Shahid Kapur's keen mind analyzes the budget.

Here's Shahid Kapur on yesterday's budget, in today's TOI :

"As the finance minister pointed out, we've had a fairly trouble-free 2009. But, we live in the times of terror and increase in defence capital expenditure was mandatory. I feel that besides giving our border and police forces better amenities like guns and bulletproof vests, we must give them better living conditions. These guys are real heroes and their homes and pay packets need to be bettered. It's the least we can do for them. "

Notice two key features of his message :

1. The use of the term 'defence capital expenditure'.
2. Complete sentences with real words.

Now contrast this with the contents of Shahid's twitter stream, for the period leading up to the budget, and the day the budget was presented. Reproduced here for your reading pleasure. Please click the image for a magnified view. It's worth it.

Note the salient features. Only four tweets even remotely resemble proper sentences :

1. "ishaan to my left"
2. "hey man" 
3. "of course i will"
4. "hey"

Other than pointing out the precise location of Ishaan, and providing a thrilling demonstration of the overuse of punctuation marks, Shahid gives us no evidence on twitter that he is capable of such a lucid response to the budget. "Defence capital expenditure" indeed.

I suspect that Shahid is an extremely articulate, perceptive and intelligent young man who deliberately recruits half-wit morons to ghost-tweet on his behalf. But I could be wrong.

Control Freaks : A brief look at the evolution of the videogame controller.

by Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared in India Today's Gadgets and Gizmos magazine.

2010 could well be the year of the motion controller – with Sony's yet unnamed magic wand, and Microsoft's eagerly awaited Project Natal set to make their debuts, to challenge Nintendo's monopoly over motion-control console gaming.

When they introduced the now ubiquitous Wiimote controller back in 2006, Nintendo changed the rules for the gaming industry – exploding into completely new target segments and exponentially growing the size of the videogames market. Sony and Microsoft were caught napping, and ended up fighting for the smaller, more saturated 'hardcore' segment while millions of new gamers gleefully lapped up the Wii, which ended up outselling the XBOX and the PS3 combined by some distance.

Now Sony and Microsoft are finally getting into this game, hoping to get a chunk of the huge numbers of casual gamers – kids, women, families – that Nintendo currently targets. While Sony's offering looked rather uninspiring, reminding us of a Wiimote clone combined with Sony's own PS2 eye-toy gadget, Microsoft's much-hyped Project Natal has the potential to be just as revolutionary and influential as the Wii was. When Microsoft demonstrated their 'controller-less' gaming system at E3 last year, people were blown away. Using a true motion capture system, the control scheme allowed gamers to translate their real-life gestures such as punching, kicking, ducking and jumping into the game environment. It also featured voice-recognition and face-recognition systems, offering gamers a completely new, immersive gaming experience.

So could Natal end up being the next game-changing controller innovation? Or is it doomed to becoame another one-off novelty like the Eye-Toy or Nintendo's Power-Glove? Is the success of a game controller purely due to innovation? Or are there other factors?

For the answers, it would help to take a trip down the memory lane of videogame controller history.

Surprisingly, game controllers have changed very little since the very first conventions were established – early arcade games, after some experimentation with sliders, knobs and all-button layouts, settled nicely into a joystick-button combination, which is still the dominant control scheme today. And it works so well purely because it neatly captures the two most commonly used inputs in all games – directional input and instantaneous input (jump, do this, do that). Interestingly, the first home video consoles didn't have multiple cartridges – they came with built-in games, and so featured highly customised controls, such as motorcycle handlebars for 'Stunt Cycle' and dual joysticks for 'Tank'. Only when the 'cartridge' system of selling multiple games for home consoles became the norm, the need for a common controller that would work for multiple games ensured that the joystick-button combination became the standard. And everyone was happy for more than two decades.

The ATARI 2600 joystick evolved from the ones found in Arcade Cabinets, and handled the two kinds of inout that most games require - directional and instantaneous. It worked remarkably well for many years.



