In the second installment of Rabbit Robot’s Button Mashin’ Mixtapes I decided to focus on the incredibly fun and ridiculous action game, Bayonetta. It’s called Gun Feet Dancin’ & Dragon Face Punchin‘. You can read my praises (and several head shakes) about the game here. And when you go to play it listen to this mixtape I made for it! Take a look at the tracklist, cover art, and download links after the jump.

I think this is much more focused than the last one, and has a bit more variety. My goal was to get as many songs with female vocals or artists on them, and save for a few exceptions I think I accomplished that. All the music is very funky, and in some cases favors an over the top sexual tone, something that is a quite evident (and laughable) theme in Bayonetta. Basically, I think Mr. R. Kelly would enjoy this mixtape and I hope you do too.

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Platinum Games’ Bayonetta has the mysterious ability to often make you forget what you are actually doing on screen. This is not a bad thing. During the course of the game you’ll be so focused on the intricacies of the action happening all around you that you’ll simply forget you’re fighting tentacles with cherubic baby faces on the end of them. You’ll forget that you’re using a giant fist made of hair to punch an upside down head with dragons for arms. And you might even forget a David Bowie lookalike is trying to kill you with the power of peacock feathers and giant space satellites.

One would think what I’ve said is exaggeration. Hyperbole manipulated into just the right sentence structure to make this game seem more awesome and ridiculous than it actually is. But none of this stuff is a lie. I mean, just look at this:

A giant robot cat shark with leg faces. And you fight it while surfing. Then you kill it with the aid of a giant fire breathing spider made of your own hair.

The bombastic “who cares if this makes sense as long as it’s fun” attitude is the same thing applied to Platinum Games’ (formerly known as Clover Studios) God Hand for the Playstation 2. Even though Bayonetta is directed by Hideki Kamiya, most famously known for his work on the Devil May Cry series, it seems that his time spent with his Platinum Games colleague and director of God Hand, Shinji Mikami, has rubbed off. Like God Hand, Bayonetta actively avoids making much sense, and at the same time puts an incredible amount of depth into the particulars of the combat and the visual creativity of the characters. The problem is that Bayonetta is still constricted by the bloated and neverending nature of the contemporary Japanese video game narrative, and because of this frustrating fact the game is most of the time very good, but never great.

For instance the combat is incredibly satisfying, funny, and gorgeous. From the simplest of actions, like dodging an enemy at just the right second and activating the slow motion “Witch Time”, to the more detailed scenarios, like executing ridiculous “Torture Attacks” that involve everything from iron maidens to giant owls, one can tell that the game’s strengths lie almost exclusively within the combat. Along with all the moves one can buy, there are quite a few weapons that change up your fighting (and they can be switched out in various slots, as Bayonetta has guns not only in her hands but also on her feet). Along with that are also a plethora of power-ups. Everything to do with the fighting has been refined right down to the very molecules of the game, and it’s hard to imagine people not enjoying it at least most of the time. Even when the game gets frustrating it’s still fun in that hair-pulling “I’m gonna get that giant baby face next time” sort of way. The only time gameplay gets kind of annoying is in the clunky racing and classic video game homage sequences. However, these few bits are never enough to stop you from enjoying the crazy and in depth combat.

But when it comes to anything that does not involve combat, or the visual assortment of characters that one fights while in combat, the game becomes a drooling rambling mad man whose lack of charm and sense is only ignored because he’s really good at shiving other crazy dudes for sandwiches.

I’ve played the game nearly twice over, and even if I was able to bear the cutscenes and stop motion comic book interludes between all the heavenly monster stomping, I don’t think I would still really know what’s going on. The game suffers from what I call the Kojima Effect, where people talk about something, then explain it, then explain why they explained it, and then talk about why Kant explained it, and by this point your brain is in your lap trying to crawl to the console to turn it off and make it all stop.

From what I could gather Bayonetta is a witch and she’s killing some angels to get their halos which passes for cash in this world. Also, she’s the last of her witch race? But there is another witch race, too? I think David Bowie at the end is the last of that race, but he talks nearly for 20 minutes straight and I left to go make some soup so I don’t know. David Bowie is also trying to raise some sort of Cosmic God Lady from the grave, and he needs some eyes that aren’t actually eyes to wake it up. Oh, and also your soul/past is represented in the form of a little kid and it comes out of your body and pretends you’re its mother or something.

Basically the game takes the long way around to say “hey yo punch these aliens in the face and use their halos to buy magic lollipops”.

