You know, about a month ago I turned to a good friend of mine and said, “You know what franchise they need to bring back in a major way? Bionic Commando.” Of course, when I said that, I was envisioning some Wii-tastic bionic arm whipping, probably in an attempt to purge the still repugnant odors of Spider-Man 3 from my travel-via-extendable-latching-device palette. But really, I’ll take the return of Bionic Commando on whatever platform it’s available. Even if they fail to include a fat, balding Hitler! The one fear I do have is that they will disregard everything but the concept, which I think would be a mistake. While I don’t want to be named Radd, and I don’t necessarily have the urge to fight Badds and Gereralissimo Killt, I don’t see any reason to drop the whole New World Nazi theme from the game entirely. If there’s one thing we’ve all learned from George Lucas, it’s that everyone likes killing Nazis.

On the other hand, the original Bionic Commando, whether in Nazi-killing Japanese mode or watered-down American mode,  has plenty of problems in terms of modern day requirements on plot and believability. It would be an incredibly delicate balance to take the original source material of Bionic Commando and draw that into the modern franchise. Though it’s been done before. The original stories for Metal Gear and Metroid were equally absurd and campy, yet Metal Gear Solid and Metroid Prime are two of the most beloved modern action game franchises today. Though that success more a result of purely brilliant talent (thanks, Hideo Kojima and/or Retro Studios) than it is of hokey nostalgia. So either way, Bionic Commando still has me psyched.

As for titles that are coming to the Wii, we’ve got a double header of PS2 ports in Rygar and Okami. I’m excited about these titles because despite being exceptional, neither of them found a good home on the PS2. It could be because they came out at odd times in the system’s life cycle, or because they simply got lost in the avalanche of other games for that system (hey, regardless of how I feel about Sony, the PS2 did have an insane number of great games, many of them exclusives). Okami looks to be a straight port of the PS2 title, where the designers are calling that choice “faithful” instead of “lazy”. I was hoping the straight port days were done, and only forgave Capcom because they started pricing those sorts of titles below $30. Still, Okami is such an exceptional title, and the Wii is so dry in terms of adult friendly games, it’ll probably do well regardless.

And then there’s Rygar. While Okami got in right under the PS2′s relevancy buzzer, Rygar is a much older title, and the PS2 version shows that age. Thankfully, it’s getting a full revamp as opposed to just a new control scheme, and so far it looks like one of the darker, prettier games coming out on the Wii. It sounds like it’s going to be a sort of “re-imagined” version of the original, in much the same way that Resident Evil 1 and Metal Gear Solid got re-imagined on the Gamecube. The genesis of bringing Rygar to the Wii came from the design team toying with the Wiimote and literally thinking, “This would have been perfect for Rygar!” and that fills me with hope. Too often Wii games are just normal games that make you shake the remote like an idiot. Hopefully Rygar’s control scheme will have more depth than that, and the design team in question isn’t completely new to the Wii, which also helps.

No More Heroes. My morbid fascination with this title continues, largely because of my equally morbid fascination with Killer 7. Suda 51 is probably the weirdest, craziest, and potentially the most artistic game designer you’re going to come across – especially on this side of the Pacific. And if you think Killer 7 isn’t enough street cred to make No More Heroes seem interesting, it’s worth pointing out that he’s apparently good buddies with the aforementioned Hideo Kojima. Heroes looks like lanky pulp anime on the wrong side of an acid bender, and might just be the first game to strike the proper balance when flailing the Wiimote around like an idiot during sword fights.

So, let’s pretend that you’re an executive in an industry that, despite making hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, isn’t making quite as many hundreds of millions as you used to be. And let’s also pretend for a moment than 95% of your product is crap straight from an infected mule’s ass. And you’re pissed, see, because it turns out that some people have been wandering over to the mule with their own buckets. So in order to convince your customers to buy from you and not tap the mule directly, your brilliant new idea is to charge more money for the same amount of crap. Yeah, so. . . honestly, I forget where this metaphor was going, but the music industry is still run by idiots.

Because coming soon from Universal Music is the USB Single. You see, it’s like a conventional CD Single (which is already too expensive, because all you get is one good song and two shite songs, neither of which you want), except it’s going to be on a tiny little USB thumbdrive. And, if I know the industry, it will be loaded with enough Digital Rights Management as to make the fucking song unplayable. But the real kicker is that this little USB Single is going to cost almost twice as much as a CD Single. So you’re paying double the overcharge for one song, because it happens to come on a small plastic stick instead of a flat plastic disc.

Are you with me so far? Universal thinks this will be a big hit because, um, of the internets? And, you know, like, the web or something. You see, because people are pirating music not because it’s crap, or because it’s overpriced, but because of, uh, computers? So if they overcharge people for crap music, but do it on a little plastic thing that plugs into a computer it suddenly becomes cool again. Supposedly, the little USB sticks will come with movie files or pictures – nothing you couldn’t just include on a CD of course – and cost more because of it. The reality is that they cost more because USB sticks cost more than blank fucking CDs, and this is a dogshit stupid idea. But if there’s one thing the music industry knows, it’s dogshit stupid.

