Metroid Prime 3: Corruption Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/23/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

Developers: Retro Studios

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): First-person shooter, Action-Adventure

Platforms: Wii

Release Date: August 27, 2007

Normally, a trilogy of games would be confined to the same console. Keeping an IP to a confined minimum of three is a respectable decision based on maintaining conciseness with a three-act story arc or preserving the natural evolution of a series before it severely starts to lose its initial luster with subsequent entries. It also helps the general cohesion that all three games in a trilogy are rendered with the same game engine and are released around the same time. It worked for Mario on the NES, Donkey Kong Country on the SNES, both Crash Bandicoot and Spyro trilogies on the original PlayStation, etc. Did the Metroid Prime series on the Gamecube tightly wrap up the 3D Metroid subseries in a neat, little three-piece package on Nintendo’s sixth-generation system? Sadly, Retro Studios only managed to eke out two titles on the twee little lunchbox, putting every Metroid fan that purchased a Gamecube at an awkward place of irresolution. It’s not as if Retro Studios failed to meet their deadlines before the Gamecube’s demise, nor did the sixth generation of consoles deviate from this industry-practiced pattern of a well-rounded set of three consecutive mainline games per series. My insightful conspiratorial musing on why Retro Studios deferred the third Metroid Prime game after the Gamecube’s tenure is that a little birdy over at the Nintendo mothership in Japan flew all the way across the pond to inform Retro Studios that a revolution was coming: The Nintendo Revolution (later renamed the Nintendo Wii). Because they received this tidbit of crucial information, Retro Studios shifted their efforts to finishing their final rendering of the Metroid series on the Wii. What made the presence of a Metroid title on Nintendo’s new console so pertinent? In short, the motion controls. Because a large portion of Metroid Prime’s gameplay involves aiming and shooting, Nintendo would be foolish not to capitalize on the notion of a 3D Metroid game where the player can control Samus more intimately than ever before. As thrilling as the notion of waving Samus’s arm cannon around with newfound layers of kineticism is, the inherent novelty of motion controls will strike gamers with a familiar sense of dread. Does Metroid Prime 3: Corruption supersede the negative connotations associated with motion controls and provide us with an exemplary ending to the critically acclaimed 3D Metroid trilogy? Well…

Why does Retro Studios seemingly enjoy making the Metroid fanbase fretful? Gamers everywhere had to install pacemakers after their hearts couldn’t take the nerve-wracking thought of the highly anticipated next Metroid game being a first-person shooter after its prolonged absence. After being relieved at the result of Metroid Prime being a modern masterpiece and the second gaming carrying on the first game’s mantle splendidly, it was apparently time for another onslaught of anxiety-induced heart murmurs. Considering how astounding the finished product of Metroid Prime was, at least everyone could now trust Retro Studios' game developer acumen. Still, the new ideas on display here feel as if gamers are once again witnessing a pack of vultures circling around the Metroid series on the brink of death, praying to God that it will show signs of revitalized vigor so that they will leave and peck at Star Fox or something instead. If motion controls weren’t as maligned in the gaming community as they are, one might chide me for approaching what could be exciting feats of gaming innovation with such abject cynicism. Frankly, the stigma surrounding them is justifiable, which means the vultures can probably break out the fancy china and napkins for a freshly stinking feast. To assuage players of the mental burden revolving around Metroid Prime’s new peripheral, I’m glad to report that the motion controls in Metroid Prime 3 are perfectly competent (for the most part) and do not severely hamper the Metroid Prime experience. However, there is still plenty to find fault with Metroid Prime 3 which has little to nothing to do with the Wii’s primary control gimmick.

My primary gripe with Metroid Prime 3 is how it strips the essentials of Metroid’s rich, intuitive design down to a slurry of standard first-person shooter elements. I should’ve expected something like this considering the third entry to a series is always the point where streamlining occurs to make a series more accessible after the gameplay formula has been tweaked to refinement over the course of two entries. Even though Metroid Prime 3 submits to the third-entry pattern as usual, certain outliers exacerbate the extent of its accessibility. Historically, 2007, the year of Metroid Prime 3’s release, was when the first-person shooter genre hit its commercial stride and began its course as the dominating king of gaming for the duration of the seventh generation. At the same time, Nintendo was trailblazing new ground for widespread accessibility on the Wii to garner an audience totally unfamiliar with the gaming medium. Metroid Prime is both a first-person shooter and a Nintendo-produced title, so the two happenstance sums of its identity, unfortunately, make for a distressing equation in 2007. Both factors make their best efforts to subdue Metroid’s idiosyncrasies that have made the series one of Nintendo’s most influential and acclaimed properties for the sake of garnering a broader audience.

At face value, Metroid Prime 3’s introduction vaguely recalls the one from the first game. Samus arrives on an intergalactic tanker called the GFS Valhalla suspended somewhere in the vast reaches of the cosmos to discuss a matter of utmost importance with the vessel’s decorated commander Admiral Dane. Samus is tasked to cleanse the internal hard drives of a series of organic supercomputers called the “Aurora Units” located all around the galaxy that have been infected by a nasty virus. Apparently, the situation is so dire that it calls for enlisting three other bounty hunters to assist Samus on her mission: the “Silver Surfer on ice” Rundas, the phlegmatic, mech-powered Gohr, and the bouncy, flirty shapeshifter Gandrayda. Seeing Samus work alongside this motley of bounty hunters reminds me of the Superman joke from Seinfeld, stating that the practicality of the Justice League is superfluous because the Man of Steel would never require assistance for any act of heroism. Still, it’s relatively amusing seeing other figures in the Metroid universe of the bounty hunter vocation besides Samus. Despite the number of valiant warriors on deck, the GFS Valhalla still manages to be successfully infiltrated by a fleet of space pirate goons, causing the spaceship to sink into the gravity of a nearby planetoid as its remnants lie dormant forevermore like the frigate that opens the first game. The chaos during the introduction certainly upholds the Metroid standard of hooking the player with that ticking sense of tension.

Suspicions should rise from any Metroid veteran while witnessing Metroid Prime 3’s introduction sequence. I’m breathing a sigh of relief that the game doesn’t revert to modeling itself as a co-op shooter like Halo after seeing Samus fraternizing with the other bounty hunters during the expositional buildup in the GFS Valhalla. Still, where does the game get off uttering so much dialogue? Gamers often criticize 3D Nintendo titles for lacking spoken lines of dialogue, another smirch against the old fuddy-duddys at the company for rejecting gaming modernity. Even if Nintendo ever decides to inject enough voice acting in their IPs to fill a Tennessee Williams play, Metroid should still be the series with the lowest priority for this radical change. The last time I checked, isolation was a key component to Metroid’s tone and atmosphere, and conversing with NPCs on a regular basis is antithetical to conveying that crushing feeling of loneliness. Samus is still roaming around the map(s) without a bounty hunter peer or a diminutive sidekick to keep her company. Still, the former agents of the now-defunct GFS Valhalla insist on signaling in information on Samus’s objectives through some sort of earpiece in her power suit. Sure, transmitting current objectives to Samus and pinpointing them on a map with a question mark was present in the previous two Metroid Prime games, fueling the counterargument that 3D Samus had already tarnished that explorative Metroid meatiness. To think that the majority of Metroid fans hadn’t batted an eye until now! I, along with several other Metroid fans, interpreted the objective signaling from the first two games with a suspension of disbelief. We viewed the suggested trajectory as something for our eyes only, a videogamey attribute like a pause menu or the game over screen. When characters from the game are constantly voicing commands at Samus and directing their orders by uttering Samus’s name, the immersiveness of being surrounded by a looming air of alienation is heavily compromised. Even with streamlining the trajectory to completing an objective, one would think the process would be at least smoother, but I encountered far too many instances where the game would nail down an objective on the map just to send the player back to fetch an upgrade needed to progress that isn’t marked. This does not foster exploration through the player’s intuition, it’s just brazenly misleading.

A considerable aspect of Metroid’s intentional feeling of onset dread through sci-fi seclusion is also compromised with Metroid Prime 3’s environments not coalescing on one planet. As a landmark first for the series, Samus progresses through the game by traveling to and fro from five different planets and or smaller orbital bodies by flying to them with her ship. Did an unpaid intern at Retro Studios come up with this newfangled idea to “innovate” on Metroid’s gameplay and if so, why did the higher-ups listen? It is the dumbest change that Metroid Prime 3 implements by a fair margin, even among plenty of other questionable ones. If the state of abandonment in Metroid doesn’t send pangs of nervous uncertainty down the player’s spines, the flow of progression deeper into the catacombs of uncharted ground will. That is, it would trigger this feeling if Metroid Prime 3’s maps were constructed as a conglomerate of diverse environments connected by branching paths like every other Metroid game. Venturing from the tranquil origin point of her parked ship to an area comparatively harsher and deadlier through inquisitive excavation is a strong element of Metroid’s level progression. Encountering a number of dead ends after completing the assigned objective and resorting to tread back to the ship to change the course directive is as cheap and inorganic as a lawn flamingo. What is this? Ratchet & Clank? Actually, that comparison reminds me of something amusing. I adored Insomniac’s space-age 3D platformer series as a kid and was slightly disappointed while playing the first Metroid Prime that Samus wouldn’t be revving up her ship’s engines to blast off to multiple planets throughout the course of the game like the way that Ratchet & Clank organizes progression. Now that I grasp the slow burn, intricate direction of Metroid, a Metroid game that actually delivers on my initial expectations is a sacrilegious transgression equivalent to spitting in my face. On top of acting as a remote valet, Samus’s ship is also armed to the teeth with missiles and a grapple beam that lifts hefty objects airborne. All Samus’s ship did in every previous Metroid game was twiddle its proverbial thumbs waiting for Samus to finish her mission or to periodically save. Here, it’s Samus’s indentured servant, and calling it to bombard defensive systems with a load of firepower from the skies is another brassy scene in a series that relies on subtleties.

It could be possible that I’m acting a tad overdramatic. Splitting the notable districts of a Metroid Prime world could still function appropriately if the daunting sense of progression is still emulated on each individual planet. I’m sorry to say that Retro’s streamlining seeps deeply into the level design as the planets are divided by individual districts, signified on the map by the ability to dock Samus’s ship. The worst offender of the planetary parting is Bryyo, the first legitimate location in the game whose exploration isn’t halted entirely by the narrative. The first section of the world that Samus arrives at is a sweltering rock with the cosmos as a prominent backdrop. With the exception of the mechanical Chozo technology that intersects the branching paths, the unhinged alien fauna and the wild humidity exude a prehistoric atmosphere. Its beauty is arguable, but one cannot deny its curious aura. After completing the first objective on the planet, Samus scurries back to her ship with the coordinates to Bryyo’s Fiery Airdock, a smoldering furnace whose sulfurous claustrophobia rivals that of Magmoor Caverns with the manmade industrial sterility of the Metroid Laboratory on Phendrana. Remember when every player’s heart sank from the tonal whiplash of stumbling upon the Phendrana laboratory after an hour or two of plodding along the serene, snowy cliffside? That effective sensation could only be achieved through organic progression, and the fact that Bryyo could’ve offered the exact same reaction but ultimately couldn’t due to the artificial way Metroid Prime 3 approaches level progression is such a shame.