The characters themselves and their personalities are equally ridiculous, sharing the same “what the…” nature of the fight scenes and mixing it with the intolerable annoyance factor of the cinematics. For the beginning (and very end) of the game the developers decided they wanted to torture you, so they pair you off with a fat Italian stereotype that looks and sounds exactly like Joe Pesci and never stops talking. Add to this the random black devil guy who sells you guns because that’s what black people do, and you either have the most amazingly retarded recreation of Lethal Weapon 2, or a big gooey bowl of generic anime action characters that smells like headaches and Michael Bay.

Bayonetta herself is no better. Imagine you walk into your parents room and find your little brother wearing your mother’s bra and one of her dresses while he prances around pretending to be a “sexy lady” and talking in a British woman’s voice that he probably heard in a James Bond movie. That is exactly how Bayonetta acts almost the entire time. Her sexuality is ramped up to such ridiculous heights that it goes light years past being lewd and becomes nothing short of hilarious. When she fights with any object that is pole shaped, she can plant it into the ground and dance around it like a stripper. In the opening sequence, when her nun costume is slashed off to reveal her hairsuit, she moans with each slash, as if being murdered by bloodthirsty angels are something that commits her to orgasm every time it happens.

I think you’ll quickly find that very little of this story and character stuff actually matters in the game (and thank your deity that you can skip all the cinematics as well, because you will eventually). Most often you’ll be far too eager to get to the next big action set piece, and they do indeed get bigger as the game goes on. Not once did I ever think the last encounter or boss fight was more ridiculous than the one I was currently doing. Think a surfing battle with a catshark is crazy? Wait until you’re riding a motorcycle up the side of a rocket that is shooting into space and also being controlled by wizard David Bowie who’s about to resurrect a god who has a vagina and giant feathers made of faces.

If that don’t make you want to get it I can’t do a thing for you, son.

My love for hip-hop knows no bounds, and part of that love is maintained and nourished via the free mixtapes the genre has churned out over the years. With a bit of diligence and research one can find free songs from incredible artists, some mainstream and some underground, some conscious intelligent rhymes, some loud bangers and lyrical mazes.

So with this invaluable resource at my fingertips I decided to start creating mixtapes of my favorite free tracks for my favorite and most anticipated games. Rabbit Robot’s Button Mashin’ Mixtapes is meant to be impromptu soundtracks for you to download for free and listen to while playing specific games. Almost always the tracks will maintain a loose theme with the game its supposed to be providing beats for. This week its a mix made specifically for Super Street Fighter IV. After the jump check out the tracklist and cover art for the very first Button Mashin’ Mixtape: I Spit Hot Fire.

In the .rar file is also a list of what mixtapes the tracks were taken from, along with links to them. All these are free and legal songs, and as are the mixtapes, so enjoy to your hearts content. If you like what you hear, consider getting the respective artists’ real albums as well.

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“I haven’t played Street Fighter in years,” Mike said as he awkwardly picked up the controller. Mike, a friend I’ve known since junior high school, but I hadn’t seen in years, had never really played much of the Xbox at all either. He was used to the Playstation controller. But he shrugged as he looked at the screen of characters in Street Fighter IV. A vague smile came over him after he passed each one.

“Remember Street Fighter II? It’s just like that,” I said. “It really isn’t too bad to get used to, sort of like riding a bike. I’ll pick someone I don’t usually play to make things even.” I chose M. Bison and he chose Guile. Both of us hastily drank our beers before the match started, as if the very act of playing would make us die of thirst. When Mike won the first round he rubbed his hands together furiously and cackled like a gremlin. When I beat him the next two for the win, he insisted for another match. Then another. And then another after that. Sometimes one of us would scream with disappointment and stand up in a fury. Not long after we would sit down and just want to keep playing, enjoying every little aspect of competition we could squeeze out of this franchise that has been around 20 years.

The whole gaming session with Mike reminded me of why I loved Street Fighter in the first place, and Ian Cofino’s documentary I Got Next not only defines that experience, that frenzy of excitement that comes with playing the game, but it also reinforces it. I said as much in my review of the film, and even in its current early stages I Got Next embodies the type of vigorous competitiveness and community that even the most common of Street Fighter fans and players have seen over the years.

