Commander Shepard and Captain Planet

Mass Effect 2

System: Xbox 360

Developer: BioWare

NA Release: January 2010

Back when neon was king and Paula Abdul was coherent, environmental matters were an issue of great media attention—by which I mean exploitation.

The global warning debate barely garners a yawn on the airwaves anymore, but the '90s bombarded us with tons of bright, whimsical shows and games that fell along the same general lines: Nature good! Big greedy dirty corporations and their machines bad! Evildoers—you could tell because they were ugly and often voiced by Tim Curry—sought to take over worlds by pillaging them of their resources and overrunning their dry, smoggy husks with metallic contraptions. These plans, of course, would be foiled in extreme '90s fashion by wildly colored characters like Captain Planet, Sonic the Hedgehog and Widget the World Watcher.

You know! Widget! The World Watcher? Ah, forget it.

Setting things in space does change things significantly. In the Mass Effect series, the metal of ships and stations becomes a primary means of life, with the natural settings of planets mere specks compared to the grand void of it all. Still, I had to muse how the influence of environmental messages has seemed to wane as I shotgunned probe after probe onto every planet I could find to satiate the game's never-ending demand for natural materials.

Mining in Mass Effect 2 is a simple matter of scanning planets from orbit and firing probes onto locations that spike the readings. Whatever needed materials are found there are automatically added to your store. Ores include Irridium, Platinum, Palladium and “Element Zero,” which is probably what powered Ma-Ti's heart ring.

Even he knows his useless ring's going to get him hurt.

On the surface, probing is a fun little mini-game, but go deeper and the propensity for environmentally based backlash rises right along with the likelihood of making dubious metaphors. For a series that enjoys delving into moral quandaries so often, I'm surprised I haven't come across any sort of tough choices in this department. Firing probes at a planet from space can not be the safest means of exploring. Many of these planets are noted as being inhabited, so it would only be a matter of time before you hit something important. It's much the same reason they banned lawn darts, only now you're playing it in someone else's backyard with stakes the size of the Eiffel Tower.

"I'll build on that Palladium deposit!" I said. "Who's ever going to need Palladium?" I said!

And how do the materials instantly transport to your ship? It doesn't look like the universe has teleporters yet or else you'd be Star Trekking all up in this place. I can only imagine a long, Dr. Seussian hose snaking out of the Normandy and onto the planet, sucking all the elements up while fluffy Neptunian dodos or what-have-you shriek and flee in terror.

Of course Mass Effect shows that the universe has a lot of gray areas, but when my '90s kid mind sees me hopping from planet to planet, depleting planets of their metals in order to fabricate weapons and war machines, I'm suddenly Dr. Shepbotnik. I just can't get around it.

Perhaps I've missed a scene where mining is brought into question or one is coming my way, but I think it would be an interesting subplot. Trust me, though; even if it's not, this definitely isn't the end of the world for me. I can only shudder to think of what Mass Effect could have been if media's extreme '90s environmental push was still alive today. We could be playing some cross between Star Fox and Awesome Possum.

Remembered so it may never happen again.

Rayman Origins and the Case for Classic Eclecticism

Rayman Origins
Platform: Xbox 360
Developer: Ubisoft Montpellier
N.A. Release: November 2011

There is no doubt this season has been bountiful with games--an onslaught of quality year-end releases that has pushed many gamers to joyful bankruptcy. Yet in all the festive frenzy, one poor, deserving game has fallen by the wayside; a game whose performance may very well influence the creative future of the industry.

Rayman Origins is a critically adored 2D platformer whose whimsically oddball style coats an extremely well composed level design. This game is quite frankly a joy to play, but according to sources, only 50,000 copies of it were sold in the first month.

I can't begin to describe what is going on here, but let me assure you it is glorious.

It's easy to blame these criminally low sales numbers on getting lost in the holiday shuffle, but it's worth asking: of all titles, why this one? Rayman isn't exactly on the top tier of mascots, but the brainchild of Michel Ancel has held his own pretty well, if merely by the fact he's not occupying some circle of gaming hell with Bubsy and Blinx the Time Sweeper. Recognition is there, as are the glowing reviews and some good deals on Black Friday (which I took advantage of). So why did this game get overlooked?

Do we just not give 2D platformers the same recognition we used to?

Oh sure, we still have the kings, Mario and Sonic, hanging around, but they just can't seem to stay out of 3D (for better or worse) and their modern 2D offerings tend to get treated as nostalgic sidelights rather than main entries to the series. Donkey Kong Country Returns did relatively well for itself, but it's tough to call it a blockbuster. The only other character who seems to remain consistently 2D is Kirby, and bless his little pink soul for it.

