Ten years of PlayStation 2

Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love came out for the Playstation 2 on the US on March 30th.That's not a big deal in itself (unless you're a die-hard fan of the strategy/RPG/dating sim/mecha genre), but last month marked the ten-year anniversary of the Japanese release of the PlayStation 2. The American anniversary will be this fall. A decade after its birth and three years after the release of PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2 just keeps lumbering along.

It's been quite a 10 years, too. So many memories: The first PS2 game I ever played, Summoner. Still an underrated game, in my opinion.

The time a friend and I played through Metal Gear Solid 2 in a single marathon session, lasting late into the night. If you're familiar with both the late-game events of MGS2 and the psychological effects of sleep deprivation, you know that's not a good idea. Never before or since has a game caused me to repeatedly ask my friend “OK, have I fallen asleep in my chair and started dreaming, or did he actually just say that?”

Spending more time on the Disgaea games than I have ever spent on any other life activity, including (but not limited to) family gatherings, personal hygiene, schoolwork, and social engagements, EVER.

Becoming violently ill when I failed to anticipate the results of combining a rental copy of the PS2 port of Half-Life, my life-long vulnerability to motion sickness, the lingering effects of an indeterminate quantity of Guinness consumed earlier in the evening, and what later turned out to be the early symptoms of a strain of flu that was going around.

Loving Xenosaga. Then grudgingly tolerating Xenosaga II. Then loving Xenosaga III which, aside from its inexcusable failure to bring back Shion's glasses, was a fantastic comeback for the series.

Seizing control of the train in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and accelerating to such high speeds that it derailed as I approached a bridge, went flying over the side of the chasm the bridge spanned... and just started floating in mid-air, presumably because the programmers at Rockstar didn't anticipate my train fetish.

Being the only adult male in the Western hemisphere who actually liked Tidus in Final Fantasy X.

Joining every other adult male in the Western hemisphere in wondering why the hell Vaan was even in Final Fantasy XII.

Ace Combat 4, Ace Combat 5, and Ace Combat Zero. I let out an anguished Revenge of the Sith-style “NNNNOOOOO” when I found out that Ace Combat 6 was an Xbox 360 exclusive.

The RPG/horror series Shadow Hearts, or at any rate the first two. (The third one was just sort of meh.) Aside from the great gameplay, it broke the usual JRPG mold in all sorts of ways: Instead of the usual fantasy settings, it was set in the early 20th century in our own world. (Aside from some minor liberties taken with history. For instance, the real Grigori Rasputin died after being beaten, shot, and thrown into a river by a cabal of noblemen and reactionary politicians, rather then when his aerial fortress was destroyed by a Russo-Japanese shapeshifter in the sky over Petrograd.) The battles were turn-based but relied heavily on reflexes as well as strategy. Protagonist Yuri Hyuga was actually old enough to buy tickets to an R-rated movie without being accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Plus, it had what is probably the filthiest joke ever to appear in an American localization of a Japanese RPG. (Early on, the heroine is being held prisoner in a village where the people have turned to cannibalism. Yuri is having none of that, so he breaks in to demand her release and... well, from there it practically writes itself.)

Persona 3 unexpectedly becoming one of my favorite games of all time. Which I then sold online in mint condition for over $100 when its unexpected success caused a crippling shortage. Then finding a complete used copy in very good condition at my local Game Crazy for $40, buying it, and then selling that for over $100 as well. (Hey, arbitrage is an essential part of any market economy.) Then, shortly afterwords, cackling like some evil top-hatted Gilded Age plutocrat when Atlus announced that they were localizing Persona 3: FES and the once-lucrative Persona 3 used copy market collapsed. Then getting Persona 4, which managed to be even better.

Yes, it's been ten truly magical years of action, adventure, drama, obsessive behavior, profitable speculative bubbles, drunken first-person shooter-induced projectile vomiting, assorted angst-ridden bishonen both likable and unlikable, and Russo-Japanese shapeshifters making appalling puns about cunnilingus. A true golden age.

