Faux-Chaos

They Bleed Pixels’ faux-retro look mirrors its masocore design -- necessity disguised as stylistic choice, more well-adapted crutch than renaissance. Put together a relatively cheap pixelated art style and a tendency to focus on fewer, harder challenges that extend a game’s lifespan through repetition, and you have a potent kick of faux-nostalgia.

 To their credit, developer Spooky Squid Games introduces a bit of chaos to a genre that typically relies on rote memorization and execution. Longer levels, fodder enemies, checkpoints, and a combo system make They Bleed Pixels more like a regular platformer, and upset the “perfect run” mentality masocore games often cater to. Portions of pure traversal and fighting are mixed in directly with the masocore challenges, and makes the entire experience feel novel; at one point or another, most masocore games make you feel as though you’re just bashing your head against a wall, but They Bleed Pixels considers pacing more than you’d think.

 The “flow” of difficulty in They Bleed Pixels, then, becomes more varied when it introduces adaptation as a necessary skill than when a challenge falls back on lessons from the masocore school of learning by dying. But this isn’t necessarily a positive. The zombies, bomb-spiders and Samara Morgan knockoffs complicate the precise, twitch-based challenges more than they should, and they can make success and failure seem based on chance. If, for example, a zombie guarding a ledge you need to hop on to proceed doesn’t attack you immediately after you land on said ledge, when it’s done just that every other time you’ve tried, it’s hard not to feel lucky (it’s conversely frustrating when the opposite happens).

 Adaptation is certainly a skill. But the kind of challenge They Bleed Pixels is going for -- maneuvering through a sawblade-riddled obstacle course -- doesn’t benefit from ambivalent challenge. Here the unpredictable factors are frustrating for the wrong reasons, and when the obstacles are static, they’re unremarkable. The conflicting challenges of dealing with variables and mastering a challenge through repetition turn They Bleed Pixels into an uneven mess, and the game becomes even worse when they’re one in the same. If the “classics” They Bleed Pixels takes inspiration from were this fucked, then they probably aren’t worth revisiting, and there’s not enough faux-nostalgia in the world to fix that.

Thoughts on the oncoming singularity*

I almost skipped Binary Domain. Its hackneyed boxart, its plastic characters and environments and its Final Fantasy-esque user interface -- all of these things gave me the impression of a game attempting to emulate, rather than adapt, the modern standard. But the third-person shooter is such a stagnant, conservative beast that even minor changes in its formula tend to pique interest. So while Binary Domain is still "just another shooter," it's the minor differences that are worth mentioning, and ultimately what prevent the game from being entirely forgettable. For the first time in a while, a shooter feels human.

For one, there's a lot more talking in Binary Domain than I was expecting. The central question of the game, whether sufficiently sophisticated AIs can be considered human, gets harped on constantly by the entire cast of the game at length. But rather than give me varying perspectives, though. Binary Domain makes its mind up early on, and makes it point to tell me how terrible automatons mixing with humans would be. Only in the last act of the game did I ever question the game's stance and, call me a extreme futurist, but I don't find integrating robots and humans all that offensive.

The amount of cutscenes and conversations with teammates (including dialogue choices that are anything but, since agreeing with the person asking the question is the only viable option if you want combat to go more smoothly) in Binary Domain sound completely removed from the image of the average shooter, but the surprise isn't that it was there, it was that I liked it. Much as I disagreed with the game's thesis, the fact that I was even arguing with it is noteworthy, and I much preferred that to engaging in combat.

I haven't said much about how Binary Domain plays, but that's because it's "just another shooter." A crash-course on the design of Binary Domain: the level design is poor when it isn't boring, the bosses are tedious, and most of the guns, upgrade system an all, are interchangeable. Of course, those criticisms are important, but they're the robotic failures. The human failures are there too, but that Binary Domain even has human flaws is the most interesting thing about it. The theoretical prototype android will likely have plenty of defects, but I think most of us would say its existence will itself signify a success.

*Yes, I hate coming up with titles.

