St. George's Games: Introduction

St. George’s Games: Introduction

Although, outside my regular job in linguistics, most people probably know me as an amateur music reviewer, I have never made it a secret that for an almost as large chunk of my life as I have enjoyed music, I have also been (since around 1989, when dear Dad generously donated me his first PC XT) an avid fan of video games — particularly those that offered a chance to wash your problems away in an imaginary universe, a.k.a. Adventure Games (and, later, certain types of Role-Playing Games and Action Adventure Games as well). Oddly enough, this is yet another passion, along with languages and music, that I actually shared with my father (I remember him fondly retelling me the entire plotline of Sierra’s Space Quest III after he’d proudly beaten it without a hintbook), but while his own interest in following the evolutionary thread of PC gaming waned and fizzled out some time around the mid-1990s, mine never truly disappeared — rather, it just followed its own pattern of on-and-off time periods.

For a long time, it has been a dream of mine to add a series of reviews of my favorite (and not so favorite) games and game series to the slowly growing repository of my reviews of pop music, but in the end, circumstances always forced me to put the idea off. Unlike music — even its less blatantly «artsy» forms — video gaming has always been, and still remains, an extremely niche form of entertainment, especially when it comes to plot-based games that take themselves somewhat more seriously than the usual arcades, platformers and various easy-going manners of amusement that people play on their phones and tablets while commuting. Few, if any, people in my immediate vicinity whom I know personally have ever been seriously immersed in gaming (and those who have would probably not admit it for fear of being laughed off). And, saddest of all, video games have a far shorter lifespan than music: most of the titles that I have enjoyed in my teenage years can only be played on special life support today (e.g. by using special emulators such as DOSBox and ScummVM), look dreadfully antiquated on modern monitors, and are often distinctly dated to their time periods, such as the late Eighties or the mid-Nineties.

Even so, at the same time that I began to prepare the newest relaunch of Only Solitaire, my music review site, a very distinct inner voice (at times taking on the inflections of Tim Curry’s Gabriel Knight, Dominic Armato’s Guybrush Threepwood, and Sarah Hamilton’s April Ryan) began insisting that if I was ever going to make a stab at making that old dream come true, it was now or never. Several circumstances and observations contributed to that. First, it just so happened that a recent deep dive into the gaming world, during which I had the opportunity to truly soak in some of the 21st century classics (like the Mass Effect and Witcher trilogies), actually helped pull me out of a somewhat troubled period, or, at least, keep my head above water during that time, offering a vast positive charge that could not be offered at the time by anything else. Because of this, it’s almost as if I owe the genre a debt of gratitude at present, and this is the only way I can think of to repay it (short of designing a video game myself, which is about as likely for me as recording a musical album).

Second, just as it happened with music, the video gaming industry at present (as of our Covid-dominated times, that is) seems to have also been caught in a rut: after the massive technical breakthroughs of the 2000s and early 2010s, when 3D-based games finally began to look as breathtaking as originally promised, and the epic sprawl of open-world gaming all but exceeded the imbibing capacity of the average player, it is currently beginning to look as if the industry is finally running out of fresh ideas, with remastered editions of old classics catching as much of, if not more of, public attention as original titles, which seem to be lacking the freshness and innovation that you could find less than ten years ago (witness, for instance, the relative embarrassment of the long-awaited Cyberpunk 2077 after the absolute triumph of The Witcher 3).

While this may be just a temporary stutter (I am not entirely sure of this, but I’ll hold off my judgement for a few years at least), at present at least this perspective does bring a certain whiff of «finality», which is easily convertible into an incentive to take a careful look back and see where it all started, which directions it all took, what sort of problems it faced, and where exactly, if anywhere, did it all go wrong (or didn’t?). It is not even unthinkable that some of the more demanding young players, bored with the monotony of the big studios and increasingly turning their attention towards more daring and innovative indie developers (yes, indie seems to still be an active concept in gaming), will also want to pay more attention to source material — some unique inspiration can actually be found in old titles. Some of which, in turn, I’d be happy to re-introduce.

Now, onward to some particularities.

