Ico is one of the first examples I think of when someone notions the concept of an “artistic video game.” Several gamers, including myself, would argue that all video games are inherently art, as it is the golden rule of artistic classification not to compartmentalize a medium for the sake of integral cohesiveness. However, we have to make this distinction between the “regular” video games and the more artistically-inclined ones because there is still a large portion of cultural philistines that still oppose gaming’s deserved ranks of respect with film, music, literature, etc. As of a few years ago, video games started outselling the film industry, so how does that grab you? Ahem...anyways, despite how prevalent video games have become as a source of entertainment in the pop culture zeitgeist over the past few decades or so, there is still a vocal pushback against the medium reaching its well-deserved place of recognition. One might blame Roger Ebert for his notorious op-ed decrying that video games could never be art, but he was simply someone with a credible platform echoing the status quo. Because video games are still met with an air of prejudice from the arbiters of high art, some game developers craft their work with heavy deliberation to prove them wrong. To be classified in the canon of artistic video games, one has to subvert the presentational, mechanical, and narrative tropes commonly found across most video games. In the modern gaming landscape, the medium has progressed to the point where subversiveness has to be implemented for the sake of standing out among the saturated marketplace, and the stark creativity makes a game inherently artistic by proxy. I suppose Ico is the first example that comes to many people’s minds regarding this topic because it was one of the first notable games that dared to challenge the medium’s conventions for the sake of making a work of art.

To fully comprehend the intended artistic scope of Ico, perhaps it would be wise to draw parallels between it and the arthouse film world. Since the early years of the medium, several directors saw great potential in using film as a means of expression beyond commercial means. These films are challenging, oftentimes surreal experimentations with narrative, characters, and several other typical film attributes. Most of these films are produced outside of the sphere of Hollywood in the foreign lands of Europe and Asia, and the American filmmakers that fit the arthouse denomination usually produce their films independently. They’re the filmmakers who make every college film professor get an emphatic hard-on just by mentioning their name. Robert Bresson, anyone? Like the aforementioned French arthouse director, Ico’s direction is minimalist to a fault, an ascetic choice to discern its heightened artistic merits from the accessible exhilaration found in most video games.

A lack of context for the game’s plot premise is one of the many artful elements not found in typical video game narratives, or at least not in the 3D era. A group of men on horseback ride through a shimmering, serene forest with a young, horned boy straddled as a passenger. Once they reach a dead end at the cliff’s edge facing an absolutely immaculate landscape, the men decide to tread through the river below by boat to transport the boy to the castle that resides on the other side. Through a series of elevators and unlocking a few obstructive gates that divide in two in the presence of a sword that emits magic, their destination point in this vacant fortress is a spacious chamber with wall-to-wall stone pods symmetrically aligned like library bookshelves. The men place the boy in one of the pods and leave him with the parting words “do not be angry with us. This is for the good of the village.” With a stroke of pure luck, the boy manages to escape his state of entombment when the castle shakes and he falls out of his pod when it collapses onto the floor. The boy climbs the spiral staircase to the upper reaches of the chamber and finds a poor girl curiously imprisoned in a giant birdcage dangling from the ceiling. The boy feels inclined to share his relieving feeling of freedom, so he smashes the cage with the force of his body and liberates the girl from her comically-sized and probably symbolic prison cell. From there on out, the two are an inseparable duo working together to escape the fortress’s oppressive boundaries.

I don’t mean to pick on Zelda but considering Nintendo’s glorious IP is arguably the gaming series most synonymous with the fantasy theming, I have to use it as an example to compare and contrast the way Ico establishes its mythical setting. Many Zelda titles introduce the player to the world, setting, and characters with an illustrated slideshow of yore, giving as much exposition as the opening credits in Star Wars. Thanks to the loglines of exposition, we are immediately privy to the epic scale of the game’s narrative and Link’s elevated role as Hyrule’s chosen protector. While providing an extensive backstory of Hyrule’s lore and current state of affairs is never a detriment in unfolding the narrative, one could still argue that the intended epic scale would be more effective if the game only showed the player the stakes of Link’s adventure rather than telling us from the get-go. We’re supposed to give this small, prepubescent boy the benefit of the doubt that he’s the valiant hero destined to slay the imposing, malevolent forces of the world when he can’t even grow pit hair yet. The boy in Ico, on the other hand, is introduced with zero information about his background or any inkling of what his intended arc is as the game’s protagonist. Is he also a pint-sized prince of peace like Link facing a moment of persecution here from an unjust society, or do his former acquaintances have every right to condemn him to a stationary state of solitude for the rest of his natural-born life? What exactly is the boy’s crime that justifies this cruel fate? Murder? Theft? Was he framed? We have no idea. We also have no clue about the status of the anemic, consumptive-looking girl he freed either. With a prevalent sense of ambiguity, it adds a level of rich mystique to the story. The player should ideally be eager to piece together their own conclusions with context clues, heightening the interactivity of an already interactive medium.

Ico commits to the minimalist direction for every facet of the game’s identity. On top of delivering story exposition in the sparsest manner possible, Ico’s presentation is the video equivalent of a Steven Reich composition. One might not even notice when the opening sequence of cutscenes is over because the game makes no clear indication that it’s the player’s time to help the boy get the hell out of dodge. A signifier that usually would tip the player off is a hud appearing on the screen, displaying important references like health, equipment, stamina, etc. When the player presses the pause menu, the only options are to adjust the volume/display picture and to quit the game. There is no inventory screen or status details, and there certainly isn’t a page dedicated to collectibles. There isn’t even any music that accompanies the gameplay minus a select few cues for a few situations. All Ico presents the player with is the horned boy in an uncaring world with the wind blustering over the high-elevation cliffside, with total uncertainty hanging in the balance. Somehow, Ico omitting gaming’s primary referential tools does not handicap the player with an unnecessary blindspot as one would expect. Health is superfluous in Ico (except in the case of falling off of tall ledges) and the boy can only hold one blunt object, seen clearly in his right hand at all times. These common visual aids are rendered redundant and gratuitous for what Ico delivers, and insisting on implementing them would distract from one of Ico’s biggest appeals: its atmosphere. Without the videogamey white noise of a hud or level music, the player can fully immerse themselves in their surroundings. Whilst breathing in the fumes of Ico’s atmosphere like a fine wine, I detect a myriad of refined scents like melancholy, dread, isolation, helplessness, and a pinch of desperation. Even though all of these are negative descriptors, the sheer beauty of Ico’s cliffside setting makes the negativity permeate an aura of dark romanticism like an album from The Cure.

“Subtracting design” was the specific ethos that Ico director Fumito Ueda hammered in for Ico’s direction. Essentially, it’s the idea that less is more. Already through its narrative and presentation, Ico proves that this is a feasible philosophy not rife with contradictions. Still, the most effective aspect of showcasing Ueda’s radical ideas pertains to Ico’s gameplay. The closest video game genre one can pigeonhole Ico into is the puzzle platformer genre, involving executing feats of platforming to solve puzzles. No, I don’t think a fragment of Ueda’s ethos was to craft a cerebral, arthouse version of Q*Bert or Wario Land. Given that the game is confined to one setting, the more methodical puzzle platformer genre is a more appropriate fit to accommodate its slow-burn pacing. To achieve Ueda’s vision, nothing in Ico is conspicuous. The series of suspended platforms most platformer characters would ascend on to reach their goals is too unnatural and would compromise Ico’s deep immersion. The dilapidated fortress resembles an environment akin to something from reality, connoting that it does not offer any obvious avenues to success like a series of floating platforms would. The player is forced to humor any sort of protruding ledge as a viable means of traversal, shimmying across perilous gaps and executing awesome feats of parkour. Decor centerpieces such as ladders, boxes, and chain link ropes are strewn around the vicinity for clearer interactions. Still, the player has to use all of them as individual fractions of solving a platforming puzzle instead of acting as smooth solutions. There are also the select moments where the boy must ignite his torch to light fixtures and the fuses of bombs, but these instances aren’t as explosive as one might think.

So how does stripping down the elements of a platformer to its pure essence prove to be enticing for the player? Well, it comes down to warping the perspective. Because everything at the player’s disposal for platforming is humdrum and unobtrusive, suddenly, the most minute resources in solving puzzles become a point of potential interest. There is no wasted space in the foreground, or at least the player will be forced to figure out what its valuable assets are by tinkering with everything. Some argue that this makes the puzzles in Ico rather obtuse, but I think it's a brilliant way to make the player engage with their surroundings. The environmental cohesion also aids the game’s immersion by heightening that prevailing sense of realism. Puzzles in Ico are almost designed with how a real person would execute them, only if they had the nimbleness of a youthful kid and an impressive resilience to fall damage. They are also met with a realistic sternness beyond the little samples of gratification most games deliver. Unlike in Zelda, surpassing obstacles in Ico will not warrant a jaunty little jingle to signify a job well done.

The caveat to solving Ico’s puzzles is to not only consider how the boy will progress, but how to make the path traversable for the girl as well. Given the game’s premise of a boy rescuing a girl from captivity, one could infer from this that Ico is an elongated escort mission, and it might make many gamers avoid this game like the plague. Unfortunately, this aspect of Ico is where the game falters. Naturally, the girl does not possess the same physical prowess as the boy, so she cannot climb the chain links, push the boxes, or scale the walls. In fact, the girl looked so frail and waifish that I was always concerned that the boy would pull her arm right out of its socket as he was dragging her around. The puzzles actually seem like the boy is constantly providing support for this girl to reach him at eye level, and this process can be insufferably wonky at times. AI during the early sixth generation of gaming wasn’t exactly sharp as a tack but dear God, the girl’s AI is downright aloof. She responds to the boy’s calling command quickly enough but she doesn’t seem to grasp why her presence is needed. She’s a horse that obliges when being led to the water but doesn’t know how to drink it. Of course, drinking it is the primary objective at hand and when she struggles with the analogous task of taking the boy's hand to climb or missing the ladder she’s being led towards while the boy is screaming at her from above. It could be due to the language barrier considering the boy’s subtitles are in plain English and hers are in hieroglyphics. If she didn’t open the occasional gate that impedes progress, I’d suggest that the boy should consider an “every man for himself” approach and shed the dead weight. The boy can lie down horizontally on the save station couches if the game is that peculiar about the amount of space that needs to be filled.

The hypothetical scenario of leaving the girl behind would also relieve the boy of the burden of having to protect her from the barrage of spirits that are trying to reclaim her. These shadowy ghouls that resemble the balls of ash from Spirited Away forming together to somewhat emulate a physical substratum will emerge from portals in the ground to snatch up the girl and carry her back to the abyss where she’ll be hopelessly sunken into oblivion. If this happens, a shockwave will encompass the entire area and eternally render the boy as a stone statue. To prevent this harrowing curse from occurring, the boy will bat them off with his trusty wooden pole, upgraded to a full-fledged sword after a certain point that naturally deals more damage. While the scourge will withdraw after a few meager hits, their pension for acting as a mob will sometimes overwhelm the player. Knocking the boy on his ass after a swift uppercut usually gives them ample opportunity to yoink the girl off her feet, so always watchful. Their ambushes will be a chronic occurrence throughout the game, but a vigilant one will seize the girl whenever the boy leaves her alone for too long. One might think this could only happen to the careless sort, but the game places puzzle sections where the boy is forced to be absent from the girl for a lengthy stretch of time. A particular section involving a slow shimmying session over a ramp with streaming water and cutting the hinges off of bridges will always result in a nail-biting race to save the girl from plunging into darkness even if the boy is as quick as a golden eagle. Despite the fact I previously implied that anything involving the sooty spirits is a cumbersome dirge, I quite like the looming threat overhead as a consequence of dilly-dallying during one of these sections. The alarming tension is an unexpected way to spruce up a game with such a serene tone.

So, what does it all mean at the end? Certainly, I can’t gloss over my interpretation of Ueda’s intent when Ico’s narrative is so open-ended. A piece of exposition I’ve been hiding thus far is that the boy was ostracized from his society because he was born with horns, which is considered a bad omen by societal superstition. The girl’s name is actually Yorda, a name that you give to your daughter if you hate her. Or, in Yorda’s case, if your mom sees you as a disposable source of youth whose sacrifice will stagnate the aging process. Her mother is the main antagonist of the game, scoffing at the boy’s efforts to rip away her toxic connection to her as she sees them as utterly futile. As imposing as she seems to be as the dominant regal power of the fortress, the black spirits are surprisingly not acting on her command. Right before the climactic final fight against Yorda’s mother, the boy returns to the chamber where it all started and fights a crowd of spirits who now cower under the might of his new energy sword. Once I realized that the spirits were retreating to the pods once they were defeated, I finally uncovered Ico’s narrative depth. The black spirits are the damned souls of previous horned boys who have succumbed to their untimely fates. Maybe not all of them died from suffocation and or starvation being trapped in their pods. Perhaps the reason why they stubbornly try to retrieve Yorda is because all of these horned boys have attempted to save her when they were still flesh and blood, and they’ve all failed miserably somewhere along the line. These horned boys are labeled as genetic pariahs as soon as they’re born, destined to bring nothing but pain and suffering for all of the common non-horned folk. Saving Yorda not only proves their usefulness but proves that they are capable of performing acts of kindness as well. Meanwhile, Yorda is ultimately doomed to never escape the fortress because her rescuers seemed fated to fail. This current boy in the long line of sorry saviors most likely exceeds every other one before him, slaying Yorda’s mom by impaling her with the energy sword. Before he can celebrate his unprecedented victory, he is blown back by a sweeping power force, severing his horns from his head as a bloody signifier of his death. A resurrected Yorda treats her knight in shining rags and sandals to a respectable Viking funeral as a sign of her gratitude. After the credits roll, the boy wakes up from what was merely a slumber on the beach shore and sees a happy Yorda smiling at him. Seems like a happy ending that breaks the vicious cycle, right? Well, we don’t know for sure if what we are witnessing is reality. It could be the pleasant final dream of this boy before his consciousness passes on into the eternal ether. After all, the main theme of Ico’s narrative seems to be that the oppressed can never overcome the crushing higher powers that undermine and subjugate them no matter how hard they try. It may be bleak, but interpreting Ico’s ending this way feels more substantive.

Ico is a game that I respect more than anything, which is a statement I usually reserve for the industry pioneers of the pixelated eras that predate Ico by at least two generations prior. I guess that when I take off my rose-tinted glasses for the gaming generation I grew up with, I realize that there was still plenty of radical innovation for gaming that needed some time to mold, and Ico is the epitome of this. Yorda’s partner AI is mostly the aspect of Ico that desperately needed reworking, as the girl’s inattentiveness in most scenarios drove me up a wall. Also, the boy’s controls could be smoother as well. There’s nothing deep about wonky movement and finicky response triggers. In saying this, there is no way that Ico could ever aspire to be a perfect game. What I respect about Ico is all of its efforts in its experimentation, to dial back the elements of gaming for the sake of achieving something never before executed in the medium. For all of its objective faults, Ico was still more interesting and resonating than whatever flavor-of-the-week game that had better controls and a peppier tone at the time. Truly effective art has a habit of making a colossal splash regardless of how abstruse it is and considering all of the games released after Ico that derive inspiration from it, it is a testament to that phenomenon.
...
Burn the North American cover for this game with the fire of a thousand suns because it's the ugliest thing I've ever seen. It makes the North American Mega Man covers on the NES look like bonafide Steve Ditko illustrations. No wonder Ico didn't sell well over here.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

I’m starting to lose my patience with BioShock Infinite. I’m starting to think that Ken Levine is huffing the high praise he received from the outcome of the first BioShock game that he has become baked beyond belief and thinks that everything that passes through his cerebral cortex is a stroke of pure genius. I think if what I’ve stated throughout my review of the base game and the first episode of Burial at Sea holds any merit, Ken Levine needs to be humbled because the writing in both reeks of hubris. Now, Burial at Sea continues as the conclusion to the two-part DLC content, and I wasn’t at all confident that Ken Levine would redeem this disaster of a story. Surprisingly, I can at least say that the second Burial at Sea episode is more interesting and less overblown than its former half.

But how can Burial at Sea continue considering that Booker’s vital organs have been liquified and he lays still on the ground dead as a doorknob? In Burial at Sea’s second half, the primary protagonist's viewpoint has been shifted to the smoking, seductive Elizabeth of this reality. Actually, that Elizabeth was also murdered by the Big Daddy and her body is propped up in the dank corner of the vicinity, so the game introduces an Elizabeth more akin to her personality from the base game. Isn’t that convenient? However, what totally isn’t convenient is that this Elizabeth possesses no extraordinary tear powers, rendering her as frail as a newborn puppy. Nevertheless, this Elizabeth persists in her quest to rescue Sally, now from the deranged mobs of Atlas’s goons who are holding her captive. Also, another version of Booker is here to play guitar in the background and to provoke Elizabeth’s guilty conscience every so often, because why not!

If you couldn’t infer the linear notes from the previous paragraph, playing as Elizabeth is a far cry from the physically adept swashbuckler Booker. As I stated before, Elizabeth must fend for herself in the drowned neon streets of Rapture’s deep sea ghetto, as the apparition of Booker is too ephemeral to switch her role and provide aid when needed. Elizabeth is on her lonesome in a dire situation, a terrifying prospect that fills her mission full of dread. Fortunately, just because Elizabeth can’t summon Patriots to mow down Splicers doesn’t mean the game leaves her as a stark naked sitting duck ready to be plucked by the malformed ghouls at a moment’s notice. Elizabeth’s offensive and defensive means have been reworked to fit the new context, as BioShock has been reconfigured as a stealth game. Elizabeth will lurk around the watchful eyes of the Splicers, who still give away their positions due to the effects of long-term ADAM usage causing them to think out loud. When a Splicer is in the line of sight, an overhead indicator signifies their alert level and if it’s a yellow or under, Elizabeth can subdue them with one hearty thwack of the sky-hook she “borrowed” from Booker. Failing to stealthily curb the Splicers by altering them to Elizabeth’s presence should result in Elizabeth running like the wind to regain her hidden position because ammo is still scarce and the dainty whacks with the sky-hook Elizabeth gives to them do little to no damage. Rapture has always exuded a creepy vibe but with the stealth gameplay as the focal point, Rapture has now become genuinely scary. The simplest of mistakes can lead to utter disaster for Elizabeth and working with this radical new mechanic never before seen in a BioShock game adds a fresh layer of difficulty.

Elizabeth eventually stumbles across an inactive machine devised by Rapture’s superwiz scientist Yi Suchong and has to recover all of its missing parts to activate it once again. Using a tear, the machine served as a portal that connected Rapture to 1912 Columbia, communicating ideas and passing down technology through both of the franchise's eminent dystopias. The general purpose for this machine might be the most excusable use of the time tear that has fucked Infinite’s narrative to oblivion. It explains why Columbia is as advanced as it is for existing in the prime of the industrial age when things like automobiles were still a revolutionary stride in technological advancement and why Rapture shares the same assets with Columbia like the vending machines and the inclusion of “vigors” that Suchong originally branded as plasmids. It’s a clever way of canonizing Infinite with the two previous BioShock games despite all the ways it deviates from it. By visiting both Columbia and Rapture in this Burial at Sea episode, we are treated to a dichotomy between the two civilizations, as seeing Columbia for the first time since the base game and then returning to Rapture feels surreal. Don’t get too prideful, Ken: You’re not out of the woods with this plot device just yet. However, I am somewhat impressed that you’ve finally made this work.

Returning to Rapture also reminds us that the notable people we’ve come to have a nostalgic wonderment for were/are right bastards. Throughout the episode, Elizabeth is collaborating with both Suchong and Atlas, two figures of interest from the first two games that up until now, the player has never had any intimate interactions with either (well, technically not for Atlas if you discount who he actually is). The second episode of Burial at Sea is going to make the player yearn for the times when they were voices in audio diaries and communication arrays respectively because they were both despicable people when they were still alive. Suchong is a total creep who physically and verbally abuses the Little Sisters he’s testing, and I’m not the least bit perturbed by his grizzly death scene at the hand of a Big Daddy because of it. Once Elizabeth helps Atlas return to Rapture’s metropolitan sector, he continues to probe Elizabeth more on a coveted “ace in the hole,” which turns to be his iconic catchphrase “would you kindly?” that he uses to manipulate Jack in the events of the first game. Before Elizabeth knows this, Atlas’s method of interrogation involves an ice pick lobotomy in one of the most uncomfortable torture sequences I’ve sat through in a video game. He disposes of Elizabeth once he gets what he desires in his mission to usurp Rapture from Ryan (who, by the way, unleashes hordes of his guards on Elizabeth after learning of her scavenging around Rapture while belittling her like Ryan would do) by bludgeoning her with a wrench, leaving her to die while Sally holds her in her arms. Cohen electrocuting his subjects while painting was charming compared to the actions of these scumbags. Then again, these are the kinds of people that Rapture attracts.

This conclusion would be a satisfying way to circle around to the beginning events of the first BioShock if not for one nagging bit of information. Killing the two protagonists from Infinite and thus ending their involvement with the overarching BioShock story could’ve been incredibly impactful if not for the fact that these are technically not the same Booker and Elizabeth from the base game. In fact, any emotional impact that the deaths of these characters would elicit is totally negated by the fact that there are infinite versions of them existing in this world and can evidently be swapped out at any given moment. You almost had me, Ken. Still, the stealth mechanics in the second episode of Burial at Sea prove to be a far more engaging way of retreading Rapture than what BioShock 2 offered.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

By popular demand, BioShock Infinite’s DLC takes us back to good ol’ Rapture. What sense does it make to return to the franchise's original place of intrigue in a game set three decades prior to its inception? Well, with the new dimension-hopping tear plot device, anything is possible, and I mean that quite literally. The plot of the base game was almost completely ruined by Ken Levine’s liberal use of manipulating the fabric of time and space and the structural foundation of Infinite’s story and characters by proxy. At this point, I’m taking the Burial at Sea DLC at face value and am trying to enjoy the ride. I’ve spent all this time asking why when the game obviously wishes for me to revel in the “why nots?” Therefore, I will try my best not to criticize Burial at Sea too harshly, unless something truly absurd occurs.

