Zen in the Art of Horse-Shit

Well, there’s one consistent thing about Rockstar’s most recent games: they’re markedly inconsistent.

Red Dead Redemption II has at least three buttons for context-sensitive actions (there may be more that I can’t remember). You pick up provisions by holding the X/Square button. You pick up weapons by holding LB/L1. You mount horses and take people into choke-holds by pressing Y/Triangle.

That last, calculated choice of controller setup caused me a couple of social faux pas that quickly developed into long elusions from the police.

There are a wide variety of care-taking activities in the game. Some are quick and automatic, while others are slow and laborious. Order some fried catfish at the saloon, and your character gobbles it down in a jump cut. Take a bath at the same saloon, however, and you need to mash three buttons to make him scrub each of his extremities, one at a time.

You interact with people, camps, and horses through menus at the lower-right of the screen. For people, these menus include options for robbing, friendly greetings, or masculine taunts. For camps, you can choose to sleep, cook food or craft items, or just leave. You can give horses tender pats, brush dirt from their hides, or feed them various vegetables. To actually perform some of these actions, you need only tap a button. To perform others, you must hold a button until a ring around the button icon fills. For some actions, the options differ from occasion to occasion, so pressing Y/Triangle will make you sleep for eight hours one night, and it will make you sleep for fifteen hours on another.

The game’s story missions involve a lot of horse travel, usually in the company of your gangster buddies. Sometimes, in the course of these trips, the game will draw black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, meaning you can release the controller and just watch them talk and ride until they reach their destination. Other times, the game just keeps going, and you have to hold A/Cross and steer carefully while the characters talk and ride. If you don’t keep pace or follow the paths of your companions, they’ll yell and complain at you until you fall back in line. The game offers a “Cinematic Camera” for these situations, which helps keep your steed where it needs to be for the mission’s sake, but you still need to hold A/Cross for the duration of the ride.

The sum of this is that you simply cannot count on your character to do what you expect him to, without keeping vigil over the game’s prompts. The game involves a terrific amount of engagement and planning, in both the short and long terms. You can’t just gallop your horse through downtown Saint Denis, and then skid into the post in front of the barbershop. You might barrel over a pedestrian and wind up in jail over an assault charge. Besides, you need to position your horse just right, and then hold Y/Triangle for a couple of seconds to hitch it properly in the first place. No, no, you have to judge the road before you enter it, and then make your way along it with patience, just as you would in real city traffic. That is, of course, unless you don’t mind getting into a costly accident.

So, is all this just complaining? What do you think? The word “inconsistent” has a foul connotation, but I haven’t done anything other than describe the game’s details. When I began playing RDRII, I deemed its confusion as the mark of poor communication between a series of disparate design teams. Maybe that’s how it happened; I don’t know. Whether it was intentional or not, though, I find that I now appreciate it.

I rush through games nowadays. I was playing Skyrim a few days ago, when I felt exasperated at the repetitive combat, and the annoying characters who still gave me lip after I’d slain Alduin the World-Eater and saved their ungrateful butts. I asked myself just why in hell I was doing it. What, exactly, had compelled me to start the game up on that particular day? After some boiling, I got to the bones of my motivation, and discovered that I just wanted to get some of those god-damned entries off of my quest list.

When I manage my farm or explore a mine in Stardew Valley, I always fall into an efficient rut of behavior, always in pursuit of the most profitable wines, always seeking the next ladder to the unseen floors below.

Metroid games reward quick completion with images of Samus in varying degrees of nudity. People brag that they reached the final boss of Breath of the Wild within ten minutes of play. Online clubs devote themselves to speed-running. 

I understand that games are about goals, and that much of the joy of play is in building wise strategies to meet those goals. Of course you want a high score. Of course you want 100%-completion. Of course you want that rare achievement, so you find the quickest, most effective way to get it, and then you win. Right? I feel like I’m forgetting something.

What RDRII is telling me is to slow the hell down. Its makers worked pretty damn hard to construct its world, and though it’s little more than a weaving of smoke, so is most of real life. Do you want to rush through that, too, without taking a moment to, you know, experience the moment?

Arthur Morgan’s actions, even in the chaos of combat, are all very deliberate. He saunters. He slurs. He peeks into chests and drawers with a languid, I-got-all-the-time-the-world casualness. Sometimes he doesn’t even act when you tell him to. Not immediately, anyway. He just isn’t a hurried man. He certainly doesn’t have the crisp, stimulated motion of a Black Ops character, I’ll tell you that. Now, you can scream at the screen about it if you want to, but if you just relax and have a little faith, you’ll see. Arthur’ll get to it. Sure.

The fascinating truth is that the button menus in this game force you to think about what you’re doing right now, not about what you’re going to do a few seconds into the conceptual future. They force you into the moment. Arthur’s ponderous nature keeps you there.

This might sound peculiar, but when I hear the creaks of Arthur’s footsteps, or the rustle of his coat, or the jingling of his horse’s bridle, I think about the miracle of my own movement. How the heck do I do it, anyway? Where does the will to move come from?

I think about the minor motions of simple, daily activities, and about the ripples they send into the void. Opening the cabinet, pulling down the coffee mug, lifting the sink lever, seeing the mug fill with ripples, waves, and bubbles. Moving the mouse, opening the software, clacking the keys to make symbols that others will interpret. I do this everyday, altering and expressing into the pattern at large, and I don’t even know how it’s done. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that tremendous? Isn’t that worth stopping to wonder about?

RDRII is full of beautiful things to look at. The trees, the birds, the horses, the horizons — they’re all strikingly depicted. But isn’t the real world infinitely more beautiful than a mere simulation? Isn’t a twenty-minute drive to work just as lovely as a twenty-second, imaginary horse ride? Isn’t the idea of controlling a magnificent contraption with incremental, reflexive motions, just extraordinary?

Then, when you arrive at work, you enter into a sea of people united in the process of providing for themselves, and for the community. You are involved in a thoughtfully devised social structure where everyone makes a difference, no matter how small. Everything you say to your co-workers changes them, and everything they do changes you. Just like when you greet or antagonize those random pedestrians on the muddy streets of Valentine, you’re adding to the pattern, expressing the process. All you have to do is…well, take the time to do it, and then watch what happens. Isn’t that incredible? Isn’t that empowering? Isn’t that worth living for?

So maybe they fucked up. Maybe Rockstar screwed a whole litter of pooches and didn’t wind up with the perfect product that Nintendo or Blizzard would have made. Maybe a wide part of their audience won’t like it, and the game will get a lot of flak for it. I like it, though. My time with Red Dead Redemption II has been one of the most Zen experiences I can remember, and it’s been very good for me. When you try it out, I hope you’ll take a little time to enjoy it, too.

Breath of the Wild: Master of Disaster Mode

Holy cannoli! Nintendo wasn’t screwing around when they originally christened this “Hard Mode.” I’ve been tooling about in my DLC replay of The Legend of Zelda – Breath of the Wild and I’ve learned right away that the giant world of Hyrule is best used to give those monsters their space, man.