More about games and fear: Paranoia, helplessness, and Solid Snake's terrifying mullet

It's Halloween, the day when all the children of America, enjoying a privilege usually limited to mob enforcers, governments, and nomadic Iron Age horsemen, don threatening-looking garments and knock on my door to demand that I hand over valuable material resources, lest I end up suffering some sort of ill-defined but ominous harm at some point in the future. This seems like a good time to make another venture into actual commentary about games and add something to my previous post about horror games and the creation of fear.

As I said last time, my single most intense moment of fear in a game was probably the bath tub scene in Eternal Darkness, which I think is a pretty commonly cited example among gamers. In terms of total experience, however, my most frightening game is sort of an unusual one- Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. If for some reason you're avoiding spoilers for an extremely well-known and endlessly discussed game that came out eight years ago, consider this your warning.

It goes to show how individual fear can be. In real life, my greatest sources of fear aren't about being in physical danger, they’re about the possibility of disruptions of the mind and senses- loss of self-control, delusion, reality around me dissolving into incomprehensible chaos because I’ve lost my ability to reason. For me, nothing is scarier than that, because there is nothing else that can render you so utterly helpless. Most of my favorite horror movies, such as Jacob's Ladder and In the Mouth of Madness, involve these sorts of themes. Metal Gear Solid 2 is one of the relatively few games that does this, and it takes it to a much deeper, more disturbing level than something like Eternal Darkness.

So, I'm playing as main character Raiden: elite spy, warrior, and Japanese market-friendly blond pretty boy. I'm fighting my way through the Big Shell installation, battling heavily armed terrorists, the elite rogue agents of Dead Cell, and the hostile work environment created by the grossly inappropriate workplace sexual advances of the President of the United States. Then, things start to get strange. Weird, inexplicable stuff starts happening, Colonel Campbell and Rose start sending me bizarre, threatening, or outright nonsensical codec messages, and things just become generally bizarre and confusing.

My straightforward, comprehensible, and above all rational (by Metal Gear Solid standards) military action-adventure turns into a nightmare of paranoia, delusion, and dissociation. People I’ve trusted and grown accustomed to suddenly have different personalities and are saying things that make no sense. Normal, comfortable, predictable conventions of reality (like the Game Over screen) are suddenly confusing and not behaving as they should. I’m being told I’m not really who I think I am and that my own past may be a lie. The lines between reality and fantasy are blurring or collapsing entirely, both within the universe of the game (suggestions that Raiden is actually in VR, the eventual revelations about the true nature of Raiden's mission) and beyond it (the Colonel telling Raiden to turn the game off).

My friends, my own sense of identity, my sensory perceptions, reality itself are not to be trusted. The eventual explanation for these phenomenon- the malfunction of Arsenal Gear's artificial intelligence- brings no consolation, and does nothing to make reality any more solid. The people I thought were my friends really are lying to me and conspiring against me. I really have been stripped of my free will by hostile outside forces. The world I inhabit really is an illusion, meant to deceive and control me. All sorts of seemingly unrelated phenomena really are consciously directed at me, personally. All the events I experience really are caused by the machinations of a powerful, hostile intelligence that controls everything around me. The sort of nightmarish world some people in the throes of severe mental illness imagine is the world I actually live in.

I found it incredibly creepy and disturbing. I’m being attacked by terrorists or Harrier jets or a portly mad bomber on roller skates- fine. I can evade physical attacks. I can kill them before they kill me. There’s nothing to dodge or run from or kill when rational, comprehensible reality itself is falling apart around me. If you're feeling immersed in the game, it can be quite an intense experience.

People who like Metal Gear Solid 2’s story and atmosphere usually cite its postmodern elements- removal of the fourth wall, commentary on the nature and conventions of its own medium, hyperreality. I find those aspects interesting, but I think discussion of the game has placed so much focus on subtext that people largely disregard what a more straightforward look can offer. Much of the later part of the game, if considered not in its role as commentary on gaming but simply as a depiction of events experienced by the protagonist, is a rather chilling portrayal of going insane.

