The Ten Most Important Games of the Last Decade (Part I)

So, if it hasn't been made painfully obvious for you as of yet, it's the year 2010. It has been said year for about two and a half boring months (by my experience, perhaps you're having a blast). Now that it's 2010, what do we have to think about? For me, there's largely nothing. However, the past decade was a decade I spent firmly rooted as a player of video games. That's kind of important to me. Now, looking back on that decade, I'm aiming to compile a list of the truly important games of the last ten years.

Before we get going, let's broaden that definition a little bit, regarding what it means when I call a game "important". This is not a measure of quality or of creativity, although it can be. It really depends. For the record, let's be frank in saying that my opinion doesn't mean a whole lot. It certainly doesn't command a lot of leverage, that's for sure. So, for a game to be important, what kind of criteria are we looking for? I'm going to summarize it as basically being a measure of what the game has or can do for the industry, likely by breaking the mold and introducing something fresh. A terrible game can, at times, inspire a plethora of things and change the way we perceive the gaming collective.

Let's not waste a whole lot of time right now (there will likely be plenty of time for those sort of antics later). My plan, right now, is to finish this list in its entirety in about a month's time. The choices are going to be well thought out or completely not thought out at all. It's my list, I'll do as I please. And don't be upset if I left your favorite game off the list. Chances are, I don't feel the same way about it. If I do, that's wonderful! I'm always looking for people with good opinions. Hell, if they're good enough, you could probably contribute to this blog (I'm being 100% serious here! Wanna write about video games? Send me an email (lowepat @ gmail.com) with your interest and perhaps a small sample. Please do not have wonderful labels such as GRAPHICS or SOUND in your review, that's a sign you're trying too hard. Just write. Make sure to be unique, too.).

in NO particular order

Katamari Damacy (PlayStation 2, 2004, Namco)

I've managed to throw more mentions towards this game in previous reviews than was likely necessary. This game gets mentioned a ton by me because I'm absolutely in love with it. Where do we even start?

Katamari Damacy is basically, in a lot of ways, god damned super 3D Pacman. Its goals are obvious and its style of play is simple as could be. Everything about this game has a TON of style, which is where it truly excels. There are detractors who claim that it is "too short, too repetitive", all I really have to say to these people is that they are pretty much stupid. These are the same people who fellate the hell out of the big RPG experiences, in which you do the same thing for about forty hours and watch as the numbers go up so other numbers can go down. Something that long must have a lot of depth, or most definitely has the ability to pretend to have it.

What do we do in Katamari Damacy? It's pretty great to be able to say that never once while playing the game is it necessary to use our imagination. The game is far too busy doing that for us, and for once, it's for the better.  Keita Takahashi's influences on the game are, for the most part, visual artists. A notable one is Tadao Ando, a Japanese architect who has designed some absolutely beautiful, perplexing buildings and sites. Go onto your GIS (Google Image Search for the unenlightened half-wits out there) and look up "Rokko Housing" to get a glimpse at some of his designs. Takahashi seems to have a bit of interest in the field as well, he's repeatedly been quoted as wanting to design a children's playground. Katamari Damacy is a playground, that's for sure.

There's not a whole lot going on in Katamari Damacy. Its idea is that your objective in each level (with some slight variations not really worth mentioning) is for your Katamari (a ball with the ability to snag up essentially anything and everything) to reach a certain size. To do this, we roll the ball around. As we hit objects, they may attach to us. Or we might be too small, as of yet, to grab the object and we are deflected. In that instant, we realize the issue and we go roll up more smaller objects. Eventually, we come back to that larger object and absorb it into the mishmash of items that our Katamari has snatched up. We keep going, and hopefully before our limited time has depleted, we are of the right size or bigger.

The fun thing about the game is that there is always this sense of tension, especially in the later levels where the size we're required to get seems out of our reach from the very beginning. You play, rolling up plenty of objects and increasing in size with somewhat of a steady pace, but you're still not that close. You're accessing new areas of the level due to your Katamari's size, but there's just not a lot you seem to picking up. Suddenly, you start gaining huge increases in the radius of the ball, seemingly out of nowhere. You just barely make the grade (maybe with twenty or so seconds to spare). This seems to happen a lot, until you get really good at memorizing a level's layout and knowing the greatest payoff spots for size. In a very matter of fact sense, Katamari Damacy is getting bigger and bigger by the second.

