Xbox's Greatest Hits

The magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly used to be cool. That was when I read it. One section that survived through the years was Desert Island Games, in which a famous person or some other fool was asked what games he would take with him if left on an island with nothing else on it. I can't remember how many games, but it was certainly 3 or 5, that the interviewee was allowed. Here are my compromised 4, yeah, to play on a coconut-powered 15-inch Wega with my fiber-optic controller which is composed of a large seashell with pressure-sensitive barnacles, while keeping my foot on the Xbox to stop it from crawling away, digging a nest in the sand, laying its eggs, and departing for the ocean where it will die from pollution or a stray fishing net if I so let it.

1. Jet Set Radio Future.
Let me quote the wise DJ Professor K: "I'm gonna bust in your head through your cute li'l ears and blow your minds with my sexy voice and out-of-sight sounds! Those of you prone to nosebleeds should keep those tissues handy, suckas!"
He is referring, of course, to the pirate undercover radio broadcasts from Jet Set Radio, a punk-pop station that speaks to Tokyo's oppressed youth. Said youth has divided itself into gangs who have set out to claim their territory by burying the whole city in graffiti. Have I mentioned they're doing this on magnetic rollerblades? You recruit more street soldiers for your gang with challenges from City Rush (a race) to Tag Battle (spray-paint your opponent before they do it to you!) and when you've beat rival gangs and tagged all the buses and billboards in the terminal, that's when the man comes for you. If they have helicopters, get in the halfpipe or wallride to spray the windshields; if they jump on you, skate 'em off. The music is quirky at first but grows on you (I've downloaded Concept of Love and Like It Like That just to relive the good memories!) , the character designs are stylish and the Cel-Shading effect (think of Budokai 2) puts you in mind of this comic-book-esque story. What more could you want from a game? Too bad, because there's more; every character has a signature dance that they do after winning a challenge, or even if you stand still for a while.

2. Shenmue II
It's 1987. Ryo Hazuki, searching for the dude who can lead him to his old man's killer, arrives in bustling Hong Kong, full of interactive people, shops you can buy from, jobs you can have, places you can gamble at, and the martial arts-related plot hooks that tug the story. Want your palm read? The Chun Li chick will do it for a small fee. Want to play classic games that Yu Suzuki, the creator of this game, made earlier such as HangOn and Outrun? If you unlock them in the main story, you can play them from the menu. And on the street are various wrestlers you can beat for money. The cast of characters, whether they help or harm, is diverse and interesting; Joy the fearless motorcyle punk chick, Xuiying the martial artist lady who kicks your ass (Girl Power!), Ren the sexy street gang leader who shares several of your misadventures; and of course, Dou Niu, the fat gangster (and I mean FAT) whose Yellow Head Gang is working for your father's killer.
The intriguing blend of mystery, martial arts, and Asian culture pulled me through, but this game's hidden world (I unlocked hidden mini-comics by taking in-game pictures of people) is the amazing part. You can play darts with various people in clubs, and their styles all differ. You can buy Sonic the Hedgehog toys from Capsule Toy machines. You can buy scrolls of different techniques at a martial arts dojo, and learn new ones from the unlikeliest of people.
This game isn't for everyone. It's painfully slow at times, the controls feel dated (it's a port from the Dreamcast, after all) and the short action sequences can piss you off. But stick with it, because if you're a writer it'll teach you a thing or two.

3. Blinx the Time Sweeper.
Why didn't time control hit video games sooner? Blinx is a cat who leaps into the most dangerous region of time to clean it up. He can pause, rewind, fast-forward, slow-mo, or even record himself to accomplish the same action twice as he battles maniacal pigs who kidnapped some princess. The levels get steadily more complex as you're forced to avoid specific problems using time; the bosses are fun if not breathtaking; and you can buy Blinx different outfits, including a pimp-style zebra suit that comes with an ear piercing.
The gorgeous concept put a whole new puzzly spin on the platformer. It has flaws--the unlockables suck ridiculously--but it's a keeper. I want to play the sequel. Unlike the two previous titles, I never managed to beat this one. It gets too damn hard in the 5th world!

