From There to Here: Super Metroid (WiiVC/SNES) Review

I've been living in New York City for almost 6 months and I still get lost all the time.  Even with pre-trip research, I regularly go the wrong way or pass my destination.  Typically, before venturing out of my apartment I'll Google Map my destination to look for nearby subway stations, and if there is one in close proximity I'll open a subway map pdf to plot my route.  If there are no nearby subway stations I'll Google Map driving directions and look for parking options.  Planning the expedition is a task in itself, but that plan can be easily derailed by any number of unforeseen variables once I finally hit the trail: road construction, poor signage, or faulty GPS, to name a few.  It seems like I'll just need to learn from experience and refine my transportation instincts to the point where I just know where I'm going.

The universality of this experience could be why a video game like 1994's Super Metroid has such lasting, broad appeal.  The Nintendo keystone has topped numerable "best game ever" lists, and inspired plenty of imitators, even this year.  And deservedly so, it is a great game.  Super Metroid has action and atmosphere, but the core of the game is traversal and cartography of the alien planet, Zebes.  The world of Super Metroid is full of bizarre underground passageways.  It's not unlike the NY subway system: dark corridors, deadly electrified pits, and an air of toxicity.  When you enter a new room in Super Metroid, the in-game map draws a pink square on the pause menu's graph paper background.  Additionally, I kept a full world map with detailed legend beside me on a laptop for further reference.  I constantly paused the game to get my bearings and see which spaces I hadn't visited or fully explored.  The map system is helpful for waypointing, but before I'd gained an understanding of the intricacies of Zebes' layout, I had to blind-jump in and hope for the best.

When I forged my own path, putting myself out there in the world, no amount of planning could have fully prepared me for what I might have encountered.  On roads and rails, unexpected late-night track maintenance, station closures, or unpredictable expressway traffic have cast doubt upon my carefully constructed plans, and occasionally motivated a change in course.  The maps I carefully scour before heading out the door are only the system in abstract with limited applicability.  Even Google Street View, which let's you see what buildings look like from the street, can be outdated and misleading.  Super Metroid parallels this disconnect.  When a Map Station is discovered, you can download a rough blueprint of the surrounding area, but it's incomplete. There are huge gaps between rooms that I had to chart myself, which pushed me to engage with my surroundings in real-time.  I didn't know exactly where I was going, but the only thing sacrificed was efficiency, which is, ironically, the element of most concern for commuters.

Meandering exploration is the name of the game in Super Metroid, but most often when navigating big city transit, time is of the essence.  Given the similarities between navigating real and virtual spaces, it's not happenstance that Super Metroid is one of the most popular games for speedruns: attempts to beat the game in as little time as possible.  My playthrough took about 9 hours with an 87% completion rating, but the fastest single-sgment run through the game is 32 minutes at 14%.  Someone even made a 100% run in 48 minutes.  I'm guessing these folks probably know how to get to work on time.  New York is a massive place to explore, and while there is no 100% completion rating, you can figure out how to get from point A to B with as little trouble as possible, at least in theory.  Super Metroid presents the player with an environment where seeing everything is attainable, where the systems are predictable and mechanics are flexible enough to be used more effectively by dedicated players.

When it comes to NY transit, I'm mostly at the mercy of the system, but there are ways to use knowledge of that system to better handle random variables.  When I commuted to work in DC, I knew the exact subway door to enter so that I would exit right in front of the escalator at my destination.  I was pretty proud of myself.  At several points on my way into Manhattan from Brooklyn I can switch to express subway lines that make fewer stops and arrive downtown in a fraction of the time.  I could pour over subway schedules and use the MTA's online trip planner, but show me a public transit system that runs on schedule to the minute, and I'll do something equally unbelievable.  As a result, I just go to the station when I'm ready, and peek out at interchange stations to listen for incoming express trains.  It requires quick thinking, and forces me to learn where all of the lines stop since multiple lines might come through one track at a transfer point.  If no express train is nearby, I can take a gamble and step out and wait for it or take my chances at the next station interchange.  I'm getting better, but like to imagine what I could do with a Grapple Beam.