Something that always struck me about the game, something I took the time to remember, is that at any moment you want, you can pause the game and be given a comparison for your size. It is randomized, picking an item out of the hundreds, if not thousands of items in the game and telling you: "Your Katamari is the size of 2434101024 Telephones!". That, right there, is a lot of fucking telephones. 

And really, what's more important in life than telephones? Who doesn't have a cellular phone? (I don't =3) Everywhere I go, people are on the phone. It's hard being a social outcast (lol), what with the no phone and all! Maybe that's what growing up is all about, getting a phone that you can never ever have an excuse for not having, and be expected to be in touch with everyone at all times.

Katamari Damacy is a very gutsy game. It is no bullshit, and it's not "style over substance" as I've heard it referenced before. It has the right amount of substance and the right amount of style to act companion to that substance.

The Sims (PC, 2000, Electronic Arts)

Now I'm going to be incredibly forward here and preface the following paragraphs with the fact that I dislike the Sims. Honestly, I never ever got into the craze. Maybe I was too young to understand my sister's fascination in the series, or maybe I was (and still am) too childish to do anything other than kill my "sims" in increasingly complicated ways. Mostly, I just threw three or four of the fuckers into a house, removed the doors, filled it with wooden furniture, and set it ablaze. Not often did I go past that mark on the creativity scale, but the important thing is that I was, for some perverse reason, enjoying myself.

Maybe I'd enjoy the Sims, now. Of course, when a game is successful, especially when it's that successful (who hasn't heard of the Sims, honestly) we will get the sequel treatment. In an effort of businessmen wanting to make more money, to sail more yachts and buy more gorgeous women to accompany them, women who don't care about your bald spot or your doughy physique when you have enough money; the aforementioned decided it was a great idea to make "expansions" to the Sims formula, piece by piece. People bought the expansions without really realizing that they were wasting their precious, hard earned money, and so the people of Maxis and Electronic Arts got richer and richer.  This happens in games! Look at Street Fighter II, which had incremental expansions released for what felt like forever, and by the time Street Fighter 3rd Strike came out, everyone still preferred the second game.

What makes me think I might actually have fun with the Sims now? I've come to understand, and like a lot of things I never did previously in the last few years. Thanks to the creation of Coke Zero, I will now drink Coke products quite willingly. I still prefer Pepsi, but I will drink Coke. That is just one of the many inconsequential maturations that I've undergone. The older you get, the more you realize that you are incapable of living an entire life without doing things that you don't want to do. So maybe I can play the Sims now, that's what I tell myself.

Now, you might be thinking at this point that this decision was based primarily on "popularity". You'd be wrong, partially. The game's popularity is an immense point towards why it gets on this list, but I am in no way biased towards the game because of that. I actually had to do some hard thinking to come to this choice! Without the Sims, we might be living in a world where people actually give a damn about their own lives.  I'm sure there are plenty of people who do, yeah. Let's analyze that for just a moment.

The Sims is escapism. You play the role of an "overseer" for a character, or perhaps a family of characters. You make all their decisions, what to watch on TV, what kind of things to have in the house, when to take a piss or have a shower. You are the "god" of the world, except that you're able to lose the game. Your characters can become unhappy, sickly, and may wind up dead because their lives are just too damn terrible.  You start another family, and decide to theme their house a specific way. There was (probably still is) a bustling mod community for the Sims where people designed custom appearances for objects so as to let you make your "dream house". You give these people everything you want in life, and then you realize:

"OH fuck, I haven't showered in two days. The garbage needs to be taken out. I haven't eaten in probably close to twelve hours, and I'm out of ramen noodles and oven pizza. My job called yesterday and they said if I take another sick day, I'm fired. Hey, Dmitri seems unhappy..."

And you're back to playing the game because you've fallen into that simple trap. The objectives of the Sims, the needs of its characters are so almost identical to that of our own that when we play, we can't escape the game. The Sims probably ruined a life or two here and there, which is scary and a little bit captivating if you're like me.

The notable thing about the Sims, other than ruining the lives of people who were probably running a near autonomous lifestyle anyways, is that the game is not only more fun, but incredibly more rewarding when you cheat. Starting off, you'll notice two things about the game; you don't have near enough money to furnish a house with "good" furniture (a bad bed = bad sleep) and that you don't have enough time to do fucking anything. It's pretty inane how you tell your Sim to go to the bathroom and about an hour later, they accomplish it. No wonder he can never get to work on time, and when he does he's too cranky because he can't sleep! So you put it in a cheat code or two, get a bunch of money, and spend, spend, spend. Get all the best stuff. Make even having a job for the poor character completely extraneous. That's it, you've beat the game. Now, just play.

