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More Max Payne 2

I just found out here about this, which is here.  It’s Mona the Assassin, a five level expansion pack for Max Payne 2 created by some of the original design team.  I’ve played both Max Payne games about six times, total, not counting some of the fan-made mods such as the excellent Kung Fu mod and the obvious, yet somehow soulless Matrix mod.  I even considered watching the movie, twice.  That is, I considered watching it and then re-watching it.  Or did I consider watching it, then also consider watching it at another time?  That comma is unclear.  Also, I’d never consider watching that fetid, celluloid shit whistle.  Boo, on it, forever.

I really liked the Max Payne games, and it was the ultimate kick in the teeth that we never got a third one.  The story resolved itself, more or less, but it had all the makings of a nice, tight trilogy.  I mean, it’s not as if the games didn’t have themes which could be explored and wrapped up in a final act.  It’s nothing but themes.  That damn series has themes lying around everywhere, stuffed into drawers, stacked three deep.  On one of my many playthroughs, I encountered a symbol which stood for two other symbols, which in turn represented the symbol of a theme.  And I don’t know what that means either, but wow, huh?  I remember taking down a note on it, something like:

Rain – does it represent snow?

This Mona the Assassin dealy better have some redonkulous symbolism, or I refuse to consider it part of the Max Payne canon.  Because Mona already represents so much.  She’s a living metaphor for redemption, revenge, renewal, re-redemption, Dostoyevskian “twin” characters, shooting in slow motion, and tits.  Oh, and asses.  Wait, I get it.  Mona the assassin.  Ooh.  That’s brilliant.  I can’t wait to deconstruct the rain out of this one – if you catch my drift.

Technorati Tags: Max Payne,Mona Sax,Mona the Assassin,the way video game characters should always be named,for all time

Tales of Bingwood – Eyes and Hands

This won’t be as odd as the title makes it sound.

Tales of Bingwood (technically, it’s Chapter 1 of the Tales of Bingwood series, la di da, as all adventure games must be episodic now) is a cute little point ‘n clicker which pays homage to the Monkey Island series.  It pays a lot of homage.  It should really pay royalties.  A pair of Finnish game developers, Markus Tupperainen and Carl Granberg, spent fifteen years, off and on, creating it, through many different iterations, and it finally ended up as what’s essentially an alternate-universe Monkey Island.  Imagine if Ron Gilbert had been two indefatigable Finns.  OK, now let’s imagine him as a sheep and three slices of pizza.  Why the pizza?  Well, the sheep needs to eat something.

Most of the mechanics in Bingwood are tried and true adventure game standards, which is fine and nostalgic, but even adventure games have learned some new tricks in the past fifteen years.  One nice exception is the eye/hand cursor, which uses an approach I’ve never seen before.  Other adventure gamers, have you heard of this one?  The cursor defaults to an eye the first time you click on an object, and then becomes a hand if you’ve already looked at it once.  A simple idea, but very useful.

One can, of course, cycle through the cursors to look at things twice, or manipulate/pick up things immediately.  But I rarely do that because the default behavior coincides with my default adventure game behavior: look at everything in the room, then try to pick everything up, then fiddle with every switch, button, and lever.  Works very well in traditional point and click adventures, less so in Myst clones, as I usually begin by immediately pulling the very worst lever.  It also doesn’t work real well in life, where such behavior is considered a) shoplifting or b) “lever fondling.”

The Eye and the Hand symbols are a good shorthand for how people used to, and occasionally still do, play adventure games.  The Hand is the obvious way to play – figure out the right action to perform, do it, repeat, and you win the game.  The Eye represents what old-school adventure gamers tend to consider the real reward: a clever bit of description, dialogue, character insight, etc.  I’d bet that almost all Sierra and LucasArts fans back in the day examined every object in hopes of a fun response before trying to use it.  The Eye is the game showing you how well-realized its world is, and the Hand is you showing the game how cleverly you can outwit it.  Bingwood and similar retro games can only succeed if the player is able to derive enjoyment from both acts, and I’m surprised that more adventure games didn’t come up with equally helpful ways to facilitate that constant switch between the two fundamental actions.  I’m inspired that, fifteen years later, two fans of the genre found a new way to get the funny from the game to the gamer, and created a damn funny game to show off this new technique.

Technorati Tags: Tales of Bingwood,BugFactory Games,Finland,innovation,Finnovation?

Spike Pit

Let me stop you right there.  This is not a “spike pit,” it is a pit which contains spikes.  It’s a pit for spikes.

There’s a difference.

My hobby is collecting spikes, and I need a place to properly mount and show off my spikes.  It’s like an album for stamps, as they say.  You can see that I have many, many sharp spikes, so obviously I need a very big pit.  It’s not a deadly trap, it’s a testament to the tranquil art of spike arranging.

Obviously, I’ve gone with a traditional configuration: very closely spaced, perpendicular to the walls and floor of the pit for maximum pointiness.  I like to call it the “inverse hedgehog” or the “pokey hole.”  But its beauty cannot be fully expressed in words.  You’ll just have to see it for yourself.

The best way to view it is by attempting to jump over it.  I should mention that’s a bit dangerous.  And yet, well worth it, my friend.  Well worth it.

My entire spike collection is not limited to the pit.  Some of my best spikes are hidden in the walls and floors.  They’ll pop out when you least expect them!  Maybe I shouldn’t give away the surprise.  Forget I said that.  You see those little holes in the floor?  Run over them real quickly.  Who knows what’ll pop out?  Flan?  Yummy flan?

Spikes!  I thought that I gave it away, but you still look surprised.  Be more careful next time, those spikes almost killed you.  They’re just for looks.

Now, you seem a bit exhausted, but check out the room’s centerpiece, my aforementioned pit for spikes.  Just take a running jump and fly over, but not into it.  Or, who am I to tell you how to experience these spikes?  Everyone has their own aesthetic sensibilities.  Fall into the pit if you must.  Embrace the thing-in-itself nature of each spike.  Where do you end, where does the spike begin?  The answer may surprise you.  Jump for it!

And I know you were pretty surprised by that big ol’ pendulum which just knocked you into the pit.  I didn’t mention before that I also collect pendula.  Pendulums?  Pendula?  What’s up with these Latinate endings, any – oh, you’re dead it seems.

OK, everyone else, stay with me, I want to show you the kitchen.  It has an island!  An island for lava!

Technorati Tags: spikes,pits,Prince of Persia,feng shui,Hole Week

Zombie Sonnet

More substantial content coming soon, but to demonstrate that the site is alive, or at least, dead but still roaming the Earth, here's a little sonnet for the upcoming co-operative zombie game Left 4 Dead.  Coming very soon now!  I'm excited!  It's fun to just attempt a sonnet once in a while, and it's doubly fun if I get to work alternating feminine endings into the line structure.  Because I am all about alternating feminine endings.  Oh yeah.

When ev'ry day you breathe the stench together,

When ev'ry night is an unliving hell,

Your souls become entwined by hidden tethers -

Well, what I mean, I know you pretty well.

But I can't waste another breath reliving

These violations of your silly rules.

I'd think you'd be a little more forgiving

When someone saves you from a pack of ghouls.

Hey kid, there's more than one I in Surviving!

This grizzled vet is wise to all your tricks.

Some day you'll fall, and if you want reviving,

Stop pitching hissy fits and watch my six.

And so's you catch the purpose of this sonnet:

That health pack didn't have your name upon it.

Technorati Tags: sonnets, Left 4 Dead, proper zombie killing manners

"Watch Me Laser This Mario Dragon, Mom!"

Parenting magazine has some tips for moms who want to be great parents.  Personally, I'm just going to shoot for "mediocre parent" which is more attainable, but the uppity moms out there may be interested to know that Tip #1 is to play video games with your kids.  It gets them to talk or something.  I was planning to just trick them into talking with a series of misleading questions like, "Hey, would you like to go white water rafting next Sunday or is your friend Vanessa still doing drugs?"  But that's just me, World's Mediocrest Parent, as it says on the T-shirt I'll receive from my indifferent kid someday.  And my kid won't even bother wrapping it, she'll just drop it on the floor and sigh.

Check out their example of a great mom and her kid:

Yeah, they know what's up.  There's Mom, rocking out with her tiny bestickered Guitar Hero ukulele, tossing her hair about, while little Jayden jumps up and down on the couch with his XBox 360 controller.  "Hey Mom, why do you get to use the actual controller when we play Guitar Hero and I have to play back here with the wrong input device entirely?" 

"Well, Jayden, it's the same reason you aren't allowed to use the Wiimote when Mommy plays Smash Bros. and have to make do with a couple of shirt buttons hot glued to a twig.  It's because while I'm a great parent, you, as a child, have been phoning it in since you were four and a half."

Technorati Tags: Parenting, Guitar Hero, beating motherhood on Expert without using Star Power once

Boom Blox and Zombie Games

Which have nothing to do with each other.  Just a couple of new GWJ links.  Someday, some halcyon morn, they will be integrated into the blank, expectant space to the right of this column.  I have big plans for that little sidebar.

Boom Blox Interview.  Very silly, but I really enjoyed doing this one.  I don't like to be too materialistic about games, but occasionally price matters.  They are, in fact, consumer products, and the asking price indicates something about what the publisher thinks of you, the consumer.  Sometimes they think you're a brainless sheep, easily cowed into forking over your nest egg to some snake oil salesman.  To put it another way, using only 1/4 the animals, sometimes they're Tom Nook all thinking you're made of bells.

The Last Stand 2.  "It's like Oregon Trail with zombies," says deftly in the comments, helpfully condensing the writeup to a single, much pithier sentence.  Absolutely spot on.  There are lots of decent zombie killing games out there to tide you over until Left 4 Dead comes out in November, or whenever Valve decides it's done.

For example, as mentioned at TIGSource, the indie game Survival Crisis Z tries to mix survival horror with free-roaming, clockwork city, sandbox GTA other buzzwords open world etc.  It largely succeeds in following through on the GTA idea, although it's more like GTA 2.  Isomorphic graphics don't lend themselves well to scary situations.  You can see the zombies coming a mile away.  In real life, sure, I guess you would, but the point of a zombie story is to force the characters into situations where they get surprised by the shambling hordes.  That way they can make decisions under pressure, which usually means more exciting decisions.  As it is, I spent a lot of time in Survival Crisis Z slowly walking away from zombies who eventually got bored and left.  I'm sorry I was so boring, zombie.  You're not the first one I've encountered, you know.  It's really arrogant of you to think that.

Technorati Tags: GWJ, Gamers With Jobs, Boom Blox, The Last Stand 2, Left 4 Dead

LostWinds

Here's a review of LostWinds, a nice prize at the bottom of the WiiWare cereal box.  It's exactly what I want to see from WiiWare: small, creative games that use the Wii remote like a mouse.  In coming years, the Wii remote's ability to simulate a mouse will bring in more independent developers who don't want to make one more Asteroids clone for Xbox Live Arcade.  It's less intuitive than a mouse, but it's closer to one than any other controller.  Anyway, give the LostWinds website a look, it's a charming game.  Even though it's a bit short, it presents several fun ways of using wind to toss this cute little kid around his adowable wittle viwwage.  Er, that's "village."

Technorati Tags: LostWinds, WiiWare, Wii, GWJ

Hearsay, But I'll Allow It

I can't avoid mentioning this rumor for another second.  It's all over the gamy news sites.  It may have been debunked already.  I don't care.

This photo is a leaked scan of the upcoming issue of Famitsu, credited to JapaneseGIRL on Court-Records.net, the most comprehensive and entertaining Phoenix Wright/Apollo Justice fan site out there.  I believe the rumor (or let's say, as-yet-unsubstantiated fact) originates on this blog.  It is that Capcom, which has been teasing something like this for a while, will announce a new game called Gyakuten Kenji/Turnabout Prosecutor, starring Edgeworth and Gumshoe.