Elysia and the Pirate Homeworld aren’t as jaggedly orchestrated as Bryyo. There are plenty of free vacancies for Samus to park her ship on their surfaces, but she isn’t forced to hop between them via flight to visit each section. Elysia implements a tramway system to carry Samus across the various isles suspended in the sky. If you’re adept with your Greek mythology knowledge, I can affirm that Elysia is as immaculate as its name would suggest. The ancient Chozo creatures have crafted a scattered sky metropolis among the clouds, with glimmers of golden light shimmering among the clouds and cracks of lightning booming in the distance to signify the rapturous scope of the setting. Elysia is Cloud City from Star Wars as depicted in a glorious afterlife with sparse architecture. Yet, I believe that Elysia is a gas giant, so the hazy, ethereal effect is actually a noxious element wafting around, still exuding a sense of Metroid danger (literally) in the air. From a conceptual standpoint, Elysia is a highlight section of the game, and I might prefer its angelic serenity to the electric iridescence of the Sanctuary Fortress from the last game. However, Elysia is quite a pain to navigate due to the zigzagging arrays of skylines that Samus must grapple on and ride around. The Pirate Homeworld also affirms all connotations to its name. The place that the series mainstay menaces call home has a hostile glow surrounding it, signifying a prevailing threat of danger at every step. The underground metro transit system is a logical method of transportation for what we can infer is an active civilization, transporting Samus around the three prominent districts in what is the most organic example of traversal in the game. The only aspect about the Pirate Homeworld that bothers me is the escort mission that serves as the area’s climax. What irks me isn’t the AI of the soldiers charging headfirst to their deaths, but the fact that the corrosive acid rain that Samus spent at least three overarching objectives finding a means to become immune from doesn’t phase them in the slightest. So much for continuity? I’m not sure what to make of the base of the federation on Norion or the Metroid-infested remnants of the GFS Valhalla either. Transitory filler for a few story beats, perhaps?

While I explicitly stated at the beginning of this review that Metroid Prime 3’s motion controls weren’t a substantial detractor, their radical implementation after two Metroid Prime games played on a more traditional controller still makes them worth delving into. All in all, Metroid Prime 3’s control scheme isn’t much different than it was with a Gamecube controller. Shooting is still assigned to the primary A button while the B button usually used to execute action still makes Samus leap off the ground. Jumping manages to be smoother due to the player’s trigger finger fitting nicely on the back of the Wiimote. Analog control still fits on the left thumb even if the nub is separated by the additional nunchuck peripheral. The motion aspect is all in the aiming, which is highlighted by a more pronounced reticle. As one would probably guess, the accuracy of Samus’s shots coincides with the player’s ability to line them up with the reticle. Since Metroid Prime is a more combat-intensive Metroid experience, not automatically ensuring a dead-on hit with the targeting system like in the previous games makes the action more challenging and engaging. The grapple gameplay on the other hand, however, is a fickle affair. Swiping the nunchuck half of the controller when using the grapple beam will tear away enemy shields, machine sockets, and chunks of debris. When executed properly, it feels like the player is cracking a whip, but only when the game decides to register a grapple with the adhesive stick instead of a pathetic energy splash. The section on Bryyo where Samus must pull back three levers on a generator was the worst instance of their unresponsiveness, and I’m pretty sure the flying space pirates that were present were laughing at my struggle, which infuriated me to no end.

All other gameplay attributes in Metroid Prime 3 involve little to no motion control, and the total number of them has been reduced or slightly modified. The game forgoes the Super Missile upgrade that blasted the most microscopic of cracked barriers and stubbornly locked doors. The missiles themselves eventually are rendered in the ice variety after a certain point, and they’re mainly used for freezing makeshift ice platforms more than combat. Accumulating missile upgrades are mainly for the occasional door locked behind five or so targets that need to be hit all at once. The trusty scan visor is now accompanied by an X-ray visor and one that calls Samus’s ship for a variety of commands. Every beam Samus acquires replaces the old one as opposed to having it join her arsenal for specific elemental situations. It’s a shame the game can’t be bothered to mix and match the beams anymore, but I guess upgrading to a stronger beam every time makes sense. The modification that upsets me more is making Samus jump in morph ball form without the push of a bomb, for my proficiency with double jumping with bombs that I honed to expertise has been rendered obsolete. One Metroid tradition I’m actually glad that Metroid Prime 3 has forsaken is the need to recollect all of these gadgets and upgrades because it became a tiring tease.

Metroid Prime 3 forces all of Samus’s weapons and other abilities to take a backseat to Phazon: the mechanical and narrative weight of the entire game. Since its heavy lore implications and infamous mine on Tallon IV, the pernicious substance has been edging its way far too close to Samus for comfort. After materializing itself as Samus’s evil, neon blue doppelganger in the second game, Phazon’s growing evolution in the third game has critically struck the bounty hunter. After an encounter with Dark Samus on Norion in her attempt to obliterate the planet with a Phazon meteor called a “Leviathan Seed,” Samus recuperates from her strained victory with a nasty Phazon infection. It now runs rampant in Samus’s bloodstream, and she must release it from her system like any other bodily waste. Expunging the toxin comes in the form of a superweapon, an extension of Samus’s standard beam unleashed by holding down the start button. Samus’s visor becomes engulfed in a hazy static, and the frenzy ceases when the energy bar at the top of the visor is either entirely depleted or taps out by pressing the start button again. If Samus neglects to do either, the bar will turn red and force Samus to drain the Phazon or succumb to the corruption and die bleeding out into her suit. Considering using Phazon proves to be far more effective at dispatching enemies than any regular weapons, one would figure to abuse this mechanic without impunity. However, the caveat is that the Phazon energy coincides with Samus’s health, with a full bar equalling out to one whole energy tank. This balancing act is what makes the Phazon usage the most interesting new mechanic that Metroid Prime 3 offers. Unleashing the ineffable substance is contingent on whether the player can afford to drain their health for their own safety, a gamble based on the player’s defensive skills during combat.

Even though using Phazon comes with dire complications, it seems like the player will be obliged to take the gamble even if they feel tentative about it. Eventually, the enemies become so durable due to the prevailing corruption of Phazon, so the only effective means of wiping them out is to fight fire with fire. Despite the risk, Samus will end up flaunting her internal affliction. In the way Phazon is used, it seems like an illicit drug rather than space-age asbestos. Everyone, even the heroes, is imbibing the stuff to make themselves stronger at the cost of their physical and mental integrity. The most tragic examples of Phazon use are Samus’s bounty hunter chums, who fall the furthest from grace when they get a hint of it. Unlike Samus who can control her inner struggle, the other three bounty hunters go stark raving mad with drug-induced delusion and attempt to sabotage Samus’s mission. Because they are too far gone to save, Samus must euthanize them with the brute force of her arm cannon to prevent further harm to themselves or the fate of the galaxy. While their boss fights on each of the three significant areas all amount to the struggle of keeping the targets aligned with all of them moving erratically, the narrative depth behind these fights obviously bestows some emotional weight. Or, at least that’s what the game is trying to convey. I got the impression that the bounty hunters were the good guys in the introduction, but were these guys Samus’s bosom buddies? Is the fact that Gandrayda cheekily called Samus “Sammy” enough to signify a sense of a personal connection? We aren’t granted enough time to interact with them under normal circumstances to understand the gravity of the scenario. The main bosses that cap off an area’s completion at their Phazon cores prove to be much more of a challenge but did not feel the slightest bit of grief upon slaying these Phazon-riddled giants, so I suppose the emotional effect sort of worked. Ridley is one of these titans in his new “Omega” variant which seems to be the metallic “Meta” coat, but thicker because it’s now protecting a tender wound from when he plummeted down an elevator shaft with Samus on Norion. What exactly is Ridley’s stake in Dark Samus’s nefarious plans to flood the universe with Phazon? Is he simply acting as a cog in this wheel just to spite Samus? We weren’t bereft by Ridley’s absence in the second Metroid Prime, and his inclusion here just feels like an arbitrary lark.

After liberating each world of their Phazon problem, Samus and the federation troopers take the newly acquired Leviathan Battleship to penetrate the barrier surrounding the planet Phaaze: the source planet of the Phazon corruption. Once Samus makes the intrepid plunge downward to the point of no return, something unexpected occurs. You see, at this point in the game, the player shouldn’t fear the damaging effects of Phazon as they did when Samus’s health bar first turned red and the alert levels were critical. In fact, the player should be comfortable using it as an extra boost. Well, the game assumes the player has been fiending Phazon like a crippling addiction because Samus will be in an inescapable state of Phazon frenzy mode for the duration of the finale. From the trek to the center to the two boss fights with Dark Samus and the multi-phased Aurora Unit, the constant state of alert and the threat of that bar filling to its breaking point is genuinely hairraising, more so than any of the series' mainstay escape sequences. In the end, when the federation celebrates Samus’s conquering of Phazon and all it adulterates, the ending I received was one where she returns to Elysia and looks longingly out into the skyscape. I’m told that this scene is her lamenting the deaths of her fallen bounty hunter comrades, which overtly adds more weight to Samus’s grief. Still, I don’t know why it’s specifically where she fought Ghor. Maybe she’s showing some favoritism like Dorothy did for the Scarecrow. Despite all of the effective moments in Metroid Prime 3’s finale, the best part by a fair margin is how the game handles the obligatory fetch quest near the end. To usurp the Leviathan Battleship from the space pirates, Samus needs to recover a code located deep in the broken catacombs of the GFS Valhalla. Restoring the battleship to the state of traversability only requires five of the nine energy cells, and they can be plucked out of the walls at the first point Samus sees them. This is the only clear improvement that Metroid Prime 3 makes to what was already in place for the previous two games, and I am extremely grateful for not having to backtrack, especially in this divergent galaxy.

Upon playing Metroid Prime 3, I’ve concluded that the 3D trilogy should’ve been titled “Metroid Phazon.” Now that the third and final entry in the trilogy shares little in common with the previous two, Phazon is the one constant that unites all three games and gives them the sense of a cohesive trilogy arc. Everything else in Metroid Prime 3 is naturally hard to compare to the previous two Metroid Prime titles, and it’s not only because the player has to contend with flailing Samus’s arm cannon around with a detached, bulky wand to ensure accuracy. For the record, I much prefer how the first two Metroid Prime games approached exploration and level design because it was astounding that a 3D game could effectively emulate a design philosophy that seemed staunchly planted in the 2D space with no legroom to innovate. Metroid Prime 3 looks like a Metroid game but does not act or feel like one, sharing more in common with its first-person shooter contemporaries than any title of its own namesake. I cannot criticize Metroid Prime 3 for what it wasn’t trying to be, which was the first two games only with motion controls. As far as a more action-intensive, space opera Metroid goes, Metroid Prime 3 still succeeds thanks to the Phazon system, and the grapple beam utility to a lesser extent, for offering something interesting while raising Metroid Prime’s skill ceiling. My comparative distaste for Metroid Prime 3 compared to the other two ultimately comes down to a matter of taste. I much prefer Alien to Aliens because I prefer a rich, brooding atmosphere in my horror media, but I can still concede that the latter still achieves something substantial with its different intentions.

Kirby: Planet Robobot Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/15/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Kirby: Planet Robobot

Developer: Hal Laboratory

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: 3DS

Release Date: April 28, 2016

Kirby has managed to grab my attention once again. This time, it's the 3DS title Kirby: Planet Robobot, which has been rumored to be the best Kirby title of the bunch. This news intrigues me because no Kirby title before has ever taken the stand as the championing king of the series despite its 25-year tenure at the point of Robobot’s release in 2016. The mainline Kirby games have always been consistently well received, but none of those games have an “Ocarina of Time” status: the unanimous darling in both critical and audience acclaim whose ground-breaking impact changes the course for every subsequent entry for the foreseeable future. Suddenly, one game has the moxie to step up to the plate and hoist itself into the ranks as the alpha Kirby title, making its predecessors bow down to its sheer awesomeness. You can tell that Kirby: Planet Robobot means business from the game’s cover. Normally, Nintendo feels inclined to alter Kirby’s visage on the cover to a more cheerful, elated face for the Western release if he looks menacing or determined on the original Japanese cover. Because Nintendo made no effort to make Kirby look more accessible, this means that Kirby: Planet Robobot takes no prisoners. Also, Kirby piloting an intergalactic Gurren Lagann mecha, which is what the title alludes to, already makes for a persuasive pitch. Alright, Robobot, I like the cut of your jib and I will accept your duel to challenge my preconceived notions based on all other Kirby titles before you. However, because of your high regard, you’re going to have to convince me that the mech isn’t a gimmick and that Kirby can be a substantial gaming experience.