The first of two chapters in Burial at Sea is set entirely in an alternate timeline to the base game of Infinite, which is why both Booker and Elizabeth exist in 1959 at the same ages they were in 1912. Booker is still the gruff private dick he was in the former half of the 20th century, but Elizabeth is practically unrecognizable. Here, she’s a sultry femme fatale with that fierce, cunning sexuality associated with the role. Unlike her demure self in Columbia, she’s got experience with the outside world and then some. She sashays into Booker’s office in the typical film noir fashion with a job to rescue a little girl named Sally from Rapture’s Little Sister Program, and Booker is highly invested in this job on account of her being his adopted daughter in this reality. Just roll with it.

Given that Burial at Sea takes place a few years before the ultimate fall of Rapture, Booker and Elizabeth arrive at the tailend of the city’s prime. Seeing Rapture in its state of regal prosperity that we all only heard of through audio diaries and other lord pieces is a succulent treat for every fan of the first two games. If Rapture is a wondrous spectacle as a darkened ruin, imagine how it looks with the lights still on. Rapture resembles the swanky, elegant, mid-century aesthetic seen by the billboard advertisements and general furbishing of the city. From the looks of the plaza on High Street, Andrew Ryan’s actual goal for Rapture was to surpass the scope of the surface world’s gallant balls. Imagine the New Year’s Eve photo from the end of The Shining but located at the aquarium at night. Elizabeth distracting the various shopkeepers from Booker stealing a bunny mask as entrance to Sander Cohen’s ongoing exhibit subtly gives the player a chance to bask in Rapture’s refined form. Oh, and seeing Sander Cohen again before he was TOO far gone from sanity is also a nice piece of fan service as well.

As Sander Cohen sends Booker and Elizabeth on the bathysphere set to Sally’s location after a fit of impassioned artistic rage, we are reminded that Rapture’s downfall was a gradual outcome of persisting corruption. We are also reminded that we’re still playing BioShock Infinite with its FPS-intensive gameplay mechanics. However, in order to keep this DLC section from becoming a Splicer bloodbath, ammunition for every weapon is incredibly scant. Booker can only blow through a few bullets of a select few weapons from the base game before his defenses run dry. Hope you got well acquainted with the sky-hook melee strike attack in the base game because Booker will have to resort to using it in lieu of the now-scarce resources. I’m glad the developers chose to approach combat like this because it makes Booker feel less capable in the more claustrophobic setting of Rapture as opposed to the sprawling skies of Columbia, retaining the effectiveness of the setting. EVE is still abundant, but the number of plasmids has been reduced along with being forced to use some for means of traversal. It’s fairly interesting using “Old Man Winter”, a stronger version of the “Winter Blast” plasmid, to freeze running water to make it into solid platforms. Also, the explosive laser Radar Range weapon is a thrilling new addition, but its use is hindered by the fact that it is unlocked so late in the chapter.

I was having fun with all of Burial at Sea’s new stipulations until the ending, and it’s when I can no longer reserve my vocal critiques on Ken Levine’s convoluted tomfoolery. To Booker’s dismay, poor little Sally has transformed into a Little Sister and is hiding from him in the sinuous Little Sister vent network. Booker’s solution is to force her out by cranking up the heat in the pipes, but Sally is a stubborn one. She sics a Big Daddy on Booker who serves as this chapter’s final boss, and it’s where the parsimonious ammunition system does not bode well against a burlier enemy. When Booker finally defeats the brute, Sally still won’t emerge because of Elizabeth. In this timeline, Booker is an amnesiac Comstock who regains the memory that he transferred to Rapture after he couldn’t shake the guilt of losing Anna/Elizabeth. Elizabeth doesn’t forgive him, leaving the Big Daddy to eviscerate Booker’s torso with its drill and kill him. I chose to ignore the Booker is Comstock resolution because it still doesn’t make any fucking sense. “But have you seen Booker and Comstock in the same room together?” YES!! Now, the falling action of Burial at Sea forces me to digest it along with a new spree of nonsense plot points that make it even harder to swallow. What does Sally have to do with any of this? How is this reality’s Elizabeth still alive after we see her get decapitated through the tear instead of severing her pinky finger, and why is she especially vengeful here as opposed to in the base game? What does any of this matter if there are infinite Comstocks/Bookers? I’m supposed to be gut-wrenched by the result, but I’m even more pissed off at the throngs of twists and turns the game expects me to accept. I can’t believe this hacky writing came from the same guy who wrote the first game.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

I have an enterprising question for all of you to answer: What is BioShock? Really, think about this for a second or two. No, I will not be accepting the literal answer of “BioShock is a critically acclaimed first-person shooter series developed and published by 2K games,” you smart-asses. I want everyone to deeply consider the most vital components of BioShock that comprise its integral distinctiveness as a series and why they’ve resonated with millions of gamers. Is it the underwater city of Rapture and its sublime, sunken remnants of its former glory? Is it the relationship between the possessed Little Sisters and their thuggish Big Daddy protectors? Could it perhaps be the moral choice mechanics that cause a sense of ludonarrative dissonance and befuddle all of the snobby critics of the world? I mostly jest at that last part, but I’d be lying if it wasn’t at least a sizable fraction of the discussion surrounding BioShock. I parlay this question to the reader here because BioShock Infinite, the third installment to the BioShock series doesn’t include any of the aforementioned elements that one would associate with the franchise. BioShock 2 perhaps laid the first game’s idiosyncrasies on a little too thick to the point of being derivative, and the once awe-striking spectacle of Rapture and its intriguing downfall, unfortunately, became as numbing as gaming novocaine. I suppose BioShock Infinite is the result of our collective complaints ringing harshly in the ears of the 2K offices, and they certainly conveyed that they understood our gripes and grievances and took necessary action. BioShock Infinite is so unlike the BioShock that launched the series into the esteemed ranks of gaming royalty that an owl would have to squint at it to recognize the connection. Is the fresh-faced Infinite a relieving title that revitalizes the remarkable quality of the first game, or is it an example of an identity crisis that proves 2K should’ve left the first game as the sole entry? My take on the matter leaves me conflicted.

Judging by Infinite’s opening sequence, the game at least exudes some sense of BioShock familiarity. One indelible image from the first BioShock title is a lighthouse prototype of the monumental pillar erected from the abyssal ocean below where the city of Rapture is located, where Jack attempted to find a place of respite after being stranded in the open waters after his plane crash. Booker DeWitt, the protagonist of Infinite, is conversely being comfortably rowed to the pillar with a better sense of certainty and purpose. After climbing the pillar and opening the gate with a secret code, Booker enters the inner vessel where Jack is introduced to his birthright from the vessel’s on-looking window screen. However, what will surprise the player is that this elevator goes up. Instead of being submerged a hundred leagues under the sea, Booker is transported to the blindingly golden glimmers of the sky. Has Booker died and gone to heaven? No, he’s gone to Columbia: a civilization sitting above the clouds modeled to resemble heaven as much as humanly possible. From the vessel’s one clear reference to the outside world, Booker views the sights of Columbia’s magnificence. From the soaring zeppelins, the lofty angel statue looking over the miles of metropolis, to the launching of fireworks, Columbia’s beauty will make the player involuntarily shed a single tear. I see what the developers did here, and I approve of their efforts to recreate the opening sequence from the first BioShock. Infinite’s opening sequence suggests that the same scenario can still elicit a wondrous effect, even if it does warrant a smidge of deja vu from how it’s directed. The core difference is that the initial glimpse of Columbia evokes a feeling of elated marvel as opposed to anxious curiosity upon seeing the outside of Rapture. Still, it’s impressive that what I regarded as the most effective hook of an opening sequence in gaming can be rivaled in scope by a game in the same series.

Columbia is as much of a culture shock for the player as it is for Booker. For a series that seemed like Rapture was destined to be its permanent stomping grounds, it’s almost ironic that this new setting is the antithesis of the underwater society. Setting foot on Columbia and seeing the sights from a more personal viewpoint will leave the player just as gobsmacked as they did as a voyeur from the vessel. The sun is radiating down on the spotless streets where a bustling crowd of people engage in mid-day merriment. Unlike the denizens of Rapture, these people aren’t missing full rows of teeth and seem to have all of their mental faculties intact. Shops are still in business and choirs are cheerfully performing an anachronistic acapella version of “God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys. The scene here is so idyllic that it’s what I imagine Norman Rockwell is busy painting in the afterlife. When Booker gains his first plasmid vigor by drinking it like an elixir, the smelling salt of BioShock recognizability prudently flashes us back to the reality of the game we are supposed to be playing. The following scene will be the first of many scrapes in the process of ripping up the proverbial wallpaper mirage that Columbia bestows. Booker uses the possession vigor to perform a Jedi mind trick on a ticket machine for an ongoing raffle. By winning the raffle, Booker gets the utmost privilege of throwing a baseball at an exploited interracial couple as a warmup for a humiliating tarring and feathering they are about to endure. Whether or not you make the right choice and do not cave into the racist peer pressuring of the time, guards will stop Booker mid-throw and accost him for the engraved marking on the back of his right hand. Apparently, this mark labels him as some kind of pariah and will stop at nothing to apprehend him. Now, the city's superficial mask has been torn off and the cop slaughter that ensues serves as the point where the game starts to make sense.

Let’s continue to harp on the setting of Columbia because it bothers me as much as it beguiles me. I don’t think I have to further compare and contrast how Columbia’s atmosphere differs from Raptures because anyone can plainly see it’s a night and day situation. Also, presenting a setting with a more pleasant and sparkling aesthetic, albeit on a surface level, is not the bothersome facet of difference regarding the sky city. What irks me is how far the world design seen in Rapture takes a steep regression with Columbia. While many immersive sim enthusiasts will scoff at me for stating this, the level plotting in both previous BioShocks (especially the first one) was a rich, multi-layered trek down the rabbit hole of Rapture. Areas were mapped with a great deal of meticulous plotting and inspiration, as if every corridor of the dank, sunken cesspit told its own story in tandem with the big picture of Rapture’s colossal failures. Objectives given in the first game may have admittedly tested the thresholds of tedium with fetch quests a tad too liberally. Still, the oppressiveness of Rapture’s labyrinthian hallways never faltered even with subsequent visitations. Running through Columbia, on the other hand, is as linear as an esophageal tract. To say that progression in Infinite is streamlined is an understatement: the game is ironed out like a graphic t-shirt. Infinite is one straightaway trek after another with the frequent enemy swarm to halt Booker’s momentum and distract the player from their straightforward trajectory. It’s a wonder why the developers implemented the arrow feature that points to the objective because every decimal point of Booker’s quest is conspicuously defined. What occurs when a game makes a mad dash from point A to B is that the setting becomes a foreground piece of window dressing. Infinite will take the player through countless Columbia streets, plazas, docks, and the insides of buildings with extravagant, Victorian-era decor. Still, do any of these setpieces really matter in the grand scheme of things? While exploring Columbia is still fractured by individual levels, the inability to stop and smell Columbia’s pristine roses makes the city far more of a monolith. As immense as I’ve made it sound, the context here suggests that Columbia is lacking layers. Columbia is grand from the aerial view but proves to be shallow past the surface. Even with the new sky-line mechanic that sees Booker zipping through Columbia on his makeshift transit system, the trajectory just amounts to either a shortcut or a cyclical loop on the track. Also, while I enjoy the adrenaline of the first-person rollercoaster, this extent of swashbuckling in a BioShock game makes me feel a little embarrassed for the claustrophobic previous titles in the series. We still have video diaries and kinetoscope viewings as peripheral tools for further insight into Columbia, but their implementation doesn’t make much sense considering the city is still thriving. One thing that does interest me is how they managed to implement an active beach with sand and rippling waves crashing on the shore of this floating island.

You know what video game genre revels in this design philosophy that’s as narrow as an uncooked spaghetti noodle? The first-person shooter genre, specifically the modern examples that encompassed the genre’s peak of popularity in the late 2000s/early 2010s. One might be confused by my assertion that the then-king of video game trends is the primary cause of Infinite’s streamlining considering the BioShock series has always been a first-person shooter game by definition. As I’ve expressed before, BioShock’s success was in part because it was a sophisticated outlier of its kind. It wasn’t convoluted enough for the immersive sim PC playing crowd, but its level design and narrative were far more cerebral than any of the campaigns of the gung-ho FPS games it was competing with on consoles. Guess which direction Infinite takes to throw off BioShock’s refined genre equilibrium? On top of the linear level direction, BioShock’s treasure trove of firearms organized by a weapon wheel has been reduced to two firearms on Booker’s person, swapping between the two with a button press. This limited method of alternating between the weapons doesn’t make a lick of sense to me when the more typical FPS games implement it, so you can imagine the weight of the exasperated sigh I made when I discovered that Infinite followed suit with it when I picked up another gun. However, the game still assures that Booker will be alternating his sparse selection frequently because the weapon variety retains its enormity. Booker’s first means of defense against Columbia’s righteous pigs is a small, yet effective pistol, which can soon be supplemented by the BioShock staples of a shotgun, machine gun, RPG, etc. New additions that will be objects of curiosity at Booker’s feet include the kicking hand cannon, the explosive launcher volley gun, a carbine hunting rifle, and a bodacious, automatic chain gun to turn armies of enemies into Swiss cheese in seconds. Each of these weapons also has a modified Vox Populi twin, the proletariat brand, to pick up for slight variation. Booker’s melee weapon is the sky-hook, a handy tool of the “steampunk” variety that allows Booker to latch onto the sky rails as well as obliterate the faces of the Columbia Founder's opposition to a gooey pulp. Instead of being traded in and out by the limited weapon system, the sky-hook is activated by a specific button on the controller…like the melee weapon in every other FPS game. Sigh. I’m still aggravated that I cannot wield all of these weapons in a tricked-out arsenal, but I’m pleased that BioShock has retained its standard of weapon variety.

Fortunately, all of the plasmids that I refuse to refer to by their colloquial term “vigors” can be selected on an option wheel at any time. For this aspect of BioShock’s gameplay foundation, Infinite delivers the goods after BioShock 2 half-assed the plasmid lineup with too many recycled ones from the first game. One may chide at my apparent naivety and point out that “Devil’s Kiss” and “Shock Jockey” are rebranded clones of “Incinerate!” and “Electro Bolt” from the first game, but I’m well aware of their near exact resemblances. The plasmid freshness I’m referring to is the new batch that only Columbia has in stock. “Murder of Crows” unleashes a biblical plague of the black birds to peck bits of flesh off of enemies in a whirlwind daze. “Bucking Bronco'' and “Charge” may have similar names, but the former renders enemies in a state of humiliating vulnerability by suspending them over the ground for a short period, and the latter sees Booker making a mad dash at enemies like a raging bull with his sky-hook. “Return to Sender” is a spiraling energy shield that absorbs enemy firepower and is then launched back at them. Considering the rate of enemy firepower is amplified to better fit the FPS genre in Infinite, this is arguably the most practical plasmid the game offers. My personal favorite new plasmid is “Undertow” which grapples enemies with the titanic force of giant, aquatic tentacles, making me feel as if I have the divine power of Poseidon being channeled out of Booker’s left wrist. Retain the dual-wielding mechanic from BioShock 2 with these debuting plasmids and suddenly the plasmid gameplay is finally both exciting and functional in combat.

Because Infinite erases all pretenses of BioShock’s FPS identity, the developers had to drum up a more fitting way of penalizing the player for dying. Vita Chambers are too ultramodern a piece of biological innovation for the second decade of the 20th century. Hence, Infinite settles on the FPS stand-by of subtracting a sum of money. The amount depleted is scaled by the total amount of money Booker has in his wallet, which can break the bank if Booker is sitting pretty on wads of cash. Finally, a BioShock game upholds a reasonable penance for failure as opposed to allowing the player to callously treat death like a minor inconvenience…ideally. In practice, losing a modicum of money is superfluous because it can easily be regained in seconds. The silver eagle currency is strewn about the streets of Columbia along with tons of other goodies like food, medkits, and ammunition. Making a meticulous effort to collect all of the helpful detritus is one of the only ways in which Infinite retains its BioShock roots. The major difference, however, is that Booker needn’t act like a packrat for survival. Because Columbia is still an active civilization, every resource is plentiful. If Booker ever exhausts the ammo in one of his guns, he can simply swap it out with another. Why bother purchasing medkits from one of the dispensaries when fallen enemies are strapped with them? The only logical incentive for storing large quantities of coinage is for the weapon and plasmid upgrades. Besides, Booker shouldn’t die so easily because he’s got a shield meter on top of his health to stave off dying more efficiently. Why does Booker have a shield when he doesn’t have any physical armor? Because it’s a first-person shooter, god dammit.

At least Booker DeWitt is a fresh change of pace for BioShock protagonists on the simple merit that he vocalizes his emotions. The previous BioShock entries could skate by with the typical, yet slightly archaic, character trope of a silent protagonist because Jack was a mere vehicle in learning about Rapture’s sordid past through exploration, and anything more advanced than the stolid demeanor Big Daddy in BioShock 2 would contradict the inherent brutish nature of Rapture’s bodyguards. In a faster-paced game whose narrative zooms past any chance for the environment to utter a single word of exposition, Infinite delivered exceptionally with Booker DeWitt. While escaping one of gaming’s most common tropes, Booker is still a solid fit in the overly capable male protagonist role in the grander scope of fiction. Extrapolating on Booker’s characterization of a handsome, strapping, thirty-something intrepid adventurer man should conjure up stark comparisons to Indiana Jones and other leading men cut from the same cloth. Booker’s air of cynicism and moral ambiguity also give him that edge that prevents his character from verging into cheesy John Wayne territory, which can also be said for Harrison Ford’s iconic archeologist. Booker is both a reinvigorating change of pace for BioShock’s protagonists and a cliche for leading men in an action role, a balance that makes him at least charismatic enough to appreciate.

Besides the occasional instance of mumbling something under his breath, Booker’s character exfoliates through his interactions with Elizabeth, the central secondary character of Infinite. She’s also Booker’s impetus for going through the painstaking trouble of visiting Columbia as retrieving her will absolve him of some felonious debt that isn’t given context until the very end of the game. From Elizabeth’s rescue from her tall tower prison, her demure first impressions, to her stunning beauty with piercing blue eyes, one could certainly infer that Elizabeth is the epitome of a damsel in distress. The girl is more liable to get swept up by Columbia’s antagonistic forces than Princess Peach frolicking through a dark alleyway in the Mushroom Kingdom’s red-light district. However, in all that time Elizabeth was isolated from the outside world, she made the decision to thrive as much as possible in her solitary state and exceed our expectations.

After freeing her from her elevated chamber, Elizabeth accompanies Booker for the remaining duration of the game with a select few breaks in between that coincide with some specific story beats. The player’s other likely inference regarding Elizabeth’s role is that her presence has triggered another grueling escort quest, and she’ll inadvertently cause the player pain and suffering at every step in their attempts to protect her. In a twist of fate, Booker benefits greatly from having the little lady by his side. Elizabeth’s totally invulnerable from enemy fire, but cannot dole out any offensive strikes either. She instead uses her background advantage to support Booker by tossing various wares at him such as health, EVE, ammunition, etc. from the sidelines. She’ll even fling some silver eagle coin Booker’s way to finance those juicy upgrades. Whether or not she takes the time to scrounge the area efficiently or she just pulls all of this stuff out of her ass is uncertain. She also evidently practiced trying to escape her cell for years because she’s quite adept at lockpicking. While all of these ancillary efforts are appreciated, Elizabeth’s innate support ability of “tearing” is the most vital of her contributions and her most interesting characteristic. Elizabeth’s supernatural skill is ripping through the fabric of the space and time continuum when she uncovers a slit of static energy emanating in the air. Using the entry point here allows her to materialize items and ammunition, hooks to grapple onto from above, and holographic manpower to fight with Booker in the vein of those balloon-powered weaponized mosquito drones and the juggernaut Patriot enemies. Don’t judge a book by its cover.

To Booker’s slight dismay from a narrative perspective, perhaps Elizabeth is TOO exceptional as a human being. On the surface, Booker is Elizabeth’s knight in shining suede and steampunk pleather, a relationship dynamic so commonplace that it was exhausted in the oldest of fairy tales. She should be head over heels for him after rescuing her but only sees Booker as her necessary collaborator in the quest of leaving the shackles of Columbia to a promising new world. Admittedly, Booker isn’t entirely a noble gentleman either, as his intentions with Elizabeth are entirely in his own self-interest. His impression that the mission will be a breeze after finding Elizabeth is thwarted when there is a conflict of interest in which Earth city they want to visit via the airship. Elizabeth grows to (rightfully) distrust Booker after this altercation, and there is an aura of acrimony between the two. Elizabeth’s romantic wish to see the bright lights of Paris is sidetracked when it’s revealed that she’s the adopted daughter of Columbia’s supreme leader Zachary Comstock, who trapped Elizabeth in the tower to preserve her as the successor to the throne if something unfortunate were to happen to him. Elizabeth then desires to discover more about her origin and stop Comstock’s reign. Booker then realizes that he’s not going to return to New York with Elizabeth in time for supper. Why does Booker comply with Elizabeth’s plans? Well, it’s because he’s scared shitless of her, knowing that she has the potential to transport him anywhere in the world to any reality in any span of time. Booker and Elizabeth’s relationship is a subversion of the male savior trope with the helpless princess, warping a dynamic so old that Elizabeth cannot produce a tear big enough to simulate its origin point. Don’t fuck with Elizabeth, and that goes double for you, Booker.

I only feel inclined to discuss Comstock’s antagonist role as Columbia’s supreme ruler because he’s the central commonality in the Bioshock series Venn diagram I proposed in my opening paragraph. The one core attribute Infinite shares with its predecessors, the conjunctive tissue that defines the series, is the megalomaniac figure at the highest governing power in their dystopian creation, ruling under an unchecked dogmatic idealism that formed the city’s cultural and economic identities. The execution of their philosophies in the game also suggests a biting critique of their fundamentals from the developers. Delving into Comstock’s extreme Americana fueled by religious fundamentalism is so on-the-nose that it's boring. Growing up as an American, these kinds of nationalistic ideals are heavily ingrained in our society, even in the 21st century. Columbia is the quixotic fantasy of every one of my country's villains I learned about in history class coming to fruition. Comstock’s philosophies are just deranged and self-righteous with no room for arguments. He’s the kind of person who made Andrew Ryan abscond from American soil to start his own society, and Ryan’s ideals are at least academically credible.

