reset (****)
a review of reset
a videogame by robin burkinshaw
music by timothy lamb
text by adam burch
score: 
(out of four)
One the biggest problems with our medium is the fact that, by and large, the people making these fucking things are engineers. This is not to say that I have any dislike for engineering. Quite the contrary! I am a proud alumni of FIRST robotics*. Some of the proudest non-gaming moments of my life were only possible with the dedication of my robotics mentors**. Your modern life*** has been made possible off of the backs of countless thankless engineers. They built the computer you are reading this on, the power lines that power the computer you are reading this on, the generator that charges the power lines, et-cetera, et-cetera. We owe our medium to an engineer’s boredom; Tennis for Two was first played on an oscilloscope. And let us not forget that our Orson Welles is an Electrical Engineer by training. Each of us owes the fine craft of engineering more than we could possibly imagine.I repay these men and women by saluting their efforts, and making pains to spread the nobility of their profession to all those I meet. But it is this same appreciation for engineering that leads me to the unavoidable conclusion that it is (part) of The Problem with Videogames. One thing you must understand is that engineering is not so much a field as it is a mindset. Just as science is not about scientists but rather the scientific process, so is engineering not about engineers as much as it is about the process one must go through to engineer an object. It is about the proper mode of thought; about how to see not only what you have, but what you want. It is about trying, failing, and trying again. Seeing the patterns, the interaction of rules. And then taking those plans, and slowly, surely, painstakingly, making them reality. Engineering is all about the long con; the setup.
One of the key techniques you learn in engineering is the idea of a “General Solution.” This rule of thumb encourages you to find a way to form your current problem (say, building a house on a mountain) into one that you, or someone else, has already solved (is there some way to make the terrain flatter?). This is a technique that has its roots back in mathematics, where rephrasing questions to make them easier has a long and storied history****.
This is an extremely useful paradigm, but when applied outside of its home, problems arise. In the case of videogame design, it leads one to try to fit as many “designs” as one can into a narrow framework. Square peg, meet round hole.
This particular problem is most evident in the so-called “rhythm genre”; Rock Band and Guitar Hero are prominent examples. They were undoubtedly born out of a desire to make a music game for the masses. The men and women at Harmonix are music lovers, and several run bands on the side. The goal when they made these games was to be able to bring their passions to the masses; to let Joe Sixpack get a taste of that sweet, sweet rock and roll magic. Musicians making a game about music — what could go wrong?
Guitar Hero and Rock Band are most certainly not about music. Just as Jason Rohrer doesn’t understand what Passage is about*****, so, too, does Harmonix not know what Rock Band is about. Via their General Solution of Simon Says — their simplification of the nuances of notes into a glorified QTE — Harmonix has made these games into a meditation on performance. What is important in these games is not the beats, the chords, nor even the unique timbre of the instruments; rather, it is you, and how well you have memorized which candy colored buttons to slap. Behold the madness of the “rhythm genre”; born out of music, it is no longer about music.
Reset is a repudiation of this ridiculousness. It has none of the trappings of the so-called “rhythm genre.” No words on screen, save the brief tutorial, no flashing notes, no STREAK MULTIPLIER. Just ships and a chiptune. Where RB and GH lose sight of their roots, making a game about the YOU, Reset never loses sight of its true master: the music. Here is a rhythm game whose soundtrack is inseparable from its gameplay. The speed of your ship, of your enemies, when your enemies are introduced — all of this is born in the beats of Trash80′s classic chiptune. When something like, oh, let’s say REZ, has you and your enemies fire in time with the beats, it is an artificial construct, an arbitrary restriction that strains the system of gameplay by twisting that system’s internal logic. When Reset does so, it is a natural extension of the rest of the game. The entirety of this game’s internal logic is built around Trash80′s Rest to Reset. A rhythm game about rhythm; what a concept.
This is Trash80′s “Rest to Reset.” This is Robin Burkinshaw’s Reset. Where does one end? Where does the other begin? What a foolish question.
One is a videogame.
*usfirst.org : Find a team in your area, and mentor!
**Winning Chairman’s at Nationals: 842 4 LIFE
***Not you, Rohrer; everyone else.
****Hey guys, maybe the parallel postulate isn’t always true!
*****A Life Well Wasted, Episode 3: Why Game?
September 30th, 2009 at 1714
So who would be the aforementioned Orson Welles of games? It’s not like the title isn’t contested.
September 30th, 2009 at 1846
This is an icredible project, and a showcase of where combat in video games should be heading, but compairing it to REZ is a bit unjust.
