[img width=412 height=572]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/JourneyCover.jpg[/img]
Continue reading Unloved #17: Journey to Silius
As Site Director Emeritus (and Current Acting Site Director), I wish to announce the appointment of Adam Bickley to Technical Director of RF Generation.
What does that mean? That means that Adam is now responsible for the back end of the site. More simply stated, he gets to assist Mike and make sure the site runs smoothly from a simply keeping going standpoint. He will have a lot to learn, so be nice to him.
This may seem abrupt to some, but Adam has had access to the back end for a while as a third set of eyes watching over the site in the event the server has a "hiccup". He has the technical background necessary to keep the site in tip top shape.
In case you are wondering, Eddie and I will still be around. We are not going anywhere. We will still be the programmers. We will do what we can to bring new stuff to the site. I am about to lose internet for two weeks so my only internet comfort will be my test site. Maybe I'll tinker with something that is needed for the site...
Congrats Adam! I hope you find your new abilities exciting and don't use your new found powers for evil!
So, the first episode has been released, I'm going to be working on getting it up on iTunes for easier subscribing, and now it's time for you guys to chime in for an upcoming episode. (We have the next episode blocked out and should be recording very soon!)
What we want from you is to ask us some questions. slackur and I both agreed that there should be some sort of an introductory episode that lets you know just where we are coming from when we are giving our opinions. The time between our ages is about the same as a console generation, so while we have probably played many of the same games, we are bound to have different viewpoints on different games and topics. So, we would like to get some input from you (yeah, you, the listener!) about what you want to know about us. We'll be answering your questions in an upcoming episode. You can comment here or in the thread here: http://www.rfgeneration.c...m/index.php?topic=10781.0
Look for more episodes soon (with your input!) and don't forget to keep it on channel 3!
[img width=480 height=640]http://imgur.com/vpVgfl.jpg[/img]
What you're looking at above is a (rather bad cellphone) of my new 2-Player Cube setup. This is something I've wanted to put together for quite some time. In fact, not that long ago I even acquired a set of elusive Gamecube component cables so that I could connect the Game Boy Players (one hooked up to my computer monitor, the other to my TV) on my two Cubes from one end of the room to the other. Alas, I cannot find a GBA Link Cable long enough to pull this off.
[img width=300 height=300]http://imgur.com/Fzkgg.jpg[/img]
I did however recently come across a 5.4" LCD screen that sits atop a Gamecube. I couldn't turn it down when the gears in my head started clanking together again about the old 2-P Cube setup that I had been wanting to try out. I know it's sort of silly considering the GBA's are portable in nature so trying it on a portable screen sort of defeats the purpose. But I suppose more than anything it was a proof of concept (for my own eyes). Eventually I'd like to just get a second LCD monitor and have each Cube hooked up to its own monitor side-by-side. Combined with the pictured arcade sticks, this would make for a great setup to play ports of the Street Fighter games and things of that nature.
Also, once I come across a second Gamecube broadband adapter, it means LAN-time baby. But until then I'll be experimenting with the various games that benefit from multi-player released on the GBA. Surprisingly, a fair amount of games incorporated a single-cartridge multi-boot mode, such as Chu Chu Rocket (pictured above). On the flip-side, this will probably give me an excuse to get a second copy of Super Street Fighter II Turbo Revival.
It's a sickness, I know.
I just posted episode 1 of the RF Generation podcast minutes ago. Give it a listen and tell us what you thought! Your feature requests, show topic ideas, and just plain comments about our initial go are also welcome!
http://rfgeneration.podomatic.com
Enjoy!
So the Vanquish demo arrived on XBox Live. I thoroughly enjoy developer Platinum's titles (Bayonetta, Okami, Viewtiful Joe Series) but until this demo arrived, I had little interest in another third-person sci-fi shooter. Any other time of the year it might have blipped on the radar. But in the same time frame as Halo: Reach, a new take on Castlevania, and another Call of Duty (I'll be honest, I'm only getting it for the radio-controlled RC car equipped with an AV feed for spying on/playing with my kids) it had to stand out, and the screen shots didn't really sell it for me.