On Suda Goichi and Surrealism

Michael Thomsen's recent Kill Screen article on what he calls "the nonsense art" of the games of Suda Goichi makes a few points that I'd been mulling over for a while. Firstly, his assertion that writers and critics see every piece of art they encounter as a fundamentally interpretable and cohesive. This is true enough; non-fiction writers can be seen as interpreters, of sorts, in that they take information either not available to the masses or not easily discernible by them, and distill it into a more digestible format, lest we all comb over patents all day. This may or may not aid us when examining art, since, as Thomsen puts it, "Irreducibility is a defining characteristic of surrealism," so when something doesn't discernibly make sense, game critics might push against it.

I love the absurd, the surreal, when put to good use -- but I can't completely fall in line with Thomsen's way of thinking. At times, I think Thomsen gives Suda a little too much credit, doing what he calls out others for doing: overinterpreting minor details. He calls the simplistic movement in Killer7 an "elegant and obnoxious decision" that is part of Grasshopper games' tendency to be "hostile to interpretive idealization in every aspect" when really, Suda himself, in an article Thomsen linked to, has explained his use of the simplified control scheme:

“In many action games you control the character directly. But there are many people who find that too difficult. They don’t know how to hold the controller, or how to use the analogue stick. I decided not to use that complicated control scheme."

If you take that quote at face value, any artistic statement made by Killer7's simplified movement is an unintentional byproduct. Later on, Thomsen interprets the overbearing sexuality of Lollipop Chainsaw "as a bizarre ventilation of guilt, acknowledging how lurid and disfiguring these clichés must always be—men depicting themselves as monsters who need defeating at the hands of their own cultural creation," He then makes the point of dismissing any interpretation of any of Suda's games to make his real point: that Suda's games are surreal art because they're fragments and small correlations of meaning that don't cohere, and don't do so on purpose, and that it's "trap surrealism lays for us," that trap being a pile of non-sequitors rife with potential meaning that maybe, just maybe, connect into a grander statement. Of course, the grand joke here is that by Thomsen's logic, his own interpretation is itself meaningless (though to be fair, he kind of makes that point himself).

His argument isn't that all interpretations of all forms of art are meaningless, just that Suda creates his works in such a way as to defy easy interpretations. This might be true of his earlier titles, but not of his later ones. Shadows of the Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw, both of which were more collaborative efforts and whose surrealism is more aesthetic than intrinsic, for example, both seem less surreal than absurd, using ludicrous setups as backdrops while they engage in more traditional gameplay (another point Thomsen makes). They're not as weird as we're used to from Suda (a case I've made before), and to me seem easily interpretable as the exploitation-inspired fare they appear to be at first glance. They're crazy for the sake of being crazy, and while not every piece of art needs layers of meaning to work, the nonsense Thomsen identifies in them as isn't there as statement; it's there because elephant motorcycles and giant cock guns sound cool and edgy, and for the purposes of creating a game that's fun to play, that's good enough. I don't think there's an intentional surrealism -- it's just a byproduct here.

And really, the term "Nonsense art" seems like a dismissive pejorative, especially considering that Thomsen correlates Suda's games with surrealist art, which I'd argue might be a more appropriate title for the article. He's not chastising Suda for making games that don't follow a neat string of logic -- he's reveling in their absurdity. And I do too, going as far as considering Suda one of, if not the, best designers in the patently odd.

Thomsen actually leaves out some of Suda's earlier works in his analysis, which would've actually aided his arguement. Flower, Sun, and Rain, for example, fits nicely within the surrealist label. But FSR's surrealism doesn't just come from its Groundhog Day-esque time-loop premise, or its fever dream of a story. Playing the game itself is often frustrating and weird, which I've argued before is an intentional design decision. And all you need to see of Michigan: Report From Hell to conclude that it's surreal apart from its title is this clip. These titles are surreal to their core, whereas Damned and Lollipop are only superficially so. You may be in punk-rock hell or fighting zombies in an arcade, but you're doing the same shooting and slashing you've done in so many other games. Suda's history seems to heading towards something resembling an avant-garde director losing his patented touch over the course of becoming more mainstream, though he's thankfully not there yet.

