My Video Game Meme Thing Response

1.       Very first video game.

This is a little difficult to answer because it depends on whether you exclude “edutainment” like the Muncher or Blaster series. I played a lot of those titles at school and at home when I was a kid. The first “real” video games I played, though, were the PC ports of Sonic titles like Sonic CD and possibly the first Rayman. If you consider a videogame something that is played on a console, then my first one was Sonic Spinball on the SEGA Genesis.

2.       Your favorite character.

Probably Dante from the Devil May Cry series. He’s superficially devil-may-care but has real heart. His ability to laugh in the face of whatever odds he faces really helps soften the blow of playing the games on the harder difficulties and failing because Dante’s own ability to shrug off whatever comes his way helps empower the player to keep going. It’s a great characterization in cinematics that carries over into the gameplay by encouraging the player to embody that same attitude.

3.       A game that is underrated.

Onechanbara Z2: Chaos. The game is ultimately a mess in a lot of ways and can become repetitive quickly with its Dynasty Warriors-style “throw one hundred enemies with broken AI at the player at once in lieu of actual balancing” approach to level design, but there is a surprising amount going on with the game under the hood. There are a lot of little details that indicate some real care went into designing this thing, like a robust practice mode more action titles should include and full bios for every character (including the bland zombie enemies). The game isn’t a hidden gem by any means, but it feels like a diamond in the rough.

4.       Your guilty pleasure game.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan. I recognize that almost every criticism of this game is valid: Many enemies aren’t fun to fight, the companion AI is completely moronic, too many missions are badly-balanced and often just involving holding the circle button in front of an object. BUT—I unironically love this game. Granted, I got a great deal on it on Amazon when the PS4 version was deeply-discounted for no particular reason, but I really enjoy it. I like the graphical style and the emphasis on outright brawling over styling on opponents (which put off people who went in expecting the finesse of something like Bayonetta and instead got the undisciplined roughness of Anarchy Reigns).

5.       Game character you feel you are most like (or wish you were).

I’m not sure I really feel like any character, but I would probably most like to be Bayonetta. She’s stylish, sassy, and basically omnipotent. In a dreary, nasty, overwhelming world, that seems like something to aspire to.

6.       Most annoying character.

The Gadgetron vendor in the Ratchet & Clank remake. He embodies everything I hate about games/media seemingly designed for younger players these days—He never shuts up. It would be one thing if he only talked to you when you were near his shop, but he also somehow has the ability to call you when you’re out in the field and will constantly remind you that he has X weapon for sale or that you have “a lot” of Raritanium and should come by something. He only has a few lines, and they get old very fast.

7.       Favorite game couple.

I don’t think I have a favorite couple specifically, but my favorite relationship (of any sort) between characters is probably between the members of Dedsec in Watch Dogs 2—They’re bright, excited, eccentric, dorky, and just fun to be around.

8.       Best soundtrack.

Best soundtrack of a game I have played—Bloodborne. Best soundtrack of a game that I (regrettably, somehow) haven’t played—Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

9.       Saddest game scene.

The most melancholy scene from a game that I can think of is the one that ends The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. Although the story ostensibly ends “happily” after Majora is destroyed and we get to see so many of the characters enjoying their happy endings, the sequence ends with depressing music and a shot of the Deku butler beside the twisted tree players encounter in the “things betwixt”-like area before the proper start of the game when Link is travelling from Hyrule to Termina. The implication of this scene is that this tree is all that remains of the butler’s own son who left home long ago. This is a real gut punch of a final note that drives home how deeply melancholy Majora’s Mask is. It’s not just “sad”; it’s sad at heart in a way that few stories are. I’d most compare it tonally to the live-action Spike Jonze adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are.

10.   Best gameplay.

I am completely addicted to the Souls games’ gameplay loop, and I love the weighty combat and emphasis on managing the stamina meter. The mixture of exploration, esoteric storytelling, atmosphere, levelling, and gradual progression despite or even because of repeated failure is just great. I can’t get enough of it.

