yes, you may

I've been in and out of work over the last week, missing time to visit Mako and the baby, particularly to be there when they checked out yesterday morning. Can't say it's any easier to get myself in the mood to teach these days, but at this point I credit the unpleasant weather and the fact that this semester is practically over. The fact that I missed a couple days here and there adds to the feeling that we're all just killing time in English class until summer vacation starts. Of course, the fact that half of my classes were canceled today so the kids could go swimming is another reminder that what I do isn't all that important.

I know my attitudes towards this job (and this country) are cyclical. It just so happens that so far, this year's cycles have been warped by dealing with a difficult pregnancy and then the birth itself which was ill-timed to say the least. I'm confident that once the summer has passed, giving me ample time to adjust to the serious life changes that are in store for me, I'll be eager to get back to work when the new semester starts (in August, damn it, thanks to that week off we took for the "new flu" panic).

Speaking of the baby, since that's all everyone wants to know about lately, he is with Mako at her parents' house and doing what babies do: consume, excrete, and occasionally sleep. He's still the most adorable baby I've ever seen, but I guess there's an obvious bias there. For those curious, yes, I have held him and I've given him a bottle a couple of times, but I have yet to try my hand at the infamous diaper duty. Don't worry, I won't leave Mako hanging in that department; I'm no monster, I'm merely squeemish.

Augh, it's past midnight and I'm still up. This kind of behavior can wait for the baby to arrive. He's nowhere near the point where he sleeps through the night, according to Mako, so I should really try harder to get my sleep while I can.

Labels: family, Japan, number one son, teaching

つづく...(Click here to read more)

This may surprise some of you, but I am having trouble fulling comprehending the sudden death of Michael Jackson. His music was an enormous part of my life for many years and the idea that he is gone at the age of fifty, well, it just doesn't sit right. I know everybody dies, but icons of this magnitude don't go quietly. Their departure rips a chunk out of everyone who ever looked up to them.

I was born in the 70s but I grew up in the 80s and, as a result, Michael Jackson was the undisputed ruler of the planet for a stretch of my childhood. We had a copy of Thriller and we played it a lot, more than any other contemporary music that we had. I'm sure I don't seem to be a very musical person, but I cannot stress how many times I listened to that record and watched him perform on the once-great stage that was MTV.

In a way, his death reminds me of the conflicting emotions I experienced five years ago when Ronald Reagan died (ironically, Michael died in a medical center named for Reagan). Both men were superstars of the 1980's and both were inescapable; there wasn't a channel on television or magazine cover that didn't feature their image on a regular basis, to say nothing of video games and comic books.

Once the 80's ended, the two of them went in very separate directions. Reagan all but disappeared from public view while Michael only became more famous - just not for his music. Between the molestation charges, his increasingly bizarre appearance and the scores of rumors, Michael Jackson the performer became a memory. It was a really great memory that we all shared, but with each new story the Michael Jackson we saw made it harder to look back with fondness on the Michael Jackson we all loved.

So in a sick way, Michael's death is the best thing to happen to Michael's musical legacy. Unlike Ronald Reagan, his very public life was actively denigrating his past accomplishments. When Reagan died, everyone looked back on his presidency and wondered whether he was right to do what he did. Michael's music is unambiguously positive; it was the lingering pedophilia questions and oddball child-rearing habits that was negative.

The more I think about it, the dirtier I feel for ever having condemned Michael for anything he did in his personal life. Yes, I thought that Martin Bashir special made him look creepy as hell, but why and what did that matter? The man was an incredible singer, dancer and performer. Who cares that he had his children wear masks and fancied himself to be Peter Pan?

I guess in the end, it doesn't matter at all what any of us thought about him because he's dead. And when someone dies, especially someone with young children, I feel awful. Goodbye Michael, we never knew you but deep down we all loved you.

Labels: fuzzy memories, RIP

つづく...(Click here to read more)

So I've got this baby to take care of now. What am I going to call it?

Quick note: you might have missed it, but I posted the full story of my son's birth right here. I wanted the post to be dated on his birthday (which is when I started writing it, honestly) but then when I made this quickie post to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Batman, the other post kind of slipped down on the page a bit and my usual auto-notification system ignored it. So if you didn't already, please go back and read about our day-long delivery experience. Or you can tell me what you think of Batman, that's cool too.