I do think that Suda's earlier works, like FSR and Killer7, cohere into a grander statement. FSR stands as one of the few early parodies of game design, and makes the point about the intrinsic absurdity of videogames while laughing right along. Killer7 is the closest thing video games have to a David Lynch film. But they're full of practicalities, like the decision to make movement simplified because anything else was too complex for Suda, who simply wanted players to see his vision without worrying about spatial awareness. They're likely also nonsensical at first not because of some artistic intent, but because of some fumbling in presentation (see this link for a great interpretation of Killer7's plot). So while Thomsen's point of some interpretations often reading too much into nothing does work, it's not for the reason he thinks, and even if it's self-admitted, he makes the same mistake. It's not nonsense, even if that can be a good thing -- it just takes a little more work to interpret. And while interpretations can completely miss the mark, if enough of them overlap, there's probably something there. Of course, the final say is up to Suda.

Now, if Grasshopper can bring The Silver Case over to the States, we may have this conversation again some time.

Addendum (Spoilers): Thomsen makes a factual error when he says that Harman is not a definable character, and that his multiple personalities "eliminates any conception of self that we might have for him." It's actually Garcian Smith/Emir Parkreiner who assimilates the Killer7, including an avatar of Harman Smith. This is important because the game does make an effort of fleshing out the game's real main character (Emir), so he does have a sense of self. Even Harman, as complicated a character as he is, does have a backstory. He is not simply a surrealist trick used to rock the player off-base.

Of Log Traps and Pride

Taro Ebine's victory at Final Round XV's Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 tournament may have been a surprise, but it wasn't unheralded. By the time Ebine (or as most of the chatters on Twitch TV came to know him, “Kusoru”), made it to the Grand Finals match, he'd gone from novelty to underdog to favorite. He'd already defeated several of the Marvel 3 vets – Peter “Combofiend” Rosas, Ryan “Filipino Champ” Ramirez, and Job “Flocker” Figueroa – on his way to the top 8 bracket without so much as breaking a sweat. Veteran pro player Justin Wong, who'd been eliminated earlier in the tournament, mentioned on Twitter that in a first-to-ten set earlier that weekend, Kusoru had defeated him 10-8. Justin's prognosis for beating him in a tournament set was grim.

But it's not just Ebine's remarkable skill that made the Marvel 3 finals so much fun to watch. To the Final Round crowd, he was in every way a foreigner; he was a Japanese player (not something you see often in the Marvel 3 tournament scene) and was using characters and tactics that few pro players were even aware could work. Both in and out of matches, there was a sense that he messing with both the players and the audience as he decimated the competition. After every match, Ebine went for the dramatic – cocking his hands like guns or doing bat-swing motions when he won a round with a Hyper Combo (which gave him enough time to do poses), and contorting his face in agony when he lost. Regardless of whether this was an act or common behavior, Ebine was a cheerful showman, which galvanized the online audience and polarized the tournament crowd. Players are usually cheerful between matches, but it's all business when sitting down to play at a tournament. A violation of that unwritten rule changed the atmosphere.

The narrative Ebine's presence both in and out of the game created also broke ground. The Japanese player's in-game team comprised of Viewtiful Joe, Frank West, and Rocket Raccoon, none of which are considered top-tier characters by most players (Ebine himself, though somewhat jokingly, doesn't regard them that highly, either). All three are goofy characters, which is at odds the rest of the top 8's character selection – high-tier, oh-so-cool fighters that take themselves too seriously. In that sense, the characters the players used reflected the attitudes of the players themselves – goofy and offbeat versus serious and conventional. And goofy won every time. From the moment Ebine defeated Ramirez's Dark Phoenix team in two equally spectacular ways, the baffled online viewership was with him (even Ramirez himself walked away from the match with his hands up in confusion).

He was showing players and viewers alike something they'd never seen before: top-level players being slaughtered by out-of-left-field tactics that didn't look like they should work. Between Viewtiful Joe's barrage of of dive kicks and Voomerangs, Frank West's general trickery, and Rocket Raccoon's now-infamous Log Trap assist attack, Ebine didn't just beat his opposition – he made fools of them. Log Trap specifically was his primary way to wreak havoc; a long-range attack covering most of the screen, it usually allowed Ebine a fatal combo every time it hit, regardless of what character he was using. Every match he played became a matter of when, not if, the Log Trap would hit, and watching people who are usually on top of their opponent scramble on defense fundamentally changed the game people were watching.

