Driving an open world

Open world games are probably the most popular single-player experiences in the industry today. Many gamers, developers, and critics have begun to consider open worlds objectively superior to restricted ones. Of course, as something becomes popular, the laws of nature require a vocal minority to rise up and attempt to summarily discredit it, so we have traditionalists who lament the supposed aimlessness of these GTA clones. As usual, there's a ton of middle ground here - an open worlds isn't inherently good or bad, but a tool that must be used properly to add worth. So let's have a think about how, historically, these open world games drive players' interest. 

An obvious pitfall in creating an open world is that they have a tendency to be too open - the player may lose interest if they aren't being challenged to progress and that progression doesn't have repercussions. One solution to this is what I would call the toy (or sandbox) approach - if it's fun to do everything, the player is guaranteed to be having fun, right? And if they're having fun, they'll keep playing. This is the modus operandi of series like Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row. While the world architecture is mundane, lifeless, and irrelevant to gameplay, the player can still have a great sandbox experience crashing cars, flying helicopters, and firing off rocket lawn chairs. The toy approach doesn't even really benefit from an open world - in fact, I'd posit that the open worlds are often merely an excuse to generate loads of content for an otherwise flat and underdeveloped mechanical core. 

Needless to say, toys get boring, especially when one game after another is set in the same damn East-Coast-style city in the same damn contemporary timeline with the same damn cars and guns to play with. More ambitious (and traditionally rooted) games like Arkham City, Prototype, and Red Faction: Guerilla encourage the player to interact with the world, bestowing the environment with its own character. This can mean the traps and perches of Arkham, the shifting zombie/military dynamics of Prototype City, or the full-on destructibility of Guerilla's Mars. This is more than just adding an extra variable into the mix. Defining a unique and nuanced world that complements core mechanics is the very essence of open world gameplay - it's what makes freedom rewarding. 

A great deal of the appeal of an open world game is scope. I'm not talking about the size of the world, but the size of the action. Even in missions, the player is free to choose their own turf*. This gives them the opportunity to make use of their knowledge of the world to alter the circumstances presented them. Take an example from Assassin's Creed; a mission might task the player with escaping a cadre of guards. A novice player may choose the simplest solution, to stand and fight. A player who better knows the world could make a run for a great hideout or find allies to help with the fight. The player is rewarded for capitalizing on their freedom and knowledge of the world and is thus encouraged to continue learning about it.

So one way of looking at it is that an open world game is driven by the urge to learn the world and use that knowledge to one's advantage. How much there is to learn and how well that knowledge can be used actually provides a pretty good metric of quality for an open world. In fact, it's really what differentiates an open world from a plain old over-world. Arkham City is loaded with tricks, traps, and gadgets that provide all kinds of ways to approach each conflict, rewarding the player for recognizing their surrounding and the tools it presents. At the other end of the spectrum, Sleeping Dogs' extremely rudimentary open world is really just an over-world. The player spends most of the time driving, which isn't even the main gameplay mode, and there's no way to take advantage of freedom-of-setting to win brawls or shootouts. Even the races are extremely tightly confined. Thus there's no reward for learning about the world - there's not even really any exploration, since you have an all-inclusive map and a GPS to highlight the quickest path. That's why Sleeping Dogs plays more like a traditional brawler/shooter equipped with an over-world.

The open world itself isn't really a style of gameplay (it doesn't fit the goals and oppositions model and can be characterized by some combination of exploration + another type of gameplay (shooter, platformer, etc.)), but it's a setting that can accentuate and develop mechanics just as successfully as rigid linear campaigns. The worth of this type of setting is in creating realism - the correlation between a game's concrete presentation and abstract mechanics. An open world sets the stage for experimentation and discovery and allows for spontaneous, emergent gameplay alongside technical progression. "Emergent gameplay" is easy to mistake as a buzzword for "randomness", but if the player feels in control of all the variables, it can offer the same learning experiences as the strictly guided, artificial feeling "tutorial-plus" style structure of linear games.

