Games of the Abstract: Rez (2001)

Developer: United Game Artists

Publisher: Sega

One Player

Originally for: Sega Dreamcast

 

Finally reaching a game I wanted to play for a good few decades, Rez does live up as a one-off experience. It feels like a labour of love for developer United Game Artists, under the watch of producer Tetsuya Mizuguchi. Starting off as a member of Sega AM3 working on the likes of Sega Rally Championship (1994), he would later focus his career on games which matched Rez's fascination with music and visuals to create interactive examples of synaesthesia, melding together both the images and the sounds of the games like Tetris Effect (2018). Tellingly, among his many projects included founding an actual band, Genki Rockets, which had a prototypical virtual idol in Lumi as their lead female singer, which is a fascinating transition as someone producing great and fun racing games for Sega's arcade arm, like Manx TT Superbike (1995), which were well made and built with love. Clearly, however, he found a love in the likes of electronica and esoteric New Age influenced ideas that influence the games he would make with his collaborators from United Game Artists to future companies of his like Enhance, Inc.. The irony is that it was during his research to produce Sega Rally Championship 2 (1998) where the seed of Rez comes from, as Mizuguchi took time off in that time to go to Zurich, Switzerland for Street Parade, a huge musical event for electronic dance music where he saw firsthand the transcendental qualities of music that influenced the ideas behind Rez itself¹.

Thankfully, the beginning of this new career, made alongside the original Space Channel 5 (1999), lasted both in quality even if played in its non-high definition remaster, and in terms of being a game that was available to play without old hardware. It became the one cult hit which did not mean scarcity. Certainly, it has had its fair share of forms, as originally this visual-audio experience as an on-rail shooter was possible through Sega's habit of producing magnificently unconventional materials. Sadly, those were not the games to necessarily sell whole consoles, as Rez was originally designed for their last hardware, the Dreamcast, before they left to be a multi-platform software publisher, the end of a dynasty. Released in 2001, it was being released at the same time on the Sony Playstation 2, with them having decided to end the Dreamcast early that year.

The later versions included a new stage taking advantage of virtual reality headsets becoming more readily available, but focusing on that original Dreamcast/Playstation 2 version, the melding on a simplistic gameplay mechanic with audio-visual ambition was perfect from the get-go. Rez being created around the on-rail shooter template was a great design decision to start with, tellingly taking advantage of the fact one of Rez's key members is lead graphic designer Katsumi Yokota, who was an integral part of the aesthetic and tone of Panzer Dragoon², a cult Sega franchise of on-rail shooters which began on the Sega Saturn. On-rail shooters, restricting you to a path but with the difference to light gun games of allowing a form of movement, are a genre I find myself growing in love for and appropriate for the tone set out here. They, like other arcade genres, allow the truly artistic without the issue of full freedom potentially undercutting the design experience for the player.

The genre allows for idiosyncratic art styles, even in mind to the full motion video games which may be dismissed as having limited gameplay in the modern day but, like Novastorm (1993), still fascinate me in their artistic styles in a simple template. Panzer Dragoon itself, with its unique futuristic world encompassing fantasy and even using the language created for the franchise to build its lore, is an apt comparison with those who transferred their skills to this later Sega production. Rez has its own idiosyncratic touch in how, in a tale of a hacker who is going through corrupted firewalls to reawaken and fix an artificial intelligence named Eden, you are not following the tradition of a cursor that fires bullets, but plants bombs instead. This presents an interesting challenge as you can lose levels as regular on-rail shooters, if your form of a health bar is lowered by being hit enough, but you are more encouraged (with six at a time maximum) to set the bombs on enemies in a rhythm, either in a string or pressing the button over and over to cover everyone, pressing the fire button to set the planted bombs off in a cascade of pixelated implosions. The game has enemies who will fire at you, but until the bosses who can (mostly) attack back credibly, most of the enemies are entirely to get the hundred percent clear and points. Important as well, alongside those pickups which increase your health bar or the limited specials, allowing you to cover everything onscreen with bombs beyond your limit, are the cubes you need to spot. You grab them using the bombs, and bomb them repeatedly as a metaphor for hacking codes, requiring hundred percent per level of all of them unlocked to access the final stage.

