Max Payne (the game) has a deep plot about drugs and crime, themes of loss and revenge, a some what subtle background in Norse mythology, and gunfights -- lots and lots of slow motion, totally awesome gunfights.

Max Payne (the movie) has a plot about government super-soldiers, no apparent themes whatsoever, a complete and total lack of subtlety about its Norse mythological influences, and two -- count them -- two, gunfights. Fine maybe its two and a half gunfights, but that still makes Max Payne a terrible movie, and an insult to a game that was wonderfully melodramatic and -- I can't stress this enough -- full of gunfights.

But for now lets pretend that the lack of gunfights in the movie (seriously, there's only one slow motion bullet time shot) isn't a problem, and take a quick look at how the movie butchers the game's story and themes.

[Editor's note: Cowzilla3 looks at how the videogame companies have made hatred a part of our normal day lives for his Monthly Musing piece. -- CTZ]

Gamers hate. Gamers hate hard. There are few areas of entertainment that attract such fervor over where one should apply ones money. Hell, there are few subjects in the world that seem to attract so much benign conflict. As a whole we just love to hate. We hate on other systems, we hate on outsiders, we hate on each other and we hate on developers who don’t do it exactly how we want it. The most irrational form of hate is the fanboy. Gaming fanboys are more vocal and divided than any other type. In fact the only division I can think of that gets more people riled up is the one between Democrats and Republicans, and at least in that case the fate of an entire country lies in the balance.

No, the gaming fanboy is a strange breed indeed. Intensely loyal, incensed by even the slightest jab at his/her chosen system and ready to shout to high heaven how stupid the other systems are at the drop of a hat, they are seriously full of hate. But why is this hate here, what created the system in which fanboys could thrive in the first place and how, in a world of gaming where every system has its benefits and drawbacks, does he/she survive? Let’s take a look at how hate was born and thrives in the gaming industry.

[Editor's note: Cowzilla3 tackles Lara Croft for his A cast of thousands as part of July's Monthly Musings. -- CTZ]

Upon reading of the topic for this month’s Monthly Musing I thought, “Awesome, I love dissecting characters into more meaning than they probably have in the first place!” So I figured I would do Mario. I mean seriously, what character has had more of an impact on everything and everyone who has ever picked up a game even if it wasn’t an emotional or physical one. Wait, this sounds familiar. Oh, whoops, I’ve already written this blog as part of my What is a Hero series. Link, Sonic, Solid Snake, Samus and Master Chief? Done, done, done, done and done. Well crap, I’m out of ideas.

Just kidding, there were a ton of other heroes I wanted to tackle with this, and this month’s Monthly Musing is the perfect excuse to start it back up again or at least do one more. One of the characters I really wanted to talk about, before I got side tracked by life, was Lara Croft because she is such a walking contradiction that the lessons she teaches us about heroism are at incredible odds. As always, please go back and read the introduction to this series (linked above) so you know what I’m trying to get at here and why I’m even discussing this. I tackled many of the contradictions that female heroes in gaming raise with my Samus post but I think Lara brings them to the forefront even more powerfully because she is even more sexualized and has far more character development. Let’s jump in. 

[Editor's note: Cowzilla3 talks about the time he and his friend pulled an all nighter going through Rampage: World Tour for his Start of the Affair. -- CTZ]

For the past month, many people have been extolling how they fell in love with the wonderful world of gaming. It’s brought them joy and laughter and happiness, and I too fell in love with it long ago by some game.

But that is not the affair I am going to talk about here. No, my affair is the kind of affair a person has when they cheat on their spouse in that it causes more pain and horror than joy and happiness and yet, can’t quit it. An affair that has destroyed men before me. This is not an affair to remember but one to run from while screaming like someone has put the spawn of Satan into you. This is an affair with beating Rampage games in one sitting no matter how bad, repetitive or boring they are. And this, my friends, is the sad tale of how it all started.

