Triptych - Volume 12: Idiot-Syncratic
By Brenna Hillier - Thu Aug 20, 2009 6:27pm
Welcome back once again to Triptych, the feature that asks, “why have I never heard of this game?” and occasionally, “why did I have to hear about it now?” After last week’s exploration of a cultural phenomenon creeping into marketing executive’s “necessary” list, we’ll visit another baffling trend: laboured quirkiness.
We all accept that not every game can be about an international espionage conspiracy involving big guns, or an invasion by aliens involving big guns. There are plenty of greatly appreciated classic titles that have nary a hint of manliness; Bubble Bobble doesn’t pretend to be anything but what it is, and nor does Puyo Puyo; both titles are cute and slightly oddball, but with a core gameplay that is as solid as a rock and not – and this is important – clones of existing games.
When you have a really good idea for a game, it often doesn’t matter much what you wrap it up in; gamers will want to play it. But when you don’t have a very good idea for a game, suddenly the wrapping becomes all-important, and that’s when marketing teams seem to let their brains fall out their ears, because rather than dressing their titles up in all the things which gamers, the target demographic of games, are reputed to like – explosions, scantily clad individuals, chips – they seem to think they’re selling their games to vapid adolescents who enjoy the kind of not-actually whimsical whimsy and not-really-ironic irony slathered over the following upcoming and recent releases.
Everyone, whether they have a marketing degree or not, knows the things that are awesome. The things that are awesome include: Pirates, Ninjas, Robots, Zombies, and Monkeys. Making a game starring any of these is a good way to win a few hearts, but is it different? Is it unique? Is it not just jumping on last week’s marketing bandwagon? But what about… mini awesome things? Oh! How subversive. That will really impress the kids!
It’s rare for a week to go by and for me to not have some piece of Mini Ninjas hyperbole sitting glumly neglected in my inbox. I have been avoiding this stuff the same way I avoid traffic accidents – they waste your time, and after staring at the mess you feel guiltily soiled. A shot of cement gave me the necessary gumption to dive into this sordid world, and I was not disappointed. For example, the game’s main antagonist is called Evil Samurai Warlord, isn’t that adorable? He lives in the Fortress of Doom. Oh, how ironic the tongue-in-cheek use of clichéd descriptions is! What a shame it’s glaringly unoriginal.
The game itself looks to be some sort of third-person action jobbie, with the camera occasionally taking on various odd angles to make up for the fact that your eleven-year-old hero’s shoulders are not aptly positioned for a sensible view of the environment. The various characters have different weapons and magic skills, and being able to freely switch between them adds an element of tactics or puzzle solving to the combat and terrain navigation. The few trailers with actual gameplay in them have not been stunning, but the inundation of cut scene trailers (apparently) packed full of off-beat humour will no doubt win your heart and make you ignore that! Unless they don’t.
I’m pretty sure Mini Ninjas is ripping off Naruto in some way, although not being overly familiar with that grossly bloated franchise I can’t be certain, but although our miniature ninjutsu practitioners are pre-teens rather than adolescents, the line up of characters seems to tick all the same boxes, so with any luck when it arrives in September on DS, Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii, it will outrage a bunch of fans and be thoroughly shunned.
Actually, come to think of it, Eduardo the Samurai Toaster tells you everything you need to know about this WiiWare release. It tells you somebody who thinks they are very funny, in an “off-beat” way, made the game. You can tell how alternative the creator is by their clever combination of cashing in on the rampant Japanophilia of the last decade’s anime and manga obsession, and an inanimate object. I know! It’s genius!
A glance over the screenshots will fill in the rest of the blanks. Eduardo is a samurai about as hard-ass as Hello Kitty, and the enemies he encounters on his roaming adventures through a landscape made up of the corrupted distillation of hundreds of years of culture strained through a filter of misinterpretation, stereotype, and commercialism is packed with enemies whose greatest weapon is their ability to make you gag on sight, which makes the fact that the game’s art style is refreshingly unique and highly attractive completely unbearable.
