There is no time in my functional memory that does not include at least a passing knowledge of the existence of the ninja, so I can’t say for sure when I became aware of them. (Most likely it occurred during a way-too-young viewing of the 1980s Michael Dudikoff classic American Ninja series.) As with more or less every preadolescent with such inclinations, I became enamored with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the latter part of the decade, and as previously noted, one of my first games was Ninja Gaiden.

And so it goes. But unlike many of my peers, I never really grew out of my fascination with the ninja. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not one of the Japanophile douchebags. However, I do find the feudal era of Japanese history fascinating, and chief among the fascinating things about it, for me, are the ninja.

Rather than just going ahead with the working knowledge of ninjutsu that I and everyone else gleaned from those late ’80s incarnations, I actually did some studies and learned some facts. It was really weird, for example, when I found out that the Ninja Turtles were not, in fact, ninja at all. They acted much more like a group of samurai. The Foot Clan, on the other hand…

(Well, aside from the fact that they were robots.)

Ninja have been characters in video games since approximately forever. A cursory glance at Wikipedia reveals that the oldest game ninja is older than me, and I’m almost 30. While I cannot accurately say that their perception in games has evolved alongside my knowledge, there have definitely been some strides.

Like Tenchu.

I have a lot of love for stealth games. I gather from the vitriol against the erstwhile genre on the internet that I am in the minority with this love, but as far as I am concerned, it is unconditional. When presented with the option, I will never alert anyone to my presence, even if going in guns blazing would be easier.

I played some of the first two games, originally released on the PlayStation, but the fact is that I have only spent a lot of time with the third Tenchu game, known in the USA as Wrath of Heaven. And despite never having even completed it, I love it.

The funny thing about it is that, well, it’s not very good. It is essentially a hybrid between a puzzle game and a Hitman game, only without the solid gameplay shown in the best examples of the former or the complexity of the latter. And heaven forbid that you end up in open combat; the non-stealth fighting in the game appears to exist only to remind you that YOU ARE A FUCKING NINJA AND YOU SHOULD KILL WITHOUT BEING SEEN.

The game came out during the year between moving out of my parents’ house and moving to New York City. I spent a lot of time in that apartment playing games, and Tenchu was one of the ones with which I spent the most.

Working through the fortresses and towns in the dead of night to unravel the rather baroque story got me through a lot of nights in what would turn out to be my last full year of college. I worked, and worked, and worked to get through the game, possibly harder than I did at school. In the end, I achieved the same success in each. Which is to say I reached a certain point where the cost-benefit ratio of continuing leaned heavily enough into the red that I stopped.

Still, much like college, I have a lot of fond feelings toward Tenchu, enough that I have considered dusting it off and bringing it back into a world where there are dozens of games that feature ninjas and/or stealth, and do it better than Tenchu ever dreamed.

I have my doubts about whether this will ever come to pass; Dishonored is about to come out and I never did play Ninja Gaiden II. (On the Xbox 360, I mean. I played it a lot of the NES.) I imagine that, for me, the Tenchu series will best be served to remain a fond memory rather than a ruined revival. At least until they release another entry in the series and I decide whether or not to give it a try.

There’s a scene fairly early on in the 2011 animated film, Chico & Rita, in which the main characters embrace each other in the early morning after a night of making love. It is not a sexy scene, at least not in the traditional sense of Hollywood sex. There’s no conquering, no victory. When Rita embraces Chico from behind as he plays the piano, both are naked and vulnerable. It is a scene of true intimacy, made even more powerful by the fact that this is an animated movie: such things should not appear in “children’s media.” It is a shock because it is a moment that most human beings experience at some point in their lives reflected in an abstract way. Shocking, no?

It shouldn’t be. Intimacy should not be something of which one is afraid. People’s feelings towards sex are complicated, but if an individual is scared of being close to somebody else, it usually means that he or she is afraid of something within. Only extreme acts of connection can push these people out of their shells. As sex is (sadly) one of the few points that individuals let go of their inner inhibitions, it naturally makes it a more intimate act than others, even if people don’t necessarily view it as such.

Sex is a part of the human existence, yet too often it is treated as taboo or a symptom of winning. The man seduces the woman, or the woman seduces the man. One has defeated the other’s sense of inhibitions and is rewarded with a sexual favor. Sex is a reward, a treat, rather than a shared experience between two individuals (regardless of sex or gender). Is that really how intercourse is supposed to work?

Video games have yet to completely work this out (just look at the link above). For too long, the technology just wasn’t there to adequately describe human sexuality in a meaningful way. Even now that we’ve reached a level where that is possible, some creators would rather titillate than expand the medium’s borders. What is lacking is intimacy; a connection across the planes for which video games, more than any other platform, seem perfectly suited. A gamer could connect with a story physically, projecting themselves and their lvies into the avatars of the title, experiencing the highs and lows from a first-person perspective (even if it is a 3^rd Person game).

It’s not that it hasn’t been done in the past. Despite its harsh exterior, Alan Wake did a remarkable job of creating an atmosphere of shared passions. The story—a frustrated writer in a small harbor town dealing with unspeakable horrors—sounds like something that Stephen King churned out while on the can, except where it comes to the issue of the titular character’s wife. Alice Wake is not just the damsel-in-distress. She is the symbol of Wake’s loss of intimacy within his marriage, in himself, and with the world.

Witness Wake’s literal descent into hell. Alice is kidnapped by forces unknown. The writer then loses his memory. He discovers pages of a manuscript that he may (or may not) have written. Townsfolk are turned into creatures of pure night, stalking the author through the woods with bad intentions on their mind. Wake must keep moving to find his wife, but to what end? Everybody thinks Wake is insane… and maybe he is. Just what is the connection with that other writer that just happens to look and sound exactly like Alan? It seems that the only rational answer is that these are all physical and symbolic manifestations of how Alan has cut himself off from the world.