If one couldn’t tell from the scene with the couple in the beginning, a large facet of this waspy wet dream is that it is incredibly racist . So racist, in fact, that Comstock is a huge proprietor of eugenics, whitewashing Columbia of all racial diversity and calling it a cleansing. The worst part is how Infinite decides to tackle this subject. In the middle section of Infinite, Booker, and Elizabeth are detoured from their mission by the ongoing class struggle between the bourgeois Founders and the impoverished lower class called the Vox Populi (the voice of the common people). It’s no coincidence that the members of the Vox Populi resistance group are all racial minorities, namely their leader Daisy Fitzroy who is withholding Booker’s airship from him. While assisting the cause, Elizabeth becomes disturbed by the extent Daisy takes to ensure equality for her people, and the moral breaking point is when Daisy attempts to murder a Founder child in cold blood. What we’re supposed to take away from this scene is that there is no justification for the brutal violence of the lower class, emphasized by Elizabeth when she comments that Daisy is no better than Comstock. Check your privilege, Elizabeth. Sure, there are lines one can cross in the fight for freedom, but is this really the time to point that out given that Comstock’s vision for Columbia is to exterminate all non-whites from his society like they’re a contagion? The game’s narrative shifts its view to Elizabeth’s colossal Songbird guardian trying to reclaim his “property” for the remainder of the game almost as a distraction from how deep Ken Levine lodged his foot into his mouth.

Ultimately, BioShock Infinite is not as intelligent as it thinks it is. Problematic sociological topics aside, this assertion really comes to light at the game’s climactic point. In their futile attempts to vanquish the Songbird, Elizabeth resorts to using her tear ability to transport the terrifying mechanical marvel to the bottom of the sea where he drowns (or rusts). We’re somehow back in Rapture, only for the game to become suspiciously cinematic. With Elizabeth liberally using her tear powers to manipulate time, we learn through a clusterfuck of exposition that Elizabeth, also known as Anna Dewitt, is Booker’s daughter who he had to give up as payment for his massive gambling debts when she was an infant. Comstock and his dearly departed wife were respectively sterile and barren and could not bear an heir, so there was a mutual agreement between both parties along with the phantom-like Lutece twins enacting the transaction. Obviously, Booker’s decision haunts him severely, hence why he went to the great lengths he did in Columbia to get her back. The debt instilled upon him was self-inflicted, and he must cleanse himself of his unforgivable sins through baptism, only one that sacrifices himself for the ultimate act of repentance. All the mysterious loose ends are resolved…or are they? While attempting to make sense of the game negating all narrative pacing to dump all of this information on us, the game also suggests that Booker’s sins account for his contributions to the Wounded Knee Massacre and that he might also be Comstock himself? What?! I don’t know if it’s because multi-dimensions are the hottest plot device nowadays and I’ve gotten sick of them. For Infinite’s case, you can’t use the endless possibilities the concept gives you to throw away any logical character or plot bearings in an attempt to make your convoluted slop plausible. Do you know what other game regrettably ruined itself with a heap of nonsensical exposition as an addendum? Metal Gear Solid 2. Quit borrowing Kojima’s fart inhaler, Ken.

BioShock Infinite is ridiculous. A series that was once perceived as a monumental achievement in gaming narrative and atmosphere is a cheap shell of its former self. BioShock was a title that rolled out the red carpet for the burgeoning FPS trend of its time due to its innovative execution of the genre’s mechanics. Now, Infinite’s full commitment to the first-person shooter’s tried tropes six years later is indicative that perhaps the genre should be put out to pasture. Strictly as a first-person shooter, BioShock Infinite is still an exemplary addition to the genre. I may have my nitpicks, but they mostly pertain to how the FPS genre evolved since the first BioShock was released and not Infinite on its individual merits. When I turn my brain off and relish in the stunning, albeit creepy, setting and paint its pristinely white roads with the insides of its denizens, I always end up having a blast. Then, the narrative rears back around and forces me to flip my cognitive switch back on and reflect on so many bafflingly knotty plot points that it makes my brain hurt. Actually, it doesn’t hurt my brain because I know it’s just pretentious bullshit. Overall, BioShock Infinite is technically the BioShock game I wanted after BioShock 2 merely retread the old ground of Rapture. Still, I wish the final product wasn’t a contrasting blend of dumbed-down attributes competing with intelligency bloatedness. I still don’t know if BioShock Infinite is a worthy successor.

------
Atrribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

I’ve waited for this for a long time. While my analytics would beg to differ, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was the very first game I ever reviewed back in 2017. I never published this review to any online outlets, for it was an emotional mess of a review that lacked the organization, articulation, and polish I try to strive for when writing these days. I believe one of my college professors described this rough writing process as “unleashing the monster,” an analogous comparison to a rampaging beast with a writer’s free flowing, unflinching ID in the drafting process. Did I feel inclined to put in the extra effort to rant and rave about Skyward Sword because I needed to express how the game floored me? No, it was quite the opposite, as I loathed every minute of drudging through it for two years. Back then, only a negative experience could make me that zealous. I still possess this review somewhere in the catacombs of my Google Docs, but I’ve left it to my personal archives. Starting fresh with six years of writing refinement is the optimal way to approach this game for reevaluation. Finally, after replaying and reviewing every mainline console Zelda title prior to this one, I ache with anticipation. I finally get to rip Skyward Sword a new asshole and considering how it already stinks to high heaven, I’m about to make its already appalling stench tear a hole in the ozone. Actually, this is what I initially foresaw for this review: to echo my former one only in a more dignified format. However, after replaying Skyward Sword, my hostile fervor for this game has quelled quite a bit. Still, there is so much objective evidence in this game to fuel a diatribe on what is the most maligned Zelda game since Zelda II.

A lot of Skyward Sword’s makeup is a compromise between the previous two 3D Zelda titles, namely the graphical presentation. After consecutive bouts of controversy regarding the visuals of both The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, Nintendo appeased their havering fans by striking a balance between the light of the former game and the darkness of the latter. The result seen here could probably be described as Wind Waker’s cel-shaded brightness being baked overnight in a kiln. It’s a warm, water-colored maturation of the rounded, cartoonish puffiness seen in Wind Waker, deviating from the sharp and damp moodiness of Twilight Princess. My personal quibble on Skyward Sword’s aesthetic is that its milky tint verges on a strong resemblance to Disney’s hand drawn animation, a look too saccharine for my liking. I’ve always adored the exuberance of the Wind Waker’s visuals and am disappointed that Skyward Sword’s animated aesthetic isn’t a bodacious piece of eye-candy. While not as strikingly lurid as The Wind Waker, the balance between animated expressiveness and stark realism should at least prove not to piss off the irresolute Zelda fanbase at first glance.

Skyward Sword also makes a compromise between Link’s age. Previous Zelda titles alternate between a pre-adolescent eleven-year-old Link and a barely legal adult Link of 18/19, with Ocarina of Time as the game that formally established this dynamic and the sole title where Link’s age is relevant from a thematic standpoint. Skyward Sword introduces “teenage Link” at the age of 15 or 16. He may fit the stature of a fully grown Link, but is treated with a sense of condescension as a child. If that sentence doesn’t summarize the teenage experience, I don’t know what does. This source of angst is conveyed via Link’s life as a sophomore student at the boarding school Knight Academy on his airborne home of Skyloft.

Regarding the incongruous Zelda timeline, Skyward Sword’s placement is at least easy to follow because it is set far before every other title released before it. That’s right: Skyward Sword is ostensibly the very first Zelda adventure to ever occur. Because of its relatively humble beginnings, Zelda’s name hasn’t the slightest regal connections. She’s merely Link’s peer at the academy and Link’s lifelong friend. The only level of prestige she bears is being the daughter of the academy’s headmaster Gaepora, who evidently was reincarnated as an owl in the distant future. Zelda is just a sweet, giddy teenage girl whose friendly affections for Link are portrayed through the opening sequence where they interact in anticipation for the annual Wing Ceremony. Both Zelda and Link are also caught up in a love triangle with fellow classmate and local beefy, broad-shouldered chad Groose. His palpable envy for Link’s relationship with Zelda becomes a liability when Groose sabotages Link’s chance to win the grand prize of an event with Zelda by stashing his Loftwing, this game’s feathered Epona companion. I’ve always shared the sentiment that this opening sequence proves to be the best that 3D Zelda has offered yet. Not only does it effectively introduce a recurring setting along with the dynamics of characters new and old, but Skyward Sword marks the first time where Link and Zelda resemble real human beings. Their interpersonal relationship is adorable and seeing them interact domestically with each other makes their characters surpass their typical avatar leanings with paramount implications, even if Link is reserved to his grunts and yelps as usual. Perhaps the volatile teenage period adds a certain coming-of-age edge. It certainly beats the drag of an introduction presented in Twilight Princess with Link performing farm work by a country mile (no pun intended). What’s most impressive is that the stoic, bland Zelda character finally evokes a sense of wanting to protect and save her from the player.

However, the introduction is unfortunately the extent of Skyward Sword’s magnificence, as everything plunges downward similarly to how the capturing of Zelda ultimately sets signals the remaining duration of the game. Where do I begin in detailing the scrolling laundry list of issues I have with Skyward Sword? Well, I’ve already mentioned Skyloft, the society situated in the sky, for starters. The hometown of the teenaged iterations of Link and Zelda is a quaint, rustic village with fluffy, white clouds obscuring all other land masses potentially surrounding it. The unassuming folk of Skyloft operate their remote community modestly, living in single room wooden cottages around the interior perimeter with the bare essentials of home decor. The meager amount of energy this community collectively uses is powered via the windmills placed all over the isle, an ingenious source of inexhaustible energy considering their high altitude location. The windmills provide energy to a few notable buildings, namely the one-stop-shop Bazaar tent at Skyloft’s center and the Knight Academy dormitories at the isle’s northwestern peak. Overlooking the cascading lake basin off the eastern side opposite the tower in the plaza is the specially designated Isle of the Goddess, where the winged statue of the goddess Hylia casts a benevolent shadow over Skyloft’s denizens. The statue also acts as a giant effigy for the community as she’s a spiritual figure regarding Skyloft’s origin along with the rest of the outside world. One may interpret the aspects of Skyloft’s communal identity as being overly pristine to the point of suspecting something darker underneath (not referring to the friendly monster Batreaux residing under the floorboards of a stable) the suspended surface, but it really is as idyllic as it sounds. There is nothing inherently wrong with Skyloft in regards to its layout or atmosphere as I was charmed by its tranquil coziness. The problem lies in how the game uses Skyloft in the grand scheme of things as it exemplifies the closest definition of a hub in a Zelda game. Really, Skyloft isn’t too different from the lively areas from the previous games such as Windfall Island or any depiction of the Hyrule epicenter around Zelda’s castle. Still, those were notable destinations on the map that Link only routinely visited on his own volition for side quests past the few obligatory story situations. Having to revisit Skyloft to restock on Link’s various wares and resume the rhythm of the narrative interspersed between the dungeons feels like Link is constantly tethered to his humble beginnings. A substantial factor of the hero’s intrepid journey is leaving the nest, which the previous games conveyed wonderfully. Revisiting Kokiri Village or Grandma’s house on Outset Island once after completing a sizable portion of the game causes a sensation that washes over the player on how much Link has grown. Being forced to visit home again and again is a half-measure that dilutes that epic effect of adventuring.

The Skyloft hub isn’t an awkward nitpick of slight streamlining found in Skyward Sword: it’s indicative of how the entire game flattens the 3D Zelda design into a fucking crepe. Let’s extend my grievance of Skyloft one meter beyond to the fluffy, crystalized masses of condensation that pillow the floating commune. Ideally, the surrounding sky should act as the game’s vast, vacant open area like the Great Sea from Wind Waker. The blue sky up above is as seemingly immeasurable if not even more so than its watery parallel down below that divides the continents. That sense of wonder with any potential discovery in this sprawling space is arguably heightened by the fact that Link’s sight is heavily shrouded by the viscous, white liquid accumulations. Therefore, exuding that grandiose scope of adventure should be a breeze according to regulation. However, my disappointment is the immeasurable factor pertaining to Skyward Sword’s wide open range of boundless air because of how confined the skies truly are. Nintendo really emphasized the “limit” in “the sky’s the limit,” misinterpreting the age-old idiom and twisting the meaning of the expression. Any of the notable destinations situated outside of Skyloft like the Lumpy Pumpkin tavern and that island with the bamboo shoots (there are so few distinctive spots) still feel like they are in the windy civilization’s jurisdiction, short ventures off the mainland with the same direct curtness as going to a convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes. That kind of trip needs to be brief in order to curb the intense cravings immediately. In a game like Zelda with no routes to any addictive substances, that sensation of basking in the free-flowing excitement of an uncharted adventure felt in Wind Waker is practically gone. The context of immersion is the only instance in which I will forsake convenience in a video game. Also, why do the clouds look so sickly? The golden, popcorn-butter tint disgusts me enough to become inclined to lecture the yokels of Skyloft on emitting greenhouse gasses. At least Link’s Loftwing animal mate soars through this semi-toxic sky gracefully, retaining some assets from Epona while adding some surprisingly smooth motion control flying features.

To add another layer of irony to how restricted the sky is, Skyward Sword’s world expands exponentially once Link dives down to the surface world underneath the clouds. Besides volumizing the scant area of the world map, the surface world is especially intriguing from a narrative standpoint. You see, the humble people of Skyloft are a bit ignorant. No, this isn’t another stab at how they’ve polluted their air quality, but how they’ve put the surface world on a pedestal. The clouds around Skyloft are so thick that the surface world is but a mythical realm told in stories of legend around their campfires. Even with breeds of horse-sized birds at hand, no one has thought to use their innate soaring prowess to penetrate through the wispy divider because of some silly indoctrination passed down several generations. Link’s call to adventure gives him the golden opportunity to break through the forbidden barrier and become the first human resident of Skyloft to explore the surface world, Zelda withstanding on account of her captivity. The surface world is divided into three districts that vaguely resemble some notable geographical tropes from series past while connecting the areas to the future Hyrule by sharing the names of the kingdom’s provinces mapped out in Twilight Princess. Faron is still a deep forested realm, but with the atmospheric mysticism dialed back compared to Twilight Princess due to the sun’s rays not being filtered through the blanketing leaves of the many trees. Eldin is the site of an active volcano like the familiar Death Mountain, only with a streaming lava moat around its perimeter as an uninviting defensive measure as opposed to falling rocks. Lastly, the Lanayru desert fills the void of what will eventually become Gerudo, and there’s even a species of dragonfly here that references Hyrule’s arid valley of sand. Lanayru is also my favorite of the three areas because of its gimmick involving hitting a purple crystal to transform the barren quicksand pits into a fertile patch of grassland over a certain radius.

From the perspective of a Skyloft resident, I’m sure the terra firma of the surface world is jaw dropping beyond comprehension. As a seasoned Zelda veteran like myself, however, the surface world is relatively dull. While shifting the landscape of Lanayru is neat and all, this desert still displays the same prevalent design issue like its woodsy and molten borders, and it's that all of these areas are as boxed in as the sky above them. Considering how thematically polar all of these areas are, it’s not surprising that there is a significant layer of division between them unlike the districts of Hyrule. The sky's the mediator between these three areas as it is the only means of transport between any of them. Link will dive off his Loftwing and use his trusty sailcloth to negate the violent impact of his crude arrival’s velocity, and return to flying around Skyloft by requesting the option at one of the various bird statues. Never will Link find a method of transporting between the three realms more organically by foot or by any grounded vehicle. It’s the sky’s way or the highway. Because of the hub world acting as a transit station between each area, the surface world feels so disconnected. The traversal process feels no different than being transported via a magical painting hanging from Peach’s Castle in Super Mario 64, something that ruins the much-needed interconnectivity of a Zelda world. Funny enough, the color signifiers of each area seen from the sky are displayed like a scalene triangle, a sense of organization that would have some sense of cohesion. However, given how short the distance is between them in the prohibitive sky hub, it inadvertently makes the surface world seem pitifully small.

The singular areas themselves are designed like playgrounds. They each offer enough ground for Link to excavate, but the parameters are far too defined. Besides a way to establish boundaries between each area, this enclosed construction makes the consistent objective for each area feasible. However, it does not make them enjoyable. Before Link enters the area’s dungeon, he must undergo the “dowsing” process which involves using his sword as a radar to ascertain the location of a myriad of collectables. The initial scent trail to follow is Zelda’s, but who is the game trying to kid thinking rescuing her will be that quick and effortless. Utilizing the sword as a dowsing rod will be put to use to find five of the same objects located across the map that have some semblance of context with progressing through to the dungeon. Having to play a game of metal detecting with this feature is especially aggravating because in order to locate the objects, the player has to compromise the third-person view in favor of Link’s first-person perspective with a beeping glowing purple reticle at the center. Apparently, this process also requires rigorous concentration, which is why Link’s movement is reduced to a glacial tiptoe when seeing through this mode. The physical and narrative pacing during these sections is slower than molasses and having to perform these tasks before EVERY dungeon is maddening.

But who is the person/thing that mandates this grating tedium? I’m glad I finally reached my segway into discussing Fi, because she was and still is the primary source of my source of frustration with Skyward Sword. On the fateful night of Zelda’s capture, Fi beckons Link to follow her to the basement level of the Isle of the Goddess to uncover the Goddess Sword (the beta version of the Master Sword) and unsheathe it from the marble casing. The levitating arcane being that led Link to this location is the spiritual soul residing in the mythical sword, and she is obligated to aid the prodigal Link to victory against the universe's dark forces. The player is going to wish that Link settled for a knock-off forged by the local Skyloft blacksmith because pulling the sacred sword and receiving Fi as an auxiliary prize feels like a curse. Fi’s idea of assisting Link is to mollycoddle him like an overbearing parent. Her constant interruptions just to play the role of Captain Obvious in every situation are an insulting slight to every player’s intelligence and shows she has zero sense of self-awareness. But how could Fi conceivably be cognizant about how useless and annoying she is given her state of existence? She’s essentially a glorified AI Nintendo implemented to facilitate the new crop of gamers that the Wii garnered with its unparalleled accessibility. She’s C-3PO if the effete, metallic know-it-all was dipped in cotton candy wax, swallowed a vocoder, and wore a cloak and fishnet stockings combo to signify the gender swap. Half of Fi’s input is telling Link her approximate percentage odds on any given scenario. Need I point out the obvious reference? Unlike Han Solo who will tell C-3P0 to shut his fucking mouth unit, Link will be forced to comply with paragraphs of text that moves along like black sludge without any objection. Fi skating on the air when Link reaches his goal at the end of a dungeon attempts to make her more personable via acts of gaiety, but the scene is uncomfortably uncanny like a holographic dead celebrity in a commercial. I want to pull a Tonya Harding and bust up her knees to make it stop. If the Fi-possessed Goddess Sword is the unevolved version of the mighty Master Sword, then the significant improvement is simply made by performing an exorcism to permanently rid the blade of its condescending spirit. Nintendo somehow managed to craft a partner character worse than the infamous Navi, and I use the word “character” tentatively when describing Fi.

Another aspect of Skyward Sword that practically shares an equal billing of vexing incompetence with Fi are the controls. We initially weren’t afraid of contesting with the radical peripheral of motion controls because Twilight Princess made them work with relative simplicity when the Wii console launched. However, one could still argue that Twilight Princess was initially designed as the Gamecube’s swansong and the motion controls for the Wii version were tacked on. Skyward Sword is the only mainline Zelda title exclusive to the Wii with the motion controls in mind. Sometime in the middle of the Wii’s lifespan, Nintendo decided to amplify the Wii’s true motion control capabilities by introducing the Wii Motion Plus appendage wedged between the Wiimote and the nunchuck. Now, the kinetic involvement in using the motion controls would feel eerily closer to reality, or at least that was the ideal result. While the additional fluidity of the add-on sounds fun in practice, Nintendo did not consider that a game like Zelda involves a deeper, more complex gameplay schema than the party sports showcase Wii Sports Resort and the hack-n-slash sequel Red Steel 2. When the extensive range of motion is mixed in with analog control and a use for each button on the controller, the multifaceted amalgamation can make the general controls awkward, to say the least. Link’s unsheathed sword stance sees him pointing it outward like an amateur fencer, making me worry that one clumsy trip will cause him to get impaled. Of course, Link can’t throw too much caution to the wind when moving because he now has to contend with a new stamina gauge which is both colored and shaped like a lime. It depletes quickly when Link is sprinting or executing the roll move (making the player use it sparingly now), but it also accounts for advanced sword skills like the diagonal and horizontal spin dash. I guess Link’s stamina was a new consideration to aid in the kinetic immersion of the enhanced motion controls but besides a few neat puzzles, I’m not certain the implementation was entirely necessary.

Putting Link’s energy into better consideration will be tested on the field with the familiar range of enemies like the flying Keese and the gelatinous Chuchus. The common Zelda enemies that the game overloads on Link are the Moblins/Bokoblins. The ugly, mangy swine shaped in Ganon’s image are the most humanoid of Hyrule’s storied bestiary, which means they are the prime candidate for testing the player’s dexterity with the Wii Motion Plus controls by blocking Link’s sword swipes with rough-hewn cutlery. Their defensive maneuvers are surprisingly responsive and their numbers can get overwhelming when one with a horn calls in the cavalry to deal with Link intruding on their territory. The Lizalfos enemies also appear to challenge the controls even further with greater agility and sturdier defense, but much less frequently as they are endemic to the Eldin region. For the most part, the combat controls with standard enemy encounters are tolerable. The controls become an unyielding chore regarding the forward stab maneuver outside of the four cardinal directions. Executing this move always seems like a stroke of luck and in instances with the totem pole laser and the scorpion boss battle, the player can be punished unfairly if the controls decide to waver. Overall, the level of player involvement does somewhat fulfill my wish for 3D Zelda’s combat to engage the player with substantial difficulty. Still, with the context of Skyward Sword’s motion controls, it’s like being grateful that my brisk morning walks are more strenuous now that I’ve contracted polio.

