Fuck it; it’s over – a work of fiction

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It’s probably worth reading this article before this can be enjoyed to its full.

Finding that special someone who gets involved in your favourite hobby is fraught with difficulty: is it a furthering of the bond between the two of you, or is it merely an acceptance that the pair of you are not fit for wider social interaction and probably should keep your type to yourselves? It’s probably the latter: obsessing so much over something and fuelling each other’s fixations probably isn’t going to end well for anyone. It’s not you that they love, it’s the inanimate ones-and-zeroes that they have affection for.

The dating scene is a frightening place: people lie to each other in a vain attempt to get their genitals seen to in whatever way they see fit. Books, TV shows, whatever: these are all catalysts for wider discussion that will eventually decide whether people are going to be experiencing some fleeting physical pleasure, if indeed they are even that lucky. Men are, for the most part, inadequate; women taught that sexual pleasure is a sin. Lie to prove adequacy; lie to prove that you’re not a “slut.”

At one point I dated someone who said that games were just masturbatory aids for the disaffected and the perpetually lonely. If in a bad mood, she’d even go so far as to say the “autistic.” A lie, of course: gamification is all around us. I’d find her playing Farmville and she’d shudder when she realised that she’d been caught. A terrible thing, that lie: something that our relationship never recovered from. She’d been terrified as I’d played Broken Sword: “why isn’t reality enough for you, Xand? Why can’t I be your world?” Her world was pay-to-win Zynga fare: her world was unreal. I’ve never been able to look at a pixellated plot of land the same way.

There was another: a fan of Platinum’s action fare, with God Hand being her favourite title of all time; a real diamond in the rough. That game had taught her to do terrible things with her right thumb. Terrible is probably not the right adjective: terror, save for rare psychological dysfunction, would not have caused the ecstasy that that thumb provided. Thank you, Mikami-san; thank you Inaba-san for that oh-so necessary dodge mechanic.

She’d play Shenmue and the Yakuza games in front of me, delighting in a fictionalised East Asia – at once hyperviolent and serene. She made me watch; made me submit to the whims of what it was that she wanted to play. These were things that I loved; things that she had to take from me to make her expression of affection towards the games more “real.” I watched; I had to watch. We bonded as captor and hostage: a postmodern Stockholm Syndrome centred around fictional worlds. Coupland would have been proud.

I loved her; I loved this bonding.

She left.

She took what I loved and left.

The phenomenal words of Platinum, Clover, Yakuza Studio and Sega AM2 ruined for me. I couldn’t enjoy them without being told that they were not mine to enjoy; without being told that my participation would cheapen their beauty. They were not fit for me, nor I for them, just as with her.

They say games can bring couples together, and I guess they did here. I still feel connected to her when I play games, but the games are different now. I took on the spirit of the submissive sort that she tried to turn me into: eroge was the new calling and no matter whether it was Requiem Hurts, Oppai Slider or Time Leap, it was always her.

It was always her and I always won.

On the inevitability of self-ingestion

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In this month’s Edge, a case was made by Tadhg Kelly against the general sense of dread that seems to accompany the news of moves such as the further incorporation of microtransactions into (typically EA) games and the borderline puritanical clamouring of “games are not what they used to be” from certain elements within the community, and that, further, games will be adapt to new commercial environments just as other media have. The perceived irrationality of this response, as described by Tadhg in his piece, will be rationalised here. It is sought that explanation be given to the phenomena elucidated upon in the article with a view to demonstrating that the opposite conclusion is true: games may well end up consuming themselves.

The crux of Kelly’s argument is that the perception of the death of games as a meaningful enterprise is fuelled by what some perceive as the “Jersey Shore-ification” of games through the proliferation of behaviorist games such as those developed by the likes of Zynga and other “social” game creators. While these “games” may be “functional, moneymaking but hollow experiences”, their success is due not to any sort of true design for such success on the part of developers, but rather due to games that should be pushing the medium forward failing to do so (one example may be the disjunct between the mainstream gaming media’s love of Bioshock Infinite and the more critical outlook of the enthusiast press). With advances in technology over the course of the three decades of the games industry qua industry, costs have also become prohibitively expensive for developers, leading to “conservatism, crisis, collapses and realignments.”  These elements, however, are of little concern for Kelly, with a parallel being drawn to the shift from the genuine passion for music in the 1960s morphing into the MTV-engineered pop music of the 1990s: if gaming is undergoing a similar evolution, for Kelly, there is little to be concerned with – in spite of any other goings on, honesty and passion in music has managed to shine through in underground movements, and will in games, just as it did even in cash-generating pinball machines. As an addendum, Kelly remarks that imagination, innovation and artistry find “their best voices through constraint” and that this has always been the way that games have operated. The conclusion from all of this is that games are and will continue to be fine, as they have been in the past.

