Orin Bishop Rambles About Games

Magic Cards With Googly Eyes

2012-01-12T02:20:00.000-08:00

I don't know how this took 18 years to happen.

Pac-....blam blam blam....-ing

2012-01-07T10:18:00.000-08:00

It seems to be all the rage right now for AAA developers to try and ape the style of Hollywood blockbusters. Games like the Uncharted series are doing so a little more openly, but increasingly almost every big budget title seems to be taking lessons from Hollywood schlock, from the flashy setpieces to the cliché characters and dialogue.

Putting aside the question of whether videogames really ought to be aspiring to be more like Hollywood, for the most part I don't have a problem with this cross-pollination. Peter Jackson's King Kong game was a breath of fresh air, and I had a blast with Uncharted 2. I think there are many elements of blockbusters that work well in a videogame medium. Story structure is one of the things which does not.

Most good action movies follow a basic structure along these lines: You start with a big action scene to get everyone's attention and stifle their ADD; you throw in some scenes to establish the setting and characters, some action to show the heroes in their element, until things start spiraling out of control; put in a couple of quiet scenes to make the characters less one-dimensional; something goes wrong and everything seems hopeless, the heroes get mad at one another; then, when all seems lost, the protagonist gathers everyone and everything together for a final desperate stand and wins the day at the last possible second, using a nugget of wisdom he learned along the way.

Works great for a 90-120 minute move. Now try stretching that formula over an 8-12 hour game. The most ubiquitous method is to pad out the action sequences to ludicrous proportions. Most games make me feel like I'm watching a cut of Die Hard where every time McClain encounters the terrorists, he has to kill hordes of them for 45 minutes before the plot can resume. This can cause a weird disconnect where the Nathan Drake of the cutscenes is a plucky adventurer whereas the Nathan Drake of the fighting sections is a serial murderer. Another common method for addressing the problem is to make the plot so ridiculously convoluted that it takes a whole 12 hours to play out, but most games that go this route don't seem to stir sufficiently and you get lengthy clumps of repetitive action floating in a large bowl of nonsense and exposition.

Weird pacing in videogames is definitely not a new problem, but the more we've tried to mimic film conventions, the more it's begun to stand out as something that isn't working. Through their interactive nature (and sketchy Skinnerian techniques) videogame worlds can draw us in better than films can, allowing them to waste our time with hour-long fetch quests, and room after room of identical goons.

And it's our fault. Not just because we put up with it, but because we constantly criticize games for being too short, and commend them for being lengthy. When's the last time someone complained that Casablanca was too short? Do people love The Godfather because it's 3 hours long? I understand wanting to get value for your money, but I'm more concerned with getting value for my time.

Despite the success of Portal and Braid, I don't expect shorter game-length to be embraced anytime soon, so what are some ways of keeping an 8-12 hour experience from dragging? Well, the issue isn't the length itself, but the pacing. So how should a videogame be paced?

Most RPGs, particularly hefty 30+ hour RPGs, are liberally sprinkled with "sidequests," optional missions that distract from the main plot. The fact that these quests have only tangential connection to the main quest is important, because they help break up the action and flesh out the gameworld without having to increase the complexity of the main story. (In JRPGs, sidequest-like sections are often mandatory, but this isn't that important to the issue of pacing, assuming the sidequests are compelling enough that you'll do them regardless.) For the record, I find the pacing in most RPGs even worse than in action games, but the method by which a game like Persona 3 can keep you interested for 100 hours(!) is by providing an overarching plot, with lots of smaller plots strategically sprinkled throughout, similar to the way TV shows generally have an overarching plot with smaller story arcs occupying individual episodes and seasons.

In fact I would argue that TV shows could provide a much better template for videogames than films, at least in terms of pacing and storytelling. The average season of a TV show is comparable in length to the average action game, and both are written with natural stopping points in mind (episodes/levels, though in videogames there is more flexibility). Characters in action/adventure movies have to be drawn in broad strokes, because there isn't time to develop a cast of fully-realized human beings. TV and videogames don't have this restriction. Benjamin Linus (Lost) and Lex Luthor (Smallville) are well-developed and interesting villains who would both come across as completely milquetoast in a summer blockbuster.

The other suggestion I will make is to mix up gameplay better. Most games have two to four different types of activities, be they shooting, platforming, exploring, driving, macrame, etc. I nearly gave up on Mass Effect (one of my all-time favorites) when, right after the first mission, it had me wandering around talking to random NPCs on a space station for literally hours, and my housemate did give up at this point despite my assurances that it got better. It's not that wandering around talking to random NPCs is inherently a boring activity (which it is), but rather that any type of activity has a tendency to become boring after that length of time.

It's also important to recognize that "quiet bits" in action films are not automatically analogous to "quiet bits" in videogames. Having a conversation scene sandwiched between two action sequences is not the same as having a section of backtracking sandwiched in between two action sequences; In the one case, I'm getting to know the characters, in the other, I'm watching a guy walk down a series of hallways. Please embrace the jump-cut, or at least lay dialogue over the backtracking.

I recently purchased the much lauded Deus Ex: Human Revolution, as well as the much reviled Apha Protocol (which was on sale for a single dollar). Alpha Protocol has no shortage of problems: technical glitches, a broken upgrade system, an almost incomprehensible plot, dodgy AI. And yet I've currently put three times as many hours into it as I have into HuRev. Why? Because when I put a couple of hours into Alpha Protocol, I complete a few spy missions, uncover some secrets, make some friends and enemies, and buy some cool spy gear. Most of the time I've put into HuRev so far has involved wandering around talking to random NPCs.

Seperating the Goal from the Faff

2011-12-21T19:13:00.000-08:00

I noticed the other day, whilst twirling something in one hand and dropping something in the other, that it is our natural tendency to be playful. We have an inherent drive to make things unnecessarily challenge for our own enjoyment, whether it be a child trying to avoid stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, or an office worker trying to bank a crumpled receipt into a trash receptacle rather than walking the three feet. I term this behavior "seeking out unnecessary challenges to amplify our engagement with and enjoyment of otherwise mundane tasks," or "faffing about" for short.

Most of us faff about a lot in games too. Grand Theft Auto allegedly has missions you can go on, but pretty much all I've ever seen anyone do is aimlessly cruise around listening to the radio, mow down some pedestrians, get in high speed chases, and struggle with the awkward shooting controls while getting gunned down by police. Lather, rinse, repeat. There's nothing wrong with this sort of gameplay any more than there's a problem with strictly goal-oriented gameplay (though I'm hard-pressed to think of a game that doesn't usually involve at least some faffing about). The act of pursuing goals can also be fun and engaging in and of itself. The problems arise when the goals of the game discourage the most entertaining faff.

Imagine a hypothetical fighter. We'll call it Street Kombat. In SK's practice mode, one can try out all sorts of elaborate combos and specials. If this were the only game mode, it would still be moderately entertaining to try out the countless crazy maneuvers that the developers put in. But there's a problem. The developers put so much time into the various special moves that they neglected to properly balance the game. As it turns out, the safest and most effective way to knock out the opponent in SK is to crouch in a corner and repeatedly trip them. This wouldn't be a problem in and of itself, except that the goal of the game happens to be to knock out the opponent. SK's goals have actually made the game less fun.

This is an edge case, and the best solution would presumably be to tweak the game's balance rather than trying to find goals that would make SK's broken fighting system enjoyable. But this issue crops up all the time in (usually) less noticeable ways. Have you ever wanted to explore a level more but couldn't because of a time limit, or horded the ammo for the guns that are most fun to use because you knew you might need it for a boss fight later? When a game's goals discourage players from doing the things they find most enjoyable, there is potentially a problem. (I say "potentially" because sometimes being hamstrung in certain ways can be extremely enjoyable, such as when you have to sneak past some guard or defeat an enemy without using your weapons. Just make sure that whenever you are preventing or discouraging a player from doing something they want to do, you are doing so intentionally and with purpose.)

So if this problem of imposed goals ruining players' fun can crop up in carefully designed systems like games, what happens when we recklessly impose goals and incentives in real-world environments like jobs or schools? There is research that shows that external incentives can erode and supersede our internal motivation (this is known as the Overjustification Effect), but external incentives can also directly discourage us from having fun.

While cooking a meal, have you ever twirled the spatula, juggled an egg, or perhaps stirred along to the song on the radio? What about when you were in a hurry? Would you still cook 'playfully' if you were a high-paid chef in a high-end/high-pressure restaurant?

Goals, particularly challenging ones, can make an activity more engaging and fun, but all too often they can merely prevent us from having fun. Often we faff because the activity is too easy and monotonous. Maybe rather than trying to stop a student from doodling through class, or disallowing humorous emails in the workplace, we could simply let people have fun, or even encourage it, and trust that motivation and productivity will follow. Google recognized this, and they are currently worth about 200 billion dollars. Just saying.

Great Game Ideas #1

2011-12-07T14:54:00.000-08:00

Skinner Boxing

-A standard boxing game except that your punches only occasionally connect, on a random basis.

-You also have to block at least once every 30 seconds or your coach electrocutes you.

Drop the SOPA

2011-11-17T20:56:00.000-08:00

I don't like to get political on a blog purportedly about games, but this bill seems important, and it's allegedly set to pass before Christmas. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), also known as E-Parasite (Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation... way cooler name btw) is a bill intended to help US corporations shut down websites that host copyright-infringing material.