One aspect that gels well with the motion controls are the bevy of new gadgets at Link’s disposal. The item lineup in Skyward Sword dials back on the audacious factor that made the ones from Twilight Princess so entertaining, but more than compensates for their more frequent usage and utility. The Beetle is a mechanical drone in the shape of the insect of its namesake, fluttering around like a remote control biplane to navigate through tight, out-of-reach crevices and drop bomb plants on rocks and enemies from up above. The Gust Bellows blasts away hefty mounds of sand that have accumulated from Lanayru’s fallow decades while the whip allows Link to latch onto switches from a distance and snatch trinkets from enemies. Bombs have been integral items since the dawn of the series, but Skyward Sword marks the first time where Link can roll them like explosive bowling balls. All of these nifty tools were significant proponents to making the first three dungeons as engaging as they were. I thoroughly enjoyed cutting down spider webs with the Beetle in the Skyview Temple, rolling bombs down chutes to blow up the sea lava monkeys in the Earth Temple, and rotating pulleys on platforms in the Lanayru Mining Facility with the Gust Bellows. They all elevated dungeons that would quite frankly be far less memorable without them. Each of these items can also be upgraded at the blacksmith’s bench in the Skyloft Bazaar using the various materials that enemies leave behind, building on their range of utility even further.

The second half of Skyward Sword is signaled similarly to its 3D Zelda predecessors. Once the first quest of piecing together three essential artifacts is complete, another version of the previous arc is presented with a whole new slew of dungeons to excavate. The narrative context that discerns Skyward Sword from the others is that the latter arc is spurred by the need for Link to enhance the Goddess Sword. The “skyward sword” alluded to in the title does not refer to the relative elevation of the sword’s burial site, nor is it a phallic innuendo. Link’s most strapping skill with this sword is the Skyward Strike, achieved by pointing the Wiimote upward and holding it to charge solar or holy energy to release it as a ranged vertical slice. This move functioned well when it came to activating the winged triforce icons, but its tepid burst is indicative of its vestigial state of weakness that Link must enhance to crack open a time gate where Zelda is taking refuge. Summoning the sacred flames also involves the harmonious strumming of a divine harp, this game’s instrument that can be played with the Wiimote, and the plans are conducted out of another temple in the (not so) far off reaches of the cloudy domain of Thunderhead. So far, Skyward Sword does enough to deviate from the tried and true Zelda quest line by altering the context a bit.

The dungeons featured in the second half of Skyward Sword are the most exemplary sections in the game. Behind the glistening waterfall at the edge of the river in Faron Woods lies the Ancient Cistern, a sanctified temple illuminated in the divine, bright light of the Gods. This Hindu-esque holy garden with blooming lotus flowers and lily pads resting on the surface of its majestic pool of water at its center is a stunningly gorgeous scene, the exemplary case of the game’s impressionistic visuals finally flourishing. Before one gets the impression that Link has been raptured away to the promised land, the heaven depicted here has no Earth as a median point to prevent Hell from being its conjunctive neighbor. The Ancient Cistern’s basement is a contrasting underworld cave with a moody blue stillness, coagulated streams of blood, and hordes of condemned, Bokoblin zombies. The basement section of the cistern doesn’t exactly compete with the same level of visual splendor as its opposite side, but the contrast is still conveyed effectively. Using a boat in Lanayru with a time-crystal attached, Link and one of the native plucky robots set sail on the once-bountiful sea, manipulating the effects of the purple gem to emulate its former prosperity. A cloaked pirate vessel simply referred to as the “Sandship” has taken the crew of the Lanayru robot with the sea captain’s hat hostage, and Link must rescue the lot of them while attempting to uncover the next sacred flame somewhere on board. Not only is a pirate ship a unique and exciting setting for a Zelda dungeon, but the motif of working in tandem with the unfruitful present and cultivated past of the area makes for some wickedly clever puzzles here. Shish Kebabing thorny water plants to make for magma platforms and clawing at the backsides of humongous centipedes in the Fire Sanctuary is also cool, I guess. I’d place the former two dungeons side by side with some of the series finest, along with the fight against the golden Shiva golem Koloktos at the climax of the Ancient Cistern. Tearing him limb from limb with the whip and brutally breaking open his core with his own giant scimitar sword feels incredibly cathartic. Unfortunately, the kraken Sandship boss Tentalus is not worthy of its ostentatious “Abyssal-Leviathan” title. It looks like a goofy Monsters Inc. extra with a weak spot so conspicuous that even Fi never bothered to point it out.

The caveat to experiencing Skyward Sword’s best sections is that Link will have to endure a smattering of busy work on the way up to them. I could’ve started discussing the game’s pension for padding during the passage on the dowsing fetch quests, but stalling between the meat of the game persists to an especially egregious degree in the second half. I’m not referring to collecting the Sacred Tears across each area as I enjoy the more contained and gamified version of what was presented in Twilight Princess with genuinely harrowing stakes. What I don’t approve of is the portions that occur between the Sacred Tears scavenger hunt and entering a dungeon, minus the thrilling minecart rollercoaster segments in Lanayru. Skyward Sword is already pushing the revisitation of these areas for a second time, so you can imagine that blowing through the first dungeon again is skating on thin ice with my patience. Escorting a particularly arrogant Lanayru robot through the fiery cliffs of Eldin to douse the flames around Fire Sanctuary wasn’t exactly a highlight either. To make the vein on my head pulsate even more with the growing irritation, the final quest to collect the three pieces of the Triforce is the epitome of inanity. What herculean objectives must be met to collect such consecrated pieces of Zelda lore? Swimming for music notes in a flooded Faron, another handicapped stealth mission in Eldin, and growing a peach from a tree that grows in Lanayru. By this point, one could get the impression that the game is fucking with them with all this repetition. On top of all of that, Link must attend to repressing The Imprisoned in the Sealed Grounds every so often. The scaly, nightmarish monster with a throng of razor-sharp teeth shakes his rooted encumbrance to wreak havoc on the Sealed Grounds as chronically as a bad case of gonorrhea, and Link must send him back to a state of concealment THREE times throughout the game. Was all of this content necessary? The extensive padding just bloats an already lengthy game to the point where my sanity is bound to burst.

Link also fights Skyward Sword’s main antagonist three times, but the narrative staves off from exhausting his encounters. The surprising part about this pervasive villain is that it isn’t Ganondorf. Sure, a flame-haired prototype of Ganondorf named Demise is the looming threat over Skyloft and the epic final boss of the game. Still, the technical definition of an antagonist is the strongest counteractive force against the protagonist, and this description more appropriately fits Demises apprentice Ghirahim. This androgynous, thin white duke of evil initially acts as the first roadblock as his fight will demand a reasonable level of proficiency with the motion controls. His second fight in the Fire Sanctuary will act as another checkup, and the third fight before the final boss is the penultimate culmination of motion controlled prowess. While his fights verge on being unfair because the controls are inherently finicky, I still appreciated Ghirahim as a character. It’s refreshing for a Zelda game to feature a villain that is a constant physical impediment to progress rather than the dark omnipresence of Ganondorf until Link faces him at the very end. That, and Ghirahim’s devilish charm adds a charismatic layer to his sadism as he waves his snake-like tongue around Link’s ear and threatens to torture him so ruthlessly that “he’ll grow deaf from the sounds of his own shrieks of pain.” A genuinely bone-chilling threat if there ever was one. One highlight moment with Ghirahim is his untimely end when Demise uses his puppet one last time to forcefully extract the weapon inside him. Even though his master has murdered him after the lengths he went through to resurrect him, he still accepts his fate with psychotic glee. The man is fucking daffy.

Discussing Ghirahim’s strengths as a villain reminds me of the compliments I gave Skyward Sword at the beginning. I realize that Skyward Sword’s true substance lies in all of its characters, their interactions with one another, and the growth that occurs by the end of their adventure. Zelda is no longer the rosy-cheeked little girl she once was after braving the dire implications of her eminent destiny. She’s matured greatly through this whole ordeal, and the player can determine this even without the weighty logs of exposition she delivers. Impa, Zelda’s Sheikah protector from Ocarina of Time, returns in two forms of time, with her elderly form assisting Link in the present and her younger form for Zelda in the past. When she disintegrates from old age at the end, the moment is profoundly bittersweet because of the time in which Link got to interact with her. Really, the outstanding case of character growth in Skyward Sword may come as a shock to the uninitiated, and that is regarding Groose. At the middle mark of the game, this school bully stereotype (complete with his own two little cronies too) learns that he’s not the center of the universe. I mean this quite literally as the wizened soothsayer Impa states matter-of-factly that Groose is not destined to save Zelda like Link. This revelation that his hopes with Zelda are fruitless causes a moment of clarity to occur. With his biggest insecurity reaching a point of closure, he gets over himself and starts making himself useful as a supporting character to the cause. By the end, this meathead douchebag with a stupid hairdo actually became a loveable big lug of a guy who became Link’s friend. Has the franchise ever reached a positive character arc of this magnitude before? Impeccably, this is a first.

Well, Ocarina of Time: I hope you’re happy. How can you still flaunt your impact with a sense of pride when Skyward Sword is a product of your legacy? While Wind Waker and Twilight Princess both came with minor deterrents, I still defended them as worthy successors to Ocarina of Time with great fervor. Now, because of Skyward Sword, I am marching alongside my dismayed Zelda fan brethren waving a picket sign that says, “NOT MY ZELDA” in bold red letters. I suppose a 3D Zelda title that is a slave to its design philosophy was bubbling up on the surface for quite a while, and Skyward Sword was the boiling point. Skyward Sword is rife with uninteresting filler content, a shoddy use of the motion control scheme, and overstays the welcome of all of its areas. It has a partner character as grating as Navi, gameplay more repetitive than Majora’s Mask, a Triforce quest as insufferable as Wind Waker, and has a more sluggish sense of pacing than Twilight Princess. Skyward Sword is a wake-up call that what Ocarina of Time established for the series has finally run its course. I’m glad I played it again after all these years as its positive aspects started blossoming in my mind. Yet, Skyward Sword possesses too many objective flaws to forgive and gloss over.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

One cannot underestimate the impact of being included in the character roster of a Super Smash Bros. game. Really, everyone wants their favorite franchise represented in Nintendo’s gilded crossover fighting series. Representing them in the fray with some of the most popular and impactful video game characters of all time is more than enough affirmation that a character along with their franchise is worthy enough to be in the upper echelons of the video game canon. However, the echoes of people clamoring for a franchise that has yet to receive an invitation to join the Super Smash Bros. ranks implies that this franchise is already celebrated enough. Does the series or its fans really need the vindication? The actual magic of Smash Bros. is how it can revitalize interest in a dormant IP whose fans have forsaken them due to an idle presence over a long period. For some reason, director Masahiro Sakurai seemed to overtly catalyze this effect with Kid Icarus. The franchise's starring angel Pit made his Smash Bros. debut in the Wii title Brawl, and his fresh presence was more pronounced than any logic would allow. By all means, Pit should’ve been a Smash Bros. benchwarmer in the same minor league as the Ice Climbers and Mr. Game and Watch. He should’ve had a subsidiary presence in Brawl due to his inclusion being a historical lark to remind us of Nintendo’s storied past. Yet, Pit is present throughout the entire Subspace Emissary campaign, and he’s paired up with Mario, Link, Yoshi, and Kirby: THE prime contenders for a Mount Rushmore of Nintendo characters. Sakurai ostensibly saw a potential in Pit that had been undermined by decades of inactivity and felt keen to put the fallen angel front and center among Nintendo’s mascot elites. I agree with Mr. Sakurai, as the varied gameplay mechanics and rich, ancient Greek mythos gave Kid Icarus more to expand on as opposed to the other NES franchises that Nintendo decided to abandon. By some miracle, Sakurai got his wish to situate himself at the helm of jumpstarting the cryogenically frozen Kid Icarus franchise and steering it in the direction he saw fit. Kid Icarus: Uprising is Sakurai’s monster to his Dr. Frankenstien, doing the seemingly impossible by resurrecting something from the dead and coaxing all of us into believing that it can function among the living. To everyone’s astonishment, Sakurai’s creation proves that Kid Icarus can not only compete with Nintendo’s fortunate sons but surpass their capabilities as well.

It makes me wonder what Sakurai’s first step in developing Uprising was because his template to use as a reference was stone-cold stale. The last time Kid Icarus showed its face to the gaming public, it was rendered in black and white, 8-bit pixels on the first iteration of the Gameboy. In the wake of its two-decade absence, Kid Icarus slept through so many vital evolutionary periods that at this point, the series would have to sprint like an Olympic runner in order to catch up with the rest of Nintendo’s properties. Uprising is Kid Icarus's 3D debut, an awkward aspect of development three generations prior that the rest of Nintendo’s early IPs already endured the growing pains of. How could Kid Icarus possibly make that desired impact in the eighth generation of gaming when its lack of experience with modern hardware forces the developers to apply water wings to safely swim in the deep end of the third dimension? After some further consideration, perhaps evaluating Uprising in this manner is looking at it from the wrong perspective. You see, developing every beloved Nintendo property during the early 3D era was especially fretful because the IPs had earned a golden reputation through a series of exceptional, ground-breaking entries in the pixelated generations. Their 3D breakouts still needed to uphold that excellent standard of quality despite the underdeveloped new framework they were sculpting these games with. Fans would’ve been devastated if the third dimension inhibited Link from exploring intricately-designed dungeons or if it stilted Mario’s sprightly acrobatic abilities. The hidden, ironic beauty of developing a Kid Icarus game in a more elaborate graphical plane after two decades is that no one cares about Kid Icarus, everyone except for Sakurai evidently. One most likely can’t have any expectations for something that hasn’t crossed their mind for so long, so Sakurai is given free rein to reimagine Kid Icarus to his liking as long as it retains the same semi-notable protagonist in a realm inspired by Greek mythology. For Uprising, Sakurai didn’t refurbish the rooms of Kid Icarus: he constructed a brand-new house.

Most likely, no one would anticipate Kid Icarus reinventing itself as a third-person shooter. The NES Kid Icarus was staunchly in the 2D platformer genre with the vast majority of its 8-bit ilk, even if its implementation of the genre’s tropes were a scattered mess of ascension levels and weirdly-paced traditional side-scrolling. This lack of cohesiveness and ingenuity is a substantial sum of the reasons why Kid Icarus wasn’t greenlit for greatness like its peers, so it’s for the best that Sakurai practically wiped the slate clean. However, Sakurai still somehow figured that converging two different swirls of genre flavors in the same gameplay cone was a necessary element of Kid Icarus. This time, Kid Icarus tackles two separate methods of blasting enemies away from afar. Each level in Uprising is divided into two distinct shooting sections. The first of the two is a rail shooter where a stream of enemies will engulf the screen as Pit soars through the skies, his contrived trajectory guided by the divine control of Palutena from the heavens. Once Pit survives the ambush above the clouds, the grounded section begins as Pit mows down the armies of the underworld with his full bodily autonomy. The primary goal of the latter half of these levels is to charge toward its boss battle apex point while attempting to endure enough firepower from its cronies on the journey toward it. This halved progression dynamic persists for every single level in Uprising, and only one level deviates from the formula for the sake of plot point relevancy.

One might be concerned that Uprising’s dedicated pension for this predictable level arrangement for a whopping 25 total chapters would cause the player to become numbed by the repetition. Fortunately, Uprising’s gameplay for both the sky and the soil is consistently enthralling. Ripping through the legions of mythical demon creatures with a blazing stream of energy bullets never grows old because of how consistently energetic the action is, with a triumphantly bombastic tone fit for an epic Greek tale to bolster the scope of the scene. Plus, Pit isn’t limited to his piddly, Cupid-esque bow and arrow combination typical of his fairy/angel status. In Uprising, Pit’s arsenal is more stacked than a Texan watering hole. From the long-ranged rapid-fire staffs to the razor-sharp claws and blunt clubs for getting up close and personal, to the balanced blades in between, the sheer variety of deadly toys to play with along with their varied range of practicalities on the field should retain that thrill of combat for the player.

Also, the underworld must be like the United States of afterlife realms because their forces are a melting pot of creatures. We amusingly get to see all of the 8-bit enemies from the NES Kid Icarus rendered in the third dimension, ranging from the one-eyed Monoeyes, the Groucho Marx masked Specknoses, to the more harrowing enemies of the Reapers and notorious Eggplant Wizards. Don’t worry, the eggplant effect is only a temporary curse in Uprising. The developers obviously streamlined dealing with these baddies a bit from their stiff NES origins. Fighting these foes and gaining a profit of hearts from their defeat never makes for a tense encounter. Coupled with all of the new enemies that Uprising introduces like the whale enemy vessel Belunka, cyclops juggernaut Clubberskull, and deceitful, oddly sexy treasure chest Mimicutie enemy most likely stolen from Dark Souls, conquering the underworld’s eclectic army adds another layer of prolonged investment into playing Uprising. The variation also extends to the bosses, of which Pit fights at least one per level. It’s a Clash of the Titans roulette in Uprising as several of the bosses are depictions of notable creatures in classic Greek texts like Pandora and Thanatos or at least alluded to the mythos with the hellhound Twinbellows and giant squid Kraken. While these bosses are as enjoyable, none of their fights are as challenging as dealing with hordes of regular enemies.

The player also has the freedom to make Uprising as enveloping as they please by altering the challenge meter. Uprising’s approach to difficulty is to implement a scale that indicates how overwhelming the level will be on an ascending scale from one to ten with a single-word description coinciding with the specific metric placing. I’d call it the game’s “spice level” if the scale’s visual wasn’t represented by a boiling pot of liquid, ruining my clever food analogy as a result. Still, betting hearts that mix into the soupy, bubbling concoction that represents the difficulty is like sprinkling chili pepper flakes over any dish; your time consuming it will prove to be more memorable, but be careful not to inadvertently punish yourself. The minimalist cartoon drawings above the scale depicting a stick figure Pit being shrouded by more demons should give the player enough of an indication of what to expect, including the richer rewards as compensation for the gamble. When the player becomes aware of their actual skill threshold the hard way and dies as a result, the cauldron will spill all of the wagered hearts and demote them to a marginally decreased difficulty for the remaining duration of the level. This penalty is the game’s not-so-subtle way of signaling to the player that they can’t handle the heat, adjusting more appropriately if need be. While compartmentalizing the levels per decimal makes the range of difficulty superfluous in most spots, the demerit for failure is a brilliant motivator for the player to amplify their abilities. Luckily, at the player’s sweet spot, the game heartily obliges the player with plenty of food and hot spring locations to heal the player, hampering death as much as humanly possible.

Bless all that is holy for all of the game’s accommodations because the player will constantly have to grapple with Uprising’s austere control scheme in the meantime. Handheld systems aren’t designed for games involving intricate, multifaceted button schematics, and not even the 3DS with its innovative, flexible analog control can elevate a handheld to the titanic stature of its home console counterparts. The player aims Pit’s shots by directing the reticle with the stylus and fires with the back L button. This button prompt functions adequately during the opening flight sections when Palutena is manning Pit’s forward velocity. Once Pit regains the use of his legs, however, the wider range of movement greatly exposes the glaring issues with the game’s controls. I thought carpal tunnel syndrome was an urban legend before I played this game, and now my left wrist is screaming bloody murder at me to put it out of its misery. It feels like I’ve been choking the chicken for a week straight. Working the stylus constantly to aim and man the camera with your right hand while holding the system and pressing the back L button with your left hand unbalances the standard equilibrium of holding a controller. Having my non-dominant hand perform the bulk of supporting my kinetic involvement in the game makes every growing moment tense in the worst way possible, only because the cramping was making my hand slip. I never humor Nintendo’s message to take a break from their games as part of their health-conscious initiative but in this case, everyone should heed to the suggestion. I speak with the utmost objectivity when I say that Uprising’s control schematic is probably the worst I’ve experienced across all the games I’ve ever played. They are the sole reason why Uprising is a divisive title, with some people feeling confident in discarding the game completely because of them. The player can change the control scheme in the menu, but no amount of modifications can feasibly make them comfortable. The actual solution would’ve been to develop this game for the Wii, as the dual components of the motion-control Wiimote for aiming and the analog nunchuck to swiftly dodge enemy fire would’ve rectified the issues COMPLETELY. However, Nintendo seemed to have premeditatively given the Wii a premature death after 2011 to starve their consumers for the launch of their next console at the end of 2012, so development time for Uprising inconveniently settled it to the 3DS during the Wii’s purgatorial twilight year that Nintendo mandated.

The controls are a damn shame considering the caliber of Uprising’s gameplay they are tarnishing. Not only that, but the fact that gamers will be deterred away from witnessing the presentational aspects of Uprising that are of equally high quality is a larger tragedy. If your wrists are on their last limbs and are liable to burst from the pressure, I grant you sanction to play this game on a lower difficulty just to hone your focus on the game’s story and characters. It’s these specific facets of Uprising that make me grateful for Sakurai revitalizing the Kid Icarus franchise most of all.

Surprisingly, Uprising is genuinely funny. The first Kid Icarus game featured a few subtle hints of humor, but Uprising revels in being glib. The game is cheekier than Jennifer Lopez wearing a pair of jean shorts. Uprising is as aware of its quarter-century slumber as Laura Palmer and jabs at that fact quite often. Palutena discusses facing off against foes of yore like the Hewdra and Pandora by displaying screenshots of their previous 8-bit encounters. Pandora is even rendered as her primitive ghostly blue flame again in the third dimension to punch this joke to the extra mile. The three heads of the Hewdra are always interrupting each other in a battle for dominant attention, and a rotund, jubilant Thanatos is the antithesis of his usual draconian depiction as the lord of death. Because the game is self-aware, the characters naturally use their advanced perception to break the fourth wall. This tried and true postmodern practice isn’t only used to poke and prod at Kid Icarus but to reference other Nintendo franchises. Let’s say that you made the observation that the Komayto creatures shared a strong resemblance to a Metroid, Uprising affirms that connection for you. While the humorous direction can verge into being too quippy at times, it’s refreshing to see a Nintendo franchise that doesn’t take itself so seriously. It’s Nintendo’s quaint rendition of subverting the ancient Greek lore in a way that fits the company’s accessibility, as opposed to Sony massacring them in God of War.