To be fair, side-scrolling action is a well-explored genre, so the makers of Eduardo the Samurai Toaster rightly realised they needed a gimmick to sell their game, but here’s the thing: they kind of already had one. Putting aside the question of whether the very datedness of their chosen genre ensures its freshness to a new generation, Eduardo has a pretty decent four-player mode that is actually a lot of fun. Why didn’t they just go with that instead of trying to cute me to death with their toasters? Oh wait, maybe because Castle Crashers already did that, and did it better, too, with a lot more edge and a lot less saccharine.
Eduardo the Samurai Toaster is currently only available in North America, a situation that is exceedingly likely to continue and meets with no opposition from me, or anybody else.
At the time of the great 16-bit console wars, I was very firmly in the Sega camp. I swore my life to Sonic and his compatriots – mainly because my parents quite sanely would only buy me one console and well, that’s the one we had. Most of you know what happened next. When we waved a sad farewell to the Dreamcast, Sega fandom kind of petered out. And you know what? This sort of stuff is precisely why we just can’t resurrect it.
I think it was Terry Pratchett who rightly commented that the word “wacky”, like “zany”, has a place only in the eternally-1950’s world of black and white sitcoms. It’s been about three generations since consumers developed a kind of cynical discretion that makes them wary of this kind of blatant marketing spin. “Wacky”, indeed. It really doesn’t matter how obscure the sports Sega has packed in there – and tuna tossing and furniture racing are admittedly odd – we all know we are looking at an attempt to cash in on the Wii’s ever-stellar performer, the Wii Sports series, except his one comes without all the actually interesting bits like monitoring your progress and keeping your dignity.
Wacky World of Sports is, of course, an upcoming Wii release, expected to generate a small flurry of worldwide WiiMote waggling when it is released in September, before being shoved in the back of the broom cupboard with all the other hilarious party game compilations that platform is plagued with instead of real games.
Way back in Volume Six – heck, even in Volume One – I had a good rant about unnecessary cuteness in games. I don’t actually have an objection to cuteness, when it’s not being used to flatten children’s self-identity into neatly packaged gender norms, but I do have a serious objection to being patronised. Some games are funny. I like funny games. Some games are unusual. I like unusual games. But some games seem to pile on this aesthetic so thickly that it turns into just another case of style over substance, designed to extract your cash at minimum effort, and when everybody and their piebald dog starts to do it, any charm found in these titles evaporates, leaving behind only the damp traces of what was once “alternative” but is now “manufactured” and “mainstream”.
Don’t forget, if you think you can come up with a challenging Triptych theme, you can leave your suggestion in the comments and enjoy my proving you very, very wrong the next time I don’t have a particular axe to grind.
We all accept that not every game can be about an international espionage conspiracy involving big guns, or an invasion by aliens involving big guns. There are plenty of greatly appreciated classic titles that have nary a hint of manliness; Bubble Bobble doesn’t pretend to be anything but what it is, and nor does Puyo Puyo; both titles are cute and slightly oddball, but with a core gameplay that is as solid as a rock and not – and this is important – clones of existing games.
When you have a really good idea for a game, it often doesn’t matter much what you wrap it up in; gamers will want to play it. But when you don’t have a very good idea for a game, suddenly the wrapping becomes all-important, and that’s when marketing teams seem to let their brains fall out their ears, because rather than dressing their titles up in all the things which gamers, the target demographic of games, are reputed to like – explosions, scantily clad individuals, chips – they seem to think they’re selling their games to vapid adolescents who enjoy the kind of not-actually whimsical whimsy and not-really-ironic irony slathered over the following upcoming and recent releases.
Mini Ninjas
) The little one. |
It’s rare for a week to go by and for me to not have some piece of Mini Ninjas hyperbole sitting glumly neglected in my inbox. I have been avoiding this stuff the same way I avoid traffic accidents – they waste your time, and after staring at the mess you feel guiltily soiled. A shot of cement gave me the necessary gumption to dive into this sordid world, and I was not disappointed. For example, the game’s main antagonist is called Evil Samurai Warlord, isn’t that adorable? He lives in the Fortress of Doom. Oh, how ironic the tongue-in-cheek use of clichéd descriptions is! What a shame it’s glaringly unoriginal.