And this is exactly why public opinion is so squarely turned against them. It’s why, yes, people pirate music, and no, no one feels even remotely bad about it. Because the industry response to “You sell donkey crap and it costs too much money!” is “How much more would you pay for that donkey crap if it came in a small silver box?”

And while I am on the subject of public loathing for the music industry, I’d just like to take a moment to shoot to hell the notion that was recently offered by an RIAA lawyer that when you purchase a song, what you are actually buying is a license to listen to that song. And that if you want multiple copies of that song (for your car, your mp3 player, your home stereo, your computer and so on), you really ought to buy multiple copies of it. What they are talking about here is licensing. And I know licensing.

The model they are using is the software industry, where what you are buying isn’t the physical CD with the software on it, but they serial number and the license key (essentially “permission” to run the software). If you’ve ever had to enter in a serial number or product code after buying software (this is especially common with online games), you have purchased a product license. If you work in an office, all of your office software has a license associated with it. So you could own five hundred copies of the CD, but if you only own one license, you only legally can have the software installed and working on one machine. Hell, very often you can download the software and not own a physical copy at all. Valve distributes virtually all of their games this way via Steam. And every one of those games is associated with your account, which purchases the right to install and run those games.

Which is fine. But there’s a funny thing about all of that software. It’s mine. And I can prove it’s mine, because I have a fucking license for it. If my computer gets wiped out, and I want to re-install Half-Life 2, I can just hop online and re-acquire it. If I want to install Sam & Max on a dozen computers I can, provided I only play one at a time. And if I lose my copy of Windows XP, but I have my serial number, Microsoft will send me a new fucking copy of the CD in the mail. You try calling up a music label and request a new batch of CDs that you legally own the license to. Let me know how that turns out for you.

The music industry never sold their product as a licensed commodity, and still doesn’t until this day. They want all of the protections and extortions of licensed software without providing any of the advantages or support that comes with it. And without actually, you know, handing out license keys so that there is a concept of ownership outside of the physical copy of the CD. The music industry does not sell licenses. They sell products. Physical, material products. If they want to shift over to selling permission to experience content, that’s fine. I’d actually welcome that. But it’s going to require more than shady lawyering on their end to make that happen.

There’s a truism in virtually any market that if you have to tell people why they need a product after you show it to them, your product is a dud. A product can do one of two things. It can address a pre-existing need that the consumer is already aware of. Food, for example. You don’t need to tell people why they need food in your advertisement you just need to tell them what kind of food you are selling. Or, a product can manufacture a need and then try to fill it on the spot. Restless leg syndrome is a good example of this, because up until that commercial came out, that condition was called “being a jittery bitch”. Hallitocis (a ten dollar word for bad breath) is actually a classic example of creating a need while advertising the product to fill it. Dandruff is a milder version of this scenario – more than twice as many people use a dandruff shampoo as actually have dandruff.

But USB Singles? No one has a need for that. It reeks of the hopefully already failed Ringle – a recent proposal where a consumer would purchase a music single along with the crappy, low-fidelity ringtone version for (here it comes again) twice as much money. Do you see a pattern forming here? Specifically, one where the industry keeps trying to sell its consumers products it doesn’t want at a higher price? Yes? Congratulations. That’s what separates you from a Universal Music executive.

It’s a funny thing when something that everyone already knows is officially announced. Such was the case when Nintendo told the world that Sonic the Hedgehog would, in fact, be a playable character in Smash Brothers Brawl. Hurray! I knew that already. From the moment I saw how much of an improvement Sonic and the Secret Rings was over those “other” new Sonic games, I figured on it. When Mario & Sonic at the Olympics started previewing, it was a forgone conclusion. And once we saw Solid Snake skulking around the Brawl scene, we knew that just about any character was on the table.

One thing I would not like to see is all of the Sonic extended characters in Brawl. There are far too many to list here, but you all know what I am talking about. I’d be okay with, maybe, one of them. Tails or Knuckles, perhaps. Even Shadow (who is black and has a gun, in case you hadn’t heard). But that’s going to be my upper cap on Sonic spin-off characters – at least until games like F-Zero or Star Fox get their own sidekicks as playable brawlers. I’m pretty sure I could knock most players off the screen just by spamming “Do A Barrel Roll!” come to think of it.

As someone who remembers the bitter rivalry between Mario and Sonic (or, at least, between their parent companies) this is really quite enjoyable. It was Sega who first realized that “Nintendo is for kids!” could be a marketing weapon. I remember commercials featuring “blast processing” which was the very clever technique of compiling source code properly (as best I could tell). And I remember reading the pure technical specs of the Genesis and the Super Nintendo, comparing numbers I scarcely understood and noting that Nintendo had two, perhaps even three megahertz over Sega’s competing product. Mode 7 was the altar on whose bloody surface the original F-Zero was worshiped into existence. Genesis did what Nintendidnt. And the Super-FX chip introduced console gamers to these things called “polygons”.