Then I tried the Demo.
Whee!! Fluid, stylized action that felt like a hyper Gears of War, set in a clone of a Robotech universe, with a character in Issac Clarke's armor and wielding a gun stolen from the new Transformer movies. It was fast, over the top, Sega-brand arcade-y while containing depth, and I could see how the game's presentation and control combined into a beautiful player guided ballet in the vein of the new Ninja Gaidens and Devil May Cry.
At least, I think that's how it would feel if I could play it.
You see, I'm a southpaw. No, not a feline from Mississippi, a left hander. In a 3D space, my left hand has to control the look, and my right hand the movement. This, of course, is reverse of the traditional play control. No, it's not as simple as 'just get used to it the normal way.' Try playing one of the few games that manually allow a southpaw setting on the opposite of your preference and you may get a glimpse of my pain. And to all the Lefties in the forums that say an alternate control setup is unnecessary because they can play on the default, I'm happy you don't have a problem. I literally get nauseous playing the 'normal' way for more than ten or fifteen minutes, and I refuse to take Dramamine or other dimenhydrinates or medications to play a game. I've tried off and on for years, and it still makes me motion sick. Its not a problem if I can simply have the thumb sticks swapped.
Except it is. Because developers aren't really paying attention to between 10% and 15% of their gaming population, they may offer a southpaw control option that swaps the analogue stick controls, but obviously don't play test it. Let me give you a perfect example:
Gears of War supports an internal southpaw control option. It makes the left stick the look controls, and the right stick movement. We good now? Not hardly. Because G.o.W is a 'stop and pop' shooter, the player uses the 'A' button as a context sensitive control for taking cover, rolling to cover, jumping over cover, etc. The 'A' button is probably the most important button after the shoot button. Its directly above the right stick.
And. You. Can't. Change. It.
For normal controls, not a problem. But for southpaw, I need to move that right 'movement' stick in a direction while pressing the 'A' button. The button directly to the right of the stick. Let me give you a visual example of what my hand has to do to press 'A' while moving my character to cover:
Yeah. Any game requiring me to move the right thumb stick while pressing a face button (pretty much every 3D game) requires some crazy move like that. If I just move all my fingers across the face buttons 'arcade stick' style, then I can't reach the top bumpers and triggers. For Gears, they could have just let me change the 'A' functions with one of the bumpers (the left bumber is only used to give an arrow locating AI team-mates for crying out loud! I need that more than the game-designed-around-it cover system?!?!) Obviously, someone at Epic never play tested the southpaw option much, or this GLARING oversight of the unmappable 'A' button would have been addressed.
In fact, any 3D game requiring the use of face buttons that can't be remapped to the four top-side buttons on the 360 or PS3 controller is just a slap in the face to any southpaw-required gamer like me. It gets worse; many games won't even let you swap the thumb sticks anyway. Even the 360's internal southpaw preference is unsupported in many AAA games, including Battlefield 2, Lost Planet and Lost Planet 2, Bioshock, and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, just to name a small few. I had to buy a hardwired modded controller that internally swapped the sticks just to play these games, and that still doesn't address the face button problem.
What, are we still in the '90s? Why on earth, in this day of unprecedented mainstream gaming popularity, can we not get universal control mapping options on every game? Especially the large-scale developed ones? Sure, developers have their preference on how a game should be controlled; make that the default. Why alienate even a small percentage of the gaming population over such an easily correctable issue?
Maybe it's just me. For a long time I assumed it was. Then I read this:
http://lawofthegame.blogs...8/southpaw-manifesto.html
I'm not alone!
Every time I submit a complain about this (I even called a few companies directly) all I would hear is a standard, 'thank you for bringing this to our attention, all of our customer's feedback is important to us, and we'll consider it for future releases' reply that would be the same line if I complained that their games didn't feature enough custard filled donuts.