The game itself looks to be some sort of third-person action jobbie, with the camera occasionally taking on various odd angles to make up for the fact that your eleven-year-old hero’s shoulders are not aptly positioned for a sensible view of the environment. The various characters have different weapons and magic skills, and being able to freely switch between them adds an element of tactics or puzzle solving to the combat and terrain navigation. The few trailers with actual gameplay in them have not been stunning, but the inundation of cut scene trailers (apparently) packed full of off-beat humour will no doubt win your heart and make you ignore that! Unless they don’t.
) The tough one. | ) The token girl. |
I’m pretty sure Mini Ninjas is ripping off Naruto in some way, although not being overly familiar with that grossly bloated franchise I can’t be certain, but although our miniature ninjutsu practitioners are pre-teens rather than adolescents, the line up of characters seems to tick all the same boxes, so with any luck when it arrives in September on DS, Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii, it will outrage a bunch of fans and be thoroughly shunned.
Eduardo the Samurai Toaster
) The sun has a frowny face! |
A glance over the screenshots will fill in the rest of the blanks. Eduardo is a samurai about as hard-ass as Hello Kitty, and the enemies he encounters on his roaming adventures through a landscape made up of the corrupted distillation of hundreds of years of culture strained through a filter of misinterpretation, stereotype, and commercialism is packed with enemies whose greatest weapon is their ability to make you gag on sight, which makes the fact that the game’s art style is refreshingly unique and highly attractive completely unbearable.
To be fair, side-scrolling action is a well-explored genre, so the makers of Eduardo the Samurai Toaster rightly realised they needed a gimmick to sell their game, but here’s the thing: they kind of already had one. Putting aside the question of whether the very datedness of their chosen genre ensures its freshness to a new generation, Eduardo has a pretty decent four-player mode that is actually a lot of fun. Why didn’t they just go with that instead of trying to cute me to death with their toasters? Oh wait, maybe because Castle Crashers already did that, and did it better, too, with a lot more edge and a lot less saccharine.
) Is the toaster on crack, or am I? | ) Oh god, the bees. |
Eduardo the Samurai Toaster is currently only available in North America, a situation that is exceedingly likely to continue and meets with no opposition from me, or anybody else.
Wacky World of Sports
) Redheads. Indubitably "zany". |
I think it was Terry Pratchett who rightly commented that the word “wacky”, like “zany”, has a place only in the eternally-1950’s world of black and white sitcoms. It’s been about three generations since consumers developed a kind of cynical discretion that makes them wary of this kind of blatant marketing spin. “Wacky”, indeed. It really doesn’t matter how obscure the sports Sega has packed in there – and tuna tossing and furniture racing are admittedly odd – we all know we are looking at an attempt to cash in on the Wii’s ever-stellar performer, the Wii Sports series, except his one comes without all the actually interesting bits like monitoring your progress and keeping your dignity.
) Tense. | ) It's better than eating it. |
Wacky World of Sports is, of course, an upcoming Wii release, expected to generate a small flurry of worldwide WiiMote waggling when it is released in September, before being shoved in the back of the broom cupboard with all the other hilarious party game compilations that platform is plagued with instead of real games.
Way back in Volume Six – heck, even in Volume One – I had a good rant about unnecessary cuteness in games. I don’t actually have an objection to cuteness, when it’s not being used to flatten children’s self-identity into neatly packaged gender norms, but I do have a serious objection to being patronised. Some games are funny. I like funny games. Some games are unusual. I like unusual games. But some games seem to pile on this aesthetic so thickly that it turns into just another case of style over substance, designed to extract your cash at minimum effort, and when everybody and their piebald dog starts to do it, any charm found in these titles evaporates, leaving behind only the damp traces of what was once “alternative” but is now “manufactured” and “mainstream”.
Don’t forget, if you think you can come up with a challenging Triptych theme, you can leave your suggestion in the comments and enjoy my proving you very, very wrong the next time I don’t have a particular axe to grind.
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