I'll agree that piracy can be damaging, but if you look into some of the wording, SOPA is the equivalent of spraying for termites using napalm. All websites will have to start carefully monitoring everything since they could theoretically get blocked or have their revenue yanked because a user posted some song lyrics or something, and all the added litigation (which will carry no risk for the prosecuting companies, mind you) will likely cost the government tens of millions of dollars. On top of this, downloaders will still be able to easily access pirated material simply by finding the site's IP address, so the affect that SOPA will have on actual piracy will be minimal at best.

If you support any notion of net-neutrality, please contact your local representatives immediately (or if you aren't a U.S. citizen pass this on to people who are) and explain why this bill is important, and why we can't allow it to be rushed through like this.

If you want intelligent, well-reasoned arguments against copyright in general, check out some stuff by Cory Doctorow (who is an advisor in my program at UW, meaning that my degree is cooler than yours).

4 Things That Suck About Zelda Games

2011-11-13T01:36:00.000-08:00

The Legend of Zelda is probably my favorite series of all time, in any medium. With that out of the way, I'd like to point out some lazy design choices that have plagued the franchise since its inception, and will undoubtedly plague Skyward Sword as well.

4) Combat is way too easy - This is something that has slowly crept in over the years. The original's combat was challenging and intense, and The Adventure of Link had sections that were harder than Goron turds. But as time wore on, the battles became increasingly less challenging. This wouldn't be so bad except that the puzzles have remained fairly devious, causing an odd disconnect. For me the worst was in Wind Waker, which had a couple of puzzles that stumped me for hours, yet common enemies and even most boss fights provided little challenge.

If you disagree, that's fine, but the optimal solution would be to finally institute a difficulty system of some sort. But as previously mentioned, Zelda designers are lazy. Besides, if the combat were too hard, it could completely halt a player's progress and ruin their experience, whereas if it's too easy, the worst that can happen is that they'll futily rant about it on the internet.

3) Heart pieces don't matter - One great thing about Zelda games is that there are tons of secrets hidden everywhere. In Majora's Mask, many of these secrets were masks, some of which actually granted you new abilities (like the "bomb mask" that let you explode your face). However most of these secrets are "heart pieces." Collect four of these, and get an extra heart added to your life bar. Which is all well and good except that every time you complete a dungeon you are granted a "heart container" which immediately increases your life total by a heart, rendering the number of heart pieces you've collected pretty insignificant.

Let's say after 4 dungeons you've found 10 heart pieces. Sounds pretty impressive, except that when you add the 4 heart containers you got automatically to the 3 you started the game with, the extra 2 you got from all that secret hunting aren't exactly game-changing. Of course if you rewarded skilled player's too much, the combat would become more of a breeze to them than it already is. And the easy combat is another reason why heart pieces don't really matter.

2) Rupees really don't matter - With rare exceptions, you will generally have a full purse. This is because rupees fall out of every enemy, pot and shrub. But it doesn't matter because there is nothing to buy with them, aside from bombs and arrows which fall out of every enemy, pot and shrub. On the rare occasion that you actually need rupees for something quest-specific, it usually costs more than you can hold, meaning that you need to obtain the "bigger purse" mcguffin in order to proceed, rather than actually being faced with a decision about whether you can afford the item, or at least how to go about raising money. Not taking the time to balance an actual money economy is ***drumroll*** lazy.

1) It's Ganon! ...again - Spoiler: the big-bad is nearly always Ganon. This wouldn't be a big deal in and of itself, except that the games always try to spring it on us as a surprise. At this point I would be much more surprised if the twist in Skyward Sword is that it's not Ganon. o.0

But despite these niggling flaws, if you say anything bad about Zelda games in my presence, you will be Gannon-Banned.

The Unspeakable Thinks You Can Think

2011-10-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

Many who know me are aware that I am a fairly avid longtime fan of H.P. Lovecraft and all things Cthulhu Mythos related (Eternal Darkness is one of my favorite games of all time). It dawned on me a while back that his stories of eldritch terror scratch a similar itch for me as another author whom I was wildly into many long years ago named Theodore Geisel, better known to the world as Dr. Seuss.

Both authors deal with strange and fantastical worlds, and both authors like to make up lots of silly worlds to accentuate the strangeness and fantasticalness.

Both revel in the bizarre and the unnatural. And both were a little racist.

Granted Lovecraft usually goes for more of a horror angle, but Dr. Seuss can get somewhat creepy too.

"What would I do?" Probably soil myself.

In honor of these literary giants, I've compiled a list of words they made up and turned it into a quiz. Can you tell the difference between Lovecraft and Dr. Seuss?

Unspeakable Thinks » funny quizzes

And apparently I'm not the only one who thinks these two greats should go together. (You won't regret clicking that link. Unless of course you value your sanity.)

The Musician as Athlete

2011-09-20T01:24:00.000-07:00

Two decades ago, my mom wrote and self-published an extensive book on Musicians' health from the perspective of someone who both plays the Cello and gets injured. If you too are a musician made of delicate human flesh, you're in luck. I recently converted The Musician as Athlete into an ebook which can be purchased through Amazon. If you are instead some sort of inorganic music synthesizer program, you may not find too much of value here, but I personally suggest uploading yourself to the cloud in order to achieve nominal immortality. If you are a non-musical spambot, I would like to discuss a few things with you.

GameStop can go die in a fire...

2011-08-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

Not content with destroying the industry through used game sales, and trying their best to prevent me from rightfully returning products, GameStop decided to cut open every copy of the recently released Deus Ex: Human Revolution and physically remove the coupon for OnLive, then seal them back up and sell them as new.

For those unfamiliar with OnLive, the service allows people to play games over an internet connection without having to own an Xbox 360, a PS3, or a PC that required selling their firstborn. The service sounds pretty swell, and I would try it myself if I didn't live in Canada where we get our internet through strings and plastic cups.

So why did GameStop do this? Because OnLive is a "competing service." It not only competes with their physical stores, but also with the recently purchased, popup laden, Impulse, a digital download service that also has not much to do with OnLive. It also competes with a service similar to OnLive that they plan to launch some time in 2012, which may or may not actually feature Human Revolution.

After customers became rightfully pissed off, GameStop decided to make it up to them by taking their ball and going home, sending all copies of HuRev back to publisher Square Enix. To GameStop's credit, you will supposedly be allowed to return your pre-opened copy if you kept the receipt, but if you attempt to do this I recommend leaving the rest of the day open and bringing along some manner of torture device.

Why DKC 2 is better than DKC Returns

2011-08-22T21:23:00.000-07:00

In my personal opinion, the SNES Donkey Kong Country trilogy offered some of the best platforming gameplay ever designed. My opinion is undoubtedly clouded somewhat by nostalgia seeing as Donkey Kong Country was the first videogame I ever owned (except for a weird handheld Sonic game in which the titular hedgehog could occupy about three positions on the screen, the music to which I have spend the better part of two decades trying to erase from my memory).

I have, however, replayed the 2nd and 3rd installments within the last year or so, and they hold up. I also recently had the pleasure of playing Donkey Kong Country Returns, a lovingly crafted throwback to the original series by newcomer Retro Studios. Returns is a great game, with some truly stellar level design, but I'd like to lay out a few reasons why for me it doesn't quite dethrone Donkey Kong Country 2, which is probably my favorite platformer of all time.

Reason 1: The Roll
I've been a minor Wii defender for the past few years. Sure it has as bad a case of shovelware-itis as the iPhone app store, and when a game is ported over, the motion controls are usually implemented horribly (gestures are not buttons!), but most of the first-party stuff has been top notch, and the Virtual Console is like a candy store for a retro gamer.

And yet, in a title that obviously had a great deal of care and effort put into it, made specifically for crotchety oldschool fans such as myself, we have one of the two central actions assigned to the "shake" motion, with no other control options. There's no reason it had to be like this; the game only needs two action buttons which the Wiimote, conveniently enough, has. Maybe they thought no one would want to use the "shake" command if the player could change it to a button. I can't say I'd dispute that.

Aside from the issues that come with the waggle, such as the roll not always registering when you want it to (which doesn't happen too often, but one in a hundred times is still enough to be a little infuriating), the move itself just isn't as interesting as it used to be. In the SNES games, the roll speed/distance was heavily influenced by your prior momentum, and you could easily jump and change direction mid-roll. This made it much easier to incorporate rolling into your gameplay since it would hardly break your stride. The roll in DKC Returns sends you forwards much farther, always, making it eminently possible to overshoot a ledge. It may be partly due to my comfort with them, but in the originals I utilize the roll constantly and unconsciously, whereas in the new one I found myself thinking "doesn't look like I can make this just by jumping, better break out the roll." It becomes a key to open figurative locked doors strewn about the levels which, combined with the physical invocation, breaks flow somewhat.

Reason 2: The Economy
I'll just come out and say it: the economy and lives system in this game is essentially broken. Extra lives were always rare in this series (heh, "rare"),and this entry is no exception. However, they've added a store wherein you can spend coins to purchase, among other things, extra lives. You accumulate coins like Pigpen accumulates dirt, and lives are roughly two coins apiece (15 for 7), so before you complete the first world you'll be able to buy enough lives to open a balloon conglomerate.

Thankfully the game doesn't actually need a lives system, so this isn't a huge problem, but it feels like the developers were afraid to implement such a system, but also wanted to be oldschool, and compromised by implementing one that should have no effect on the game's difficulty whatsoever as long as the player is awake (although they may start to run down if you're playing coop, which is a weird disincentive).

