No Fear + No Ambition = Perfect Zen: No Fear Downhill Mountain Biking

 

“No Fear” was last generation’s “YOLO”, only without as much fail.

“No Fear” is an extremely stupid mantra; it’s even worse when applied to racing. And yet, this is the explanation provided to us scrawled on the rear tinted windows of modified cars that would cut us off on the road.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but fear is good. Fear is natural. Fear is the instinct that keeps us alive when danger threatens us. As per whichever famous race car driver said it first, fear is the instinct that keeps you from slamming into a wall at hundreds of kilometres per hour and dying, because that’s not how you win a race.

The phrase “No Fear” implies that some emotions are unnecessary baggage that need to be discarded on the way to victory when in fact the opposite is true. In order to succeed, you need to transcend your fears by confronting and embracing them, not by ignoring them.

Like people with addictions, this is something that you’ll never eradicate from your life, so every path towards success starts with acknowledging the fear in your life.*

As I’m not done complaining, the very worst thing about the phrase “No Fear” is the way it is used as a justification. If you have no fears and are pure ambition, what’s to stop you from doing everything you want to do without regard to others? While it’s called regicide in the Scottish play, for everyone else is simply called “being an asshole” (Yes, I’m talking about people who cut you off while driving).

“As honored as I am to accept this trophy, I’d like to remind everyone that we need to work harder to eradicate fear from our planet. There are children in Africa that still don’t play extreme sports.

For all these reasons and more, I was sure I was going to detest No Fear Downhill Mountain Biking. I was sure I was going to enjoy thinking up strings of similes to describe how poor it was like or as, but instead, I liked it. It’s a fun game. No Fear Downhill Mountain Biking is deceptively deep, offering options for tilt balancing and front and back steering, and offers lots of upgrades and courses to keep you busy.

Even so, the soundtrack is worth whatever time it takes to turn it off in the options, and the menu design feels like the UI interface for a highly-advanced Mountain Dew refreshment dispenser. But these detractions can’t take away the fact that the first mountain run in England is a blast; it catches the excitement of racing down a hill, your heavy breathing rhythmically punctuating the whirl of tires and the whirl of the breeze.

Unfortunately, the other tracks I’ve sampled in my short time with No Fear Downhill Mountain Racing aren’t true to the keyword “mountain” in the title. The Africa race course is disappointing, as is the one in San Francisco. “Extreme” or “not extreme”, parked cars shouldn’t be a factor to consider in mountain bike racing.

So, consider me a player who dared for more, letting my video game racing ambitions run wild only to be ultimately let down. But then, maybe it’s not right to be so ambitious, and yet at the same time play a video game that let me live a life with no fear.

 

* Simple version: Exhibit A – Batman, whose greatest fear is bats (his parents are already dead by this point). Since he embraced the thing that scared him the most, nothing else would ever scare him for the rest of his comic books and movies.

 

How far did I get in 45 minutes: was able to win the first track championship, and was able to check out the Africa and San Francisco tracks

The good: that first England track

The bad: my poor, battered ambitions

Will I play this again once this year is up: I was so sure it was going to be yes, but no. Driver, Gran Turismo and even Ridge Racer are better

Number of days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 11

Ludonarrative Dissonance – the Best Neo-Punk Name Up for Grabs: Jackie Chan Stuntmaster

Jackie’s VO may be saying “I don’t want to hurt you,” but I’m going to use this fish and beat you until you blink and disappear.

There’s this word, and it exists to describe something that happens in video games. The problem is that this word is way too complex to describe the crappy games it’s used for.

It’s called ludonarrative dissonance. I promise I won’t use it again.

This isn’t to be anti-intellectual or difficult, but we don’t need a word like that, not as a way to simply describe that games aren’t as fun as they could due to poor design.

I’ve always maintained that video games are art, but that they’re really bad art. We don’t need a fancy term like this, not when playing a crappy game like Jackie Chan Stuntmaster. We don’t need to use a term that’s even longer than the title.

What that phrase can be boiled down to is that the video game and the person playing it are telling two different stories, or narratives, as you will. So to analyze a crappy game like Jackie Chan Stuntmaster, we’ll use an equally crappy term that is fitting enough: story-breaking.

Even though the definition of a video may be tough to pin down, it all comes down to the interactivity a player has with a game. Since video games are almost always a contest for the player to compete in, the unspoken narrative of almost all video games is conquest: a princess to rescue, a race to win, all that kind of macho chest-beating kind of stuff.

As video games have become more complex, so have the stories they want to tell. But no matter how far games have evolved, players are still the same as the stories they want to experience for themselves: they want to have fun, they want to be challenged, they want to win.

Here’s a classic example of story-breaking. Besides the licensing of its titular star, Jackie Chan Stuntmaster is a very plain beat ‘em up. You don’t need to be told that punch-punch-kick is your basic combo, or that hidden collectibles are located up in the rafters. However, because this is Jackie’s video game, it’s going to tell his story, as much as he and his two pointing thumbs’ can tell.

While he’s best known now as a crotchety-old loudmouth who’s a lousy dad, Jackie Chan was famous for establishing his own brand of comedy and action into all of his post-70’s films. Almost all of Jackie Chan’s characters, coincidentally also all named Jackie*, are pacifists that would rather run away than be a tough guy and take on an army. However, what’s great for pratfalls and outtake reels is not necessarily good for a video game.

As a player, you want to kick ass; as Jackie Chan, you want to spread your brand of pacifist comedy. Needless to say, they don’t match. As a player, your brutal button pressing is story-breaking what the lovable crowd pleaser is trying to do; by following the plot and tone of the video game, it’s story-breaking the ambitions of a player that wants to succeed.

What results is a bummer of a game with two separate narratives that cancels each other out, and not just in story-telling.

When you get beat up, Jackie’s voice-over laments, “It’s not my lucky day.” However, before you spend your lotto ticket money on beer, the game suddenly tells us something else. Immediately after, upon finding a collectible, Jackie’s voice-over then contradicts himself by saying, “It’s my lucky day!” And then, there’s the part where Jackie uses a muffler to beat a hoodlum to death, something you won’t see in any of his movies or outtakes.

Video games are fascinating, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves by making terminology for aesthetic and mechanical appreciation more complicated than the game itself. There’s a simple formula, and we’d be wise not to stray from it. It’s called: punch-punch-kick

.

* The same way porn stars portray characters with their own name in their movies. Because: both Jackie Chan and porn stars perform their own stunts．

How far I got in 40 minutes: made it out of Chinatown, and was enjoying battling French stereotypes along the pier until I stopped

The good: The guy who did the overdub for “Monkey” in Kung-Fu Panda also did this game

The bad: the invisible fourth wall for much of the game made me feel like Jackie was some kind of hamster, or at least some stunt-hamster hybrid; while his movies are “so Chinese”, this game is not Chinese-y in the least, dragon heads be damned

Will I play this game once this year is up: No, and it seems the games get all the (misguided) action from his movies, but none of the overly complicated comedy bits and overacting during the “feels” part

Days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 10