But those are the good memories. Back in the SNES and Genesis days, 2D platformers were in abundant supply; and while there were masterpieces, there was also a slew of copycats who just didn't provide as satisfying an experience. You couldn't swing a Super Scope without hitting some "me-too" critter with obnoxious '90s attitude and a set of phoned in stages to stumble through. Poor controls and redundant design killed a lot of these titles and may make us subconsciously gun-shy when even a semi-familiar friend returns in 2D--or at least think a game is not beefy enough to warrant a price similar to its 3D brethren.

Check out the above screenshot. If you were around to play it, I wouldn't be surprised if it reminded you of Earthworm Jim. Now that was a game that also had a unique character and an incredible art style, but honestly, I didn't really consider it that much fun to play. It has its fan-base, but the series is kaput--the fodder of iPhone ports and small murmurs of possible-maybe-one-day comebacks. Origins might be the same, right? Another "classic" character fading into the mists of obsolescence, flailing in a desperate yet mediocre attempt at relevance?

Take in the animation and ambiance of this scene in action and it's as engaging as any 3D world out there.

No. We must not allow ourselves to treat the terms "classic," "artsy" and "2D" as remnants of a bygone era and handheld-only appearances. To do so would be denying crucial elements and amazing experiences when someone manages to combine them all correctly. There are certain artistic and mechanical licenses 2D games can employ more effectively than 3D; creators and developers that can flourish much more brilliantly on a flat plane. And as methods evolve, both forms have and can continue to benefit from each other's breakthroughs.

Please at least try Rayman Origins. The gaming industry needs now more than ever the confidence to put its money behind artistic and creative exploration. An ocean of indie developers with the potential to do extraordinary things to the fundamentals of gaming is out there just waiting for green lights. And when something as right as Rayman Origins comes along, all the important people are watching.  

Sonic Rush and the Inner Monologue

Sonic Rush
Platform: Nintendo DS
Developers: Sonic Team and Dimps
N.A. Release: November 2005


Do you know how certain things tend to tie together in your mind? My birthday is just a couple days away, on Nov. 15. It's a Tuesday this year, making it a prime release date for games like Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Halo: Anniversary, but there's only one game I associate with my birthday: Sonic Rush.

Released Nov. 15, 2005, Sonic Rush is not only one of the higher points in the the tumultuous modern generation of Sonic titles, but also marked the debut of my favorite character: Blaze the Cat.

You can tell she's a different Sonic character because she's wearing reasonable pants.

Blaze is a princess from a separate dimension who is charged with protecting her land's Sol Emeralds, mirrors of the series' famous Chaos Emeralds. A stalwart dedication to her duties has resulted in her being quite solitary and socially underdeveloped, although through the course of the game she learns to embrace the values of friendship.

In a cartoonish realm that highlights very bubbly and/or forward personalities, introverts--especially in female characters--seem to rarely find much of a platform or popularity.

Although a new one did show up last year. It's always the purplish ones.

Blaze, however, has managed to establish a healthy and positive following. In a lineup of characters that have very one-track motivations ("I want to beat you, Sonic!" "I want to prove I'm superior, Sonic!" "I want to knock you out with a hammer, tie you to my bed and ravage you until every one of my raging biological desires is satiated, Sonic!") Blaze's separation actually makes her feel relatively deeper.

But if a character is not wont to be chatty, how do you reveal enough of him or her for the audience to care? It's really not that hard if you're not using voice acting: reveal the inner monologue through text!

A hefty amount of Blaze's text in Rush is not her talking to other characters, but herself in her mind. The shortness of her spoken responses come through, but are also matched with lines of inner mulling over her choices and behavior that make you empathize with and even feel a little sorry for her awkwardness. It's not the deepest soliloquy you can find out there, but as Sonic's plots are never that deep to begin with, it still proves effective and outright fascinating.

It's likely my journalistic background talking, but I wish the inner monologue was a more regularly applied technique. I heard so many manufactured soundbytes in my time that I started wondering just what a politician or press rep was really thinking while they were talking to me. And I now realize that my thinking of that back then was yet another truth hidden within my mind as I went through my own reporter motions.

There is an entirely separate universe of thoughts and feelings others will never know, locked away in each and every one of us. Perhaps it's best we can't access them in each other--I doubt society would be a better place if some of those secrets were let out--but in the realm of fiction, it's a reminder that every word we hear can be floating on a hidden ocean of thoughts.