We All Fall Down

Western Deconstruction

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Structure of the first half of Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:

  1. Title sequence
  2. Showdown #1; The Ugly identified
  3. Showdown #2 (and aftermath); The Bad identified
  4. Showdown #3 (and aftermath); The Good (such as he is) identified
  5. Back to The Bad; he beats a woman, showing how bad he is
  6. Back to The Ugly; the strange gunshop scene, where he displays his strange character traits
  7. (in the restored version) Added scene setting up the logic for the following scene; helps to space things out and show a little more of Tuco’s character
  8. Back to the Good, via Tuco; Blondie shows how sensitive he is, with the gun-cleaning scene; the outside world interferes for the first time, saving Blondie and setting the rest of the movie in motion
  9. (in the restored version) Back to The Bad; Angel Eyes’ eye-opening scene, where he is exposed to the effect of the war; some logic, to help explain why Angel Eyes returns when he does
  10. Back to the Ugly, then the Good; the squabble resolves. Blondie is again saved when the outside world (the stagecoach) again interferes, thus giving a greater goal for the movie and setting the third leg in motion.
  11. (in the restored version) Added scene setting up the logic for the following scene; helps to space things out and show a little more of Tuco’s character
  12. Tuco and Blondie at the mission; Tuco’s eye-opening scene, where he is exposed to the effect of the war; Tuco’s character is fully established, making Blondie more sympathetic to him
  13. Tuco and Blondie get caught up in the prison camp, to finally intersect with Angel Eyes
  14. etc.

I’ll fill the rest in later. It’s all downhill from here. Very… clean.

The removed scenes mostly help with the plot. Only one (aside from the boot thing, which is lovely) strikes me as important to the tone of the movie; that’s the early scene with Angel Eyes. The others are all nice to have, and make the movie feel fuller. More complete. I can see why they were cut, though, if cuts had to be made.

I can feel the walls closing in on me

  • Reading time:4 mins read

So everyone around me kept saying how great the new Zelda was

I don’t know. It struck me as another Zelda game, from what I saw of
it. And. I understand that some of Nintendo’s trends have been worsening. Even though Capcom’s making all of their games, these days.

Zelda used to be a thing of wonder. Now it is a template. Metroid is starting to go the same route, too. The series has been stagnating since the third game. Both series have been. It just gets more obvious, the more often it’s iterated. And the more out-of-touch and patronizing each iteration becomes.

Metroid Prime is a nice exception.

Wind Waker brings a lot of nice things to the series, just as Metroid Fusion does. The problems with them are the same, though. They don’t really succeed because in the end, the template rules. They have to answer to it, so they don’t get away with as much as they might. It’s mechanics, not experience, that Nintendo chooses to deliver these days.

I don’t give a damn about the rules. I want to feel something.

Here’s the part where I’m a wiseguy and ask which series has undergone more substantial changes over the years, Zelda or King of Fighters? I suspect most fans of either would pick the other, which is only natural. Fans of something pay attention to the small but sometimes crucial changes between iterations, while non-fans shrug their shoulders and say that they all sort of look the same.

I adore Zelda and Metroid — or at least, what they once stood for. The series have certainly changed; they’ve regressed. It’s pretty sad when the first two games are the most sophisticated, and everything else has just been about weeding away what made the games stand out from the crowd. A process of prolonged blanding. That’s what distresses me. I have come to be dismissive through one mediocre decision after another.

As far as fighting games go, KOF has evolved more in concept, and covered more ground, than any other series I can think of. If you can even compare it to other games; the series operates on its own terms. It’s more a serial novel than anything. Yet it’s a serial that only becomes richer and more rewarding as it unfurls.

Meanwhile, all of Nintendo’s series become more generalized and mathematical, drawing from the same proven design documents.