It is only Alice that attempts to bring Wake back to the world of the sane. In flashbacks (and in the opening sequences), we see her pushing Alan to get over his writer’s block (to connect with himself, that is) and the beginnings of seduction. Alan is frustrated by this; he won’t be able to get out of his way until he accepts that the root of his problem is him. This is made tangible in his wife’s disappearance. It doesn’t matter who took her (spoiler: a creepy old witch lady that would make the girl from The Ring shirk away in terror). Alan’s last connection to the real world is taken away. It is no wonder that he seems to go mad.

Alan didn’t know how much he needed his wife, need this intimacy that came so easily in his earlier life, until she disappeared. Now he must wander through the woods and fight shadows armed with knives, axes, and horror in order to find his partner… and himself. He was scared of admitting the weakness in himself, so now he must literally combat it if he is to ever get back that which is most precious to him.

It’s a shame that AW required the trappings of the horror genre to make it marketable to more than niche audiences. More varied gameplay beyond the hack-n-slash, simple-puzzle solving variety perfected by the Resident Evil series nearly a decade before would have really pushed the game into the stratosphere. The horror of the unknown is somewhat diminished after the thousandth converted town-person/figment of Alan’s imagination.

Where the game really shines is when it spins these trappings in interesting ways. Just a few? A mystery at the insane asylum, a shootout at a rock show attended by no one except darklings, aspects of the story revealed through television and the random page of an unfinished novel. Each in some part utilizes the fun of gameplay (or rather, putting the emphasis on survival on survival-horror) to show the isolation of Alan and the various other denizens of this backwater town.

The horror extends out of this sense of seclusion. Alan is (almost) alone against this horror that threatens his life and the world. The innocence of the townsfolk is transmitted even when they are transformed into demons (of sorts); Alan must hack his way through them to find himself. Only a few human figures crop up along the way—a confused sheriff, a pair of aging rock stars, a charlatan of a doctor—and they are largely ineffective against this insurmountable fear that has descended like the daily fog.

Alan Wake is horrifying because we witness the loss of intimacy in every single character in the game. Nobody comes out of this ahead. Sure, people survive and the big bad is defeated, but at a great cost. Alan himself must sacrifice an aspect of himself (His life? His sanity? His marriage?) so that his wife will survive. We are put back out into the world, alone, with only uncertainty to guide us. At least we have the ability to connect in the real world. We aren’t pushing our loved ones away. We aren’t scared of the openness that intimacy will bring.

Right?

Let’s be frank: bad games abound in this industry. It wouldn’t be imprudent to say that most titles that come out are poor creations meant solely to win a buck and not advance games as an art form or a mode of entertainment. The mountains of mini-game collections for the Wii, the endless hack-n-slash ripoffs that come out for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, and even the computer titles that–even though some are decent–are shipped broken, requiring patches to fix. There’s a lot of bad stuff out there, and for the casual gamer, it can be quite daunting.

This shouldn’t get anyone down down. Having an art form buried underneath a pile of schlock is the hallmark of Hollywood, the music industry, and television. It means that the mainstream has finally discovered video games as a means of telling a story, for better or worse. Which means, indirectly, bigger budgets, bigger stakes, and more advanced titles, which translates into more scrutiny and better storytelling.

Eventually.

Until then, gamers will have to wait out the various bandwagon jumpers like they did the Tycoon titles. But, like my professors used to say (when they weren’t failing me for doodling in my textbooks), one can learn as much from a failure as one can from a success. It might have been that they were drunk at the time (they might have been; I was a handful, as I was myself usually inebriated), but there was something to what they were saying; look at the bad points of a bad title and you can see what went wrong and why. It’s sometimes hard to discern why a good title is good; it may just be a gut-level reaction. A poor game–with awful controls, hideous graphics, and unfocused gameplay–is very easily hung by its own controller cord.

So, then, after that lengthy introduction, let’s get to PaRappa the Rapper. For all of its popularity, it is perfect for this little demonstration: it is a horrible game.

Of course, that’s just a personal opinion. Nearly one million people bought the game in Japan alone, so obviously there was a lot of appeal to maintain the sequels and merchandise that came later. But it seems that an exaggerated Simon-Says game featuring quirky (read: poor) rapping and gameplay that–thanks to some ill-timed glitches in the controls–could send a player into disaster without reason just doesn’t justify its existence.

But, as previously stated, PaRappa the Rapper did get SOMETHING right. It hooked into a video game genre that was in its infancy but would later spawn some of the most popular titles ever produced: those of the Rhythm Genre.

Guitar Hero. FreQuency. Space Channel 5. Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. All have their foundations in PaRappa, as do no-less-fun-but-much-more-maligned Dance Dance Revolution titles (and knock-offs). Sure, Nintendo’s Dance Aerobics came out almost a decade before, but PaRappa the Rapper is where its ilk started hitting stride.

This was just one of the innovations. The odd graphical style of PaRappa–2D characters in a 3D world–predated Paper Mario by several years. Thanks to Rodney Greenblat’s designs, the pixelated and often-hideous graphics of early Playstation games were ditched for something that can still be found pleasing on the Nintendo DS. The music wasn’t (too) tinny, either. The storyline doesn’t always make sense, but who said that video games always have to make sense?

This style and inanity helped push it through a crowd of gamers who, at the time, were just emerging into the first quality CD-based console games (that is, CD titles that had the benefit of a few years failures to see what worked and didn’t work in the new medium). This wasn’t Final Fantasy VII. It was NEW in almost everything it brought to the table. PaRappa managed to hook onto Playstation’s cool image just as Sony began to topple Nintendo from its long-held perch atop the gaming business.