*it should be noted that many open world games do include closed missions - Arkham Asylum, for instance, almost always sets missions in restricted linear environments. However, this is a union of styles - it doesn't make sense to examine these missions under the banner of "open world", as they exit the open world paradigm.

Wow, Mothra vs. Godzilla is amazing

When a typhoon dumps a giant easter egg at Japan's doorstep, Japanese David Byrne and Hitler try to exploit it for commercial gains to the chagrin of its owners: primitive, atomically irradiated island tribesmen. Tiny singing Minimoth Girls teleport around town to plead for the egg's return, just in time for Drunk-zilla to appear at a construction site to put everyone in danger. When Godzilla withstands a giant moth and the army, the tiny girls must sing at the egg until it hatches into twin larvae who know the beast's only weakness: String Shot. Like, 30 fucking minutes worth of String Shot.

And I was worried it was gonna be boring! I've seen the original Godzilla (1954 - the Serious one), but am otherwise naive to kaiju films, so I didn't know what to expect here. The prospect of equally crappy action with even worse plot/acting/budget never enticed me. Little did I realize how gonzo shit had already become by 1964 - in this case, the "worse" story is far more entertaining than a real one. Each unexpected twist is quickly one-upped by the next: oh no, giant egg! And um, tiny one-foot-tall fairy girls naturally follow from that? Oh, and they sing? And they're actually representatives of a primitive island tribal society (whose chanting can somehow be heard from the mainland)? And the tribe worships a giant moth? It gets sillier and sillier, but the movie isn't laughing. There's some trite attempt at commentary when the Japanese go to the islanders to plea for Mothra's help, the tribal chieftain turning his back and responding "nope you ruined the earth and you ruined our land with your nuclear testing, serves you right", which becomes the silliest moment of all when our protagonist melts his icy heart with the most patronizing, two-faced speech ever. He says, "look. We screwed up with the nuclear testing. We destroyed your land, and that's totally our bad. Then when you wanted your egg back, we ignored you. Again, dick move by us. But listen, for the good of the world, we all need to work together, and that's something you guys could really stand to learn. If you learn to help us, you can finally overcome the mutual problem that we keep completely fucking you over!" And that actually works!

God and I didn't even mention that the dastardly plan of the villains is to turn the egg into a tourist attraction. With all the dubious profiteering that could be going on, these guys are playing it pretty fucking safe here. Sell tickets! O...kay, but that hardly addresses that it's the scientific discovery of a lifetime and that, you know, it's probably going to hatch into something gigantic and impossible to control. You'd think these guys had never seen a Godzilla movie.

So the great strength of the movie is that it constantly introduces weird shit. By comparison, Godzilla himself feels mundane and boring, his introduction perfunctory at best. There's a really weak attempt at build-up when a reporter discovers (what I assume is supposed to be) one of his scales (which in fact looks like an unidentifiable piece of plastic... exactly what it is) and someone says "we've gotta shut down construction, boss!" or some shit like that. Pretty much Godzilla just bursts out of the earth somewhere in the middle of the movie and no one asks why. What makes this even more hilarious is the big lizard's initial rampage, which has him literally falling over himself.

I can't even begin to fathom the thought process that went into these introductory scenes. Godzilla stumbles around like he's wasted, even tripping over his own tail! What the fuck? The series was not comedy at this point. Godzilla is supposed to be an unstoppable antagonistic force, yet he gets tangled up in an electrical tower? Why doesn't the army just dig a giant ditch and put a trip-wire in front of it? Seems a lot smarter than their convoluted (and, shockingly!, unsuccessful) plan to drop electrical nets on him from a helicopter. This comic ineptitude of course works in the movie's favor: instead of a terrifying apocalyptic beast, we get a Godzilla who's kinda just a nuisance because he doesn't know what he's doing. He's like an innocent toddler stumbling around, trying to get his bearings. 