And much in the same way the trench coat and spandex-clad characters on-screen had to change behavior, so did the players using them. As the American players grew increasingly nervous about being ousted by someone who is both an outsider and, to some degree, mocking them, the tournament became about national pride. Before the US's last hope, Eduardo “PR_Balrog” Perez-Frangie, stepped up to fight him, players Ebine had defeated earlier engaged in huddle to advise Perez-Frangie on how to fight his strange opponent. The homegrown players had banded together to defeat the foreign threat. Even when Michael “Yipes” Mendoza faced off against Perez-Frangie after being defeated by Ebine to decide who would fight Ebine in Grand Finals, there was a clear camaraderie between the two, with a “give 'em hell” handshake at the end of the match.

During the Ebine/Perez-Frangie match, you could see that Perez-Frangie had indeed taken the advice he'd been given and adapted. He knew the Log Trap was coming, and towards the end of the set, he was properly working his way around the attack. He even utilized some tricks of his own, landing a powerful X-factor infinite attack a few times against Ebine's team. As soon as that happened, the crowd and even the commentators became excited at the chance of a comeback. It never truly came, though, and as Log Trap after Log Trap hit, it was more and more clear Ebine had the match in the bag.

But as soon as Ebine won the final round, both competitors became people again. Perez-Frangie went to shake Ebine's hand with a smile on his face but was overtaken by a mob of Ebine's teammates rushing to congratulate their friend. Whether Perez-Frangie was happy for his opponent or amused by his antics and fatigue wasn't clear. Ebine, for his part, did a tired gun-cock gesture one last time before throwing his head back in exhaustion, retiring his usual cheery self to just take in his victory. After leaving his home country for the first time (something he's apprehensive about doing again), he'd made the trip worth it for him and his team, financially and emotionally. But most importantly, he'd blindsided the Marvel 3 scene. But the local players will be back next year, no doubt with a new few new tricks of their own. And you can bet they'll have practiced their log-hopping skills.

You've read the book, now see the movie.

Better Living through Fusion

Despite being as gobsmacked by Metroid Prime as the critics were back when, I hadn't dared to venture to the Metroid side of the 2D “Metroidvania” sub-genre, sticking with the DS Castlevania games and Symphony of the Night until recently. As it turns out, Metroid Fusion's ambient running and gunning is more up my alley than recent Castlevanias' RPG upgrade systems and overwrought plot. A guide character still points you to your next goal within the game's more structured map setup – six sub areas versus a large single one – but between story snippets limited to bookends for each area, you're left to your own devices, which can be as frustrating as it is liberating. I'll confess to using a FAQ more than once, but I'm glad the game doesn't resort to the gaming equivalent of baby-talk.

So that's the setup for my run through Fusion, but here's the kicker – Metroid: Other M, most recent Metroid title, has a distinctive smell, so to speak, and there are hints of it in Fusion. Rather, it should be the other way around; the divisive aspects of Other M had their origin in Fusion. Specifically, Fusion began the dangerous task of fleshing out Samus, a main character who before was a cipher for the player, albeit a non-traditional one (I didn't find out Samus' gender until a paused a Super Smash Bros. screen of her being electrocuted). She exposits the introduction of Fusion, her thoughts as the story develops, and her history with Adam Malkovich, who in Fusion leads Samus around as he did in Other M. In the former, it's through an AI program designed to replicate him, but I'm splitting hairs. He also has the same knack for telling Samus when she should and should not use her weapons, though in Fusion Samus still has to find all of her upgrades instead of being told to do so.

In fact, after finishing Fusion, it's hard not to see that Other M is to Fusion narratively as Ocarina of Time was to A Link to the Past – a retelling with a few twists. Allusions to Samus' military past, the return of Ridley (though that one's a running theme of the series in general), the hint of a “mysterious new threat.” Mostly, though, it's the exposition. Odd, really, since intricate backstory seems at odds with Metroid's desolate, quiet exploration. Metroid, from my experience (the Prime trilogy, mostly), benefited from the era of its inception, when 8 and 16-bit graphics didn't do any sort of proper narrative justice. When most games either emulated arcade rulesets of trial-and-error or went with grandiose, sweeping narratives, Metroid and Super Metroid, whether they aimed for it or not, were something in between; the gameplay focus and wordless play of the arcade crowd and the consistency of the narrative group. That's where the series' trademark isolation comes from – being an arcade game with a lifespan longer than a few minutes. The dark backgrounds and eerie tunes also help.

