drscotcheggmann

[drscotcheggmann]

[drscotcheggmann]

Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You Review & Wider Reflections

On Sunday afternoon I went to see Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You. As a longtime fan since Generation 1, the thirteen year old boy still hiding inside this now thirty year old man (sometimes not all that well hidden) was nothing short of buzzing; but while excitement was running high as the lights dimmed and the curtain went up, at the same time I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I knew what I wanted: a huge slice of nostalgia; to be transported back to the late 90s, a reminder of when my love for these little monsters was still in its infancy; a warm, tingling Thundershock of a hug from Pikachu and the gang. But would this be what I would get? Would the film alter or even damage my memories of watching the original Animé all those years ago? Getting up early before school, willing to forgo breakfast to make sure I’d watched the latest episode. Some will say “Get over yourself and stop being so precious”, arguing that no matter if good or bad, those golden mornings watching Mew dance across the screen as the ridiculously infectious theme tune rose to crescendo shouldn’t be and can never be touched by watching this one film. Yeah, that’s all well and good in theory but it’s never nice having a half baked reimagining or rehash of something classic seemingly shit all over your childhood. And this was a slight worry because....I’d heard things. That Brock and Misty had been ditched for two other male and female companions. That the movie was only loosely based on the original Animé and might stray from what longtime fans like me might expect. It’s always the longtime fans that feel most entitled, whether it be video-gamers, movie buffs or Pokémaniancs. So as Ash’s Mum comes in to wake her long sleeping son, dreaming of his future adventures in the early hours of his tenth birthday, the weight of expectation was weighing on my mind. But. I’m pleased to say that this longtime, entitled, nostalgia crazed Pokémon fan had nothing but a huge smile on his face when all was said and done. I would go as far as to say that I left the movie theatre, mentally waving my arms in delight, like a Togepi on speed. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t perfect and it didn’t tick all of my own personal boxes but sitting at the end watching the credits roll, I realised that it didn’t have to. Looking around me as the lights went up I realised that it was about more than just me and all of the other Gen 1 superfans sitting there in the semi darkness (and I would wager there were quite a few of us)! Let me explain. WARNING: FULL SPOILERS AHEAD. Something for the Oldies The movie tells a story which is, at its core, rooted in the original Animé. Ash, a regular 10 year old boy living in a world inhabited by Pokémon, dreams of one day becoming the greatest Pokémon Master (yes, the greatest Pokémon master, not trainer). Ever. Like no one ever was (sorry, couldn’t resist). And in this fact alone, the film lavishes longtime fans with nostalgic riches at every turn. From Ash’s frantic dash out of the house (he doesn’t seem to shower at any point before setting off, as noted by my cynical cinema going companion), to those first wonderfully endearing moments of love hate interplay between Ash and Pikachu, it’s all just ‘kid in a sweet shop’, ear to ear smile inducing stuff. Another thing that struck me as a fan from the beginning is that I’ve never seen so many Gen 1 Pokémon in such a short space than in this movie. As Ash tumbles off a cliff into a river clutching Pikachu, a murmuration of angry Spearow in pursuit, a snarling Gyarados darts downstream in what is a near miss for our hapless duo (but at least he has a wash in the river). Pinsir prowl the forests, people can be seen strolling down streets and indoors with their Pokémon at heel. A slumbering Onix is provoked into pursuing our group of heroes. Nidoran of both genders, a Sandshrew and a Paras are all led into a cave to shelter from the rain by a certain legendary dog (more about them later). At one point, I even had to laugh as Ash approaches the summit of the mountain towards the end of the film, only to be greeted by an audience of exclusively Gen 1 Pokémon: Graveller, Venomoth, Golbat, Nidoqueen, Nidoking, Magnemite, Magneton, Electabuzz and Magmar. You wonder if some of these even belong on a bloody mountain but this is the love the filmmakers are keen to show those fans of the earliest generation. A clear message: ‘Here we are! The originals. Back in all our glory again’. And the effect of this is wonderful. I actually began to go through how many of the original 151 Pokémon I hadn’t seen. There were still quite a few but not as many as you’d think. And it’s not only Gen 1 that seems to get that special treatment. Gen 2 is just as lovingly captured. Ho-Oh is the Gen 2 Pokémon at the heart of Ash’s quest in the movie, a quest which was never realised in the original anime but still has its roots there, as Ash spots Ho-Oh flying over the rainbow in the very first episode. But there are others too. The legendary dogs, Raikou, Suicune and Entei all feature, the latter most prominently. When I say prominently I mean this in the most literal sense for Entei - he’s the size of a freakin’ house! There’s even a glimpse of Lugia as the film draws to a close. As a longtime fan it’s great to see all of these guys on the big screen again but I’m also quite honestly glad that the movie did not become an exercise in crowbarring in every legendary Pokémon across the generations, just for the sake of it. Arguably seeing all 3 legendary dogs, who are so incredibly rare that hardly anyone ever encounters them, is a bit much but I was ok with this. It’s not all about the legendaries though; the not so legendary Pokémon spanning all generations are well represented. That first moment when I saw a non Kanto Pokémon alongside a Kanto one and the realisation that this wasn’t a world totally rooted in Kanto. It was great, despite my Gen 1 bias. It really showed how far the Pokémon phenomenon has come over the years and that the filmmakers weren’t afraid to lay out all their wares and risk upsetting those wanting a solely Gen 1 affair. What’s there to be upset about anyway? We all love Pokémon, right? Classic Pokémon from numerous generations are one thing but it’s the set pieces from the Animé that I still remember fondly today and some of these have been reimagined in this iteration of one of Ash’s adventures in Kanto. A clever use of the slightly jazzier (but not necessarily better) theme tune advances Ash’s journey as far as Erika’s Gym, but not before we see him catch his very first Pokémon in the form of Caterpie. We see those initial struggles (and shocks) with Pikachu, the Charmander left out in the rain and Butterfree’s departure to the spawning grounds, presumably to do some spawning with his female companion (can we not even say ‘mating’ anymore?). These set pieces are either bang on the money in terms of paying homage to the original or are slight twists on the original formula (most notably, the Charmander arc). Unfortunately for me, Butterfree’s departure to pastures new didn’t really have the same gravitas here as it did in the original Animé. I think the reason for this is partly due to the time constraints of the movie and that we don’t really get to see Ash’s relationship with Butterfree develop in any sort of meaningful way, except for seeing Caterpie evolve into Metapod and then into Butterfree. The tears flooding down Ash’s face, while they served as a call back to what was a particularly heartbreaking farewell in the Animé, just didn’t have the same punch. But perhaps without a direct comparison, this wouldn’t be an issue at all. Regardless, it’s still a touching monument, showing the deep and lasting bond humans form with their Pokémon; perhaps one of the best outside Ash’s relationship with Pikachu, which shines as brightly as it ever did despite having only 90 or so minutes to show it. And it’s perhaps because it seeks to wow its audience with so many of these individual moments, both past glories and new, that the movie feels a little disjointed in places. At times the action moves on a little too quickly, leaving no room for character development beyond the high octane chase/fight we have just witnessed. Consequently I didn’t feel that the synergy was quite there between Ash, Sorrel and Verity. Marshadow on the other hand is well deployed, being introduced gradually as the movie progresses. I actually thought that using Marshadow as the primary Pokémon antagonist was a good move as opposed to the likes of Darkrai or something a little more obviously evil looking. Marshadow’s ability to seem innocent enough but to pack a few punches when backed into a corner was well done, even if Marshadow isn’t a Pokémon just for the fans of yester year. But this is ok. More on why is coming. Team Rocket make their appearance as you would expect but maybe not in quite the way I expected. If anything, Team Rocket are fringe players here. There is no grand and bombastic entrance with the Team Rocket signature jingle; in fact, I can’t recall a moment when Ash and his friends actually come into direct contact with Jesse, James and Meowth. There doesn’t seem to be much of a grand plan from Team Rocket: they want Entei, then abandon that and go after Ho-Oh but are always thwarted without our heroes ever knowing, either propelled into the air or disappearing off the side of a mountain and always into a glinting star denoting that they might not be back for a while. But they do keep coming back, which is fine, but to no great effect. It’s all a little bizarre and you can’t help but feel, having watched the original Animé, that they could’ve been put to better use rather than simply be made to seem even more ridiculous than they already are. To the movie’s credit though (and this sounds like I’m wanting to have my cake and eat it here), the filmmakers don’t beat us over the head with Team Rocket, as was sometimes the case in the Animé. I remember physically sighing and rolling my eyes at times when Team Rocket would appear and break the flow of a perfectly good episode. The XY Animé moved away from this thankfully but I suppose it was nice to not have Team Rocket dominate, despite also being a tad underused. For longtime fans (or certainly for this one), there were one or two other things missing that, while they didn’t detract massively from the overall experience, just would’ve been nice and not too much trouble to implement. For one, although Ash seems to be largely the same character as I remember, here he comes across as even more gung ho and sure of himself than usual, to the point of actually losing some of the naivety that made him so endearing in the first place. At no point in the film does he whip out the Pokédex, looking confused and saying ‘What’s that?’ as he spots a Pokémon he’s never encountered before. Indeed, there is no Pokédex AT ALL as far as I can remember, just like the one so ceremoniously presented to Ash by Professor Oak in the Animé. There is a smartphone though which Verity uses to take pictures (sigh). Not even Kanto is free from the reaches of modern tech it seems. The lack of Pokédex and ‘what’s that?’ moment made me a little sad as Ash’s confusion was once my confusion, as a 13 year old sitting in front of the TV, pre widespread internet and readily available lists of information, wondering what this new and wonderful Pokémon Ash had just run into actually was. And then running into school to chat wildly with my friends about it - “Did you see this morning’s episode?! That was awesome!” I still remember the original speculation about who the Pokémon at the beginning of the theme tune was and why it wasn’t part of the original 150. Ash’s naivety was mirrored in my own. Don’t get me wrong, Ash is still green around the gills in the movie, pushing Pokémon to their limits at times without fully knowing their capabilities or strengths. But maybe the absence of this wide eyed naivety, even if only a little, struck me so much as I’m not that naive young person anymore. Someone who lives in a different world where information is at our fingertips and there is no excuse for not knowing. I’m digressing slightly here but it did make me think about the then and now. But perhaps the movie’s most striking departure from the Animé is the absence of some key figures. Brock, Misty, Officer Jenny. I understand that maybe 90 or so minutes just wouldn’t be enough time to make Ash’s relationship with Brock and Misty believable, especially when Ash’s relationship with Pikachu should be centre stage. I know that the movie is really only a side quest in Ash’s overarching journey. A snapshot of his travels on his way to glory. But a small cameo would’ve been nice. Fighting a gym battle in Pewter or Cerulean City, especially since the only gym battle we see is beyond this point chronologically and so it’s not a case of Ash having not run into Brock and Misty yet. Ash’s direct rival, Cross left me feeling a little dissatisfied too. What was wrong with good ‘ol Gary. Even though Cross goes from Pokémon masochist to seeing that there’s more to the whole Pokémon thing than ruthless ambition, he’s still a bit of an ass when he goes his own way, despite the fact he owes Ash (and Charizard) his life. The Charizard he abandoned as a Charmander. The bastard. Yeah, he wasn’t my favourite. Let’s leave it at that. Something for the Newbies While you may think that because I’ve spent the last section of this review picking at this bit and that bit and perhaps making unfair comparisons to the Animé days, I just want to reiterate: I loved the movie, imperfect as it was. I loved it for all of my own reasons, some of which I’ve mentioned and some I’m yet to mention but also for other people’s reasons too (bear with me on this one). For as I watched the audience file into the cinema (and I saw absolutely everyone file in, having been über keen in arriving half an hour early), I began to realise that the Gen 1, diehard Pokémon fan wasn’t going to be the only type of Pokémon fan represented. I’m talking about the kids, of course. Kids ranging in age from 4 to 14. The younger ones especially excited to be seeing their favourite Pokémon on the big screen for the first time. One particular Mum and Dad ushered their two young daughters to their seats, one carrying a Squirtle and the other with a Charmander tucked under one arm and an Eevee peeking out of her bag dangling off the other arm. This is a whole new wave of Pokémon fans, all of whom weren’t