Mixing Up Games in Your Head By Accident: The Definitive Review
Blends. For everything!
Back in the mid-late 1990s, I was struck by the emergence of novel music when DJing vinyl and finding two tracks could blend together so perfectly, a magical third track would resolve. I was well into sparse and terribly elitist Detroit Techno at the time but the austerity of the tunes, both in terms of orchestration and arrangement, proved fertile for this kind of sonic hybridisation. The magic came from the ephemeral nature of this third tune, which would only last as long as the records involved and with a traditional two-deck setup, these third tunes led fleeting lives. I would go and see luminaries like Jeff Mills play with three decks,a TR-909 and even reel-to-reel tape machines, where there was an inkling that Jeff was chasing elusive third tunes the whole night through. More commonly he was just banging through 12s at a gallop, matching the raw, jacking pace of his transitions with the specifically blistering aesthetics of loop-oriented hard Techno. The third deck being as much an accommodation for a super-packed playlist as it was some vector for vinyl artistry in triplicate. The drum machine was the source for a constant 4/4 kick, EQed out but ever-present as a metronomic click track that kept up Jeff’s relentless momentum in the very best clubbing nights of my life1. These days setting up a third tune is trivial. Modern DJing software will happily set loop points that can run forever, and offer blending options beyond any 1990s DJ dreams. The latest trend being AI-led stem separation, allowing tracks to be split into their sonic components and thus blended with extraordinary degrees of control. But those tunes that sprung from the marriage of two platters of plastic carry a romance that the digital rarely captures. There’s an accidental sense of serendipity when stumbling across a third tune, where its transitory nature is the magic.
What does this have to do with videogames? Well consider this. In Starfield, I’m crouched in an office, staring at a guy who’s in my way. I really don’t want to kill him, and I don’t want to make any noise. The game brings my attention to objects within reach and up pops a hammer. Immediately, my instinct is to pick it up and press ‘L’ to target the NPC’s head and launch that damn hammer for a wonderfully convenient KO2. Only that is a Hitman mechanic, not Starfield, and ka-ping! We have the fleeting emergence of the third game. The mere idea of Hitman content within Starfield’s setting and structure obviously reduces me to a gibbering wreck of unfulfilled desire, but the brief glimpse of how it could actually work is tantalising. I mean, if only Starfield would let you drag bodies, right? Beautifully, I remember much the same collusion between Hitman and Cyberpunk 2077, where I instinctively went to deploy a cyberware quickhack on a troublesome enforcer NPC, only to be dismayed at my immediate stupidity and willful reaching for Cyberpunk’s then wildly-overpowered hacking capabilities. These momentary invasions aren’t always benign missteps borne of instinctual problem solving and the kind of sparse gaming monodiet that allows singular games to dominate my imagination. I have to admit that my ageing brain has managed to run through button sequences from the wrong game to achieve certain tasks. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint was so burnt into my spinal ganglia3 that I fumbled quite a few pressured weapon swaps and reloads in Sniper Elite. But yet again, the idea of a union between Breakpoint’s vast omni-biome island and Sniper Elite’s ballistics creates a spectral third game that would have me in raptures. Well, to be honest I’d shove in the Fultons, the base, the mercenary kidnapping and incredible charisma of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain to make a fucking stupendous affair that I’d likely play for decades.
Jamming together obviously compatible games like two open-world stealth shooters and a sniping system doesn’t carry the same serendipity of those wilder, more accidental unions. I can immediately think of Hitman’s systemic complexity lending itself to Starfield’s other disciplines; the Ryujin questline of corporate thievery, for one. In Starfield, they were a pretty satisfactory transposition of the Thieves Guild, but with Hitman’s details it would be almost transcendental. This exposes how limited Hitman’s mostly-murderous objectives are to some extent, and illuminates where its under-exploited systems could be beautifully adapted. Perhaps the best aspect is how these brief synergies establish and then redefine the horizons for both games. The thinly-filled disciplines within Starfield that could be so much richer, and the scopes of application and setting within Hitman that could be so much broader. In this sense, the ‘third game’ reveals missed potential via unconscious impulse.
Always a marvel, those transitory glimpses into the unconscious do lead me to wish for a full reveal. What do these games really do in the unconscious mind, how does the maelstrom come to issue the incorrect commands? Is it because the mood is so similar, or a simple case of correlatory viewpoint? Or did my dissatisfaction with Sniper Elite 5’s conservative timidity make me wish for Breakpoint’s more ambitious endeavour, despite its multitude of failures? The Starfield/Hitman crossover is more transparently about frustration with a lack of options, and turning to a game overflowing with solutions for that specific problem. But again, it’s interesting that my mind turned to the more ambitious application to try and solve the problem. I’m definitely reading far too much into the unknowable abyss of the unconscious mind to really believe that the control system error was anything more than a case of older, stronger connections overriding newer, weaker ones, but it’s fun to imagine an anthropomorphic motive nonetheless. It’s more frustrating that I can’t relay more examples of systemic bleed, but I distinctly remember the accidental transposition of controls happening with some regularity, often when I was flitting between various Splinter Cell, Watch Dogs and Far Cry entries. Fortuitously, there’s a joyous slapstick to be had when you confuse one game’s equipment swap for another’s grenade drop, and then have to deal with the immediate consequences.
Tying this back to music, there is a lyrical quality to those accidentally beautiful collisions of disparate game mechanics, which contrasts the dissonance of substituted controls and the clanging errors they cause. This isn’t entirely dissimilar to the third tune coming from two records, and anyone who’s blindly tried to mix two songs in unfortunately clashing keys will be well aware of the dissonance that results. There’s a vague partnership there which I hope doesn’t seem too forced. But I forgot to mention that when well-versed in a set of tunes, you might actually seek out individual pieces that should blend together, rather than the more orthodox notion of tunes that will transition nicely4. However these forced unions are rarely as delightful as the accidental blend, just as the conscious effort to chops two videogames into a hybrid isn’t as fun as your unconscious mind doing it for you, in the heat of the moment. Like the surfacing of videogame geography I wrote about last week, there is something wonderful about how this medium generates conscious experiences from the relentless bombardment of the unconscious. But equally as annoying, I have no idea when the next one will arrive. Thing is with my playing habits, it’ll probably be in Starfield again. Funny, that.
[21]
Lost, the arches, Southwark, summer 1997(?). Derrick May, the Derrick May, is in one room and Jeff Mills is in the other. Mixmaster Morris playing the chillout. Bicknell finishes the warmup and Jeff’s off on one, empties Derrick’s room and we all go mental for like six hours straight or something. I’d been to big old raves in my youth, the biggest being 6000 people in a warehouse in rural Cambridgeshire, but nothing matched the raw energy of that night. Jeff Mills, a loud sound system, 200 knowledgeable fans in a sweatbox with a single strobe, a red light and fuckloads of smoke remains my idea of paradise when it comes to music. We went to a lot of Losts, and I saw a lot of Detroit royalty blistering the place, including many Jeff Mills sets (and even Richie Hawtin doing Spastik live with his own 808), but that one night had something truly magical.
Hitman’s throwable melees are the OP GOAT of videogame weapons, in my opinion. There’s rarely a situation where they aren’t a) hilariously amazing and b) the best way to solve an emergency. Well, other than clobbering guards one-by-one as they queue through a chokepoint door.
My shameful, grubby obsession with that game will be detailed, in full, at a later date.
Vague stablemates are the DnB double-drop and the Soulwax-style mashup. But these are consciously-made hybrids. I think that aside Techno and its offshoots, it’s probably only its uncle, Deep House and its cousin, NY Garage that carry the same serendipitous potential.