One of the nice things about the movie is that it doesn't look as bad as you probably think it does. While the monsters themselves are utterly bogus - Godzilla walks like Big Bird and sports scales that look more like fleece, and Mothra doesn't look or move even remotely like a living thing - the rest of the special effects and compositing mostly work. Primarily with regards to the miniatures - as stupid as the monsters look, I still believed they were giant thanks to the excellent mini-sets. And, on the flipside, I never found myself distracted by the tiny size of the Minimoth Girls. It helps that there are plenty of practical explosions and tidal waves to support the shoddy creature effects. The only time the quality becomes a matter of comedy is a scene in which Godzilla melts a battalion of tanks with his atomic breath; I'm afraid I don't believe that real tanks would begin to liquidate and drip plastic. 

Those ships look real to me!

Here's a learning fact about this movie's history: the original direction of the franchise would have pit Godzilla against classic movie monsters. The preceding series entry is King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), which was to be followed by Frankenstein vs. Godzilla. When Toho didn't like the script of FvG, they opted instead to fold in one of their own existing monsters for the fourth movie: Mothra (who debuted in 1961's semi-appropriately titled Mothra). With Mothra vs. Godzilla's smashing success, the producers dropped the classic monster idea, settling on in-company crossovers with other kaiju. The Giant Frankenstein concept did eventually take shape as its own film, Frankenstein vs. Baragon (Frankenstein Conquers the World in the US). And then I think Baragon later showed up in the 'Zilla franchise.

Fun fact 2: Almost all (if not all) Godzilla movies were released under different titles in the US. The American title of this one is Godzilla vs. The Thing. While that'd certainly be an interesting prospect post-1982, it's an asinine title. The title change is carried into the dub, where characters frequently call Mothra "the Thing", an element not present in the Japanese script. So... why? "Mothra" is a silly name, but "the Thing" is much worse, and in particular makes no sense in the dialogue - everyone knows the creature's name as soon as it's introduced AND they call Godzilla by name, so why would they make up a nickname for Mothra? Well, I've got the answer right here in this envelope: the American production company decided on an advertising tactic before titling or dubbing the film. The idea was to withhold images of Mothra and play up the mystery of "the Thing", this new match for Godzilla, forcing audiences to buy tickets if they wanted a look at the monster. I don't know how well this worked as advertising (seems retarded, but I know nothing about popular film-going culture in 1964), but it left a lot of really weird dialogue for posterity. There is no mystery in the movie over Mothra's identity. It shows up like twenty minutes in, completely out of nowhere, and the audience and characters all get a clear look and are told its name, origins, and motives! So the entire "the Thing" idea is just an advertising lie - it has no connection to the actual film.

So if you're ever curious about the God-Z franchise, don't be overwhelmed by the selection of 20+ movies - Mothra vs. Godzilla is a great place to start, enjoyable for fans and newcomers alike. Also, don't mistake it for 1992's Godzilla vs. Mothra. Totally different movie. 

Story where it's least expected, or not: Sonic 2

Continuing my recent blue streak, I completed Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for Genesis for the first time this past weekend. It's an excellent platformer with memorable stages and deep mechanics, the kind - and sorry, I hate this phrase, but it's really applicable here - the kind they just don't make anymore. Each of Sonic 2's stages is its very own game worth mastering, employing unique interaction, structure, and pacing. As much as I believed the opposite five years ago, Sonic 2 is a classic for a reason. Yet the game's greatest shortcoming parallels this strength: narratively, it is irreconcilably fragmented. 

I realize the first reaction to this is: "you're gonna complain about Sonic 2's story? While you're at it, why not ask for the back-story to Beethoven's Fifth?" We'll get to the latter point in a moment, but first I should clarify that I am not complaining about the actual substance of the plot. I don't care if Sonic is a space alien sent to destroy the Badniks as a way of harvesting Flickies that he can feed to his starving home planet. What I'm discussing is the necessity for story itself in order to fulfill the potential of a narrative medium. Sonic 2 has great platforming, great music, and great visuals, but - for me - where it falls short of being a great game is in connecting these elements with a story. 