Of course, controllers evolved in small ways. The ubiquitous Atari 2600 joystick featured one Joystick and a single button, and worked remarkably well. Then, Mattel experimented with a disc-based directional input, and a telephone-like number-pad that you could use for multiple button-inputs. There were many alternatives for specific games, such as paddles / knobs, trackballs and steering-wheels, but the joystick remained the dominant control scheme.

Then the 8-bit and 16-bit consoles such as the NES, SNES, Sega Master System and Genesis introduced the gamepad design, which made more efficient use of both hands. The joystick was replaced by a directional pad, which performed the same function of directional input, by using a single thumb (as opposed to the entire right hand), freeing up the other fingers for holding the controller and operating more buttons.

The PlayStation was the first system to introduce twin analog sticks - thus establishing the modern controller configuration. All modern conventional console controllers are merely variations of this basic design.



The next generation of consoles, including the PlayStation, the Dreamcast and the Nintendo 64 introduced analog joysticks, more face buttons and shoulder-buttons. The analog joystick, referred to as a thumbstick, was an important design leap forward – it could, like the d-pad, be operated using a single thumb, and yet offered more precise directional and speed control. The Playstation 2 was the first system to offer two analog sticks and a directional-pad, thus establishing the modern console controller configuration. Microsoft introduced Analog 'triggers' in place of the shoulder buttons for their XBOX console, and basic controller design hit a plateau after that. The XBOX 360 and PS3 controllers are merely small, mostly ergonomic improvements, but the two-thumbsticks / face buttons / analog triggers / shoulder buttons combination is quite the same as the previous generation's.

Then, Nintendo changed everything with their Wiimote, and people were pointing at the screen, waving and swinging their controllers to play tennis, golf and boxing games. Or did things really change that much? Even Nintendo admits that, after the novelty factor wore off, people played a large percentage of games using the Wiimote turned sideways, like a normal controller. Sure, the motion-control is still a huge winner for the Wii, but it hasn't replaced conventional control schemes altogether. And there's a darned good reason for this – ultimately, controlling videogames has an inescapable layer of abstraction to it. So, to most game players, convenience and comfort tends to be more important than innovation or immersion or realism. After a point, they simply don't care, they just need a convenient, easy, efficient way to tell their on-screen avatars what to do. And the basic joystick-buttons combination works just fine for that.

Nintendo's famous Wiimote ushered in the first controller paradigm-shift in years, forcing Sony's and Microsoft's hand. Both companies are set to introduce their own motion-controllers later this year.




Even in theory, the Wiimote is just an evolution of a pointing device that gamers have used for ages – the humble PC mouse. Aiming using the Wiimote and moving with the Nunchuck feels vaguely similar to the mouse-keyboard combo that PC gamers have always used. Sure, the Wiimote is wireless and senses motion in three dimensions, but at its core, it's just an improvement over the gesture-functionality offered by the mouse. Games like Die By The Sword even managed to create fairly effective swordplay mechanics using the mouse input alone, long before No More Heroes arrived on the Wii. Similar in concept? You bet.

Innovative 'music' controllers have played a huge part in creating and popularizing a whole new mainstream genre of rhythm games - an example of how controller innovation can help sell games.




However, this isn't to say that innovation is dead or useless. The guitar and drum controllers for the Guitar Hero / Rock Band games, the turntable for DJ Hero, steering wheels for racers, and the dance Mats for dance games have shown that, when there's a fit, innovative controllers do make a huge difference, and sell lots of games. However, it's important to note that each of these unconventional controllers enhances the fun-factor of the games they're meant for without sacrificing usability or comfort levels. Therein lies the rub.

In the final analysis, Natal will be a game-changer only if it also comes with games that fit well with its motion-capture input scheme. It has to make games easier, more comfortable and more fun to play. If Microsoft tries to shoehorn the controller into existing genres, then we could very well see it recede into the realm of forgotten novelties, and everyone returning to their beloved conventional controllers for another decade.

Alternate ways to deal with the 'Manglik' curse.