I have mixed feelings about harsh failure penalties, but I will say that some of the most exciting parts of replaying DKC2 were when I was running low on lives and trying desperately to reach the next save point. That's the kind of gameplay you don't get much anymore. It's not like playing a modern game with badly placed checkpoints, you're fighting for your life so that the previous 40 minutes of gameplay weren't for naught. There are valid reasons why you don't see this kind of punishing gameplay anymore, even in hardcore indy titles like Super Meat Boy or I Wanna Be The Guy, but all the same something has been lost.

It's not that the difficulty has been dialed back much. Some of the unlockable temple levels are quite challenging, and the secret fruit-float level is about as challenging as anything in the originals. The game is clearly aimed at those looking for a challenge, so it just irks me that the lives system is generous to the point of being completely irrelevant.

Reason 3: The Bosses
Not sure exactly why, I think the reasons varied from boss to boss, but I didn't particularly enjoy most of the boss fights in the new game, whereas I generally have in the previous entries. Here they were presented less ominously, and rather than epic struggles, they mostly just felt like "complete this pattern several times without screwing up." Not a huge deal, but slightly disappointing. I would like to do a more in-depth analysis, but apparently they were also pretty forgettable as well.

Backpedaling
This isn't to say that everything in the new game is a step back. The level design is some of best and most varied I've ever seen in a platformer, the ability to grab onto moss is interesting and well implemented, and simultaneous coop is a lot of fun. Also they didn't include Kiddy Kong.

Overall I'm really happy with the job Retro Studios did, and I hope they consider continuing the franchise. Now if you'll allow me to put my nostalgia goggles back on, I need to go watch the rest of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs.

Battleship Trailer

2011-07-27T21:10:00.000-07:00

It's really happening. A trailer for the new Battleship move has just surfaced. There doesn't seem to be a way to embed the video, so I'll have to describe it for you:

So Alexander Skarsgård is dating Liam "I Will Find You" Neeson's daughter, and Liam Neeson doesn't like this one bit because Liam Neeson is the Admiral and stuff. But then, during a routine drill, the fleet discovers a big metal thing. And one guy goes to touch the big metal thing but he gets an electric shock because maybe he rubbed his feet on the carpet. Then they all get attacked by Decepticons and Liam Neeson yells "Prepare to fire!" and his naval assistant asks "Sir, which weapons?" and Liam Neeson looks serious and says "All of them."

I don't know, this whole project seems a bit ridiculous from the start. I mean, it has Rihanna in it, and everyone knows women can't play Battleship:

Regardless, if it doesn't have Tim Curry revealing that communism was just a red herring, I'm not interested.

A Gaggle of Group-Names

2011-07-06T09:55:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered what to call other people? First terms that come to mind not suitable for polite conversation? Then this handy-dandy list of collective nouns should come in handy ...and dandy.

Subject            Collective Name of People

A
Academics......................... A faculty of academics
Acrobats........................... A troupe of acrobats
Actors/players.....................A cast/company of actors/players
Aldermen...........................A bench of aldermen
Arsonists...........................A conflagration of arsonists
Artistes.............................A troupe of artistes
Athletes.............................A team of athletes

B
Bakers................................A tabernacle of bakers
Barbers...............................A babble of barbers
Barmen...............................A promise of barmen
Barons................................A thought of barons
Beaters...............................A squad of beaters
Beauties..............................A bevy/galaxy of beauties
Bishops...............................A bench/psalter of bishops
Boys...................................A blush of boys
Boy scouts............................A troop of boy scouts
Brewers...............................A feast of brewers
Brownies..............................A pack of brownies
Bureaucrats..........................A shuffle of bureaucrats
Butchers..............................A goring of butchers
Butlers................................A sneer of butlers

C
Candidates............................. A slate of candidates
Canons.................................. A chapter/dignity of canons
Capitalists.............................. A company/syndicate of capitalists
Churchgoers............................ A congregation of churchgoers
Clerks....................................A school of clerks
Cobblers................................ A cutting/drunkship of cobblers
Cooks................................... A hastiness of cooks
Critics................................... A shrivel of critics
Curs..................................... A cowardice of curs

D
Dancers.................................. A troupe of dancers
Deans.................................... A decanter/decorum of deans
Directors................................ A board of directors
Dons..................................... An obstruction of dons

E
Employees.............................. A staff of employees
Experts................................. A panel of experts

F
Foresters................................A stalk of foresters

G
Gamblers................................A talent of gamblers
Girl guides............................. A company of girl guides
Governesses............................A galaxy of governesses
Grammarians.......................... A conjunction of grammarians

H
Harlots...................................A herd of harlots
Harpists..................................A melody of harpists
Hermits..................................An observance of hermits
Hoodlums................................A gang of hoodlums
Horsemen................................A cavalcade of horsemen
Hunters...................................A blast of hunters

I

J
Judges................................... A bench/sentence of judges
Jugglers.................................. A neverthriving of jugglers

K
Knights....................................A banner/rout of knights

L
Ladies......................................A bevy of ladies
Lawyers....................................An eloquence of lawyers
Lepers......................................A colony of lepers
Listeners...................................An audience of listeners

M
Magicians.................................An illusion of magicians
Magistrates...............................A bench of magistrates
Matrons....................................A riches of matrons
Majors.....................................A morbidity of majors
Men........................................A band of men
Merchants.................................A faith of merchants
Messengers...............................A diligence of messengers
Minstrels..................................A troupe of minstrels
Mourners..................................A cortege of mourners
Musicians.................................An orchestra of musicians

N
Natives....................................A tribe of natives
Nuns.......................................A superfluity of nuns

O
Onlookers..................................A crowd of onlookers

P
Painters......................................A curse/illusion/misbelieving of painters
Peddler (US)/pedlars.......................A malapertness of pedlars/peddler (US)
People........................................A crowd/audience/congregation/ mob of people
Performers...................................A troupe/troup of performers
Poverty.......................................A skirl of pipers
Police.........................................A posse of police
Preachers....................................A converting of preachers
Prisoners.....................................A pity/gang of prisoners

Q

R
Robbers.........................................A band of robbers

S
Sailors...........................................A crew of sailors
Seamstresses...................................A scolding of seamstresses
Senators.........................................A house of senators
Sergeants-at-law...............................A subtlety of sergeants-at-law
Servants.........................................An obeisance of servants
Sheriffs..........................................A posse of sheriffs
Shoemakers.....................................A blackening of shoemakers
Singers...........................................A choir of singers
Soldiers..........................................A squad/army/brigade/ company/division/muster/ platoon/troop of soldiers
Students..........................................A class of students
Subalterns........................................A simplicity of subalterns

T
Tailors...............................................A disguising of tailors
Taverners...........................................A glozing of taverners
Thieves..............................................A den/gang of thieves
Trustees.............................................A board of trustees
Tourists..............................................A flock of tourists

U
Undertakers........................................An unction of undertakers

V
Vicars...............................................A prudence of vicars

W
Widows..............................................An ambush of widows
Witches..............................................A coven of witches
Women...............................................A gaggle of women
Workmen............................................A gang of workmen
Worshippers.........................................A congregation of worshippers
Writers...............................................A worship of writers

X

Y
Yeomen.............................................. A fellowship of yeomen

Z

Nintendo announces their new console

2011-06-07T16:06:00.000-07:00

The Met's Game

2011-05-28T03:48:00.000-07:00

A milestone for the videogame industry. America's National Endowment for the Arts has declared videogames an art form, meaning both that now developers can apply for art grants, and that Roger Ebert was wrong. In France, videogames have been considered art for years, but America's sway on the global stage can't be denied, nor can its host of developers that could potentially benefit from this ruling, or be influenced by it.

I don't see this changing anything overnight, but it helps secure a path towards whatever heights this newly branded art form might one day achieve, and it is most certainly cause for celebration.

Now if we can just get boardgames declared as art too, I'll be a happy cookie.

Portal 2

2011-05-05T02:00:00.000-07:00

I was working on a review for Portal 2, but Yahtzee uncannily covered point-for-point everything I wanted to say (with a mild spoiler), so instead enjoy these other science facts:
<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;No spoilers in the&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>
(No spoilers in the video, but in the YouTube comments, probably.)

Top 10* Music Mashups

2011-04-26T00:37:00.000-07:00

Some songs seem like they were made for each other, like chocolate and peanut butter, or jerks and the internet. After some poking around, here's a list of my favorite music mashups. Thanks to Strongbaddude for the idea and for providing a few of my selections. Be sure to stick around for number one, 'cause it rocks my socks.

10) When I'm 25 or 64 (The Beatles - When I'm 64 / Chicago - 25 or 6 to 4)

*EDIT: I forgot about this one, but I have to give props for how catchy this abomination is. Plus Jonathan Coulton is awesome.

9) Phoenixmen (Masakazu Sugimori - Investigation ~ Cornered from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney / music from Cheetahmen II)

This spiffy little medley almost justifies the Cheetahmen series' existance.

8) Thriller Situation - (Micheal Jackson - Thriller / Yazoo - Situation)

Mmmm, 80s goodness.

7) Numb/Encore (Linkin Park - Numb / Jay-Z - Encore)

Many of you may have already heard this one seeing as it was on the Billboard Hot 100, but I've always liked it. I don't generally listen to rap music, but Jay-Z does a nice job of cutting down Linkin Park's whine factor.

6) Whole Lotta Sabbath (Led Zeppelin - Whole Lotta Love / Black Sabbath - War Pigs)

This does not sound like a mashup. Would be higher on the list if the artists' styles weren't already similar.

5) Enter You (Metallica - Enter Sandman / Bryan Adams - Run To You)

These artists, on the other hand, are not similar.