The Sims is a milestone, really. Nowadays, we see the influences of the simulation genre burgeoning into others, taking up residence on the proverbial doorsteps of video games everywhere. More importantly, it's escapism that works by drawing on real life. Caring for virtual humans is easy, as long as you've an idea how to care for yourself.

World of Warcraft (PC, 2004, Blizzard Entertainment)

This is frankly the choice of this list that I disagree the most with, personally. I've never actually sat down and played this game. I frankly have nil interest in the game.

Yet, it may be the most prominent piece of entertainment that emerged in the last decade, the entire entertainment industry included. So many men and women play this game on a daily basis, around eleven and a half million monthly subscriptions exist at the present time for this game. That's what we in the business (and we outside it too!) call a god damned phenomena. 

World of Warcraft is a job. I've never been able to see it as anything else. Millions of individuals, many whom could be doing any number of important things and contributing to society, are spending their time fighting monsters and doing quests so that they can gain levels, get new equipment, and get better. This isn't like a sport, though. All this repetition does is reinforce the fact that these people are paying good money to do the same damn thing, over and over again.

Let's be frank. I've never been exactly what I'd call a social person. I have a lot of little things that bug me, and a lot of people possess these little "things", so naturally I'm not a good people person. The concerns of the players of World of Warcraft are such things as "forming parties" and "finishing quests".

FUCK THAT NOISE.

Honestly. That's depraved. That's saddening. Let's get this into easy terms that we can all understand. When I "form a party", I'm getting together with a group of living, breathing humans. When I "finish a quest", I'm accomplishing something that I enjoy or think will be a means of personal betterment (let's use lifting weights as an example). These terms are as cut and dry as they sound in the actual World of Warcraft universe. Groups of people, who are real people in the sense that behind every character is an actual human player, gather so that they may tackle the dangers of the world and get ever closer to "finishing a quest". It's a novel concept, I'll give it that. What do you get for that quest?

Well, you're certainly going to get some numbers going up. The RPG genre, whether Western, Japanese, or MMO is obsessed with numbers, like some obsessive compulsive mathematician. In an RPG, your goal at the most basic of premises is to make sure your numbers stay up and find ways to make the numbers of your enemy go down. So, naturally; your reward in these games is the same as your goal, and that is to have high numbers regarding your character(s). All this number shit actually makes it look like something really important is going down, and that's where the illusion of depth comes into play.

There's not a whole lot wrong with tricking us, the player, into seeing depth where there is none. World of Warcraft pulls a double whammy, not only is there plenty of depth, there's social interaction (in a sense).  This is all incredibly key. To keep people together, Blizzard has designed many parts of the game to be accessible and completable only by groups. These groups will spend hours (no exaggeration) skulking through some dingy shithole of a dungeon, fighting enemies, gaining experience, fighting bigger enemies, gaining more experience...this is what these people do.

Eventually, you might start to think that you should be getting paid for this, instead of paying for it. Hell, we're pretty certain at this point that Blizzard makes enough money to throw a little chump change at the player and not start cutting names off the payroll. Like mentioned, World of Warcraft is a job. It's rearranging the cells of a Microsoft Excel document into the right order. It's making sure the bar graphs on the latest company earnings are big and important, that the spreadsheets will come up in the proper order so as to avoid looking like a complete fool. Remember that day when your boss asked you to come in four hours early, so that you could look through mountains of unorganized paper for something he had in his god damn office desk? 

Let's be completely hypothetical here. Let's say that tomorrow, Blizzard had to shut down. With it, the World of Warcraft servers are forced permanently offline. You now have ten million people who have to replace that time with something else. Some of them may move to other games. (sidenote: there are people who play inferior versions of World of Warcraft and the like because they're freeware. they don't feel like paying the money to play the real thing, so they play a cheap knock off instead because they've got to get their fix.) Some of them may focus on their actual job and get promoted. Some of them, because this game meant the world to them (and there are definitely people like this in the world) may go out in the streets and just kill someone. I'm not saying this happens! I reckon though, taking this game away from its die-hard enthusiasts would be like convincing a coke addict to quit cold turkey. There's going to be a lot of mental instability.

People have told me that they made a decision to "quit" this game. That's what I find the most telling. If I'm playing a video game, let's say...let's say I'm playing Super Mario Brothers 3. I'll use this as an example because I love it. I play until I get until about the sixth world and then I happen upon some bad luck and get a game over. I stop playing.