Perhaps the most troubling element of Kelly’s argument is what appears to be an almost throwaway comment towards the end of his article: the remark made about innovation being a function of tough times. While the aphorism of necessity being the mother of invention is a meme that has carried through generations, it is important to recall that innovation is not something that is unquestionably good. Necessity and its subsequent innovation is responsible in part for such devices ethically troubling in their use as weaponised smallpox and nuclear weapons. While making comparisons between such devices and the video game industry may seem crass, there is a valid point to be made here: just as innovation may lead to more engrossing worlds in games; novel gameplay mechanics; or new ways to tell stories interactively, it may also lead to ever more effective ways to convince players that pay-to-win is not only acceptable in terms of corporate ethics, but also that is the way that games should be played.

While I will accept the point that Kelly makes about the success of the freemium model and other behaviourist innovations being essentially a happy accident that caught on, there is something that was missed in his analysis. Whether or not the success of these initial behaviourist titles for their developers is a result of savvy business acumen or not is an irrelevance: if such a title can be shown to be cheap to develop and deliver fair returns on investment, the nature of the landscape in which game publishing decisions are made changes massively. From being an innovative risk, the behaviourist route becomes the simple, rational choice for publisher sponsorship: it is cheap, delivers returns and in fact conditions players to expect to have to pay more for the game on top of its initial price – push button, get reward; hand over money, push button more often: a simple and deviously effective tool for the manipulation of human psychology. Many other endeavours, such any movement towards “traditional” games, become far more risk-laden.

The assertion that restrictions are all that is required for innovation is also troublesome: social and cognitive distance between members of groups involved in the production of games will also serve as a factor in determining the extent to which any new product is “innovative.” Having white males of a similar age forming the groups that create games (as, currently, is ostensibly the case) will not lead to a great level of diversity in the end result. The crowding out of the market with brown-and-bloom first-person shooters is perhaps all the proof one will need of this. de Vaan, Vedres and Stark’s 2012 study shows that the distinctiveness (where distinctiveness is coded for by combination of 78 stylistic elements that they identify) of games is a function of cognitive folding (the incorporation of individuals in multiple, cognitively distant groups: a sort of group polarisation, the effect of which differs in whichever group an individual finds themselves at any point) and team size, with team size being negatively correlated with game distinctiveness at the p<0.001 level and cognitive folding associated positively with distinctiveness at the p<0.01 level. At a time where resources are limited in the games industry, it seems likely that the boon for genuine innovation in games is limited by the lack of cognitively diverse individuals coming into the industry: where jobs cannot be guaranteed in a fragmenting industry, it would seem safer to any individual who would consider going into games to either attach themselves to a “traditional” profession or move into the STEM space proper – perhaps an effect that would be made worse by traditionally female attitudes to risk aversion with regard to employment, where women are already under-represented in the industry and have more to worry about in terms of job security from areas other than the vicissitudes that face the industry as a whole (ie discrimination for being of child-bearing age and the rampant misogyny of the industry). Innovation, then, would be stifled by a lack of new and different blood coming into the fold.

There are spaces, however, where we have reason to hope: indie development, though it never ceased, has come to the fore once again thanks to tools that have served to democratise game creation. Games will continue to exist, there is no doubt of that: man is a playful creature. The concern, however, is that for the industry outsider it may appear to be the case that all games are simply dressed-up Skinner boxes if the trend toward the commoditisation of in-game resources continues.

Ikaruga (Dreamcast)

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The men and women of Treasure are sick, twisted individuals: again and again, they have managed to craft games that are incredibly compelling and forever demand just one more go, while remaining so horrifically hard that one starts to develop a captor-captive relationship with the fruits of the developers’ labours. Treasure, along with Cave, are probably responsible for more fits of puerile rage from people far too poorly adjusted to be playing these two companies’ masterworks; more irrational responses that lead to damage to control pads and arcade cabinets; more reported cases of Stockholm syndrome involving inanimate objects than any other in their field. Passé though it may be to make even the most fleetingly glancing reference to Fight Club in a public setting by now, Palahniuk had one thing right: the things we own can end up owning us. Treasure’s games bore their way into one’s head with their combination of sensational visuals and wonderful mechanics: Ikaruga is no departure from this lineage.

Ikaruga is a game of black and white.

Ikaruga is a game of black and white.

The immediately striking thing about Ikaruga following  the brief introduction to gameplay mechanics that the prologue-like section that starts the game is its simplicity: not that this is alien to shooters such as Ikaruga, but play is handled through a fairly meagre selection of actions available to the player. Much as in Jamestown (or virtually any other modern shooter that does not provide me the opportunity to link to other content on this site), the game provides the player with the ability to move around to dodge incoming projectiles, shoot at enemies with what is a “conventional” weapon in-game, shoot at enemies with a special weapon and utilise some sort of defensive mechanism to delay the inevitable loss of a life. This symmetry of basic underlying mechanics in shmups may well be what puts people off them in the West: “it’s just another game about moving and shooting with a lot of bullets on the screen, isn’t it?” is a phrase that any fan of the genre will have heard from their friends when they end up raving about the latest release on whatever dead console that some plucky, invariably Japanese, developer has decided to produce a game for. Such people are without souls; such people should not be considered friends; such people should be compelled to sit down with Ikaruga and be shown that the genre has all of the depth as the most cerebral of strategy games.

Love is no replacement for competence.