Both Fusion and Other M tamper with that balance of game and enviorment. But surprisingly, Fusion comes out a winner and Other M a wreck. Why? It's a simple matter of placement. Most of the cutscenes in Other M are placed in a scattershot fashion; before, after, and during fights and other checkpoints. They interrupt. They're frequent. They're long. In Fusion, they're commercial breaks. Taking place mostly during elevator rides and in briefing rooms, where a rhetoric of waiting is already established. Even when the scene makes an elevator ride go on longer than it should, the expectation of downtime is there. Fusion takes advantage of its natural flow, while Other M meddles with your actions at times. Other M's haphazard mechanics and control scheme didn't bother me – in some ways, I preferred that simplicity – but its dull and intrusive narrative did. When all the melodrama of Other M sticks out more than any of its design decisions, the foundation almost seems besides the point.

Samus is a character interesting enough to flesh out. She's more than a blank slate, and I'm fine with losing my sense of immersion for the sake of getting to better know someone I'm familiar with. But only when done right – as punctuation, not intrusion. Premise is important, but method matters more.

Turnin' on the Screw

The following posts cover most of the current Aris Cross Assault situation:

Ben Kuchera reports on Aris' comments towards Super_Yan on Cross Assault
Patrick Klepek reports on Aris' comments the following day
Isaiah T. Taylor offers a good viewpoint for why the fighting game community felt defensive
Victor "Sp00ky" Fontanez offers his own comments

Opinions are everywhere on the subject, but those pieces cover most of the situation as I see it. A recap for those on 56k or poor phones: On the live stream for Cross Assault, a reality show about two teams competing for $25,000 through a new fighting game, Team Tekken coach Aris Bakhtanians Miranda "Super Yan" Pakozdi by asking for her bra size, smelling for the benefit of the viewers, and making frequent references to the condition of her thighs ("How are your thighs doing today, Miranda?"). Then, Pakozdi forfeited a match the would have determined whether she was still eligible for the prize money. An appropriately large negative reaction ensued.

I don't feel as though I have much to add at this point, so I'll make this quick. Aris was unequivocally wrong but doesn't represent the entire fighting game community. Miranda can't be blamed for what she did. Calling people "White Knights" for defending her is idiotic. She made frequent enough mention about how uncomfortable she was that her not reporting the issue sooner is not an issue. If you think she was doing anything other than getting on the show for the purpose of gathering attention, you're missing the point by such a large margin I'm afraid you might actually hit a bystander in the crowd (this analogy implies arguing is like an archery competition, in case you're lost).

On the other hand, the press is not responsible for giving your community coverage. And if they do cover it, it's not their job to paint the scene in a positive light. They can only offer as much perspective as possible, and should attempt to contact as many sources as possible when reporting on a touchy topic.

The exposure the community got over the whole affair is a good thing. And not in the "any publicity is good publicity" way. You cannot solve an issue unless it's exposed and there are consequences as a result of that issue. It's the only repeat offenders can learn the problems they are causing. I'm sure Aris is feeling that now, and has apologized.  A little late, but all we can do is move on. But imagine if this hadn't caught fire. Aris would still make lewd comments, commentators would not know there's a line, and the scene would have stayed the same, bullshit and all. If this issue forces more strict regulation on what can be said on a stream, that's a good thing, because it allows more people the ability to watch a sport they love without having to make excuses and give anyone who might not understand the scene a disappointed "Yeah, I know, but..." I want to watch fighting games. As Jared Rea has asked, I want my fighting games without sexual harassment. There are limits to free speech.

If the community can learn from this, clamp down on its bullshit just by keep its mouth shut some of the time, we're all better off. Making sure people don't yell "rape!" during a match won't change your lifestyle. Think about having sex with fictional characters all you like -- just don't let me know about it. There's still a lot to love about watching people play fighting games, but we don't have to love all of it. I want this community to grow, but it doesn't have to be filled with ignorance for it to work. Just watch Wednesday Night Fights tonight.

