Clank Hole

I just finished Ratchet and Clank for PS4, and now there’s a hole inside of me. You know the one. When a book, or movie, or binged TV series ends, and you just don’t know what to do with yourself. Portlandia covered this pretty well:

Luckily for me, Ratchet and Clank’s challenge mode is essentially new game plus, adding weaponry and upping the ante on the cash and prizes gained for searching every nook and cranny of the map for sweet sweet treasure. In this case, bolts and rareitanium, the game’s currency for weapons and their upgrades respectively. So I have an excuse to stay in Ratchet and Clank’s wonderfully realized galaxy a little longer, and save that galaxy on hard mode. The mode of heroes.

Ned: Hero

The prevailing description of Ratchet and Clank has been that it’s like playing a Pixar movie, and that couldn’t be more true. Minus that ubiquitous Pixar moment that crushes your feels into a fine powder, which I can only imagine is then collected by elves so it can be snorted by the Pixar staff to fuel production of their next emotional kick to the nuts. Just gettin fucked up on feels powder... I need more coffee.

Tony: Interim Pixar CFO

But maybe they did plan such a nut-kick... The game ends. That hole I mentioned was very real before I knew there were plenty of legit reasons to play Challenge Mode, and even though that’s given me a 20 hour stay of execution, this game will end. Then what?

Oh SHIIIIIIT!

Thank. Fuck. It would figure that the last game I play on a traditional screen before getting my VR headset is a throwback to everything that has made these games so great. It’s a greatest hits album; a museum of every technique that evolved with the medium since an oscilloscope was turned into a rudimentary tennis game. That Ratchet and Clank is also a reboot of arguably the last great mascot game of my youth isn’t to be understated, as it recalls all the characters that have colored my video game life: Mario, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot, Ratchet and Clank, Gex... Ok, maybe not that last one. If only because he was clearly too cool to hang out with the rest of the Mascot Gaming Crew. 

Gex: Hideja girlfriend, hideja mom.

So while I replay Ratchet and Clank to get one last look at everything before I turn it off, I’m also looking back over an entire lifetime of video games that began when I was 2 and my mother dropped a quarter into Pole Position to keep her absurdly hyperactive child distracted while she checked out at the local Kroger. I could barely reach the steering wheel, but a permanent electrical connection was established in my brain. For good or ill, the damage was done.

I say all of this because 2D gaming on a monitor may one day go the way of the Tiger Handheld. If it does, it won’t be any time soon, or completely, but in either case VR will irrevocably change video games. You can see it when you put on a VR headset, hear it when you listen to VR devs talk about crafting experiences for the medium. The rules, the lessons learned, the core tenants. The past thirty years no longer apply. New rules are being established, priorities are being shifted. 

Once VR is more affordable (I say “more,” because my Vive cost about what my cell phone was worth when it was new) and in the hands of the masses, who’s to say that everything that draws us to video games in the first place won’t simply be better realized with VR? That it’s just a better tool for accomplishing the same set of goals?

That gaping Clank Hole (wait... fuck it, stream of consciousness) left by completion of Ratchet and Clank, or that Portlandia screaming fit I linked you to, or the depression that comes with “The End” is a result of (at least in my case) being forced to leave a world you’d been occupying with your imagination and the help of a few choice tools; Language, pictures, controller, whatever.

As I said, maybe VR will be better at delivering that sense of presence. It’s certainly got a technical advantage. Either way, as long as I can meet my friends inside of my sci-fi goggles, I’m excited to see what happens.

Friends: Because real people are assholes.