Love is no replacement for competence.

Ikaruga‘s depth lies in the very bounds that its simplicity places upon the player. The game’s key differentiator from any other shooter lies in the way in which one can change the polarity of their ship: coloured white, and the player is invulnerable to anything white on the screen, be this bullets or enemies themselves; coloured black and anything dark ceases to be a threat. Any contact with enemy projectiles of the colour which the player has assumed will lead to the bar at the left of the screen filling up. This bar indicates the strength of the special attack of homing missiles that is unleashed with a nudge of the right trigger. Beyond the mere element of aiding survival that the ability to change polarity offers the player – it is rare that any wave of enemies will be of one colour – the availability of this special attack also serves to incentivise judicious use of the mechanic in order to better serve the challenging boss fights that punctuate the chapters. There is something so wonderfully satisfying about dodging around some white projectiles, absorbing some black ones only to predict a large onslaught of further white enemy fire, switch polarity and unleash the most powerful secondary attack. It is not just a case of the game being a series of disjointed risk-reward calculations, there is a flow to the game that feels natural, almost instinctive, that seems to be provided solely by the responsiveness of the player’s ship’s movement and how quickly one is able to change polarity.

Game Over. Get used to it.

Game Over. Get used to it.

Running out of continues only a couple of chapters into the game is no sad experience: it is an excuse to experience the attention-lavished visuals and enemy behaviour that the game offers right from the off. In spite of the core mechanic of the game being premised around only two colours forming the core of the palette, there is a surprising amount of variety on offer in enemy appearances, with the best occurring in the end of level bosses that tend to have light and dark elements thrown together to form a series of Frankenvessels with unique approaches to destroying the player and undermining the vast amount of concentration required to make any real progress in the game. Also worth mentioning are the lavishly detailed backgrounds that accompany the action: beautiful and complementary to the action without drawing focus away from the hail of bullets that defines the gameplay.

Ikaruga manages to define both a console, in the Dreamcast’s fantastic selection of shooters, and a genre, in its deceivingly deep gameplay. A feast for both the eyes and the mind, it manages to draw in even the most reticent shmup fan with its stellar art, sound and gameplay design. In stacking the odds hideously against the player with the promise that all of the necessary tools to survive even the worst situations are provided  – all helped by its wonderful control scheme – it manages to be both accessible and rewarding for the most obsessive player. Words are not enough to illustrate the brilliance of the game: seeing it in motion, holding the controller and seeing the ship move almost with prescience owing to the responsiveness of input – this is the only way to understand the level of artisanship that underscores the overall exceptional experience that Ikaruga is.

Gravity Rush (PSVITA)

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Considering that the Vita has suffered from an unfortunate case of “let out to die” syndrome at the hands of Sony, there is something special about finding a Vita title that is not good simply because it exists on the platform, but rather good by virtue of its presentation, game mechanics and use of what makes the hardware unique. While incredibly polished and incredibly enjoyable in short bursts, Gravity Rush is unfortunately not the Vita title to be held up as such as exemplar. While use is made of the accelerometer and front touch screen that the Vita provides, these uses are not particularly novel and do not add much to the experience of playing the game.

Areas of interest are well-marked in the game world.

Areas of interest are well-marked in the game world.

Gravity Rush sees the player taking on the role of Kat, a character who is suffering from some sort of memory loss, meaning that she does not know how she came to be in her location at the start of the game and has no idea why she seems to have a rare ability to manipulate gravity local to herself. This limited amount of backstory, while potentially construable as lazy writing, provides the sort of loose grounding in the nature of the game world to allow for the wonderful sense of discovery that accompanies light bumps of the Vita’s right trigger; bumps that can quickly change how a player expects to traverse an area or bumps that reveal that the gravity powers can be used in way that, perhaps, had not previously been envisioned. The first time that the way in which gravity changes will also make the player character “sticky” to sides of buildings and the like if they are aimed at using the reticle that appears after the first bump of the right trigger in normal-gravity state. A second bump and the world changes, causing Kat to accelerate in the direction the player points her in; a second bump and the player wonders “why can’t I do this?” This mechanic defines much of the game, and never once fails to elicit a sense of wonder unparalleled elsewhere.

The presentation of Gravity Rush's story missions is fantastic.

The presentation of Gravity Rush‘s story missions is fantastic.

Aside from this ability to fling herself around, Kat is also able to use her ability to manipulate gravity to throw wooden objects and rocks in the world at foes; to slide around at high speeds; to super-charge aerial kick attacks; and to unleash visually stunning special moves unlocked as the game goes on. In the realm of the more conventional, Kat also has a series of physical, unaided kicks at her disposal for attack and a dodge which is used by swiping in the desired direction of travel on the Vita’s front screen. Here, unfortunately, is where things start to go wrong: the platforming and exploring of the game are fantastic simply because of the ability that the player has to zoom about anywhere with no concern for what the developer’s intended path for the player may have been. It is this freedom, however, that leads to the combat of the game being utterly terrible. Targeting enemies efficiently is made difficult by the wonderful pace with which Kat travels when manipulating gravity; when dodging, the player loses control either of Kat herself or the camera through necessity of moving a thumb from the analogue sticks; the sliding mechanic is fundamentally crippled by its use of the Vita’s lacklustre accelerometer for directional change with no override for any alternate input, as is provided where Kat is shifting gravity. While the game’s core mechanic of altering gravity to suit one’s whims is excellently implemented, everything else seems to have taken a backseat over the course of the development lifecycle.

