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The airport scene in Modern Warfare 2 has been described by many as a harrowing or affecting experience. Before I discuss that scene, I would like to bring up a far more uncomfortable moment that I experienced in Treyarch’s game Call of Duty World at War. I had an English friend and some Japanese friends over at my house playing some games when my English friend saw World at War and was interested to see the game in action. Being pretty thoughtless at times, I popped it in and started a new story mode. For those who haven’t played the game, the opening sequence involves your American character as a prisoner of war witnessing the brutal torture and execution of one of your comrades by your Japanese captors. We played the game for less than five minutes then, feeling painfully embarrassed, quit the game and moved on to something else.

Obviously this was a rather large cultural faux pas, but I never discussed how my friends felt about the situation. As close as we are it still seemed like to difficult a subject to broach. But I was surprised to learn afterwards that although World at War was never released in Japan, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun was. There were rumors (later proven to be unfounded) that Russian game stores had removed Modern Warfare 2 from their shelves. Some people feel that, if it were true, it would be an overreaction. So we come to the rather sticky dilemma; should we see the release of historically and culturally sensitive games as tasteless? Or as a triumph of freedom of expression and allowing adults the ability to make their own decisions on the content they are exposed to? Most people would probably agree with the second statement, but perhaps the reality is more unpalatable if the shoe were to be on the other foot.



Imagine instead, ignoring how radically different the plot would be, that the airport scene was set in America as opposed to Russia. Would you be more affected witnessing, or even participating in, the murder of innocent civilians? Of course there shouldn’t be a difference between nationalities of civilians but it is difficult to claim that the scene wouldn’t carry more impact if the people were of the same nationality as the player. Although the airport scene in particular has incited some controversy within the media I would expect the furore to be far greater if the scene in question was in JFK airport.

This leads to inevitable but misleading comparisons to games such as Grand Theft Auto. Why should the airport scene be so traumatic when, as the media has often pointed out, you can also kill innocent people in GTA? It depends on the person as to their response, but certainly the fact that the airport scene is a scripted event in which you have no ability to alter the eventual course of the mission makes a difference. Because the event is scripted and the outcome cannot be altered, the emotional response of the player to the situation is the most interesting aspect. In my case I sadly knew roughly what occurred at that point in the game before I played it, and as such I never really tried to prevent it by attacking any of the terrorists. I did however restrict myself to shooting at corpses and purposefully missed the innocents, but in a sense I don’t really know why. Whether you kill as many as you can or don’t fire a single shot the result doesn’t change. I also would be interested to know what other people did in this situation and why.



Essentially the ‘What if’ scenario that I’m postulating is whether you would play a game in which you played as an army in direct opposition to your own country. If instead of being an America soldier being tortured in a Japanese prisoner of war camp you could play as a Taliban freedom fighter being waterboarded in Guantanamo bay. If Six days in Fallujah had you play as an Iraqi. If were a Nazi soldier during the Second World War.

That is a lot of questions and I can provide few answers. I don’t imagine that there will be many high profile games that do approach first person perspective war games from the other side of the fence so we may never know. I only know that playing World at War in front of Japanese people is an experience that I am not keen on repeating in the future.

The 2nd highest rated game of all time

The highest rated game of all time is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. What do you think the second highest rated game of all time (according to metacritic) could possibly be? The shocking answer is Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. Released back in 2000 to universal acclaim, this game consumed countless hours of my life and led to a near death experience. But more on that later.



The Tony Hawk license has become so tainted in recent years that it’s hard to remember the time when each new installment was awaited with breathless anticipation. The game reinvigorated the flagging popularity of skateboarding and increased interest in the lifestyle and accoutrements surrounding it. So for better or for worse it briefly led to an increase in the percentage of kids wearing baggy ripped jeans that hung around their knees, hoodies bearing references to chemical consumption and hair so unkempt and bedraggled that hobos would shake their heads disapprovingly. Tony Hawk’s Ride, due to be released next week, comes with a skateboard peripheral which leaves us wondering why at this point we don’t just go outside and actually start skateboarding. The series, once shiny and new, has been hit hard by the brutal double team of Father Time and Mother Nature. It is being tipped by some journalists as the potentially biggest flop of the year. Enough about its rocky present, let’s go back to its glorious past.