Decoding Super Metroid's environment moment-to-moment is what makes the game satisfying to play.  The basic gameplay mechanics involve running up against puzzling obstacles with unique visual traits and searching for power-ups that will increase your repertoire of abilities to overcome them. The game's non-combat puzzles ask you to use the correct ability to get from one space on the map to another.  I reached a point where I worried that I had pushed ahead to far, too fast, cutting off my return route and unable to progress forward.  I thought if only I'd consulted the map more thoroughly, I could have avoided the predicament, and I was on the verge of starting the entire game over.  I cross referenced no less than 3 maps, with no apparent answer.  Luckily, after much critical thinking, bomb blasting, and wall jumping I figured out a solution that showed an avenue forward and, eventually, a way back.  I had to play to figure out the right path.  Crazy, I know – a video game that required me to play it.

Even though Super Metroid pulls from the same strange-person-in-a-strange-land feeling that mimics the experience of learning your way around a big city, it's tremendously fun.  That's more than you can say for your average bus ride.  This is where the science fiction fantasy of Metroid comes in to play.  Metroid games are known for their isolated atmosphere and slick sci-fi armaments.  A sure way to look lost or worse, uncool, while riding the NY subway is to pull out a map for reference.  Samus, on the other hand, equips a stylish X-Ray Scope and scans the environment for clues.  Also, she's always alone, so no one is there to give you a look that dismissively mutters "tourist," providing a safe space to be overly meticulous.  Even if someone else was there, remember, Samus' right arm is a laser cannon, so, 'nuff said.

When it comes to traversal Super Metroid behaves like a metropolis in microcosm, albeit a fantastical one.  It takes the challenging aspects of learning to navigate a major city transit system, but substitutes mundane actions like "board the subway car" and "sit in traffic" with entertaining space opera fare like "open the door with a Super Missile" and "freeze the flying jellyfish with an ice beam."  It's not that Super Metroid has helped me feel my way around New York City or that learning the subway has changed the way I approached the game, but I did relate to Samus more than the typical silent protagonist.  "Finding your way" is a concept that travels effectively between fiction and reality and across age groups.  It's a concept that, surprisingly, I empathize with more literally as an adult than I would have when I was only 11 back in 1994, – a testament to Super Metroid's enduring cultural significance.

:top photo modified from Christopher Allen:

Confessions of a Last-Gen Gamer

Back in September, Sony unveiled a third body design for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console, which left many game journalists puzzled, or at best, indifferent.  There was no headline-grabbing price drop, despite the system being constructed from cheaper materials.  The timing was odd and anticlimactic: too far away from a projected PS4 release next holiday season, yet somehow too close.  Maybe Sony wanted a new piece of hardware on shelves to counteract the Wii U launch.  If nothing else, a cheaper manufacturing assembly could only improve the PS3's per-unit profitability, a problem for Sony since the console debuted in 2006  Speculation went on, but the big question was "who is this for?"

The answer: me.  I live and breathe games, but I've yet to own a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, until now.  It's a little embarrassing to admit this in the age where anyone who talks about games first must prove their "gamer cred."  But it's true, for the past 6 years, I've been a "last-gen gamer."  With my new PS3 this year, I've finally entered the current generation of consoles.  It didn't have anything to do with the console redesign, just that this was finally the right time for me.

For years I got by just fine, discovering older games that I never had the chance to play, while keeping abreast of current game culture through various podcasts, news feeds, reviews, and feature stories instead of actually playing the titles being discussed.  On the upside, there are so many interesting older games that I could dedicate time to, instead of overlooking them in favor of the constant cycle of zeitgeist-of-the-week titles.  For a long time, I was quite content to revel in undiscovered 8 and 16-bit treasures, absorbing Mass Effects and Assassin's Creeds from the sidelines.  Sure, I've missed those big communal gaming moments, like the collective puzzle-solving of Fez upon release, but that was all part of the gamble.  However, since I spend so much time and effort writing about games, it became clear that I could no longer hang back.

