There are few games that make me want to cry. Okami came close.

While the touching ending could be considered sappy, I found it to be very appropriate to the spirit of the game. When you have a game about Gods and demons, it is difficult to make something that is not based around fantastic violence or faith. Okami’s ending incorporated both.

The theme of faith has been an undercurrent in the game, but it really rises to the surface at the end. People who believe in the power of the wolf help empower her throughout the game. The wolf is touching in its realism, and, as an animal lover, I find it amazing that the game created so much personality for the wolf without hearing her thoughts.

So what made me want to cry? It wasn’t the heartwarming faith message. It was beauty. At the end, you are able to see the wolf in a different form. The majesty, the music, and the miracle of it all is almost overwhelming in its artistry. It is a rewarding experience in itself.

I would love to recommend this game to anyone I could, but I feel that I can’t. The sheer amount of time necessary to appreciate the reverent tone and subtle humor of Okami will make it inaccessible for many people. I logged 54 hours and eight minutes. Although that included many sidequests, that type of dedicated gaming is not for the average person.

When the game finally ended, I was satisfied by the final fight and the conclusion. The story felt solid. Thinking back on my experience, I felt that the mini-games were frustrating at times, but those required to continue were never ridiculously tiresome like those in Kingdom Hearts II. I finally did find Moley’s treasure eventually and was able to complete the quests I really cared about.

Perhaps one of the best aspects of Okami was the fact that dying was more of an annoyance that a danger. I think I only died once in the whole game. If you fell off a cliff, you would only lose a portion of your life. This lead me to always have a sense of security, which fit the game, as the character was a God and should not be defeated by such a paltry setback.

I really enjoyed Okami and hope that my future gaming experiences can live up to it.  

As an aspiring game designer, I knew that I had to play Zelda sooner or later. Embarrassed not to immediately associate the name “Link” with happy childhood memories unlike many of my peers, I decided I could avoid Nintendo no longer. I had always had a PlayStation and never bothered to play Nintendo games (due to the seemingly limited options available for games on their consoles) and had never been a big fan of Mario. Yet the Zelda series kept coming up in class discussions and casual conversations. As an RPG fan as well, I was long overdue to play Zelda.

Fortunately, my professor brought The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker to class today. I jumped at the opportunity and sat down to play. I was engrossed in the game and found the island strikingly similar to that in the original Kingdom Hearts. I played for a good twenty minutes before noticing that a few people had gathered around to watch. I offered to let them play, but was glad when they declined. I was finally getting the hang of the controls and the style of the game.

When a mystical bird flew in with a girl in its talons, I was quickly reminded an article on Shigeru Miyamoto. It talked about his sense of exploration and fun. The colorful world of Zelda held the distinctive, imaginative style that has defined Miyamoto’s games since the original Mario series. I began to see why such a fan base has grown.

An hour later, class was over. Sadly, I could not save my progress or return to play Zelda later. However, I was excited to play again. I even considered buying a GameCube. I would not mind playing that hour again because it was a lot of fun.

When I returned home, another game in the same genre was waiting in my mailbox: Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. I had an opportunity to play it later in the day. After feeling stressed from the week, I was glad to have a fun game to play (after having rented so many games exclusively for my school project).

This game started out with a lengthy cinematic process. Once into the game, however, it was mainly platformer action. I enjoyed the playful style and friendly characters. One particular task, herding creatures resembling water buffalos into a pen for a farmer, reminded me of a very similar task in the third Spyro game. I player for a couple hours.

However, I ran into much more frustration in Jak and Daxter. I was continually dying, but there wasn’t a limit on the number of lives. Toward the end, I believe I spent about ten minutes trying to beat a boss. I kept dying, but about 80% of the time I died was from carelessness during the simple jumps to get to the boss. I was so angry about losing that I lost my focus. I was so stubborn that I kept at it over and over again, and finally beat the boss. I played a little bit longer after that, and got stuck. I was still upset from beating the boss and quit around 1 a.m. to get some sleep.

