arts // no. 8 Beat the rush > ‘Rush Hour’ pilot review Lauren Paulsen Senior Columnist OOOO R“ Hour is a new action- comedy television show based on the movies of the same name. A straight-laced detective from Hong Kong unwillingly teams up with a detective from L.A. who doesn’t follow the rules. Unfortunately, Rush Hour doesn’t really show much originality. There aren't any new spins on the genre tropes to make it feel fresh, and the characters are very stereotypical. Lee (Jon Foo) is the by-the-book cop who's, always ina stylish suit, where Carter (Justin Hires) is the funny black partner that does everything unconventionally, but somehow still manages to keep his job. Neither wants to work together in the beginning, both preferring to be lone wolves, but by the end they both like each other and team up. Flawed by Design: > What makes an RPG? Adam Tatelman Arts Editor he roleplaying game is one of the longest-lived genres in all of video game history. From Richard Garriot’s seminal Ultima series to the glitchy, unrefined majesty of the early Elder Scrolls titles, game designers have sought ever more detailed methods by which to mathematically represent the progression of a player character’s skill over time. It’s a novel idea that’s seen a lot of change over the years, and it wasn’t long before every other genre in the world began to adopt RPG mechanics in a bid to give their gameplay a sense of progression. First it is necessary to define RPG mechanics. Any game that endows the player character with new abilities or equipment over the course of the story does so for the purpose of adding complexity to the gameplay over time, but that does not necessarily an RPG make. Nor should it: after all, video games did not pioneer RPG mechanics. Tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons introduced elements like character creation, classes, attributes, skills, and levelling up long before Rogue players were eaten by their first Grue. Player-generated characters aren't strictly necessary for an RPG. Some have static The show’s humour is entertaining enough, but it’s all been done to death. There is a running gag throughout the pilot episode where Carter keeps trying to prove he is braver than Lee. Lee never disputes this, but still manages to act in a way that makes Carter feel bad about himself. For example, Carter goes on about being shot in the leg and how he wasa big hero, but then he finds out Lee was actually shot twice, and feels put out because Lee had been placating him and hadn't even mentioned that he’d been shot. It wouldn't be a surprise if this running gag continues throughout the season. That also brings up a point that Carter himself asks: is Lee really human, or is he some advanced Chinese robot from the future? He tells Carter he doesn’t feel fear, and even when he was shot, he acted like it barely hurt. In fact, Lee pretty much appears emotionless throughout the whole episode, though Carter’s running commentary—seriously, protagonists that the player merely chooses skills for. It is the specialization of skills that makes an RPG. Simply put, if there is a level cap, characters can never acquire enough experience to become an expert in every skill. If there isn’t one, acquiring that much experience would still take an obscenely long time, so specialization is still just as necessary. Being a jack-of-all-trades is typically the guy never shuts up—offers some insight into Lee’s emotional side. And though he never actually shows much emotion, his actions demonstrate that he cares deeply for his sister, enough so that he goes along with some of Carter’s rule breaking. But we don’t really need Carter’s commentary to tell us what Lee is feeling. It would be nice if it were shown more, instead of told. Maybe the most interesting aspect of Rush Hour is the action. Not really the shootout scenes, but the martial arts that the Chinese characters seem to have perfected. Lee is like a martial arts fighting machine, and it shows in his choreography. Unfortunately, Carter doesn’t seem to know anything about hand-to-hand combat, so he sticks to his gun. Although Rush Hour may not be really even remotely original, it is still entertaining enough to watch as some mindless television. nowhere near as effective as being a master of a few. The great thing about RPGs is the number of different playstyles they offer from one playthrough to the next. Playing Dark Souls as a heavily armored knight who can block anything requires a different strategy from playing as a speedy rogue with a high damage-per-second output. The experience can be tailored to the player's actions without Character development Screenshot from Dark Souls 2 the fundamental mechanics altering in the slightest. Unfortunately, many genre- bending games implement RPG mechanics in a shallow way that defeats their appeal. Deus Ex: Human Revolution, for instance, allows the player to unlock almost every single ability in a single playthrough thanks to the gratuitous windfall of experience points. As such, every player’s endgame character build will theotherpress.ca Still of Jon Foo and Justin Hires in Rush Hour (2016) via CBS be nearly the same as everyone else’s. The only specialization players need concern themselves with is confined to the beginning of the game, which eliminates most of the replay value. Then there are games where the presence of RPG mechanics doesn’t even make sense. In the Batman: Arkham Asylum series, Batman can unlock new gadgets and skills as the game progresses, but he must then re-unlock them at the beginning of each next game. This doesn’t make sense for the character, since he should have these skills and weapons from the beginning of the game. After all, he’s Batman. What these games get wrong is their use of RPG mechanics as if they were just another collectible item— something to be hoarded for the sake of completion instead of a deliberate strategic choice. When the only choice involved is what order to get the upgrades in, then none of them have much impact on the gameplay. Some of the most beloved games in history are RPGs, but that doesn’t mean that RPG mechanics are an automatic guarantee of success. There’s more than one way to make gameplay progress over time, so it is a matter of choosing which mechanics are best for the game in question, not forcing popular mechanics to fit in places they don’t belong.