As a rule, Introversion’s output oscillates rapidly between exultant and sobering – Uplink invokes both tension and terror from the humble progress bar, while Darwinia’s corrupted themepark vibe only makes the plight of its pixellated citizens more ghastly – but none more than Defcon.

Never has impending thermonuclear war been so relaxing. Then jubilant.

Then terrifying.

After this song had been running through my head for the past three weeks, I decided last weekend it was time to dig the Gamecube out and dive back into the balmy seas of Hyrule.  In my eyes, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker is a flawed masterpiece. Visually, it’s breathtaking – to the point where I can’t help but feel that the half-hearted handheld sequels are thoroughly wasting the potential of the art style – and as mentioned previously, thanks to the quality of the animation it’s the only Zelda game in which I feel any connection to Link as a character in his own right rather than a blank-faced voiceless nobody.

Moreover, the first half hour spent on Outset Island is delightful.  This time I gave in and spent an enjoyable fifteen minutes chasing pigs and throwing them in the sea. It’s an easy and enjoyable lead-in to the game, teaching the player the skills they need to learn without beating you over the head with it, and acts as a perfect example of all that is right with Wind Waker.

But it is Wind Waker’s flaws which have taken root in the collective consciousness – not least due to the horrendous nature of the triforce fetch-quest sapping all pace from the progression prior to the stupendously excellent finale – and even as you leave Outset and embark on your journey, disaster looms.

I’m still not entirely sure how Nintendo got the Forsaken Fortress – the first dungeon of the game – so wrong.  It’s a stealth-based mess of patrolled corridors and pointless rooms, with no clear sense of progression and an infuriating habit of returning Link to his ridiculously insecure cell every five minutes.  The stealth mechanics – and lack of a sword – encourage you to give every foe a wide berth, but it’s not until you’re lost and confused and sick to the back teeth of repeated imprisonment that you realise the game expects you to man up and face one specific type of monster, one who doesn’t immediately incarcerate you on sight, armed only with what initially appears to be a rubber chicken but eventually turns out to be a distinctly overwrought stick.

Finally, I escaped the fortress (read: was thrown out on my ass), and began to sail the high seas. And to be honest, if the rest of the game were just me sailing from island to island, hopping off and poking all manner of strange outcrops, flora and fauna with my reclaimed sword, I’d be a happy fellow. But I’d still have that damned tune in my head.

Teph and I are still really enjoying making this strip, so we’ll keep making ‘em as long as you promise to keep visiting. We’ve got some plans to spruce up the website this year, including more bonus content and interactivity. Not to mention the addition of a store!

As always, if you want to get in contact with either of us, I can be reached at mana@generationminusone.com and Teph can be reached at teph@generationminusone.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

And Exhibit B: Bayonetta.

Bayonetta is sublime. Ridiculous, insane, delightfully self-indulgent, and as a result almost entirely impervious to satire. Oh, and then it kicks your ass.

As I write, Mana is being dissected by what appears to be a giant lego dragon. And she’s dead again. And once more into the breach. I almost want to play it tonight, but honestly, I’m not sure whether my brain can take the sheer explosive concussions of light and sound the game kicks out. I think I’ll leave her to it and simply marvel at the spectacle.

And what spectacle; our feverish button-mashing is nothing compared to the sheer beauty of a master at work:

To begin, here is an actual conversation I had with Teph at the start of my latest playthrough, in which I try to figure out my (female) commander’s path in life:

Mana: This time, Shepard’s gonna be a little Renegade; bitchy when trying to make a point, but she’ll say and do nice things for people if it doesn’t put her out. But I’m trying to decide if I should make her fall in love with Kaiden.

Teph: Oh?

M: Well, see… I was thinking about how in Mass Effect 2, when [SPOILER REDACTED], she’ll probably gravitate towards Renegade, cuz I know I’d be super cranky if that happened to me. Perhaps to twist her even more, I should have her fall in love with Kaiden and then choose him to [SPOILER REDACTED], so that in the second game she’ll have every reason to be even more fucked up, after having lost both her [REDACTED] and her [REDACTED].

T: *stares at me* You’re thinking way too hard about this.

Perhaps I am. But I’ve never created characters before. I didn’t even realize that was what I was doing in this game until I had the exchange with Rob above. But with the knowledge that the decisions you make, the people you help, the people you allow to die in this game carry over to the next two games where they’ll snowball and flesh out your character and your galaxy, thus creating an almost limitless number of endings  in the third volume, I couldn’t help but to attempt some manner of forethought in the path I was driving my character.

Hence why I’ve played this game three times so far. Each Commander Shepard I created with different personalities and relationships to other characters, so that when I eventually get the second and third games, I can choose from a few different destinies and see where they lead the character by the end of the tale.