11.   Gaming system of choice.

GameCube—the last time Nintendo had a solid third-party lineup of titles like the excellent Prince of Persia trilogy and the simple but enjoyable Lord of the Rings movie tie-in games. The system also had two Pikmin titles and multiplayer games like Kirby Air Ride and Mario Kart: Double Dash that I played a lot with family. Luigi’s Mansion, a Skies of Arcadia port, The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. As much as I have enjoyed owning both a PlayStation 3 and 4, I can’t stop thinking of GameCube games I played and enjoyed and have fond memories of. The system was also originally supposed to be the exclusive home of Resident Evil 4, so… there you go?

12.   A game everyone should play.

When I think of the criteria for a game “everyone” should play, I can’t help but try to think of games everyone could play. Although I love the Souls series, for example, and do not think they are actually as prohibitively difficult as some claim, I also do not think everyone could play them. At least not to completion. Similarly, I think God of War III is the ultimate distillation of everything that series is about and absolutely should be played by anyone with an interest in the franchise. However, once again I don’t know that everyone could play it. I’m thinking a bit about my mother here—someone who enjoys games like Kirby Air Ride but isn’t up to tackling something as seemingly straightforward to many people as Call of Duty. Ultimately, I want to say that Rayman Legends is a game everyone should play—particularly fans of platformers. It’s a beautiful, high-energy game that improves on the classic platformer formula by completely doing away with lives and offering frequent checkpoints. It can still be difficult, but the difficulty can be mitigated in a few ways like playing multiplayer or ignoring optional collectibles and side challenges like the “invaded level” time trials.

13.   A game you’ve played more than five times.

I’m not sure I’ve played it more than five times, but the original Darksiders is one of the few games I’ve played through more than once or twice. The game is obviously, heavily influenced by other titles like Zelda and God of War, but it’s ultimately greater than the sum of its parts. In particular I think the mixture of Zelda-style adventuring and dungeon-ing with a flashier, meatier, but also accessible combat system makes it great to me.

14.   Current (or most recent) gaming wallpaper.

I don’t actually use gaming-related wallpapers. The closest I came to doing it was when I saw this image of 2B from Nier: Automata, in Raiden's pose from Metal Gear Rising’s box art, by MoonFace on Twitter recently. It’s just too cool.

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15.   Post a screenshot from the game you’re playing right now.

(Lords of the Fallen—a Souls-like with a number of technical issues that nonetheless does pretty well replicating the gameplay of those titles. If Dark Souls is Western fantasy by way of Eastern sensibilities/comics (like Berserk), then Lords of the Fallen is Western fantasy by way of Western comic books: ludicrously big, bright, and over-designed.)

Captured by my PS4

16.   Game with the best cut scenes.

Devil May Cry 3 has the best choreographed action in its cinematics I’ve ever seen (even compared to Devil May Cry 4 and both Bayonettas).

17.   Favorite antagonist.

Majora’s Mask/Majora. I like under-explained villainous forces that cannot really be understood (like the Great Ones in Bloodborne).

18.   Favorite protagonist.

Dante (again).

19.   Picture of a game setting you wish you lived in.

I love horror movies, and I’m retiring to Yarnham to become some kind of monster.

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20.   Favorite genre.

Stylish "Beat 'em up"s like Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden. The mixture of replayability (on higher difficulties) and skills/systems to master really appeals to me.

21.   Game with the best story.

I’ve never replayed it again, but I remember really liking Metal Gear Solid 4 when I first played through it a few years ago. Since the story is about 90% of the game, I guess you either get very invested or stop playing. I might also offer up Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, though I don’t necessarily think it individually has a great story—It’s just a very fitting capper for the trilogy both textually and metatextually. It’s a return to form tonally from Warrior Within and essentially redeems both the Prince and the developers in one go.