September 30th, 2009 at 2255
Can’t wait to check this out when I get home today. You know, if I don’t get snagged by TF2 or DDO first.
(nerf left turns)
September 30th, 2009 at 2345
hey, can we use some actual first and last names on the review on this website? we’re not fucking gamepro, for god’s sake.
October 1st, 2009 at 031
Am I the only one who doesn’t get any sound from this thing?
October 1st, 2009 at 240
@108
But…the mystery! Bitches love mystery!
@Kinto
Make sure your sound ports are soundy.
October 1st, 2009 at 445
Yeah, you guys could bother with a lot more homebrew coverage than you have so far really.
October 1st, 2009 at 456
Come on, man! Nicknames are EDGY! Look at mine! I’m from the streets! It’s hip to be square.
To dissuade you, I will point out that a newest set of Twin Primes were discovered just last month: 65516468355 · 2333333 ± 1!
You should totally change your posting name to 65516468355 · 2333333.
October 1st, 2009 at 459
Did I say dissuade? I meant assuage. Big fail. From the streets, remember.
Back on topic, I remember FIRST from back in high school. We programmed some robotic arm for the guy who headed the team for our school but I was never officially ‘on’ the team. Diablo II had come out, you see.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1033
has anybody let the game run after you run out of fuel? Does the air supply timer have a function?
October 2nd, 2009 at 1038
This game is pretty goddamn amazing and really really makes other rhythm games look bad. I’m always happy when it gets even a little bit more press.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1400
@Cossix
We here at Action Button like using our Unstoppable Press Powers for the betterment of gamerkind
@checkonte
I believe it’s a measure of damage taken!
@ENERGY EYE
The homebrew/indie scene is pretty fucking brilliant; apparently, people really like making good games!
Have you played runman yet? That game is soooo cash! It’s like (very forgiving)Godhand for Sonic! I really like it!
@D-Bo
I got on the team by virtue of being the only programmer that the team could have easy access to. It was pretty cool! Chick just walked up to me one day and said “Welcome to team 842!” Been nothing but free food and victory since!
October 2nd, 2009 at 2006
wow, i remember this game.
great stuff as always pi, keep ‘em coming!
i really like the pratchett-style footnotes; certainly a more bearable attempt at flavour than the myriad of things kite does both intentionally and unintentionally.
for what it’s worth, the first plastic guitar game by harmonix actually did have something more in the way of pacing and progression in terms of introducing new combinations and note patterns in order to provide a challenge similar to the better bemani games. though as you’ve said, all the following derivatives are roughly as interesting as playing simon-says via a short looping cassette tape.
October 2nd, 2009 at 2252
The air meter seems to be determined by how far you traveled and how much damage you’ve taken. I did some experimenting and if I just circled the planet and tried to run out of fuel as close a possible to the point of origin and got as low as 1 hour and change air remaining. I let it run out and it stop at a large negative number. The air gauge is just there for emotion effect, it doesn’t have an explicit function.
October 3rd, 2009 at 242
@p1d40n3 (I keep reading that as “pigeon”)
Have been at work at all day but I’m totally gonna, looks swell as hell.
October 3rd, 2009 at 1033
“…REZ, has you and your enemies fire in time with the beats, it is an artificial construct, an arbitrary restriction that strains the system of gameplay by twisting that system’s internal logic. When Reset does so, it is a natural extension of the rest of the game.”
what.
October 4th, 2009 at 1003
Brevity is the soul of wit, huh. You’ve got energy, Mr. Pi, and I like the change of pace you bring between the lengthy and referential essays. It’s like a breath mint after a large feast.
This and Runman are both quite fun. I’m glad you wrote about them, as I probably would have never discovered them on my own.
October 4th, 2009 at 1714
@Fiero
No problem! I am very tempted to do a very technical (read: referencing individual levels) review of Runman. It is a good game, but it has very real flaws that NEED to be talked about if we are to advance into the Future of Gaming.
October 5th, 2009 at 624
It seems like it’d be distasteful to dissect such a charming little game, especially since the guys weren’t paid to make it.
October 5th, 2009 at 1130
well, i gave you Several Days to think of your own fake first and last name, and you blatantly disregarded my more-polite-than-necessary request, so congratulations! i have given you a pen name and you are never, ever allowed to change it as long as you write things intended for publication on this website.
October 6th, 2009 at 257
October 7th, 2009 at 052
To be fair, I did respond to your post, but my response was a joke, as I though your post was a joke! Sorry to have offended.
