Franchise Fatigue... Or, Castlevania and Where It's Going.

I am an unapologetic Castlevania nerd. To the core, sons and daughters. To illustrate just how far I've gone into the realm of fanatical fanboy territory, I own a Castlevania T-shirt and have been known to actually wear it in public. Sometimes. Seriously. Send help.

I'm not usually one for fanatical devotion to anything related to a specific 'brand' in media. It's unhealthy. It clouds judgment and leads to idiot behavior, like any other kind of fanaticism. A relevant example would be the Nintendo and Sony fanboys who lurk on GameFAQs and other gaming related message boards. Go ahead and try to reason with them. Pick a subject guaranteed to cause them to crawl out of their anime wall-scroll and manga collections to respond. Like, "The PS3 has fallen behind in gaming mind-share". Point out objective facts and try to appeal to them using rational, logical thought. Go ahead. I'll wait. Be polite and thorough with your thesis. Point out your neutrality in the overall discussion. Do not post pictures of retards crossing the finish line or LOLcats. Rise above it.

See how well that works?

I have no room to speak. I've recently discovered that I'm that guy when it comes to Konami's signature Dracula-slaying platformer. I loved Portrait of Ruin, arguably the least interesting and most formulaic of the DS series entries and, to my shame, I'm going to buy the controversial new Castlevania fighting game when it's released on Wii later this year. I can't help it. It's like a cult, or a narcotic. I just cant say "NO" to the Castlevania. I know. I feel sorry for me. too. I'm hanging my head in shame right now. In my Castlevania shirt, no less.

Why Castlevania, you ask? A healthy part of it is pure, unadulterated nostalgia. The first game I got seriously hooked on for NES was Castlevania; the same is true for Playstation(the indefatigable Symphony of the Night). Part of it is comfort. The formula(s) for any given Castlevania game haven't changed since the eighties and nineties. I know exactly what I'm getting when I pop in a new Castlevania game. Part of it, and this is going to sound weird but hear me out, is how disposable the experience is. I can steal twenty minutes of play time on the DS or PSP on lunch break or between classes: I've played the series so thoroughly that even new games are almost rote by association. It's low impact gaming, and it's relaxing. It doesn't change the amount of sheer enjoyment I can squeeze out of them, but it does illustrate the amount of monkey-level conditioning that I've allowed the Castlevania development guys(helmed by the infamous IGA)to subject me to.

(A quick interjection: adult readers? Let's play a drinking game. Every time I type 'Castlevania', you take a drink. For example, I will now type 'Castlevania'. When you read the word 'Castlevania', you will then take a drink. Ready? Castlevania. You can take a drink now, because I typed 'Castlevania'. Get it? Anyone who can finish reading this post without throwing up or passing out gets an anime wall scroll. Castlevania.)

Let's pause a minute so you can re-read the post so far, just so we're clear on what the issues are. Remember to take your drinks.

Still with me? Let us, then, continue, gentle reader.

Bearing all that in mind, it's no surprise then that I bought the newest game for DS last week, the stupidly titled 'Order of Ecclesia'. On the surface, it's the same game they've been releasing since the Playstation one era. It's got the signature open-world roaming. It's got leveling and item grinding. It's got the same enemies and backgrounds they've been using since the GBA days. The same items populate the stores(once you open them up). You can still back dash and (eventually) double-jump. So basically, I thought 'here we go again! Glee!', and set to the task of whacking Dracula for the ten-thousanth time. An hour later, I realized I was playing something much more ambitious than any Castlevania game since Symphony of the Night. I died a lot. I struggled to wrap my head around the new weapons system, dubbed the "glyph system", and the custom combos you can create with it. I noted how far up the difficulty had been ramped. I meditated on how you don't start off in Dracula's castle(cleverly named 'Castlevania'). I balked at the map screen, not seen since Castlevania II: Simon's Quest on NES. While all the usual stuff you find in a Castlevania game is present and accounted for, it's cleverly rearranged. There are things in the game for which I have no reference at all. It's an honest to God attempt to move the series in a new direction.

It irrationally pissed me off.

I shut the game off, frustrated, and took a long look at how I approached the Castlevania series as a fan. I thought about how static and cookie-cutter the series was, and thought harder about all the posts I'd written defending that on various gaming forums. I might have posted a picture of a retard crossing a finish line. I might even have done that wearing my Castlevania T-shirt. I discovered I was one of 'those people', like on GameFAQs. I was wearing a Castlevania T-shirt, and I was suddenly struck with how ridiculous that was.

(A quick digression: did I mention that if Castlevania is in italics, you have to drink double? Well, you do. So there. Bottoms up champ.)

I went back to Order of Ecclesia determined to play the game without prejudice. I applied myself to learning the new systems. I adjusted my expectations in regards to difficulty. I'm really enjoying it. In fact, it might be my favorite of the portable entries. I might even buy a T-shirt.