The new mode replaces the game’s wimpy red monsters with their black and silver brethren, and reduces weapon durability to the level of dried straw. There are also snipers hanging about in the sky, and Lynels on the Great Plateau! This new Hyrule is no place to strut like the lord of the land, at least not without some careful strategies.

First, you gotta play it sneaky. I’m not used to doing that, but it really makes a difference. Sit by fires until nighttime, and then slip into enemy camps for weapons. Then get the hell out of there before you wake anyone up. Master Mode monsters recover their health if you don’t finish them quickly, and odds are those spears and clubs you just gathered won’t last long enough to kill even one of them. Save those weapons for when you really need them, because they’re precious.

Second, getcha ass southwest, and into Lurelin Village as soon as you can. If you want to counteract that enemy health regeneration, you’ll need the bananas and Mighty Porgies found there to make strength-boosting meals. Also, Lurelin is one of the few places where you can buy Shock Arrows, whose power to disarm enemies is invaluable.

Third, play with physics. Use two-handed weapons to send bad guys soaring, specifically off of cliffs or into deep water. If you have no two-handed weapons, use charged attacks. If you have no weapons at all, use bombs. If there’s no chance for victory, knock the monsters away and run for the hills.

I’ve found that these strategies are most important when facing Silver and Black Bokoblins, who can absorb so much punishment that toe-to-toe fighting will only eat up your armaments. Moblins are usually easy to Sneakstrike or avoid altogether, while Lizalfos aren’t especially hardy, and don’t require so many hits to take down.

I’m not very far into my replay, so there may be many challenges that I haven’t seen yet. I’ve heard that there are Gold monsters, even tougher than the Silver ones, who have yet make their debut. I…think I’ll avoid the dungeons for a while so I can delay their arrival.

Still, I’m kinda looking forward to it. Encouraging creative thinking is what Breath of the Wild does best, and I can’t wait to put my Zelda skills to their greatest test yet.

Review: The Legend of Zelda – Breath of the Wild

At last, the winds of modern gaming have turned Nintendo’s sails, and tipped its fantasy-action flagship on its side. With The Legend of Zelda – Breath of the Wild, the trendsetter has become the trend follower, and though this could be viewed as a sad capitulation, I prefer to think of it as an overdue adaptation.

Most gamers revere the Zelda series as a standard-bearer for action-adventure video games. The original NES game mixed fast-paced action with a relatively large world full of secrets of surprises, and then made it all easy to learn and play. A Link to the Past took this formula and structured it to align with a simple but dramatic plot. Then The Ocarina of Time transplanted the whole thing into a beautiful production that didn’t just look like a dream, but felt like one. The controls in Ocarina of Time were genius in their elegance, employing lock-on targeting and adjustable viewpoints. Its presentation rivaled anything seen on the PlayStation. The game wasn’t as challenging as previous entries in the series, and the game featured extensive tutorials to ease players into its features, but the graduation to 3D was so impressive that this didn’t matter. All the familiar elements of Zelda were present, but they were grander and more impressive than ever before. Ocarina was everything that Zelda fans had hoped it would be: a glorious jump into a new generation, and a literal game-changer.

I guess this is all you really need to see.

Ocarina was such a success, in fact, that Nintendo itself became fearful of it. Its lengthy development had demanded a lot of work, a lot of time, and a lot of risk, and Nintendo didn’t want to mess with it. Aside from the polarizing Majora’s Mask, future titles were pretty safe in their design. There were gimmicks here and there, from Wind Waker’s sailing and toon graphics, to Skyward Sword’s motion controls, but the overall flow is the same: you explore a fantasy world, delve into a series of caves, castles, and dungeons, find special tools that aid your navigation, and then use those tools to advance to other caves, castles, and dungeons. Even the minute-to-minute action went untouched. Each game had its own unique monsters and puzzles, but they were conquered with the same backflipping and block-pushing we saw in 1998. Worst of all, the constant hand-holding only grew with each release. The language of 3D Zelda became static, and then stagnant.

Then the gameplay videos of a new, “open-world” Zelda trickled out of E3 2016, and everything changed.

The first surprise was that these videos were hours long. We weren’t looking at bite-sized, self-contained samples with trite “Thank you for playing!” messages at their ends; this was the full game, and Nintendo was just setting people loose on it. They knew that even with the unprecedented access they were allowing, players would make meager progress, if any.

The reason for this was that the players didn’t want to make progress. They were too busy bounding across grassy hills, leaping streams and scaling cliffs. They were marveling at endless, gorgeous landscapes and devising clever methods for taking out monsters. They were chasing every distraction, and not once did a fairy or a lion or some glowing, talking sword interrupt or redirect them. The world was theirs to enjoy, and on their own terms. This was Zelda as I remembered it from the good old NES days: unbound, untethered, free, wild.

With their well-advised Let’s Play approach, Nintendo conveyed a significant message: they’d recognized the rut they’d been in, they’d acknowledged the concerns of the fans, and most importantly, they’d paid attention to the market. They hadn’t overlooked the rise of Dark Souls, Skyrim, and Minecraft. They were going to take those upstarts on, and show that they still had the magic.

Breath of the Wild was Game of the Show. It will likely be Game of the Year. It sold a million Nintendo Switches. It sold me a Wii U. I don’t regret the purchase.

I won’t go over the premise or details of the game, as many other reviews have already done so, and any attempt of mine would be mere parroting. Instead, I’d like to describe what I find so confounding about the game: its unoriginality.

That’s right: Breath of the Wild doesn’t do anything I haven’t seen in video games before, and yet it somehow comes off as groundbreaking and magical. In taking familiar concepts and spinning them into Zelda’s universe, Nintendo makes the old appealing.

Not something I expected to read in a Zelda game.

Why does this work? I think it’s because Zelda fans — and by extension, Nintendo fans — have been frustrated at Nintendo’s sideline strategies as of late: aiming for a theoretical market outside of the established hardcore where Sony and Microsoft hold court. Those who grew up with the genre-defining Nintendo have been holding their breaths, waiting for the emergence of their beloved franchise into the crafting-heavy, DLC-laden, micro-transaction world that gaming has become. They have accepted that Nintendo is no longer dominant; they hope for it at least to remain relevant.

By all measures, Nintendo has done this.

Gone is the formula of “find dungeon, clear dungeon.” Breath of the Wild still has its dungeons, but they needn’t be cleared or found in order to complete the game. The overarching goal is presented right at the beginning, and all else is optional. The real focus is on the world and how the player chooses to take it in.

There are familiar concepts at work to facilitate this. You’ve got towers, a la Far Cry, that Link can climb in order to reveal portions of the world map. There are Shrines where Link must solve a Portal-sized puzzle or two so he can claim a health enhancement. There are wild horses to tame as in Red Dead Redemption, and stables where he can board or take them out, like the garages in Grand Theft Auto V.