One of my friends has just been told the bad news in no uncertain terms. His brutally honest, grim-faced astrologer has informed him that he is 'Manglik'. And hence he would have to marry an earthen pot.

I have nothing against earthen pots – they're cute, unargumentative, and eco-friendly – but I would draw the line at marrying one. No insurance benefits, and the sex would be below par. Not to mention the horrifying prospect of the house being filled with the pitter-patter--plunkety-plonk-oops-crash of little anthropomorphic pots resembling something from those badly animated advertisements seen on Doordarshan during the eighties.

But I digress. The reason for this downright bizarre practice is, of course, to prevent your bride(or groom)-to-be from meeting with a grisly end a few months into the marriage. By marrying the pot, your 'curse' is transferred to the innocent container, which then frees your beloved to live long, prosper, and nag you about your clothes. The pot is then destroyed, ending the curse. Neat.

On closer examination of the practice, I find that our friends in the astrological community have been rather unimaginative in their process design. The things you can marry to redeem yourself from the dreaded 'Manglik' curse seem mostly limited to earthen pots, banana trees and clay idols. Boring.

My question is – why not expand the scope a little and include a number of things that are better suited to bearing the curse of imminent death? Just a quick glance around will provide numerous examples of things that are probably going to die quickly anway, so what's the harm in going a little 'Manglik' on their sorry asses? A sampling :

• An XBOX 360 console
  Everybody knows that Microsoft's crappy hardware quality will ensure a 'Red Ring of Death' just a few months after purchase. Perfect for absorbing any Manglik negative energy.
  
  
• Sania Mirza's chances at the next grand slam
  If lack of survival is what you're looking for, then Ms.Mirza is unlikely to let you down.
  
  
• A Mayfly
  The poor creatures only live for a few hours anyway. And their main purpose is reproduction, so you can even squeeze in a quick one before saying goodbye. Caution – might die even before you complete the ceremony, so make it quick and snappy. Register marriages recommended as opposed to those interminably long circuses we sometimes call weddings.
  
  
• The acting careers of Tushar Kapoor, Dino Morea or Suniel Shetty
  While we admit that their careers are dying a tad slower than is ideally suited for this purpose, there's nothing wrong in helping their demise along with a little Manglik magic. 
   
  
• An answer to any question posed on TV by Arnab Goswami
  A very safe bet – since Arnab takes great care to kill all responses quickly and efficiently, by cutting them off after “Well, you see, Arnab, it's a ma . . .”
  
  
• A social revolution started on Twitter or Facebook
  Nothing is more short-lived than attempts by thousands of people on Twitter and Facebook to rid the world of its evils by starting hashtags and saying interesting things about their underwear. Most of these live for about 24 hours, or until someone links to a funny video where Hitler gets upset.
  
  

Of course. I realize that many of these things are fairly hard to actually 'marry' – but Astrologers are studs at coming up with ideas to solve such problems. If they can cure chronic gall bladder problems by tying coloured ropes around stone idols hundreds of miles away from the gall bladder in question, this can't be too hard. They'll figure it out.

Learning to Floo

Also - the comic is being serialized now on the CIS India web site. For those of you who missed the beginning - you can start reading here.

Here's the latest page, as a teaser :

We'll be updating mondays and thursdays, so do follow. And let us know your comments and feedback right here on this blog.

The need for game appreciation

by Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared on my weekly Game Invader column for The New Indian Express.


All other currently thriving art and entertainment forms benefit from a thriving ecosystem of critique, appreciation and deep understanding. Films, books and music are studied and dissected by an army of critics who look at everything the form has to offer, from the popular to the obscure, and throw light on their many aspects – such as cultural relevance, historical significance, sheer aesthetic beauty, technical excellence and so on. This not only helps us as fans understand and enjoy the arts in broader and deeper ways, it also exposes us to a far wider body of work, and indeed enhances our experiences of these arts.