4) Mind Gone Mad (The Pixies / Beastie Boys)

I'm not exactly the biggest Beastie Boys fan, and Where is my Mind by The Pixies is a masterwork, but I'm surprised how much I dig this.

3) Somebody Told Me to Feel Good (Gorillaz - Feel Good / The Killers - Somebody Told Me)

This one's definitely grown on me. Now both songs just sound odd to me by themselves.

2) Thunder Busters (ACDC - Thunderstruck / Ray Parker Jr. - Ghostbusters theme)

And never the twain shall part.

1) Stayin' Alive in the Wall (Pink Floyd - The Wall / Bee Gees - Stayin' Alive)

Hands down the most astounding mashup I've ever heard.

Dynasty Warriors

2011-04-21T05:12:00.000-07:00

Some have accused the Dynasty Warriors series of not innovating its combat system, to the point where slicing up hordes of enemies with a katana has begun to feel stale and repetitive. Up until recently I might have agreed, but check out this gameplay footage from Dynasty Warriors 7 and tell me they haven't changed things around a little:

A Song of Ice

2011-04-17T16:34:00.000-07:00

This article ties in nicely to what I was talking about. The general smugness (and moderate sexism) really grinds my gears, and I haven't even read or watched A Game of Thrones (though the boardgame is awesome).

And apparently sexual content is pandering to women. I'd heard that pornography was exploitative of women, but I didn't realize it was pandering to them as well!

Humble Frozenbyte Bundle

2011-04-12T13:45:00.000-07:00

The latest Indy Bundle is available now for a limited time! Pay what you want for a bunch of cool games, and support worthwhile charities. You can pay as little as a penny, but I'm paying $10 and already bought Trine, so if you choose to pay less, that means I'm a better person than you.

AND DON'T FREAKING PIRATE IT THIS TIME!!

Guiltless Pleasures: High Art, Pablum and Pretentiousness

2011-04-12T01:04:00.000-07:00

I want to try and tackle something I've been thinking about lately, on which I think I have different opinions from most people. These are complex subjects that won't be getting the exhaustive treatment they deserve.

We seem to like to divide every medium into two catagories: Popular Meaningless Pablum, and Intellectual Meaningful Art. We do this with movies, books, comics, TV shows, songs, boardgames, artwork, dance styles, and videogames. Often we all seem to agree which is which. Air Force One, Twilight, Infinite Crisis, Oops I Did It Again, Memoir '44, the cover of Action Comics #1, Hip Hop and Halo are examples of "low" art, while Citizen Kane, Lolita, Ghost World, Adagio for Strings, Caylus, Guernica, Waltz and Limbo are examples of "high" art. High art is subtle, innovative, meaningful and well made while Low art is accessible, crass, derivative and inconsequential.

Except that that last sentence is clearly bull. No matter how you divide any medium into High and Low, there will always be plenty of songs that are both crass and innovative, plenty of films that are both meaningful and accessible, and plenty of artwork that is both subtle and inconsequential.

Yet most people seem to at least tacitly accept these ideas of high art versus low art, regardless of which side of the fence they find themselves. Many times I've heard people remark that they like a film even though they know it's trash, or accept that a film is brilliant but just not their cup of tea. While I think that it is healthy to realize that others may not share your opinion, I also feel that it is somewhat intellectually dishonest to tout an opinion that you don't personally share.

An additional problem with the notion of High versus Low art is that many things once labeled as Low art have morphed into High art over time. Shakespeare's plays were considered Low, plebeian entertainment in his day, as were the works of Charles Dickens and composer Gustav Mahler, and John Carpenter's Halloween and The Thing, now considered benchmarks of horror cinema, garnered mixed reviews upon their initial release.

All of this leads me to the uncomfortable conclusion that our dichotomy between High art and Low art is inherently flawed. I don't mean to say that only our personal opinions matter (though when it comes down to it, that's kind of true), or that the concept of artistic merit is meaningless, merely I believe that trying to place works on a one-dimensional spectrum with the ends labeled "High" and "Low" is as unhelpful and wrong-headed as marking one's worldview on a spectrum labeled "Right-Wing" and "Left-Wing."

We like to categorize things, and I don't think that categorizing media is worthless, but I also don't think one dimension is enough to paint a proper picture. Any work of art is made up of many elements, and how much we care about a particular element, or how much "artistic importance" we ascribe a particular element, will greatly shape our perception of that work. If I care highly about narrative, I may get a lot out of Mass Effect and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and not so much out of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Mario Sunshine. 2001 is generally considered to be more of a masterpiece than any of the other things mentioned, so maybe I'll apologize for my opinion either by saying that I enjoy the other things as "guilty pleasures" or that 2001 is boring artsy crap. But can I say with honesty that I think 2001 is artistic if I didn't enjoy it and wasn't moved by it?

As it happens, I greatly enjoy 2001. I probably value atmosphere and uniqueness more than some, and conventional narrative structure a little less. 2001's story and characters are sparse and muted, but I get more of a feeling of actually being in space than with any other film I've seen. Similarly the hollow plot and one-dimensional characters in Sucker Punch bothered me less than some, though here the atmosphere and visuals don't quite pick up the slack for me. If you are offended that I would even compare 2001 to Sucker Punch, you are exactly who I am writing this for.

Tron: Legacy is often maligned for having a weak plot, and has been called "nothing but a Daft Punk Music Video." Interstella 555, at 68 minutes long, is literally nothing but a Daft Punk music video, having no diagetic sounds or dialogue, yet it holds a higher rating on IMDb. Why is this? It could just be that people don't want Jeff Bridges talking over their Daft Punk, but I believe it is an issue of context. Our expectations tend to affect our experience as much as our preferences. We assume that a statement is clever if the speaker is an expert, or if the accent is British and not Texan. The ongoing question of Art vs Pornography is an extreme example of this effect. Renoir's The Bathers will never be viewed or evaluated in the same way as a Japanese Hentai, even though fundamentally they are both drawings of naked people.

Perhaps Renoir's brushwork is more impressive than that of a Hentai Manga artist's, but this is not the reason it is considered Higher art. If one compares a Modern Artist with a Marvel artist, it's obvious that one has a firm grasp of anatomy and perspective, while the other is creating seemingly random blotches and squiggles (and no this isn't turning into a jab at Rob Liefeld). There are clearly things that the Marvel artist is doing better, so why isn't his work thought of by most people as "art"? Again it's a matter of context. Were the Marvel artist's work put up in an art gallery to be viewed by an audience completely oblivious to the existence of comics, it would undoubtedly be treated as art. The term "graphic novel" was introduced to help "serious" creators escape the stigmas that the term "comic" has, justifiably or not, come to carry, and to help people outside the hobby join in without feeling as geeky or childish. Similarly, Eurogames usually carry a vague historical theme because European boardgamers have traditionally looked down on fantasy and science fiction themed games.

The truth is, what is classified as Low art can sometimes be considerably harder to create. Hollywood spends countless millions every year on summer action flicks that no independent filmmaker could replicate. In order to compete, the small studios with less to lose focus instead on innovation. The same is true in the videogame industry, though indy developers are just recently starting to get the recognition and fiscal support that indy filmmakers have long enjoyed. Every year, many great indy games and movies are created, and many more are doomed to fail. Although I tend to seek out good indy titles in the face of corporate homogenization (particularly with videogames), it would be as much of a mistake to assume that all indy works are great as to assume that no mainstream works can be great.

People often argue that mainstream works aren't meaningful. What they are really saying is that the thematic elements aren't accentuated or "fleshed-out," since virtually every work has thematic subtexts, whether or not the creator is aware of them. But this also is not an adequate measure of a film's artistic status. Machete would be considered by most to be Low art (Danny Trejo swings through a window by a dude's intestines), but the immigration messages are overt and pervasive. Likewise, South Park makes no attempt to hide its agendas. But, you say, High art is more subtle with its messages. I actually believe that the opposite tends to be true. Judd Apatow comedies are packed with societal critique, despite also playing to the lowest common denominator; Robocop is a vicious criticism of American media and privatization while being enjoyed by many as just a mindless action flick; and Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time and Warhammer 40k's Space Marines both portray the horrors that can arise from blind devotion. Just because a work isn't necessarily about an issue doesn't mean it doesn't have something to say on the matter. Some works of High art emphasize their thematic elements simply because they have nothing else to fall back on, or because it helps to establish the context that the work is "art." Low art is often accused of being "exploitative," yet the term "Oscar bait" certainly implies exploitation, albeit of a more insidious sort. And I challenge you to tell me that award winning movies are less cliché ridden.

Perhaps it isn't the themes of the work itself, but rather the impact it ends up having on the medium, that determines its art status. This is an attractive barometer since it defers the judgement until some time in the future, at which point the work's art status will have already been settled, however it quickly falls apart under closer inspection. Saw and Hostel, both widely panned by critics, have had an incalculable effect on horror cinema, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, widely considered the worst of the original trilogy, prompted the introduction of the PG-13 rating which has undoubtedly had an effect on the way studios have since chosen to finance films. Halo championed the success of first-person-shooters on consoles, irrevocably altering the evolution of the genre, yet most FPS aficionados would hold up games like Bio Shock or Deus Ex as being more deserving of artistic praise.

Maybe High art is what touches us more deeply on an emotional level, however I imagine more people cried during Old Yeller than during Citizen Kane. To date I have not been brought to tears by a book, a painting or a game, yet I do not consider these media to be artistically bankrupt. Maybe sometimes one has to become somewhat versed with a medium or genre to begin to appreciate its artistic depth, yet people everywhere seem happy to declare that they don't need to read science fiction novels, watch horror films, or listen to classical music to know that it sucks. And that's really my problem with the whole distinction between High and Low art: the marginal categorical convenience and feelings of comfort come at the cost of perpetuating archaic class distinctions and preventing people on both sides from discovering works that they would enjoy.