And yes, I'll be getting a copy of Street Fighter X Tekken when it comes out, because my team can consist of a rotund Mega Man and a Bear.

A Monster in Their Parasoul

From the hours of footage I've seen of the game on Wednesday Night Fights and elsewhere, Skullgirls looks like a game I'd enjoy. Its promise of teaching novice players how to actually handle themselves in a fight instead of just combos they'll never learn to implement means a scrub like me could learn to block mix-ups, see openings, and wean myself off poor tactics like jumping in constantly with the intent of using the strongest attack at my disposal. The midpoint it chooses to play at (the methodicalness of Street Fighter crossed with the more absurd tactics of the Vs. series) sounds right up my alley. It's a smarter kind of fighter, learning from both community feedback and the genre's history to create something that just might be approachable and tournament-worthy at the same time.

One look at the overly-endowed and fetishized characters that populate the game, however, and it's likely that some of the people that looked at the game as an entry point in the fighting genre will turn away. Alex Ahad, creator of Skullgirls' world and characters, doesn't mind:

“I totally understand that my style is not for everyone. The art style is more of a cartoon exaggeration, both in proportions and poses, with several inspirations mixed in. I would be pretty content if Skullgirls was a small project and had a niche following. If you enjoy the style of this game, I can never thank you enough for your support and welcome you to our world with open arms. If you have too much of a problem with Skullgirls, then this game isn't for you. To each their own. I'm ok with that notion, and would generally prefer to stay out of public discussions.”

The art style Ahad has chosen for the game isn't the problem. It's that the breast-physics are exaggerated, panty flashes are prevalent and intentional, and not a single member of the all-female cast wears pants, instead opting for dresses, skirts, or whatever Ms. Fortune's wearing. When a character's super move involves her flipping upside down and revealing her underwear, it's a problem. Skullgirls' lead designer, Peter Bartholow, defended the panty flashes by mentioning that “if a woman dressed like this were to fight, there would be some panty flashes.”

Ahad distances himself from the Eurogamer piece that previous quote originated from in his DeviantArt post, but regardless, Bartholow's point clearly doesn't hold up. Citing that the style of the characters is ”just where Alex's interests lie,” doesn't fix the problem; if the characters you designed have skirts that are too short to properly hide their underwear (Parasoul), or fight in such a way that they'll show their underwear during a super (Cerebella), the solution is to design more practically-dressed characters, not to say that it's a byproduct of the character's outrageous designs.

Sounds like the cries of a censor seeking to maximize a game's appeal, and to some degree, it is. But I'm looking for more subdued fighter designs in order to play with more people, not to increase my earnings. With the possible exception of Peacock, I don't know that there's a character in Skullgirls that I'd feel comfortable playing as by myself, let alone in a group of people*. Am I not confident around groups of people? Probably. Do I stand a better chance getting more people to play with me if at least half the cast doesn't make eyes roll? Most definitely.

Ahad says that characters' behavior within the game makes them empowered women, not sex objects, and that that's “the difference between something being sexy and being sexist.” Whether that actually bears out is unclear, but when Parasoul's upside-down cross is closer to 90° than even 45° relative to her body, taking her seriously as an empowered woman becomes difficult. Ahad also cites that none of the characters use their sexuality as weapons, that none of the characters are as bad as Cammy from Street Fighter, and that people don't complain about muscular men, but those points have been countered elsewhere recently, so I'll keep it succinct: simply because Cammy is poorly designed and people don't complain about the male characters in fighting games doesn't mean you can get away with it. Not only should Reverge have the perspective to not repeat those same mistakes, but they also don't have a legacy to bind them to characters like Cammy – they're free to correct those errors, but are choosing not to in favor or indulging an artist and a niche audience.

The Shoryuken piece regarding the topic considers the matter closed. By simply stating his view and denying the allegations against him, Ahad has made it okay for people who enjoy these characters to not worry about enjoying them. That, again, is a problem. Whether or not the game is sexist, the designs are perverted and creepy. But unfortunately, I'm a fighting game fan and a hypocrite, which means I'll buy Skullgirls – the systems at work behind the fan service look fun, and I'd love to learn to be a better player. But I'll mostly play the game alone, and instead of possibly teaching people at casual gatherings how to play a genre I'm currently enamored with, I'll either sweep the whole mess under the rug or teach them using a different game. A shame, really, because the fighting genre could use another game like Street Fighter IV to get a new group of people into playing it, and expand the genre. It's too bad Ahad's ambition is limited to keeping an insular group satisfied, because Skullgirls has the potential to do more than that.