The real genius of Tony Hawk 2 is that despite appearing to be a video game about skateboarding, it is really a video game about video games. It is gaming at its purest, in which the aim is to accumulate as high a score as possible within a time limit. Though it may tell you through an onscreen prompt that you are doing an ollie or a kickflip, in fact you are simply triggering a multiplier in a mathematical equation which is calculating the combination of your dexterity, decision making skills and technical ability. Repetition of tricks leads to smaller rewards, thus encouraging experimentation of combinations and even within the restricted levels, exploration was key to achieving the highest scores through triggering certain environmental bonuses. In fact one of the reasons the game became less appealing to me in later iterations was their focus on expanding the playing field; in the limited space greater ingenuity and guile were needed and it related more closely to a classic score attack game.

Well, having made the game sound as dull as an algebra lecture being given by Ben Affleck I think its time to move on to the game’s style. The wrapping of this hardcore score attack game was something which both drew gamers to it and repelled others from it. For those who were intrigued by the skating lifestyle there was much to appreciate. It had a cool and appropriate soundtrack including Rage Against the Machine, Millencolin, Public Enemy and Bad Religion at a time when licensed music was a rarity in video games, featured a lot of professional skateboarders and clips of their videos (and bails), and best of all it had Spiderman in it, still perhaps the most fun secret character in any game I have played. For those not interested in the skateboarding lifestyle it had a terrible soundtrack including a bunch of talentless kids screaming about the pain of life and featured douchebags you had never heard of getting paid far too much money to fall over and act like immature teenagers. But at least it had Spiderman. For those who were conceptually against it, they missed out on one of the most finely honed games of the console generation.



Owning it on the Dreamcast was in hindsight a poor choice. The Dreamcast had perhaps the worst D-pad in the history of gaming, and with Tony Hawk requiring rapid and constant D-pad movement (the analogue control was less responsive), my thumb was cut to shreds on a regular basis and required me to take alternate days off from the game. Unfortunately it was during one of these thumb resting alternate days that, having been inspired by my love of the game and my newfound appreciation of skateboarding culture, I decided to try it for real. I borrowed my brother’s skateboard and set off outside, with no prior experience, for a skate around my village. My village happens to have a lot of steep tarmaced hills and blind corners around it, but emboldened by my ability at the game I felt sure that a baptism of fire would be the best way to instantly develop the skill of skating. At this point I should probably mention that whilst I like playing sports, I never even learned how to ride a bicycle due to my poor balance. The adventure that followed was a mixture of frustration, embarrassment, and numerous face-to-tarmac introductions. I finally decided to call it quits when I gained enough momentum to head downhill at a decent pace only to have a car pull round the corner in front of me. Seeing as I had not yet mastered the 180 nosegrab, my only way to prevent myself from slamming into the car was by leaping sideways off the board and into a bush. It was at that point I decided that skateboarding was not for me.

Ah the foolishness of youth… except that I was actually 16 or 17 at the time…

Found in Translation

Have you ever watched Samurai Pizza Cats? That classic anime was as much a part of my childhood as Transformers or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yet even when I watched it I never really paid much attention as to what was actually going on. Vague memories of a building that morphed into a gun, power suits and a cute female cat that made me feel funny inside were all I could recall. Recently I decided to watch some episodes again, partially out of curiosity and partly to confront my deepest fear that I have a furry fetish, and discovered to my surprise that the show was actually really funny. It was a revelation, somewhat similar I guess to people re-watching Simpson’s episodes from their youth and realizing that a lot of the jokes are targeted at an adult audience. Much of the humor comes from the fact that whilst the show originally aired in Japan, it was being broadcast in America. The cultural reference points being very different, the show is often self-referential and is fully aware of the ridiculous nature of the situation.

Upon doing a little research, a rather grandiose term for Wikipedia, I learned that whilst the translation team had been provided with tapes of the show, they weren’t given transcripts. This combined with the fact that much of the original dialogue made numerous references to Japanese culture led to them writing new scripts which bore few similarities to the Japanese version. The result was comic genius in which the characters voice their frustration at not being able to read the Japanese writing in the background and in one case the Narrator reading the wrong script.