For the flaws of the some of the mechanics themselves, the game does a good job of introducing them.

For the flaws of the some of the mechanics themselves, the game does a good job of introducing them.

The structure of the game overall also seems somewhat confused: Gravity Rush seems to be stuck between providing a story-based experience while having enough short, challenge-type activities to make it suitable as a portable pick-up-and-play game. Both elements of this are implemented well in separation, with the challenges being bite-sized while not trivial and the story being equal parts charming and touching at various points of its progression. The difficulty comes in the fact that the two, when side by side in the world as they are in Gravity Rush highlight certain flaws that the game does have. If a player is particularly diligent in picking up gems in the early part of the game, it is possible for them to unlock and play challenges that rely on game mechanics that are explored and explained to the player later on in the story half of the game, leaving them with little idea with what to actually do. As well as ruining the great pacing of the story missions’ drip-feed of mechanics, it also makes the game look poorly thought out, which is a shame for a game so hyperstylised and incredibly consistent in its art design. On top of this, the long loading times for retrying a challenge after completing it are a disincentive for long-term play when hunting for the gold-rating for each challenge.

The RPG-lite elements of the game, whereby certain characteristics of Kat’s can be enhanced in exchange for gems, further serve to undermine the “challenge” involved with the challenges: if a player waits until they complete the story missions to go back to the challenges, there is every chance that Kat will be overpowered relative to the challenge to the point of completely undermining it. Had the game chosen to wholly be a series of challenges or the main story component, it would have been much stronger that the hodge-podge that made it into the release.

The game is lovely to look at.

The game is lovely to look at.

It must be made clear: Gravity Rush is a beautifully presented, wonderfully realised game. It is, however, let down by a lack of direction and series of supporting mechanics that do not in any way do justice to the primary mechanic of messing around with gravity. As far as games that deal with the manipulation of natural forces to one’s own ends go, however, Gravity Rush is a worthy addition and worth experiencing only for the way in which it celebrates the ridiculous nature of its own primary mechanic by letting the player do so much with it.

Afterburner: Climax (PS3)

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Simplicity is no bad thing: simplicity was regarded as such a wonderful criterion for the choice of viable scientific theories by the likes of Thomas Kuhn as it is capable of bringing order to seemingly disparate phenomena and unifying them without unnecessary multiplication of entities leading to potential confusion or a state of affair where a theory might well be untestable. Afterburner: Climax is an incredibly simple game that relies pretty much solely on the player moving a military-specification aeroplane left, right, up or down in order to avoid oncoming projectiles, while allowing them to issue their own projectiles (a choice between missiles and an undefined “gun”) in the general direction of enemy aircraft, sea units and ground units in a desperate bid to survive at unnervingly high speeds of travel. It is simply not a creature of our time: this is a game designed around high-score chasing rather than convoluted narrative; a game designed for completion within fifteen minutes; a game that is about viscera rather than the occupation of any rational faculty.

Afterburner: Climax is lovely to look at feels "just right" to play.

Afterburner: Climax is lovely to look at feels “just right” to play.

Perhaps the above description of the gameplay is a little incomplete, if not unfair: through sharp banking, the player can also perform an evasive roll, the animation of which proves incredibly disorienting, accelerate or decelerate as appropriate and enter “Climax Mode” with a nudge of R1. In Climax Mode, the player’s lock-on reticle for the lock-on function of the missile launchers increases in size, time slows down and the player-controlled aircraft seems to enter some sort of alternate dimension in which missiles are as common as molecules of water in the open areas of water that define much of the game’s backdrop. Entering this mode consumes the reserves of the Climax Meter, which can be restored through shooting down enemies in the air, on the ground or at sea. Perhaps it was also unfair to refer to the gameplay as merely involving dodging incoming rockets and shooting enemy units: there are also some mechanics that add a little variety that a little more dynamism to the underlying game: at certain points within the campaign, the player will be issued with special missions (such as “destroy this stealth fighter which missiles will not lock on to”) to complete for extra points.

Though little practical use, Climax Mode at least gives rise to some nice visuals.

Though little practical use, Climax Mode at least gives rise to some nice visuals.

The fact is, though, that none of the added complexities mentioned above really add anything to the experience. It is always nice to be spoiled for choice in how one goes about completing a game, but given the sheer pace of the action in the game, thought enough to use the roll; to use Climax Mode; to care too much about completion of the special missions indicates only that whatever poor, unengaged soul is playing the game is not engrossed enough in the game to be completely taken away by the surprisingly technical methods associated with evading incoming missiles and the incredible beauty of the scenery. They are simply playing it wrong: this is a twitch game designed to take you out of higher-level thinking in favour of putting the autonomic nervous system in control; this is a game designed to celebrate the lowest-level of mental function; this is a game designed to compel one to “one more play” from the most base form of scoreboard-oriented competition.