It's a third person point and click adventure for the DS, with crime scene investigation and prosecution and, as previously mentioned, starring Edgeworth.  (And Gumshoe!)  As the star, I can only assume that Edgeworth will be in this game a lot.  Third person means more Edgeworth on my little screens.  Point and click means I can make him run across the screen all day long.  Tap one part of the screen and he runs over there and investigates a little.  Tap another and he runs all the way back and starts prosecutin' up a storm!  Take that!  A whole game's worth of Edgeworth!

I don't often say "squee."  I feel it's unbecoming.  But, however,

squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Technorati Tags: Gyakuten Kenji, Turnabout Prosecutor, Edgeworth, Gumshoe, Court Records, rumors, hope, hope hope

 

Thief 4, Please Steal My Heart Anew

Is Eidos Montreal working on a new Thief game?  Eurogamer put together some clues and came up yesterday with a very definite "perhaps."  I've posted a screen shot from Thief 4 right here.  It's right there, hiding in plain sight.  What, you can't see it?  Ha ha!  I snatch your golden goblet, and I escape into the night!  It's my goblet now.  Goblet keepers.

When I played Thief for the first time, it really got into my head.  When I walked my dog at night, I tried to stay within the shadows.  If I saw people walking through a room it seemed as if they were on "patrol" and I half-consciously memorized their patterns.  I also had some really odd dreams in those days, because in case you didn't know, every Thief game has one very, very frightening level.  Just one.  The other levels are merely suspenseful, although very, very suspenseful.

According to Eurogamer,

Thief is a stealth-action title set in a gritty world that's a cross between the late middle ages and Victorian eras. It sees players creeping around and killing people by using their environment to cloak their approach and dump bodies down sewer hatches.

which is laughably untrue.  The game is not about killing people, it's about sneaking behind them and hiding in shadows when they turn around.  I have no idea where they got the bit about dropping bodies into sewers.  Thief sees players dousing torches to create shadows, walking on carpets to mask their footsteps, causing distractions, and leaning out of hidden alcoves to pick a guard's pocket.  Most of the damn game is just waiting.  The main game mechanic is sitting quietly and attentively.  If today's school kids played Thief, there would be much less ADHD, although admittedly, there would be many more pickpockets.  But damn it, they'd be focused pickpockets.

Technorati Tags: Thief 4, Thief, stealth action, the identity-confused genre

Professor Betray-ton and the Curious Village of LIES

As the leading puzzle solver in the continental U.S., I wholeheartedly endorse Professor Layton and the Curious Village, the new puzzle/adventure game for the DS.  Sure, it's just a copy of Games magazine cleverly concealed in a whimsical Triplets of Belleville story, but I've played plenty of adventure games where the puzzles don't match the story.  Every Myst game, for example.  In Professor Layton, the villagers come right out and say, "Here's a puzzle I'm working on.  Solve it for me."  Each puzzle I solve for these little bastards gives me access to more, better puzzles, gets me further in the story, and earns Picarats.  (Picarats are points.)  They tell me that if I earn enough Picarats, something good will happen.  Ooh, I hope it's another puzzle!

Professor Layton has more story and humor than you'd expect, pretty much just enough to provide a sense of progression, but not enough to distract from the puzzles.  Did I mention that there are puzzles?  Of course, once I've beaten the game, I doubt I'll play many of the puzzles ever again, especially the ones which are simply riddles.  That's where the DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT comes in.  Every week, I connect to Nintendo Wi-Fi and download a new puzzle, free of charge!  It's very generous of them.  I haven't beaten the game yet, but I've been faithfully downloading puzzles every week.

Except that I haven't.  The puzzles are already on the cart.  I've been downloading a code that unlocks puzzles that I already own.  Which means that unless they start actually producing puzzles, there is a finite (although large) number of puzzles remaining.  Granted, the DLC is free of charge, so no one is screwing me out of money, but I feel like they're screwing me out of time.  Why can't I unlock the puzzles from within the game?  The fun part of downloading new content is not the actual download process.  I don't get off on watching the little progress bar fill up.  "Ooh, it's at 50%!  Look, now it's 90%!  I have more of it now!"

Damn it, Nintendo, can't you do anything right?  Anything Internet related, that is?  The stupid Wii codes, the crippled online mode in Smash Bros. Brawl, and now they've decided to ignore the C in DLC.  Or is that the puzzle, Nintendo?  If I'm clever enough to solve it, will you stop sucking ever so hard?  Do I need to multiply the Wii code by the Brawl code and divide by Professor Layton's hat size?  Then can I have more puzzles?  I just want my Picarats, you lying sons of bitches.  Don't look me in the eye and tell me you're giving them to me.  I have those ones already.  I need new Picarats.  I'll solve any puzzle you want, just let me earn more Picarats!  More!  More!  Something good will happen!

Technorati Tags: Professor Layton, Professor Layton and the Curious Village, DLC, downloadable content, Nintendo, Picarat withdrawal

Audiosurf

Friday's Perspectives article, Audiosurf,  GWJ.  Linkety linkety link.  Audiosurf will be one of those games I can show to people who don't like games.  Wii Sports is another.  For people who like music, or jumping around getting exercise, these types of games are worth a hundred Halos or even Rock Bands.  You need to make the game not just accessible, you need to stop thinking of it as a game.  Only people who like games are willing to even pick up a game.  Let games be small, diverse, and inclusive, and the world will stop blindly hating them.  The world doesn't need a hundred Halos anyway.

Technorati Tags: Audiosurf, Gamers with Jobs, GWJ, links, brevity

Questionaut, Machinarium, Neologisms

Check out Questionaut, as reviewed here, for an easy educational quiz and a nice bite-sized bit of the old Amanita Design magic.  I've loved their stuff since Samorost, and now they're working on a full length adventure game called Machinarium.  Questionaut screen shown here, Machinarium below.  Lovely.  I can't wait.

Amanita's Jakub Dvorský discusses Machinarium a bit in this IndieGames interview.  In it he says he's "tired" of 3D realistic games, and has no plans to make a 3D adventure game.  Since his games appear to be designed with an eye towards art, then puzzles, then story, without any focus on "action," his attitude makes sense.  Adventure games don't do well with 3D realism.  At first glance, I thought that Machinarium picture was concept art, but in fact it's an actual screenshot.  The game will look just like that, like a hand-crafted work of art.  For that matter, it'll look like all the other Amanita games, because they've really nailed down a distinctive style.

Compare that to 3D worlds, which can look imaginative or naturalistic but almost never appear hand-crafted.  Most 3D games don't look like sculpture or art installations.  That would be pointless -- they would just be sub-par sculpture.  Real-life textures are always slightly better.  But a 2D game can look like and essentially be a drawing or painting, well-framed and full of subtle details.  Dvorský, animator Vaclav Blin, and the rest of Amanita Design manage to pull it off with every game they create, and as long as they're still crafting games, the 2D adventure will never die.  Also, painting and sculpture will probably limp along, too, for what it's worth.

Technorati Tags: Questionaut, Machinarium, Amanita Design, Jakub Dvorsky, Vaclav Blin, art, games, games as art, art as games

No More Heroes

So I didn't link to the No More Heroes article yet?  Better do that before it gets stale.  I'll post something else about it here, later this week.  It'll be a little less reviewy and a little more thinky, without neglecting the slashy slashy otaku sexy.  (If you say that fast, over and over, it sounds like the world's worst techno song.)

Technorati Tags: No More Heroes, Gamers with Jobs, GWJ

Grow Cube

Everyone knows the Grow series of Flash games, right?  Grow Cube is a particularly cute one, very lively.  Check it out if you haven't already.  One thought I didn't mention in the Act Casual piece is that it's an odd idea to create a little "growing garden" in a Flash game, as you can't save your progress and it all disappears, unless you leave that browser window open for your entire life.  (I don't recommend that.)  Well, real gardens don't last, either.  Every spring I go out and buy a bunch of stuff for my small garden.  I can't believe I have to go to the store to purchase dirt.  Supposedly it's better dirt.  It comes in a bag.  I can't use the dirt in the yard for my garden, oh no.  Have you seen that stuff?  It's filthy!   Screw you, dirt industry.  I'm on to your game.

 

Technorati Tags: Grow Cube, Eyezmaze, Gamers with Jobs, GWJ, dirt

Anika's Odyssey

Just a little game, with a little Act Casual review.  But, however, it's an adooooorable little game.  I liked it a lot, and I'd love to see Tricky Sheep do a sequel.  Fun, Flash, and free.  Anika's Odyssey, here.

Technorati Tags: Anika's Odyssey, Tricky Sheep, Kongregate, Gamers With Jobs

SimCity Societies Link

SimCity Societies article, at Gamers With Jobs, right here.

Technorati Tags: SimCity Societies, Gamers With Jobs, GWJ, hyperlinks

Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2

I import all my Japanese games from Play-Asia, because the selection is good, the prices are decent, and the return address looks like porn.  (And they do, in fact, also sell porn.  And they sell hentai games, which are sort of porny but mostly gamey.)  Sadly, not everyone associates the name Play-Asia with porn, so to make absolutely sure that everyone in my apartment complex thinks I've ordered something truly obscene, I have to do some character work.  As soon as they ship my game, I start growing a moustache, and if there's time, a mullet.  I wait outside the mailbox every day making finger guns.  (Do you know about finger guns?  You point both index fingers and go clickety-click.  It's super repulsive!)  When the package from "Play-Asia" arrives, all my neighbors naturally assume that it's porn, but then I rip it open to reveal a completely innocent game!  Fooled ya!  I immediately shave, cut my hair, and apologize to anyone who might have been wounded by my finger guns.  My apartment complex has an incredibly high turnover rate.

My latest import is a game where folks with unusual problems seek assistance from three enthusiastic cheerleaders, so it's easy for folks to get suspicious.  But what if I told you that these were male cheerleaders?  I just allayed the heck out your suspicions, right?  As you've probably guessed, my new game is Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, or more specifically, the sequel, entitled Moero! Nekketsu Rizumu-Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan Tsu, which translates to Spellcheck Nightmare Cheer Squad.  Everyone knows about it, either from playing the original, or Elite Beat Agents, the Western version, or even the sequel.  But they didn't play my specific copy of Ouendan 2, because it came shrink wrapped.  Thus, I am uniquely qualified to give an opinion on this exciting game that, in a sense, only I have played.  This will be a special moment for us all.

Get ready for the opinion.

I should also mention that this opinion will not be varnished.

Here we go.

It's pretty good!  It's not as good as the original, but that's because I loved the original so very much.  The tracks aren't as J-pop this time around, more like J-classic-rock.  It doesn't have a peppy song as frantic as Ready Steady Go, or a sad song as heartbreaking as Over the Distance, but there are some decent tunes in there, along with some amusing scenarios.  It seems less challenging, but maybe my skills have just improved.  For example, the beats, as always, don't correspond to the music; instead, they're the lyric beats where a cheerleader would shout or dance.  Either the beats are more intuitive this time around or I've finally learned to think like a cheerleader.  Took long enough.

So, yes, I'd recommend importing it, and you'll really save on shipping if you bundle it with a big old crate of pornography.

Technorati Tags: Ouendan, opinions, importing, opossums

Chalk and KUF: CoD

That's Chalk, by Joakim Sandberg, recently declared Best Freeware Arcade Game of 2007 at Indiegames.  Cute, right?  We're all a little sick of spaceships and bullets in our shmups, so how about a little girl in a beret with a bit of chalk?  That's just art design, though.  It also needs to play well, and fortunately, it does.  The left hand moves the girl around, the right hand draws lines with the chalk, and together it feels a little like you're steering the girl out of trouble while you clear obstacles and fight baddies for her.  There's a very similar relationship between player and character in Aquaria, but I'll discuss that one another time.  They're both very solid games, especially considering that one is free and the other costs next to nothing.