even born when Ash first set foot out the door and the Gen 1 hype was thriving. And I can’t overstate how much this is a great thing to behold. That the love of Pokémon is still running strong some twenty plus years later. And that’s of course thanks to Pokémon moving with the generations. Literally. I know I’ve been banging on about how wonderfully Gen 1 is represented in I Choose You but in actual fact the movie does a great job of pleasing fans of all generations. If you grew up with Piplup as a starter, you’ll be happy to see that little guy flapping about onscreen; Lucario is perhaps one of the most recent Gen Pokémon to be embraced by both old and new fans alike and he’s here by Sorrel’s side in all of his hard assed glory. And even if you just dived into the world of Pokémon last November with the release of Sun & Moon, there’s plenty to keep you happy here. Marshadow appears and disappears, Cross’s midnight Lycanroc is broodingly evil at all times, and Incineroar, while low down on my favourite starter evolution list, will have younger fans especially bicep flexing and fist pumping in delight. Personally I would’ve loved to have seen Decidueye unleash the full extent of his ghost/grass power, being what I feel is the most impressive starter final evolution in generations but the fight with Charmeleon would then not have been a fair one. Again, to hammer home my slight bias for the original 151, I was glad to see Charizard kick Incineroar’s ass in the end, not just in terms of satisfying the movie’s story but also as a mini victory of Charizard, THE ultimate fire starter Pokémon of all generations for many, over Incineroar, who I feel would look better placed on the side of a cereal packet. Rarrr! That was a bit catty but yeah, he’s just not a favourite of mine but I’m totally fine with these younger generations cheering him on. I did actually force my eyes to leave the action now and again during the screening, as I sometimes do, just to see if everyone else is enjoying the action as much as me. Of course there were the parents, some of them maybe older fans like me but there were an equal if not greater number of bemused parents whose faces seemed to be struggling to grasp what all the fuss was about. But I salute these parents for giving up a chunk of their Sunday afternoon for the sake of their young Pokémaniacs. And what a wonderful sight it was to see this new generation of Pokémon fans hanging on Pikachu’s every ‘Pika’. One little boy stood up through majority of the film, clutching and peering over the empty seat in front, so obviously brimming with excitement. Someone somewhere in the darkness screamed a giddy ‘Pika-pi’ at one point, causing a fair few chuckles. Another child sitting along my row had an expression of pure awe etched on their face the whole time and I can completely understand why: imagine seeing the Legendary dogs for the first time; not just onscreen but EVER. Imagine seeing Ho-Oh for the very first time, gliding over that rainbow; imagine hearing the names Articuno, Zapdos & Moltres, as they were mentioned at the movie’s conclusion, and thinking to yourself ‘I wonder who they are?’ and then rushing out of the cinema to look them up and find out. Oh, to be young again and see it all with fresh eyes. Something for Everyone So far I’ve tried to look at how I Choose You might appeal to the older generation of Pokémon fans as well as the new. But although I’ve painted a picture of distinct camps of Pokémon fans, the movie does a great job of bringing fans from all corners together thanks primarily to its rich visual aesthetic. Everyone can appreciate the sun drenched vistas, rainswept plains, snow capped mountains, billowing clouds drifting over fields filled with flowers dancing in the wind, dense forests and buzzing metropolises so vividly and vibrantly depicted; each area alive with Pokémon just waiting to be discovered, caught and loved. The visual feast starts and continues unabated to the end, never more so than in the Pokémon battles which have never looked sharper and more dynamic. Charizard zooms into the air with a menacing elegance; Pikachu nimbly dodges this way and that, all before landing a thundershock attack of seismic proportions; you can almost feel the flames lick your face as Entei or Incineroar unleash a frightening flamethrower blast; and some of the Marshadow-possessed Pokémon’s attacks land onscreen with the megatonne force of an atomic bomb, or so it seems, also offering a stark contrast between the affectionate side of Pokémon and their über aggressive side when given the chance. It’s all lovely to watch and your senses aren’t allowed a moment’s rest. And that goes for your emotions too. In keeping with the willingness of some of the more recent video game entries in the series to explore powerful and often dark themes, I Choose You also does not shy away from putting its audience through the emotional grinder (the dark lore threads in Sun and Moon are especially worth reading about; I still think about that abandoned Stuffl). There’s neglect (Charmander in the rain), physical pain (Lycanroc biting Cross and not letting go, something that shocked me particularly for some reason), the dangers of greedy ambition (as Ash ponders if Pikachu would’ve won the fight which his Charmeleon just lost). The latter is particularly interesting if we consider the end of the movie; we see Ash finally battling Ho-Oh and the scene cuts to a long shot of the battle taking place from afar, represented by flashes of light on the mountainside. But we never actually find out if Ash managed to catch Ho-Oh or even come close, despite seeing Pikachu looking a little worse for wear as Ash delivers him to the Pokémon Centre after the battle. And this is ok, because we don’t really need to. Arguably, Ash’s greatest adversary isn’t Marshadow or Cross; it’s himself, as he has to put aside all of his own ambitions to save his friends and his beloved Pikachu. Some may perceive this uncertainty over Ho-Oh as quite unsatisfying but Ash’s willingness to let Ho-Oh go might point to him growing and realising there is more to his journey than ruthless ambition. Viewed like this, I find this ending very satisfying and think that had Ash done a pompous and over the top victory dance having caught Ho-Oh, this would not have been tonally in keeping with what we have just seen: everyone escape with their lives narrowly and Ash come back from the dead (or a state of semi death at least in an alternate reality). I’m glad that Ash emerges at the end of the movie better off having not had a moment like this. The Pokémon Centre Lady’s ‘That’s nice’ when Ash tells her they’ve just been battling Ho-Oh is perfect in showing that the result of that battle (caught or not) doesn’t really matter. And, most importantly, Ash seems ok with it too. I would go as far as to say he looks pleased to have had the opportunity to battle Ho-Oh, caught or not and Pikachu having lost. We can see he’s come a long way. Ash’s brush with death is incidentally not the only occasion that the movie is happy with testing its audience. I sat wide eyed as I watched that Luxray found dead in the snow, frozen, trying to protect its infant owner from the fate it ultimately suffered itself. This idea that Pokémon are dispensable yet indestructible; that they can be pushed to the limit with few consequence that a Pokémon Centre wouldn’t be able to fix. With Luxray’s onscreen death, this notion is shattered in an instant and the world the movie seeks to flesh out is made all the more real and believable for it; a tenderness and bond exists between people and their Pokémon which shouldn’t be scoffed at. And, in closing out this section of the review, that bond between person and Pokémon is hammered home no better as Ash and Pikachu part into different worlds, at the tail end of the movie. That moment as they lie face to face and Pikachu speaks. PIKACHU SPEAKS. I actually thought I was hearing things. The minute I saw it I knew this would be a scene to divide opinion. The cynical side of me initially thought this was an easy pull on the heart strings. The Pokémon equivalent of Jack and Rose. But it’s actually much more than this. Having begun watching the original Animé, I’ve been used to Pikachu communicating with Ash by way of facial expression or tonal variations on the same word or half word for nigh on 20 years. But to actually hear what the little guy truly thinks of his partner, that he never wants to leave his side. I’m going to level with everyone reading this. A tear welled up in my eye. The fact that Pikachu never wants to leave Ash’s side wasn’t exactly a revelation I admit but to allow something like this to happen by way of them sharing different realities and one of which being situated a stone’s throw away from death. It was beautiful. It won’t win and Oscar and some won’t think it was anywhere near as impactful as I’m describing. Some will think that it probably wasn’t necessary at all, seeing as a trainer’s bond with their Pokémon seems to transcend language. But, to put forward the most compelling argument for the scene’s inclusion, this is arguably what gives Ash the push he needs to transcend death and push out of that nether realm. Not for himself, but for Pikachu who he would be leaving alone otherwise. Aww man, I can feel the tears coming all over again. Joking (or not) over tears aside, the willingness of the Pokémon universe, both in film and video game media, to engage with what are uncomfortable topics, gives me lots of hope for the future. I still hope for a more adult fan orientated game in which our hero feels like he or she is in genuine peril or at risk of death (I don’t think I fainted once in Pokémon Moon!), a game which makes fans confront real world problems but then allows us to eventually overcome them. I know I’ll be hoping for a long time, as Gamefreak would be unlikely to make such a move and risk alienating such a huge demographic represented by the series’ youngest fans. But, on the flip side, I wouldn’t want this alienation to happen either. The fact that the movie was able to articulate some of these themes and do so in such a way as to make it palatable for younger viewers is a triumph in itself. Those wide eyed children in the audience of my screening were the proof of the pudding and long may it continue. Conclusion I really enjoyed I Choose You. Even though the movie wasn’t perfect, it did one thing really well for me personally: it affirmed my love of Pokémon, as if that really needed any affirmation in the first place. It reminded me just why I fell in love with everything Pokémon in the first place and why that loves has endured until today. The world of Pokémon and the simple but powerful messages it communicates are timeless: that someone seemingly insignificant can achieve great things and make a difference; that we should all step out of the front door and pursue our dreams; that we can rely on our friends and family for support along the way. Never have these messages been more relevant and important than in the shitstorm of a world we live in today and it’s always nice to be reminded that this is the other side of what humanity is capable of, even if that reminder does come from a fictional world filled with fictional creatures. Such is the power of art and fiction. I’ll finish here with a reflection on a scene from the movie which really made me pause and think (to the point where I nearly missed the five minutes of the onscreen action that followed). The scene is when Ash first succumbs to Marshadow’s dark seduction and is taken to an alternate reality where Pokémon don’t exist. He leaps out of bed, a poster on his bedroom wall of a blue car, a red car and a green car in place of Blastoise, Charizard and Venusaur. He’s late to school that day, not for Professor Oak’s lab. Just regular, boring old school. He looks out the window as he sits daydreaming in class , glimpsing Ho-Oh gliding high above, except it’s not Ho-Oh at all but an aeroplane. And when he questions what is beyond the confines of the school fence, we hear something along the lines of: towns, forests, fields, more towns, forests, fields and then the ocean. What is essentially being shown, described and imagined by Ash is a world without Pokémon. A drab, boring and monotone world which lacks a layer of purpose. Quite ironically, this is our reality. Real life. I remember sitting as a kid and thinking that the coolest thing in the world would be if Pokémon were real. To be caught, trained and loved. To some extent a virtual version of this was achieved via Pokémon Go but the initial hype has died down. I knew then, as a kid, and I know now that there won’t ever be anything approaching what Pokémon does in the real world but this scene in a Pokémonless alternate reality got me thinking about the wider implications of this being communicated (and I think intentionally) by the filmmakers. Imagine a world, this shitstorm of a world we live in, WITHOUT something as wonderful as Pokémon, even if they are only virtual monsters living on our screens. This phenomenon which has brought and continues to bring so many people together, be it via the TCG, games or Animé. The phenomenon which was a huge part of my childhood and is something I engage with in some way every single day as a grown man. Imagine if all of that didn’t exist and never had done. It’s a frightening thought and as Ash snapped out of his alternate reality and I came back to mine, I gave thanks for the enduring charm and appeal of Pokémon. The fact that I was sitting in that cinema seat almost twenty years on, still enjoying everything the Pokémon universe has to offer is something that I’m so pleased the film allowed me to experience and feel and give thanks for. Thank you for the memories, Pokémon and here’s to the memories still to be made. My final parting piece of advice: stay beyond the credits. A few shorts, a goosebump-inducing rendering of the initial start sequence to the original Pokémon games on Gameboy and a beautiful piano arrangement of the Pokémon Animé theme tune. A shout out also to @brayshgaming - I hope he particularly enjoyed the Noivern clip but also hope that it isn’t now a regular feature in his nightmares. There is no escape! Thanks for reading guys. Comments on my reflections are most welcome and I’d love to hear some of your own thoughts about the movie. This review was written solely from my memory of watching the movie (and thanks to lots of frantic jotting down of ideas the moment the lights went up, while they were still fresh in my mind). There may therefore be some inaccuracies in here which I cannot yet verify without watching the movie again. Apologies if so.