I think that’s what I like so much about this series. I’ve never identify with blank slate protagonists that you’re supposed to shape as yourself because I never liked playing pretend (you can barely get me in a Halloween costume. Don’t even think about cosplay!). Although you certainly can play the game role playing as Commander Shepard, I felt like Bioware made it possible for me to feel like I am in control of the path that Commander Shepard can take in her life. I didn’t shape my character’s personality after my own so that I can play pretend and be a space hero, I actually shaped my character around events and interactions with others that occur before and during the game. I feel like I’ve been given the chance to tell a story.

I wasn’t convinced I’d be enamored with Mass Effect. But with Saren on the run for the third time, I’d better start looking forward to getting my hands on ME2!

Thanks to the generosity of our friend Gee of I Saw Elvis,  a few weeks ago we were given the opportunity to play Mass Effect 1 and learn more about the series before the release of the sequel. I wasn’t too sure what to expect; I enjoyed Knights of the Old Republic, but I’m not a huge sci- fi fan nor big on western RPGs. In the first few hours of playing, I was still unconvinced and ready to put the game down – the menu system made no sense, the battle system was overcomplicated, and all too quickly my first mission was over and I was trapped on a bland, metallic space station with hoards of NPCs overwhelming me with sidequests before I had been given a chance to give a crap about them and their world. I was just going to give it one more hour, and then I was going to go play something I could actually enjoy.

In that one hour, I was finally allowed to leave the space station and explore. “Feh,” I thought, expecting that Bioware’s idea of freedom to explore was to advertise the idea of space travel but to actually limit me to only like three planets (a la Rogue Galaxy). So I tentatively zoomed out away from the station, but nothing was there, only the nebula in which the station was located. So I zoomed out again, which displayed the Milky Way, with about 8 nebulae/clusters to choose from. “Impressive,” I thought, having expected fewer locations than that. I chose one and zoomed in, expecting my adventure to start. Nope. I was given four star systems to choose to visit. I chose one and zoomed in. My jaw dropped.

I could explore each planet in the star system – not necessarily land on each one (due to inhospitable conditions), but I could survey it from above to earn some money and XP.  According to the Mass Effect wiki, there are over 100 planets to examine. The ones you can actually land and explore are far less, but still one planet per star system. And there are a lot of star systems.

The sheer scope of the game’s explorability (is that a word? No? Well it is now) shocked me and gave me the incentive to try this game out for just a little bit longer. In addition, every planet (even the ones that you don’t actually land on), had a writeup including statistics such as orbital period, gravitational pull, average temperature, etc. Major props to Bioware’s writers: they took imaginary planets and crafted such realistic science around them that I couldn’t help but to believe in the Mass Effect universe.

It was that which took me into my first steps of giving a crap about this sci-fi game and the people in it.

So I observed the ridiculous hype over their recent iPad announcement with amusement. Even more amusing was the inevitable disappointed backlash as it began to dawn on Applefans the world over that the announcement was exactly what they had expected it to be.

Ignoring the vagaries of this particular discussion, I like the iPad. I’ve been thinking of picking up some sort of netbook for ages, mostly for writing on the go, and the delightful living-in-the-future vibe Apple tech tends to imbue would just be the icing on the wang. Cake. Wangcake.

Still, Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 were the true heyday of the series for me. I never got into the Adventures, or the Heroes, or – God forbid – the fabled reboot. It was as if Sega had lost their way.

Every time another of these bumbling travesties of a Sonic game was let loose upon an unsuspecting yet optimistic public, a thousand forums burst out with the refrain that Sega had lost the plot, that they failed to understand what it was that made Sonic great in the first place. And then today, after sixteen years, this:

Everything about this trailer is so perfectly pitched that I have difficulty believing that Sega ever forgot the secrets; even if the game itself bears no resemblance to the four seconds of footage we’ve just been shown – Sega’s bitten us before with the old werehog switcheroo, after all – it’s clear that they’re taking this seriously, and the act of appending the long-awaited 4 to the title only confirms it.

So if they’ve known all along how to make a good Sonic game, why the decade and a half of mediocrity? Why put loyal fans through so much garbage before delivering on their promises?

Because if you tried to sell a Sonic 3 as a £50 retail title in today’s market, where a semi-skilled player can blast through everything on offer in an hour and a half, no-one would have it. Perhaps I’m giving Sega too much credit, but it would explain the years of sub-standard, drawn out titles. It would also explain today’s announcement, in the wake of the success of such downloadable reawakenings as Mega Man 9.

All we can do now is hope that Sega don’t have anything tucked up their sleeve, and that Sonic 4 can be the rebirth the franchise has been waiting for.

