Crisis

People underestimate this game. It's the closest Shigeru Miyamoto has ever (at least consciously) come to being an artist, and not an entertainer. His words, by the way -- no one pitch a "games are art" fit. Think of the game as a magnifying glass over the tiniest of ecosystems, with the struggle to survive at least equally (though probably more like exponentially) magnified. When things like bottle caps and puddles pose obstacles to your ever growing populous, and the local bullies are creepy-crawlers of prehistoric proportions, it's an eye-opening shift in perspective, to say the least. There's a reason I still haven't finished the game: I fear for my Pikmin. I don't want them to get lost, or drown, or be maimed by a Cretaceous caterpillar.

I've never experienced that fear (or anything comparable in emotional extremity) while playing similar population-management games. In the likes of Sim City and Roller Coaster Tycoon, it's quite often more fun to cause as much destruction as possible, rather than attempt completion of the quota. Not so in Pikmin. Maybe it's the setting, the injection of biology into a genre that is almost always urban or militarized, and whose usual focus is gluttonous micro-management... but Pikmin is for whatever indeterminable reason, more pathological. We know that Miyamoto was inspired by the "tiny worlds" he found in his garden. The result (as much as I hate the "E" word) is an almost existential examination of life. Or maybe mid-life is more appropriate, given Miyamoto's age, and player-character Captain Olimar's preoccupation with family. Not to mention the game's ticking clock. One of my favorite game overs ever, honestly: if marooned Olimar can't escape the deadly atmosphere in under 30 days, he dies. Most people buy a sports car; this genius made a real time strategy game about ecology and primary-colored bugs.

Final Fantasy XIII impressions

The major theme here seems to be duty; upholding and fulfilling predetermined roles. This is seen in both the story and the battle system. That is the mark of a good game, when the rules and the narrative express the same ideas.

For instance, the l'Cie are these martyrs, right? Straying from their path results in "death," and completing it results in "death." Contrast this with the notion of the Cocoon citizens: a society so sheltered and constructed that open-minded thought is pretty much impossible; not living up to your expected role here is again, deadly. On the gameplay side, you've got this battle system which revolves around assigning and mismatching "roles" for the characters to fulfill. It strikes me as a juxtaposition and melding of two paradigms: the old school Final Fantasies (pre VII), and the newer ones (post VII). Old FF required players to utilize different characters' predetermined unique stats efficiently, by pairing compatible classes. New FF essentially turned characters into blank slates, to be customized entirely by the player. The fact that Final Fantasy VII was indeed a paradigm shift for the series, coupled with the (almost) painfully obvious and copious references to that game found in XIII, to the point that I'm not sure XIII isn't some strange secret remake, well... it makes me think.

Now, I'm still really early, but the inevitability is that at some point in the game, the cast will make it off of the technological, floating wonder that is Cocoon (or was it Midgar?), and onto the lurking wild below, opening up a whole new world of gameplay options and possibilities. Gone will be the pandering tutorials and sterility of party management. There will a breaking out of the shell, a shedding of the skin of such fantastic proportions...

... oh.

OH. I see what you did there, Square-Enix. Nice metaphor.

Western Funeral

Once Upon a Time in the West is the greatest Western ever made, and by extension, one of the greatest films ever made. Actually, even though I have a strong hatred for such silly hyperbolic phrases (despite said phrases having become common subjects and methods of classification), Once Upon a Time in the West may be the greatest Western of all time. There are grounds for this. First of all, I doubt there will ever be a director who loved or understood the genre more than Sergio Leone. The Italian's fascination with and awe of American culture was epitomized by the glorification of the time period; the Old West had become modern mythology. There is a chivalry to the cowboy, and a fantasy to the frontier. Leone idolized it all.

"In my childhood, America was like a religion. Then, real-life Americans abruptly entered my life in Jeeps and upset all my dreams."

That's the other reason a better Western is unlikely to ever exist, and what the film is really about: the death of the myth. West was almost topical in the way it combined and referenced so many of the genre's staples. The opening credits sequence re-imagines the train scene from High Noon, except in West, the three characters waiting for the train are gunned down within minutes. There is even a small reference to Leone's previous film (and one of his three masterpieces), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. One of the three men famously filled the frame of that film's opening shot, and remember the stray dog that intercut that first shot? He's back, too. Legend has it that Leone even intended Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach to play the three men at the beginning of West. The shock of their deaths so early in the film would have perfectly symbolized the deconstruction of the genre, especially since Van Cleef was also one of the original three in High Noon. The man knew what he was doing.