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2008 couldn’t have started out on a worse note for the struggling Indian gaming community. Already reeling under problems such as delayed releases of titles (and the complete absence of others, like UbiSoft ones), game price stickers tugging heavily at our monthly incomes and less-than-average broadband connectivity, Indian gamers will now have to bear the additional burden of trying to get their game past the eagle eyes at the Indian censorship board.

Confirming the decision by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, the Censor Board chief, Sharmila Tagore has said that they will now actively censor computer game software as well, in an attempt to keep objectionable content out of the hands of children who shouldn’t be playing them in the first place. According to DNA India, Sharmila Tagore says:

This is true that there is a proposal that the Censor Board should start censoring all video games - and I agree with proposal totally. We have already submitted our proposal to the ministry and the draft is being considered by them.

Apparently, it looks like this issue began with a number of parents voicing their concerns that their little ones were playing games that are entirely unsuitable for them. According to the proposal, the Censor Board will identify games with aforesaid “unsuitable” content and will advise age limits for children to access the videogame content. But chillingly, in a move that we are used to hearing coming out of Germany’s radical game ratings board, Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (USK), the Censor Board will also reserve the right to ban a videogame if it deems it unsuitable for an Indian audience.

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The severed head is so passé. Ditto for the ragdoll model, entertaining as it was to see a supposedly something-kilogram individual dissolve into a fluttery, floppy pair of dead bunny ears. No one pouts at the impaled body or distinctive parts on a pike, spear, or any variant thereof. That close-range shotgun shell into the gut is now commonplace – and it’s a strategy most players should adopt quickly if they want to take survival for a night out on the town without cheating on Lady Luck. And in today’s gaming world, true horror and chills have been substituted for spanking, new-fangled attempts at sadism, joyfully depicted in almost poetic reams of aching screams, cannibalism, most preferably of the female figure (Rape is so old-school), and intense emotional suffering.

Flash back to the time when Alone in the Dark first came out. Or to the first Resident Evil. Or if you’re one of the more gritty horror-mongers, Silent Hill. What started in those games wasn’t a trend but an élan for playing with a gamer’s nerves. Opening a door in Capcom’s franchise was a common sequence publicly admitted to hide load-times; Resident Evil: Code Veronica used the ingenous technique of a slow close-up on the handle of an entrance set to the rapidly increasing beating of a tense heart whenever a serious event was to take place. Most times it was the case, as when you were greeted by the Tyrant on the escape plane. The clawing of zombies out of graveyard soil formed the first CG sequence to gameplay transition. However, most insane, most maddening, and for all honesty, the best example of total full-on mind-fuckery was going through the sequence above and being greeted by…nothing. Horror done right, as they say, is horror not done at all.

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With the latest flood of new game releases and with almost everyone around disappeared to either play BioShock, watch awesome videos, kick back on their Xbox 360 or otherwise write possibly spoiler filled reviews of the “Game of the moment” *glares at certain people*, it leaves those of us without systems or 360s or PS3s to contribute to the one niche that is still left open: random rants and raves.

As seen by the ever-awesome scenes from BioShock, Crysis and even Assassin’s Creed, games nowadays are becoming more and more realistic. As with the previous generations, each set of games coming out these days pushes the visual boundaries further and further. Sooner or later, we’re going to end up seeing games that are really, really hard to distinguish from the movies we watch everyday. Of course, this usually ends up coming at cost of system resources, money and time so high, that the line that defines ‘sane’ is so far away; it looks most akin to a dot to those individuals that would dare look back (I’m looking at you, id. You and your bloody 20GB of Rage textures! You want Rage? TRY HULK RAGE! *SMASH!*).

However, since this issue has pretty much been discussed to death time and again over a million of the internet’s websites, forums and other venues for discussion, I won’t touch on it too much. Such discussions are normally peaceful and more expressions of opinion. Usually they just start out as words, but then slowly descend into a madness from which everything from Ion Cannons to Tactical Nuclear strikes are deployed to bring about devastation upon the armies of tanks, planes and infantry that struggle for control upon a massive and varied terrain of jagged programming code, drivers and the occasional wreck of an old 486s or Amiga of yore.

Okay, kidding. So it usually doesn’t end up like that. But the flame wars that usually emerge can be ferocious in nature and were it to be mapped into an RTS of sorts, I bet it’d put even Supreme Commander to shame.

To focus back on the subject (do random rants even have subjects?) the realism of today’s games is nothing short of awesome, but it does have its drawbacks. Having been spoiled by F.E.A.R., Doom 3 and other new games, it is becoming incredibly harder to revisit the old retro-days of yore.

