In the valley we ain’t. Recently, at least one author I respect and one, deep, no-frills douche have tried to elucidate on motion controlling as the ‘Uncanny Valley’ of interaction. Which I argue is wrong. You are probably familiar with the Uncanny Valley hypothesis, it is a favourite of online pricktards pretending to sound mildly philosophical. As I understand the unproven hypothesis, it is the idea that in robotics, as a robot approaches human likeness there is a sharp dip in familiarity (which some even go as far to say registers as disgust) when a robot appears to be ‘very’ human like. Others have hi-jacked this theory for robotics and used it in all kinds of fields and the two authors I have linked to are attempting to reinterpret the hypothesis and apply it to motion controls as the ‘Uncanny Valley of Interaction’. Both of them invoke the Uncanny Valley when describing how motion controls don’t work because your on screen presence doesn’t do what you are doing in real life. I would argue that they are over stretching to sound intellectual when in fact they mean, when motion controlling doesn’t work as they expect it to, like some kind of fucking Jetson Family Convenience, it sucks. Guys, guys, it’s okay to just call out disappointment. But does current motion controlling just generically suck because waggling is a little bit more embarrassing than pressing square and triangle or the S key?*

Because they tend to be well written, I read a lot of PC gaming blogs despite owning all of seven PC games (If you care: Darwinia, Max Payne, MDK, The Sims, Sentimental Shooting, Starcraft, Swiv, Warcraft III). A large proportion of the PC blog writers write of the Wii in statements along the lines of “Game X might be an excuse to play the Wii for a first time in over a year”, “Don’t really play it aside from sessions of Rock Band”, etc. A lot of other brands of console fanguys (including my co-author over at TGAM) often cite ‘waggling’ as a factor they just can’t get over enough to want to purchase a Wii to experience the best it has to offer. Why is the idea of waggling so dividing?

To be fair to the PC gamers, I think there is some mileage in the argument. I actively miss out on those PC classics like Out of The Park Baseball 2007 simply because I can’t stand gaming at a desk. I know indie games are great. I know that some of the best of gaming to be had comes from mods and I know that if you really care about graphics and sound you need to buy what they call a gaming-rig. But a desk? You do work at a desk. A desk is a place for staplers and tax returns. Social, couch-based gaming in the centre of the social space in the living room just feels so much better than lonely corner desk-based gaming, facing away from the social spaces and the other people in it. That and all the bullshit that comes with keeping a PC updated so it stands a chance of playing a current game. So I can appreciate that some PC gamers who played Wii Sports Tennis for ten minutes and got annoyed that Wiimote waving was very loosely translated to on-screen Mii moving, running, jumping and racket swinging decided that motion controlling isn’t worth it yet and to come back to check on it in a while. It is wrong though to equate all Wii games to waggling to not being worth it just as it is wrong to equate all PC games to downloading patches and ridiculous DRM and too much effort than it is worth.

It is also worth mentioning Sixaxis. Consider it mentioned.

Waggling, when thought about and competently implemented, becomes just as second nature as pressing the X button. I have absolutely no problem with the motion control bits (the bits beyond pointing and clicking) in Mario Kart Wii, Metroid Prime Trilogy, No More Heroes, Super Mario Galaxy, Resident Evil 4 Wii, Mario And Sonic at the Olympic Games, Wii Play, Okami, Resident Evil Chronicles series and Zack and Wiki. None of these support Wii Motion Plus yet I defy anyone to have an issue with these because they couldn’t get the motion controls to work properly. I would also pity the fool who misses out on all of the above just because they don’t want to waggle or worse, because the waggle action has nothing to do with what happens on screen (I think this is where the uncanny valley stuff comes in). In fact, waggling adds the extra element in that it is quite easy to be pressing buttons on the Wiimote, nunchuk as well as waggling. No other system currently allows for such easy multiple inputs without severe discomfort or RSI.