And now that’s all changed. Console wars now aren’t about characters or even games anymore, they are about ideas and the way that entertainment is evoked. Sure, Mario is still a Nintendo mascot, and in many ways he still represents the company. But it was Link that launched the Wii, and it’s been Samus that has revitalized interest in it from a serious gaming perspective. About the closest thing to a rivalry that exists, from a mascot standpoint, has always been Metroid and Halo. But even that comparison is fanboy infantilism at best, and does not exist in even the mainstream of gaming.

Now the console wars are about the how and not the what. Xbox does it online. Wii does it with your hands. And PS3 does it, um, I don’t know, to your wallet? I guess that’s always been Sony’s problem with the PS3. Other than it looking pretty, it didn’t have a real grab feature. And people who are willing to pay $600 to look pretty have probably already paid $2000 to look pretty on their computers. But it’s all different now. We’re never going to see Master Chief and Samus Aran duke it out in Super FPS Brothers (coming soon to the Wii60 Extreme, July of 2014). Link is never going to lock blades with the weird little kid from Ico. It’s not just a different type market. It’s a different type of product.

As for the future of Brawl, though, things look bright. Online Versus and Co-op is confirmed (and crappy friend codes are present. . . Nintendo really needs to allow an option to turn them off even if that is done via parental controls), so the biggest fear, partly realized by the lack of multiplayer in Prime 3, has been laid to rest. There are going to be at least four different control schemes, and it will be interesting to see how Nintendo resolves that properly. Just about the only reveal left for the game are the other hidden characters. Personally, my money is still on Pac-Man. Yeah, you heard me. Pac-Man. Though if I could build up my dream roster, I’d throw the Prince of Persia and Sam Fisher in there (finally, Fisher vs. Snake could be resolved). Though if Raiden shows up. . . I am out.

First of all, I recognize that there may be some people amongst my readership that have never seen Duck Amuck. This is a travesty. Nothing short of an absolute injustice to humor and all things animated. Thus, I must demand that you drop whatever you are doing (yes, even reading my scribble) and go watch Duck Amuck immediately. In terms of animation, it’s a genuinely clever and inventive clip that plays with the whole idea of animation and character. It introduced surrealism on a level that no one had ever imagined existing in a 1951, aimed-at-children short. And it successfully broke the fourth wall in a way that endless years of drama student productions have never even approached.

All of that crammed into a six and a half minute Daffy Duck cartoon? Really? Yes, really. And rarely has a pre-existing piece of media (in this case, a cartoon character being harassed by the pencil of a sadistic animator) been such fertile ground for a Nintendo DS game. The interface for the hardware literally is the animation concept. Of course, this is a Looney Tunes gaming license, so there are still all kinds of things that can go wrong here. I mean, when is the last time you remember playing a good Looney Tunes video game? But the preview I saw over on 1up.com sounded very positive – and honestly I was expecting this thing to get destroyed by the gaming media.

Coming from a publisher that almost guarantees mediocrity (Warner Brothers’ in house company) and coming from a developer that is very hit and miss (Wayforward Studios), there was plenty to be apprehensive about. And it sounds, largely, like it’s going to be a mini-game based title rather than some epic journey through blank white paper. Admittedly, the latter could have been well done, but would have been less in line with the original concept of Duck Amuck, which is largely centered around pissing Daffy off. If what I’m getting is Wario Ware with a Looney Tunes faceplate on it, I’m actually fine with that. And if titles like Duck Amuck stretch the definition of what a game is while still remaining enjoyable, I’m excited about that.

In the absence of direct combat, gaming tropes like health bars, weaponry, power ups, special attacks and so forth lose their meaning. A game like The Sims lacks most of these concepts, but not all. You still have character bars, but instead of measuring health they measure things like bladder control. And while you don’t acquire weapons in the classical sense, you can power up your character, your character’s home and its belongings through various game mechanics. So a game like The Sims took the combat mechanic out of the classical game structure by adapting the normal mechanics to fit a lifestyle simulator rather than, say, a flight simulator.

Duck Amuck sounds like it will abstract that idea of what a game is on an additional layer, there being no bars or indicators of any kind. Just you, a stylus, and a really pissed off duck. Which isn’t as dirty as it sounds. But just might be genuinely fun to play.

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.

It’s a question that, to most gamers, seems obvious. What is hardcore? Who are the “real” gamers? And where does the distinction lie between what we think of as hardcore gamers and the new wave of casual gamers that is slowly eeking away from word-wrangling flash games on the internet and taking a sudden interest in these “gaming console things”?

Really looking at that question, I first thought of the most obvious distinction. That hardcore gamers prefer larger, more complex games. And, as a rule, more difficult games. That hardcore gamers are the types of people who crank a new game up to maximum difficulty before even loading the opening cinema sequence. And they’re usually the people complaining that modern games are too easy and too short (especially if the new buy price is going to be $60 a pop). And that begs another question – an important one – about difficulty. Are games getting easier? Or, as Tim Rogers of insert-creidt.com suggests, are we simply getting better? Is hardcore defined by a learning curve, or by natural ability?

