Oldschool Hard

I am on the road crew. This is my stop sign.

Happy birthday, Psychonauts. Today you are 5, and if you got through kindy ok, played nicely with the other children, showed appropriate motor-skill development, and did not set anyone on fire with your psychokinetic abilities, you should just be settling into your first year of school.

My, they grow up so fast, don’t they?

Now, I can understand why people don’t quite get what a special little person you are. Your charms are not necessarily immediately apparent. Quite frankly, you are not aging well, looks-wise, even at the tender age of 5. You have good bone structure, but a new haircut wouldn’t hurt, and the best of your personality only comes out after some time spent with you. However, among other heartwarming moments, the way you traipse through that city and your wonderful friendship with the Milkman show you truly are a special individual, and if only people would give you a chance, they would see the care put into your upbringing. More people should spend an evening in your company, especially now that you make such small demands on their wallet.

Yes, yes, you can start opening your presents. But please stop trying to enter my mind, and for the love of Jebus, you need more control before you start trying to light the candles on your cake with your powers. There’s only so much scorched buttercream I can take the smell of…

****

In more current news, hol-eeeee shit, Blizzard has made, by estimates, somewhere in the realm of $3-5 million USD from ethereal sparklehorsies. They couldn’t make money more easily if they became an outpost of the mint. As for me, I’m gonna hold off until the /mountspecial is changed to shitting rainbows, thanks.

Annnnnd, we’re having that ‘are games art?’ hand-wringing competition again, are we? Oh, joy. This is such a useful conversation to have, because, without fail, it always changes the minds of those criticising games, and doesn’t look at all painfully insecure.

Yeah, most games probably don’t approach ‘art’, just as Hot Tub Time Machine is never going to be used as an example of the singular artistic vision of a cinematic auteur. It’s entertainment. ‘Games are not art’ does not have to be extrapolated to ‘games have no value/legitimacy’ every time. Games are usually fun. That’s enough. However, once again we (as gamers) rise to the bait like a dolphin at Sea World. Well, maybe with slightly more or less chattering, but to the untrained eye I imagine it looks quite similar.

Roger Ebert doesn’t get it, what a surprise. News at 11, old man doesn’t understand technology/a medium that rose to popularity after his own youth! It’s just like my grandpa using ‘back in my day…’ to rail against anything he doesn’t understand, without actually judging it on its own terms. Fuggedaboudit. For more, refer to my prior comments about seeking validation from those who are in no position to give it.

Image from Double Fine’s official site.

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Are you experienced?

Some games have all the luck – high critical praise, strong fan appreciation, and good sales. Most game companies would be more than happy with two out of three, as long as it’s the latter two. Unfortunately for a few of the games on my Top 25 list, due to a quirky and/or unique nature, they seemed to have the first two covered, but not the last one, and similar games are unlikely to ever be released. Games like Psychonauts and Grim Fandango reviewed well, have a rabid fan base, but just never seemed to be able to sell to a more casual audience.

Another one of these sales-deficient games on my top 25 list was Rez. Ostensibly a cross between an on-rails shooter and, to a lesser extent, a rhythm game, Rez is one of those games where the mechanics are fairly pedestrian, but the strongly Tron-like (but brighter and more colourful) ‘vibe’ and what it does with its simple mechanics is what sets it apart. Rez is set inside a mainframe computer run by a (now) rogue artificial intelligence having an existential crisis, which you must liberate it from by giving it back its ‘soul’. You do this by destroying viruses and breaking through a firewall in each level to get to the AI’s central core.

You can go through different stages of ‘evolution’, which transform the look and function your avatar, and serve as powerups and increased health. The game builds through 5 levels to the last boss rush, which deals with the crisis of the AI by (literally) throwing all sorts of existential questions at you. Possibly my favourite level outlines the entire evolution of life from the primordial soup onwards – not the sort of thing you see in most games.

