There are two experiences that I find most enjoyable in a videogame: The first is ripping indiscriminately into a mob of defenceless enemies (this is why I had a good deal more fun with Modern Warfare 2's "No Russian" mission than most normal people I know); the second is 'progression', whether it be levelling up or buying better weapons.

Perhaps then it should come as no surprise that the three games I revisit most frequently are Resident Evil 5, Earth Defense Force 2017, and Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires.

I resisted the Resident Evil series for a long time because of its completely stupid controls. There is absolutely no reason that I should not be able to walk and do something else at the same time. But my biggest problem was the lack of strafing. Going around a corner and having to take a second to turn to look at the enemies was excruciating. Resident Evil 5 solved the strafing problem, and with the addition of a partner, having to stop to shoot your gun isn't as cumbersome as it was in the past. Indeed, it adds to the tactical depth of the game: One person shoots while the other moves. It still doesn't make any sense, but at least it's fun. And with the option of infinite ammo, I can blast away at zombies with my AK-74 all day and never get tired of it. (I know they're called Majini, but they're zombies. Get over it.)

I have put over a hundred hours into my EDF file. I know, because it keeps track. There are something like 160 weapons to collect (albeit, most of them are useless), over 50 missions that last anywhere from 2 to 15 minutes, and 5 levels of difficulty, each more ludicrous than the previous. But here's the kicker: Sometimes, when you kill an enemy, they will drop a piece of armour, and each piece that you collect increases your maximum health by one point, permanently. I started playing with 200 health, and I now go into every mission with over 12,000. But even with 12,000+ health, I have yet to best the hardest difficulty. On occasion, I've been able to coerce my friends into playing co-op with me (the second player gets all the guns and health that the host has) and we'll maybe take down another couple of missions. But I've gotten off track here. My point is that EDF has progression - no matter how strong you become, every mission that you successfully undertake makes you even stronger. I just can't stay away from a game that rewards me for every single victory...not until that 300 point Achievement for beating the hardest difficulty is mine, at least.

Finally, Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires. Truth be told, I have probably put more time into DW5: Empires, but the one I've been focusing on most recently is 6, so 5 can get stuffed. The levelling system is more limited in 6, but you get more direct control over it. But you get the most sense of progression from watching your country's colour slowly spread across the map, and you achieve this, of course, by ripping indiscriminately into mobs of defenceless enemies.

These three games excel at what I like most, but they also have something else in common - they're all Japanese (finally getting to the part to which the headline alludes).

The writing in Japanese games is...well, it isn't bad, per se, but you either love it or you don't. The archetypes, themes and expressions make sense in Japan, but the culture from which any work of art springs is vital for giving the observer context, and without context, art loses its meaning. The famous painting, 'The Third of May 1808' by Francisco de Goya presents a scene of massacre that is quite shocking, but is ultimately meaningless to anyone who wasn't alive during the period in which it was painted...which is to say everyone who is alive today.

I can't stand the writing in Japanese games. I tried to play a Final Fantasy game once when I was much younger. I didn't have time to connect with any of the characters; every time a new character joined my party, another character got arbitrarily (though heroically) killed off to keep the party size under the cap. I finally threw in the towel when a party member whom I had watched die miraculously came back to life because the plot demanded that I find someone who could build a whatever-the-hell-I-needed, and he was evidently the only person in the world who had taken the requisite night-school courses. And naturally, someone else conveniently died to make room on the team for Mr Lazerus.

More recently, I tried playing Lost Oddyssey. I got all the way to the fourth disc before realizing that I didn't give a sh*t about any of the characters and stopped. You see, the story is about five immortal beings who came to the world in order to perform some very important task (I didn't get far enough to find out what said task was). One of the immortals went evil, wiped the memories of the other four, enslaved them, and then set about scheming to conquer the world. You play as one of the amnesiac immortals as he regains his memories and recruits the other three, as well as some non-immortal hangers-on to fight the bad guy and finish whatever it was they were supposed to do centuries earlier. The problem is that since the protagonists have no memory, they also have no personality, and therefore do nothing to endear themselves to the player. You can't even pity them for having scrambled brains because they're freaking immortal! In the second cutscene, you see the main character get an asteroid brought down on top of his head, and it might as well be a warm breeze for all the harm it does him.