Or was it the other way around? Did PaRappa help Sony break out as THE brand of mainstream video gaming?

Video games were just emerging from their infancy. Still viewed as kids fare in the mid-90s, the makers of PaRappa the Rapper captured a generation of fans just as they were moving out of the family-friendly titles of Nintendo. True, PaRappa was rated K-A. But it also featured (awful) rap, which certainly didn’t endear it to the heads of households used to Mario and Sonic, even if the main character was so soft around the edges you could sleep on his belly. PaRappa was subversive without being TOO subversive. So what if the game played like crap?

Now, of course, video games are much bigger and more visible than they were in the 1997. Nintendo, for all its problems, is one of the largest companies in Japan, period. Sony, although somewhat humbled by the Playstation 3, still rakes in the dough. And Sega has been replaced by the behemoth that is Microsoft on the console making scene. But the ripples of those early days of mainstream success can still be seen.

So, if you get a chance, find PaRappa somehow and throw it into your system of choice. Look past the glitches and see what it gets right. Then apply that to every game that you play henceforth. Like a foodie, you’ll begin to see BEYOND what the video game presents and into what it can mean outside of the gameplay. See how the newest Madden is pretty much the old one, repackaged? Yeah, it’s crass, but look at in its own context: it’s a pretty solid game, right?

So, yes, in summation, PaRappa the Rapper blows. But it can all teach us some valuable lessons on history, video game creation, and Onions-cum-Sensei Masters. And when the best Lair can do is be used as a Frisbee, that’s pretty good stuff overall.

Part 1: Analysis

A serpent falls from the sky, and where he lands, the story begins. So it is with Metal Gear, the first in a long line of tactical espionage action games by famed Japanese designer Hideo Kojima. Much has been made of the Metal Gear franchise, from its innovative gameplay, to its verbosity, to its affection for 1980s action movies, but there has never been a true literary analysis of the games and their ties to the greatest epic poems in any language.

Until now.

You see, that first moment in the first game, when Solid Snake falls from a plane and lands in Outer Heaven, mirrors the descent of another snake, the great serpent, father of lies, prince of darkness, and son of the morning–Lucifer, the Great Satan. It’s not that Solid Snake represents the devil per se, there are certainly more devilish characters that appear throughout the series, but there are a great many similarities between the two falls. Both snakes are cast out of the sky by a Father, and they land in a place outside of Heaven. For Lucifer, it is Hell, for Snake, it is Outer Heaven, where death and torture lurk around every corner, just like in Hell.

This is but one example of the many connections between Hell and the journeys of Solid Snake; there are echoes in Dante’s Inferno, Paradise Lost, Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialist play No Exit, and and other classics. Kojima’s massive series is thick with allusion, metaphor, depth, and complexity. Breaking it down, and drawing these connections, is no simple task.

In part one of this special two-part Pixeltheque article, I will examine many of the elements that make Metal Gear Metal Gear, looking at some of the characters, settings, and plot elements that make these games so interesting and important. In part two, I will break down the Grand Hell Theory of Metal Gear, using evidence from the six games in the main series to argue that Snake, Otacon, and the souls of the rest of the cast are trapped in Hell, forced to suffer for eternity by reliving the same traumas on different battlefields, over and over again.

For the purposes of this analysis, I will be dealing primarily with the entry in the series that most people consider the pennacle, Metal Gear Solid. The third game in the series, MGS is the game that its predecessors were striving to be, and all subsequent games were responses to. There will be spoilers galore, but it will also be very interesting!

Metal Gear Solid is the story of a former special operations soldier, an infiltration expert known only by his callsign, “Solid Snake,” who is brought out of retirement for one important mission. Snake’s former unit, FOXHOUND, has gone rogue. They have taken over an Alaskan military base with the intention of launching a nuclear weapon if the United States does not comply with their demands. Snake’s job is to enter the base, rescue the hostages, defeat FOXHOUND (now called terrorists by the US government) and prevent a nuclear attack. But as Snake creeps deeper into Shadow Moses, he learns many dark secrets, and uncovers the true purpose of his mission. It turns out that Shadow Moses Island is hiding the new weapon prototype Metal Gear Rex, a giant walking battle tank, like the mecha from Battletech or Xenogears. Snake has tangled with Metal Gear in the past, so he sets out to destroy the tank.

But that’s not why he has been sent to Shadow Moses. Solid Snake, like the leader of the terrorists, Liquid Snake, is a clone, created from the DNA of the legendary mercenary Big Boss –Solid Snake’s former commanding officer. Snake is a carrier of the virus FoxDie. By coming into proximity of the members of FOXHOUND, Snake can pass on the virus and kill all the terrorists. That way, the government can step in at the end, clean up, and reclaim Metal Gear undamaged. But that’s not how it works out. While Liquid pilots Metal Gear, Snake destroys the tank, and after a high-speed jeep crash during his escape, Snake witnesses Liquid perish from the effects of FoxDie. Then, after a farewell from Snake’s commanding officer Colonel Roy Campbell, Solid Snake rides off into the sunset on a snowmobile.

Who joins Snake on the snowmobile is up to the player. There is a scene about halfway through Metal Gear Solid when one of Liquid’s henchmen, Revolver Ocelot, tortures Solid Snake. If Snake resists the torture, he is joined by his comrade, the rookie female soldier Meryl, in the final sequence. This is considered the happy ending, where Snake escapes Shadow Moses Island with a new love interest. If Snake submits, Meryl dies, and Snake is joined by the techie Hal “Otacon” Emmerich. There is a lot of sadness in Metal Gear Solid. Two of the hostages that Snake is sent to protect die right in front of him. Otacon falls in love with one of the terrorists, but she dies too. Snake reunites with his old comrade Grey Fox, but Fox dies saving Snake’s life. Meryl’s death is another twist of the knife, one last bit of suffering Snake has to cope with. As if he hasn’t suffered enough.