October 7th, 2009 at 155
Hoooly shit, Pip Jackling! Fuck yeah!
October 7th, 2009 at 401
?_?
I don’t get it…Great Expectations reference? South Park? General Insult?
October 8th, 2009 at 1742
none of the above. it’s something i made up off the top of my head.
that’s the kind of thing i can do, which many people cannot do!
October 8th, 2009 at 2249
Tim, the only people I know of who can do that are you, Groucho Marx, and a friend of mine who looked at a drawing I’d done of a short, fat, bald, harmlessly nervous middle-management type, and said “Who’s that, Bill Plorbo?”
If I had the money, I would hire you just to sit around coming up with character names all day.
October 12th, 2009 at 053
lol you don’t know shit about what rhythm games are about
October 12th, 2009 at 229
I do think that the absence of Rhythm Tengoku GBA and/or early Harmonix is remiss as all hell, but some interesting points are made and the plug is well-taken.
Also, the lack of indie coverage here is pretty much attributable to ABDN being an extension of the “108 ‘spergs all over then-nebulous Japanese game industry coverage writ large” that roped us all in a decade ago. There’s lots of good independent gaming coverage elsewhere which works just fine without our legacy of anal-retentive hypertext™.
October 12th, 2009 at 1049
@Joe
Thanks for your insightful commentary! The comments I get at ABDN fill my heart with hope for the future!
@felix
But think of the missing lols! And it’s not about coverage! It’s about taking apart those games, and learning what makes them tick
October 12th, 2009 at 1436
This game requires more of an acknowledgment, just a thoughtful remark on its existence, than a review. This is exactly what this was.
I just took the forty-five seconds to download this game, and then the two minutes required to experience it. I couldn’t agree more about the sheer exploration of the basic rhythm and variety of sounds. The game is contained within the same matrix, each time, but every melodic romp through its vastness finds you left to a different pocket of the void. Seeing your craft careen perpetually through space beneath an almost visible veil of newly-created silence is unnerving.
I began to feel the emptiness, myself; I have never experienced anything like it.
October 14th, 2009 at 102
I want this to work on my Mac :{
October 14th, 2009 at 459
It won’t even work on my PC =/
October 14th, 2009 at 1130
Dude, the majority of rhythm games (Harmonix are not the only people who make them, and Konami’s been doing this shit for -years-) aren’t about memorizing note patterns or any of that nonsense. Virtually no one who’s “good” at those sorts of games does that, because at a certain point the patterns become too complex for rote memorization and it comes town to motor reflex and your skill at the game.
They’re pure, pared-down-to-the-essentials skill games more akin to a Cave game or Quake 3 Arena than any sort of musical performance.
Rock Band tries to dress all that up with their focus on some sort of “progression” via unlocking songs and the emphasis on coooperative multiplayer, but they’re essentially about hitting buttons to a song to make your score higher than it was the last time you hit those buttons to that song.
They’re about music as much as a Cave game is about spaceships. People are certainly drawn to the games because of the music (I started playing Beatmania IIDX because I like house and techno) but they’re not the reason people keep playing them.
October 14th, 2009 at 1205
@Joe
So wait…muscle memory…isn’t memory?
Good games have you adapt to changing situations; there is no perfect sequence of inputs that will ALWAYS give you max score. Shit, there is no fucking max score period. Guaranteed victory means a puzzle, and a puzzle means no gameplay*
*NOTE: A game can BECOME a puzzle after a certain point (one player becomes all powerful/everyone else becomes to weak, and victory becomes academic). But having the game START as a puzzle makes it not a game!
October 14th, 2009 at 1208
@Kinto, dberes
I am so sorry for you
;_; these eyes! Are crying! These eyes have seen a lot of games, but they’re never gonna see another one like Reset*!
*Hopefully we will, but probably we won’t.
October 15th, 2009 at 222
@pip jackling
Hey, you know, if you could just make a video of yourself playing it and post it on youtube that’d be great. I’d just like to see how the action fits the music
October 15th, 2009 at 225
@Joe
Cave shooters haven’t gone uncriticised on this site for pretty much the same reason.
October 15th, 2009 at 357
@Kinto
That name should be changed soon to my Real Name (Adam Burch)! But it seems tim is to busy writing for Kotaku and being a rock star atm. Sigh.
And your suggestion is a good one! Will try to do this over the weekend!
October 15th, 2009 at 450
That’s really cool, man! Thanks!