Recommendations

2011-04-10T12:15:00.000-07:00

I've come to the conclusion that there are more things of interest to me on the internet than I can sensibly devote individual posts to, so I've added some links to the sidebar that can be perused at leisure.

But go read Hyperbole and a Half first.

I thought about adding a list of favorite boardgames, but one problem is that many of the games I play and enjoy are not ones which I would recommend for someone getting into the hobby. I'll add a list whenever I make peace with this conundrum.

Minecraft Store!

2011-03-31T22:44:00.000-07:00

Minecraft just got even more awesome! Head on over to the all-new Minecraft store for fantastic, low-priced DLC like the "Miner's Helmet," the "Enlargement Pill" or the "Creeper Saddle!" I personally recommend downloading the "Regular Padlock" (only $8) since I hear they've recently learned to open doors...

OBRAG is NOT associated with Notch or Mojang AB, but Minecraft IS awesome.

Sucker Punch Review

2011-03-26T02:41:00.000-07:00

Steampunk Nazi Zombies.

Important Announcement from NASA

2011-02-28T15:05:00.000-08:00

NASA makes another important announcement regarding the search for extraterrestrial life

NASA: Good news, everyone! We've just discovered a rare species of rhesus monkey that can live off of arsenic!

...

And this starfish that can eat at Jack in the Box!

Everyone: Yes, that's great. Can you please go back to finding aliens?

NASA: Ohh, but scanning the night sky is boring.

Power Rangers Totally Ripped-Off Spider-Man

2011-02-19T11:47:00.000-08:00

As we gain more details about a subject, often a larger picture emerges. Sometimes it can be inspiring, at other times terrifying, and ocassionally you discover that that one weird series from your childhood is a total ripoff of that other totally unrelated weird series from your childhood... kind of.

It all starts in 1978 when the Japanese company Toei signs an agreement with Marvel to license each others' characters over a three-year period, during which time a Japanese Spider-Man series was produced. The results were interesting.

...

That's right, Spider-Man has a giant robot, which I guess is why in the show he introduces himself as the messenger from hell. 'Nuff said.

Toei took this idea of the mecha-accessory and ran with it, introducing it into their long-running Super Sentai franchises. These were a genre of shows about a small team of color coordinated fighters (the term 'Sentai' was applied to squads in WWII) who would battle a variety of alien and/or magical threats using special powers and lots of kung-fu. Dozens of these shows were produced, and a few continue to this day.

After the webslinger introduced the giant robot concept (given to him by the alien Garia), other Sentai shows began toying with the idea, including one called Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger. In 1993, U.S. studio Saban Entertainment shot new scenes with American actors, edited it together with licensed and redubbed action footage from Zyuranger, and brought the show to American audiences as Power Rangers.

So the next time you see the Megazord defeat one of Rita Repulsa's gargantuan goons, give a salute to the wall-crawler who does whatever a spider can, including summon a giant robot.

Back to Back to the Future: a Critical Restrospective

2011-02-16T15:13:00.000-08:00

Somehow I had managed to avoid the Back to the Future films until very recently. Eventually I grew tired of the constant teasing and the threats of physical violence and decided to sit down and watch the trilogy over the past couple of years. I'd like to give my take on them as someone who has no nostalgic stake in them.

The first film is relatively straightforward by time-travel-story standards. Marty McFly simply has to 'fix' the the timeline he has inadvertantly screwed with, and manage to get back to future, or present (though Back to the Present doesn't sound as good). Overall, I feel that this film is the strongest of the trilogy as everything holds together well and I have no particular criticisms. The scene with the clock tower is thrilling, and the final few seconds of the film are fantastic (and I'm not sure how I avoided having them spoilt for me).

The second film is probably the most rewatchable as it has the most labyrinthine plot and some really smashing visuals, particularly in the 'future' segment. However I also feel that it is ultimately the weakest of the three as greater emphasis is given to the series' antagonist, Biff Tannen. Through no fault of Thomas F. Wilson, Biff is a pretty weak villain. He's completely one dimensional and, worst of all, not all that threatening. Perhaps due to this, there weren't any scenes that felt particularly suspenseful to me. In the first film, Biff's the stereotypical Hollywood jock, but by the second, his evil jock persona has ballooned out of all proportion. For me, Biff is not a strong enough villain to build an entire film around, though a valiant effort was made.

The third film has some great elements, but is held back by some noticeable flaws. Introducing a more distant historical setting is a nice change of pace, and the old west is realized in a way that is both tongue-and-cheek and believable. I love that Marty's historical equivalent is also played by Michael J. Fox. The Biff equivalent is still weak, but downplayed from the second. The big problem is that while he was never mentally intimidating, here he no longer seems physically intimidating either. And while the fairly straightforward plot holds together pretty well, there's not much of a sense of urgency about anything since there's no particular hurry to get back to 1985, and no apparent threat of messing with the timeline. In essense, Biff's role as a source of tension has been dialed back with nothing dialed in to replace it, though in my opinion this still makes for a stronger film, and a good amount of excitement is generated in the climax. The movie does have one extremely bothersome plothole though. Early on, they save Clara from plummeting off a cliff, but are mildly concerned that this may have disrupted the timeline after discovering that she was indeed supposed to die. After she and Doc Brown fall in love, Marty suggests bringing her back to 1985, but the Doc dismisses this idea as he is afraid it will disrupt the timeline. No!!! Leaving her in 1885 is what will disrupt the timeline! Hello? Hello?! What's worse is that this is never pointed out, and the entire 'disrupting the timeline' idea is dropped like horse pucky. Come on, you're smarter than that, Doc. Think, Brown, think!

Overall, the series is pretty solid. All three films range from decent to great, Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd are both endearing and enduring in their roles, and the only big problem is that the sole antagonist is not intimidating, although this isn't really a problem in the first film. I think it would have been interesting if, for the second or third film, they'd introduced a rival scientist, or maybe a cruel version of Marty from an alternate timeline. Ultimately though, Back to the Future is the rare film that is both enjoyable for adults and appropriate for children, and it is no small feat that they were able to duplicate this achievement two more times.

I'm interested to try the new adventure game that has come out. It's nice that Christopher Lloyd is reprising his role, and the guy doing a Michael J. Fox impression is outstanding.

I close with the immortal words of Sam Neill: "Where we're going, we won't need eyes!"

John Hughes' Legend of Zelda

2011-02-11T03:54:00.000-08:00

Hands down one of the best videogame parodies I've ever seen.

Their indie God of War is pretty great too.

Words of Wisdom

2011-02-02T02:03:00.000-08:00

If Uwe Boll actually hates gamers, it's only because he's been making movies for them. If he started making movies for florists and spelling-bee contestants, he'd quickly learn to hate them too.

Aquaria Review: Life is Much Better Down Where it's Wetter

2010-12-24T20:15:00.000-08:00

Water levels have gotten a bad name in videogames, somewhere just above "Sewer Level" and a bit below "Ice Level." This is justified, as the control schemes for said levels tend to be atrocious. However, there is a game that proves conclusively that swimming controls can not only be tight, but also fun and engaging...

Ecco the Dolphin for the Sega Genesis!

And it's various sequels!

...but also Aquaria!

In this impressive debut from ambitious indy-developer Bit Blot, you swim around exploring a massive aquatic environment as a mermaid-type creature named Naija, and the controls for doing so are rather impressive; the entire game can be played comfortably with just a dual-button mouse, leaving your other hand free to hold a tasty beverage or pastry. To swim, you hold down the left button (no rapidly tapping A here), and the distance at which you position your cursor relative to your avatar determines Naija's speed and direction. It's not only intuitive, but it allows a high degree of control once you master it, allowing you to effortlessly dart between obstacles and enemies, push off from surface to surface, and stop on a dime (or sand dollar) to avoid danger.

And you will be thankful, because danger you will find. This game may be about a singing mermaid, but it's not for sissies. It's by no means the hardest game I've played, but it will challenge your gaming skills, particularly if you go after some of the optional side-bosses. For example, there is a crab boss who hangs from the ceiling and is immune to all your attacks. When I finally realized what the game intended me to do, I believe I said "are you mad?" out loud. Perhaps I failed to try some easier maneuver that would have worked, but frankly I wish I had this reaction to games more often.

I must admit, when I first started playing Aquaria, I wasn't hooked. It seemed reasonably well made, with excellent production values, but I'm not a huge fan of exploration games, and I found myself getting lost and a little bored. I had gotten the game as part of the Humble Indie Bundle (possibly the best $25 I ever spent, even when I could have paid a penny, or saved that penny by pirating it, like 25,000 people apparently did), and I had no particular expectations about Aquaria. After having some trouble getting Penumbra to run properly, I decided to give it a fair shot. Here are my three basic Aquaria tips for anyone playing for the first time.
1: Use your map. The world of Aquaria is larger than you think. Much larger. Even when you are confined to a smaller section of it, getting your bearings is crucial to avoid just swimming around aimlessly.
2: Save often. This game doesn't mess around. There's no auto-saving here, and save points are not all that abundant. If you pass by a save crystal and don't bother to use it, you will likely regret your decision.
3: Mark locations on the map. This isn't critical, but as this game is in the style of a Metroidvania, you will find yourself wanting to go back to some particular feature you saw, and not being able to remember where the heck it was.

