Last week I wrote about what makes a playable female character virtually unplayable for me. This week, I’d like to talk more about what makes a good playable female character. Of course, it can be difficult to locate good playable female characters, but this weekend, as I was looking around for a new game, I stumbled across White Noise Online in XBLA for only a dollar. Even I can justify a dollar, and I’m a sucker for horror games, so I downloaded it and prepared to spend a few hours exploring what promised to be a very creepy environment. As it turned out, however, I spent the majority of those hours exploring the playable characters in the game. Unlike my discussion of Rayman Legends last week, White Noise Online offers a surprising number of female character choices. Initially, I didn’t expect much from these characters, but as I began to explore, I found the various character descriptions very entertaining.
White Noise Online is a paranormal horror game for one to four players, and the game places the players in creepy environment and tasks them with looking for recorders that will hopefully give clues about the paranormal situation. The game is super simple, you can only see what your flashlight allows you to see, so you actually cannot see the character you choose, as it is strictly first person. Nevertheless, Milkstone Studios put some thought into these characters. Initially, you can choose from one of four characters, of which the choices include two females and two males. Further, White Noise Online includes seventeen more unlockable characters, and get this, of the twenty-one total characters, eleven are female. But, that’s not even the best part. The best part is these females are by and large more closely based on reality with only a few somewhat insulting characteristics. But, unlike the Rayman Legends’ characters, the female and male characters seem more closely aligned with each other. That is, almost all of the characters are portrayed in a similar, more realistic light, as opposed to the whimsical males and warrior-princess females in Rayman Legends.
Each character in White Noise Online has distinct characteristics, some of which are descriptive and some of which are intended to give you various advantages or disadvantages in game play. For example, Jean Luc, “despite his fear of the dark, . . . tries his best to uncover the truth behind the so-called supernatural events, risking his own life in the process,” and he comes with increased speed, sanity, and stamina. Frank wants to know “Where’s the party?” He comes with a longer lasting flashlight, but no other advantages. A couple of my favorite female characters include Sylvia and Alex. Sylvia is “rebel and free-spirited girl. Who is now “a very capable investigator, with a captivating personality.” Sylvia comes with extra speed, sanity, and scout abilities. Alex is a famed race driver, holding several track records in the national championship. She’s here to win and she won’t let anyone get ahead of her.” Alex comes with extra speed, evasion, and stamina. Unlike the warrior-princesses in Rayman Legends, these characters don’t need anyone to save them first. You do have to unlock them, but that is true of the male playable characters as well.
While I enjoyed the descriptions and characteristics of many characters in White Noise Online, there are, of course, a few that gave me pause. Two of the characters are invisible: the Invisible Man and the Invisible Woman. The Invisible Woman is described as “Behind a great man is a great woman. And it couldn’t be more true in this case. The invisible man would be hopeless without her.” Too bad that wasn’t reversed. And we have a couple of women, such as Katya who “runs away whenever danger appears” and Sarah who “realized it was smarter to hide than close your eyes when in peril.” But, really, who am I kidding? I would probably run away from that monster, too. Any sane person would, male or female.
As I wrote last week, I find it difficult to relate to the female characters in Rayman Legends. I’m not even all that picky. I just want the option to play a character that I can somewhat relate to. White Noise Online is a game that not only gives me choices, it gives me lots of choices of female characters more grounded in reality, and therefore it gives me characters which are more relatable and more fun for me to play.
