fortress 2 games, and then doing nothing myself to promote teamwork, either. It’s what I do best. But who wants to actually talk to the jerks on Xbox Live, especially when you have a name like KittyCatPirates? I met a few good people yesterday, but they still all sucked as a team. I’m trying to get two achievements where you have to defend a map without losing any areas at all…my team always seems to lose horribly at that. Hmm, what’s the common link there…..

Lightning Warrior Raidy - PC
I want to complete this game so badly, because if the first three bosses are anything to say for the rest of the game…my god. I got this game when they announced Raidy 2, which is supposed to be a lot heavier on the RPG and a lot less on the dungeon crawling, but it’s so worthwhile to see a heroine like Raidy. She is actually so fucked up, I am sorely tempted to write an analysis of her character….needless to say, she has way more of one than a lot of other video game characters. And if you can’t tell from the photo, yes, this is a hentai RPG. Come on — hentai RPG. How could I NOT get it?

Writing a game with mature themes, as Persona 3 has, is a dual-edged blade. On the one hand, you’re able to explore situations and characterizations that touch on things ranging from teenage social awkwardness to self-mutilation to alien sex (no, really) to death…oh, so much death.

On the other hand, by embracing such a mature theme as suicide into the combat system, you inspire the entire LiveJournal-obsessed angst-ridden mascara-drowned groups (whom I lovingly refer to as ‘emo-fucks’) to gush and squeal about how cool this game is, because it’s all about shooting yourself in the head and people with hair fashionably and annoyingly draped over half their face (you are exempt from this, Mitsuru). Glamorizing such a tiny part of such a huge game that deals with so many deeper things is just as ridiculous and inexcusable as blaming it for an increase in actual suicides.

But teenage fascination aside, why is this unique method used to summon Persona?

A Persona, in this game, is seen as an inner power; something akin to your soul. It is not something everyone seems to have, and even if you have it, chances are that you don’t even know you can use it. To summon this potential out of you requires an act of intense emotional stress…short of seeing your mother butchered in front of you every time you want to knock an enemy around, the best thing you can get is forcibly putting your own life in (supposed) immediate danger. Cue the suicide brigade.

The summoning is done with an Evoker — something that looks very much like a live handgun, that fires something when shot (not a bullet, but the character’s heads recoil as if hit with something). Holding a gun (even a fake one) to your head, pulling the trigger and having your head knocked back is traumatic enough to force the Persona out of you.

This difficulty is something explored early in the game - Yukari, a main character, has been part of the Pesona-user group for some time, yet could not actually bring herself to use her Evoker. It was such a deep fear that, when confronted with enemies she knew would kill her, she still could not bear to pretend to shoot herself.

And can she really be blamed? Using a Persona is a bit like Russian Roulette….if someone hands you a gun and tells you that you’ll achieve a higher level of existence if you just blow your head off, how comfortable would you be with it? It’s made even worse when you discover later on that the group is responsible for murdering at least one innocent due to their lack of control. So even if you don’t kill yourself with your fake toy gun, chances are pretty good you’ll kill someone else. But hey, at least that kind of trauma would probably level up your Persona like a Pokemon.

Though the main group has to fool their psyche into thinking they are committing suicide to unleash their power, not all other Persona-users do. Aigis, a robot in the group, seems to have it easy in comparison. She needs no Evoker, but can summon a Persona simply by willing it. While it may seem strange that she’s able to wield a ’soul’ to begin with, it makes sense when you see how little like a robot she ends up behaving …and perhaps it’s the essence of this soul that keeps her that way.

The only other Persona users, a group called Strega, are a special case. The subordinates, Jin and Chidori, both act the same in their summoning as the main group. The leader Takaya, however, does not. His summoning appears to consist of him falling to his knees and tearing the creature out of his own mind. These three were the result of a forced experimentation…rather than having this power naturally, it was forced into them at an early age. These three members were the only survivors, and it’s easy to see why Takaya doesn’t need a pistol to invoke any emotional stress.

Throughout the series, the Persona’s appearance is always linked to times of need or danger. Going by this, we can assume they serve not only the role of a soul of sorts, but also that of a guardian angel. To those awakened to the power, they will appear when their vessel has suffered enough damage — in most cases, psychologically.

The psychological impact of being shot in the head is one of the most damaging you can have, short of seeing a loved one being shot in the head. That said, humans by their very nature adapt to things quickly….who’s to say that during that final boss battle, the main character won’t arrogantly yank out their Evoker, muzzle to their temple, and…get nothing. Shooting yourself in the head might not have the same bang as it used to.

Personas are never fully explained in game; they exist more as representations of emotions, and evolutions of personal improvement. But even so, every time one is summoned, it is easy to see it as just another cool animation or attack, and forget the opening scenes showing the stress and uncertainty that must come with every summoning — the main character, sweat running down his face, gun at his forehead, finger on the trigger, wondering if this will be the one ‘bullet’ to finally shatter him and end it all. And that is the stress that keeps it working.

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