State of the Blog Address

I started this blog a year ago as an outlet for writing, a way to justify my time spent playing video games. I didn't know exactly what topics I would cover—old games, new games, game topics—or what form the writing would take. So far there have been some game “reviews” (although I use the term very loosely), some game-related “essays” (again), and even some attempts at creative nonfiction (emphasis on the “creative”). I guess I've laid out a few ideas that I'm happy about. Maybe.

Overall, I still feel very far from my goal, a bit like Socrates via Plato: “I know one thing, that I know nothing.” Games are an interesting beast, and there are so many ways to approach thinking about them that it can be difficult sometimes to know where to start.

One way to start would be to examine the unique experience of play. And when I say “unique” I don't mean different or unusual, which is not what the word means (seriously, “unique” is one of the most abused words in modern writing). I mean it in the truest sense of the word—as in literally one-of-a-kind. All games rely on a certain amount of variable input and internal randomness as part of their very design. It's part of what makes a game a game. An easy example of this would be an Elder Scrolls game, in which each individual's playing experience is going to be determined by their own meandering path through the sprawling virtual world. More importantly, different people can have different reactions to the same games, partly because of the game's own built-in variability, but also because folks are just plain wired differently and will react to virtually anything uniquely. Needless to say, there can be value in documenting one's personal experience with a game—the emotions invoked or memories recalled. It just takes a skilled writer to make it worth reading.

The second fundamental way to approach a game is through an examination of the game itself—its systems, mechanics, and overall design. How do a game's rules make for an interesting, provocative, or otherwise worthwhile playing experience? This kind of writing requires a perceptive mind, probably some familiarity with games, as well as writing skill.

Now that I've said all of that, you can probably forget everything I've just said. It's not like I really think about these things when I'm choosing something to write about. As much as I would like to be able to find my niche or area of expertise in this wide world of critical discussion, I simply don't have one. My approach is more of the shotgun variety—scattered, frantic, reactionary, imprecise.

I find it's still much easier to play games than it is to write about them. In fact, it's not so much that there is too much to write—because there is—but there is absolutely too much to play! Just offhand I can think of about 15 games I've played over the course of the last year that I haven't gotten around to posting about (a couple of those games I have tried to write about (frantically, imprecisely, etc.) but gave up on them when nothing was working). It pains me to leave them behind, because I genuinely feel that they all merit discussion. It's just a matter of finding the right angle, also a matter of finding the energy and inspiration.

This has got to be the most fascinating time to be player of games, and I'm not sure if I was aware of it a year ago. We have a multibillion dollar industry that is simultaneously dying and flourishing. Even as games make a shitload of money, that revenue is problematically concentrated in sequels and mega-popular franchises (the “blockbusters” of video games). Is there any room for risk or experimentation when, for each game, there are millions of investment dollars—not to mention jobs and livelihoods—at stake? There are untold fortunes to be made through mobile and social gaming, but has it become too saturated of a market for newcomers to make their mark, let alone an income?

Gaming platforms are changing. Games distribution methods are changing. Even the funding models for games are changing. Developers are developing on console platforms that are almost seven years old—a technological eternity!—precisely because there is so much uncertainty and so many unanswered questions. What will happen to Nintendo with the launch of this bizarre new console of theirs?

And just as the major publishers may be on the brink of implosion, more people are making video games than ever before (I don't have empirical proof of this on hand, but I suspect it to be true). The realm of independent game development is becoming just as vibrant and exciting as in the film and music industries. Go check out the Independent Games Festival website and just pore through the  titles that have been developed over the last decade. See how polished they have become. You might be amazed. People who grew up playing video games are gravitating to the medium to make their own games. Why? Because it's still fertile ground! It's become a much more accessible thing to do. There are so many different ideas that have yet to be tested, so many subtle variations of ideas that have the potential to change the entire landscape of games. Through small, independent games, developers have a better chance of making an actual authorial statement.

Unfortunately, I know more about the current games industry through gaming blogs and proverbial window shopping than through actual play. I have a stupidly hard time bringing myself to start new games. I think I take games too seriously. I don't want to go into things half-assed. I want to be sure that when I begin something I can give it my full attention.

It's my own fault, but I think it's partially a reaction I have to the way I see media being consumed in today's day and age. We live in such a hyperactive culture, in which our collective attention span has been reduced to the click of a hyperlink. Exposition has been reduced to an infinite stream of 140-character sound bytes. Games, music, media, and technology—it flows by on a high-speed, one-way conveyor belt. As soon as we pick something up new we're distracted by the next shiny thing whizzing by. I don't want to give anything up. And so it collects and builds up, all these forgotten treasures and junk. Try as I might to inventory it, I know it will never all get done.

Thus far I've really only given myself one rule for this blog, and that is to post something at least once every month. On more than one occasion, it's come down to the last day to get something out the door. It's not my favorite work, but it at least keeps things moving. Tonight I'm giving myself a deadline to post on the anniversary date of my first post, so I can look back evaluate my first year, generate new goals for the future. I can't say for sure how long I'll end up maintaining this particular blog, or whether or not I will continue my minimum monthly quota. But I'll try.

On the List — Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3

UDPATE (3/18/13): There's a slightly better version of this article on Gamasutra. Maybe read that one instead. K thanx.

"On the List" is a series that lets me talk about my favorite video games of all time, games that could potentially end up on a best-of list.

“So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking, racing around to come up behind you again.” - Pink Floyd

As I get steadily older, and as I become further poor of it, my time becomes an increasingly valuable commodity. It seems no matter what I do or don't do, all of my goals and aspirations outpace my ability to reach them. It's not often that I think about death itself, but I do think about approaching middle age. As pointless as it may be, I sometimes worry now about the regrets of what I might not accomplish in five, ten, or even thirty years time—assuming I'm fortunate enough to have them. What's wrong with me, right? Just get out there and live!