Us southpaws have struggled in vain over this control issue ever since the Playstation era (though strangely, the Dreamcast featured several games with Southpaw defaults.) Please, help us bug developers enough so they will listen. Everyone wants to play games with the controls set up the way they are most comfortable, and even if you aren't a southpaw, there is almost certainly a game you would change a few buttons around on. Why are we still waiting?
[img width=285 height=201]http://imgur.com/FR2nN.jpg[/img]
Recently while doing a bit of research I came across what is possibly the strangest Game Boy Color accessories out there: the Singer IZEK bundle. To be frank, I've seen a lot of odd Game Boy accessories out there, but this one was so unusual and expensive that I felt I had to share it with you all.
For $399 you get the IZEK sewing machine, a special GBC link cable, and a GBC cart that "contains stitch pattern designs. The Game Boy's on-screen menu will guide you through all the functions you need to make sewing fun and easy."
[img width=100 height=165]http://imgur.com/OCYmC.jpg[/img] [img width=103 height=149]http://imgur.com/ksI3g.jpg[/img]
Here's the features as listed on the website found at http://sewandserge.com/se...s&brand=Singer&model=IZEK:
* LOWEST PRICE GUARANTEED!
* Select stitches have length, width and mirror image adjustment capabilities
* Five buttonhole styles
* Letters (block, script or outline format), numbers and symbols
* Combine up to three stitches for combination patterns
* Create your own custom stitches
* Favorite patterns, letters and custom designs can be saved in memory
* Menu displays information in English, French or Spanish
* 84 actual stitch patterns
* 25 Year Manufacturers Warranty
* FREE Shipping
As a collector, there's a tiny part of me that would love to have the cartridge just to say I have it. But you have to draw the line somewhere. I am however extremely interested to know if anybody out there has ever seen one of these in person, and can maybe explain how the Game Boy Color connectivity is even useful.
During every Castlevania title, from the NES original to each anticipated portable release of the last few years, one thought has permeated my time and enjoyment of the series:
'I am never moving to Romania.'
One thought that actually never popped into my head?
'What would make these games even more awesome is if six players could speen-run through a montage of levels from previous games.'
Oh, and 'Shanoa is vapid and soulless and somehow still endearing and attractive.' I never thought that. Ever. Moving on.
We Castlevania fans were all hyped when the series was announced for XBLA, as a good modern console 2D version has been as rare as that last item drop you've waited hours for. Then it was announced that this new incarnation would:
a.) Be six stages long, with a half-hour timer on each
b.) Be comprised of characters, enemies, stages, and everything else from the last six GBA/DS titles
c.) Not have traditional RPG-lite character leveling
d.) Would feature 6 player co-op play
e.) Would cost 15 bucks worth of Microsoft's imaginary funny money.
Put together, this starts throwing up red flags all over the place. How would a standard 'Metroidvania' game that thrives off exploration and atmosphere work as a fast-paced attack-spamming teamwork based action-platformer? It seems counter intuitive to what the series' fans have come to expect. And indeed, many Castlevania fans will skip this one altogether with only thoughts of vague disappointment over 'what could have been.'
I'm such a fan of the franchise I bought Castlevania Judgment, a game whose design could have worked but instead felt so disconnected it might as well have been Castlevania: DraKart Racers in the Night of Despair, so I approached with tepid caution. Could I just play this as a single player adventure at all? Is it too easy to blast through with six vampire killers? (The profession, not the mystical whip.) How do cleaned up sprites from a low resolution portable, some bordering on a decade old, look on an HD set? Will it be any fun? And most importantly, will this give me any juicy story elements for my Alucard-marries-Maria-while-a-lovelorn-Trevor-dies-of-a-broken-heart fanfiction?
Well, there aren't many straight answers over this one. (Except the last one, which is a solid no. I don't write fanfics, I leave that to Paul W.S. Anderson.) Let's get the biggest problems addressed right away:
First, there is no real narrative, no solid story, and no satisfactory explanation as to why the various protagonists from different centuries are gathered together for a slay-ride. Those assuming Harmony of Despair expands or even links together plot threats in the convoluted Castlevania time-line can give up on getting anything here.
