It’s the only survival game I don’t hate! It makes an absolutely huge difference to have, like, objectives, and a “narrative arc” (after a fashion).
1 Like
I’m definitely with you in enjoying games just to see places and atmospheres rendered in dense, mundane detail. That’s a significant factor in why I like so many of the games I’ve played so far. I also just appreciate how so many designers are trying new things. Very few of these games are trying to make grand statements or reinvent how we see games, but when I look at all these small accomplishments together, I’m really impressed. I guess it’s kind of like what Manny Farber would’ve called termite art. I don’t know, I haven’t actually read anything he’s written but the concept makes sense to me.
4 Likes
Gitaroo Man
“The dreams I’ve abandoned couldn’t have come true. I have other dreams I haven’t given up on. They still shine bright. They still light my way.”
The character I control is a boy named U-1. He wants to be a skateboarder. He is…not good at skateboarding. He has a talking dog who teaches him how to play guitar with a tennis racket. Something stirs within the cosmos and suddenly U-1 is threatened by minions who want to stop him from playing guitar. I follow the trail of notes and jam the circle button close enough to the proper tempo. U-1 is safe for now.
I’m entering middle school and I want to join band. My brother joined when he went and played the saxophone. When my sister had gone, she chose the clarinet. I’m joining band to play the trumpet. Years later, I earn first chair in trumpet when there are only two chairs to go around. I picture myself as a musician. My best friend was a musician; he knew how to play the drums, bass, and guitar. If he wanted to, he could’ve recorded a full band’s songs all by himself. I want to create a band with him.
The stages in Gitaroo Man get progressively more difficult. I get better at timing my button presses and tilting the analog stick just so. After every song, I watch U-1 accept more and more that, not only can he play guitar, but he can play it very well. He discovers that he is a musician.
My friend and I gather other friends together one night and try to start a band. My friend plays the drums. One of his friends plays bass, another plays guitar and is a member of chorus, so he can sing. I think I can sing well enough. I can’t. I started taking piano lessons six months ago and I think I can play okay. I can’t. I have no place in the band.
After playing through the game once, I unlock the Master Play mode. I survive the first stage again and move on to fight against a UFO. There are far more button presses than before. I barely survive. My thumb is sore. On the third stage, I’m assaulted by an impossible flurry of notes. I fail. I try again and make less progress. My thumb is numb and semi-unresponsive. I go to bed.
Over the next couple of days, I play through the entire campaign on normal again and push to get A ranks in every one. I try stage 3 on Master Play again and, to my surprise, I actually make it. In fact, it’s easy to me now. I move on to stage 4 and lose almost immediately. Failure isn’t the point though. I don’t even need to complete the stage now because I know that I could do it if I focused my mind on it.
I no longer think of myself as a musician. I haven’t played the trumpet in over 10 years. I haven’t played the piano in 2 years. I don’t want anyone to hear me sing. But sometimes, the idea germinates in my head that I should dig out my trumpet and wash it or dust off the keys on my piano. I tell myself that I don’t have to impress anyone. I tell myself that I can find satisfaction in simply growing.
21 Likes
that game is an absolute thumb destroyer. it hurt my hands even as a young teenager with all the collagen in the world!
i also didn’t realize the guitaroo man team went on to do ouendan/elite beat agents, but i can definitely see the throughline there.
really enjoying these mini essays!
5 Likes
Thank you! I’m slightly changing my approach to writing and I hope it pays off.
I was surprised by the history too. I actually really liked the soft look of the cutscenes, so I looked up who directed those. They have a really cool portfolio:
4 Likes
Hot Shots Golf 3
Better grip it and rip it!
I am on the 17th hole and I have one up on my opponent, a hairy Australian man known as “The Sasquatch.” I try to steady my nerves. It’s difficult because I just drank a cup of coffee and ate a blueberry cake donut. My fingers are vibrating imperceptibly, but enough to throw everything off. The caddie mutters, “so uncool.” I’m in the sand. I try to get out, but the ball can’t make it over the slope. I find myself back to where I started. The Sasquatch declares “That’s it.” We are even.
This is a game about timing. There is the microtiming of button presses to hit the ball just right. There is the macrotiming of being at the right place, in the right moment. Most importantly, there is the metatiming of being in the right heart and mind. In the biography for Lin, the Chinese golfer, the game states that she “focuses ‘energy’ into her clubs.” I take it the game is trying to be tongue-in-cheek with their quotations, but I absolutely believe that golf takes energy more than anything else.
