There are few games as unique and downright strange as the original “Ecco the Dolphin”. It was really hard, it had a very eerie atmosphere and most of all, it had an insanely weird story. “Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future”, the fourth and final title in the Ecco series, manages to retain all of the difficulty and eeriness of the original series and makes a perfect transition from 2d to 3d.

The visuals are nothing short of awe inspiring, and like nothing else on the Dreamcast. The ocean world is rendered so beautifully, I found myself getting sidetracked from my current objective because it is just so much fun to swim around and look at things. It’s all in the details. Like the tiny barnacles on the back of an enormous humpback whale, or the little specks of sand that are stirred up when Ecco skims the ocean floor.

The story is all kinds of strange. It’s the 30th century, 500 years after dolphins revealed their sentience to humans and dolphins and Humans have decided to co-exist and explore space. At some point, a mysterious foe called “The Foe” decided to destroy Earth, and Ecco is one of the guardian dolphins that must protect the planet. The Foe goes back in time, and takes the Noble Traits of ambition, intelligence, compassion and humility from the dolphins. Each trait was bound to a glowing globe and scattered across the planet, and Ecco must find all of the globes in order to save the future. It was interesting to see how the future changes as each trait is restored.

For example, without any of the traits, the dolphins become mindless animals and humans eventually become extinct, but once the dolphins have Intelligence and Ambition (without any of the other traits) they become aggressive, driving the humans from the sea and conquering all other sea life. It isn’t until all of the Noble Traits are restored that the future can be restored and the Foe is Defeated.

Ecco the Dolphin’s gameplay made the perfect transition from 2d to 3d. A few moves, like a quick 180 degree turn, have been added to make it easier to get around, but altogether, Defender of the Future plays almost exactly like the Genesis versions of Ecco.

Another feature Defender of the future shares with its 2d counterparts is an unforgiving level of difficulty. The puzzles are so difficult I found myself taking wild guesses at the solution until I stumbled onto it, or often had to resort to a FAQ.

The combat is no easier. Most enemies can take some big chunks out of your health bar, and there are a lot of hazards in the environment. On top of all this, Ecco needs to come to the surface for air every 60 seconds or so, adding another level of complexity to the puzzles.

If you liked the original Ecco games, I highly suggest dusting off the ‘ol Dreamcast and giving Defender of the Future a try.

"Burn it all down, Colin..." "Yes, Colin. Make them all pay!"

I’ve been playing adventure games since I was pretty young, and I believe they’ve wired my brain to deal with obstacles in my everyday life in a unique and efficient way. Traditionally, this “adventure game logic” has helped me to solve simple tasks, but recently I’ve been confronted with a new adventure game that is making me wonder what other parts of my life this type of problem solving can be applied to.

Although it now exists pretty much only as an aspect of various other types of games, adventure games were once one of the most popular video game genres going. In them, the player followed along with the story and solved various puzzles in order to advance the sequence of events. So, to use the most overused and basic example possible, if the player needed to get something or someone that was locked behind a door, they’d have to find a key to open it.

Adventure games operated under this principle almost exclusively; King’s Quest, Day of the Tentacle, Myst and even Doug TenNapel’s surreal The Neverhood all held fast to this basic formula. You were introduced to the characters, then you’d find objects and use them to advance the story. You would often use the objects you found to overcome an obstacle that was holding the main character back from the next step in their journey. Finding a battery to use for your phone to call for a ride because your car broke down or finding a list of ingredients to make a magic potion that would let you grow wings and fly home. That sort of thing.

As time went on I started to notice myself utilizing this same type of logic in my everyday life, kind of like how Tetris players see tetriminos everywhere they go. After a problem would present itself I would start to scroll through a mental Rolodex of all of the immediately available objects (known to adventure gamers as their “inventory”). “Okay… can’t shave at the sink because my girlfriend keeps too much stuff around it and I don’t want to get it covered in hair… Where would it be okay for me to get stubble everywhere?… The shower!… But there’s no mirror in there… I can grab the hand mirror out of the bedroom and hang it from the shower head!” or “We had to put the couch on it’s back to get it through the front door, but it’s too heavy to lift and we don’t want to tear the back up dragging it across the bottom of the door frame… we can fold up the tarp that Mark lent us last week and put it under the couch, and then just drag the couch out by the corners of the tarp!” A problem solved using a series of items, letting the events of the day advance.

And so it went for a long while. Then, I was given a copy of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. I remembered seeing it mentioned on the Internet as a bizarre adventure game. Apollo Justice (actually the fourth in the “Ace Attorney” series of games) is not what you would conventionally think of as a video game, but is actually what’s called a “visual novel”. Most of the time you’re not “playing” in any sense of the word, but reading conversations between the judge, defense and prosecution and cross-examining witnesses with elaborate dialogue trees. The game is Japanese both in origin and tone; the courtroom is a dramatic, flamboyant place where particularly intense revelations are met with shielded eyes and wind-blown hair. It has a complete disregard for the way the legal system actually works.

Everyone, including people on the stand, yell “Objection!” whenever they feel like talking. But what’s really interesting about the Ace Attorney series is it’s variation on the classic adventure game formula. In order to advance in the story, you don’t need to solve an incidental puzzle. The story IS the puzzle to be solved, and your ability to process and interpret all of the information contained in it determines your ability to succeed. For example, in order to get stubborn witnesses to tell you more of the story, you have to find the evidence (or rather, the object in your inventory) that you know will force that particular character’s hand. In this way, the Ace Attorney series integrates it’s puzzles directly into the story of the game. Traditional adventure games’ puzzles are action based. Ace Attorney’s are story based.

I only just recently found out about Ace Attorney, so it’s effects on my decision making process have yet to be determined. Honestly, I didn’t really think it could be applicable. When would I encounter a dramatic mystery that I could use evidence and testimony to solve? Am I going to track down the people who smashed my car window, or find the parent of the baby that was left on my doorstep? I didn’t see it happening. But then, a few days ago, my girlfriend got sick. “What could have made me so sick?” she groaned. And my mind started turning in that familiar way: “What time did you start feeling this way? What did you have for dinner? Have you eaten that before? Did you have wine? How many glasses? Do you usually have that many?…”