Second, while single player gameplay is possible, it is clear the game design is for multiplayer. Big chunks of each level are difficult or even inaccessible with only one person, and the bosses are even worse. There is no scaling for player count; each enemy and boss deals and takes the same damage whether there are one or six heroes, leading some fights to be frustrating and even unfair. (I'm looking at you, stage 2 Puppet Master. You are evil even for a Castlevania villain.) There is fun to be had in single player, but it is much more limited.
Third, and this is directly connected to single player, is that there is no overall 'grinding' that the 'Metroidvania' type games are known for. Oh, there is certainly farming, but no characters 'level up' overall from repeated monster killing. The closest are Jonathan and Shanoa's secondary abilities gaining levels through consistent use (which does power up their respective main attacks.) The rest of the characters have to absorb spells (Charlotte) souls (Soma) learn magic attacks (Alucard) or just get lucky drops for equipment. For the majority of stats, the only improvement method is through better gear found in random (read: super rare) drops.
Fourth, even for multiplayer, the online setup is clunky. For a multiplayer experience designed to revolve around farming, players have to form a party before the host selects what level to play. If your Charlotte needs to farm Death's Scythe attack from level 5, you won't know if the new party you've joined has any intention of going there at all. Worse, the host can only select levels every party member has gotten to, so if you want to play on Hard mode (where all the best drops are) you just have to hope your entire party that randomly joined has also gotten there, and that the host wants it in the first place.
Fifth, if you're a fellow diehard fan of the series, you've already seen all of these graphics before. Sure, they look better now than ever, but part of the appeal of each new 2D Castlevania is the excellent art, sprite, and animation design. Every game in the series borrows some graphical elements from those before, but Harmony of Despair lifts each level wholesale from previous games and rearranges them into an extended remix.
Sixth, menu navigation and documentation are incredibly poor. 'Main Menu' is actually the character equip screen, you can only visit the menus at specific areas in-game, no pausing even in single player, and the game has countless important facets (say, how to level-up spells or use character abilities) that are not described or even mentioned. You practically have to learn by accident, experimentation, or Gamefaqs.
Seventh, (yes, seventh) no couch co-op!
Eighth, NO COUCH CO-OP!!?! Wha? C'mon, that's just lazy, stupid, stupid, greedy, or both. Wait...well, two at least. Sure, there would be some tug-o-war with the map zooming on the same screen, but no split screen or anything? Someone's trying to fleece de moneys out of each and every player.
Ninth, well, see seven and eight.
So why even bother paying $15 for what surely sounds like a bizarre failed experiment?
Simply because it can be a ton of fun.
I've already talked almost half a dozen friends who were on the fence or had no interest at all into buying what we all agreed was an overpriced game, and yet we can't stop playing! For all the missteps and technical issues, grabbing a crew and running through challenging platforming and traditional Castlevania combat just feels right. It isn't the same as a new 2d Castlevania, but instead a bizarre offshoot that yanks familiar mechanics, sights, and sounds, and congeals into a mutant Frankenstein monster that shouldn't be alive, yet sings and dances. Even playing online with strangers, something I rarely enjoy, has been an absolute blast. Almost every night I get messages, texts, or calls asking if I want to play. That hasn't happened since Halo 3.
It may have ultimately better fit an online mod some kids hacked together for the fun of it, but it actually works. There are some intelligent design decisions hidden in the clunky and under-documented interface, such as every player getting character specific drops when an item chest is opened, or the dual crush combos between different characters that can decimate certain bosses. Even the eclectic methods separating each character's farming needs means there are always reasons to go back to earlier levels with beginner parties. And even if they are from previous games, the controls, graphics, music, and effects are the same quality goods we've come to expect. Not superb, but definitely Castlevania.
The interest will fade, as it is a limited design. But our crew is having so much fun farming loot and making different character builds that for the time being it has been money well spent. Who would have thought?
What's next, an iPhone puzzle game based on Symphony of the Night?
Oh. Nevermind.
