Tag Archives: reviews

VVVVVV is beautiful

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While exploring the open world of VVVVVV (pronounced like six V’s) searching every nook and cranny I stumbled across the first beautiful image in videogames for 2010. The world of VVVVVV is full of secrets and it pays to explore every inch of the space to find new teleporters and shiny trinkets to collect. But while stumbling across these little caverns I discovered something larger – a room so large that it takes up around 4 screens worth of space. And within this room lies a amazing Technicolor glowing elephant that fills up every corner of this space. The elephant doesn’t do anything except sit there and glow with a single tear in its eye. The character Captain Viridian like he does for most of the game silently walks by. Except the usual smile on his face switches out for the frown reserved typically for deaths and cinemas. It’s strangely eerie and unsettling as a brief staccato of surrealism within VVVVVV.

It’s a wonderful moment, but for better or for worse to it belies the true nature of VVVVVV. VVVVVV, the new game by Terry Cavanagh, is with no doubt the first great indie game of 2010. Taking inspiration from the ZX Spectrum and games like Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner, Mr. Cavanagh has crafted within VVVVVV one of the most punishing gaming experiences in recent memory.

VVVVVV is – for all intents and purposes – a gamer’s game. There’s a simple storyline where you learn that you play as Captain Viridian, leading his merry ship of other characters (all of which have names that start with V), when disaster strikes. An emergency teleporter is used, things go wrong, and before you know it you’re crash-landed on planet and needing to rescue all 6 of your crew. Your method of choice (and the only method of choice) is your ability to flip. The Captain doesn’t fly or jump or even skip across the world of VVVVVV. Instead by reversing his own gravity the ceilings become floors in VVVVVV and vice-versa. It’s a mechanic whose initial simplicity is deceiving as the game VVVVVV ruthlessly sets out to explore just about every permutation of this mechanic possible.

And that’s where VVVVVV really shines. While rescuing your compatriots across 5 different levels connected by an overworld Viridian never learns any new skills, never acquires any equipment or weapons or armor. What he was in the beginning is who he remains at the end. Instead Cavanagh in each different level sets out on exploring a variation of what is possible with the flip mechanic. In one level you may encounter tripwires that reverse your orientation without regards, in another you need to race against the scrolling screen as you traverse a tower. And in perhaps the most mind-bending of these you’ll need to wrap your head around a world where every room is a loop upon itself.

Each level in VVVVVV is subdivided into individual rooms each usually containing a puzzle or obstacle (although more complex puzzles can span multiple rooms). The puzzles grow quite devious over the 2-3 hours of gameplay, starting off simple and requiring little physical dexterity, but eventually in some cases become masochistic exercises of muscle memory. It’s all expertly done and outside of one or two puzzles which require an inordinate amount of trial-and-error never becomes about overcoming one’s frustration to complete the game. VVVVVV’s structure comes down to individual micro moments then. Each room has its own checkpoint where death is but a momentary delay from retrying the puzzle all over again. The game lays out it challenges in tiny morsels, easily consumable and perfect to minute breaks.

It’s perhaps due to these micro allotments of game where the only failings of VVVVVV emerge. Success is only momentary and while the challenge grows as the mechanics of flipping are explored the game lacks a tangible sense of progress beyond revealing the hidden corners of the map. When the game ends there’s no satisfying culmination of skills nor a narrative breakthrough, but merely an end because that’s all that was developed. Not that the game doesn’t fully explore the systems and mechanics, VVVVVV has a deft touch in exploring each concept without overstaying its welcome. But there’s a bit of the sense that closure is slightly fleeting in VVVVVV.

But regardless of the ending the journey is by itself an accomplishment. As each room unravels its secrets and each improvisation of the game mechanic is dealt with there’s no doubt that what the game has is a fountain of love and passion behind it. VVVVVV with its unusual title and contrary graphics and its punishing gameplay stands out like few other titles – pure and concise, clever and brief.

