For a long time I've been meaning to post a shout-out to my friend and sometime co-conspirator, Gus Mastrapa, has been steadily building a name for himself a culturally literate videogames critic. While always adept at speaking directly to a gamer audience, I believe it will be writers like Gus who eventually bring videogame criticism out into the light, as finally happened with film criticism in the 1960's.
Gus writes for a growing number of outlets, but his home site is Looky Touchy. The Looky is generally when Gus has only a trailer or screenshot to go on, which he'll analyze armed with a wealth of games industry knowledge. Touchy means he played the damned game.
He's talked about redesigning the blog, but I think it's an easy to enjoy stripped-down look, screenshot followed by review, all on white background. The writing is economic and opinions clear, often quite funny. He's got a core understanding of gameplay, classic to today, and gives only one rating, "Recommended". It's somewhat rare and separates out the homeruns from the singles, doubles and triples, to all of which Gus will give fair credit. But when you see Looky Touchy giving the Recommended seal, you can trust that you'll get a great game experience from that title.
Writing recently about the well-received (and Recommended) Dead Rising on Xbox 360, Gus waxed political:
Dead Rising's setting is a brilliant choice for the sandbox genre because the zombie story, especially the George Romero take on the legend, is about nihilsm. These people are better off dead and as a survivor of the zombie apocalypse you're helping them get dead again. The Dawn of the Dead zombie is a metaphor for the sleepwalking consumer, the opinionless and the impotent. They're pretty harmless one at a time, but when you get them in a crowd they can shuffle you into a corner and tear you limb from limb.
I guess it's all a matter of fantasy. Grand Theft Auto is about the fantasy of strength and lawlessness. It's a self-centered fantasy where the rest of the world is in the way. Dead Rising, and all the great zombie tales that have come before it, has a sort of revolution and dissent at their core. And that's why I'll always dig them more.
His sense of social and media critique sets him apart from other videogame writers, maligned as they are. Earlier this year, on the 24 videogame release, he brought up some wry questions for the entire franchise:
I wonder a bit about 24, a program I rarely (if ever) watch. Do all the bad guys usually look like the thugs from a Stephen J. Cannel show? I made it halfway through the game and it seemed like most of my enemies were burly American dudes in bandanas. I guess I missed a plot point, but who exactly are we fighting here? And does the show really have that many contrived countdowns? On several occasions it seemed like they were scraping the bottom of the excuse barrel for reasons for me to make with the quicky.
And finally, when they make the feature film will it be called 2?
Based on his core grasp of how games differ from any other medium, Gus is wary of crossovers between games and film and back again. Writing last year in a rare "Not Games" critique of the Doom movie (starring The Rock), which was based on the blockbuster videogame license:
Here's the problem with most video game movies; they're based on derivative product. The "story" behind the Doom games is a hackneyed mix of Aliens and H.P. Lovecraft. Nothing terribly original. What made Doom an amazing game was its ability to immerse and isolate the player, to take them someplace different and make them feel fear. What makes Doom a shitty movie is that it does none of those things. There's very little to set this picture apart from the miserable direct-to-video sci-fi pics you see on the new release wall at Blockbuster (besides the 45 days it will take to get there).
Gus has reviewed games for print before, but now he's hit the big time with G4 and The Onion. How about this opening to his positive G4 review on Prey:
Here's an oxymoron to contemplate; the thinking man's shooter. No disrespect to Gordan Freeman, but honest-to-goodness goatee strokers like Gore Vidal and Stephen Hawking probably wouldn't resort to gun play quite so eagerly. Maybe an essay or a general relativity talk first, then out comes the rocket launcher.
His inaugural review for America's greatest satiric resource is actually a straight piece for the "A.V. Club" arts section, covering Star Fox Command for the Nintendo DS. He notes of the fur-covered lead character:
Beyond the game: More than a decade after the series' debut, its talking animals with shapely human bodies veer dangerously close to the bizarro sexual fetish of furry fandom.
Lastly, you can check out his opinions on non-game media on Things I Like, his legacy blog but one I wish he'd update more often. His most recent post is on his late discovery of the new Battlestar Gallactica series, where he "offer(s) up my sincere apologies to all my friends and loved ones whom I doubted."
I'll close with Gus' ten "Best of 2005" from the end of last year. Like Tom Sturgeon's annual 50 best comic book list, it an eclectic genre-crossing, platform assorting celebration of excellence, in this case excellence of the electronic interactive kind; the Art of Gameplay:
1. Resident Evil 4 (Gamecube)
2. Shadow of the Colossus (PlayStation 2)
3. Killer 7 (GameCube)
4. Guitar Hero (PlayStation 2)
5. Mario Kart DS (Nintendo DS)
6. Lumines (PSP)
7. Psychonauts (Xbox)
8. Hot Shots Golf Open Tee (PSP)
9. Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan (Nintendo DS)
10. Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (GameCube)
Try any of them; with Gus' choices, you won't go wrong.
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