To signify its preeminence, Planet Robobot immediately catapults the player into a high-stakes premise unseen in any previous Kirby title. Kirby’s home planet of Pop Star is enjoying its time of peace until it is abruptly interrupted by a colossal UFO that sinks its claws into the Pop Star’s crust like a cougar does to its prey. King Dedede and the rest of Pop Star’s military forces are naturally not going to take this hostile invasion lying down, so they man their battalions with the fiercest firepower possible. Unfortunately, the deadliest extent of Pop Star’s opposition is a few cannons and an army of Waddle Dee’s frantically scrambling around for something more formidable and failing, making Pop Star easier to invade than a small island nation in the Pacific. Meta Knight thinks the artillery of the winged aircraft Halberd modeled in his masked visage will be enough to conquer the alien forces, but is quickly dispatched as his ship careens downward in a blaze of smoke. Meanwhile, as all hope seems lost, the chaos of the invasion disturbs Kirby from his slumber, calling him to action as the obvious true defender of Pop Star’s sovereignty. One image in Planet Robobot that is particularly striking is seeing the size of the Halberd in the sliver of screen space with the alien mothership that almost eclipses the screen. Remember in Kirby Superstar when the Halberd was a formidable presence? The juxtaposition in this shot subtly suggests that the Kirby series has evolved and the game has raised the bar for the challenges that Kirby will face in this adventure.

But does Planet Robobot finally amplify the facile difficulty level associated with the Kirby series? That was the widespread sentiment echoed around the block for everyone who was floored by this game. Considering the breezy difficulty is my main vocal criticism for every previous Kirby, the notion of Planet Robobot providing a heftier challenge was a factor in instilling my sense of interest in it. After playing Planet Robobot with this pretense in mind, I have to ask this question to everyone who stated this: did we play the same game? Does Kirby not float extemporaneously with a boundless flight like a freed balloon, allowing him to elude most obstacles that stand before him? Is the game not littered with a more-than-charitable amount of extra lives and health items that make the Red Cross seem covetous by comparison? No, I didn’t expect the game to implement limited continues and a one-hit health system like what was initially expected of Kirby’s Adventure on the NES. Still, the fact that Planet Robobot seemingly makes no attempt to provide a steeper challenge leaves me utterly confused at what everyone was beaming over.


Because Planet Robobot is still a traditional Kirby experience, discussing Kirby’s gameplay mechanics feels redundant. He still soars from left to right on a 2D axis and treats his stomach like an inexhaustible, ironclad vacuum when he devours everything as a solution to overcoming every obstacle in his way. Planet Robobot flaunts the graphical capabilities of the 2.5D perspective like the last two mainline Kirby titles did by cinematically changing the camera angles for certain situations like ascending the staircase ramp up to one of the mothership’s industrial inner workings. The game even implements a number of visual gimmicks regarding the 3D peripheral of the 3DS system. The impact of getting run over by a Waddle Doo’s compact car or when a tube materializes on screen before it starts to roll makes Kirby literally break the fourth wall. If I were able to physically see the full extent of the 3D effects, I’m sure they’d be marvelous and not simply recycled defeated animations from Super Smash Bros.

Talking about Kirby’s innate controls isn’t what people want to hear regarding Planet Robobot, for they persist from every previous Kirby game with no deviation. Let’s be honest, the exciting aspect that reeled most people into purchasing Planet Robobot was the hulking mech seen on the front cover and alluded to in the title. Kirby did not figure that dusting off this deadly mechanical marvel from whatever garage he hypothetically owns would be especially advantageous for such a monumental threat like the alien invaders, for he does not possess the insight. The mech is actually a tool used by the alien foot soldiers that antagonizes Kirby sometime in the first world. Once defeated, Kirby discovers that the mech somehow has physical properties that allow Kirby to command it like one of the enemy's powers, shifting from an industrial gray to a bright pink to signify Kirby’s newfound ownership of it. After the initial undertaking, the mech can be ready to use once Kirby finds it again on the field. The mech literally packs a mean punch and while it is tethered to gravity unlike the pink, cosmic being that pilots it, its double jump feature along with a temporary glide proves to be enough for traversal. When trying to wallop an enemy with a sucker punch that Kirby could potentially use their powers when he sucks them up, something extraordinary occurs. The mech will instead scan the enemy in close proximity and copy their specific power, mechanizing the ability for the mech’s own usage. Essentially, the mech powers are high-octane versions of what Kirby can perform on his own. Scanning Sir Kibble and Blade Knight for their respective cutlery tools sprouts massive steel appendages that are able to cut through industrial-strength chain links. Copying fire allows the mech to belch molten lava like a military-grade flamethrower, and the ice ability can freeze Bonkers the gorilla into a solid block of ice and slide him across the level like a curling iron. The wheel completely transforms the mech into a bitchin’ vehicle that blazes through Pop Star’s inhabitants with ramming speed, and the jet completely shifts the gameplay mechanics into a scrolling shooter where the craft is armed with lasers and comically sized missiles. The thunderous mic move is actually practical in the mech as Kirby can weaponize tinnitus with a pair of concert speakers on wheels instead of one sonic boom blast. As you can probably guess, the mech is more than a worthy addition to augmenting the standard Kirby formula. Mowing down enemies with the mech gives the player a gratifying thrill that makes them make the same dastardly face as Kirby does on the game’s front cover. Surprisingly, the ostentatious presence of the mech does not render an already easy game totally effortless. Not since Kirby 64 have the developers found an engaging way to diversify Kirby’s copy abilities, and seeing how the mech would transform according to the power-up was always a sight to behold. The player has the option to pimp out their mech with symmetrical arm tattoos in the form of various sticker collectibles. I recommend dueling Hydra and Dragoon stickers from Kirby Air Ride, for they look totally badass.

Sadly, there are powers in Planet Robobot that Kirby leaves all for himself to use when he leaves the mech in an idle position on the field. Since Kirby has accumulated new powers to use over the two decades since Kirby’s Adventure introduced the ability, some of the copied classics have been subject to the cutting floor for the sake of brevity. Most of the powers in the expected roulette are present, but the player will not be seeing Kirby sprout needles from his body like a porcupine, nor will we see him flutter with the wing ability. The few new Kirby abilities found in Planet Robobot are cheekily referential, and I guess twenty years is the mark when Kirby is allowed to be meta, as well as a reminder that Sakurai is allowed to dip his hands into any other Nintendo franchise whenever he pleases as the creative director of Super Smash Bros. Doctor Kirby mirrors one of the plumber’s more famous occupational ventures, overdosing enemies with an irresponsible prescription to gigantic pills of all colors. Beating them with a clipboard is a new touch that Dr. Mario never did in Smash. Doctor Kirby’s most unorthodox move is materializing a lab desk to mix and mash potions and elixirs with a myriad of different elemental properties. I wouldn’t make the connection between another Nintendo character and Kirby’s new ESP move, but the backward baseball hat is a dead giveaway. The only new power that does not remind me of any Nintendo character is the poison move unless the developers are suggesting that one of the Smash Bros. characters IS poison from a metaphorical stance, which is quite mean (it’s Pichu). The only new move I would welcome into the canon is the ESP move as Poison was too similar to fire and Doctor Kirby featured way too much utility to be practical.

Besides the previous two Kirby games on the 3DS that share the same engine, the Kirby game that Planet Robobot reminds me the most of is Kirby 64. This comparison is due to the code cubes, the main collectible from Planet Robobot that have the same utility as the crystal shards from Kirby’s first outing with 3D graphics. Like the shards from Kirby 64, there are three code cubes in each level placed in the beginning, middle, and end sections of each level. Don’t worry; as the player, you will not need to grab a pencil and paper to write down the code from every cube acquired. However, the player will still have to keep their wits about them, for the code cubes are not seen in plain sight. The repeated process from Kirby 64 might make some veteran gamers groan, for gathering the crystal shards elongated the game to a tedious degree. It wasn’t difficult by standard definitions, rather, having to seek out two separate enemies for their powers and carry their combinations was an exercise in grueling endurance. Regarding the code cubes, their role in Planet Robobot gave me a moment of clarity. The newfound substance in Planet Robobot does not stem from the game’s physical difficulty: it’s the puzzle aspect of retrieving these cubes. All the resources needed to solve the subsidiary puzzles off the beaten path are available to Kirby in close proximity as opposed to putting him on a fetch quest outside of the level. When the player figures out what is required, unlocking a code cube should be a cinch, but the player will still have to exert a fair amount of logical intuition in order to lead themselves to victory. The codec cubes finally offer a consistent and reasonable challenge in a Kirby game.

In Kirby 64, at least collecting the crystal shards was an optional endeavor. Collecting the vast majority of the code cubes, however, is a necessary venture in unlocking the boss door that follows every world’s fifth level. Behind the electronic shield, the bosses of Planet Robobot are once again an eclectic mix of foes. One pattern I noticed from all of these bosses is that they are remixes of bosses found in previous Kirby games. Terminator Whispy, for example, still technically presides as the Kirby game’s first formal boss. Still, his new cybernetic enhancements give the poor, dopey tree a freshly intimidating presence as he attempts to bulldoze Kirby in his introduction sequence. Remember the Zeppelin Kabula from the very first Kirby game on the Gameboy? The weaponized hot gas ship returns with a sinister, sharp-toothed sneer. Galacta Knight is the gallant Meta Knight with nuts and bolts kinetically facilitating his swift sword swipes, and the sludgy King Dedede clones are fairly self-explanatory. The Holo Defense API does not explicitly state that it’s a rehashed version of the Pix battle from Kirby 64, but anyone who has played the game will recognize it instantly. The same goes for the final fight against Planet Robobot’s true final boss, the Star Dream source of the alien invader’s operation. To face the colossal intergalactic machine in the immeasurable battlefield of the cosmos that should remind everyone of O2, Kirby’s mech morphs with a certain battleship that has been fully restored, and the absolutely wild combination made me audibly gasp. As much as I appreciate the roster on display here, I wish Planet Robobot offered more bosses that involve the mech. Unscrewing the towering Gigavolt’s parts and the few scrolling shooter sections are fine, but I was eagerly anticipating some Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots action.

While Planet Robobot’s bosses didn’t quite meet my high-octane mech battle wish fulfillment, I’m still pleased that some of them tap into some unprecedented narrative substance. Like the atomic age horror films that popularized the concept of an alien invasion, there are veiled allegories beneath the conceptual surface here. Kirby has subtly conveyed themes of ecological preservation before, alluding to the Shiver Star area from Kirby 64 that depicted a once prosperous planet reduced to a desolate tundra due to hazardous anti-environmental practices. The invading alien forces that have discourteously made themselves at home on Pop Star’s surface are called the “Haltmann Works Company,” parasitically draining Pop Star’s resources before moving on to another poor planet to rinse and repeat the process. It’s no coincidence that this evil imperialistic terror sounds like the name of a business and that their leader is a debonair humanoid creature dressed in a suit. Planet Robobot conveys that intergalactic bureaucrats are as scary as races of grizzly warrior aliens wearing necklaces made of human skulls because these kinds of bureaucrats exist in real life and they’re destroying the planet for a profit as we speak. In Haltmann’s case, his company's operation runs under the ethos that mechanical life is superior to organic life. He tries to render all that comes from the Earth and the womb obsolete with robotic innovation. As we can see from Whispy and Meta Knight’s mechanical doppelganger, the cold, malformed depictions of these classic Kirby characters are hardly an improvement. In fact, their twisted uncanniness is actually rather disturbing, as Haltmann’s pink-haired assistant Susie’s gleeful is when she introduces them. Planet Robobot’s narrative tone is surprisingly dark, which one could argue is counterintuitive to the lightheartedness of a Kirby game. Still, I think the regularly blithe nature we’ve come to associate with the Kirby franchise makes us more invested in preserving it when someone comes along to ruin its sanctity. Planet Robobot features more domestic levels featuring Waddle Doos driving cars and swimming in lakes in the background to remind us of how blissful Pop Star is supposed to be, and the presence of the robotic overtaking is present in each of the worlds. Whether it be the grassy “Patched Plains,” the watery “Overload Ocean,” the arid desert “Gigabyte Grounds,” etc., an industrial level inside Haltmann’s operation will always be featured to convey the severity of the situation at hand. Suddenly, I care about the state of Kirby’s world, a concern I thought would never cross my mind.