I remember when The Sims came out in early 2000. It was a fun little game about the pursuit of happiness—from a decidedly first-world perspective. Create a person or a family. Tell them when to bathe, when to be social, when to practice a musical instrument. Take care of their needs and hopefully watch as they progress through the ranks of their respective careers. And above all, help them to buy and decorate their house with the coolest stuff. The Sims was genre-pegged as a life simulator, but I'm not so sure what that means. I think it's a game that has more to do with socio-economics than with “life”—at least in the grand sense of the word. Where was the drama, the everyday anxiety of existence?

In 2007 I stumbled upon an entirely different sort of game, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. It was just on a fluke that I played it. Somebody gave me a hand-me-down Playstation 2 that hardly worked. As sort of a starter kit, the person who gave me the system also let me borrow this absurd looking Japanese role-playing game (JRPG). The first thing I noticed about it was its sleek anime art style, but I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.

The game centers on a band of Japanese teenagers who—as with every other band of JRPG teenagers—must contend with a dark and powerful, world-threatening force. Unlike other JRPGs, Persona 3 doesn't send you wandering all over the planet or parading around in big flying boats. Nor does the final battle take place on the moon. It actually takes place on the roof of your school.

Something is strange in the city of Iwatodai. Each night starting at midnight, the moon turns a sickly green color and just about everyone transforms into a coffin—literally. The students' high school morphs into a massive tower fortress known as Tartarus, and a bunch of shadow monsters start wreaking havoc. For some reason, this Dark Hour does not affect a select group of individuals, including the main protagonist, a newly arrived transfer student. These gifted individuals are the only people who realize the Dark Hour even exists. Worse yet, this strange phenomenon seems to be causing an ominous outbreak among the population known as Apathy Syndrome, whereby people suddenly fall into a numb, vegetative condition. As such, the protagonist joins forces with his dorm mates who form the Specialized Extracurricular Extermination Squad (S.E.E.S.). The group's members have dedicated their nights to hunting the shadows inside Tartarus, hopefully to vanquish the Dark Hour from existence.

The most interesting aspect of the game is its structure. Events in the game take place over a one-year period, with the days and weeks counting down to some kind of hinted doomsday. Daytime segments play out like a social simulator. During the weekdays, the player character attends school, then spends the afternoon either hanging out with friends, attending a campus club, or doing some other activity around the town before retiring to the dorm. Then, on most nights, the player has the option to form a party and go fight monsters at Tartarus. This is the combat portion of the game, one enormous grind of randomized dungeons, turn-based battles, and periodic boss encounters.

To say that Persona 3 takes its time is an understatement. As the game goes on, various plot twists formulate. New story clues comes to light. The members of S.E.E.S. undergo their various trials, both individually and as a team. But most days are just regular days, with the player deciding how the protagonist will spend his free time.

And it's within this limited freedom that the game truly shines—as a game. The choices available to the player present themselves in a largely scripted fashion. As the hours tick by from early morning to mid morning, from mid morning to after school and onward, there are moments that come up. Some mornings the game's focus will narrow in on a classroom lecture, during which a teacher will be going on about some subject. If the teacher pops the protagonist a question and the player answers correctly, that protagonist's popularity rating will increase. Sometimes the game will give the protagonist the option to take a nap during a lecture. Whereas doing so temporarily improves the character's physical condition, paying attention to the lecture will result in a permanent increase to the player's academic ranking.

A similar choice presents itself during most evenings. If the player decides not to go battle during the Dark Hour and retreats to the dorm room for the night, there will generally be the option to either stay up studying or go to bed early. These studying opportunities can be valuable for gaining those academic skills. But getting rest is equally important for preparing the body for battle during the Dark Hour and for preventing sickness.

The most interesting choices are the ones that involve social interactions with other characters, sometimes forming social links. During my play through of the game I befriended a fellow track athlete, an eccentric old couple who ran a local bookstore, a drunken monk at a nightclub, an MMO computer game player, a little girl in a park, some of my fellow S.E.E.S. members, and more. Some of these social links are more difficult to access than others. Certain options will not appear until the protagonist has reached a certain benchmark in academics, charm, or courage points. Others are available only through exploring particular areas of the city at a certain time and day of the week. Each of these relationships forms a social link that, when leveled up, allows the player to create more “persona” characters, which are used like summonings during battle. Some story branches lead to other story branches.

My protagonist, for example, had an interesting love life. After going out with a fellow athlete for a while and maxing out that social link, he started following a link with a shy girl from the Student Council Club. When I realized this character was forming a crush on my character, I decided to stop pursuing that social link. It was a tough call, especially knowing that by spending time with the girl she was beginning to overcome her self-confidence issues. Oh well. Closer toward the end of the game, as my character's stats began to reach the higher echelons, I suddenly found myself with the option of pursuing all three of the women in the protagonist's dorm—a pretty satisfying reward for his persistent leveling. Of course, social dynamics played a factor. Dating multiple women at the same time would lead to trouble, and there was probably only sufficient time to pursue one of the three girls.

But I really kind of admire how the game stayed true to this rigid design throughout the game. Unlike so many RPGs that give the player so-called freedom to explore every last quest and side story to their neurotic content, here is a game that forces actual choices. A year is a long time, but not long enough for everything. If the player chooses not to participate in certain holiday festivities, or to pass up on a invitation to hang out with an acquaintance, those social opportunities and potential memories will be lost for good.

I think this resonated most when it came down to the small daily choices—when to sleep, when to study, when to go battle. It's something I relate to every day when I come home from work. What is the best use of my time? Is it in writing (boosting academics)? Going for a run (combat training)? Spending quality time with my wife (improving my social links)? And in this way, the game feels like a much more accurate “life” simulator than any kind of glorified dollhouse game—as great as it may be in its own right.

The game's opening cinematic makes multiple textual references to “Memento mori,” a Latin phrase that translates to something along the lines of “remember your mortality.” It also refers to an artistic theme popular through classical and medieval European history. Painters would depict still-life images of skulls and skeletons to reinforce the message—remember that you too will die! Is Persona 3 a modern-day Memento mori?