What was I talking about? Oh right, the baby. My inbox and Facebook have been overflowing with messages about the baby. First, let me thank everyone who wrote in to congratulate us. I really appreciate all the love and I know Mako does to. She's still in the hospital right now but whenever I see her, she asks about what information I have shared with my family and friends. Unfortunately, she's a bit sensitive about her appearance right now, so she doesn't want me to share any photos with her in them. In fact, she doesn't even want to see them on my phone! The first picture I chose to add to my mobile phone's background was a shot of her holding the baby because I felt it was a beautiful picture of two people I love. When she spotted it, she immediately told me to change it lest someone else see her face au natural.

I am hoping to get a nice shot of our new family soon, but I presume it will have to wait until she is discharged so she can put on her makeup. No kidding: both Mako and her mother were really worried on Sunday because they left the house without going through their usual beauty routines. Ladies, if you're reading this, believe me when I tell you that any human being who is seriously concerned you are not wearing makeup is a douchebag - especially if you are on your way to the hospital to have a baby!

For those of you clamoring for more baby details, here they are. My son was born on June 22nd at 2:33 AM. At the time, he was 1' 8" and weighed 7 lbs 7 oz. These seem to be above-average numbers in Japan; he is noticeably larger than the other babies I see in the maternity ward. So far, his appearance is more Asian than Caucasian. His hair color, eye color, eye shape and skin tone all resemble his mother's more than my own. However, we all agree that facially, he looks like me in some way, particularly the eyes and nose. Watching these features develop over time will be very exciting.

One weird thing I must talk about are his hands. When I first saw him after the nurses toweled him off, his hands were pale, wrinkled and the fingernails were a dark crimson. In other words, he had what I would call "wizard hands." Subsequent washing and nail trimming has made them more human than magic-user, but they still seem quite wrinkled. Mako thinks they look like my hands even though he has her nails. No one has laid claim to his feet yet.

Of course, the big question everyone wants to know is "what is the baby's name?" While I was coy about this for a long time, the fact is we picked two names (one male, one female) months ago. Once we learned the gender we threw out the girl's name and have been using his name ever since. Some late-term kicking made me jokingly refer to him as "Bruce Lee Feit" for a stretch, something Mako immediately mock-embraced and then latched onto for a while, but otherwise all that time I pretended we were still deciding, we weren't. I just wanted to say the baby's name to his face before telling other people.

Now that he's heard it, I can tell you all my son's name is...

GO

In Japanese, that's written with the following character:



...which means "great," "powerful" or as I like to think of it, "awesome." It also represents Australia in certain contexts, which is pretty random. I guess we'll have to take a trip there someday.

(If you just want to learn more about this character, including seeing a list of words that use it, you can visit this page for more information)

It took us a long time to settle on GO. Mako, much to my surprise, was more interested in Western sounding names than I was. As I previously mentioned, she was quite fond of "DJ" (as in "Daniel Junior") and it took some stern refusals on my part to force her to drop it. Meanwhile, I wanted a Japanese name from the start but Mako shot down all of my ideas as being too old-fashioned or because she felt they were inspired by anime or movies. I still maintain Kenshiro Feit would be an incredible name for a child but she disagreed. Vehemently.

In the end, GO satisfied us both and it had the added benefit of being instantly recognizable to both English and Japanese speakers. Japanese doesn't use a lot of vowel sounds but the way certain names are romanized, it can be confusing if you are unfamiliar with the language. Cool names like Ryu and Iori would only confuse my American family and friends, and certain English-derived Japanese names would be romanized in odd ways (i.e. Rei/Ray or Tomu/Tom) GO is simple, straightforward and if I may say so, dynamic.

(Strictly speaking, GO is a long "o" which can be romanized as Gou, Goh or Gô. But much like Tokyo is never written as Toukyou, GO is just going to be GO in my book)

For those curious parties, there will be no middle name or any other artificial names recorded for my son. Middle names are sources of endless confusion in Japan because the custom is not well understood. I can't tell you how many times I've been questioned or forced to rewrite application forms because I neglected to include my middle name or I did so and the clerk misinterpreted it. No, his name is GO. That's that.

For those curious, GO is a Cancer in the West and a Ox/Bull in the East, the latter being particularly popular in Japan. Don't feel pressure to pay attention to either though. I view the whole thing as a curiosity myself, but I have the luxury of being a Scorpion AND a Dragon which is just plain cool. GO shares a birthday with some notable movie-types, such as Meryl Streep, Hong Kong actor/director Stephen Chow and...Bruce Campbell???

Is it too late to name him Bruce?

