Lucius

Did you ever watch, say, The Omen and think ‘I really would like to know what it’s like to create all these accidents?’ Then you get a chance now, because Shiver Games has created an adventure in which you do precisely that. You play Lucius, the only child of politician Charles Wagner and his wife Nancy. Well, officially. Because your real father is Lucifer himself.

Born on June 6th, 1966, Lucius has grown up mostly normal for six years before the game starts up. The only thing his parents worry about is the fact that Lucius doesn’t talk. Apart from that, he is a healthy, little boy who does what he is told and doesn’t cause problems. On his sixth birthday, however, things take a turn for the worst.

When alone in the kitchen with one of Dante Manor’s maids (Dante Manor being the home of the family) in the evening, the time slows down and Lucius sees a strange man who motions for him to lock the maid into the walk-in freezer. Once he has done so, secured the door with a padlock, and lowered the temperature, his life moves in a new direction. The strange man, who visits him in his dreams from now on, is no other than Lucifer, Lord of Hell. And Lucius is his son and supposed to work for the family business by bringing in souls. While doing so, he will gain powers that make things easier for him (especially as a six-year-old is not that powerful physically).

The game is an adventure with a few difficult parts (twice you are sneaking through the manor at night and have to make sure you are not seen, these passages are hard). You move through the manor like you would in most 3D games, controlling Lucius’ movements with WSAD, as usual. If you are a very good boy (do a lot of chores), you will even get a little tricycle. Two other items you get as rewards are a Ouija board (gives one basic hint per chapter) and a music box (helps you find important items). Besides gaining rewards, being a good boy also serves to make you less suspicious, so it’s a good idea to do your chores. Plus some chores, such as cleaning up your room or taking out the trash, give you a chance to practice your telekinesis skill.

Which brings us to the next part. As promised, Lucius gains new skills (and strengthens them) by killing people and sacrificing their souls. The first skill is telekinesis which allows him to manipulate stuff that is out of his reach. And in a manor filled with adults, a lot of stuff is kept out of a kid’s reach, normally. Mind control follows afterwards, giving him a chance to get someone to use something. Like this, Lucius can make some deaths look like suicide or terrible accidents. Advancing from mind control, Lucius gains the ability to manipulate people’s short-time memory. Like this, if he gets spotted by someone (which is a ‘game over’ before that point), he can make them forget and continue with his plans (what would I have given for that ability earlier, that is to say in the fifth chapter). Finally, he gains the ability to protect himself with a fireball. This ability, however, is usually locked and can only be accessed at some points of the game. Lucius is no flame-throwing demon (at least not outwardly), but a harmless kid. Skills evolve with time, which means they can be used longer or more effective.

The logical victims for Lucius crusade for souls are the people living and working on his father’s estate (including, of course, his family). The sequence in which they have to die is preset, Lucius finds his next victim by meeting them somewhere in the house. He has a vision in which the time slows down and he sees blood all around them. Additional help and occasional hints are provided by a present he gets from his ‘real’ father very early: a notebook with all necessary information. The notebook also records everything he hears and keeps track of his chores – practical stuff. The other present, though, is not really that useful. The flashlight can’t be used at night when sneaking, because it would draw attention, and is not useful during the day. The few times it might be used, diffuse ambient light still proved good enough for me.

Most of the time (with the exception of the first three chapters and his nightly escapades) Lucius can enter most rooms whenever he wants. This can be used to the player’s advantage (by gathering stuff long ahead of its use). For instance, picking up the glue in the classroom before chapter 10 is a very good idea, because it shortens sneaking time through the house at night. Instead of crossing the house once to get into the classroom, then going back and down through the utility room and the garage, Lucius just has to make his way down to the wine cellar and the secret chamber below it. Just employ the good, old ‘if it’s not nailed down, pick it up’ method of adventure gaming and you are good to go. The game allows the player free movement through a huge mansion most of the time and comes with a map that also shows the way to the next target, until it has been found. Means of disposal usually present themselves in some way. Something the characters say may include a tip, not necessarily only to their own demise.

As the house empties of staff, the story is told very well. Cutscenes show in gruesome detail how the victims die. Voiceovers from the detective investing the case, Mr. McGuffin, lead from one chapter to the next. The music is fitting, in some levels (chapter five, when you have to sneak around without being spotted first) it’s necessary to turn on the sounds, so you hear people passing you by or doors being opened and closed. The game relies on save-points instead of allowing you to save wherever you want. That means you can’t save every step until you are through with difficult passages. Save-points, however, are frequent enough and placed well, most of the time. (If you ask me, one between avoiding Lucius’ mother and distracting the detective in chapter five would have been nice.) The graphics are good, even though not really state-of-the-art. There is at least one spot you can get caught by (if you walk in the corner wall between the classroom and the door to the balcony over the library), which had me replaying a few levels, because I couldn’t get away. The whole game has a very good atmosphere and the movements of people during the house (during the day they don’t mind Lucius around, but some things should not be done with someone else in a room) adds a more realistic feeling. Setting up the ‘accidents’ for people requires thinking and taking advantage of the place.

