.hack Part 1: infection

Pros • Gives hope for videogames to develop (in our gaming lifetime) into a true art form • Very intriguing game concept and story • Interesting character and enemy design • Effective, active 3D battles • Great mix of freedom to explore and story elements to keep you interested • Passable voice acting • Underlying the game, the story of .hack broaches interesting and relevant social themes and issues	Cons • No real use for the money you collect in the online world • Main characters and dialogue are skewed a little younger than those who have the capacity to appreciate the subtleties and artistic qualities of the project • Character models only reflect the weapon they are carrying, not their armor • You can't choose your character type • Occasional hiccups in translation • Relationships with other players poorly explored • No matter how resolving the final battle was, a "to be continued" is never a completely satisfactory ending • Short for an RPG (well, all four volumes will probably be long, but breaking it up into four parts will be difficult for most gamers to accept)
Bottom Line A very intriguing experiment in game design and story telling, but a less intriguing experiment in episodic publishing. .hack infection: Volume 1 is a rare, high-concept videogame. Unheralded videogame publisher though they may be, Bandai seems to have taken a rare step towards recognizing the medium of the videogame as a true art form; as a medium which can, besides entertain, reach into the digital zeitgeist, conjure out, and communicate true meditation on the human condition, most especially, meditation on the condition of the digital humanity we are rapidly becoming, and as gamers, represent the vanguard of. They did this by drawing upon the creative and artistic powers and talents of three men who had their hands in the development of anime film as art form. Men instrumental in films like Ghost in the Shell and Neon Genesis Evangelion, projects that demonstrated the artistic merit and potential of the medium of anime. And, it seems as though they will be successful to a similar degree with their work on videogames. I can only say "seems," though, because Bandai has also chosen to experiment with publishing the project in four volumes, and only .hack infection: Volume 1 is available to us. Volume 1 is good, and hints at much better and more interesting things to come, but, as any "to be continued" videogame, feels unsatisfactorily complete when the boss at the end of the game lies defeated, yet there is so much more to unravel.

Like the play within a play of Hamlet, .hack infection plays within itself. This is a videogame where you play yourself playing a videogame; an online massively multiplayer role-playing game. Within that game, the role-playing is very traditional: you battle enemies (in active, sword-swinging, 3D real-time), with or without the accompaniment of the virtual online friends you have made throughout the game, gain experience, increase in strength and power, discover weapons and armour to aid your quests; and, most importantly, investigate the strange goings-on in the real world of the game.

Your only interface with the real world of .hack infection, is the email you trade with your online friends, the bulletin board you visit, and the general news service you subscribe to. In that "real world," your friend has slipped into a coma while playing the online role-playing game with you, and there are hints and whispers of the same happening to other players. Add the news items to the list of evidence and the Faustian possibilities of this online game seem seriously sinister to anyone with the least conspiracy complex, and the sophistication of story-telling in this game is absolute poetry compared to the bumbling of the rest of the industry.

While, in concept, sophistication of story-telling, relevance and artistic style, .hack infection rises, cream to the top, of the videogame milk bottle; technically, it curdles and sinks, lumpy and pixilated back towards the bottom. Though stylistically irreproachable, .hack infection: Volume 1 does not meet current graphical standards on the PlayStation 2. The interaction with your virtual friends in the game is not particularly well implemented (Baldur's Gate, for example did a better job some years ago on the PC), English translation is not always excellent, and the lead character's online avatar (whom you do not get to choose) is not particularly sympathetic, and seems skewed to appeal to an audience younger than has the capacity to truly appreciate and meditate on the relevance of the higher aspirations of the project.

Further, there are some formidable barriers of arcane wisdom barring the appreciation of this game by the uninitiated. Anyone unfamiliar with bulletin boards, email, news servers, and massively multiplayer online role-playing games will find the concepts, and even the fundamental gameplay of .hack infection difficult, at best, to grasp.

Yet, no, strongly, Y-E-T, .hack infection is a project relevant, entertaining and interesting to any who have the means to access it (meaning a PlayStation 2 and basic familiarity with the concepts of mmorpgs, bb and news servers, and email), and particularly interesting to those who spend large portions of their real lives online. A truly brave, and hopeful germination of pertinence in the typically banal garden of videogames.

Everything though, is hedged by Bandai's decision to publish the complete .hack infection project in four volumes. Volume 1 hints at greatness to come, but can be easily completed through to the unsatisfactory "to be continued" in about 24 hours or so; one gaming sitting for those gamer enough to best appreciate it. I am of the opinion that this is enough gaming to warrant the cost of a game, but how does that compare to other publishers such as SquareSoft who release games easily twice that long? Would Final Fantasy games be such multi-million sellers if they were broken up into two volumes? Will gamers remember, well enough, the events of .hack infection: Volume 1 to care about or to even to fully appreciate Volumes 2, 3, and 4 as they become available? Will the force of the game's message be blunted by the length of its trajectory through the game development stratosphere? Will gamers buy games in episodes? What if Volume 1 doesn't sell well enough for Bandai to bother bringing the rest of the volumes to North America (just as Sega weighs the continuation of the Shenmue saga on the Xbox sales of Shenmue II)?

I fear that Bandai may be making too many experiments at once. Every elementary science student knows that without a control, you can't trust the results of your experiment. We will probably never be able to accurately determine how much the high-concept of .hack infection played in the game's success, or lack of it, and how much was/will be, the result of Bandai's decision to publish the game in four episodes.

Anyone though, with any hope for videogames to arrive as a true art form, would be missing a seminal title if they did not play .hack infection: Volume 1. I say, play it.

Info & Screenshots