Why, then, don't we have anything similar for games? Why is there precious little in terms of critique or appreciation of videogames as a bona-fide art form as there is for cinema for instance? We cannot argue that games are in their infancy, because they aren't. Videogames are now well over three decades old. All we have are reviews, which are great, but do not qualify as informed criticism. As Greg Costikyan, the renowned independent game designer and journalist pointed out, a review is a buyer's guide, intended to tell people whether the game in question is worth their time and money. It tells us nothing of the game's cultural context or significance within gaming's canon.


For gaming to gain acceptance as a mainstream entertainment medium and art form, we must make efforts to preserve and celebrate its heritage. A young gamer playing Bioshock 2 today is unlikely to know much about the history of shooting games, and the diverse influences which Bioshock brings together.


We need to look at questions that dig deep into gaming's very soul. How does the history of games that are based on destruction differ from that of games based on creation? How are these games different in what needs and desires they fulfil in the gamer? Where does a game like Spore (which gives you tools to create things that help you destroy other things) fit in to the scheme of things? How do games that let you nurture creations (The Sims, Farmville) differ in basic nature from those which depend on mindless destruction (Borderlands, Doom) to engage the gamer? How do we explain games that lack objectives or winning conditions altogether (The Sims, Flower) ? Are they games at all? There's so much to understand and study and shed light on.


Popular discourse based on questions such as these will only help strengthen the foundations of popular gaming, and create a solid base of knowledge from which who knows what kind of games will spring. The sheer variety of choices available to the public in books, films and music is staggering – and games are nowhere close to offering that much variety. But it's growing extremely quickly, and a better critical understanding will doubtless fuel innovation and experimentation.


We need game clubs where young gamers can play the games which are the ancestors of today's blockbusters. An Age of Empires fan must experience Dune II. A Fallout 3 fan should have the opportunity to play Wasteland. An Uncharted 2 fan should be given the chance to check out the original Ninja Gaiden or Prince of Persia or Donkey Kong.


Music and film fans have access to the hits of yore, the creations that shaped and defined the art through the ages, and to intelligent discourse and critique that helps them experience and appreciate it in context. We must ensure that gaming fans have the same.

Is Bioware the greatest developer ever?

by Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared on my weekly Game Invader column for the New Indian Express.

By releasing two genre-defining games within a few months of each other, Bioware has stamped their authority on cutting-edge game development, and have staked their claim to being the greatest game development studio of all time, at least outside Japan.


Last year's Dragon Age : Origins was a lovingly, intricately and masterfully crafted classical role-playing game, in the traditions of Bioware's own epic, Baldur's Gate 2. It featured a delightfully rich and detailed high-fantasy gameworld, a role-playing system that was a purist's delight, and some of the best squad-based tactical combat in modern gaming. It raised the bar for swords-and-sorcery RPGs, and is now the definitive high fantasy role-playing game by some distance.


Now, merely a few months later, they've gone and done the same for sci-fi based RPGs with the utterly magical Mass Effect 2.


This is a very different role-playing experience from Dragon Age. While the latter is a very old-school, classical, deliberately paced game, Mass Effect 2 lays down the template for the post-modern RPG – faster paced, more accessible and more cinematic. While Dragon Age : Origins is clearly aimed at veteran RPGers, Mass Effect 2 is the kind of game that can introduce a generation of new players to the role-playing genre, which it in fact completely redefines. While Dragon Age feels like you're in a 'Lord of The rings' type epic novel, Mass Effect 2 is like being in a Star Wars movie.


With the Mass Effect franchise, Bioware achieves what no other developer has managed to achieve in the past decade – simultaneously establish a new set of interactive storytelling and role-playing gameplay mechanics, and create one of the most interesting sci-fi universes in recent times. The Mass Effect universe is fleshed out with the usual top-notch writing, great lore and painstaking attention to detail that are all vintage Bioware. It has the potential to be the Star Wars / Star Trek universe of future generations - no mean feat, and it could only have been pulled of by Bioware.