I thought for sure that I’d be warning the public that Kirby: Planet Robobot was just another entry in a persisting formulaic line of Nintendo’s simplest formula for platformer design and that my vocal cries and fervor would be undermined by the fact that this time, Kirby is in a mech. For the first time in a series that had been around for two decades at this point, I am chugging the Kirby Kool-Aid and will not be mewling on about how easy Planet Robobot is like every other Kirby game. The mech is a blast to use on the field for whichever of Kirby’s powers it is emulating, but the mech represents more than an additional gameplay perk. The mech’s functionality has an unexpected depth beyond its thunderous physicality. The mech’s mechanical attributes allow for an engaging range of manipulating the level’s foreground, making me wish that there was a Kirby game that was a staunch puzzle platformer. In addition, the mech also represents not only an evolution to Kirby’s gameplay after so many years, but it’s a symbol of a harrowing future that Hal Laboratories express negatively on through their work. Sure, Kirby: Planet Robobot is still a tried and true Kirby experience with the same level of ease. However, the player will not be able to use its ease to breeze through it. Unlike the previous titles, Kirby: Planet Robobot’s secret ingredient is a heaping load of mechanical and narrative depth that lets the experience resonate with the player longer despite the simple gameplay. Let’s hope this persists for every Kirby game afterward.

Rocket: Robot on Wheels Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/10/2023)

[Image from igdb.com]

Rocket: Robot on Wheels

Developer: Sucker Punch

Publisher: Ubisoft

Genre(s): 3D Platformer

Platforms: N64

Release Date: October 31, 1999

Given that the Sly Cooper series was an integral part of my video game upbringing, the N64 Sucker Punch developed title Rocket: Robot on Wheels definitely piqued my interest. On top of that piece of information, hidden gems from gaming’s past generations whose humble legacy is concealed in their original console tend to hit a particular synapse in my brain and cause a salivary sensation. Naturally, with all of the circumstances surrounding Rocket: Robot on Wheels, seeking this game out and playing it was a requisite in satiating my esoteric cravings. However, simply because Sucker Punch upholds a glowing reputation as a studio with an impressive streak of high quality with their IPs, I wasn’t sure what to anticipate from Robot on Wheels in terms of its individual merits. Admittedly, none of Sucker Punch’s products are acclaimed due to pioneering anything revolutionary for the progress of the medium. Sly Cooper was a second-generation 3D platformer series, and the distinction of directly descending from a broad crop of older games inherently means that its attributes are borrowed and bruised from excess usage. What gave Sly Cooper that original edge was its ingenious creativity with those tired tropes, which is a testament to Sucker Punch’s strength as a developer for any of their properties. Rocket: Robot on Wheels might be another 3D collectathon platformer during the genre’s peak, but the expectation of Sucker Punches creative innovation is what solidified my interest in Robot on Wheels.

Exhibit A of Rocket on Wheels’s uniqueness is the game’s premise. The game’s world is an amusement park run by the old and eccentric engineer/entrepreneur Dr. Gavin. Rocket is his primary maintenance robot with a Mega Man-like relationship with Dr. Gavin’s Dr. Light. Of course, this can only mean there is a Dr. Wily in the midst, and that’s Jojo. It’s amusing how raccoons were still incorporated into Sucker Punch’s games before Sly Cooper was even a thought that crossed their minds. Did someone on the staff have one as a pet or something? Anyways, this ring-tailed mammal is no charming rogue, but a vindictive little stinker out on a mission of vengeance. He’s tired of playing second banana to the park mascot Whoopie, a fat blubbering walrus who is incapable of any abstract thought. Using his superior intellect, Jojo takes Whoopie hostage along with all of the park’s tickets and tokens for good measure. He has also tinkered with the park to make it as uninviting as possible before he ultimately assumes position as park leader. Rocket now has to reclaim the park before it falls entirely into a dictatorship at the hands of a scurvy trash panda.

Lo and behold: Robot on Wheels is a Banjo-Kazooie clone. I had a hunch that the game would be at least some degree derivative, and it doesn’t come as a surprise that its inspiration stems from every 3D platformer on the N64’s favorite cheat sheet. The borderline dreamscape hub draped with stars is an ascending climb with the levels as detours, and those levels are designed like non-linear playgrounds where the player must be proactive in seeking out the collectibles by completing objectives through exploration. Swap the jiggies from Banjo-Kazooie with lettered ticket stubs and no one is bound to notice the stark similarities, right? I realize this sounds like an indictment of Robot on Wheels for being overly pastiche, but this isn’t the case at all. I quite like Banjo-Kazooie’s overall design and some of my favorite games are those that shamelessly ape it. It’s all a matter of what Rocket on Wheels does with the Banjo-Kazooie formula to discern itself from not only Rare’s bird and bear duo but all of the other imitators. Fortunately, this aspect is where Robot on Wheels shines as Sucker Punch is a team of creative geniuses. Firstly, the game’s amusement park theme is a wonderful constant throughout each level. “Clowney Island,” a carnival-themed area on a beach island like the real-life attraction its title alludes to, is the first area of the game with a traditional depiction of an amusement park setting. After that, the developers go buck wild with the possibilities. “Paint Misbehavin’” is ancient Rome in a paintball park, “Mine Blowing” is a goldmine prospector cavern, “Arabian Flights” is an Arabian journey on a magic carpet, “Pyramid Scheme” is an Aztec jungle/volcano, etc. (I’m just now noticing all of the bad puns…) My favorite area from a conceptual standpoint is “Food Fright,” a Willy Wonka factory meets an Alice Cooper stage set hybrid with chocolate rivers, candy spiders weaving sugar webs, and a lake of boiling…marshmallow? While all of these themings are radically different like the typical range of diversification in a 3D platformer, what’s impressive is that the theme park atmosphere of thrilling fun is always prevalent no matter the scene.

What separates Robot on Wheels from the ilk of Banjo-Kazooie clones even further is the vast range of objectives present for each area. There are thirteen tickets to collect in each area of the game, so thank God the game provides such an eclectic mix of tasks. The substance of the various objectives is too numerous to mention, so I will do everyone a favor by listing some highlights. Ring challenges were very commonplace
across the 3D platformer genre, and they make their usual appearance in Robot on Wheels. Still, each of the ring challenges here provides enough variation from their standard implementation because Robot on Wheels features a different vehicle, testing the player’s proficiency with their mechanics. Out of the silly hot dog cart, the mechanical dolphin, etc., the one that stands out is the gliding motorcycle with bat wings which is definitely the vehicle with the steepest learning curve. Many platforming puzzles involve the tossing of objects with Rocket’s tractor beam like the magnet section in “Arabian Flights” and blowing open cracked crevices in the earth with bombs in “Mine Blowing.” The physics engine isn’t up to par with something like Half-Life, but the fact that something like this was implemented in a 3D platformer on the N64 is an admirable point of ambition. Parasitic mushrooms cling to Rocket so he can execute a series of high jumps, and soaring around the “Arabian Flights” area with the magic carpet looking for tickets feels so liberating. The absolute best feature Robot on Wheels offers is the rollercoaster maker in “Clowney World” where the player can make their own roller coaster AND ride in it once they are done. There is also a puzzle portion of this section where the player must also mold their creation to hit five numbered checkpoints along the way. Forget the ring challenges; I don’t care if this is Rollercoaster Tycoon light, I’m disappointed that this is only present in one of the areas.

Robot on Wheels is also much more difficult than Banjo-Kazooie and most other 3D platformers of the era. After the second area of “Paint Misbehavin,” the areas become progressively more linear, and the problem that resides with that is the game’s penalty for dying mirrors that of Banjo-Kazooie as well and Rocket will be respawned at the beginning marker of the area. Incorporating this was fine in Banjo-Kazooie because every notable sight was only a few meters away from the spawn point. In Robot on Wheels, having to trek all the way back around creation where the last death occurred feels like a severe punishment. Staving off death in Robot on Wheels can be an especially tense excursion because the game has a strict margin of error throughout with sections that feel like tests of endurance. The consistent sections that test the player’s meddle are the ones unlocked after collecting all of the machine's parts scattered around the area. The player earns a ticket for simply finding them all, but another section is revealed involving a lengthy swath of platforming. One brush of air from the vents for the one in “Arabian Flights” will send Rocket back upward and the electric polyhedron overhead will shock Rocket as an added punitive measure for a small error. Carrying a bomb from its origin to an exposed crack in the walls with Rocket’s tractor-beam apparatus also caused me a ton of auxiliary damage when it really shouldn’t have.

Admittedly, platforming in Robot on Wheels was always going to have complications considering the design of the playable character. Rocket checks off all the criteria for charisma and cuteness like a worthy platformer mascot should. Still, one can see the glaring issue with his character design in that he was not built with legs or arms, the essential anatomical pieces for things like balancing on tight platforms. I assumed from his design that the game would primarily offer narrow platforms to balance on with Rocket’s spinning wheel or a ton of sections where he rides on tracks, and these kinds of sections are certainly prevalent. But on top of this, Rocket is forced to perform incredible feats of ascension that would make Mario say “fuck this.” Rocket is as slippery as a bar of prison soap, and I can’t say I’m surprised considering we’re all playing as an AI unicycle. One might suggest skipping any section involving tight platforming because the non-linearity of the collectathon usually permits the player to skip any undesirable tasks. While this completion criteria is implemented in Robot on Wheels, I get the impression that the developers actually desire the player to go the distance with the tickets. Not only does the last level have a lofty number of tickets to unlock it, but the cavalcade of linear platforming challenges that the crafty vermin Jojo has set up as the game’s finale is contingent on the assumption that the player has experienced all of the hardest platformer challenges the game offers. If Rocket dies during this prolonged finale, he’ll have to start at square one. Also, that paint section early on in the gauntlet is so fucking persnickety that I wonder if the developers tested it.

My faith that Sucker Punch would take the then-tired 3D platformer genre and craft something unique and flavorful out of it has been undoubtedly vindicated. Still, I think all of the blatant issues that mar Robot on Wheels is that Sucker Punch was so focused on making their 3D platformer debut title distinguishable among the formulaic sea that was flooding the gaming landscape at the time that they never considered if their ideas would be practical. Rocket: Robot on Wheels is an awkward and unbalanced 3D platformer experience that augments the genre with so much flavor, yet strips too much of its foundation that is too crucial to replace. It’s like a mishmash of delectable sauces and spices with a base dish that isn’t too solid. All in all, it’s not too shabby for a first-time developer, and the positive attributes seen in Rocket: Robot on Wheels would persist for their superior future titles.

Ico Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/5/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Ico

Developer: Japan Studio

Publisher: SCE

Genre(s): Action-Adventure, Puzzle Platformer

Platforms: PS2

Release Date: September 24, 2001

Ico is one of the first examples I think of when someone notions the concept of an “artistic video game.” Several gamers, including myself, would argue that all video games are inherently art, as it is the golden rule of artistic classification not to compartmentalize a medium for the sake of integral cohesiveness. However, we have to make this distinction between the “regular” video games and the more artistically-inclined ones because there is still a large portion of cultural philistines that still oppose gaming’s deserved ranks of respect with film, music, literature, etc. As of a few years ago, video games started outselling the film industry, so how does that grab you? *Ahem*...anyways, despite how prevalent video games have become as a source of entertainment in the pop culture zeitgeist over the past few decades or so, there is still a vocal pushback against the medium reaching its well-deserved place of recognition. One might blame Roger Ebert for his notorious op-ed decrying that video games could never be art, but he was simply someone with a credible platform echoing the status quo. Because video games are still met with an air of prejudice from the arbiters of high art, some game developers craft their work with heavy deliberation to prove them wrong. To be classified in the canon of artistic video games, one has to subvert the presentational, mechanical, and narrative tropes commonly found across most video games. In the modern gaming landscape, the medium has progressed to the point where subversiveness has to be implemented for the sake of standing out among the saturated marketplace, and the stark creativity makes a game inherently artistic by proxy. I suppose Ico is the first example that comes to many people’s minds regarding this topic because it was one of the first notable games that dared to challenge the medium’s conventions for the sake of making a work of art.