[drscotcheggmann]

The Value is in the Aesthetics: the Art of the Pokémon TCG

New Twitter account: @ArtofPokemonTCG

Hi guys. So here we are. An account dedicated to celebrating the art of the Pokémon Trading Card Game. The idea for this channel was primarily born from my love of, well, the Art of those lovely little rectangles of cardboard (that’s my wife’s description, substituting the word lovely for pointless) that we like to cherish. Some of said pieces of cardboard can even be special, sparkly ones (that’s what I tell my wife as an unexpected package drops through the letterbox and I try to justify spending more than I perhaps should have).

Despite having dabbled in the Online Trading Card Game on and off, I’m not much of a player. I prefer to collect. It all started back in 1999 with Base Set when I was about 12 years old and the Pokémon craze craze swept my school and every other school in Britain. But while I’d like to say I’ve been collecting ever since, the reality was that Pokémon just wasn’t seen as ‘cool’ when heading into your mid to late teens. And thus began my, what adult Lego fans call, Dark Age. But darkness can only have relevance in relation to light and the light was to make a brilliant return in my early 20s when I picked up Pokemon Diamond for DS. It was like picking up where I’d left off with an old girlfriend (my girlfriend at the time wasn’t happy when I described it like that)! But my itch to climb back into card collecting wasn’t scratched until about a year ago. The initial excitement of opening a booster pack came rushing back, followed by a pang of regret at not having the foresight to keep all of my old cards, but the elation at realising I had about 18 years worth of sets and expansions to wade through on eBay. To date there have been 74 total sets/expansions released with the 75th and 76th expansion of the current set due to be released before the end of the year. If we take the cards in those sets plus promos, the TCG now has nigh on 10,000 unique cards, give or take a few for reprints etc. (If anyone knows the precise figure, I’d love to know). Of course, there was no way in hell I was going to collect all of them, as

a) I’m a collector, not a completionist and b) I’m not rolling in cash.

The latter of the two arguably dictates how true the first is. Maybe if Pokémon cards were £0.50 per pack, I might be a completionist. But sadly they’re not that cheap; the reality is that this hobby has if anything become more and more expensive since my glory days in school. Booster packs, booster boxes, collection boxes, pin badge boxes, booster packs, elite trainer boxes. That’s a few hundred quid in that last sentence! Spending is a huge part of collecting in any hobby, but especially in this one. The rarest cards can fetch hundreds of pounds; the extremely limited Pikachu Illustrator Trainer card fetched more than £44,000 at auction. That’s an extreme example. Even if you’ve not got £50k kicking around, gathering dust in your bank account, a well looked-after Base Set Charizard could cost you in the region of £50 these days on the secondary market (shamefully, I traded mine for a holo Scyther after school one day; the excitement upon the release of the Jungle set led to a few silly decisions!) A sought after full art card, depending on rarity and set, can go for a more modest but by no means insubstantial £15 to £20.

So what’s all of this got to do with what this account is setting out to do: celebrating the Art of the Pokémon TCG? Well, there’s much more to collecting Pokémon cards than investment. Arguably, there is just as much enjoyment to be had from this hobby, regardless of whether you have your monthly pocket money to spend or have a full time job that affords you a little disposable income. Actually, I’ll retract part of that statement: Not arguably. Definitely. Regardless of value or rarity, all of the cards that you pull from your £3.99 booster pack are bound by one thing: the love that the illustrators pour into their design and presentation. I’ve always loved the artwork and aesthetics of other media. I’m no stranger to a video game art book and so Pokémon TCG was no different. The owner of my local card shop (sadly now closed as of yesterday) used to even keep a few cards aside for me, just because they might be of interest to me from an aesthetic point of view, and not just for his own commercial gain. But it was on one afternoon in particular that this idea of celebrating the art of the TCG really took root. Following a long spell of not having bought any boosters (13 packs of Burning Shadows in a row without a GX, Full Art or better had left a more than bitter taste in my mouth), I impulsively bought a Break Point blister pack. Blisters are not renowned for their good pulls but it was nicely reduced and I had my mind fixed on one of the many Full Art Mewtwos in that set. Nothing beats the thrill of breaking the seal on a booster, doing the card trick and seeing what happens. But there’s also no worse feeling than pulling three packs of absolute crap, which is exactly what happened. Feeling just that bit more bitter and remembering afresh why I had decided to stop buying booster packs, I decided to pick up my £9 worth of nothing and flick through what I’d pulled. Might as well get my money’s worth, I thought.

That was the moment.

I stopped to actually look at some of these cards more closely: the commons, uncommons, the non holo rares; all cards I would’ve rashly skipped over on my way to see if that elusive EX of any description lay hidden at the back of the pack. But while only lowly common and uncommon cards, some of these were nothing short of stunning with so much care and attention given to render them so vividly and really bring each Pokémon to life. The bitterness subsided and gave way to sadness. Not a '£9 down the drain’ type of sadness but one that spoke of booster pack openers across the world doing exactly the same as me and not giving the lesser cards the attention and love they deserve. And they do deserve it, since their illustrator no doubt devoted just as much attention and love to their design as they hoped we would pour into appreciating them. And I know for one that that doesn’t always happen. The most damning example of this is a recent feeling of disappointment I experienced at only pulling a rare holo from a pack. That was another big moment since I started collecting again. A stop moment. Way back when Base Set fever was sweeping every playground in the land, holos were the pinnacle. I remember being so proud to own my 1st edition Machamp holo, which was dime a dozen since it came in a starter deck. But it was a cool card and I whooped at pulling it as part of the Evolutions reprint again almost 18 years later. So, to go from this to now resenting a holofoil card, just because it wasn’t the EX, GX or Hyper Rare I was craving. It seemed that somewhere along the way a perversion of values had taken place as to what constitutes true satisfaction from a set of pulls. Value, rarity and status had trumped the true value of aesthetics. I know there is some crossover there too though: an ultra rare card can also be truly stunning. I’m not going to lie and say that I now throw all of my ultra rares in the corner because 'look at the pretty colours on this Caterpie’. I have many Full Arts and a few Hyper Rares which I really love. But my point is this: let’s not ignore the Magikarps, the Polywags, the Hoot Hoots, the Mudbrays just because of their circle or diamond symbol. Stop and have a closer look. Think about how someone somewhere thought to capture this particular Pokémon in this particular pose, on this particular backdrop and that that person was fortunate enough to have their work placed on a card for the world to see.

To quote Novellist Julian Barnes:

“Art belongs to everybody and nobody. Art belongs to all time and no time. Art belongs to those who create it and those who savour it.”

Never have truer words been spoken. My hope in creating this account is to celebrate the art across the entire TCG; not only cards across generations but also from Commons to Hyper Rares, not celebrating their status as such but rather what our senses first latch onto above all else: their aesthetic value. I hope to do this through posting pictures, offering personal reflection on selected cards while also inviting you to share with me your highlights from the TCG.

Thanks for reading and enjoy. Please follow, like and retweet. Spread the word. Art belongs to everyone. Pokémon can too. And you don’t even have to catch 'em all to do it!

[drscotcheggmann]

Virtual or Reality: Would We Ever Want to Live Out Our Greatest Video Game Adventures?

