Geek Girls Rule! #55 – An Article on Female Video Game Costumes that DIDN’T Make my Head Explode!

Start looking for the goat-headed boy, because the apocalypse, she’s a coming!

The article is “Top 5 most preposterous getups in games” and I agree with them.  A lot.  The commentary under the screen caps is freaking hilarious, too.  Under the screenshot of La Mariposa from Dead or Alive 4:  “…because nothing says “I’m a competent combatant and a smart scientist” like a butterfly mask, tassels and matching G-string. “

Bwaa haa haa haa haaaaa!!!  I seriously want to meet the person who wrote this article.  I have a giant crush on their brain for that line alone. 

But really, the butt-flossing, barely there costumes on female characters in games have been making female gamers roll their eyes until they risk a sprain for years.  And for years we’ve just been grinning and bearing it.  But seriously, guys, you’ve been striving for new levels of stupid lately. 

Here’s the thing, if you want jiggle, there are games dedicated to jiggle.  I think Stax used to play this Beach Volleyball game on one of her consoles, that had all the jiggle you could hope for and more.  It was festival of water-balloon-like motion barely constrained by pixelated bikinis.  And those games have their place and audience.  Stax loves her the jiggly bits in her games. 

However, when I’m trying to play a fighting game, I want characters in realistic outfits that look like they might do some good, reasonable footwear, and no one flips their hair in battle. 

I love the SoulCalibur franchise.  I think the games are absolutely beautiful.  I like the gameplay.  I consistently beat the pants off of Mr. Geek Girl What Rules at it.  It’s a lovely game.  But what the hell is up with Ivy’s amazing disappearing outfits?  I swear, her already improbably skimpy outfit has gotten teenier in this latest incarnation of SoulCalibur.  I’m hoping that they still have the alternate costume of SoulCalibur III, where  she wore breeches and a waistcoat, and looked sexy as hell in them.  But the picture of her in the article I linked to above just made me roll my eyes and introduce my head to my desk.  What, butt-floss wasn’t bad enough?  Now we have to introduce boob-floss? 

However, in the same game we have Hildegard von Krone, who is competely and believably armored.  WTF, guys?  Is there some sort of conservation of pixelated armor theorem at work here?  “Well, see if we have this woman in believable armor, that uses up all of the armor pixel allotment we’re allowed for female characters, so we have to take those pixels from somewhere.”

Ok, Ivy’s old “armor” was bad enough.  Not to mention Xianghua’s mega-mini outfit and Sophitia’s miniskirt.  Taki was relatively reasonably dressed.  Granted, some of the male characters are also dressed pretty stupidly.  But Voldo’s actually been getting MORE clothed in successive games.  What gives here?

That said, though, I’ll still play it.  I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE SoulCalibur.  I’m less than enthused about the inclusion of Star Wars characters in it.  Keep Lucas’ money-grubbing, childhood raping hands off my favorite videogame, damn it!  But I’ll still play it.  Now I just need to break down and get a 360.

To Geek or not to Geek…

Actually, the question is what sort of geeking. 

I have a LONG bus commute every weekday, and after chatting with the Boy about the fact that frequently the only thing saving my fellow passengers from agonizing death is the games on my phone, and recognizing that my phone is fairly limited in the number and sorts of games it can hold, we have decided that maybe I should pick up a Nintendo DS or PSP.

Now, most of my friends have the DS (and it comes in pink, squee!), and LOVE games like Animal Crossing.  It also has the games My French Coach and My Spanish Coach, which make me exceptionally happy.  Not to mention the Brain Age games.  I would probably refrain from fighty games on the bus as I’m a “Leaner” when I play those.  So, in the interest of not making other bus patrons want to introduce me to agonizing death, I think we’ll stick to relatively sedate games that won’t make me Lean or spit expletives every thirty seconds.  Yeah, I’m a talker when I play fighty games.  Another reason those are just right out.  No one on my morning commute wants to hear me yelling, “Suck it!  Suck it, Trebek!!!  Take that! Oh, Damn it!”

So right now I’m surfing to see who has what games.  PSP has the Warhammer 40K game.  Ooooooo!  And Marvel Ultimate Alliance, I have that for the Xbox and LOVE IT!!!! 

But DS does have Animal Crossing, MahJong, the Namco Museum game sets with Pac Man and such, and Dementium looks good.  And Castlevania Portrait of a Ruin looks good.  I don’t know. 

Ok, the DS costs about $40 to $70 less initially.  However the games are mostly arond $30.

The PSP costs more initially, but has a lot of $20 games.  Granted, how good those $20 games are, I do not know.

DS has more games. And Nintendo is really good about supporting their platforms, as opposed to Sony who are notorious for dropping platforms very quickly after not fully supporting them. 

Any thoughts?

ETA:  I have friends at Nintendo, as well.  *wink wink*