I have not quit Super Mario Brothers 3. I simply don't want to play at this moment. I was having a ton of fun and then I happened to lose. World of Warcraft, you don't lose. You just stop playing, whether it's for ten minutes, three days, two months, or forever. When you stop playing it forever, you have quit. Like leaving a job, you have a sudden realization that you were just doing it because you had to. You needed the money. Or in the case of World of Warcraft, you needed an outlet. You needed something to do with your mounds of free time and your hard earned dollars that felt rewarding. We've already outlined that the rewards are as fake as some supermodel's body (which probably cost more than your car!). So, you've quit World of Warcraft and you lose that sense of accomplishment that you were doing something that felt like it mattered.

The world changed with World of Warcraft, for better or for worse. It could be worse though, it could be Second Life (maybe the worst "video game" ever made).

WINDING DOWN

I'd like to thank you for reading the first part of this article and would also like to assure you that the list will be updated within the next few weeks. As mentioned, there's a decent amount of thought and research being put into this. Alternatively, you can also read this article under the pretense that I'm putting no thought into it and pulling random names out of a hat! You're the reader, I leave the choices up to you.

Cave Story (****)

A video game "review"

Doukutsu Monogatari (Cave Story) for the PC

developed by Studio Pixel

published by Studio Pixel

score: **** (Game of the Year 2004)

I've decided to wind the clock back about five years and write a review about a game that I enjoy. Being back to work full time, and out of school for a little while, I'm using my time to do all I've ever really wanted to do anyways, play video games. Hell, I figured that out when I was a lot younger, although I suspect I've been an adult for quite a while!

Cave Story is about as pure as the modern video game can strife to be. In an era where we are bombarded by bullshit from every direction from pretty much everything, it's like a dip in the cold pool on the warmest summer day to see something like Cave Story. Let's look a bit at the nature of the game and we'll quickly become aware of why it is what it is. In the time of huge, multi-million dollar productions, Cave Story was cobbled together by the efforts and free time of one man, Daisuke Amaya, the aforementioned Studio Pixel. Obviously, there's a lot of love that went into Cave Story. Its ideas aren't really new, just startlingly well executed.

Before we delve further (well, at all I guess) into this review, I'm going to take a few minutes of your time and talk about absolutely nothing. I'm notoriously good at talking about nothing, after all.

So, another year has gone and passed, without much incident to myself. A bit of a change in the plans of my "life" have led to me being out of school for a little while. I'm going to be going back in the fall, hopefully to start my way to procuring a Journalism degree. After that, I think I might move to Japan or something. To be drop dead serious for a minute, Canada is kind of boring. No offense, I do actually like where I live but man, is it ever boring. Why do you think it is that I play video games all the time? Gotta occupy myself somehow, and it seems to be the only way I'm coming up with (okay lifting weights and running, as well as working, whatever). So, my plan is to get out of Canada and move somewhere where I'm gonna be barely visible in the general population. Right now, my concerns are so tiny that I just can't bring myself to really care.

I was just checking my laundry in the designated room in my apartment building. Apparently, leaving my laundry unattended for an hour when the dry cycle takes forty five minutes is some sort of cardinal, loathing sin. Someone left me a note explaining how inconsiderate I was! Stuff like this, these small little bumps and concerns in life just feel so fake. Is this really what adulthood is about? Just shuffling through miniscule things like this?

Cave Story is a nice way to get away from growing old, a certain little piece of that friendly childhood nostalgia. Like I mentioned, it doesn't do a whole lot that is wholly original. Where its genius lies is in the care of how its elements are put together. Currently, I'm thoroughly upset with the video game scene for its treatment of sequels. Basically, instead of creating new, unique games and properties , the real way to make any money (which is all the developers really care about) is to make something popular and expand it beyond any reasonable limits. I mean, god, look at Mario. Isn't it about time that we get tired of Mario games? I know I am! I can reasonably assume that people are getting tired of me talking about Mario games too!

Let's stop painting in broad strokes and talk about the details regarding Cave Story being one of the greatest video games of all time. It's ambition was, as far as I can tell, to pay tribute to the games of old. Its design brings memories of Metroid and Megaman rushing into your brain, without being a blatant copy of either of them. We start Cave Story with a character attempting to make conversation with another through the use of instant messaging on a computer. We have no idea who this character is or who he's trying to get in touch with. Are we going to be this man at the computer?