*A quick anecdote: I play Juri in Super Street Fighter IV because I like how she plays, not because I endorse how she looks. I don't loathe her design entirely – she at least wears pants – but I play her despite her design, which I imagine I'll have to do with most of Skullgirls' cast. Peacock, again, might be the lone exception here, but when only one character appeals to me superficially in a game where you can select up to three at a time...

Compromise of the Damned

I'm calling Shadows of the Damned a compromise, and it makes me sad to think about the game that way.

I realize now that this has almost nothing to do with the game I was actually playing and everything to do with my expectations. You'll be hard-pressed to read a review of Shadows of the Damned that doesn't mention its stable of Japanese talent: Goichi Suda, known for making games weird, Shinji Mikami, known for making games fun without making adhering to modern standards, and Akira Yamaoka, known for adding unsettling ambiance wherever it's needed. As someone who's enjoyed the work of all three on multiple occasions, Shadows seemed like a dream project. Suda and Mikami in particular seem like complimentary forces; Suda's eccentric design choices rarely lead to “fun” games, while Mikami's suffer from a lack of creative direction. Or at least, I think they do.

Still, I'm let down, and it's entirely because the game isn't crazy enough, which some of you might think wouldn't be possible. I don't think that's true. The undead-meets-punk aesthetic is a fine touch, and the game's tone is consistent enough to not make the look seem out of place in hell. But this is where I feel that both the narrative and ludological sides capitulate not just for the sake of making EA can actually sell (not that they really tried), but so that the end product ends up being more cohesive. Suda's knack for the absurd is augmented by the fact that for better or worse, his games don't play like anything else out there. Mikami's games play so well because he has control over contextualizing gameplay concepts, even when they seem out of place. With neither person in full control, we end up with a faster, "spookier" version of Resident Evil 4, which is a product six years too late.

When I look at it that way, I find myself at odds. I certainly think the game is good, as my three playthroughs will attest, but when I read unapologetic praise for the game, I wonder what it is that places the game so high on people's "best-of" lists for the year: is it the atmosphere, done better in almost every Suda game? The gameplay, which feels clunky when put beside Resident Evil 5? The papercraft shooter sections? Is it the story, which acts as a metaphor for how loving someone involves embracing the bad along with the good of a person? There's a lot in Shadows of the Damned that makes it good, especially when most shooters don't dare delineate from military conflicts. But though Damned is charming, it doesn't hold up well when looked at past its veil of its setting.

Nitpicks: the big boner sections go from distracting side show to painful grind, and the shooter sections later on are only slightly better. The shooting, again, isn't up to par with Mikami's previous work. David Blum shouldn't attempt to mimic Spanish ever again, nor should Suda. The main game and Bosses alike rely on tired lock-and-key and glowing weakpoints ad nauseum. Replay value, one of Mikami's strongest suits in the past, is all but gone here. The game ends one scene too late. These could all amount to kicking Damned while it's down, but these are the kind of things that grate on a player after the first playthrough.

As I said earlier, I do like Shadows of the Damned, particularly for its examination of a relationship past rescuing or fighting with someone. Similarly, Akira Yamaoka's soundtrack seems like the one element of the game that feels unrestricted. And I theorize that for many players, this may be their first true exposure to a Suda title, since they can play it without too much hassle, which may be why so many people laud it for being novel. But I can't escape the feeling that both Suda and Mikami could've done a better job were they each making separate games. Label me a hater, but I think it's because I'm such a fan of both Suda and Mikami's work that I hold the game up to a high standard. Or maybe Suda's messing with me by further deepening the "love the good and the bad" into the development of the game itself.

Nah.

A Note From Wonderland.