There’s also a crafting element, in the form of cooking. It’s very much derived from alchemy in Skyrim, right down to the principles. You gather ingredients by hunting animals, picking flowers, or catching insects. You throw these ingredients in an established crafting pot and you get a healing/buffing food item. Mix two or more ingredients with similar properties, and you get an improved version of that property. Nothing new, right?

There are tweaks, though. You’re not restricted like you are in Skyrim. You don’t need to taste items and ensure that their properties match before combining them. You can experiment with multiple ingredients from the start and end up with satisfying results. Different categories of ingredients affect healing value, buff type, and buff duration. There are elaborate recipes like tarts, pies, and sushi that actually look kinda tasty. Plus, there’s a cute little animation that plays when you cook, in which all the little apples, herbs, and hunks of meat hop around to a tune.

Then there are the environmental hazards. Link has to deal with rain, snow, extreme heat, and even thunderstorms. Some of this stuff is just annoying: rain will make climbing any surface nigh impossible, while snow and sand slow Link’s movement. Others are dangerous, and even deadly, but a smart player can use them to his or her advantage. Setting a metal weapon in an enemy camp during a thunderstorm can bring about a wrathful Zeus-blast that spares Link a risky fight. Dropping fruit and meat in a volcanic area will result in instantly roasted meals with added healing potential. Toss food in icy water, and they’ll freeze over, gaining a heat-resistance buff. There’s a natural logic happening here that’s reminiscent of Minecraft, and if you ever catch yourself wondering if something will work, odds are that it will. It’s a wondrous feeling. The last time my experimentation was rewarded in a Zelda game was way back on the original NES, when I first tried burning a bush with a candle and found a hidden passage beneath it. The guy inside stole my money, but that’s not the point. The point is that I had a funny idea, tried it out, and found something I didn’t expect.

Another significant change from previous Zelda games is that Link has learned how to climb like Altair in Assassin’s Creed, or Nathan Drake from Uncharted. Link can climb almost anything now, and that means that there are no real barriers in Hyrule, other than its furthest borders, of course. Link still has to manage his stamina as he climbs, or he’ll lose his grip and fall, possibly to his death (sorry, you can’t roll when you fall from a high place anymore). Even with this smart limitation, climbing allows a tremendous amount of freedom, and different players will approach their exploration in different ways. An anal player will likely seek out every possible path around a mountain, while an impatient one will simply climb over it.

The greatest change — and to me, the most important — is the dramatic increase in difficulty. It’s very easy to die in Breath of the Wild, especially since the game doesn’t warn you of its many lethal threats. Monsters can hack off as many as ten hearts with a single blow, so it’s easy to charge into a fight completely unprepared. When Link collapses from an unexpectedly powerful attack, and that red “GAME OVER” wafts onto the screen, I’m sure that Dark Souls fans will have some unpleasant flashbacks. Beating the challenges of Breath of the Wild requires harsh learning, and perhaps the occasional face-plant.

This is critical to me because I feel the Zelda series has become far too easy for its own good. Monsters in past 3D Zeldas have been typified by their slow, lumbering movements, but here, they hop about madly, make lengthy combination attacks, and are happy to gang up on Link for unfair fights. Link still has his backflip and side dodges, but he can also parry attacks with his shield and respond with mighty counterattacks. There are satisfying callouts for these special defenses, and it’s all very Dark Souls. The toughness of the monsters demands skillful play, and I find this invigorating and refreshing. Again, I think the thrill is amplified simply because it’s unexpected from this series. I’m just so happy that Zelda is difficult again! It’s a fanboy thrill, but I’ll take it anyway.

There’s something more, though. Something greater. It’s the mixture of these many systems with this beautiful, expansive world that makes Breath of the Wild irresistible. The possibilities presented by the game’s physics, logic, and move-sets are almost limitless, and enterprising players can create action sequences far more memorable than any scripted Call of Duty set-piece:

THIS is the success of Breath of the Wild: its steadfast faith in the talents of the player. I’m sure there are plenty of people who will play this game in a predictable and conservative manner, but the option for experimentation is there, and that alone makes me very happy. For once, Zelda isn’t about searching for Hookshot targets, it’s about making your own way through, and if we’re going to get anywhere with Nintendo, we must praise them for respecting our intelligence.

Now that I’ve gushed, it’s time for the negatives. I realize that to complain about anything in such a generous feast of a game would come off as exceedingly ungrateful, but I’m compelled by honesty to mention the few minor issues I had with it. Bear with me.

First, the game chugs, and unnervingly so at times. In grassy areas with lots of monsters, the frame rate drops into the teens. It didn’t affect my fighting, but it was frustrating to see. There were also a few occasions — usually upon slaying a Moblin — when the game froze completely. Several anxious seconds passed before it snapped back into action, just an instant before I made to reset my console. Nintendo has released a patch that’s mollified the problem, but hasn’t rectified it.

Second, I wish there was greater variety in the monster types. There’s an impressive panoply of baddies in the game, and they increase in strength as Link does, but there are really only three major types you’ll deal with during your travels. As I wandered the game’s diverse environments, I hoped to encounter all kinds of monsters to match them, like nests of Skulltulas, rock-hopping Tektites, or burrowing Leevers. I soon learned, however, that Bokoblins, Moblins, and Lizalfos were the meat of the enemy army, and that was disappointing.

Finally, some of the game’s quests are bummers. Most of the side quests are quite interesting and involving, particularly the ones regarding Shrines. There are others, though, that slip into typical RPG tedium, and make me wish that Hyrule was even less populous than it already is. Bring me fifty bundles of wood. Show me a Moblin Club. Can I have ten luminous stones or restless crickets? There’s some cute and charming dressing to it, but it’s still just filler.

Still, Breath of the Wild is so engrossing that I performed every task it assigned to me. Then, as my quest list shrank and I struggled to refill it, I realized that it was time to stop screwing around and make for the final goal. That was when I stopped playing for a few days, and became hesitant, uncomfortable about returning to it.

The reason was simple, and yet oh-so-rare: I didn’t want it to be over. That may be the kindest, most recommending thing to be said about a piece of entertainment, and Breath of the Wild is one of those precious few pieces that earns it. I can’t say that this is my favorite Zelda game; that title remains with the very first Zelda on the NES, which is short, so I can play through it every week if I want to. Breath of the Wild is like an epic novel that one reads once every few years. You’ll never forget it, though. Once you’ve played it, it will always be a part of you.

Controller1.com rating: 3/3

Top Non-Cartoons: Innerspace

This may be a bit on-the-nose, what with Innerspace being a Joe Dante film, starring Martin Short, and featuring a cameo by Chuck Jones. Still, I think it deserves recognition as a Non-Cartoon, if only because we just don’t see a lot of movies that are this damn crazy anymore, and certainly not done this well.

Innerspace came out in 1987, right around the time I was heavy into game-books like Choose Your Own Adventure. I had recently picked up Explorer Destination: Brain at my school’s Book Fair and read it to tatters. I think I learned more about human biology from that silly little book than I did from any science class.