22.   A game sequel which disappointed you.

Darksiders 2. I think this one was a real step sidewise—The RPG systems are ok but unnecessary additions, the story is worse/less urgent (partly because the game isn’t a true sequel), the lore is less interesting (less riffing on the Biblical apocalypse, more generic fantasy adventuring), and there’s the added problem of more glitches. Don’t get me wrong, though, as Darksiders 2 is still a great game. It still mixes Zelda with better action and manages to use its obvious influences to great effect, but it feels like a misstep in a number of ways. Most importantly, I suppose, it failed to make good on the hype from the end of the first Darksiders. Rather than blasting forward and leaving it all out there with a proper follow-up, the developers chose to do a sort of side adventure with Death that takes place before and during the events of the original game. They couldn’t have known that this would be the last Darksiders game they would get to make, of course, but if nothing else this is a very real lesson in not hesitating when it comes to what you’re making as a creator: No saving stuff back for later, as there may not be a later.

23.   Game you think had the best graphics or art style.

Killer7—a style that not even Grasshopper itself has managed to one-up despite obvious attempts like Killer Is Dead. Child of Light is also a beautiful, beautiful game undermined only slightly by the protagonist’s character model (which looks too 3D compared to the other models and landscapes). The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker also has a highly-expressive graphical style that truly withstands the test of time.

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24.   Favorite classic game.

What is a “classic”? (It’s probably Sonic 3 & Knuckles. I loved that game to death as a kid to the point that what I wanted most was a level editor in it. I actually wrote SEGA about this at one point.)

25.   A game you plan on playing.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole and The Stick of Truth later this year. I remain a South Park fan despite the rough quality of more recent seasons. To me, both of these games seem to embody one of my favorite aspects of the series, which is the child POV vs that of the adults: magic vs reality. They’re games about playing games as a kid, and one of the moments that really sold me on The Fractured But Whole is the one during the “Civil War” fight in the street when the fight actually pauses briefly for an irate guy in a car to drive past and yell at the kids for playing in the road. As “edgy” as South Park can be, there is just something charming about the whole scenario of playing fantasy adventure or super heroes.

26.   Best voice acting.

Uh… the English voice acting in Devil May Cry 3? Look—voice acting usually doesn’t make a huge impression on me unless it’s noticeably bad. Maybe I take it for granted. What I like about Devil May Cry 3’s presentation of its story is that it is both melodramatic and genuine. I think it has moments of anime ludicrousness—“Dude! The party’s over!”—but also genuine pathos—“I told myself I wasn’t going to cry.” It made an impression on me when I first played it because of how well it balances its sillier moments with family drama that I found surprisingly effecting.

27.   Most epic scene ever.

I’m not sure I think of things as “epic” or not. It felt appropriate to use something from God of War here—a series built on the promise of “epic” moments—but I’m not sure what I want to use qualifies. Similar to Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones there is a moment at the end of God of War III that I think really caps off the series very well. At the end of the final fight against Zeus and then his ghost(?), you grab the boss and are prompted to press the circle button to pummel him, and the more you punch the boss the more the screen fills with blood. The catch is that you can actually keeping jamming on the button forever here and that it is up to the player to realize this and finally let go. It’s a powerful moment of using direct gameplay/input to influence the emotional quality of what is essentially a cinematic scene. After everything the player and Kratos have been through together, of course the instinct is to grab the boss to get to “safety” from a game over in the QTE and then mash like hell to win. It’s incredibly effecting (to me at least) to have that “Stop, he’s already dead!” moment and realize you’ve been bashing a corpse for longer than was necessary. More than any other QTE in the series, it makes the player embody Kratos’s rage and (I think) be somewhat surprised or repulsed by it when they finally realize what they’re doing. It’s not “epic” so much as it is “draining,” but forcing the player to literally quit playing the game so that it can end is a nice finale to the series. (And as far as I’m concerned, the series chronology ended there. I'm not enthusiastic about what I've seen of the new God of War so far.)

28.   Favorite game developer.

PlatinumGames—for the simple reason that they’re basically the only folks around still making triple-A entries in the genre I most enjoy.