To fully comprehend the intended artistic scope of Ico, perhaps it would be wise to draw parallels between it and the arthouse film world. Since the early years of the medium, several directors saw great potential in using film as a means of expression beyond commercial means. These films are challenging, oftentimes surreal experimentations with narrative, characters, and several other typical film attributes. Most of these films are produced outside of the sphere of Hollywood in the foreign lands of Europe and Asia, and the American filmmakers that fit the arthouse denomination usually produce their films independently. They’re the filmmakers who make every college film professor get an emphatic hard-on just by mentioning their name. Robert Bresson, anyone? Like the aforementioned French arthouse director, Ico’s direction is minimalist to a fault, an ascetic choice to discern its heightened artistic merits from the accessible exhilaration found in most video games.

A lack of context for the game’s plot premise is one of the many artful elements not found in typical video game narratives, or at least not in the 3D era. A group of men on horseback ride through a shimmering, serene forest with a young, horned boy straddled as a passenger. Once they reach a dead end at the cliff’s edge facing an absolutely immaculate landscape, the men decide to tread through the river below by boat to transport the boy to the castle that resides on the other side. Through a series of elevators and unlocking a few obstructive gates that divide in two in the presence of a sword that emits magic, their destination point in this vacant fortress is a spacious chamber with wall-to-wall stone pods symmetrically aligned like library bookshelves. The men place the boy in one of the pods and leave him with the parting words “do not be angry with us. This is for the good of the village.” With a stroke of pure luck, the boy manages to escape his state of entombment when the castle shakes and he falls out of his pod when it collapses onto the floor. The boy climbs the spiral staircase to the upper reaches of the chamber and finds a poor girl curiously imprisoned in a giant birdcage dangling from the ceiling. The boy feels inclined to share his relieving feeling of freedom, so he smashes the cage with the force of his body and liberates the girl from her comically-sized and probably symbolic prison cell. From there on out, the two are an inseparable duo working together to escape the fortress’s oppressive boundaries.

I don’t mean to pick on Zelda but considering Nintendo’s glorious IP is arguably the gaming series most synonymous with the fantasy theming, I have to use it as an example to compare and contrast the way Ico establishes its mythical setting. Many Zelda titles introduce the player to the world, setting, and characters with an illustrated slideshow of yore, giving as much exposition as the opening credits in Star Wars. Thanks to the loglines of exposition, we are immediately privy to the epic scale of the game’s narrative and Link’s elevated role as Hyrule’s chosen protector. While providing an extensive backstory of Hyrule’s lore and current state of affairs is never a detriment in unfolding the narrative, one could still argue that the intended epic scale would be more effective if the game only showed the player the stakes of Link’s adventure rather than telling us from the get-go. We’re supposed to give this small, prepubescent boy the benefit of the doubt that he’s the valiant hero destined to slay the imposing, malevolent forces of the world when he can’t even grow pit hair yet. The boy in Ico, on the other hand, is introduced with zero information about his background or any inkling of what his intended arc is as the game’s protagonist. Is he also a pint-sized prince of peace like Link facing a moment of persecution here from an unjust society, or do his former acquaintances have every right to condemn him to a stationary state of solitude for the rest of his natural-born life? What exactly is the boy’s crime that justifies this cruel fate? Murder? Theft? Was he framed? We have no idea. We also have no clue about the status of the anemic, consumptive-looking girl he freed either. With a prevalent sense of ambiguity, it adds a level of rich mystique to the story. The player should ideally be eager to piece together their own conclusions with context clues, heightening the interactivity of an already interactive medium.

Ico commits to the minimalist direction for every facet of the game’s identity. On top of delivering story exposition in the sparsest manner possible, Ico’s presentation is the video equivalent of a Steven Reich composition. One might not even notice when the opening sequence of cutscenes is over because the game makes no clear indication that it’s the player’s time to help the boy get the hell out of dodge. A signifier that usually would tip the player off is a hud appearing on the screen, displaying important references like health, equipment, stamina, etc. When the player presses the pause menu, the only options are to adjust the volume/display picture and to quit the game. There is no inventory screen or status details, and there certainly isn’t a page dedicated to collectibles. There isn’t even any music that accompanies the gameplay minus a select few cues for a few situations. All Ico presents the player with is the horned boy in an uncaring world with the wind blustering over the high-elevation cliffside, with total uncertainty hanging in the balance. Somehow, Ico omitting gaming’s primary referential tools does not handicap the player with an unnecessary blindspot as one would expect. Health is superfluous in Ico (except in the case of falling off of tall ledges) and the boy can only hold one blunt object, seen clearly in his right hand at all times. These common visual aids are rendered redundant and gratuitous for what Ico delivers, and insisting on implementing them would distract from one of Ico’s biggest appeals: its atmosphere. Without the videogamey white noise of a hud or level music, the player can fully immerse themselves in their surroundings. Whilst breathing in the fumes of Ico’s atmosphere like a fine wine, I detect a myriad of refined scents like melancholy, dread, isolation, helplessness, and a pinch of desperation. Even though all of these are negative descriptors, the sheer beauty of Ico’s cliffside setting makes the negativity permeate an aura of dark romanticism like an album from The Cure.

“Subtracting design” was the specific ethos that Ico director Fumito Ueda hammered in for Ico’s direction. Essentially, it’s the idea that less is more. Already through its narrative and presentation, Ico proves that this is a feasible philosophy not rife with contradictions. Still, the most effective aspect of showcasing Ueda’s radical ideas pertains to Ico’s gameplay. The closest video game genre one can pigeonhole Ico into is the puzzle platformer genre, involving executing feats of platforming to solve puzzles. No, I don’t think a fragment of Ueda’s ethos was to craft a cerebral, arthouse version of Q*Bert or Wario Land. Given that the game is confined to one setting, the more methodical puzzle platformer genre is a more appropriate fit to accommodate its slow-burn pacing. To achieve Ueda’s vision, nothing in Ico is conspicuous. The series of suspended platforms most platformer characters would ascend on to reach their goals is too unnatural and would compromise Ico’s deep immersion. The dilapidated fortress resembles an environment akin to something from reality, connoting that it does not offer any obvious avenues to success like a series of floating platforms would. The player is forced to humor any sort of protruding ledge as a viable means of traversal, shimmying across perilous gaps and executing awesome feats of parkour. Decor centerpieces such as ladders, boxes, and chain link ropes are strewn around the vicinity for clearer interactions. Still, the player has to use all of them as individual fractions of solving a platforming puzzle instead of acting as smooth solutions. There are also the select moments where the boy must ignite his torch to light fixtures and the fuses of bombs, but these instances aren’t as explosive as one might think.

So how does stripping down the elements of a platformer to its pure essence prove to be enticing for the player? Well, it comes down to warping the perspective. Because everything at the player’s disposal for platforming is humdrum and unobtrusive, suddenly, the most minute resources in solving puzzles become a point of potential interest. There is no wasted space in the foreground, or at least the player will be forced to figure out what its valuable assets are by tinkering with everything. Some argue that this makes the puzzles in Ico rather obtuse, but I think it's a brilliant way to make the player engage with their surroundings. The environmental cohesion also aids the game’s immersion by heightening that prevailing sense of realism. Puzzles in Ico are almost designed with how a real person would execute them, only if they had the nimbleness of a youthful kid and an impressive resilience to fall damage. They are also met with a realistic sternness beyond the little samples of gratification most games deliver. Unlike in Zelda, surpassing obstacles in Ico will not warrant a jaunty little jingle to signify a job well done.

The caveat to solving Ico’s puzzles is to not only consider how the boy will progress, but how to make the path traversable for the girl as well. Given the game’s premise of a boy rescuing a girl from captivity, one could infer from this that Ico is an elongated escort mission, and it might make many gamers avoid this game like the plague. Unfortunately, this aspect of Ico is where the game falters. Naturally, the girl does not possess the same physical prowess as the boy, so she cannot climb the chain links, push the boxes, or scale the walls. In fact, the girl looked so frail and waifish that I was always concerned that the boy would pull her arm right out of its socket as he was dragging her around. The puzzles actually seem like the boy is constantly providing support for this girl to reach him at eye level, and this process can be insufferably wonky at times. AI during the early sixth generation of gaming wasn’t exactly sharp as a tack but dear God, the girl’s AI is downright aloof. She responds to the boy’s calling command quickly enough but she doesn’t seem to grasp why her presence is needed. She’s a horse that obliges when being led to the water but doesn’t know how to drink it. Of course, drinking it is the primary objective at hand and when she struggles with the analogous task of taking the boy's hand to climb or missing the ladder she’s being led towards while the boy is screaming at her from above. It could be due to the language barrier considering the boy’s subtitles are in plain English and hers are in hieroglyphics. If she didn’t open the occasional gate that impedes progress, I’d suggest that the boy should consider an “every man for himself” approach and shed the dead weight. The boy can lie down horizontally on the save station couches if the game is that peculiar about the amount of space that needs to be filled.

The hypothetical scenario of leaving the girl behind would also relieve the boy of the burden of having to protect her from the barrage of spirits that are trying to reclaim her. These shadowy ghouls that resemble the balls of ash from Spirited Away forming together to somewhat emulate a physical substratum will emerge from portals in the ground to snatch up the girl and carry her back to the abyss where she’ll be hopelessly sunken into oblivion. If this happens, a shockwave will encompass the entire area and eternally render the boy as a stone statue. To prevent this harrowing curse from occurring, the boy will bat them off with his trusty wooden pole, upgraded to a full-fledged sword after a certain point that naturally deals more damage. While the scourge will withdraw after a few meager hits, their pension for acting as a mob will sometimes overwhelm the player. Knocking the boy on his ass after a swift uppercut usually gives them ample opportunity to yoink the girl off her feet, so always watchful. Their ambushes will be a chronic occurrence throughout the game, but a vigilant one will seize the girl whenever the boy leaves her alone for too long. One might think this could only happen to the careless sort, but the game places puzzle sections where the boy is forced to be absent from the girl for a lengthy stretch of time. A particular section involving a slow shimmying session over a ramp with streaming water and cutting the hinges off of bridges will always result in a nail-biting race to save the girl from plunging into darkness even if the boy is as quick as a golden eagle. Despite the fact I previously implied that anything involving the sooty spirits is a cumbersome dirge, I quite like the looming threat overhead as a consequence of dilly-dallying during one of these sections. The alarming tension is an unexpected way to spruce up a game with such a serene tone.

So, what does it all mean at the end? Certainly, I can’t gloss over my interpretation of Ueda’s intent when Ico’s narrative is so open-ended. A piece of exposition I’ve been hiding thus far is that the boy was ostracized from his society because he was born with horns, which is considered a bad omen by societal superstition. The girl’s name is actually Yorda, a name that you give to your daughter if you hate her. Or, in Yorda’s case, if your mom sees you as a disposable source of youth whose sacrifice will stagnate the aging process. Her mother is the main antagonist of the game, scoffing at the boy’s efforts to rip away her toxic connection to her as she sees them as utterly futile. As imposing as she seems to be as the dominant regal power of the fortress, the black spirits are surprisingly not acting on her command. Right before the climactic final fight against Yorda’s mother, the boy returns to the chamber where it all started and fights a crowd of spirits who now cower under the might of his new energy sword. Once I realized that the spirits were retreating to the pods once they were defeated, I finally uncovered Ico’s narrative depth. The black spirits are the damned souls of previous horned boys who have succumbed to their untimely fates. Maybe not all of them died from suffocation and or starvation being trapped in their pods. Perhaps the reason why they stubbornly try to retrieve Yorda is because all of these horned boys have attempted to save her when they were still flesh and blood, and they’ve all failed miserably somewhere along the line. These horned boys are labeled as genetic pariahs as soon as they’re born, destined to bring nothing but pain and suffering for all of the common non-horned folk. Saving Yorda not only proves their usefulness but proves that they are capable of performing acts of kindness as well. Meanwhile, Yorda is ultimately doomed to never escape the fortress because her rescuers seemed fated to fail. This current boy in the long line of sorry saviors most likely exceeds every other one before him, slaying Yorda’s mom by impaling her with the energy sword. Before he can celebrate his unprecedented victory, he is blown back by a sweeping power force, severing his horns from his head as a bloody signifier of his death. A resurrected Yorda treats her knight in shining rags and sandals to a respectable Viking funeral as a sign of her gratitude. After the credits roll, the boy wakes up from what was merely a slumber on the beach shore and sees a happy Yorda smiling at him. Seems like a happy ending that breaks the vicious cycle, right? Well, we don’t know for sure if what we are witnessing is reality. It could be the pleasant final dream of this boy before his consciousness passes on into the eternal ether. After all, the main theme of Ico’s narrative seems to be that the oppressed can never overcome the crushing higher powers that undermine and subjugate them no matter how hard they try. It may be bleak, but interpreting Ico’s ending this way feels more substantive.

