Catching up on the year that was 2009 in gaming inevitably led me back to the spiraling saga of Resident Evil, that mix of cherished memories from my youth seeking to merge a marketable sense of action with a lingering air of terror. The week of late-night sessions it took to survive the horror also led to an inevitable conclusion –
Resident Evil 5 is a fool’s errand, and I am the cosmic jester.
Title Image by WildcatJF via deviantart
One day, sometime between now and the end of eternity, Beyond Good and Evil 2 will be released. Other than that, no one outside of the development studio knows much about the title. Every other bit of information regarding the game has been given in a mosaic of brief mentions by those attached to the project and unofficial announcements from corporate Ubisoft. While the fact that a sequel to the original is even in production should suffice for the happiness of its fans, the endless wait accompanied by the shroud of secrecy surrounding the title is enough to make one’s frustration with Ubisoft climb into the stratosphere.
It’s been six years since Michel Ancel’s Beyond Good and Evil bombed, and the game has greatly spread as a topic of discussion since. Beyond Good and Evil was in no way a trend setter or even a pioneer in some new form of game mechanic, but it is nonetheless beloved by many and lately has been showing up on quite a few “Best Games of the Decade” lists. Rather than trying to presumptuously claim to know why Beyond Good and Evil is loved by so many gamers (I’ve seen many great articles discuss the game and somehow very few of them retread the same ground), I opt only to explain why it is appreciated so much by this gamer.
From the human to pigman, to a society of animal hybrids, it is the memorable, relatable cast of characters that Ancel crafted for this game that makes the experience of playing it such pure, unadultered escapism. Beyond Good and Evil presents a world inhabited by characters as appealing as any of Disney’s in a story as mature and mysterious as any of Miyazaki’s. Somehow these characters, regardless of their status as fictional species, have such an ability to evoke emotional responses from the player that we are given a personal stake in their conflict.
Two teasing bits of video and a few scant comments about the direction for Square-Enix’s PSP title, The 3rd Birthday, have had to serve as morsels to feed my appetite for a continuation of the Parasite Eve series. While good things come to those that wait, my patience for more details is at the boiling point, because the franchise has always been the good horse to bet on. The original title emerged during a period of legitimate experimentation for Squaresoft, and remains one of the most intriguing and potentially important deviations in the company’s development catalog.
Side-stepping the typical Square-speak of the day about the first cinematic role-playing game, Parasite Eve presents layers of possibilities, which make the physical game as much a mutation as the creatures running loose within the world coded to the disc that carries it. And from a company prided on pushing visuals, narrative, and occasionally the mechanics underneath those fancier concerns, Parasite Eve is a series that represents an evolutionary experiment, finding a strange and peaceful balance of those elements where one so often overshadows the others. Deviations and changes in the continuation of the franchise are not risks, but instead the very means of staying true to the inherent nature of the game and its narrative heartbeat.
Parasite Eve represents the chaos of change and evolution in a way that isn’t simply confined to narrative concerns, but is also a potentially continuing mutation of design and style.
Like most fragile and mentally fragmented individuals, I’ve developed a few strange rules to regulate my life and make for interesting conversations over the years. I don’t eat seafood because fish have sex in the water, I buy fattening treats and leave them unopened to bother others, and I refuse to play a Super Mario Bros. game when fellow gamers are in the same area.
That last point should be a golden rule of thumb, because if you’ve grown up playing from the earliest block busting beginnings through to the Yoshi riding bliss, you are a Mario expert. It doesn’t matter if you agree with that generalization or not. The truth is that there may be no other series as personal to those that grew up playing it as side-scrolling Mario titles. As a result, turning any of these games on while surrounded by other gamers is inviting backseat gaming and controller grabbing as everyone in the room feels more capable than whoever is in control.
This touches on the frustration of the series throughout my childhood, the dreaded two-player option that forced me to watch someone else play while my fingers itched for a turn and I tried to not act excited when the other player died.
Originally Published via Toronto Thumbs – June 14, 2009
Few revelations could have placated the long time Nintendo faithful at E3 this year more than the announcement that another Metroid title was in development. The applause within Club Nokia was instantaneous, and I’m certain the person to my right started convulsing almost immediately; the person to my left added “new Metroid game” to his notes as if he’d forget, but that’s another story. As gamers have absorbed the news, there’s a nagging concern as the knee-jerk excitement gives way to a recognition of what was shown in the footage.
The Team Ninja project consists of video sequences focused on developing a back story for the bounty hunter, presenting characters and emotional elements through externalized story telling tactics. In other words, aspects that are largely foreign to the series. Nintendo told me that the project was about telling a different story in the franchise, and for now that appears to rely on anime-styled cinema to wedge a new entry into the series. I can’t help but think that this has more to do with selling units in Japan, where the series has proved less popular compared to Nintendo’s other storied franchises. Yet there’s more at stake than that.
As Hideo Kojima wisely pointed out at GDC this year, technical limitations played a definitive role in the design and narrative aspirations of early videogames. Designers were forced to find unique ways to tell stories, often achieving fresh narrative approaches by nature of the marriage between what was desired and what was technically possible. While that caused Kojima to create a stealth-oriented genre that continues to thrive today, it also gave birth to a science fiction series that represents the single most symbolically significant franchise Nintendo claims ownership over, linked to the best examples of a genre where the primary goal is to think harder about who we are and where we are going.
With technical limitations fading and giving rise to unparalleled design possibilities, there is every reason to be concerned that this most preciously-guarded franchise will be raided and exploited, lessening the significance in the attempt to broaden the appeal.
Originally Published via 4ColorRebellion – August 31, 2009
Joanna Dark was born into a harsh and stark world, one of unbridled technological advancements, largely governed by the corrupted greed of corporate agendas. In short, Perfect Dark brought all the many splendid things which help make the science-fiction genre slick and delicious while pushing hard into the reaches of a new slipstream frontier.
Beyond the reality of the game, Joanna also faced the harsh expectations of a skeptical audience, which questioned her ability to fill the shoes of the spy who not only preceded her, but also made the FPS genre successful on a gaming console.
Yet the success she would achieve wouldn’t come from cheap imitations, but rather from the ambition to surpass previous benchmarks, pushing the genre further to obtain true legitimacy for her would-be franchise.
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