The Aims of BioShock: Shoddy Shooting

For a New Classical critic the degree to which a game’s formal elements promote its primary function is a measure of its success. Such a critic views all games through the lens of the principles found in Classical game design whether a game is made under a Classical or Western design. When approaching a New Classical critique of BioShock, I ran into a number of issues. Because Western designed games prioritize game-story and the overall “experience” over its gameplay and mechanics, I had to consider if a New Classical critique misses the core of such games? On the other hand, I had to consider if I had enough experience to critique BioShock’s experience or story otherwise. With games borrowing from various other mediums (books, music, theater, movies), wouldn’t assessing a game’s overall experience require at least a working knowledge of these fields? For the purposes of this essay, I will begin with a New Classical critique of BioShock, and then move into a more free discussion of my BioShock experience in relation to other mediums (books & movies).

Hacking. Examining. Shooting. Listening. Photographing. BioShock equips the player with a variety of actions. Being classified as a shooter, shooting is indeed the primary function in BioShock. For BioShock, shooting includes anything from unleashing plasmids, launching ballistics caught with telekinesis, striking targets with a wrench, and shooting any guns. Between splicers, security bots, security turrets, Big Daddys, and the final battle with Ryan, battle is where the player finds the most meaningful encounters in the game. Comparing the range of functions by frequency of use and necessity (what’s necessary to complete the game) the hierarchy of functions is as follows:

1. Shooting
2. Examining
3. Hacking
4. Photographing
5. Listening/Playing recordings

Now that the primary and subsidiary functions have been identified, I’ll examine how BioShock’s formal elements promote or demote shooting. Open sources of water, puddles of oil, chunks of ice, short circuited devices, security cameras, and security turrets are all designed to promote the use of specific plasmids: “Turrets can be hacked when they are unaware of you, or when Shocked or Frozen.” By shocking the water with the Electrobolt plasmid, players can electrify multiple enemies at once. Short circuited devices can be shocked into action. Puddles of oil can be ignited by using the incinerate plasmid to create a flaming barriers. Likewise, ice can be melted. And security cameras and turrets can be frozen or shocked to temporarily disable them. In a Classically designed game, these functions would be used throughout the game their combinations, frequency, and arrangement gradually increasing in complexity by creating new strategies and objectives by layering their simple functions. However, after the first few hours into the game, these formal elements either became obsolete shortly after their introduction (igniting oil), were rarely encountered (melting ice), or became a dominant strategy used in the majority of encounters (shocking cameras and turrets).

The enemies in BioShock function as dynamically moving targets that fight back, run away, and even use healing stations to repair battle wounds. Though some enemies have more obvious strategies to dispense of them with like using telekinesis against a Nitro splicers, BioShock fails to create situations that promote the use of a specific guns/plasmids by failing to offer any kind of consequence or punishment for doing otherwise. Just about any weapon out of your walking arsenal can be used on any enemy at any time. In this way, many of the functions of the plasmids and weapons overlap demoting the potential variety of weaponry. BioShock seems to have attempted to create an open world where the players aren’t restricted to having to complete a challenge in a specific way. However, by failing to promote the use of specific weapons/plasmids, there is no incentive for the player to deviate from a strategies that use a limited selection of weapons from their arsenal. In other words, BioShock isn’t structured to curb or alter some of the dominant strategies found early in the game. For the majority of splicers, the dominant strategy is strafe and shoot. For turrets, bots, and cameras the strategy is to zap and hack.

The Big Daddy encounters initially serve to break up the monotonous application of the existing dominant strategies. The Bid Daddy’s non scripted free roaming AI allows for them to show up just about anywhere you can go. Fighting one is much tougher than fighting a splicer because they feature a boost in defensive and offensive abilities. A simple “strafe and shoot” strategy or a “zap and slap” (electrobolt then wrench) doesn’t cut it. To topple these foes, players have to utilize their more powerful weapons and ammunition. Strategies like laying mines down in the Big Daddy’s path or using the Target Dummy plasmid require the player assess their enemies as well as their environment. I wouldn’t be surprised if most players find the Bid Daddy battles the highlights of the game as they represent the deepest combat (shooting) in the game. Unfortunately, the significance of the various plasmids and guns is demoted somewhat because of the function of the Vita-Chambers. Because these chambers take away the penalty of death from battle, the base level of play needed to overcome the majority of encounters in the game consists of “wrench, die, repeat.” This strategy revolves around the conservation of ammo instead of the efficient use of time.

