For the past three weeks I have been fully consumed by a WiiWare title known as bit.trip Beat.  It’s very, very wonderful.  I’ve been trapped in the loop of thinking I should write something about bit.trip Beat, then deciding I should play bit.trip Beat a bit more before I write anything about it, and then waking up the next morning cursing myself for staying up until 3AM playing bit.trip Beat.

Basically, the game is single player Pong.  You have  a little paddle, and you move it around to repel tiny squares.  Except the little squares are smart, and repelling them produces harmonious tones. And each “level” is a section of a larger musical composition, of the chiptune variety.  And instead of using the directional pad, you twist the Wii remote.   And I feel at peace with the world when I’m playing.

The behavioral patterns of these little squares, the “beats” (as the manual refers to them), are incredibly varied.  Some fly at you in triplicate, some skip along the bottom of the screen, and others move in such an erratic manner that you cannot predict them… you just need to react.  Unlike the falling gem rhythm games where you just need to monitor an area of the screen and respond accordingly, bit.trip Beat feels like playing actual music.  You are in the zone and you just know what will happen next, even when you don’t.

Contemporary psychology has a word for this:  the flow state. Popularized by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi¹, the flow state is a sort of involuntary mindfulness (think Zen Buddhism without the botanical knowledge). Key components include the loss of self-consciousness, focus of awareness, and an altered perception of time.  This is where your mind goes when you’re playing a sweet bass solo or, in my case, trying to hit little squares with a paddle.

Of course, I can’t bring this up without mentioning the game titled flOw (which will run you five dollars and is well worth your time). Jenova Chen’s thesis was a direct attempt to translate Csikszentmihalyi’s theory into an interactive experience.  Aside from the ridiculous capitalization schemes, flOw and bit.trip have little in common.  flOw used the prime ideas behind the flow state to dictate the game’s difficulty dynamically in response to player ability, while bit.trip hopes to invoke the flow state through extremely brutal difficulty.

When I say it’s difficult, I mean it’s difficult with a capital “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?”  It’s got the challenge level of a shoot-em-up², where you go from thinking life is great to crying in the corner over the course of thirty seconds.  It’s like a video game version of my first sexual experience that I get to play over and over again.

The difficulty is the beautiful part of the whole thing:  you will always fail at bit.trip Beat.

There’s no way to win.  Or, at the very least, I can’t win.  But not winning is where things get interesting.  Miss too many beats and you get sent into a “nether.”  The overly saturated colors disappear, you see only your avatar and the beats, and the sound cuts out minus a single rhythmic bleep from the Wii remote. Repel enough beats and you go back up to the main play area.  Miss them and you’re back at the title screen.

If I were to rank my favorite gaming moments, my first time entering the nether in bit.trip Beat would easily be number one.  Going from being fully immersed in a driving beat coming from my speakers to this extreme absence was like a slap in the face.  It is so jarring and so very beautiful.  I don’t think I’ve ever been more aware of the act of playing a game.   All I could see was a wireframe of an idea on my screen, and the game controller alerting me to the fact that I was still playing. This says something. I was so disoriented that I didn’t even understand what was going on at first.  It was like waking from a dream and hearing the buzz of an alarm clock, realizing that what you just experienced, no matter how real it may have seemed, was nothing more than a product of your mind.  I am now convinced that adding a speaker to the Wii remote was a stroke of genius.

It may have helped that I was playing on a projector in complete darkness with the volume at max.

The motivation to play again is not just to top your high score, but also to progress further and hear more of the song. I believe that the song never actually ends; maybe some  programming trickery allows it to mutate at a cellular level as you progress.  That may not be the case, as there are two inactive options in the main menu.  I assume there are prerequisites that must be met for those options to become active… maybe requirements such as winning, or at least not losing.