Having played a bit of Chalk, it's clear that the best feature by far is the little sound effect of the chalk tapping the board.  The music is very nice, too, but there's something so satisfying about a chalk's tap.  Even the word "chalk" has a little tap at the end.  A good sound, a good word, and a good title.  I collect bad game titles, as you may know, but I can appreciate a good one every once in a while.  My newest atrocious game title is Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom.  Think about that.  Is the kingdom under fire from the circle?  Is it literal fire?  How does one arrange doom in a circular pattern, anyway?  Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom has some interesting character names as well, including Linehart, Curian, Regnier, and . . . Duane?  (Sound of a record being scratched.)  I think we know who started this whole mess in the first place.  Duane's cooking up some late night noodles with his hot plate of doom, even though he knows that hot plates, fondue pots, and toaster ovens are forbidden.  We forbade them for a reason, ass.  Now the whole kingdom's under fire.  Way to go, Duane.

Technorati Tags: Chalk, Aquaria, indie games, Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom, standing outside the dorm in the rain, waiting for the fire truck to arrive, it is cold

More Alpha Prime Out of Context

I beat Alpha Prime.  I wanted to see if it could get any worse.  It sure could!  Around halfway through they begin running out of ways to rip off Half-Life 2 and start biting on Doom 3.  That's around when the "Coral Snake" plot line kicks in.  "Coral Snake" is the code name of someone who might be a double agent, working to foil Arnie, the player character.  Who could Coral Snake be?  Well, there are only three characters besides Arnie, and one of them is overtly evil, so you do the math.  At the end, it turns out that one of the two remaining characters is Coral Snake.  Huge surprise!

The "Glomar's Heart" plot line makes even less sense.  I still don't really understand that one.  Glomar is some kind of magical entity or something (we never see him, and the game assumes we already know about him) and his Heart grants wishes, if you can find it.  Coincidentally, his Heart happens to reside on this crappy mining asteroid, for a little while at least.  At other times, Glomar's Heart flits around the universe granting wishes, I think.  It's confusing.  The finale is a very, very lame boss battle in which you run around pressing buttons  on the walls because none of your weapons will permanently kill this hulking monstrosity.  You're carrying a damn rocket launcher which for all the damage it does, may as well be a strongly worded letter to the editor.  Boss battle, Arnie.  Don't fight back, try the wall buttons!

The final cut scene makes Halo look like brilliant storytelling.  I didn't think I could be more disappointed by this game, but they found a way.  Indescribably bad.  Rather than wrapping up the story in any way, they attempt to set it up for a sequel, which is just so darned optimistic.  Bless their little retarded souls.

Come on in and see the rest of my collection of ridiculous quotes from Alpha Prime.  Every one of these is at least as befuddling as Resident Evil's famous "Master of Unlocking."  The last one, in bold, I've begun saying in casual conversation, and it's done wonders for my social life.  Try it!

"Did they give the marines some kind of better shopping bag or what? . . . That's what you call one hot potato!"

"I had a reality check, baby.  You're in cahoots with them.  Once again I've let you lead me down the garden path even though I know you well."

"We romped around a little on the ship.  I'm not a whore.  I'm being disgustingly frank with you, Arnie."

"You know women ain't shit."

"Well I'll bear that in mind, Mr. Eavesdropper Extraordinaire!"

"I need to throw some rotten tomatos on the stage."

"Probably someone from that shower of bastards."

"I didn't know that the troops had licked him into shape!"

"Ass is needlessly vulgar.  I personally am betting on the duodendum and pancreas."

"If you touch that Heart, Glomar will enslave you.  You'll be a rookie taking on an old warhorse.  Glomar will fuck you over."

And he will.  Oh, he truly will.

Technorati Tags: Alpha Prime, Resident Evil, Glomar, forget about Social Security, Glomar's Heart is the third rail of American politics

Passage

Passage is more of a concept than a game, but it only takes five minutes to play (in fact, you can't play it for more than five minutes) and it has an interesting payoff at the end.  Try it, it's nice.  I won't give away any of the details, but you play this guy who walks around while some music plays.  You meet a girl and can travel with her, or not, there are some landscape obstacles, and you can search for treasure chests if you want.  Every single gaming blog discovered it sometime in December and did a little piece on it.  Now that it's 2008, Passage is officially retro and this blog can write about it.  Hey, remember Passage?  Let's kick it late 2007-style with Passage and recall a simpler time when America was still head over heels for Chris Dodd.

I liked it all right, but wasn't as blown away as everyone else.  I think it's the graphics, which are intentionally simplistic and blocky.  The entire screen area is only 100 by 16 pixels.  Atari-level graphics combined with aimless wandering remind me of playing E.T. back in 1982.  I played the hell out of E.T., never suspecting it would become the most notoriously bad game of all time.  Hey, it was better than Journey Escape.  It was better than Journey Anything Journey's Ever Done.

I think I would have had a stronger emotional reaction to Passage if the characters didn't look like the shameful fruit of Pac-Man and Q*Bert's forbidden passion.  Does that make me heartless, or just a graphics whore?  I like to think that I'm a high-class graphics prostitute, and deep down, I have an exquisitely rendered heart of gold.  After reading the game's mission statement, I understood it much better, but still only on an intellectual level, not emotionally.  It's a miracle that I can feel anything on any level after watching E.T. fall into a hole over and over during my formative years.  I wish those federal agents had dissected his wrinkly ass.

Technorati Tags: Passage, E.T., Journey Escape, Chris Dodd Escape

Alpha Prime - Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Czech Republic

If you like games, or conceivably, if you hate games and want them all to suck, you may want to read the new Alpha Prime review up at Gamers With Jobs.  Oh, what a shoddy piece of work.  The game, not the review.  Alpha Prime is another one of those Eastern European imports that have been making it into North America lately.  S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is the only example of a good one that comes to mind.  All the rest have been junk.  I'd like to check out the Night Watch game someday, if only because Night Watch is such a fun movie.  Sometimes the movie's luster can carry me through the rough spots in a game.  Hell, I'd play an adventure game based on Russian Ark if they made one.  It'd make a good roguelike.  The movie is one long take, so the game only allows you one life.  Hardcore.  Like me.  I am hardcore, too.

Anyway, the most outstanding bits of awfulness in Alpha Prime are the cutscenes, which aren't fully translated from Czech.  One of the characters is a cowardly Italian stereotype, and he speaks in half Italian, half badly translated English, and it's clear the voice actor is in way over his head.  They're all bad, though.  I put a couple of examples of awkward dialogue in the review, but here are a few I had left over.  Imagine all of these being read in an overly dramatic space soldier voice:

"They'll surely prize us out of this ship like an oyster from its shell.  And eat us with some lemon!"

"How could they hire such a worthless sack for a prospector?"

"By pressing (Default T) you turn on flashlight to help you in the dark corners."

When you walk over some bullets or health, the text on the screen says, "You Picked Pistol," or "You Picked Medikit."

"I'll get you Glomar . . . I'll pull you out of the fucking wall."

(That's another thing, pointless swearing.  I left all those quotes out of the review because someone might be reading it from work.  Also, I wanted to get away with using "dick" somewhere else.)

"Don't be such an asshole!  Do you think I've just been sitting on my ass here?"

Sometimes I'd sit around in a firefight and let everyone shoot at each other a while.  This is an actual transcript of the taunts and exclamations these soldiers tossed around while I waited for them to die:

"Fuck!"  "Shit!"  "Fuck!"  "Shit!"  "Take him out!"  "Shit - fuck!"  "Jesus!"  "Somebody take him out!"

Admittedly, it's fun to think of the voice actors having to record a hundred versions of "Oh shit!"  That's an apt way to describe Alpha Prime, too.  A hundred shits in a firefight.  Ew.

[I'd like to create a little archive of my GWJ contributions, so here's a link to my FreeRice writeup and also the 2007 Gaming Reference Guide to which I added a few mini-reviews.  After the winter break I'll make a little sidebar list for these links and start turning this joint into a proper website.  For now, think of it as low-fi DIY rustic charm.  Think of it that way.]

Technorati Tags: Alpha Prime, Gamers With Jobs, GWJ

The Extra Slot

I love my new DS Lite.  I got my original DS Heavy just before they came out with the Lite and I would've felt like a chump buying the same system again for full price.  I held off until this Thanksgiving, when I took advantage of a discount and trade-in deal on Black Friday.  It was absolutely worth getting up early and standing in line in the cold.  My new machine feels like a whole new system, not just improved hardware.  It's bright, satisfyingly clicky, and fits in my pocket now.  It also plays all my favorite DS games, I checked.

Here's the problem.  If you put a GBA cartridge in the slot, it sticks out a bit.  Not a whole lot, but it's a little less streamlined.  Nintendo's solution was to include this little plastic pretend cartridge that doesn't break the lines but also doesn't play anything.  I almost never use the GBA slot anyway, but it was always nice to know that I had that backup game.  Now the slot just sits there, empty but full, mocking me.  Shut up, slot.

I've considered getting a Rumble Pak for the slot, but that would also protrude, and come on, rumble?  Almost no DS games support it.  Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents support it, so that your DS can jiggle around while you're trying to hit the beats.  What a terrible idea.  Also, Hotel Dusk supports it.  Now, I played and even liked Hotel Dusk, but at no point did I think, "You know what this sedate, moody adventure game really needs?  Rrrrrrummmmble!"

(Super Princess Peach also supports rumble.  That's a game in which Princess Peach uses a "Vibe Wand" to control her "emotions."  Thanks, Nintendo.  Now I'm coming down with a bad case of imagery.)

Have you heard about the Glucoboy?  It's a glucose tester which plugs into the GBA slot and comes with some little video games as well.  Diabetic kids can win points and unlock games for having good blood sugar levels.  Gimmicky, sure.  But I love that kind of stuff.  It's even better if adult diabetics end up playing it.  What they need to do is integrate it with some of the better DS games, for example, unlocking cheat codes in Contra 4.  That game is dead hard, and I'd test my blood over and over if it gave me an edge.  Of course, I'm not diabetic, and (no offense) I'd rather not get diabetes, so that really would be cheating.  Sorry, real diabetics.  And now, since I've mentioned blood glucose levels and Contra in the same breath, it's time to let you in on a little secret:

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, <140 mg/dl 1-2 hours after meals.

 

Technorati Tags: Nintendo DS, DS Lite, Rumble Park, Glucoboy

Phoenix, We Have A Problem

New article up at Gamers With Jobs about Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations.  Read it here.  It'll take less time to read than it took me to type out that long ass title.  It's the conclusion to the Phoenix Wright trilogy, but there's a new Ace Attorney game coming out with a new protagonist, Apollo Justice.  Apollo has an uphill battle because he'll never be my beloved Phoenix Wright, with his retinue of wonderful characters like Maya, Mia, Pearls, Gumshoe, and of course Edgeworth.  (I also enjoy Godot's antics, and Franciska has a certain crazy appeal.)  This last game is bittersweet because the better the story gets, the more I'm reminded that this is the end.  Well, that's how stories work, and Phoenix Wright is very much a story-based game.  Most games nowadays don't tell a story very well at all, and I'm still surprised when I find one that has a coherent narrative structure, with character arcs, heightened stakes, imaginative details, etc.  Usually I ignore a game's clumsy attempts at storytelling unless it really interferes with my playing.  I've played many games which would have been more fun if they'd just dropped the plot altogether.

Phoenix Wright, however, lives and dies on its characters and plot, although once in a while it throws in a clever puzzle to solve.  As such, it's a tough game to review because I can't just tick off the little boxes (graphics, controls, multiplayer, length, replayability) and tally up its score.   One funny thing about games is that because they cost so much, we keep looking for ways to quantify the experience.  I never see book reviews that say it's a great story, but not worth the cost of the book, and you wouldn't want to re-read it.  Gamers With Jobs is pretty damn obsessed with scores, or with not having them, so I actively avoid trying to tick the boxes in my articles.  Unfortunately, it's a deeply ingrained part of every gamer's mind.  (Adult gamers, anyway.  Kids who don't pay for their own games have different priorities.  They'll play anything, which is kind of sweet, isn't it?) 