Metroid isn’t as far along the decay as Zelda, of course. Nintendo avoided the series for nearly a decade after Yokoi died. And Intelligent Systems isn’t EAD. Now Retro is doing some insightful stuff with the concept, fleshing it out in a way Nintendo never did. Zero Mission gets a lot right, especially where it borrows from Retro rather than from Miyamoto. I like the way it prepares the player for how to deal with Metroids, for instance. It is, however, still mired in the same hyper-safe, inbred theory that Nintendo’s been using since 1991. And with every generation, that theory generates more genetic defects…

If every chapter of KOF were 2002 or NeoWave, I would feel the same as
I do about Zelda. (Conversely, this would probably please a lot of people.) If a game like Wind Waker or Fusion were allowed to follow through on its own ideas, rather than bow to the Miyamoto machine, I would be inclined to care more.

I’ve not really played Majora’s Mask. It’s the only Zelda game aside from Wind Waker to look interesting to me since the NES. I played for about half an hour, and in that time noticed that all of the models were recycled from OoT. That wasn’t too encouraging, though I suppose it doesn’t mean anything on its own.

240 Denarii

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I went through the day in a bizarre, stomach-curdled funk. I had a vague headache, my eyes were blurry, my temper did not exist, and I couldn’t really sleep. I blamed everything and everyone. Sometimes I had to fight back tears. I had intended another odyssey in search of a certain coffee shop. That didn’t happen. Instead, I… sat. I tried to sleep. I read. I gritted my teeth. I forgot to eat. Eventually, set out by a book on Krakatoa that I have been reading, spot in spot, in the bathroom, I began researching things on The Internet.

In that book, I had come to a passage mentioning a claim a few years ago, in a British documentary, that an early explosion of Krakatoa, in 517 or thereabouts (early sixth centry, anyway) was in part responsible for everything from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Dark Ages to the Plague of Justinian.

This got me to wondering about the “Dark Ages”. The implication that the period could have been brought about by environmental factors, such as those that come after such an eruption… well, it perplexed me. So I pulled up Wikipedia and typed in “Dark Ages” — to find nothing terribly illuminating. Since I was up for a refresher on Charlemagne, however, I followed that thread. This brought me to the revelation that Charlemagne’s father, Pepin, was responsible for the revival of a system of coinage in the land formerly covered by the Western Empire. That system, inspired by the original Roman model, was as follows:

1 libra = 20 solidi = 240 denarii

How… oddly familiar. The math was just bizarre enough to force me a double-check on the pre-decimal system for Pounds Sterling. And what do we have here.

The “L” for pound comes from Libra; the “S” for shilling comes from Solidi, and the “D” for Penny comes from Denarii.

It’s the same thing. In at least some form, the original Roman system persisted until 1971, before progress made its blow.

This revelation led me to other topics. Those, to others. Hours later, I feel… fed.

Now, I may sleep.

Postmodernism

  • Reading time:4 mins read

>The logic of the fiction in MGS2 is broken to jarring effect often throughout the game. I understand that Tim’s article states that this is the entire point. However, I would argue that that is not a point at all.

Sure it is. Well, not on its own.

The issue at play here is a kind of a meta-understanding. A defamiliarized awareness of the nature of a particular form, as it were. Or a self-awareness within that form (which is itself a form of defamiliarization). This is exactly the way that we understand our world; by taking it out of context or by summing it up in unexpected, yet somehow logical, ways. This is also how humor works.

There is, therefore, a certain built-in level of humor. There is a certain built-in level of insight about the nature of everything that is happening, as it happens. If it all serves to make some interesting observations, then the project is a success.

If you will, that subjectivity is the whole damned idea here. It’s a big part of the process of defamiliarization. It’s a big part of deconstruction. Understanding the nature of that subjectivity, on (of course) a subjective basis.

A game like MGS2 works because of the questions it raises about the nature of the videogame, about our interaction with the videogame, about our expectations of a videogame. On its own, you might consider this obnoxious. On the long term, these are questions that need to be asked — because there aren’t a lot of people asking them. Asking us to look at what our assumptions are.

If all you want to do is be entertained (that is, to have your expectations met), then you’ll have a problem with this. If you are really interested in the medium, its nature and its potential, you will greet questions like these with a certain level of delight.