[img width=640 height=468]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/IRB-box.jpg[/img]
Continue reading Unloved #16: Iggy's Reckin' Balls
So... it's now been over a year since I announced the RF Generation Podcast. That went... nowhere. Again, after chatting in the IRC room again, slackur brought up the question to me about just what happened. I had nothing but excuses. It's been in the back of my mind for a long time, but the excitement that he brought to the discussion reinvigorated my desire to podcast for this site. We are beginning the framework and some initial topics and scripts now, but feel it's time to officially...
REANNOUNCE THE RF GENERATION PODCAST!
To reiterate my previous blog post on this: this podcast is for you, the members. slackur and I will be your co-hosts. We will, eventually, have guests from the community as well.
Starting off, we're looking at bi-weekly episodes, but if it takes off (and we get good at this), we may move to a weekly schedule. slackur is working on some topics for us to start off with, but we're going to have a topic in the forums to take your reactions, your topic suggestions, or any other comments you may have about it.
Hopefully, it's not another year before a topic like this comes up and we hope to hear from you guys soon!
EDIT: Wanted to include a link to the new topic in the forums.
http://www.rfgeneration.c...m/index.php?topic=10730.0
I'm a longtime fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. The comic book and original cartoon was a big deal to me when I was young. I saw the original trilogy in the theaters. Not only did I have all three soundtracks, but I begged my parents to bring me to Pizza Hut so I could get the Coming Out Of Their Shells cassette as well. I had an air-conditioner box filled with the action figures. And luckily for me, there were a lot of video games based on the series. This is the first in a series of posts that will explore some of the titles related to the Game Boy Player Land blog. First up -- we'll take a look at the three Game Boy Advance games.
[img width=300 height=300]http://imgur.com/9Mhqcl.jpg[/img]
[img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/ZTAUTl.jpg[/img] [img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/OyGFg.jpg[/img]
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was released by Konami in 2003. It was intended as a handheld port of the Gamecube game of the same title. Not surprisingly, the Game Boy Advance and the Gamecube games are completely different. While the Gamecube title was 3D, this one would be a sidescroller. It plays rather similar to some of the Game Boy Konami games from the series, though oddly it strays from the formula of the Ninja Turtle beat-em-ups that Konami had perfected in the arcades. However, this isn't to say the game is bad. It's a rather competent game that allows a good amount of playing time seeing as each turtle has his own levels to tackle. Konami being Konami also included several levels of other genres, such as switching to first person to keep things interesting. What's funny is that level-varying concept seems to be borrowed from the Battletoads games, which of course were a bit of a ripoff of the Ninja Turtles to begin with. Ultimately, the game isn't a classic, but it is worth a few bucks for the several hours you could sink it to it.
[img width=300 height=300]http://imgur.com/yDAs1l.jpg[/img]
[img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/NTTOk.jpg[/img] [img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/PS2kR.jpg[/img]
In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus Konami used the same formula as the previous game, though seems to make everything a lot better. It's also a 2D take on the 3D Gamecube game of the same title, it allows each turtle to complete his own missions, and it throws in some other kinds of levels like Shmup-inspired ones to keep things fresh. However, it seems that to some degree this game just pulls everything off slightly better than the first. It's almost ineffable, but it just feels like a better and more perfected game. The controls are comfortable, the graphics and animations are great, and the music is good. Collectors should note that the first two games were reissued together on a single GBA cart as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Double Pack.
[img width=300 height=300]http://imgur.com/tJyDQl.jpg[/img]
[img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/w11M9.jpg[/img] [img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/kEtwp.jpg[/img]
TMNT was released in 2007 to coincide with the CGI movie of the same title, and it's easily the best of the GBA games. Though it plays the closest to the Konami arcade games, this game was actually published by Ubisoft. Although the Gamecube version is a 3D game similar to the Konami ones, the GBA port is an old school brawler and completely worth checking out. The graphics are fantastic and will appeal to fans of the comic books, and the gameplay is pure classic arcade beatemup. This one is not to be overlooked!
