Sub mission

>> Bemoaning his lack of hallucinogens, the reporter takes Metaforia's voyage to the bottom of the sea

by CHRIS BARRY

After countless delays and many millions of dollars, the Metaforia entertainment complex has finally unveiled its much-ballyhooed pièce de résistance, Oceania, a 40-minute virtual reality deal, which takes the adventurer down to the bottom of the sea to discover the treasures of its namesake's mysterious lost civilization.

Funded exclusively with local money and primarily employing home-grown Quebec technology, Metaforia's promo literature promises thrills and chills galore and hints that the hearty virtual archaeologist who embarks on the Oceania journey may, if they're lucky, encounter some of the wacky creatures that allegedly still inhabit this forsaken nether world.

And if that, in and of itself, isn't enough to get any Nintendo-loving geek's heart racing with anticipation, I'd also heard that a few of the creatures will sometimes try to fuck with you by tapping you on the shoulder or giving you a virtual whack in the back of the head if you're not paying attention. Wow! Could anything be cooler than that? I didn't think so.

So last week I went to check it out.

Who's holding?

Like most virtual adventurers over the age of 12, I assumed that the best way to experience the technological wonder that is Oceania would be under the influence of drugs. This much seemed obvious. It's not that the virtual reality experience is a shoo-in to be lame without hallucinogens, but, you know, these things are developed primarily with children in mind. And realistically, how thrilling or scary is a virtual aqua-ghoulie going to be to a cynical old crank like myself unless said crank is wacked-out on LSD or some equally enlightening substance?

Maybe it's a generational thing but, to my mind, virtual reality and hallucinogenic drugs go together like cheese and crackers, a natural and satisfying pairing. So it seemed obvious to me that the Metaforia complex would be chock full of teenage drug dealers eager to meet the public demand. Right?

Wrong.

I spent a good 15 minutes walking around the joint looking for some greasy denim-jacketed kid to catch eyes with and send out the vibe I was hunting for chemical enlightenment but, try as I might, I couldn't even find one greasy denim-jacketed kid, let alone one who sold drugs. The only people hanging around Metaforia on this Friday afternoon were swarms of toddlers with their parents, the odd gang of nerdy adolescent boys, a few depressing fat people, and a bunch of security bozos running around with walkie-talkies. None of whom, I suspected, were holding.

What struck me as being particularly twisted, however, is that this travesty of an urban ritual took place on the main floor of the complex, which is, when you get right down to it, essentially a glorified arcade with a few state-of-the-art video games and a great big climbing wall in the middle of it. And seriously, what kind of poor excuse for an arcade doesn't have drug dealers working it? I was confused.

But I wasn't about to let this disturbing aberration bum me out of my virtual adventure and, being the terminally good sport I am, after repeating the mantra of "I don't need drugs to have fun"--which is something I sometimes tell myself on occasions when drugs are not available--I slowly came to accept the inevitable and resigned myself to embarking on the 40-minute ride without the expanded perception I had originally planned on. A bit despondent despite my resolve, I got back in line with the other children, and waited for the virtual submarine to arrive and deliver us all to the magical kingdom of Oceania.

All aboard!

And what kind of excitement is in store for the virtual sea warrior once they've forked over the $20 admission fee and waited approximately an hour for the first available seat on the next Oceania submarine shuttle? If you're an adult, I suppose it depends on your personal disposition.

And if you're a 10 year old, well, I suspect once you've lived through Oceania, Frontier Town ain't never going to feel the same again: even if Oceania is kind of goofy thematically, a few of the effects are truly hard to beat.

But it didn't take too long before I started feeling kind of retarded just for being there in the first place. There's something about being all alone and strapping yourself in to a pretend submarine with a bunch of children and their parents and all of you yelling "Weehee" together that just doesn't feel cool. From the moment our "commander"--a 19-year-old female CÉGEP student--started leading our group through what sounded like a series of French football chants in an attempt to get us all stoked prior to our big journey, I knew I was in with a bad crowd and started to sense this virtual reality thing was going to be a letdown.

To begin with, it appears I had been way misinformed about the virtual aqua-creeps coming around and punching people in the head. Although everyone on our mission was required to wear what I assumed was a sensor-equipped life-jacket-type thingy and a similarly equipped audio helmet that might have been able to do the job, but which ultimately just had the effect of making all the little kids look like Fred and Barney's pal Gazoo--no virtual sea monkeys came by to tap us on the shoulder and say "Hello" on our excursion at least. But I suppose this is asking for a lot, even from a $32-million state-of-the-art facility--and, honestly, I don't necessarily have to be groped by sea monkeys to have a good time.

Smoke under the water

But it would have helped if I'd known what was going on with the plotline of my Oceania adventure! The goofy characters and their bad English dubbing is one thing: that's kind of fun in a mean-spirited way. And it is possible, as my mother is fond of saying, that I'm a little bit stupid, but I honestly had no idea what was supposed to be going down for the entire 40 minutes I was submerged in the virtual kingdom. All I can report with absolute certainty is that they sure like to use a lot of smoke machines down under the sea.

I think the idea was that our sub was supposed to have had some kind of accident and our mission was to try to find some magic key or something that was going to lead us out of Oceania. All I know is that eventually we ended up at a 3D shipwreck with some old grumpy guy who apparently had been lost down there for centuries... Along with a talking mermaid, and Kami the sea dog, and a scarecrow, and a tin man, and...

I'm not so sure any of the other children understood what was going on either. There was a lot of confusion down there, I tell ya. Every time our commander tried to lead us to a new virtual world (there were five scenes in total), somebody would get left behind and we'd all have to wait until one of the Metaforia staff went back to fetch them. Had this been the Poseidon Adventure, we simply would have let them drown.

Which is not to imply that Oceania totally sucks. It doesn't. The whole experience kind of feels as if you're walking around inside an IMAX movie, which, if one is in the proper headspace, could be a pretty cool thing.

The Montreal Metaforia is the first of several that the proprietors are planning to open around the globe, and our local boys intend to go head-to-head with Disney in the quest for worldwide domination of the potentially mega-lucrative virtual entertainment biz. Apparently the Oceania technology was all the rage at 1998's World Fair in Lisbon, and so far the people who pay close attention to these sorts of technological developments are giving it rave reviews.

So what do I know? The place has already started to do a booming business and everything indicates that it's going to be one hot tourist attraction this summer. So let's all root for the home team, I say! Go Metaforia!

Oceania, Mon-Fri, $12-16 before 4pm; Thurs- Fri after 4pm and all day on weekends, $15-20. At the Metaforia Centre (698 Ste-Catherine W.)