After I interviewed Ian over e-mail I had planned to do some large overarching article, something like I usually do for the site. But after reading the questions and answers over and over in their purest form, I really realized it was far more interesting that way, and I could only add so much to what Ian and his film already had to say. Ian himself had some really smart comments about storytelling, real independent filming, and the positive aspects of the Street Fighter IV community in general. So, enjoy reading the interview in all its unedited glory.

Just to get the general questions out of the way, what’s your name, age, hometown, and tell us just a little bit about I Got Next and what it is.

My name is Ian Cofino, I’m 22 and I’m from Rye, New York in Westchester County, which is about 40 minutes outside New York City. I Got Next is a free documentary on the fighting game scene. Although now, if I were to describe exactly what it’s focuses were, I’d say it’s more of a character study, that uses Street Fighter 4 and tournament play to propel the story forward.

There’s a lot of general info about how this film came into conception, that it was a college project that kind of grew in scope and passion. What I want to know is your actual act of filming. Did you just have one camera and run around yourself to interview all these people? Did you film it all over an extended period of time or all at once? Was there a particular story you wanted to get across when you first started filming, and how much did that change if at all?

In the beginning, the story, or what I thought would be the story was very different. In fact, I didn’t see a story at all. Because this was my senior project at the time, I tried to set limitations on the documentary, and also to make sure the focus was more on being able to exhibit my skills as a designer. So 7 months ago, I thought that the film would be more of a 10 to 15 minute segment, from one to two major tournaments and a few smaller local ones. The settings really were not important; it was about the players there, and what they had to say about the scene. So the film at the time had less of a focus on what they were playing, or who was winning, but it was more of an informative piece for people who maybe had not been exposed to the scene yet. I followed a lot of threads that I never did anything with in the current version of the film, such as: the rise and fall of arcades in America, the effect console gaming has on the community, online play, the Gamestop tournament to a degree (since it was just me filming, I couldn’t be everywhere at once, so I couldn’t film multiple players at multiple locations competing to get to the final round, I could only chronicle what they went through, or discuss their impressions). The more I filmed, the narrower the focus of the documentary became, I started to realize that I didn’t need this story thread, or I didn’t need to ask this question, because ultimately the response was unimportant to the final story. That may be why you see so much footage from Sinsation and Final Round and not NEC, because at that time, I had not met Ryan, and I was also not asking Justin and Joe all the right questions, the story was very different then.

As far as the technical issues go, it was just me, with one camera. The whole film is shot by myself (with the exception of some footage at NEC where a friend came with me, and some additional match footage at Sinsation and footage of the Liston vs Kensou fight from Final Round) on a Canon Vixia HV30, without any lighting equipment, and a rode shotgun mic that’s attached in the camera’s shoe. I definitely didn’t shoot like that for effect or because that’s the way I generally work, hell I don’t know how I generally work, since this is the first “film” I’ve ever made. I worked everything out as I went. The lack of equipment and personnel came from a lack of money on my part. At the first couple tournaments, I would go and interview players that I had heard of or who were winning and soon a story started to form, and I stuck with Joe, Justin and Ryan (I met Mike at Final Round and besides being a really great guy, he also fit perfectly into the documentary). So the shooting of the film (the short cut) happened over the course of about 3 to 4 months, with footage also making it’s way in from all the way up to June (some b-roll from the SBO Qualifying tournament in California), which is about 7 months into the project, although the majority of the footage really came from the first 3 to 4 months. The footage I was collecting after Final Round was all with the intention of playing a larger role in the feature length cut.

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A child is crying in terrible fits in the corner of some bleak and purple alley. It’s night and she is desperately clutching her stuffed bear. There are ravenous dogs searching for her and she is hiding in cars whose trunks can be opened with dance magic. And then you or me or whoever happens to be hovering over the controller, a desperate gaming hunchback salivating over pixels, initiates that dance magic. Then the dogs dance. All of them. Their leader, supposedly a shaman hound made of glistening white fur, dances so incredibly hard that he has a brain aneurysm and collapses. You killed him with genital thrusts so powerful it cut off the blood flow to his brain.

The girl is saved and she thanks you and then flies away on a hover board made of blue luminescence.

This is Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker.