October 15th, 2009 at 1714
@p1d40n3:
“Good games have you adapt to changing situations; there is no perfect sequence of inputs that will ALWAYS give you max score.”
Let me just get this straight: did you just diss every single arcade shooter ever made?
October 15th, 2009 at 2058
Well, that excludes Ikaruga, since there’s multiple ways of doing anything in that game. Most arcade shooters are pretty fair game, imo.
October 16th, 2009 at 408
@Dozer
I would argue that for most shooters such a perfect sequence has not been found, but it (theoretically) exists, as the whole game is just one long pre-defined sequence. Finding the ‘max score’ is a game, but once it it found, the game stops existing, and simply becomes a memory/dexterity test. Kinda like how pac-man was hot shit till someone got a perfect score. And thus comes pac-man ce which has no perfect run (random generation, ftw!) etc.
October 16th, 2009 at 510
I’d say that every single arcade shooter is about finding that perfect sequence of inputs. As long as the game remains the exact same every single time you play it, such a perfect input sequence exists, and chances are you can order a recording of the game being played with that sequence on DVD from Japan.
That would mean Ikaruga isn’t excluded, since that perfect sequence is included on the game disk.
October 16th, 2009 at 709
@Dozer
The question begs itself; are you SURE that input is perfect?
October 17th, 2009 at 255
Yeah, but Ikaruga has one of many perfect sequences.
October 17th, 2009 at 256
Erk, that made no sense.
The DVD depicts one of many of Ikaruga’s perfect sequences.
October 18th, 2009 at 458
Did I say anything about muscle memory?
Also, I’ve realized that I’m just yelling at a brick wall when you say things like “good games require you to adapt to changing situations.” That’s really silly. Why are you forcing everything you play to fit into some framework of what you consider a “good game” instead of evaluating titles on what they’re trying to do and how well they’re doing it?
October 18th, 2009 at 826
@Joe
I am sorry that I have a mental model for good games! I am also sorry that I am not willing to compromise this model for games I do not like! I am sorry that I am not objective! Please, forgive me of these sins.
@Kinto
Perfect in terms of score, or in terms of ‘beat the game’?
@everyone
Does anyone know a good video capture program? FRAPS doesn’t seem to want to capture more than a minute or so of video.
October 18th, 2009 at 947
Ok, so you’re just going to avoid actually addressing anything I say.
October 18th, 2009 at 1825
@Joe
Have you considered saying anything of worth?
October 18th, 2009 at 1933
@pip jackling
Probably both!
@Joe
What if game X tried especially hard at being shit and fully succeeded at it?
October 18th, 2009 at 1940
@pip
Xfire video, apparantly!
You could also get a livestream account, broadcast yourself playing it and have it automatically saved, you can do all that for free.
Hell, I wouldn’t mind watching a livestream with some genuine ABDN running commentary.
October 21st, 2009 at 1632
@Joe
I regret my previous post. I was rude, focusing only on attempting a ‘zing’. I apologize. But what exactly are you trying to say? I really don’t understand where you are coming from.
@Kinto
Please cal me Pi. Or P1.
Also, I will put up a video tomorrow hopefully!
October 22nd, 2009 at 315
sorry P1!
Thanks very much for the video!
October 22nd, 2009 at 830
I will henceforth refuse to call you by any desired moniker. In my heart you will be Pip Jackling forever.
October 22nd, 2009 at 1545
Why Cuba?
;_;
Why?
That video is coming this Friday, hopefully maybe!
October 28th, 2009 at 135
@KillahMate
Sorry, didn’t see your post (lol, missed first post!)
The Orson Welles is Miyamoto, as Mario is our Citizen Kane.
November 2nd, 2009 at 002
So what’s the ETA on the video, p1d40n3?
November 4th, 2009 at 304
Soon! Hopefully! Maybe!
To much homework…;_;.
To much SF4 (why am I playing this game, I really don’t even like it!)…;_;
To much stuff…;_;
November 4th, 2009 at 1007
I need some way to pester you before this review drops off the end!
November 6th, 2009 at 329
E-mail might work!
November 6th, 2009 at 943
What’s your email!
December 12th, 2009 at 1549
Click on my name! hurry you fool!
December 12th, 2009 at 1551
At the top of the review!
May 15th, 2010 at 749
Okay…VIDEO.
TOMORROW! I SWEAR IT!!
ORAORAORA!!!
July 15th, 2010 at 1057
It is more than tomorrow.