Anyway, so jazzed was I about adventures in human anatomy that Innerspace grabbed me from its first trailer. It had informed me of the basic plot: a miniaturized pilot (Dennis Quaid) gets injected into the body of an everyman (Short), who seeks the aid of the pilot’s girlfriend (Meg Ryan) to get him out. It sounds like a decent sci-fi setup, even if it’s one that’s been done before. One thing I’ve learned, however, is that when you go into a Joe Dante picture, you never get quite what you expect.

The film has all the elements of a sci-fi thriller, but they’re all bent into weird angles. Short’s everyman, Jack, is a neurotic mess who has nightmares about grumpy ladies attacking him at his cashier job. Quaid’s heroic pilot, Tuck, is a cocky drunk who smacks himself for a quick psych. When Tuck’s miniaturization experiment is raided by thieves, the lead scientist, Ozzy, escapes by zipping down a highway on a ten-speed. He tries to vanish into the crowd at a mall, but one of the bad guys shoots him with a gun hidden in his prosthetic hand. Ozzy saves Tuck by injecting him into Short’s ass-cheek, and then proceeds to bleed out while surrounded by performers wearing animal costumes.

As you can see, this movie’s on the edge of Goofytown, and it doesn’t stop at the outskirts. Tuck eventually makes contact with Jack in a series of hilarious and awkward scenes that leave Jack wondering if he’s been possessed. Jack meets Ryan’s character, Lydia, who’s not only Tuck’s girlfriend, but an investigative reporter looking into the aforementioned tech thieves, and promptly falls in love with her. The two work together to trap a fence called The Cowboy (Robert Picardo), an Eastern European who’s about as far from a real cowboy as anyone can be. All the while, Jack has to avoid telling Lydia the truth about Tuck, simply because Tuck’s embarrassed about being so tiny.

Things just keep building like this, taking turn after kooky turn, until Tuck is dueling a cyborg over an ocean of bubbling stomach acid, while Jack and Lydia fly down busy roads in an out-of-control car, battling arms dealers who are the size of children.

Don’t ask me how it all works. I’m just not that smart. I’m sure the amazing special effects help. The visuals from inside Jack’s body are quite impressive, even by today’s standards. Tuck starts his journey in Jack’s buttocks (the fat cells are really just balloons), and using the bloodstream like a highway, he visits some very real-looking eyes, inner ears, lungs, and heart valves. Using slow motion and clever sound effects, Dante makes the human body into a majestic and scary place.

More important than the visuals, though, are the performances. Martin Short finds real  sympathy as Jack, even when he goes full screwball. Short can be grating in other films, but I think he’s palatable here because his overacting seems appropriate for the extreme situations he’s put in. He’s also grounded by Tuck, a charming rogue who’s been forced into near-powerlessness. Quaid spends most of the movie scrunched in a blinky, buttony computer console, yet he manages to project great energy. The two actors share nearly no screen time, but they somehow play off each other, with powerful and funny results. Innerspace pulls off many great feats, but making us care about its leads, in the midst of its insane plot, is by far its greatest one.

There are so many crazy little details and characters that make Innerspace memorable that it’d do no good to try and list them all. The movie is a mural of silliness, painted corner-to-corner with colorful characters and wacky moments. A lot of it is corny, but a lot of it is inspired, and there’s an innocence to its tone and aesthetic that’s missing from comedies today. The more I watch it, the more I lament that we may never see a movie quite like it again.

If Innerspace were to be animated, it’d have to be done by Madhouse, the Japanese studio that brought us the glorious Stink Bomb. That cartoon was another tale of science gone wrong, and it also featured a bit of a dope at its center, so the parallels are there. While I doubt that even their greatest wizards could channel Dante’s sly directing style, I’m sure they could add a voltage to the film that would turn it into something special.

It’d sure be tough to replace that face-changing scene, though. I think animating that part would only make it look worse!

The Five Weaknesses of Zelda

I wrote the following essay in 2003, after playing through both the Japanese and US versions of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Now that Breath of the Wild is on its way, I find that the essay makes for some interesting reading. I hope you enjoy.

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The Five Weaknesses of Zelda

I love The Legend of Zelda series, but there are some unfortunate trends happening in it that have ruined the wondrous feelings I had while exploring the very first land of Hyrule on my NES. Listed below are five suggestions aimed primarily at Wind Waker, but that should have been applied to each Zelda game since A Link to the Past. I am aware of the need for game franchises to evolve as the market grows, but these aspects I condemn are altogether weak, and in their retooling I see the series’ return to its former glory.

Here are five things Nintendo needs to do to Zelda.

1.) Remove needless “RPG” elements.

Start by eliminating the worthless “Magic Meter.” That big green bar not only clutters the screen, but it seems to have been added only to give the Zelda games a closer resemblance to popular RPGs. Rarely have I emptied this thing, let alone wasted a bottle on some green potion to refill it. Thinking over the items that have required “magic power” to function through the series, I notice that none of them are useful enough to warrant limiting. The rods and canes from A Link to the Past, the spinning sword technique, the magic spells from Ocarina of Time…none of them aided me outside of certain unique circumstances. Certain tools that can be abused, such as Din’s Fire from Ocarina and the Deku Leaf from Wind Waker, should come with built-in limitations rather than share a meaningless resource with other items.

Towns need to go, as well. Bastions of civilization are integral to gameplay in series such as Dragon Warrior and Chrono Trigger, but they have little use in Zelda games (with the exception of Majora’s Mask, whose time-based gameplay created unique possibilities with regards to NPCs). Their needlessness can be identified by noting their usage in other titles. What are towns good for in other games? Shopping? Well, there’s no need to shop in a Zelda game since hearts and weaponry can be replenished from pickups in the wilderness, and all of the special treasures are found in dungeons. Recovering health? Zelda has Fairy Fountains and potions for that. Getting clues for upcoming quests? Well, allow me to say that I was able to complete a Japanese copy of Wind Waker after going in cold and not knowing a word of the language. I missed a couple of sidequests as a result, but my enjoyment of a game has never hinged on the presence of a character trophy collection. My progression from one goal to the next involved little more than deciphering the game’s many visual cues, which comprise another complaint that I will share further below.

Early in my first playthrough of Wind Waker, I watched Link regain consciousness in the little red boat in that tiny cave at the edge of Taura Island and felt a bolt of excitement. The pirates’ assault at the Island of the Magical Beast had failed, and now I was alone in a new land, rescued by a kind god of the sea and spirited to a quiet place away from enemy eyes, a lone adventurer on an unknown beach. I gleaned from the cinematics that the boat wasn’t seaworthy, and that I needed to find something to shove it off. Thus I expected to find a barren ruin about me, connecting to a dangerous network of passages infested with monsters. Somewhere inside this labyrinth would be the item I’d need to fix my damaged vessel. After skipping through the boat’s monologue, I ran out of the cave and heard chirpy, cheerful music playing. Disappointment swept over me as I realized that I was on a settled island. I wasn’t alone after all. The boat hadn’t brought me to the tiny cave to protect me. This beach wasn’t wild or unknown. The aura of mystery was gone. This place had already been discovered. And now, instead of having to explore a creature-crawling dungeon, I had to talk to a bunch of people.

