The Five Minute Rule

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Let me tell you about a little secret to video games that saves me lots of time and mental energy. It's something I got from my Lord and Master, who is no friend to the digital world. In the movies, says Roger, "if nothing interesting has happened in the first two reels, nothing is going to happen in the third." I take that a step further. For me it's literally the Five Minute Rule. If I have not done or seen something entertaining within the first five minutes of starting the game, then the entire game is worthless.

I should note that this five minutes excludes cinematic intro movies or long-winded dialogue in the beginning of an RPG. When the "game proper" starts (or I get control of the character), the timer starts. This isn't a hard thing to get right, but I'm shocked at the games that get it wrong.

Burnout, for example, gets it right. The first Burnout game I tried, Burnout 3, invented its own 30 Second Rule. In thirty seconds you: (a) get a car, (b) accelerate to 130mph, and (c) crash that car into a busy intersection and watch the carnage. Instant fun.

SiN Episodes: Emergence fails the Five Minute Rule. The first five minutes of that game are spent (a) staring at the villainess' oversized rack, (b) being chauffeured in a cool car that you never get to drive yourself, and (c) talking to a dumpy old man in a shipyard. The good thing about SiN is that it only took me $20 to find out how bad it is. Thank you, Ritual Entertainment, for jumping on the episodic gaming bandwagon. I will not buy any more of your SiN titles.

Some other notable Five Minute Failures? Suikoden V, for one. You spend a lot of time in the beginning of that game running around this massive city looking for some hot girl who you never find! Now I'll admit that game (and many others like it) is a special case. When the point of the series is to collect 108 playable characters and raise entire armies of soldiers, it can be forgiven if it starts slow. But mainly I'll forgive it because of Miakis.

The biggest failure so far, I must say, is Enchanted Arms. The first five minutes of that game is like a warning from God that you should eject the disc immediately. There isn't even an intro cinematic. You just start with a battle sequence in this sepia-toned ice cavern. Your enemy is the Ice Queen, who is a final boss if I've ever seen one. This is before they even explain how to play the game, mind you. What you are supposed to do is not try to move any of the characters, but just keep pressing the A button to accept the default attack commands. Every time you hit the ice lady she regenerates hit points. Maybe you can see where this is heading.

At the end of your turn, the Ice Queen hits your party. Massive damage. Everyone dies. Then the "real game" begins. I was disgusted. Note to the idiots at From Software: do not create a game where you lose the very first battle without giving the player a tutorial or at least an introduction to the chumps who are about to die. Thank you.

Today I bought Okami with my Enchanted Arms trade-in money. This is like taking bird poop to a car dealership and walking away with an Enzo Ferrari. In the first five minutes of Okami's real gameplay (it does have a rather long-winded intro) you see a flea build a bridge from a wavy brush stroke, dot the eye of a dragon constellation and have it come to life, then use your own celestial brush to create a river of stardust to connect two green islands in the middle of a starry expanse.

Okami, after 30 minutes, is a masterpiece. It's Zelda where you play as a reincarnated wolf god (interested yet, Jason?) with a magical brush. Press a button and the game world flattens to a 2D canvas. Move the brush in a straight line to cut rocks in half or attack enemies. Draw circles to create leaves on trees or lilly pads on the surface of a pond, or even draw bomb shapes to blow open rock walls. The graphics are simply outstanding; not just the choice of style, but the execution is absolutely peerless. It gives me Wind Waker flashbacks, but good ones. The energy and movement of the entire game is breathtaking (note: breathtaking energy and movement may not be adequately represented by still images).

If you have a PS2 and do not have Okami, go get it immediately. If you are not entertained in the first five minutes... then we have nothing else to say to each other. Ever.