Once I had put an hour or two into the game, I started to realize that there was a lot more to it than my initial impressions had led me to believe. Yes, the game's main focus is exploration, but along the way you face many challenges, and the game slowly unveils a plethora of interesting abilities to deal with them. Rather than revealing its hand from the get-go, there is enough interesting content to discover that the experience continually gets better as you play, which for me is an extremely rare quality. I'm glad this is the case, because the game took me about 20 hours to complete, which I wasn't expecting from an indie title.

The world itself is huge. When you start out, you have no idea how flippin' massive Aquaria's game world is. With no hub world, and the ability to "teleport" only gained late in the game, traveling from one place to another can be quite a daunting task. However the game's inherent challenge and its variety of locales and enemies generally keep traveling from becoming tiring. I tend to dislike exploration and travel in games, but the slow pace works, and is I think necessary here, to create a world that feels truly epic and immersive. Also the game never feels like it's sending you to and fro arbitrarily in order to pad its length. On the contrary you often get very little indication of where to go, and are free to explore the world pretty much however you wish, but you ought to pack a lunch.

Which brings me to one of the coolest features in Aquaria: the recipe/cooking system. Okay, no, hear me out. Remember what I said earlier about this game not being for sissies? You're just going to have to trust me when I say that the recipe system in Aquaria is one of the most interesting and well designed and fleshed-out systems I've ever seen in a videogame. The idea is that slain enemies and plants will drop a wide variety of ingredients (and logical ones; no squirrels and amorphous blobs dropping coins and broadswords here). You are then able to combine these ingredients in your inventory to create food items that provide various benefits when ingested, like healing or stat boosts. As the game progresses, you will encounter new ingredients and recipes for more and more powerful dishes, and like Eternal Darkness' brilliant spell system, you are free to experiment with combinations of ingredients to try and discover recipes yourself. Instead of grinding through combat for experience points, you'll find yourself hunting down particular enemies just because you really want to make some turtle soup. And dropped ingredients don't blink out of existence, they simply float down into the depths, requiring you to delve down after them. The whole system is extremely well balanced - ingredients are plentiful, yet you never have enough of what you need and will be forced to make legitimately difficult choices as to how to allocate them.

The other thing that really stood out to me was the music. For weeks I've been unable to get the main theme out of my head, and for once I'm glad. Many of the songs in the game riff off of this melody in interesting ways, and a huge factor of my enjoyment came from the way the music set a strong tone throughout. Music also plays an important role in gameplay, similarly to the way it's used in Ocarina of Time, except that you often have to sing a little tune in the heat of combat in real time. I actually wish that the tunes were a little more difficult to play and to remember, since these are some of the most intense moments of the game. The story is nothing revolutionary, but it gets the job done, and the excellent and abundant narration, combined with the music, really makes the experience.

On the negative side, the admirably simple controls don't always work the way you want them to when trying to perform certain abilities. And the lock-on system for projectile attacks is fine most of the time, but on a couple of boss fights I had to switch the auto-aim off to actually hit anything. The whole thing feels pretty darn polished though, and not just for being an indie title. The biggest disappointment is that the secret ending teases at a sequel that will probably never be.

On the surface, what might initially appear like a lame concept (seriously it's about a singing mermaid baking cakes) or a Zelda ripoff belies one of the most unique and engaging games I've ever played. It also goes to some surprisingly dark places (figuratively and literally), and in the end Naija probably racks up a body count comparable to that of Kratos, including deities.

To the prospective consumer: if you like exploration adventure games, this is a must-play. If you don't, give Aquaria a shot anyway. It just might surprise you.

And to the developers, Alec Holowka and Derek Yu: thank you for crafting this unforgettable experience. Aquaria is the kind of game that makes me proud to be involved with the hobby. Also I beat your stupid hanging crab boss.

The thing with The Thing

2010-12-04T17:04:00.000-08:00

So I got around to watching John Carpenter's 1982 remake The Thing. I'd never watched it before, and for the record, I thought it was good. A couple of things struck me about it though.

Firstly, in my opinion, the film would be exceedingly middling without the fantastic practical effects on display. That is, if the alien were CGI, I feel the whole thing would be exceedingly meh. The plot and characters are decent, but not exceptional. The film does succeed admirably in creating mood and tension, but I feel this is as much due to the creature effects as anything. This isn't to knock Carpenter's directing or the soundtrack, both of which are excellent, but if The Thing were released today with the standard computer effects, I doubt it would attain the cult status that it has. Perhaps the 2011 re-remake will test my theory, assuming it doesn't suck altogether.

This isn't a knock against The Thing. There are a great number of excellent movies that would be hugely diminished if their practical effects were removed: 2001: A Space Odyssey; King Kong (1933); Team America: World Police. At the time though, The Thing received critical flak for having too much style over substance, and I feel that our opinion on the film (currently 80% on rotten tomatoes) has morphed partly due to ennui over CGI and a collective nostalgia for physical objects.

Overall, I think that CGI has improved the medium of film by making it possible to show almost anything at an acceptable cost. This in turn affords screenwriters more creativity, and consequently more films with fantasy elements are being released today than ever before[citation needed]. The problems come when directors and studios come to see CGI as a panacea, forgoing all other types of effects. Plenty of films, even horror films like Drag Me to Hell, use CGI heavily and are better for it. Then you have Peter Jackson's King Kong, which features excellent locations done in miniature, and dinosaurs that look worse than Jurassic Park, a film that came out twelve years earlier. I think the rule of thumb should be this: if it's magic or something ephemeral, use CGI, if it's something physical, strongly consider some sort of practical effect.

But getting back on topic, while the pacing and atmosphere in The Thing work well, the plot has a few issues, and I want to bring up the most major problem I had, and please keep in mind that no normal, well adjusted person would be as bothered by this as I.

A certain ways into the movie, the characters collectively realize that the alien is taking human form. To ascertain whether one of them has been taken over, the doctor proposes the idea of a blood test. They'll each donate a sample of their blood, and each in turn will be mixed with a sample of regular emergency blood that they know to be untainted. Based on previous observation of the interaction between alien cells and normal cells, if a reaction occurs, then that donor is infected. This plan is scrapped when it is discovered that blood bags in storage have been tampered with (e.g. they have tentacles growing out of them).

The issue I have is that with the established fact that alien cells react with normal cells when the two are mixed, the previously described experiment could easily be performed without the uninfected blood bags. What the characters need to do is mix blood samples between every combination of two people. If there is a reaction, then one of those two people is an alien. After running through every combination, based on who reacted with who, you could divide everyone into two groups, Group A and Group B. Everyone's blood would react with all members of the opposing group, and with no members of their own group. As is stated at one point in the film, the infected must not outnumber the uninfected, or else they would simply reveal themselves and overpower them (ala Werewolf/Mafia). Thus the smaller group are the ones infected, and they may be promptly disposed of by the larger group.

Also there are no shape-shifting aliens in Antarctica, so there's that too.

stay out, we also have topless fur-protesters

2010-10-26T20:19:00.000-07:00

To solve the Amero-Mexican boarder crisis, PeTA has provided this helpful sign in order to deter illegal immigrants.

translation: "If the boarder patrol doesn't get you, the chicken and burgers will. Go vegan."

...no, that's really what it says.

Because a hungry Mexican attempting to sneak across the border will verily be deterred by a delightful carnival showcasing America's wondrous bounty, overlooked by a jealous sun, and contrasted with Mexico's apparent paucity and relative dourness.

Or maybe the ambulance is meant to warn them of medical premiums.

you totally deserved it

2010-10-25T23:44:00.000-07:00

Today, I tried to resurrect my mother using alchemy but ended up exploding my brother instead, so I had to bind his soul to a suit of armor. Also, I blew my own arm off. FMA

Sintel

2010-10-02T02:44:00.000-07:00

To quote the description: Sintel is an independently produced short film, initiated by the Blender Foundation as a means to further improve and validate the free/open source 3D creation suite Blender.

And boy does it ever validate. If all fantasy were this well executed and conceptualized, then, um, that'd be ace.

The Resistance Review: Voltage over Current

2010-09-14T13:55:00.000-07:00

I like Werewolf. Quite a bit actually. I’ve not had the opportunity to play it a lot since most groups I game with are Euro players more interested in strategy than player interactions and more irritated than some by the early and repeated player elimination. Getting enough people together to make Werewolf interesting can also be prohibitive, but there’s nothing quite like a well run game of Werewolf with a group that’s willing to really get into it, especially when played at a convention with 30 other people (I won that one, by the way...).

There are a number of recent Euro/Ameri-style games that use a traitor mechanic (including one of my own designs if it ever comes out), and I tend to play a lot more of these due to the reasons above, but they rarely evoke the same level of involvement and pure character analysis that a good game of Werewolf does. The Resistance successfully straddles the line between Werewolf and more "gamer-y" games with a straightforward system that provides significantly more information and clues as to who the "spies" are, while remaining open enough that the interpersonal aspect remains front and centre.

The system is extremely simple, to the point where everyone I brought this out with seemed initially dubious that it would even be interesting. There are two phases of voting in each round, the first done publicly with everybody to determine which players will comprise the "Mission Team," and the second done secretly by the mission team to determine whether that round’s mission was successful. Accidentally putting even one spy on the team is potentially disastrous since it only take one to sabotage a mission, but then again the spy may choose not to do so in order to earn the group’s trust.