Imagine the scene. Saturday afternoon. Sun shining. Pitch freshly cut, like a great green carpet. The whistle goes and the ball zips across its surface as the early game passing gets going, the players probing and always looking to open up space. Then a midfielder suddenly cuts inside with a sudden burst of pace, leaving his defender for dead. He spreads the play out to the wing, the ball is fizzed into the box and the forward, having peeled off his marker, jumps into the air primed to strike. Not a header but an exquisite back heel mid air which catches the keeper off guard and soars into the roof of the net. The scorer wheels away towards the crowd, fists pumping and lapping it all up. The stadium is rocking. This is a true story. It actually happened. I scored that goal. Well, at least my team of 11 pixelated footballers controlled by my dexterous thumbs scored it during a recent session of Pro Evolution Soccer. Could I score a goal like that in reality? I'd have to be picked for the team first. My High School football coach's words of 'Can you not even pass the ball, son?' are still ringing in my ears. But while I'm not the best footballer in actual reality, I am in an alternate reality. A fucking good one too. Suck those eggs, Mr Skimin! The fact is that I play Pro Evolution Soccer because I have no hope of doing half the things in real life that I can do on a virtual pitch. It's for this exact reason that we often like to immerse ourselves in virtual worlds. Not only is there an element of escapism at play as we try to briefly divert our attention from the stresses or monotony of everyday life. But also in video games we can often experience and accomplish things which we would ordinarily not be able to do. But a wider question is whether we would actually want to do some of the things we enjoy in video games in real life. It's very easy to say yes. Of course, scoring flamboyant goals as a top footballer week in week out, left foot, right foot, headers, free kicks, cheeky dinks over the keeper, showboating around defenders, playing to the crowd and all for £200k+ per week. If you enjoyed it and were damn good at it, who wouldn't want to do that? But not all jobs nor all video games involve skilfully hitting balls into nets. Video games often put us in precarious and not altogether appealing positions and so if given the choice in real life, would we really want to participate in some of the activities that video games are so good at entertaining us with? Imagine this for example: You get up each morning and pull on your dungarees, shiny black shoes and don your monogrammed cap. You feel underused and under appreciated as even though you're fully qualified to fix pipes and stop leaks, your day job consists of smashing boxes, sometimes boxes that are not easy to reach too and boxes which sometimes have something wonderful inside or sometimes are just plain empty. Everything requires precise jumping and timing. Have you ever tried to jump any distance in dungarees by the way? Hardly the most practical wear for intense physical activity! Luckily there are costume changes, some of them cool, some helpful in getting the job done, some plain humiliating. But at least gloves come as standard to protect against the blisters popping up from repeated box smashing. Then there are the fireballs, spikes, critters and gaping holes, all common hazards in this line of work. And of course there's the reason you're doing all of this in the first place: the princess who just won't stay saved. But you go about your work always with a smile on your face and that irrepressible sense of optimism, even though you know you're doomed to repeat this existence in various forms from now until the end of time. Ok, this is an overblown and ridiculous example as there isn't anything quite like this in real life. The reason we play this particular game (it was Mario, by the way) isn't because we want to be able to do what Mario does in our own lives. Despite the obstacles, dangers and pitfalls, Mario is escapism in its simplest form: fun! Danger often begets fun in video games, no matter how serious that danger may be: a Goomba slowly dancing its way towards you or an axe wielding demon hoping to mash you to bloody pulp. Danger is a huge factor in what makes video games challenging and exciting. But imagine experiencing the danger of a video game scenario that would be entirely plausible and just as dangerous were it to play out in real life.... Imagine this one: You are a highly skilled US government special forces agent. You have been tasked with infiltrating a high security nuclear weapons development facility in the most remote part of Alaska that has been seized by a band of international terrorists. Before we go on, a few things. Well, no actually you're not a highly skilled US government special forces agent. Solid Snake is a highly skilled US government special forces agent. You're just pretending to be one. Heaven knows why the US military big wigs asked you to do this. That's what happens when you post a few Metal Gear Solid gameplay videos on YouTube. Ok, so you managed to make it through to the first boss without getting spotted once. And then didn't get hit at all by Revolver Ocelot. And then boasted about it online. To the world. And someone high up in the military, the ACTUAL fucking military caught wind of it all and thought 'Let's get him on board for the next big one! He looks like he knows what he's doing...' But it's fine because you recently did a speed run of Metal Gear Solid, found all the best weapons and made it out with only some light scratches and a few third degree incendiary burns so you're sure it'll be the same if not better for real. Anyway, the government doesn't actually send people in solo. That's just in movies and video games. Right? Oh, they do send in solo agents. Fuck. Right, ok. As the door of the helicopter slides open, fighting against the strength of the blizzard winds, you step off the helicopter, the snow swirling around you. Your feet hit the powder with a crunch. Dense pine forest surrounds you. The facility is 2 miles to the North. Fuck sake, they could've parked closer. And to add insult to injury, you haven't even packed a hat, scarf and gloves. You look in the bag you were handed by a member of the support team before touching down. This is your bag. Not anything military issue. Bound to be something useful in here. Bottle of water (that's now fucking frozen), an egg and onion sandwich (to knock out the dogs), toilet roll (I don't remember Solid Snake ever needing the toilet), the Metal Gear Solid strategy guide and a t shirt (a fucking t shirt in this weather) with 'I love Metal Gear Solid' emblazoned across the front. Suddenly a telephone starts to ring. The whole thing could be over before if it's begun if you don't stop that phone ringing! Then you realise. It's not a phone. The ringing is in your head. Your ear. You put your index finger to your ear like you've seen Snake do before. Wrong ear. You try the other one and a stony voice crackles before becoming clear. 'Colonel?' 'Colonel? Who said I was a colonel? Just listen Snake.' 'Snake?' 'No, we can't call you that. Can't risk a lawsuit from Konami and Kojima. They're both fond of that sort of thing. Wait, we'll call you....Drake. Wait no, that's been done too.' 'Fake?' 'That'll do. Ok, Fake. Listen. Your espionage skills are renowned the internet over. So this should be like a training exercise for you. Good luck. Let me be clear though, Fake. If you are found and intercepted, the US government will deny any knowledge of your existence. Keep the t shirt close to hand. If you are caught, hopefully they will suspect you as nothing more than a giddy stealth action fanboy rather than a highly lethal government weapon. But I'm forgetting who I'm talking to. We've seen the speed runs. Those terrorists won't know what's hit them! And if you die in combat, well, you die. Game over, no continues. This is not a game. This is the best game of all: life. Now go shoot some terrorists! Out!' You begin to walk. The first steps of a two mile hike to the objective. About an hour later, as you break the trees and approach the link fence, you're suddenly aware that your feet are soaked through, calfs burning and blisters pressing against the soles of your shoes. A deer moves out of a clearing toward the fence, suspiciously eying what is beyond. You can see human shapes, black against the fading light moving across a dimly lit helipad, their patrol paths crossing with seeming regularity. A brief flick of a flashlight attached to an automatic weapon as the patrolling guard turns and retraces his steps. That man has a gun, a real fucking gun. That actually shoots. With bullets. Maybe it's not real. Maybe they're just decoys. A money saving measure in these tough economic times. But you've never seen that in a video game before. Unlikely. But what you have seen countless times is how to breech a perimeter fence. There's usually a conveniently placed hole, drain or ventilation duct somewhere close by. Or some footholds conveniently highlighted by a different coloured paint that stands out from the rest of your surroundings. As if they wanted you to find them. But there's nothing. There must be some mistake. Do all of these terrorists not know that you're here to take down their facility? You'd think they would make it easy for you. As you contemplate your next move, you spot the deer again. On the other side of the link fence. Fucking Bambi is better at this than you! You retreat to the safety of the trees, hugging their edge, until a guard post with a manually operated barrier appears in the middle distance, marking an entrance into the facility. Quick, your binoculars. But you haven't packed binoculars. You reassure yourself that there will likely be some lying around in a spot just when you're about to enter a new area in which you'll need to see really really far. This isn't really really far just yet so you decide to get a bit closer. It looks like it's unmanned, for the moment. You reach the window. An oil lamp burns on a desk covered in various paperwork and a clipboard. A mug of fresh coffee stands steaming on the cluttered surface, having made a ring stain on a document marked 'Classified'. Maybe you should take this though. Files like this are always left lying around in plain sight in video games. You thrust it into your bag without pausing to read. You look around, your brain starting to whirr into gear. There's bound to be some sort of weapon in here too or a map of the whole area. Ah ha! (Did Snake ever say Ah ha?) There's the map, pinned to the back wall. Covering the whole of the back wall. No one will notice that's missing! As you unpin it, you can't help but wish you'd paid more attention during ordinance survey lessons in High School geography. The map unpinned, the next challenge is: how the fuck do you fold it neatly so that it fits in your bag? You frantically try one way; it doesn't fold neatly. Another way; no luck. Yet another way. 