In large part my decision to withhold buying a current generation console until now was based on money.  I was a PS2 loyalist from launch who wanted nothing to do with Xbox and it's giant jewels-for-buttons Halo controllers.  This was also high school, so let's not dwell on biases.  Naturally, I was interested in continuing the legacy by purchasing a PS3 in 2006, but the $600 price point was a nonstarter.  I was then a very recent college graduate, trying to practice personal fiscal responsibility and independence.  I didn't want to throw down that kind of money on something as seemingly frivolous as a new video game console, especially when the price of games also increased to $60 from 50.  The PS3 was even too expensive to feel comfortable asking for as a birthday gift from my parents.  Besides, for that kind of money I'd rather have invested toward something truly extravagant like an arcade cabinet or a pinball machine.  I knew from history that console prices eventually lower; they always had.  I figured I could just wait for Sony to come to me, but that wait was much, much longer than I expected.

Despite this, being a last-gen gamer isn't depressing like you might think.  In fact, during my current-gen fast I discovered several substantial benefits of forgoing day-one-purchase culture.

1: Hindsight.  2012 alone has seen the release of hundreds of games—far too many for a single person to play in one year.  Coming to a console after-the-fact means I can easily select the critical standouts and avoid the noise.  Games are a unique medium when it comes to the quality of sequels, often iterating on their predecessors, improving functionality and addressing unresolved issues from the previous title.  If I can buy LittleBigPlanet 2, I really don't need the first one.  This logic doesn't apply to all franchises, but is especially applicable to sequels plagued by critical labels like "more of the same" which were otherwise touted as technical improvements.  I spend less time and money, but still get the best of a particular brand of experience.

2: Cheap games.  This one's pretty simple.  I don't need to spend more than $20 for new, in-box retail games that originally sold for 3 times as much.  Deluxe reissues and trilogy collections abound, including DLC add-ons for a fraction of what they would have cost a la carte upon debut.  As for downloadable games, they're digital, so there's no "limited pressing" impulse buy.  Digital supply is virtually unlimited, so there's no need for consumers to rush out and pay a premium for fear that a game might be hard to come by later.  Plus, even downloadable games go on sale from time to time.  This isn't even taking into account used games, which can reduce costs even further, despite having to deal with blocked online modes and anti-resale DRM.

3: Avoid the hype.  It's refreshing to exist outside of the realm of tech-lust.  In fact, I'd say I'm more appreciative and caring of the technology I do possess because I'm more invested in its longevity.  Part of the appeal for early adopters of new technology is the sexiness and air of luxury that comes with owning something few but the elite crop of die-hards have.  Perhaps it's just come as a part of getting older, but I don't feel an intense need to be a member of that club anymore.  I like new stuff, but if a product is built for the long haul, it'll still be around when a purchase becomes more personally convenient.

The wait-and-see approach has its downsides though.  Conversations about current games are richer when drawn from the physical experience of actually playing them.  Even with a background in previous console generations, I can only assume so much based on descriptive video footage and commentary.  Also, much the way services like Netflix and Hulu have been accused of killing the simple pleasures and unexpected discovery of channel surfing, a last-gen gamer making the leap forward is more likely to invest in a "greatest hits" game collection than try out B-tier titles that try something unique, but flounder on the overall package.  For example, I may give the supposedly provocative, yet middling shooter, Spec Ops: The Line, a shot someday, but it's certainly not on my initial list of must-plays.

Ultimately, I recommend being a last-gen gamer, at least for one console generation.  It was a great run — I've learned quite a bit about my own consumer preferences and have observed the video game industry from a more objective, disconnected perspective.  As long as you're not a collector, last-gen gaming is a super cheap way to maintain a gaming hobby.  I've only joined the corporate-indoctrinated fray because writing about games has become more than a recreational exercise for me, and at some point I was missing essential tools for the job.  There's not one correct way to play or interpret games, and by extension, there is a diversity of gamers who consume games at their own pace.  I don't know if there are enough last-gen gamers out there to make an impact on the video game marketplace, but no matter—flying under he radar is sort of the point. 

:image modified from The Daily Mail:

What's This Do?: McPixel (Mac) Review

Before you can navigate the top menu in the blocky point n' click adventure game, McPixel, you're faced with a brief gameplay scenario.  Your character, the titular McPixel, stands in a field awaiting your orders.  In the center of the screen is a big red button with a giant arrow pointing to it that reads "Press to start."  There is no way to continue in the game without giving in to the temptation of the button, so you click it, like so many Wile E. Coyotes who have come before.  Instantly, a boulder falls from the sky, crushing McPixel and everything else on screen.  The main menu then pops up and you're free to select game modes and fiddle with the options as you'd normally expect.  In this short little introductory scene, McPixel let's you know exactly what kind of game it is: a cartoonish, old-school adventure game with a sophomoric sense of humor.