After playing both platformers, I began to wonder why one had appealed to me so much more than the other. Both games were made into best-selling series. Both had whimsical creatures and bright, playful levels. The characters and stories were rich. It seemed to come down to the puzzles and difficulties. The Zelda game felt more intellectual and charming, such as when you could discover that you can hide under barrels to avoid getting caught unarmed. The Jak game had more meaningless mini-games, such as catching 200 fish (catch only two of the three types and the speed at which they swim increases) or the animal herding. It reminded me of Kingdom Hearts II and getting frustrated with ridiculous tasks.

While both games may be strong, I believe that they do appeal to different types of players. Zelda requires more of a puzzling mind, where you have to ask yourself how you can use what you know to solve the problem. Jak and Daxter gave less initial guidance but left the world so open that you had to discover things for yourself that had less bearing on mental challenge and left more to chance or physical skill. While both games satisfied my need to run around and collect items, I found that Zelda was more fun, simply because it was crafted like a puzzle; all the pieces were there and you just had to figure out how to use them. I felt like I was respected as a player to solve simple challenges that were attainable with a little thought. With Jak, the action was there, but the cleverness and subtlety was not.

I am not sure whether the fluidity of Zelda was due to the countless iterations and since the beginning of the Zelda series or simply more compatible elements (simple puzzles as opposed to mini-games in the same game type). However, I do think that the Jak games would appeal to players who are less inclined to want to think through a puzzle and simply win by pushing through the incidents of ridiculously menial tasks.  

After a stressful week, I find that playing a video game can be rather therapeutic. You can project your enemies onto the plethora of monsters you must fight and gain a sense of satisfaction from completing in-game tasks. While the individual tasks in a game as long as an RPG can be quite nominal, they are fairly easy to complete. I am a person who makes lists and loves to cross things off of them, so it is fun for me to go through with a strategy guide and mark my progress.

Richard Bartle would probably classify me as an achiever for this reason. I do thoroughly enjoy running around the levels and collecting items. I like playing independently – I enjoy competition most if it’s against the game or myself. I don’t mind leveling up at all, but there could be two possible motivations for this. The first would be that I enjoy gaining levels, another form of achievement. I find that higher levels make boss fights a little bit easier, and I am a fan of low-stress games. My second motivation is that I enjoy killing monsters. As I mentioned earlier, I can unleash any pent-up aggression on the virtual monsters. If a monster scares me, it shatters that line where I feel safe (like when I jumped and screamed after the sudden appearance of a monster in Doom). This takes me out of the play and I would much rather fight monsters when I can see them clearly.

These two motivations are not mutually exclusive, however. While Bartle’s ideas apply mostly to MUDs, I do think that it is possible that people can fit multiple classifications, and these qualities may be seen more clearly in different games. I believe that I do have a bit of a killer in me – I’ve been known to shout Bartle’s “Die! Die! Die!” (a killer classification quote) when excited about any fight. However, I think that my neurotic collecting and leveling up would classify me as an achiever, even if I do decide not to go after EVERY ultimate item at the end of these games. (Usually, at the end of RPGS, I am at such a high level that it really does not matter if I get all the items since it would not make it significantly easier to beat the game.)

I had been neglecting my RPG addiction in an effort to spend time with my mother during her recent visit and get my homework done. However, once I had a few spare hours to myself, I decided it was time to jump back into that genre I love and give Kingdom Hearts II another try.

I was so excited to play again, thinking that after my first five hours, the game would really take off. I had regained control of the original party (not the main character’s doppelganger and his friends). I was thrilled to have to chance to run around and collect items, and maybe slay a few enemies along the way. Unfortunately, I had triggered a story point before I saved that cleared the area of monsters. How disappointing. While it was nice to run around quickly, I missed the satisfaction of slaying the monsters. I told myself not to get too upset, as I would soon enter a new area that was sure to offer more enemies.

