Character creation.
Around 2004, in Tiger Woods ‘03, ‘04, or ‘05 (can’t remember, whatever) I spent the better part of two hours with a mirror leaning against the coffee table, creating my spitting image, complete with hoodie and Chucks, who would then saunter ‘round the courses for the remainder of the semester. At least once in the process I accidentally hit the accursed Randomize Button, which is true to its name (and the human race); a cosmic dice-roll that almost always results in some homely, unpleasant, pudgy, crushingly average avatar. The Randomize Button was a tiny existential black hole; hit it again and again, assorted unattractive folks flicker by, and every once in a while, someone decent-looking — a genetic crapshoot, and then when you really think about it, most people you know kind of look like that, and hell with it, I’m going to make a chick with a big rack. It’s okay, we understand — a video game that provides true character creation risks uncovering all of the non-ideal features of your average homo sapiens.
That, of course, was 5 years ago. Now we have HD, to enhance the liver spots on our geriatric 360 avatar. Some games have sliders that require hours for you to not end up with Sloth, others (Mass Effect) let you choose between a handful of finely-manicured meatheads. We have inferior creators, like Oblivion, where everyone is a lumpy-faced, yet trim adult of average height, or Rock Band 2, where the “Body Shape” slider goes from Skinny->Muscular for boys and Hot->Fat for girls, and Skate 2, where the developers sighed (heavily) and said, “Fine, here are some sliders. Make your character ugly if you want, whatever.”
Saint’s Row 2 has a character creator that is a microcosm of the intentional(?) meta-mockery exhibited by the game as a whole. There are sliders everywhere, for everything. But (again, much like the rest of the game) the goal is ugliness. Maybe context (the entire game is coarse and ugly) is a get-out-of-jail-free for Saint’s Row 2, but even so, Saint’s Row 2 understands that, and (I think) is making fun of games that don’t enjoy that kind of freedom. Pick the Male gender; slide the Body Slider all the way to the right, and your dude sprouts a bra and becomes a vivid sex-change situation. Slide the Weight Slider all the way to the right, and your dude (or woman, or woman-dude) becomes a morbidly obese lump of flesh. All the way to the left, and you have your standard-issue meth addict. Slide the Muscle Slider to get an anorexic bodybuilder — you’re getting it. The Saint’s Row 2 character creator is the Tiger Woods character creator taken to its logical conclusion, plus some. Feel free to play the entire game as an overweight, balding 90-year-old great-aunt with full sleeves and a goatee with a permanent scowl who walks like a stripper.
Pick your face, hair, skin, body shape, facial expression, voice, walking style, taunting style … then go buy some clothes, get some tattoos. You know, whatever. My guy has a Joe-Dirt-esque mane/sideburn combo and a snappy British accent. And a hammerhead shark on his arm.
Then you get out there and do … you know, whatever. That’ll have to wait until my next entry; I’m behind, and since this is a Diary, I don’t want to lie — I’ve also been playing other games. Plus, tonight I have a D&D evening, and I also have a job and work — unlike my guy in Saint’s Row 2, who lives in a consequence-free cultural wasteland that would make Niko jealous.