News Roundup, August 27th: Adult subject matter, childishly snickered at

The Xbox360 version of forthcoming game Fairytale Fights is reported to have an Achievement for killing 1,000 children. Now, granted, they’re cartoony children in an intentionally silly and over-the-top fantasy kingdom, but this still seems tantamount to pinning a giant “I Want to be Subpoenaed by a Senate Subcommittee” sign on your own back. There’s a good chance the achievement will be removed from the release version, though the epic juvenile-dismembering action itself is expected to remain unchanged.

I’m a bit worried due to the fact that the media has the habit of exaggerating the content in games. The best-known recent example of this is probably the Mass Effect/Live Desk With Martha MacCallum debacle, when a few seconds of shadowy bare ass was inflated into a Caligulaesque hardcore porn extravaganza by commentator Cooper Lawrence, who had never actually seen the game. (The scene with the shadowy bare ass was inflated, I mean; not the bare ass itself. Though there are websites for the latter, if that’s your thing.) If this game catches the media’s interest, by the time the report on it makes it to air the story will have grown from “game where you kill cartoon children” to “game where you kill every child in the Western Hemisphere and sell their organs to the yakuza.” This could be the gaming industry’s biggest public relations disaster since the media firestorm that accompanied the ill-fated release of Will Wright’s SimKlan in 2002.

(A side note: You have no idea how desperately this new story made me want to somehow work in a reference to Karsa Orlong from the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, but that’s a bit arcane even for me. However, the first person to successfully explain in the comments section what the relevance of such a reference would have been will win a valuable prize. Please note that I reserve the right to make the prize turn out to be something intangible, like my respect and good will, and thus valuable only in some abstract spiritual sense that doesn’t cost me anything or do you any actual good.)

Speaking of Achievements, forthcoming spy RPG Alpha Protocol has previously been said by its developers to contain a veritable horde of female NPCs that the secret agent main character can potentially get intimate with. Apparently, for those of you who choose not to descend into a 1080p pit of vice and depravity, the game will also have an Achievement in the Xbox360 version (and presumably a trophy on PS3) for completing the game while remaining celibate.

I'm not aware of any previous video game that has had a feature like this, but I’ve encountered the idea of a celibacy recognition award before. Well, technically it’s a novelty mug I won in a Star Trek trivia contest during the mid-90s, but the underlying concept is pretty much the same. (I actually still remember the tie-breaking question for first place. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that being able to remember the name of Lieutenant Worf’s adoptive human brother Nikolai Rozhenko won’t get you anywhere in life.) This comes after previous reports announcing that Xbox360 players who hook up with all of the potentially available NPCs would be likewise recognized, earning the 50-point “Painful Burning Mystery Discharge” achievement.

Speaking of recreational activities that can lead to internal organ damage and unwholesome bodily discharges when enjoyed irresponsibly, somebody is selling a device known as the “Arkeg Drink n’ Game,” which despite sounding like the name of a store that would appear in a throwaway background gag on The Simpsons is apparently an actual product. It’s an arcade cabinet with 69 classic arcade games preloaded and a built-in keg, CO2 draft system, and tap to dispense alcoholic beverages while you play.

I see two potential stumbling blocks for this thing. First of all, it costs $3,999, and I’m not sure how big the Wealthy Alcoholic Nerd Age 25-45 consumer demographic really is. Second, there are less expensive alternatives available that offer essentially the same functionality, such as my own patented “Bottle of Wild Turkey 101 Sitting On the Table Next to Me While I Play Disgaea 3” system.

Nevertheless, I admire the underlying vision, and the union of gaming and drinking has great promise. Think of the potential a well-chosen tie-in beverage has to add atmosphere to a game. The developers could provide a jug of moonshine with the next Harvest Moon game to evoke the feel of rural life. You could give everyone who buys the next installment of Metal Gear Solid a bottle of absinthe so that the player’s mind-bending wormwood-induced hallucinations will make the game itself seem almost rational and comprehensible by comparison. Every copy of the recently released GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra could come with a liter of pure grain alcohol so that the player can drink himself into merciful unconsciousness to escape the horrible dawning realization that he has just paid actual money for a game based on GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. The possibilities are endless.