Enough of your ramble down memory lane I hear you cry, what does this have to do with games? Well the same point is applicable to video games. We have come a long way from the early days of localizing Japanese games in which the companies janitor armed with a Japanese to English dictionary would attempt to retell a 50 hour RPG. Instead we have come to the point where for major releases dual language tracks are recorded in tandem and translation teams have finally realized that a having a sense of humor related to Western points of reference is as important as being bilingual. PS2 game God Hand features many references to American pop culture including Clerks, Star Wars, 50 Cent, Christopher Walken and even the Dukes of Hazard.



With the Japanese gaming industry aiming to appeal more to a Western audience recently, it is refreshing to still see some games that previously would have been deemed ‘too Japanese’ being localized for a Western release. Game Center CX is one such example, and although the name may be familiar to fans of Shinya Arino’s cult TV show, most people would have no idea that it is based on a Japanese show which documents a comedian trying to beat incredibly difficult retro games in a limited period of time. Instead with the localization they enlisted the aid of real video game journalists (with pseudonyms) and put their images into the in-game magazines that your character can peruse. 1UP’s former Editorial Director Dan Hsu features as Dan Sock for example. Despite the low sales of the game, it was nonetheless a bold attempt to give, what is considered a niche title even in Japan, some relevance to a Western audience.



We have to also salute the fan translators who worked tireless with no financial reward. Before Japan cared about selling their games overseas, their passion led to investing vast amounts of their own time in talking games that seemed unlikely to see a Western release, Final Fantasy III for the NES being the most famous example. Released in 1990, it was only officially released overseas in a 2006 DS remake. An ambition fan translation project meant that those without an excellent knowledge of Japanese could understand the game a mere nine years after its release in Japan.

Although we should rightly celebrate the ready availability of Japanese games translated coherently into English, we should also celebrate the early efforts that will remain timeless due to their unintentional hilarity. We salute you.

Confessions of a Ken player

Worse than telling a lover you used to be another gender. Worse than telling your girlfriend you have a highly contagious STD. Worse than telling your conservative Mormon family that you are gay. Worse than all of these things, is telling a serious Street Fighter fan that your favorite character is Ken Masters. Yet that is what I am doing today. I come not on my hands and knees begging for forgiveness, but with an outstretched hand looking for understanding. I am here to humanize the faceless, reprehensible masses that always choose Ken. As you scream abuse at your online opponent for picking the ‘same bastard as every other punk noob’, and prepare to face off against your fifth Ken in a row, bear in mind that behind every Ken Masters is a real person. And one who probably isn’t that good at the game.

The odd thing is that in a sense I never really had a choice about which character I was going to be due to my relationship with my older brother. I idolized him, copied everything he did and liked everything he liked, but as a result I always got second pick. He chose the Decepticons so I was the Autobots; he was Cobra so I was G.I. Joe; he was Ryu so I was Ken. Besides showing that my brother had an inherent fascination with evil, it showed how natural it was that my choice of character was a mirror image of his. Ryu was quiet and brooding whilst Ken was brash and arrogant, but essentially they were two sides of the same coin. But since that was about eighteen years ago perhaps I should look to justify my love of Ken Masters a little more eloquently.



I have been faithful to Ken for all of the eighteen years we have known each other. I can’t claim to be a perfect monogamist. I have strayed from the true path in the past, experimenting with the sultry pout of Cammy, the rippling thighs of Chun-Li, the rock hard abs of Fei-Long and even the Jack-booted eroticism of Bison, but I can’t help but come back to Ken. It just feels so comfortable and familiar, like putting on a pair of warm gloves. Every time a new iteration in the Street Fighter is released it is like a reunion with an old friend and the ebb and flow of his moves and the roll of the arcade stick is almost instinctive. I know exactly what his capabilities are and thus in a competitive match, victory feels not like a mindless spamming of special moves but the sense of tactically outmaneuvering an opponent using an extension of the body. My awkward high school studentesque fumbling whilst playing with Cammy means that victory is largely down to playing an inferior foe, or fluking a win. I have tried to leave him before, but in the end I am at my happiest playing Street Fighter when it is with Ken. It sounds ridiculous I know, and I too have often questioned my sanity when I notice that I’m using one character 95% of the time. With another twenty or so characters left to watch despondently from the sidelines it makes me wonder why I am really that excited about Super Street Fighter IV.

Back story isn’t especially important in the fighting genre but Ken is certainly one of the more fleshed out characters in the Street Fighter universe. His fraternal bond with Ryu is central to the game, and their relationship based on a fierce rivalry makes for one of the more relatable aspects of the narrative. It isn’t complex, but their continual desire to test their abilities against each other provides a link throughout the various additions to the franchise. His flashy personality and cocky thumbs up victory pose are as iconic for me as his ludicrous flaming Dragon Punch which symbolizes much of his personality.