Interestingly, the opening animation juxtaposes this textual reference with the game's most iconic image—attractive characters shooting themselves in the head! This is actually the animation that happens all throughout the game whenever a character in combat summons a persona. They do so by aiming a pistol-shaped device called an Evoker at their noggin and pulling the trigger. The characters don't even keel over, but the wispy particle substance that emanates from the other side of the head is clearly meant to resemble something much more violent and permanent.

Is this supposed to be symbolic, the stark reminder of death implied in the “Memento mori” reference? I imagine that's a part of it. But wouldn't an image of suicide sort of contradict the implication of that very reference? I suppose one could argue the game is engaging in a form of psychological reverse engineering, inverting a dark and highly suggestive image of giving up in a way that it becomes a much more positive representation of fighting back. I imagine it's also an exercise in being subversive for subversive's sake. If anything, it's provocative, an interesting way to illustrate the undercurrent of teen angst that flows throughout the game.

Ultimately, I think there's an even greater irony that relates to the entire Persona 3 playing experience. For a game that does such an effective job of reinforcing the seize-the-day outlook, it does an even more effective job of sucking away one's otherwise productive hours. Persona 3 is the longest game I have ever played. While I managed to spread it out over a six-month period or longer, I'm pretty sure my final play through clocked in at over 120 hours (I made sure to basically erase the save file from existence as soon as it was over). I remember being just stunned as the hours continued on past the 50 or 60 mark and just . . . kept . . . climbing. It got to the point that I had to ask my girlfriend at the time (now my wife) for a day of solitude to complete the game. I don't think she took the request very well, but it did the job. I spent probably an entire weekend to wrap it up, and I still had to stay up quite late to do so.

As I mentioned once already, one of the game's optional side stories involves the protagonist playing an online role-playing game. It's bordering on metafiction. In doing so the protagonist befriends a player who goes by the name Maya. It's kind of a fun story segment that involves selecting the dialogue options, which the protagonist types to his online companion. Maya, in return, types back a bunch of playful comments, mixed in with all manner of chat abbreviations and emoticons, and there's a flirtatious little relationship that forms between the two. It's later revealed that the anonymous Maya is actually your character's homeroom teacher, who gets like totally embarrassed when she finds out she basically fell in love with her student. Persona 3—like so many Japanese games—has its cheeky moments, little bits of nerd fantasy indulgence. But the funny thing about that social link is that the option is only available on the weekends. And by playing the online game, the protagonist spends his entire weekend playing the game, thus eliminating the possibility of doing any other activities all day. I swear the game developers at Atlus must be aware of this ridiculous setup they've created. Here I am, whiling away my own precious hours role-playing as a make-believe Japanese teenager who is flirting with a make-believe online game player—to the point that I have to seclude myself from my very real girlfriend to keep playing the make-believe game! Obviously, this was one minor part of the entire game, but it does sort of put things in an interesting perspective.

Looking back, I actually think my time playing Persona 3 was time well enough spent. Not that I ever want to ever go back! This was four years ago when I was knee deep in a very stressful, life-sucking career as a newspaper reporter. It was a job that drained so much of my time and energy, and playing Persona 3 was for a time my mode of escape—not so different from the protagonist taking a deserved break from his own exhaustive battle against the Dark Hour to unwind with a video game. Abnegation, at times, does have its merits.

If you really think about “Memento mori,” there are two ways of responding to the message. One day you will die, so get out there and do something with your life while you still have time! On the other hand, no matter how important you think you are, and no matter how great or small your individual accomplishments, you too will one day die. So what's the point in worrying about everything so much? I'd like to think there's a balance to be found in between the two, and that there's a perfect time for everything. I could spend probably a lifetime trying to find it.

Images were borrowed from megamitensei.wikia.com.

Silent Hill review — Paint It Black

This past month I finished the original Silent Hill game, and for weeks now I've been trying to write something about it. Unfortunately, no good ideas were coming to me. So in order to at least purge this game from my system I've decided to just throw words on paper. I don't know if any of it sticks.

I will just say that it's a very interesting game, far from perfect but almost better because of it … if that makes any sense. Anyway here are some of my impressions.

Start Me Up

Silent Hill has one of the weirdest opening cinematics I've ever seen. I'm talking about the film segment that plays before the main menu comes up, before the player even starts the game proper.

The first thing that stands out is the song by Akira Yamaoka. It's got this haunting mandolin over guitar (I think) that quickly turns into something from a James Bond theme that soon gives way to a bit of a spaghetti western feel. However you want to describe it, it's a good track.

The accompanying CG montage, although it doesn't initially make any contextual sense to a beginning player, is pretty interesting as well, even more so after you finish the game and realize that most of the sequences do not appear anywhere in the actual game. It's only later that you go back and begin to try to analyze what some of the images are referring to—a mansion in an open landscape, a nurse in a physical altercation with a man. The sequence does a good job of priming the brain for what will end up being a rather puzzling experience all the way through.

I Saw Her Standing There

After the opening montage, the game begins with an equally great playing segment. Your player character Harry Mason wakes up in a wrecked car. His seven-year-old daughter is missing. You emerge from the car to find yourself in what appears to be an abandoned town. It's foggy, gray. Snow is falling. You step forward.

You see a figure standing in the distance, partially submerged in the thick fog. Is it your daughter? Just as you approach her she runs away. You run after her, follow her trail into a strange alley. You pass through a gated fence with a “beware of dog” sign, and there's blood on the ground—and a fleshy mess—but from what, or whom? That doesn't look like the work of any normal dog. You keep going, and the alley becomes narrower. You pass through another gate and suddenly it's dark as night, so Harry pulls out a lighter (it might be a match). There's a crashed wheelchair with the wheels spinning. What's that about?

As you continue on the camera angles become all wonky and discombobulating, almost enough to make you want to throw up. There's blood everywhere, then some more scraps of flesh. You see some kind of skinned, crucified body hanging on barbed wire. Then, just as you try and flee in terror, these gray childlike monsters close in on you and stab you to death. And that's just the first four minutes of the game!