In the original Zelda, the only people who talked to players were the survivors of Ganon’s invasion, scattered remnants of a devastated kingdom who were reduced to living in caves. Sometimes they sold treasures or information, sometimes they gave money, sometimes they offered clues, but they never asked pointless favors, they never held the player back, and they never seemed safe. It was a subtle way of explaining why Link was alone on his journey: these folks were depending on him to complete HIS goals, not theirs.

It can be argued that a Zelda world without settlements would be a boring place. I disagree. I have played through Ocarina several times over, and with each playthrough I find myself doing less and less talking. This isn’t because I know what I am going to be told by each character, but because the things each character says are inane. So what if that guy’s proud of his beard? Is this Mido guy supposed to be funny? Am I the only one who never bothers to sell anything “with C?” Should I be offended that Malon keeps calling me a “fairy boy?” As such, I have decided that Hyrule’s townsfolk are altogether unnecessary and that the places where they live are little more than poor attempts at duplicating an element of successful RPGs. Now I run straight through Zelda towns and only stop to talk with those folks who give me treasures.

Which makes for a fine segue into the last “RPGish” concept that Zelda has adopted and which now must be abolished: treasure chests. They were cute in A Link to the Past, in which the newly implemented “action” button needed as many uses as possible, and opening chests seemed as good an option as any. The “opening” cinematic that was added in Ocarina of Time was meant to generate suspense and excitement in players as they waited an extra five seconds to discover which item they were to receive. Now, however, the chests have worn out their welcome. In Wind Waker, the opening animation plays every single time Link finds a large treasure chest, whether the contents are critical to game progress or not. With dozens of undersea and hidden chests in the game to open, that’s a whole lot of repetitious animation to sit through.

A fundamental question of design arises from this: Why disconnect the player from a reward with a container, anyway? Aren’t the activities of seeing a pickup icon on the game screen and moving the player-character to touch it both parts of basic player/game interaction? Metroid Prime has proven that there is still satisfaction to be drawn from the simple action of moving the player-character into an object to obtain it. Despite their efforts at creating an immersive, realistic environment, Metroid Prime’s designers chose to display Energy tanks, missile expansions, and major power-ups as icons that float, glow, and even hum for no reason other than to make them recognizable to the player, even from a distance. None of the major pickups in Metroid Prime is stuck inside some futuristic container that Samus must open for the sake of context. The point is to instill the excitement of discovery in the player, and encourage them to rush up and grab their prize. The game still features scripted animations that depict the collection of most power-ups, but they aren’t shown until the player actually comes into contact with the pickup icon.

These concepts of pickup design may detract from the game’s realism, but they promote a sense of active player control. In contrast, the scripted animations of Zelda which describe the receipt of an item foster distance and passivity. Ugly and surprising examples of such passive receipt are everywhere in Wind Waker: consider the episodes when Link attains his first bottle, the Grappling Hook, and even the game’s titular treasure, the Wind Waker itself. All of these items are just given to the player in lengthy cutscenes displayed as the plot requires them. Ocarina of Time started this trend with its odd Spiritual Stones and Sages’ Seals: untouchable, completely scripted objects given little meaning by the game’s design and plot except as abstract marks of player progress.

This growing player/inventory disconnection is a serious threat to the Zelda experience, one that began with the incorporation of treasure chests for the sake of making the series more “RPG-like.”  Eliminating the Dragon Warrior/Final Fantasy chest concept from Zelda will help the series return to its action gaming roots.

2.) Say no to pot, grass and rock.

A disturbing trend has developed in the Zelda series in which Link has turned his sword away from monsters in favor of harmless stationary objects, namely the stones, bushes and jars that are sprinkled across Hyrule like so much grass seed. Upon their introduction in A Link to the Past, these environmental accents were innovative: to the designer they were a new method of hiding passages and treasure, to the player a new level of interactivity with the game world. Now, however, they’ve simply become replacements for more deserving targets.

Here is a quote from the original Legend of Zelda’s instruction manual: “The basic principle of the game is, of course, to defend yourself and destroy the enemy one after the other in quick succession.” This line is accurate because Hyrule used to be packed with monsters. Everywhere Link went, he had to fight for his life. Though his adversaries were not intelligent or aggressive, players still needed to think fast and move faster to adapt to each situation. When things got too hot, players could either retreat from their current course and run for a fairy spring, or continue fighting, praying that the next enemy they dispatched would drop a precious heart so that they might continue their adventures a little while longer.

Boy, those were the days, weren’t they? Ganon’s army has since seen a great reduction in volunteers. The overworlds of recent Zelda titles are sparsely populated, and the creatures that do appear there fail to present a significant threat. Even the dungeons aren’t as dangerous as they used to be, as their denizens either lumber about like tortoises (moblins, ironknuckles, redeads), or are rooted in place (skulltulas, deku babas, octoroks). There are a few monster types that provide a thrilling challenge (the ‘fos monsters in particular), but their encounters are few and far between, and often over too soon.

It is presumed that this change in focus from furious charge to leisurely tour took place to ease gamers through the series’ transition to 3D, but that guiding hand has been too gentle. I haven’t lost once while playing a 3D Zelda game. In contrast, I’ve perished several times in each of the Game Boy Zeldas, and dozens of times on the NES Zeldas. The greatest challenge to the original Zelda wasn’t in figuring out where to go next, it was in surviving the trip. Clearing dungeons didn’t involve endless hunts for keys (there was an overabundance of keys in that game), it was about fighting through hordes of Wizzrobes, Like Likes and Darknuts, using reflexes and skill to pick them off one by one until it was safe to move forward. The monsters were tough, too; there were no quarter-heart-taking wimps in this game. The beefiest monsters like the Blue Darknuts would relieve an unarmored Link of two entire hearts if they touched him, and players couldn’t go and chop a bush or smash a jar to get them back. They had to go right back into the fray and slay until the desired pickups appeared.

What’s scary is that other games have adopted this useless element of incidental breakable objects as though it’s a legitimate step forward for gameplay. Even the Diablo series and its clones have pots and barrels to kick. Designers have forgotten that these characters are not landscapers, they’re warriors. They wield weapons, not tools. They fight evil, not aphids. I spend more time in Wind Waker cutting grass than I do fighting monsters, and it’s a boring shame to witness. Zelda is about action, not yardwork.

3.) Consolidate the subscreens.

A Link to the Past has the right idea: in it, there is a main screen for action, a subscreen for information, and a map screen for guidance. That’s it. That’s all any player should need.

Unfortunately, in Ocarina, the developers saw fit to add an “equipment screen” and “Quest Status screen” to this formula. As a result, Ocarina has one of the least elegant subscreens ever designed. The concept of an equipment screen in a Zelda game is questionable at best: weapons such as the Megaton Hammer were used with the C-buttons, so the Giant’s Knife could have been too. Boots should also have been relegated to the item buttons, as they are in Wind Waker, since the Water Temple demonstrated to players how annoying it is to have to pause the action dozens of times just to move from room to room.