My favorite golfer in this game is Stacey. She wears glasses and speaks in meek chirps. “Go home ball!” she whispers as she putts. “Heck yeah!” she says to herself and no one else as the ball drives deep onto the fairway. When she gets a bogey, she crumples into a ball on the ground. I understand her.
When I was 12, I would visit my uncle who lived in Pennsylvania. On these trips, we almost never left the house. Family time like this was meant to be spent over home cooked meals, occasionally takeout, and watching TV. He was dating a woman who had a son half my age. In my memory, he looks exactly like the boy from Stuart Little. Because he owned a PS2, I would play with him. For one week, we played nothing but Hot Shots Golf 3 . We got better together. We joked about how the characters talked. I imagined that this is what having a little brother feels like. My uncle did not stay in a relationship with this woman, and so I only knew him for two years. I don’t even remember his name. But now that I think about it, I realize that he is a full grown adult. As I write this, I’m looking at pictures of adult Jonathan Lipnicki and pretending that it’s him. I’m thinking about how we had bonded for a short period of time and that’s all the time we’ll ever have together. It’s satisfying.
I don’t know if I got much better at this game over my hours of playing it. I don’t know if progression happens like that. Playing well feels more like entering a state of clarity. I cannot control when I score -6 overall, I can only bask in the moment when it happens.
16 Likes
Forever Kingdom
In the opening of the game, three friends have their souls bound together. If one is cut, they all feel it. If one dies, they all die. If one is tickled, they all laugh. Consider me the fourth soul bound to this trio.
This is a prequel to Evergrace, the first game I tried as part of this series. The world is still painted in teal and amber. It feels good to be back, like returning to a dream that I had years ago. The world feels more designed. The arches, canyons, skywalks, and alleyways crisscross in clever ways tempting me to look in each corner.
Features of the landscape are surprisingly responsive to my touch. There’s a log next to a river. If I whack it, the log falls in and creates a bridge downstream. There’s a chest frozen in a cavern. If I set it on fire, it’s free to open. These examples are simple, but create an illusion that there are dozens of other, hidden ways I can affect the world.
The world’s science and culture is still obscure. There’s no display telling me the elements with which my enemies are aligned. I learn through entering my closet and trying different outfits and cutting them with different swords to see what makes them bleed most. Scattered plaques continue to speak in riddles of goddesses and the elements, but the mechanisms appear more elaborate.
I near the end of a labyrinth and find a pond which heals me and replenishes my spirit. Down the hallway, there’s an enormous minotaur marching around a column. If he strikes me, I die. I carefully skirt around him and come to an obelisk monitored by statues of godesses. There is a locked door behind it. I heard about this room through two of the riddles before. When I read those riddles, I was distracted by my team’s banter. They talked about how it didn’t make any sense. They complained that they had no idea what to do. Since I forgot, I had to walk back around the minotaur. He…killed me this time.
I ended my session in a battle where my team was separated, fighting in two encounters. I think the game was trying to teach me something with each one. One of the bosses was a plant monster that would unload a barrage of attacks on me. No matter what armor I seemed to wear, each hit would take down half of my life. I learned that, even when blocking, I can still use the magic from another team member. I lived. In the other, a council of slimes teleported around me. Sometimes they would stand erect and other times flatten into puddles. I’m fairly certain the slime changed its attributes depending on its state. I switched between powers and lived again.
That’s the thing with Forever Kingdom. I rarely feel like I’m obtaining solid knowledge of the world. Rather, I apply inferences and sometimes, maybe those make a difference. I love this ambiguity. It makes the game feel much larger to me, as if I cannot fence it in.
22 Likes
Summer 2001 Part 2
- City Crisis
- Final Fantasy X
- Jade Cocoon 2
- Maken Shao
- Parappa the Rapper 2
- Stretch Panic
- XGIII
- Yanya Caballista
0 voters
3 Likes
I love this thread.
10 Likes
Thank you! It has been very fun and fulfilling for me. I’m really glad I started putting more of my thoughts out there. It helps me see myself in a more positive way and it’s great to hear from people who enjoy what I’m doing.
8 Likes
Do you have the skateboard deck for Yanya? That’s the only way to play it!