Deja Vu

It's almost impossible to talk about Silent Hill without talking about Resident Evil. It's no secret that the Silent Hill franchise was game developer Konami's late response to the survival horror success of Capcom's zombie series. The mechanical similarities are undeniable, from the tank controls to the puzzle solving to the mazes of locked doors and monster-infested corridors. And yet these borrowed mechanics—and their familiarity—serve the game rather well, because at the end of the day Konami ended up making a very different type of game. And it's the similarities that help make Silent Hill's distinct flavor all the more apparent and appreciated.

I've heard a lot of people describe Silent Hill as a more psychological game than Resident Evil. That's true. Silent Hill is a much darker game. Whereas Resident Evil (or BioHazard as it's known in its native Japan) deals with physical mutations and evil corporations, Silent Hill is straight up about the occult and demonic forces.

But that's not the only distinction. Whereas Resident Evil had a very keen focus on strategy, resource management, and the sheer challenge of getting from one claustrophobic corridor to the next, Silent Hill eschewed much of that strategy-based focus in favor of a more streamlined playing experience. Yes, there are ammunition supplies to conserve, but there is no time wasted in having to decide which weapon or ammunition type to carry around at a given time.

Silent Hill is roughly divided into two types of playing maps. There are the open-world segments, in which the player must navigate the large open streets of the town. Then there are what I would argue are the more Zelda-like dungeon areas (an elementary school, a hospital, etc.) that play more like a traditional Resident Evil map. And yet even in these dungeons, the game manages a kind of pleasant flow and progression. There's a method to getting around, which is simply to try and open every door you can, and the correct path becomes apparent through a process of elimination.

The puzzles in Silent Hill are a lot more cryptic than those in a Resident Evil game. Often they involve deciphering clues and hints delivered through pieces of text. There are certain aspects of Silent Hill puzzle solving that feel like a throwback to traditional text-based or point-and-click adventure games.

But one of the most notable (and yet subtle) differences between the two games is the combat. If you were to juxtapose Silent Hill's combat to that of Resident Evil—which has always been somewhat clunky in its own right—the latter game is downright agile in comparison. It's a slow and awkward sight to behold when Harry swings his lead pipe at an enemy, a maneuver that simultaneously leaves him vulnerable to counter attack. His shooting is not very good when not delivered at near point-blank range. And yet these same handicaps reinforce the narrative reality of the situation. The protagonist in Silent Hill is no action hero, and he never feels like one.

Obscured By Clouds

The early days of 3D were not always pretty. The 32- and 64-bit systems that ushered in a new era of real-time 3D rendering did so almost at the expense of the hardware itself. Sometimes it came down to a matter of what the developers were willing to sacrifice—realism or performance. Games with a lot of environmental detail and surface textures were more difficult to render due to memory and processing constraints. Thus, developers flooded their games with this environmental fog that masked the embarrassing effect of scenery objects suddenly “popping” into the view of the player at a relatively close proximity.

Silent Hill was probably the first (and perhaps the only) game to really use that technical constraint to its advantage (it almost worked in Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, but not quite). Players wandering through the town of Silent Hill can't see more than about 20 virtual feet in any direction. This in and of itself was nothing new to games in 1999, but in most games this posed a number of problems for the player.

Not being able to identify any significant landmarks in a 3D game world makes it difficult to know where the player is at or where they need to go. Fortunately, Silent Hill incorporates a very helpful mapping system. Harry has a map that he marks on with information as he explores. If a particular street proves unnavigable, the game automatically makes a scribble on that area of the map for future reference. And by pulling out the map, an arrow points in whatever direction Harry's body is currently facing.

And it's usually a good idea to know where you need to go and get there quickly, because wandering through Silent Hill is never safe. There are all sorts of demonic, Lovecraftian monsters lurking around. Due to the fog, it can be almost impossible to know where they're at or how close they are. The Silent Hill developers only partially solved this problem. First of all, Harry receives a portable radio that inexplicably emits a static noise whenever a monster is near. That gives the player a clue to watch their step. But the problem of not seeing the enemies, in this case, isn't such a bad thing. As with the feeble combat, the limited seeing distance creates tension and dread.

Shine A Light

There's another tool in Harry's inventory that adds yet another interesting component to the playing experience. It's a flashlight that Harry clips to his chest pocket, which he automatically turns on during the nighttime (or Otherworld) segments.

I didn't realize until about a third of the way into the game that the flashlight is really an optional device. During the daytime segments, there is no need to use the flashlight and it doesn't come into play. But when it gets dark, Harry actually has the option to turn the flashlight off. While this might seem like an idiotic thing to do, it can be used to the player's advantage. Even though the player will have a harder time spotting the creeping monsters, the creeping monsters will simultaneously have a harder time spotting the player.

During many of the game's open-world segments I often found myself simply turning off my flashlight and running through the darkness as fast as possible. Even though there were monsters nearby, my strategy was just to run and run and hope for the best. It's kind of the equivalent of a child who hears a strange bump in the night and pulls the covers tight over their head, trying to block out the fear by refusing to pay attention. By running blind, of course, the player eventually loses sense of direction. As a rather smart move on behalf of the developers, the game does not let the player consult the map unless the flashlight is turned on. In doing so, however, the player risks giving up their location to whatever enemies are nearby.

Sad Lisa

Silent Hill feels like an incomplete game, almost like a beta test or a clever experiment for a game. Even after the credits have rolled, regardless of whether the player receives either a “good” or “bad” ending, there's really no sense of closure. From a narrative standpoint, it's not readily apparent what just happened at all—logically or otherwise.

We know there is a strange cult in town. There may be some drug trafficking involved. And there may be a crazy woman who sacrificed her seven-year-old daughter in a fire as a means of ushering in the birth of some demonic entity. But if the real “story” of Silent Hill exists somewhere as a complete and delicious meal, then the game treats the player more like a dog under the table than a proper dinner guest. We like the scraps we're given and we want more.