The level design in BioShock functions more toward creating the dystopic setting of Rapture than an environment where the mechanics of shooting can be fully realized. With the Big Daddy’s roaming the halls and splicers scavenging through the corridors of their broken world in nearly every nook and crevasse, a battle can take place practically anywhere. Because Rapture was designed as a city (a series of open rooms and halls), most of the battles exist in open environments. You won’t find many objects to hide behind for cover. And even when you do, the enemies aren’t designed to recognize that you’re in cover. The splicers, security bots, turrets, and Bid Daddys attack the player in, more or lest, a direct-straight-line approach. When these enemies appear to be flanking the player or using any other kinds of battle tactics, it is merely the uncoordinated result of being attacked at once from many different sides. Even the few battles that are staged (Coen’s attack, defending Tenenbaum’s research facility, the magma room in Hepheastus, etc.) also take place in environments that lack adequate cover, visual flow, and physical flow that communicate the dynamics of power struggle from the changing positions between the player and enemy that are commonly found in shooter games.

Because the combat strategy isn’t very deep, there is a limit to how much the sound design of BioShock can support it. In other words, the sound design can’t create a level of depth that exceed the depth and involved in shooting (or any other function). The splashing sound from stepping into water alerts players that they’re standing in a puddle or pool which can lead into an electrobolt attack strategy. The foot steps on the ground or ceiling can communicate enemy position when their position isn’t visible. However, the soundscape often falls apart in the heat of battle when the environment, yelling enemies, gun/plasmid sounds, gun turrets, and audio recording all melt into a horribly unbalanced chaotic experience, which in itself is often reflective uninspired gallimaufry of combat mechanics.

A New Classical critic considers BioShock’s story and narrative elements to be inconsequential because they don’t effect “shooting” in a meaningful way. The vast majority of what Ryan, Atlas, Fontaine, Tenenbaum, or any other citizen of Ratpure says provides little information that shapes how you combat targets in the game. Thus the primary function is unsupported by the story. For that matter, the subsidiary functions are largely unaffected by the story of BioShock, because there are no consequences for excessively examining, hacking, taking photos, listening to recordings, or watching the world unfold around you. There are no drawbacks to examining and taking anything you find. The player only has strength to gain from excessively taking pictures of enemies. To cushion the consequence of not having film to complete the few objectives that require the player to take pictures, the game finds ways to supply the player with film before it’s necessary. Even when Ryan discourages hacking public vending machines, the player knows he/she can continue hacking away at any machine they can get close too because that’s what they’ve been doing since the beginning of the game: “It has been brought to my attention that some citizens have discovered ways to…hack the vending machines…Parasites will be punished.” What is necessary for beating the game isn’t that you’re helping to complete Coen’s masterpiece, but that you follow the golden arrow to the next enemy, photo-op, or object you have to examine so you can progress to the end of the game.

After reading that last paragraph you might be just about ready to dismiss my entire essay altogether. Am I actually suggesting that BioShock’s story and setting don’t matter to the game? In some ways, yes. But writing in a New Classical mode, my assessment of BioShock is limited to what works for the game (the actual interactive experience bound by rules, challenges, and consequences). This is why it was necessary to define the primary and subsidiary functions of BioShock. However, I would be doing this essay a great disservice if I didn’t address BioShock’s story or narrative from view point somewhat removed from the New Classical mode. Many swear by the depth, mature subject matter, and complexity of BioShock‘s story. Personally, I’m much more skeptical about “high concept” stories. As a writer, I’ve come across more than my fair share of overly ambitious stories filled with “deep” and complex ideas that ultimately fail because of poor execution. I’ve learned that part of understanding how to write a good story is understanding the strengths and limitations of the writing medium. “Show don’t tell” was a popular meme throughout the various workshops I attended. “Show don’t tell” means instead of telling us that character X went to the store and spent 5 minutes picking out bananas, it’s better to “show” or describe this character at the store standing in front of the crate of bananas with her arms crossed, her eyes darting back and forth relentlessly between two signs: organic 2.99/lb and yellow 2.89/lb. A proper description placed in scene (time and space) works wonders for the reader’s ability to visualize and absorb the story more naturally. But the gaming medium is inherently different, which brings up interesting issues.