Visually the game looks gorgeous between the four initial levels and its final fifth one, where you have a wire frame computer aesthetic which was influenced by Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, who painted abstract pieces which inspired Mizuguchi in terms of his own form of synthesisia². Fighting unnatural organisms, apt for the computer interface setting but also at times evoking the intergalactic aquatic aesthetic unique to Taito's Darius scrolling shooter franchise at point, this also separates the levels with clear distinctions so they all stand out, be it taking visual cues for one from ancient Egypt to Buddhist temples for another. Even your player character, as you have increased health, evolves with literal emphasis of this. Lose health, and you are a mere fragile orb, whilst as you grow from wireframe man to wholly drawn, you reach floating in a sphere in the lotus position, to a full bright orb of enlightenment, with the final level in the boss battle with Eden starting you off in a stage higher initially, that of a 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) star baby.

The bosses are worth their own praise, representations of the computer system's attempting to crack down on the player. Some do provide challenge, as it becomes a task of figuring which visual pieces of the spectacle are damaging you, and they add the x-factor to the presentation. One, which can easily be defeated, is yet one of the best bosses I have encountered in a video game, Level 4's Running Man who is a spectacle of beauty, chasing this shifting form that turns into a literal giant running man. By its unlockable last level, you go through Rez's one attempt at profoundness in an overt way; with very little exposition or context for the game for the most part, it may be a very heavy handed and earnest run through the theory of evolution and technological singularity, but you will not complain when it is part of a cavalcade of increasingly digital natural landscapes with trees combined with spaceships. The last boss, a female super computer, is a challenging multi-section epic where she shows confusion and self-awareness at what is happening, asking why you are trying to stop her and of her own existence. In another context, it would be incredibly oversimplified but in context of an arcade game at heart, with this vibrant artistry, it is instead a wonderful conclusion by the time she wishes to be freed from her state for a true climatic conclusion.

To talk about Rez also means discussing the music, which is all incredible. Collaborating with both Japanese and Western musicians, from Ken Ishii and Adam Freeland, my first encounters with Rez was a video demo on an Official Playstation 2 magazine demo disc, which gave you a snippet of its score especially for the first level's boss, of a spinning form whose spherical shield can be blown off in pieces to hack the entity within. This is arguably a musical on-rail shooter at heart with emphasis on being a musical game too, where each bomb planted and set off creates a percussion beat. The music is the final touch which made Rez a great game, with an honest-to-God sense of this as video games as art without necessarily needing to have a story and tackle profound themes through a story to get to this. It does have Level 5, which emphasises themes of human consciousness, evolution and spirituality, like a science fiction New Age piece, but for the most part, this is art as pure synaesthesia, something which has sadly been dismissed in arcade games despite the richness to the art form. From scrolling shooters, the silliest of Parodius to the disealpunk aesthetic of Battle Garegga (1996), to even fighting games with their character designs to music, there is a linking of aesthetic, gameplay and music which can be captivating when embraced fully, and in this case, with the critical acclaim Rez got, you see a wonderful example of this.

Rez thankfully lasted in public consciousness. Infamously there was the Trance Vibrator, which emphasised the sense of connectivity with the artistry, but was a vibrating attachment to the human body which can lead to jokes about it generating tingling sensations in strategically placed areas...something even Tetsuya Mizuguchi himself admitted in later interviews could be a misinterpreted use, when it was a "serious joke" reminiscent meant to let the gamers feel the vibrations of the music³. Child of Eden (2011), designed for the Xbox Kinect and PlayStation 3 Move, involving Genki Rockets, is less innuendo ladened, and is a melding of full motion controls with beautiful live action footage mixed with the high definition polygons. (It is though a game I remember was an exhausting experience in trying to do the same bomb planting mechanics with one's arms and body, but that is an entirely different review). The return of Rez in high definition was in 2008, but Tetsuya Mizuguchi clearly wanted to take advantage of the growth of virtual reality being more widely available, which I can respect, leading to 2015's Rez Infinite and its new "Area X" level taking advantage of the technology. The original game, even in its standard definition form, is transcendental in itself, and I have nothing but love and admiration for a game I finally reached as a gamer.

 

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1) Rez retrospective: A look back at Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s early days, written by Polygon staff, and published for Polygon on November 22nd 2016.

2) Tetsuya Mizuguchi: Reexamining Rez and Space Channel 5, written by James Mielke, and originally published by 1UP.com on July 26th 2006. Archived from the original on the web archive on July 11th 2012.

3) Still Shinin': Tetsuya Mizuguchi on creativity, music - and bringing emotion to gaming, feature by Rob Fahey, and published for the Gamesindustry.biz on July 26th 2006.