It’s a beautiful action adventure story–much better compared to First Blood, Die Hard, and Terminator than Contra or Doom. Those games are great, but the story of Metal Gear Solid really hooks you in, and makes you root for Snake. He’s more than just some pixels with a gun. Not only is he a tough-as-nails action hero, but it’s clear from the things he says (and more importantly, the things he does) that it isn’t easy for Snake to punch out his brother on a burning battle tank, shoot down a Hind D with a stinger missile, or rappel down the side of a tower while under heavy fire. The fact that Snake’s challenges are so difficult makes the player understand the insurmountable odds Snake faces, so the player roots for him because the player is along for the ride.

But let’s be honest. The most distinguished aspect of the Metal Gear series is its stealth mechanics, which pioneered a whole genre. In an era where Jump and Shoot were the only commands in action games, the original Metal Gear utilized key cards, security cameras, guards who fell asleep, camouflage, and other cool features. Metal Gear Solid may be one of the most responsive games of all time. Hiding under tables, peeking around a corner, sneaking up behind a guard and knocking him out years before Hitman came on the scene. Both the original Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid were incredible leaps forward in showing what kinds of games there could be, and what kinds of games could be fun.

In the next installment of this special pixelthèque event, I will look deeper at the characters and situations that occur and reoccur in the Metal Gear series, and what allusions these repetitions make to classical literature. Stay tuned!

Most people remember Phalanx for its cover: an old man playing a banjo next to his dog while a spaceship flies by in the night sky overhead. What the banjo player and his hound had to do with a fairly typical space shooter has left laymen and scholars alike arguing for the past fourteen years. The hypothesis that most people work under: it was a clever ad campaign to get people talking about an otherwise unremarkable game. We’re still talking about it almost a decade and a half later, aren’t we?

When I say unremarkable, however, I don’t mean “bad”. I just mean that the title isn’t nearly as compelling as the many, many, many other games of its type that have come out. Ikaruga, most recently, has achieved cult status for its spin on the genre.  R-Type and Gradius continue to have faithful followings, even though they haven’t done anything revolutionary to the genre in almost a decade. The Japanese space shooter’s following has always been greater than that of its American counterpart, but if you get a large group of gamers together in a room, I doubt that there will be more than one or two who won’t pick up and play a shooter of Phalanx’s type when given the option.

That’s because these games are fun, easy to play, and difficult to master. The surface details are superficial, unimportant, and usually the same. Alien race. Last pilot. Experimental fighter. Long Odds. Fate of the World. The story doesn’t matter: these games are based in dogma from an age when story had to be limited so that a game could be played. It was a simpler time, when a game had to be judged on its gameplay alone. A grandiose tale of yore couldn’t save glitchy gameplay; glitch gameplay WAS the tale.

Phalanx, then, epitomized all of the best traits of its genre. It’s got a rocking soundtrack. Its levels get progressively harder until Wink Baufield (the hero of the title, and also candidate for the coveted Most Video Gamest Name Ever Award) finds himself in the ridiculously-silly-hard arena. Its graphics are little better than decent, but its framerate never slows, even when hundreds of bullets, baddies, and bombs are hurling themselves through space toward your A-144 fighter. In short, it’s a challenge that will make almost anyone hurl their controller across the room. It’s designed that way; what’s wrong with that?

We’re going to dive into the realm of personal preferences for a little bit, but I think a title that knows what it is and doesn’t try to go beyond that is a load better than a title that jumps for the stars but stumbles on its shoelaces coming out the door. That’s not to say that innovation is no good: far from it. It’s just that sometimes it’s good to reflect and make something that’s fun for fun’s sake, using the tools of the trade and plying them in a successful manner.

Take The Emperor’s New Groove, for example. Lame title notwithstanding, it’s a fun and funny little bit of animation from Disney, which, at the time of the film’s production, couldn’t decide between producing cash-ins like Cinderella 2 and the let’s-not-get-too-adult noble failures such as Treasure Planet. It didn’t break the box office records, it didn’t win a load of awards, and it didn’t remake animation rules. But it did keep me entertained for about 80 minutes, and still does whenever I’m in the need for a good laugh.

That’s the kind of game that Phalanx is: no-frills fun. Action, and LOTS of it. High-speed thrills through a forest of well-animated alien hardware. Steady streams of little red bullets that mean instant death. A MIDI soundtrack that sets the mood without becoming too distracting (or annoying). A short-but-sweet running time that does what it can with the limitations of its era’s hardware. It’s not an epic, 50-hour magnum opus, but it doesn’t need to be. Phalanx is Phalanx. And in honor of it, this is just going to be a short and sweet review, without any frills. Little more than an ode to a nearly-forgotten classic.

To the Old Man and his dog, wherever you may be, thank you.

And so it is with SMB: Super Meat Boy.

Oh, you thought I was talking about that other one?

I kid, of course. There is no conversation I can have about Super Meat Boy that doesn’t at least mention its progenitor and (at least as far as the initials are concerned) namesake. They are of a piece, the player guiding a small and relatively fragile avatar across dangerous terrain to effect a rescue from a diabolical enemy. In that way, they are both links in the grand chain of platformers, from Donkey Kong and Pitfall! through to the current iterations of Nintendo’s various platform series and independent entries like Trine and, yes, Super Meat Boy.

It probably goes without saying (at least to the type of person liable to read pixelthèque) that platform games have changed dramatically over the years. It stands to reason, as platformers were one of the earliest genres. The transition between 2D and 3D was rough; the cameras of those early transitional games were madness-inducing. Nevertheless, the genre persevered and is still a mainstay.