If you mind gruesome games and blood, you should not play Lucius, that much is for sure. If you like exploring your dark side a little and play a game in which you can wreak havoc without grenade launcher and mini-gun, you definitely should have a closer look and give Lucius a good (really?) home.

Catholic Scandals

People from Germany reading this blog (if there are any, except for my father…) might already have wondered why I didn’t write anything about the current scandal the Roman Catholic church is suffering in Germany. Namely: child abuse over decades in various Catholic schools.

I have not been writing about it before, because I was waiting for the high point of the scandal, the moment when it starts to ebb down. I’m not really sure if we’ve reached this point already, but considering the huge number of cases already in the news, I decided to write something about it.

I am Roman Catholic, but not really a very religious person. I’m more sort of an atheist who has forgotten to leave church. But, as a girl, I wasn’t really in any danger, considering the stories that have leaked out to the press. The abuses concerned boys in almost all cases.

I will not retell all the tales here, there’s more than enough material online anyway. I will, instead, tell you why I was not surprised.

I grew up in a somewhat divided household. My father is Lutheran and my mother Roman Catholic (thus I am Roman Catholic, too). None of my parents is very religious, but my mother is in the habit of praying before going to bed (no fixed prayer, rather a little chat with God) and my father has studied the bible himself (both testaments). My father is very interested in philosophy and has discussed his ideas with me since my later teens (when I was around 15). I was not an easy student for every teacher in this topic, either. I had – and still have – my own views of religion and how it should and shouldn’t intervene with peoples’ lives.

When I learned in school about the fact that Roman Catholic priests have to always been forced into celibacy, I was surprised at first. The argument that was presented to us in school always was “That way they only work for God and the parish”. Why had this changed during the medieval age? Had priests been better at multitasking before this time? And did Lutheran priests (not forced to live in celibacy) care less for God and the parish? Then I learned the real reason for celibacy: money.

Before the middle ages, Roman Catholic priests were allowed to marry and have children (in the Orthodox church, only a married priest is a priest…). But that presented a certain problem, namely inheritances. A priest lives on church grounds, is paid by the church and thus has nothing to give to his children. Today, that would not present all that much of a problem, because most people earn money in jobs and live in apartments. But in the middle ages, people handed everything down to their children. The sons (sometimes also the daughters) inherited the possibility to earn a living from their parents. When a man died, his wife and children usually split the grounds and everything else he left between them. But priests lived on church ground – they didn’t leave behind anything their children could live off. So the church had to step in and give money to those children (and care for the widow). To avoid this, the Roman Catholic church came up with the great idea of celibacy, officially telling people ‘it’s for the best of the parish’. No more children to take care of (and no more priest’s widows, either).

And that from a religion that demands from every believer to produce as many children as possible…

Young men start training early to become a priest, right after school or after university. And not all of them are saints. And a young man who is no saint will sooner or later long for company, that of a woman if he’s heterosexual, that of a man if he’s homosexual. Nothing really wrong with that, as long as it’s consent contact. In fact, the church silently pays for up to four illegitimate children. The logical course would be to drop the celibacy and allow the priests to choose whether or not they will marry. The logical course … but we’re talking about religion here, so there is no logical course.

A job in which you’re not allowed to marry and your boss (and I don’t mean God himself here) has the right to kick you out if you’re interested in your own gender? In every other job in Germany, the boss would be in big trouble. The Roman Catholic church isn’t. And is it so unlikely that a group that damns every kind of sex as a sin will attract people whose sexual interest is really sinful (because they like to have sex with children, for instance)?

I’m definitely not saying every Catholic priest is a child molester. There are men who freely decide to live in celibacy and serve only God and the parish. There are men and women who will even go further and join a religious order and only serve God for the rest of their lives. All of them deserve our respect. (And they definitely get mine.)

But if the church is so strict with marriage and still condemns homosexuality as a sin, it should also damn everyone who touches children in a sexual way – and deliver them to the worldly authorities. God may punish them later on whichever way he sees fit. They should only be punished by human law beforehand.

Football and War

Only very recently, I bought a game called “Blood Bowl.” It’s an interesting mixture between football (Australian Football, probably) and war.

The computer game is adapted from a tabletop game created by Jervis Johnson and published by Games Workshop. It features various races from the “Warhammer”-universe and is indeed a mixture between strategy and sports game.

