Home of New York’s Intellivisiongentsia
Today on the Dispatches, we reach the end of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and perhaps the end of the Solid Snake’s story, altogether. But just because the Metal Gear saga’s over doesn’t mean the series isn’t about to continue, in all likelihood.
Continue reading ‘Dispatches: Metal Gear Solid 4, Part Three; Or: Dulce Et Decorum Est’
Today on the Dispatches, we cover the next stretch of Snake’s journey, all the way from the jungles of South America to the darkness of Shadow Moses, with a little bit of Eastern Europe along the way, and explore how Kojima manages to save this game from his own poor plotting with good old fashioned hunting and surrealism.
Continue reading ‘Dispatches: Metal Gear Solid 4, Part Two; Or: Peace Is Our Profession’
Today on the Dispatches– oh, who am I kidding? Like none of you saw this coming…
Continue reading ‘Dispatches: Metal Gear Solid 4, Part One; Or: Why We Fight’
Today on the Dispatches, we finally reach the finish line of Suda 51’s No More Heroes, a real piece-of-work in every meaning of the phrase.
This week month solstice on the Dispatches, we return to the Garden of Madness. Don’t expect too much in the way of landscaping, though…
Continue reading ‘Dispatches: No More Heroes, Part Two; Or: A Perfect Day For Bloodfish’
It’s taken a while now, but in the new action smörgåsbord No More Heroes the Nintendo Wii finally has one of those lynchpin titles necessary to prove its strength as a console in the long run– an original, exclusive third-party game that capitalizes on the best aspects of the system’s motion-controls while delivering a universally solid gameplay experience. Furthermore, it’s from one of the premier modern gaming auteurs, the ever avant-garde Goicha Suda, creator of the Gamecube curiosity Killer 7. As such, it stands as one of the most perversely satisfying and deeply frustrating gaming experiences of the next-gen generation, and even half-way through at this point, I feel like I’ve got more to say about it than most other games I’ve played in quite a while. Not all of it is good, of course, but that’s so much the better.
What I can say is this: No More Heroes is quite possibly the most important game that may ever be released for the Wii, and very probably the single most offensive piece of shit I’ve ever laid my thumbs on. Strangely enough, both these sentiments come from one of the game’s defining features:
It’s pretentious.
Continue reading ‘Dispatches: No More Heroes, Part One; Or: For Esme, With Love and Rockets’
Third Playthrough–1 Hour
“Psychonauts is not worth my effort…Psychonauts is not worth my time…Psychonauts is not fun.”
In other words…
Continue reading ‘Dispatches: Psychonauts; Or: They’re Selling Postcards Of the Hanging’
Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t quite know what to say, yet.
I’ve come to Tim Schafer’s premier platformer, Psychonauts, with nothing but the best intentions and expectations. I know of his reputation as an adventure game designer from the LucasArts days, and I know the old adage of not judging a book by its cover. Heck, as a writer myself I tend to take it as far as you shouldn’t judge a book by the first few pages you’re likely to leaf through in Barnes & Noble, since that alone isn’t going to show you everything a piece of literature has to offer. In our Cable TV world it’s very easy to decide whether or not to watch all of a film based on the strength of its first few minutes, but nobody decides to purchase a movie ticket or DVD on that same criteria (not that you’d be able to, anyway, except if you were renting or merely ducking into a theater to play peekaboo with the projector). Therefore, I realize that I cannot render an immediate judgment of this game until I’ve sat with it for at least another hour or two more, but after this first triplet of quarter-hours, all I can say with definitiveness is this:
I didn’t have fun.
Continue reading ‘Dispatches: Psychonauts, Part One; Or: Not-So Pleasant Dreams’
Well, pleasant dreamers, I once again find myself at the end of a stirring Kojima game, staring down the end of an interminably long cut-scene, and one of the master’s first, to boot. Once again, it’s been a gripping narrative, despite some of the cloying story devices, plot holes, last-minute love triangles and other assorted narrative missteps. Moreover, while I’ve griped here and there about how the game has more or less failed in terms of providing gameplay that is at once satisfying, innovative and expressive, I find myself rather pleasantly surprised at the end with a few mechanical twists and turns that actually offer tantalizing glimpses of the same kind of playful design Kojima would later infuse, with much richer detail, in the MGS series. Still, at the end of the day, Snatcher isn’t really a game, just in the same way that it isn’t really “cyberpunk,” either. What it is, on both counts, may wind up being one of the most surprising revelations about Kojima’s work, in general.
Snatcher isn’t futuristic or ahead-of-its-time, in aesthetic, gameplay or narrative style, but stubbornly old-fashioned.
Continue reading ‘Disnatches, Act Three; Or: A Snatcher Darkly’
This week in Dispatches, we continue our examination of Snatcher, the game that time forgot, and compare its gameplay to one of its closest mechanical relatives. Does that mean we’ll be delving into the Lucasarts vaults like everyone assumes when talking about adventure games? No, and a big part of that comes between the difference between the point-and-click and the click-and-click, and if you don’t know it already, then prepare to learn a little something. Things are about to get educational…
Continue reading ‘Disnatches, Act Two; Or: Where In the World Is Hideo Kojima?’
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