As for the shields, it should stand to reason that players will always want the best, all-purpose defenses equipped, and as such any upgradeable aspects of Link’s character should have a single, layered path for improvement. After all, the Mirror Shield was just as useful as the Hylian Shield and it had the added ability to reflect beams of light; why didn’t it just replace the Hylian Shield altogether? Why is the choice even available when one shield is only better than the previous shield?

Then there are the tunics. As Link discovers the tunics that allow him to breathe underwater or withstand great heat, these abilities should simply accrue upon his character. The player shouldn’t be forced to go into the equipment screen to switch tunics so as to enter a different environment. The Metroid games already have this down pat with their handling of suit upgrades, why did Zelda make this mistake? Thankfully, the equipment screen was axed in Majora’s Mask, replaced with the much more appropriate “Mask Screen.” Here’s hoping it never appears again.

Now we come to the “Quest Status Screen,” another that can be removed with little hindrance to gameplay. In Wind Waker, the subscreen is divided into an “Item Screen” and “Quest Status” screen, and I still don’t understand why, when several of the elements found on the Quest Status Screen could easily fit on the Item Screen if certain game elements were designed and organized better.

First of all, all of the item and equipment graphics can be shrunk down, as can the Triforce display. After all, most video game players aren’t blind, and those who are probably don’t play Zelda.

Next, the main widgets of collection (Triforces, Seals, Instruments of the Siren, etc.), can easily fit on the Item Screen. This consolidates information and acts as a more effective method of reminding the player of how far along they are in the main thread of the quest. Every time players go to change items, they will see just how much farther they need to go.

Item #4 of this essay will deal with the issue of Heart Pieces as gameplay elements, but for the purposes of this subject of subscreens I will say to simply eliminate the Heart Piece display altogether.

Finally, get rid of the song list. Playing musical instruments with the controller buttons or analog sticks is fun the first few times, but tiresome each thereafter. Since all other objects and characters in the world freeze while instruments are in use, there is no point in making the player go through the lengthy doldrums of recalling and then inputting extended button sequences. If Link is going to use a musical instrument, let him use it the way he did his ocarina in Link’s Awakening: by choosing a specific song beforehand in the Item screen and then playing it with a single button press. By using this method for playing instruments, designers eliminate the need for memorization, and thus the song list can be altogether cleared from the Quest Status screen.

With all these pointless graphical elements removed, the required elements can be retained and placed in the extra space made on the Item screen by shrinking the graphics there, and lo and behold, all information has been condensed into one screen. The game is streamlined, players have less to remember, and designers have less work to do.

4.) Stop with the collections.

You know what I’m talking about: Heart Pieces, Golden Skulltulas, Joy Pendants, Chuchu Jellies, Golden Feathers, Knight’s Crests, Skull Necklaces, and all the other objects that are useless unless you have a certain amount of them. There is only one item type that should function this way, and it’s called money.

Too often has the thrill of discovering a secret cave been defused by the anticlimactic Heart Piece at its end. The reward for the player’s exploration is an object that is worthless until three more of them are found. In the original Zelda, players would often find whole Heart Containers in the caves they blasted open. Awarding entire Heart Containers in one swoop may seem to lessen the challenge of a Zelda game, but if designers would make the monsters less wussy, this wouldn’t be an issue.

In Metroid games, players don’t have to retrieve four Energy Tank “pieces” before powering up: they get the whole thing at once. The enhancement, and thus the reward, is felt right away. The reason it works is that the game is tapered and balanced well enough to continually challenge players even as they grow stronger and more skilled.

In fact, there isn’t a single instance of pointless collection in Metroid Prime. The only objects that function as a collection in that game are the twelve Chozo artifacts, and gathering those is the main goal of the game. There aren’t any items that need to be hoarded and brought to an NPC for a reward. There are no items that need depositing or reforging or rebuilding before they become useful to the player. Everything works at once, so when players attain something, they know it’s important, and they keep their eyes open for more.

If Zelda’s designers want to make their game feel longer by making players collect things, why don’t they dip into the bag of tricks from the original Zelda, and bring back the treasure-hawking merchants? By tempting players with expensive shields and rings that cannot be found anywhere but in shops, designers can encourage players to hunt monsters and seek out caves to gather Rupees, an asset that has been ill-used in recent Zelda games. The disappointment that used to settle on players who found Rupees inside of chests instead of more powerful items would turn to cheer, especially if the archaic wallet-size limitation is removed, and players are allowed to hold as many as they can find. What’s more, by driving players to gather Rupees and nothing else, designers won’t have to waste valuable development time coming up with flimsy NPC fetch quests, so everyone will be happy.

5.) Let the players do the thinking.

In the first Legend of Zelda, players had only their brains and the instruction manual to guide them in their adventure. Almost all of the dungeon entrances were hidden. The occasional old crone or hermit found tucked away in a cavern may offer some clues about where to find them, but said clues were cryptic (not to mention poorly translated), and so the players were encouraged to think, to explore, and most of all, to experiment. In their hunts for the next piece of the Triforce, players would bomb every wall, burn every tree, push every rock to succeed.

Sometimes these searches would get tedious, or even frustrating, and players who had gotten stuck and exhausted of time or energy would often quit the game for a while before returning, drawn by its action and spot-on play control. They would proceed to enjoy themselves as they fought their way through Hyrule, until through some chance bombing, burning, or flute-playing, they would come across that dungeon which had so far eluded them, and interest would rise anew.

Such personal quests have all but disappeared from present Zelda games, in which every goal is spelled out and underlined before the player in extensive cutscenes and dialogue.

What’s worse is that every item’s usage is described by the game as well, and as such there are no surprises as to what an item may be used for. Part of the joy of exploration in Zelda was discovering new ways of interacting with the environment so as to find new areas to explore. The instruction manual for the original Zelda didn’t explain how the boomerang could be used to catch items, nor did it explain how candles could be used to burn down trees, nor did it describe how bombs could be used to find hidden caves or blast open walls in dungeons. Players had to realize these through experimentation and effort, and when something unexpected happened, accompanied by the now overused “Zelda secret” jingle, jaws would drop in astonishment.

Now the bombs, boomerangs, hookshots and other items have been around so long that their usage is clear even to newcomers to the series, and those who don’t have an idea will be promptly filled in by the game’s “helpful” text. It doesn’t help that every target for these items is now marked or made clear in some way which discourages experimentation. Wind Waker is replete with cracked walls, wooden pegs, and bull’s-eye circles all in plain sight. Whatever happened to instilling subtle suspicion in players by placing blank walls, tree branches or empty torch hangers in unusual places?

What caused Zelda’s designers to underestimate the intelligence and moreover, the creativity of players? Long player-driven quests to unearth hidden treasures and passages can be aggravating, but in taking the aggravation away, designers have also robbed players of the reward that accompanies the rare success.