Uprising’s jaunty tone benefits the characters most of all. It’s ironic that even though we’ve seen Mario and Link’s illustrious history every step of the way that even almost four decades later, all these characters can muster up are still only emotive grunts and one-liners emitted through cartoony vocalization. This lack of substantive characterization extends across almost all of Nintendo’s mascots, for narrative simplicity seems to be an idiosyncratic element of their brand. Pit being untethered by Nintendo tradition gives Sakurai the freedom to make the supernatural angel feel as human as possible. All we could infer from Pit’s personality from his 8-bit incarnation is his commitment to Palutena, as the length he was willing to go to rescue her was rewarded with a promotion at the end of the game. Sakurai extrapolated on this one trait to formulate a character that is a lot like Spongebob Squarepants. No really, Pits shares a lot in common with Nickelodeon’s yellow, undersea icon. They are both overly positive, have a strong sense of duty to the point of being sycophantic to their superiors, and both desire the means to travel faster of their own volition (a boat and the capacity to fly, respectively). They’re also both a pair of squeaky-clean, goody-two-shoes, but I suppose Pit can’t help himself as an angelic entity. Pit’s endearingly dorky disposition is expressed through the background conversations with Palutena, commenting on every bit of action that takes place during a level. While Palutena is essentially a glorified guide to aid the player, her lighthearted banter with Pit gives her enough personality to supersede her role as an advisor. At least this position gives her more character presence than the damsel in distress figure she was before, the fate commonplace for every other female with royal eminence at Nintendo.

The characters that banter with Pit the most are the other supporting characters. Pit’s diminutive role in both status and physical stature seems to be heavily contrasted with the rest of Uprising’s cast. Magnus is a human character that aids Pit in fighting the Dark Lord Gaol in chapter two. His dark features and apparent strength to wield his mighty greatsword make him the masculinity incarnate ying to Pit’s soft, inoffensive yang. Viridi, the petite and bratty goddess of nature of Sakurai’s own creation, uses her godly distinction to undermine Pit. She dishes out more insults than Kazooie, and Pit is too determined and proud to let her penetrate his confidence. Her temporary role in guiding Pit highlights her foil role to Palutena, as she certainly isn’t as pragmatic or patient with Pit as she is. Speaking of confidence, the flaming, self-proclaimed sun god Pyrrhon exudes a sense of quasi-heroic cockiness that Pit is too humble to share. Really, the most on-the-nose contrast with Pit is Dark Pit, a more dour-looking version of Pit with a black tunic formed by our hero staring at his own reflection for one moment too many in the Mirror of Truth. While Dark Pit is obviously equal to Pit in size and relative repute, Dark Pit defies the character traits of his originator with his rogue attitude and edgier demeanor. Well, it depicts a better character contrast than Sonic and Shadow, at least. Pit’s interactions with all of these character foils are thoroughly entertaining and had me smirking throughout. I just wish that these conversations didn’t take place during battle, as they tended to be quite distracting.

To everyone’s further surprise, the bounciness of Uprising’s characters even extends to its main antagonist. No, not Medusa, as she’s manically determined as any typical villain would be to conquer the world and crush her adversaries. I’m referring to the game’s TRUE main antagonist. In the ninth chapter, the game intentionally misleads the player into thinking that the fight against Medusa is the climactic point of the game with her being the main villain of the first game along with Pit decked out with the three sacred treasures. In a turn of events, Medusa is merely a red herring for Hades, the king of the underworld and the primary cause of this holy attrition. This twist was not surprising because I still remember my Greek mythology education from middle school. What was a shock was that the game was barely half over at this point.

Unlike Medusa, Hades is a vibrant, charismatic antagonist. You know the phenomenon that occurs when people have morbid lines of work like being a doctor or mortician and form a callous to cope with the hardships? Well, bearing the brunt of the world’s deceased has turned the lord of the underworld into a flamboyant clown that is at least three degrees related to Tim Curry’s Frank-N-Furter from Rocky Horror Picture Show. His growing indifference to death and destruction due to his godly vocation has turned him into a raving sociopath, toying with mankind like a kid does to an ant hill with a magnifying glass. Despite his flippant manner, Hades still retains his eminence. The newest idea Hades has conjured up is fabricating the existence of a wish seed, something the humans wage war over out of gullible desperation. In the event of the humans being distracted, an alien race called the Aurum takes advantage of the earth’s resources. All of this culminates in Pit spiraling into utter defeat after the seventeenth chapter. Three years after his defeat, Pit has to clean up the mess in the wake of his failures and train himself to finally vanquish Hades harder than Rocky did eating all of those raw eggs. While Hades' titanic status as the main antagonist is effectively portrayed when our hero succumbs to his might, the way it is executed is rather clumsy. The Aurum is an asinine plot device whose middling relevance only seems to be tied to causing Pit’s downfall. I’m not entirely sure the parasitic Chaos Kin is really relevant to the grand overarching plot either. The goal of the story should’ve focused entirely on Hades, who is formidable enough to carry the weight of the main antagonist role. Also, Hades' time in the spotlight delves into some insightful musings on the human condition from divine outsiders looking in. While Hades and the other gods to a lesser extent have contempt for humans because of their pathetically selfish propensities, Pit eloquently states that the gods only exist because humans are the only mortal beings with the intellectual capacity for spirituality, conveying a symbiotic relationship between the heavens and the earth. After all, what is a God to a non-believer? Is Uprising actually delving into complex philosophies relating to faith and human nature? Isn’t this game from the same company where an Italian guy saves the same woman again and again and a pink marshmallow eats everything in sight?

When all is seemingly done, Uprising elongates its playtime even more with a bevy of content outside of the main story. All of the additions surrounding Uprising starts to remind everyone that Sakurai is the driving force behind Super Smash Bros. A checklist prescribed by Palutena offers over 120 boxes that reveal an extravagant painting per box checked off. These tasks range from using a specific weapon type to defeat a boss, clearing a chapter under a certain time, to being transformed into an eggplant. Real funny, Sakurai. After a certain point, the player unlocks TWO MORE checklists commissioned by Viridi and Hades with the same amount of objectives. Little figures of the game’s characters and settings similar to the trophies in Smash Bros. are unlocked via a chance mechanic like the aforementioned series and are displayed in a gallery with descriptive blurbs. The player can also engage in an online multiplayer mode that models a capture-the-flag game with skins of Pit divided by white and black factions. The game offers as much content to sink as Sakurai’s more involved IP, and that one has an incredible amount of star power.

Sakurai profoundly loves Kid Icarus. How else do you explain the finished product of Kid Icarus: Uprising? Sakurai wasn’t even involved with Nintendo, much less with the creation of the first Kid Icarus on the NES, yet he raised the franchise like it was his own child. His unconditional passion for the forgotten Kid Icarus IP has enabled the prolific Nintendo developer to convey his strong feelings with an impressive amount of hard work attached. His efforts have done more than convince me of Kid Icarus's full potential: he’s convinced me that Pit should headline the next Smash Bros. game. His one comeback arguably features more content, pizzazz, and personality than all of Nintendo’s more celebrated series, which is just absolutely astonishing. Unfortunately, the compromise with the controls that Sakurai has to make in adhering to the technically inferior 3DS handheld is the game’s Achilles heel. Actually, it’s Uprising’s bulbous, salient zit on its beautiful face. It's enough to keep Pit out of being the beau of the ball for Nintendo's 2012 prom. For those who appreciated everything else in the game regardless of its controls, Sakurai made a miracle in making us all clamor for more Kid Icarus after several years of total indifference. Bravo!

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

The rule of thumb when it comes to a retrospective cultural appreciation for a period of our recent past is to revel in it after two decades. Approximately twenty years is the sweet spot to open the floodgates to swim in the nostalgic backwash of yesteryear pop culture, for one decade would still remain in recent memory and three decades almost verges into celebrating the youth of one’s parents, and nothing they liked can possibly be cool. Nowadays, teenagers are interested in the fads of the 2000s (Jesus Christ) but when I was growing up in that decade, everyone was clamoring for the 1980s. From the resurgence of post-punk and new wave, the live-action rise of Transformers, to all of the content on VH1 Classic, the idea that the 1980s were a glorious, gilded time to be alive was efficiently drilled into my brain. I almost had to remind myself that the decade ended six years before I was born because I had been exposed to so much of its cultural tapestry as a child via the retrospection of the older folk who experienced it firsthand. It beats being terrified by the post-911 war on terror news or TiVoing the new sleazy, shameless reality TV show on the hospice bed of the once respected MTV. You don’t know how many times I was reminded that MTV used to exclusively play music videos back in the 1980s, truly the definitive statement for the rush of nostalgic wonderment granted to the 1980s after it had been hazy in the pop culture zeitgeist for over a decade. One of the pieces of media from the 2000s that might go unnoticed as a blatant work of 1980s pastiche is Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. If there is any example of a work that soaks in the retro kitsch of the 1980s in a towel and wrings it over the dawn of the modern 21st century, it’s this game.

However, for as deliberate as Vice City is as a vessel of 1980s nostalgia, that component of its identity might be undermined by several other aspects surrounding its legacy. Vice City is the fourth installment in the infamous Grand Theft Auto series and the second title to be rendered as a 3D open-world game. The latter of Vice City’s placements in the franchise is the more pertinent one, for it’s the entry that followed up the ground-shaking splash of the first 3D GTA game that eroded the moral fiber of modern society. Or, at least that’s what the menopausal soccer moms and fuddy-duddy political figures in Washington DC would have you believe. At the same time these people were dreading the new tidal wave of unmitigated amoral mayhem Vice City would bring, gamers everywhere couldn’t wait to get swept up in its riptide current. Vice City was especially exciting because the series could only improve on the open-world formula that GTA III established. Its predecessor merely provided a base level of player-induced chaos with a staggeringly simple foundation with half-baked gameplay mechanics and narrative weight. Even though GTA III admittedly was the first of its kind, the game is like the equivalent of putting two pieces of bread together with some mayonnaise and calling it a sandwich. While technically true, it leaves a lot to be desired. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much hindsight to note that this sandwich would be both tastier and more enriching with some bacon, lettuce, and tomato on it, and that’s the meat of what Vice City could potentially provide to the open-world crime experience.

Crafting a full-fledged GTA title around the aesthetic of the 1980s was actually a complementary fit for the franchise. Gangster films are a primary influence on GTA in the narrative sense, and the 1983 blockbuster crime epic Scarface is among the most inspiring. Songs featured in that film’s soundtrack even make up the theme for a radio station’s playlist in the previous game. Specifically, in the case of Vice City, Rockstar seemingly attempted to formulate a tracing of the hit Brian De Palma and Oliver Stone collaboration, hoping to smudge the film’s trademark print as if doing so meant that the two Hollywood giants couldn’t take legal action against them. Flying too close to the copyright-infringing sun aside, what are the benefits of using Scarface as your muse to channel the decade in which it was released? Scarface, more so than any of its other contemporaries or gangster film elders, is an excessive depiction of the crime life. Everything from the constant indulgence in the city nightlife, the violent, bombastic action sequences, to shouty Al Pacino chewing the scenery as Tony Montana exudes a whirlwind of hedonistic adrenaline relatively associated with living on the fringe of legality. Two words: cocaine snowman. Yet, all of these hyper-exaggerated elements that make up the tone and direction of Scarface never verge on accidentally making the film overblown to the point where it’s ridiculous, or at least not at the time. The prevailing aura of the 1980s was to revel in excess thanks to the economic boom at the beginning of the decade, also making material gain a stark signifier of American “freedom” in the largest anti-communist decade since the 1950s. Only in the 1980s would Scarface be approached with the utmost sincerity. Try squeezing the line, “This town is like a great big pussy waiting to get fucked” in The Godfather, and see how that film stands up as a masterpiece.

While Al Pacino’s Tony Montagna is admittedly a bit over the top, one can’t deny his magnetic screen presence while we witness the tragic downfall of his rags-to-riches story. Because the character is such an integral part of Scarface’s identity, Rockstar needed to formulate their own Tony Montagna without actually calling him as such, much to their disappointment. Race-swapping the character to an Italian guy named Tommy Vercetti did the trick, even though the uncanny connections still scream Scarface arc from the top of the Miami Freedom Tower. Instead of introducing him as an immigrant, Rockstar cements that its main characters always enter the fray the same after a stint in the big house, with Tommy being released after a fifteen-year sentence as opposed to running on the lam. Apparently, Tommy was not a respected figure in the Italian crime syndicate as his old boss Sonny Forelli immediately sent him away to do some grunt work after a decade and a half of his absence. During a drug deal, a third party infiltrates the rendezvous and gun down Tommy and the others, surviving the unforeseen attack by the skin of his teeth. Because the deal is a bust, Sonny demands that Tommy compensate for the money lost and find the culprit behind the breach, even though Sonny is obviously playing him for a fool here.

Thankfully, clarity hit Rockstar over the head within the year after GTA III hit the shelves and gave Tommy a voice and a defined personality. Not only that, Ray fucking Liotta supplies his vocal talents to another low-level mobster on his rise to the top like the character from Goodfellas he is best known for. Puts the success of GTA III into perspective, does it not? Also, we can be thankful that Ray Liotta doesn't ham up Tommy’s inflections in an attempt to impersonate Tony Montana and that Tommy is relatively down-to-earth and pragmatic for a guy who is working his way to overthrow all organized crime in southern Florida. Ray Liotta even monologues Tommy’s thoughts and feelings like his Henry Hill voiceover to enhance his personability. Admittedly, surpassing the mute avatar character Claude as a substantial character is not a high bar to hurdle over. Still, Tommy provides enough charisma and personality to remedy Rockstar’s mistake they made in the previous game and put the franchise on the right track from here on out. Maybe I just like his festive Hawaiian shirt.

While the supporting characters in GTA III possessed the ability to speak, the overall cast still somehow managed to be as chillingly distant and impersonal as Claude. Tommy’s role as a more personable protagonist also makes the various people he associates with more vibrant by proxy. Ascending to the top of the throne of organized crime involves Tommy making business relationships with the Vice City elite that practically run the city. The suave, ex-drug kingpin Juan “The Colonel” Cortez seems to use his amassed wealth and retired status to congregate his upper-class colleagues on his fanciful yacht, which is where Tommy ascertains the idea of who to make bedfellows with on his mission. These notable aristocrats include Ricardo Diaz, the irascible and unpredictable drug baron of Vice City who Tommy believes most likely orchestrated the setup in the beginning. The Sam Elliott impersonator Avery Carrington is a Vice City real estate magnate who hires Tommy to subside the property values for his own financial gain, and the obnoxious British poonhound Kent Paul is a high-profile music producer working with fictional Scottish glam metal band Love Fist. The members of this band are present only in side missions, but I highly recommend engaging with their Spinal Tap shenanigans for a laugh and a satirical look at 1980s music trends. We see an earlier window into the lives of characters from GTA III such as Donald Love and the not-yet armless Phil for a lark and to cement a kind of world canon between the GTA games.

Not every character here in Vice City is a powerful mogul that Tommy has to prove his worth to. Tommy’s two right-hand men collaborating with him on equal standing are his advisor Ken Rosenberg and partner on the field Lance Vance. Both of these men irritate Tommy to no end because neither can be relied on. Ken is as neurotic as the Jewish stereotype comes by, and the white booger sugar he’s constantly cranking up his nose probably doesn’t help alleviate his anxiety. Lance, on the other hand, showcases the game’s strong Miami Vice influence by presenting a parody character of Don Johnson’s partner Tubbs from the show. I’ve never seen an episode of Miami Vice but after consulting my mom who watched the show during its run, Tubbs is completely worthless. The same could be said for Lance during the missions, and his whining to Tommy about how he doesn’t “appreciate him” is sure to give both Tommy and the player a migraine headache. While Tommy is ultimately using the game’s supporting cast to climb the ranks like Claude did, one gets the impression that the relationships he makes are more personal through the interactions in the cutscenes, a certain repartee that goes beyond sterile commands that are just business transactions. It’s amazing how much depth can be added to a character and their interactions through the power of speech.

How does Vice City bask in the indulgent atmosphere of the decade it is set in? Let us start with the setting and its aesthetic. With some deeper consideration besides simply reusing the same city setting from Scarface, Miami seems like the perfect US city to retrospectively encapsulate the sense of 1980s pomp. Florida’s most southern major metropolis is notably a party city for wild college kids and wealthy socialites alike, the appeal stemming from its beaches and year-round tropical climate without requiring a passport to visit. Its southern settlement along the Atlantic Ocean also verges near the Caribbean where foreign island nations are but an earshot away via a breezy boat ride. Because Miami is in close quarters of these nations outside the bounds of US jurisdiction, the city is also associated with trafficking illegal exports from these countries. Namely, an elicit white powdery substance that was the center of a city-wide drug war during this decade. It’s also the drug that fueled the debaucherous high life associated with the decade, so why not set the scene at the source? Miami is fun, hot, colorful, and decadent, four words that also tend to summarize the nostalgic pining people had for the 1980s. Correct me if I’m wrong, Miami natives, but the most indelible image of the city in my perspective is Ocean Drive along the beach with the festive buildings running the gamut of the neon-colored rainbow. Put some palm trees and lawn flamingos in the shot and you’ve basically constructed the perfect postcard of the American tropical paradise.

If you couldn’t tell from my description of Miami, the mimicked GTA version of Miami is a far cry from the New York-esque Liberty City from GTA III. The atmosphere that Liberty City exuded was one of urban cynicism, a cold concrete jungle that served as the graveyard for the American dream. Vice City emits such a polar opposite of the atmosphere from Liberty City that it’s hard to believe that both metropolitan areas reside in the same country. Conversely, Vice City feels like a lucrative bastion of economic and humanistic prosperity. The American dream is still alive and well in Vice City, even if achieving it here involves skating around federal law and putting a target on your back. On top of drastically shifting the tone from the previous cityscape, Vice City itself is also designed in a different manner than that of Liberty City, naturally so considering the real American cities they parallel. Instead of three distinct burroughs of equal size, Vice City is divided by two large islands with some smaller isles between them of relatively less significance. Progressing around the map of the city is still similar to that of Liberty City in that the player must complete a certain amount of missions to visit the other islands that comprise the city. Tommy starts out operating from the resort island in the east with people in bathing suits walking along the beach sidewalks to the various clubs and other lavish tourist traps. The island in the west, conversely, is the downtown sector that completely juxtaposes the inviting glow of its eastern counterpart with dirty slum villages and a rampant gang war between the Cubans and the Haitians in the foreground. Both islands contrast each other and display a strong and honest city dichotomy of poshness and poverty under the same area code. Navigating through Vice City is also more convenient due to the straightaway shoreline drive on both islands as opposed to the grid design that emulated New York. Vice City is technically smaller than Liberty City, but it compensates more than enough with substance, style, and accessibility.

The largest improvement Vice City makes on GTA III’s open-world foundation relating to the city's design is that the developers implemented a world map, a wake-up call this kind of game desperately needed. An arrow icon could have perfected the utility of this requisite reference tool along with putting more key icons on the radar, but at least it's a step in the right direction after its appalling omission in the previous game. Other quality-of-life enhancements Vice City adds are the sturdier vehicles that will not be set ablaze by the slightest of road shrapnel or minor change in wind velocity. Of course, this makes enemy vehicles more difficult to mow down but considering how many vehicle missions involve evading the cops who batter the player’s cars like charging bulls, I much appreciate the added durability. The first safe house will provide health icons and some of the other properties that Tommy can purchase also come with free body armor. The target system when shooting has also been tweaked to the point where it targets enemies from further away depending on the firearm with a more defined reticle. The developers listened to everyone's prayers and delivered splendidly.

I complained that GTA III’s rudimentary design made the game unnecessarily difficult, so all of these improvements should make for a more accommodating GTA experience, right? Well, it seems like I was only partially correct. All of the improvements make the general GTA gameplay more fluid, but Vice City introduces a whole new slew of new mechanics that rival the austerity of GTA III. For one, everyone seems to gripe at any mission involving steering a remote-controlled model from a distance, namely the chopper in “Demolition Man” or the seaplane in “Dildo Dodo.” The objectives during these missions aren’t outlandish or anything, but controlling these model aircraft is always rigid, and accelerating them requires so much force that it feels like the player will need a paperweight. While these types of missions can be aggravating because of the controls, acclimating to them is still something that can be achieved through a small amount of practice. However, the prevalent number of escort missions really tests my patience. Fending for oneself against the onslaught of police forces is hard enough, but the additional challenge of protecting (not assisting, let's be real here) a CPU whose mortality lies in Tommy's success is a game of chance most of the time. During the bank heist, it’s a gamble whether or not Cam dies on sight from the security guards, and Lance certainly does not atone for his annoying bellyaching by adding extra firepower in the mission “Cop Land”. The cocaine that the denizens of Vice City are snorting must be laced with lead paint because their AI is as unresponsive as Internet Explorer. Forget about continuing with the mission if your car catches on fire with someone else in it. It shows me that some aspects of 3D gaming were still in their primitive stages and gaming AI still needed some heavy consideration. On top of all the new grievances, Vice City still proves that the shooting gameplay should have a duck-and-cover system because Tommy standing in the open and opening fire will often annihilate him even with body armor. Because of this, the mission “No Escape?” where Tommy has to perform a jailbreak with an endless stream of armed cops in an enclosed vicinity is my pick for the hardest mission. I guess the developers intentionally craft GTA as a challenging experience. Still, seemingly unrefined mechanics shouldn’t be the source of it.