I don’t! I just tested the game out and got an A on the first course, but I feel like I’ve cheated the system. I need to craft some facsimile and make it work.
City Crisis
This is a very small game. When I load up to the menu, a plain female voice prompts me to “Choose arbitrary item.” Lady, I’ve been doing that my whole life. You don’t have to tell me.
When I choose my helicopter, I’m given the option to turn “auto-hover” on. I think to myself; I don’t know what that is, but it will stop me from being a master pilot. When I start flying, I can’t stop my helicopter from spinning. It twists to the right, I correct it, and then it twists to the left. I smack between buildings like a pinball. I assume that I need to reset my controller but that’s not it. I need to turn auto-hover on.
For half of the missions in this game, I fly out and extinguish fires. This is very satisfying. I have water canons that shoot out a constant stream and water missiles that lock-on to fires. I run out of water but if I wait, it comes back. I don’t know where from. I see people who need help and I lower my hook so my partner can grab them. Sometimes I help dogs instead of people. Sometimes the people are wearing mascot uniforms for the local amusement park. Sometimes I’m not careful and I swing my partner into the fire. The game admonishes me but my partner is okay. They will always be okay.
I get another mission to fix my searchlight on dangerous drivers. I need to be low to the ground and weave through skyscrapers. After I explode several times, I get used to it. I even grow to love the rhythm of it. Then I notice something strange. The car I’m chasing can drive into buildings, clipping in and cutting my combo short. I’m trying to hold back my emotions. I worked so hard to keep this combo going and this bus is just reversing into a shopping mall to get away. I suppose there’s nothing one can do sometimes.
I earn the final mission and the city has been devastated by an earthquake. The train has derailed, buildings have fallen over, and there are fires everywhere. At this point, I am a pro. I get an S rank on my first try and find myself rewarded with a pigcopter. Trust me, there is no greater reward.
There was another helicopter rescue game up for selection earlier in this series. When I finished the game, I wondered aloud if I was playing the inferior helicopter game. My wife interrupted, “What are you talking about? You’re playing the one with the pig helicopter. There isn’t a better one than this.” She was right.
19 Likes
Forever Kingdom: A short revisit
When I came back to Forever Kingdom, I felt confident that whatever challenges blocked my path, I would be able to learn a solution. My confidence was tested then bested. Let me tell you how.
My trio of bound souls find themselves knee deep in sand, immersed in an inky cavern. I notice that there are torches I can light with fire. I think, maybe this will be important. Maybe a stela will refer obliquely to lighting these.
I move forward into an opening and a massive snake shoots out of the ground. I strike it to no effect and it immediately kills my group. On try two, I run past it towards a door. But the door is locked. I die again. In the third run, I veer left and try a different door. This one opens and I’m safe. I attack a crab and it feels like an easier match. I continue and leeches begin bouncing like giant fleas from out of the sand. They don’t hurt me so much, but now I notice that I’m cursed. Being cursed means that my defense is cut in half. I battle another crab and it kills me with one swipe of its claw.
I am only beginning to recognize the depth of the situation.
Fortunately, I have enough currency to buy armor that helps me withstand three shots instead of one from the crab. I develop a combo that stuns the crab perfectly into death. Then I make my way through the labyrinth. There is a minimap, so I figure I do not need to draw my own. I’m wrong. There are many important details that are not displayed on the minimap: pits and piles of sand block some passages and sandstorms teleport you around. I become lost. There are no stelae to clue me into my situation. I simply wander around trying to find a path I haven’t found before. I meet a door covered in fire and try several ideas: I wear fire-resistant armor, I shoot it with fire, I shoot it with ice, and nothing changes. I remember the torches from earlier and convince myself that they all need to be lit.
At this point, I have been wandering in the labyrinth for an hour, lighting torches and trying to find new paths. Often, I find myself going in circles. Until everything ends. I switch to a different character each time I want to shoot a fireball. On one of these attempts, a crab sneaks up on me. It strikes and I’m dead. I’m dead and I don’t want to come back. I don’t want to look at a walkthrough. The game exists perfectly in my head right now as something impenetrable. Perhaps one day, I will return.
Yanya Caballista:City Skater
Yanya Caballista is one of the best names for a video game. The Japanese release added “featuring Gawoo” to its title and that’s even better. I would love to refer to skaters as caballistas from now on, but I don’t think anyone would know what I meant. I don’t think anyone would be familiar with Gawoo or Bluebee. Now, for better or worse, I am.