I, for one, didn’t care at all about Metal Gear until a bit of MGS2 was spoiled for me. Until I began to hear about to what degree Kojima went out of his way to fuck with his audience. Then, suddenly, I was transfixed. I had a new level of respect for the game, and for Kojima. Because he’s using his established power to force his audience to think. It would be one thing if the game were some little-known release with no media attention. Kojima had the limelight, however. So rather than just cash in, he decided to do something useful with that power. That, right there, is a part of the game. It’s not just the code, or even the game’s relationship with the player. It’s the wealth of expecations the player already has, going into the game.

If the game pisses people off, or confuses them — good! Frankly. It should. That means it’s doing part of its job. And that just adds to the experience for anyone who is in a position to giggle at what Kojima has done. To see the implicit humor on all of its levels; to see just what Kojima was trying to comment on; to think about what that might imply about videogames, and our relationship with them, in a broader sense. Some of those people might go on to make other games. Or at least to greet future games with a more critical eye.

It’s games (and stunts) like this which help to expand what videogames Can Be, simply by forcing us to look where we never would have thought to look otherwise. Some of us are annoyed because there’s nothing but a blank wall and a stagehand where we’re looking. Some of us are intrigued for the same reasons. It’s the latter who are targeted, and it’s the former who help to illustrate the idea for the latter. It’s just as well. They serve a purpose, too — in furthering that understanding and in heightening that humor. They just serve to make the joke, as it were, all the bigger and more profound.

It’s the sheer, high-level irreverence that gets me fired up. I get the same sensation out of observing MGS2, and the reaction to it, that I get out of a Marx Bros. movie.

If you know me, you will know that this is one of the greater compliments I can give.

The Gathering

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Someone asked why videogames — that is to say, console games — tend to be so sought-after by collectors, when PC games more often just fade away when their time passes. I’ve covered this before, in some form. Here it is again, though.

PC games are ephemeral. Console games are not. The latter feel real; concrete. The former are kind of disposable. You install them, you uninstall them. You’ll never have a standard experience. In a few years they’ll never work again. Magnetic media decay, and quickly. Cartridges, not so much. Now that everything’s on CD, the lines are blurred a bit.

I think it’s a similar question as to why VHS isn’t as collectable as DVD and cassettes aren’t as collectable as LPs or DVDs. They don’t feel as permanent. They aren’t an investment in the same way, because you don’t know if you will be able to rely on them when you feel you need them.

The whole idea of the collector is to amass trinkets which he will be able to refer to at whim. Often they are kept in as pure a condition as possible, just to preserve them for the future. Every addition is sort of like an addition to one’s extended being. One more exterior node to the mind, or personality. One more anchor to stability. One more reminder that one exists, that there is a certain order to life.

We collect because we want to capture life. Hold onto it forever. It comes from a deep inner need. Anything which can decay is a problem, from this mindset.

Of course, videogames themselves are an ephemeral phenomenon. If anything really does exist in the way we perceive it, videogames fail to do so except in the electrical space between hardware and the player’s mind. Once the electricity is gone, once the infrastructure that supports them is gone, videogames will also be gone. What physical remains remain wil be irrelevant.

Still. We all play our little games in life.

New Grounds

  • Reading time:21 mins read

Judging from what’s in the game now and from what Keiko Iju said in her intervew, it looks like Noise intends the roster in Maximum Impact 2 to look something like this:

  • Kyo, Beni, Iori
  • Terry, Joe, Rock
  • Mai, King, Lien
  • Ryo, Robert, Yuri
  • Alba, NEW, Soiree
  • Athena, Kensou, Mignon
  • Leona, Ralf, Clark
  • Chae, Chang, Jhun
  • K’, Maxima, Whip
  • Seth, Vanessa, Ramon

I’m not saying that’ll be the exact arrangement; it’s just an example. I can see a third Magical Girl taking Kensou’s place. Or a new woman, in King’s.

I’ve broken this into teams, because it seems from the current arrangement like Noise wanted a team-based structure; they just didn’t have enough characters to support it. If you notice, I’m mostly just adding one color character, as Noise puts it — meaning a supporting character or sidekick, such as Benimaru or Kensou — into each of the existing rough “teams” (going horizontally).