Vice City’s difficulty curve is also just as wonky as it was in GTA III, with some missions requiring one simple objective and others acting as an endurance test. However, Vice City’s uneven difficulty progression is due to the most interesting mechanic the game offers. The first half of the game revisits the quasi-linear mission format of completing tasks for a certain character until an arc is completely akin to GTA III. That all changes once Cortez flees the country and Tommy takes down Diaz, repurposing his resplendent isle estate as his own. After that, it’s time to utilize the teachings of Mr. Carrington and invest, invest, and invest some more. Ten total assets can be purchased for a sizable sum of money, and most of them come with a line of missions. Others involve more trivial tasks like spending $300 in a private room of the Pole Position strip club and making fifty deliveries of a potent new drug out of an ice cream van, which amused me greatly. Once Tommy completes these missions, he can collect a consistent revenue stream that maxes out at the in-game 24-hour period. Some of these assets are investments of a considerably large price like the club and the counterfeit mill, so making rounds will be a consistent outlying task outside of the missions themselves. The Reaganomics-era rate of inflation is only so accommodating. One may see this tedious task as an example of grinding, but I didn’t mind it so much unlike other instances of gaining experience and or finances. The reward of a constant flow of money after completing the necessary missions was super gratifying. The struggle of rising to the point when Tommy was an errand boy pawn during the first half shifted into Tommy becoming a bonafide bigwig in the crime world. Only treating that goal with this sense of pacing could effectively translate this to the player, and I felt as powerful as Tony did. If only I could translate this to my real life.

As effective as the game’s second half is in conveying Tommy’s character arc, it does put the main plot on a cryogenic hold. Once Tommy has a comfortable hold on most of the assets, Sonny decides it's time to reap the benefits of his accomplishments. Tommy’s mafia cohorts start taxing the revenue of his new assets which obviously, Tommy doesn’t care too much for. Working his way up to being a self-made man has given Tommy a newfound sense of self-respect and is willing to defend against Sonny and hold his new ground as a prime contender in the crime syndicate. Tommy’s original plan was to dupe Sonny with counterfeit money to throw him off, but that plan falters because Lance betrays Tommy for both personal and financial reasons. Given that the final mission takes place on the upper foyer balcony of Tommy’s mansion with him gunning down Sonny’s forces infiltrating his private domicile, the Scarface comparisons should flare up once again. While the mafia’s numbers seem endless, the spacious estate gives Tommy enough room to take them, Lance, and Sonny out at a safe distance, and health and armor can be picked up at any point. Again, Rockstar learned that depriving the player of all of their defenses for the final mission was a bad idea. Unlike Scarface, Tommy’s sense of pride doesn’t lead to his downfall as he wins over Sonny attempting to toy with him like a sociopathic child picking off the legs of an ant once again. He walks off with Ken in a moment that references the end of Casablanca as he plans to continue his business ventures with him, the “beginning of a beautiful friendship” in a criminal context. No, Tommy should not have shot Ken as Claude did to Maria, as the more upbeat GTA game deserved this more satisfyingly upbeat ending.

Though GTA III spurred a monumental movement in both game design and the parameters of video game controversy, the game itself was but a beta test showcasing the base potential of what it offered and nothing more. All it took was a meager year for Rockstar to use those primordial workings that promised thrills unseen in any other video game before it and actually delivered on those promises. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a lighthearted thrill ride through ascending to the top of the drug lord ladder, and the added aesthetic of 1980s culture with a few pronounced elements of that time period certainly add to the game’s vibrancy. I became totally immersed in the game’s presentation and its intriguing pacing, even with a few lackluster aspects still retaining or adding to Rockstar’s “to-do list” for the following game. All in all, Vice City is simply far more fun than GTA III, which should ultimately be the prime aspect that really matters.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Brutal Legend was released at the pinpoint perfect time in my life. I know this is hard to believe for a guy that reviews video games on the internet, but I wasn’t exactly the BMOC in school. My middle school days in the late 2000s were a turning point in my social life when I discovered that I was the weird kid in school and probably wouldn’t be dating any cheerleaders in my upcoming adolescent years. What do the weird kids tend to gravitate to when they feel ostracized by their peers? Music, and specifically underground music that their classmates would revile and or cause them bewildered confusion. Let’s face it: metal music is the epitome of this sensation, encapsulating all of the musical themes, tropes, and boisterous musicianship deemed unsavory by the masses. Yet, metal’s inaccessible aesthetic and musicality is exactly why the genre’s community has persisted since its glory days in the 1980s. It’s the reason why I found myself magnetized to its gritty majesty during my early teenage years and ostensibly, the same chord was struck inside LucasArts mainstay and Double Fine founder Tim Schaffer. Already, Tim Schaffer is the ideal developer to task with making the radical notion of a heavy metal video game come to fruition, judging by his legacy of weirdo, auteur-driven cult classics under his belt. From another perspective, putting Tim Schaffer at the helm of a video game based around a niche music subculture is destined to be poison for sales figures. Fortunately, Brutal Legend foresaw this possibility of being a continuation of Tim Schaffer’s shortcomings and ensconced itself with some notable industry heavyweights. If someone wishes to launch their new video game IP into the stratosphere of success, I can’t think of anyone better to bolster that possibility than American gaming wall street sharks EA to publish it. It also doesn’t hurt having A-list Hollywood celebrity Jack Black as the face of your new IP from a marketing standpoint, as he’s the only famous face who champions the spirit of rock music as much as humanly possible with his various projects. With a solid team backing Brutal Legend, Tim Schaffer finally hit his commercial stride and the game ushered in a new wave of interest in the metal genre beyond its legion of committed community members…no, it didn’t. I can’t lie to you, people.

Brutal Legend subtly suggests how passe it is making something revolving around heavy metal music past its days in the 1980’s as a youth subculture. The game’s introduction illustrates the sad state of the genre in the 21st century. Eddie Riggs, who is essentially Jack Black’s ideal version of himself he sees in the mirror to amp up his confidence, is a roadie for the obnoxious, braindead quasi-boy band Kabbage Boy. He cringes and facepalms at their fusion of modern metal with tasteless hip-hop elements and schmaltzy, sugary pop choruses, parallelling everything under the realm of “mallcore” that unfairly defined the heavy metal landscape in 2009. He laments that he was born too late to witness the genre at its inception before it became an embarrassment. A shooting star must’ve flown past the venue within milliseconds of Eddie expressing his metal malaise because before he knows it, the Motorhead-esque Snaggletooth/Warpig set piece he designed comes to life and makes mincemeat out of these scrawny Kabbage Boy clowns. Unfortunately, Eddie does not get to witness the sinister side of his wishes come true because he’s knocked unconscious by a large piece of the stage after saving one of the little pissants from falling. When he awakens, he is transported to an altar where he must dispatch the droning deacons with a mighty battle ax and his guitar Clementine seems to have elemental powers in this new environment. Eddie soon meets up with his metal pixie dream girl Ophelia who enlists him in the rebellion army against a fascist force in this world named Emperor Doviculus who has enslaved humanity.

If you couldn’t tell from the synopsis of Brutal Legend’s opening sequence, the game isn’t merely a lark to converge metal culture and video games: it’s a metalhead’s wet dream sure to cause more nocturnal emissions than Kate Upton wearing a bullet belt as a brasserie. To make every metalhead make a shameful mess in their ripped-up jeans, Jack and Tim had to consider the culture of metal deeply beyond a game full of references to the music groups and their songs. Firstly, Double Fine nailed the metal aesthetic and for those of you who are totally alien to the genre of music, I’m not talking about chain link fences and kitchen utensils. It’s safe to say that metalheads encompass another branch of the nerd family tree, and that’s not a shocking statement if you look past the seemingly tough exterior. Fantasy tropes are interwoven all over the fabric of metal’s visual tapestry. They crank up the testosterone-fueled, power-fantasy elements with a pinch of ghastly hellfire to boot while diminishing the whimsical, folksy elements associated with fantasy to mask its nerdy core. It’s like a marriage between the designs in an offroad tattoo parlor and dungeons and dragons. Brutal Legend’s fantasy realm that Eddie finds himself in after his stupor encapsulates that electric metal atmosphere to a T. The environment is a naturalistic landscape untouched by civilization with its rolling hills and steep, rocky cliffs, with a few paved roads for the convenience of Eddie’s bitchin hot rod. There’s constantly an element of the sublime with constant thundering in the clouds and towering effigies to exude that metal mightiness. The piles of skulls and pits of fire interspersed on the field definitely aid the intended atmosphere, don’t you think? As Eddie travels further across the map, Lionwhyte’s palace, the snowy peaks, and the gothic grave lands might change up the surface aesthetic a tad, but it still provides the same spicy flavor of fantasy landscapes. Brutal Legend looks absolutely incredible.

Of course, a heavy metal game couldn’t possibly hope to be a genuine experience on aesthetics alone. One of the most exciting aspects of Brutal Legend was the reveal of the soundtrack, with a whopping 107 songs to shuffle through. This aspect of Brutal Legend was arguably of the utmost importance, as nothing is more vital to metal than the music. Fucking this up would prove to be disastrous, and potentially out Jack and Tim as posers. Fortunately, they both proved their metal credibility because the selection of metal songs is dynamite. By 2009, metal had evolved and sprouted a myriad of subgenres, so Double Fine had plenty to pick from. Naturally, classic bands like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and Motorhead get a higher precedence not only for their titan-like status as metal pioneers but because members from these bands offer their voice talents to a few of the characters. A few hard rock bands like UFO, Budgie, and Kiss are in the mix for their proto influence on the genre as well. Some classic obscure heavy metal bands featured here include Crimson Glory, Omen, Sanctuary, Brocas Helm, etc. and some NWOBHM bands like Angel Witch and Cloven Hoof should ideally intrigue players into diving deeper into their catalogs via Google. The newer bands on display are ones that emulate the classic metal sounds like Slough Feg and Skeletonwitch. Bands that lean more towards the more modern styles post-1980s are few and far between, with Ministry, Prong, and Marilyn Manson being the representatives here. Some might be alienated if their metal fondness stems from the alternative side, but really, that makes the soundtrack authentic to the metal community. I’m satisfied with the range they’ve covered and I’m impressed with their deep cuts, but not with some genres only having token picks and the extreme metal selections verging in the more melodic/symphonic directions.

Brutal Legend’s gameplay deceived everyone at the time. Given that Eddie brandishes a hulking battle ax and that his guitar now summons magic, everyone assumed that Brutal Legend would be akin to a hack-n-slash action game like God of War. One should’ve expected that Tim Schaffer would never produce anything typical or by the numbers, so the fact that Brutal Legend’s core gameplay mechanic combined with the driving is real-time strategy shouldn’t come as a surprise. This unorthodox decision is exactly why Brutal Legend failed to captivate both gamers and metalheads alike, for it’s as half-baked as that time Metallica collaborated with Lou Reed. Through the unmitigated power of his guitar shredding enacted by simple rhythm-based sections, Eddie will call forth the metalheads battalions to do battle with the opposing forces, dismantling their stage before they penetrate their defenses to do the same. RTS games usually aren’t designed for consoles, for one thing, because the genre tends to involve an intricate array of quick options that functions optimally with a mouse and keyboard. The wheel roulette of sick licks to play to summon the forces of metal works well enough, but there is barely any real strategy involved. Most of the time, spamming any kind of class from the shirtless meatheads with iron skulls to the mammoth creatures with steel tusks will always prove effective. This is a relief because it’s difficult to know what’s going on beneath all of the chaos because the rival factions tend to share too similar of a resemblance to Eddie’s. All of the RTS sections are in one ear and out of the other, and engaging in one to further the story always felt irritatingly distracting from the real appeal of the game. I doubt Brutal Legend would be any more substantive as a hack-n-slash game because fighting as Eddie lacks a certain oomph compared to the chain-wielding of Kratos. That, and the man does not have the capability to jump even an inch off of the ground.

I can’t help but feel like Brutal Legend’s story is more allegorical than anything. Anyone that has a slight knowledge of the history of metal can suss out the subtle identities of Doviculus’s forces by their appearances. The gaudy glam metal forces of Lionwhyte and the mall goth factions mirror the metal communities' distaste for the metal-adjacent genres they represent that have wrongfully (in their eyes) been the de facto faces of metal in the public eye in separate decades. If there’s anything metalheads hate more than Top 40 pop radio consumed by the masses, it’s the “impure” popular genres that creep in and adulterate the metal family tree. Certainly, a story revolving around absolving metal from commercial sin makes the Metalhead fantasy more palpable. However, this premise only works for me if there is a tongue-in-cheek element that is poking fun at the less-than-savory aspects of the metal community, and I don’t think it is. That kind of elitism and groupthink is one of the reasons why I abandoned metal as my favored genre of music for over a decade now.

Ultimately, the allegorical route to Brutal Legend’s story is more interesting than what is happening on the surface. Once the metal rebellion defeats Lionwhyte in his pleasure palace that looks like a perfume grenade went off in Tony Montagna’s mansion, Lars, the most interesting character, dies at the hand of Doviculus. After that, the group travels past the beachy cliffsides to the jungles and misty woods of the gothic factions' territory where Ophelia betrays them by drowning herself in the mystical Sea of Black Tears to become a supernatural force of power for Doviculus. Anyone surprised by this twist needs to crack open the first page of the Story Writing 101 book as the love interest is always the mole in every reveal such as this. A flood of lore is exposited involving Eddie’s destiny in this world due to a familial lineage he was not aware of and how it pertains to vanquishing the threat of Doviculus, which he does by the end of the game. Not only does the story suffer from being a bit rushed because of the game’s quick pacing, but the stakes of Eddie defeating Doviculus in the end were never too severe. He’s not a fish out of water here, but a shark who’s been transported to the vast depths of the ocean after living his life in an aquarium. The metal world is his paradise, not an unnerving strange land he has to acclimate to survive. It would probably be more interesting to see Eddie struggle in the real world where metal is practically kitsch.

Brutal Legend is yet another indication that Tim Schaffer is doomed to never ascend past a cult classic status, even with so much stardom backing his project. In a twist, this might be the first example of poor Tim fumbling on one of his titles because of the questionable quality instead of the unabashed quirkiness that hinders his sales margins. Tim should’ve kept it simple with the story and the gameplay, for even he can’t be so dense not to realize that Brutal Legend’s appeal stems from its concept and theme. When it comes to those aspects, Brutal Legend excels wonderfully as the culture and aesthetic of the metal genre are emulated perfectly. All I enjoyed doing in Brutal Legend was basking in the glory of the setting while driving around and listening to its extensive metal soundtrack. I do understand that releasing a game as bare bones as that would be hard to sell at all, though even to the most zealous of metalheads.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Banjo-Tooie is a perfect sequel to the innovative, influential 3D platformer Banjo-Kazooie…in theory. On paper, Banjo-Tooie completes more than the necessary criteria for an exemplary sequel. The factors I’ve always attributed to when it comes to crafting a substantial followup to a celebrated title is expanding upon its world and characters along with using the element of hindsight to oil the hinges that perhaps started squeaking once the game was released, much to the embarrassment of the developers. If you’ll notice the cheeky instance of play-on-words in the title, Banjo-Tooie is a game that revels in its inherent role as a sequel. The game was always in a comfortable position, after all, succeeding its predecessor after only two years and on the same, familiar hardware. Banjo-Kazooie constructed the concrete architecture of the Banjo mansion, and all Banjo-Tooie was tasked with was sprucing up the glorious estate with some voguish furniture or state-of-the-art HDTV complete with surround sound speakers. The question still remains: does Rare’s magnum opus really need these additional luxuries? Banjo-Kazooie made such a monumental splash for the prevailing 3D platformer trend that it stole the proverbial torch away from Mario to guide every subsequent release in the genre with its light. Any game that usurps the throne from Nintendo’s golden boy ain't no slouch, so one can infer the extent of Banjo-Kazooie’s quality merely through this fact alone. Because of Banjo-Kazooie’s high mark of 3D platforming excellence, Banjo-Tooie is another example of a sequel needing to prove the rationale of its existence. In some aspects, Banjo-Tooie knew which of Banjo-Kazooie’s loose bolts to tighten up, but there are some screws that it never should’ve tinkered with.

Even though Banjo-Tooie is screaming its sequel status from the stormy peak of Gruntilda’s Lair, it’ll be damned to be content with being eclipsed in the shadow of Banjo-Kazooie’s glory. Since Gruntilda fell from her tower upon her defeat and was entombed under the crushing weight of a massive boulder, the moral characters from the first game can now relax and play a rousing game of poker at Banjo’s house. During their relatively carefree evening of playing cards, Gruntilda’s two equally unsightly sisters of contrasting body proportions align with her old scientific servant Klungo to tunnel to Gruntilda’s resting place with a military-grade drill. Somehow, Gruntilda defies the laws of biology and still remains alive and well despite her stationary status beneath the earth for who knows how long. The glaring effect being buried has had on Gruntilda is the total removal of her sickly-green skin, reducing her to a skeleton with the same witch garb and squawking voice (personally, I think the new look is an improvement). Before Gruntilda begins her major quest to procure a new epidermis, she can’t help but act on a petty impulse to blast Banjo’s house with a comically-enhanced laser cannon. Bottles the mole is the sole victim of Gruntilda’s vengeance, leaving his wispy soul to roam around Banjo’s front yard until the end of times. That’s right: the game begins with Bottles fucking dying. As the unceremonious onslaught signals a new adventure, the events of the previous night leave the old stomping grounds of Spiral Mountain in ruin, with the overhead entrance of Gruntilda’s lair blocked off by the wreckage. The first cutscene and its aftermath convey a message that the comfort of nostalgia that comes with a sequel has been blown to smithereens, even if the game is still strictly confined to familiarity as a direct sequel developed on the same console.

That cynical attitude seems to persist throughout Banjo-Tooie. Banjo-Tooie behaves the same way as a displeased, ill-natured child does being dragged along on a chore by a parent, committing minor acts of obnoxious debauchery to both alleviate their boredom and spite their parental figure. Banjo-Tooie does its damndest to dump on its predecessor at every waking moment possible. Namely, corrupting Banjo-Kazooie’s guileless presentation and tone as fervently as it can while admittedly being tethered down by the same aesthetic. More cases of murder pop up after Bottles is dispatched among the various NPCs, and the fact that Tooty is missing once again (with a credible search ad on a milk carton to boot) but no one seems to care disturbs me a smidge. Really, the trick that Banjo-Tooie pulls out of its hat in an attempt to ruin its predecessor’s legacy is constantly breaking the fourth wall. Seemingly every line of dialogue references Banjo-Kazooie in some capacity, noting some familiar characters, events, and other nostalgic nuggets to further hammer in its sequel status. The emotional impact of Bottles being fried to a crisp is tainted by Kazooie’s offhand comment that “he wasn’t the most popular character in the last game.” In fact, the snarky bird spits so much verbal venom at the NPCs in Banjo-Tooie that I’m almost offended on their behalf. On top of referencing the previous title, the game features posters with characters from Jet Force Gemini and a jiggie quest involving unfreezing a Rare relic named Sabreman. The second title is too soon to start being meta, guys! The game gives off the impression that a sequel to Banjo-Kazooie was greenlit, but Rare shared the same weary sentiment about sequels that I tend to express. I’m not sure if this flippant direction is an attempt to sabotage the player’s immersion or if Rare genuinely thought it made the game more discernible from Banjo-Kazooie. Still, it indicates that something was stirring at the Rare offices during this game’s development.

However, just because Banjo-Tooie makes a fuss out of having to exist, it doesn’t mean that the game didn’t ultimately make an effort. As I stated before, the quality of life enhancements that usually come with a sequel is certainly apparent. For example, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with Banjo’s combat moves. Here, Banjo’s roll maneuver to mow down enemies is far less stilted, as he can now shift the direction slightly. When in an idle position, Banjo has thankfully stopped trying to attack with his pitiful arm slaps and the game leaves the short-range offense entirely to Kazooie. One glaring issue found in Banjo-Kazooie that encompassed most players' gripes and grievances was the traversal of the hub world. Having to make the trek all the way up Gruntilda’s Lair in the later portions of the game from its entrance at the bottom was a tedious excursion unfitting for the accessible feeling of a hub world, and the teleportation cauldrons were too sparsely placed to amend this issue. Banjo-Tooie’s hub and its levels are divided into distinct districts that all come with a teleportation mechanism. Simply place Banjo into the dome fit for a mole and a menu will appear to select where to arrive at, provided Banjo has already visited that area already. The levels also feature something similar in the vein of a warp pad which transports Banjo across the map, but I’ll touch on that in further detail later on. The developers have corrected every last one of Banjo-Kazooie's minor sniggles and while the amount of these is marginal, at least the developers paid attention and acted accordingly for the little effort required.

Isle O’ Hags is the name of the new nucleus between all of Banjo-Tooie’s levels. Technically, it encompasses the entire eclectic island nation that Banjo, his friends, and the Gruntilda sisters who are apparently a native species. Every area from Banjo-Kazooie also shares the same dominion but for now, let’s focus on the district revealed behind the dirt wall of Spiral Mountain. Isle O’ Hags essentially copies the same design philosophy as Gruntilda’s Lair; a steep ascent where the peak of the climb is the climactic point of the game, with frequent inhibitors in the shape of arbitrarily-assigned jiggy quantities to implore the player to visit the levels and to stretch out the pacing to elevate the scope of the journey. While both hubs share the same overall design and collectathon direction, they differ in the atmosphere. Ironically, for a place named after the pejorative term for Gruntilda, the looming presence of Gruntilda and her sisters is practically absent, never throwing her voice from her chamber to cackle discouraging limericks in Banjo’s ears. That, and the oppressiveness that Gruntilda’s Lair exuded was contributed by the enclosed cavern setting, something that winding seaside cliffs of the isle certainly don’t. Still, I actually prefer Isle O’ Hags as a hub world, and not only because the fast travel domes make climbing it much breezier. The developers have also streamlined the level-unlocking process. Once Banjo collects a certain amount of jiggies, he’ll revisit a jiggy spiritual temple near the base of the hub where solving a jigsaw puzzle will reward him with the monk-like Master Jiggywiggy beaming a ray of light that rivals Gruntilda’s laser beam to the unlocked area. I thought exploring to look for the painting with the missing jigsaw pieces made for an unnecessary additional venture, so I’m content with returning to the same sacred jiggy domain once in a while to further the game.