29.   A game you thought you wouldn’t like, but ended up loving.

Bloodborne (and the Souls series). Despite playing stuff like Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden, I was genuinely worried that the game(s) would be too difficult for me and that I would have bought a PS4 for a game I wouldn’t enjoy. (I literally did buy a PlayStation 4 for Bloodborne.) However, I did enjoy it, and it wasn’t too difficult. If anything, Ninja Gaiden in particular prepared me for it pretty well since that game also has overly-powerful, frustrating grabs and an emphasis on most actions being un-cancel-able once initiated.

30.   Your favorite game of all time.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask is an astoundingly good game—made over a shorter development cycle with many recycled assets and using a new system of time management wholly unique to the series, it somehow managed to become one of the most compelling games I can think of. I love the creepier, moodier atmosphere and the way that it turned bit players in Ocarina of Time like the mask salesman into important, compellingly strange people. As much as critics tend to praise open world titles today and talk about advances in AI, I don’t think any game has sold me on a world as well as Majora’s Mask has. Every character has a story that plays out over the three day cycle, and revelations like the boastful sword master hiding in his back room for fear of dying or how Anju and her family relocate to Romani ranch to try to escape the moon’s falling help sell these characters as people in ways that “radiant” AI still can’t replicate (by virtue of it being random and not artfully orchestrated). The game makes up for a lack of proper, longer dungeons with many more shorter, self-contained side areas like the infested spider houses and the three-night delve into various graves on the way to Ikana Canyon. As a games player and as someone who wanted to make games, Majora’s Mask inspired (and continues to inspire) me in ways that only a select few other games—like Devil May Cry 3 (had to get that one in here again)—have ever done.

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Life and True Detective

“Pain is inexhaustible. It’s only people that get exhausted.” – Ray Velcoro, True Detective (season two)

*The following post contains spoilers for seasons one and two of True Detective (if you have not seen them already and/or care).*

            I started to write something on HBO’s True Detective a while ago shortly after finishing the first season; however, I ultimately tabled it because I felt that the show had already been written about to death. I did not think I could contribute much to a discussion that had been going on for over a year (which is about how long it took for me to actually watch season one after it aired). I recently watched season two, though, and I think the time has come to say something—partly because of True Detective and partly because of how I can use True Detective as an excuse to talk about myself a little bit. When I started this blog, I decided that I was going to keep personal stuff to a minimum because of how unsatisfying I find those posts in retrospect and how I would like to keep the personal information about me online to a minimum. That being said, I have certainly had the urge to get personal, especially after the election last fall. There is a recurring concept in season two of True Detective mostly centered on Vince Vaughn’s character that I feel really applies to what I experienced waking up on November 9^th, 2016. At several points, Frank Semyon mentions that there are times in a person’s life that essentially split their life—There’s you before and you after. This is a salient theme for the season, of course, because the whole thing, much like the first, is concerned with fatalism, and arguably the night that three of the four main characters are all called to the scene where missing Vinci city manager Ben Caspere’s body has been discovered is one such moment. Their lives are irrevocably split, as the past is gone and they enter into the phase that will lead to their destruction.

            In retrospect, the election was absolutely one of those moments for me. I am genuinely not exaggerating here when I say that it split my fall. I remember the events prior to the day, of course, but they feel abnormally far removed from me. It feels like I jumped forward a decade in a day. Obviously the sensation I just described suggests which side I was rooting for, though I do not really want to dwell on the particulars of that personal interest. Generally, what I will say is that I have never been involved in politics before, and I got really invested in this presidential election. The ultimate denouement of all that emotional and mental investment just… did something to me. This is not going to turn into a “woe is me” or End of the World-type diatribe, but that day felt like a split that I did not really appreciate until I watched season two of True Detective and discovered a metric by which to judge real life—and regardless of whether you wanted Trump to win or not, I think this election marks a clear divide in the lives of all of us. There was life before November 8^th, and now there is life after November 8^th. 