Or is it merely enthusiasm? I know a few gamers that would consider themselves hardcore, but suck at a wide variety of games. I myself know that, despite infinite amounts of playtime, my best use in Counter-Strike is as a human shield for more skilled players to rush in and mow down my killers. And yet, take the same basic game engine and call it Day of Defeat, and I am a one-man Ally busting machine (hey, it’s not my fault I like the German guns more). Does my inability to adapt to certain game styles or archetypes disqualify me as a hardcore gamer? Does the fact that most people haven’t beaten Super Metroid with a 17% collection rate disqualify anyone else?

These are questions that have been floating around in the back of my mind with the release of the Wii, but I don’t think they solidified until Tycho uttered words that were prophetic and insightful even for him – “The game is not challenging, it’s difficult to play, and it’s taken many years but I’m ready to begin making this distinction.” There was a time in gaming history when the two things were so very similar as to be indistinguishable. Was anyone really ever “good” at a game like, say, Burger Time? Or had they just memorized enough patterns and learned to control the awkward meanderings of their character enough to do what normal people could not?

The game I always think of in this regard is Castlevania – well, the first three anyhow. Everything about your character in the original NES games was slow, cumbersome and even downright frustrating. Simon and Trevor Belmont jumped a very methodical way. Once you pressed the jump button you were committed to that jump in a way that was completely unlike any other popular side-scrolling game (though admittedly, more realistic). Mario, Mega-Man, Kid Icarus, Samus Aran, and scores of other lesser gaming avatars could change course mid-jump, could double back, could define the length and height of their jump with the release of the A button. The Belmonts (whom I am told by my instruction booklet texts were very athletic) jumped in even plops. And they likewise whipped in strong, slow, definite strokes.

Modern incarnations of Castlevania have done away with that control concept in exchange for a much more Metroid-y movement style (as well as a Metroid-y everything else). But the question is whether or not that new control scheme was simply to conform to the new style of play or if it was an admission that the old Castlevanias were clunkier than they could have been. And likewise, were the older titles balanced against the control scheme in terms of difficulty? Were there fewer demands on the protagonists’ agility (evil fucking flying Medusa heads aside) because the scheme limited that agility? Would giving Simon and Trevor the mobility and speed of Samus Aran have broken the challenge of those old games (in much the same way that the Wiimote broke Resident Evil 4′s difficulty)?

Of course, this isn’t the question Tycho is referencing. What he is saying, very plainly, is that Lair expects players to be able to perform airborne acrobatics that are beyond the reasonable scope of the interface. That it is technically possible to execute them is irrelevant. Because that technicality has reduced the challenge of the game to simply grasping basic controls. Would Ocarina of Time have been a good game if it took you thirty game hours to figure out how to swing the sword properly? And balanced against this example are fighting games, where precise and often unlisted button inputs are the different between a Super Shoryuken and performing a right jab while you get Sonic Boomed in the face. And what about a game like StarCraft, where the interface is a contextual GUI of menu-drive commands? Or World of Warcraft, where the interface can be completely stripped away and replaced by user-created content?

Though maybe the truth is in the telling. There were (and probably still are) vast numbers of players that can play fighting games with great skill and precision. And there are armies of Korean gamers that could crush either you or I in a round of StarCraft that makes even the most vulgar internet vernacular seem timid and kind by comparison. As for Warcraft, well. . . I have over 80+ inputs on my Warlock’s screen and I’m always looking for ways to add more. Yet none of these games are limited by their interfaces, and while some of them require the gamer to learn the interface, that learning tree is not the game itself. If a game goes from being mind-numbingly impossible to being breathtakingly easy once the clunky interface has been learned, then the game is the clunky interface. Period.

So when Sony sent out a guide on how to review Lair to the gaming media it really gave me pause. What they were essentially saying to a group of people that play games all day long, even play them for a living, is that they universally didn’t know how to play Lair. And that if only they would learn how to play Lair, everything would be alright again and Sony’s new flagship title wouldn’t sink like a stone. It begs the question of whether any game that needs a huge, full-color picture book to explain the control scheme should even be able to qualify as a good game. I think it could, possibly, if such a thing were intended as part of the gaming package. Certainly I’ve seen flight sims with manuals that long. But Factor 5 intentionally doesn’t make fight sims (they cranked out Rogue Squadrons, not X-Wing vs TIE Fighters). The general gaming public certainly isn’t going to get a glossy full page player’s guide to show them how to perform basic maneuvers.

Lair is, by definition, a hardcore game. It’s on a hardcore platform – seeing as how the PS3 has the lowest buy rate and the highest price, it’s fair to say that the PS3 is limited almost exclusively to the hardcore gamer. And yet the gaming community, the gaming industry, and even the idols of gaming themselves have smote Lair – despite having previously heralded it as a reason to break down and buy a PS3 in the first place. So is Lair hardcore because it’s on the grown-up console? Because it has cinema-quality graphics? Because it’s matured rated and for a reason? It certainly isn’t casual. And maybe it’s just plain crap. But the question of What Is Hardcore speaks to so many qualifications and in many cases personal preference. In the end, identifying hardcore gaming may wind up following the same statute that the Supreme Court uses for sifting porn from art. I may not be able to define it, but I’ll know it when I see it.