Unlike passive mediums like books, music, and movies, videogames are interactive. “Show don’t tell” would more appropriately be replaced with “play don’t show” or even “play don’t tell.” This is why cut scenes are generally frowned upon. Back in the generation of Sony’s Playstation, cinematic cut-scenes where often spliced into games, particularly RPGs like Final Fantasy VII. These scene not only were graphical leaps beyond the blocky, jagged, polygonal models that the actual game used, but they often displayed daring feats of action packed heroics that the gameplay couldn’t match either. Now, our current generation of systems are powerful enough to push such graphics, and many of our leading developers are smart enough to make the most spectacular feats possible through simple and intuitive mechanics. Because of these two advancements in game design, cut scenes are becoming more and more obsolete. Ken Levine, creative director of BioShock, said himself that cut scenes were the “coward’s way out.” The New Classical critic believes the same tenets. For such a critic, it is better that the story elements in the game support the gameplay than merely coloring it, but it is best that the story is what the player plays. Of course, by play I mean meaningful interactions. Having the freedom to move your characters eyes or even walk around during “story parts” isn’t very meaningful (unless the game‘s primary function is looking/walking of course). For interaction rooted in subsidiary functions, the range of player control can easily fail to be meaningful and therefore detract from the effectiveness of the story telling. Furthermore, if there is no reaction or interaction between the player and elements or fictional computer controlled characters in the scene, then these story scenes are functionally passive. This is why a New Classical critic seeks to delineate exactly what ways a game’s story supports its primary function. Because the primary function is the driving mechanic of a game, it most likely will achieve meaningful interactions because of the consequences already built into the game. Bridging story and function in this way yields the highest chance of creating consequential and interactive story in a videogame.

So if BioShock story doesn’t support its game Classically, then how else can we consider it? I believe it is helpful to consider BioShock’s story in two parts: premise and narrative. The premise includes all the details and facts about Rapture that occur chronologically before the beginning of the game. The narrative includes all the new events and actions that the player prompts from progressing through the game. Considering these two parts of BioShock’s story, I’ll first consider BioShock’s story as if it were a book.

As a book, BioShock’s story falls for a few fiction writing “don’ts.” BioShock sets the story (premise) in the city of Rapture and describes this city through a series of audio recordings. When the player enters the game, their experience composes the narrative as they actively progress through the setting and events in the game. As for the recordings, they fail to show rapture. Rather, the majority of the recordings of the various characters literally tell the player what happened. BioShock is a game that excessively switches back and forth between what has happened in the past and what is going on in the present. This incessant switching is analogous to frequently using flash backs in fiction writing. Doing this not only weakens the readers sense of time and place within a story, but it also weakens the ability draw strong connections through scene, space, and time. In other words, it’s hard to achieve sound, and compelling story telling when the past (the context) is ostensibly given to you right before you need to know it. Examples include Suchong’s recording about the telekinesis plasmid; McDonagh’s recording about seeing ghosts; LangFord’s recording about how the thieves stole nearly everything from the office. Besides the examples of recording closely preceding their context within the narrative, the other recordings usually contain general information about Rapture that the player is responsible for filing away somewhere. When the story of the game punctuates the alternative experiences (the narrative), the player is left to organize things for themselves. During the course of the game, the player has to keep track of the narrative of their play experience, the bits of story that give immediate context to the next objectives, and the bigger picture of how Rapture fell. Managing these three stories would be hard enough in a book that‘s read linearly. But opens up the progression of listening to these recordings. The player must find the abandoned ACCU VOX personal recorders on their own. This feature practically destroys the chance of the player following an order to listening to these recordings if one existed.

I believe the main reason for shuffling these “flash back memory recordings” into the game was because BioShock exists between two mediums (at least for the purposes of this particular analysis). BioShock is a game that essentially sets characters in the middle of the climax of Rapture. By destroying Ryan and then Fontaine, the player is the prime participant in the great and violent coups of Rapture. Unfortunately, the entry point in the game had to be at such a high action point. Being place in a time where Rapture is rampant with splicers, Big Daddy’s, security bots, turrets, and other such dangers makes the game more interesting to play especially in the context of the shooter genre. However, starting the narrative where it does presents a problem. The players have to somehow understand the exposition, which traditionally contains more information and material than the climax. This simple flip-flop of structure creates a strain on the story telling in BioShock that the developers had to find a way around. Setting the game before Rapture went crazy can’t be played like a shooter. Guns weren’t even allowed during those times. Such a decision would have changed the entire genre. With the limitations set by the video game medium and the book medium, BioShock falls awkwardly in between.