The problem is, even though you can't really quantify a story, we try to do it anyway.  This twist was good, this character is bad, they left this thread hanging.  I don't have a solution for this mind set.  I think time tends to smooth the rough edges of a game and after a few years I look back on it with pure nostalgia.  I've even gotten to the point where I can be playing a great game and feel a kind of pre-nostalgia: "I'm definitely going to remember that moment."  Later, I find myself listing the reasons why that moment works so well, and it kills the magic a little, like explaining a joke.  Well, there are worse problems to have.  Enjoy a game, analyze it later, and come back much later to enjoy it again.  I've gotten more than my share of enjoyment from the Phoenix Wright series, and even if Phoenix isn't in it, I'm doggedly optimistic about the new story on its way.

Technorati Tags: Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney, Trials and Tribulations, Apollo Justice, Gamers With Jobs, over-analyzing analysis itself

Assassin's Chat

I think the various controversies surrounding Assassin's Creed have died down now.  Everyone was yelling about whether it was over-hyped, whether reviewers unfairly knocked it without really playing it, and some childish idiocy about the game's producer.  I'm not even touching that one.  It's funny that a game in which you traipse around the Holy Land during the Third Crusade sticking shivs in every Christian, Muslim and Jew ended up as an Internet shout-fest about whether or not the gameplay is repetitive.  Religious watchdog groups don't bother with video games.  You could make a game about leading a group of starving kids during the Children's Crusade and the only controversy would be whether your squad mates have decent AI.  Actually, that game sounds like fun, but now I've over-hyped it.

I played Assassin's Creed for an entire week of multiplayer fun, and it never got boring.  The game doesn't really have modern multiplayer.  Rather, it features the underrated pleasure of watching someone else play.  It doesn't work for every game, but the cities of Assassin's Creed are glitteringly beautiful and the control scheme makes it easy for even a novice to pull off cool acrobatic feats.  You climb to the top of very tall buildings, see a breathtaking panorama of labyrinthine streets and sun-baked domes, then dive off a ledge into a cart of hay and pop out unscathed.  Let's just ignore the question of how a small pile of hay prevents injury and why passersby don't flip out when you jump out of it.  I'm a little ashamed that every time I did that, I'd quip, "Hay there.  I gotta bale."

That one sequence of events just never gets old, whether doing or watching it.  That's not to mention all the shanking, sneaking, swordfighting, and rooftop chases that make up the actual game.  Maybe they're right, it is a bit repetitive, but finding things that give me pleasure and then repeating them over and over, well, that's the general idea of my life.  My only real criticism is when the game insisted on showing off its idiotic story.  I don't care about the complex and intriguing story behind Assassin's Creed.  I also don't know anything about it, because every time someone started talking we went off to get more drinks, and they were still talking by the time we got back.  The speeches were always negative, too.  From what I could tell, every character who talks to your guy, Altair, calls him a dupe or a coward.  Why does everyone think it's a good idea to endlessly berate a guy who carries throwing knives?  Each conversation seems to run for at least five minutes.  Four minutes of that should just be Mr. Rudy Insult's gurgled apology.

The assassination targets even chat with you after the hit.  As they're dying, you get one of these scenes:

"So it is you, Altair.  You have come to kill me."

"I did kill you.  Stop breathing."

"Don't you want to know the big secret behind my entire operation?"

"Not really.  Can we get out of this magical slow-time whispered confession?  You're not the only guy I'd like to kill today."

"It isn't what you think.  You're a pawn in a deep game.  Forces beyond your control are pulling the strings."

"The strings on the pawn?  What?"

"I was once like you . . ."

"Come on, just die a little more.  Please?"

"Altair, come closer . . ."

"No."

"I am your . . ."

"Shut up!"

"The password is . . ."

"Die already!  I killed you!"

"Believe me, I am still alive . . ."

"No!"

"Still alive . . ."

"Boo!"

". . . still alive."

Technorati Tags: Assassin's Creed

Safe, Effective, Downloadable Psychonauts

You can now directly download Psychonauts on XBox Live.  It's a wonderful experience, one of the most imaginative, genuinely funny, lovingly crafted games I've seen since they all went 3D.  I don't know if you'd call it an adventure game, really, but it gave me that magical LucasArts/Sierra feeling.  I couldn't wait to see more, but I also wanted to savor every last moment.  Like it was the only game I owned.

Here are a couple of cutscenes from the brilliant Lungfishopolis level.  Spoilers, obviously.

Technorati Tags: Psychonauts, Tim Shafer, adventure games

Zack and Wiki and Gobliiins

My new article on Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure is up on Gamers with Jobs, right here.  The short version is that it's delicious.  The game, I mean.  In the review (which is tangy and robust), I mention Gobliiins and The Lost Vikings, two old adventure games, which prompted Rabbit to suggest that I throw some Wikipedia links in there, because they're a bit obscure nowadays.  I wasn't sure whether to feel old or hopelessly out of touch, but then I thought, why not both?  Let's rattle on about the Gobliiins series.

Gobliiins was a 1991 puzzle game by the French studio Coktel Vision which was translated into English and distributed by Sierra.  There wasn't any dialogue to translate, but they changed the names of the characters from Oups, Ignatus and Asgard to Dwayne, Hooter and BoBo.  It's just a cultural thing; English speakers like their goblins named Dwayne.  Each goblin has one ability -- BoBo punches stuff, Hooter casts spells, and Dwayne can pick up and use items -- and you control all three together to solve puzzles.  LOTS of puzzles.  Lots of HARD puzzles.  Each level is only one screen, but that screen is packed with items and creatures and stuff, all of which needs to be manipulated in just the right way to achieve the main goal, which is usually just to exit the room.  Let's say twenty objects times three goblins, and everything needs to be done in a certain order, some actions are time dependent, and some actions kill you.  It's frustrating and unfair, but it's fun.  It's like life itself, but with three goblins.

(By the way, Zack and Wiki has a similar structure, but is much easier.  It's challenging, but never truly frustrating.  It's a very fair game.)

So how do you ramp up the challenge for a sequel?  Interestingly, Gobliins 2 dropped a goblin (and an "i") but gave them personalities which affect their actions, rather than an arbitrary task that only one goblin can perform.  The new goblins, Fingus and Winkle, can pick up objects and perform actions, but they choose different actions because one is smart but afraid of everything, and the other is a courageous moron.  It's even more difficult than the original, despite the streamlined goblin count.  I don't want to get all combinatorics on your ass, but there are more possible actions now, and the goblins are all like, "I'm too smart to listen to you," or, "Hurrrrr."  Again, like life itself, specifically high school.

Goblins Quest 3 (Quest?  Don't ask.) has only one goblin, Blount, but he's a werewolf.  Switch between goblin and wolf, wolf has his own personality, goblin can deputize other animals and make them sort of mini-characters, blah blah blah, puzzle induced migraine.  This game's so frustrating I have to wonder if opening the package was a test that I failed.  I honestly don't remember if I ever finished it.  I think I paused, left the computer, and moved to another town.  Looking back, though, the Gobliiins series always made me feel really good when I finally stumbled upon a solution.  Sadly, there's not much of a market for "impossible" games anymore.  It's 2007.  I should stop living in the past . . .

What's that?  Off in the distance?  Could it be?

Gobliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiins!

Technorati Tags: Goblins, Gobliiins, Coktel Vision, Sierra, Zack & Wiki, puzzles, puzzle games, love begins anew

Extracurricular Activities

For today's video game post, click over to my new article at Gamers With Jobs.  It's an excellent site for folks who play games but don't go all crazy about it.  Well, sometimes they go crazy, but not the way twelve year olds do.  For example, they do "perspectives" rather than "reviews," which means they don't just slap an arbitrary score on a game and then kill time for two pages.  Scores sell games, but for reviewers they're a way to hide behind a number and feign objectivity.  Painkiller: Overdose, the game I'm discussing, is horrendously bad, even worse than you would expect from the title, but the lowest score it would ever get on any review-based site would be maybe 5 out of 10, and that's if the disc didn't fit in the drive properly.  Reviewers tend to default to "it's good for what it is" when a game lacks ambition.  Maybe there should be a scoring system that starts at zero and has no upper bound.  Does that make any sense?  Read the article instead -- I may have used up my coherence for the day.

Technorati Tags: Painkiller, Overdose, Gamers With Jobs, GWJ

Brutal Legend

That's the trailer for Brutal Legend, Tim Shafer's new game featuring the voices of Jack Black and Lemmy from Motorhead.  I've never seen a game that looks quite like that.  Of course, we all know the game itself won't look like that.  Current technology doesn't allow a playable game with that level of detail.  I've always found it odd that movie trailers show actual footage but game trailers show something that tries to convey the experience without boring stuff like the pause screen and the tutorial level where someone explains to you how to play the game you thought you were playing pretty well already.

With enough style (and I think the above trailer has enough style to shred and/or melt the face off the last twenty non-Valve trailers I've seen) you don't need these piddling gameplay details, but just once I'd like to see a trailer that consists solely of a bunch of Game Over screens, with the tagline:  That One Jump Is Too Hard.  Jump Misser, plummeting to a store near you, December 2007.

The teaser trailer makes haruspices of us all.  We kill it with our opinions and search for omens in its entrails.  In the trailer, the roadie goes from axe slashing to driving to flying around.  Those are clues, and the order may indicate the relative importance of each element in the actual game.  Then he sits on a throne surrounded by sexy groupies, which indicates that Tim Shafer wants lots of young men to buy the game, the way they didn't buy Psychonauts.  (But if you actually bought Psychonauts, congratulations!  Welcome to our overlooked but self-satisfied little club.  We meet every ninth Thursday on a dragonfly's eyelash.)

Technorati Tags: Brutal Legend, Tim Shafer, Psychonauts, spellcheck doesn't like "haruspices"

Portal Countdown

Wednesday night.  Midnight PST.  That's when they unlock the Orange Box.  That's when I start playing Portal.  Unless I get sleepy.  Which is likely.  So I might not play it until later.  Unless I'm sleepy again.  I should stop drinking warm cream.

My hopes for Portal, the time and space bending puzzle game, are that it will be tricky and fun, and that when I'm done, I can create my own little levels for it that will hurt other folks' brains.  Wired has a brief user's guide and this helpful diagram by Jason Lee.  I think that's a different Jason Lee, but it's more fun to picture the little mustache, isn't it?

Question:  Let's say I place one portal on the ceiling and I place the corresponding portal on the floor directly below it.  I drop an object, let's say my heart, into the floor portal, it comes out the ceiling, and falls right into the first portal again.  What happens to my heart?

Answer:  With sufficient momentum, my heart will go on forever.

Question:  No.  No more questions if you're going to be that way.

Technorati Tags: Portal, Orange Box, Jason Lee's stache of glory

Run and/or Gun

Thanks, Crystal Dynamics!  The new Wii version of Tomb Raider Anniversary will let Lara Croft run while shooting.  This article says it's a first for the series, and as far as I know, that's true.  I got out of the series early before it soured, about halfway through the second game.  Sure, the graphics improved, but I always liked the very first Lara, the one made of maybe twelve polygons.  You kids today don't realize lady archaeologists are sexier when you have to use your imagination a little.  You want her upper body to be one big shapely but immobile Lego, like she's wearing a sports bra made of cement.  Aww yeah, I'd dust that off with a tiny brush.