The Harry Mason character is more blank slate than Deus Ex's J.C. Denton, an empty vessel meant only to represent the point of view of the player. It's the strange people Harry encounters that are far more interesting.

The most fascinating is Lisa Garland, a hospital nurse who appears in the game's otherworld setting. She's a desperate character, and in the end a tragic character. The first time you see her, she clings to Harry with startling affection (via CG cutscene). As Harry drifts in and out of consciousness between the day world and otherworld, there's a subtle relationship that develops between the two characters.

On the one hand she acts as a kind of anchor. Amidst all of the freakish encounters, Lisa is like a calming and familiar presence, a confidant of sorts. And yet, why is it that she only appears in the nightmarish otherworld reality? Even as Harry makes an offer to try and protect Lisa, she herself appears to be strangely anchored to that hellish hospital where other zombie-like nurses wander around the hallways in a fiendish stupor. Harry's final encounter with Lisa immediately goes down as one of the most oddly gut-wrenching moments of any game I've ever played. Game artist Takayoshi Sato, who single-handedly created all of the game's CG cutscenes, had an incredible influence over the mood of the game, and his scenes with Lisa Garland are by far the most memorable and effecting.

David's Song

Do you like David Lynch? If so, this is the game for you. Silent Hill is absolutely dripping with his influence (or at the very least wringing juice from a cut of the same fetid cloth). 

Consider the audio onslaught of Eraserhead, the strange industrial noise that permeates the entire film. Silent Hill creates a very similar soundscape, from the diegetic radio static to the sometimes grating and unnerving musical score. Even the game's visual world—as it transforms into an alternate nightmare version of itself, all rusty metal and dystopian decay—shares a similar grotesqueness to the wasteland set pieces of Eraserhead.

Some parts of Silent Hill feel very reminiscent of Twin Peaks. Think of Silent Hill as the quiet small American town with a dark, mysterious undercurrent. There's a CG reel in the closing credits of two game characters sway dancing rather hypnotically and suspiciously, which I'm almost convinced is a nod to characters like Audrey Horne or the "Man from Another Place" dancing in Twin Peaks. But even the setup of Silent Hill has some parallels to the TV series. Twin Peaks begins with the mysterious murder of a teenage girl and an outsider who comes to the town to investigate. Silent Hill begins with an outsider coming to investigate the disappearance of his daughter. It's the plot device that sets all of the madness to follow into motion. One of the game's creators (not sure which one) has been quoted as saying that the name Cheryl Mason (Harry's daughter) is a reference to Sheryl Lee, the actress who played Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks.

Then there are the themes of duality, the Lost Highway ambiguity of what is real versus what is a hallucinatory nightmare and the gradual merging of the two, to the point that there is no longer any real distinction. Who is that doppelganger of Harry's daughter? And isn't it interesting how the interrelated characters of Michael Kaufmann and Lisa Garland appear in the same hospital room, only that Lisa appears in the otherworld version of the room?

Basically, the entire game playing experience is akin to the role of Kyle MacLachlan's Jeffrey Beaumont character in Blue Velvet. Like Beaumont, we find ourselves drawn to that darkness, lured deeper and deeper into the knowledge of evil.

Tell Me What You See

There have been a lot of indie titles that have been sporting a retro art style. They look like old 8- or 16-bit games. Nobody that I can think of is touching the look or style of the 32-bit era. Like I said earlier, it was pretty ugly.

But the grainy, pixellated look is absolutely perfect for Silent Hill. The monsters are so much more effective, because frankly, it's hard to tell what they look like. They're more suggestive than representative. 

The environmental gore—the fleshy objects, the hanging bodies—leave much more to the imagination than if they were drawn in modern high definition. There are even many sections of the game where the wall textures look like those old ink blot tests.

And I feel that's pretty representative of the entire game. It's open to interpretation.

Silent Hill gets three out of four stars.

Images were borrowed from silenthill.wikia.com.

Work is Fun: A Minecraft Observer's Review

“In every job that must be done there is an element of fun.” – Mary Poppins

It used to baffle me as a child. It seemed almost every weekend my parents wanted nothing more than to stay home and work around the house. My dad would mow the lawn. My mom would toil away on her hands and knees, grasping for weeds in one of her five or six gardens as a heap of roots and other organic detritus collected by her side. I, of course, thought that this was the most boring thing on earth. Who were these people? Why stay home when we could … when we could … we could go to the mall?

If you were to go to my parents' house today and observe the humble magnificence of their property, you might be able to understand — better than I was able to — why my parents preferred their weekend work. I think it's even nicer now than when I lived there. They've got a greenhouse. A pond. There are still a bunch of gardens and places to sit around during the nice summer weather.

But it's funny. If there's one thing that has remained true about my parents' two-and-a-half-acre spread of land, it's that it has never been static. Slowly but surely, it's always changing. Not only are the state of the plants and trees in constant flux (my parents' never-ending campaign against the creeping blackberry vines used to suffer crippling setbacks almost every year) but even the manmade features are impermanent. Once ambitious gardens fall to ruin while new ones thrive. Wooden birdhouses disappear, replaced later on by homemade bells. My dad's first attempt at a pond was for years just a gaping hole in the ground before getting filled back in. These were the types of gradual and sudden changes I didn't notice and appreciate quite as much until I went off to college and started coming home only every few months. My parents' work is never finished. The prominent features change over time as their resources and focus shift between various projects.


I guess I've noticed a sort of parallel phenomenon watching my wife play Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition. It's great. Every day last week I would come home from work and get to hear about all of the mini emergent adventures my wife had experienced that day. Her intrepid mining expeditions. Her taming of a huge pack of dogs and getting lost for hours in the wilderness. Better yet, I got to see the latest iteration of her ever-expanding “home.” I got to watch over time as her survival cabin at the top of a hill became more of a faux-house concealing her much larger bunker underground. Pretty soon her bunker had expanded to encompass most of the hill. Then one day I came home to find that the hill had basically become like one big cobblestone castle. And it all happened one block at a time, without an instruction manual.