On that note, it will be interesting to see how Natal fares, especially if it does address the ‘Uncanny Valley of interaction’ problem. One of the reasons that many games are fun is because you don’t have to do everything as you would in real life. Imagine your journey into work this morning; leaving the house, locking the door, walking to the bus stop, crossing the road, buying a ticket, getting on the bus, sitting down, sending a text message, waiting for your stop, etc. etc. Pretty fucking boring necessity. Now imagine the AAA game “Your Journey To Work”. Which one would you prefer to play:

a) Your Journey To Work (PS2). All the boring stuff is cut and 90% of your journey is done through a short series of cutscenes. The only bit you play is an interesting conversation with a man at the bus stop, controlled through a dialogue tree.

b) Your Journey To Work (Wii). Your character moves automatically but you have to use the pointer and the Wiimote to make sure you give over your ticket at the right time, lock the door properly etc.

c) Your Journey To Work (Natal). Essentially you move exactly how you would on your real Journey To Work, except you don’t actually go anywhere.

To be honest with you I’d probably go for ‘A’, maybe ‘B’ but ‘C’ seems like a waste of time. Of course, ‘Your Journey To Work’ will never be made as a game because Christ would it be dull (although GTA4, the Sims, Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon and Heavy Rain all have these ‘am I having fun?’ elements). The point is that I don’t think gamers want this 1 to 1 motion and action kind of gaming and I don’t think they’ll get it but it does put some of Crecente’s and other Wii-dissent-by-default-comments into a much needed perspective. If waggling alone is bad enough for some gamers imagine playing through that first level of Medal of Honor Frontline except you literally have to run up the beach yourself and manually reload every time and crouch to crouch etc. Playing driving games on manual is more realistic but chorish, playing FPS games on manual would quickly become as boring as Your Journey To Work with the odd fun ‘headshot’. This is before we start to think about how you turn around in Natal FPS or how ‘The Uncanny Valley of Interaction’ is compatible with abstract games. So, the big question is, well what do you do with motion gaming then?

Sony’s PS Move ‘concept art’ is one answer to that question and that is, “What they did, but steriler**”. I’m interested to see how Natal pans out, but I imagine it’s going to be along the same lines as Sony’s Move, initially at least. This means remixes of the best of Eye Toy and the best of the Nintendo Wii games. It’ll take someone with a strong history of innovation like Bungie to do something that breaks the mould and then it will be copied over and over again. One great advantage with Natal is that because it uses the body, the controller inputs are no longer restricted to relatively simple tasks like “move forward”, “jump forward” or “jump left and shoot”. Pulling off a “move, strafe, crouch, lean, shoot, punch, smile” simultaneously could really change the way games are played, not to mention significantly challenge the way AI enemies are programmed. But as anyone who has spent time with Wii Fit will know, THIS IS EXHAUSTING. Five minutes in Mario’s shoes would leave the fittest of health freaks wheezing. Will there be a new divide in gamers like the theoretical hardcores vs casuals based on fitness levels perhaps?

* We reckon there are a slew of gamers annoyed with waggling because their flabby, shakey bodies cannot replicate the split second no-scoping that their agile digits can with a mouse or analog sticks. Sucky bodies!

** We’re being unfair here.

Anyway, I spent part one and part two talking about different individual aspects of the game, so I’ll finish this by summarizing my feelings of the game as a whole.

THE REVIEW OF THE ARMORED PRINCESS
- Part III: The End is Another Beginning -

This is the kind of game that I enjoy playing for reasons completely unrelated to any of the gameplay or presentation that I’ve mentioned so far. I’m always the most satisfied with a game that completely takes advantage of the hardware it’s made for, and the King’s Bounty games fully utilize the PC. It completely fills up my screen with a vivid and detailed world. There are buttons strewn across the interface. Text is small and never dominates the screen, allowing for lots of many tiny details. If I have a mouse in my hand, I like to be able to play a game that uses that mouse. If my eyes are only a few inches away from my screen, then I don’t need everything to be humongous. On top of that, the presentation is incredibly polished. The game constantly gives you feedback on everything you’re doing and everything else that’s happening. There are dozens of little details in the graphics and animations which were in no way necessary to be added, but the developers put them in anyway just for the fun of it, and I love them for it. The HUD’s shadows even shift depending on which angle the camera’s facing. It’s comparable to games like Torchlight or Civilization 4; before even getting into the actual gameplay, the game is simply a pleasure to interact with.