And now she can shoot while she jumps around.  It's funny how I expect that from every game now, except for Resident Evil, of course.  Video games have done nothing but impair my ability to kill anything in real life.  If you gave me a real gun the first thing I'd do would be to jump sideways while firing.  If you gave me another gun I'd try to fire them simultaneously in different directions.  On some deep level I'm convinced that in a desperate shootout, I could do a slow motion backflip without any loss of accuracy.  While all you people are slowly training your sights and checking your backdrops and whatever, I'll be out there mixing it up.  Sure, I'll miss you by a mile, but you'll admire my enthusiasm and spirit.  I'm like a gun toting Kerri Strug.

 

Technorati Tags: Crystal Dynamics, Tomb Raider, Lara Croft, Kerri Strug, firearm safety, Archaeology 101

Zak AND Wiki? Bonus!

Continuing the Wii theme, one game I'm looking forward to is Zak & Wiki: The Quest for Barbaros' Treasure.  I'm also looking forward to never typing that title again.  Let's just pretend it's an old Sierra adventure and call it Treasure Quest.  It's colorful and pretty, I like the whole Wind Waker kiddie pirate theme, and it's promoted as an adventure game, with maybe a little platforming.  The DS has had some decent adventure games which took advantage of the touch screen, and this game seems to go way beyond that in integrating the Wii's motion sensing technology.  I love games that give me new ways to solve puzzles, where figuring out how the game works is part of the puzzle itself. 

But this trailer, from the Tokyo Game Show, gets a little too enthusiastic about features that every Western adventure game has had since forever.  "It's up to you to decide which item to use!"  Really?  You mean the game doesn't play itself?  Guess I better put down that hoagie!  "The door needs a key!  Is there a key nearby?"  Well, there damn well better be.  It's poor puzzle design to put a locked door with no possible solution in your way.  Of course, the most boring way to get past a locked door is with a key, and in the real world, people don't lock doors and then leave the key outside but just barely out of reach of a short kid.  Hell of a security system there.  Keeps out 100% of lazy midgets.

And one last thought:  Do Japanese people applaud when they watch someone play a video game?  That's so sweet!  I want people to clap for me when I play.  Damn this uptight no-clap American society.

Technorati Tags: Zak and Wiki, The Quest for Barbaros' Treasure, adventure games, hooray you used an item!, you are my hero!

W Double I

I got a Wii.  I'm now a Wii owner, and can now write about all things Wii with confidence and hands-on experience.  If I'm writing about the PS3, rest assured I just looked it up on Wikipedia.  Of course, all the new Wii owners wrote about it last year, so once again I'm behind the times.  I've been standing in line since December 2006.  Turns out it was the wrong line.  And get this, the second line I got in was also not the Wii line.  But third's a charm, and now I own a Wii, and I got to feed a baby goat, and Randy Jackson informed me that he, personally, was not feeling me.

What new casseroles can I bring to the table of Wii commentary?  First of all, I promise I'll never make a Wii pun.  I've done it a couple times before, with my friends, but that wasn't in print, and those were different times.  It's played out.  And I won't insipidly double the letter i or substitute "Wii" for all hard e sounds.  Check it out: implicitly, invidiously, interstitially.  If you've read other Wii articles, you know what a mangled nightmare the word "interstitially" becomes.  It makes Lex the Bookworm hide and cry.

Another refreshingly unusual (or boringly typical?  read on!) angle for my Wii story is that I'm bad at it.  Or at least, I need to unlearn all the years of experience with other consoles.  As kids, we would all jerk the controller while playing.  You press A to make Mario jump, but your hands also jump upward, as if that gave him more oomph.  As controllers got more complicated, we stopped doing that, because you couldn't mess with analog sticks, triggers, and buttons while waggling around like a bee with news.  But the Wii controller requires motion, and what's worse, sometimes there's no corresponding button to press.  In Mario Party, you wave the remote to make him jump up and hit a block.  I spent a full minute frantically mashing A and wondering why he wouldn't jump, even though there was a prompt right there on the screen.  And in Trauma Center, you apply the shock paddles by holding the remote and nunchuk towards the screen.  Somehow I could not believe that the game would register that action.  It seems crazy that the game can tell where I am in the room.  I feel like my privacy has been violated.  Does the game know what I'm wearing?  Is the next Everybody Votes going to be whether I should put on some pants?

So far, the Wii feels less like a game system and more like a weird appliance designed to produce and distribute Nintendo vibes around the room.  At its best, it turns people into little kids, and rewards them for acting silly.  At its worst . . . well, Nintendo vibes have been shown to cause obsession, bleary eyes, and corrupted spelling.  I'll try to remain objectiive.

Technorati Tags: Wii, Nintendo Wii, hypocrisy

I'm a Healer: Beginner's Tips for Team Fortress 2 Medics

Twice now I've dreamt about Team Fortress 2, and I haven't even played it that much.  It just gets in your head.  It's a bottomless toy chest of colorful visuals and exciting moments.  All the classes are fun, but I always return to the Medic, because he suits my play style.  I'm an accurate but slow shot, and I prefer to be in the middle ranks, neither on the vanguard nor defending the base.  And I like healing other people.  I know what it's like to be low on health.  It feels bad.  Even if you come across a health pack, it might not bring you up to 100%, and it's kind of impersonal.  And it's been on the ground.

Here are a few tips I've picked up along the way:

• The Medic uses a proton pack-looking device to shoot a stream of healing plasma or something into the other players on his team.  It looks, um, a little intimate?  You should probably aim above the belt.  And although you have to stick close to your target, always stay behind them!  Don't block their view.  You can't defend yourself while healing, so let them do the shooting.  However, if someone throws grenades or shoots rockets at you, jump away or you're dead.
• Your teammates will call out when they're wounded, and if you see them nearby, run out to help them.  If they're too far away, though, they're going to die anyway.  I know how that sounds.  But you're not a miracle worker, damn it.  And they respawn.  They'll forgive you.  I make tough calls like that every day in Team Fortress 2.
• Scouts are too fast to keep up with and if they need healing, they come to you.  Engineers and Snipers stay in one place, so once they're healed, move on.  Spies are pretending to be on the other team -- shh!  The Soldier, Demo Man, and to some extent the Pyro need attention.  They get hit all the time.  And every single Heavy Weapons Guy wants a Medic behind him constantly, because he's so damn slow, but a good Heavy Weapons Guy can push through the one choke point where both sides have reached a stalemate.  So keep him alive through that push.
• And of course, the best way to do that is to use your Über Heal!  After you've healed enough damage, activating Über Heal gives you and your target ten seconds of invulnerability.  That's enough time for the H.W. Guy to take out a ton of enemies and turrets.  It's the most exciting ten seconds in a Medic's life.  Some Medics say it's not as fulfilling as the ten seconds of getting married, or the ten seconds during which their children were born.  They're lying.
• Everyone on the other team wants to kill you.  Snipers will take you out first, and Spies will backstab you.  Scouts are usually busy with something else, but they'll take a few shots on the way.  You're armed with a gun that fires syringes and a bone saw.  For real.  It's hard to kill anyone with them, but it can be done, and it's brilliant.  I once hacked up another Medic with the saw.  "Aaagh!" he cried out.  "What happened to Do no harm?"  "Sorry, doc," I replied.  "I was late for class that day."
• Finally, watch out for spies.  It's a special achievement for a spy to get an opposing team's Medic to heal them.  Keep in mind your teammates' names, although the Spy can also imitate them.  It's annoying, but your safest bet is to shoot everyone first, because it makes Spies drop their disguise.  Friendly fire doesn't damage your allies.  It's almost a sign of respect.  But don't get paranoid.  If every Medic starts mistrusting their friends, then the Spies win.

It's not the most glamorous profession, but a good Medic can really make a difference out there in the crazy, competitive world of Team Fortress 2.  Once the beta is over and everyone's playing it (assuming they're not playing Halo 3, of course), you'll see a lot of Spies, Snipers, and Scouts, but as long as there's one Heavy Weapons Guy out there, he deserves a Medic of his very own.  Let the healing begin.

Technorati Tags: Team Fortress 2, Medics, Über Heal, "over heal"

Have You Heard of This Halo 3 Game?

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Internet) just sent me an email asking when I was going to get around to the mandatory Halo 3 post.  All Internet typists need to put up a Halo 3 post by the end of the week or face a hefty fine and possible senatorial teabagging.  Sorry, y'all.  I'm still getting caught up on my BioShock posts.  I think I need to write eight of those before I can even pretend to be a "games journalist," also known as a "playa writa."  Technically, I was out of the country when BioShock dropped, so I get an extension, but Halo 3 is too mainstream to be ignored.  I like to keep my finger on society's pulse for so long that it gets uncomfortable and society starts wondering, "Is this guy even a doctor?  Most doctors don't move their lips when they count."

This Halo 3 thing is tricky because I don't have the game and I won't until it comes out on PC at least a year from now.  Also, I don't like Halo.  I don't hate it, either -- I just don't think it has that something extra that makes a great game.  It's a lot of fun playing multiplayer matches with friends, but almost everything is fun with three or more.  Chess can be fun, but have you ever tried to play while a third person picks up all the pieces and moves them around randomly?  Instant excitement.  And Halo matches, fun as they are, tend to reward the same limited skill set, as opposed to, say, Team Fortress 2, with nine genuinely different ways to play, and a chance to switch each time you die.  In Halo, the most important choice is whether you're going to use the pistol, and in Halo 2, it's whether or not you should pick up an energy sword.  The answers are, respectively, yes, and yes, you cheap bastard.  Have fun stabbing people with a giant Quake 2 logo.

As for the single player campaign, well, everyone knows that's not the main draw.  Personally, the Halo universe doesn't do it for me.  It's futuristic, frantic, and colorful, but also annoyingly familiar.  I blame Master Chief, the protagonist.  I don't like him, and I hate his friends.  He's just a soldier, or super-soldier, which is even dumber.  He just follows orders, shooting up each level, and moving on to the next one.  His sidekicks have no personality beyond the sort of hoo-rah team antics that you see in any war movie, as perfectly satirized in Starship Troopers.  (I don't care for Cortana any more than for Denise Richards in that movie.)  In any FPS, the game forces you to complete somewhat arbitrary objectives, but the Half-Life series, BioShock, and to some extent Far Cry disguised the linear narrative by putting you in the bodies of self-motivated characters who were really just fighting for their lives.  Master Chief is fighting to save Earth.  Screw Earth.  It's a pretend future Earth.  Almost none of my friends live in pretend future Earth, and I bet I could convince them to move before shit went down.  I would offer them, uh, credits and homemade cyber-pie.

Three questions for writers, even writers of video games:  In your story, is an entire race, planet or universe in danger?  Is your story set in the future or another alternate world?  Finally, is your hero very very special -- superhero, super-soldier, or Chosen One special?  If the answer is yes to all three, start over.  Two out of three is acceptable, but still requires a lot of work to keep the cheese level manageable.  You'll need to be extra clever, extra funny, or extra nude.  The Halo series has a cool way with names (a robot named 343 Guilty Spark, a ship named In Amber Clad) but never follows through on the allusions.  Thanks to a ten million dollar marketing campaign, Halo 3 gets plenty of attention from the non-gaming press, but they may be wondering if this game is worth the hype.  Probably not, because no game could live up to that buildup.  If you want to enjoy Halo 3, I'd suggest not reading another word about it.  I'm not even going to write another word

Technorati Tags: Halo 3, Master Chief, Starship Troopers, Team Fortress 2

BioShock Demo for the Xbox Peoples

 

I don't have the Xbox, live or dead, but if you have Xbox Live, the demo of BioShock is now ready for download.  There's no PC demo, so I can stay pure and free of spoilers until the full game drops on August 21.  I'm getting the collector's edition with a little figurine, soundtrack CD, and art booklet.  I haven't menti0ned it much but I'm as excited as a bee in bee town about this game.  If, somehow, you haven't heard of it and would still care, it's a spiritual successor to the System Shock series, a terrifying Art Deco parody of Ayn Rand's Objectivist ideas set in a collapsing underwater dystopia.  In fact, although I won't be in the country when it arrives, I'll take a moment that day to think about how cool it must be for everyone just starting to play.  Maybe I'll ridicule Ayn Rand in my own little way by opening an atlas and shrugging or finding a fountain and sticking my head in it.  Or, I guess I could pursue my own self-interest and happiness that day, but I was gonna do that anyway.  I know!  I'll pursue my own self-interest Objectivist style and act like it's some kind of goddamn virtue.  Join me, won't you?  August 21st, a day to be insufferable.

