Videogames are rich with memorable moments. Born of both play and story, there are those images, those brief passages of achievement, that are emblazoned in your memory: the first time you clear 100,000 points in Tetris, the dogs bursting through the window in Resident Evil, the booming march that begins to play after the baby metroid’s sacrifice during Super Metroid’s climactic battle with Mother Brain. We are tied to these events thanks not only to those games’ mechanical and artistic design but because of our agency in them. We facilitate these conclusions and, since the game is well-made, we feel them. Another classic: Solid Snake’s first fight with the cyborg ninja, Grey Fox. Like so much of the Metal Gear Solid series, this sequence is ludicrous: simplistic to play, overdramatic, over-everything. But when Grey Fox begins screaming, “Make me feel!” and your controller begins to shake in time with his uncontrollable gesticulations, the scene becomes something else. In 1998, rumble technology was still relatively new in home gaming, so having this drama reflected in the physical world made that much more of an impression. Every time Snake was kicked in the gut or when you landed a hit amidst this half-man’s yowling was tangible.
I feel a lot like Grey Fox when I play videogames these days, particularly action fare. I want an action game to make me feel. Not necessarily a profound emotional reaction – though that’s always a plus – so much as a physical one. When I’m playing an action or sport game, it’s essential that the game translates the physicality and impact of my actions well lest the aesthetic façade covering the game’s rules be ruined. It’s no easy thing to affect either. This past week, I finished playing through what may well be Lucasarts’ final in-house game, the damn-near-ubiquitous Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. TFU is a good game, not a great one; its big-scale Jedi power fantasy is marred by some serious glitches and questionable design choices, like its over-reliance on quick time events. Even though I had a good time playing through it, I was perturbed by how weightless much of the action felt. It’s incredible that TFU’s three physics engines allow me to pick up almost every part of a game’s environment and toss it about willie-nillie, but a mammoth, building crushing boulder shouldn’t feel like it has the same mass as shoe-sized robot. (Before any of you Star Wars nerds pipe-up about size mattering not, shut up. Idiots.)
Alternatively, Sega’s Yakuza 2, a nearly three year-old game running on hardware that couldn’t hope to run the engine beneath TFU’s hood, has been an eye-opening physical experience. Yakuza 2 is, at heart, a modern Japanese role-playing game that trades ponderous turn-based fighting for beat’em-up combat that recalls Die Hard Arcade. Yakuza 2’s combat is deliciously precise and, more importantly, visceral. Every impact of the fist is felt in Yakuza 2, and it keeps what would otherwise be a very repetitive game constantly rewarding, but it takes every facet of the game working in concert for this to work. The fights are fast, never lasting more than ninety seconds, and there’s no discernible delay between your button inputs and your character’s moves outside of what seems natural (throwing a fat guy over your shoulder or landing a jump kick should, after all, take a few more seconds than a jab.) This is on top of impact sound effects (grunts, the exaggerated thump-pop of a blow landing). What puts it over the top is the game’s “Heat” moves, a one-button super move that activates a contextual one-hit kill provided you’ve filled a meter. “Heat” moves are brutal enough to make Tony Soprano blush, but their presentation is remarkable. The screen becomes slightly washed out, the camera provides a shifting, dramatic perspective, the controller shudders, and the onscreen characters enact serious violence like, say, ramming a thug’s head through a car windshield. But it all takes little more than five seconds. Every single aspect has weight and every aspect of the game is built to translate that weight to the player.
This marks the difference between a good game and a great game. Not every game needs to translate literal physicality, but every game should leave you feeling like you’ve transcended the many, many barriers between you and the actual game. When the controller, the television screen, and the cognitive dissonance between your brain and making something happen on screen disappear, that’s when the game becomes something more. It becomes unforgettable.
This is What We’re Playing. Here’s What We Played.
Whatcha Playing: Bubbles, Bubbles, Bubbles!!!
Whatcha Playing?: Final Ninja
Whatcha Playing: Cleaning House, Finding Roots
Whatcha Playing: The Thirst For Adventure, Pointing At Things, and Not Knowing What to Say
Whatcha Playing: The New Adventures of the Nintendo DS