Color characters are the likes of Joe, King, Robert, Chang, Ramon, Whip, Vanessa. They serve no important role in the game balance. They don’t represent anything that isn’t already covered by someone more obvious. They exist mostly to provide different kinds of energy. To make the game feel more alive and varied. In my interpretation, it’s the kind of subtle variation just for the sake of humanity which makes The King of Fighters what it is.

Which might go a distance toward why MI doesn’t feel like a KOF game to me. You might notice that there are basically no supporting characters here. It’s all heroes; protagonists. Main characters. Icons. The only ones who you might count as supporting characters are Maxima and Seth — yet K’ and Maxima are close to a matched set, and Seth actually serves a bigger role in the plot than anyone outside the new characters.

Keeping Your Options Open: Reinterpreting a Legacy

  • Reading time:12 mins read

by [name redacted]

This is an early draft of a feature or review (depending on your perspective) that soon after went up on Insert Credit. The version there is probably better. Still, interesting to compare.

I must be forward: although the series has charmed me for two decades, Gradius is as cold, arbitrary, and unforgiving as videogames get. It almost feels like it doesn’t want me to play it. For my part, I abide where I can; I turn the game off when I lose my first life. The only chapter that has stuck to me through the years is the NES version of Life Force — yet I adore the game. Life Force is one of my favorite games for the NES. It’s one of the best shooters I’ve played. It’s probably one of the games I have the greatest affection for, overall.

Clearly something is odd here.

On Metroid: Zero Mission

  • Reading time:2 mins read

> So I was wondering, why did you never review Metroid Zero Mission?

Because I moved to the other side of the continent, and some plans have gotten kind of lost along the way.

It’s a good game. I really like a few things it does, in particular the way it frames itself and what that means; how it justifies existing alongside the original version of that game. There are some little bits of narrative which I find uncommonly clever and illustrative of just how videogames work, as a medium. The game also tries hard to fix some of the problems in Fusion. Much of that is a success. Some of it, not so much.

I just had a dream in which it was common knowledge (and indeed true) that oranges, left unpicked, grew up to huge gourd-like fruits; their rinds hardened into a shell, while their pulp decayed into a juice then dried away. Oranges also grew along the ground, on vines. There was one orange in particular, on the front porch of my mother’s house in Maine, that had a fungal infection on one corner. Sort of a tumor. I knocked it off, only to realize that if it had the one infection, the whole orange was bad. Especially if I left the hole in the shell which I (unintentionally) did. So I tipped the orange over, adding a flood of rancid matured orange juice to the front lawn.

There are a few things about the game which I don’t like as well as I might, of course. Most of those would take a while to explain, though.

On the Outside: An Informal Look into Silent Hill 4

  • Reading time:3 mins read

by [name redacted]

Today’s post is brought to you by Andrew Toups and the letter Æ.

People complain about Henry’s personality. I don’t get it. I mean, I do. There seems to be this idea that The Room is substantially more character-based than the earlier games, and that the tendency toward supreme understatement in all parties somehow undermines what emotional potential there might be. I don’t know how true that is, though. Taking the game for what it is, I get the idea that the characters are distant because they’re distant. Because that’s the nature of our interaction, as the player and as Henry Townsend.

See, Henry is a strangely normal guy; in a way, more typical than either Harry or James. He doesn’t have a dead wife and a lost daughter. He doesn’t have a dead wife and a crushing sense of guilt. He just has a bottle of white wine and a carton of chocolate milk in his fridge. He has no particular problems, outside his current predicament. Although compassionate for his part, he maintains his distance. As far as others are concerned, Henry’s role is of the bemused observer.

Although he’s not just a foil, Henry is a parallel for the player. You might call him a bit of a Raiden. Think of his circumstances in terms of Myst — with the Malkovich-holes in place of linking books. Notice how much of the game involves peeping — Henry, taking in his world indirectly, which we in turn take in indirectly through Henry. That is, except for the portions in room 302. Those, the most overtly Myst-like, we experience in the first-person. It is only when we leap through the holes, back into the game world, that Henry returns as a buffer.

In his relationship with others, Henry continues this role. He’s nice enough a person; it’s just, this isn’t his world. He’s busy living the life of the mind. Even when he’s standing next to Eileen, he’s still peeping. He’s not really there. He’s just watching.