In an industry that thrives on milking recognizable brands, it's refreshing to see a franchise that's usually so formulaic try and stretch it's boundaries, albeit slowly. Or, at least it should be. Maybe if we gamers were more open to experimenting in our legacy gaming franchises, we'd see more innovation and less rehashes than we do now. Keep that in mind when next year's Madden is a rhythm-action dating sim.

Castlevania Castlevania Castlevania Castlevania Castlevania.

And Now, In This Corner... Mainstream Media Vs. Gaming. Fight!

Let's not talk about Jack Thompson. Enough is enough. He's had his time in the sun, and if we're lucky, he's been discredited so thoroughly that we no longer have to see his face on television or on Digg. He was a dangerous man in his early days, when the specter of GTA-inspired violence and porn rock threatened the purity of the nations youth, but his time has passed. Another attention whore crucified on his own self-righteous rhetoric.

Let's talk, instead, about the relationship between the media and that most savage beast, the Hardcore Gamer.

I'm always interested in how popular media covers games(Lately, the tide has been turning toward a more even keeled approach, but historically games and gaming culture have gotten the greasy end of the stick). Even more interesting to yours truly is how gamers themselves respond to the attention. I've noticed that more and more, the focus of mainstream media's gaming coverage is the business side of things: how much money is being made and spent, lines of faithful gamers waiting to buy the newest games and consoles on release day, World of Warcraft of course, and how much more money games are making than Hollywood. That's all well and good, but it ignores a legacy of slander and misinformation that's left scars on the psyche of gaming culture. And without sounding too melodramatic, those scars may take a long time to heal.

Earlier this year, a trailer for Resident Evil 5 was called out for presenting itself in a racist light. Gamers exploded in a storm of self-righteous rage, accusing those reporting the story of having an anti-gaming bias. Forums blew the Hell up. Enthusiast sites talked about it endlessly. Capcom, the makers of the game, responded with a press release and with interviews, denying that their game was racist. Those of us in the hardcore gaming scene thought it was the end of the world.

When the dust settled though, the joke was on us. None of the usual detractors had bothered to show up; not even Jack. We, ourselves, had created a veritable tempest in a teapot, and the few intelligent, well-spoken folk in the press who were trying to open an honest to goodness dialogue about the subject had been entirely drowned out by the waves.

N'Gai Croal of Newsweek was a sane and intelligent voice in the midst of all the hyperbole and vitriol. He wrote an excellent article that illustrated better than any other why the trailer was controversial. In a nutshell, He suggested not that the game was racist, but that the imagery presented in the trailer had some serious psychological and historical baggage attached to it. As an african american, he couldn't help but be affected by the image of a huge white guy shooting up a crowd of black africans. It didn't help that the trailer was devoid of context; to those who were not already familiar with the series, it would be even more jarring. Whether or not the development team had intended for the viewer to interpret the trailer in that manner was irrelevant. the imagery would speak for itself.

It was a well-reasoned and insightful argument, but it went unheard amongst the furious typing of ten thousand angry gamers telling the internet just how insane people were for condemning yet another innocent video game for a crime it didn't commit. To the gamers, it was Hot Coffee and Manhunt 2 all over again. Reason didn't factor into it; we were under attack, and we responded with ridicule, rhetoric, and empty threats. It was embarrassing.

Just as Mr. Croal highlighted how he was conditioned to react to the imagery present in the offending trailer in a certain way, so did gamers illustrate how they had been conditioned to react when they perceived their hobby to be under attack. And the resulting picture disturbed me greatly.

New media has always come under attack by those who didn't understand it. When Stravinsky premiered his Rite of Spring, it was uniformly panned by critics and actually started a bonafide riot. A book on the corrupting influence of comic books in the fifties actually contributed to a congressional hearing on morality and ethics in the medium. Midnight Cowboy was slapped with an 'X' rating in the time of it's theatrical release, though the movie barely rates a PG-13 in modern times. I mean, compare Midnight Cowboy to Saw. Which one was rated 'X' again?

And that right there is the answer to our problem: familiarity eventually breeds understanding.

Also contempt. But that's for a different post.

People like Jack Thompson, Joe Lieberman, and all the other people crusading for the regulation of games are simply repeating history. It should be noted that the Rite of Spring is now considered a masterpiece, and that your mom probably does aerobics to Prince and Guns N' Roses. For every reporter who writes a condescending article on video games, there's an N'Gai Croal or Jon Davison trying to educate and inform an ignorant population about what games actually are. For every Cooper Lawrence, a Leigh Alexander. We should remember that we have friends, too, and that as gaming grows to be more and more integrated into popular culture, the outcry and controversies will eventually be replaced by a calmer dialogue, just as it always has in the past. This too shall pass, and when it does, we'll all be able to laugh about it over a game of Halo 6 or Guitar Hero 315 Remix. It's practically in the cards.