Something funny happened over the last decade, though: digital distribution. First on PC, then on home consoles, developers were freed from the onus of developing a game with a perceived value of $50 or more. The video game economy, which taught consumers that cheaper games were either old or of lower quality (because they often were) and publishers that consumers didn’t want cheaper games (because they didn’t sell), was turned on its head.

Now people who made games were free to, you know, make games. As crazy as that sounds, it turned out to be a good thing. And so it went.

There are dozens of examples of fantastic games from the past five years or so that never would have seen the light of day prior to the advent of digital distribution. Super Meat Boy is one of those.

It shares a lot of DNA with that other SMB, but it took it to an entirely different level. I wrote before about how The Lost Levels was hard enough that it briefly gave me powers of levitation. Super Meat Boy actually gave me a far greater super power: cursing in ways heretofore unheard in my life. Because Super Meat Boy is exponentially harder than The Lost Levels.

The truth is that when I was looking back over the YouTube videos of The Lost Levels to relive those difficulties, I found myself wondering what the big deal was. Sure, there were pinpoint jumps through difficult obstacles that required a muscle-memory intimate knowledge of Mario’s particular physics, but those puzzles were, on the aggregate, not something that I would think would drive me to the edge of madness the way that they did. Only later did I realize why.

As I have previously mentioned, I have been playing video games for more or less my entire life. It’s been almost a decade since that Lost Levels sojourn. One would hope that I would have experienced some growth in that ten years. And, as evidenced by Super Meat Boy, I have.

I finished the game, because when I start a game it is usually with the intent of finishing. I unlocked all the secrets, because I have the sort of completionist personality that could probably be put to better use doing something other than spending three hours on one fiendish (optional) section of a game. And, as mentioned, I cursed up a storm.

I truly wish I had been recording myself as I played through this game. In between games, I would run a sink full of hot water and dunk my hands in order to alleviate the cramping that had occurred from curling my fingers around the controller. During, it was something else. I had video game Tourette syndrome.

Shit-teeth! Bastard fuckshitter! CHARTREUSE! Was I inventing new curses? Not exactly. I imagine all of the above have been shouted in anger at some point or other. (Except probably chartreuse. That was… a weird moment.) Still, it was unprecedented for me. I was beyond the realm of conscious thought. To beat some of the levels in that game, I quite simply had to be. So through cramped hands and an addled conscious mind, these things came out in my frustration and anger. And it was fucking hilarious.

“What did I just say?” became a common question when the laughter of whoever was serving as my audience would pierce through. And they would repeat something that was, even in the moment, completely ludicrous. And I would laugh too. And then die five or ten more times as I worked my way back into the strange equilibrium of the game.

At the end of the session, when I was again immersing my hands in the almost-scalding water to ease the literal pain of playing Super Meat Boy, I would reflect, and laugh, and shake my head sadly. Also, I would be very glad that my subconscious cursing was merely hilarious, and not truly heinous.

Innocence has been explored as a concept in video games since storytelling methods became advanced enough to utilize themes. This is not just limited to the ability of youth overcoming evil (Ristar, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, etc.), but the destructive force created by the loss of innocence. Secret of Mana, Panzer Dragoon, Astal, and dozens of other titles have shown that capable hands can use the medium to express the power and sadness inherent in the transition from childhood to adolescence.

Ico takes this to another level entirely. Not simply content to utilize age-old motifs and themes (burgeoning sexuality as seen in the character of Yorda, the dark magic inherent in child sacrifice), it plays on the themes of simplicity with regards to gaming itself. This is a game simple enough for a child to play, to understand, to interact with… but one that does not reveal its darkness in full until the gamer has already become enmeshed in the story and mechanics.

The title reveals its hand, one trick at a time, from the very beginning. You are Ico, a young boy with an unfortunate set of horns. Because of this deformity, your village has imprisoned you in an ancient castle to ward off the bad mojo that births such as yours may bring. Only a tremor that runs through the crypt allows you to escape the fate of so many other children (as visualized by the dozens of other tombs around you). You are alone and intentionally forgotten by the village, but you will not give up so easily.

What’s stunning is Team Ico’s ability to connote all of this with such little dialogue and tutorial. There is no interface, no way to tell what buttons to press to pick up a torch or climb a ladder. The gamer, like the character, is an innocent in a world that does not make sense. The journey of self-discovery will be interwoven between avatar and gamer.

Such a linkage makes the upcoming horror all the more powerful. Ico soon discovers a young girl imprisoned in a cage: Yorda, ethereal and pure white. Freeing her calls to dark, shadowed things—the spirits of other horned children, their spirits risen from the grave—that cannot harm nor be harmed. Ico can only disperse them temporarily with a stick. They seem drawn to Yorda, but Ico refuses to let his age or Yorda’s seeming simpleness be the cause of capture. He (i.e., you) help her across the landscape, solving puzzles and aiding her escape. They must learn to work together… or they will die.

Deep in the castle is Yorda’s mother, the Queen. She has given birth to Yorda only so that the girl can be sacrificed to retain the Queen’s own youth. The obstacles and horrors that await Ico and Yorda all stem from this desire: the desire to defy aging, no matter the cost. It is innocence corrupted, paid for in blood. To break out, Ico must find an ancient weapon that can finally “kill” the shades and defeat the queen, destroying the castle in the process. What is left is a final question: will freedom ultimately stem from death rather than life?

Notice that it is only Ico’s ability to kill that allows him to save Yorda and himself. He “saves” the other children by dispersing their forms, allowing them to pass on. As a gamer, you are complicit in this act. Each cause-and-effect puzzle is worked out in the player’s mind before completion. There are no bells and whistles to distract. As lead developer Fumito Ueda said, “subtracting design” led to a minimalist approach that accentuates each moment, be it of security, safety, terror, or despair. The destruction that beats like a snare drum becomes the foundation of the gameplay, and of a lifetime.