1990’s Sega Genesis adaptation of Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker has scenarios, settings, and characters that are the epitome of the bizarre charm that is synonymous with the 16-bit era. I think the delightfulness that exudes from that silver age of gaming is of such a peculiar uniqueness that we will very rarely ever see something like it again. Moonwalker is a side scrolling beat ‘em up, and it is that genre in particular that was such a boisterous representation of the gaming world at the time. Filled with these eccentric adolescent concoctions that they called plots and characters that were even more compelling because of their nutty nature: Assassin robots wielding nunchucks and crumbling enemy soldiers down with jet boots. Men riding around in 1950s American sports cars with mounted machine guns while killing stampedes of thought manipulated velociraptors. Random crime bosses punching your girlfriend in the uterus. A baby inside a robot.

But the difference here is that Moonwalker has Michael Jackson being represented in what is arguably one of the most celebrated {and controversial) times of his life. He’s dead now, if you did not know. And though that is the inspiration for this particular review, I like to think Joe Pesci’s current state of healthy vitals should be as equally celebrated. He does after all play the brilliant nefarious drug dealer Mr. Big in the film the game is based on (of which there is a wonderful analysis of here), a man with grand dreams of getting kids high and building gigantic laser cannons on the moon.

Perhaps examining the game itself would show how it is such a beautifully rendered example of the mid-1990s beat ‘em ups. Regardless of all the things mentioned previously, the game is deceivingly simple. Michael Jackson is some sort of sorcerer dancer, whose feet and hands emit a sparkling poison that can knock men clear across the screen. He’s searching for kidnapped children, all of them the exact same WASP-y child clutching the exact same bear. In the process everything from frog-leaping zombies to pool hall prostitutes gets in your way.

On the most simplest of levels the game is actually rather enjoyable. Almost in the way that those classic one punch one kill games like Kung Fu Master and Ninja Warriors were. But the enjoyment – like Ninja Warriors – is quite frankly derived from the batshit insane and absurd things you will fight and see. The introductory paragraph is not some completely made up fantasy. I did indeed have Jackson’s flamboyant avatar jive and groove so hard that his enemies – what were essentially angry canines – danced themselves to death. One of them, whom I assumed was the leader, was already doing some sort of voodoo dance to control his minions when I arrived to face him in combat. So, seemingly, it took little provocation to make him dance even further, and then eventually to the point of death.

You can make most everyone dance themselves to death. This is not, as you have most likely guessed, the strangest of things that happens during the course of this game. At one point I threw my hat and made a zombie explode. Children hide in windows, doors, car trunks, bushes, sewers, teleporter rooms, and within vast spider caverns. Near the end of a level a monkey flies in on a beam of light, places himself upon your shoulders, and like a jonesing crack addict continually points in the general direction of the boss fight. Once there Joe Pesci arrives, but is in the game apparently played by a broad Latino dwarf, and he says “Hahaha, you’ll never catch me!” and then runs away. He does this I would guess about twenty times.

At one point you simply scream and turn into a robot.

Soon after you’re a space plane, and you blow up other space planes. Once you’ve blown up Joe Pesci’s space plane the credits roll and Michael Jackson decides to dance with a random black child.

After I was done playing I found it hard to look at the game objectively as if this was a real professional review. It left me awestruck, shaken, and perhaps even a bit aroused. I like to think that’s how Michael, in the end, would have wanted me to have felt.

What you’re going to immediately notice about I Got Next, the independent documentary about the fighting video game scene, is that everyone can watch and enjoy it. Even the most dedicated of gamers see the world of fighting games and the real life tournaments that surround them as an endless pit of quarter circles, seemingly ancient Egyptian terminology, and athletic-like dedication that would make pre-ear gnawing Mike Tyson astounded. The documentary even shows how gamers like Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez make an actual living out of the fighting game scene. But for me, the exploration of this subculture in a coherent and relatable format is long overdue. Ever since the Daigo Umehara versus Justin Wong EVO 2004 video, where a mob of over enthused geeks fly their hands and voices across the screen in some uncontrollable rabble, I have wanted to understand the fighting game scene better. Researching and reading about the world itself from the comfort of one’s own home never seemed to be enough; the videos and stories presented always making it seem like you need to be there to truly understand these people’s obsessive dedication with this one particular genre of video games.

Ian Cofino’s documentary does the next best thing and simulates what it’s like to be there. It primarily follows the rivalry between East Coast and West Coast players at a tournament called SinSation. With not too many kind words to say about each other, the viewer immediately can tell that the East versus West Coast rivalry runs as deep as any old conflict you would see in an professional sports team. Always respectable, the two sides often compliment what good traits they can about the other, and then quickly move on to saying with absolute certainty that their own side (and often themselves) is the best. This is what sets up the tension in the documentary itself, and what makes it an exciting viewing experience.