Considering the story as a movie, BioShock also falls into awkward space for the same reasons that it failed as a book. The exposition had to be made up after the start of the game, and the intercalary recordings failed to show visually the expository events. Indeed the game contain rich settings powered by an acute artistic style. However, what makes the setting most interesting is that human hands created it. The drive, inspiration, purpose, and reason behind Raptures conception stems from the dastardly Ryan. Seeing the world makes us wonder what kind of man Ryan really is, and what kind of people could/would live in such a place. Yet, the scenes involved the sane human characters are all gimped or truncated in some manner. Tenenbaum speaks to the player from a balcony in their first encounter. Toward the end of the game, Tenebaum could be seen smoking peacefully behind tinted glass. Besides these brief moments, Tenebaum (like most of the characters) hid behind their voices via the recordings scattered throughout Rapture. The encounter with Langford was also behind a veil. When attempting to save Atlas’ family, Atlas could only be seen from far away. And when Fontaine went mad throwing around large heavy objects with his new found plasmid strength, he was little more than a darkened silhouette. The encounter with Ryan before his death, the two dancing splicers, and smaller moments from the events in Fort Frolic are better examples of film-like scenes. However, these scenes don’t balance out the amalgam of insufficient story telling elements.

In the end, BioShock isn’t much of a shooter, and it doesn’t have much of a story. Years of sweat, radical ideas, and good intentions fell apart in their execution much like Rapture did. Even if BioShock’s story can’t be considered as a book, movie, or a game in the terms that New Classical critics adhere to, it is useful to analyze BioShock from these angles. Ultimately, creating a mood and throwing in a bunch of ideas into a work without consideration of how they come together or how they’re executed is taking the easy way out rather than crafting a narrative that takes advantage of a particular medium. I’m not convinced that the execution (story) of BioShock is as good as anyone says. BioShock would have probably made a better book than a game.

Lefty Loosy Righty Tighty

New Classical criticism focuses on identifying a game's primary function/action that sums up all of the player's actions, functions, and abilities into a single expression. This expression can be thought of as the interpretation of the game or what the gamer is actually doing when he/she plays. Sometimes the primary function can be encapsulated in a single word. For example, the primary function of the Super Mario platforming series is "jump". After the primary function is identified, the New Classical critic then looks at a game's formal elements to analyze how they promote the primary function. The formal elements include Sound, Music, Art style, Story, Graphics, level design, enemies, etc. Because the New Classical critic privileges interactivity over passivity (especially when focused into a limited number of rules and actions), such a critic is only concerned with how these elements shape the gameplay experience, and assumes that any formal element in a game is only meaningful when it supports the primary function and exists in a lower state of priority to that function. In other words, elements like story can't be more stressed and more important to a game than the gameplay. Even if a game is designed according to the conventions and assumptions of Western game design, it can still be critiqued in the Classical mode.

Lefty Loosy Righty Tighty: An analysis on how Drill Dozer's formal elements and structures harmonize around the primary fuction of Drilling.

Drill Dozer, a game developed by GameFreak and published by Nintendo, features a primary function of "drilling" as made obvious by the title. Players are set in a world where just about everything responds to drilling. Enemies, garage door openers, giant engines, crates, walls, ceilings, desks, and even toilets are all manipulated or destroyed by the mighty drill that Jill wields. Besides basic walking and jumping mechanics, you drill to move, attack, defend, burrow, and clutch onto suspended surfaces. Beyond these functions, Jill can also duck and dash for shot distances left or right. These functions alone are more than enough to create a deeply interactive game world. The following is a list of Drill Dozer's player functions arranged in a hierarchy of importance based on frequency and necessity of use.