Like a child’s first steps, each discovery has meaning simply by its isolation or novelty. Each moment builds on another even if it is only in the subconscious. The gamer may not remember how he learned to call Yorda, but the recall is there when the monsters close in. Terror teaches survival, which becomes truth, for if there is truth only in death, then existence itself has no meaning. Thus, the ability to kill—base power—is the context of continued existence, of growing up.

Once the player has become accustomed to the mechanics and to the story, he/she begins to systematically destroy the story world. Each minute brings the tale closer to an end, to when the Queen must inevitable die and the castle must fall. Even in this, an aspect of Ico is destroyed: his horns, the symbol of his own innocence and the reason for his banishment.

The girl is saved, the battle is won, but not everything has been answered. Has Ico proven his villagers right by the great power he has shown and wielded? What is to become of Yorda and Ico, together or apart? Was this “awakening” unnecessary, or did Ico require a trial to emerge into adolescence?

That is the key word: adolescence, the period at which human beings radically redefine themselves. There are few answers in that period of life, though many revelations. Simplicity gives way to complexity. Magic gives way to reality. Ico is stored for another day, the gamer goes back to the real world, but the moments remain. It is a powerful statement, and it is no surprise that Team Ico’s next game, Shadow of the Colossus, dealt with this topic.

It is a necessary step, after all. Childhood, though “pure” and “magical,” is but a rung in the ladder of any person’s life. To arrest momentum is to become like the Queen: vain, monstrous, inhuman. At some point and in some fashion, innocence will be lost. Ico has dealt with the tribulations that went along with it, and so have most gamers. The title itself is just a testament to that in the form of a game. We relive the memories of our own childhood in an active way that is also subconscious. The shadows we find may not be pleasant, but they serve their purpose…

To hold on to preciousness is to obliterate it, and…

To survive requires destruction.

Ico is something else. Ico is about remembering what it’s like to figure things out for yourself.

I played the game to completion for the first time earlier this summer. I freed Yorda from her cage, beat a shadowy kidnapper into smoky submission, and grabbed her hand.

Watching, my girlfriend asked, “Do you have to drag that dead weight around for the whole game?”

“Yeah. That pretty much is the game.”

“Really? Fuck that.” She didn’t watch me play it much.

I feel like she missed out.

The fact of it is, this was not my first exposure to the game. I played the demo over a decade ago, on a PlayStation Underground demo disc. I had fun with it, and intended to buy the game, but in that way of things, I just never got around to it.

Finally, a couple of years ago, I prevailed on a friend of mine to sell me his copies of both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, which I also had not played. (In fact, I still haven’t. But I will! Soon!) I knew by this point that I was missing out on what were widely considered to be among the finest, if not the finest, experiences in the realm of video games, games that, for many, represented the apex of the argument for games as art.

I started playing, finally. It’s a short game, even if you’ve never played, and I could have done it in a sitting if I had dedicated the time. I wanted to savor it, though, and so intended to spread it out over a few days.

Over those few days, the PS3 HD collection of the games was announced. Bitterly, I abandoned my game.

Until a few weeks ago.

As Matt touched on, Ico manages to make one of gaming’s most despised devices, the escort mission, compelling. For an entire game. It is not because Team ICO did a great job programming Yorda, either. Every time she arbitrarily decided to turn down a proffered hand of assistance or chose to go back down the longest ladders this side of Snake Eater, I grew a little bit testy.

Yet somehow, that worked in the game’s favor.

In modern games, it is exceedingly difficult to get lost. Even when you find your player character dropped into a sprawling world tens or even hundreds of miles across, you almost always have a handy-dandy arrow overhead pointing your way like you’re an insane cabbie with a thing for Offspring.

On top of that, any action you may need to take will be demonstrated with a friendly onscreen prompt. Don’t know what button combination to press to drop the hammer on those creepy monstrosities? No worries!

It makes the first few minutes after you get out of the tomb into which Ico has been ensconced a little strange by comparison. Part of it is definitely that I only just played the game this year; a game over a decade old is almost always going to have different standards of instruction than whatever is current. Nevertheless, dropped into this story, you tell Ico run around, getting the hang of the controls, some of which don’t appear to do anything. You jump around, you try to get the camera to point somewhere useful, and you find the door to the next room.

And then you find a door you can’t open.

It’s maybe ten minutes into the game when you find Yorda. You drop her cage and rescue her, using a weapon that you just had to figure out how to 1) pick up and 2) use. Without anyone telling you how to do it. That fight is a breeze once you know what you’re doing. When you don’t? Well, you’re just a scared, confused little boy trying to free someone you found locked in a giant birdcage, and you’ve got to figure some shit out real quick.

I was wrong when I said that dragging Yorda around is the game. That fight? That figuring some shit out? That’s the game. Yorda turns out to be the key to opening the locked door, and it is cemented from there: you need each other. Without Ico, she’s helpless against the shadows. Without Yorda, he’s doomed to starve to death (or die falling from a huge height). Without both of them, there is no escape.

So: in much the same way that you (the player) are Ico in that tense moment when you first wield a weapon, so too are you Ico when Yorda decides she does not want to follow you and you shout at her to come up the ladder. Sure, you get exasperated with her, but you still need her, and as the game goes on and you meet the queen, the need to protect her becomes overwhelming.

You can probably tell by now that I don’t mean that “overwhelming” in the typical video game sense. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of games where the need to “protect” someone is a critical objective. To beat the game, you need to save that character. That is an overwhelming need in the typical sense.