'Fold you mappy piece of shit, fold!' Did you say that out loud? Or are the approaching footsteps you now hear thanks to your excessive map rustling? Snake never shows any shame in hiding and it's about time that this whole scenario started to follow the Metal Gear Solid playbook! What would Snake do? Snake would be smoking a cigarette with one hand and tapping walls to the tune of William Tell with the other, sending guards running in circles. You're not quite there yet. 'Look around! Think outside the box......BOX! You spot a sturdy looking cardboard box with some unrecognisable script block printed on the side. 'Fuck outside the box, I wanna get in the box!' The box is sitting next to five or six others, all sealed with thick tape. Either prepared to be shipped out or not yet unpacked. Your box though.....is empty. You quickly climb in. Snake uses the box to move unseen. But you just want to stay unseen. You close the flaps of the box over your head the best you can and wait. The footsteps draw closer. At the door. At the desk. Feet away. A handheld radio crackles into life, the guard confirms all is clear and clips it back into his belt. A diesel engine rumbles into earshot, brakes squeak and a heavy door slams shut. Your heart is racing and just about jumps into your mouth as the guard's foot slams into the side of your box. You can hear boxes above and beside you being shifted. There is someone else in the room. Heaving breathing and panting as boxes are lifted, passed out the door and dumped onto the back of the diesel vehicle with a thud. Then the last chinks of light are extinguished as the cardboard flaps are sealed shut above your head, the squeak and tear of the tape muffled behind the cardboard and then you feel yourself rising. The guard swears at the weight of the box and laughs as his mate's knees buckle slightly under your weight as he hands you over. He steadies himself and you are dumped onto a hard metal surface. The engine purrs into life again and you begin to move. 'This is a result!' you think to yourself. You've seen Snake do this before. A clever ploy to get to the heart of the facility without snapping a single neck (or your ankle). But want you didn't realise was that written across the box, in strange lettering was the word "Владивосток" - Vladivostok. You hear the drone of a jet engine. You are lifted and dumped one last time. Heavy doors closing as you feel the weight of the earth vanish beneath you. Oh well, this certainly never happened to Snake before but every cloud, and all that. A new life in remotest Russia, learn the language, live off the land, settle down. All you can do is begin to sob in the darkness of your box as you rue the day you ever posted those cocky playthrough videos online. I'll stop there. You get the point (even if I have taken a few poetic liberties here and there). I reckon if you did try a Metal Gear Solid type scenario like this, it wouldn't be quite as bad as I have painted it. You'd probably be dead before making it to the fence. Quick and painless at least. Still not as far as the deer though. But while I jest, loss of life is actually nothing to take lightly, even if it is only pixels we're talking about. I know people who struggle to play particular games as they feel they are often forced into scenarios where they have to kill people and feel that they would quite simply rather not. I admit the first time I loaded up Battlefield 1 multiplayer, I did wonder if we should be finding any sort of entertainment in a virtual depiction of the most bloody war in history. Whether I should be pleased to have just bludgeoned this mass of pixels in front of me to death with a spiked club or run ReBeLwARrIoR888 through with a bayonet to the sounds of bloodcurdling virtual screams. And I'm sure others felt the same. For these people, their respect for human life in reality cannot be easily separated from their feelings towards virtual beings. And I applaud them for it. The pacifist's path, with the use of sleep rendering choke holds and tranquilliser darts, has become a more prevalent one in games like Metal Gear Solid and Deus Ex. But games have not always been so open to cater to all tastes. Perhaps the most shocking and memorable example of this was the very short mission 'No Russian' in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, in which the player is seemingly forced into partaking in a terrorist attack on an airport filled with civilians. Although the game makes you think you have to walk on the predetermined path through the departures lounge gunning down everything that moves, you actually don't need to fire a single bullet to finish the level. But that is never made clear. I admit, I started shooting as I thought that by not shooting, I would not be allowed to progress. When the smoke had settled and the blood has stopped flowing, I honestly felt sick at what had just happened. The controversy this level provoked prompted a patch whereby the level could be skipped, which was at least something. But by telling players that 'the following level contains disturbing material' and then asking if they want to play it or skip, I'm sure the curious side of human nature got the better of many. Me for one. There have been many and will be many more times I pick up a gun in a video game but never have I wanted to put one down quicker than after that. I'm not often forced into feeling like this for pixels but it was precisely because this very thing could occur in real life (and has, coming from Northern Ireland where the country is only just emerging from the bloody legacy of terrorism) that I felt so sick. And if anything, society is now much more acutely aware of the threat of terrorism than ever before; as I write this, Manchester is trying to pick itself up from a suicide attack on a pop concert, claiming the lives of children. Children! And as a man with children now myself, I now view senseless video game violence and real world atrocities very differently than I once did. Whereas before I would've just opened fire on anything and everything (since it's just a video game, after all) and would've been just as appalled by an attack like Manchester as I am now, I now see things like this, be they virtual or real, and think 'what if my boy was ever caught up in something like this?' I wouldn't say my parent chip impedes my enjoyment of video games and or how I go about everyday life but it does make me think. It's for this very reason that I still can't bring myself to play 'That Dragon Cancer'. I know I should, just to on some level feel what those poor parents went through but I just can't. Maybe one day. A question lingers: How would I view this Call of Duty mission had I played it for the first time today? I think had this Call of Duty mission been released today, well.... perhaps thanks to the very fucked up world we live in, it maybe wouldn't have been released today. This Call of Duty level remains the biggest example of something that, it goes without saying, I would never want to experience in real life, at either end of the gun but conversely something which I had absolutely no taste then nor have any taste now for experiencing in a video game either. So far there have been a lot of examples of video game experiences that we would not want to live first hand. But are there any that we really would? Well, although the world seems to be becoming an increasingly intimidating and gloomy place, the release of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has puffed new life into me. It has made me reevaluate my perceptions of how beautiful the world and everything in it really is. Setting out with the greatest sense of wanderlust imaginable, cooking in the outdoors, living off the land, running through tall grass that parts as you go, getting caught in rainstorms, watching the sun rise and fall on the horizon, climbing hills, standing atop a mountain and gazing in every direction as far as the eye can see. These are all things that I hate the thought of....in reality, not being the most outdoorsy type. Or certainly did until I dived into Zelda. A game in which spending two hours doing very little except cook a few meals, discover two new species of fish and wrangle a wild horse feels like a triumph. Now I might actually consider spending the weekend walking up a hill and stopping for lunch under a tree rather than traipsing around a retail park before diving into McDonalds for a Big Value Meal. There's so much life in Zelda and so many possibilities, much like, well... life itself. Even the box art hints at the treasures that lie within: Link standing on a plateau, the world sprawled in front of him. He's looking over his shoulder at you as if to say 'Are you coming?' And it doesn't stop there; the inside cover depicts Link scaling a sheer cliff face, moving ever upwards. The sky really is the limit with this game. And while I admit that from time to time I do worry about the state of the world my boy will be growing up in, I am also wholeheartedly looking forward to introducing him to the world of video games. My wife is not so thrilled at the prospect though. I think she has visions of me trying to teach a six year old how to escape a six star wanted level in Grand Theft Auto or how to aim the sniper scope slightly above a target's head to account for bullet dip. But while Zelda is pure to its core, there is violence and danger: battling Bobokins with swords, pikes, axes, twanging bowstrings, setting things on fire and triggering explosions. But really is this violence? Come on now. Even the combat in Zelda is pure, good and true: no blood, no dismemberment; there is as much threat in the combat as a child running around in the back garden swinging a plastic sword. It's just honest, swashbuckling action with enemies disappearing in a puff of smoke. No looting dead bodies for items; items drop and their retrieval is greeted with a fanfare. You can't help but smile. And this is exactly what I hope I will be doing as I watch my son get lost in Zelda's world of endless possibilities for the very first time. Witnessing the pure joy on his face. But if the joy of virtual nature has its effect I sincerely hope my son and I will make it out the front door too, put the controller down and live some of Link's adventures: be it a walk in the woods one day, a hike up a hill, cooking a skewer over an open fire or running around slashing at imaginary Moblins. This is something I would most definitely want to live and all born on the back of a video game. I sincerely hope that we see more of this. Developers giving us experiences that give us a sense of achievement and fulfilment to such an extent that it gets us out into the world to chase similar experiences for real. I may never become a Premiership footballer, infiltrate a terrorist base or go over the top on the front lines. I've never been more ok with anything in my life than I have with that. But I can cook a sausage and climb a hill. And will look forward to doing so with my boy and whoever else wants to join. Virtual and real worlds are not so far removed as we might think: both are best enjoyed with others. So who's coming? God bless you, Zelda!