Note: For better or for worse the price tag for an indie game has yet again become a subject of discussion online. VVVVVV is currently being sold for $15, an amount that while certainly not cheap isn’t anywhere as exorbitant as some would lead you to believe. It matches well with the general prices indie games of similar size and scope are priced elsewhere (indie/mainstream favorite Braid was also initially 15 dollars) and while the initial playthrough is on the shorter end of things, there exist time trials and other modes to extend the length of the game. Ignoring the clinical comparison of metrics, the ratio of ingenuity per the time spent in-game is extraordinary and that alone makes VVVVVV worth the price of admission.

The Myth of the Perfect 10

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Media criticism is hard. Everyone’s a critic in some capacity (you’re reading one right now), but much like elbows or other body parts, having an opinion isn’t exactly revolutionary. There are precious few critics out there who manage to rise above the fray and illuminate their thoughts with clarity, ingenuity, and sometimes even wit. And while film, music, and other entertainment mediums have their fair share of good criticism out there, gaming’s critical landscape is pretty barren at the moment.

And a large reason why games criticism seems to languish (outside of academic circles thank you very much) is that the review is given no respect. And honestly, why should anyone respect game reviews? They’re a mish-mash of some of the worst aspects of games journalism. Reviewers are prone to hype, their criticisms are often jumbled, they focus on arbitrary aspects of the game, they treat games like software applications with checklists, they’re overly reliant on scores and numbers, there’s no sense of history or context, etc., and etc. The game review as a form of criticism in game is woeful to say the least.

Shockingly enough, the idea that the modern game review is fundamentally broken is not a new idea. When heavy hitters like Kotaku, N’Gai Croal, and Stephen Totilo have discussed this in far greater detail than this simple blog post. So the consensus is decided: game reviews suck and people know they suck.

Yet despite this apparent agreement on the sorry state of game reviews and criticism, the same old problems continue to persist. GameDaily’s recent fluff piece about 10 out of 10 scores they’ve come to regret is just another example of this phenomenon. All of the games on that list were given 10s not because of their quality, but due to a combination of reviewer preference, hype, and plain poor judgment.

There are a few publications notorious for being stingy with scores (most notably Edge). There are even fewer publications that effectively use the entire scale for reviewing (a complaint for another time). But to give a game at 10 out of a 10 review scale, the mark of perfection, is to ask what exactly makes a game a 10 rather than a 9. It’s obviously not perfection because perfection is to say that a game is without a single flaw or blemish which is clearly not true. When one rates a game a perfect score then, is it because that game was a complete execution of a particular vision or design? Was it because that game was in complete harmony with all its systems and elements to form an amazing experience? Was it because that game was a daring experiment with new ideas, systems, and mechanics never before seen in games?

There’s just no agreement on what game reviews are suppose to do in general. Some people grade each element of a game individually and others don’t. Some people value innovation over playability, some value polish over originality, some value the whole package rather than the individual game. And it doesn’t help that at least half the people who do reviews aren’t qualified to judge games beyond the veneer. Some reviewers admittedly don’t even devote a significant amount of time to playing the games they claim to judge.

This is why I welcome the rise of internet reviewers who are at least honest about their personal biases and honest about their views on a game. Reviews such as the Yahtzee and his Zero Punctuation series of reviews provide viewers with a certain perspective for critiquing games. Yahtzee is honest about what he cares about, he likes immediate feedback, he likes fun, he enjoys interactions with unforeseen consequences. He’s not a perfect reviewer and damn well I disagree with him about half the time, but at least he provides useful information amidst much reviewing noise.

Really, that’s all I ask for. Very rarely in any critiquing fields will you find a critic who is your essential voice. Instead, we tend to rely on an aggregate of people we trust (and sites like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic are shortcuts to this). Reviewers need to avoid trying to judge games in some faux software application for PC Magazine review and instead approach games, well, like games! Play the hell out of something and let loose on your (valid) critiques.

Without being Tim Roger though please.