Woe to those who read my blog and care not for Metroid, because it’s going to be a boring couple of weeks. I finally had a chance to sit down with Prime 3 last night, and I want to talk about my first impressions with the game because they weren’t exactly what I was expecting.

First off, let me just get the graphics portion of this discussion over with. They’re very pretty. And I don’t mean, “pretty for the Wii”. I mean just plain pretty. If you get really up close, you can see a bit of grain in some of the textures. But they are a significant upgrade from the GameCube Primes, and those were some of the prettiest graphics of the last generation, no matter what system you were looking at. I notice, once again, that the Wii’s favorite effect is Bloom, but it’s used quite nicely so far. And I’m sure that the graphics are as much a testament to Retro Studio’s brilliant artists as anything else – but that is true of any game with superb graphics. Of particular note is the level design itself (not so much in the intro, but once you get to the real meat of the game). Metroid is famous for strange, almost erily foreign worlds, and Prime 3 has thus far deliviered. Now, is it as pretty as the best offerings on the 360 or the PS3? No, no it’s not. But Prime 3 should put to rest the Duct Taped GameCube ramble, and shame the living crap out of third party developers that can’t crank prettiness out of everyone’s favorite thin white monolith.

And now for the controls. First off, everyone who’s told you to engage Z-locking and set the sensitivity to “Advanced” is right on the money. And those of you out there that are still burning with rage over the $50 you spent on Red Steel should put your fears to rest. Prime 3 is the handbook on how to do a FPS on the Wii, and even goes above and beyond that simple formula (by allowing the screen to be independently aimed from the targeting reticile. I think, personally, there was room for mild improvement (it would be nice to have a toggle option on the Z-locking, much like Wind Waker did) but these are thoughts for another day. You will spend your first hour of Prime 3 wandering off course, and after about twenty minutes of battle you won’t even have to think about how to fight. However, after three hours of combat, you’ll realize that what you thought were cool moves were the amateurish staggering of a rookie bounty hunter compared to the crazy lock-on tricks that can be performed with the right hand-eye coordination. Hopefully, unlike Resident Wiivil, the game will balance its difficulty around the amazing new combat prowess that this control scheme affords the player.

As for the game itself, it’s raw Metroidiness? I am still up in the air about that one. Maybe it’s just that there are suddenly voices and narration in the game. For once, a Metroid title doesn’t open by stranding you on some strange alien world with no recourse (not that Hunters or Fusion did, but those are often thought of as the least “Metroidy” games in the series). Techncially, you have allies. But their contribution o the combat is completely scripted and cut-scened. And yet I still can’t shake the feeling that the desperate, solitary alone-ness of Metroid isn’t truly present in this game yet. Both of the Primes, while occasionally plot-explained in text boxes, had this sideways forensics appeal to them. An almost creepy necro-voyeurism, sifting through the broken lives of others, trying to set things right. Dr. Sam Beckett with a big fucking gun. So far, that feeling hasn’t yet materialized, but admittedly I am not very far past the “intro” segment of the game yet.

What I can tell you is that the game feels a bit streamlined. Mostly in a good way, though. Samus feels a bit less clunky than in previous Prime titles (there were always a few bosses that were hell to fight simply because turning around was such an ordeal), and while I first found it annoying to have to use two movements to swap between visors, it’s become such a second-nature motion now that I hardly think about it at all. There are a few streamlining choices made I am not sure if I like. For one, the weapons configuration seems a bit less tactical and a bit more “pew pew pew”. It reminds me of the jump from Deus Ex to Deus Ex 2 – although not nearly as severe or crimp-tastic.

Though anyone who thinks Prime 3 is a “casual gamer” game is in for a rude awakening. So far I’m having no trouble on Veteran difficulty, but even the Standard game is going to be a brick wall for players used to Wii Tennis and Elebits.  Personally, I think that’s a good thing. Nintendo needed to reach out to hardcore gamers, and they’re finally getting around to that. And if Prime 3 manages to take even a portion of the Mario Party crowd and get them playing something more advanced (even if they do leave it on easy mode), I see that as a good thing as well. Higher demand for games like Prime 3 on the Wii benefit the hardcore gaming segment as well as just fans of great games.

Sure, lots of gaming websites are incurring Metroid-related flashbacks this week. I’m going to confine mine to just this one post, but I also want to touch on a few of the things that have made Metroid such an important franchise – even in spite of its years of dormancy after its initial release. Though sparsely sequelled for many years, Metroid has always been one of the cornerstones of modern gaming design both because it came first and because it was brilliant.

A lot of things about Metroid that we now take for granted were incredibly strange and radical at the time – like the idea of moving left. In fact, moving left is one of the very first things you have to do in the game, since you can’t progress rightward without the morph ball upgrade. By setting up this very simple puzzle (move left, touch glowing thing, get power up), the game teaches its players one of the fundamental concepts behind the Metroid formula. Sometimes you have to go backwards in order to be strong enough to go forwards.

