Review By

Walter Kim

The extent to which our lives are shaped by the human hand is truly remarkable. Those of us priveleged enough to have a working pair rarely stop to appreciate how versatile and useful they are, saving our awe for the talents of an occasional concert pianist, surgeon, or Virtua Fighter champion. Indeed, the Western intellectual world had for a long time failed to truly grasp the significance of the mind's relationship with its hands, and from there its relationship with reality. Only in the last century have they begun to realize that we live in a world not merely composed of physical objects, but of affordances, the psychologically constructed availability of things. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger called this phenomenon "readiness-to-hand", and used it as a key to understanding our existence, our being in the world. Cognitive scientists are even beginning to uncover the relationship between language and the control of our hands: the former may well have arisen from the neural circuitry used for the latter. Given the gestures we often make in everyday speech, perhaps this is not too surprising.

What does any of this have to do with Breakdown? Well, I want to argue that the game is really a celebration of the human hand, its extraordinary versatility, power, and meaning. It's not just the box art showing off a fist bristling with pure energy: Breakdown is the first videogame to model and animate the various uses of the hand in such intricate fashion. Unlike so many first-person games to date (as Brad notes), Breakdown lets the hand get all up in our faces, whether we're opening a door, climbing a ladder, picking something up, flipping a page, swiping a keycard, opening a can of soda, or tearing off a wrapper. Newly confronted with the experience of hands that are and are not our own, we're put in a position that allows us to see just how remarkable they are, even in their everyday use. I don't know if the designers intended for it to be seen this way, but like the man-ape and his bone in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, I believe we can transform just about anything that fits into tools for our benefit, whether for productive work or understanding, and this applies as much to videogames as anything else.

Once I began to look at Breakdown in this way, it became hard to see how it wasn't a celebration of the human hand (and even, to some extent, the videogame). The game charts the progressive empowerment of its central character through a glowing energy that invades his hands, and through their skilled use, he saves the world. While violence inflicted by the hand plays an unfortunately large role here, it would be a mistake to ignore the role of cooperation and trust that Breakdown brilliantly expresses through the very same body part. For my money, some of the best moments of the game had nothing to do with shooting or hand-to-hand combat, but involved giving (or taking) a helping hand. Players who make it to the end and pick the "good" ending may find it an especially "fitting" conclusion.

Not everything is wonderful in Breakdown-land, though. As Brad is keenly aware, the levels are ridiculously bland and repetitive: the cut-and-paste level design of Halo's infamous Library level is indeed in effect. And while I didn't have too much of a problem with the controls, several times the game would suddenly become extremely difficult, requiring ultra-precise hand-eye coordination. These moments are so hard that, were it not for the quintuple threat of decently compelling story, brilliant storytelling techniques, constantly evolving gameplay, wacky sense of humor (munching on health bars is a great videogame pun), and the helpful urgings of a friend, I never would have finished the game. I'm glad I did, but anyone interested in Breakdown should be warned that the game can be exceptionally trying, and not just from a level design standpoint.

All things considered, though, I have to wonder if that extreme difficulty doesn't go hand-in-hand with the celebration. It's like the game is expressing this enthusiastic optimism over what the player's own hands are capable of, and yeah, after finishing Breakdown, I'm pretty damn proud of them.

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