Banjo-Tooie’s branching areas were an especially exciting prospect because the previous game exhausted all of the typical level tropes seen across 3D platformers of the same ilk. This doesn’t inherently mean that the developers have hit a wall with nowhere to run; rather, scratching off all the boxes on the 3D platformer cheat sheet forces the developers to amplify their creative juices. Overall, the level tropes on display in Banjo-Tooie are a little less conventional. Mayahem Temple’s core inspiration stems from the ancient civilizations from Central America, while the humid, terraform dinosaur biome Terrydactyland takes Banjo further back in time far before the dawn of human civilization. Jolly Roger’s Lagoon separates the sea creatures from the land lubbers when Banjo dives into the basin of the port town and discovers an immaculate underwater world beneath the surface. Hailfire Peaks presents the most classic of contrasts with a fire and ice world coexisting on opposite sides of one another. Glitter Gulch Mine reminds me of one of those hokey prospector attractions where families get their pictures taken at, complete with a train station and shiny piles of counterfeit gold. Speaking of attractions, my favorite area in Banjo-Tooie from a conceptual standpoint is the amusement park of Witchyworld run by Gruntilda, a despondent carnival that makes every Six Flags location look safe and professional by comparison. In fact, the churlish atmosphere found in Witchyworld sort of extends to every other level to some extent as well. None of these levels capture that cheery, captivating vibe that oozed from levels like Freezeezy Peak or Click Clock Wood and instead borrow the same filthy dirge found in an area like Clanker's Cavern. Grunty Industries certainly exemplifies a glum, morale-free factory and if I didn’t know any better, I’d think Hailfire was a censored misprint of the damned afterlife of a certain religious denomination because of all of its scorching fire and brimstone. Still, the variety on display rivals the level selection of the previous game marvelously.

In lieu of Bottles pushing up daisies, who will teach Banjo and the bird new techniques to survive these harsher worlds? Bottles' brother, the army drill sergeant Jamjars, will pop out of his various underground hatches to whip Banjo and Kazooie into shape, promising them that they’ll learn some military-grade shit after Bottles simply taught them the basics. He doesn’t teach Banjo how to sneak up behind a man and snap his neck like Solid Snake, but I’m sure some of these moves are still illegal in at least seven different countries. The developers found a better use of the golden musical notes in Banjo-Tooie as they can be used as an accumulated currency to unlock a new move from Jamjars. Some of these new feats of dexterity come in the form of quality-of-life enhancements, with ledge grabbing and the Breegull Blast seeming like necessary afterthoughts after the first game was released. Kazooie gains a smattering of other egg types alongside the standard ones, including fire, ice, grenades, and birthing a walking cuckoo bomb with a timed or manual detonator. The Beak Bomb is now enhanced with the Bill Drill to crack open large boulders and unscrew bolts. Temporary power-ups that involve the Talon Trot add some moon shoes to bounce high and shoes that can climb up inclines with footprints on them. The most interesting of these new moves are the ones the pair learn for their individual merit. “Split pads” with both characters' faces on them separate both of them until they regroup on the same spot, proving that Kazooie isn’t fused to Banjo like an abominable conjoined twin. Banjo’s individual moves involve his backpack in some capacity, whether it be hopping inside it to mitigate damage or carrying someone else in it for a change like a taxi service. Kazooie mostly performs enhanced versions of her innate abilities without Banjo’s weight to contend with, on top of hatching other creatures' eggs for them. Banjo-Tooie doubles the number of learnable techniques while keeping the old ones intact, and playing as the dynamic duo separately doesn’t feel too much like a handicap.

Beloved character Mumbo Jumbo was present at the card game and did not perish at the scaly hand of Grundtilda, so he doesn’t have an excuse to sit this adventure out like Bottles. Fortunately, Banjo-Tooie had big plans for the pygmy shaman. Visiting Mumbo in his now two-story skull house with the new and easily obtained Glowbo collectible will grant the player the ability to play as Mumbo on the field. His range of movement is fairly limited, and the taser staff he brings to defend himself is more humorous to use than practical. Bringing Mumbo to pads with his face on them triggers him to use supernatural magic to levitate colossally-sized objects, perform a rain dance to create a rainbow bridge, resurrect the dead, etc. A new magical companion Banjo-Tooie introduces is the beautiful native girl Wumba, whose character is probably a more overtly racist depiction than Mumbo. She fulfills the transformation mechanic introduced in Banjo Kazooie, changing Banjo’s shape into an animal or object when he enters her wigwam and takes a dip in the pink, Glowbo-powered pool in its center. Some of the new transformations include a dynamite plunger, a submarine, and even a full-sized fucking T-Rex that bulldozes all in its path. Even the washing machine easter egg from the last game actually becomes a useful mechanic in Grunty Industries. As much as playing as Mumbo and the returning transformations serve as nice additional layers to the gameplay, what interests me more is the strained relationship between Mumbo and Wumba. Considering their feuding attitudes toward each other, these two obviously have some intimate history together, right?

Judging by all of Banjo-Tooie’s exciting new features that are all fun and fluid, it would seem like it’s a sequel that renders Banjo-Kazooie obsolete. However, the way in which Banjo-Tooie utilizes all of these new features in the quasi-open world environment is the source of its downfall. If Banjo-Kazooie's single-world summation of its design is conspicuous, then Banjo-Tooie’s is circuitous. In Banjo-Tooie, exploration is still required to progress the game, but it is rarely rewarded. Oftentimes, excavating the area and finding a jiggy comes with several unnecessary extra steps. As much as I enjoy the lark of being able to play as Mumbo, retrieving him from his perch just to trigger a cutscene in a specific place and then trailing back to his skull house grated on my nerves one too many times. Grunty Industries, the area that exemplifies the worst of Banjo-Tooie’s bloated design, is a languid climb up the five floors of the industrial cesspit with finding the stairs for each following floor as the central progression gimmick. At the apex point of the factory lies a jiggy on a wooden crate, which should’ve been the reward for making it this far. However, this point is still littered with unnecessary obstacles to pad out the levels. Banjo-Kazooie was consistently more engaging because the quicker satisfaction of simply finding a jiggy tickled the player’s sense of accomplishment more frequently. It can take longer to find half of the jiggies in Banjo-Tooie than all of them in any of the Banjo-Kazooie areas. It seems like the new features like the split pads and the alternate characters only enable this circuity even more, as they are often implemented as the extra and not-so-obvious steps to obtaining a jiggy. This level of augmented length also extends to the other collectibles, as the jingos in plain sight will most likely be their evil, bizarro counterparts the minjos who will dupe Banjo and harm him. Most of the jiggies in the game feel as if they’re annoyingly out of reach as if the game is dangling them over the player as a cruel tease. Coupling this with the swollen breadth of each area, I thank the lord for the warp pads because, without them, I’d go as far as to say the game would be unplayable.

Another factor of Banjo-Tooie’s bloatedness is due to the developers attempting to intertwine each area and craft an interconnected world. Considering the game is modeled the same as the sectioned-off playgrounds in the first game, it’s no surprise its execution didn’t work. The adjacent paths between areas require a heavy suspension of disbelief and only seem to be applicable in select situations to make collecting a jiggy more drudgery than anything like delivering food from Witchyland to the struggling cavemen in Terrydactyland. Chuffy, the train that should ideally facilitate the rationale for an interconnected world, only rolls through six of the nine areas. If that doesn’t indicate that the idea was unfeasible, I don’t know what does. What irritates me the most about their decision is that it is the biggest contributor to the fleeting jiggy hunt quandary in Banjo-Tooie as most of the jiggies can’t be obtained until Banjo or Kazooie requires a move at a later level. Approximately half of a level’s jiggies will be kept out of reach initially and in a game with levels that are supposed to foster exploration, being limited to only a few jiggies needed to progress the game is a big kick in the balls from developers. One might raise an eyebrow at my criticism of this direction considering it mirrors the design philosophy of the Metroidvania genre, one of my niche video game favorites that I constantly tout. For one, Metroidvania worlds never have slapdashed interconnectivity when its world doesn’t warrant it. Secondly, finding an upgrade in a Metroidvania game will always put the player on a direct path and make the once-inhibited passage a cakewalk to traverse, something Banjo-Tooie still goes out of its way to reject even when the move and or upgrade is learned.

It seems like most of the jiggies not obstructed by the developer's ill-planned directives come in the form of minigames. As pleased as I was to stumble upon these to finally earn a jiggy in a somewhat fair and natural way, it’s a shame that many of them boiled down to the same task of shooting or collecting objects of three different colors with different point totals. I’ll be seeing objects of red, green, and blue hopping around in my sleep at this point. I greatly missed the variety from Banjo-Kazooie, even if those minigames were easier than grade school arithmetic. While it does seem like I’m complaining, I’ll easily engage with these minigames as opposed to the other option. In a select few areas, entering certain sections will make Banjo cock Kazooie like a gun and the perspective will shift to the first-person view. As amused as I initially was to witness “Banjo-KaDOOMie,” these minigames were more hellish than anything from the pioneering FPS franchise. Kazooie’s targeting is as responsive as a lazy eye and trying to skewer enemies with her beak like a bayonet made me feel like a drunk civil war reenactor.

The jiggy tasks I did enjoy and sought out over the rest were the boss battles. They were few and far between in Banjo-Kazooie, and I’d be lying if I said that the wooden box or Nipper the hermit crab were herculean foes that were hard to conquer. Each level in Banjo-Tooie features a mighty foe worthy of the boss battle title, and they are a varied and challenging bunch. The fights between the twin dragons of the opposite representative of Hailfire Peaks were in some pretty taut arenas, and Weldar featured enough simultaneous offensive tactics to overwhelm me. Popping the monstrous boils off of the angler fish Fak Fak and the stitched patches of the giant inflatable beast in the circus tent by soaring and swimming over them made the bosses seem formidable, and the Targitzan duel managed to make that particular FPS section palatable. Klungo even cements his role as a recurring supporting character through frequent encounters. To my surprise, I ended up enjoying the final boss fight against Gruntilda and her drill tank more than her final fight from the first game because of how involved it is. Those final increments of her health bar had me sweating bullets. Or, perhaps I enjoy it because the developers made the bizarrely-implemented quiz show portion of the finale tolerable this time around, and it's hilariously morbid to boot.

Banjo-Tooie isn’t quite an example of a sophomore slump. However, the game seems to have tacked on a sophomore seventeen pounds due to the developers having ambitions bigger than their stomachs, and it’s enough weight to make the game feel comparatively fatigued and sluggish throughout. Either this was a faulty wish, or Rare took the piss out of the natural evolution of the franchise and this is their idea of a joke, judging from the game’s more negative tone. Behind all that excess fat, Banjo-Tooie feels like the same game as its trend-setting predecessor, and it even makes the Banjo experience more inviting because of the effort of the minor improvements. Banjo-Tooie made me exhausted at simply performing the bare minimum to complete the game, which is certainly not a feeling I got after finishing Banjo-Kazooie.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Nintendo is never too keen on trying out new ideas for their poster boy Mario. Mario is their #1 asset that maintains their accessible marketability, the buoy that has kept Nintendo afloat for so long in the gaming landscape. Because of this, Nintendo feels adamant about taking risks with Mario in fear that deviation from the norm risks sinking the multi-million dollar vessel that they’ve built over decades of time. This is why multi-genre spin-offs of Mario are essential entries in the overall Mario series, offering intriguing ideas revolving around Mario and the Mushroom Kingdom increasing the ubiquity of his brand and keeping it from stagnating. I’m partial to the few Mario JRPG spinoff series because the genre’s broader narrative scope allows the developers to swell Mario’s properties to something more substantial. It forces Nintendo to make Mario step out of his comfort zone and dive into the deep end for a while after mastering all kinds of swimming techniques in the shallow end. Suddenly, the most recognizable video game character to ever exist in the medium feels fresh and interesting after generations of soaking itself in a bath of its own familiarities and pruning up as a result. However, there is a possibility that the JRPG series could also languish in their own idiosyncrasies eventually. Both the Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi series have multiple entries themselves, and there has to be some sort of cohesiveness between each entry to make them identifiable from one another. What happens when the series intended to break the cycle of tired tropes and ends up falling victim to the same fate? Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, the second entry in the Mario JRPG series mentioned in the latter, is another JRPG game with Mario and his green brother Luigi sharing equal billing. The game has the same dynamic mechanics and humorous presentation that made Superstar Saga an excellent Mario adventure. However, perhaps the game is too close to its predecessor for comfort.

Initially, Partners in Time seemingly strays away from Superstar Saga’s identity with its plot. I never pegged Princess Peach as the eccentric type of royal figure that comes with the territory of having more fame and fortune than one knows what to do with and little sparks of boredom-inspired creativity, yet she decides to embrace her inner H.G. Wells and travels back in time using a rocket-shaped time machine manufactured by Professor E. Gadd (I guess he’s a Mario & Luigi mainstay at this point). However, her enterprising journey isn’t for recreation, The princess calculated a course to a period of the Mushroom Kingdom’s history where a race of sentient purple mushrooms called “Shroobs” enact a full-scale invasion of the Mushroom Kingdom. Upon anticipating Peach’s arrival, Mario and Luigi are instead greeted with the hostility of a rogue, hulking green Shroob, indicating that something has gone horribly wrong. Through another time portal that has conveniently materialized on the castle grounds, the plumber brothers plunge into the past and rendezvous with their youthful counterparts who are taking refuge from the Shroob invaders. Mario’s vocational duty of rescuing Princess Peach this time around involves crossing the plane of the fourth dimension, simultaneously saving the past and the present on an adventure with such huge stakes that the pairing with his brother needs to be doubled. Despite how many plot holes are seeped into the premise of many time travel stories, this one included, the topsy-turvy nature of time travel is a perfect new narrative device in the kooky and whacky Mario & Luigi series.

Beneath the excitingly intricate notion of time travel, Partners in Time fails to use its premise to its full potential. For one, all it amounts to is the same collectathon quest from Superstar Saga. The Cobalt Star is the power source for E. Gadd’s time machine, and it has been ruptured into five separate pieces. Retrieving these pieces is of utmost importance for the Marios and Luigis, for it is the only way to restore balance to the space-time continuum that all of this interdimensional galloping has caused and sever the unnatural connection between the two periods of the Mushroom Kingdom. This type of fetch quest should ring familiar to those who played the previous game, as the Beanstar was the former all-powerful plot Macguffin that spurred story progression. In saying that, obtaining the pieces of the Beanstar only became significant to the plot for the last third of Superstar Saga, while picking up the pieces of the Cobalt Star is an objective that spans the entirety of Partners in Time. I wasn’t all that enthused when Superstar Saga’s manic pacing came to a screeching halt when it introduced this scavenger hunt, so you can imagine my disappointment with Partners in Time inflating this typical task for the whole duration of the game. One could argue that committing to a single overarching mission gives Partners in Time a better sense of narrative organization, and splitting each individual trek for a piece of the Cobalt Star should recall the chapter-based pacing of the Paper Mario games which I professed to appreciate. Still, the Mario & Luigi games should exude a different tone from its thinner Mario RPG associate to establish its own tonal identity as the first game did. In terms of visuals and presentation, Partners in Time upholds the expressive, animated pixels that made Superstar Saga so charming. Yet, Partners in Time feels bogged down by its more stringent arc, as if the game is submitting to order by some bureaucratic gaming force that demands order and neatness. Superstar Saga’s wilder pacing that only acceded to plot regulations made the game more interesting because the wonky direction the game would dart through was unpredictable.

Toning down Superstar Saga’s erratic pacing with more construction is one thing, but streamlining the way in which the game goes about dividing its disciplined plot adds another worrisome layer of accessibility. The time rifts are endemic to the present-day Peach’s Castle, as her royal domain was ground zero where the dilemma occurred. Because the dissonance is confined to the castle, it's the only entry point to the past. While this makes sense, the developers use their realm of logic to dilute the overworld to a standard level hub. Portals to the past are located in each room of Peach’s palace, signified by a psychedelic swirl encompassing the diameter of a crater caused by the shaking up of time and space. The transport on the other side resides in a unique district of the Mushroom Kingdom in its glory days, and returning to the castle is a two-way backpedal through the same hole. Normally, I wouldn’t chide a hub so emphatically, especially considering that Peach’s Castle here meets the same exemplary qualifications as its other iterations. Still, I can’t ignore that Partners in Time presents a stark regression in this regard. The BeanBean Kingdom’s overworld that took a liberal helping from A Link to the Past’s Hyrule wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of an open-world environment, but it was the optimal inspiration point for a 16-bit adventure with a top-down perspective. Implementing an open landscape like the BeanBean Kingdom was a mark of excellent effort on the part of the developers, to integrate something with more spatial depth in a franchise that is usually content with simpler, more conventional hub areas (even if Mario popularized their widespread pervasiveness). In Partner in Time, we’ve reverted back to traveling to levels via a shrouded warping process that makes the player put the pieces together for the geographical rationale of the trip themselves. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using Peach’s castle as a middle ground between all of the game’s areas again, but it's rather disappointing when the developers have proved that they can offer something more interesting.

At least the individual areas that stem from these portals still uphold the quality standard issued by Superstar Saga. Each area encompasses the journey to collecting one shard of the Cobalt Star, circling around the district back to the entry point either from a natural occurrence or comedic mishap once the task is complete. The Mushroom Kingdom’s areas that are under siege by the Shroob forces are a varied bunch, which signifies that the purple buggers have already seized large swathes of Peach’s monarchy in the short time since the initial invasion. The areas here solidify my comparative observations between the Mushroom Kingdom and their BeanBean neighbors, for we now witness the developers rendering the Mushroom Kingdom in its first Mario & Luigi outing. Toadwood Forest is another shaded wooded area that vaguely resembles that of Chucklehuck, minus the thirsty tree golem blocking the path to the objective. Gritzy Desert is another sand dune with some ancient mysticism sprinkled in, and Bowser’s Castle is a tutorial-level inverse of the climactic final area it served as in Superstar Saga. Besides areas that reuse level themes at a dissimilar angle, a few of the Mushroom Kingdom’s places of interest are fresh-faced destinations that share fewer similarities with BeanBean’s. Yoshi’s Island is newly rendered in the Mario & Luigi format, a particularly inspired choice considering this tropical offshore dinosaur villa is where the babies originated from. I don’t recall seeing the monstrous Yoob casting a shadow over the island with its drooping gut in Super Mario World 2, and I’m thankful for not encountering this abomination back then. Here, the core of his gaseous stomach also makes for an area with a riveting foreground. Navigating through the inner sanctum of the Thwomp Volcano is more involved than the other areas due to zipping and hopping around its floors to reach the exit point instead of a straightaway descent. Star Shrine sort of reminds me of Magicant from Earthbound with its otherworldly splendor and mandated tasks to get to its center. Overall, the Mario & Luigi level design still thrives with the abundance of puzzles and enemy variety whether or not the area motifs look suspiciously familiar.

The process of solving the puzzles in question is now divided between the paradoxical pairing of Mario and Luigi and their infant forms. The division of work is a collaboration between the teams of the adult brother and the baby brothers instead of swapping Mario and Luigi in Superstar Saga. The grown-ups will throw the babies off their backs to allow them to journey off on their own as their own tethered duo, using their underdeveloped sizes to squeeze through crevices in an alternating sequence with the older brothers. When separated, the two teams regroup by hitting a block with a warp pipe symbol, summoning the duo not being controlled by the player. As useful as this seems, the baby's utility simply amounts to gaining hand-me-downs that their older counterparts used in Superstar Saga. Only the babies are granted hammers to drill themselves into the earth, which also means that Baby Luigi is the sole volunteer to whack an engorged Baby Mario when he gulps down too much water as well. Grown-up Mario and Luigi roll into a ball to flatten the babies like pancakes instead of using the hammers, but all this change does is highlight how team-intensive the moves on the field tend to be here. All of the moves are recycled from the previous game, only with Mario and Luigi violating child labor laws by making their younger selves perform half of the work. Really, the appeal of cutting the quartet in half by age brackets some of the time is to flaunt the two screens and doubled controller buttons of the DS. The flippable handheld was still in its infancy, and swapping between the screens when the babies are on their lonesome with their own button commands was something Nintendo thought everyone would marvel at back then. Personally, I’d rather have the characters perform some fresh, new abilities instead of reusing stale ones.

The double-screen gimmick is also highlighted in the combat. With comparisons to a 3D movie, the developers have implemented some cheap minute effects like a Piranha Plant enemy’s neck stretching out and shooting projectiles upward to fall on the brothers from above. Other than these neat little peripheral tricks, base combat is essentially the same as it was in Superstar Saga. Mario and Luigi still hop on enemies for offensive and hop over their projectiles and bodily rammings for defense. Mario and Luigi carry their respective younger selves on their back, and this isn’t a weighted burden as one would expect. In fact, Mario and Luigi should always come into battle with the babies strapped on their backs. While together, the babies use their hammers to counter damage by pressing their respective buttons, and the window of time holding the hammers before they strain themselves is much more lenient than it was in Superstar Saga. The babies can fight in battles involving Mario and Luigi but ideally, they shouldn’t have to. The babies only take matters into their own hands when their older self has fainted, which might give the impression that their life force is hanging by a thread and it's time to wave the white flag. Not only can the babies pull their own weight in combat, but their turns can be used to fully revive Mario or Luigi to get their feet back into battle. Evidently, the Mushroom Kingdom’s resources seem to be as bountiful as BeanBean’s, so the babies should always have a 1-Up in their inventory to stave off defending themselves from potential harm. Ultimately, this outcome upon defeat in battle acts as an unintentional safety net, an Aku-Aku-like shield that has the potential to never diminish. It never did for me. Because the enemy health pools also aren’t upscaled for this augmentation, Partners in Time manages to be breezier than an autumn afternoon.