Make no mistake, with Mass Effect 2, Bioware now owns the sci-fi RPG, and indeed have set the new standard for the 'interactive cinematic experience' that has always been gaming's holy grail. And with Dragon Age : Origins, they own the high-fantasy RPG, and the legions of fans of hardcore traditional role-playing. Indeed, while Dragon Age is the successor to Baldur's Gate 2, Mass Effect is descended from Star Wars : Knights of The Old Republic, another of Bioware's best games. And with both games, Bioware has broken free of the shackles of existing franchises (Dungeons and Dragons, Star Wars) and created completely original universes.


A look at any definitive list of the best games of the last fifteen years will reveal that no other developer has so many entries, with so many different franchises, with the possible exception of that other legendary studio, Blizzard. With the upcoming Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic, Bioware now threatens Blizzard's stranglehold over the MMO landscape. If anyone can dethrone World of Warcraft, a Bioware-Star Wars combination probably stands the best possible chance.


A Blizzard vs Bioware verdict is too close to call – they're both incredibly skilled, influential and successful studios. They've both created top-class fantasy and sci-fi universes. They've both created games that redefine genres. But one factor in favour of Bioware is that, while Blizzard's efforts have so far been restricted to the PC platform, Bioware has found success on consoles as well.
Greatest ever? Close, but a successful Star Wars MMO should seal it conclusively.

A renaissance in racing games

Titles such as Forza Motorsport 3 are taking racing games back to the forefront of popular gaming.

Racing games have always been one of gaming's more popular genres, selling millions of copies, attracting legions of fans, and playing a stellar role in introducing people to videogames. Along with sports games, racing games are arguably the most common 'first gaming experience' for a huge percentage of gamers - because everybody loves to race cars, right? Many of us old-timers remember fondly the hours spent playing arcade and home console classics like Pole Position, Enduro and Night Driver back in the early eighties. Developers like Accolade and papyrus gave us incredibly realistic (for the time) and enjoyable racing experiences on the PC. Even in India, during the early computing days, you'd very often find Grand Prix CGA or Test Drive or Indycar installed and running on almost every other PC you saw. Franchises like Need for Speed were instrumental in expanding the videogames market in India, and remain at the forefront of every new gamer's wish list.



However, as the years rolled on, something happened. Racing games began to become inaccessible to the new player. Controls became more realistic, the sense of speed was amazing, the games looked better and better – but boy, were they hard to master. Even the more 'arcadey' handling of titles like Need for Speed or Project Gotham Racing (leave alone simulations like TOCA Race Driver, the earlier Forza titles and Gran Turismo) required a skill level that many gamers simply did not possess, especially those who were new to racing. Most of them would enthusiastically pick up a game, enticed by the rave reviews, start off a race, and find themselves hopelessly out of their depth – skidding and spinning and crashing out of control. Frustrated, many would just give up. And miss out on some fantastic gaming fun – unless they had the perseverance to practice and master the skills. While the Burnout games went in the opposite direction - making it n00b friendly by actually encouraging and rewarding crashes and reckless driving - with tremedous success, this was the exception that proved the rule. Racing games had forsaken the newbie who had made them so successful in the first place, in search of an elusive holy grail of being the most ;realistic' or 'hardcore' title on the planet.



This alienation ultimately had its impact - big-name publishers found that they were faced with the twin problems of hugely expanding development budgets (better graphics, ultra-realistic physics, more graphics assets) and shrinking markets. Faced with this situation, companies like Codemasters, Microsoft and Sony had no choice - get more people to buy your games, or perish. And, thanks to some great design innovations, they seem to be on the right track this time.



Codemasters took the lead with last year's excellent Race Driver : GRID, which introduced a nifty 'rewind' feature that vastly improved things for the less-than-immaculate driver. Now, if you crashed negotiating a tricky turn, you didn't have to restart the race – you could simply 'rewind' to a point a few seconds before, and continue from there. Like an 'undo' feature of sorts. It was brilliant (though hardly original – remember The Sands of Time? Braid? ), and made GRID fairly accessible despite it's undoubted hardcoreness.