Ughhhhhhh

Ughhhhhhh.

There are conceits to more modern narrative arrangements within videogames: the game has multiple endings, but it is not immediately apparent how these are acheived; there are a series of unlockable “EX Options” for the arcade mode of the game, allowing for a series of options that serve to alter the difficulty of gameplay by either hindering the player (by making the gun less powerful, for example) or by helping (through making the missile lock-on reticle larger), perhaps taking away from the brutal spirit that should define arcade games and their propensity to bleed people dry of any loose change they may have the misfortune to be carrying on any given day, but definitely making the game more accessible to the newcomer. It must be said again, however: none of this really matters. The game is an experience utterly incomparable to most others in terms of its speed and visceral nature: it acts as proof that accurately modelling every detail of a human face is not the way to get emotions into video games – all that needs to be done is to fling a player towards enemies at great pace.

God Hand (PS2)

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Clover Studio, though only having a three-year go of things due to commercial pressures within Capcom, managed to make games of such obscene quality that the world seems a little more just for the lack of sales that they received. Between Okami and God Hand, Clover managed to produce to games that not only exemplified everything of worth in their respective genres but also did so in ways that, if not redefined the expectations of mechanics for games of their genres, definitely managed to challenge extant narrative ideas and mechanical expectations within them. God Hand is not simply yet-another-3D-beat-’em-up: it is the yardstick by which all within its niche should be judged, and comes close to defining what a good action game should feel like, independent of whatever idiosyncrasies a game might have to itself. It is a triumph.

Enemy design is stellar, if a little eccentric at times.

Enemy design is stellar, if a little eccentric at times.

God Hand’s release must have been ill-timed: it did not receive much in the way of critical recognition upon its being unleashed upon the market. IGN, bastion of good taste and integrity though they may be, saw fit to award the game a meagre 3/10 at a time when eights and nines were being handed out freely for the most mediocre efforts. To think that this reviewer’s opinions may well have led to the lacklustre commercial performance of what is a wonderful game and thereby perhaps even the closure of Clover studios boggles the mind; to be so hard on a game that’s play mechanics are defined by a fairly lengthy learning curve for reasons that seem to be rooted in simply not giving the game enough time to grow on the player and adapting to its firm-but-fair no-nonsense approach to combat beggars belief.

The premise is simple enough, and was something that had seen before plenty of times prior to God Hand‘s release: you’re a guy; you need to get somewhere; a variety of enemy combatants stand between you and your destination; you have fists and therefore both can and will punch your way to your destination. Narratively, the twist comes in the fact that, for a variety of convoluted reasons, you have actually come to possess the right arm of a God and your human frame. Far more interesting, however, are the mechanical twists from expected norms that transform the game from what would have been a fairly generic-yet-competent entry in the PlayStation 2 catalogue to the sleeper classic that it is. Unsurprisingly, given Shinji Mikami’s work with Resident Evil 4, the control of the game is wonderfully tight with any error made by the player never being the fault of controller input delay but always being that of the player themselves: this fact in combination with the dodge mechanic employed by the game (whereby a quick flick of the right analogue stick results in the player character performing a variety of acrobatic manoeuvres to get out of the way of an attack) means that in spite of the incredible difficulty that a new player will have with the unapologetically tough first level of the game, there is always a sense that the game can be learned and mastered by someone merely willing to give it the time it more than deserves. This game is an archetype of design that rewards failure by giving the player the tools (in the form of understanding of the game’s mechanics) to succeed in the future.

The scope for gaining satisfaction from pummeling enemies is near endless.

The scope for gaining satisfaction from pummeling enemies is near endless.

The tight controls and unique dodging system are by no means the sole reasons for the game being as compelling as it is to play. At the bottom left of the screen in-game, there is a readout of a level. Upon a first play of the game, having not made reference to the instruction manual, it seems unclear what the purpose of this is. While it may not be unreasonable to think that it would be an RPG-like indicator of player character progression that increases with the defeats of enemies, it is something far more interesting than that. The level of the player is used to show the real difficulty of the game, above the initial selection of easy or normal: this adaptive difficulty increases with good play and decreases when the player is hit by their opponents. Upon reaching a higher level, it is not just a simple case of enemies hitting harder and living through more abuse, but their behaviour is also altered: whether or not they attack becomes less contingent upon where the camera is facing and the sorts of attacks that they use will change. Knowing that there is more challenge waiting for the player when they have come to “master” the game at level one ensures that there is something to keep coming back for and prevents the game getting stale at any point. Add in the ability to purchase and find in-game new techniques to use in combat and there is even further scope for variety within what is, on the face of it, a fairly simple combat system. This is a simple system, however, that is rife with hidden depth.

These are fuckers. Thankfully, use of the God Hand can dispose of them quickly.

These are fuckers. Thankfully, use of the God Hand can dispose of them quickly.