The rules as a such are easy: two teams, one ball, one goal (getting the ball to the touchdown zone of the other team). In this aspect, the game resembles American Football (or rather, because of the violent game play the rougher Australian Football). Two teams of ten players face each other on a playing field (or, as some may call it, a battlefield). The ball (looking like an American Football with spikes) is kicked off by one team, then each tries to get the ball and make it with the ball (which can be handed over or thrown) to the opposite side of the playing field, where there’s a touchdown zone.

But in addition to the sports tactics themselves, a lot of other tactics can be employed, such as foul play (which might result in the fouling player getting sent off the field – still, the fouled player will be out of the picture for quite a while), bribery (of the referee or a member of the other team), the use of (forbidden) potions and so on. It’s indeed very much like professional sports these days … just kidding, of course.

I have yet to try out the various races and find the one I’m most happy with. Currently, I’ve tried out lizard men and humans, but skaven (some sort of man-high rats) and chaos (beast men of various types) sound interesting as well.

"Killerspiele" return - Election Edition

Elections are coming um, next week on Sunday we’re electing the new members for the Bundestag (the German parliament). And, as always, the “Killerspiele”-debate comes up again.

In addition, there have been some things happening lately – violence that resulted in the death of a man trying to help, another student running amok in his school – that have, once again, sparked off the whole debate.

It’s always the same faces you see throughout the debates on TV – people who usually speak about the whole topic without knowing the slightest bit about the actual games.

Even after almost three years – that’s how long my blog’s been running now – the actual debate as a such has not changed the slightest. Whenever there’s someone killing or maiming people and the person is a teenager or in his twenties (no women accounted for so far), it’s immediately the fault of the “Killerspiele.”

Yes, most of them do have something like “Counterstrike” on their computer. But, to be honest, I’d be more surprised if a boy that age didn’t have such a game on his hard drive.

One thing is strange, though: all people running amok during the last few years were members of a Schützenverein (shooter’s association would probably be the right translation). As not everyone in Germany is allowed to own a gun, becoming a member of such a club is the only way to learn how to handle a gun (something you don’t learn from a computer game) and how to actually shoot with it (aiming with a gun is completely different from aiming with a mouse). Despite the fact that those amok runs would not have been possible without the amok runners being members of a Schützenverein, not one politician has ever demanded to shut them down. Strange, isn’t it? Or, maybe, it isn’t. The older members of those clubs are most likely to vote for the politicians always going on about the “Killerspiele.” So why alienate those who will most surely vote for you?

On the other hand, the politicians still have to learn one fact: it’s not just a small group of underage nerds who play computer games, it’s a large group of people at voting age (getting bigger and older every year) who do it.

A violent game

There are games that are violent because of the things the player can do. And there are games which are violent because of what the characters do. That's a big difference. And it is a far more significant difference than most people might think.

Games in which players can do violent things (most ego-shooters or games like GTA) are quite often called "Killerspiel" by the politicians. They are what those people fight against, because they believe it's a bad influence on teenagers and young grown-ups.

Games in which the characters do violent things, on the other hand, are rarely seen as "Killerspiele", they are usually seen as harmless - at least in Germany. I learned that when buying - and playing - the game "Still Life". In Germany the rating is "16+", but he European Rating, which also is on the box, is "18+". Now, if you just examine what the player is doing, the German rating is absolutely correct. But if you take a look at the story and the pictures the player will see throughout the game, then the European rating is absolutely correct.

"Still Life" is about a serial killer who positions his victims in certain ways, each of them differently. He kills them violently and that's how the corpses look when found by the police. As the player character is an F.B.I. profiler named Victoria McPherson, she gets to see the pictures and the corpses (in some cases). The player is faced with some pictures that might be a little too much for a sixteen-year-old teenager - although some will have no problems, but some sixteen-year-olds won't have problems with "18+" games either.

Usually, whenever it's about "Killerspiele", the politicians argue that the European rating is too low (sometimes it's even "12+" when the game is "16+" in Germany). In this case the German rating is lower, because the player can't actually do something violent (well, there's a fight at the end, but that's a cut-scene, not something the player can control).

That shows quite clearly how different people understand the issue of violence in Germany and the rest of Europe. We seem to think the only violence to keep away from teenagers is the kind they're allowed to do themselves while the other countries seem to think the violence to keep away from teenagers is the really bloody type.

"Still Life" is intense. It's drawing the player in and has quite some 'shock-moments'. But it doesn't have any "Killerspiele"-moments.

There are games which are for grown-ups because of their content. And there are games which are for grown-ups only because of what you can do. But there's no way politicians in Germany will ever grasp the difference.