We wake up, somewhere in the world. Surrounded by caves, we are unaware of who exactly we are. We have no weapon and we're most certainly alone. A really inquisitive person can figure out a few things about this first room in the game: how to use the save and healing points, and they can also decide, if they want to, to die in the first room. Anyways, you quickly figure out how to get out of the room (what game stumps a player in its first room? Either a very bad or very cruel one.) and you try to get a bearing on your surroundings. Maybe you try going right first and find that you can't proceed that way. Enemies and an unbreakable (at the moment) wall hinder your path. You go to the left, looking for a weapon. You might, if you're hasty, proceed down the first hill, hit a patch of spikes (which are blood red in color, to denote just how dangerous they can be) and die. Next time, you'll be more careful. Eventually, you weave through a path of spikes and enemies and you find a gun in another room. It's in a treasure box (one can never resist the allure of a treasure box). From here on out, Cave Story is yours to play.

One of the greatest nuances in Cave Story is how one goes about obtaining any one of the three endings. One is incredibly blatant, easy to obtain, and completely unsatisfying. I doubt many people get this ending when they play, simply because it is just as easy to avoid as it is to obtain. The second ending is the standard ending, complete with a great final boss fight and an ending to the story that seems conclusive. It's also quite challenging, in its own right. To obtain this ending, all you really have to do is follow what the game logically sets up for you. The real genius is that in order to obtain the real, and quite viciously difficult ending, you must understand the influences on this game, particularly its Metroid influence.

Let's talk about Metroid. Specifically, the very first Metroid game. Everyone always tends to talk about Super Metroid or the Prime series, so we're not going to. Metroid was this weird, notoriously obtuse game where in order to progress, you basically had to search every square inch of the screen and hope that something you were able to do would let you through. Mainly, you could bomb walls that looked no different from the walls you couldn't bomb. It was Metroid where it seemed like we can see the evolution of compulsive behavior in video games, the kind that persists even today. Take any of the Pokémon games, where the whole aim is to "catch them all". At first, that was one hundred fifty. Now, that number is in the four hundreds (sorry I don't know the exact number, I haven't played a Pokémon game in what seems like forever). Even after you catch them, you're presented with the next challenge, even more insurmountable, "can I make these Pokémon good in battle?". That's actually pretty brilliant game design. What would it be like if all you could do was collect the Pokémon? It's pretty doubtful that anyone would even want to play it. The battles are the real meat of the game!

In Cave Story, you have different weapons. Consider them the "pocket monsters" of the game. Chances are, your first time through the game, you won't collect them all. Actually, on a realistic note, it's impossible to obtain every weapon in Cave Story on the same playthrough. So there's always that, but even then; you may miss the opportunities to get certain weapons. Straightforward thinking will get you nowhere. Now, not only do you have a multitude of weapons, these weapons also have levels. You know what that means, right? If not, I'll explain it in a very matter of fact way. Kill an enemy, they drop triangular crystals of "experience", pick them up, pick up enough of them while holding a weapon and it will increase in level, thereby increasing in power. The opposite can also be true, getting hit by your enemies will drop your weapon experience (as well as your health). Pretty damn simple game mechanic, but really well done.

The weird thing is, to me, that you'll likely have some weapons you never really want to bother with. The very precise usefulness of several of the weapons will likely have you disregarding them, picking up the experience for your other weapons and using them instead. That's a pretty acceptable choice! We don't discredit you for sticking to the weapons you actually enjoy. Now, back to the Pokémon analogy I was making earlier, have you ever stopped to wonder why there are so many damn Pokémon? Half of them, I bet, get ignored by the general playing populace because they're useless. Having been a big fan of the games, I'll go ahead and confirm that assumption. People get together and play in tournaments, pitting their game monsters against each other. In these tournaments, the Legendary Pokémon are pretty much always banned because they're too good. They can learn too many good moves and coupled with their high stats, it makes them far too ready for any situation. So, people have learned ways to train the other monsters into being useful. The legendary monsters are basically just there to make the meta-game (think of it as the game after the game) easier. Pokémon games don't actually end in a traditional sense, you beat the final boss and you're given the option to just kind of keep playing forever, raising more monsters and trying to get ready to take on all challengers, which is pretty heroic sounding. Now, picture yourself as being an avid player. You've built up a team of six different monsters that you consider to be "pretty awesome". You engage another, actual real life human player in a battle (no doubt your first human contact in roughly six months time (this is a well constructed joke)) and they stomp your ass into the ground. What kind of lesson does that teach you? Likely nothing.