I'm aware that there was a GBA Video release that contained a couple of episodes of the revival cartoon, but I've never bothered to pick this one up. Later posts will focus on the Game Boy and Gamecube Ninja Turtles games. But what did you all think of the Game Boy Advance releases?
As my game reviews of Small Worlds and Limbo have shown, I have a strong appreciation for a minimalist approach that focuses on just one or two key concepts, thus reflecting a represented idea's pure form. At first glance, it would seem that the shmup field (shoot-'em-up, space shooter, vertical/horizontal scroller, etc) seems to be one of the few classic genres still so relatively simple in concept and execution that to remove any more staple components would dilute the concept to a dull tedium. The barest form (Space Invaders, Asteroids) can be difficult to return to after introducing in-depth layers (Ikaruga, Cave bullet-hell survival, unique scoring methodology.) The oldest are fun for classic nostalgia and score contests, sure, but even Galaga had to layer a bit more complexity over Galaxian to become an industry stalwart.
Cue Hikoza T. Ohkubo's Warning Forever. A freeware PC shmup from 2003, Warning Forever is a perfect example of a talented 'indie' developer that refined a concept into a simple game with more polish, gameplay, and pure addictive quality than the import-heavy genre had seen in years. And to this day, it remains an incredibly fun testament to stripping down a game concept and just keeping what works.
In Warning Forever, there is only your ship avatar and a never-ending stream of boss ships, one at a time. 180 seconds on the clock. Each boss ship has various destroyable compartments and weapons. A destroyed boss ship core grants the player another 30 seconds added to the timer, and every player ship lost costs 20 seconds. No power-ups, no alternate player ships, and only one vulcan-like cannon on the player ship that can either dumb-fire forward or switch to a swiveling fire arc that moves opposite of the direction the player moves. The goal is as simple as it is intuitive: survive as long as possible.
While the initial setup is not really extraordinary, after destroying a few boss ships something notable occurs. If you blow up the front of the ship, the next one has more armor on the front. Killed by a missile launcher on the last boss? The next one will be bristling with missile pods. As each boss ship is destroyed, an artificial process of natural selection will enable the next to better counter your attack method.
In other words, when this-
[img width=640 height=480]http://www18.big.or.jp/~hikoza/Prod/ref/ss_wf02.png[/img]
Becomes THIS, its YOUR fault.
[img width=640 height=480]http://www18.big.or.jp/~hikoza/Prod/ref/ss_wf07.png[/img]
Soon, players will be targeting specific areas during different fights, knowing how to customize their own battles in reverse. Instead of the player ship advancing and leveling in specified directions, the enemy is growing in power against the player's attack methods. While the game includes a button for slow and precise ship movement for delicate dodging, and the hit box on the player ship constitutes a single pixel, the computer will eventually overcompensate its weakness and conquer you. At least, until next game.
The player has a fire control that allows the angle of attack to sweep across the dark void around the two opposing ships, as well as widen the spread or focus the shots into a targeted area by moving towards or away. Warning Forever removes the level-up weapon structure common in these games and focuses entirely on a player's movement, precision, and tactically surgical strikes. The less-is-more approach drops the over-the-top arcade-frantic nature without loosing any of the intensity.
The vector-like graphics and simplistic, retro style sounds give the game a clean, sharp impression. No frills beyond some humble particle effects, Warning Forever nonetheless shows artistic design in the subtle polish that displays Hikware's commitment to an excellent, complete game belying its quiet origins.
It will also run on any PC computer you can still turn on without waking up a hamster on a treadmill or inserting a floppy disc the size of a pizza. Even if shmups have never interested you, the price of admission alone and the ease of which it can be installed and played on anything smarter than a Ti-99 is reason enough to give it a whirl.
If you are like me, your poor consoles and Starcrafts and Warcrafts and house-on-fire might take a back seat for a few minutes or hours as that familiar warning klaxon starts blaring...