Yes, God Hand is a little ugly to look at with its bland textures and habit of having walls clip away as the camera rotates. None of this matters, however, once the entire aesthetic of the game gets its hooks into the player: a zen-like state has to be acheived in order that any real progression be made in the game. The slightest of errors will be punished in the most harsh of ways: if the player manages to progress to level 3 or level Die!, the slightest mistake can mean a game over. The game is not only engrossing because of its eccentric world of demons, gorillas and far too many bars, but also because it requires the player to be engrossed for them to make any real progress. God Hand has no pretence about it: find a guy; punch him; repeat. Oh, and if you mess up, you had the tools at your disposal to prevent it: it’s your fault for being awful at the game. If God Hand were to have had kids, it would have either shaken them to death out of frustration for their lack of ability to do calculus ex utero or been picked up by even Haringey’s child protection services. It is brutal, but the sense of achievement for any success is unmatched in any game.

Everybody’s Golf (PSP)

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I fucking hate golf.

Golf is nothing short of an excuse for the well-to-do to idly walk around under the pretense that they are in fact doing something constructive in taking part in a “sport.” Nice though it may be that followers of the sport do their part to uphold the local economies of certain areas of Scotland and Kent, there is such little value in knocking a small ball about with much larger clubs in a competitive setting – it just makes no sense at all to me how seriously people take it, given that a single stroke can result in the necessity of a 200-plus yard walk along the line of the path of the ball. Merely walking gives a freedom unconstrained by such petty concerns as the flight route of a small white ball: something I would see as far more rewarding. All of this said though, there is something incredibly compelling about the experience offered by Everybody’s Golf.

Even the menu screens are packed with colourful charm.

Even the menu screens in Everybody’s Golf are packed with colourful charm.

Everybody’s Golf does a wonderful thing for golf in that it abstracts away the details of the sport itself in favour of making a video game out of it: while selecting types of club and types of balls still features in the game, its importance is not one of concern for presenting an accurate simulation to the player but rather as a method of providing rewards for success within the framework of the game’s Challenge Mode and allowing for customisation of each of the game’s ten available characters, allowing for players to adapt the abilities of their character to their own play style. In making the in-game analogues to the real-world equipment essentially statistic modifiers, Everybody’s Golf does something nigh-on magical: it turns a sports game into a game that is, at its core, little more than a puzzle game with character development. It is about picking the right clubs and balls for the course that is being played on; it’s about knowing when hitting the ball as hard as you can is simply not the right option; it’s about knowing when a straight line just is not the best way from tee to hole.

The game provides wonderful visual feedback for victory.

The game provides wonderful visual feedback for victory.

If Everybody’s Golf is treated as a puzzle game, it’s one with a considerable amount of variety and depth. With six eighteen-hole courses (with very little in common) playable split between the front and back nine or the straight eighteen holes, either on one’s own or in competition with other human players or CPU players, every play session will be in some way different to the last, whether this be because of differing pressures on the player due to a differing play style on the part of competitors or the more simple, more honest forgetting of hole layouts. Wind conditions also vary from play session to play session, affecting the degree to which the ball will carry and in which direction it will be encouraged. These factors of difference between games create a surprisingly large number of possibilities for requirements of player thought in order to be successful. “Simple” is not quite the correct term to describe the gameplay given the number of factors that affect ball travel and the level of accuracy required to time a perfect swing of a club, but there is nothing here that is not intuitive, perfect for a portable game: while not too much mental engagement is required, the game does not fall into the trap of neglecting the engage the player to a significant extent. Everybody’s Golf is a triumphant embrace of the portable console on which it finds itself.

Rainbows behind a ball in flight: real golf is obsolete.

Rainbows behind a ball in flight: real golf is obsolete.

For once (perhaps twice, if Gitaroo Man is included), I find it difficult to find a negative comment to make about a game. It is a wonderful game for a handheld, with play sessions being limitable to a single hole or course if necessary but also extensible to multiple hours if that is what is desired. The gameplay is a simple timing exercise for making strokes, but far more strategic in the way that one should consider where they want to put the ball and the quick mathematics required to calculate the distance of the shot as a function of wind, swing strength and the nature of the surface your ball currently sits on. Everybody’s Golf is a delightful example of what more casual handheld experiences can and should be: delightful, engaging and compelling on the verge of addictive.

Bioshock Infinite (PC)

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The Bioshock franchise has always been somewhat calculating and somewhat cold in how it uses young humans: the Little Sisters of the first two games served as player motivation and articles of morbid curiosity in the first two games, given just how terrible the treatment that they have been receiving at the hands of Rapture’s most affluent was. If fully grown males were being harvested for their ability to adequately host sea-slugs, perhaps the player may not have felt this drive towards the defence of characters so overtly defenceless as a young girl prisoner to her own modified biology and drive to collect ADAM. Infinite picks up very much in this tradition where the previous two games left off: after a little bit of introduction, we are expected to look after maligned female youth in what turns out to be a game-long escort mission that deals with key themes of guardianship including remorse, duties owed to others and the limitations of mitigation of harm that may come to those to whom we have such duties. There is much of worth in Infinite, but also a large number of failings that blight what could have been a moment of brilliance in video game writing.

