The general structure – a screenshot, link to the game, and my own text – is going to be maintained. The two biggest changes are to schedule and word count. It will now be a monthly series, and instead of 250 words per game I am going to limit myself to 1,000 words total. This will mean a little more variation on the format; I may do four games, each taking up a quarter of the word count, or I may do one game that takes up the whole thing.
I should say, too, that these aren't meant to be recommendations or reviews. They will mostly be a small catalogue, with the occasional insight. Some writeups will attempt holistic readings, others ignore the bulk for a particular sparked-off angle. These will not be differentiated.]
Stick Shift
Robert Yang's Stick Shift makes me think, strangely, of Evan Calder Williams' Hostile Object Theory – and of his cops as "comic objects" and "indirect hostile objects." Not because it is a stretch, necessarily, but because the game's foregrounded relation is one of pleasuring objects, and the man and his car never really come into conflict, much less enact the structural hostilities of capital.
Not that strangely, of course, because the similarity seems to me to be in the system, rather than in the narrative. I highly recommend Yang's liner notes, whether or not you play the game yourself.
Cops are indirect hostile objects; they show up at random, an invisible number generated, chosen for representational value. They are comic; the "riot sticks, grenades, and an M4 rifle"-wielding uniforms don't react when you click to make a kissy face, but the amount of real time they will take from you does. They're narrative justifications of designed systems.
Maybe I afford them so much weight because it took five playthroughs over three days to finally see the end of the game, regardless of its being weighted in favor of your finishing, or because I played it with no foreknowledge the first time through and added an hour to my wait before I realized what was happening.
There's also how much Stick Shift's like those arcade racers when, as a kid, you accidentally chose manual transmission, with no instructions and a timer that doesn't depend on the race's finish. And how that means you attend more closely to the transmission than the steering, and how you get publicly frustrated by it, even if you're alone.
Crypt Community
Crypt Community is probably the closest thing I'll ever experience to the pleasures of owning a fish tank. It's a game that wants to be read into – the word community in the title is conspicuous – or at least to be experienced dialogically. I'm not sure how possible that is. At the end of the tutorial, the game suggests that you "try to create a healthy, robust, satisfied crypt community."
When I mention fish tanks, I'm thinking of the kind that Susan Choi's My Education talks about. So when I point out that Avery Mcdaldno and Karl Parakening's game is full of visible numbers, I hope that doesn't not make sense.
You hold the mouse over folks and an unrelated row of lights blinks up over time. You hold the right mouse button down while hovering over a mob and every interval a grunt. You hold the left down over a portal and the sfx build and the light goes brighter until a little mob pops in the door. By the end you've held down so long that sometimes the one that pops in launches one that popped in three ago's body like a billiard ball.
It isn't that I disbelieve the end of the tutorial, necessarily. I can imagine the game reaching a point of equilibrium, where all current members of the crypt community have maxed out satisfaction that doesn't decrease. I'm just not sure how interested I am in that – either as an ultimate gameplay state, or as a theorization of community.
Which equally isn't to say that this (or the game) is 'wrong.' It has qualities – the dungeon-tiled single room, the billiards, the seemingly-arbitrary numbers/values – that allow for it to be experienced with that fish tank quality, which is wonderful.
Room of 1000 Snakes
Room of 1000 Snakes is maybe the most effective tutorial for WASD controls this side of having bought Half-Life when it shipped and having attended LAN parties for the next half decade.
The game opens with a crawl, in which you are informed that "They told you not to enter / You, an explorer, didn't listen / 'I will find out the mystery of the snakes'" and then you're a disembodied camera in an Indiana Jonesish temple. You can walk around, or hop, and look at the neat stuff. There's a dais with a podium with a big red button on it straight ahead; walk up to it to be prompted to 'press E' to use. Once you "use," music swells. It's The Verve Pipe's "Bittersweet Symphony," and it's really, really funny.
The room starts to shake a little, and you probably click use a few more times, and you probably just start wandering around. And then you notice the holes in the wall spewing sand, and then you remember the name of the game. For the last thirty seconds or so, you shake off snakes. The chorus hits and the game ends and boots you out to an associated tumblr where you can buy "Collectible Jpegs." It's all really wonderful.
Eco Fighters
Here's how you control the Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 port of Eco Fighters: you spin your arm with the triggers, either bumper fires, and the d-pad moves. Or: the square button swivels the arm left, the circle right, and the X fires. Or: the right analog stick swivels, left moves, and any of the above fire. Or: whichever combination of the above. This is appropriate, because the ship slugs and jolts its way around no matter which you choose.
Eco Fighter is set in a future where green anarchist teens are the space-faring heroes who save the Earth from becoming a "Dread Sphere." Designed by the winner of a contest, it's a horizontal shmup with the unique mechanic of your ship having an arm which can be customized with a weapon and spun in a full circle around you. It's as awkward and goofy as it sounds.
You start off by blowing up a couple cranes, but a single level later you're blasting turtles for no reason. The horizontal scrolling makes the whole thing dreamy, punctuated by seconds of action. Too-often mimetic bullet designs over busy levels with bad controls means enough deaths that they become less full stop and more comma, a clearing of the air. It's a pretty little mess.