The need to protect Yorda isn’t like that. With a story economy that borders on ephemerality, Team ICO created someone that you (or at least I) legitimately care about. Yorda is not just the key to escape, nor is she just a damsel in distress. She is someone that needs you, and if the game gets its hooks in you, you will go to whatever lengths necessary to make sure that she stays safe.

My connection to the game is nowhere near as personal or visceral as Matt’s. He imbued it with something even deeper. Yet I do not find it at all difficult to perceive how that happened. I care about Yorda as much as I’ve cared about any video game character, despite (or maybe because of) the fact that she is a blank slate onto which you can draw. That aspect of her, the fact that beyond her resolve to help and her need to be helped, makes her matter more than any princess waiting to be rescued.

And so you will fight for her, and you will save each other. That is always the hope.

The first time I fell in love, I remember having a lot of dreams. Some were the tame fantasies of boyhood, but for the most part, they were fairy tale inspired epics, a twist on the narratives of classic fairy tales, with us standing in for the leading players. Disney had done a good job on me, I guess. But falling in love is very much like a fantasy quest. There is a call to adventure, when you first meet your beloved, there is a pursuit, and complications, and then victory and jubilation (or defeat and self-improvement and reflection).

I would sometimes walk in the woods behind my house, and mull over my feelings for this person. I would imagine conversations and adventures we would have in my head. Sometimes these wanderings would go on for hours, and the amount of time I spent in this pattern of behavior I’d rather not admit, but there was something emotionally satisfying about these roamings, even if they did not meet the qualifications for a well-paced story. Not every story needs to be observed in two hours like a play or a film. Some are meant to be lived in for a while, experienced, like a thick, juicy novel, or a video game.

Ico is a video game about love. It’s about first love, to be precise–that quest to be with a beautiful, powerful, unobtainable person; in the game, that person is the girl Yorda. Rather than force the player into constant hack-and-slash gameplay, Ico allows for long passages of reflection, where you can contemplate your quest and drink in the beauty of the natural world. The message here is that first love is meant to be savored. You want to appreciate all the little moments, so that you have them to cherish once the love fades. Memories fade as much as love does, but by treasuring those details about our first loves in the moment, they stay with us.

In many ways, Ico resembles that famous example of early Italian printing – the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, or Poliphilo’s Strife of Love in a Dream. Dreams are a key part of any love. Not love story. Love stories are usually dreams themselves, because how often do things work out that magically in real life? In the book, the hero travels to a lush island, where he explores a magical land for his lost love. When he finally finds her and goes to embrace her, she vanishes and he wakes up. This story has many similarities to Ico, not the least of which is that at the end of Ico, the heroes both wake up. Was some aspect of their adventure a dream? It is somewhat ambiguous.

But why do we fall in love while playing Ico?

Ico and Yorda share an intimacy throughout the game that is almost unrecognizable to most video game audiences. It takes a mechanic that is usually infuriating, the escort mission, and makes it endearing. A big part of what makes this work is the dialogue, or lack thereof. There is little spoken word in Ico. The characters communicate for the most part through gestures, images, and the occasional word spoken in a made up language, only some of which have subtitles. The silences are key. In those gaps, where maybe you would expect Yorda to comment on something, and she doesn’t, you fill in the space in your head. You create the dialogue subconsciously as you wander the castle. In my first play through, I remember the moment when I first stumbled onto the ramparts and saw the enormity of the castle’s battlements for the first time.

“Wowwwww,” I said aloud. “That’s awesome.”

Who was I talking to? I was alone in my living room.

I was talking to Yorda, who was standing right beside me, on the castle wall.

I was filling in the gaps with my own thoughts. My own words. I was writing lines of dialogue for Ico and Yorda, where Ico was was played by me, and Yorda was played by my projection of the girl I loved. It instantly generated a ton of empathy for the character. She was dear to me, and when she was in danger, I had to rescue her.

In the few scenes where there is dialogue between characters, it is not in English, nor the language of the game’s designers, Japanese. Instead, the characters speak a magical, made up language with subtitles that are (usually) in the language of the player. This artistic choice is one of the distinguished elements of Ico that was used later in Ico‘s spiritual successor, the greatest video game of all time.

But what does this choice do? How does it affect our experience of playing the game? There’s an old cliche that French movies are romantic. We’ve all seen the parodies, the man in black and white, staring with longing down a rainy cobblestone street, while puffing on a cigarette and drinking a bottomless glass of red wine. Oui, he says in a gravelly whisper. Oui, Oui, Oui. Do people in France think French movies are romantic? To them they’re just movies. So why do Americans feel that way? A love of Paris is a part of it, I suspect, but there’s something else too. People take dialogue more seriously when it’s in a language they don’t understand. There’s something about hearing the tone of someone’s voice, reading the lines, and interpreting them in your own way, that makes the drama much more believable. Contrary to what you might guess, that extra degree of removal–that little bit of psychic distance–enhances our suspension of disbelief and draws us closer to the drama.

My favorite example of this is the filmography of Wong Kar-Wai. Like the games of Team Ico, the famed Hong Kong filmmaker is known for his lush visuals, patient pace, and sad love stories. He uses minimal dialogue in his films, relying instead on the quality of the actors’ performances and the beautiful musical score. One place where Wong Kar-Wai does employ dialogue is in his clever use of voiceover, which is woven through several of his best films. Of course, if you don’t speak Cantonese, you’re going to spend a lot of time reading. But it works, because the words inform the pictures. Other foreign films use voiceover successfully in a very similar way. Take Amelie, whose breathless narrator is a constant presence throughout the film. I would argue that if you are an English speaker, movies in English can’t pull this off. Think of Stranger Than Fiction, (500) Days of Summer, and the notoriously awful theatrical cut of Blade Runner. And then there’s Wong Kar-Wai’s own foray into English language cinema–My Blueberry Nights. It was a box office disaster.