The premise of McPixel is a twisted joke itself.  As the player, you click around in screen-sized areas to interact with objects in hope of defusing a bomb, but often you'll click on the wrong object, triggering a quick animated gag before the whole scene explodes.  Seemingly derived from SNL's MacGruber skits about an inept bomb-defusing action star (itself a spoof of the late 80s TV action series, MacGyver), McPixel plays it's own influences up for laughs.  It's a bit like that part in Multiplicity where Michael Keaton clones himself so many times that the quality of his copies turn out a bit...unflattering.  It's true that McPixel's major "plot" conceit, like the Macs from which it's derived, is still bomb disarmament, but it's the clone that came out very wrong.  That may be a long walk to take for the concept of a game that primarily trades in fart jokes, but a funny juxtaposition in its own way.

Mechanically, McPixel is a conventional point n' click adventure game, but because of it's short-fuse timer and rapid level cycling, it feels quite different from other genre entries.   McPixel's levels are divided into subsets of six that you tackle in rotation.  You're only given 15 seconds per scenario to make a definitive action before the bomb explodes and the scene shifts to the next level in the group.  Adventure games are traditionally known for their slow pace, smart writing, and lengthy inventory-based puzzles.  McPixel dials up the speed, substitutes writing for Dumb and Dumber-esque visual punchlines, and makes combining the incorrect objects part of the fun.  It's true that you can find yourself stuck on a puzzle, rewatching incrementally less amusing gags play out multiple times, but you'll be onto the next set before too long.  This rapid-fire approach is an appealing recipe for someone like myself who needs an extra push to get my interest up for a point n' click adventure.

Juvenile humor combined with the act of "daring" McPixel to put himself in compromising situations is at the heart of McPixel's appeal. With 15 seconds to solve puzzles, you can spend your time clicking on things that you think will disable the ever-present bomb, or you can click random stuff that you want McPixel to mess around with before inevitably being blown to bits.  The character McPixel is quite a gullible dolt, succumbing to the mildest of peer pressure, all for your amusement.  McPixel's base-level instinct is usually to kick whatever you click on, which rarely ends well for him.  Policeman?  Kick 'em!  Stick of dynamite?  Kick it!  In one scene you're presented with a hair dryer, a yeti, and a barrel with a lit fuse.  You could click on the barrel in hopes that you put the fuse out somehow, but you'd probably rather see what happens when McPixel tries to blow dry a yeti.

Ironically, sometimes going for the sight gags ends up disarming the bomb anyway, leading you to question your judgement about whether the obvious solution is too obvious to be the real answer.  McPixel plays with this nonsensical logic throughout its length, at times requiring you to pursue a ridiculous pair of actions (two clicks at most) to diffuse a bomb, but other times the solution is as simple as clicking on a bomb in clear view to swiftly win the level.  Note that if you can get a character to consume the explosive, it will probably detonate in their body, puffing out their stomach like a balloon, but ultimately saving the stage from annihilation.  With this precedent established, McPixel's play incentive stems from a desire to view all of the comedic possibilities, regardless of whether the bomb gets taken care of or not.  Plus, since the only way to earn 100% completion on a level and unlock bonus areas is to witness every joke in a scene, you'll spend a considerable chunk of your time with McPixel hunting them all down.

Make no mistake, McPixel's humor is as dumb as it gets, but it still made me chuckle from time to time.  The game goes lowbrow, but sticks mostly to slaphappy, cartoonish violence and bodily functions, instead of wading into dark or offensive territory.  Granted, someone might find the bonus level set inside a toilet offensive, but it's all quite tame in the grand scheme of internet-borne comedy.  It helps that the visual style of McPixel is, well, pixelated to such an extreme degree, reinforcing its harmlessly crude nature.  The character McPixel is nothing but a dead-eyed, pot-bellied stack of red and blue squares, and the rest of the resident populace is rendered in similar MS Paint fashion.  McPixel is full of nerd-culture references that look great/terrible in the game's chunky, low resolution world too.  The whole game comes off a bit like an overly-compressed JPEG version of MAD Magazine.