They repeated the feature in this year's critically acclaimed DiRT 2, with a slew of newbie friendly features and slick presentation that made it a great fun pick-up-and-play experience for players of almost any skill level. And all this was done without sacrificing the hardcoreness or challenge level for more advanced players.



Sadly, GRID and DiRT didn't quite get the sales boost they deserved, partly because of they still carried the baggage of earlier, more hardcore titles from the publisher, and were perceived by new gamers as being too hardcore. But these games undeniably laid the groundwork in terms of design for the seminal Forza Motorsport 3, which has taken accessibility to an entire new level. And, thankfully, Forza 3 sold over a million copies in the first few weeks of its release, and is well on its way to becoming one of Microsoft's top sellers for the XBOX 360.



Unlike in GRID and DiRT 2 which have limited 'rewinds', Forza has removed all limits. You can rewind at any point in the race, how ever many times you want, without any penalty. While this may seen like spoon-feeding to the tuly hardcore – the truth is that you don't have to use it if you don't want to. It doesn't alter the game for the pros, but gives the rest of us n00bs a great opportunity to try those risky moves without fear of instant failure. Eventually, the more casual players will improve their skills, and come to appreciate the game's realism and challenge when they're ready for it - as opposed to being discouraged and put off by difficulty spikes early in the game.



Forza 3 also has some of the best implementation of variable, customizable difficulty levels seen in gaming. Depending on how you want to play, you can turn on or off a number of assists such as auto-braking, stability control, traction control, anti-lock brakes and the series' now famous racing line. Turn all of them on, and the car will practically drive itself – even a first time player will feel like Michael Schumacher. Turn all of them off, and you'd have to BE Michael Schumacher to drive with any sort of success – just like the hardcore simulation fans demand.



This is the kind of brilliant, opt-in game design that we need to take hardcore gaming mainstream. put in the features to attract and encourage newbies, and give the hardcore set the option to safely ignore them. As easy or hard as you want it to be. Microsoft seems to get this – Halo was similarly spread out difficulty wise. On Easy, it was almost impossible to die, but on Legendary, one bullet could be the end. But Forza 3 takes it well beyond that – you can get assists for skills you suck at, and set higher challenge levels for your strength areas. You can customize the challenge to suit your precise skill level and style of play. Absolutely top class game design.



Here's hoping future titles follow Forza Motorsport 3's lead and introduce design features that bring the fun back to racing. After all, we're all not quite hardcore gearheads, but we still like to race. And if publishers give us titles that are more like games and less like boot camps, we'll gladly buy them. Are you listening, Gran Turismo 5?

Is Role-Playing the ultimate videogame genre?

In the beginning, genres were watertight. Action games were pure action – some had the semblance of a story, others just ignored it altogether and let you get on with the leaping, running and killing. Racing and sports games put you in the thick of things, and didn't bother with levels or stats or items. Strategy games just focused on making sure your fingers were almost dropping off from pain. Fighting games featured crazy rosters, mad combo skills, but no customization. Adventure games had great stories, mind-bending puzzles, and little else.

Meanwhile, Role-Playing games were catering to the more hardcore, more intelligent and erudite gamers who demanded more complexity and nuance from their gaming experience. There were engaging stories, lots of complicated stats and items to manage, there were vast and exciting lands to explore, dangerous creatures to kill, puzzles to solve, strategies to formulate. Early CRPGs such as the Ultima games, SSI's legendary Gold Box games based on the Dungeons and Dragons rules, Wasteland, Daggerfall and Betrayal at Krondor were amazingly complete gaming experiences, and prely for the hardcore. They were difficult and demanding – and would usually overwhelm new players who would rather play more simple games such as Doom or Screamer or Prince of Persia.

But the fact was that Role-Playing games offered the most complete gaming experience of all genres – incorporating adventure, strategy, puzzle-solving, and action in addition to the core role-playing mechanics of character development and equipment trading.