This game wants me to use a finger board attached to the analog sticks. I didn’t have one, nor could I figure out how to attach a plastic spoon or popsicle stick to them. Instead, I just put my two fingers on the analog sticks and did my best to keep them in a v shape.
I bought a skateboard recently. It’s funny to me how much learning this game and learning to skate are similar; that is, my mind wills my body to move in a certain way and my body cannot heed the command. My wrist and fingers hurt just like my legs hurt after an hour of trying to pop higher ollies.
Gawoos have invaded Earth and the only thing that gets them to go away is skateboarding tricks. They are so impressed by tricks that they explode. holding the controller sideways, I slide my two fingers forward. I click the left stick down and ollie; then I click it again and land a heelflip. The Gawoo is amazed and pops into thin air.
Through the game, I realize there are advanced techniques that I must learn. There are challenges that teach me these techniques and they remind me of Crazy Taxi in their cruelty. In one challenge, I have to impress 7 gawoo in three minutes. They are standing all over the place, on islands, in cages, on top of a tower. I tried this stage 5 times before realizing that I wasn’t executing an important technique, the push ollie. For this, I have to push right before a ramp and ollie at once. If I don’t do it right, I don’t clear jumps and splash in the water. Even though I know how to do it, I still only hit it right 70% of the time. The same is true for almost any other action in the game.
After two hours, my wrist hurts far too much to think about playing this again. If I go into the options, I can change the controls to something “normal,” but that feels like a betrayal. I can’t allow myself to step around these over-proud design decisions.
16 Likes
it’s true
4 Likes
Stretch Panic
“We have made them beautiful, like your scarf. Do you want to become beautiful Linda?”
Linda is dropped into a room leeched of its color but decorated by paintings. It’s as if some large straw had siphoned all the pigment in the hall and deposited it into each frame. I am surprised that Linda cannot jump. A hand floats from her scarf like a flying dog on a leash. I squeeze the button on the shoulder of the controller and the hand mimics me by pinching the landscape. I pull on a door and it swings open. Linda falls into a meadow where a dozen women with comically large assets wonder around. Occasionally, one will fall of the map and use her unique physical features to helicopter back. I learn that in order to open other doors, I must reach around the women’s natural defenses and destroy them. This is a nightmare.
Underneath its surreal exterior, Stretch Panic is a game about the kind of dysmorphobia that children, particularly girls, experience while growing up. Each of Linda’s sisters has become physically distorted by demons who have stretched them to match their desires. For some, their vanity has influenced their new form and the demons have molded them into tall, angelic models of femininity. For others, their obsessions have transformed them into homunculi-like caricatures: a pyromaniacal sister has her head stretched into a fire-breathing melon while a budding Egyptologist is now encased by a flying sarcophagus. We get to see these girls in their original forms before they are possessed by demons and they look so much like Linda. In a way, stretching and pulling their new, monstrous features feels like an attempt to compress them back into their old shape.
When I was a child and first started to grow hair in my armpits, I shaved them. I didn’t like the change. I never shaved my legs, but I got close. It occurred to me one day that I would have to shave my armpits for the rest of my life, and I was only going to begin growing more hair in more places. On that day, I realized that I was going to be changing forever. My hairs would continue to push out, my pores would expand, and my weight would continue to fluctuate. I would grow to a maximum height at some point; years later, at a different point, gravity would eventually wear down my spine and I would begin to shrink. I had to learn how to accept being in constant change.
After you exorcise Linda’s sisters of their demons, you can view them in a gallery. In this gallery, you can stretch parts out and pin them into place. Here, you are the author of a caricature of a caricature. Aside from facing off against the sisters and destroying busty bikini babes, this is all you can do.
After you’ve exorcised every demon, the girls are free. They join Linda in a parade, marching in unison, perfect again; except, just as the game up to this point has only been a bad nightmare, the ending is only a good dream. The truth is, each of these girls will stretch and change form. Their inner personality will shift and alter how they appear. They are together now, but later, no one knows.
18 Likes
Maken Shao: Demon Sword
Tensions between the United States and China continue to rise. The European Union is deteriorating. I have spent so long looking at life through other peoples’ eyes that I am no longer certain of who I am. I am playing a PS2 game that is a remake of a Dreamcast game, but the perspective has changed. Now I only see things in third person.