The UI isn’t the only polished part of the game though. The army building and combat is incredibly detailed and balanced. There are dozens and dozens of unit types, and any can be recruited into your army. This is a game where you and your opponent both play by the exact same rules, and the only thing that separates you from the computer is your own strategy. There are limitless strategies that can be devised too. Each unit not only has its own place in the elaborate rock-paper-scissors cycle of strengths and weaknesses, but their individual talents can be used for multiple purposes. A dragon can grab people from far away and pull them towards him. This can be used to help surround an evasive enemy with ranged attacks, or you could plant booby traps on the battlefield and pull enemies into them. There’s an elaborate web of teamwork that the player needs to develop.

Armored Princess is one of my favorite games, but it’s not the best game. Like so many that succeed extensively in one area, it sacrifices its competency in others. It’s very unfriendly to new players, and its story and world both suffer as second rate. This doesn’t particularly bother me, and if I was assigning a score for Metacritic I doubt I would take off points just for that. While it’s an excellent game, its shortcomings hold it back from fulfilling the potential of being an excellent videogame.

In spite of everything I’ve written so far, the best way I can communicate my feelings for the game is this: I’ve spent more time playing Armored Princess than I have spent playing any other game in the past year, and I intend to continue playing it. That should tell you enough about how I feel about this game.

And then it hit me. The answer is, of course, a game show. The concept is simple: envision a game show, likely on Spike, where famous game designers are put on the stand. They are asked a series of difficult questions about their game design by a panel composed of industry experts and casual fans. For example “Epic, why did you make the chainsaw animation bizarrely long and also invulnerable in Gears of War?” or “Blizzard, why did you dumb down the challenge in your game until it could be played by a 3 year old with fetal alcohol syndrome?” Game designers will then be given a chance to rationalize their decision. And it has to be a lead designer – no sending the new guy or the intern to do your dirty work.

And why? Well, if you recall “You Can’t Do that on Television” on Nickelodeon (not to mention several other Nickelodeon slime based TV shows or activities), the threat of being slimed is great: not just the act of whatever the hell that stuff is, but the humiliation of of being publicly slimed made it all the worse. Any designer who does not explain his case to the panel of judges will find himself summarily slimed on national TV. Naturally, this can’t just be a TV show of vengeance. The incentive to appear on such a torture would be to promote a company, promote a game, and make rivals look bad. Arguably, one could set the show up to be a face off of designers and games, where the terrible are punished and the rational rewarded.

It is completely unrealistic, but I needed something to fantasize about as I experienced the latest atrocity of a patch from Eve Online.

This isn’t to say it’s a bad game. Sands of Destruction’s problem isn’t that it’s actually bad – it’s just that it’s never good. It manages to be almost entirely middle-of-the-road throughout, with no particularly exciting moments and only a few terribly boring ones. Its plot has an interesting premise, but gets dragged down by bland characters and predictable twists. Combat has the potential to be interesting, but is so easily broken that it ceases to be fun after the 8-hour point. Finally, despite compositions by Yasunori Mitsuda, none of the music is really memorable. It’s really sad when you see a game with this much wasted potential. I don’t think SoD could have been another Chrono Trigger or Xenogears, but it might have managed at least, say, Grandia or Lufia.

I couldn’t help but be disappointed when Sands of Destruction started to fall into the same old JRPG traps. It managed to avoid the one obstacle that stopped any of the games I named above from being really good – the flow of the game is really snappy, which is important when the encounter rate is fairly high.