I haven’t even begun to touch on the narrative elements of the game (yes, there is a narrative!).  “Everything comes from something,” the operations manual informs me.  “We will return to something once we become nothing.”  Heavy.  The little paddle you control?  That’s your avatar, and he has a name. All of the bit.trip games (there will be more, I assume) revolve around a character known as Commander Video.   His mantra speaks of moral fallibilism and self-acceptance³:  “I am only a man.”  And, indeed, you’ll find no extra lives in bit.trip Beat.  You may be able to skate around that near-death nether, but once you’re done, that’s it.  You’re evaluated whether you win or lose.

Someday, when you’re older, remind me to tell you the story of the four player co-op.  Did I mention this game is only six dollars?⁴

Update: I just read the IGN review for bit.trip Beat, and apparently the song does end, and the greyed out options in the menu are additional songs.  I must be terrible at this game.  Forgive me.  I am only a gamer.

1. Hottest psychologist ever, am I right?! [↩]
2. I refuse to use the word schmup, unless it itself is incorporated into an equally ridiculous portmanteau.  Like “aweshmup” or “schmupsicle.” [↩]
3. For additional information, please see the Wikipedia entry for Human. [↩]
4. I totally stole this footnotes idea from The Quixotic Engineer.  I think it works well.  Though the hypertextual nature of the internet may render traditional MLA style citations pointless, there’s a lot of stuff that just doesn’t fit into a document.  Like whatever the hell I’m saying in this footnote. [↩]

I’ve been unemployed for a little over a month now, with absolutely no job prospects and very little money to my name. This means I have a lot of free time. I’ve been trying to figure out what the average vocationally impaired american does instead of working. I tried drinking in the morning (I saw that one on TV), which, by the afternoon, I realized was a very bad idea. I tried growing a beard, which was an even worse idea… now my Xbox Avatar looks like a creepy junior college lit professor. I considered writing the great American novel, but more than a few have already walked that path. I was at a loss.

Then, during my family’s annual Thanksgiving circus event, I got to talking with my cousin Timothy. He’s a few years older than me and recently completed his Master’s in English language and literature. Needless to say, he’s been looking for a job since April. I’m going stir crazy after a month; I can’t even imagine going that long without doing something. His secret? World of Warcraft. “That’s ten hours a day right there.” Oh, Timothy.

I can’t imagine that’s what the average jobless fellow does with all his free time, but I’m sure there are many like my cousin out there. I’d venture a guess that some are unemployed because they play World of Warcraft. The fifteen bucks a month subscription fee isn’t too hard to swing. That’s, like, only four ounces of plasma.

A Confession: I have never played a massively multiplayer online game. In fact, I’ve actively avoided them. The whole grind-until-you-die-from-exhaustion angle never appealed to me. I mean, trying to balance an extremely addictive game alongside my job, my girlfriend and my social life would have been hell. I could barely find the time to play twenty minutes of Bomberman after work as it were.

Now I don’t have a job or a girlfriend or a social life. My days consist of scratching my hideous beard and staring at the phone, waiting for some big firm to call me and say they have a position open. Which, FYI, isn’t going to happen. Perhaps the time has come for me to take the plunge and become one of those people.

So, as if by some divine magic, I received an email last week from Atlus inviting me to beta test a new MMORPG. “Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine. ” It could be nothing other than fate! Or maybe the fact that I’m on the Atlus mailing list and they sent a beta key to every subscriber. Either way, I knew what I had to do.

Some Background: Megami Tensei — or MegaTen, as hopeless romantics will refer to it — is a long running series of Japanese roleplaying games. There are, seriously, like a million different titles. Not many were released in North America, but the Persona sub-series has gained a bit of a following (I consider Persona 3: FES to be one of the finest roleplaying games I have ever experienced). The quality that sets Megami Tensei games apart from the average JRPG is that they are not terrible… there are no elves or ultimate troll swords or undying gods that happen to resemble the protagonist’s father. Thematically, most MegaTen titles are set in modern day and the player has to fight demons and junk. It’s different, which is probably why the series has attracted an audience.