But isn’t the lack of difficulty only an issue during the standard battles from the Shroob grunts and the kingdom’s various wildlife? Surely, the boss battles offer something more substantial and wouldn’t allow the brothers to slide by them so smoothly? On paper, the bosses in Partners in Time are more complex than the average Shroob underling because they require exploiting a weak spot to deal a sizable dent in their defenses. I especially enjoy making the Wiggler boss sickly and pale after slipping him a poison shroom Mickey into his healing beverage, or saving the Yoshi’s in Yoob’s stomach for them to drop a Chain Chomp boulder on the head of a ghastly Yoshi egg. However, the more engaging boss battles can revert back to a guerilla beatdown with a new feature: the “Bros. items.” These nifty tools in the item menu replace the convoluted Bros attacks and require an honed accuracy to use them effectively. Shells of the red and green variety are batted back and forth as they bounce off the enemy, and the same goes for volleying an egg that can make the enemy dizzy. The most powerful Bros. items are the cannonballs and trampolines, which incorporate both DS screens as the brothers flatten the enemy with the force of four swift landings. Needless to say, each of these Bros. items deals whopping amounts of damage, making quick work of each boss after their weak spot is exposed. I suppose this is what I asked for considering I griped that the bosses in Superstar Saga tended to overstay their welcome, but now I almost feel remorseful for doing these bosses so dirty like this. Also, the Bros. items are just as plentiful as the healing ones, so the game is practically incentivizing their use with their high stock.

Upon my reflection of what the Baby Mario brothers add to the Mario & Luigi gameplay mechanics, a record scratch sound interrupts my thought process as I begin to ask myself one important question: does anyone really like the baby versions of the Mario brothers to begin with? The last time that I checked, all Baby Mario accomplished was being an effective advocacy for abstinence for everyone who played Super Mario World 2 as he wailed in his helpless panic as Yoshi scrambled to retrieve him. Any offshoot of Mario Kart and sports venture that includes the babies dials back on their infantile proclivities to cry and whine at every waking moment, but their inclusion in the fray of competition always seemed like filler to me. Mario’s universe consists of a plethora of creatively designed creatures, and Nintendo thinks they can pull a fast one on us and pad the roster with the same characters portrayed at different ages and masses. The fetal forms of Mario and Luigi have never inspired feelings of true joy in Mario fans, and this is not only due to acting as glorified skins of the mustachioed men in overalls. I’ve said this a thousand times already, but Mario’s appeal is his wide accessibility. Games that fall under the “E for everyone” rating from the ESRB actually exhibit content that accommodates a wide audience instead of exclusively children. Still, there are games that are specifically catered to very young children. Including the babies as a focal point in any Mario game teeters on that accessibility threshold, for some adults might be put off by the babies doing the puerile things that babies usually do. The character dynamic between Mario and Luigi in Superstar Saga is compromised because they both have to act as solid rocks to balance the babies. Mario and Luigi playfully interacting with the babies are fairly cute until the realization that they’re both playing with themselves creeps in and things feel weird ahem. So much of the humor their dynamic facilitated in Superstar Saga is lost because they’ve both been relegated to the roles of babysitters.

To make matters worse, Partners in Time decides that every familiar character needs to interact with a younger version of themselves to bloat the list of secondary characters. A relatively youthful Toadsworth spends his time with his present self trying new ways to entertain a Baby Peach with amusing contortions that count as the brother’s team moves on the field. He also proves that Peach’s “protector” was still a total oaf before he became a senile old man, for they often fail to entertain the princess which results in her uttering a baby cry so excruciating that I put my DS volume on mute. Please cancel all Yoshi sequels that could potentially feature this character, please. Baby Bowser exhibits more personality as a spoiled little twerp, but all he does is confuse me because his design and voice mirror his son, Bowser. Jr. Padding the game with even more childish characters is grating enough, but the character that irks me the most bears no resemblance to any preexisting one. For some reason, the developers found it appropriate to give the suitcase in the item menu sentience with googly eyes and feet to boot and call him Stuffwell. He lugs around the pieces of the Cobalt Star, and I wish that was all he did. He also insists on popping up frequently to offer unsolicited guidance to the player on their objective, which is entirely unnecessary considering every objective is still clear as crystal. I would say that Stuffwell has the personality of a cardboard box, but that packaging apparatus would actually be far more interesting. The fact that the developers implemented Stuffwell to keep on the player’s side at all times in a desperate attempt to maintain his presence as a character is laughable, and his constant condescending input exemplifies the worst trope of children’s media. Fuck off, Stuffwell. Go help Dora the Explorer or something. Meanwhile, Fawful is making his presence remote in the underground sewers as a black market badge dealer that only the babies can access. Oftentimes, I’d visit him just to hear the sweet sounds of his grammatical errors. I’d let Fawful off the hook!

The Shroob forces aren’t all that colorful either. These demented, dwarfish mushrooms that look like someone forgot to add a pinch of chlorine to the Toad gene pool to clean the gunk out of it do not deviate very far from the standard model. The developers could’ve used the X-Naut army from The Thousand-Year Door as inspiration. Perhaps the Shroobs work more efficiently with a stronger sense of unity. By the end of the game, they’ve taken total control over the past version of Peach’s castle. The climactic build-up to the finale of Partners in Time is storming the palace and sending the Shroobs and their dinky Plan 9 from Outer Space saucers back to their polluted home planet. As seen in the first game, the difficulty curve completely ratchets up here, which made me fearful of the final boss at the end of it. The Shroob Princess is by and large the most challenging fight in the game with her forcefield phase and spider walker, but she’s not the final boss. The last piece that fully reforms the Cobalt Star actually houses the true heir to the Shroob throne, and she’s more sinister than her spare of a sister. The beastly Elder Shroob Princess is as daunting as Cackletta was in Superstar Saga, with her multiple phases progressively becoming more durable and unpredictable. An even bigger slight against the player is that if they die on the Elder Princess, they’ll have to tackle the grueling battle with her sister AGAIN as well. Thank God for the Bros. items for both of these fights, for I was sweating bullets the entire time. The developers learned from the fight against Cackletta. Apparently, saline would’ve saved me the trouble, for Baby Luigi’s tears are the substance that eradicates the Shroob presence from the Mushroom Kingdom. Interesting.

Given everything I’ve said, it should be apparent that Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time is rather underwhelming. It’s a by-the-numbers sequel that does very little to innovate on its predecessor except for doubling the playable characters, the items, and the screens the player can use as reference. It all amounts to practically nothing of substance. However, I wouldn’t go as far as to declare Partners in Time as another unfortunate example of a “sophomore slump.” It’s more like a student finishing a semester with a 3.0 GPA after sweeping the dean’s list their freshman year, a hard act to follow indeed. Still, achieving that average is a respectable accomplishment. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with Partners in Time because the Mario & Luigi foundation is so solid, and they’d have to botch it pretty badly to make me forsake it entirely.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Since the dawn of humanity, our society has always needed a scapegoat as a source of blame for the corruption of our young. Television on the whole was claimed to rot the minds of children since its inception in the mid-20th century, and the rebellious spirit of rock-and-roll soon after proved to be another nightmare for the halcyon post-war America that we desperately attempted to uphold. However, these ridiculous moral panics were but historical footnotes of the early information age by the time I was born, so I obviously didn’t experience them firsthand. However, the video games I played as a child were always a point of concern for my general welfare as an impressionable youth. Even then, I still wasn’t privy to the genesis point of the video game controversy when hundreds of soccer moms fainted at Little Timmy performing button combinations to unsheathe one’s spinal cord from their bodies in Mortal Kombat. No, my initial exposure to the anti-video game pandemonium was early in the sixth generation of gaming in the early 2000s when this little game hit the shelves: Grand Theft Auto III. Not since sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll has a three-word combination struck fear in the hearts of the perennially bored housewives and prudish, geriatric politicians of America. Considering how vocal the outcry was against this game, it seemed as if these authoritative figures would rather their children be influenced to become a degenerate hedonists rather than mirror the realm of murder and chaos found in Grand Theft Auto. Ever since the media conveniently discovered that the Columbine shooters were fans of games like Doom and Quake, attributing the exposure of video game violence to the foibles of adolescence became second nature to the stodgy older generations. Releasing Grand Theft Auto III two years later felt as if an encore of that horrific event was directly on the horizon. My own mother grounded me for two weeks in the fourth grade for watching a friend of mine drive around in this game for five minutes before school one day, as if simply being exposed to the game for such a short time would affect my ethical fiber like radiation poisoning. (I swear, that’s all I watched him do). The Grand Theft Auto epidemic was an irritating reality for gamers such as me, but I’m sure the then-small-fry game developer Rockstar Studios were eternally grateful for all of the inadvertent press.

But everyone would be remiss if they didn’t experience Grand Theft Auto III back then, for the franchise's third entry during the PS2’s infancy was a groundbreaking milestone in gaming history. Grand Theft Auto III’s titanic splash didn’t just provoke the wrath of parents and politicians: it ignited a revolutionary new wave of game design by popularizing the open-world genre and indelibly laying out the rules and regulations for all other developers to follow. Realistic polygons were only a surface-level aspect of the transition to the third dimension in the former generation that started it. After the initial period of setting the foundation, game developers were seriously expanding the possibilities of a 3D environment to radical proportions. The non-linear sandbox design popularized in the levels of fellow 3D trendsetter Super Mario 64 was enlarged to proportions that they could be reminiscent of environments from the real world, eliminating the problem of empty, ethereal graphical space found in the levels of the game from the previous generation. In fact, GTA III coalesced its areas so seamlessly that using the term levels out of the beginner’s book of the gaming lexicon now seemed inappropriate to assign. A staggering evolution in game design was taking place, and GTA III's contributions to this growth and change served as the substance behind the game’s bloodshed and mayhem. However, one would have had to experience GTA III in the short window of time of its initial release to appreciate what it did. Not only did the series sprout two sequels on the PS2 soon after that eclipsed its impact, but hundreds of imitators naturally emerged after seeing the tangibility of its content and design that translated to great success. In a way, GTA III is the Super Mario 64 of the sixth generation of gaming: an early innovator that skates by in retrospect because of its influence despite its myriad of glaring flaws.

A portion of GTA III’s appeal can be attributed to its cinematic flair. The franchise's influences stem directly from tons of crime fiction from other entertainment mediums, ranging from HBO’s television staple The Sopranos, heist films such as Heat and Reservoir Dogs, to the acclaimed filmography of Martin Scorsese. GTA III’s opening cutscene displays a bank robbery unfolding, with three culprits making their quick getaway. The female criminal at the scene of the crime, Catalina, leaves her boyfriend and fellow bank job accomplice Claude to die by shooting him point-blank while escaping the scene. Claude miraculously survives, but is the sole perpetrator apprehended and taken to justice. After being sentenced to ten years in prison, the Colombian Cartel seizes the armored van he’s being transported in, and the hostage takeover gives him and another prisoner “8 Ball” an opportune moment to escape custody. While the cinematic splendor on display here doesn’t rival the arthouse ambitions of, say, Hideo Kojima, the exhilaration of the bank robbery to introduce the game is an effective enough hook to intrigue the player immediately and set a precedent for the game’s chaotic tone.

Claude Speed, a name that is totally on his birth certificate and not the fabricated persona of a criminal/D-list porn star, is GTA III’s protagonist and the vehicle for the player committing a bloody holocaust in the city streets. Interestingly enough, Claude is another example of a silent protagonist seen so many times in a game that presents its story cinematically. Rockstar would learn their lesson soon after but here on GTA’s open-world debut, interacting with anything and anyone with a character that doesn’t make a peep feels completely unnatural. The silent protagonist trope should be reserved for platforming characters who only focus on tight gameplay and customizable avatars in RPGs. Through a particular perspective, Claude maybe works as a silent protagonist to immerse the player in the biblical chaos they can commit without any injected personability getting in the way. This was the developer's intention, right? No, they severely fucked this up.

The core of GTA III’s heightened non-linearity is to facilitate a sense of freedom, to unbound the shackles of video game discipline and order, allowing the player to run wild and let their hair down, or so to speak. One realization that dons over the player is that once Claude arrives at his safe house is that the rate of gameplay doesn’t halt when the player isn’t engaging in tasks that the game assigns them. The brilliance of GTA III’s design philosophy is that the player could potentially spend hours playing the game without even progressing the story with one mission, and it’s also likely that the player wouldn’t grow weary of their deregulated merriment. Playing a game with rules on the playground as a kid is all fine and dandy, but the free reign of using everything at your disposal on the slightest impulse tends to feel more joyous, no? The player is given the opportunity to perform acts of the game’s namesake and ride their stolen property around with a sense of recklessness like they’re in The Italian Job. Claude can engage in spontaneous fisticuffs with the unassuming pedestrians that roam the streets, or take the morbid route of ending their insignificant lives with the blast of his roulette of firearms. As one can expect, all this debauchery will alert the attention of the Liberty City Police Force, who will proceed to hunt you down like a pack of wild dogs. The alert level coincides with how tenacious their efforts will be in ousting your malignant presence from the streets, escalating to them sicing an attack helicopter and an army-grade tank on you if you refuse to comply. One may argue that the police penalty is a buzzkill to the adrenaline-fueled fun that the game fosters, but where would the thrill of committing crimes be without the looming consequence of legal blowback? Then again, the player is never forced to enact anything that would warrant this heavy rate of firepower unless they choose to.

Whether or not the player wishes to lay waste to Liberty City on their own time, I implore the player to at least frolic around to learn the layout of the game’s map. The most egregious aspect of GTA III’s rudimentary open-world design is the lack of a map. I don’t care if the game exemplifies the fetal stage of the open-world genre: no amount of reflective hindsight excuses omitting this essential feature from the game. The circular radar located in the bottom left corner of the screen only indicates the safe house and mission icons, but not the locations of the Pay-N-Spray garages or the Ammu-Nation stores. The reason why both of these stores are as imperative to find is that if Claude gets arrested or gunned down, he respawns outside of either a hospital or the police station with only the clothes on his back. The cause for both of these unfortunate outcomes is usually attributed to the police horde raining their fury down upon Claude or being unequipped to deal with the various gang factions infecting Liberty City. Not to mention, the player will constantly be subject to lethal carbeques because every vehicle in the game is as durable as paper mache. Eluding the police by changing the color of the car and stacking one’s arsenal to rival the gangbangers is the only possible way to survive the harsh streets of Liberty City, and obscuring these destinations from view on the radar makes the game unnecessarily more irritating. All the player has as a reference to where anything could be is a northern mark like a compass, but who do I look like? Magellan?

Learning the layout of GTA III’s map is an especially grueling escapade because the urban jungle the player is forced to commit to memory is rather drab. Liberty City is obviously a fictional American city because it doesn’t share a name with one from the real world. However, its similarities with The Big Apple almost veer into the uncanny valley. Like real-world New York City, Liberty City is divided into three islands that act as distinct Burroughs that the player has access to as the story progresses. One may argue that imposing barriers between the Burroughs negates a true open-world environment, but each individual island can stand on its own merits with its breadth. The starting island of Portland vaguely resembles both the New York Burroughs of Brooklyn and Queens due to its hilly elevation and the persistent presence of the metro station. Staunton Island is a comparatively more flashy, bourgeois metropolitan area like Manhattan. Shoreside Island ostensibly depicts the suburban sprawl of Newark, New Jersey. While the three islands are certainly inspired, they all lack a kind of urban pomp. Unique geographical features such as Portland’s Chinatown district, Staunton’s central park, and Shoreside’s dam give them enough distinction, but none of these sites pop and sparkle with that city magic. Many of these features feel slapdashed onto the map, obligations of what usually composes the city streets of America without any of the grand allure that makes spots like these enticing in real life. Around all these underwhelming “landmarks” are the typical tall buildings and cluttered streets that simply trace the bare minimum of urbanity. If New York was as generic as it is depicted here, I highly doubt it would be the most populated city in the country.

Eventually, the player’s pension for senseless, unmitigated destruction will conflict with the fact that crime costs money. Maximizing the scope of a mindless murdering spree requires at least a fair amount of cash to purchase weapons, and the arcade-style method of ebbing away vehicles to the point of exploding and gaining a sum of money isn’t enough to finance all of the manic fun the player could be having. Naturally, the only way of earning a substantial income in GTA III is by putting Claude to work. Claude could steal a taxi and siphon the fare money from the poor Indian guy he’s co-opting the business from but really, the more organic way of earning income in the game is completing the story missions. Essentially, GTA III’s story missions are odd jobs assigned by Liberty City’s finest: the higher-ups of the city’s crime syndicate. Claude becomes everyone’s glorified errand boy in his mission to get to Catalina, maintaining his pure chaotic neutral position between the Italian mafia, the Yakuza, and the Jamaican Yardies strictly for his own benefit. These tasks range from escort missions via car, assassinations, property damage, etc. By completing these various missions, the player will be more than compensated for their troubles so they can make bigger bloodbaths on the streets.

Being that these jobs are assigned by the disgusting criminal toe scum beneath the feet of the city, almost every mission given to Claude is dangerous, deplorable, and highly illegal. Because of this thrilling combination of circumstances, GTA III’s missions tend to be quite challenging. The tasks are relatively short and straightforward, but the game goes the extra mile to grief the player with additional circumstances. If you’re too afraid to cause any sizable conflict on the streets for fear of facing the lashing of the law, get used to it. A pattern anyone who plays the game will notice is that the harder missions involve Liberty City’s boys in blue strong-arming Claude with everything they’ve got while the mission is still underway. Some notably bothersome moments involving the police abruptly exercising their authority during missions are running over a man in a seemingly impervious body cast in “Plaster Blaster” or bumping a car over and over to drop paraphernalia in “Evidence Dash.” The only way to elude the rampaging police force is to visit a Pay-N-Spray to throw off your scent, which is why obscuring their view on the map is cruel and unusual. Actually, I’ll kindly accept any vehicular mission over any that involve weapon combat with gang members. Getting up close and personal with a posse of armed malcontents in missions like “Arms Shortage” and “Grand Theft Aero” assures that their barrage of whizzing bullets will tear through Claude like tissue paper. Preparing beforehand by acquiring body armor will only make a marginal difference in defense, for its material is evidently made of bubble wrap and the targeting system for the guns is not exactly smooth or accurate. The sniper rifle is your best friend in this game and not only during the often maligned “Bomb Da Base: Act II” mission. Time is of the essence when committing a criminal offense, so many of the missions are given a strict time limit to complete. I’m convinced the developers meticulously formulated the perfect time to keep the player on edge during these missions and scrape out of that time by the skin of their teeth. Even if you outsmart the constraints of the city-spanning mission “Espresso 2 Go!,” you’ll still only ram into all nine espresso stands across Liberty City with under a minute left. The Asuka mission acronym “S.A.M.” is arguably the most frustrating mission in the game because it combines every excruciating element listed above. To top everything off, the missions in GTA III must be completed without any mistakes, for there are no checkpoints to bail the player out when they make a mistake or die. GTA III is a ruthless test of trial and error, and whether or not the game offers a fair, reasonable challenge is up to contention.

Performing the missions and furthering the story is also the only way to meet GTA III’s number of supporting characters. GTA III cast exemplifies the film noir tenet in that there are no good, moral characters to attach to and hope for their happiness and prosperity: only bad characters that fall on a spectrum of amoral behavior. The problem with every character in GTA III is not their scumbaggery, but that they’re all caricatures. The Leone crime family seems like a parody of every Italian mob ever depicted with their ritzy attire, restaurant place of operation, and overbearing mother figure yelling at a made man from a distance. Kenji is the classic Yakuza member, justifying the ultraviolence he commits with ancient Japanese spiritualism. At least it’s amusing and disturbing how aroused his sister Asuka becomes around Clyde the more death and destruction he causes. These characters might only seem as one-dimensional as they are because their relationship with Claude never surpasses a formal employer-client dynamic. I’m sure corrupt cop Ray and sleazy yuppie Donald Love lead interesting lives, but it’s difficult to peer into their characters in a deeper manner when it's all strictly business.

The business of all of these criminal figures at least begins to wrap around to something interesting around the second half of the game. After Claude’s relationship with the Italians is soured due to the Don’s wife Maria and her philandering, Claude enters the center of a drug trafficking ring involving all of the gang factions, shoveling SPANK around the city and attempting to occupy control. Things get rather contentious between the Colombians and the Yakuza when Claude whacks Kenji using a cartel car to set them up and take the blame. This escalated gang war only allows Claude to get closer to Catalina, which he eventually does at the cost of her murdering a scorned, grieving Asuka. The final mission involves following Catalina’s helicopter to a cartel base. Fitting for a final mission of a challenging game, the caveat to the climax of Claude’s revenge plot must be done without any purchased weapons or ammunition, as Claude must rely on cartel pickups. Why not just make Claude also do this mission stark naked while they’re at it? Catalina finally earns her comeuppance via a bazooka shell, but GTA III’s ending is not happy. A part of the mission was to rescue a captured Maria, who Claude decides to shoot as the screen goes black. Jesus, Rockstar. Maria was a trifling skank, but that’s just ice cold. Ike treated Tina with more dignity than that.

I could easily write off GTA III for being completely undercooked in every feasible department. The world is empty and bland, the controls are austere, and every mission is padded with unfair bullshit. All of the characters have the charisma of a gaggle of cockroaches, including the protagonist we’re intended to root for. However, I’ve come to a realization that maybe most of these discrepancies were intentional. It’s possible that all of GTA III’s attributes ranging from its world to its characters seem raw and generic because of the bluntness the developers want to convey. Through the game’s fabric, a sort of satire is subtly interwoven through the game’s active ethos. Perhaps the reason why Liberty City is an unflinching depiction of New York City without the superficial glitz and glamor associated with a bustling American metropolis. Claude as a silent protagonist isn’t a mistake made by sticking to traditional video game tropes despite the cinematic evolution of the medium, but only a stoic, unwavering sociopath could survive on the brutal city streets run by people who have no human warmth. The harsh ending indicates there are no happy endings here, only the next step in a cycle of violence and greed. It’s a bit of a stretch in divulging some sort of substance, and I don’t think any concerned parent would care in making their decision to keep it away from their children. Overall, GTA III’s substance is defined by its innovations, which were certainly awe-striking at the time. No other game tested a gamer’s subconscious ID that thirsted for animalistic impulses, nor was there one that facilitated it. GTA III belongs in a museum where we can give it all the respect it deserves but from an impersonal distance.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com