[drscotcheggmann]

Resident Evil VII: Evil Seems to Have Moved House.

First of all, this isn’t a review. Not really anyway. If it’s a good ol' review you’re after then allow me to oblige: the game is great; buy it! I’m hoping that you’ll still want to keep reading, even if that was all you wanted to know. But I warn you now: all who enter here beware, for spoilers lurk around every corner! Fair warning, more than Ethan ever got! When Resident Evil VII was first teased, I’m sure a lot of fans, like myself, held their breath and said the same sentence to themselves over and over: ‘Please don’t fuck this up, Capcom!’ Well it seems that mass fan recital of that very wish has paid off in full and we can all finally breathe out. Despite some blips in the series most recently, I am pleased to say that Resident Evil VII is a true return to form, ensuring the series remains as relevant as ever. The latest release in the franchise feels less like Resident Evil VII and more like Resident Evil I. And by that I don’t mean a modern reworking of the original formula; I mean, it feels like the series is starting again, acknowledging and retaining what once made it great but at the same time dragging its festering corpse in a fresh (or putrid) new direction. Arguably some of the most striking examples of how this entry in the series attempts to stride into brand new territory occur before the action even begins. The cover art is interesting in itself. Ok, there’s a big spooky house, creepy little girl, a garden in need of some pruning and a fair sized puddle that hints at an underlying drainage problem. Standard horror gaming fare, right? Yes. And I’m fine with that. Does the puddle symbolise the waterlogged, murky and troubled recent past of the Resident Evil series pre VII? Does the fact that the little girl is standing at the other side of said puddle mean that Capcom have exorcised the ghosts of RE6 in particular, hung themselves out to dry and are now ready to tackle whatever the future holds with a fresh set of clothes? Does the sun breaking over the roof of the house hint at a new dawn for the series? In a word, no. This isn’t High School English poetry analysis. The most I can give you is that the house’s porch looks like a gaping mouth into the unknown, the pillars flanking each side acting as teeth, hinting at the menace that awaits on the other side of the front door and ready to swallow up anyone foolish enough to come near. And the little girl? Her face in darkness, it isn’t clear if she’s approaching the house or walking away from it. Entrance or escape? Having finished the game and looking back at something as simple as the cover art, this idea of Evelyn's escape or refuge and its consequences in terms of how pivotal she is to the whole plot, takes on a frightening new meaning. I can honestly say that I’ve never invested so much thought in the cover art of any game to date. All of this conjecture may be a load of old twaddle but at least its interesting old twaddle. But the actual art aside, it’s how Capcom have chosen to market the game’s title that really catches the eye, or at least my very overactive one: The VII hidden or not so hidden in the word Evil. Clever. But is it about more than being clever with words and shapes? Yes, this is VII. The one after VI. But the game isn’t called ‘Resident Evil VII’. It’s called ‘Resident Evil’. The biohazard tag, all lower case and oddly uncapitalised for a title, seems almost like an afterthought. Or else perhaps the name of the first entry in a new series (here’s hoping). But the message is clear – this is a Resident Evil game first and foremost which, ok, is number seven but the understated number seven. It’s as if Capcom wanted to acknowledge it as the next entry, perhaps in ‘hiding’ the VII they hoped to create a little distance from VI but at the same time make clear that it’s a new breed of evil and that’s how we should approach our time in the Baker household. We should expect something new. Yeah, yeah, yeah so why not just call it Resident Evil? Well, I’m sure that calling it this and then risk defecating all over the original’s cult status, especially had VII flopped, was a path that Capcom were reluctant to tread. 'Resident Evil? Do you mean the good one or the shite one?' I’m glad this never happened and Capcom has allowed both games some space to breathe and to exist independently of one another. For this reason I'm sure there was a conscious design decision to set the game in a house rather than another mansion. Run down dilapidated old house means fresh start. And it is a house by the way, a big one but not a mansion. Mansions are luxurious and decadent. By the looks of things in VII, you'd be lucky to find anything fitting that bill in this front yard. I'm also pleased to see that Capcom did not feel the need to blatantly cross reference previous entries in the series for the sake of sycophantic fan service. Don't get me wrong though, Resident Evil VII does have cross references but I'm glad that they don't consist of bland and frankly forgettable audio files and written logs which we often feel obligated to collect for fear of missing something important, as is the norm now in games of this ilk. Resident Evil VII's cross references are subtle and meaningful to those who know what they're looking for. They’re not thrust down your throat with a ‘This is a reference to Resident Evil II! Fucking appreciate it!’ kind of tone. If you miss them, you miss them. It really isn’t a loss in the grand scheme but a gain if you like that sort of thing. For example, there's a painting of the Arklay Mountains in the Main Hall which I'm sure many of us missed. These were the mountains where the Spencer Mansion from the original was built. Didn't know that? No big deal. If you did happen to recognise the name though, you still have to do some memory jogging to pin it to the mansion, especially since said mansion isn't pictured. Subtle. But clever too as the picture does not look in any way out of place in this dimly lit hall and blends seamlessly into the decor of the place, despite it being an obvious/not obvious cross reference. There really is something for everyone here. Perhaps the final example I'll put forward to illustrate this point is the VHS tapes that can be found dotted around the house. Handled incorrectly, these tapes might well have turned into the type of heinous obligatory file collecting exercise mentioned above; the type that has the potential to bore the arse off you, especially if there are 563 of them hidden around the house, which you then feel you must find and listen to. But these tapes are far from arse-numbing. These tapes, remnants of a now almost dead and buried technological age, are paradoxically one of the freshest and most modern mechanisms in the game. Find a tape recorder, put the tape in. It actually takes a minute to load. Shit, is the tape broken? Is my PlayStation broken? Is my TV broken? A click and a flicker and it's rolling. Then not only are you privy to what the tape shows but you become the subject of the film and have control over what you're viewing. Your actions here help inform your decisions as you seek to drive your own narrative forward once the tape clicks and pops out of the recorder. But, again, miss one of these tapes? And you might, as there aren't 563 of them (but why would or should there be in a house this size? A family vendetta against Blockbuster, deliberately never returning rentals?) There are a mere four VHS tapes. Three are optional. It's actually no big deal if you miss an optional one. Ok, you've missed a gem of an ordeal caught on wobbly handheld but you can still proceed regardless. This is brilliant. And realistic. And fresh. And new. For this series at least. But let's pause and rewind, a squeaky VHS style rewind. Perhaps the true taste of things to come arrives as early as the title screen as, with trepidation, you take the plunge and press ‘New Game’. But the traditional ‘RESIDENT EVIL’ voice clip that heralds the beginning of every game in the series, like Christian Bale’s Batman with a chest infection, the voice that always struck me as verging on the ridiculous and somewhat tonally inconsistent with the atmosphere of terror the game tries to create: this voice never comes. It was this voice’s absence that chilled me more than on any start screen of past entries. This is still Resident Evil but not as we know it. In terms of major thematic departures from some previous entries, the one thing that really leapt out at me in REVII, as well as all of the things I really didn’t want to leap out at me, is how ‘human’ the game feels. This may sound odd considering how a large proportion of the game involves sub human abominations seeking to disembowel you at every turn. But I do mean 'human' in the truest, most redeemable sense of the word as well as in the very darkest sense. The central protagonist, for the first time in the series’ history, is a nobody. No offense, Ethan. This is to your and Capcom’s credit. Ethan is not some macho, dual machine gun wielding, in the gym five days a week, protein shake drinking super cop who has direct links to some far-fetched government conspiracy. He’s just an ordinary, everyman looking for his missing girlfriend. In fact, we don’t ever even get to see what he looks like. His facelessness is indicative of this new direction Capcom have taken. Ethan is you, me, everyone and anyone. We all have or have had loved ones and by thrusting us into the character of someone who has had one taken away, we are drawn in immediately and arguably feel a more intimate connection with Ethan than with any other Resident Evil protagonist. The game’s clever subversion of expectations in the opening hand held camera cinematic is both chilling and deeply affecting as Ethan’s girlfriend, Mia looks straight into the camera, addressing you the player directly: ‘…if you get this, stay away.’ Not, ‘come after me, help me, save me’. Pause a moment and think about how genuine this is, from a human rather than a video game protagonist’s / purely narrative perspective. Despite one’s obvious state of emergency, what decent human being would drag a loved one by invitation into a hell hole of horror if it meant putting them at risk? Yet so many games, movies, books have run headlong into this narrative pitfall. Sure, sometimes it can be entertaining but is it realistic? Well done, Capcom on two fronts here. The first is for actually portraying how normal human beings would behave in this situation. If Ethan had heeded his girlfriend’s warning it would have made for a fairly short and shite game for 45 smackers but thankfully he doesn’t. His decision to drive into rural Louisiana is also down to a well met sense of humanity: he loves his girlfriend and cares enough to want to save her. She’s been missing for a few year for Christ’s sake! There’s nothing wrong with that but it’s these sorts of emotions that are sometimes missing in games at the expense of setting up exciting or emotionless dialogue or a cheesy set piece. And thankfully, as Ethan’s car rolls up on the edge of the Baker estate, he doesn’t open the trunk, haul out a Gatling gun and sling several ammo belts over his shoulder ready to wage war on whoever the fuck took his sweetie pie away from him. He doesn’t even seem to anticipate a fight. He’s there to get Mia out and that’s it, not to play the hero in any romantic sense. That leads onto hooray for Capcom point number 2: Mia is no damsel in distress. She’s a highly educated research scientist, not a naïve and over trusting hitchhiker who stumbled upon the wrong house. She can also handle herself, even if this is when her veins are pumping to bursting point with the virus. She’s a strong female presence who is just as robust as her male counterpart, Ethan. While not the main protagonist, she has a face and so is in some ways more identifiable than Ethan is. The gaming scene has seen a positive upsurge in strong female leads recently, most notably the new, significantly less sexed up version of Lara Croft, the headstrong young mind of Ellie in the Last of Us and Aloy, the post apocalyptic kicker of robotic dinosaur ass. More of this, with an extra dollop of humanity all round please! And the much discussed switch to first person is also a great fit to help achieve this sense of the game being more human and intimate. This is never more obvious than when sampling one of Resident Evil VII’s finest items of functional décor: the simple door! Gone are the slowly zooming cut scenes of doors creaking open in previous installments that felt detached and often distanced the player from the action momentarily. For instance, when the Nemesis chases you through that police station in Resident Evil III, frantic music pumping in your ears and you come to a door and have to wait for its animation to finish before proceeding (albeit slightly quicker than normal since you are in kind of a rush) 'Come on, for fuck sake!’ And then the Nemesis just breaks the bloody thing down anyway! What was that about? But here, Ethan’s hand, our hand eases each door open, with a pause before being pushed fully ajar. For me, this, with the deliberate pause, was ten times more tension filled than a generic cut scene, so much so that I would only trust myself to open about three doors at a time before legging it back to a tape recorder. Never in any game I’ve played have corridors, confined and more open spaces been so heavily pervaded with dread. And thanks to how the character of Ethan is introduced to us, his eyes being our eyes and his relationships our relationships, there is a sort of trickle down effect in terms of human emotion and feeling. As a consequence we feel much more deeply affected by it all. And by affected I mean scared. There, I said it. Pure shitting myself for large portions of this, I was. All because Capcom have bothered to make it's setting and everything in it feel real. When I wasn’t staring in wonderment at the box art or title screen, I spent the vast majority of the game scrubbing skid marks from my underpants which in turn is testament to Capcom nailing the other side of the human coin: the subhuman. Resident Evil is an exploration of the darker side of humanity: depravity, cruelty, sadism and blood lust. This is barebones horror. But it’s ok, because it’s not mindless gore. All of the horror you witness as Ethan is not as straightforward as it first seems. Never have you felt more sorry for a family of cannibalistic sociopaths than you have for the Bakers, who happened to be living in the wrong house, on the wrong waterway as the wrong ship ran aground, with the wrong chemically infused little girl on board. It’s a pity it takes until the very end, having been almost run over, chain-sawed and bludgeoned to death by one of the family for you to realise this. But forgive and forget, eh? They are the victims as much as you and Mia. They were a family before all of this happened. Family photos found around the house show a closeness and affection for their children. But unfortunately as we progress, our view of the Bakers is tainted by the fact that they would prefer to have your intestines for dinner (literally) and smear your blood across their living room wall. And you, the lone wrecking ball that blunders in and begins to dismantle this sick family from within, destroying them bit by infected bit. This raises further questions which are not immediately obvious as you make your way through the game: are you noble in your quest to save Mia when you're also ultimately responsible for the death of this backwater family, regardless of what state you find them? Are you saviour or usurper? You might say you're doing them a favour, putting them out of their misery? Has a Resident Evil game ever been so keen to confront you with so many hard hitting and 'human' questions, beyond the more sweeping ones raised by the unethical actions of a megalomaniacal corporation, as seen in previous installments? Then there's the biggest little question of them all: Evelyn. She wants to be loved. She’ll pump your veins full of her muck in a blink and kill you in the process but isn’t that adorable all the same? I’ve only completed the game once and am unlikely to have a second go. But I would be very interested to see how I would actively feel toward what I am going through with all of this knowledge on board. I sense I might be playing an entirely different game. That’s clever! This is the Capcom we deserve but it’s not the one we need! Actually, no, we do need this. Never has this genre needed it more and Capcom have delivered. Resident Evil VII is a gem, there's no doubt. But it's still an imperfect one. The puzzles are nice. That’s a really bland word and it’s a fair one for the puzzles. Not overly challenging but at the same time not overtly offensive either. Solving them quickly means the action and exploration can continue apace. The game is also guilty of quite a bit of hand holding. I’m looking at you, constantly ringing telephone. I did try to melt the cord with the burner at one point but to no avail. Hand holding in this game is especially annoying since the house itself, while not completely linear, is not a huge place. The final and also weakest portion of the game is completely linear and akin to a tower challenge level in which waves of monstrosities are thrown at you to test your mettle, each wave stronger than the last. Then there are the boss fights which, I’m pleased to say, are not as bad as many make out. They’re far from the most sophisticated encounters in gaming and are heralded with the now standard glut of ammo and health remedies housed handily in the room immediately before the fight itself. This stood in direct contrast to the vast majority of the game where I found myself dangerously low on both and having to make sure that I managed my inventory well and that all of my bullets counted. But to the game's immense credit, in nearly all but one boss battle I didn’t fully realise I was engaged in an actual boss battle until the fight was almost over. My chief aim in the garage boss fight with Baker, at least initially, was ‘How the fuck do I get out of here alive?’ rather than actively seeking to engage with the madman. Marguerite's insect form had me literally scraping the coffers of my ammo and health reserves, running around the lower flower frantically, with pee running down each leg, looking for a chance herb or box of bullets. I eventually won this battle backed into a corner, slashing blindly with my knife. Skin. of. my. teeth. And not a boss health bar in sight which was refreshing, a detail that Monster Hunter championed. But at least in that game a monster would limp when injured and near the end. Get with it, Capcom! That one’s your game too! Although I’ve dedicated a sizeable paragraph to the game’s shortcomings, these really are minor when all is said and done. I'm not a Resident Evil/survival horror fanboy by any stretch but imperfections notwithstanding, Resident Evil VII is an absolute tonne of nerve jangling, heart attack inducing fun that will leave you feeling extremely hopeful for the future. It’s handling of people and human beings and how human beings and their emotions should form the focal point of any believable narrative is refreshing to see fullstop, let alone in this genre. For some bizarre reason, this is a detail, as obvious as a wet fish to the face, that is so often sacrificed in video games in favour of jumping off high things, blowing things up or swishing the biggest sword imaginable. I know that not every game is driven by people but when you are aiming to go down that route, let’s do it right. Let’s hope that Evil has not only come home but that it has also moved into a new house! For good. And there's plenty of room for lodgers too!