Like most middle-school humor, you'll probably reach a point where McPixel's jokes begin fall flat and the thinking behind them becomes too transparent to enjoy with your initial enthusiasm.  If you play McPixel for more than one suite of levels at a time, you risk stretching the appeal of the game's comedy beyond its limits, but in small doses, it's the interactive syndicated comic strip that your local paper would run if they had the technology and weren't opposed to jokes about public urination.  The same way a comic like Marmaduke is really just the same two punchlines repeated ad infinitum, McPixel also offers mere variation on a handful of gags.  At their core though, those jokes are still so stupid that they're pretty funny.  McPixel may not have perfected the accessible adventure comedy game, but it does step in a progressively-minded, if aesthetically dim-witted, direction.

Authentic Authenticity

"It's as close to the real thing as you can get without being there!" has become the philosophy behind use of the term "authenticity" as it pertains to video games.  Notably, the word was used as part of a public relations strategy in promotion of the recently released modern military shooter, Medal of Honor: Warfighter (MoHW), which came under fire from critics citing laundry lists of features that detail the gulf between the game and real world combat situations.  Amidst some other PR follies, developer Danger Close set the record straight on what they define as authentic in their game: weapon models, field equipment, and squad chatter, among other largely aesthetic categories.  War games like those in the Medal of Honor, Tom Clancy, and Call of Duty franchises take criticism on issues concerning authenticity, but the vagueness of what makes a game "authentic" is not genre specific.

This semantic gray area is problematic when the word "authenticity" is co-opted for deployment by marketing teams in a fallacious, occasionally hypocritical manner, as was the case with MoHW.  When you see a trailer for a game or hear a publisher's spokesperson hyping their upcoming title, it's in the service of selling a product to consumers.  "Authenticity" is a buzzword, used primarily when speaking about how a game has adapted elements from another work or from real life.  When potential players are told that a game is supposedly authentic, it's easy to react with skepticism.  In most cases, using "authentic" as part of a marketing campaign for a video game either sets up players to think that they will actually have an authentic (insert game inspiration) experience when in fact the game only offers a visual sheen of realistic tropes, or it places the bar for authenticity so low that the game easily hits its mark.  These possibilities will produce players who are either cynical toward game marketing or who develop lowered expectations for what qualifies as authentic, or both.

Contextual authenticity is a crutch when true historical reenactment is an impossibility.  Since history happens one way, even if witnessed from multiple perspectives, it can pose a problem for game developers that seek to offer player agency in historical contexts.  If you're designing a game set in 1944 where players command Allied forces as they storm the beaches of Normandy, you have to challenge players to succeed, but ultimately, a string of very specific actions need to happen for the sake of historical accuracy.  One way to ensure that an event happens in a game is to narrowly script it, taking a certain amount of control away from the player.  Commonly this results in plot devices such as non-interactive cutscenes, areas where you can't draw a weapon, locked doors, and forced prompts.  These moments can add authenticity in a more cinematic execution, but they ignore the strengths of the video game medium.

Video games can present alternate, what-if histories that can offer a degree of insight, via roleplay, into various cause and effect relationships throughout time.  In authentically reenacting history, the Civilization games wildly miss the mark, (Montezuma vs. Gandhi: not historically accurate, turns out) yet they are one of the few go-to titles for social science educators.   All entries in the Civilization series put players into virtual leadership roles, asking them to consider and act upon variables consistent with the depicted eras of history to ensure the continued existence and prosperity of their citizenry.  The lack of real-world chronological beholdenness unchains Civilization's gameplay from following a strict timeline, and instead focuses play on decision points and resource management that actual national leaders must consider, albeit in simplified form.  Civilization has proven that it's not necessary to force a historically accurate narrative in a game in order to say something significant about history.  In contrast, MoHW's use of the word "authentic" rang hollow not because the game lacks realism, but rather, the areas chosen to tout as authentic are ancillary to the nature and quality of the gameplay experience.