I don’t have total control of my body. At first, I can land a three-hit combo and that’s it. It’s okay because that’s all it takes to kill the people coming after me. It’s okay because when I kill, my sword eats the life force of whoever died. With enough life force, I synchronize further with the being that lives in my sword. I learn to thrust my body forward by shifting my weight. Thrusting kills faster and works well in hallways. There are many hallways, so I do it a lot.
My character is a young woman. She looks like a high school student. Her brother moves like a marionette. Her brother is mad because his sister is now comatose. Her image lives in a parallel plane. If she cannot return to her body, she may forget that she exists. In the mean time, I help her transfer her consciousness from person to person.
Most people I find are like human weapons. They have been trained and conditioned since birth to fight in this struggle. Another person I inhabit is just a security guard. None of these people can return their minds to their bodies. They have been permanently severed from their consciousness.
I jump from head to head and land to land. I love the scenery. I’ve seen the Taj Mahal and walked the rainy, neon-reflected streets of Hong Kong. But I can’t continue. I am trapped in a tomb somewhere in Greece. The victims of iron maidens rush after me and squeeze me in. I have tried so many times to let them be, but they always catch me in the end.
I wonder which one of my choices landed me here and what I should have done differently. If I had let that poor security guard alone, I would still have the body of a titan. I probably could have withstood the spikes then. I might’ve been pulled into a completely different corner of the world. Maybe instead of the dungeons of Greece, I would have found myself in a French palace. Maybe if I had stayed at my old job, I wouldn’t have had to spend the past year in the same house I lived in since I was 7 years old. I want to move on.
13 Likes
Summer 2001 is now over! As we step into autumn, we’ll start to see a few more Western releases. The three with the most votes will be selected!
Autumn 2001: Part 1
- Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies
- Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001
- King’s Field IV: The Ancient City
- MetropolisMania
- Soul Reaver 2
- Spy Hunter
0 voters
KING’S FIELD: KING’S FIELD IV
I have been given a cursed idol. Terrible things are certain to happen to me, and yet I feel compelled to grasp it tightly in my hands. Someone offers me a few coins to buy the idol from me, but I cannot part with it. First, because I would not wish for another to share my curse. Second, because I feel like my fate is tied to this object and losing it would mean losing myself. I have been given King’s Field.
The world I step into is grey and brown. One exception are the vermilion lakes and rivers of lava that seem to be eating this land. I come into this world almost naked. I find helmets, boots, and breastplates scattered on the ground, the only pieces of bodies that haven’t rotted. More than armor, these are costume pieces.
I am not alone. There is a soldier who is afraid to join the rest of his troop. His remaining troop is probably dead. There is an old man who wants to cross a ravine. The bridge has been destroyed. There is a young girl standing next to her dog. Her mom is dying and her dad has probably already died. I am not alone, but the world seems to be working towards my isolation. I wonder if this is part of my curse.
I am becoming more like the rest of the inhabitants of this world. The people I meet are curt, but I am more sparing with my words. I learn how long my arms stretch out when I strike. I learn to stop running when I begin to approach a carnivorous plant or giant pill bug. Most importantly, I learn how to move like a crab and only face my enemies’ backs.
The world is decaying and people are becoming more desperate. In my first visit to a shop, I notice that a hole in the wall has been boarded up. After I return from an excursion into poisonous mines, I see that the boards are gone. The shopkeeper tells me the old man has bought a map and despite warning, he has forced himself into the opening. I follow in the old man’s footsteps and find the skeletons of soldiers. These skeletons stand up and seem doomed to continue fighting for eternity. I run away from them and find the old man sitting in a church. He tells me that there are too many monsters. He asks me if I can help him. I go out the back to a graveyard swarming with the living dead. They are slow and I can easily flank them. I return to the church. The old man is dead. A skeleton peers over him. I wonder if I will become one of these skeletons. I wonder if this is a part of my curse.
The road is long and hard, but the only way out is through. My actions are so limited that I’ve been able to work my way past every challenge I’ve met so far. I will continue my march.
17 Likes
MetropolisMania winning the poll is all the proof you need that Select Button is filled with joyful surprises, and anyone who accuses the community of having a “hivemind” is silly, and should be laughed at, joyfully.
9 Likes