Cave Story is all about teaching a lesson. Going way back in this review, to where I was talking about Metroid and its definitive trait, I'm pretty sure that's the lesson that Cave Story is trying to tell us. Make sure that you take the time out of your busy schedule of trying to finish this game before your friends to actually look around. Make sure to leave no stone unturned, or else you're going to have to settle with the regular ending (which is still pretty good). It's a reinforcement of the one value a lot of people I know, a lot of people worldwide left behind when we became "adults": our curiosity.

You may be noticing that this review is lacking in the "wit" that I've displayed in my previous reviews. Don't worry, we'll be getting to the paragraphs constructed simply to force along painful one-liners and absurd generalizations. Let's talk about video games for a little while, you and I. There's been a lot of painful talk lately that the gaming industry in Japan is in trouble. I'm not really at liberty to say whether or not that's entirely true, but it seems to be the general consensus going around. Economically, it's not that hard to see why.

Keita Takahashi, a favorite developer of mine despite his criminally limited body of work (Katamari Damacy, Noby Noby Boy) has said of the medium: "...I believe videogames should always be a medium that everyone around the world can understand and enjoy. Forget the money side of things, games should just be pure fun and enjoyment." That, right there, is the attitude I wish was prevailing in the industry today. No wonder it's going downhill, every company is really just aiming for the same thing and that's making money. Hopefully millions of dollars, so that they can go on vacation, buy fancier cars, and keep making video games so that they can make more money. There are very few developers who can go against the grain and make exactly what they want. The modern day video game needs to do a few, key things to really appease the players:

1. give the player the sense that they are always accomplishing something

2. engage them, no matter what the situation

3. be presentable (kind of like NOT going to a fancy business party dressed in faded jeans, circa the early '80s)

The gamer is literally obsessed with being rewarded at pretty much every juncture. Final Fantasy XIII, which is a good game but not a great one constantly gives the player a feeling of accomplishment with the ranking system employed in the battles. That is, until you figure out that the rankings are completely and utterly insignificant. Say for example, you get a five star ranking in one battle, and then in a battle with the exact same enemies, you get a two star rating for whatever reason. You will receive the same amount of Crystal Points (there is no experience in Final Fantasy XIII) regardless and the item drops, if they happen, will not be different, so why have the ranking system? Simply put, to make the gamer seem as if they're accomplishing something, plus it gives them some sort of weird aspiration to do better (I should know, I have played it). Five stars is obviously better than two! Final Fantasy XIII does the three listed objects incredibly well, during battles against who knows what (the design in the game is stellar in a very creative sense) you are very damn engaged because it is just impressively flashy. I mean god, is the game ever white hot.

So, what's the matter with being accessible to the average gamer? If you're trying to make money (we've laid the groundwork to see that that is absolutely the case) it's certainly not the wrong path to be taking, but we've also seen that in order to be truly accessible we must sacrifice a certain bit of creativity. Sometimes, the truly creative individual (Keita Takahashi, for example) will think something up where the appeal of the game is the creativity or abstract nature of the game itself. Katamari Damacy didn't become a damn near sensation because of its easy play mechanics, it was the culture behind it. It was a weird, inventive game based around the simple mechanic of "roll things up, get bigger, roll up bigger things". It was artistic. It was a modern art video game and it'll likely be appreciated for years to come. A recent game which has "rejected" accessibility is From Software's Demon Souls, a grandiose PS3 exclusive that might be a front runner for the "Best Video Game of 2009". It is at this point I draw attention to this review's illustrious score (****) and the following line of "Game of the Year 2004". So, back to Demon's Souls because talking about the video game you're actually reviewing is so cliché and I'm attempting to be as edgy and unlikable as possible!

Some people have said that Demon's Souls has no place in modern gaming because it is frequently an unrewarding, challenging catastrophe. You can and will die without much alarm and it is as unceremonious as possible because it becomes a common event. However, dying is simply a part of the game, so much that it is impossible to actually lose the game. The only way to lose to Demon's Souls is to stop playing it. You are actually being rewarded on a near constant basis in Demon's Souls, just the nature of those rewards can sometimes be too subtle to truly appreciate it. Learning where a certain enemy lurks and how it attacks, while still dying in the process is one such example. You can overcome that obstacle once you come to understand its nature. Eventually, you progress in a quantifiable amount and then you fucking die, again. It's a frustrating feeling, but you'll get used to it. You may finally amass enough souls (the game's universal currency, it is used for everything under the sun) to get a new weapon or upgrade an integral stat. This may or may not enable you to make a little more headway.

