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

Hello, my name is Patrick Lowe and I'll be your fine host today, as we rummage through the remnants of ten years which have now left us, searching for meaning. We've explored three games that I put on the list after somewhat careful deliberation, today's article; on the account that I'll be writing about games that I actually played and enjoyed (there will be no apologies to you World of Warcraft players. I honestly think you are terrible.), I'll be limiting the amount of games covered in this article to a mere two. After today, we'll have five more games to go through!

Before we start, let's discuss a few things. I can see outside my window that it is snowing, which fills me with a weird sort of apprehension. The weather has been mild recently and the month of March is fast approaching. I was certainly hoping we were done with the snow and crappy weather. I'm putting off a variety of things I should be doing in order to write this article, and how that makes me feel...it's hard to tell. I think about the fact that my apartment is near deathly silent, outside of the music emanating from my laptop. My roommate is on a week's vacation in a place of sun and sand; and I'm sitting here, writing about video games in an apartment which could easily be the scene of some grisly murder. That's the type of silence I'm talking about. It's not a sad feeling, as melancholy as my words may sound; I've missed this kind of weird silence.

In my experience of playing video games, I've seen plenty of things and been encapsulated in a variety of moods and feelings. The game industry is like any other facet of the entertainment sector; the focus is honestly and truly about making money. Telling a story and making people happy is an accessory to this. Sometimes, the games and movies which tell the most heartfelt story and invoke the greatest emotions to the player or viewer are not the ones which are most successful.

I feel, a few months away from being twenty, that my nineteen year old self knows about as much about life as my twenty year old self will. Did I grow up a bit too fast? Ever since I was young, I knew how I'd want to be entertained for the rest of my life: I wanted to play video games. Good video games, video games that are fun, that are interesting, video games with music good enough that I can keep the volume way up and shut out the world. I've known this for what feels like forever. There's a lot of satisfaction in knowing that my younger self was smart enough, or at least perceptive enough to know a part of what I wanted out of life. I'll be back in school in the fall, ready to take on the world again. Another choice, made by myself, about myself. Whenever we're faced with the toughest choices, we're always a bit away from that right answer. 

That's reassuring, actually. We're human, after all. There are some of us who just want to play video games. Can you blame us? That first time we picked up a controller, that apprehension as we tried to understand what it was we were doing, and more importantly, why it was fun for us, that's an experience. I've tried to tout the merit of the experience above all else in this blog's few reviews (there are more coming. when, i'm not sure). I'm writing this in the middle of the day, when I could be doing something better, honestly. I'm sipping a hot chocolate (it's not from anywhere or anything...it's uh...Nestle Carnation. it's not bad, it's kind of making me sick to my stomach, though i'm blaming that on my headache and general feeling of weariness)

Without any further ado, however, today's presentation is ready to begin. Enough talk, enough bitching, let's get right on down to it.

sponsored by:

(A&W Diet Root Beer)

&

(the relatively hot women of Final Fantasy XIII)

continuing in no particular order

Mother 3 (GameBoy Advance, 2006, Nintendo)

This is somewhat of a controversial choice, because the game never saw a legitimate North American release. You've probably never even heard of it, so it does seem like a bit of an odd choice. It's a decision that is being made simply for myself, because I'd feel truly awful to leave this game off of here.

This could easily be one of the greatest games ever made, and it makes strong points of contention that it could be simply put, the Best Game Ever. Certifiably, it tells the best "story" that a video game has ever done, because it was written by a man whose obvious flair is not for video games. I'm going to spend a decent amount of time (and words) elaborating on this. Make sure you're sitting in an incredibly comfortable chair and are well fed, with plenty of fluids on hand.

Years ago, I was first introduced to the work of Shigesato Itoi when I stumbled upon Earthbound in a small rental store in the town I was raised. It was a Saturday morning, the day I always rented games. Never an active child, this was the start of why I'm here now, doing this, I figure.