Made with a sort of stylised wireframe graphic look, Rez‘s tagline is ‘experience synesthesia’. Synesthesia, if you’re not familiar with the term, is a condition in which senses can blend together, leading to things like the association of certain sounds with different tastes, or assigning colours to letters based on their look or sound, among other symptoms. The game tries to do this in a few ways: by using bright colours throughout most of the game, matching your shooting to coincide with beats and sound effects in the pumping electronic soundtrack, allowing you to have some control over the music in the game, and with the Japanese release of the game, there was also an option to buy it with an accessory called the ‘trance vibrator’ which, as you can probably imagine, was rapidly pressed into service by female gamers.

Rez takes some elements of Tempest 2000, Tron, and even (the also underrated and undersold) Frequency, and combines them with a sort-of more cyberpunk version of the Tron plot. Originally available on the Dreamcast, the version with which I’m most familiar is the PS2 version, although there is now a HD version available on XBox Live. Although it’s not really a long game, it is highly re-playable, with multiple game modes, and at around 10 bucks, I can’t recommend it more highly.

Image from bit-tech.net, cropped to size.

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Deja Vu? This could be what all gaming will feel like, soon.

As well as the big pile o’ unplayed games, I keep a list of games that I hear/see/read about, both already released games that I’m yet to get (some examples: Bayonetta and The Saboteur), and games yet to come out (like Heavy Rain, Alan Wake, and Rage). As the examples show, there’s definitely still new stories, new gameplay ideas, and new stories grafted onto old ideas coming out of game publishers. However, these new ideas have to fight very hard to get any traction. On my list of 31 upcoming games to watch, 22 are either direct sequels or part of an already established series. Mass Effect 2, Crackdown 2, Max Payne 3, Diablo 3, Thief 4…

I suppose I’m the sucker; it’s my own list, after all. And it’s probably what a large section of the gaming public wants – why wouldn’t you want more of a good thing? But it makes me wonder, are these games being released in addition to games with original ideas and settings, with as many new properties being released as there has ever been, or are they the replacement for new ideas? I worry when I see things like Activision (oh, you have come a long way since Pitfall, haven’t you) talking about not releasing new games unless they can be “annualised.” That statement does perhaps imply new ideas in gaming, but it implies ‘safe’ new ideas. Does it prevent any resources being put into the next Psychonauts, Ico, or Okami?

Call of Duty, Guitar Hero - these sort of series will be cranked out on a yearly basis, quality or need be damned. As game budgets and therefore the number of units needed to sell to make a profit rise, the will to take on risk evaporates, and thus these sort of sequels or annual installments will be prevalent. GTAIV, as an example, had a lot of ambition, and in some ways its reach exceeded its grasp, but at the core it was largely the same game as every GTA game since GTA3 – and stuck largely to what people look for in a GTA game. I can see the Madden Syndrome threaten to take over before too long, where the game title just becomes ‘Call of Duty 2011‘, and any gameplay changes are minor and incremental. It seems like the only games that will join these existing series’, at least from major publishers, will be games that are derivative of them.

Repitition and sequels are old as games themselves: Look at Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man, Galaxian and Galaga. There’s been a million Zelda sequels, give or take, and that’s down to a fine art by now, which is pretty much exactly why I struggle to take much interest in the Zelda series anymore. You can contrast this with the (western versions of the) Super Mario Bros. series, which up to Super Mario 64 (at the very least) did something different in every game. But the development cycles were long, and games were relatively less expensive to make – the pressure was undoubtably there to make a hit, but would be unlikely to sink the company if one game in a series wasn’t quite the blockbuster they were hoping for. There was time to experiment when a game didn’t have to come out every year, and even if games were released annually, they didn’t need the scores of graphic and sound resources that games do now.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t want a good sequel to a game I enjoy, but getting one every year is a bit ridiculous and can make you tired of even the best ideas. I mean, I like pizza, but I don’t want to eat it every night, you know?

Image from Sports Rubbish, done over with my 1337 chopping skillz.

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