It is this distance, and the safety it provides, which the game later tries to dissolve — for Henry and the player alike. When the game notices Henry is when it notices the player. When the darkness intrudes into room 302, it is intruding into the player’s own perceived safe space, where there is no Henry to fall back on.

For my part, I would find Henry’s conversations jarring if they were any less zoned-out. I would be distracted if the human relationships were any more satisfying. That would be too perfect. Perfection ruins any illusion. Henry would cease to be so very normal. He would become someone special. And he’s not. He’s no hero. He’s barely a protagonist. He’s just a twentysomething guy with white wine in his fridge. And at the end, Henry has resolved no personal problems. He remains the guy he always was. He just needs a new apartment.

Boston

  • Reading time:1 mins read

It just hit me the other day how absurd the term “scientist” indeed is, as it was considered from about two hundred years ago when it was coined up until around a hundred. If you consider that “science” is just a formal term (being Latin) for “knowledge”, and that the field that we now call science really IS basically a natural philosophy — it…

I mean. It’s like labeling yourself an ideological proponent of knowledge. Which is fine, I guess, but doesn’t it seem both inordinately arrogant and a little silly to claim that a rational consideration of exterior evidence (a reasonable, if inherently backward approach — as evidenced by the absurdity and horror that the scientific method has brought to, say, psychology, or any system where exterior variables only hint at the actual story) is equal to knowledge itself — and that you are a ideologue of this standpoint, this One Truth?

Sifting for Treasure

  • Reading time:5 mins read

When Yu Suzuki began his work on Shenmue, I doubt he any more understood what the game was going to be than I know what I’m going to eat for breakfast tomorrow. Sure, he had a plan — a plan for a Virtua Fighter-themed RPG. And when the game was finished, it had turned into a hands-on parable for the idea that life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.

If, as they say, creativity is the tendency to make interesting mistakes, and if the best works are found in the editing, then intent becomes academic.

What, then, I find really interesting are those supernaturally clean concepts — statements so precise and frankly obvious that they surely must have burst from the aether of their own volition, without any human filter to muck them up. The truth is that, almost to the last, these are just the same shotgun ideas we all try to express, only edited to such a fine point that you feel you can use them as a weapon.

After a brief period of awe, I now understand Gradius V as one of these cases.

At the outset, I admit I was a little confused by how few choices the game seemed to present in comparison to past games. There is only one ship: the Vic Viper. There are four weapon modes, yet they all seem so similar; each has the same kind of a force field, all have the same laser, and what variable factors exist are much the same.

Later I saw that Treasure had merely brought the Options to the fore and center of the game mechanics, doing the uncanny obvious. With this one move, the game and indeed the whole concept of Gradius sticks as it never quite has and never would have otherwise. For the benefit of focus, away with the ripple laser and the photon torpedo and the classic Gradius shield, in favor of the Life Force model. Away with the checkpoint-respawning, again in favor of the Life Force system.*

Though — apparently not too far away. As insightful as the final game is, it looks like Treasure didn’t know any better than I what they were doing when they began. I say this because it seems they actually developed a bunch of that excess material which has so bogged down the series just for the sake of being there. When you beat the game — despite the difficulty level, I find it is more a when than an if — you are treated with a few of the details that Treasure apparently chose to leave out. Namely, a weapon select mode that includes a trove of abandoned concepts, largely inspired by past games.

As far as extras go, this one is about perfect; like a deleted scenes reel, only better. After the game knows the player has had the full experience, it eases up and returns all the toys that Treasure had taken away for fear of distraction, or even of undermining the whole game design. Even if it breaks the game, I finally get my ripple laser. I get a couple of neat missile types, which are far more useful (that is, easy to exploit) than the defaults. If I really want it, I can now use the old-style Gradius shield. I even have some wonky flavors of double shot, that I can combine with my Option type at will.

To me, this is neat precisely because I feel I have now earned the liberty to mess around. I’ve listened to what the game had to say. I’ve done what there is to do. Now we can let down our hair. It’s much the same strategy you see in fighting games like Capcom vs. SNK, where you to make want certain characters available, yet where those characters don’t really fit the main roster. So you lock them away, to make it clear that they’re just there for the fun of it; they’re not part of the actual design.