Labels: family, number one son

つづく...(Click here to read more)

It's been twenty years since Batman was released in theaters. I remember begging my Mom to take me to an afternoon matinee after Children's Theater to see it and it blew me away. I watched it again on Saturday night and it didn't disappoint, although the new Nolan Batman flicks are noticeably better. Not that Keaton v. Nicholson doesn't rock, but the storytelling is just light-years ahead of the older pictures.

Oh, were you expecting something more relevant to recent events? Fine, look at this:

"I'm Batman." What, like he knows I'm fibbing?

Labels: family, fuzzy memories, movies, number one son

つづく...(Click here to read more)

If there's one thing movies and television shows have taught me, the birth of a child is the greatest day of a person's life. Sadly, it seems Hollywood is a habitual liar because I felt that the twenty-four hours I spent in a hospital waiting for my son to be born was one of the worst days of my life. Thankfully it all ended well.

Mako shook me awake around 2:45AM on Sunday morning, clutching herself and saying "We need to go to the hospital." It would later turn out that she had been in pain for nearly two hours prior to that but she stuck it out and waited to see if it would pass. It never did, so we all threw on our clothes and drove to the hospital I was understandably excited, if a little drowsy.

When we arrived I was quite surprised at the lack of initiative from the skeleton crew working the off-hours. Technically speaking, this hospital is "closed" on Sunday but they maintain a side entrance and a small reception desk during these periods. Mako called them before we left so when we arrived, they knew we were coming. That doesn't mean they did anything though. I distinctly remember one man walk past us, acknowledge our presence by simply saying "Ah, Feit-san. Go to the fifth floor." without breaking his stride. You would think a pregnant woman bent over in pain would warrant a wheelchair or some measure of physical assistance, but not here.

The fifth floor was a little busier than the ground floor, probably because there's always something going on in the maternity ward. Newborns arrive when they arrive and both they and their mothers require 24-hour care. Still, despite the buzzing of nurses around us most of the lights were off on the floor, so we spent our initial wait in the dark. Eventually Mako got a bed in the "labor room" and we were told that despite the pain, Mako was only dilated three centimeters and she needed to be at ten centimeters before any serious attempt to give birth could be made. When we asked how long that might take, they said "a while."

I must try to set the scene here by describing the labor room. There is only one room and all expectant mothers have to share it, apparently. I don't know how many beds were in the room but there was little more than a wall and a curtain to separate Mako's bed from the others. Mako was also located right next to the toilet and near the examination chair, so we were in a fairly high traffic section of a very small room. It was here that we had to wait...and wait...and wait...

As noon approached and after repeated claims of "it'll be a bit longer" it was evident that while Mako needed to lie in bed and wait, we didn't all necessarily have to sit next to her until the baby arrived. Mako's mother stayed and encouraged me to go with my father-in-law back to the house and clean up. We were all exhausted, having woken up in the middle of night only to sit and wait for nine hours in the corner of the labor room, so the idea of a shower sounded pretty good. Mako's dad also suggested we have some lunch, which I thought might help me cope with all the stress but it didn't change much. That's how nervous I was: not even eating made me feel better.

We went back to the house and I washed up. My father-in-law told me to try and take a nap which was virtually impossible. Despite all the waiting with no end in sight, I was still worried that the baby would arrive at any moment. I laid down and maybe nodded off for forty minutes or so, but I awoke sharply and scared that I had missed the birth. I hadn't, of course, but I wouldn't feel calm until I was back at the hospital and next to Mako.

Hours and hours went by, and I spent all of them by Mako's side in the corner of this horrible, horrible room. I'm not going to point any fingers here, because I certainly don't have the intestinal fortitude to endure even a tenth of what a pregnant woman goes though, but everything in this labor room carried a horrible stench. The human body generates a lot of foul smelling byproducts and this room was where they all get discharged. The delivery room (when we finally got there) was even worse, but the labor room's odor and total lack of privacy was miserable. Adding insult to injury was that my only seat was a tiny stool with no back and nothing to lean against. Between Mako's bed, her I.V. and the table where we laid out her belongings, there was barely any space for any visitors to sit by the bed.

Eventually I went out again with her father for another meal, but I again spent the entire time thinking only of her. It obviously can't compare to the physical pain a pregnant woman experiences, but to see my wife in such torturous agony all day while she waits and waits was really painful for me. However, the idea of not being with her felt even worse because we had decided together to try and have a baby. Wouldn't leaving her to have the baby without me be a betrayal of our mutual agreement?