1. drill
2. jump
3. duck/dash
4. walk
5. search/examine
   

The main game is broken down into 6 areas each featuring sub missions depending on their size. Structurally, the game achieves variation from mission to mission by adding new enemies and level elements that force players to exercise different facets of their 5 core mechanics (see above). This approach is the alternative to a progression of "counterpoint" which takes a single (or limited) mechanic/function and designs a series of levels and challenges from a limited set of pieces or tools to express the function. A good example of a game with counterpoint level design is Super Mario Bros. for the NES. On the other hand, in Drill Dozer, by adding new pieces per level, the player is constantly experiencing something new even when using the same mechanic of one of the core functions. Additionally, in true Nintendo fashion in regards to enemy AI and difficulty, the enemies in Drill Dozer are "dumb" meaning their simple attacks and predictable movement patterns make them easy to dispense of (at least individually). Also, Drill Dozer's level elements and challenges aren't difficult to overcome (nor does the game severely punish players for making a few mistakes). However, these simple elements add up to impressive results when layered together. Whether you're drilling, tunneling, swimming, or flying, the level design is clearly focused on drilling.

Structurally, the game uses repeated acquisition of the 3 gears to propel the players through each level. With each gear comes increased power, speed, and drill time with the third gear having an infinite drill time. With increased power the player can access new areas by destroying the strongest barriers as well as destroying targets and enemies more quickly. With increased speed the player can move more quickly through and between obstacles. And with increased drill time players can hold on to drill sockets longer.

To accentuate this "gear-shift" gameplay structure, the music and sound design in Drill Dozer uses tempo and multiple sound pallets to create a sound scape that supports progressive drive through the level. Because the background music is out of sync with the rhythm of the steps in Jill's walking animation, an underlying tension is created that makes the player feel slightly off; like they're always late or just out of reach from some goal. These rhythms are punctuated the heavy mechanical sound of landing from jumps and the acute kick of a shifting gears. Furthermore, as Jill shifts into higher gears drilling harder, the metal sounding pitch increases of the drill. This crescendo creates a drive and a feeling of pushing forward that is synced up with progress through a level as measured by how many gears they've found. When the player grabs the final (3rd) gear, the music shifts into an upbeat higher pitched song that reflects Jill's newly acquired abilities (speed, power, and time). This light weight, upbeat tune discards the slower, heavy sounds telling the player "you're almost there! now drill your way into the finish!" In this way the sound scape supports the primary function of Drill Dozer.

The majority of the visual design in Drill Dozer follows the structural principles of "form fits function." This principle simply means, any visual element that serves a function must reflect that function by adhering to either a universal, or easily learned visual code. For Mario, everyone knows that jumping on spikes is painful whether the spike is on a goomba's head, inside the mouth of a piranha flower, or descending from a sliding ceiling. For Drill Dozer, objects that must be drilled with the bit spinning left (loosy) are color coded blue. And objects that must be spun right (tighty) are coded red. These codings however, provide an easily discernible visual clue. Due to the small size of the GBA screen, the threading of the drill shafts can only be seen in the large tunnels. For the small bombs and missiles however, this color code is necessary. It's universal knowledge that screws hold things together. Likewise, the oversized screws (form) in Drill Dozer serve the same function. In order to dismantle any large robot with a protruding screw, removing the screw is key. Other forms include cracked walls (reveals a weak spot), thicknesses of drill-able targets (the thicker the cable the more drill power needed), and the appearance of drill-able material (stone, wood, general metal, titanium). Because the entire game follows these rules, the player can break down and understand the level according to what's drill-able and how, at a glance. Empowering the player with intuitive, dependable, and universal design only makes their job of drilling easier. Instead of tediously testing each square surface for hidden drill-able spots in the entire game, the player use his/her eyes to do the checking and move on quickly, and smoothly otherwise.

To conclude, Drill Dozer is a very Classically designed game. It's no wonder when you consider that GameFreak is a company that sits very close to Nintendo (the company responsible for pioneering Classical Game design in the first place). When playing games like Drill Dozer, the stress of beating the game is taken off the player leaving them free to just have fun in a world design completely around doing one thing a hundred different ways. From the sound design, to the level design, Drill Dozer is all about drilling. Even the fiction in Drill Dozer supports this primary function. As the leader of a band of "good hearted" thieves, drilling into museums, stadiums, and out from police custody is all in a days work.

SMG - Edge Re-review

Structures are probably the most recognizable feature of videogames. Because structures create the foundation for the game rules and player to learn these rules, analyzing structure develops a clearer insight into how a game works at its core. We're all familiar with the structures of genre. Any gamer can instantly recognize a first person shooter like Halo from a puzzle game like Tetris. Each gaming genre has a certain look to it that is the result of the gameplay structures. Like with any genre, the degree to which the conventions are followed or deviated from varies greatly from game to game. Recognizing a game's structure is an acute way of talking about how a game works in or outside of its genre.