I recently watched an interview snippet with Sid Meier, creator of the Civilization series and many other highly regarded computer games. He spoke in pretty plain language about the distinction between fun and work when designing games. If something in his games begins to feel too much like work, they have the computer do that for you. Imagine the tedium if, as opposed to simply commanding your Civilization workers to improve tiles, you had to somehow do that work yourself. Imagine if your peons in Warcraft required that you click continuously on each tree you were making them harvest. It would detract from getting to focus on the bigger picture, the satisfaction of the macro-management.


How interesting then to consider a game like Minecraft, in which almost the entire playing experience consists of simulated labor, and not the kind in which you simply command and watch your minions but rather one that has you play as your own lone minion in a world all your own (which encompasses both master and minion, I suppose). It's essentially a do-it-yourself game. It involves cutting down trees, shoveling dirt, hunting for food, tilling soil, building tools, and moving thousands of blocks from one place to another. I jumped into the game for a little bit the other day and helped my wife completely level half of a mountain. Talk about landscaping. We picked and picked and picked while the sun was up and retired to bed at nightfall. In human time it probably took about forty minutes or so.

What the playing experience doesn't include is the physical strain — the soreness of muscles, the shortness of breath. There's no cleanup involved, no tracking mud into your home at the end of the day. Still, I would wager money to guess that if Minecraft did not make the player “work” for those resources, so to speak, it wouldn't have the millions of players that it does. Minecraft is much more than a game of infinite legos. It really is about the work, or the idea of work.

Because the human species craves work! Rather, they crave the accomplishment that emerges as a result of the work. People enjoy Minecraft for very much the same reason they enjoy sweets. It's biological. A delicious fatty food contains so many calories in such a condensed form that it's almost impossible to pass up. It eliminates the need to forage, the need to hunt. What an incredible opportunity! This is why raccoons pick through the neighborhood Dumpster. It's why the squirrels load up on free food from my parents' backyard bird feeder. The intense desire for accomplishment through work is just as inherent to the human species as is the need for physical sustenance. But whenever an opportunity arises that appears to satisfy what we need, or which appears to eliminate the barriers separating us from those things that we need, that opportunity is very difficult to resist. Minecraft eliminates the unpleasantries of work while retaining its core essence, which is precisely what makes it such a near perfect substitute.

That's really what a lot of video games do so well to begin with — reward the player with a sense of accomplishment. Usually, however, both the reward and the means of obtaining the reward are completely arbitrary. It could be doled out however the designer sees fit. Complete a level, advance to the next one. Defeat a boss, enjoy a cutscene. Solve a puzzle, gain a collectible star. Earn a set number of experience points and level up. Minecraft, by contrast, does not seem nearly as concerned with having to impose a set of goals and objectives upon the player (other than staying alive, perhaps). It says to the player, “This is your world. These are its rules. Do what thou wilt.”

My wife could just as easily venture off into the wilderness, perhaps go exploring the mysterious nether world for the first time. For now she still seems to find just as much enjoyment staying close to home, steadily improving the scenery within rendering distance of her glimmering tower, plucking away at her ever-changing list of pet projects. So much work to do!

It's pure indulgence, sure. Isn't any game? But there are things that Minecraft and other games allow us to experience that we would not otherwise, at least for the foreseeable future, get to experience. Take owning a house, for example. My parents might have had the benefit of purchasing property in the 1970s. They were able to actually build their own home. They have a real landscape on which to sculpt their improvements. It's a little different for my wife and I. At least, the barriers standing in the way of us doing the same thing are significantly greater, 30 years later. My wife's heart literally aches for owning a puppy (well, a very specific pure breed of puppy). We don't currently have the setup to make that particular dream a reality, but you should see how excited she is while playing Minecraft and coming home to her pack of blocky, domesticated wolves. I guess what I'm saying is simply in answer to an internal question bouncing around in my head: Why not enjoy a bit of harmless indulgence when it helps you cope?

(Final thoughts (which are not my final thoughts): There is a lot more to talk about with Minecraft than this piece gets into, especially considering the Xbox version is still rather primitive compared to the latest PC version. I've specifically used the word 'review' here, because my posts titled 'review' seem to get more hits than the ones that don't. I'd definitely like to talk more about my experiences with this game once I've had more of a chance to play it. This game is worth trying out at least once just for the experience of getting lost.)

Images were borrowed from mine craft.wikia.com.

Choose your own Super Amazing Wagon Adventure

We'd just made it beyond the Great Plains when, as a token and confession of his love, Flynn gave Poopface a flower. Soon after that Flynn got syphilis. Then, in his weakened state, Flynn died. I think he was devoured by a wolf. Anna died too, although—honestly—I don't at all remember what caused her demise. I'd been through so many different versions of this adventure already, it could have been any number of things. But our story didn't end there. Somehow, against the odds, Poopface survived a river raid of sorts and made it to the coast. And I finally completed the Super Amazing Wagon Adventure.

To say this game is a parody on The Oregon Trail would be both obvious and insufficient. Yes, the game has you shooting buffalo (lots of buffalo … sometimes flaming buffalo) and fording rivers (or, if you prefer, jumping them). It's utterly zany, completely hilarious. But Super Amazing Wagon Adventure is also just a really good, well thought-out game.

The game splits between two primary modes of action. There are the wagon driving portions that involve side-scrolling shooting and dodging. And then there are the segments during which one of your party members sets off on foot and the game becomes a dual-stick shooter. Your journey across the wagon trail is broken up into a bunch of semi-random episodes that last no more than about 30 seconds each.

I say semi-random, because the game actually has a really nice structure that gives the adventure some overall grounding and consistency. Each play through—depending on how long your party survives—will involve a trek through the Great Plains, a mountain pass, a couple of rivers, and more. The precise obstacles you encounter along each stage of the journey, however, will vary. A side quest for exploring a cave might trigger a battle with giant bats during one adventure and giant spiders during the next. Or you might not encounter a cave at all.