So what am I trying to say? I guess I'm trying to say that Japanese games are good as games, and nothing more. The three games I mentioned earlier as being my preferred games for revisiting have terrible writing. I can't take anything that anyone says in RE5 seriously; Sheva is too wimpy, Chris is too clueless and Irving sounds like someone who underwent brain surgery and was accidentally given helium instead of anesthetic. EDF...suffice it to say that I've actually turned the 'voice' volume option all the way to zero. And the Dynasty Warriors games have been reusing the Romance of the Three Kingdoms story since their inception, but in their case the story is all for naught because no one really cares whose peasant soldier legions they're hacking to bits.

Mass Effect 1 is, in my opinion, one of the best games of all time because it struck a good balance between action, story and progression. Getting better guns and mods was extremely rewarding (I remember the first time I got my hands on a Katana VII and put Incendiary rounds on it...), and seeing your acquisitions and customizations in action against your enemies was equally satisfying. Just to keep from getting sick of fighting on foot, plenty of vehicle sections were spliced in. And of course, I don't need to point out how good the story was. I think that ME1 had the best twist I've ever encountered, and when I say "best" I don't mean "most surprising". A good twist happens when the viewer/player is given all the information they need to put things together, and yet they don't. Shyamalan's 'The Village' is a perfect example of how a good twist does NOT work.

Mass Effect 2 feels like a step backward in every department. Not only are there hardly any weapons, but the levelling and skill progression system has been stripped down to its bare minimum. The difficulty has been upped, removing the option of just tearing into your enemies, and you can't even take your frustrations out by running dudes over in the Mako because the vehicle sections are gone as well. The story, while still good, definitely struggles with being the second chapter in a trilogy. The threat to the galaxy has already been revealed, but we can't go stomp on its neck just yet because that would leave nothing to do later, so we'd better go find someone else to fight. In 'The Lord of the Rings', the position of second chapter filler bad-guy was filled by Saruman. In the Star Wars trilogy (the good one), George Lucas used up all of his narrative tricks too early and so was forced to reuse the Death Star, except that this time it's more powerful for no other reason than to make the protagonists' situation seem even more dire...as if a weapon that destroys entire planets needs to use a few extra watts to become a REAL threat.

Why the hell am I talking about Canadian games in a post about Japanese games? I'll tell you why. Trends in videogame style are determined by the people who buy videogames. I'm afraid that not enough gamers feel the way that I do - that games should have action, story and progression. If western gamers really think that Mass Effect 2 is an improvement over the original, we'll keep getting games that strip away RPG elements, or even satisfying combat in favour of story. I fear that I shall soon have to choose between good-gameplay, bad-story Japanese games and good-story, bad-gameplay western games. This is not a choice I want to have to make.

Perhaps I'm being melodramatic in order to justify my rant on the differences between Japanese and western games. What I really wanted to do here was try to put a finger on why some people are fanatical about Japanese games while others can't stand them. To some degree, I think I've done that: Japanese games play much differently than western games. Some people like the differences enough to put up with the stories. Perhaps some people have a better handle on Japanese culture than I do, and therefore actually like the stories. I had a roommate in college who played through Mother 3 with a line-by-line translation guide. I though he was crazy, but then again, he thought I was crazy for having a knife collection.

I don't really have a proper conclusion to sum up the thoughts I've presented here. Perhaps one will occur to me later. For the time being, I would like to invite discussion in the comments section. I know that hardly anyone is tracking me, so this discussion will not actually happen, but the invitation is there as a formality. Thank you for your time.

[tags: resident evil 5, earth defense force 2017, dynasty warriors, final fantasy, lost oddyssey, mass effect, trilogy, lord of the rings, star wars, japanese culture, western culture, story vs gameplay]