Ico is a game that I respect more than anything, which is a statement I usually reserve for the industry pioneers of the pixelated eras that predate Ico by at least two generations prior. I guess that when I take off my rose-tinted glasses for the gaming generation I grew up with, I realize that there was still plenty of radical innovation for gaming that needed some time to mold, and Ico is the epitome of this. Yorda’s partner AI is mostly the aspect of Ico that desperately needed reworking, as the girl’s inattentiveness in most scenarios drove me up a wall. Also, the boy’s controls could be smoother as well. There’s nothing deep about wonky movement and finicky response triggers. In saying this, there is no way that Ico could ever aspire to be a perfect game. What I respect about Ico is all of its efforts in its experimentation, to dial back the elements of gaming for the sake of achieving something never before executed in the medium. For all of its objective faults, Ico was still more interesting and resonating than whatever flavor-of-the-week game that had better controls and a peppier tone at the time. Truly effective art has a habit of making a colossal splash regardless of how abstruse it is and considering all of the games released after Ico that derive inspiration from it, it is a testament to that phenomenon.

...

Burn the North American cover for this game with the fire of a thousand suns because it's the ugliest thing I've ever seen. It makes the North American Mega Man covers on the NES look like bonafide Steve Ditko illustrations. No wonder Ico didn't sell well over here.

BioShock Infinite Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 8/22/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

BioShock Infinite

Developer: Irrational Games, Blind Squirrel, 2K Games

Publisher: 2K Games

Genre(s): First-Person Shooter

Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360, PC

Release Date: March 26, 2013

I have an enterprising question for all of you to answer: What is BioShock? Really, think about this for a second or two. No, I will not be accepting the literal answer of “BioShock is a critically acclaimed first-person shooter series developed and published by 2K games,” you smart-asses. I want everyone to deeply consider the most vital components of BioShock that comprise its integral distinctiveness as a series and why they’ve resonated with millions of gamers. Is it the underwater city of Rapture and its sublime, sunken remnants of its former glory? Is it the relationship between the possessed Little Sisters and their thuggish Big Daddy protectors? Could it perhaps be the moral choice mechanics that cause a sense of ludonarrative dissonance and befuddle all of the snobby critics of the world? I mostly jest at that last part, but I’d be lying if it wasn’t at least a sizable fraction of the discussion surrounding BioShock. I parlay this question to the reader here because BioShock Infinite, the third installment to the BioShock series doesn’t include any of the aforementioned elements that one would associate with the franchise. BioShock 2 perhaps laid the first game’s idiosyncrasies on a little too thick to the point of being derivative, and the once awe-striking spectacle of Rapture and its intriguing downfall, unfortunately, became as numbing as gaming novocaine. I suppose BioShock Infinite is the result of our collective complaints ringing harshly in the ears of the 2K offices, and they certainly conveyed that they understood our gripes and grievances and took necessary action. BioShock Infinite is so unlike the BioShock that launched the series into the esteemed ranks of gaming royalty that an owl would have to squint at it to recognize the connection. Is the fresh-faced Infinite a relieving title that revitalizes the remarkable quality of the first game, or is it an example of an identity crisis that proves 2K should’ve left the first game as the sole entry? My take on the matter leaves me conflicted.

Judging by Infinite’s opening sequence, the game at least exudes some sense of BioShock familiarity. One indelible image from the first BioShock title is a lighthouse prototype of the monumental pillar erected from the abyssal ocean below where the city of Rapture is located, where Jack attempted to find a place of respite after being stranded in the open waters after his plane crash. Booker DeWitt, the protagonist of Infinite, is conversely being comfortably rowed to the pillar with a better sense of certainty and purpose. After climbing the pillar and opening the gate with a secret code, Booker enters the inner vessel where Jack is introduced to his birthright from the vessel’s on-looking window screen. However, what will surprise the player is that this elevator goes up. Instead of being submerged a hundred leagues under the sea, Booker is transported to the blindingly golden glimmers of the sky. Has Booker died and gone to heaven? No, he’s gone to Columbia: a civilization sitting above the clouds modeled to resemble heaven as much as humanly possible. From the vessel’s one clear reference to the outside world, Booker views the sights of Columbia’s magnificence. From the soaring zeppelins, the lofty angel statue looking over the miles of metropolis, to the launching of fireworks, Columbia’s beauty will make the player involuntarily shed a single tear. I see what the developers did here, and I approve of their efforts to recreate the opening sequence from the first BioShock. Infinite’s opening sequence suggests that the same scenario can still elicit a wondrous effect, even if it does warrant a smidge of deja vu from how it’s directed. The core difference is that the initial glimpse of Columbia evokes a feeling of elated marvel as opposed to anxious curiosity upon seeing the outside of Rapture. Still, it’s impressive that what I regarded as the most effective hook of an opening sequence in gaming can be rivaled in scope by a game in the same series.

Columbia is as much of a culture shock for the player as it is for Booker. For a series that seemed like Rapture was destined to be its permanent stomping grounds, it’s almost ironic that this new setting is the antithesis of the underwater society. Setting foot on Columbia and seeing the sights from a more personal viewpoint will leave the player just as gobsmacked as they did as a voyeur from the vessel. The sun is radiating down on the spotless streets where a bustling crowd of people engage in mid-day merriment. Unlike the denizens of Rapture, these people aren’t missing full rows of teeth and seem to have all of their mental faculties intact. Shops are still in business and choirs are cheerfully performing an anachronistic acapella version of “God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys. The scene here is so idyllic that it’s what I imagine Norman Rockwell is busy painting in the afterlife. When Booker gains his first plasmid vigor by drinking it like an elixir, the smelling salt of BioShock recognizability prudently flashes us back to the reality of the game we are supposed to be playing. The following scene will be the first of many scrapes in the process of ripping up the proverbial wallpaper mirage that Columbia bestows. Booker uses the possession vigor to perform a Jedi mind trick on a ticket machine for an ongoing raffle. By winning the raffle, Booker gets the utmost privilege of throwing a baseball at an exploited interracial couple as a warmup for a humiliating tarring and feathering they are about to endure. Whether or not you make the right choice and do not cave into the racist peer pressuring of the time, guards will stop Booker mid-throw and accost him for the engraved marking on the back of his right hand. Apparently, this mark labels him as some kind of pariah and will stop at nothing to apprehend him. Now, the city's superficial mask has been torn off and the cop slaughter that ensues serves as the point where the game starts to make sense.

Let’s continue to harp on the setting of Columbia because it bothers me as much as it beguiles me. I don’t think I have to further compare and contrast how Columbia’s atmosphere differs from Raptures because anyone can plainly see it’s a night and day situation. Also, presenting a setting with a more pleasant and sparkling aesthetic, albeit on a surface level, is not the bothersome facet of difference regarding the sky city. What irks me is how far the world design seen in Rapture takes a steep regression with Columbia. While many immersive sim enthusiasts will scoff at me for stating this, the level plotting in both previous BioShocks (especially the first one) was a rich, multi-layered trek down the rabbit hole of Rapture. Areas were mapped with a great deal of meticulous plotting and inspiration, as if every corridor of the dank, sunken cesspit told its own story in tandem with the big picture of Rapture’s colossal failures. Objectives given in the first game may have admittedly tested the thresholds of tedium with fetch quests a tad too liberally. Still, the oppressiveness of Rapture’s labyrinthian hallways never faltered even with subsequent visitations. Running through Columbia, on the other hand, is as linear as an esophageal tract. To say that progression in Infinite is streamlined is an understatement: the game is ironed out like a graphic t-shirt. Infinite is one straightaway trek after another with the frequent enemy swarm to halt Booker’s momentum and distract the player from their straightforward trajectory. It’s a wonder why the developers implemented the arrow feature that points to the objective because every decimal point of Booker’s quest is conspicuously defined. What occurs when a game makes a mad dash from point A to B is that the setting becomes a foreground piece of window dressing. Infinite will take the player through countless Columbia streets, plazas, docks, and the insides of buildings with extravagant, Victorian-era decor. Still, do any of these setpieces really matter in the grand scheme of things? While exploring Columbia is still fractured by individual levels, the inability to stop and smell Columbia’s pristine roses makes the city far more of a monolith. As immense as I’ve made it sound, the context here suggests that Columbia is lacking layers. Columbia is grand from the aerial view but proves to be shallow past the surface. Even with the new sky-line mechanic that sees Booker zipping through Columbia on his makeshift transit system, the trajectory just amounts to either a shortcut or a cyclical loop on the track. Also, while I enjoy the adrenaline of the first-person rollercoaster, this extent of swashbuckling in a BioShock game makes me feel a little embarrassed for the claustrophobic previous titles in the series. We still have video diaries and kinetoscope viewings as peripheral tools for further insight into Columbia, but their implementation doesn’t make much sense considering the city is still thriving. One thing that does interest me is how they managed to implement an active beach with sand and rippling waves crashing on the shore of this floating island.

You know what video game genre revels in this design philosophy that’s as narrow as an uncooked spaghetti noodle? The first-person shooter genre, specifically the modern examples that encompassed the genre’s peak of popularity in the late 2000s/early 2010s. One might be confused by my assertion that the then-king of video game trends is the primary cause of Infinite’s streamlining considering the BioShock series has always been a first-person shooter game by definition. As I’ve expressed before, BioShock’s success was in part because it was a sophisticated outlier of its kind. It wasn’t convoluted enough for the immersive sim PC playing crowd, but its level design and narrative were far more cerebral than any of the campaigns of the gung-ho FPS games it was competing with on consoles. Guess which direction Infinite takes to throw off BioShock’s refined genre equilibrium? On top of the linear level direction, BioShock’s treasure trove of firearms organized by a weapon wheel has been reduced to two firearms on Booker’s person, swapping between the two with a button press. This limited method of alternating between the weapons doesn’t make a lick of sense to me when the more typical FPS games implement it, so you can imagine the weight of the exasperated sigh I made when I discovered that Infinite followed suit with it when I picked up another gun. However, the game still assures that Booker will be alternating his sparse selection frequently because the weapon variety retains its enormity. Booker’s first means of defense against Columbia’s righteous pigs is a small, yet effective pistol, which can soon be supplemented by the BioShock staples of a shotgun, machine gun, RPG, etc. New additions that will be objects of curiosity at Booker’s feet include the kicking hand cannon, the explosive launcher volley gun, a carbine hunting rifle, and a bodacious, automatic chain gun to turn armies of enemies into Swiss cheese in seconds. Each of these weapons also has a modified Vox Populi twin, the proletariat brand, to pick up for slight variation. Booker’s melee weapon is the sky-hook, a handy tool of the “steampunk” variety that allows Booker to latch onto the sky rails as well as obliterate the faces of the Columbia Founder's opposition to a gooey pulp. Instead of being traded in and out by the limited weapon system, the sky-hook is activated by a specific button on the controller…like the melee weapon in every other FPS game. Sigh. I’m still aggravated that I cannot wield all of these weapons in a tricked-out arsenal, but I’m pleased that BioShock has retained its standard of weapon variety.