Before I start in earnest, a quick anecdote: early in American McGee's Alice: The Madness Returns, there's a point where a singular path splits into two. Nothing too flashy -- games do this all the time. A quick switch into Alice's shrunk form that allows me to see chalk markings that are otherwise invisible, and I see two notes; one with an arrow and a childish rendition of a Jolly Roger, and another with an arrow and a flower, both leading down the two paths I mentioned earlier. I haven't played enough to know that the Jolly Roger is Chalk for "main path" (meaning the other path leads to a reward and a dead end), but I get enough to know that's where I'm supposed to be going.

But I double-check myself. I go along the main path first, to see far enough ahead so I know I should double back. But after going too far, the path behind me is closed by rock-slide. I've lost that little reward I knew I should've gone after. I did what I did because most games let you go back. Madness Returns didn't.

They don't make games like this anymore.

Really, they don't; it doesn't take much to see that Madness Returns finds much of its design fundamentals from 3D platformers of yesteryear, which is a good and a bad thing. Good because honestly, this throwback design sets it apart from most other games. Bad, because it's not revamped return to form. Poor camera controls, switch and door puzzles, both repeated ad nauseum -- this might've been one of the reasons these kinds of games stopped filling Wal-mart shelves (the other, perhaps,being that companies ran out of appealing mascots to slap onto covers).

But that's not what set the 2001 game, Alice, apart either. American McGee, partly heir to the Doom empire, has a panache for horror themes and "dark atmosphere" that would make Todd McFarlane and Tim Burton blush. And what's true of the original game is true of its sequel: Madness Returns is a powerful story told in adequate way between sections of an average game. Combat is consistently challenging (due to both careful difficulty balancing and occasional frustration), but like many an indie game where "art" is a keyword, you endure what you're doing to see what will happen. In this case, it's Alice reconstructing the puzzle of her fragmented memory to find out what actually happened the night her family died in a fire. Not common video game fare, though it's told in the medium's bread-and-butter tricks: cutscenes, memory fragments the tell a story during gameplay, and a few in-game sequences where you're left to experience a scene while wandering about.

But even if you're the kind of person that hates the separation of story and gameplay, Madness Returns may still hook you. Scenes in an asylum, the Carpenter and Walrus' dark philosophical waxing -- that's what you're here for. Before Alice redeems herself, you see some dark stuff, and not just aesthetically. Where McGee outdoes McFarlane is impact; Madness Return's worst moments hit hard because you don't know if a silver lining exists, where Spawn's dark corners add up to so much fluff and attitude.

Conventional in all but the one way that counts -- that's Madness Returns. Its tale is worth seeing more than most others in gaming this year, but you may have to slog through memories of gaming's past to see it. Which, as it happens, is just fine with me.

Modern Guilt

Rebecca Black's "Friday" video -- and, more importantly, the widespread negativity towards it -- spread like wildfire across the internet last week, and other important contextual setup that I don't care to add. Basically, the song is a vapid, auto-tuned mess made by a company who specializes in promoting acts that consistently remind me of rich parents hocking their kids to companies because they have the money to make viral video. It summarizes everything that's wrong with modern music. Except that it doesn't.

Many of the comments I've read about the video focus not only on how awful the song is, but also on how it represents the downfall of modern music. It has auto-tune. It stars a fabricated idol singing about friends and weekends and other stuff that lacks the depth of pop music of the past. And clearly, to someone who's outgrown pop music and thus hasn't kept up with it, this is trash and symptomatic of a larger problem.

Let's put aside the fact that the song is terrible. Because yeah, it is. And frankly, my arguments against this line of thinking can summed up perfectly in the "rose-colored glasses," argument. People who haven't grown up around this kind of music clearly see it as foreign, and will quickly dismiss it and go back to longing for the pop music of the past. Like many people who are bemoaning the loss of the morals in society, they assume a downward trend in in quality when the changes are really exposure and options.

But propping "Friday" up as the representation of "modern music" obviously ignores quite a few factors. First, there's all the progressive and indie stuff that garner high MetaCritic scores that exists outside pop music. Second, "Friday" isn't even actual pop music; it's made a relatively small company for who the song is an outlier in terms of its popularity. Though it's tempting to group them all together, Rebecca Black is ultimately not in the same category as Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift. If you're to beat on a straw man, at least make sure it's the right one.