1. Why "St. George’s Games"? Isn’t that a bit... sacrilegious / pretentious?

St. George’s Books, as every veteran gamer born prior to 1980 is obliged to know, is the name of the used book store owned by Gabriel Knight, one of adventure gaming’s greatest heroes to whose character I can somewhat relate. Since most of the titles that I play and review are every bit as used (and seemingly useless) as Gabriel’s books, the name fits the site to a tee... not to mention the fact that my own name is George, obviously.

2. What kinds of games do you actually play and review?

The site is and always will be exclusively dedicated to what might be called «story-driven» or «plot-based» games. I have never been much of an action guy — I can play a few rounds of Mortal Kombat every now and then, but generally my arcade-playing skills remain on the level of Digger and Arkanoid from the early-to-mid Eighties. My favorite genre has always been and remains adventure gaming — from the early text parser-based classics of Sierra on to the point-and-click style of LucasArts and other inventive studios of the 1980s-1990s, but I can actually handle RPGs, action adventure (such as RockStar games), and even first-person shooters and survival horror, but only as long as the game involves an actual plot, individual characters, and serious elements of world-building. Thus, Half-Life works for me; Quake does not. Grand Theft Auto is the shit; Mario Brothers, not so much. Simple. Basically, I don’t play for «achievements» or to prove the superhuman origins of my fingers (they are quite ordinary, in fact); I play to entertain my imagination.

It would be nice to have the site eventually become a sort of museum of solid plot-based game series, though it is most likely that this is a far more ambitious goal than I’ll ever be able to reach. At the very least, I have very serious plans of writing about every Sierra On-Line and every LucasArts adventure title ever released. How deep I’ll ever get into the RPG and action-adventure genres, I am not yet able to tell.

3. Which platforms?

Even simpler. PC, and nothing but PC. Never owned a Nintendo, never owned a PlayStation, never owned an Xbox, never even had a joystick or a controller — mouse and keyboard work for me just fine. I like the idea of using the same device for my work and my play, I’m perfectly happy with the graphic resolutions and processor speed provided by my machine, and I enjoy the possibility of freely twiddling with the games, modding them and taking a peek at their entrails if necessary. This does deprive me of the opportunity to check out some titles I’d most likely enjoy the hell out of (The Last Of Us), but about 90% of what I am interested in is available for PC, and even games that were not previously available for PC are gradually coming around (Red Dead Redemption 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc.), so I don’t worry, I’m sittin’ on top of the world.

4. What do the actual reviews look like?

Unlike my musical reviews, my reviews of video games have a fairly rigid structure — this is because games are complex entities, each aspect of which can be analyzed and judged separately from the other (though ultimately, of course, they are all connected). The Basic Overview section is a general introduction, containing some factual information about the game. Content Evaluation is devoted to writing about the substantial aspects of the game: Plotline, Puzzles or Challenges / Action (depending on the genre of the game), and Atmosphere (easily the most important part for me — this is all about world-building, immersion, and emotional content of the game). Technical Features give a (usually more brief) assessment of Graphics, Sound, and Interface (mechanics of the game, screen layout, controls, logistics, etc.). Finally, a general Verdict is issued — if you’re not interested in a long read, just skip over there to see me recapitulate whether the game is a masterpiece or a piece of shit or something in between.

There is also some purely technical information about the game at the beginning of the review (date of release, studio, main author, primary credits, etc,), as well as links to sites such as Wikipedia and MobyGames where you can find additional info, or GOG.com if you want to buy yourself an oldie. Finally, there are links to my own playthroughs of the games in question which I diligently post on YouTube.

5. YouTube? Do you actually do Let’s Plays?

NO, so help me God. (For the record, I don’t judge let’s-players en masse — some of them are pretty funny, but, unfortunately, most just do it to get subscribers and monetize their channels). I do, however, scrupulously play each game I review back and forth, or replay it if it’s been a long time, so I thought it would also be a nice gesture to record these playthroughs as well — in as much detail as possible. I think that the resulting channel, St. George’s Games, actually looks quite nice (before YouTube blocks it for too many copyright claims on the music in GTA videos, that is), and I’m actually kinda proud of my Paragon and Renegade Mass Effect playthroughs on there. Check it out, if you got seven hundred hours of spare time to burn or something.