It’s a shame that choosing Ken is like seen as similarly evil to voting for the communist party. Street Fighter II was the first console game I ever owned and still one of the best. I’m no expert at the game by any means, or even that good, but playing as Ken provides a link to the start of my love affair with video games, and as such I won’t cast him aside in order to placate an angry mob. If you have a beef with people who choose Ken then don’t worry, there are still quite a few people online who also seem to have a fondness for him.

Evil Ranking Chart

5 – Watching American Idol
4 – Breaking wind in an elevator
3 – Stealing from blind orphans
2 - Picking Ken in an online game of Street Fighter IV
1 - Throwing puppies off cliffs

Keep it contextual: Uncharted 2

The opening sequence of Uncharted 2 is memorable for a number of reasons. Many would point to the dramatic nature of the location, the perilous situation in which the protagonist finds himself in or the simple fact that the game is visually stunning. Personally, one of the most impressive aspects is that it throws you in a dramatic and dangerous situation and gives you no instruction as to what you should do or even what you are capable of doing. The tutorial sequence comes afterwards in the form of a flashback, but when you are left dangling from a destroyed train carriage in the midst of a raging blizzard with a seemingly endless abyss below you, you have had no explanation of the game’s mechanics. Yet you soon discover your capabilities as you struggle to ascend to higher ground. Uncharted 2 is a triumph of contextual gaming and should be held up as a source of inspiration for developers hoping to create a cinematic experience.

The way in which Nathan responds to the environment and the way in which it responds to him are key in creating the game’s atmosphere. The dire situation in which you are placed initially is compounded by a serious injury that the character has sustained. Accordingly his onscreen movements are cumbersome and weighty. Likewise the task of scaling vertically up the train carriage is an arduous and desperate challenge and the torturous measured pace with which you are forced to move is a reflection of this. It mirrors your own reaction to being thrown into the opening of a game in which you haven’t been told how to play; movement is cautious and slow, and tension and panic swell within you. When ascertaining if you can make a jump, Nathan’s hand stretches tentatively towards his desired target as if to get a feel for his own limitations. In this sense the character’s response to the environment is being conveyed to the play through the way in which the game controls.



The context of the environment in which he has been placed also has a strong bearing on the game. The carriage you are being asked to climb is on the brink of collapse and this is reflected by the way in which pieces fall towards you altering your environment, or by the pipes and handles that collapse or swing according to your weight. When you finally haul yourself up the cliff you find that nearby explosions cause the character to buckle and double over; slowing your movement temporarily. The pain that Nathan is enduring is expressed through limiting the player’s movement and making him respond appropriately to his changing environment. This is further enforced by the way in which his physical appearance alters, whether it’s the snow that sticks in his hair if you roll in it, or the texture and color of the famous half-tuck shirt being altered by the water.

Importantly this early establishment of contextual gameplay means that the player is groomed to deal with unfamiliar situations using the same control scheme. The moving train section is a truly breathtaking moment in game design because it forces the player to engage in several different kinds of wildly different gameplay, some which the player has yet to be exposed to, in a continuous sequence that remains unimpaired by the need for explanation.



Bionic Commando, released earlier this year to a rather lukewarm reception, was notable for being largely repetitive but with a couple of incredible action sequences at the end. Like Uncharted 2 they took the controls with which you were familiar, and put them into a drastically different scenario to great effect; in that case by hauling yourself from the back of a squadron of planes to the front using your bionic arm. Batman Arkham Asylum took a different, but no less effective path, by clearly sectioning off its gameplay into three compartments, explaining each and then rotating them.

Of course in an article discussing the importance of contextual gameplay it would be a massive oversight not to mention one of the greatest games of all time; The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The A button was described as the ‘action’ button and could be used for a number of different commands depending on the context of the environment. This would be displayed in the top right of the screen where the action would be described for the player. At the time it was an impressive advance in console gaming interface, and Uncharted 2 has shown how this simple idea could be developed into truly contextual gameplay.



When Tim Schafer got frustrated with people asking him why there wasn’t a jump button in Brutal Legend, he needed only to mention Ocarina of Time.