Technorati Tags: BioShock, Xbox, Ayn Rand, Objectivism

Current Mood: Atari 2600

It's the Atari 2600 Label Maker!  (First seen on Insert Credit, then Kotaku, and I read about it on a CRT monitor.)  Make your own nostalgic Atari labels and then close your eyes and imagine playing them!  Don't imagine too hard, though, or the graphics will be unrealistically good.  To start you off:

I don't remember if the Mooninite invasion was technically in Southie, but had we not defeated that first wave, all of Boston would be speaking Atari right now.  One more:

Technorati Tags: Atari 2600, Mooninites, David Beckham, game cartridges

Numbing Repetition vs. Nummy Repetition

Every game has some amount of repeated action, and every game player has some internal clock ticking down towards boredom.  For me, that point feels like I've stopped playing the game and started practicing it.  Although I want to do well at a game, I don't feel like spending hours developing any skills that will only help me in one game.  Improvement in any FPS, rhythm game, adventure game, or strategy game can transfer to other games of that genre, but learning the abstruse rules of a particularly complex fighter or RPG feels pointless unless I get a steady feed of small victories.  Otherwise, there's no guarantee you'll ever master that one game.  You may suddenly discover your personal glass ceiling, only this ceiling has spikes and slowly lowers itself towards you and also the ground is covered in lava.  Not to mention the employee sex discrimination in the video game world.  I say, if women want to work in Bowser's castle, they have every right to go all the way to the top and someday kidnap and threaten princesses for full pay.  But ask yourselves, though, am I part of the problem?

I'm on about repetition because I played a bit of the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars beta this weekend.  I doubt all 25,000 keys are gone yet, so go install it now and play for several hours, so you can understand the next two paragraphs.  Oh look, you're back.  As you can see, Quake Wars is a multiplayer FPS, meaning you and a bunch of guys run around fighting off the other guys until time runs out.  You run out there, kill some guys, get killed, respawn, and run out again.  If you're lucky, there's some strategy and team comradery, but you don't actually know these people, and there's no time to chat.  Although it's mindless and impersonal, you also have to stay constantly alert and predict your enemies' actions.  But you never really win.  Anybody you kill just comes back a few minutes later and you have to kill them all over again.  I want the satisfaction of permanently killing someone, in a video game, I mean.  Even America's Army, the FPS developed by the Army (a free download, and rated T, for Teen!  "Enlist" today!) brings everyone back to life in the next round.  In real life, this only works when the Army invades someplace like India, where they have reincarnation.

Some folks already like Quake Wars ("roXorz" level satisfaction) and will probably love it once it's finished.  I've enjoyed Counter-Strike and some other multi FPS's, so maybe I'll like the finished product, too.  But I felt too much like an unpaid tester to really get into this beta.  I was there to fight the same battle, over and over, to help the developers work out bugs.  With time, I would have improved, the way everyone improves, by "learning the map."  By memorizing the map.  Go for the sniper rifle, it's over there.  If they show up over there, come at them from this direction.  I'd be all over that map like Carmen Sandiego.  But when do you get to kick back and enjoy the map?  I want to blow up a bunch of nondescript soldiers, but then I want to have a leisurely stroll along the battlements with a cooling drink and some cucumber sandwiches.  I want the crusts cut off my sandwiches, too, and I don't want them to respawn.  So what if the game is called Enemy Territory?  Once you kill all the enemies, then it's just territory.  My territory.  And I'm building an aboveground pool.

Technorati Tags: games, FPS, Enemy Territory, Quake Wars, America's Army, Carmen Sandiego, cucumber sandwiches, relaXors

Beowulf: The Game

That's Beowulf: The Game.  Don't get confused and walk out of Gamestop with Beowulf: The 1000 Year Old Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem, because I guarantee your PS3 can't read that shit.  So now you can dismember monsters and their moms in your very own home!  Hopefully you can play as Beowulf, not some new character inserted into the story named Rickywulf.  I also hope that was just some generic monster in the trailer and not Grendel or Grendel's mom, because it's not nearly tough enough.  It looks like a Weeble with claws.  It may as well be a tubercular tadpole feebly slapping Beowulf's toe with his tiny, moist fist.

I used to listen to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf while driving at night.  It's great stuff.  Seamus Heaney's poems often have several really thick, meaty words balanced with a few bright, gleaming ones to create a certain kind of earthly music.  Beowulf was already a pretty juicy story, but Heaney makes it so chewy and clangy your jaw hurts and you might get metal poisoning.  Sometimes I would slow down in the fast lane so I could devote my full attention to his voice.  I liked to think that if I got in a wreck and had my arm lopped off it made more sense to do it to Beowulf than, say, Chumbawamba.  Because, odds are, I won't get up again.

You can see why Beowulf fits the gaming trends of today.  It's mythical and violent, like God of War, and I bet it appeals to the Ren Faire crowd as well.  However, the original story only has three actual fights, and the third one doesn't go so well.  Anything else you throw in there is filler.  And I can't imagine how they would deal with my favorite part of the text, the weird bits of advice on honor and manners.  "Always reward someone who does you a favor, and double rewards if they die."  "If someone kills a family member, hunt down their whole family and kill them, unless they pay you a lot of money."  They cleverly weave the advice into the tale via that old child-rearing trick: "Hrothgar always eats his vegetables, so you should too."  Stop comparing me to Hrothgar!  I'm not Hrothgar, all right?  And I never will be!  (Runs to room, sobbing, and slams the door)

Technorati Tags: Beowulf, Grendel, Seamus Heaney, God of War, games, tubercular tadpoles

Mess with the d'Urbervilles

That's Rose & Camellia, a game where you play a young woman of low birth who marries into a snooty aristocratic family.  But your husband dies right after the wedding, so to gain respect, you have to win a slap fight against every woman in the house.  Play it here.  Be warned, though!  This is the Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! of Victorian disagreement simulators, in that the final boss is ridiculously overpowered.  It's also like Punch-Out!! in that the evil sea hag at the end actually punches you, in the face, while your open palm daintily whiffs past the place she used to be.  You don't bring a fist to a slap fight.  It's indecorous.

I can't tell what happens at the end, so I'll make something up.  The aristocratic family learns to accept you, and never speak again of how you routed them all that one sporadically loud November day.  You lead a retiring life full of domestic hobbies, like fox hunting.  When a fox goes to ground, you wriggle into its burrow and slap every member of its family until it returns to the chase.  As an equestrian you have no equal.  You love horses because they have so much extra face.  And in the fullness of time, you remarry and have children, and soon no one can tell the new line of the family from the old, save for the boys' surprisingly flexible wrists and the girls' curious predilection for gloves.

Technorati Tags: games, Flash games, Rose & Camellia, slap fights, aristocracy, opening up Hand-ora's Box

True Tales of Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s

It dropped on Tuesday, with Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword, and I hit the store bright and early to purchase the hell out of them.  Target was out, but Gamestop had plenty.  They actually gave me a box from the pile of reserved games.  Made me feel special.  I had a bit of a row with the clerk over Guitar Hero 80s, which proceeded thusly:

(Oh, and I call myself "Tristram" in this dialogue, because that's how I remember it.  Subjectivity, you know.)

TRISTRAM:  Hullo!  I'd like to purchase this game.

CLERK:  OK, but you do know this game features rocking out, right?  It's only for rockers.

TRISTRAM:  Of course.  I know how to rock.

CLERK:  Yeah, we just have to ask that.  Sometimes kids get a hold of it and their parents come in later because their faces melted off from a blistering guitar solo and we have to buy them off with gift cards and gauze.

TRISTRAM:  Oh, I don't mind proving my skills.  Toss me that guitar.

CLERK:  Rock on!  [tosses me a guitar]

TRISTRAM:  No, not a real guitar.  What the hell are these wiry things on the neck?  Give me a HERO guitar.

CLERK:  Sorry, I didn't know you were up to that level.  [tosses me a plastic guitar, with fret buttons, like Hendrix used]

TRISTRAM:  Wheedly-do, deedly-yo, tweedilly tweedilly tweedilly reeeeeeowwww . . .  EEEOOOW.

CLERK:  Oh God!  That's insane!  I couldn't be rocked any harder by a nanny on steroids!  You've got hotter licks than an aardvark on fire!  My ears just came!

TRISTRAM:  I CAN'T STOP GET OUT OF HERE NOW

[Later, among the ambulances, fire trucks, and animal control vehicles, the CLERK recounts his terrifying experience.]

CLERK:  And I ran.  I ran so far awa-hu-yay.  I just ran.  I ran all night and day! . . . I couldn't get away.

REPORTER:  But what happened to Tristram?

CLERK:  He didn't make it.  No one can stare into the eye of awesome for that long without going mad himself.  Or at least getting carpal tunnel syndrome.  No, he's in Heaven right now, shredding with the angels, or in Hell, hitting the Devil's whammy bar.

REPORTER:  Or he could be in Purgatory.

CLERK:  Don't you see?  We're the ones in Purgatory, because try as we might, we'll never rock as hard as him.

Technorati Tags: Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero Encore, Rocks the 80s, slight exaggerations

Titan Quest, or You'll Pay For That!

Titan Quest isn't the most original game in the world.  It's a Diablo clone released long after the end of the Diablo clone war.  That was after the Myst clone war but before the GTA clone war, and by now I'm not even sure what war we're fighting now.  Brain Age?  Katamari?  All those innocent games, copied before their time.  Senseless.  At least with Titan Quest, developer Iron Lore waited to cash in on the craze, and ended up with a highly polished, streamlined take on the "click on monsters until they die" genre.  And did Blizzard really invent that genre after all?  Diablo had kind of a generic medieval setting, while Titan Quest takes place in Greek mythology, which actually predates medieval times.  I smell a lawsuit! 

(Figuratively.  If anyone out there is tragically afflicted with the ability to physically smell lawsuits, I'm not mocking you and I apologize for being so litigious in the past.  It's just that I thought Ronald McDonald was spitting in my food.  I later discovered that everyone else's burgers taste like that, too.)

In college, everyone I knew played Diablo.  On average, that is -- I knew plenty of people who didn't, but the ones who did played it so much that they wrecked the curve.  If you're easily addicted to things, or -- and this is an important distinction -- you just like doing things over and over without being able to stop, Diablo was a great warm up for Blizzard's later project, World of Warcraft.  I've never played it but I hear it's maybe a little addictive.  Of course, with any game there's a fine line between "addictive" and simply "extra fun."  All good games entertain or satisfy in some way, and some aim for many hours of good, decent fun rather than a few hours of unforgettable joy.  My problem with World of Warcraft, and all MMOs, is the monthly fee.  I want to pay for something and be done with it.  I like buying games, not paying for services.  One of these things is not like the others: water, gas, electricity, Internet, whomping on orcs with your magical sword.  Yes, I consider Internet access a basic necessity, and no, you may not try to make a case for your magical sword.  Also, I do not want to see your magical sword, and no, I am not just jealous.