What allows it to be that exciting, though, is that anyone can understand it. Cofino wisely pulled himself far away from trying to implement too much of the convoluted terminology involved with the fighting game scene. More than likely he realized it just was not practical to try and explain every avenue of it to a commonplace viewer. Instead, he focuses on the people, the history, and the culture.

Like 2007’s King of Kong we’re surrounded by characters that are deeply entrenched in the competitive video game world, and as a result we see how the whole scene has shaped their personality. Justin Wong, the famous East Coast player from New York, is constantly attributed to some sort of Jesus Christ of the video game scene. Most people make it seem as if he was birthed from an unnatural conception of human seed and an original Street Fighter II arcade cabinet. But he often comes off as cocky and a bit brash, a trait that is apparently the result of overzealous and fraudulent supporters getting in his good graces for their own selfish reasons. Nonetheless, Wong is all about playing the game, focusing whatever mental and physical faculties he has within himself to perfect his ability.

On the other side of the spectrum you have people like Joe “iloveu” Ciaramelli who is the fighting game scene’s every man. You can’t help but relate to Joe when you see his modest life and a proud smiling father recollecting his son’s talents and achievements. All of his reasons for playing the game are on the side of passion, practicality, and good old competition. We see this when he plays against others during the tournament, but also in little moments, like when some of the top players show their excitement for an official professional league that will pay them consistently for what they already love to do. Wong and Gutierrez are thrilled while Ciaramelli is cautious, professing his comfort for where he is right now.

It’s these and other little moments that make the documentary so entertaining. Like the absolute eruption of the spectators as they watch winners and losers stand in the center of the room with complete concentration. Ian Cofino definitely simulated that emotional tension people feel when playing fighting games. The screaming crowds and trash talking rivalries is infectious, and if you’ve ever played a fighting game in an arcade or even in the same room with friends, then you can’t help but smile at it all. The film even mentions the fighting game scene’s diversity and how it was built up from arcades where anyone from anywhere could come and play. For the most part the film is right about that, and one can’t help but feel refreshed when they see all the different types of people, from all different backgrounds, sharing the same room, and cheering for all the same reasons. Where as something like King of Kong featured some of the worst of the video game world, this documentary certainly tries to explain and feature the best, showing the viewer why these people love what they do so much.

That’s what makes the documentary such a fun piece of filmmaking. All the small problems, like the short length (though admittedly the most recent cut has been advertised as “The Short Cut” and Cofino plans to film more, such as EVO), kind of wash away when you sit and watch these professionals going head to head to prove their skills. One has to also realize that Ian Cofino did this all on his own, with little more than a college student’s dedication to tell a story that isn’t told very often. If anything Cofino has opened the door to a world that proves that competitive gaming isn’t all overweight ne’r do well’s and hyperactive adolescents urinating in empty Mountain Dew two liters. It’s a world that can have a history and culture to it, and one that can even sometimes be a positive effect on those who watch and compete in it.

You can watch the trailer for I Got Next embedded above or at the official site. You can watch an early cut of the film at Ufrag TV complete with a question and answer session after the movie.

“The actual experience of playing Guitar Hero is nothing like playing a real guitar,” says Andrew Clarke, “and it’s because you’re basically just following instructions. You’re just following along with something that has already been written. You’re just concentrating on an on and off switch, hitting the right notes at the right time. That’s not actually playing music. What it actually is the most like, and what makes it great, is listening to music.”

Guitar Hero is a loud cultural phenomenon. The game, originally created by developers Harmonix, has become a ravenous beast that has scoured across the music, gaming, and even television world. After selling millions Harmonix moved on from what was becoming a repetitive series of games and instead created Rock Band. Rock Band — a similar game to Guitar Hero in gameplay — moved from only using one guitar to including drum and microphone peripherals as well. With Guitar Hero on its fourth iteration and Rock Band on its second, the music genre they have created will only continue to get bigger and bigger.

I was never a fan of either franchises. What people made out to be some sort of social experience of musical transcendence instead looked like a bunch of saggy pale faced gamers hopping up and down and slamming on a tiny plastic guitar. Most often they played the game to nu-metal howlings, like Disturbed’s “Down With the Sickness”, a song that had more in common with a hangover than actual music. I heard fun and love of music. I saw karaoke for introverted geeks and songs for “wacky” teenage girls who dye their hair green. I saw these people.

But I am a serious games journalist with a serious games blog. Called Rabbit Robot.