If I thought the game was brilliant before, I now also consider it generous. Particularly in regards to the insight it provides on Treasure’s creative process. It is a relief to see that they don’t just come up with these ideas; as with anyone, they have to just throw paint at the canvas, and see what sticks. Still, what editors they are!

A note: I see that Gradius V, as with Ikaruga, was designed and developed by only about half a dozen people. I think this says a lot for small teams. I wonder how the growth of team size corresponds to the way the medium has changed (and grown distracted) over the last decade. Something to think about.

* – If the game seems to draw from Life Force so much, I think there is a reason: Life Force is one of the only other games in the series to get certain key things right. Most of the other games in the series are so mired down in tradition and clutter that they become relics of broken-yet-cute ideas.

I QUIT

  • Reading time:1 mins read

There’s this mission in Fable, where I’m supposed to rescue a kid from a cave filled with monsters. I tried twice to beat it. It wasn’t any fun at all. I mean, I really did not enjoy it. The second time I nearly did finish, but I died again. The third time, which I attempted just today, I succeeded — but then I failed anyway because the kid I was supposed to protect got killed somehow. When I failed, I figured, ah, well. So I failed it. At least I didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

BUT THEN THE GAME LOADED THE LAST AUTOSAVE.

So. I was forced to start again.

Finally I completed the quest effectively. I went back to the guild and leveled-up. I went back to town. I bought a few items. I checked on my wife.

AND THE GAME LOCKED UP.

I… I tried loading the last autosave. It was was just before that quest, again.

I’m… about to kill something.

I certainly don’t feel compelled to continue playing.

The Focal Point

  • Reading time:4 mins read

It seems to me that the distinction here between the “big” and the “small” is one of focus. And I think that’s what made me think of B-games.

Silent Hill 2, Ico, and Shenmue are all very small games in the sense that they each consist of really one key theme, or concept — with maybe a related secondary theme, that helps to flesh out and color the primary one.

Further, each game is mechanically, substantially, practically designed so as to illustrate the theme at hand as well as possible. The games don’t always succeed; there are often silly elements present for no good reason. Some of the mechanics aren’t thought-through or implemented as well as they might be. The intent is there, though.

Ico is about Yorda, and the intent to create affection, a protective impulse for her. The game is designed in order to do that, without any distraction. There is no life meter because it’s not about life and death. You can die if you do something retarded, like jump from ten stories up, but that’s just there to keep the player from doing something retarded and to make the world feel more believable. What genius there is in the game is in what it chooses to omit, in order to make its point.

Silent Hill 2 is about James’s emotional state; the entire game is a dive into his subconscious, into his guilt and sorrow and his inability to let go. Everything — well, nearly everything — exists as an ingredient for exploring this: the monsters, the level construction, the imagery. Even the way the game determines the ending is tied into what the player focuses on; how he or she has, intentionally or not, chosen to narrate the game and thereby illustrate the details of James’s condition, through his or her behaviour. There are a bunch of issues with the practical implementation (particularly in the actual moment-to-moment details of gameplay), that threaten to get in the way. Ultimately they don’t occlude the underlying design, though.

Shenmue exists to illustrate the mundane beauty of Being. That life is in the moments, not in the goals. Some people complain that the game is boring; those same people probably wouldn’t think of staying up all night just to watch a sunrise. It’s almost Hitchcockian in the way that, right from the start, implicit in the gameplay, the game lets the player in on something that the main character can’t even see, to try to make its point.  In a way, Ryo himself is kind of a caricature of the average singleminded teenager who would likely play Shenmue, and thereby a perfect tool for the game’s purposes. Everything in the game exists either in attempt to illustrate the simple beauties of life, or to support the plot and characters which wind through this mission — in time, perhaps, to get to the point of seeing what the game has been trying to show the player from the outset, and thereby clearly state its case.

The games feel small in the same sense that a good movie will always be too short, and a bad movie will always be too long.

