When I tell you that I am playing Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 I know that the first thing you think of is “there’s only one reason to play that game in 2009.” But it’s not what you think, honest. Yes, it’s an archaic collect-a-thon that was excoriated by the press for a variety of reasons both just and unjust. But the Xtreme series actually does manipulate the player in fascinating ways. Xtreme 2’s failure to appeal also speaks to the failure of some modern gaming conventions, and specifically suggests that maybe Achievements shouldn’t be mandatory on every title under the sun. If we can all disregard the nauseating breast physics for a second (and I understand this is very, very difficult) I’ll try to explain.
I’ve always held that the Xtreme games are actually doing something insidious behind all of the cheesecake and ridiculously proportioned girls. Yes, they try to appeal to the part of the male brain stem that will always be twelve years old. But when this testosterone-filled player actually starts playing the game it actually goes the other way. This is not a game where you just ogle women, it’s a game that makes young men carefully consider the fashion implications of a new floral hat. It’s a game that forces the player to think about at nearly all times their relationships with everyone else on the island, and how to nurture those relationships by understanding the wishes of others. This is effectively boys playing with Barbie, a project that uses the prospect of bikini-clad women as a carrot while it does the work of feminizing the player. It is a great trick, and I bow to Itagaki for perpetrating it so successfully.
Unfortunately, I think the smoke and mirrors Team Ninja employed to such great success in the first Xtreme were a reason for Xtreme 2’s failure. Most people did not see Xtreme 2 as an elaborate mind game. They saw it as a guilty pleasure. A really guilty pleasure. A pleasure so guilty that maybe they didn’t want it to be broadcast to their friends/co-workers/family that they were playing it for hours a day. This desire runs pretty contrary to the basic feature set of Xbox Live, and is exactly the reason it took me two years to chip away at my shame and finally put it in my console.
But it gets worse. The achievements in DOAX2 do not have that nice pro/con dichotomy most achievements share, that feeling of pride mixed with just a twist of shame. It’s all shame in DOAX2. Every achievement is related to buying swimsuits, with even the easiest ones requiring a pathological devotion to voyeurism. By the time you’re getting to the mid difficulty achievements, Itagaki’s joke has not only been lost on you but has revealed a latent mental illness. And then Xbox Live broadcasts it to the world.
As a result, I’ve been playing the game in fear of getting an achievement accidentally, and what that might say about me to my Live friend’s list. Now I do like achievements, and I think their ubiquity in 360 games has value. But it also creates a layer of structure that isn’t appropriate for all games. What if something like Shadow of the Colossus gave your achievement points for every colossus you felled? Wouldn’t that kind of positive stimulus weaken that game’s intent?
Related Links:
Team Ninja’s Post-Itagaki Future
Where Will You Go, Tecmo? What Will Happen to Our Love?
The 61FPS Review: Ninja Gaiden 2 Part 2