Gene (GAME 301, Fall 2025)

     Truth be told, I don't really play RTS games, but I have played one game I've seen classified as one (or at least as something with a lot of overlap), and that is Pikmin 2 for the Nintendo GameCube.      The systems of Pikmin 2 center around the eponymous Pikmin, small plant-like aliens of whom the protagonists, Olimar and Louie, can command up to 100 at once in real time as they explore the planet they find themselves on. These critters are the primary objects the player interacts with in the game, and nearly all other objects are defined by the ways in which they and Pikmin interact with each other. Among these objects are... Enemies , who can both harm and be harmed by Pikmin, and who, when slain, turn into... Pikmin food , which includes dead enemies and colored pellets found growing from certain treasures. Pikmin can carry Pikmin food back to the "Onions" at the player's home base and converted into more Pikmin. More on this in a bit. Unique Tre...

     Since this game and its in-progress somethingquel Deltarune have returned to their rent-free living space in my head this year, I'm going to write about Undertale for this one.        Undertale is an interesting game to talk about with respect to narrative structure and dramatic arc, because there are sort of layers to it. There's what's going on with the player character and other characters in the Underground, of course, but, unlike many story-focused games, you , the real-life human being playing the game, are also a character in the story. That said, I think the game actually incorporates multiple types of conflict depending on which path through the story is being assessed.      For the player character, I think the game at least starts out on the foot of what I think slots best into a sort of "Man vs. Society" framework; the protagonist has fallen into the Underground, a cavern beneath a mountain sealed off from the outside...