Describing Earthbound would take forever if I were to go into any intimate details; let's just put it this way. It's the most verbatim copying of the original J-RPG formula which Dragon Quest laid down, cleverly used to critique and satire Western culture. It is beyond clever, and in the end is an incredibly touching experience. And it did this without really doing anything new regarding the structure of the game itself. It was certainly the work of a man who wasn't really interested in the gaming industry, however, he was certainly quite enamored with using the medium to deliver a story so fine crafted to being a video game that it's arguable that the story could be presented otherwise.

That man is Shigesato Itoi. He has only made four video games, to date, all for Nintendo systems. An oft-told story claims that he is the man who thought up of the name GameBoy for Gunpei Yokoi, a man whom despite all his great innovations was lambasted for one of the greatest failures in Nintendo's long history, the Virtual Boy. His four games are as such:

1. Mother
   
2. Mother 2/Earthbound (the name granted to it for its North American release)
3. Mother 3
4. Shigesato Itoi's No.1  Bass Fishing

He is a journalist and essayist by trade, a writer. He runs a website where he has published countless articles regarding his philosophies on life, as well as interviews with people from many walks of life that focus, usually, on the philosophical. This is a man who never needed to make a video game in his life, yet he has made four of them. One of which, we can regard as simply being done for the "fun of it". No. 1 Bass Fishing was actually the subject of two several day tournaments across the nation of Japan, the first of which Itoi himself participated in. I think that's pretty neat.

Mother 3 is perhaps, on the one hand, the least video game like endeavor of his four games. It has the most literary qualities, a plot which is, as the game's commercial touted: "Strange, funny, and heartrending." We deal with things in Mother 3 that we may easily deal with in life; death, destruction, the budding of friendships and those giant changes, with plenty of tears shed along the journey. When it ends, we come to the realization that we never wanted it to. We're all adults here, yet I wonder if we've yet left behind our childhoods.

I was certainly a child when I first played Earthbound, so many years ago. Growing up, ever so slowly, I've been able to derive more meaning from the game. Mother 3 came out when I was fifteen, soon to be going onto sixteen, which everyone tends to treat as an important time in your life. I never saw the fuss. Perhaps I was (and still am) a bit too cynical to grasp the fascination.

Mother 3, however, was exactly what my fifteen year old self had wanted. A grown up version of what my younger self had declared his "favorite video game ever". I had grown up, and my video games had too. Every day I waited for the game, remembering the ending of Earthbound and the promise of a continuation, I became a bit older. When Mother 3 came out, for a brief period of time, I wasn't getting any older. When I beat Mother 3 for the first time, I grew up again. Since then, I probably haven't gotten any older. When we're truly old, we'll look back through our memories and see what has defined us. Mother 3, for the past four years, has been so truly important to me that until something else comes along, it will continue to be with me forever. Where Earthbound was what we'll call a childhood obsession, Mother 3 is my adulthood obsession.

At the start of Mother 3, for the first three chapters, we're simply being introduced to the story. The three chapters occur in a fashion that interlocks them, they are happening all at the same time, from different perspectives. The fascinating thing to me, and certainly a great element of how Mother 3 goes about telling its story, is that we control a different "main" character for each of the first three chapters, and then the game's true main protagonist for the remainder of the game. When they are directly under our control, the main character will never speak. This allows us to step into the shoes of multiple characters along the way, knowing their personalities, knowing that they are actually an important part of the game's story, yet for a period of time; they are us, the player. A vessel through which we interact with the world that is not ours.

Today is one of those days. I'm awake, begrudgingly, making myself some lunch. Listening to some music in this otherwise hushed apartment of mine, wondering what kind of night I'm going to have at work. Every weekend, I work one night until 2 AM or later. That kind of predictability, some people care for it. I'm drinking diet pop and wondering how good an energy drink might be later. Here I am, on the verge of adulthood, sitting at its cusp, shuffling through such small cares.