Fast-forward to the present day, and you have every single genre scrambling to introduce 'role-playing elements'. Shooters such as Borderlands and Bioshock give you a range of weapons, stats and skills to develop your character. Racing games such as Forza Motorsport have introduced XP points, a level-up system, car customization and vehicle upgrades you can buy from a store. Sports and racing games have introduced story based 'career modes' to further draw players into the experience. Strategy games such as Dawn of War and Warcraft now feature unique 'hero' characters that can be levelled up just like in an RPG, and equipment and items that offer bonuses and boosts. Fighting games such as Soul Calibur now have 'create your own character' modes, skill progression, and unlockable moves and equipment. Even casual games like Farmville have tons of features from traditional RPG designs.

Just what is happening here?

Looks like game designers are discovering that as the gaming market matures as a whole, gamers are demanding more value from their games – especially considering that games aren't cheap these days. You stick in role-playing elements (character development and customization, item progression, engaging story and setting) and suddenly the same basic gameplay is more involving, and lasts much longer. Job done. Even online communities have all been built as meta-games, which are essentially role-playing in nature – consider XBOX Live's customizable Avatars, achievements and gamerscores, all fundamentally role-playing concepts.

So what we have here is this – whatever you're playing today, it's likely you're playing an RPG at some level.

At a basic psychological level, we're all obsessed with acquiring stuff, and comparing said stuff with our friends and neighbours and total strangers. Role-playing games tap into this need for constant acquisition driven growth, and make it a harmless (mostly) and entertaining virtual experience. And addictive. Game publishers like that.

Alright, off now. Need to play Dragon Age Origins for a few hours – so I can level up my strength to 38 and wear that Blood-Dragon Armour. That'll show Videep Vijay Kumar who's boss.

Weird, beautiful, Japanese.

Japanese game design makes another breathtaking comeback with Bayonetta – the new action adventure from Hideki Kamiya, the creator of Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe. Every time you think that Japanese studios can't make weirder, more outlandish games, they go and surprise you by doing exactly that.

Essentially, Bayonetta is a third person beat-em-up featuring insane combos, furious combat, and fantastic graphics. But that's like saying Zinedine Zidane is essentially a midfielder. It's accurate, but entirely useless in describing Zizu's magical, almost superhuman qualities. You play through Bayonetta alternating between frenzied tension, helpless laughter and sheer open-mouthed awe.

It's hard to describe the Bayonetta gameplay experience without sounding like a drug-addled lunatic, but I'll give it a shot. Bayonetta is a dark witch who has pistols in her hands. And she also has pistols that double as high-heels for her shoes. So she can, and does, shoot the bad guys while pirouetting, turning cartweels, leaping and somersaulting through the air, or just strutting around like a fashion model. She also has a variety of kicks and punches, but why bother with mundane martial arts when you can magically produce an iron-maiden and crush your foes in it? Or chop their sorry noggins off with a guillotine that appears out of nowhere? Or eat them by summoning a dragon, which used to be your hair, which used to be your clothes? You'll battle in gothic churches, broken clock-towers that hurtle through the air, abandoned train stations for dead souls – all to the beat of crazy techno music. Do I sound like a drug -addled lunatic yet? Good.

This is where Japanese game design really comes into its own – in the execution of ideas so crazy, so bizarre, that any sane publisher would immediately withdraw support. Luckily for us, the Japanese aren't sane. Which is why we get to play games like Bayonetta. Or Devil May Cry. Or Katamari Damacy. Or Loco Roco. Or Okami.

The Japanese have no problems believing that you can make a commercially successful game out of rolling really big balls using random junk, and using them to create stars in the night sky. Or one where you play a wolf-god and defeat your enemies using calligraphy (yes, calligraphy).

Even the more straight-laced games from Japanese designers, such as the Mario, Zelda and Metal Gear Solid franchises display a basic sense of fun and humour that defy conventional logic. Solid Snake hides from terrorists and other hi-tech enabled bad guys by climbing into a cardboard box, for heavens sake. Can you imagine the Master Chief doing that?

