The Mammon Philosophy

Via Kotaku, a blip from Hideo Kojima as to why he’s putting MGS: Peace Walker on the PSP:

With the PS3, you’ve got a whole range of middle- and high-school kids who can’t play your game because their parents don’t let them play video games at home. Those kids can whine at their parents all day about how the game’s anti-war and anti-nukes, but they’ll just respond ‘Well, you’re still killing people with guns, aren’t you?’ and brush it off.

Thanks for that, Kojima. Thanks for perpetuating the common illusion that kids play video games while parents just don’t understand. Congratulations on brushing off the post-teen demographic which might’ve also been interested in this game. And way to go with tacitly implying that virtual violence is something to be hidden away, kept from the prying eyes of those who might have a problem with it, rather than putting it out in the open and engaging in a dialogue about it. I get that you have issues with authority figures (see also: the eight million hours of cutscenes about the Patriots) but damn, bro, give the parents a little credit.

Reading an article about Six Days in Fallujah, the recently canceled title which would have been the first game to be released concurrently with the conflict it featured, I came across this line from oft-cited Gamasutra columnist Ian Bogost:

“We use the word fun as a placeholder, when we don’t even really know what we mean when we look for some sort of enjoyment in a serious experience.”

This had been my problem with Six Days from the start: the gaming business, not to mention its respective media followers, has been so focused on marketing for virtually its entire existence that when titles come along which deserve a deeper perspective, they don’t know what to do with them. Konami, the company behind Six Days, is a big name, which means they’re looking to turn a big profit. And that means pumping the brand, throwing up as much information as possible to break through the nonstop press machine — and assuring gamers that they will enjoy playing the game. It should be simple to fashion a manner of PR that connects without offense, but they blew it by trying to connect “war” with “fun.” Which it apparently is, when it’s a recreated war that was fought by our parents or grandparents, lost on the youth market’s collective memory. But not when it’s happening right now, when we turn off the console and see the caskets coming out of the planes on the news. Then the connection brings fear and outrage from a variety of sources.

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Much as Marle unwittingly follows Crono to the telepod demonstration which sucks her into the middle ages, you can now follow me on Twitter! Simply attach your account to mine in the manner of your choosing, and you’ll receive updates on my latest posts, gaming accomplishments, and other sundry activities such as previews of my movie reviews. I feel this is a good alternative to posting directly on Mammon every time I have a fresh observation about SMB3 that only lasts a matter of sentences before sputtering out.

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A hallmark of the Metroid Prime series — okay, hold on. I feel weird saying that a subset series that only started one console generation ago, despite being built on a storied franchise, already has its own hallmarks. It’d be like saying that a key component of Mario games is Goomba-stomping after only the first three titles. And yet, core gamers will note that I was very upset when I learned that the Goombas of Super Mario World could not be stomped, only flipped over and kicked around like common Troopas. Interesting how quickly we the gamers will adapt to new technologies or motifs, even in spite of our haranguement of them on message boards.

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If there’s one problem with today’s games, it’s that the number of large-scale treks greatly outweigh the simpler start-to-finish titles. It seems as if all but the most casual of titles are now packaged with “adventure” or “storyline” modes, sending players on journeys that deliver an overload of information as a balance to the time spent actually playing the game. And woe unto you if you get a game that was designed from the ground up as an adventure: every dungeon (palace, temple, abandoned nuclear missile complex…) has a story, a secret, and a four-minute cutscene detailing its connection to the NPC who oh-so-gently goaded you into visiting it with a series of yes/no questions where the answer was always yes.

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When I was young (or so much younger than today) I used to hate Maridia, the token waterlogged area in Super Metroid. I hated how its passages would crisscross each other in a confusing fashion, how the quicksand could suck you into an earlier area if you weren’t careful, how you could gain access as soon as you had a Power Bomb but then couldn’t actually get anywhere without the Gravity Suit. It was a tease and a blockade all wrapped into one lousy late-game region, and it drove me nuts.

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The first time I played Majora’s Mask, I felt simultaneously overwhelmed and unimpressed. On the one hand, there was almost too much to do: aside from the traditional dungeon staples, there were a multitude of sidequests (to the point that the game gives you a notebook to keep track of many of them) and tons of collectible heart pieces, masks, and other paraphernalia. But those same elements were something of a turnoff; the dungeons were great, but there were only four, and I was no big fan of lengthy treks to get one or two hearts at most. I think I still got most of the stuff, but I had no great desire to pick up the game and replay it.

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My sense of nostalgia is currently in tatters. Years upon years ago, shopping malls in Ottawa still had coin-op games present in their free spaces. Today, if there’s any games to begin with, they’re located in designated “entertainment zones” and typically cost a dollar a shot for the opportunity to pretend to dance or ride a motorcycle. But in those glorious times when you could play Raiden or Super Sprint for a mere twenty-five cents, the machines would be distributed throughout the centre, huddled around pillars or pushed back into corner alcoves. You never knew when the flash of an attract screen would catch the corner of your eye, and even if you did learn the places where you could expect to find a cabinet, you weren’t always assured that the same game would be there on the next visit.

When I was young, or so much younger than today, I remember catching a glance at one of these games just before it was swept away. It appeared to feature some sort of backflipping superhero, battling large men with spiked bats in an amusement park and, later, an angry yellow boss with waving ball-and-chain extendo-arms. It even seemed that you could switch characters! Unfortunately, the pair of “big kids” on the machine had a steady supply of quarters to pay for their continues, so I had to leave the game unplayed, never to see it again or even learn its name.

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I was lucky; I decided to wait for the Wii version of Okami, so I didn’t play it until after Twilight Princess. This is a good thing because I would’ve been more disappointed with TP if I’d done it in the other order. I said while I was playing it that it would be better if you could just be Wolf Link all the time, and Okami proves me right.

If you haven’t played this wolf-hopping adventure yet, you owe yourself a treat. It can be best described as “beautiful,” perhaps. Flowers grow in your wake as you steer the sun goddess Amaterasu across the ground; trees blossom when you paint them with your celestial ink; the history of the land, taken almost verbatim (though with a few welcome liberties) from Shinto mythology, is retold in flowing style. But naturally, it’s the little details that make the game: for example, the handling of the cutscenes. I was caught off guard in an early sequence where a would-be swordsman attempts to slice through a training dummy. It turned out I had to take up the remote and draw a power slash to cut it down for him, since his own combat skills were rather subpar. This convention continues throughout the adventure, as Amaterasu surreptitiously aids villagers and travelers with secret manipulations of the environment. I’m continually reminded of a line from the end of Princess Mononoke: “huh, I didn’t know the forest god made trees grow.”

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I’m a little embarrassed, because I went on at length about how badly I was waiting for Ys, and now it’s been out for a week and I only got around to playing it last night — right before downloading Super Mario RPG, which I’m enjoying properly on a TV screen for the first time in six years or so, and right after getting my bubble-sliding on with Clu Clu Land. I don’t know if there’s something in the ventilation at Big N HQ, but I hope it causes permanent effects if this is what it means for the Wii faithful.

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