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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