At some level, the Japanese realize that above all else, a game needs to be fun. If it manages that, it doesn't matter if it isn't realistic, or believable, or plausible. This is why they make bold, innovative games that don't puch the design envelope so much as tear it to shreds.

Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo's legendary creator of Mario, Zelda and Metroid, once said that he didn't understand why people always wanted to compare games to movies, and want games to be more like motion pictures. He stressed that Nintendo's design philosophy always aimed at creating games that could be enjoyed purely as games. No points for guessing which company sells the most games worldwide.

More power to innovation, I always say. I'd like to see more Bayonettas and Katamari Damacys among the inevitable deluge of derivative Halo and Call of Duty sequels. Thankfully, it seems to be happening increasingly. Good times.

Going one-up. An Aamir Khan - Shah Rukh Khan rivalry story.

 A short story by Anand Ramachandran



“Fuck! I hate my job.”, said Sankalesh Jimmy in exasperation. He would have slammed the phone down in disgust, had it not been a mobile phone. He suddenly hated mobile phones for not being slammable. He then proceeded to hate his coffee, his cubicle, his nose, and even his beloved collection of old 'Dipy's Cowboy' memorabilia – all of which were blameless for his current state of agitation.

But most of all, he hated Aamir Khan, who wasn't.

“What's the matter? You seem upset.”, said James Dare, keenly observant as always. James was one of those guys who, if you had chanced upon his visiting card without having met him, you would have imagined looked like a dynamic, rock-jawed, spacefaring captain who saved the universe on Thursdays. In reality, he looked more like 'Mirchi' Siva in a foul mood, perhaps after losing a closely fought table-tennis game from a winning position.

“Now he wants craters on the fucking SUN! Screw this.”, said Sankalesh

“What?”

“It's bloody Aamir. Ever since that stupid moon-crater was named after Shah Rukh, he's been desperate for attention. Now he's asking us if we can get a sun-crater named after him. Sun-crater. Can you fucking believe that?”. Sankalesh slumped into his chair and buried his face in his hands.

“You'd think it was a blast being Aamir's PR manager.” he said wryly.

“So you're saying there aren't any craters on the sun?” asked James

“Of course not. You're telling me you didn't know that?” asked Sankalesh incredulously.

“I didn't even know that there were craters on the moon. And that you could name people after them. So there aren't any on the sun? Why not? You can't name people after them?” asked James cheerily.

“Yes there are. Yes you can. No there aren't. Maybe because the sun doesn't have a fucking SURFACE! No you can't, because there's nothing to name.”, said Sankalesh, answering the questions in the correct order, through gritted teeth.

“Oh.” said James absently, peering into Sankalesh's monitor and reading his messages. At any other time, Sankalesh would have been annoyed at this, but now he merely ignored it. He looked up at the ceiling.

“It's always the same. Shah Rukh gets a six-pack, and Aamir invents the eight-pack. Shah Rukh picks up some awards, Aamir stops accepting awards altogether. Shah Rukh plays a psychopath, Aamir plays a violent psychopath with memory-loss, a bad attitude and his contacts list tattooed on his fucking body. Shah Rukh makes a bad movie a hit, Aamir makes the worst movie of all time the biggest hit of all time. It's unbearable.”

“Yeah. Aamir rules. He's the best at everything he does.”, said James, taking a break from reading Sankalesh's monthly accounts statement in order to perform the valuable service of missing the point entirely.

They sat in silence for a few minutes.

“I know what I'm going to do”, said Sankalesh suddenly.

He picked up his phone and dialled.

“Hello? Aamir? Hi, it's Sankalesh. More news on Shah Rukh. Apparently this morning, he woke up and actually contemplated suicide. It's going to be in the TOI tomorrow – front page. Seriously. SRK contemplates suicide. Half-page with colour pictures. What do you suggest we do?”

He waited a few seconds, and then heard the gunshot.

He felt evil.







Note : This post is part of an experiment to treat the same subject of satire in three different ways. There's a cartoon here and a satirical fake news report here.