I downloaded the Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine client, installed it and created my account. Things can only get better from here.

A.D. 20XX TOKYO

In the aftermath of the Great Destruction, those who survived constructed shelters, waiting for the day when they would rebuild their city.

Led by the Seven Philosophers these survivors constructed a massive tower.

This tower came to be called Shinjuku Babel.

Having lost their homes, the remaining survivors took refuge in an underground city called
Third Home. This is where you learn the skills and techniques to be a Demon Buster.

Okay then! That text is all the backstory I get before I’m dumped at a menu screen. The game boldy announces “You will be able to create a new character.” The music is actually fairly interesting, despite being a twelve second loop. Before I can be able to create my character, I have to chose a world in which to inhabit. I guess such is the norm for MMOs? Different servers and all that? I only have one choice: Cerberus. How goth.

I name my character ‘Evil Tom Waits.’ Both the male and female character models look identical, except or the male being a bit more feminine. All the hairstyles are hilariously douchey. I choose ‘mushroom,’ hoping to make Evil Tom Waits resemble Edith Head. Not quite.

I’m pretty anxious to play, so I leave most of the options untouched and click start game. “You can not create a character with that name.” No explanation why. I try taking off the last name (maybe there’s some sort of celebrity defamation filter in place), but no go. “Pussycat Central” doesn’t work either. Nor does Zachary or any of my online handles. I get frustrated and start entering random phrases until I find one that’s acceptable. So, uh, Bob Murderville it is.

Start game! A computer terminal tells me that Murderville has to investigate Home II at once. No exposition or anything… I like that. Then some blocky chick in a visor says the same thing. I’m finally in the game and the amount of stuff on the hud is overwhelming. I approach a lion thing named ‘Unseasoned Cerberus’ who exclaims “I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS.” The visor chick starts talking about demon busting and saving citizens and… oh! She’s a SLUT (Systematic Linear Unavoidable Tutor). You know, the sort of NPC that you have to put up with for a while to learn how to play the game. The kind with no varying dialog and a throwaway personality. This is the opposite of something like Link’s Awakening, which features DICs (Detail Instance Coaches); multiple NPCs who subtly relay information about the controls and game mechanics. I swear that these are real acronyms and not something I made up just now to keep this post interesting. Anyway, tell me how to use the camera, SLUT!

She teaches me to move around and says I should check out the elevator. I check out the elevator. “The elevator is broken.” I go back to the visor chick. She says to go down the hallway. I go down the hallway. A dialog box warns me that I’m on my own from this point forward. Um… okay? I guess all I really need to know is how to move around. Fade to black.

“ACT 0: THE SIN OF WEAKNESS.”

Except I’m not on my own. The visor chick is somehow in the next room giving first aid to a rambling solider. “I could have saved them… if it weren’t for those darn demons!”

So far this game is unbelievably boring. The rooms are so big in relation to my character that it takes an unnecessary amount of time to move from place to place. I understand the need for a tutorial sequence (as there are a million weird buttons on the screen and the documentation is a bit lacking), but can’t something interesting happen? Shoddy flow is a breaking point for most titles; poor pacing in the first few hours of a game is unforgivable. And this is an MMO… shouldn’t I be able to interact with other people by now?

No one seems to be around. I imagine that most massively multiplayer games confine the player in such a manner during the introductory segments.

The next room has a monster in it. It’s a green slime. Left click to target, left click again to attack. Click haphazardly in rapid succession for more efficient attacks. I kill that thing dead. The following room has three slimes in it instead of one! These rooms are seriously way too big. I kill a purple monster in the adjacent room and level up. Entering the status window lets me assign ability points. Fairly straightforward. I pump it all into intelligence. Bob Murderville is obviously lacking in that area if he’s running around battling monsters by himself in an MMO.