What the game does provide for story - if you've somehow managed to get to this video game blog without ever having played Sonic 2, or perhaps don't remember - is a collection of untethered elements. We have Sonic, we have random robots, we have all kinds of colorful locales, but there is zero dialogue, zero exposition, and zero cut-scenes (unless you're counting the miniscule Tails-flying-a-plane moments in Sky Chase and Winged Fortress Zones). When Sonic completes a zone, the screen fades to black and immediately fades back in at the next zone. There is no communication of where he is, how he got there, or why he is there. We could assume each stage is next to the surrounding ones, but this creates some implicitly humorous notions of Sonic's world - like that there's a giant casino in the middle of an aquatic ruin. Worse yet, we don't know who Sonic is, we certainly don't know anything about this Tails asshole, and Robotnik is an enigma as well - though clearly he has it in for our hero. The one clue we do get is the animals - whenever Sonic destroys a Badnik or unlocks an end-of-zone capsule, tiny animals are set free. So apparently Sonic is a tiny animal rescuer?

By comparison, Super Mario Bros. has an equally primitive but more effectively woven story. We may not get that Mario is a plumber (not like that matters), but the "Your princess is in another castle" scenes are just enough to tell us what Mario's quest is and where it will take him. We learn he's rescuing a princess who has been imprisoned in a castle, and we know that he doesn't know where this princess is. So Mario is methodically combing through hostile castles. Fine. It gives him a reason to be where he is. We can also garner some understanding of who he's fighting just through visual design - the Koopas are obviously related to King Koopa, while the Toads are clearly the good guys / victims, so Mario must be up against some kind of occupying army. It's tiny stuff, but enough to bring together the game as a story.

But Sonic doesn't need a story just cuz Mario had one, or cuz I said so. Every work of art sets its own terms for success - there are no universal objective end criteria that always hold true. Yet a single criterion can act sufficiently as a point of evaluation: the work should live up to its own standards to accomplish what it set out to accomplish. Sonic 2 creates the expectation of narrative - it presents the player with a sequence of concrete scenes, a protagonist and antagonist, and consistent forces of conflict. It has story elements. For it to lack connective tissue is a failure to live up to its own promise, a setup without a payoff, and is in that sense a shortcoming. 

Miles "Tails" Per Hour: a setup without a payoff

Let's return to the music analogy. Greg L. brought this up, arguing that cut-scenes for Sonic would be as extraneous as a written program for a symphony - that they could add clarification, but wouldn't inherently alter or improve the audience experience of the composition. I contend that cut-scenes in a game are not the equivalent of verbal back-story to a symphony. A game is a multimedia presentation. Any presentation of story - from stage titles to cinematics to atmosphere and audio/visuals - is as much a part of the game as are the interactive mechanics. You can't play the game without experiencing it. That is to say, it is as much a part of the game as a composer's overture and interludes are a part of his symphony. A written program for a symphony would be the equivalent of a manual, which I am obviously excluding from the text of the game.

In truth, symphonies almost never have these "verbal back-stories", despite the fact that they usually do contain some kind of plot. They are either abstract or representative through musical terms alone - the story is meant to be received through impression, not dictation. Games can accomplish this level of storytelling through mechanics, in that gameplay functions identically removed from context. Nonetheless, they (or at least the Sonic games) pair concrete presentation with this abstract interaction. Were we to consider mechanics the abstract element of Sonic 2's delivery, even acknowledging that they tell a story of their own, there is still an excess of concrete data presented to the player. To experience the mechanics, the player has to look at Emerald Hill Zone, has to control Sonic, and has to fight robots and Robotniks - all concrete experiences. A symphony does not present this pairing of abstract and concrete. There's no need for verbal explanation because there's no verbal data to link. Thus, for Sonic to successfully emulate a symphony still leaves it an incomplete experience on its own terms. 