Once players get into the swing of things, they may be surprised at the amount of subtlety present. There are a number of different ways to suss out who might be lying, and equally many ways to lie and subtly manipulate. I definitely recommend playing with the plot cards as these are anything but fluff and add a lot of complexity to the deduction while being quite straightforward and adding minimal randomness. The game definitely rewards being able to successfully read people and lie, but it also heavily rewards logical deduction. I frequently made my head spin trying to form an explanation for myself of who the spies were that could even match up with everything I’d seen and heard, regardless of who I suspected, realizing that my two prime suspects couldn’t both be spies, unless Player A was more savvy than I thought...

Despite its simplicity, the game is a tiny bit fiddly. There are several different sets of cards, and the way the mission cards need to be repeatedly sorted and passed around can cause some confusion. I haven’t thought of any solutions, and it’s more than acceptable given the game’s strengths, but it did turn off some players at first. For example, players are asked to close their eyes at the start ala Werewolf to allow spies to identify each other. At first several people scoffed at this as seeming stupid and unnecessary, and there is even a variant in the rules that allows skipping this step, but after a half-dozen plays I definitely think it improves the game in a number of ways if the spies know who each other are from the start.

If I were to point to any serious flaw, it would be that some games are not going to be as interesting as others simply because players get lucky and manage not to send the spies on any missions. This happened in my first game before we had gotten into the groove, and it seemed as though the game was outright broken. This situation is rare though, and the game is short enough that it shouldn’t be a big deal to ride out the occasional session where the resistance just gets lucky and the spies can’t do much except impotently scheme and pretend to look pleased, and if your group has eased into the accusatory spirit then even these less-interesting sessions are still enjoyable.

The game also seems noticeably better with more players. As I say, I’ve only played a few games, but I had a lot more fun with seven players than with six. The deduction becomes a lot more complicated, and there are more people trying to talk at once (which you want in a game like this). More players also makes the above issue occur less frequently.

The Resistance doesn’t quite scratch all the same itches for me that Werewolf does, but it has a number of notable advantages over it, the main one being no player elimination. And while I prefer it with more players, The Resistance does work fine with as few as five, which is not something I can say for Werewolf. It also feels like less of a popularity contest as there is more tangible evidence on which to argue your case (even if you’re a spy).

Despite the fact that there is more information on which to base your decisions, I generally prefer games with a little more "game" to them apart from the social aspect. My favorite hidden roles game is probably Battlestar Galactica since it combines the sociopolitical element with solid tactics and strategy and a well-fleshed-out theme. But it must be noted that Battlestar achieves its level of player involvement largely through it’s considerable gamelength. The Resistance had us vehemently arguing and hurling complex accusations in minutes.

In the end, if these sorts of social deduction games just aren’t your cup of tea, I don’t think The Resistance will convert too many people, but if the concept sounds at all interesting, or if you like Werewolf/Mafia but wish it didn’t have player elimination, then I suggest checking out The Resistance. On the other hand, doing so might put you on some government watch list, so maybe it’s safer if [Message Redacted]

Sonic Doesn't Need a Story

2010-08-31T17:52:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure that Sonic, Mario and Zelda can't and shouldn't be improved by bringing in more compelling narratives than the standard "save the princesses/toads/the woodland creatures" scenarios, but the transition has been demonstrated to be far easier said than done. While Mario has been content for the most part to wallow in the purity of its established formula, the new generation of Sonic games has boldly and consistently explored new horizons, with decidedly mixed results. Mixed enough that Sega has decided to go back to its roots with Sonic 4, which is where Nintendo has been all along.

That's not to say that Nintendo has never ventured outside its comfort zone. The franchise of Mario's RPGs (with the first installment admittedly created by Square) has consistently mixed up Mario's formula, and with good results. But for the most part, Nintendo seems stuck in the 80s, while other once-proud franchises blindly flail around for new ideas, eventually attempt to grab onto their cache of nostalgia like a polyester life-preserver, and are finally lost to the annals of history and the bargain bin (*cough*Mortal Kombat*cough*). Some might attribute Nintendo's recent success solely to their having a larger cache of nostalgia than most to fall back on, but I believe an equally important factor is that for three decades they have been perfecting a way of doing their thing, while by comparison Sonic only ever kind of worked in 3D, and Sega apparently lost the formula after Sonic Adventure 2. It would be ironic foreshadowing if an employee dropped it down the toilet.

I think most would be willing to grant me that games like Mario Galaxy and Mario 64 essentially have no story, and it's clear that although the ideal goal should probably be a good story, no story seems easily to trump a bad one. Back in the day, games like Super Turrican and Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania and Ecco the Dolphin and Zelda felt super epic because their lack of a fleshed-out narrative, and their simpler graphics, forced and invited us to fill in the gaps with our own imaginations. Another World exploited that simplicity and subtlety to create one of the most narratively rich and compelling games I've ever played. As graphics improved, and as it became easier to incorporate story into games with things like spoken dialogue and better cutscenes, gaming worlds began to feel less epic and expansive, and the stories started to sound dumber and dumber as they began to be told more explicitly and completely. We finally saw our beloved franchises recreated in glorious technicolor and quietly said to ourselves "is that it?"

I personally have no idea what the plot for Super Turrican was, but I do not wish to go and find out. It cannot possibly measure up to the fabulous mythology I build for myself as a six-year-old boy, spurred on by the captivating music and 32-bit graphics.

Various Ideologies Analyzed in terms of Objectivism

2010-08-01T17:49:00.000-07:00

Objectivism: A is A

Agnosticism: A is impossible to determine

Liberalism: A is whatever

Conservatism: A should only be A

Communism: A is ours

Despotism: A is mine

Anarchism: Screw A

Capitalism: A is for sale

Agrarianism: A is 2A

Dualism: A is A and a

Idealism: A is A

Subjectivism: A is A to me

Darwinism: A was B

Absurdism: A is B

Postmodernism: B is A

Surrealism: A is sandwich

Nihilism: There is no A

Rastafarianism: A mon!

Science Fiction/Double Feature

2010-07-22T00:52:00.000-07:00

With the introduction of "Less-price-gougey Tuesdays" at the local cineplex, I got a chance to see both Inception and Predators one after another, and I'll try to give my thoughts on them without giving away too much.

I can't get very specific with Inception without getting spoilery, so I'll keep my critique vague. All in all, I thought it was awesome, but I do think it ran a bit long. The concept behind the film, of invading and navigating other peoples' dreams, amply warrants an in-depth treatment, yet as cool as the premise is, I didn't feel that it was explored to its fullest potential, and at two-and-a-half hours the screenplay dragged in places and at times even felt repetitive. I have the feeling that this was somewhat intentional to drive home the dreamlike aesthetic that the film does effectively convey, but I also feel that an already impressive film would have been made stronger had a few more minutes been cut, and I would likely be inclined to re-watch it more frequently. As it stands, Inception is still better and more original than the vast majority of films released, and probably the closest thing to a big screen adaption of Psychonauts we can hope for.

With its themes of what is really real, and of plugging into other realities, comparisons with The Matrix are inevitable. I wouldn't say that Inception is in any way ripping off The Matrix, but I also feel that The Matrix succeeded in a few areas where Inception fell short, particularly in terms of its action sequences. With the exception of a fantastically trippy setpiece in a hotel hallways, Inception's action falls drastically short of it's potential. This is not to say that the action is poorly shot or choreographed, but that because we are working in the realm of dreams, where conceivably anything could happen, a series of gunfights and car chases with generic goons just feels like a bit of a cop-out. Where The Matrix wowed us with its funky wire-fu and novel bullet-time effects, Inception sort of goes out with a whimper.

To be fair, Inception is meant more as an "ideas" film than an action film, and in that regard it holds up a bit better. Whereas the ideas behind The Matrix don't hold together all that well under closer scrutiny (such as the machines not having any apparent way of drawing new energy into the system they have constructed), Inception has a little more depth and ambiguity to pick at. That's not to say that the film is devoid of gaps in logic (there were a couple points I didn't get, but I won't pass judgment until I have a second viewing), but there are plenty of things that the films leaves you to turn over in your mind. But again, because so much could have been done with the concept, the result ends up feeling a tad disappointing. In particular, I would have liked to see more of the universal aspects of dreaming covered in some way, like when you're trying to run away from something and suddenly it feels like you're moving through molasses, or when your teeth don't seem to have been quite put in properly. I realize that the film is expressly trying to make us question what is and isn't real, but I can't shake the feeling that opportunities were missed.

A common complaint I've heard, of movies in general, is that the "dream-within-a-dream" is purely an invention of Hollywood and that this never happens to anyone. I can attest firsthand that this does happen in real life, and that it as trippy as balls. You wake up and say something like "what a peculiar dream that was. I'd best return to reality with a nice bowl of cornflakes. Then maybe some goldfish polo. I do hope the Queen has a spare dachshund." Later you awake in a cold sweat with the feel of scales and victory still on your palms.

Or maybe that's just me. I'm just gonna move on to Predators now.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Predators is the first film to feature the titular character, since the 1987 original, that wasn't awful. To be fair, I never saw the sequel to Aliens vs Predator, and I remember somewhat enjoying the first AVP film, probably out of some perverse fondness for the games, but I think I wouldn't be remiss in saying that both franchises went significantly downhill when they tried adding numbers or subtitles to their names. Just adding an "s" seems empirically to work out better. For the next installment, I suggest Predators'.

This is a film that I think would greatly benefit from a lack of foreknowledge. If you were somehow able to go into this with no idea what to expect and no knowledge of the original, or even just no idea that this was the movie you were going to see, I think the film would generate a respectable degree of tension and excitement. As it is, it just sort of feels like an homage, like it's just going through the motions (♪walking through the part♫), with little by way of surprises (and a painfully obvious Chekhov's Neurotoxin).