4. Dead or Alive 3
This one's sexist. All the chicks have very revealing costumes, but Jann Lee is the only dude who takes his shirt off. But you can smash your opponent out of skyscraper windows. And destroy old-fashioned temples. And Brad Wong, the wino who looks like he lives to pick fights in bars, has the most unpredictable, interesting fighting style. The two ninjas--Ninja Gaiden hero Hyabusa and Hayate--need to be less emo and more shirtless. It's the most gorgeous fighter I ever played, but like certain celebrities it could live to be uglier and deeper.

I don't think I'll get the Xbox 360 even if I get rich...I'd rather have an Mp3 player for tennis and a Nintendo DS Lite, plus some nice food and clothing. But I'll always remember how good I got at JSRF (I unlocked the villain!) and how Wong steals your cash in the start of Shenmue II, then brings your unconscious ass back to his boat for patching up after the Heavens Gang takes you out.

Dual Berettas and painkillers

Max Payne, An MA-rated golden oldie? Believe it. I just had to take this screenshot--it's so evocative of the concept.

Thing is, I shouldn’t have liked this game. Take a NYC cop with nothing to lose, fold in cadres of baddies to mow down in a myriad of urban environments—the choice of modus operandi is endless, from Desert Eagle to Molotov cocktail to sniper rifle—and chop in some then-revolutionary ‘bullet time’, which slows down time to make dodging gunfire (or just showing off) actually possible in an otherwise realistic game world. Whisk until there’s no one left to shoot.

Why, then, would it interest someone with a Hello Kitty address book? Because this game has several things to make up for its violence.

1. A wussies-go-home (but still killer) story. Max Payne was living the American Dream when junkies on the fictional designer drug ‘V’ murdered his family. Something snapped inside Max—a newborn nightmare that you spend parts of the game fighting through—and he transferred to the DEA to investigate a mob family for the drug’s source.

He’s undercover when someone sets him up for his best friend’s murder; that clinches it for our hero. During the worst snowstorm to hit New York City in a century, he plunges headfirst into an underworld of mobsters, drug clashes, government ties (naturally) and a hired killer chick named Mona, walking in uninvited on V deals as sirens ring through the night, following him like the ghost of the crime he didn’t commit.

2. Max’s noir psyche. The cutscenes in this game are like turning the pages of a graphic novel—but with sounds and top-notch voice talent intact. So then there’s Max’s narration to the tune of “I released my finger from the trigger. The final gunshot was an exclamation point to everything that had led up to this point.” and “I came in from the cold and the dark. Outside the city was a cruel monster.” and “Seeing her there got me thinking about another woman on another bed. Got me thinking about a fallen cradle.” He doesn’t always make metaphors, no—but when he does, in a perfect gravelly voice for metaphors of that sort, it complements the scenery.

3. Hard work went into this, and it’s obvious. It helps that all the voice actors drawl and quip just like you picked a few thugs and cops straight off Brooklyn. And that, though Max is alternately given clues and double-crossed during the drug war/storm of the game’s plot, it never gets repetitive.

One time, he’s slipped some V and suffers through a shrink’s-dream-come-true version of the night he came home to his dead wife and daughter (complete with mazes and blood smears that suggest his wayward soul)—and wakes up tied to a chair in the boiler room of a roachy hotel. A mobster plays baseball with his head and leaves for a crap. Max breaks the chair to get free; all the doors are locked except one that leads to a hallway; that hallway is heavily patrolled by the heavily armed. All Max has is the mobster’s bloody bat. It will take creative use of bullet time—his only advantage in this one-man war—and stealth to get him out of there.

Another favorite of mine is when Max arranges a meeting with a mafia big fish in a restaurant that turns out to have been rigged. As Max runs through each room (the place is burning in real time) obstacles realistically block his way: shelves fall on each other like dominoes, fire extinguisher tanks explode—a fine puzzle of design that’s quite different from having him face eighty enemies head on (hello, every other third-person-shooter game I can think of). Of course, the exit is a secret basement door in the kitchen leading to a sewer, and it’s guarded by ingram-wielding psychos, but it’s the design of the game that pulls, first and foremost.

4. OK, the violence is relatively amusing once in a while. Max is like the guys in the movies; he never stays down (unless he’s out of painkillers; he takes those things like I do Pez. What are the long-term psychological effects of that?). He can leap across fire escapes, catch rides on train roofs, and escape from self-destructing steel factories if he wants answers, and this whole game asks strong questions. The terrain gets cooler with the story; one minute you’re in a subway station, next the token arms-smuggling Russian freighter, so on through a Gothic nightclub and—finally—the penthouse suite of a vicious CEO. I left some stuff out. I don’t want to spoil it for you.