Interestingly, Richard Wagner maintained that symphonies were a limited format, unable to match the expressive capacity of a multimedia work (Gesamtkunstwerk).

Wagner's favorite game was, of course, Odin Sphere

Oddly enough, Sonic 2 stands alone among the Genesis trilogy in failing to tell a story. Sonic 3 & Knuckles introduces interstitial cut-scenes to fill the player in on character motives and scene sequencing. The levels and enemies themselves are still a bit of an arbitrary batch, but we have the general sense that time is progressing and a plot is taking place. Just check out the cut-scene where Sonic/Knuckles is thrown from the Flying Battery (Zone) into the desert of Sandopolis Zone. That's connectivity - it doesn't leave it to my imagination to figure out if there's an oilfield at the bottom of a crystal cave. Btw, to whomever named Sandopolis Zone: bravo. I admire your work.

Admirably, Sonic 1 accomplishes a similar effect passively without any explicit narration. Its progression of zones (story-wise) makes far more sense than Sonic 2's, to the point where it eludes any sensation of arbitrariness. Marble Zone looks kinda like what lies beneath Green Hill, then the forest remains in view (in the background) from Spring Yard, like Sonic is at the very foot of industrialization. Labyrinth admittedly I don't get, but Star Light works as a continuation of Spring Yard, like Sonic is crossing from the edge of the urban region to the center, where he discovers the polluted techno-futuristic metropolis of Scrap Brain. There's a steady progression from nature to civilization, delineating a clear journey for Sonic. He has left his forest home to seek out and destroy Robotnik's industrial haven. The story also appears to take place over the course of one day, the sky getting darker as the game progresses. The player can feel Sonic getting closer to Robotnik's lair, the [reverse] heart of darkness, clarifying that this is indeed a story of nature vs. artifice. 

That is to say, over time, the original series essentially inverts its story presentation. In Sonic 1, the plot is told passively with environmental progression and no explicit narration. Sonic 2 drops the logical progression and adds nothing, essentially making it The Game Without a Story. Sonic 3&K gets us back on track, but instead of returning to Sonic 1's sensibilities, it goes for active narration to link otherwise unrelated sequences. Without making a comment on overall quality, this makes 1 and 3 more complete, fulfilling experiences that live up to their own aspirations. 

What I'm Playing, August '13

In this feature, we commemorate games I have for the first time started and finished in the last few highly variable time units.

August what the doctor ordered. This. K these need to be shorter. The last one was like a full-fledged review of every game I've ever played in my entire life. Considering I generally already write about the stuff I'm playing, this feature feels redundant. But I do it for posterity.

Special Recognition for Starting and Finishing:

Sonic Generations (Xbox 360)

Everybody Segasonic Racing, try to keep your feet right on the ground! Yay! This game has that song! Sonic Generations really makes an excellent tribute game. I was a bit concerned (due to the character and Sega's shaky history) that Generations' self-referentiality would be yet another gimmick, this time used as an excuse to recycle old content. A lot of anthologies get slapped together with sadly little effort to get new players excited about the classics. That's not at all the case here. Generations is every bit the celebration of Sonic that Smash Bros. is of Nintendo (scaled appropriately of course - Sonic is just one series) - the game is littered with references (the whole gang gets back together), in-jokes (Tails apparently shares our childhood unease with Chemical Plant Zone's purple water), all-inclusive callback mechanics (everything down to the Thunder Shield from 3 shows up!) and gives every fan what they most want: the ability to set every stage's music to [this immaculately gay version of] "Escape from the City"!