[Editor's note: Whoa, a promoted story that isn't related to the Monthly Musing theme?! That's right boys and girls, we still recognize brilliant pieces of work that deserve to be promoted. Such as this case where Cowzilla3 writes an eye-opening piece on what No More Heroes really represents. -- CTZ]

Videogames stories hardly ever confront the gamer, causing some sort of introspective look on the decisions they’ve made throughout the game and prompting them to not only take a look at what they are doing in the game but who they are as a person. Films, books and television all have a myriad of means of confronting their audience forcing them to think about their actions and the world around them. However, videogames more often then not supplant us in the role of hero and push us forward unquestioningly and linearly to a victorious end goal. Sure there have been the rare gems like BioShock or even Call of Duty 4, but even these games only confront the gamer's ideals and not the gamer themselves. This is why I am so chagrinned that Suda51’s No More Heroes is not getting as much attention for its story and characters as the aforementioned games do.

Maybe it is the fact that it’s on a “less serious” console. Maybe it’s because the story is just that strange. Maybe it’s because of the different artistic style. Or maybe it's the fact that the game wasn’t quite as big as others. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t seem like No More Heroes is getting the attention it deserves for its incredibly smart, confrontational and interesting ideas. So I’m going to do that here. There will be spoilers, but that isn’t really that important because as we will see, in the end it is not the story that makes the point but the game itself. Hit the jump to read on.

[Editor's note: Cowzilla takes a look at the Casual gaming scene as part of the Monthly Musings theme. -- CTZ]

Casual gaming, which I will define as gaming that you don’t have to invest too much time into to understand and can enjoy without becoming enthralled in it, has pretty much taken the world of gaming by storm since the Wii’s launch. Though it has been around since the dawn of gaming, it hasn’t really been recognized and sanctioned off from hardcore gaming until surprisingly recently. With the Wii’s launch and the focus of brining in gamers with more casual style games, we now have great debates raging on the benefits and down sides to this newly recognized section of gaming.

Before reading this please read the introduction so you know what I’m trying to do with this series and why I’m talking about heroism. Then, if you wish, read about Link, Solid Snake and Mario.

Before we jump into the next hero, I’d like to comment on something that has come up via the truly awesome responses in each blogs comments since I’ve started this series. Many of videogames early heroes were designed around necessity (Mario for example as Necros pointed out). Thus their look and often times their actions weren’t created to make a statement or define them as a character but instead because they had to look or act that way. This doesn’t mean however that the way these characters define what a hero is to us is any less valid. In fact the technical limitations of videogames forced the medium to have an entirely different standard of what a hero should look like and how they should act (Mario once again being a prime example). The point being made here is that it doesn’t matter if videogame heroes were designed around necessity or not because either way, they still apply to how we perceive heroism and they still teach us lessons about it.

The second point I would like to make is something that should have been in the introduction but I missed. Videogame characters, more and more so, do define how we think. If you believe that our generation wasn’t some how influenced by the stories of Mario, Sonic or any other character, then you’re just wrong. The stories might have been simple, the morals easy to understand and the dialogue blatantly obvious but we all learned from them in one way or another. Gaming, like books, art, film and every other form of media, does help to define how we perceive different ideals. I would say games especially define heroism since in the majority of them you are placed in the role of hero. With that being said let’s move on to our next hero: Sonic.

[Hey all. Hope you're doing well. We've got a piece here from Cowzilla. It's a relatively lengthy, but give it a read. He's got some great points about how there's a lack of innovation in music. Sure, we've got some great luminaries, but there's also a ton of stuff that needs to be worked on. Be forewarned, the BioShock section has some spoilers. Enjoy! -- DMV]

Music in video games has come a long way from its early days of beeps, boops and other tiny file sounds. Well it has come a long way in sound quality, but not really anywhere else. Unlike many other aspects of gaming that are evolving and challenging how we play games like game controls, graphic design, actual plots and character development, music seems to be staying pretty stagnant as a whole. I’m not saying the quality of the compositions and the level of expertise of composers isn’t getting better (though most beloved themes are still 8-bit, but that is another discussion), it is the way that music is used in games that hasn’t changed.

Music in any medium is meant to evoke stronger emotions out of the listener. Simply playing a song can do this so applying a score or song over a movie or game in effect defines how the scene should feel. Scary movies are a great example of this, tense music makes what would normally be a person walking around into a scary scene, usually the tense music leads to a fake scare but it wasn’t the scene that got you it was the music ramping you up. Gaming music does this too, as you play tension is built via stronger themes, spooky music or the grandiose sounds of a boss battle.