Speaking of which, one of the worst things about this shared labor room was overhearing all of the other patients. In the next bed over was a woman who had checked in some time before us. At first she was just sleeping but as the evening approached, she went into the delivery room which was within an audible distance. She shrieked and screamed and we eventually heard the baby's first cries. A little while later, a man showed up and was surprised when he found out the baby was already born. This was obviously the father and I never saw him visit her once that day. Where the fuck was this guy that he couldn't attend his own child's birth or even comfort his wife as she struggled? His failure as a father/husband reminded me why I needed to sit next to Mako and just ignore my back pain and exhaustion. Yes, I left twice to eat meals, but I never left her alone and on both occasions I came back within an hour. At no point was Mako without a member of her family on hand.

As the sun went down, it occurred to me that Mako had just spent the entirety of the Summer Solstice indoors, waiting for this baby. After about seventeen hours, things started to look like the baby was coming. We were still in the labor room but as her dilation increased, Mako was encouraged to try pushing to speed up the process. While I had spent most of the day just sitting with Mako and occasionally massaging her, it was during these initial pushes that I actually had something important to do. Mako was standing up and hugging me, holding onto me for leverage and squeezing with all her might as she tried to push. It was crazy intense and while it would prove futile (and it hurt like hell), it was the undisputed highlight of Sunday because I felt like I mattered.

This is as good a time as any to mention how little attention the hospital staff paid attention to me, which I found deeply insulting. Maybe it's just the culture of Japan to leave the husband out of the birth process, but as I spent my entire Sunday next to my wife trying to console her and assist in the delivery our child, you would think that at one point someone would just start talking to me about something, anything, to acknowledge my constant presence. Instead, I was spoken about but almost never spoken to. The bad news is, I'm pretty sure it was that old-fashioned Japanese racism at work.

For those unfamiliar with Japanese racism, I should explain that it's not actually hateful as much as it's clueless and stupid. I'm sure none of the nurses or doctors felt anything was wrong with me, they just never thought to treat me like a human being. Instead, I was treated like a gaijin. They would ask my wife "where is your husband from?" and "does your husband speak Japanese?" instead of just asking me directly. When they needed our signatures on waivers, they would explain everything to her (while I listened) and then look at me and start stammering, mumbling to themselves "oh, how do I explain this since you cannot read?" Under the circumstances I let it all slide but inside I was pretty pissed.

But I digress...around ten o'clock we finally entered the delivery room. Mako gave it her all but after spending her entire day in pain on a bed without eating (she had no appetite at all), she found herself unable to push the baby out. They put her through a variety of poses, which means they were trying their best but it felt like they didn't really know what to do. Eventually they said there was a "bump" (こぶ in Japanese) and the baby wasn't moving any closer to the exit. Just after one AM, Mako couldn't push anymore and asked them for a C-section. True story: in Japan they call it an "imperial cut" (帝王切開).

They spent almost an hour prepping Mako for surgery and then took her away to the O.R. I was left in the dark (literally) to sit and wait to find out what was going to happen to my family. I was understandably upset by this turn of events. Was there nowhere else I could go? I knew the surgery was routine and carried relatively little risk but that couldn't stop me from worrying about what might happen on the operating table. Let's not forget that it was past two AM and I had been awake for nearly twenty-four straight hours, so I was already a little out of my mind. Being afraid that my wife or my son might not return from the O.R. was terror I didn't need.

My son was the first to appear, shortly before three AM. I wanted to be excited and revel in the moment of seeing my first child in the flesh, but all I could think about was Mako who was still absent. I asked the nurse and all she could say was "they're closing her up." While that was meant as a reassurance, I couldn't put her out of mind even as I looked down at my very healthy brand-new baby boy.

As you can guess, she eventually turned up, as did her parents who must have been up waiting for my messages. Mako was on a stretcher and couldn't sit up, but she was conscious and able to ask me if I saw the baby. I told I did and that made her smile. For all the hell the two of us had gone through (her more than me, of course), having a baby after nine months of anticipation was a wonderful feeling. I suppose if we were going to go with the surgery in the end we could have saved Mako a great many hours of discomfort by asking sooner, but we had hoped for a natural birth. Ah well, at least now my son can totally kill MacBeth.


Tell thee, Feit was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripp'd.

Labels: awkward firsts, family, Japan, marriage, number one son, pregnancy

つづく...(Click here to read more)

It's Friday night again and yes, we are still childless. I'm waiting with Mako at her parents' house, just like I did last weekend when I thought we were done with this process. Will the baby be born this weekend? Maybe, but at this point the doctors are just saying the same thing every week: "The baby will come soon." Thanks, Doc!