Games Started:

Beyond Oasis (Sega Genesis / Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection)

This game caught me a bit off guard in how modern it is. Typically it gets swept into that category of "games that wish they were Link to the Past", and while in truth it doesn't fully escape that stigma, it's almost too perfect how Beyond Oasis predicts the future trajectory of the action-adventure genre. It is all action. For anything but a brawler to have this much combat in 1994 is odd enough in and of itself (combat didn't become mainstream games' bready butter til maybe 2002) - to maintain and evolve fisticuffs as a primary mechanic alongside a largely linear quest of dungeons, minor puzzles, and boss fights is almost clairvoyant. That's what sixth/seventh-gen 3D action adventures like God of War and Devil May Cry do! But that type of game didn't exist in the '90s! Apparently Beyond Oasis disagrees. 

I've speculated on the possibility of a "missing link" of action-adventure that fills the gap in the '90s when arcade sideways walkers presumably would've been absorbed into Zelda-style adventures; Beyond Oasis certainly demands examination under that light. Even if it wasn't particularly influential (who knows, but I doubt it was widely played), it at least shows that Devil May Cry didn't simply appear out of the void with a new gameplay paradigm in tow. 

Mario Golf (Game Boy Color)

Yeah, this old boy. Okay, I have played Mario Golf before, but never stuck with it. It was a reward last month for Club Nintendo members (join up! you pretty much get a free Virtual Console or eShop game for every three Nintendo games you buy) so I snapped it up in lieu of any good golf games at all ever happening since. Why aren't there more sports RPGs? If anyone knows of a good baseball RPG, please let me know. I would like to play it. It's such a perfect union of genres - each round of golf is that much more exciting as it helps you build toward a better player and conquering the world. 

Killer Is Dead (Xbox 360)

This feels like the final step in Grasshopper's recent journey from experimental art-games to full-blown immersive narrative experiences. Dead is, in a word, slick. Unlike earlier Suda-directed games like No More Heroes, it's not looking to knock you out of your seat and bewilder (or overtly mock). Dead wants you to sit down and enjoy a story, even if it is a little cryptic at times. Shadows of the Damned started to move things in this direction a few years ago, although that (along with Black Knight Sword) was locked to a succinct cinematic through-line that kept it from feeling like a full-fledged game. The player was along for the ride. Which is certainly one type of video game narrative, but a primitive one. One which shies away from control. Dead is like the Super Mario World to Damned's Sonic the Hedgehog. It's a fully realized concept for a virtual world without any obviously cut corners (which even Lollipop Chainsaw didn't manage) - the player is stepping into the life of Mondo Zappa. 

None of that really matters. Grasshopper has proven time and again that rough experiments can be terrifically successful, far better than the polished turds being fawned over today. What does matter is that Dead's writing is excellent. The protagonist's name alone is rife with subtext: "Mondo" is a pun on Bond, a type of philosophical Zen question, the German word for moon (the moon plays a major role in the story), a genre of hyper-realistic gore-driven Italian films, and slang for extreme; "Zappa" reiterates the Italian connection and obviously calls to mind Frank, known as an artist, virtuoso, freak, and outsider. This is the kind of thing you have to look for if you want to get anything out of Killer Is Dead. Writing. Ideas. Thought. If you can't appreciate a five-minute dream-sequence in which you are left nothing to do but literally run around Mondo's subconscious reflecting on the game's events (the time to reflect is fittingly set at the edge of a reflecting pool showcasing the moon), you won't like this game. It's far too easy to write it off as "bizarre" and "impenetrable". Yet it is by no means arbitrary, random, or purposefully obscure. If you aren't creative enough to put together the pieces... well I'm sure in five years when it's widely accepted as an underrated gem, you'll sycophantically insist that you liked it all along, the same as you do with Killer 7 today.

You know, I wonder if there's something to be said about the fact that the video game critical community is made up mostly of journalists, while the critical film and literature communities are made up of, well, usually film studiesers and literary theorists. Games aren't generally reviewed by people who study games. They're reviewed by people who report industry news. Yeah. There's something really obvious to be said. I don't remember what though.