In vast, detailed 3D worlds, even the best player will need some guidance, so being aided by in-game text isn’t always a bad thing, but sometimes players should be allowed the freedom to figure out what to do on their own. Once again, the Zelda design team need only look at Metroid Prime to see a decent, though not perfect, method of mixing player freedom with a guided quest. In Prime, Retro implemented an optional “Hint System” that gave players a helpful push towards the next step of game completion. Attentive players, however, could go through the entire game without using it, as each power-up in the game is placed to help players reach areas they’d already seen, but were unable to access.

Zelda used to be designed in the same way, but in Wind Waker, the gameplay has mutated to the point where players are pushed through nonsensical plotlines and disconnected locales, so they need to be inundated with information in order to get to places they hadn’t even thought of approaching.

This can be blamed on the ocean-based overworld, which cuts landed locations off from each other by empty distance, but even with a large ocean, the game world could have been designed with greater cohesiveness. Today’s gamers are smart. They can handle it. If I could finish the original Zelda at seven years old, I think that today’s children could handle a greater challenge than Wind Waker any day.

So the Zelda game series needs some serious retooling to reclaim the throne of action-adventure games. With all these steps to take, the game may as well undergo a whole design overhaul, and why not? Good graphics, even cel-shaded ones, don’t create a beloved franchise, innovation does. Perhaps a Zelda game unlike any other is in order to revive interest in the series. One with new villains, new worlds, and entirely new mechanics. Swordplay that doesn’t involve merely pushing the B button repeatedly. A life meter that doesn’t use hearts. All this might sound strange, but who knows what new concepts Nintendo could come up with if they unfettered themselves from the five weaknesses they’ve pressed upon the once infallible Zelda franchise? Players would get something wonderful that doesn’t emulate RPGs, doesn’t have a bunch of ancillary decorations to destroy, doesn’t require navigation through unnecessary screens, doesn’t force players to gather worthless trinkets, and doesn’t do all the thinking for them.

After all, they’ve already lost the console wars; what else do they have to lose?

ULTIMATE TOP CARTOONS #4: Wallace & Gromit in The Wrong Trousers

And now for something completely different.

If you haven’t heard of Wallace and Gromit, it’s time you got plugged in, because these claymation characters have had some wonderful adventures. Wallace is a brilliant but scatterbrained scientist, and Gromit is an intelligent but silent dog. The two characters have a sort of Inspector Gadget/Brain relationship, in which Gromit constantly has to bail Wallace out of trouble of his own inadvertent making, and the formula never fails to entertain.

Wallace and Gromit starred in three televised specials: A Grand Day Out (Oscar-nominee), The Wrong Trousers (Oscar-winner), and A Close Shave (another Oscar-winner). So successful were they that they went on to a big-screen feature, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (which also won an Oscar). I find, however, that the long format doesn’t suit these two very well. The Wrong Trousers, which fits into a half-hour, feels better paced than the movie, and it’s still the best cartoon that Aardman has yet made.

The Wrong Trousers starts off with a rather simple scene: Gromit spends his birthday morning collecting the mail and preparing breakfast. On paper, this sounds quite dull; not the sort of thing you’d want to start your cartoon with. However, the animation has an easy, languid quality that’s incredibly attractive, and that makes even ordinary actions fun to watch. It invests us almost instantly, too: we get the sense this is a (relatively) realistic world we’ve entered into, where life is really all about enjoying a good cuppa. It doesn’t matter that it’s a clay dog selling us on this, either; our minds are already hooked into this place. Just watching old Wallace eat his toast with jam invariably makes me hungry for a slice of my own. How does that work?

Anyway, poor Gromit is feeling pretty neglected. Wallace behaves as though he’s forgotten the doggy’s birthday, and though that turns out to be a ruse, his gift doesn’t help matters.

It’s a pair of mechanical “techno-trousers,” which can be programmed to walk over predetermined routes with its front control panel. With a lead attached, they’re the perfect automated dog-walkers. Gromit isn’t too thrilled with the present, though. For one thing, the trousers move too quickly for Gromit to enjoy his trips, and for another, it seems as though Wallace only got them so that the two could spend less time together.

So when budget troubles cause Wallace to let out a room to an emotionless penguin…

…the sensitive Gromit really starts to feel unwanted.

This odd lodger insists on taking Gromit’s room instead of the spare. In the mornings he hogs the bathroom, and fetches Wallace’s paper and slippers before Gromit can. At night, he chuckles over cheese and wine with Wallace, and then leaves his radio on at full blast, even when he goes out.

Also, he has this unexpected interest in those techno-trousers.

Feeling that he’s lost Wallace’s favor, Gromit runs away, and moves into a rubbish can. Then, one morning, he wakes to see Wallace wandering around town, stuck in the techno-trousers! The machine’s control panel is missing, and Wallace has no idea who’s operating them. Gromit is no dummy, though, and he decides to do a little snooping.

Gromit tails the penguin into an alley, where he takes cover inside a cardboard box and witnesses some strange behavior.

Mysterious music plays, and we watch through Gromit’s eyes as the penguin scribbles notes, scales walls, and measures windows (I particularly admire the animation of the measuring tape). The effect is surprisingly eerie and menacing, and the scene closes with a “gotcha” moment that’s both thrilling and hilarious.

Gromit returns home to discover that this “paying guest” is planning an audacious heist. The building he was casing is actually a museum where a diamond exhibit is taking place. Using the vacuum-soled boots of the techno-trousers, the penguin sends Wallace marching up the side of the museum, down through a ventilation duct in the roof, and then upside-down along the ceiling to where the diamond lies.

The heist scene, for all its silliness, is nail-biting all the way through. Nick Park, who wrote and directed Trousers, obviously knows suspense. He knows when things should go smoothly, and he knows when things need to go wrong, so when the penguin sweats, you’ll sweat with him. Park earned his Oscar for this scene alone — though there’s one coming up that’s even better, if you can believe it.

The thief manages to get the booty back to home base, where he locks Wallace and the trousers in a wardrobe. Gromit steps in to save the day, but this penguin’s packing heat, so doggy and master are soon reunited.

Gromit manages to short the techno-trousers and make them charge at the penguin, smashing the wardrobe open in the process. In surprise, the penguin leaps to the engine of a passing toy train, a train whose tracks run all over the house. Thus begins the most gripping and memorable sequence of The Wrong Trousers: the train chase.

This chase has the kinetic, slapstick spirit of a Roger Rabbit cartoon, but it’s really a very smart scene in which Gromit and the penguin continually thwart and outwit each other.

And you’d have to be dead inside not to laugh and cheer at some of the things that happen:

Perhaps fittingly, the techno-trousers themselves save the day when they block the penguin’s path and cause everyone to crash in one place. What happens next is so hilariously satisfying that it’s certain to make at least one person in the room stand up and applaud. I know this because that person is usually me.

It should be clear by now that I adore this movie, and that I regard it more highly than most cartoons in the world. Still, I struggle to define exactly what it is that I love about it so much. The Wrong Trousers is a subtle and gentle thing; it’s about as far from “in your face” as possible. It doesn’t have the artistic pizzazz of the other Ultimate Top Cartoons, nor does it have the emotional or narrative complexity.