Same deal with B-games. Often as not, they exist to illustrate one concept. That concept might be philosophical or emotional; mostly it has to do with a unique idea for a play mechanic, or some other gimmick. Anyway, these games don’t mess around; for well or ill, the entire game exists to try to get that central idea across. See Gyromite or Pikmin — which I do consider a B-game. Heck, see Katamari Damacy. It is effective because in the end, its entire being is focused on getting one thing across.

In contrast, games which try to please everyone (like, say, Final Fantasy) try to include something to please everyone. So they come off as unfocused. Expansive. Big. Games which exist solely to reflect some outside idea (like, say, the games based on the Lord of the Rings movies) by nature don’t really have a focal point of their own. So regardless of their craft, they tend to feel empty.

Optional behavior

  • Reading time:1 mins read

That’s a thought.

The focal point of Gradius is the Options. It always has been. They are the most uncanny element of the game. They are one of the most critical elements to success. They are what make Gradius what it is.

G5 knows this. As mentioned, it designs the controls and the power-up systems around the Options. There is also the respawning, though. Unless, for some foolheaded reason, you set the game to restart you at a checkpoint, the Options wait around for you to reclaim. They are the powerups you keep with you throughout the game, regardless of error. With the Options in hand, it’s not too difficult to get back on track. All you need are a few speed-ups and a laser. That’s not hard to earn back.

Options, for all their enigmatic charm, are the heart of Gradius as a game and a series. G5 is the first game, though, to notice that; to be entirely built around them. At least, so far as I am aware.

…

I intend to dwell on this for a while.

Ultima disappointment

  • Reading time:8 mins read

Gradius V has now arrived.

It is, of course, terrific. I could go into detail. Instead, I ask:

WHERE’S MY LORD BRITISH?!?!

I could have sworn it was there at E3, last year. Now player two just steers a red-tinged Vic clone.

GIVE ME MY LORD BRITISH, MISTER IUCHI.

WHERE’S MY COPPER SPACESHIP OF LOVE, NAKAGAWA?

…

Otherwise, all is good.

EDIT:

Here are some things from an IM conversation with Shep over the evening:

—
Gradius V is really, really good. It’s pretty hard. It’s the kind of hard where you get a little further every time, though.

It’s also got a lot of… details. I mean. You can set two different kinds of respawn behavior, in the options. The default is Life Force style. You can also set it to go back and restart at checkpoints, though, as in the other Gradius games. If you really want to.

If you get your ship fully sped-up, it nowhere near as too-fast as in past games. And then it cycles back. If you want to slow down, you just get another capsule and select it again, to reset.

Also. You don’t need your shield to be depleted entirely, to activate a new one. This is actually helpful.

The game looks like Ikaruga, stylistically. You can tell they just dumped everything they learned about rendering a 3D 2D shooter into this.

It also, though… incorporates some elements of Ikaruga’s decoration. Along with all of the Gradius and Life Force stuff. Subtle things.

Like the tube that the player’s ship flies out of, as Ikaruga begins. I swear that’s in the background somewhere.

When you play for long enough, or maybe when you get far enough, or when you reach a high enough score (I’m not sure which), you unlock more credits. To start with. Much as in Ikaruga.

There is a little Bangai-O influence in here. Mostly with how chaotic it can get, and the way the options work now.

The remixes of old Gradius and Life Force tunes somehow make them sound majestic. Epic. Something from a big space opera. That’s part of the whole tone the game tries to capture. This elegant… space thing. Even the font on the side of the DVD case looks like the one used in the logo for The Last Startighter Starfighter.

After three or four tries (and after having already practiced all last E3), I managed to improve enough to beat the first level on one life. I’ve discovered if you can power up the Viper to full strength by the beginning of level two, you should have few problems for a while. If not — well. It’s not impossible, like other Gradius games. It’s just much tougher. Treasure manages to always leave leeway — some desperate means to get through a situation, even if you’ve no real means to protect yourself.

So far.

Limeade! BRB

Smiley: I want Limeade.

Actually. The boss of level four — I blew two credits on it when I went in with full power (and still had all of the options for the subsequent lives). Then I went back and beat it without a single power-up. Not even a speed-up.

