Game On

I’ll give the Kinect credit: It’s improving. Microsoft’s motion-sensitive, hands-free videogame controller for the Xbox 360 arrived last year to the usual gimmicky fanfare. Yes it was amazing to be able to control games simply by moving my body.
But at the same time, the Kinect was sloppy. A thumbstick was something I could touch, so I was never in any doubt about how I was steering through a game. But the Kinect forced me to slowly wave my hand in the air in front of me, trying to find out how far I had to reach before the system realized that I was moving. And it was almost useless at detecting whether I was moving fast or slow.
Fortunately, after a year, that broad-range motion sensitivity has been fine-tuned, and Kinect Sports: Season Two provides a number of games such as darts and baseball that demonstrate the system’s improved programming. Now, the act of aiming feels intuitive. Once the Kinect starts to track my moving hand, every subtle shift I make translates onto the screen as I try to keep my aim steady while I pull back my arm and throw the dart or pitch the baseball.

With great power comes great responsibility. I learned that from Spider-Man, but it’s been driven home by the current generation of videogames. Since the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 arrived under my TV, and Nvidia’s graphics cards arrived in my PC, I’ve been playing videogames that have the power to replicate reality.
But as games have become more detailed and lifelike, they have also started to show their seams. Every fake-looking eyeball and each unnatural movement spoils the game’s illusion. Whenever I see the landscape ripple and tear as the graphics engine attempts to draw it into existence, I’m thrown out of the world that I’ve been pulled into.
Rage immediately impressed me with its visual intricacy. Gone were the endless straight lines that always reveal that I’m walking in a world created by computer. Even the floor of the simplest room in Rage undulates and fragments. Rage is set on Earth after a meteor has plowed into the planet, and the haphazard, uneven appearance is perfect for the aftereffects of an apocalypse.

As I’m writing this, there is a very real chance that there won’t be an NBA season in 2012. The dispute between the players and the team owners has already postponed the pre-season. Unless someone capitulates, there might not be an official season at all. So much for real life.
Videogames, on the other hand, are chugging right along. Without an official NBA roster for 2012, 2K sports has drafted all the players from 2011, along with plenty of old and retired players. They return via 2K12’s “NBA’s Greatest” mode. And really, who wouldn’t rather have a legend than a rookie, anyway?
The lack of new faces puts the emphasis on the gameplay. In a game like basketball, which is based on reflex and reaction, it’s important that the controls allow a twitch of my thumbs to immediately register with the onscreen player. But because the player is a virtual human being with a virtual body, he can’t just switch directions. He needs to reverse his momentum and swing his limbs. His digital reflexes must be tempered by believable physics. In this crucial combination of electron-fast response and realistic follow-through, NBA 2K12 is completely lifelike. My players respond as though they share my thoughts.

I kept thinking, “The game is about to come together.” I was sure that the next alien I shot would be the one that transformed Resistance 3 into the eye-popping, controller-clutching game that started the franchise. In Resistance
I was thrust into a human-alien war that displayed all of the PlayStation 3’s strengths. I could see for what seemed like miles. More importantly, I could shoot for what seemed like miles. Most important of all was that I could shoot the tubes on an Alien’s backpack from miles away and watch him spin out of control as his cooling system stopped working and his overactive alien metabolism cooked him alive.

In case you’ve forgotten, Nintendo released a 3D version of its bestselling DS system. The system has been in stores for five months now, but consumers haven’t exactly been snapping it up. To bolster sales, Nintendo recently reduced the price of the 3DS to $180. But the problem isn’t the price. The problem is that the system doesn’t have any must-have games yet.

Behold the Internet, circa 2200. It looks a lot like the 1992 movie The Lawnmower Man imagined “virtual reality” would look – lots of whirling fragments of light and color, like an exploded disco ball seeking to reassemble itself into some new form. Long, twisting, circular tunnels of light flow past, as though I’m commuting rapidly down an intergalactic wormhole on rails – no steering needed. And the soundtrack sounds like a frantic mixtape from the early 2000s that has been run through a blender and poured out onto a dance-club floor. Behold Child of Eden.
Behold, as well, me as the Kinect sees me. From its perch beneath my TV screen, the Kinect’s glistening red eye witnesses me standing in the middle of the living room, holding my right arm stretched out in front of me, waving it around as though I were directing the rearrangement of some far-off set of furniture. “Over there. No, over there. OK, around there…” Then I flick my hand toward the screen as though rejecting everything. The soundtrack strikes a flourish.

I know nothing about the anime series Bleach. At first I thought my ignorance would help me. I thought that I’d be able to play the game without complaining that they modeled the spikes on the hero’s hair wrong, or forgot to include my favorite character. I thought I could focus on the gameplay.
Bleach: Soul Resurrección is a “beat ’em all” game modeled on the popular Dynasty Warrior series. What that means is that the characters wander through blank, featureless tundras or castles until they encounter a swarm of enemies. Then the fighting commences, with swords slashing through the air in bright semicircles and characters leaping into the air, hanging suspended for a moment, then crashing tumultuously to the ground.

The Asskickers, as its name suggests, is a game about kicking ass. So how does this make The Asskickers different from hundreds of other videogames?
For starters, the asses in The Asskickers are all hand-drawn. Most asses in videogames these days are the result of hundreds of hours spent staring at computer screens, arranging wire-frame models into three-dimensional domes and encoding them with digital jiggles and jives. None of that happens in The Asskickers. Using a handmade aesthetic that is rarely seen in videogames these days, The Asskickers renders every object – ass or otherwise – with the lurid simplicity of a cartoon sketched onto a piece of paper or graffiti sprayed onto a wall.

I am offense. With one eye making sure a burly linebacker doesn't break toward me, I focus my attention on the gridiron like a grandmaster evaluating a game of chess. I watch my teammates rush across the field in the pattern we agreed upon, making sure they arrive at their destinations and travel their intended paths. A pair of padded shoulders from the opposing team can set one of my men back. Or a pack of the other team's players might close in on the ball just when it reaches its target. I'm always trying to anticipate the flow, guessing where the players will be arranged in the few seconds it takes me to throw the ball.
Unlike a chess player, I have no time for drawn-out deliberation. Playing offense requires near-instant action. Fortunately, a videogame controller is well equipped for that. Those buttons that rest under my right thumb are snap decision-making tools par excellence. Each receiving player is mapped to one of the buttons, and its symbol moves across the field with him. When I want to throw, I merely press the corresponding symbol. The players become buttons and my thumb makes the throw with a tap.

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 is a game about giant robots fighting each other. And yet, at the beginning of the game, these giant robots ask “Why fight?” To that, I ask: What else do giant robots do?
For more than 30 years, giant robots have been fighting in the Gundam manga and anime series. (Technically they’re not robots – they’re people in robot suits. Same dif.) The robots themselves resemble Transformers wearing ancient samurai armor – jutting blades, outlandish colors, elaborate headdresses. Everyone looks like an industrial drag queen.