And it introduced the idea of non-linear movement in general. Sure, the concept had existed previously in gaming. Most notably in the Legend of Zelda. But Zelda’s overhead map-like screens, which scrolled in huge chunks in every direction, were a very different beast than Metroid’s varried hallways and scalable passages. For most gamers, Metroid was the first side-scroller that allowed backtracking, and where not every hole in the ground led to sudden, inexplicable death. Metroid was about exploring, learning, memorizing.

And it was also about utility. Many of the items and power ups in Metroid had an obvious purpose. Bombs could be used to blow holes in the ground or to injure certain slow-moving enemies. But they could also be used to climb upwards if the player’s hand-eye coordination were sufficient. In fact, you could scale supposedly unreachable heights by chaining bombs off of each other. And the ice beam had an obvious function. It would freeze enemies, thus making them easier to shoot down. But it could also freeze enemies, thus turning them into stepping stones. It was one of the first examples of using pure weaponry to achieve non-combat results in a game, as well as using items and equipment to manipulate the gaming environment.

And the other true hallmark of the Metroid system was a world environment that literally was unlocked by the weaponry you had access to. Again, this was something that players had encountered before in games like Zelda. The ladder might give you access to a heart container or the raft would let you float over to a new dungeon. But Metroid had no keys except for the gear you carried. Doors were closed off to anyone without missiles. Entrances were out of reach to anyone without bombs. Even an item such as the high jump boots were used to “key off” certain areas that simply could not be reached without them.

The difference was that it wasn’t just one roadblock. You didn’t encounter one tricky jump or one missile locked door. It was a persistent condition of the environment. And while these two approaching have the same effect, the message is different. The first says, “We made you go get Item X so you could enter Location Y.” The second says, “Item X is necessary to survive in Location Y.” And rather than forcing the player to chase around for otherwise useless keys (I mean, how many times did you use the raft in Zelda, really), everything that you acquired simultaneously added to your arsenal and unlocked new portions of the game world to explore. It provides a context and a logical reason to progress, and it makes it feel less like you’ve reached a new part of the game because you got Key A for Lock A, and more because your character has genuinely become more powerful.

This system was advanced and in some ways overexploited in Metroid II (can we say spider ball?) and then refined as cleanly and as perfectly as gamers had ever seen in Super Metroid – heralded by many as not only the best of the series, but as one of the best games of all time. To this day, hundreds of games have copied the exploration, environment keying and combat concepts that were laid out in Super Metroid. The current crop of Castlevania games owe so much to Super Metroid that they almost feel like sequels – they even duplicate the look and feel of the mapping features.

In fact, it was the wildly popular Super Metroid that made many people (myself originally included) dread the release of Metroid Prime. Maybe it was the sacred reverence held for the originals. Maybe it was the uncertainly of the GameCube platform. Or maybe it was just that every 2D-to-3D conversion I’d seen in the past year and a half turned out to be an embarrassing, mortifying, stomp the soul from the original disaster. Sure, there were sparks in the night like Ocarina of Time. But for every Ocarina, there were a dozen Prince of Persia 3Ds. And a game like Metroid? No way, couldn’t be done. Metroid Prime was going to ruin the series forever – especially since it looked like Nintendo had handed off development to some no-name guys called Retro Studios.

Sometimes, it feels so very good to be wrong. Because Metroid Prime became the template for how to make the leap between 2D and 3D. What Retro captured was the feel and the style of the series. It didn’t just re-create weaponry and enemies (actually it re-created very little of the earlier incarnations and largely introduced new material at every turn). But it held true to the ideas of staged exploration, of weapon-keyed environments, and it balanced the concepts of accessible and earned content in much the same way that Super Metroid once did. Though what really sold Metroid fans on the game was the sequence breaking.

Which brings us to the quirkiest oddity about Metroid. The original game, while briliant, was very buggy. It’s understandable and even expected as no one had really attempted that sort of game before. As gamers played and replayed the title, they started to create challenges for themselves. First there were speed runs, where players tried to beat the game under a certain time limit. Those naturally lead to low-item runs, where players tried to beat the game with less health and fewer weapons.

And then finally gamers got into sequence breaking – ways to purposefully get around the weaponry-keyed parts of the game that made it so enticing in the first place. Often, sequence breaking was done to either lower your time or reduce the number of items needed to complete the game. Eventually, it was done just to be done (it was a proud moment when I beat Super Metroid with only one energy tank, one set of missiles and one set of super missiles – and yes, the last fight was a bitch, thank you very much).

Retro either understood that sequence breaking was an important part of the game to true fans, or else they were true fans themselves, because they left the world of Metroid Prime just manipulatable enough to break it. Perhaps they’d studied the series and realized that the only Metroid that locked out sequence breaking – Metroid Fusion – was widely panned by gamers for its stagnant, mission-ordered feel. Or perhaps the capacity to sequence break was just a natural extension of the kind of world you have to create to preserve the Metroid feel.

But what really makes Metroid an important series, what really defines it not just as a model to be copied but as a series to be envied, is that there is this incredible sense of working-ness about the game. You can sequence break because the game makes you powerful and because the game challenges you in the ways it does. In a game where locked doors and earned keys stand in your way, your progress is a static thing. You perform whatever task you have to to earn the key, then you “use” the key and you move onward. Your character and your functionality are exactly the same before and after you acquire the key and use it. In Metroid, you are what you can do. You are your own abilities and strengths.