I pulled Titan Quest down to my box using Steam, a digital distribution platform without monthly fees, which makes all the difference.  Free online game services are Full of Terrific Wonderment, a phrase you sometimes see on forums as the acronym FTW.  It's on sale until tomorrow for $18, and with high speed it's an easy download.  Steam started out horribly buggy, but now it's the best service out there, closely followed by GameTap, which has kind of a screwy business model but a slew of wonderful old and new adventure games.  That's the future should look: on-demand downloads, wireless access everywhere, and nobody charging little fees on top of it.  It's been established many times that gamers will put up with little fees, or as they call them, "microtransactions," but that doesn't mean it's right.  Gamers also put up with Sonic the Hedgehog for years as he got slower and dumber, when they should have slapped that spiky blue betrayer so hard that rings fly out of his ass.

I'm fine with the Wii approach, which focuses on games as a physical action in the real world.  But as a work of fiction, most of a game takes place in your head.  It doesn't really exist.  So they shouldn't be tied to one disc, one console, one gas and time wasting trip to the store, where you end up punching some twelve year old until they drop the one available copy.  And you shouldn't be charged again for the time you spend playing.  It's silly and a little rude to monetize fiction to that extent.  It's like making people pay for the morning dew, or a gentle breeze, or the innocent laughter of a child.  Or all three for one low rate.  Holy shit, I just came up with a brilliant idea.

Technorati Tags: Titan Quest, Diablo, Steam, GameTap, monthly fees

Debating "de Blob"

This video is longer than a 21st century attention span, so feel free to stop watching once you get the idea.

The upcoming De Blob (which supposedly has a lower case "d," but it's a video game, not e. e. cummings) combines the OCD-like goal of touching everything in the world with the anarchic method of splattering paint with every step.  Of course, when you see a rolling ball and an entire world that needs to be transformed, what's your first game reference?  Katamari Damacy, of course, such familiar words by now that I'm surprised my spell check noticed them.  I assume that's a good way to get a game made nowadays, compare it to Katamari.  If your game is about doing ketamine in a catamaran until you develop a caramel catarrh, that's probably close enough.  Just throw in some stealth action and bullet time.

Looks fun, especially jumping from wall to wall, but why does the character need to be a blob?  Just because it looks cool?  Can't a solid character do all that stuff in video game reality?  In Super Mario Sunshine, Mario flew around and wall jumped while spraying water which cleaned off the environment and restored color.  The blob barely changes form at all, which strikes me as a sad waste of, you know, gelatinousness.  Why can't it stretch out into a rope, or ooze under a door, or break into little pieces and then reform?  Even if that's not the point of the game, why isn't there a game like that?  You'll never see a critique like this anywhere else -- to summarize, I am complaining that this unreleased game disappoints me because another game that would be cooler does not exist.  Welcome to the way I think.

One game that comes close is Gish, a well-liked 2005 indie game.  It features an oily black blob who overcomes obstacles and defeats enemies through a realistic 2-D physics system.  Gish can make himself heavy, sticky, or extra slippery and easily compressed.  He can also hop a tiny bit, or more if he builds momentum.  You have to see it in action to see how frustrating but ultimately satisfying it is to solve all kinds of puzzles using the laws of physics and a ball of goo.  If it looks confusing, remember that he becomes sticky at will, and when he grits his teeth, he's making himself heavier.  This doesn't work in real life.

My ideal blob game (I spent much of last week thinking about this) is a combination of Gish and the 1989 NES game A Boy and His Blob.  In that one, you collect jellybeans which transform your pet blob (named Blobert) into different useful objects.  Feed him a licorice bean, and he becomes a ladder.  Vanilla = umbrella, cinnamon = blowtorch, and so on.  It's self-explanatory.  Here's a seven minute speed run, which shows that A Boy and His Blob is winnable, a proposition that was not definitively proven until 2003.  Damn, that game was hard.  While watching this video, the power of nostalgia caused an NES controller to appear in my hand and I immediately broke it.

So what have we learned from this exploration of blob games and embedded video?

1. Nothing.
2. Were we supposed to learn something?
3. Whoops!  My bad!

If you've gotten this far, I appreciate it and can only assume that you like blobs, too.  We're kindred souls!  If you have any questions or corrections about blobs, or if you just want to "blob rap," feel free to join in the conversation.  I can also write about non-blob topics on occasion.  I know a lot about politics and have many insightful and snarky political opinions and stuff.  An example: On this page, you can submit a question to Barney, George W. Bush's dog.  Actual White House staffers take time to reply, and some poor schmuck pretending to be Barney has to type "Woof!  Bark!  Aroo!"   Discuss:

1. As the questions go on, "Barney" becomes less and less coherent and begins laughing hysterically in all caps.
2. The last question answered was in November 2004.  What happened?
3. Miss Beazley, the female dog, has almost no web presence.
4. We know a dog can't answer mail.  They know we know.  Why keep up the pretense?
5. Is it perhaps a metaphor?
6. How great would it be if instead of some dumb Scottish Terriers, there were pet blobs oozing around the White House?
7. Whoops!  My bad!

Technorati Tags: blobs, de Blob, Gish, A Boy and His Blob, politics, more blobs

Girls, Violent Games, and Feminism

The F-Word blog (safe for work, and if your work filter blocks it, I'm sorry to say that your work filter is kind of dumb) posted yesterday about a study showing that teenage girls play violent video games, such as Grand Theft Auto.  Well, of course they do.  No one who actually plays games thinks that the female hand is only capable of moving a mouse or controller when it's connected to the Sims or, say, Barbie's Demure Adventures starring Princess Kitchen Pony.  I expect, however, that if this gets picked up as a news item it will be yet another terrifying look at our out-of-control kids.  Hooray for equality: boys and girls are all ticking time bombs.  The only non-dangerous family member left is Grandpa, because he and the rest of the Greatest Generation already got their kill on and now they just want a nap and free samples at the Costco.

The F-Word's generally fair analysis of the story gets a bit muddled in this last paragraph:

I’m not a believer in the idea that playing a violent video game makes people want to go out and commit violent acts: but I do think it’s problematic that one of the most popular games played by both girls and boys involves the male protagonist using, beating, pimping and killing prostitutes.

That's technically correct (the best kind of correct!) but a little misleading.  As a Grand Theft Auto player, this is one of my pet peeves.  Every "violent games" GTA story always mentions killing a prostitute, which is possible in the game but not particularly encouraged.  The only thing you get from killing a prostitute is a worthless amount of cash, the same amount you can get from any random pedestrian.  "Using" them is a transaction of a few dollars for a small health boost.  Beating them offers no reward, and like all violent acts, if a cop sees you do it, they pursue you and try to throw you in jail, which is a very significant deterrent.  You will get some minor funds from being a pimp, which involves driving prostitutes around and killing guys who threaten them.  However, in terms of gameplay it's no different from being a taxi driver, ambulance driver, "freelance police officer," or fireman, all of which are equally encouraged, which is to say that you can do it, but rather than saying the game involves driving an ambulance and saving lives, I would say it includes that feature.  GTA definitely involves carjacking -- anyone who says you don't have to jack cars is correct but being cute with logic.  But every single news outlet appears to have a pronunciation guide which proscribes using "Grand Theft AW-to . . . prostitute killing sex money death murder hooker game."  (To anyone who got to this paragraph via Google -- boring, huh?  The real hardcore stuff is here.)

I'm too mature, intelligent, and good looking to enjoy every single aspect of GTA.  I don't kill prostitutes, and I only pick them up if I need the health boost.  Some of the humor is hilariously clever, but some of it makes me cringe with its self-conscious edginess that only titillates teenage boys anymore (and girls, apparently.)  My favorite activity is driving the taxi and listening to the radio while being chased by the cops.  I love that fares will still get in your cab and even tip generously as police helicopters shout and shoot at you.  Combine that with a sunny Miami-like 1980s cityscape, Wang Chung's "Dance Hall Days," and, um, maybe some tequila, and you've got a recipe for awesome.  Sometimes the game influences me to be awesome in real life, but as an adult I can resist that urge.

Recently, while playing GTA: Vice City Stories, I ended up on a mission to protect some prostitutes who were being targeted by a rival gang.  I had to grab a car and quickly pick them up around town, while the gang cars tried to run me down.  When I saved the first prostitute, just in time, she thanked me, then leaned out the window and started firing a powerful semiautomatic at our pursuers.  "Well honey," she said, "you didn't think the only protection we have is rubbers, did you?"  Those damn gang cars were really killing me but once I had three prostitutes in the car firing back at them it became a glorious, chaotic high speed chase, with enemy cars exploding into flames and flying through the air -- the best moment in the game so far.  And I couldn't have done it without prostitutes.  Bless their hearts of gold and diamond trigger fingers.

Technorati Tags: The F Word, feminism, GTA, Grand Theft Auto, Vice City, prostitutes, Wang Chung, being awesome

Soul Caribou 3

Soul Calibur 4 is coming, and as preparation, I started playing Soul Calibur 3.  Sure, I suck at Soul Calibur 2, but there are some subtle changes that I need to understand if I'm really going to suck at Soul Calibur 3.  And when the new one comes out, I'm not even going to use a controller.  I'll just slap at the screen making hooting noises.

I started playing with Tira, because she's new and fast.  No defense to speak of, but I never actually guard against attacks.  I just attack over and over and if I get hit, I try to recover or accuse the other player of cheap moves.  Tira wields some crazy metal hula hoop that's sharp on both sides, and it's the coolest thing when I manage to get a hit in with it.  I love the hula hoop!  Swords bore me.  I want to go back to a simpler time of sock hops and decapitations.

My training regimen:  I play Tira for several rounds in a duel to the death with Ivy.  (That's Ivy on the right.)  Then I play Ivy against Tira, so I can get inside Ivy's head, figure out what makes her tick.  Then I change them into different outfits, in case it matters, and back to playing Tira.  Sometimes I wish they could hash out their differences once and for all, though.  If I were there, I could defeat them in battle but then propose some kind of truce in which we all work together towards a common goal.  I have some other ideas about that.

Brainstorming about such scenarios improves your visualization abilities, which helps you think up new combo attacks and be a better Soul Calibur player.  You can't do it with every fighting game, though.  If you find yourself doing it in Super Smash Bros. Melee, well, I'm not saying it's wrong, but I don't want to play with you or hear one word about Link-Bowser action.  Also, it's wrong.  Ew.

 

Technorati Tags: Soul Calibur, Tira, Ivy, Super Smash Bros, visualization, subtlety

Game Fixer: Apollo Justice

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney told the story of Phoenix Wright, a rookie defense attorney who never gives up.  In Japan, his name is Naruhodo Ryuichi, and Naruhodo is a pun on "I see".  The English translators named him Phoenix, because in court he "rises from the ashes" when it looks like all hope is lost, and Wright because, I don't know, he fights for what's right?  His friends call him Nick and make puns on the name Wright.  The game has great characters, a crazy plot, fun mysteries, and exciting courtroom drama.  I can't praise it enough.

The second game, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney -- Justice for All, had both a colon and a hyphen, a stone cold guarantee of awesomeness.  I liked it almost as much as the first one, and there was a bit at the end that really got to me emotionally.  The third game, which hasn't been translated yet, will be called Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney -- Trials and Tribulations, and is the final chapter of Phoenix's life story.  But in Japan, the Ace Attorney series of games has already continued with a game about Phoenix's successor, Apollo Justice.

Yeah.  Apollo Justice.  Yuck.

Maybe I just got used to Phoenix Wright, but Apollo Justice sounds awkward and dumb.  I assume he likes justice?  And Apollo corresponds to the mythology guy?  Honestly, I don't remember anything Apollo did.  Americans know what a phoenix is, but I don't think they respond much to the name Apollo.  Let's try some alternatives:

Hercules Equality: Ace Attorney

Hermes Due Process

Ulysses F. Airness

Theseus P. "The Right Thing" ToDo

Procrustes Jurisprudence

(That actually almost means something so try the more subtle alternative: Crusty J. Prudence, Attorney at Law)

See?  That was just off the top of my head, and I don't even know the original Japanese name.  Also, I'm not very bright.  And, I've had a bit to drink.  So the sober, Japanese-knowing, non-idiot translators at Capcom should have no problem coming up with something even better.  Come on, folks!  Apollo Justice?  OBJECTION.