Over at the excellent Gamers With Jobs blog there’s an article on non-vocal protagonists which resonates very strongly with my opinions on the matter. Back in the mists of time when characters were mere splodges of pixels, it didn’t particularly matter that your protagonist said nothing; they were defined by their actions, and their actions were determined by you, the player. Moreover, I feel no less connected to my time spent playing Elite because my interactions were entirely on a non-verbal level.

But as technology developed and games began telling us stories, giving us characters with backstories and personality, the enforced silence of a character in the misguided attempt to make us feel more attuned to them began to encounter unforeseen side-effects. The suspension of disbelief that developers attempt to maintain by refusing to put voice to our avatar – at the risk of them saying something we would disagree with – then becomes strained by the perpetual silence.

I appreciate that some gamers enjoy this, but for me it becomes increasingly difficult to relate to a silent protagonist.  The other characters are forced either to perform semantic backflips to imply that which has been said, or just reply as though the character has indeed spoken leaving regular gaping holes in the conversation.

It’s telling that from the ensemble cast of Chrono Trigger, the character I care least about is Crono himself. Sure, he’s got a mean moveset, and the game attempts to jury-rig some emotion regarding his death and eventual resurrection, but when it comes down to it he has no backstory, no feelings, no motivations; by the end of the game we know more about Crono’s mother and her cat than our heroic protagonist. Rather than proactively saving the world, it feels like he’s going along for the ride.

I experienced much the same displacement with the 3D Zeldas. Ocarina of Time provided a double-gutpunch by not only leaving Link a blank-faced, scary-eyed creepy doll of a Hylian with no opinion on anything, but then saddling him with short, repetitive soundbites to accompany his every action. If the idea was to make me relate to this silent protagonist, how about not saddling him with a non-verbal voice both alien and irritating? Somehow, thanks to the beauty of the cel-shading, Wind Waker’s Link overcame much of this initial discomfort by providing enough personality through animation and clear character motivations.

Still, I won’t argue about the dangers of crossing that line between player and protagonist, of breaking the bonds of trust and forcing the protagonist to do something utterly incomprehensible in the name of plot that the player would never have allowed. The recent Prince of Persia is the main culprit that comes to mind. Please, just let me make that choice, to walk out of the valley with the knowledge of what I’ve lost, rather than force me into a stupid action which neither I nor the character I now fully relate to would reasonably take.

Even Mass Effect isn’t perfect; the distance between dialogue-wheel summary and Shepard’s actual dialogue is spectacularly close for most conversations, but occasionally one slips through, where the text does not translate into my intended meaning, and I find myself at odds with my ugly-ass avatar.

It’s testament to Bioware’s skill with character that I still care, and that Commander Bryn Rhys Shepard is still out there, spreading his cultural heritage to the stars. Lesser developers beware!

Yet as I played through Scarecrow’s first appearance, a towering visage rotating high above you, his deadly gaze sweeping past as you scurry by, I was struck by how far Arkham Asylum has reached for its inspiration.  That’s not Batman; that’s The Sentinel.

Whenever I delve into the mid-eighties 8-bit computer scene, I risk leaving people behind.  But Sentinel’s worth being aware of, whether or not you have any investment in the Amstrad, Spectrum et al.  One of the first games to utilise solid 3D – rather than the wireframes of Battlezone and its ilk – Sentinel was a weird mix of overcomplex controls, weirdly unintuitive mechanics and absolute mind-numbing terror of the sort Scarecrow would give his left arm – hypodermics and all – to instill.

Set down, motionless, amongst the hills and valleys of a primitive landscape, you cower beneath the gaze of the Sentinel itself, a menacing cybernetic foe whose gaze sweeps in a steady circuit around the landscape, sucking you dry of energy if it so happens to glimpse you on its way.  Your only chance is to remotely absorb trees and rocks from the landscape, creating new robotic bodies for yourself elsewhere – preferably out of sight of the ever-watchful Sentinel – while building towers of boulders, seeking to transfer yourself into a body higher than the Sentinel, from which vantage point you can absorb him.

It’s a fascinating game to experience.  Your immobility lends an air of menace to the proceedings, and as you begin your careful traversal across the landscape, flitting from body to body while reabsorbing those you’ve passed through, gradually climbing while using hills and rocks to hide yourself, you never quite feel safe from that penetrating gaze. Somehow, the expectation of failure makes the reality even worse, as the Sentinel gazes into your soul, devouring your gathered energy and diverting it to grow new trees upon its hilltops.

Which is a shame, since I’ve yet to find a version of this classic which lives up to the concept. There are a couple of freeware adaptations, the best of which appears to be Zenith, but even this falls foul of fiddly controls – trying to remember that Q is teleport makes zero sense – and suffers as a result. Perhaps the original suffered the same problems, and my nostalgia’s papering over the cracks, but surely this is something that a modern publisher could overcome with only a little thought.

Here’s hoping for a Live Arcade remake one of these days.