It feels good to be back doing one of these after only a week, instead of a month like last time. Now, if I can just keep up the pace for the next couple weeks until school starts back up. Anyway, this week was a little slow for me, especially on Saturday with only one purchase the whole day. Luckily, the flea market on Sunday came through for me with a good purchase.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles 2010 - #8
Remember that nyquil fever dream you had that meshing together a bunch of hot girls, samurai, powered-armor, dragons, World War I, sword and gun fights, a bordello, medieval castles, and a lot of mascara? Well, Zach Snyder does. And he made it into a new music video movie:
Now before you gripe about how unrealistic it is that any movie featuring REC7 Barrett M468s, M4 SOPMODs, HK UMP45s and HK MP5s can be set in the 1950s, that little chronology faux pas (and the other tiny anomalies) are explained by implying the surreal events are all in the protagonist 'Baby Doll's head. And she's in an insane asylum to be 'fixed'. (C'mon, even the MP5s didn't show up until the late 60s. Duh.)
Taking a moment to blink after the trailer ended, I was immediately surprised by two thoughts. One, I never like how dark eyeliner makes a person look in real life, yet somehow it can look kinda cool in movies. And two, video games seem to have helped push the boundaries of how we accept the absurd.
As pop culture has become more completely entrenched in newly developed electronic technologies (and vice-versa,) hitching onto this runaway connection is our corporate tolerance for what was previously, well, nonsense. From the Surrealism movement of the 1920s on up to campy anime-inspired Saturday morning cartoons (R.I.P  ), the entertainment and introspection of our current day is laced with ideas so strange and bizarre, only Jules Verne could have predicted it.
While our modern culture gates itself with a Renaissance-modeled glorification of reason and intellect, peering through the portcullis reveals a growing acceptance of outlandish and strange media. It has become so widespread, it can take a moment to remember just how patently absurd it is to accept what video games take as commonplace: ducking behind cover in a shootout and regaining lost health, picking up an item that instantly heals you, finding food in random items such as candles, streetlamps, and...garbage cans? How about jumping a height equal to or greater than your character's own height, 'double' jumping, the ability to both see and dodge ballistic weapon-fire, hitting anything while going over fourty or so miles an hour and not destroying either you or your vehicle, or every female video game character not requiring extensive back corrective surgeries?
It goes on so extensively that listing the absurdity in gaming is itself absurd. There is so much we have to just accept and realities to ignore while playing a game, that we can't truly keep track anymore.
(I find it hilarious when I hear comments like, "its so unrealistic that Mario falls into the water and dies in one level, then swims submerged for three minutes in the next level." Really? We're going to discuss physics continuity in a game that allows your avatar to take a person-sized flower and use it to throw fireballs from his hand?)
From storytellers around a campfire, to fantasy and sci-fi books, our fiction media has always been rich with unreal concepts, and movies like the Matrix and the recent critically acclaimed Inception take an approach of layering the absurd with ideas grounded in a definable reality. Even the upcoming Sucker Punch attempts to explain itself with the 'all in her head' setup so that even the biggest nerds won't be put off by the true absurdity just featured in the trailer.
But do we need to justify our love of the absurd? It seems common now that we, a western culture that prides itself in technology and 'forward thinking', need an excuse to rationalize the absurdity in our entertainment. Interestingly, this nowadays onus to explain away absurdity in our entertainment seems divergent, even counter, to the video game mentality of old.
In the beginning of video gaming, there was no real interest in explaining why you were a mechanical fly/spaceship in Yar's Revenge. (They did, in a pack-in comic that is only really desirable to collectors.) Pac-Man only developed a loose and bizarre story for the sake of continued sequels. Monkey steal your girl and wreck a construction zone filled with dangerous chemical barrels and cement pans commonly mistaken as pies? Well, soon-to-be-plumber-boy, you know what to do. Where did the monkey come from? What does he want with the rather unattractive Pauline? Where is the police, Humane Society or PETA in all of this? Who cares!