We gamers should remember that the next time someone points out something controversial in a video game. If gaming is going to grow up to be a relevant part of our culture, there will sometimes be criticism and slander. Film and literature aren't exempt from that; why should video games be?

Media is subjective. Scars only heal if you learn to stop picking at them. Meaningful discussion sometimes comes from the most surprising places. The mainstream media has cautiously started to embrace the idea that, hey, video games... There might be something to them. We should try and view that as the tentative first steps toward something greater.

How Difficult Games Ruined and Enriched My Life. Or, How many controllers have YOU broken?

I'll answer my own question first, so I can speak with a clear conscience: two. My first broken controller was for the NES. I broke it playing Castlevania, and I was twelve years old. I didn't screw around, either; after yet another humiliating death at the hands of Frankenstein, I stormed out of the room, got a twenty pound weight from my dad's weight bench, stormed back to the den, and threw that sumbitch at the offending piece of hardware, which died a quick, agonizing and inglorious death. At that point in my life, I had never felt so satisfied. In my juvenile and offended mind, righteous justice had been served. Score one for organic life.

The second controller was about a year ago. It was a SIXAXIS controller for the PS3, I broke it playing Call of Duty 4 single player, and I was twenty seven. I had been trying to clear the infamous TV station level for nearly an hour, and even though I could see how to advance, infinitely spawning enemies kept killing me just as I'd finally manage to approach their spawn point. "Just one more time", I promised myself, and reloaded my save. I died within a minute. I didn't screw around then, either: I launched that controller through the wall at top speed, inadvertently reloading my save and making lifelong enemies with my neighbors. My girlfriend was mortified. At that point in my life, and to this day, I've never been more annoyed with myself. Score one for cold, indifferent technology.

(Adding insult to injury, while retrieving the controller from the hole in the wall, those goddamn terrorists killed me again. Score TWO for cold, indifferent technology.)

I did eventually clear the TV station, but only after a long period of postponement. I had other things to do. Work, school, and all the other stuff that adults are forced into to pay their way through life are now more important than pretending to be a soldier. My real life responsibilities came to call, and I had no interest in spending more of my life being angry. My free time is too precious for that. I'd rather play a few rounds of Virtua Fighter 5 on the sofa with my friends than be shamefully slaughtered by computer controlled terrorists over and over again.

So. When does a game become so difficult and infuriating that it drives me into a situation where I actually choose to interact with other humans in order to beat them silly(virtually) on my couch, as opposed to shooting terrorists solo in an unnamed middle-eastern location in order to further the cause of freedom(also virtually)? When does it cross that invisible, blurry line that separates 'frustrating' from merely 'challenging'? There's no easy answer that fits everyone(an experience will always differ from person to person), but I think I understand how I personally react to difficulty in games. If I'm not being consistently rewarded for playing the game, then I give up and move on to something else.

That seems simple, or even self-evident, but it's more art than science. I can lose in a Street Fighter 3 or Virtua Fighter match because I know that I'm being rewarded with a deeper understanding of how the game works every time I hit the mat. Over time, my mastery of the game increases, which manifests in beating the A.I. consistently and making my friends on the couch break more of my controllers. Other games offer more immediate rewards; experience points, unlockable characters, or loot. Some rewards are more intangible; the atmosphere of Silent Hill and Shadow of the Colossus, the exploration of Oblivion, or the 'wow' factor of how good Metal Gear Solid 4 looks on my HDTV. There's a feeling of equal pay(reward) for equal time(...um..time), and it might be the single most important factor in deciding whether or not I'll continue to play a game.

Guys like Criterion get it. In Burnout: Paradise, I choose how I want to advance. Alternately, I can choose NOT to advance, and it's still fun and rewarding. If I crash or fail an event, there's no 'Game Over' and a kick to the title screen. I'm not being punished for learning the ropes. I honestly think that games like Call of Duty 4 single player and Ninja Gaiden are going to die out as gaming becomes more and more mainstream; casual players don't have a history with arcade or 8 bit games that insulates them from being frustrated with something that seems like it hates them personally. They'll move on, and so, eventually, will the developers.

That isn't to say that all games should be objectively easy, either. Don't get reductive; that's MY job. What developers will do is figure out ways to cater to both crowds, without something as crude(and historically uneven) as a difficulty setting. What could that be? I encourage the reader to check out the scaling difficulty in Sin Episodes, or the TrueSkill mechanic on Xbox Live for a good idea.

I've paid my dues. I did finally beat Frankenstein in Castlevania. I can still play through Einhander without a continue, and I walk tall in Ninja Gaiden. Xbox or NES. You pick. I've decided that I'll never again break a controller in anger. It's not worth my time.

Plus, I figure this post scores a point on cold, unfeeling technology. That makes us even.

My car better start tomorrow.