In which N'Gai reflects on the experience of playing his first Zelda game, and Stephen wonders whether this may be his last.

Heading into the sixth Vs. Mode exchange, it occurs to us that we've never focused an entire Vs. Mode on a Japan-developed game. So what better way to rectify this oversight than by tackling the newest entry in Nintendo's longstanding Zelda franchise, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the DS? In Round 1 of our exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, we try to articulate why, despite the game's breakthrough control scheme, we aren't having an unreservedly good time playing it. For his part, Totilo scrutinizes Zelda's rich past and diagnoses the series as suffering from a crippling case of sequelitis. Some excerpts:

N'Gai Croal: I've been struggling to figure out why I'm not digging this game more. Allow me to offer up a half-formed theory. There are two types of action-adventure gamers: those who like to move in a straight line, and those who like to move in circles. By that, I mean that when I'm playing an action-adventure game, I like to move from point A to point B. I don't mind exploring--in fact, I rather enjoy it--but generally speaking, I only like exploration if it propels me forward. I don't like to backtrack, as you well know. I don't like fetch quests, but I can tolerate them in small doses. And I don't like venturing out from a central location to which I always return. Hence, the action-adventure games I tend to enjoy the most are games like Devil May Cry, God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Halo and, with a few dispensations, BioShock. Clear, hold, move on, and above all, never look back: that's my motto.

Stephen Totilo: If I may, I would like to blame Nintendo. I would like to blame them for not finding a way to get their wing of the gaming industry in step with the book, music and movie industry. George Lucas doesn't keep making new "Star Wars" movies for me year after year. I haven't seen 12 of them. He made three back in the day and made them well enough. Then he made a few more and even that might have been stretching the concept. After that he just drilled down on selling me new copies of those same movies again and again. I can't begrudge him that. The movies were good enough that they deserve not to be swamped by six more sequels. Nintendo got Zelda just right a few times already. More than a few times. Can't they just keep re-releasing the really good ones, polishing them up for new platforms, and make some newer non-Zelda stuff? I've heard all the arguments about limited development resources, but I'm unconvinced that remaking Ocarina wouldn't net Nintendo more money and do a better job of solidifying what is great about the series than routinely iterating sequels. The era of Zelda-as-rough-draft is past.

To read Round 1 of our exchange in its entirety, click on the link below.

We apologize for our absence from the comments section last week. Rest assured, we do read each and every one of your remarks, but time simply got away from us over the past several days. In today's edition of "It Came From the Comments," we ponder what StolenName said last week in response to our post titled "The Clive Barker Interview, Part III." He wrote:

I'm 22 at the moment and when I read these interviews I actually feel younger than I am, call it lack of experience, but from what I can glean from your interviews with Barker and the media at large, it seems like critics, whether of art, film or novel, are close minded or myopic. Couldn't their rejection of media like games and music be partly because they have no way of understanding the mixed media, as games are a marriage of visual, audio, writing and player interaction, and actually finding a way to understand that within their on learned discourse?

And also, N'Gai, do you believe that as younger gamers grow older and begin to move into the industry (as I'm trying!) and the older critics move on, that the perception of games as art / not art or for adults (as well as children) will shift? Or is there something about games in particular that forces them to remain an under-appreciated artistic medium by the general public?

To which we replied:

StolenName, every critic has assumptions, biases, prejudices, dogmas and blind spots, all of which add up to what some might call myopia and others might call personal taste. The challenge is for we critics to recognize the baggage that we bring to the table and to constantly engage it--publicly, whenever possible--so that our readers can see us working through our thought processes.

As you correctly point out, games present a particular challenge to older critics because while many older media only require the intended audience to have eyes and/or ears, videogames add a mechanical component that necessitates varying degrees of skill. I'm fond of saying that we "see" games with our hands; unfortunately, this means that a number of people who sit in positions of influence and authority over videogames--parents, politicians, protesters, even some publishers--are for all intents and purposes blind to the medium.

As for whether or not demographics alone can solve the art/not art conundrum surrounding videogames, I don't believe that that alone will be sufficient. First, there are many people who make videogames who don't believe that games are art--Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto and Konami's Hideo Kojima among them--and the same is true of a lot of people who play games. Second, those of us who do believe that videogames are art are still struggling to understand and articulate the nature of that artistry. If I had to predict, I would say that the process by which videogames may become widely accepted as art will be both long and incremental, and its success is not guaranteed.

Halo 3 multiplayer in action

Does reading Level Up sometimes feel like drinking water from a fire hose? Or surfing a tsunami? Does it ever give you the sensation that you've been buried under an avalanche of words, words, words? Yes, we know that the dizzying length of certain Level Up posts can read more like a manifesto or a jeremiad than a blog entry. For you, we offer the occasional feature "Things You May Have Missed," which will cull compelling excerpts from our more voluminous posts.

It's been a little bit over a month since Halo 3 shipped to generally overwhelming acclaim and record-breaking sales. So it's a good time to look back at what we said in the May 29th-31st edition of our Vs. Mode exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo on the multiplayer beta for Halo 3. Back then, not having played much in the way of competitive or cooperative multiplayer shooters, we bemoaned the lack of a friendly introduction to the various online game modes in the Halo series. Today's excerpt focuses on some of the suggestions we made as to how Bungie could make Halo 3 multiplayer more accessible to newbs like ourselves.

To read our summary, click on the link below.

Clive Barker

Note: This Q&A with writer-director-painter-game creator Clive Barker originally ran on Level Up in four separate installments, from October 22nd-25th 2007. We now present it here in its entirety, under a single permalink, for easier printing, emailing and archival purposes.

1. MGS...Metal Gear theme stolen derived from Russian composer?
2. WOW...Would you consider playing this game?
3. HMM...Is circulation the be-all, end-all of videogame mags?
4. RPG...Like Justice Powell, do you just know it when you see it?
5. Wii...Is it really the only next-generation videogame console?
6. RND...Who will stop the nationwide scourge of the fashion bully?