Devote a little bit of practice to the game and you might start to develop some strategies. Each animal carcass, if picked up, can potentially be traded for extra health and munitions at certain points in the game. But because some weapons, such as the ray gun, decimate a carcass completely, there might be times when you choose to avoid that particular power-up.

I first got a chance to see this game in action during the Seattle Indies Expo on July 29. And I had a brief chat with the game's developer, who goes by the name sparsevector. Super Amazing Wagon Adventure is actually his first game, and the expo was his first chance to observe the experience of first-time players.There were a lot of interesting games on display, many of which were much shinier than this one, but I think Super Amazing Wagon Adventure was my my personal favorite from the show. It had a kind of instant, mass appeal, mostly attributable to its sense of humor.

It was only upon purchasing the game from the Xbox Live indie games channel that I got to appreciate the actual playing experience. I kept dying and retrying, intent on getting through the entire adventure at least once. Pretty soon it was like something out of The Twilight Zone. Here were these three hapless digital versions of myself, my wife, and some stranger named Poopface, caught in an endless procession of inevitable death and destruction. Each journey, while different, was uncannily familiar. I watched and played as all of these facsimile versions of my party met their gruesome end, unable to stop myself until the wagon adventure gods smiled upon that one Poopface who had given Flynn an STD.

I could have been bitter. I could have turned away in disdain. But it was a beautiful moment. Life had found a way. The sperm had fertilized the egg. Also, I got to unlock the game's “shuffle” mode.

Here's my final recommendation. Buy this game if you:

• Like an old-school video game challenge.
• Still enjoy doing Mad Libs.
• Are looking for a new kind of party game to show off to your snarky friends.

Super Amazing Wagon Adventure is currently available on Xbox and will soon be out on PC.

Rapture is us

Rapture is leaking, and nobody seems to mind. Anyone who might have thought to point this out—and maybe do something about it—has already died by the time I arrive on the scene. And let me tell you, I'm seeing a lot of dead people.

Rapture was probably what you might call a boomtown. Talk about commercial enterprise, this place found a way to profiteer just about everything, even criminal justice! Did you accidentally get caught trespassing someplace you didn't belong? Just pay a quick one-time fee to shut down those frenzied flying death bots.

It seems on the one hand brilliant, and yet I can see just as easily how this automated economy will soon meet its end. Monetary transactions no longer flow between the hands of human beings, only into the dead-end deposit slots of these untended vending machines. After a while, as I venture further into new areas of the city, I find that even the money isn't sufficient to buy the supplies needed for survival. I'm literally scrounging through corpses and garbage cans looking for the raw components that will let me invent my own items. Random supplies could be anywhere, sitting on some high up ledge, hiding under a fallen slab of concrete. I feel like a skittish street rat.

I've discovered there's also a new economy, the economy of Adam. It's a cartel really. It ate up the old economy, the old way of living. In fact, it completely killed living and replaced it with something different, a kind of … sub-living.

This is my mental travelogue as I re-play my way through the first few hours of BioShock, and I must say, I'm really feeling it. Here is a shooter that doesn't feel like a regular shooter. It feels more like the old Resident Evil games (sort of mechanically clunky, but on purpose) only more immediate and immersive. As I travel, I have to make decisions about how best to approach my enemies—not only how to win an encounter when I come upon a splicer by surprise, but how to become more deliberate in how I move about, deliberate in how I kill. Before long, I find myself to be more hunter than prey. I'm becoming more dangerous than the crazies around me.

This is good stuff, right? Like, I wonder how this game experience might relate psychologically to a recovered (or not) drug addict. I really do! How do those first hours of playing BioShock feel to someone who might actually have experienced what it's like to go from upstanding citizen to a desperate and broken mess of a person, someone who pawned off all their crap when they descended beyond the means of legitimately obtaining cash and eventually had to resort to other less-than-savory methods of getting by. Burglary? Violence? Scavenging copper wire from abandoned buildings, perhaps? Go back and watch that animation of your player character popping a syringe needle into his vein. Feel that desperation!

But then, something strange happens. The game keeps on going … and going. I wouldn't say it becomes boring or unplayable, but that once foreign and engrossing experience becomes less engrossing and a lot more familiar. My simple, understandable motivation for getting the hell out of Rapture becomes a bit more convoluted. I notice how my once compelling need to scavenge for supplies becomes more of a compulsion. It's a mindless chore, wherein I search every available box and corpse, not to find things that I desperately need, but rather any item that I haven't arbitrarily maxed out.

A friend of mine told me he started playing the first couple of hours of BioShock and then soon lost interest. While I definitely don't have the same playing habits (I will compulsively finish almost any game I start), I can understand how that would happen. I told him he probably got the best of the BioShock experience in those first couple hours.

It's maybe the day after I start playing through the game when news of the violent massacre at a movie theater in Colorado sends shockwaves through the nation. It's terrifying. What's happening to our country, we ask? Then the national discussion immediately becomes another political debate on the issue of gun control. People argue about the need for more regulation. They say guns are deadly instruments that are too numerous and too easy to obtain. Other people argue that an infringement on the right to bear arms is an infringement on an individual's safety and personal liberty, the right to defend oneself from the violence of others.

All the while, America is leaking. Infrastructure is deteriorating. The purchasing power of the dollar is plummeting while the people become more and more accustomed to an increasingly impersonal economy. The streetlights of bankrupt cities are being systematically shut down. The surveillance system is expanding. So many unsettling things are happening around us and yet we're more likely to hear people talking about the personal scandals and exploits of Hollywood celebrities (is it that much different from the meaningless jabber of those wandering splicers, some insane woman complaining about a tenderloin steak or a psychopathic religious nut babbling about “Jesus loves me” before he tosses you a live grenade?). Before long we'll hear about another episode of shocking violence somewhere else, and it's kind of like being reminded that we built our city at the bottom of the sea. Ours is a fragile and exposed society, an at-once impossible, constantly bleeding utopia. And I'd like to think that if we knew how to fix it, we would.