A room with a locked door introduces an important mechanic: loot. I find 19 pieces of magnetite on a corpse. It’s kind of refreshing that the game uses actual mineral names instead of magicite or awesomtonium. Still, I wish there was some way to just buy loot using actual currency instead of having to find it in the game. That’d be really convenient. Maybe I can use this magnetite to forge a compass later on, or turn it into a ferrofluid during a challenging chemistry minigame.

A blood stained control panel sits in an adjacent room. Menacing. “A door has unlocked somewhere.” I wonder if it was the locked door from the previous room? I fight some weird ‘Gaki’ monsters and dispatch them quickly. Each one has two band-aids. I have so many band-aids! I was under the impression that “band-aid” a brand name and non-licensed versions had to refer to themselves as “adhesive bandages.” How peculiar. I should probably send an email to Johnson & Johnson letting them know about this possible trademark infringement.

Okay, how the hell was was the visor chick behind the locked door? Maybe she’s a demon! We have a conversation. There are many ellipses involved. “It seems the demons came through… the service entrance.” What the hell kind of post apocalyptic stronghold has a service entrance? That is some seriously poor planning. I make my way to the stupid service entrance.

This extended tutorial is becoming quite tiresome. The Shin Megami Tensei series is known for two things: enjoyable game mechanics and an engaging story. I have yet to experience either of those elements in this online iteration. I’ve been playing an introductory sequence for almost two hours now; the only characters I’ve encountered are paper cutouts lacking in motivation. By this point in the game I would hope that
some sort of lure would present itself, a reason to continue playing. Two hours should be the cutoff for that, right? Instead I’m making my way through a maze of identical rooms filled with identical monsters, hoping for a — HOLY SHIT WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!

Where did Kali come from? Is she a demon? I thought she was a goddess? What the hell is going on? Why are the subtitles for this scene in a crazy moon man language? The visor chick and Unseasoned Cerberus are dead at Kali’s feet. There’s a strange hissing noise and my character passes out. Fade to white. This game may just have gotten awesome.

Now Mr. Murderville is in some room that… well, looks exactly like all the other rooms. A non-player character tells me about a training computer I have to use to move on. I try it and the NPC goes into SLUT mode. “Let me tell you about controlling the camera.” Wait, what? I’m in another tutorial. What happened to Kali and all the cool stuff? Why do I have to do this again? “Use your basic attack skill to kill five slimes.”

I exit the game.

Somehow, even though I have absolutely nothing better to do, I lack the patience for this. The gameplay proceedings are downright dull… click an enemy, then keep clicking until it dies. Click it’s corpse to get loot. Click on the floor to move forward and find another enemy. I understand that a computer mouse is the primary input device, but c’mon. The mechanics should probably be a little deeper than “click on things until you level up.” This is no different than a button masher. I realize that I spent very little time with the game (in comparison to the average person’s cumulative engagement with an MMO), but I was told by two tutorials that I would not enjoy the primary method of interaction. I’m sure there are all sorts of neat Megami Tensei standards buried in the title, but they’re not worth the repetitive stress injury I’d get trying to discover them.

The comical element here is that I couldn’t stomach the game enough to get to the online portions. You know, the online portions of an online game. I was under the impression that MMORPGs start to suck due to interaction with other players. “Griefing” and all that. Normally the core elements of a title are rewarding enough for people to put up with that sort of aggravation. In the case of Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine, such activities would most likely cause severe emotional breakdowns and destroy entire families.

I realize that the flaws of this game do not reflect the genre as a whole. The issues I encountered have to do with pacing and combat, elements specific to the title. Next week I plan on spending some time with the free trial for World of Warcraft… the end all, be all massively multiplayer game. If I do not enjoy that, I’m probably a lost cause.

Maybe I’m just not cut out for this unemployed wastrel position.

When I got a PSP a couple of months ago, one of the first titles I picked up was Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions. It’s a remake of the original Final Fantasy Tactics game for the Playstation, except with some rather pleasant motion graphics thrown in. I have really nice memories of playing that original game. At least I think I do. I seem to look back on everything I experienced in high school with an undue fondness, which is most likely a result of having since been crushed by the realities of adulthood. Considering my biggest concern back then was being able to touch boobs, it’s probably quite understandable.