Upon seeing the old, dated graphics that came with many a DOS game, my mind cringes; as if demanding that resolution be higher than the mere 640×480 pixels that was once considered ‘king’ of gaming in its day and age. When I finally got a chance to play Turok 1 again – a game that, for the one level I played it back when it came out I thoroughly enjoyed, I couldn’t get through even half of the same level before giving up. The graphics, the sound…my mind simply couldn’t wrap itself around how something could be so awfully painful – even as it recollected memories of all the fun it had with it at one point of time.

Then came Turok 2; although a fair bit better (especially with controls) than its predecessor, once again half-way through the game I had to stop. I just couldn’t stand the low-poly models; the horrid textures. Although I had insane fun with the game play (very, very little can actually beat using a cerebral bore, or watching as your arrows impale an enemy dino in the neck), it soon got tiring – especially with the constant annoying “Turok! Help us please!” whining from those damn brats in their damn cages! I mean, seriously, when I open the cage they should at least, you know, stop whining and make a break for it. But nooooo! Idiots have to wait for Turok to come and rescue them so they can just ‘disappear’ into nowhere. If they could disappear before, why the heck did they even have to wait for Turok in the first place?!

I have absolutely no clue how I withstood and enjoyed the game to its fullest the first time around I played it. Perhaps the fact that I was a fair bit younger and more naïve might’ve done something to the lack of criticism. Back then, to get –any- game to run well on your systems was a miracle.

But there are some games, some which despite their age seem to have that sense of style that never grows too old to enjoy. This applies both to the game play and the visuals itself. It’s a sense of style – a uniqueness that somehow newer games seem to have difficulty replicating. Doom 3 and Quake 4 are good examples of this lack of style – both games are virtually identical when it comes to graphics and game play as a whole. Although Q4 did have a few (and somewhat cool) vehicles, there really wasn’t anything that set it apart; besides perhaps the story (which rode a lot on it’s predecessor actually). Something similar could be said about FEAR. Although visually, it’s far darker and the firefights more intense with the use of slow motion, it still strikes me as ‘just another FPS’ when it comes down to it.

What gripped me about FEAR was not its dark, brooding hallways, or the scary girl ghost jumping out at me from the dark corners when I absolutely least expected it to the point where my heart skipped a beat every time I saw a little girl wearing red (oh my god did that shadow just move?) or such. What gripped me about FEAR was, rightfully, the story – which still does. However, despite this the fact that it really just looked like another shooter on the market sort of made it slightly less…unique, as it were.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for realism and awesome graphics – the two easily make up some of the best games around. But in the strive to better graphics, for some reason developers seem to be moving more and more away from having unique styles to those graphics.

By styles, I don’t mean completely cartoony or even cell shaded stuff. Team Fortress 2 is an excellent of how going on with style and cell shading works to make something unique. Yet, at the same time having everyone do that would just be counter-productive.

Its just that when every game that comes out looks incredibly real, where does the true difference lie? In the lighting? In the models or scenery? In the textures and artwork?

Whenever I see concept art for any games, it’s simply mind boggling just how good the artists of these various developer companies are. Then one compares the art to the actual in-game models themselves and then it ends up somewhat…underwhelming. Although no doubt that in certain cases the models come out far cooler than the art; many times the art itself just looks better. Be it colors or lighting, there is something about the way the artist made it – the style of the entire thing as it were, that appeals to viewer.

To take another example of such style – Defcon.

Its colors are simplistic, the details to a minimum. Yet it is this simplicity; this denial of any details that seems to flow with any player’s perceptions. The nuclear missiles are little but simple icons, yet it does not matter – the entire visual theme blends into that of the game play, creating in essence, a style hard to replicate by many other games.

It is by far not the only example. Many of us have heard of the addictive fl0w. I had the pleasure to play this simple, almost beautiful game’s limited version on the PC. Despite being rather short, its visuals merge well with the soft chimes and sound, and in turn merge with the game play again to make something different; unique almost.

Then there are older games, from the era where realism was not very possible. Games in this era relied on impressive artwork, visuals and impressive action to draw in the gamer. A few good examples could be like Crusader: No Regret and maybe even to a lesser extent Mortal Kombat and the street fighter series.

Yet another recent example can be Battleships Forever – a successor to the hit classic Warning Forever. Indeed, one could quote a myriad of examples of games with their own unique styles – but such wishful thinking is really futile.

The market’s prevailing attitude rests more on realism than anything else right now, dictating where the majority of publishers wish to aim their content. Although developers do move to the whims of the majority of their collective audiences, the trend is thankfully not universal. Team Fortress 2 will come out, while Starcraft 2 seems to hold some promise as well. Other good, fun games to look out for is perhaps Little Big World on the PS3 or alternatively, one could just go to the Xbox Live Arcades for a dose of nostalgia.