[drscotcheggmann]

What is a Classic? And Does Classic Always Mean Keeper? Part 2 of 2

So, it's a classic - by way of the game meeting your own standards, thanks to the game's huge commercial success, its mass appeal or dedicated but relatively small scale fan following. Some or all of the above. But does this mean that it's a keeper? A game that they will have to pry from your cold dead fingers for you to ever to consider letting go? I have always been a bit of a hoarder, keeping everything from cinema ticket stubs to beer mats. I've started collections in earnest but have then lost interest and been left with something no one could truly call a collection. I've been swept along by the latest fad, only to jump ship and onto the crest of the next big craze which has ultimately petered into nothing. Video games have been no different, except they are not a fad or craze; they have been and continue to be a huge part of my life. In the same way developers don't set out to make classics, I never set out to collect video games. In the early years my collection was much more a product of my pride at having beaten a game, conquered its world and then have the game sit proudly on my shelf as a trophy to my achievements. I may very well never have played that game again but I was ok with that. I also wasn't as discerning then as I am now about which games I do or don't keep - I didn't just covet classics. For years I refused to part with a PS2 copy of Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers, simply because it was my first PS2 game that came bundled with the console which I received as a Christmas gift. Hardly a classic. But as time has gone on, such feelings of sentimentality towards my gaming library have slowly begun to evaporate. Not because I've fallen out of love with video games but because something huge has happened: life. Having quite recently become a father for the first time I have been faced with a significant and inevitable shift in where my priorities lie. I now spend more time pressing coloured panels on interactive books and toddler toys than I do bashing buttons on a controller or working an analog stick. Not only do I have less time to play games but also less disposable income. You can't wipe a baby's bum with a copy of Battlefield 1 but £44.99 could buy you a hell of a lot of baby wipes! As a consequence, when I do buy a game these days, it really has to be worth my time and money which often means that it has to tick all of the right boxes that confer masterpiece or near masterpiece status. I wouldn't say I have become a gaming snob. A gaming snob is someone who consciously chooses not to play games which fall below a certain standard, even though that person may have unlimited (or at least less limited) resources to do so. That's not me. I just need to be more careful in order to maximise the enjoyment I get from the limited gaming time I do have, as well as make sure I have money to spend on my family. And I'm ok with this, I really am. But it has also backed me into a few corners that I am less comfortable with. As I like to know if a game is worth my time and money before handing over my hard earned pennies, I've become more and more reliant on the opinion of others, namely in the form of reviews. I do like reading critical opinion but I'm also sad that I don't feel brave enough to give a game a chance and form my own opinions first. Although I don’t necessarily always agree with pigeonholing that results from the use of numerical review scores, my cut off these days is usually an 8/10 - that's not necessarily classic or masterpiece territory you may say but anything lower and the likelihood is that there'll be something else coming out in the next few months which is better and in which I would rather invest my limited money and time. And I know that's not the way it should be and I wish it wasn't. I do wish I could jump into a game for the simple reason that I just really want to play it, regardless of review scores and certainly not because it absolutely must be a near masterpiece. But time and money are precious in a young family, the latter especially so, since the day one RRP of games is not insubstantial and new games generally don't hold their value for long. I know that a £44.99 day one purchase could come down as low as £20 within a few months. Which begs a bigger question which I'm not going to attempt to answer here: should we buy games on day one? My head says no, my heart says Nioh. A big fat day one purchase which I had been looking forward to since playing the demo, despite my New Year's Resolution not to give into day one pressure. I lasted until February. But to be completely honest with you and myself, I'm resigned to the fact that Nioh, coming in at around 70 hours to complete supposedly, will likely join the vast pile of games already in my backlog of unfinished and, I'm ashamed to admit, unplayed games (Until Dawn has never even been in the machine!). I'll get to them one day, I tell myself. One day this year, next year, in 10 years. Until Dawn will be 2 years old in August..... So my backlog grows larger as my gaming time grows shorter and the new releases keep on coming. This cycle of events and the changes in my lifestyle have forced my hand a bit in the last while to the extent where I've changed how I view the games I absolutely must and must not keep. Games which I would've once kept for the sake of keeping, now make it onto the top of the trade in pile, some of them widely regarded as classics or masterpieces, even if it means I only get a few quid back. This trading in for pittance may seem callous, opportunistic, a product of relentless consumerism and the need to always have money in your pocket for something else to come along but I have to admit, I don't miss these games. Not a bit. This begs yet another question: does every game we every play need to be kept, masterpiece or not? Are memories of our escapades in these virtual worlds not enough? I have fond memories of cruising around the streets of Rockstar’s version of Miami, pumping REO Speedwagon from the speakers in my top down convertible station wagon with hydraulic suspension, but I don't feel the need to own Grand Theft Auto Vice City anymore to back that up. I remember staying up way past my bedtime, watching my Dad beat Misrabelle, the final boss of Mickey's Castle of Illusion on the Megadrive, in the days before memory cards and save files. If you died and were out of lives, it was right back to the start! This is perhaps my earliest gaming memory but I don't need to own a copy of Castle of Illusion to keep that memory alive. And now that my own son is tottering about the place I've sometimes thought to myself, I should keep these games because maybe he'll want to play them when he's older. He might. But an equal part of me thinks, who am I kidding? It'll be next gen times two by the time that rolls around. But then the other part of me is also happy knowing that I'll be content just to tell him about them, about what I remember and relive what they were like through memory alone. The feeling of hitting a spike at high speed and losing 100+ rings in Sonic 2. The jangling sound that denotes failure. Or finding out that the trick to beating Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid was to switch controller ports mid fight so that he couldn't read your mind. This was mind blowing back then and I'm hoping, if my son is remotely interested in games, he'll find it just as mind blowing without needing to get the PlayStation out of the attic. Memories aside, I'm also at a stage in life now where I don't need to keep everything I've ever played, completed or not touched, as the case may be. And I admit, not only do I not miss these game I've let go of, I feel better for having done it. I know that if I ever want to play them again, they're not gone forever. Thanks to how interconnected the world is these days, I know I could likely pick these titles up again either in a 2nd hand video games store or on e bay. And in some ways this is more exciting than having a game gather dust on a shelf for years and potentially never be played again; knowing that it's not out of arms reach, even though it would involve buying the game again, a game that I probably paid top dollar for when it was first released. For the ones I've traded in but never begun or completed, having to part with cash for them again may actually be the kick I need to get the job done the second time around. Maybe one day. This year, next year, in 10 years.... But while I've been keen to let go of a good chunk of my gaming library, there are some games that I will never get rid of. These are for me my true classics, games I would be upset about if I ever had to part with them. There aren't many and I'm not going to gush and spout odes of devotion to them all here but my all time favourite game cannot go without mention: Dark Souls. This game is my masterpiece but I know for others it's a disasterpiece, a game which provokes feelings of love and hatred in equal measure. I’m aware that some feel the game is desperately overrated and I know that not everyone reading this will be a Dark Souls fan so I will spare the details; suffice to say that the world building, combat, stat and weapon upgrade systems, vaguely hinted at lore and steep but rewarding difficulty are all things that make Dark Souls a game that has created many memorable moments for me. I’ve completed the game once and so the memories should be enough, right? Well, I'm not quite done making memories with Dark Souls. Despite my lament about limited time and an ever expanding backlog, I've just recently begun my 2nd playthrough of Dark Souls. And I'm loving it. Yes, I've seen it all before and the sheen that coated my first time isn't glistening nearly so brightly this time around but I still feel the adrenaline when facing a boss I know I've beaten before, I still care enough to explore everything I can see on the horizon. I know I will never part with it. So worried was I recently that I had permanently lost my copy during our last house move that I went out and bought another copy second hand, despite also having a digital copy on my Xbox360. You never know when the thing might go kaputt, you see, so a back up physical copy was a no brainer. This might seem a bit daft and it probably is to be honest, but I felt strangely good about buying that 2nd copy, as if I was liberating it from the shop because it didn’t deserve to be among the second hand trade-in titles. I mean, who in their right mind would trade in Dark Souls? Maybe someone who has their own little cabinet of classics at home but Dark Souls isn't one of them. Or maybe someone who has reached a stage in their life like me where they don't need to keep absolutely everything. And that's fine. The fact that it was traded in meant I bought it and I'm glad to say that since it hasn't been wasting away on a shelf like so many others before it. I've since found my original copy and have leant my 2nd copy to a friend, a Dark Souls noob. You never know, in time Dark Souls might just become my friend's very own masterpiece. If there is one message to come from all of this it's this: a classic is only as classic as the connection you, the player forge with that particular game. Although we hear the words classic and masterpiece thrown around a lot these days, forget review scores, fan following and commercial success. These are only indicators. Fundamentally a game that you consider to be a classic has to mean something to you, whether that's thematically, mechanically or just because you walked its world and reveled in its brilliance at a particular moment in time. It's a deeply personal thing. And that alone makes any classic worth keeping.

[drscotcheggmann]