Let me make this clear: Final Fantasy Tactics is not a game. It’s a couple of characters, some dialog, and a million goddamn nested menus. After replaying it for the first time in over ten years, I’ve realized that any notion of a ‘game’ is so deeply buried that it can’t possibly be enjoyable. I have no idea why I remember this as a good game. Maybe I was really into menus when I was a teenager. I did wait tables throughout high school.

If you’re not familiar with tactical role playing games, allow me to break them down a bit. The player controls an army of individual characters, each with their own abilities and statistics. Battles take place on a grid, where you maneuver a couple of your characters against some other characters/monsters/undying gods. Each character gets it’s own individual turn where it can move, attack, or use really helpful support abilities such as decreasing the charisma statistic of any applicable sub genus of a certain creature type by 0.012%. So you take turns, going back and forth for hours, until the victory conditions are met. And there are a lot of contextual menus.

If that doesn’t sound like much fun, perhaps I’m not explaining it right. Okay: maybe it’s more like a gridded board-game, such as checkers. Imagine a game of checkers. Got it? Good. Now imagine a game of checkers in which you can jump and claim an opposing piece only after situating all your pieces next to it for several hours. And there are a hundred different numbers associated with each checker piece that don’t really mean anything, and once you’re finally in a position to claim a piece you have to confirm what you want to do a dozen times, and then when you try to claim it someone comes in and punches you in the neck, upending the checker board and making you start the entire match over again. That’s a tactical role playing game.

So, yeah, I have some issues with the core elements that make up the genre. But I was trying to re-familiarize myself with it using a ten year old game. Things have advanced so much in the past ten years! Ten years ago we were rocking out to Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing,” watching VHS copies of Patch Adams and thinking that punch card voting would be the way of the future. Surely tactical RPGs have advanced in the same way, right? I threw out my copy of Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions and tried Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift. At least ridiculous naming schemes have seen some major breakthroughs in the past decade.

FFTA2:GOTR (or ‘Goater,’ as it shall be known) started out by having me just move dudes around a grid and kill some monsters. That’s promising! And, even though it took several dozen nested menu commands to kill a cockatrice with 50 hit points, the level up screen after the battle reminded me why I want to like these games so badly. It’s just like the terrible Japanese RPGs I loved as a kid, except focused on teams instead of individuals. I can beef up a group of black mages and have them all tag teaming some monster who’s weak against ice while having a couple archers taking care of any melee opponents. That’s a wonderful prospect that is, unfortunately, buried under the tedium of dated game mechanics.

Although Final Fantasy Tactics A2 starts off strong, it falls into the same trappings. Laws, auction houses, territory control, looting, privileges, a bazaar… what the fuck? Advance Wars never made me put up with this shit to get to the fun stuff. These new elements don’t provide depth, they’re just more layers that the player has to wade through in order to get to the ultimate goal of killing stuff and leveling up. And, really, when your title spends twenty minutes explaining a gambling mini-game that barely relates to the core gameplay but yet neglects to tell the player how to restore magic points, you probably have some fundamental design issues.

An Aside: seriously, how do I restore MP in this game? My characters don’t seem to recover it after battle like HP, and the only item I have with such a function is Ether (which I can’t seem to buy in shops). Is there some sort of super secret code I have to input in order to unlock a series of menus that may, at some point, allow the possibility of unlocking more menus that will let me restore some frickin’ magic points?

If you can’t tell, I’m a bit angry about this whole thing. Partially because I really want to like these games and because the core idea is interesting to me… and partially because Square-Enix is, once again, profiting off of my misery. If you weren’t aware, Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (as well as most games published by Square-Enix) costs five dollars more than the average DS title. Why? I have no idea. Because nostalgic losers will pay it, I guess.