So Ico uses a fictional language. It gives the characters an emotional potency that is unexpected, and establishes an otherworldliness in the game. And even if you hear the tone of the character’s voice, you have to read the subtitles to understand the character’s words. A few weeks ago, Kotaku published a piece on why we fall in love with specific video game characters. A lack of voiceover was one of the criteria. Reading text dialogue in a game brings the story away from the film end of the spectrum and towards the novel end. It allows for deeper experience unique to every player.

And like the Kotaku piece says, it makes you fall in love with characters.

When I dreamt about the girl I loved, the dreams were a lot like Ico. That game’s story is universal. At some level, I think every young man wants to save a princess. Ico is the purest distillation of that dream. It is rich with symbolism. Its tableaux fill my dreams even to this day. I see the windmill, or the fall from the bridge, or the way the wave of energy from the queen’s hand explodes around my sword. Ico is a game about environment and experience and memory and dream, but most of all, it is about love.

What is the nature of power? Is it the ability to destroy? The ability to create? The ability to choose? The ability to protect? The ability to lead? Is it ultimate freedom, or is it by its very nature a contract with society?

Jade Empire, Bioware’s 2003 Action-RPG for the Xbox, asks these questions as the player fights his/her way through a 50-hour odyssey of magic, martial arts, and mystery. Utilizing an East Asian aesthetic (principally derived from Chinese mythology and Wuxia) in an action-packed, modern tale of fantasy (from a Western perspective), it forges a modern synthesis that meditates on the nature of achievement in life.

Beyond that, it is a meta-analysis: the player’s actions define the story and themes, much like many of Bioware’s other, similar titles. Beyond the ability to choose one’s class and supernatural/physical skills, there is a further delineation of non-morality morality. Not simply the Light Side or Dark Side of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the dichotomy is expressed better as the pull between duties to humanity and the desires of the self. Either benefits the Universe and character, but in radically different ways based entirely upon how one expresses the use of change, both from within and without.

POWER AS AN OBLIGATION TO SOCIETY

The Way of the Open Palm is one of selfless virtue. Through this path, players can rescue the souls of the damned, stop a mob war, and destroy corruption on Earth emanating from the Spirit world. It is not just the facility to do these things, though, but the choice: at any point, the main character can choose to take the lower, evil, or selfish road. Even if one has played an egocentric adventure so far, a mammoth choice rears its head, forcing the player to take a stand that allows for destruction… or redemption. Forgiveness is not just something that the player gives to the world. It is something that can be accepted.

POWER AS AN OBLIGATION TO THE INDIVIDUAL

The Way of the Closed Fist is one of self-achievement. The player acts not out of selfish desire but because the world is made better when the strong lead the way. Coddling the weak, in the form of lustful lotharios or shadowy assassins, only produces a weaker society. Indeed, the Empire is ruled by a cowardly tyrant whose fear of death produced a war of paranormal proportions. The player’s character is under no such delusions: only the strong must rule, and when their time has passed, they must step aside. Success builds upon success until justice and peace prevail.

A shortsighted individual would see either as limiting. The Open Palm becomes a shackling existence, destroying the liberation of individuality for the sake of cultural mediocrity. The Closed Fist is vain, confusing hedonism for betterment of any kind. Yet as Master Smiling Mountain says, the “difference is in the details.” And the details are important.

Due to limitations to the platform, both journeys lead along the same basic path. Both paths lead to the Forest Spirit, to a confrontation in the afterlife, to secrets of the past. It is how the player interacts with others (particularly the party’s characters) that makes a difference. Force, persuasion, fighting, intellect, and many more options all lead to the same basic outcome, but with one big thing changed: the player him/herself.

To be fair, one is not strictly limited to a single path. A character could be mostly Open Palm, or mostly Closed Fist, or completely neutral. Or the entire message of duality could be an oversimplification.

Power is not just force. Rather, power is the discriminating use of one’s skills and mind to bring about change in the world. It is neutral of morals. Like a fire, it can create or destroy. The truly powerful are those who understand the ramifications for their actions, like Mistress Vo and Jian the Iron Fist imply. To impress either (and gain the benefits), the player must show that he/she has gained the power of a chosen path by knowing it (that is, acting in accordance with it completely).

Similarly, the gamer must learn the intricacies of the martial arts if he/she is to survive and save the Empire. Blind strikes and tanking don’t get the job done in later stages of the game. Strategy and careful consideration bring satisfying conclusions. To learn, to understand, to take authorship and responsibility and craft; that is the essence of power.

In this, it is reminiscent of Akira, the landmark 80’s animated film. In both, power taken by those without responsibility (Tetsuo, Emperor Sun Hai) leads to destruction that must be averted by “weaker” heroes. Tetsuo takes authority in a world that has stepped on him; he becomes a monster. Sun Hai ends the Long Drought; due to his actions (which will not be revealed here), ghosts and spirits begin to emerge that cause more damage than any climate disaster could.

Then Kaneda or the Player show up and bring the down the hammer. They may not be as potent as their opponent, but the journey upon which they have gone has increased their character to the point that they are willing to do anything, including sacrifice their lives, to do what they feel is just.

The influence espoused by Jade Empire is always good, if handled in the right way. We are individually accountable for our actions and their consequences. Only by accepting this—forging our own Way—do we harness true power. Responsibility to the self or responsibility to society; it doesn’t matter. It is a Nietzchean parable that moves beyond base morality. Good and evil do not exist because subjectivity enables the individual experience-exist within true virtue.

How’s that for an oftentimes Chop Sockey roleplaying game?