Technorati Tags: Apollo Justice, Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney, fixing games

Save the Trauma for Yo Mauma

Atlus just announced Trauma Center: New Blood for the Wii.  (From Famitsu, which I can't read, and Joystiq, which I can barely decipher amidst the ads and forum junk.)  I played the DS Trauma Center and a little bit of Second Opinion on the Wii, and it turns out I'm the kind of surgeon who would have to say, "We did all we could," a whole lot.  Or maybe I would walk out there with a kidney in one hand and some intestines in the other and shrug.

But Trauma Center: New Blood will have co-operative multiplayer.  That means I can limp through the operation by relying on someone else's superior abilities!  Co-op multi seems to be coming back into fashion.  Guitar Hero has it, a lot of Live Arcade games have it, and the new crop of Half-Life mods has some gems like Left 4 Dead, where you and a couple friends try to survive an onslaught of zombies.  I think it comes out this summer.  It's supposed to be brutally difficult but if you all work together a couple of you might make it out alive.  If you screw up in Guitar Hero your friends are not eaten by zombies but maybe in the '80s version their hair catches on fire.

In the best co-op games, you're forced to rely upon your partners, which works for a while until one of you does something stupid.  And that's when you learn the truth about your friendship.  I like it when you and your friends are up against the game, rather than another team of human players.  That just feels like the least athletic sport in the world.  I don't want to be stitching up a wound while some competitive asshole chants, "Choke!  Choke!"  I am a healer.  I took an oath to fix busted-up bones and stuff, and I will not be distracted by the likes of you.  If you persist in these juvenile antics, I shall have no choice but to -- great.  I lost another one.  I hope you're happy.  Very unprofessional of you, RabidIceWeasel420.

Technorati Tags: Trauma Center, Trauma Center: New Blood, co-op, multiplayer, Guitar Hero, Left 4 Dead, surgery trash talk

I Touched a Witch Last Night

And maybe, deep down, the witch touched me.  The witch in question was in the new DS game Doki Doki Majo Shinpan, just out in Japan.  You play a moody teenager instructed by an angel to touch various high school girls (and one boy) all over their bodies to determine if they are witches.  For some reason, the Internet people found this premise very compelling.  This Penny Arcade comic sums up the pre-launch hype and this NSFW and Not Cool if Kids Are Nearby trailer shows the game in action.

Thanks to some foreign hardware and shall we say, digital witchery, I played through the first chapter last night.  Actually, let's not say "digital witchery" until we absolutely have to.  Unfortunately, the whole game is in Japanese and I don't speak Japanese.  Fortunately, video games have their own internal logic and if you play enough of them you can muddle through.  It's also more or less an adventure game and I've played a jillion adventure games.  I simply poured coffee in the flowerpot, stole the gold key, searched the tool shed, and before you know it, I'm all up in a witch's grille.  If there's one thing Leisure Suit Larry taught me, it's that the key to a lady's heart is just a clever inventory item: maybe a pun on her name, or maybe an actual key.  Ladies like it when you solve their puzzles.  Ladies go wild when you combine inventory items.

Sadly, Doki Doki Majo Shinpan is a painfully linear, repetitive adventure game.  It's full of story bottlenecks where you trudge through every location over and over looking for the one place you can do or see something to progress the plot.  Every Japanese adventure game does this to some extent.  It's forgivable in Phoenix Wright (and to a lesser extent in Trace Memory and Hotel Dusk) because the investigation period helps flesh out the world in between dramatic courtroom battles, and you can work on more than one puzzle at a time.  But in most hentai games (technically, Majo Shinpan is an "eroge" game?  I don't speak pervert) the wandering is just to give the illusion of choice in a completely linear story.  You could cut all of it and the game would be simpler and more fun.  Some hentai games are essentially illustrated books where you press a button to turn the page, except that you have to turn the page after every damn sentence, and it's difficult to press the button because you're doing something else.

When compared to hentai, this game looks pretty tame.  It's rated 15 + in Japan, which seems about right.  There's no nudity, just a couple of skimpy outfits.  There's no sex.  I hear Japanese culture has a higher tolerance for "perverted humor" -- for example, the lunatic at the Hotti Clinic in Phoenix Wright: Justice for All had to be toned down by the translators because Western audiences would find him disturbing rather than funny.  Although I can't read the text, Majo Shinpan didn't disturb me, because I couldn't take it seriously.  If you wanted to find it sexy, your imagination will have to do all of the heavy lifting because it merely presents the building blocks of a sex fantasy.  The game's slogan is, "Touch! Catch! Witch!" and you could, if you want, assemble a fantasy with just those words.  You could get turned on by an ampersand if you tried.  It was once considered the 27th letter of the alphabet, but now it's all dirty and abbreviated.

Believe me, the actual witch touching is a letdown.  I had to run all over town assembling evidence about this cheerleader whom I already knew was totally a witch.  I had photographic evidence of her playing with cats -- classic witch move.  She appeared in two places at the same time -- very witchy.  But the thing that really set off my witch-dar is when she started throwing balls of pure energy at me.  I don't like to judge people, but come on.  So the touch test just felt gratuitous -- and frustrating!  You're supposed to raise the girl's heart rate ("doki doki" is an onomatopoeic heartbeat) by touching her in different random and non-intuitive locations.  The first girl required me to poke her pigtails, ears, hands, and legs, and that's all that ever worked, at any stage in the process.  To any 15 + year old kids playing this game: it doesn't work like that.  If all you do is poke her ear over and over, every girl becomes a witch.

Finally, let me reassure you that although I am a witch hunter of the highest caliber, I am no callous Inquisitor who self-righteously hurls a confessed witch on the pyre.  No, I believe that although this devilish practice must be exposed wherever it is found, we must hate the craft but love the witch.  Last night after subjecting a witch to the Infallible Test of Repeated Poking, I was presented with a moral choice, a menu if you will, with three moral choices.  I had no fucking clue what they were, of course, but I wisely and mercifully chose the topmost one, which resulted in my taking the witch out to an ice cream shop and sharing a sundae.  Do you hear me, Cotton Mather?  Did you even consider the ice cream sundae approach?   It's the top option.  I guess you clicked on the bottom button, which must have said Be a Gigantic Asshole.

 

Technorati Tags: Doki Doki Majo Shinpan, witches, witch touching, Nintendo DS, games, Phoenix Wright, Leisure Suit Larry, Cotton Mather

System Shock 2 on a Dual Core CPU

Here's what I had to do to get System Shock 2, a game from 1999, to run on my PC.

1.  Install the official patch.  That's typical PC gaming.  Fortunately, it's still floating around the Net, even though Looking Glass Studios went out of business in 2000.

2.  Install a fan made patch.  That's become more and more common lately, too.  Companies release a half-finished game, like KOTOR 2, or Vampire: Bloodlines, and the fans try to fix it themselves.  Good for you, fans.  Companies, not cool.

3.  While in the menu screen, before starting the game, press Ctrl-Alt-Del for the Task Manager.  In the Processes tab, find SHOCK2.EXE.  Right click on it and choose Set Affinity.  This brings up a list of CPUs used to process the, uh, process.  Keep CPU 0 but uncheck CPU 1 so my Intel Core 2 Duo kind of ties one hand behind its back.  Close the Task Manager and go back to the game quickly, before it crashes.

4.  Did you read step 3?  What the hell?  I do that every time I start the game.

I've heard Grim Fandango doesn't like dual cores either, which is very unfortunate.  My adventure game cred will suffer if I can't replay Grim Fandango at a moment's notice.  "Run, you pigeons!  It's Robert Frost!"  I'd have had no idea how to diagnose that if it weren't for very devoted fans at Through the Looking Glass.  And I don't want to complain too much.  I had to screw around with EMM386.EXE and HIMEM.SYS to get stuff to run on my first computer.  Not to mention the nightmarish thicket of text in my CONFIG.SYS, with lines like, "devicehigh [please:] [I bought this game] can I play it now?"  So it's an almost nostalgic experience for me having to fiddle with settings, and it builds anticipation.

System Shock 2 is definitely worth the trouble.  Despite the awful, blocky graphics, it continually scares the hell out of me.  It's a sci-fi horror story where you creep through dark spaceship corridors filled with blinking lights and unknown dangers.  The other night as I was playing I felt something brush against my leg.  I looked down and didn't see anything, so I assumed I was just getting freaked out and forgot about it. 

Then, just when some horrible things rushed me from behind, I felt it again.  I jumped back and looked under my desk and there was a tiny blinking light floating around.

It was a firefly.

Back in the game, I was already on the ground, still watching as things ate me.

I think my new white hair looks distinguished.

 

Technorati Tags: System Shock, dual core, Grim Fandango, DOS, fireflies, scary scary monsters

Chibi Robo, You're the Best!

Here's a Japanese Chibi-Robo ad I saw on GayGamer.Net.  Yes, I read Gay Gamer, even though I find the word "gamer" pretty annoying.  I don't think of myself as a "gamer" any more than a "reader" or a "TV watcher."  I probably play more games than I read books, because often you can do something else while you're playing a game.  Still, I like to think I'm more literate than someone who only reads Dan Brown or whatever the new barely written bestseller is nowadays.  Has there been a new contender for Worst Book Ever Written yet?  I bet it's hard to top Da Vinci Code, a book composed of parts of other poorly written books held together with bad movies.

A couple generations down the road, "gamer" will be meaningless, as everyone will play some kind of game occasionally.  The only holdouts will be like the people who brag about not owning a television.  Do they think that when you buy the TV, a guy comes over and forces you to watch all of TV?  You get to choose what to watch.  Some of it's good.  You can even use it to watch movies on the cheap, although maybe they're also against all forms of visual media.  I can't imagine not having an Internet connection (actually, I can -- thanks, RCN) but there are millions of users and sites out there that, if you encounter them, will convince you that the entire Internet was a bad idea.

Let's actually write about Chibi-Robo a bit.  I enjoyed the Gamecube version and it looks like a sequel is coming out for DS.  It's a game where you play a cute, tiny robot who cleans up around the house and helps fix the personal problems of the quirky Sanderson family.  He spends a lot of time picking up candy wrappers and scrubbing floors with a toothbrush bigger than he is, which earns him Happy Points from his owners.  The next day, everything starts getting messy again.  I think it would be a good way to introduce kids to real-life housekeeping, which is also a never ending cycle, but it earns you Relationship Points.  On the other hand, kids might try to imitate Chibi-Robo and stick part of themselves in an electrical socket.  Yow.

Technorati Tags: Chibi-Robo, Gamecube, DS, gamers

Crazy Taxi, Meet Bus Driver

So, Crazy Taxi is still around?  I used to love that game.  Now it's coming to the PSP.  I thought it died out when Rockstar made crazy cab driving a minigame within GTA III.  I mean, if the entire purpose of your game can be crammed inside someone else's game, almost as an afterthought, isn't it time to move on to new ideas?  Although I guess you can also drive a bus in GTA, slowly taking on and dropping off passengers, and there's still at least one bus simulator out there.

In case you weren't too curious about the bus driving simulator, let me tell you the first line of their ad copy.  Quote:

Bus Driver is all about driving buses.

Can't argue with that.  If there were a prize for keeping it real, Bus Driver would win and be too humble to show up.  Garrison Keillor, the presenter, would accept the prize (a crumpled, then smoothed out piece of 8 1/2 x 11 college ruled paper with the words "adequate job" printed on it in Courier Old) on its behalf, saying, "I don't want to make any wild assumptions, but I think if Bus Driver were here, it would confirm that inasmuch as a game can be about something, Bus Driver is all about driving buses."

Technorati Tags: Crazy Taxi, Bus Driver, humility