So what is it?

I think what impresses me most about The Wrong Trousers is that it defies expectation and classification. It pulls some chips away from Safe, Cute, and Charming, puts them down on Menace, Suspense, and Violence, and then goes and shoots seven after seven after seven. I mean, that’s got to be some kind of miracle.

Divine or not, The Wrong Trousers is a joy to watch over and over and over. I think it is the most humble of the Ultimate Top Cartoons, but it is also the only one you can watch with kids around, and the surest to brighten your day and leave you smiling. I recommend you take it with a nice port, and some Rogue River Blue.

Game Review: Grand Theft Auto V

**

Developed by Rockstar Games. Published by Take-Two Interactive. Available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Reviewed on Xbox One.

Guess what? Grand Theft Auto is back…again. Like other hits released at the tail end of the last console generation, the gaming event that was Grand Theft Auto V has received the “Definitive Edition” treatment: a next-gen coat of paint, some added features, and a re-release at full price. Should you shell out for it a second time? Well, a year ago I would have said “Hell yeah” simply because of the hype, but now I’d give a careful “Yes, so long as you tweak your expectations.” GTA has changed a lot over the past thirteen years, and its current focus might not be where you want it to be.

By now, you already know what GTA V is about: three criminals with very different backgrounds unite and perform a series of heists around the fictional city of Los Santos. You have Michael, a former bank robber who’s having a mid-life crisis. You’ve got Franklin, a repo man who’s trying to break free from his gang ties. Then there’s Trevor, a manic meth-head who dreams of a life of chaos. When these three get together, you get shooting, you get driving, you get carjacking, you get a whole hell of a lot of missions. You know the drill by now: steal cars, drive here, shoot that, lose the cops, torture this guy, blow up that guy, watch that woman get sucked into a jet engine. Typical GTA stuff. In fact, it feels a little tiresome by now. What puts the missions a cut above other games is the story. There’s a constant stream of social commentary flowing through this game, and you’ll love it if you can get on its cynical wavelength. I don’t usually care about story in games, but I care about this one. Of course, the plot isn’t sensical or plausible, and Michael and Trevor are such strong characters that they overshadow the rest of the cast, but there’s some heady, heavy stuff in here. The cutscenes are well-acted, dramatic, shocking, and they’re even laugh-out-loud funny. If you play GTA V just to screw around in the open world, you’re missing the best parts.

It helps that they look breathtaking. GTA V looked incredible even on consoles past, but now it’s even better. The characters have convincing faces and movements. Car interiors, the only aspect of the previous version that looked bad, now have full ridges and contours. The California sun bathes the world in beautiful, natural-looking color, and the northern deserts look like photographs. Never before has a game inspired me to stop what I was doing just so I could watch a freaking sunrise. Those bleeding pinks and grays…they really just nailed it. Los Santos isn’t just a place to make trouble, it’s a place to sightsee (an activity that works especially well with the new first-person viewpoint). If you look around long enough, you’ll find some cool surprises to look at, though that’s pretty much all you can do with them.

I have to say, GTA V is a strange product overall. Within the framework of its missions, it’s an excellent, story-based video game, but between those missions, it’s like visiting an amusement park, complete with the walks and the waiting and the expensive food. It is the latest step on a path that Rockstar started on in 2002 with Vice City. That was the point when they steered away from the development of groundbreaking gameplay, and focused on the construction of incredibly detailed worlds. I don’t just mean that their games have great graphics, either. While other game makers concentrate on stretching their environments to enormous sizes and packing them with slightly varied side quests, Rockstar pours its efforts into that less-tangible quality of atmosphere. Their mantra seems to be “deeper characters, smarter dialogue, more texture in the corners.” You can trace the rise of this design dogma as it threads through games like GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption, and Max Payne 3, with GTA V sitting at the pinnacle. No one else does world-building of this caliber. Even role-playing games, with their volumes of backstory and lore, don’t capture the sensation of BEING THERE as well as GTA V does, but that doesn’t mean it’s always exciting.

I’m just going to say it: there are a lot of parts of GTA V that are pointless, or just plain dull. Driving from one place to another can take a good long while, and it actually made me sleepy at times. The game has ATM machines that display your cash balance, when your HUD already does a perfectly good job of that. You can take a star tour, get a lap dance, hunt animals, run marathons, do yoga, play tennis and golf, and even go skydiving, and all these activities are surprisingly rich little mini-games, but, really, just…why? Isn’t this supposed to be a game about crime? Oh, and get a rubber band out of the junk drawer if you want to complete the cult storyline, because one of its missions requires Michael to WALK FIVE MILES IN A CIRCLE. I’m not joking. I know it’s supposed to be satirical of cult practices, but five miles? Wouldn’t one mile get the point across? No video game should ask such a thing. It’s like something Andy Warhol would come up with if he made games. If it’s a joke, then the joke’s on us.

What’s even more frustrating is that GTA V introduces some neat gameplay ideas to balance out the boredom, but then it leaves them half-baked. Michael can saunter around his mansion and say hi to his wife and kids, but he can only have conversations with them over the phone. You can take pictures with your phone, but you can’t record video. Franklin has a Rottweiler named Chop who can sniff out collectibles or run down bad guys, but he only features in one or two missions. Hand-to-hand combat is much more responsive than it was in GTA IV, but strangely enough, most of the people you fight will hit the floor after a single punch. You can swap characters at will during some missions, but it’s only useful at certain scripted moments. The famous heists appear full of emergent possibilities from the surface, as they allow players to pick their plans and allies, but all these choices affect are the branches in pre-determined events. You don’t get to post shooters, choose vehicles, draw escape routes, or anything like that.

Then there are the controls. Like the game’s design, they’re not exactly bad — they’re greatly improved over GTA IV’s — they’re just unconventional. Most games assign context-sensitive actions to a single button, but GTA V uses three. The buttons used for reloading weapons and taking cover also stubbornly differ from gaming standards. The game’s generous auto-aim makes most firefights too easy, but if you turn it off, they get too hard. There’s no cruise control option, in a game whose long freeways demand it. And you still have to hold a button to make your character jog at a reasonable speed…but not in multiplayer or first-person mode. It makes no sense. Just ditch the run button already!

These oversights aren’t deadly to GTA V, as they’re from the same vein of niggling problems common to most Rockstar games. It’s just that I think a lot of this stuff should be ironed out by now, especially in a second release. I also think this game would be better if it was structured like Max Payne 3, and if the game world felt, well, more like a game. The truth is, though, that this is a story-based game whose story is so good it makes everything surrounding it look lame and unnecessary, and sadly, most of it is.

The good news is that you have a lot of good options for open-world games now. GTA isn’t your sole choice. Get Far Cry 4 if you want a variety of activities with emergence and freedom of play. Get Sunset Overdrive if you want constant engaging action. Get GTA V, though, if you want to take part in a beautiful, well-produced, action-adventure story that’s on par with AMC’s best dramas. Just expect a little ennui dashed in there as well. Sorry, but you can’t have it all.

Kifflom!