Besides not sleeping well, a major result of this baby anxiety has been my attitude towards work. I can't really explain it, but with each new day I go to work wondering when my son will be born, the less I want to go to school and put up with what I put up with. It's not that things have been particularly rough this month, I just find myself running low on patience. With all of the stress this waiting has brought me, the little things I endure at work/in Japan have just felt a bit more irritating.

Of course, that goes right back to my issues with spending my entire weekend with my in-laws. My wife is Japanese and I live in Japan, of course, but normally I spend Saturday and Sunday relaxing in a way that offers me an escape from my weekday routine. When I instead come here and stay in their house, I'm spending that much more time "in Japan" and the stress builds up. I may not have to go to work but I'm still being bombarded with Japanese idiosyncrasies and the like while I'm here.

For example, after five days of being peppered with English questions that range from profound to unanswerable, it's a bit of drag for the parade to continue into my weekend. My wife's parents have both, in their own way, been increasingly asking me about the English language and foreign customs. My mother-in-law has even started taking English lessons from somebody and she can't wait to talk to me about what she's been studying. She's also asking me to translate random words into English now, which my coworkers and students have been doing for almost two years.

I know I sound like a pissy, bitter jerk right now, but that's the point. None of these little things are new developments, they're just accumulating en masse at the same time as I'm trying to come to terms with this baby we're having. Stuff I had accepted as part of life in Japan is no longer quietly resting in the back of my mind, easily ignored and tolerated as par for the course. I consider myself pretty adept at dealing with the so-called small stuff, but in my present situation even the small stuff is really getting on my nerves.

I just want this pregnancy to end. I'm sure the baby will present a new world of challenges and none of the things that bother me right now will go away, but that's a different matter entirely. Mako and I will work together to raise the baby. We can't work together to deal with the pregnancy. We are separated both physically and mentally and I've had enough. Give me back my wife, kiddo. Your nine months are up!

Labels: family, frustration, Japan, pregnancy

つづく...(Click here to read more)

I can't sleep. For someone with a nickname like "feitclub," this is very bad news. I'm not talking to myself (at least, not more than usual) and I haven't started plotting against society or anything, but without any self-help groups to cavalierly drop in on, I'm not sure how to correct this problem.

Oh don't worry! I mean, if I lay down in bed I will eventually fade out, but it takes a very long time and I am routinely waking up earlier and earlier in the morning regardless of when I turn in. Last night I went to bed at 11, tossed and turned for over an hour and then woke up around 4:30. I never fully fell asleep again, although I didn't get out of bed until it was almost 6. This is not enough rest for me, especially considering how much energy and liveliness my job demands.

The potential causes, as I see them, are numerous and overlapping. First and foremost is Mako and the frustratingly-unborn son she's still carrying. After her appointment last Friday and some sudden discomfort on Saturday, I was sure this kid was on the fast track for the birth canal. No such luck; it's now Thursday and she feels no closer to delivery than she did at the start of the month. She'll visit the doctor again tomorrow and we'll see what the the prognosis is, but I suspect this hovering uncertainty is definitely preventing me from drifting off into peaceful sleep since I'm so anxious about Mako's condition. The evidence supporting this theory is the fact that I sleep much better on the weekends when I am at her parents' house lying next to her.

Not helping matters is the ever-increasing temperature in my apartment. Technically speaking, Japan is in the midst of its annual rainy season, but it hasn't rained since last week. Instead, each day has been sunny and warm with a rather uncomfortably high level of humidity. I'm not at the point where I've turned on the A/C or started taking a second shower to cool down, but the bedroom is the stuffiest room in our apartment and the oscillating fan can only do so much to help me relax.

Another recent matter that might be adversely affecting my sleeping habits is my new-found video gaming time. Ever since Mako moved back to her parents' house I've been taking advantage of my audio/visual freedom and firing up the consoles on a nightly basis. For a few weeks, Richard and I were blasting our way through Resident Evil 5, so much so that the only trophy left to earn is the big one: complete the game on Professional Mode where the enemies are faster and nearly all of their attacks are lethal. The steep increase in difficulty has proven to be disheartening because the game is a lot less fun now. We've already played through all these stages multiple times to get this far, so repeated failures and restarts on Professional Mode feel like an extraordinary waste of time.