Games Finished:

Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast / XBLA)

Finished this up before moving on to Generations. This holds up much better than most would have you believe - it's glitchier than a fake top hat and the camera isn't particularly friendly, but the platforming really stands out from other turn-of-the-millenium efforts (or really anything else that followed). Namely in that it doesn't suck. Unlike many Crash Bandicoots, Spyros, and Banjo Kazooies of the 3D revolution, Adventure doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, it's a game full of babies and solid '90s fundamentals to boot.

It goes without saying though that the Adventure Fields are an atrocity and go to great lengths to mar what otherwise would be an undisputed classic. It's not so much that they're brutally unfun and occasionally broken - the problem is that they destroy the cohesion and pace of the "main" gameplay ("main" in quotes because in reality, the Adventure Fields take longer to play than the Action Things).

The Many Supers of Sonic

Games typically end with one of three approaches: a denouement, a final exam or a climax. Take Super Metroid for instance, which closes with a denouement. When you defeat Ridley, you satisfy the incomplete battle that starts the game. From there, your only task is to trash Tourian as the overpowered tank-of-a-person Samus. Something like Mega Man ends with a final exam, reviewing every key lesson that you've learned over the course of the game. Finally, Super Mario Bros. tops off in a climax, with the loopiest dungeon maze and most fearsome Bowser fight of them all.

Over the years, Sonic games have used Super Sonic fights to fill all three roles. These portions await the player at the end of many Sonic games, oftentimes beyond the normal ending. Here are three notable examples.

Denouement: Sonic & Knuckles

After clearing the Death Egg, you stand far from the Earth on shaky girders suspended in space. Robotnik chases after you with a giant laser cannon not much smaller than the height of your jump, ripping apart your footing as he goes. What's more, in order to hit Robotnik's mech suit, you've got to hit his cannon and bounce off onto safe ground; miss, and you fall into the abyss of space. Die, and you'll restart the fight without any chance to collect rings.

It's a brutal, strict fight by 2D Sonic standards, and clearing it is cause for celebration. This fight sets the stage for a denouement, the Doomsday Zone.

You're a super star, soldier.

If you're playing as Sonic and you've collected at least the seven Chaos Emeralds, defeating Robotnik's mech will lead you to the Doomsday Zone. Here, you're instantly upgraded to Super Sonic (normally, the transformation requires scrounging for 50 rings). Better than that, you can fly about the screen at will. Robotnik will fire missiles at you, but their sluggish pace is no match for you; you'll have no problem luring them into hitting Robotnik's mech. After that phase, Robotnik will try to escape, but this is just your opportunity to wail on him. Ram into him by hammering the jump button, and eventually his mech will explode.

Sonic & Knuckles follows a punishing fight with the opportunity to let loose. By beating Robotnik's mech as normal Sonic, you've shown mastery over the game. That mastery is matched by the Doomsday Zone sequence, in which Sonic's own powers reflect your skill; he's not bogged down by gravity, he's invincible, and in Robotnik's final phase, Robotnik has no means of retaliation.

In terms of story, this serves as a denouement because you finally catch Robotnik. In terms of gameplay, it resolves the game's test of platforming. If the game as a whole is about testing your ability to jump around or into things, Doomsday Zone is recognition that you have cleared the test.

Final Exam: Sonic Heroes

Which isn't to say that denouements and climaxes can't be final exams, but some sequences lend themselves more to one reading than another.

Sonic Heroes loves paint-by-numbers gameplay. That is to say, the solution to any given situation is labelled. See a fan? switch to Knuckles so you can ride its drafts. See a pole? Switch to Sonic so you can swing off of it. See a flying enemy? Switch to Tails so you can ground it and put it within reach of your power character.