I was bitterly disappointed when I played for the next two hours, when I encountered fewer than 20 fights (lasting about 15 seconds each) and more and more movies. The movies were obviously being used as a crutch to patch together an overly complicated story. I was in control of the characters for less than half of the time again. I found that the play mood was interrupted and I was rudely thrown outside this game “magic circle” each time a new movie appeared. There were so many that I kept wondering how long it would be until I would get to play again. This game me the felling that I was not invited to my own party – they didn’t need me, the player, to help them tell the story. I was just there to hack up the occasional enemy (ridiculously easy) and move along a very clear path in order to trigger more movies. It not longer felt like play.

Even if the killer in me could not be satisfied by the fights, I had hoped that the achiever part of me could find satisfaction. However, the collection of items didn’t even seem fun anymore. After eight hours of gameplay, you could collect synthesis items to synthesize better weapons but you didn’t have enough to actually improve weapons yet. Even the ready-made weapons were (what I considered) worse than what I already owned. Plus, I did not have enough money because I had barely been allowed to fight. The only other way to gain money in the game was to complete ridiculous mini-games and I really did not want to waste my time re-playing games that were ridiculous when I completed them earlier as the doppelganger.

After all this, I really thought that I would give the game one more shot or at least play it until I got to the Pirates of the Caribbean level. Unfortunately, my strategy guide walkthrough showed me that it would be at least 5-10 hours away, and I simply did not have the patience to wade through so many movies for a level that I heard wasn’t nearly as cool as it seemed.

The magic circle was shattered and my needs as a player were not met. I decided to send this game back and stop wasting my time being disappointed by a game that would not satisfy my player types.  

I switched game rental providers last week so I could play the new releases I had been eagerly anticipating. My first choice was Kingdom Hearts II, the popular sequel to the Disney/Square RPG I had beaten last winter. I already had the guide and was excited to play it despite disappointing reviews from my friends. They had warned me of the ridiculous mini-games and errand-runnning, but this was not what I have found to be the problems.

I popped the disc in and watched the opening cinematics, impressed by their clean lines and clever cinematography. The flashiness of the movie helped to hide the fact the clips didn’t really make sense within a narrative structure; I decided it was just a fun way of previewing an intricate plot.

The plot picks up after GameBoy game that takes place in between the first and second games. This linking game’s story was summarized in my strategy guide in a confusing one-paragraph description. The plot, involving regaining memories and running around a castle, seemed far-fetched.

Even more far-fetched was the idea that the game began with an entirely new character, Roxas. He appeared to be a parallel character to the first game’s protagonist, Sora. Roxas dreams about Sora and his memories.

While I do have a capacity for suspension of disbelief even in 60-hour RPGs, I found it hindered by the patience required through all the introductory movies. In a three-hour play session, I literally controlled Roxas for fewer than 30 minutes. This was not even consecutive. This few precious minutes consisted of moving my character around small sections of levels with a extremely basic tutorial.

For a game that requires such a great knowledge of a complex backstory, the tutorial is ridiculously basic. They explain how it’s a good idea to talk to NPCs (who repeat instructions thus far in case you forgot them in the thirty seconds since the last movie). They warn you to be very cautious in fights, yet most enemies can be defeated in a few single hacks.

In the beginning, the game allows you to set the challenge mode. I have been playing on “Standard” mode but am re-considering switching to “Proud” (challenging) mode. (There is also an “Easy” mode for beginners.) This game seems too easy for the seasoned RPG player. Is it geared toward children? If so, the plot would leave even the brightest child behind. I am a college student who understood the first game and am still baffled. How can children be expected to sit through all the movies when everything will go over their heads?

The opening of Kingdom Hearts II is far too dependent on cinematics to convey the plot, which is still a mystery. The gameplay is easy and does not provide a challenge; it tests the players’ patience after waiting through all the movies. However, I am still excited to play this game – I want to get through the Roxas section and believe there are fewer than two hours left of it. I will hold out hope that this game will get more challenging (I can switch modes if needed) and allow me to take more control. If not, I am going to send it back and move on.