The most fundamental disappointment, given my obsession with playing games that have good stories, is that SoD’s doesn’t have one. Giving the player the goal of destroying the world could have been interesting. Characters could have had complex (or at least moderately mature) motives for wanting to see the world end. Yet only one character in SoD, Morte, really wants to see the end of the world – and given she’s a teenager, it’s really hard to take her motivation that seriously. The rest of the group just follows her around – or, more accurately, follows the main character Kyrie around when he follows her. Kyrie himself starts out somewhat believable, but he falls too quickly into the stereotypical hero role. Plot twists that occur later in the game are telegraphed more and more – and, although a few parts were well-done, the rest of the game had become too mediocre at that point to really support it. Before long, SoD trips and falls into standard anime-inspired game hell, which has only gotten cheesier since its origin decades ago.

It seems that the easiest way to make a bad battle system is to make a simpler clone of a good one. SoD’s is a nod to Xenogears, in that you get action points and spend them on attacks and abilities. Without the Deathblow system to support it, and with all the special abilities both characters and monsters have, it ends up being simultaneously complex and mind-numbing. In many boss battles it’s better not to attack most of the time, because nearly every boss automatically takes a turn after receiving damage. Despite this ‘feature’ which serves only to frustrate the player, most bosses will go down in the course of a few turns if the skill upgrade system is (ab)used properly. It feels like the developers realized they made bosses cheat, and their solution was to allow players to cheat as well.

I’d be remiss to say Sands of Destruction was totally a disappointment. It runs fairly quickly both in and out of battles, and although many voice actors were sub-par, a few of them were decent. The plot takes an occasional unexpected twist, with one particular part – the fate of a minor villain – particularly well done and unexpectedly dark. Although SoD occasionally drags, the game is only about 16-17 hours total and never bogged down enough that I wanted to stop altogether.

Is Sands of Destruction great? Certainly not. But it is more fun to play than all the games I named at the beginning of this review, aside from Suikoden Tierkreis. It’s a little depressing that there aren’t better JRPG offerings on the DS, but there are at least a few more promising ones on the horizon.

Buy from Amazon: Sands of Destruction

With each click the characters moan, scream, and produce other sounds juicy with stimulation. Of course it’s not the meaning of the sound they make, it’s the fact that each of these noises is calculated to be so brief and repetitious, fading in and out instantly and producing a peak at just the right tone. It elicits pleasure in the player’s brain, and without thinking he or she understands that another such buzz is only a click away. When the clicking is finished, the number action begins. The screen fills itself with numbers. They sprawl across each other, mixing together, interacting to produce more numbers. They grow bigger and bigger, until they climax and the game returns to the clicking.

Okay, it may be more than a stretch to say that a game like Torchlight is sexual, but its mechanics play into a similar psychology. A simple enjoyment of watching a computer operate. Clicking mice and watching numbers change. It plays into the most basic instinctive motivation for using computers. You move your cursor around, unite numbers, watch them procreate into more numbers. A primitive instinct, but one that still hasn’t been overwritten even after decades of computer evolution, and probably never will.

John Carmack understood this dimension of games when he was quoted saying that stories in games are the same as stories in porn. Doom is violence porn just as Torchlight is number porn. This is a key reason why developers and players alike struggle for cultural validation, the non-game playing asexual public sees the violence and the statistics, and wonders why this should be taken seriously instead of kept private in dimly lit rooms.

This is an idiotic conclusion to make, despite how reasonable the logic leading up to it may be. A game that taps directly into primal instincts isn’t a bad game because of it, nor is it bad at all. Any sport will do the same, music does the same, praying does the same. A thing only becomes porn once it perverts its source into a drug. The most beautiful things in life are the most fundamental and simple, anything that glorifies those multiplies their value.

There is a fine line on the edge of pornography where art exists, and Torchlight walks that slackline without blinking. It’s a game that heightens the player’s understanding of number systems, where balances between complicated and subtle forces can produce various and unpredictable outcomes. The ability for the player to realize this resides in his or her own ability to walk that line. If the player wavers and falls, then the game can serve to stimulate that instinctive desire and nothing more.

Whether or not Torchlight or Doom or any videogame is lowbrow smut is your decision. But no matter what you decide, it’s important to understand the connection. Similarities undoubtedly exist and need to be recognized. If videogames want to achieve a higher status, then the similarities need to be reconciled.

Buy from Amazon: Torchlight