These simpler gaming days were developed with simpler needs in mind. Space Invaders were just that: bad guys from space literally viewed in black and white. The Cold War mentality in the 70s and 80s, with its clearly defined (in the minds of America and her allies, anyway) construct of 'Good' and 'Evil', helped explain unspoken notions of the developer's intentions. There just wasn't as much of a reason to define why something was good or bad, or even why there was conflict. The most liberal ideas of developers were often shoved under the rug for the sake of levity; Dave Theurer's original intent for Missile Command was to show the unending futility of nuclear warfare, as the game never ends and it is only a matter of time before the game's cities are destroyed. The developer even punctuates the somewhat political nature of the statement by stating 'The End' instead of the classic 'Game Over' upon losing a game. While the original coin-op had no storyline and indeed did not require one, the Atari 2600 VCS port's instructions included a sci-fi explanation of the "peaceful world of Zardon and the invasion of the Krytolians." Keep it light for the kids, even if the adults can chuckle at a "Rush 'N Attack." Wink.
As games matured, sprites and textures replaced the details that imagination wrapped around our digital pictures. While the absurdity was no less surreal, the game's graphics described in specific details what years ago our minds just made up. More and more, some of us wanted to know who was in that other tank or jet in Combat, even if it was just a blurb in the instructions that stated some goofiness about robots and aliens. Sure, plenty of us didn't care (many still don't) but as the violence and dark themes in games became a stalwart of the industry, many gamers (and parents, and politicians) just wanted a little comfort knowing that Shang Tsung was really an evil sorcerer and not some Chinese dude looking for his cancer-stricken son who just happened to walk by a fighting tournament. While many gamers don't need a positive context for their avatar's actions in a game (indeed, playing the bad guy is more popular that ever) the fact that there is even a 'good' and 'bad' side to play as is something that defines our industry as closer to actual role play as opposed to static books or movies. As games reach an ever-widening demographic, the responses to 'realistic' or obtuse morality issues will have to grow with it.
Story explanations helped the industry develop the antagonist/protagonist themes in gaming and gave context to the absurdity onscreen. But often, it is not a game's story that helps us just 'go along with it', but the stories we are familiar with beforehand. For example, the Mushroom Kingdom's likeness to Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' novels probably helped lay the groundwork for gamers accepting the outlandish universe. After all, many of us were perfectly familiar with the day-glow colors, eating to change size, even mushroom architecture, from a cartoon that debuted three and a half decades before. Now we've grown so used to the idea that touching an anthropomorphized star makes us invincible for a few seconds, that new Mario game oddness like flying around in a bee costume seems to make perfect sense.
Which sums up our industry's acceptance of absurdity as a whole. Early works broke ground on all these strange ideas, and later works just expound on it so we no longer question why gaming reality is such an unfathomable thing.
An interesting development over the the last decade has been the goal of introducing less absurdity and more 'realism' in gaming. Getting into this debate is another topic entirely, but it is perhaps peculiar that developments such as morality systems and more graphically displayed violence is considered to add more 'depth' to a video game. Modern Warfare's now infamous airport scene, in which the player (acting as a secret undercover agent) helps gun down dozens of civilians, would not be as unsettling to most of us if the game used a more cartoon-like graphical design, or if the action were turn-based instead of real-time. That the scene is made to play out as 'real' as current technology allows is a trend that will continue, with consequences that both the gaming industry, government, and consumer public will have to face.
In the meantime, we have gamers and critics that complain that Halo is too unrealistic for them, or they are too old for another Mario. Instead of opening up a laundry list of reasons why 'realistic' games really aren't, or that a gamer is never too old for a fun, well designed game, it is perhaps best to accept that everyone has their internal limits on just how much and what type of nonsensical fantasy is too much for them. Arguing over what each of us can tolerate for absurdity is, well, absurd. I'll go see Sucker Punch, my sister will go see the next Twilight movie, and while neither of us will convince each other that the other movie is just too dumb for us, we can agree that we just like what we like.
No matter how absurd it appears to anyone else.
[img width=200 height=179]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/lostmagictitle.jpg[/img]
Continue reading Unloved #15: Lost Magic
|
|