It’s. I really like the balance here.

Smiley: Whrr? That… didn’t used to happen in the old games. Dying was a pretty big deal.

I know. It’s been a real torture in past games. Now it’s just… very bothersome. It makes the game much more hair-raising. You have to try that much harder.

limeade! brb

Smiley: Now you’re just taunting me.

The game does similarly. I mean. It has fun with the player. In that virtuosic, subconsciously self-aware Treasure way.

In round three, three-quarters of the way through the level, you blast a hole in the floor and start scrolling down. You know that boss-thing from Gradius, that pops up at the end of every level? One of those starts chasing you down the snaking corridor, shooting all the while. You need to either aim your options to shoot behind and above you, to hit it while you’re running away and dodging its shots and trying not to get crushed against the walls, or you need to wedge yourself through a corner and behind it, so it passes you. Before you’re done, another one appears. Then another. And then you’re done with that section. You start to scroll to the right. You shoot your way through a few barriers. Now you’re in a narrow corridor, with very little space to move around. And another one of those boss-things starts to hurtle right at you, from the right side of the screen, spinning as it goes. Then another. Then another. And another. And another. And another. If you’re fully powered-up, you can blow up each one an instant before it collides with you. Otherwise, you need to duck into any crevices you can find or somehow time it to slip past as they spin.

It’s… just toying with you.

At one point, you go through a time warp and meet the Vic Viper from some earlier Gradius game and you have to help it defeat an older boss. [EDIT: Actually, that’s not so. After beating level seven, it becomes clear what’s going on.] After that comes a huge sequence of boss battles. One after another. There’s another stage where it calmly throws an entire screen full of asteroids at you, to find a path through. And you scream.

It likes to scare the hell out of you. But. It’s Treasure. So. There’s always a way through, if you know what you’re doing. Usually more than one. They just like trying to rattle you.

As in every Gradius game since 2, there are four different power-up schemes. All of the facets except for the Options one are more or less standard, across the board. One scheme will have rear shot; another will have double. One will have this kind of missile, one will have that. The factor that all of these are balanced around, however, is the options: how the options behave. And rightly so, since they’re a big part of what makes Gradius what it is.

The first scheme is a the classic one. The options just follow you as normal. If you hold R1, they freeze in place, relative to your ship. Easy enough.

The third scheme causes the options to line up vertically, above and below you. When you press R1, you pull them in or stretch them out.

The fourth one allows you to gyrate the options quickly around the axis of the Viper. When you have the laser, this is particularly interesting to witness.

The second scheme is the scheme; the scheme which makes Gradius V what it is. Namely, it lets you aim the options. By default, they shoot forward; when you hold R1, then press a direction on the D-pad, you swoop the options’ beam in that direction. When you let go of R1, the beam stays fixed. It’s… kind of like Forgotten Worlds. You can aim them in any angle. And. Most levels are designed around you doing this constantly.

Now. There’s only one kind of laser. The only other things which really change, from scheme to scheme, are the bomb and the double shot. And, again, they change according to the option behavior. In scheme 2, clearly, you have no need for a standard double shot, since you can just aim the options wherever. Instead, you have a rear gun. Of course, this means when you aim the options… you get a lot of bullets. Because the options have the double-shot as well…

Scheme 1 is the “classic Gradius” scheme. Scheme 2 is the G5 scheme, essentially. Scheme 3 is for tacticians, who want to precisely control where they’re putting what shots. Scheme 4 is kind of the opposite. It’s for going nuts.

And. Actually. More than the other Gradius games I’ve played, this game does seem designed specifically to allow any of these approaches. Even if the second one is the one it’s really made for, you can still come at it with any of the above strategies. And heck, again, you can even set it to the old style of respawning, using checkpoints, if you want to go all the way with the “classic Gradius” layout.

It’s a very flexible game, in that Treasure way: amenable to, and understanding of, the different ways people go at material like this.
Depending on your approach, the challenge will be a little different.

It really took someone with a bit of distance to dissect the series and put it back together again, to make it everything that it could be but never quite was (with one exception). Mostly, fun. Focused. And yes, majestic.