So for the sake of being serious and understanding why people loved these games so much, and to understand why it’s so different from the reality of guitar playing, I felt the need to do an act of investigative journalism. I started by having a discussion with Andrew Clarke, a 32-year-old musician and songwriter based in London. Talking with Clarke for almost two hours yielded a lot of interesting answers (and questions). For starters, he had a lot to say about why playing Guitar Hero is not at all like playing music, and why that’s not necessarily a negative.

Says Clarke: “What the physical action allows you to do is to pay attention to every tiny little bit of the song. If you have a complicated solo or something, suddenly the notes are more dense and you’re sweating and leaning closer to the screen and your fingers are tense. It simulates the effect of getting excited by a big crescendo of the music. It gives you a physical and visceral counterpoint to the song. Your whole body, your whole organism is getting into it.”

When I mention it sounds a lot like dancing, Clarke pauses for a moment and agrees. “That would probably be the best metaphor for it. Since you’re getting your whole body into the experience.”

Andrew Clarke has a good idea of the different experiences guitar playing can evoke. Since the age of sixteen he’s been playing the guitar, and for the most part taught himself how to play the instrument. Before that his music experience was limited, with himself not even listening to music on any regular basis until he was about fourteen. Still, it was his self-teaching methods that were so bizarre. “I didn’t get a book, I didn’t get lessons, I just f***ed around until I heard something good.”

After that Clarke eventually started learning a tad more traditionally, with someone in college actually teaching him how to play Nirvana’s “It Smells Like Teen Spirit”. It opened Clarke’s eyes to how simple playing rock songs on guitar was, as he had always assumed all guitar playing was as complicated and furious as jazz guitar. Eventually, Clarke had learned a lot of what he calls “the tricks” of guitar playing and by the time he was eighteen he was playing live. Since then Andrew has written quite a few songs and has played plenty on stage. His music has a distinct folk flavor to it, and at the same time pulls threads from other genres like blues, creating a thoughtful, comfortable, and sometimes rousing listening experience. There’s story in his verses, and it’s something we further discuss when we look into the act of playing Bob Dylan in Rock Band 2.

With a good amount of experience behind him I knew talking to Andrew would yield plenty of noteworthy material about the act of really playing guitar, so before I sat down with the London guitarist I decided I needed to understand these music games more. Even though Clarke had a little bit of familiarity with Guitar Hero, stating his experience playing it “wasn’t that bad”, I still wanted a strong understanding of these games in our discussion. It seemed I would have to buy Rock Band 2 myself, and dive deep into this relatively new genre. A genre, that before I even touched it, I more or less hated.

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There is nothing more satisfying than watching people punch things. Everyone likes to watch punchings, but everyone loves pretending to do it, too. When you kick someone in Double Dragon you like the sensation. It makes you feel good. You probably make a “WA-CHAA” noise at the same time, getting all tingly that you just backhanded some murderous prostitute with a whip. The same emotional response applies to certain films. Try watching some classic kung fu fight scenes back to back. Adrenaline will rise and before you know it you’ll be the pasty American version of Bruce Lee, trying to jump kick over desks and fighting phantom Bolo Yeungs with sloth-like roundhouse kicks.

There’s a connection there, between the game and the movie’s emotional responses. I’m not saying that films and video games are one in the same – since they are two completely different experiences – but what I am saying is that video game movies adapted from video games aren’t video game movies.

Now you are all cross-eyed.

Let’s be more specific. Doom is a video game movie adaptation. It is also very bad, and involves Karl Urban and The Rock making us very sad because Doom had a wealth of story material for us all to bask in (Ha!). More importantly, however, for a movie that desperately tries to be as mentally stunted as the game and even in some occasions taking on a hilarious first person perspective, it doesn’t do much to elicit those same emotions you get when you’re playing Doom. You’re not the least bit scared or pumped up. Actually, it’s really a slog to get through, and is just barely one of those “funny bad” movies.

300 is a film I do not like but everyone else does. Regardless of this the movie is like watching one of your friends play a video game. Most importantly 300 sometimes feels like a video game, and is even structured like one. Frank Miller’s hilariously blunt fascist, homophobic, and racist overtones aside, it is a very much a movie that follows video game structure.