            I somehow managed to watch both seasons of True Detective at oddly appropriate moments in my life. I watched the first one the summer I was job hunting and feeling pretty desperate—old, bad thoughts creeping back in. Season one of True Detective is very pessimistic, but it ends with a moment of hope. Rust Cohle, our consummate doomsayer, returns from his near-death experience with the realization that there is something else out there. Life does not end pointlessly with death. As bad as things are or seem, there is more to existence than just the bad. It is a powerful moment for the character and for the audience since it is the moment we end on. A show all about fatalism and pessimism ends with hope instead.

            Conversely, season two carries its gloomy outlook through to the end—Almost everyone “good” dies from their involvement in the Caspere case. Paul guns down multiple armed assailants only to be shot and killed by a surprise attack from behind as he is about to get away. Ray’s final message of hope for his son never reaches him. Not only does Frank die, but he discovers that he actually dies before he realizes that he did—His spirit kept dragging itself across the desert unaware, futilely, and in pain for longer than was necessary. Ani and Jordan Semyon find one another and seem to have formed an unconventional family unit with Ani and Ray’s child and Frank’s former bodyguard at the end, but the message that Ani leaves us with before she and the others disappear into a crowd is not one of hope. The bad guys won, and the institutions that enabled them and are run by them still exist. All Frank and Ray and Paul did was get themselves killed for nothing. And, of course, the tagline for the season is that “we get the world we deserve.” While season one definitely has a fatalistic outlook for much of the season, it ends with hope. Season two does not stop bearing down. Post-election, that story spoke to me as many of us (mainly well-meaning white folks) have realized for the first time how fallible and corrupt our institutions can be and have been under Democrats and Republicans alike. What people like me—I will admit it—are learning the hard way after the election is what so many people living here—the poor, people of color, LGBTQ folks—have always known: That the world we live in is cruel. Not just spiritually but literally. Institutionally—legislatively, executively, judicially—the deck is stacked against people and always has been. Some of us just have not been paying attention because it was not quite as threatening to us personally for a long time.

            What we do with our real world problems, I do not know.

            As far as the critically-divisive True Detective season two goes, though, I can offer these thoughts: I do not think it is anywhere near as bad as some people made out to be. I liked it a lot, in fact. By the last two episodes in particular the show has built up a sizeable amount of momentum and concludes with real pathos. I think the biggest problem with the season is not its perhaps overly-complicated conspiracy but its technical side. I do not think either the cinematography or direction of season two are on the same level as that on display in season one, and arguably this comes in part from the fact that no one director gets to leave a clear mark on the show this time around. Everything is competent, but it seems workmanlike. There are few interesting or “artsy” shots, and I think the missing visual surrealism makes the dialogue, which sometimes goes for verisimilitude but also often swerves hard into Don DeLillo territory, come off as silly a lot of the time. The straightforward presentation makes the heightened dialogue seem ridiculous when it should be poignant. Season one had the striking Southern Gothic atmosphere and scenery, but all season two gets is some occasional mystical oddness (Ray’s dream of his father that predicts his death, Frank’s dying conversation with spirits, and Paul’s girlfriend’s recognition of his death the moment it occurs) and a lot of shots of busy freeways. Although the freeway motif works well—suggests “transit” between scenes, communicates the busy criss-cross of the mystery and the looming interconnectedness of the conspiracy—it does not create the same sense of place that season one’s wilderness did. Although the show is no longer a Southern Gothic tale, a correspondingly meaningful use of California scenery seems to be missing, though the creative title credits suggest what might have been. 

            Otherwise, I think season two is a worthy successor to the first. Yes, I liked Vince Vaughn’s performance, though it grew on me over time, and I still do not know if he had the range to really sell more intimate moments like Frank’s rumination on the water stain. In some regards, I think season two is better than season one. The first season introduced a similar conspiracy of affluent people but ended with a showdown with a backwoods handyman without saying much of anything about how the audience should feel about the other guilty parties still at large. Season two does a much better job at demonstrating the vastness of its conspiracy and following that thread to its natural conclusion—that someone uncovering such a thing would be utterly crushed in order to maintain the status quo. Insofar as season two can be said to be the “worst self” of the short-running series, I would argue that it is also its “best self” thematically, and I think those themes are now very resonant with our times.