I believe personally that Demon's Souls is a game for everyone, because it's a more engaging experience than a lot of games out there and the character options are wide enough to give a variety of play styles, so it can encompass a lot of people's desires. 

So, back to Cave Story (collective reading audience: "Finally."). The point I've been trying to make about accessibility is that Cave Story understands what that means. To be truly open to the gaming populace, you must offer them the choice of how to play the game, their way. The multiple weapons operate in such vastly differing ways from other ones that a player can carve out a particular combat style. The truly curious gamer will pick up on the clever integrated mechanics that you go about to find the secrets and head to the perfect ending, which requires skill as well as cunning. At one point, you can either accept a jet pack from an NPC (who you're likely going to talk to) or make a difficult jump that is cleverly marked out by a strange mark on the ground which shows you when you need to jump in order to the clear the gap, totally ignoring the NPC. Get the jet pack, and the jump becomes simple. That decision alone will cost you the best ending. Is that fair? Absolutely, because the game is built in such a way that you're supposed to question it.

Japan and video games are nearly synonymous. There has been a major upswing in the presence of the Western developers later, coinciding with the "death of the Japanese games industry". Is there any real relation to this? We can look at the current tastes of the gamer and see that it may have some sort of relationship, yes. The success of the Modern Warfare games is namely the obsession with the first person shooter coming to a forefront and that's what people want to play. Largely, I think the big thing right now is playing games with others. MAG, just recently released, emphasizes its humongous player to map ratio (256 players on one map). However, this trend seems to be relatively limited to the market outside of Japan. People in Japan seem to be relatively secure with playing by themselves (there was really no working outside of that innuendo, was there?). The remake of Dragon Quest VI, the best selling game of 1995, was just released for the Nintendo DS console. In its first day, the Japanese bought roughly a million copies. Have I ever mentioned that the Dragon Quest games sell ridiculously in Japan? A little research shows that no numbered Dragon Quest games (parts of the main series) have sold under a million copies in their homeland of Japan. Every game that comes out, the numbers seem to go up. Hell, Dragon Quest IX for the Nintendo DS (the world's most popular console) has sold like 4 something million copies and it came out in July. It's not even out in North America yet. I mean, there's some sort of phenomena going on there.The Dragon Quest games, however, don't sell the greatest over in our half of the world, they never have and likely they probably never will. Blame it on the seclusive nature of the games, blame it on the formula that hasn't been updated much since the first game came out in 1986 and was referred to as being archaic even all the way back then.

So, what have we figured out about video games? That you can usually fit them into two molds, seclusive or what we'll call "friendly" games. Cave Story is a seclusive game, both in design and in atmosphere. You will spend some of the best hours of your life playing it.

Let's talk about something specific within Cave Story, actually. Since we've been spending the majority of the review talking about nothing, let's take time out of our busy schedule to talk about something. I'm sitting here missing some skin on my right hand (never rotate an analog stick with your palm at warp-speed) and I'm not really feeling the whole process right now. It hurts, seriously. 

=(

Add to the fact that it's almost three o'clock in the morning and I'm wide awake; which is probably the best possible time to do any writing of any sort...this is really sort of aggravating. So, Cave Story, yeah.

INTERMISSION

So, what exactly makes Cave Story the "Game of the Year, 2004"? That's a hefty title to bestow upon anything. As a note, I'm going by the initial release (and so far, only) of the game, which was December 2004 in Japan. The game hasn't gotten an American release yet, although I've heard rumors to watch the WiiWare channel on Nintendo's Wii console. Cave Story's independent translation by the grand group over at Aeon Genesis saw release in early 2005, so we're going to strictly regard Cave Story as a game of 2004. The game, actually.

What was I doing in the year 2004? Being nineteen years old now (what a boring time of life), I'd have been fourteen. Last year of junior high school, if I recall. Back when the only real thing I was capable of was being picked on (slight exaggeration). 2004 was a year where I couldn't have cared less about things. Definitely, at fourteen, I would not have invisioned my nineteen year old writing reviews like this. Cave Story is the realization of a great invisioning. Secrets have longed played humongous roles in video games.  

Used to be, that secrets were considered the norm for design. However, despite their secretive nature, many things you were forced to accomplish in games of old were the only means of getting ahead. Video game magazines were prospering back then, before the advent of video gaming websites where the answers were just a click away. Kids would buy, or maybe even steal these magazines just go get through that one dungeon in the original Legend of Zelda, or find all the secrets in Super Mario Bros. 3 (what a great game). Cave Story is such a great loveletter to that feeling.