Of course, there is one other significant difference between Metroid and just about any game from that era. The main character was, of course, a female. Hidden behind the ambiguous name of Samus Aran and a quarter inch of crazy metalic space suit was a chick (a hot one, this being a video game after all). And while it’s much more common to have a female protagonist in a game today, whether it be an over-the-top sex doll like Lara Croft or an understated (but of course still hot) heroine like Jill Valentine, Metroid did it first and did it in a way that slipped it under the radar of the vastly male gaming audience.

And perhaps most importantly, while Samus is, as I mentioned, quite hot in her little Zero Suit, she is never presented as a sex symbol. There aren’t camera pans whose sole objective is to display her polygoginally unlikely curved surfaces. She is, first and foremost, a walking tank. And for every one argument about the powerful market draw of “teh boobz”, there are a thousand arguments that such an approach would trivialize the character. It would at best turn her into Lara Croft (who, until Tomb Raider: Legend, was becoming a joke unto herself), and at worst, reduce her to being just another Blood Rayne. Perhaps that is why Retro Studios was able to transition the series into Prime so easily. They didn’t just understand the games that had come before. They understood the voiceless persona of its avatar.

Now, I will confess up front that I, myself, have never been to Africa. It just never came up. I’m aware of where it is, I’ve known a number of people who were born and raised in various parts of the continent, but I, personally, have never popped on over for a visit. Despite this fact, it has come to my attention that there are quite a few black people living there. Between Houghton-Mifflin, CNN, National Geographic, Eric Cartman or perhaps even Lethal Weapon 2, somewhere along the way I got the message. Many black people live in Africa.

As it turns out, this staggering pearl of wisdom is not limited to the United States. Over in Japan, where they also have cable television and access to globes, it is known that many black people live, as I’ve said, in Africa. So if a Japanese video game company (let’s say, oh, Capcom for example) were going to make a game that was set in Africa (where Africa /= Egypt), you might expect there to be many black characters featured in the game. Had Capcom developed a game set in Africa that was populated entirely by blonde haired, blue-eyed white people, it not only would have been strange, but it’s likely that a lot of people would have asked why they’d done such a thing.

As it turns out, populating their game with people who appear to actually be from the location the game is set in is a big no-no, especially if your character (as in most games) winds up shooting a lot of them. Enter Resident Evil 5, which is receiving a lot of “OMG racism” flak for exactly that reason. There is one particular blog that went off on a wickedly stupid tear on the subject, and I will not link to it simply because I don’t want the showboating attention stunter to get any more traffic than she already has.

Of course, the first three Resident Evils were set in the American Mid-West, and featured the indiscriminantly creepy killing of many white, white zombies. Resident Evil 4 was set in Spain (sort of), and the not-zombie enemies in that game were slightly more swarthy – dark hair, dark eyes, distinctly mediteranian looking. No problem there. I’ve played many games where the enemies were all Asian (Red Steel, for better or for worse, comes immediately to mind). And there seemed to be no outcry a few years back when those highly mediocre Desert Storm games hit the market. But RE5? A shit-fest of implied racism.

If the game featured dark skinned enemies based on the premise that you had to kill them because they were black, yes, that would be incredibly and embarrassingly racist. Even if the game featured mobs of black-skinned enemies who needed to be killed because they were dirty or impure or somehow less than human because they were black, that would also be racist (and in some ways, much worse). But the game features the enemies it does because of the location in which it is set, and the reason you have to fight these enemies is that they have been transformed from innocent people into vicious killers by an outside influence. Probably “The Man” come to think of it (where The Man = Umbrella Corporation). It’s only a matter of time before someone who isn’t getting enough web traffic decides that RE5 is a commentary of slavery. That’ll be a fun few days on Joystiq.

Of course, the other issue that seems to be upsetting people is that the central character is white. So it’s a white guy shooting black people. That he’s white because he was already white in previous games matters not, apparently. Though it does raise an interesting point. Suppose the central character was black. Would it still be racist? What if this newly pigmented hero was shooting packs of white people? And I mean, pasty-skinned white zombies, who were wearing Members Only jackets while playing water polo and listening to Toby Keith. Would that have sparked cries of racism?

Look, I’m not trying to defend racism or prejudices. I think they’re absurd, because if you really want to hate someone, all you have to do is get to know them personally – we’re all flawed enough to find an excuse. And I agree that there is still a shameful amount of racism in the world, even and especially in the Land of the Free. But stupid bullshit reactions like this do not fight racism. They trivialize it. They make it seem like an overblown joke. They excuse the real racism that hurts good, innocent people every day by lumping it in with this made up, oversensitive politically correct bullshit nonsense. Inventing racism where it does not exist furthers the cause of racism instead of diminishing it. And that is what is going on here.

