Super Mario Odyssey was the most disappointing game of 2017. It was Mario as a completely modern videogame. Mario as content. With a bad moon economy, a tourism model of exploration, and the most unapologetic fanservice. Not an odyssey but a mockery. Mario Kibbles ‘n Bits. Mario Groupon. Mario Are You Being Served?
So it was the most welcome surprise to find that Astro Bot was not only the best Mario game of 2018, but the best Mario since 3D Land. In many ways, its heir. If the screen can’t get any more 3D, then we’ll just have to go further inside it ourselves. And what we find here is a fully arrived VR experience, perfectly suited to its own limits. There are no compromises or half measures. No nausea from movement or teleportation to hide its lack. It doesn’t apologize for or try to hide its limits but instead delights in them. Which is often the best response to our limits anyway: laughter. Let’s make a game of them.
This is the pleasure of constraint. I’m on a conveyor belt, every level a tunnel, and my little guy is crossing a bridge above me. Or he’s just around a corner up ahead. Or he’s running in circles somewhere beneath me. Point being, I can’t see him well. My view is decidedly sub-optimal. In a typically screened videogame, you would complain about the bad camera and strain against the controls to get a better view. But here, the strain is actually in your neck. You are the bad camera. Every player her own Lakitu.
There is such delight in this. Your body is centered, but you still have an avatar. And it is through this connection, this interplay that the haptic limits to current VR tech are downplayed and instead you feel your centered body anew. It’s not the same as the first person perspective of so many shooters. There you are not a body but a naked eyeball, untethered, flattened via the screen, more point-of-view than center. And this perspective is empowering. Without a body, without defined borders, what you see is the world.
But in VR, to bring your actual body in, its center, its limits, doesn’t empower you. It humbles you, just like in everyday life. You are a thing in the world, one of many, and what you see is a limited view, also one of many. And strangely, by combining the first and third persons and centering my actual body, an unexpected comedy emerges. My body, which I usually like to forget in games, becomes something dear, almost cute. Something to feel out again, gently, curiously, with laughter, even pleasure.
There are so many things to feel anew, which screenshots cannot capture. Heights that take your breath, waves that stifle it, caves that press in and enclose. Near and far, light and dark, the very fundaments of perception, you can feel them. Darkness is not a rectangle of black but the death of sight. Behind is somewhere you can never truly go. Everywhere textures tease. You can’t help but constantly reach out for things that are not there. There is no periphery to remind or frame or distract. You can’t check your phone. You can’t put on a podcast and chill. You have a headcrab on your face. It’s all in or get the fuck out.
I play Astro Bot and it’s as if I’ve never played videogames before. As if it all still lies ahead of me. That future feeling. I’ve known that feeling before. Super Mario Bros. in a Pizza Hut. Final Fantasy VII at Shane’s house. Grand Theft Auto III off the Old Santa Fe Trail. Demon’s Souls in Corte de Monterey. And now, here in that future, I’m still feeling…something. Not disappointed exactly. Their sequels had their moments. But I feel the struggle of all aging groundbreakers. For relevance. Vitality. New Ground. And I pause.
The language of VR hasn’t settled out yet, the genres haven’t calcified. And there are many obvious challenges to meet — bodies in motion, haptics, a basic solipsism. But I’m going to relish this future feeling a bit longer. It’s just a hope to feel new things, to keep feeling things anew. Soon enough videogames will do what videogames do. Domesticate. Capitalize. Sequelify. Turn a future feeling into a past we’re desperate to recover. But it’s not that future yet.
So it was the most welcome surprise to find that Astro Bot was not only the best Mario game of 2018, but the best Mario since 3D Land. In many ways, its heir. If the screen can’t get any more 3D, then we’ll just have to go further inside it ourselves. And what we find here is a fully arrived VR experience, perfectly suited to its own limits. There are no compromises or half measures. No nausea from movement or teleportation to hide its lack. It doesn’t apologize for or try to hide its limits but instead delights in them. Which is often the best response to our limits anyway: laughter. Let’s make a game of them.
This is the pleasure of constraint. I’m on a conveyor belt, every level a tunnel, and my little guy is crossing a bridge above me. Or he’s just around a corner up ahead. Or he’s running in circles somewhere beneath me. Point being, I can’t see him well. My view is decidedly sub-optimal. In a typically screened videogame, you would complain about the bad camera and strain against the controls to get a better view. But here, the strain is actually in your neck. You are the bad camera. Every player her own Lakitu.
There is such delight in this. Your body is centered, but you still have an avatar. And it is through this connection, this interplay that the haptic limits to current VR tech are downplayed and instead you feel your centered body anew. It’s not the same as the first person perspective of so many shooters. There you are not a body but a naked eyeball, untethered, flattened via the screen, more point-of-view than center. And this perspective is empowering. Without a body, without defined borders, what you see is the world.
But in VR, to bring your actual body in, its center, its limits, doesn’t empower you. It humbles you, just like in everyday life. You are a thing in the world, one of many, and what you see is a limited view, also one of many. And strangely, by combining the first and third persons and centering my actual body, an unexpected comedy emerges. My body, which I usually like to forget in games, becomes something dear, almost cute. Something to feel out again, gently, curiously, with laughter, even pleasure.
There are so many things to feel anew, which screenshots cannot capture. Heights that take your breath, waves that stifle it, caves that press in and enclose. Near and far, light and dark, the very fundaments of perception, you can feel them. Darkness is not a rectangle of black but the death of sight. Behind is somewhere you can never truly go. Everywhere textures tease. You can’t help but constantly reach out for things that are not there. There is no periphery to remind or frame or distract. You can’t check your phone. You can’t put on a podcast and chill. You have a headcrab on your face. It’s all in or get the fuck out.
I play Astro Bot and it’s as if I’ve never played videogames before. As if it all still lies ahead of me. That future feeling. I’ve known that feeling before. Super Mario Bros. in a Pizza Hut. Final Fantasy VII at Shane’s house. Grand Theft Auto III off the Old Santa Fe Trail. Demon’s Souls in Corte de Monterey. And now, here in that future, I’m still feeling…something. Not disappointed exactly. Their sequels had their moments. But I feel the struggle of all aging groundbreakers. For relevance. Vitality. New Ground. And I pause.
The language of VR hasn’t settled out yet, the genres haven’t calcified. And there are many obvious challenges to meet — bodies in motion, haptics, a basic solipsism. But I’m going to relish this future feeling a bit longer. It’s just a hope to feel new things, to keep feeling things anew. Soon enough videogames will do what videogames do. Domesticate. Capitalize. Sequelify. Turn a future feeling into a past we’re desperate to recover. But it’s not that future yet.
STRM
3 years ago