Images were borrowed from bioshock.wikia.com.

The Trials HD bunny hop and expressive movement

I made a breakthrough last week in one of my favorite recent video games . . . and I guess I'd like to tell you about it.

One small hop for a bike, one giant leap for precision gaming

The game is Trials HD, a downloadable title on the Xbox LIVE Arcade in which the player moves a dude on a dirt bike through an obstacle course as fast as possible while trying not to spill. The breakthrough involved the mastery (of sorts) of a certain in-game maneuver.

In my head I've been calling it the bunny hop. But when I think about it now, it seems more accurate to describe it as the forward hop. Or maybe the forward pop. It's kind of a snappy motion—a jerky left-to-right gesture of the left analog thumbstick that results in a sort of quick pop forward for the biker on the screen. The biker guy moves his body down and back, then springs his weight upward and forward. That sudden shift, combined with a careful acceleration of the gas (determined by the level of pressure my right index finger applies to the right trigger button), helps give me some much needed forward momentum to make it over protruding surfaces that would otherwise send me straight up in the air—or maybe right into a wall. It's … really hard to describe what I'm talking about. But believe me, it's something the Trials HD player will need to learn if she or he wants to finish the game's extreme difficulty tracks—a feat I now have accomplished, thank you very much.

You're gonna want to use the bunny hop here. Trust me.

Playing Trials HD, as a physical experience, reminded me of playing the guitar. I remember in middle school, back when I was still a fairly early learner. By this time I had gotten used to the basic chords. I could switch between a D chord and an A chord and an E chord handily enough. It was the F chord that really tripped me up. Playing an F chord—properly, at least—required me to stretch my left index finger all the way across the first fret. Not only that, I had to press down across that fret with enough pressure to ensure that each of the six strings would still ring clear and vibrant when picked or strummed. At first this was a real challenge. I could see clear as day what I had to do, and yet my hand and finger muscles weren't ready to cooperate. Stretching that finger felt awkward and strenuous. And when I strummed the notes came out all muted and smothered. This was the case for a long time until one day, lo and behold, I got it. I could do it! It sounded clear as a bell—well, almost, anyway. But it also felt comfortable! Not only that, I could now strum bar chords all the way up the fret board. It introduced a whole new mode of playing. 

I first learned about the Trials HD bunny hop while watching a YouTube video showing how to get through one of the the extreme tracks. The video tutorial got to the place in the track that had me stumped. Just do a little bunny hop, the narrator told me; push back and forth on the thumbstick and jump. This was easier said than done. I probably tried over a hundred times to get over that uphill bump, but my clunky back-and-forth motions did nothing to help the situation. I gave up on that track for a while.

I don't know what else to say, other than the guy in the video was right. My fingers may not have understood the instructions at first, but at some point—several weeks and thousands of spills later—it started to click. I can't describe what I was doing differently, only that somehow I was pulling off one successful bunny hop after another. I guess my fingers had finally learned the magic language. That was the first breakthrough. The second breakthrough was the realization that this bunny hop maneuver, or some variation of it, formed the basis for overcoming just about every near-impossible obstacle in the game. It was the secret ingredient.

The truth is I'm in awe of Trials HD, specifically its simulated physics. Trials HD is a game about precision—muscle precision to be … precise. And what amazes me when playing Trials HD is the seeming seamlessness with which my controller movements correspond to the visual animations displayed on the TV screen. Large, wild gestures (I'm speaking relatively here; these are thumbstick movements) translate to wild gestures on screen, and often result in crashes. Minute, articulated gestures result in equally small and articulated movements—which also can lead to crashes.

But there's such a spectrum of available movement, broken up by such minuscule degrees of difference. So often it's the slightest, most sensitive variation in controller movement that makes all the difference between overcoming a track obstacle or losing balance and crashing. And while the most extreme tracks demand the execution of more precise gestures, there nevertheless are infinite ways with which an individual player can move through the virtual environment—be it gracefully or otherwise. Every run through a Trials HD track is like a snowflake in that it can't be replicated. I suppose that's similarly true even for more technologically primitive games, except that other games don't necessarily feel as genuinely physical or gestural. The input/feedback of attempting a virtual jump in Trials HD could be compared to the input/feedback of any real-life physical activity that demands skill and precise muscle control. Ever tried bouncing quarters into a shot glass? Sometimes you'll overshoot; sometimes you'll undershoot. Eventually you'll get it in. And after a while, with more practice, you might start landing it in the glass more often than not.

Arcade-style video games have always involved hand-eye coordination. As with anything skill-based, there inevitably are video game players who for certain games ascend to the realm of true mastery. I would not describe the original Donkey Kong as having a very robust physics system, let alone graceful controller mechanics. And yet there are a select number of individuals who have mastered the movements of that game on a level most of us never will. That's almost to be expected, really.

What I mean to say is that my captivation with Trials HD has less to do with the fact that there are people who can play as good as this (although, if you have played the game, you will be insanely jealous). You can find people who are really good at just about anything. It has more to do with my own experience with the game and how—looking back—I have a newfound appreciation for how video game physics engines and corresponding controller input mechanics have evolved. Here's a fun exercise. Go play five minutes of Pitfall on the Atari 2600. Then play Trials HD (or skip ahead to its recently released sequel, Trials Evolution. I haven't played it, but I imagine it's just as good). 

In terms of hardware progression alone—and through the console gaming industry's gradual movement from joystick to directional pad to analog stick to dual analog sticks and pressure-sensitive buttons—game playing can be more physically elegant, dynamic and expressive than ever. This perhaps is even more apparent when playing games that—like Trials HD—have scaled things back to a set of simple but refined core mechanics. Super Meat Boy is another good example of this. In a sense, both games involve little more than simulated running and jumping on a two-dimensional plane. But by honing and perfecting the underlying engines that drive that relationship of physical input and visual feedback, developers are rewarding players with gaming experiences that feel as revolutionary and exciting as ever.

Screenshot images of Trials HD were borrowed from ign.com.