These situations are placed in a variety of platforming contexts, such as the rising lava portion of Power Plant, the fleet of battleships in Egg Fleet, and others. These contexts color each skirmish differently. Can you chain Sonic's homing attacks over the rising lava bed? Can you clear out enemies with Knuckles while dodging cannonfire from battleships? At the gameplay's core, you're always painting by numbers. To perform that homing attack, you need to recognize the call for Sonic. To clear out those enemies, you need to recognize the call for Knuckles.

And on your way to the Super Sonic scenario of Sonic Heroes, you'll have this idea drilled into your head. It'll be so far drilled that the drill will come out the other end, and your head will just be leaking this idea all over the place. First, you need to clear the main story four times, once with each team playing through more or less the same stages. Then, you'll need to get good enough at the stages to earn all seven Chaos Emeralds. Just to earn a shot at a Chaos Emerald, you'll need to find a key in the appropriate stage and then clear that stage without taking one hit.

Sonic Heroes: come for the deep
combat, stay for the rich dialogue.

So yeah, you'll do a lot of painting. Once you finally get to the Super Sonic sequence, you'll face Metal Overlord. Here, all platforming context is stripped away. There are no bottomless pits, and heck, there's not even a reason to press the jump button. He's got three attacks, one for each character you control. This fight revolves solely around recognizing Metal Overlord's attack, switching to the proper character, and matching his attack with yours. Oh, and using your screen-clearing special attack when your special meter is ready.

It's what you've been doing all along, and if you made it this far, you must enjoy it, so have some more. It also gets to the heart of Sonic Heroes; Metal Overlord lays down straight talk and discusses the one thing running throughout the whole game.

"Final exam" might not be the best term, since it suggests reviewing everything in the game. Rather, Sonic Heroes' final fight serves as a final exam by testing the one thing you should've learned by now.

Climax: Sonic Unleashed

Not since I-Ninja have I played a
platformer with a boxing boss.

You've boosted, drifted, grinded (ground?), punched, tiptoed and died through Eggmanland, a massive stage which can take more than an hour depending on your skill. You'll switch between Hedgehog and Werehog several times throughout the journey in one final sendoff that tries to pack everything in. But that's not the final sendoff; from there, you've got to throw down with Eggman's final mech atop a crumbling rock platform, box with an Eldritch abomination named Dark Gaia, and hurl Sonic into the abomination's eyes a few times over.

Ready for the final boss?

Sonic Unleashed doesn't know when to quit. Its Werehog stages employ trick pacing, regularly preparing you for the end only to yank it away and put you through 10 more minutes of bland brawling. Eggmanland is the king of such pacing, wearing you thin before you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Don't game over!

So, when Sonic finally goes Super, it's a relief--kind of. On one hand, you know the end is near. On the other hand, it brings new gameplay to learn, piling more tests upon a player already tired.

In Sonic & Knuckles, flying is a relief because it empowers you; in Sonic Unleashed, it's a burden. Sonic must fly around the edge of Dark Gaia's shield, narrowly avoiding just-out-of-sight boulders. Your job is to destroy worms that produce the shield, but you've got to find them first, and even then, they poke in and out of the shield; they're vulnerable while out, invulnerable while in. This would be fine, except that Chip, your best bud, is quickly losing health at the same time. Let him die, and you need to start the Super Sonic fight over. Seeing Chip retire while I waited for a worm to rear its head was enough for me to give up on clearing this game.

I think this incomprehensible screencap
gives a good sense of how bewildered
I felt when I encountered this sequence.

That said, it is a proper climax. Super Sonic's flying and Dark Gaia's worms combine Hedgehog Sonic's speedy dashes with Werehog Sonic's bouts against batches of hearty, tough enemies. And, unlike Eggmanland, you won't be applying knowledge of specific platforming or action elements that you've already seen in the game; instead, you'll be tested for your understanding of more abstract concepts, such as adapting to high speed and and handling giant enemy health bars. Throwing you into a new situation creates the ultimate test of Sonic Unleashed's underlying themes.

So, does this article end with a denouement, final exam or climax? None of the above, I guess.