5. Smashing windows by jumping through them. Why the hell can’t you do that in Vice City? Because that’s the constitution of an inferior product and likewise depleted gaming experience. Every game that’s set in the modern day—RPGs, therefore, are excluded—should include the feature of climbing any fire escape you see, to the roof if the spirit so moves you. And get this: ALL the windows should be enterable, and each room you gain access to should have some kind of unlockable hidden there. Now that games are getting fancier, they should really explore all that crazy stuff humans never get to do in daily life instead of just copying what sells. E.G:

- An online game where you and pals rob a realistic Target. No, Whole Foods Market. No, Suncoast…

- you have ten seconds to crash an 18-wheeler. Variations: the vehicle is situated atop a hill, in the middle of realistic traffic, or on top of MIT and you’re armed with Evel Kneivel’s motorcycle.

- wrestle with construction machines. Can you imagine?

- you are a black cat whose mission in life is global annihilation.

- OK, and this is a really cool one: Car Polo. The difficulty level depends on what your ‘pony’ is: a Charger or Escalade is obviously expert level. Medium—Jeep. Beginners go for Harley Davidson. Backdrop: a college soccer field while nobody’s looking.

That just about telegraphed it: Max 1 is 8/10 and a classic. So the graphics might disappoint you (which is because you’re spoiled) and bullet time is now cliché (because everyone else stole it), but this story taught me about using character, setting, and motivation in contemporary fiction.

Too bad the sequel could suck a golf ball through fifty feet of garden hose. It has better graphics, though.

Reminiscence: Card games

Everyone goes through this. At least I didn't waste money on Yu-Gi-Oh (out with it, you did, and now the attic is full of crappy Penguin Warriors and Book of Moons that are not only a fire hazard but will haunt you for the rest of your natural-born days as you struggle to give them for free at yard sales). Yeah, my brother and I got into Magic: the Gathering, with no cartoon graphics or stupid TV-show tie-in, and as much a rip-off of D&D as Yugi was of it.

There were three of us--we'd wrangled a nerd kid from Canada into the deal--and we hit the supermarket. I take credit for the whole ordeal because it was me who saw the cards in their pristine boxes in a stationary shop while shopping with Mom. Expert decks. I got Sliver Shivers, my bro got Elfish Assault or something to do with fricking elves, and the Canadian got Zombie Massacre or whatever (look it was a while ago). It took us a while to learn how to play. My brother and the nerd had known how to do it years ago in America but they'd forgotten, naturally.

It was very nerdy fun. Slivers, once you got the hang of them, were awesome monsters. One, Armored Sliver, gave all slivers more defense. One, Brood sliver, had little baby slivers depending on how many slivers were out. The Canadian said I smirked whenever I had something up my sleeve, and we made up special aliases for our warlord selves (this is really embarassing) and had badass quotes for when we wiped someone out. Three-way Magic was pretty interesting. Without meaning to advertise, here are some weird cards:

http://resources.wizards.com/Magic/Cards/UG/en-us/Card9773.jpg
http://resources.wizards.com/Magic/Cards/UG/en-us/Card9779.jpg

Which brings me to another reason they're cool; the artists who do each card. My favorites (my brother calls me a sissy for this) were mana.

http://resources.wizards.com/Magic/Cards/GPT/en-us/Card96923.jpg
http://resources.wizards.com/Magic/Cards/VI/en-us/Card3748.jpg
http://resources.wizards.com/Magic/Cards/9ED/en-us/Card83137.jpg
http://resources.wizards.com/Magic/Cards/5E/en-us/Card4197.jpg
http://resources.wizards.com/Magic/Cards/RAV/en-us/Card95113.jpg
http://resources.wizards.com/Magic/Cards/7E/en-us/Card11410.jpg

I got another deck after I was tired of my old one--as a Christmas present, I think, from the States this time. I should have kept it. It was called Pulverize, and it had a lot of crazy tricks that suited me. No hulking monsters, just trickery with mana costs and Morph abilities. The last time I played with it, I beat my brother, who spent a lot more time improving his deck than me and fought his other friends with it. I left Pulverize in my Dad's apartment because I was thinking of getting money back from a hobby shop in Boston. I should have kept it, at least for the pictures. Man...