Some games merely claim authenticity, but true simulations are most likely to legitimately earn the title of "authentic."  Simulations acquire this status because they focus on authentic mechanics above secondary aesthetic details.  Take the Digital Combat Simulator (DCS) line of flight sims for example.  In DCS games you sit inside a virtual cockpit and must flip all the switches and turn all the dials in the proper, real-world order to get your plane in the air, at which point you fly it using a control stick built to mimic the steering interface of an actual aircraft.  This is an authentic video game adaptation of something that exists in the real world.  You could say the same for the act of driving with a racing wheel in a game like Gran Turismo or even performing classic dance moves in front of a Kinect in Dance Central.

The aforementioned simulation mechanics have the benefit of unique controller interfaces that speak directly to the game experience instead of mapping actions to button presses on a DualShock.  Control schemes are the first layer of abstraction from authenticity that most games have to tackle.  Some players will never make it over that hurdle and will always note the artifice of the controller as an obstacle that makes otherwise realistic stories trivial or unbelievable.  The fact that with standardized controllers the same physical actions are required of the player to accomplish wildly different tasks from one game to the next can amplify the inauthenticity of those mechanics.  If pressing the "X" button means saying "Hi" to a character in one game and "stealth killing" a character with a knife in another, then the potential corollary meaning of pressing the "X" button is negated.

Even if authenticity can be achieved, to what end?  Flight simulations are used to train would-be pilots and the US military has their own crop of combat simulators for tactics and strategy.  There is a very direct relationship between playing a simulation and improving a real-world skill.  The virtual act of killing, specifically gun violence, is at the real heart of the controversy surrounding consumer-ready war games and authenticity, not Danger Close taking some heat for a marketing pitch.

If first-person shooters (FPS) like MoHW were to explore more authentic mechanics they'd risk the ethical dilemma that players could get better at shooting real guns by playing their games.  Light-gun games, which require players to hold plastic firearms and aim them at the screen, have been around for decades, and footage of them, framed accusingly, was included in many post-Columbine media packages about violence and video games alongside the now primitive-looking FPS pariah, Doom.  Light-gun games have the potential to approach more authentic gun-shooting mechanics, but developers usually take measures to assure that the interactivity isn't "too authentic."  In arcades, guns are painted bright colors or have sci-fi twists that serve to break the illusion of holding a real firearm, and the games themselves are comically over-the-top and formatted for short bursts of fluffy entertainment.  No developer wants the kind of critical scrutiny that ends in lawsuits like those filed against id Software (creators of Doom) and other game companies in 2002, and it's clear that producing games that offer truly authentic gun-shooting mechanics would approach an ethical threshold that's yet to be crossed in mainstream gaming.

Without authentic mechanics, MoHW can only get so close to putting players "directly in the boots of the soldier," especially with the inclusion of a multiplayer mode that has more in common with football scrimmages than real warfare.  In these multiplayer modes, the gloss of any overarching narrative or character motivation is replaced with the player's basic desire to win competitive matches and rank up their persistent statistics.  It's much more like a sport than a military campaign.  Modern military FPS games like MoHW succeed or fail at market by their multiplayer modes, leaving the "authentic" single player campaigns to be seen as bonuses, if played at all, by the most ardent of the genre's fanbase.  These multiplayer modes are big business for mega-publishers like Electronic Arts and Activision (this whole discussion came from PR-talk, remember), scheduling new releases annually that only slightly tweak gameplay rather than disrupting the successful formula.  When "team deathmatch" is going to be your game's most popular mode because it was that way last year, not only are you strictly obligated to a very specific control scheme, but it becomes very difficult to paint a picture of authentic, introspective wartime struggle when the most popular, time-engrossing section of your product screams otherwise. 

There is room for games to approach the subject of authenticity from a multitude of credible angles, but above all else, the final product needs to be able to speak for itself and have something worthwhile to say.  Games that are adapted from real life subjects and events, especially those striving for authenticity, should be held to high standards, both for accuracy and for the ethics of their social impact.  MoHW's big mistake wasn't its mixture of real guns and unrealistic mechanics, it was billing itself as authentic and failing to deliver.

 :Reposted on Medium Difficulty: