WIMP Diary #2
Blame Grand Theft Auto IV for my tardiness.
I dodged lightening. I raced chocobos. I collected butterflies.1 I played blitzball. I did all of this not because it was fun (it really wasn’t), but because I felt compelled to do these things in order to acquire rare and powerful weapons for my characters. In the course of doing these things I read over Mitch Krpata’s New Taxonomy of Gamers
and had to come to the conclusion that I am unabashedly a completist. From Krpata’s blog:
A Completist may be less interested in maximizing his ability to play a game, and more interested in making sure he doesn’t miss anything.
The question here then is at what point does collecting every possible object stop being the objective? I’m really not kidding when I saw that the above activities were not fun, because most of them were not. If anything, they were simply exercises in how far I could let a game push my buttons without completely losing my shit. This is no way for a grown man to spend his time, one may argue, and yet this is how I chose to spend a fairly significant amount of time. I finally achieved the majority of what I set out to do, but I’m still left with the question of whether or not it was really worth it. What do I have to show for it? A bad ass sword in a video game? No, that’s not it. I’m not certain what it is, but there is at least one good thing to come from it: I did something in a game better than my brother. He never dodged enough lightening, never finished the chocobo race. (I have no idea if he collected the butterflies or not, so he’s more than welcome to comment below to clarify this point, assuming of course that he reads this.)
Welcome to Shibuya. If you’ve seen Lost in Translation, you know the place, even if you’ve never heard the name. Think of it as Tokyo’s version of Times Square, only busier. TWEWY starts off with Neku waking up in a state of confusion, devoid of memory and completely uncertain as to why he is in Shibuya. He realizes that a black pin he is carrying allows him to read people’s minds. A cell phone that he doesn’t recognize rings in his pocket. The text message:
Reach 104. You have 60 minutes. Fail, and face erasure. -The Reapers
He can’t erase the message and things get weirder still when he notices that he now has a timer imprinted on his palm that begins to count down immediately.
As far as introductory sequences in video games go, this is a fucking masterpiece. I can’t think of the last time I’ve felt so excited just from the set up to a story. From here, TWEWY introduces new characters, starts explaining in oblique terms who the Reapers are2 and launches into the obligatory series of tutorial missions. For the most part, these kinds of missions are a necessary evil in any sort of game whose interface expands beyond any sort of common complexity level. What is quickly realized is that TWEWY’s interface is extremely complex, and yet remarkably easy to acquire a taste for. The most unique aspect of these controls come about during combat, where the player is intended to utilize both screens on the Nintendo DS. The top screen shows your companion in combat, while the bottom is Neku. The top screen controls with the face buttons, the bottom screen with the touch screen. In the interest of not overexplaining this particular control scheme, it essentially amounts to the video game equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same. It’s a little terrifying to adjust to, but I’m getting there.
TWEWY is broken down into days. The Reapers’ game is meant to be seven days, though I suspect there will be twists, as I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game and yet I am on day four. You collect pins, which enable your various combat powers. These are activated using various touch screen gestures and for the most part seem to work extremely well. As you engage in combat, you collect PP, which is used to upgrade your pins. My favorite feature of the game so far is a special ability that gets unlocked at one point which allows you to gain PP for not playing the game. Let me repeat that: TWEWY is a game that actually rewards you for shutting it off and not playing for awhile. When you return to the game, your pins are powered up in proportion to the amount of time you didn’t play. What’s further remarkable about this ability is that it serves as a fascinating counterpoint to a major theme in the game, which is that of isolation and loneliness. Neku’s a disaffected youth and this is made visually apparent by the massive headphones he wears at all times.
There will no doubt be much more to share about TWEWY as the days go by. Anyone reading this who has a DS (or is looking for an excuse to pick one up) would be borderline moronic to not jump into TWEWY’s representation of Shibuya.
This is the big one. Frankly, I’m not sure even where to begin. Contrary to the plethora of reviews that have turned up in every publication with even a remote interest in video games, I just don’t see how any review can really get this game right. They all seem to stick a big fat perfect score on it, share some stories they experienced, and call it a day. That makes for pretty shoddy reviewing. To be honest, the only one to get this right is Penny Arcade. As Tycho succinctly puts it:
I’m honestly not certain how you’re supposed to review it: I guess you just decide what portion of the experience you’re going to address.
It is in that spirit that I will focus on the parts of the experience I’m actually underwhelmed by:
- Why is there a car wash? For that matter, why are there multiple car washes? One mission requires the use of a car wash, wherein you drive your grand theft auto-ed vehicle up to the self-service machine, pay your fee, and enter the car wash. Your car is washed while you sit there and listen to the radio and then the wash is over and you exit the car wash. There’s nothing interactive, the visuals aren’t interesting, and it’s time consuming to sit through the experience so you just skip it anyway. Outside of this one mission, there is no discernable reward for driving around in a clean car. In an effort to explore new venues for dating, I took one of the ladies I’ve been seeing there. The only reward for this experience was a lot of uncomfortable silence. I’ve not taken her back out yet, in fear that she may reject me.3
- For all the talk of how dense Liberty City would be to make up for the lack of total space as compared to San Andreas, I’m pretty disappointed in the actual execution of this density. I had taken “density” to mean that there would be lots of interiors to explore, options galore. This, alas, is not the case. From what I can tell, there are very few residential interiors outside of your safehouses and those locations intrinsic to a particular mission. As for businesses? By my count, there are four clothing stores and maybe six or seven dining establishments. I’m sorry, but that’s kind of lame. The game just kind of reeks of wasted space. I realize this is a lot of nitpicking, but someone’s got to bring this game down from the stratospheric heights everyone else is placing it!
- I’ve always hated how GTA limits their locations from the outset. Basically, you start off in one area, but can’t access another until you reach a certain point in the story. The only GTA game this made any kind of sense in was San Andreas, if only because those limitations involved entire cities and not just neighborhoods within one city.4 Since GTA IV is set in a photocopy of New York City, it just seems ridiculous to say, “Hey, you can stay in Brooklyn, but if you try to go to the Bronx or Manhattan, we’ll arrest your ass.”5 The game tries to explain this somewhat from the outset when your cousin informs you that the bridges are closed due to terrorist threat. It’s still a little silly, but at least they give context. Problem is, it takes multiple in-game days to get to the point where the bridges start opening up. Can anyone imagine what kind of chaos would ensue if all the bridges in NYC were closed for a week? It’s a nit, sure, but it’s still worth picking. I still can’t go to Jersey, but maybe that’s a blessing.
Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I can assure you that the rest is tremendous. Unspeakably tremendous. I can’t even imagine where to begin, but the whole impression is outstanding. It has to be, especially when you consider that in the nine days the game has been in my possession, I have spent about 30%6 of my non-working, non-sleeping time in Liberty City. I suppose I should not celebrate this, but alas, it is the truth. It is also possibly why I am not a very good friend and for that, I apologize.
Next: Expect more GTA IV and more TWEWY. And probably not much else. Sorry.
- Note: These links lead to fairly long YouTube videos that will likely bore anyone unfamiliar with the game, but do serve as an excellent introduction into just how frustrating these experiences were. [↩]
- Or at least who they might be. At this point, the only certainty is that nothing is certain. [↩]
- It is entirely possible that this is in fact incredible advice for the socially retarded: Always get your car washed before the date, not during. [↩]
- I may be oversimplifying this on account of not having played San Andreas in awhile. They may have also limited neighborhoods within cities, but I’m not entirely sure. [↩]
- By arrest I mean kill you with overwhelming force. [↩]
- I came to this number through a very complicated series of quadratic equations that are a personal trade secret. This is, of course, completely untrue. [↩]
Tagged: butterflies, chocobo race, DS, final fantasy x, grand theft auto, grand theft auto iv, Mitch Krpata, Nintendo, penny arcade, PS2, Reapers, Shibuya, taxonomy, Times Square, TWEWY, video games, WIMP, xbox 360
Comments
OK, I came to your blog for the Disqus/Tumblr walkthrough. I’m sticking around because of this post.
I fall very much under the label of completist. It is the bane of my RPG-playing life. I have a friend who doesn’t even watch the videos in a game, preferring to skip ahead so he can “just keep playing.” I have to watch everything, read everything, collect everything–oh, except for in FFXII, where the random spawning of goods used to create rare weapons meant that I’d be playing for thousands and thousands of hours. No thanks. Even I have my limits.
I’d never heard of TWEWY. Sounds cool.
I haven’t played GTA IV (I don’t even have present-generation system, to be honest, and probably won’t get one until they’re almost ready to release the next one. I did that with PS2, and it’s worked out very nicely in terms of getting tons of games for cheap), but you’re right about the reviews. The hype machine is well oiled on that one. Also, I agree with you wholeheartedly about the “closed areas” in GTA games. Even with the excuses they come up with (hurricane in Vice City, terrorist threat in the new one), it’s still frustrating to have what is otherwise a very great series of open-ended games tell you that you–a character that can kill random people, knock over gun shops, and drive buses of people into the ocean–cannot jump the damn barricade to cross a bridge.
to clarify my brother’s statement about me in Final Fantasy X. I did finish the Chocobo Race and I did collect all the butterflies. The only thing I didn’t do was get Wakka and Lulu’s final weapons. Rest of the stuff I did in Final Fantasy X. Just wanted to clarify. Plus I feel like I made up for it by getting every single thing in Lost Odyssey.