Not only does it feature enemies that are gradually more difficult (normal soldiers, then mutant ninjas, then some armored rhinos and elephants and fat dudes with sword arms and fuck knows what else) but it also has what can be considered boss fights (the giant Abobo guy in chains). Couple that with the visual style – a movie almost completely manipulated by computer technology – and you have yourself a film that defines the video game experience. When Leonidus runs through the battlefield with those slow-mo stop-and-goes I could hold an Xbox 360 controller in my hand and it would almost look like I was playing a game.

But what about eliciting those emotions I was talking about? After all 300 is like watching someone else play a video game, and that sort of passive experience inspires detachment rather than excitement.

The reason I mentioned Bruce Lee and martial art film fights was because to me they are the real video game movies. Emotionally and tonally almost all of martial art movies – especially older ones – are very visceral and adrenaline based. They are always very light on story and plot and very heavy on pacing and action. At the core of it all are the fight scenes and how those scenes are orchestrated.

Video games have changed a lot over the years, but if I were to pick up any beat ‘em up or fighting title made today it would be about the same. Ninja Gaiden II, Devil May Cry 4, God Hand, and even Castle Crashers are games that share the common tie of being light on plot and strong on action. It’s hard not to compare them with the classic beat ‘em ups of old, especially when several of them pay homage to that particular genre. Even with all the advancements in video game stories, a lot of first person shooters still feel obligated to the “NO NEED FOR STORY KILL THEM NOW FIST POUND” tone.

Now it is very easy to disagree with all of this, but let us get more detailed by bringing three examples into play.

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I would be lying if one of the first things I wanted to ask Pablo “Dr. Spielmann” Dopico didn’t have to do with the Iraq setting. Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat has a lot of unique aspects, but the boldest is perhaps setting the Half-Life 2 mod in combat scenarios throughout a modern Afghanistan and Iraq. Couple the gorgeous albeit ruined landscapes with the kick-to-the-stomach tone of the action and it immediately makes one question why they’re having so much fun playing it. It also makes you wonder if Dopico and the rest of the team are trying to say something about the conflict.

“We’ve been asked this question too many times,” replies Dopico, the project lead for Insurgency. The development team has had plenty of times to answer these sorts of questions considering it has been around for about five years. Dopico has only been part of the team for one, and though he’s not one of what he calls the “founding fathers” he still has a surplus of responsibilities. “We work in a modular structure: art, level design, sound, quality assurance, public relations. These are all separate teams with different leads and tasks, and it’s my duty to ensure all of them communicate with each other and keep focused on the common goals. It’s also my responsibility to establish timelines, define milestones, assign some tasks to certain developers or contributors, deal with the community and the media, etc. This normally involves making sure everyone is on the same page and a lot of daily problem-solving and micro-management.”

One of those problems to solve would be the constant questions about the Iraq setting, but Dopico responds confidently. “We don’t pick sides, we’re just making a game and this seemed like a good real-world setting. I think we took the right decision when choosing Iraq. Besides it being an existing ongoing conflict it offered a few interesting possibilities: first of all the use of infantry in urban areas, the aesthetic possibilities of the Source engine to depict such scenarios accurately, the immense amount of reference materials available, and two very different, unbalanced factions.”

The Insurgency team have done something right. Intensity runs through this game’s veins, and even if one finds the setting undesirable it’s undeniable it does one thing right, and that’s create a game that forces an otherwise introverted and individualistic subculture into working together.

I saw this in Buhriz first, a town that moved in and out of a distant yellow haze, highlighted by the bright glow of the sun in the sky. Beyond that was a bridge preceded by a wide area of dirt brown, littered with obstacles like stationary ambulances, burning humvees, and randomly collected lines of sandbags. I had played the game for a few days by now, and started to get the hang of all the radical differences this particular mod had to most other first person shooters.

“They’re flanking us on the right,” a thick Scottish accent yelled over the voice channel. “We need an MG over there fellas.”

“They” were the U.S. Marine team trying to take all the points on the map that was defended by “us” the Iraqi Insurgents. My face made a disappointed skew when I realized that the one with the heavy machinegun was me. I carried a weighty RPK LMG that could be deployed on the ground or various surfaces and used as a way to lay down suppressive fire, slowing the enemy and giving our team some time.

“I got it,” I said while looking around. “Where should I go?”

Our squad leader and a few others ran with me to a place to setup, they were laying down cover fire all around, each of them giving locations on the voice channel of the enemy, telling each other to move or get down, yelling for me to setup on a line of nearby sandbags. The sounds were loud and real, even the distant pops of guns in the background being all too familiar to anyone who’s heard real world gunfire.