Well, I've spent a few days not actually working on this. It's March! I'm definitely not finishing all ten picks on this list in a month of the first iteration. But fuck, sometimes you just have to actually sit down and work. So, let's get back to Mother 3, so we can move on from it and get to another game.

talking about Mother 3 again.

A real triumph in Mother 3, compared to many games, is the feeling of its world as an actual setting, not just a necessary existence. It's something I'd like to call the "dungeon syndrome". I've always had this weird feeling that in many games, RPGs specifically, you'll find yourself in the depths of some dungeon and basically; the only reason for this dungeon to exist is for something (or someone...) to be there when you get to the end.

Mother 3's dungeons and locations are simply backdrops to the story folding out. The forest which catches fire in the first chapter, and its form later, after the fact, is an important part of the game's story. There are many instances of this, with every location in the game.

The best, and truly most interesting part of Mother 3 is the incredible battle system. I'm going to tote this as an important kind of thing because it should stand as an example. In the days of battle systems called the BEAT system (this stands for Battle Exalted Action Type (which is basically four words of completely stupid bullshit (this stupid acronym is from the terrible Star Ocean: The Last Hope)), Mother 3 doesn't call its system anything. It is just what it is. It is still, deep down, the battle system that the series has been using (which is basically the battle system of Dragon Quest) since its conception with one major twist (although it is possible to play the game without ever using it); the ability to time attacks to the music for increased hits.

A lot of people misconceived what this was going to be before the release of the game, thinking it was going to be straightforward and easy to take advantage of. Just remember a basic rhythm, and tap it out every time you attack. It is not like that at all, thankfully. It's incredibly engaging and proper use of it can basically destroy the need to grind at all. No need to pointlessly battle, over and over again, to gain a level and get a bit stronger. If you've got the groove, you're set.

Getting the groove isn't the easiest thing! Some of the battle music (which there is lots of and it is very, very good.) is pretty simple to grasp the first time. Later, you'll get into a fight and hear the first few bars of a song you've assumed yourself to know the beat to, yet now there's a small little change. What could have been a simple 4/4 timing has now been twisted into some strange math rock time signature that you're probably never going to master perfectly. Get ready to guess. Get ready to wear your headphones and truly sit there and listen to the song. That's one thing I'll recommend, Mother 3 needs to be played with headphones. Whether you're playing the fanmade English translation (which I'd love to link, but there are some legality regards here that I don't wanna get involved in) or the original Japanese GBA cartridge, play the damn game with headphones or else you'll never get the full value of the rhythm based attacking system. Don't worry if you can't get the groove too well, the game may be a bit harder but it's not insurmountable.

So the bottom line of Mother 3 (for right now; I really want to sit down and write a full length review of it). It is the most worthwhile portable game ever made. It is the life changing experience that many people have claimed to have with other RPGs, except that this one actually is.

Metal Gear Solid 2 (PlayStation 2, 2001, Konami)

Hideo Kojima's postmodern opus, and it's nothing more than a large scale, very well devised and extraordinarily cruel joke. Kojima's Metal Gear Solid had been a success, and so he was pulled into the world of resounding success; a world where you will make sequels until you die, because that's what the public wants out of you.

Why was Metal Gear Solid such a big thing? There are a variety of reasons. It laid an acceptable groundwork for what the stealth genre in 3D should be. It was cinematic, wordy, and confusing, and there was plenty of stuff in there to get captivated by. It had characters that were larger than life, down to earth while at the same time being completely supernatural and over the top. It was a bit of a realistic fantasy.

Gamers are a tricky bunch. When a game's sequel comes out, we want more of the same, but we also want something new so that we're convinced the developer is actually trying. When Metal Gear Solid 2 came out, there wasn't a consensus other than: We want more Solid Snake.

He was cool, wasn't he? Oh man, he was just so damn cool. A beacon of manliness with the best lines, the greatest no bullshit attitude this side of your middle school gym teacher (who never stopped pestering you to do more push ups)...god was he something. I'm sweating and wooing like a high school girl over him at this very moment. I mean, come on!