Daisuke Amaya showed great ability in Cave Story. His artwork was unique and beautiful, he had an ear for music that led to some catchy tunes and great atmosphere, and his storytelling was simple, yet as bold as his art. Cave Story told us a simple story, but it did it well. The convoluted plots of the modern JRPG have rarely (if ever) been told this well. The plot of Cave Story is there to compell us through the game, probably nothing more. We can all assume that Amaya-kun was not trying to really send a message, or change our lives, simply; his game needed a story because why else would the player really bother? And if the story is well told, it is that much more appealing.

Ikachan, Amaya's first video game was released in the year 2000. The namesake character, Ikachan, is a friendly squid who tries to help his other aquatic friends. It is quaint, cute, and designed interestingly. Ikachan's controls, at the start of the game, forbid fully horizontal movement. A weird hindrance, that once you play the game, feels only natural. Some game developers give us far too much, the smartest ones will take enough away to make us truly appreciate what we have (once again, I'll shout to Keita Takahashi at this point, who should be reading this...seriously though anyone who can look at a PS2 controller, and devise awesome gameplay while ignoring every face button is a genius). Cave Story takes a lot away from us, and never once does it try to give it back. You cannot, for example, shoot diagonally. Every primary direction (downwards shots can only be done in the air, but still, they're doable and with one weapon can actually act as a slight hover) can be used for attacking, but you're not allowed to attack diagonally (which would be mighty useful and perhaps even a bit of a game-breaker. Hence why it's not there.). You can, however, fight what appears to be an anthropomorphic lunch-box/toaster. That is ten times more awesome than it sounds!

The best weapon in Cave Story is a special gun called the Nemesis. You can obtain it at only one area in the game, rather specifically, it's pretty much where you start the game. When you obtain your first weapon, you steal it from a sleeping weaponsmith. This area of the game becomes unaccessible for the longest time after you leave it. So long, in fact, that you might not even ever think of returning there. Suppose, perhaps, you do. The weaponsmith has awakened, and he's a bit peeved at your thievery. He chews you out, and you get your fingers ready to just flip the dude off, walk away, and perhaps fuck his wife (childish humor is what you readers want, eh?). Earlier in the game, you traded the Polar Star (the first gun) to another character for her machinegun, because you thought "damn would I want a machinegun" and then the game offered it to you. Hours ago, you made a mistake which would defy you the best weapon in the game.

Second time through, on your way to trying to get the best ending (which you should definitely have the Nemesis for) you decide to keep the Polar Star. You go back to the weaponsmith when the opportunity presents itself, and he chews you out. Again. Then he notices that you've put his weapon to extraordinarily good use. He is impressed, inspired. He says that he never actually finished the weapon, so he grabs it from you and completes it, granting you the Nemesis. In a game where levelling up the weapons you obtain to gain their true abilities is imperative, the Nemesis totally ignores that concept. Its levels are based on how long you hold the fire button (initially set as the X button on your keyboard). This enables you to switch its performance based on the situation. Need rapid-fire? Slam that button.

Cave Story is, like Demon's Souls, a game you only lose when you stop playing it. It is rewarding in ways you can't initially comprehend. It is more than just a satisfying experience. Ten to fifteen years ago, I remember when I first played Earthbound, for the SNES. Earthbound, for the record, is my favorite video game of all time. It is **** (The Best Game Ever Made). Much of what makes Earthbound for me is encapsulated solely in my life. Beating the game at roughly 4 AM, holding the controller, sweating what I can only recall as profusely (the last battle is intense on a psychological level, especially for an eight or nine year old me), I can look at the moment and say that it may be my life, captured in one frame. Is that an incredibly lame, nerdy thing to say? Probably. What is Cave Story, to me, in terms of my life? For all I've tried to say about it, and for all I've tried to avoid the subject in the fear of saying too much, or in the fear of saying it wrong...rambling for the sake of it, because like I said, "reviewing" a game is too cliché. Explaining an experience is so much more rewarding. As I sit on Facebook, and it tells me to get in touch with friends by "sending them a message", despite the fact I know that specific friend doesn't even use the account, I'm left with a feeling that I should maybe send that message. Adulthood is learning that you may not be able to stay friends with everyone. Adulthood is learning to use the time you have to try and keep your friends. Adulthood is those mild inconveniences and those choices which may spread further than you understand.

Cave Story is not adulthood, it is everything you wanted in your childhood. Perplexing and accessible, engaging and exciting. And to sum it all up:

Cave Story is..."well, it's carefully devised art."

Thanks for reading.