But beyond the already terrible act of trivializing racism, reaction-spasms like this also make it harder to talk about the subject of racism in general. They add a finger pointing layer of obfuscation to the already murky and difficult discussion. They cause people to engage in verbal acrobatics to try to prove just how racist they are not, and those are exactly the sorts of acrobatics that wind up sounding like (you guessed it) racism. You don’t defeat racism by being a hypersensitive bitch, okay? And you sure as hell don’t fan the flames of self-constructed controversy just to get page views. Which is the only reason I haven’t suggested that assuming everyone else is racist might be, in fact. . . racist.

Oh snap! Bring on the flames.

So, anyone who has spent more than three minutes with it knows that Resident Evil 4 is a spectacular game. It is completely unnecessary to assign it arbitrary numerical values (usually high in the upper tenth of whatever rating spectrum is being employed) – in fact, it might even be a bit insulting. Resident Evil 4 isn’t just a 9.7. It’s a 9.7 that makes you shake your controller in spastic dread and exclaim, “Son of a bitch! Where did that thing come from?” at the top of your lungs.

When Capcom announced that they were re-releasing it for the Wii, my bullshit sensor went off. This was probably due, at least in part, to the flurry of GameCube titles that received a hasty, pointless Wiimote port over the first year of the system’s life. Splinter Cell was rendered maddeningly unplayable, and while Prince of Persia at least had some merrit, it was clearly just a port being re-sold at brand new prices. Considering that everyone who owned any video game system of the last generation (or a computer for that matter) already had access to RE4, I figured this was a dud title with no applicable market. I was wrong.

First off, Capcom acknowledged the obvious facts that the game is several years old, and that we’d probably all played it before, by launching the port at $30. I appreciated that. In fact, that places the title at only $10 more than the sticker price for the GameCube verison of RE4, and the new version includes all of the PS2 extended missions and a properly functional widescreen mode. Those almost make up the difference right there.

But, of course, the real highlight of RE4 on the Wii is the new control scheme. And notice I said highlight. I honestly think Capcom started the project as an experiment. How can a company take a traditional game and convert it to the Wii contol scheme without making it cumbersome and silly? The easy way to answer that question is to use an already established, polished game that requires a great deal of point-and-fire gameplay as your baseline. Resident Evil 4 was the obvious – perhaps the most obvious choice for a Wii port of any game in the past few years.

Now, some people claim Wii aiming is jittery or shaky, and a few reviews of Resident Wiivil reflected that. I have to tell you, honestly, I’ve never had that problem. Ever. I’ve played a Wii on a standard definition, curvy-faced 15″ television, on an ED 32″ tube, and on a 54″ HD projection television. They were three different Wiis and three different remotes played in twice as many lighting conditions. I’ve just never experienced any jitter that a fresh set of batteries couldn’t resolve (rechargable Energizers for the win). It could be that I rest my elbow on my knee or on the armrest of my chain and aim from the forearm. It could be that I am just a fucking deadeye. Either way, I get very good aim on the Wii.

In fact, I think the aim is too good. Honestly and truthfully. I tore through RE4 in a way I never imagined possible when I originally played it on the GameCube. Even with my knowledge of how most of the game would work, even with my better choices in weaponry selection, even with every advantage that I had playing it the second time around. I decimated that game in a way I never thought would be possible otherwise. I don’t think I fired more than a dozen shots over the course of the game that didn’t blast my target right between the eyes. I earned a bottlecap on every attempt in the shooting gallery. There were times when I thought, genuinely and tactically, “Okay, six enemies, eight bullets, I’m golden!” And yes, I mean with the 9mm.

There were points in that game that I just started using the Red9 as a sniper rifle, because my aim was so precise that it was both possible and economical to do so. What I’m trying to say is that the Wiimote actually trivialized the game. It made it too easy. Not that I never died, because occasionally I did (usually in areas where precision aiming gave way to either sheer numerical superiority or my early-level woefully underpowered shotgun). But a lot of the content was reduced to a fly swatting game, an through no fault of Capcom’s. It’s just that RE4′s movement and aiming system was never designed to accommodate such a refined and precise system of aiming. Having both the speed to whip my crosshairs from one side of the screen to the other, but also the careful finesse to aim, literally, centimeters to my left or right to line up a shot was simply more than the game’s mechanics could challenge. It made RE4 feel less like a console game and more like a PC game (which I’d always heard was easier for this exact reason).

Now does that mean you shouldn’t play Resident Wiivil? Pffft, of course you should. Professional mode returns much of the challenge to the game, and you can run through the game with less than optimal weapons (the Punisher 9mm, while low on stopping power, is crazy fun). People who didn’t play the PS2 version can finally access the Ada Wong missions as well. It’s a great game, and it is a precursor to where the series and the genre is going. It screams, “This is my potential!” with every loaded level and gurgling adversary.

In the mad, crazy rush for gaming realism, this three year old port has done more to create a realistic gaming experience than all of the pretty graphics in the world. Not that RE4 wasn’t one of the prettiest games of the previous generation, but the Wii version simply feels more real. It may be a sad commentary that, thus far, the game to best realize the Wii’s potential is a port with a control scheme slapped on top of it. But if that had to be the case, at least we can take solace in the fact that the game in question was of RE4′s caliber.