Aside from a structuralist approach to critical analysis, A New Classical approach looks at how the game's various elements (moves, attacks, level elements, sound, visual effects, etc) work together or harmonize to support the core of the game. The core of the game is more than the sum of its basic mechanics. The core can usually be described in a simple phrase of an action or feeling that encapsulates the overall impact of a game. In a New Classical critical mode, we assume that every element in a game adds up to some effect or purpose. Whether or not the end result is fun, boring, broken, or not quite what the developers intended doesn't matter to a New Classical critic. How a game comes together in the end is a measure of its unity and consistency.

The following review of Super Mario Galaxy by EDGE is a quality review that not only makes my top 3 SMG reviews (the other two I've re-reviewed previously), but it also reflects a Structuralist and a New Classical critical approach.

Edge Super Mario Galaxy Review

Super Mario Galaxy is impossible. Don’t get the wrong idea – it’s not a particularly difficult game, although it does have its moments. What we mean is, it obeys no rules, contradicts everything you know, and has no right to exist.

Just like in Margaret Robertson's review, the intro paragraph is sarcastic, silly, and totally appropriate matching its style with Super Mario Galaxy. The last line in this quoted section already suggests Galaxy is a game that deviates from the conventions of its genre. "It obeys no rules" doesn't mean the game has no order, but that the established rules from previous games in the game genre don't apply thus contradicting "everything you know." By thinking about rules and conventions, we're already working toward thinking in a structuralist mode.

Mario Galaxy turns 3D into 2D, and 2D into 3D. It takes complex spatial ideas and makes them simple and instinctive; it takes the most basic, most familiar acts in gaming and makes them strange, finger-twisting and fresh.

Edge starts to break down Galaxy's apparently unconventional genre. This section hints at the importance of space in a platformer 2D or 3D. In Galaxy's case, what was once complex is now "simple and instinctive." Just like in Parish's review of Galaxy, Edge comments on the blurred distinction between 2D and 3D. Each sentence here deserves at least a page of supporting material, but for the purposes of this review, Edge had to move on.

It lets you reach into the screen, collecting and shooting the star bits that litter the universe, grabbing on to tractor beams, steering bubbles through mazes, twanging Mario and Toad out of catapults. It lets you play the game in two ways and two places at once, and breaks a hitherto unseen barrier between the player and the action. That you can both be Mario and help him is another of Galaxy’s initially strange dislocations, but it comes to feel so comfortable that losing this godlike power is like losing an arm.

Also, as Parish mentioned, Edge writes about the how collecting starbits while simultaneously controlling Mario merges two dynamics of spacial interaction. This aspect of Galaxy's controls and interaction structurally divides and defines space (a key component to platform games) in ways never dreamed of before. "Reach into the screen," "breaks a hitherto unseen barrier," and "play the game in two ways and two places at once" are phrases that speak to the amazing unifying structure of Galaxy and of its ground breaking design.

Structurally, it’s a little more conventional – 120 stars, split into six areas comprising several galaxies each, with the ‘final’ boss coming halfway through, is an entirely familiar arrangement.

Edge even uses the word "structurally" here. In this case, Edge comments on the arrangement of the hub world by describing a formula that the previous two 3D Mario platformers (Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine) have established. This is an example of how Galaxy is structured within genre conventions.

Super Mario Galaxy is a platform game, pure and simple. More so than Mario 64 is; more so than any truly 3D videogame ever made. For all its countless diversions and bizarre ideas, it keeps coming back to running, bouncing, scaling, exploring, teetering on the brink, taking your heart in your mouth and jumping off the edge of the world. For others, space is the final frontier, the furthest you can go; for Mario, it’s just like coming home.

Here, Edge claims that Super Mario Galaxy is a platform game that reins over all over other platform games and "3D games ever made." More importantly, Edge expresses that all the "countless" variety in the game all adds up to solid platforming: "It keeps coming back to running, bouncing, scaling, exploring, teetering on the brink, taking your hear in your mouth and jumping off the edge of the world." In other words, there's nothing in the game that detracts from the simple task at hand; like the original Super Mario Bros. on the NES, it's all about that jump. Even in space and the most 3D environment ever, Mario is still harmonized around that famous jump. This New Classical idea not only displays the unity in Galaxy, but in all of Mario's platform games throughout his entire series. The feeling of unity is a big part of what makes Mario games feel like Mario games.