As a departure of sorts, I've finally forced myself to play BioShock and so far, it's every bit as absorbing as I hoped it would be. Indeed, the tension level is as high as any other video game I've ever played. For all the shambling zombie-like foes I've faced in Resident Evil 5, BioShock is the first game that's scared me in a long time. It's not that the mad residents of Rapture are more threatening than waves of infected Africans, it's their world that is so deeply unsettling to me. The so-called "Splicers" who roam the underwater city of Rapture all look like they were attending a party with the ghosts in the Overlook Hotel. Most of them wear odd-looking masks, which is just creepy, and they talk. A lot. Sometimes they yell at me, sometimes they argue amongst themselves, and some of them just babble and wail to no one in particular. There was a freaky moment at the start of the game where I approached a weeping woman who was fawning over a baby carriage. When I bashed her with my pipe wrench, I looked into the carriage to see what she was talking to: a revolver. That's just plain nuts right there.

Well, you get the idea of what I'm dealing with each night. Between worrying about my wife, sweating through my clothes and plugging myself into some intense virtual worlds, it's been difficult for me to just settle down and go to sleep at 11 or even at midnight. I know I should be doing all I can to sleep now before a crying baby moves in with us, but it's not like I'll be able to play many games when he's here. Either way, I'm going to be drowsy, so I might as well have my fun while I can.

Labels: BioShock, family, Fight Club, pregnancy, Resident Evil, video games

つづく...(Click here to read more)

As someone who spends a lot of his free time furiously pressing buttons as a form of entertainment, I feel I must complain about video game makers forcing me to furiously press buttons.

I sense your confusion. Allow me to elaborate: even though playing video games means pressing buttons on the controller to interface with the software, that's not all it is. Playing video games is an extremely simplified exercise in problem solving. Whether I'm trying to get my plumber safely through a flame-ridden castle, running and gunning against the forces of Hell or simply maneuvering little blocks into neat little stacks as they fall from the top of the screen, all video games present me with a sequence of tasks or dilemmas and force me to solve each one in order to proceed to the next. Even though I do press buttons to accomplish this, it's up to me to figure out which buttons must be pressed at what times to get the job done. At some point during that process, I have fun.

What isn't fun and what I feel runs counter to the fundamentals of playing video games is the mindless button mashing of the "quick time event." Rather than challenge me with a puzzle or offer me a twist on a familiar task, a QTE instead requires me to press a button immediately. If I do it, the game continues; failure means I must start the QTE over again. It is purely a exercise in twitch reflexes and it is the epitome of frustration.

Again, I'm picking up your resistance to my argument. Regardless of how games present themselves to the player, you're wondering, isn't success or failure always going to come down to pressing the right button at the right time? In other words, if I push B instead of A when approaching a pit, won't the plumber fall into it and force me to restart the level? And by reducing gameplay to this core mechanic of "press the button now," aren't QTEs actually easier than playing the regular game anyway? What's the big deal?

The difference is two-fold, in my opinion. All games have a learning curve that trains players to make the right decisions to play the game. Earlier stages introduce the important elements of the game world and later stages raise the bar one step at a time. In learning the ropes, players also become accustomed to what each button does to the point that using the controller becomes second-nature. QTEs have no gradient or teaching ability. They will always be nothing more than urgently pressing buttons, and those buttons rarely perform the same function they do in the game, if ever. It is completely arbitrary and meaningless, making it harder than that it sounds.

Beyond the pure mechanics, QTEs feel unfair because they exist outside the game world as the player understands it. No matter how far your character has progressed, no matter how many weapons, power-ups or health items you have collected, your inability to press a single button on demand can end the game. In the case of Resident Evil 5, my character is carrying enough artillery to flatten a small city and I have the know-how to avoid most any attacker in the game, yet I am repeatedly shoehorned into QTE-driven cut scenes that have me dodging motorcyclists and giant tentacles. Just let me shoot them and move on!

More than any other gripe I have about QTEs, the most important and most basic one is that they are boring. The buttons may change but the outcome never does. They are not satisfying in the slightest, not on the first playthrough and certainly not on the second or third. Games like Resident Evil 5 demand multiple completions to access more features. If I know what's coming, why not just let me skip QTEs as easily as I skip any other cinematic sequence? Either way I am just staring at the screen and watching the characters on auto-pilot. I'm certainly not playing the game that I want to play. I'm not "playing" anything at all; I feel like I'm being experimented upon by B.F. Skinner instead, and that's not worth my money or my time.

Labels: frustration, Resident Evil, video games

つづく...(Click here to read more)