Decisions, decisions

I'm going to be blogging about video games for a while, because it's dark and icy-cold here in Minnesota and that's what I've been doing--playing video games.

Yes, I'm a nerd, but admit it, you think it's hot.

A few weeks ago I reserved a copy of Assassin's Creed, a game which I had been following pretty closely on the developer's website and various fansites. The game looked absolutely gorgeous, and promised a 'next-gen' gaming experience.

For the uninitiated, 'next-gen' is short-hand for ground-breaking--game elements that break out of the standard mould of gameplay.

Plus, the assassin character, Altair, is sexy.

I've been playing the game quite a bit since picking it up on Wednesday, and yeah, it's pretty fucking fun.

Basically, gameplay revolves around an assassination order in one of three cities, built to scale: Damascus, Acre, Jerusalem. The cities are huge, intricate, filled with people who can break your cover by harassing you for money, as well as targets you can interrogate, pick-pocket, and investigate in order to learn more about your main target and his methods and patterns.

The animations of your character are beautiful and smooth, as you gently make your way through crowds, scale buildings to gain eagle-eyed views of the city, or battle your way out of a fight in a crowded alley.

You end up taking your time, deciding how you are going to get your guy. Scoping out the scene, analyzing escape routes and guard positions, perhaps eliminating guards in strategic positions, before finally infiltrating and nailing your guy. It's incredibly satisfying.

Then, the exhilarating escape, as you are surrounded by guards and must burst your way out and seek cover in a haystack, or a rooftop garden, or a quiet alley.

Decisions, decisions.

Video games seem to be all about decisions lately.

Whether or not a video game lives up to it's next-gen hype is how it treats decisions. What sort of decisions can your character make? Bioshock, a next-gen game released over the summer which I loved, had decisions for you to make--are you going to be ruthless, and rip this creepy little girl in half and steal the slug that's growing inside of her (you have to have played the game to know what I'm talking about), or are you going to let her go even if it places you at a disadvantage, because, you know, it's mean to rip little girls in half.

Assassin's Creed is far more open-ended. You can do a lot of investigating, or you can do the bare minimum. You can help citizens in the city, who will in turn return the favor for you later on, or you can ignore them. You can take your time plotting (literally, three or four hours for one assassination), or you can rush in there, fight your way to your guy and then fight your way out.

Yet, both Bioshock and Assassin's Creed, have an overarching plot device, a metacomment on the very nature of decisions. At the risk of giving away some spoilers, both main characters in these videogames are, despite their vast decision-making options, entirely beholden to larger forces. In Assassin's Creed, the main character is actually living and breathing in the year 2017, captive in a sinister laboratory, a guinea pig for advanced genetic testing and experimentation.

The main character of Bioshock, as soon as he starts to pat himself on the back for releasing all those little girls, finds out he's a pawn, a puppet, and not only that, a sick, twisted brain-washed guy who himself started out as a creepy little kid.

The next big video game I'll be getting, next week, is Mass Effect. They've just been releasing some new teasing trailers for the game, and guess what? It's all about decisions. You can't save everyone.

Also, Mass Effect has a graphic sex scene at some point in the game. Depending on whether you play as a male or a female, you could find yourself in a lesbian sex scene at some point in the game, or a banal male-on-female-alien hook-up.

Decisions, decisions.