Fortunately, all of the plasmids that I refuse to refer to by their colloquial term “vigors” can be selected on an option wheel at any time. For this aspect of BioShock’s gameplay foundation, Infinite delivers the goods after BioShock 2 half-assed the plasmid lineup with too many recycled ones from the first game. One may chide at my apparent naivety and point out that “Devil’s Kiss” and “Shock Jockey” are rebranded clones of “Incinerate!” and “Electro Bolt” from the first game, but I’m well aware of their near exact resemblances. The plasmid freshness I’m referring to is the new batch that only Columbia has in stock. “Murder of Crows” unleashes a biblical plague of the black birds to peck bits of flesh off of enemies in a whirlwind daze. “Bucking Bronco'' and “Charge” may have similar names, but the former renders enemies in a state of humiliating vulnerability by suspending them over the ground for a short period, and the latter sees Booker making a mad dash at enemies like a raging bull with his sky-hook. “Return to Sender” is a spiraling energy shield that absorbs enemy firepower and is then launched back at them. Considering the rate of enemy firepower is amplified to better fit the FPS genre in Infinite, this is arguably the most practical plasmid the game offers. My personal favorite new plasmid is “Undertow” which grapples enemies with the titanic force of giant, aquatic tentacles, making me feel as if I have the divine power of Poseidon being channeled out of Booker’s left wrist. Retain the dual-wielding mechanic from BioShock 2 with these debuting plasmids and suddenly the plasmid gameplay is finally both exciting and functional in combat.

Because Infinite erases all pretenses of BioShock’s FPS identity, the developers had to drum up a more fitting way of penalizing the player for dying. Vita Chambers are too ultramodern a piece of biological innovation for the second decade of the 20th century. Hence, Infinite settles on the FPS stand-by of subtracting a sum of money. The amount depleted is scaled by the total amount of money Booker has in his wallet, which can break the bank if Booker is sitting pretty on wads of cash. Finally, a BioShock game upholds a reasonable penance for failure as opposed to allowing the player to callously treat death like a minor inconvenience…ideally. In practice, losing a modicum of money is superfluous because it can easily be regained in seconds. The silver eagle currency is strewn about the streets of Columbia along with tons of other goodies like food, medkits, and ammunition. Making a meticulous effort to collect all of the helpful detritus is one of the only ways in which Infinite retains its BioShock roots. The major difference, however, is that Booker needn’t act like a packrat for survival. Because Columbia is still an active civilization, every resource is plentiful. If Booker ever exhausts the ammo in one of his guns, he can simply swap it out with another. Why bother purchasing medkits from one of the dispensaries when fallen enemies are strapped with them? The only logical incentive for storing large quantities of coinage is for the weapon and plasmid upgrades. Besides, Booker shouldn’t die so easily because he’s got a shield meter on top of his health to stave off dying more efficiently. Why does Booker have a shield when he doesn’t have any physical armor? Because it’s a first-person shooter, god dammit.

At least Booker DeWitt is a fresh change of pace for BioShock protagonists on the simple merit that he vocalizes his emotions. The previous BioShock entries could skate by with the typical, yet slightly archaic, character trope of a silent protagonist because Jack was a mere vehicle in learning about Rapture’s sordid past through exploration, and anything more advanced than the stolid demeanor Big Daddy in BioShock 2 would contradict the inherent brutish nature of Rapture’s bodyguards. In a faster-paced game whose narrative zooms past any chance for the environment to utter a single word of exposition, Infinite delivered exceptionally with Booker DeWitt. While escaping one of gaming’s most common tropes, Booker is still a solid fit in the overly capable male protagonist role in the grander scope of fiction. Extrapolating on Booker’s characterization of a handsome, strapping, thirty-something intrepid adventurer man should conjure up stark comparisons to Indiana Jones and other leading men cut from the same cloth. Booker’s air of cynicism and moral ambiguity also give him that edge that prevents his character from verging into cheesy John Wayne territory, which can also be said for Harrison Ford’s iconic archeologist. Booker is both a reinvigorating change of pace for BioShock’s protagonists and a cliche for leading men in an action role, a balance that makes him at least charismatic enough to appreciate.

Besides the occasional instance of mumbling something under his breath, Booker’s character exfoliates through his interactions with Elizabeth, the central secondary character of Infinite. She’s also Booker’s impetus for going through the painstaking trouble of visiting Columbia as retrieving her will absolve him of some felonious debt that isn’t given context until the very end of the game. From Elizabeth’s rescue from her tall tower prison, her demure first impressions, to her stunning beauty with piercing blue eyes, one could certainly infer that Elizabeth is the epitome of a damsel in distress. The girl is more liable to get swept up by Columbia’s antagonistic forces than Princess Peach frolicking through a dark alleyway in the Mushroom Kingdom’s red-light district. However, in all that time Elizabeth was isolated from the outside world, she made the decision to thrive as much as possible in her solitary state and exceed our expectations.

After freeing her from her elevated chamber, Elizabeth accompanies Booker for the remaining duration of the game with a select few breaks in between that coincide with some specific story beats. The player’s other likely inference regarding Elizabeth’s role is that her presence has triggered another grueling escort quest, and she’ll inadvertently cause the player pain and suffering at every step in their attempts to protect her. In a twist of fate, Booker benefits greatly from having the little lady by his side. Elizabeth’s totally invulnerable from enemy fire, but cannot dole out any offensive strikes either. She instead uses her background advantage to support Booker by tossing various wares at him such as health, EVE, ammunition, etc. from the sidelines. She’ll even fling some silver eagle coin Booker’s way to finance those juicy upgrades. Whether or not she takes the time to scrounge the area efficiently or she just pulls all of this stuff out of her ass is uncertain. She also evidently practiced trying to escape her cell for years because she’s quite adept at lockpicking. While all of these ancillary efforts are appreciated, Elizabeth’s innate support ability of “tearing” is the most vital of her contributions and her most interesting characteristic. Elizabeth’s supernatural skill is ripping through the fabric of the space and time continuum when she uncovers a slit of static energy emanating in the air. Using the entry point here allows her to materialize items and ammunition, hooks to grapple onto from above, and holographic manpower to fight with Booker in the vein of those balloon-powered weaponized mosquito drones and the juggernaut Patriot enemies. Don’t judge a book by its cover.

To Booker’s slight dismay from a narrative perspective, perhaps Elizabeth is TOO exceptional as a human being. On the surface, Booker is Elizabeth’s knight in shining suede and steampunk pleather, a relationship dynamic so commonplace that it was exhausted in the oldest of fairy tales. She should be head over heels for him after rescuing her but only sees Booker as her necessary collaborator in the quest of leaving the shackles of Columbia to a promising new world. Admittedly, Booker isn’t entirely a noble gentleman either, as his intentions with Elizabeth are entirely in his own self-interest. His impression that the mission will be a breeze after finding Elizabeth is thwarted when there is a conflict of interest in which Earth city they want to visit via the airship. Elizabeth grows to (rightfully) distrust Booker after this altercation, and there is an aura of acrimony between the two. Elizabeth’s romantic wish to see the bright lights of Paris is sidetracked when it’s revealed that she’s the adopted daughter of Columbia’s supreme leader Zachary Comstock, who trapped Elizabeth in the tower to preserve her as the successor to the throne if something unfortunate were to happen to him. Elizabeth then desires to discover more about her origin and stop Comstock’s reign. Booker then realizes that he’s not going to return to New York with Elizabeth in time for supper. Why does Booker comply with Elizabeth’s plans? Well, it’s because he’s scared shitless of her, knowing that she has the potential to transport him anywhere in the world to any reality in any span of time. Booker and Elizabeth’s relationship is a subversion of the male savior trope with the helpless princess, warping a dynamic so old that Elizabeth cannot produce a tear big enough to simulate its origin point. Don’t fuck with Elizabeth, and that goes double for you, Booker.

I only feel inclined to discuss Comstock’s antagonist role as Columbia’s supreme ruler because he’s the central commonality in the Bioshock series Venn diagram I proposed in my opening paragraph. The one core attribute Infinite shares with its predecessors, the conjunctive tissue that defines the series, is the megalomaniac figure at the highest governing power in their dystopian creation, ruling under an unchecked dogmatic idealism that formed the city’s cultural and economic identities. The execution of their philosophies in the game also suggests a biting critique of their fundamentals from the developers. Delving into Comstock’s extreme Americana fueled by religious fundamentalism is so on-the-nose that it's boring. Growing up as an American, these kinds of nationalistic ideals are heavily ingrained in our society, even in the 21st century. Columbia is the quixotic fantasy of every one of my country's villains I learned about in history class coming to fruition. Comstock’s philosophies are just deranged and self-righteous with no room for arguments. He’s the kind of person who made Andrew Ryan abscond from American soil to start his own society, and Ryan’s ideals are at least academically credible.

If one couldn’t tell from the scene with the couple in the beginning, a large facet of this waspy wet dream is that it is incredibly racist . So racist, in fact, that Comstock is a huge proprietor of eugenics, whitewashing Columbia of all racial diversity and calling it a cleansing. The worst part is how Infinite decides to tackle this subject. In the middle section of Infinite, Booker, and Elizabeth are detoured from their mission by the ongoing class struggle between the bourgeois Founders and the impoverished lower class called the Vox Populi (the voice of the common people). It’s no coincidence that the members of the Vox Populi resistance group are all racial minorities, namely their leader Daisy Fitzroy who is withholding Booker’s airship from him. While assisting the cause, Elizabeth becomes disturbed by the extent Daisy takes to ensure equality for her people, and the moral breaking point is when Daisy attempts to murder a Founder child in cold blood. What we’re supposed to take away from this scene is that there is no justification for the brutal violence of the lower class, emphasized by Elizabeth when she comments that Daisy is no better than Comstock. Check your privilege, Elizabeth. Sure, there are lines one can cross in the fight for freedom, but is this really the time to point that out given that Comstock’s vision for Columbia is to exterminate all non-whites from his society like they’re a contagion? The game’s narrative shifts its view to Elizabeth’s colossal Songbird guardian trying to reclaim his “property” for the remainder of the game almost as a distraction from how deep Ken Levine lodged his foot into his mouth.

Ultimately, BioShock Infinite is not as intelligent as it thinks it is. Problematic sociological topics aside, this assertion really comes to light at the game’s climactic point. In their futile attempts to vanquish the Songbird, Elizabeth resorts to using her tear ability to transport the terrifying mechanical marvel to the bottom of the sea where he drowns (or rusts). We’re somehow back in Rapture, only for the game to become suspiciously cinematic. With Elizabeth liberally using her tear powers to manipulate time, we learn through a clusterfuck of exposition that Elizabeth, also known as Anna Dewitt, is Booker’s daughter who he had to give up as payment for his massive gambling debts when she was an infant. Comstock and his dearly departed wife were respectively sterile and barren and could not bear an heir, so there was a mutual agreement between both parties along with the phantom-like Lutece twins enacting the transaction. Obviously, Booker’s decision haunts him severely, hence why he went to the great lengths he did in Columbia to get her back. The debt instilled upon him was self-inflicted, and he must cleanse himself of his unforgivable sins through baptism, only one that sacrifices himself for the ultimate act of repentance. All the mysterious loose ends are resolved…or are they? While attempting to make sense of the game negating all narrative pacing to dump all of this information on us, the game also suggests that Booker’s sins account for his contributions to the Wounded Knee Massacre and that he might also be Comstock himself? What?! I don’t know if it’s because multi-dimensions are the hottest plot device nowadays and I’ve gotten sick of them. For Infinite’s case, you can’t use the endless possibilities the concept gives you to throw away any logical character or plot bearings in an attempt to make your convoluted slop plausible. Do you know what other game regrettably ruined itself with a heap of nonsensical exposition as an addendum? Metal Gear Solid 2. Quit borrowing Kojima’s fart inhaler, Ken.