What is a Classic? And Does Classic Always Mean Keeper? Part 1 of 2

The words 'classic' and 'masterpiece' are bandied about quite a lot these days; from films to TV shows to records to novels. There are modern classics, cult classics and just plain old classic classics, seminal and universally acclaimed works that will stand the test of time. So why should video games be any different? Although video gaming is a comparatively new art form when considered alongside the written word and audio/visual entertainment media, you’d be a bit of a fool to ignore the success and influence of today's gaming industry. After all, it's now not uncommon for a top end AAA video game to outdo a Hollywood blockbuster in terms of revenue. As a result of widespread commercial success and appeal, many games are now considered staples in the libraries of both casual and hardcore gamers worldwide. These are games that we will continue to talk about, scrutinise and revisit for years to come. From a personal point of view, if a game is a 'classic', it will occupy a permanent space on my shelf and will never be subject to the routine cull of dust gatherers and 'in the disc tray once' titles which I've so foolishly bought and still buy in the wake of the inevitable pre-release hype train. For me a true 'masterpiece' is a game which grabs me so wholeheartedly that I would panic if I misplaced my copy, even though I would have no real plans to replay it anytime soon. But equally there are games which offer thoroughly excellent experiences from start to finish, which are lauded as classics but which I won't feel the need to keep in my collection from now until the day I die. So, what makes a game a 'classic' - cult, modern or otherwise? And does 'classic' always mean a game is going to be a 'keeper', a permanent feature in a gamer's library? Just to get this out in the open before we kick off: the purpose of this piece is not to determine which games are classics and which are not. Nor am I claiming to be any sort of authority on what makes a game a masterpiece. I may mention a few games by name to illustrate a point but I know that the word classic will mean very different things to very different types of player. It doesn't actually matter whether you are an avant RPG player, a lover of platformers, a fan of racing sims, mad for MMOs or a purveyor of open world chaos and exploration; but there are certain boxes a video game really should tick to be considered in the highest echelons of gaming culture. Often when playing a genuine classic you can actively feel the love and thought that has gone into every aspect of its development. This could be a meticulously mapped and resultantly slick control system, a coherent and thrilling story involving believable characters that do meaningful things in a world that feels lived in and alive. Or it could be clever level design which throws up surprises and variety at every turn, a high degree of challenge which keeps you coming back time after time, even in the face of multiple failures or even a sense of longevity and reward in exchange for the player having chosen to invest hours of their life in a single experience. A classic may possess all of these, working together in harmony to create something very special. Or just some of these. Not all video games need to rely on depth of character and story development to make them successful, for example. The overarching factor is what a developer sets out to accomplish, what their aims are and how well these aims are executed in the final product. Developers don't necessarily set out to make classics. Don't get me wrong, a developer is always aiming to make the very best game possible but it's what happens once a game has hit the shelves that can often determine whether a game gains classic status or not, for good or for bad. I've seen games that are absolutely wonderful from beginning to end, adored by the critics but unfortunately never gain any real traction with the public, shift far fewer copies than they really deserve to and are then often labelled as 'hidden gems' or 'cult favourites' but are sadly left relatively forgotten. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West stands out here, selling a mere 500,000 copies. We've also seen games that have promised lots pre-release but have fallen short when it comes to execution of core gameplay mechanics. The criticism attracted by No Man's Sky is the obvious example. In theory this could be hugely damaging to consumer confidence in a developer being able to deliver and meet expectations on a consistent basis. Thankfully in practice consumers are rarely as damning. More often than not consumers value good games over loyalty to any one developer. Thankfully. One bad release doesn't necessarily mean that it's game over, especially if the next game is a huge hit. But for the smaller developers, can there be a next game following a huge commercial flop? In the case of No Man's Sky, only time will tell for Hello Games. My feeling is that they should be afforded another chance, and to their credit have already set about things in the right way post release thanks to some hefty and very well received game enhancing updates. Despite the feelings of fan entitlement and talk of broken promises that came bubbling to the surface once discs began to spin in consoles, Hello Games did not set out to make a bad game, just as no one sits down with the intention of making a classic. And its also important to note too that for many, this is by no means a bad game at all. Not even close. The aesthetic beauty of its procedurally generated worlds alone is a marvel for some. Before being too quick to criticise, we should stand back and realise that at their core developers are teams of very talented, passionate people who make games they hope to be proud of and that they themselves would enjoy. Long may that continue. But any developer would be lying if they said they do not pay attention to what their target audience wants. It is too simplistic to say that was where Hello Games fell down, to continue with this example. Things change in the development phase and that's the way it is. The creative process is one that is constantly in flux, as it should be to allow the flexibility for new ideas to take shape and others to fall away. But at the same time being sensitive to your market is at the heart of any successful industry. As much as they are in it for the love of games, developers make games to sell copies and consumer behaviour is a huge factor in driving change which in turn keeps giving us fresh waves of new and exciting experiences that are packed with all or some of the features discussed above. For good or for bad, the consumer has perhaps the biggest say in how well received a game is and its perceived classic status or lack thereof. Commercial success is only one indicator though. The Xbox Classics or PlayStation Platinum range of days past sought to place games in the 'classic' category based on sales alone and bring them to the consumer at a fair price. Having once been a teenager living off a quite limited weekly supply of pocket money, this was always welcome. But if we look at sales alone, this does not always guarantee classic status. The Call of Duty franchise releases a new entry in the series almost every year, selling millions of copies in a blink, thanks to an engaging, well scripted single player campaign and fast paced, satisfying multiplayer modes. Hugely successful sales figures are one thing but can each successive entry in the series really be considered a classic? You might say no in the broadest sense of the word 'classic' but to the legions of loyal fans of the series, the COD games may very well be classics, in spite of recent criticism that the series is becoming a bit stale. The power of the fan community is a huge factor when talking about classic status which arguably carries as much if not more gravitas than sales do. You might say that of course if you are a fan of game or series of games, you buy the product, make your contribution and so a game's fan base is very closely linked to sales revenue. And, yes it is. But it's not quite as simple as that. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 has sold somewhere approaching 20 million copies worldwide to date. From Software’s Dark Souls released in late 2011 has 'only' sold around 3 million units to date. Admittedly both are very different games but both have very passionate and dedicated fan communities, neither more or less so than the other and who would both argue their point for their game being considered a 'classic', regardless of sales. I'm glad to see that from a consumer point of view, gaming is and has always been an aesthetic experience first and foremost and not one about numbers and popularity. Gamers don't see sales figures flashing before their eyes as they shoot an enemy, slay a monster or screech around a corner and not all are driven by mass appeal. No matter what your gaming background may be, video game enthusiasts value their own experience of a game above all else, with many also proud to occupy a place in and make a contribution to their respective fan communities. And it's thanks to the relatively recent proliferation of the internet that these fan communities have really gained a firm platform upon which to exert a meaningful influence. Gamers are a species not afraid to make their opinion heard and the internet has made that even easier, for good or for bad. And it is heartening to hear that developers do listen to gamer opinion too. The developers of Nioh for example have rolled out no fewer than three demos, the first two serving as test spaces to gauge fan opinion in the now common beta format. But aside from the voicing of opinions, fan engagement with Dark Souls and Modern Warfare 4, both now relatively old games, has not receded. Although players of Modern Warfare 4 in its original release format are now dwindling, YouTube is still awash with Call of Duty multiplayer videos and skilful kills spanning the whole series. A recent reboot of the Modern Warfare is evidence alone of the fan appeal of this particular entry which will also aim to pull newcomers in too no doubt. Six years after release, Dark Souls on the other hand not only still has a very active PvP player community but is also able to boast of wikis that are as deep as the decent to Blighttown and as wide as the Gaping Dragon's toothy appendage. And across both series, content is always being uploaded and updated as new things and ways of doing things are still being uncovered. For fans of these games and many others considered classics within their respective communities, it is this wider experience that exists outwith the bounds of the game's world that is just as valuable and special as the game's world itself. You may think the phrase 'one can't exist without the other' does not apply here, as the game's world will exist regardless of how many people engage with it. But had there not been this deep engagement from fans initially, fixes and improvements may never have been made nor may there have been the appetite for subsequent entries in these series; subsequent entries which often aim to distil, refine and develop the winning formula to serve their fans and gain new ones along the way. So in saying this, it might be fair to assume that not only do classic games breed fans but fans and their feedback breed what developers hope will be further classic games. So the game’s a classic? But does even that make it worthy of becoming a permanent feature in your collection? Part 2 of 2 to come in a few days time….

[drscotcheggmann]

Xbox Game Pass and EA Access: too much of a good thing?

February saw Microsoft announce its Xbox Game Pass service which will allow subscribers to access an initial library of more than 100 Xbox 360 and Xbox One games for a nominal monthly fee. Set to launch this coming spring, Xbox Game Pass follows on the heels of a similar subscription model from developer EA launched in 2014 granting access to an extensive back catalogue of EA titles. The positives have been well documented: unlike similar services offered by the likes of Amazon Prime and Netflix, Microsoft's service does not involve streaming. Games are downloaded and remain in situ. If they are due to be removed from the available library, as often happens with any of these subscription services, the subscriber will be given the option to buy at a discounted price. Not a bad compromise, especially if you're not keen on condemning umpteen hours of progress to the virtual scrap heap, without having even seen the credits roll. And let's not forget the bloody obvious: you're getting 100 plus games for around the same price as a trip to the cinema or a beer and burger. What's not to like? Well, for me it's just not the most attractive proposition. But the reason for that is purely circumstantial. The old adage has never been more true (fuck, I feel old even saying this): quality over quantity. I'm not talking about individual titles on offer being better or worse than others or that the bulk of what's on offer is crap. I'm sure there's something for everyone here, even if games by some big developers like Activision and Ubisoft aren't (yet) present. What I'm getting at is that I already have, or certainly had until fairly recently, what seems like almost 100 games amassed over the years, ripe for play thanks to my own little subscription service: regular and sometimes ill advised outgoings from my wallet. Forking out for the latest titles having not fully explored the other 99 games waiting patiently on my shelf. With an already extensive backlog to contend with, adding another 100 or so games on top of that is certainly not the answer. Ok, you're probably already saying, 'Chill out, it's only £8. You'd hardly be aiming to play all of the games on Game Pass anyway. You wouldn't go into a restaurant and order everything. And equally, if you had eaten your fill at a buffet but not tried everything, you wouldn't necessarily walk out feeling short changed.' Yes, I get this but does anyone really need this much choice? I'm a Netflix subscriber and watch a series or the odd film as often as the life of a new parent will allow. When the bill comes in I'm never fizzing with rage because I've paid the best part of £8 to watch half an episode of Stranger Things in one given month. That's life, especially now that I don't always come first these days. But having this much choice when I actually do have a good block of time to sit down to properly enjoy something like this still has the uncanny ability to frustrate. Often I've found myself logging onto my PS4 or Netflix, only to be abruptly reminded of how many PSN games I've downloaded and never touched or how many series I've got marked on my video watchlist which I know I'll probably never get into. It's overwhelming. Like staring into a big black hole. Do I watch this? Do I play that? More often than not I turn heel and leg it the other way, like a shite Indiana Jones, leaving all of these untouched treasures for another day and instead opting to play/watch something that I've played or seen twenty times already. Something I could walk or talk through in my sleep. All because it's familiar and comfortable. There's nothing wrong with that necessarily. But it niggles. In that moment the hole may be filled but in the end, it's still a hole. So is choice to blame? In my heart of hearts I know that the answer is no. The many horned backlog monster is of my own making and choice has meant that that monster has now grown a few more horns. Perhaps my own solution should be to bury my wallet in the back garden, cancel my subscriptions and enjoy what I've got. Unlikely. Despite all of my gripes, I do want to be clear though. I'm also aware that not everyone is privileged enough to boast of a backlog and that for some affording one game every once in a while is reality. I wholeheartedly respect that and am not bemoaning what may seem like first world problems. If eight pounds per month is what you can afford and it gets you a tonne of content which you have time to access and are happy with, fire on ahead. If you are a parent who will use Xbox Game Pass to give your youngster a variety rich but financially more controlled gaming experience, that's fantastic too. If there's just one game you are burning to play which would cost you more that £8 on the high street, by all means. Bargainous! To reference another adage (I'm full of them today), variety is supposedly the spice of life. I'm not going to argue with that as in many circumstance it is but depending on whose life we're talking about, not everyone has the palate for spice. I like to think I lead a varied existence thanks to a loving family, close friends and a rewarding job. But purely from a gaming perspective, depending on your circumstances, subscription services like this may just be turning the heat up too much, leaving some gamers with a burning niggle that can never quite be satisfied.

[drscotcheggmann]

Hello and Thanks for Reading

Hi, Thanks for checking out my blog. First thing I'll say is: don't let the name put you off. If you think that you have to be a parent to appreciate any of these writings, you don't. Playing games came before changing nappies and I still do my best to scratch my gaming itch in between nap times (for me and the wee one). If you're a fan of all things video games, you're in the right place (hopefully). Some of what's here will draw from experiences of the huge lifestyle change that is parenthood and it's impact on my ability to regularly mash buttons on a controller. But a lot of it won't. My hope is that there's something here for everyone to enjoy and, time permitting, to make a bit of a habit of it. Thanks for reading \[-]/