He's got to be one of the coolest looking protagonists of any video game ever and he does it without a decent haircut. Fuck, look at that mullet!

I possessed something of the world's nearly most fashionable mullet for a few months as of recent. It uh...it wasn't bad.

Solid Snake is the man, and rightfully so. Hideo Kojima knew that most of the people of this opinion had no idea what Snake had been through (Metal Gear? Metal Gear 2? MSX? These were all words of confusion.) and decided that he didn't like the reaction he got from Metal Gear Solid.

So he set out on his plan. We put the disc in our PS2, maybe for the first time, we load up Metal Gear Solid 2. We get a neat little cutscene of Snake jumping off a bridge in the middle of a rainy night, the cool aesthetic running through the scene like the blood in our veins. He lands on a tanker, and this is where we begin.

Where we end, ooh man, that's a different story.

At the end of Metal Gear Solid 2, we're not playing as Solid Snake. Hell, we haven't played as him since the introductory chapter, after that opening cutscene. We're now running through a high tech battleship, Snake by our side; dead seriously wondering why in the hell we're not playing as him!  Why do we desire to play as him so much? Is this truly the man-crush to end all man-crushes?

At the end of the first chapter, Solid Snake "dies". We're given no reason to believe otherwise until the start of the next chapter, where we begin a new mission; decked in a stealth suit and mask, being referred to by the Colonel (our guide and a long running fan favorite character of the series) as Snake. Oh, so we didn't die? We're still Snake, right? Awesome. After a few brief events, Snake...unmasks.

Now, we're Raiden, everyone's bad memory of Metal Gear Solid 2. A man who is everything that Solid Snake isn't, wimpy, whiny, and a pretty boy. We long for Solid Snake's chiseled jawline and his god damn mullet. We already don't like Raiden's good looks and long blond hair. Why did Kojima do this to us?

Because he had something he wanted to prove. He wanted to do what most sequels fear and tread new water. Boldly, he tells the player that they can't have everything they want. He even teases us, bringing Snake back into the plot; operating as a covert agent under the name Iroquois Pliskin (which is a pseudo-reference to Escape from New York, the main character served as inspiration to the Snake character (the Snake name being ANOTHER reference!)). Here he was, this was who we all wanted to play as, yet he was just out of our grasp.

At this point in the review, I'd like to thank Blogspot's page editor for randomly deciding to open something entirely different and erase a few well written paragraphs. That's what I enjoy, being punished for not pressing the Save button every five to ten seconds.

So, what stands out most about Metal Gear Solid 2 in my mind is the fact that its story would not work unless it was a video game. The narrative can only exist as a video game, because Kojima decided to play with the medium to the point where he was shamelessly, mercilessly breaking the fourth wall. Something he dabbled in before (Psycho Mantis' exploits in Metal Gear Solid being the prime example) and after; here is where he was undoubtedly utilizing it the best. It is simply a "video game about video games". Hideo Kojima would go on to make more Metal Gear Solid games, but they simply did not reach the level of this gem. I guess we can blame that on him not wanting to really make them! He's still making them, too! I guess you never give up a good thing, especially if it keeps the bills paid.

and now I get to talk some more about things that may or may not be related to video games

So, five games down and I'm radically off schedule. I said in the first part I'd like to finish this in about a month...yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't see an end until near the end of March or beginning of April. To be fair, it's not like I have deadlines outside of those I self-impose on myself, and those can hardly count.

Uh, wow; I thought I'd actually have something to talk about at this point, but apparently for once I don't. I don't know when the third part of this article will be up, but it'll probably feature three games, with the fourth part featuring two again. That's tentative, of course! We could end up with five games in the next part in some gigantic, over the top smorgasbord of video game journalism! Or maybe I'll get a real job (making pizza is not a real job, let's be honest). That's...yeah likely not going to happen any time soon!