Elizabeth may well be the least annoying companion character in any video game

Elizabeth may well be the least annoying AI-controlled companion character in any video game.

The player’s charge of trusteeship is made to a religiously venerated teenaged woman by the name of Elizabeth who, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Grimm’s Rapunzel, is trapped in a tower from infancy due to an arrangement made by her father to be free of a debt. The story’s start is nothing short of a demonstrative case of Aarne-Thompson type 310, “The Maiden in the Tower”, and does little to deviate away from its early commitment to this trope: the protagonist, Booker DeWitt, is committed to freeing this maiden from her tower to the point of potential self-destruction. His reasons for doing so throughout the game may change – from self-interest in the beginning to genuine concern by the half-way point – but the overarching goal of enabling this young woman to experience a world away from her tower serves very much as the spine of the narrative.

If we abstract away any of the elements of the story concerned with metaphysical meddling for the moment, the narrative direction of the game, for something that has been so critically lauded as a high-water mark, leaves a fair amount to be desired. One moment in particular is incredibly jarring: DeWitt is upfront with Elizabeth in admitting that he frees her with solely selfish intentions in mind, and for the sake of a third-party. Elizabeth’s sense of outrage and betrayal at this aboard an airship that is directed towards New York rather than the previously agreed Paris seems somewhat misplaced in the face of this: she was aware of DeWitt’s less than selfless intent, but is surprised by this going back on his “promise” made that they go to Paris. Scepticism would be more than reasonable in this situation. It may be argued that she was deceiving herself, given her carefully demonstrated affections for Paris, but she also demonstrates herself to be very perceptive as well as intelligent. Blind faith does not seems something that would motivate her, much as her hope for a better future becomes thematically important later. More ridiculous is the speed with which she forgives DeWitt this act of treachery that was rewarded with a wrench to the head above the airship: very shortly afterwards, the two appear to have made amends with no further mention of DeWitt’s misdeed.

There is some incredibly competent characterisation in Infinite.

There is some incredibly competent characterisation in Infinite.

Things become murkier around the issue of the “tears”, rips in space-time that Elizabeth is able to control. While delightfully useful in combat to make an automated turret, for example, appear, and while the explanations for the anachronistic music playing through certain red tears found in audio diaries answer questions one might have about this in an amusing manner, there is something somewhat theoretically troubling about all of the hopping between worlds and times that goes on that potentially undermines all of the work done in narrative. Towards the end of the game, it is established fairly strongly that multiple DeWitt’s can exist in the same space and time: Columbia is overseen by Comstock, who we find out is an alternate, reborn-Christian DeWitt. With this being the case, DeWitt’s baptism/no-baptism choice after Wounded Knee seems an impossibility: he should be there as another DeWitt, not the sole DeWitt in this scene. This is made all the more confusing the presence of multiple Elizabeths/Annas: there’s a metaphysical impossibility here that serves to undermine the excellent dramatic work that the prior discussions between Elizabeth and DeWitt had done: the death of DeWitt/Comstock through the use of tears is an impossibility that assumes one true world amongst all of the universes presented. The game never gives us a reason to believe this to be the case.

However confused the story may be, the gameplay does it a great service. While the linear feel of the game and literal feeling of being “on rails” when using the wonderfully designed skyline system present in the game’s realisation of Columbia would usually be something to be criticised, it does something wonderful here given the shift in theme to “breaking the cycle” that occurs towards the end of the game. Of course the game is linear: these events had to happen; things had to be this way because the universe is fundamentally deterministic. DeWitt had to give Elizabeth up; he had to go to Columbia; he had to try to save her. This doesn’t mean that we can’t have scope to attempt to break the cycle: we are human, we attempt to undo the terrible things that we have done. That element of the human spirit is wonderfully captured throughout Infinite: as well as protecting something weaker than ourselves, the game is about atonement.

The game's presentation is fantastic.

The game’s presentation is fantastic.

Heaping praise on the game is something that only the most cynical human being would refrain from doing: we are talking about a game that is not afraid to touch on some terrible subject matter with maturity and is exceptionally mechanically competent – more so than it’s predecessors in the series. We have another example of post-modern storytelling in video games, and that is no bad thing. Following the footsteps of Metal Gear Solid 2 in this regard is no bad thing: this too is a game that has and will continue to raise much discussion for some time to come. Kojima’s conclusion, however, just seems far more coherent than Ken Levine’s here, and it’s rare that that is said with regard to anything. Infinite presents no big revolution for storytelling in games, merely an evolutionary step; a step that is all too welcome for a big-budget game however.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (PS3)

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It has been the dream of many a fan of the Metal Gear Solid series for some time now to engage with the game’s universe as the Cyborg Ninja. In Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions (Integral in the US and Japan), the player was given the opportunity to play through some scenarios as Grey Fox, the illusive cyborg of the first MGS title, but this never quite lived up to the aspirations of the players who had become besotted with this wonderfully agile character that would so perfectly realise the desire to navigate the game’s world as one of the borderline supernatural entities contained within. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is the culmination and realisation of a fifteen-year dream to play a Metal Gear game that is driven by a strong character more concerned with action than avoiding detection. This change in tone is evidenced from the first moment that the player sees the stylised “P” of the Platinum studios logo, and only the hints contained in the script, presence of an alert phase and presence of Metal Gear characters in the game point at the game being one of the franchise: Metal Gear Rising is manic, action packed and unrelenting in its continual throwing of frenetic challenge at the player. It is a wonderful piece of fan service that never falters from providing pangs of tension, excitement and elation in equal measure.

