Here’s the thing about Metroid Prime 3. It needed to be more difficult. Way more difficult. Quite frankly the first Hunter boss and the first Seed boss are the only significant challenges I faced, and that was mostly due to control unfamiliarity and a lack of significant power-ups. I haven’t tried it on Hyper Difficulty mode yet, quite honestly, because after tracking down my 100% and beating the game, I just don’t have time. I have all of the other games I put on hold to catch up on, plus a raiding schedule to maintain. I’m drowning in entertainment, I am.

So, Bioshock. Yeah, I am checking in late. I don’t especially care, as I’ve always played my games according to my own timetable, and only in the case of a game like Prime 3 does the release date factor into it. And the truth is that I don’t think I am enjoying Bioshock quite as much as I am supposed to be. I was psyched when this game first game out, make no doubts about it. But as I play through it, I get the sensation that what I am playing is a very narrow game pained across a very wide landscape. Rapture doesn’t feel like a world to me, it feels like a sound stage. Or, more precisely, it feels like the artifice that so commonly exists before amusement park rides. The fake cityscape, the phony “dank interiors” that are presented as context for the theme of the ride itself. It is so meticulously broken and run down, I sometimes have trouble not seeing the intention behind its decay.

Which isn’t to say I’m not enjoying the game, because I am. But small things about it bother me. Bioshock wants to lead me along a general path, but also wants the whole game to be open and explorable. One thing that always breaks that immersion for me are staged or scripted sequences. Especially if they are designed to limit or provide access to a given area once you have touched a certain item or triggered a key cutscene. In a way, this is the exact opposite of the Metroid system of advancement, where game content is accessed through your power-ups. Of course, Prime 3 abandoned this to a point by doling out ship coordinates based on a “now beat this boss” advancement system. A concession to people who don’t like backtracking that hamstrings the game for people that like sidetracking, sadly, but one that did not significantly mar the final product – at least not on the first run through.

Of course, all of my Bioshock reservations fade into the background as I prepare to take down a Big Daddy. And for those of you that have never had the pleasure, I have to say that pitting two Big Daddies against each other (thank you, Enrage Plasmid) might be one of the most awesomely brutal spectators of AI gladiator goodness I have ever beheld. Though I find myself not using the Vita-Chambers yet, preferring to reload my quicksave if I should die. The resurrection ability just feels too much like cheating to me, and I often refuse to die in a game until I have expended all of my panic buttons, which leaves me revived but virtually unarmed anyway. I can see the magnificence and cleverness of the game, I am just not sure that I have fully grasped its scope yet – perhaps because the first thing I did was accidentally gaze outside of those boundaries.

I also fired up Phantom Hourglass last night, just to give it a brief spin. I am one of those people that originally liked the look of Wind Waker, so going back to that particular frame for Zelda excites me rather than bothers me. And cell shading is a perfect fit for the admittedly limited 3D capacities of the DS, because the graphics accentuate what the DS does well (fluid motion) and minimize what the DS does poorly (texturing). As for the controls? Honestly? They are brilliant. Not perfect, because I so far have trouble crossing short distances quickly (which I think is a controlling concept I just have to wrap my brain around).

I’m not far enough into Hourglass to make a definitive statement about its success or failure yet, though everything that I’ve played before has smacked heavily of “win”. And all of the uses of the stylus thus far are excellent. I especially like being able to make little notes and markings right on the game map, something that would have saved me hundreds of backtracks in hundreds of adventure games. It’s perfect for every time I pass by an area and say to myself, “I need to remember to come back here once I have my bomb bag!” and then promptly forget twenty minutes later because I’ve passed by seven identical areas since then.

On a fundamental level, though, Nintendo is addressing a very odd question with the DS and the Wii. It’s a question that is so much a part of gaming culture that we don’t recognize it as a question anymore. “Why do we control our games the way we do?” The gamepad (itself a Nintendo concept) has become shorthand for gaming itself, and yet all it really is is a crude interface for representing motion and movement and, at its core, action on the screen. The simple truth is that we’ve been stuck with these odd, thumb-intensive devices for so long that we’ve gotten really good at using them. We have adjusted to their awkwardness to the point that we now think of the interface as being natural.

That understanding is expended on the PC, where our interface devices are largely whatever inputs already existed. Sure, you can hook a gamepad or a joystick up to a computer, but almost any PC game has to be able to work with a keyboard and mouse combination, because that’s what’s there. We’ve all accepted the WASD keys as an interface for basic movement not because WASD is a good way to move a character, but simply because it’s the best configuration on a device that was clearly designed for typing and not gaming. The mouse is a bit more intuitive for games (and will always be infinitely superior to aiming with a thumb-stick, sorry console boys), but having been a die-hard FPS computer player, I have to say that the simple controls of the Wii leave mouse aiming in the dust. If only the Wii had a few more buttons on it, it really would be the perfect interface.

But the point is that for the first time ever in gaming (with the possible exception of the roller ball from Centipede, which was a perfect fit for the motions needed to play the game), the hardware inputs match the function of the hardware and the action of the game. When D-pads ceased to provide enough nuance, analog pads emerged victorious. But now that mantle is going to be passed on, from simulated analog controls (as a thumb stick is really just a D-pad on a roller ball that breaks your movements down into increments) to the real thing. The DS Stylus is exactly your movements. The Wiimote aims exactly where you point it.

The era of game challenge coming from awkward controls or imprecise target acquisition is over. Right now, that shift has made games easier. Once developers learn how to harness these tools, it will allow games to be harder because designers will be able to present you with challenges that could never have been met via a classic interface. Waggle is a cheap trick welded onto the ass end of a mediocre game to qualify it as a Wii title. It does not impress me. It is gesture controls that will drive the next age of gaming, and so far Phantom Hourglass is to gesture what Goldeneye was to the thumb stick or Mario was to the D-pad. It’s the very moment of “I Get It” saturation.

Everything is going to change.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.