BioShock Infinite is ridiculous. A series that was once perceived as a monumental achievement in gaming narrative and atmosphere is a cheap shell of its former self. BioShock was a title that rolled out the red carpet for the burgeoning FPS trend of its time due to its innovative execution of the genre’s mechanics. Now, Infinite’s full commitment to the first-person shooter’s tried tropes six years later is indicative that perhaps the genre should be put out to pasture. Strictly as a first-person shooter, BioShock Infinite is still an exemplary addition to the genre. I may have my nitpicks, but they mostly pertain to how the FPS genre evolved since the first BioShock was released and not Infinite on its individual merits. When I turn my brain off and relish in the stunning, albeit creepy, setting and paint its pristinely white roads with the insides of its denizens, I always end up having a blast. Then, the narrative rears back around and forces me to flip my cognitive switch back on and reflect on so many bafflingly knotty plot points that it makes my brain hurt. Actually, it doesn’t hurt my brain because I know it’s just pretentious bullshit. Overall, BioShock Infinite is technically the BioShock game I wanted after BioShock 2 merely retread the old ground of Rapture. Still, I wish the final product wasn’t a contrasting blend of dumbed-down attributes competing with intelligency bloatedness. I still don’t know if BioShock Infinite is a worthy successor.

(Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/7/2023)

[Image from igdb.com]

BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode 1

Category: DLC

Release Date: November 12, 2013

By popular demand, BioShock Infinite’s DLC takes us back to good ol’ Rapture. What sense does it make to return to the franchise's original place of intrigue in a game set three decades prior to its inception? Well, with the new dimension-hopping tear plot device, anything is possible, and I mean that quite literally. The plot of the base game was almost completely ruined by Ken Levine’s liberal use of manipulating the fabric of time and space and the structural foundation of Infinite’s story and characters by proxy. At this point, I’m taking the Burial at Sea DLC at face value and am trying to enjoy the ride. I’ve spent all this time asking why when the game obviously wishes for me to revel in the “why nots?” Therefore, I will try my best not to criticize Burial at Sea too harshly, unless something truly absurd occurs.

The first of two chapters in Burial at Sea is set entirely in an alternate timeline to the base game of Infinite, which is why both Booker and Elizabeth exist in 1959 at the same ages they were in 1912. Booker is still the gruff private dick he was in the former half of the 20th century, but Elizabeth is practically unrecognizable. Here, she’s a sultry femme fatale with that fierce, cunning sexuality associated with the role. Unlike her demure self in Columbia, she’s got experience with the outside world and then some. She sashays into Booker’s office in the typical film noir fashion with a job to rescue a little girl named Sally from Rapture’s Little Sister Program, and Booker is highly invested in this job on account of her being his adopted daughter in this reality. Just roll with it.

Given that Burial at Sea takes place a few years before the ultimate fall of Rapture, Booker and Elizabeth arrive at the tailend of the city’s prime. Seeing Rapture in its state of regal prosperity that we all only heard of through audio diaries and other lord pieces is a succulent treat for every fan of the first two games. If Rapture is a wondrous spectacle as a darkened ruin, imagine how it looks with the lights still on. Rapture resembles the swanky, elegant, mid-century aesthetic seen by the billboard advertisements and general furbishing of the city. From the looks of the plaza on High Street, Andrew Ryan’s actual goal for Rapture was to surpass the scope of the surface world’s gallant balls. Imagine the New Year’s Eve photo from the end of The Shining but located at the aquarium at night. Elizabeth distracting the various shopkeepers from Booker stealing a bunny mask as entrance to Sander Cohen’s ongoing exhibit subtly gives the player a chance to bask in Rapture’s refined form. Oh, and seeing Sander Cohen again before he was TOO far gone from sanity is also a nice piece of fan service as well.

As Sander Cohen sends Booker and Elizabeth on the bathysphere set to Sally’s location after a fit of impassioned artistic rage, we are reminded that Rapture’s downfall was a gradual outcome of persisting corruption. We are also reminded that we’re still playing BioShock Infinite with its FPS-intensive gameplay mechanics. However, in order to keep this DLC section from becoming a Splicer bloodbath, ammunition for every weapon is incredibly scant. Booker can only blow through a few bullets of a select few weapons from the base game before his defenses run dry. Hope you got well acquainted with the sky-hook melee strike attack in the base game because Booker will have to resort to using it in lieu of the now-scarce resources. I’m glad the developers chose to approach combat like this because it makes Booker feel less capable in the more claustrophobic setting of Rapture as opposed to the sprawling skies of Columbia, retaining the effectiveness of the setting. EVE is still abundant, but the number of plasmids has been reduced along with being forced to use some for means of traversal. It’s fairly interesting using “Old Man Winter”, a stronger version of the “Winter Blast” plasmid, to freeze running water to make it into solid platforms. Also, the explosive laser Radar Range weapon is a thrilling new addition, but its use is hindered by the fact that it is unlocked so late in the chapter.

I was having fun with all of Burial at Sea’s new stipulations until the ending, and it’s when I can no longer reserve my vocal critiques on Ken Levine’s convoluted tomfoolery. To Booker’s dismay, poor little Sally has transformed into a Little Sister and is hiding from him in the sinuous Little Sister vent network. Booker’s solution is to force her out by cranking up the heat in the pipes, but Sally is a stubborn one. She sics a Big Daddy on Booker who serves as this chapter’s final boss, and it’s where the parsimonious ammunition system does not bode well against a burlier enemy. When Booker finally defeats the brute, Sally still won’t emerge because of Elizabeth. In this timeline, Booker is an amnesiac Comstock who regains the memory that he transferred to Rapture after he couldn’t shake the guilt of losing Anna/Elizabeth. Elizabeth doesn’t forgive him, leaving the Big Daddy to eviscerate Booker’s torso with its drill and kill him. I chose to ignore the Booker is Comstock resolution because it still doesn’t make any fucking sense. “But have you seen Booker and Comstock in the same room together?” YES!! Now, the falling action of Burial at Sea forces me to digest it along with a new spree of nonsense plot points that make it even harder to swallow. What does Sally have to do with any of this? How is this reality’s Elizabeth still alive after we see her get decapitated through the tear instead of severing her pinky finger, and why is she especially vengeful here as opposed to in the base game? What does any of this matter if there are infinite Comstocks/Bookers? I’m supposed to be gut-wrenched by the result, but I’m even more pissed off at the throngs of twists and turns the game expects me to accept. I can’t believe this hacky writing came from the same guy who wrote the first game.

(Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/7/2023)

[Image from igdb.com]

Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode 2

Category: DLC

Release Date: March 25, 2014

I’m starting to lose my patience with BioShock Infinite. I’m starting to think that Ken Levine is huffing the high praise he received from the outcome of the first BioShock game that he has become baked beyond belief and thinks that everything that passes through his cerebral cortex is a stroke of pure genius. I think if what I’ve stated throughout my review of the base game and the first episode of Burial at Sea holds any merit, Ken Levine needs to be humbled because the writing in both reeks of hubris. Now, Burial at Sea continues as the conclusion to the two-part DLC content, and I wasn’t at all confident that Ken Levine would redeem this disaster of a story. Surprisingly, I can at least say that the second Burial at Sea episode is more interesting and less overblown than its former half.

But how can Burial at Sea continue considering that Booker’s vital organs have been liquified and he lays still on the ground dead as a doorknob? In Burial at Sea’s second half, the primary protagonist's viewpoint has been shifted to the smoking, seductive Elizabeth of this reality. Actually, that Elizabeth was also murdered by the Big Daddy and her body is propped up in the dank corner of the vicinity, so the game introduces an Elizabeth more akin to her personality from the base game. Isn’t that convenient? However, what totally isn’t convenient is that this Elizabeth possesses no extraordinary tear powers, rendering her as frail as a newborn puppy. Nevertheless, this Elizabeth persists in her quest to rescue Sally, now from the deranged mobs of Atlas’s goons who are holding her captive. Also, another version of Booker is here to play guitar in the background and to provoke Elizabeth’s guilty conscience every so often, because why not!

If you couldn’t infer the linear notes from the previous paragraph, playing as Elizabeth is a far cry from the physically adept swashbuckler Booker. As I stated before, Elizabeth must fend for herself in the drowned neon streets of Rapture’s deep sea ghetto, as the apparition of Booker is too ephemeral to switch her role and provide aid when needed. Elizabeth is on her lonesome in a dire situation, a terrifying prospect that fills her mission full of dread. Fortunately, just because Elizabeth can’t summon Patriots to mow down Splicers doesn’t mean the game leaves her as a stark naked sitting duck ready to be plucked by the malformed ghouls at a moment’s notice. Elizabeth’s offensive and defensive means have been reworked to fit the new context, as BioShock has been reconfigured as a stealth game. Elizabeth will lurk around the watchful eyes of the Splicers, who still give away their positions due to the effects of long-term ADAM usage causing them to think out loud. When a Splicer is in the line of sight, an overhead indicator signifies their alert level and if it’s a yellow or under, Elizabeth can subdue them with one hearty thwack of the sky-hook she “borrowed” from Booker. Failing to stealthily curb the Splicers by altering them to Elizabeth’s presence should result in Elizabeth running like the wind to regain her hidden position because ammo is still scarce and the dainty whacks with the sky-hook Elizabeth gives to them do little to no damage. Rapture has always exuded a creepy vibe but with the stealth gameplay as the focal point, Rapture has now become genuinely scary. The simplest of mistakes can lead to utter disaster for Elizabeth and working with this radical new mechanic never before seen in a BioShock game adds a fresh layer of difficulty.

Elizabeth eventually stumbles across an inactive machine devised by Rapture’s superwiz scientist Yi Suchong and has to recover all of its missing parts to activate it once again. Using a tear, the machine served as a portal that connected Rapture to 1912 Columbia, communicating ideas and passing down technology through both of the franchise's eminent dystopias. The general purpose for this machine might be the most excusable use of the time tear that has fucked Infinite’s narrative to oblivion. It explains why Columbia is as advanced as it is for existing in the prime of the industrial age when things like automobiles were still a revolutionary stride in technological advancement and why Rapture shares the same assets with Columbia like the vending machines and the inclusion of “vigors” that Suchong originally branded as plasmids. It’s a clever way of canonizing Infinite with the two previous BioShock games despite all the ways it deviates from it. By visiting both Columbia and Rapture in this Burial at Sea episode, we are treated to a dichotomy between the two civilizations, as seeing Columbia for the first time since the base game and then returning to Rapture feels surreal. Don’t get too prideful, Ken: You’re not out of the woods with this plot device just yet. However, I am somewhat impressed that you’ve finally made this work.

Returning to Rapture also reminds us that the notable people we’ve come to have a nostalgic wonderment for were/are right bastards. Throughout the episode, Elizabeth is collaborating with both Suchong and Atlas, two figures of interest from the first two games that up until now, the player has never had any intimate interactions with either (well, technically not for Atlas if you discount who he actually is). The second episode of Burial at Sea is going to make the player yearn for the times when they were voices in audio diaries and communication arrays respectively because they were both despicable people when they were still alive. Suchong is a total creep who physically and verbally abuses the Little Sisters he’s testing, and I’m not the least bit perturbed by his grizzly death scene at the hand of a Big Daddy because of it. Once Elizabeth helps Atlas return to Rapture’s metropolitan sector, he continues to probe Elizabeth more on a coveted “ace in the hole,” which turns to be his iconic catchphrase “would you kindly?” that he uses to manipulate Jack in the events of the first game. Before Elizabeth knows this, Atlas’s method of interrogation involves an ice pick lobotomy in one of the most uncomfortable torture sequences I’ve sat through in a video game. He disposes of Elizabeth once he gets what he desires in his mission to usurp Rapture from Ryan (who, by the way, unleashes hordes of his guards on Elizabeth after learning of her scavenging around Rapture while belittling her like Ryan would do) by bludgeoning her with a wrench, leaving her to die while Sally holds her in her arms. Cohen electrocuting his subjects while painting was charming compared to the actions of these scumbags. Then again, these are the kinds of people that Rapture attracts.

This conclusion would be a satisfying way to circle around to the beginning events of the first BioShock if not for one nagging bit of information. Killing the two protagonists from Infinite and thus ending their involvement with the overarching BioShock story could’ve been incredibly impactful if not for the fact that these are technically not the same Booker and Elizabeth from the base game. In fact, any emotional impact that the deaths of these characters would elicit is totally negated by the fact that there are infinite versions of them existing in this world and can evidently be swapped out at any given moment. You almost had me, Ken. Still, the stealth mechanics in the second episode of Burial at Sea prove to be a far more engaging way of retreading Rapture than what BioShock 2 offered.