Metal Gear Rising has the same eccentric character design that has characterised the series.

Metal Gear Rising has the same eccentric character design that has characterised the series.

Raiden returns for a second outing as the player character in a Metal Gear game, somehow seeming sentient of the fact that it took the loss of his human body to endear him to the somewhat fickle fans of the series whose loyalty is contingent solely upon the presence of Solid Snake as key protagonist. Upon taking control of Raiden for the first time, it becomes even clearer that everything that they believe they know about how the game will feel to play is wrong and that this is very much of the Platinum school of gameplay design: at its core, a frantic hack-and-slash game but with room for tactical play decisions. The high-frequency blade that debuted with the end of Metal Gear Solid 2 returns with a vengeance, invigorated with a control system that handles far better than the right analogue stick waggle that defined the previous use of the weapon. The expected light and heavy attacks with the sword from knowledge of Platinum’s legacy titles are present, with a delightfully satisfying parry mechanic bolted on. This parry mechanic constitutes the majority of any defensive action that will be taken by the player and does feel somewhat unintuitive upon starting to play the game: pressing the left analogue stick in the direction from which an attack is coming and then pressing the light attack button is a departure from the traditional approach of merely pressing a shoulder button to block, but once the the timings of enemy attacks have been worked out, it makes for a mechanic that rewards precision with a counterattack, but does not punish inaccuracy too harshly in still allowing for off-timed parry maneuvers to have defensive efficacy. Once the surface level of complexity is cracked, it becomes difficult to see how defensive action in the genre could be done in any other way.

The most publicised facet of the game’s play comes in its Blade Mode: a free-cutting extension to the swordplay enabled by pressing L1. When in this mode, the camera moves closer to Raiden’s shoulder, with a line being drawn on the screen to indicate the location and direction of the slash to be performed. This mode enables for the precision required to remove limbs from larger enemies, allowing for their easier dispatch, and for the precision required for the removal of the spines of cyborg enemies required to regenerate Raiden’s energy. This Zandatsu move – the targeting and removal of enemy energy stores – becomes particularly poignant upon a certain character development point for Raiden, when his Ripper Mode becomes available. Somewhat akin to Devil May Cry‘s Devil Trigger, this mode allows Raiden to do more damage to heavily armored foes, and in a way that underlines fantastically the issues of morality and motivation that plague Raiden throughout the narrative. Having sufficient energy in the form of these fuel cells also allows for Raiden to enter Blade Mode in a state where time is somewhat slowed in order to allow for either a greater number of cuts or more finely-tuned slices in the free-cutting mode using the right-analogue stick. A variety of subweapons are made available throughout the game, adding a little variety to combat.

The combat system rewards patience as much as brash impatience.

The combat system rewards patience as much as brash impatience.

As would be expected by something scripted by Kojima Productions, the world is populated with a cast of colourful characters, from the likable supporting cast to the eccentric and invariably flawed cast of key antagonists. Each boss fight is as much an exploration of the characters of the game as a contained session of combat. Debates are had as to motivations, ethics and consequences amidst the clashing of swords, with the manners of fighting employed by each boss pointing to their own back stories with a certain nostalgia that is only ever charming. This charm in the face of ridiculousness is something that has defined the series thus far, and Metal Gear Rising does not disappoint in this regard. Codec conversations are as engaging as ever, with the dynamics between characters never being a simple matter of one sided discussion: the codec conversations with Sunny later in the game are particularly lovely in this regard, with both parties seeking to reassure one another that all will be fine when all is said and done: again, there is so much charm, even in the fundamentally optional elements of intercharacter conversations.

For everything good in this game, however, there are some pitfalls: the camera is somewhat sluggish to respond to movements of enemies and even Raiden himself at points. When certain enemy types are terrifyingly agile, it does a disservice to the wonderful fluidity of the game’s combat to have to be slicing blindly at where enemies are thought to be, rather than where they are known to be. In an otherwise incredibly solid game, this is somewhat of a disappointment. Additionally, its length (at around five to seven hours for a playthrough) may lead some to question it’s £39.99 pricetag. Fans of the series, however, would most likely be willing to pay anything for another slice of one of gaming’s most uniquely eccentric universes.

Metal Gear Rising is a triumph of collaboration: a seemingly unlikely pairing between Kojima Productions and Platinum has resulted in a wonderfully coherent end-product that honours both KojiPro’s legacy in storytelling across the series and Platinum’s ability to turn any combat into a blissful exercise. Though its runtime may be a short one, it engages consistently and constantly, with no conceits being made to appease any particular type of fan. This is a game with its own identity, and a strong one at that. Throughout the game, it never feels like a second is wasted.