This is your life

Okay, I think the good folks at Nintendo are seriously trying to shoot themselves in the foot.

I just wasted about three hours with the new game "Animal Crossing" today. Over the course of last week, I spent all of an hour with the new "Turok: Evolution" and a few days taking the new "Super Mario Sunshine" for a spin. "Animal Crossing" and "Mario" are Nintendo-exclusive, meaning that if any other gamer wants to those games, they have to shell out the bucks for a Nintendo console.

I was a big fan of the Nintendo 64, the precursor to the company's current Gamecube. I still have it in my closet, even if the games are simpler and more crude on the graphic level. When Nintendo announced the Gamecube, I was looking forward to a whole new generation of gaming and games: smarter, prettier and able to go in new directions.

Instead, Nintendo's last three outings are just the same old crap: "Turok" is a horribly ugly first-person shooter, "Mario" is a souped-up rehash of "Super Mario 64" but with a horrible in-game camera scheme and "Animal Crossing" is Nintendo's most clumsy game to date.

In "Animal Crossing," you play...well...yourself. Your avatar journeys to a small town where you set up your home. It's all in very cutesy-cartoony style with you looking like a cross between "Parappa the Rapper" and a Viking. Immediately, you come to a town (with a name you make up) and try to find lodging and to start a new life. Within a couple minutes, I was saddled with a mortgage and a dead-end part-time job as a delivery person.

That's right. The game is about working off a debt by delivering packages and working for a raccoonish shopkeeper (yes, raccoon...told you it was a cartoon). Of course, I find out that I'm working so hard that the raccoon fires me because there's no more work. So, I'm out on my pixelated ass, trying to come up with the money to make mortgage payments by selling fruits and begging townspeople for work. I sock away the rest to help pay for decorations for my hovel. Meanwhile, I have townspeople who don't have jobs for me, but keep hounding me for letters from me. Shit, I'm right here, you dumb humanized hippo-cow, what the hell do you want? *sigh* Can't make a living as a writer, even in the pixel world.

So, I'm hustling to make money and decorate my pad (just like when I got out of grad school), I have to take care of my mortgage (just like right now), I have letters to write (well, exchange this for instant messages, e-mail and phone calls to mom) and then I have the option of writing in my "Animal Crossing" journal (just like my blog).

Great. For $50, I'm playing a cartoon version of my life.

But this game just stumps me. I mean, it's easy enough. However, it's the subtext. Granted the game isn't teaching you how to frag another person or showing you the best way to chop up a zombie, however there's something unsettling about "Animal Crossing." Maybe it's the underlying message of having to help people constantly as an item-toting lackey. Maybe it's unusual purpose of playing a character who needs to pay off a mortgage and get a job, most likely a boring occupation that you can quickly lose.

I think the worst thing about the game just who is this marketed for.

Imagine, you're a kid playing this game. Does a mortgage and getting fired sound fun to you? If you are an older gamer, do you want to play in a cutesy-poo arena with games like "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" about to hit? Or, better yet, do you want to play a game that involved hustling to make money after getting fired, mirroring a reality where corporations are downsizing every day and people are scrambling to make house payments? Where's the fun in that? Games rarely make the player so dependent where s/he has to do something so mundane as decorate an apartment, write letters or pay bills. Games are larger than life for a reason: Players want to escape. Remember: the popular "Sim" series has the player acting as God. It's faux-life...just like "Animal Crossing," but the "Sim" series is more omnipresent and omnipotent. Nearly every game gives the player some special ability that sets him or her apart, some power or weaponry. The game implies you are special and at the center of the universe. "Animal Crossing" just makes you a cog in a machine, bending to people's wills and trying to make everyone happy.

And what do you do at the end of the day in "Animal Crossing"? You go home and play vintage Nintendo games on your virtual TV. In a postmodern twist, you are playing a video game as a person playing a video game. Your avatar is having more fun than you are. At least s/he's playing "Donkey Kong"...you are along for the ride, controlling the avatar's hands on the gamepad.

To be fair, the big appeal of "Animal Crossing" is the ability to swap you town with the towns of other "Animal Crossing" players. Akin to an interactive scrapbook or an aquarium, you can show off your home and its furnishings, possibly unlocking new features in your version of the game. Still, I'm not sure if that's a big selling point for me, viewing the handiwork of people who have also been turned to servitude and debt.

I'm giving Nintendo until the release of the new "Legend of Zelda" game. Then, I'll figure out what to do with my video gaming future. I'm really let down by the video game industry, at least on the Nintendo end of the spectrum. I was hoping for something more "adult," and no, I don't mean something with nudity or another "Max Payne" I'm-a-pissed-off-cop-gone-rogue gore-fest shoot-em-up. No, I wanted something larger in scale, deeper in nuance and longer in gameplay. Something like "Morrowind" or "Myst" or even the upcoming "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic," only bigger in design and risker in storytelling.

Look, I grew up on video games. Honestly, no one owes me anything for my years of allegiance except for the understanding that the first generation of video gamers are growing older and want bigger, more mature and imaginative games to play. Although I love a good first-person shooter, I need something more....maybe like a graphic version of the old "Infocom" puzzle games. The only one that springs to mind is "Ico" for the Playstation system.

Yes, I know video games are a big business and if "Halo" and "Super Mario Sunshine" sell a zillion copies, then game companies, eager to find the next killer app, will pump out "Halo" and "Mario" clones until that well runs dry. I love explosions, but I need plot and characters and puzzles. Sure "Mario" has that in droves, but frankly, the little plumber has worn out his welcome for me. I need more.

It's sad to see, growing up and out of a market that I dumped a lot of money and time into. You give something attention and follow it and plunk down cash and here you are...just turned entered into the third decade of life and left out in the cold, watching from a muddy distance as the young turks playing with lights and sound in the castle you helped build. It sounds like a great party, but your name is on the guest list no more. There's rain on the face and a slump in the shoulders. You've been played for a fool and you're just too old.

French Word of the Day

jeunesse doree (zhuh ness doh ray): "gilded youth"; affluent young people.