I was nearing the sandbags when the familiar Scottish voice of my squad leader came over the speakers. “Behind you!”

Almost instantly I turned and let off the full clip from my sidearm. I saw a Marine crash to the ground in a heap, no more than ten feet away from me. My heart was pounding. The squad leader ran up and took cover behind the sandbags next to me, the screen having a hard and fast ripple effect as gunshots flew over our head. I then realized that this whole time, without the aide of my team, I probably wouldn’t have made it very far at all.

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A little creepy, a little sad, and a little short, David Proctor’s The Vacuum hits simple and somber notes almost immediately and effectively carries that tone throughout the game. What one has to remember is that The Vacuum is essentially an interactive short story, and like a lot of adventure games both contemporary and classic, it focuses on the narrative rather than the interactivity. While that may seem standard, it seems to be one of the few things a lazy internet critic like myself can cite as a problem.

In the The Vacuum you play Leo, who is a bit of a douche. Well, he probably isn’t supposed to come off as one, but Leo and his girlfriend Averie seem like the sort of people that would do nothing but talk about themselves and their slightly above average lives at a party while drinking all of your wine and proclaiming how they are witty and sarcastic and Jesus you want them to just shut up. Almost always their outings would probably end in crying and yelling. Perhaps starting after Leo casually says Averie’s uterus is a well of poison, or something similar.

But you’re playing him and that’s that, and really one of the compelling things about any video game is the ability to experience someone wholly different in personality than yourself. Not too much different, however, since you’ll have to make a handful of pivotal choices throughout the game that decide what the outcome of the whole story will be. One of the things that distinguishes The Vacuum from even the most lofty of narrative experiences is that it actually has different variables to the endings. It’s not just two rather lackluster endings (although the reveal at the end to the key plot point is a bit obvious), but rather there’s various things the player can do or miss during the course of gameplay that effect the results of the entire story. It’s essentially a Choose Your Own Adventure where you don’t get eaten by vampire sharks or set aflame by fiery robot breath every other page.

And it’s the adventure of it all that is really good. Basically the crew for the ship Leo, Averie, and several others are traveling on disappears. The story revolves around trying to find out what happened and how.

It’s here within in the atmosphere and story where The Vacuum really nails it. It can be seen why that specific title was chosen for the game as well. The ship has long empty halls of smooth simple grays and windows with blotchy stars in the background. The characters are a smooth palette of solid colors, all of it triggering nostalgia from games like Out of this World, the tone of which The Vacuum seems to ape. In the end it’s all about the isolation of the ship, and that’s what brings about a creepy uncertainty as Leo walks around. This is especially evident in certain scenes, like one where Leo finds himself donning a space suit and exploring damaged sections of the ship. Combined all this with a soundtrack that is sometimes distracting, but mostly very fitting and you have a great experience on your hands.

One of the first problems I noted with the game, however, is that there’s not much going on except the walking and talking. Adventure games usually give you a bit of puzzle solving along with everything, and there isn’t one dilemma here that can’t be solved with common sense and some clicking. The only thing you ever carry around with you consistently is a set of keys, which eventually unlocks just about every room on the ship. The game is barely interactive, and it’s hard to say that’s such a bad thing since it’s a good story and a short one at that.

The Vacuum’s main problems are a side effect of that shortness, though. Other than Averie and Leo, the characters are never really well known and more or less represent the stereotype seen in your common survival horror fiction. The snooty business man, the vain frat dude, and the laid back rebel girl all make an appearance here. Their development is limited to their conversations with you, and some of those discussions can alter later endings, but for the most part the characters didn’t feel fully developed or realized. The ending is the same way, with most of the conclusion being summed up rather quickly after everything is over, and the whole story being resolved in an almost hilariously quick and unsatisfying confrontation (at least for my ending). It’s all because The Vacuum is at best a two to three hour game depending on how you play it, and unless the narrative experience is spread across several episodes, the story is ultimately not going to have as much room as one would like for character development and depth of plot.

What makes The Vacuum’s problems so intriguing is that it is at the same time its strength. The short length makes it an incredibly accessible adventure game, and certainly is the interactive equivalent of sitting down and reading a fun novella. It hits great notes in that short bit of time, and despite its problems still is able to be an effective gaming experience for just about anyone who likes a simple and well executed story. Still, one has to wonder if The Vacuum had a bit more time to stretch its legs, how much of better a game would it turn out to be?