Portal 2

Just chiming in: Portal 2 may not have changed my life, but it was interesting to see how the rhetorics of science and patriarchy intertwine within it, revealing how intersectionality in these subjects can be used to get a clearer sense of how power relations within these fields take place, and their relationship to one-another. It was thus also interesting how glados is portrayed, and how hir role changes from that of the first game, because of the relations of power and how they have changed, and also how glados "came to be", and what the real culprits may be in this saga. This affected me to some degree, yes, just as the first game explores notions of medicalization and instiutions (foucault), double binds (bateson), ontological insecurities (laing), processes of mortification (goffman), master of supression techniques (berit ås). The first game got me emotional because my parents and the psychiatry have pulled those fucking stunts on me, and the second game was more interesting on an intellectual level, but also made me sad because I got a clearer sense of how notions of exploration/final frontiers/final solutions adhere to misogynist values, imperialism and modernism, and because I always have a potential of getting emotionally involved in situations where there is a reversal of roles such as evil guy is really not all that evil (see freudian excuse in tvtropes, although it can be done very badly and is often done so), and reversals such as the good guy is really the bad guy (not saying anything, because it spoils two of my most favorite games).

There is also one thing worth mentioning here, perhaps, which knife_bob will recognize since we met when zie held a lecture at a game meetup in Sweden: in the beginning, one is instructed to stand next to a painting and enjoy art, while classical music plays. Then the whole room one stands is is torn apart, moves around, with you in it, controlled, yet free to look around, an authored yet not authored experience. This is for me an ironic hint at the debate of art, amusing remark on what goes for art, and that without the literacy of that domain, one gets nothing out of it. Also the irony of being instructed, under time pressure, to enjoy something. But how about games, are they not about time, about action? Well, some puzzles aren't, are they more art than something else? I for example think there should be less static things in video games in general, not so that one gets to choose which data set to begin with (what mission) but which mission one simply most let go in order to choose something else over it.

Just some thoughts. The bulk of the game is still puzzles and puzzles and massive areas of looking for where to go next. This can make me tired.