Unfortunately, the Predators are the weakest part of the movie. There's none of the unfamiliar menace they exuded in the original, and not even any of the cheesy badassery from AVP. After all these years, we finally get a Predator on Predator fight, and it looks exactly like what it is: two guys in rubber suits wrestling. I often argue that less is more, but sometimes it's just less. The Predators also seems considerably easier to kill in this installment; I guess they adhere to the law of inverse ninjutsu.

It's weird to see Adrian Brody take up the role once filled by Arnold "Aaugh" Schwarzenegger, but I would say that the cast is probably the strongest part of the film. The personalities are more diverse than the original, and I even like Topher Grace's weirdly-out-of-place doctor character. It was pretty funny to see Danny Trejo show up at the beginning when the previous trailer had him being a badass in Machete, only for him to be pretty much the first to die (that's not a spoiler, he's ethnic). When they're all just confusedly creeping about the jungle, it feels like a good episode of Lost. It's just a shame that the Predators are less menacing than the smoke monster.

Return of Jokes?

2010-07-05T00:22:00.000-07:00

You're such a geek you think Linkin Park is why Epona won't go.

Jack Sandler

2010-06-28T04:58:00.000-07:00

One mystery they never explained...

Battlestar Galactica Boardgame Reviews

2010-05-10T20:00:00.000-07:00

I just so happen to have in my possession both the Battlestar Galactica boardgame released in 2008, and the Battlestar Galactica boardgame released in 1978. To aid the prospective consumer, I have drafted a comparison of the two games highlighting some of their features and discrepancies.

In the 2008 version, humanity is on the brink of annihilation. Impeded only by a handful of brave Viper pilots, swarms of Cylon Raiders continually threaten to wipe out what remains of the fleet. Heavy Raiders bring Centurions onto Galactica that march inexorably towards the ship's vital systems, and the fearsome Basestars ceaselessly pump out reinforcements as their guns pummel Galactica unless silenced with a nuclear explosion. All the while, internal politics exacerbated by hidden Cylon agents threatens to tear the fleet apart from within as the humans struggle desperately to hold it together long enough to reach Kobol, the signpost to Earth.

In the 1978 version, there's a single defenseless and inanimate Cylon Raider that gets dragged around a lot. If you drag it into your corner, you win! All the other Viper pilots are trying to stop you for some reason by blasting you to pieces. Perhaps all the pilots are very drunk.

In the 2008 version, you can play as William Adama, Starbuck, or perhaps the enigmatic Gaius Baltar, any one of whom might turn out to be a Cylon agent secretly working to destroy the fleet.

In the 1978 version, you can play as blue.

The 2008 version uses a simple d8 to resolve ship combat (among other things), but the heart of the game's conflict is in the skill check system where players contribute cards to a face-down pile to deal with various crises. In each check some colors of cards will be helpful while others are harmful, and the cards are shuffled before they are revealed so it is unclear who has aided the humans and who has sabotaged them. The Cylon players will need to be subtle and choose their moments if they are to successfully destroy the humans' chances of survival without arousing too much suspicion.

The 1978 version has arguably one of the most ridiculous combat mechanic ever conceived. By playing a "laser torpedoes" card, you get to spin the spinner. The number result (from 1 to 6) tells you how many further times you get to spin the spinner. Each of these times, you check which of four colors the spinner is pointing to, and all the enemy Vipers in that quarter of the board get shot. By playing one laser torpedoes card, you could realistically shoot all, none or some of your opponents. Who knows? At least the mechanic is entertaining, in a putting stuff up your nose kind of way.

I would recommend the 2008 version to anyone who doesn't mind a somewhat longer and more complex game. The only real gripe I have with the game is that it can go upwards of two hours which keeps it from hitting the table as often as it would otherwise, but I still have a great time every time it comes out. Extra recommendation if you're a fan of the show, or enjoy an excuse to lie to peoples' faces.

I would recommend the 1978 if you have a sense of humor and would like to compare just how far boardgames have come in 30 years. Extra recommendation if you're a fan of Plan 9 From Outer Space, or anything else that sucks in a brilliant way.

In conclusion, the series finale was somewhat disappointing.

Michael Bay's The Dark Knight - by Michael Bay

2010-05-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

Did you know that an early script for The Dark Knight was submitted by Michael Bay, but this version was rejected on account of it being terrible ... and made up.

Blog Entry

2010-03-13T05:46:00.000-08:00

BriTANick has been my favorite sketch comedy group for a while, but I absolutely love everything about their latest video.

You can check out their other stuff here, or listen to more meta-humor in the same vein.

Steampunk Lego Star Wars

2009-12-31T19:30:00.000-08:00

This may be one of the greatest things I've ever seen.

Slither in 5 seconds

2009-12-15T11:31:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm aware that this is longer than 5 seconds. My friend Clayton and I made this as fans of 5 Second Movies (most of which are also longer than 5 seconds...), my personal favorite being Return of the King in 5 seconds.

Emo Haiku Generator

2009-11-10T16:03:00.000-08:00

Hmm, turns out I didn't need to write that.

An Emo Haiku (based on true events)

2009-11-10T00:24:00.000-08:00

Box of Lucky Charms

Puzzle's answer: "Lucky Charms"

I weep for mankind

EA Rickrolls Yahtzee

2009-11-07T04:27:00.001-08:00

As part of their "seven deadly sins" promotional campaign for the upcoming Dante's Inferno videogame, EA has rickrolled a bunch of game journalists, including the Escapist's Ben Crowshaw, by way of a music box that had to be smashed with a tiny hammer. The sin being showcased this time around was, unsurprisingly, wrath.

I'm not sure how to feel about all the publicity kerfuffle surrounding this game. Some of the stunts so far have been more than a little unsettling (like staging a fake religious protest!), and I feel a little dirty even posting about it since this is clearly what EA wants. So I leave it to you: if you vehemently disapprove of these sorts of over-the-top marketing tactics, stop buying their games and write a firm letter; if you find this sort of thing entertaining and want to see more, go buy Mass Effect or something; and if you're sort of on the fence like me, press 5 then the # key. If you'd like to hear all this again, I expect you won't be waiting around very long.

And for those who've just been cryogenically unfrozen or something, a helpful guide about what rickrolling is can be found here.

Rev Rants

2009-10-29T23:57:00.000-07:00

I approve of this guy's rants on videogaming.

Charted!

2009-10-26T23:59:00.000-07:00

The fellows at Naughty Dog have suitably demonstrated that they understand how to make a game that feels like a movie. Rather than weigh the action down with interminable cutscenes as has been the tradition of games with cinematic aspirations, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves embraces it's interactivity and gleefully plunges the player into setpiece after setpiece without worrying that we'll muck things up. The result is a 12+ hour thrillride that feels like both a game and a movie without the sense that anything was sacrificed in the amalgamation.

The pacing and atmosphere is solid right from the start where you are thrown into an opening tutorial/action scene that is one of the better I've seen since Eternal Darkness. From there the game skillfully segues into a series of cutscenes that instantly demonstrate the striking level of direction and voice-acting present. Nearly everything about Uncharted 2's presentation just feels classy, from the way plot-points are presented, to the excellent musical score and the lavish graphics that feature numerous breathtaking vistas and make use of some absolutely astonishing water and snow effects.

The gunplay and exploration is a whole lot of fun, with intuitive controls and an abundance of awesome and memorable setpieces involving collapsing buildings and speeding trains. There's rarely a dull moment, and the game is just a whole lot of fun to play, bringing to mind similar games I've enjoyed such as Tomb Raider: Legend and the oft-overlooked gem Everything or Nothing, which also features the single-button cover mechanic popularized in Gears of War and used to good effect here. In fact putting aside the cutscene quality and the nifty snow effects, there isn't much in Uncharted 2's actual gameplay that we haven't seen plenty of times before. Luckily everything gels together so well that what Uncharted 2 lacks in originality, it more than makes up for in sheer fun and style.

That's not to say the game is without it's problems. The enemy sprites get to feel repetitive, and their AI can be quite thick at times and will sometimes do things like stand in the open during a gunfight or fail to notice commotion that should be in their field of view. One spot I felt the AI really shined though was the way enemies behave behind cover. Rather than simply popping out to shoot at regular intervals, they vary their timing and position and now and then seem to display a genuine sense of self-preservation.

Climbing about the impressive locales is fun and intuitive, but it is not always evident what can be climbed on or jumped to. This is exacerbated by the fact that much of what Nathan Drake, the series' protagonist, does acrobatically is ridiculous even by the standards of Hollywood physics. The game is also rather inconsistent about how far you can fall without dying, and falling as little as two meters can sometimes be fatal if you weren't supposed to be going that way. Luckily your deaths can be rather humorous, and the game is quite generous with its checkpoints, on occasion starting me ahead of where I had actually died. Once I stumbled off a ledge and somehow managed to skip past an entire cutscene without even being asked to retry. That said, the game does offer some decent challenge in its enemies later on, but because most battles tend to play out differently each time, having to retry them is rarely frustrating.

Though a fair amount of the environment is destructible, it tends to destruct due to scripted events rather than by your own doing, and the physics can feel a bit lifeless at times. Rockets and grenades don't always send enemies flying the way they should. The hit detection also sometimes feels a bit wonky. We seemed to differ on what constituted a headshot, and though I consider myself a fairly competent gamer, I was surprised to find myself unable to complete the challenge of getting five in a row after considerable effort. Luckily there are plenty of other challenges one can complete to earn the amusing bonus features like the sepia filter, or the "next gen" filter (which makes everything drab and generic). It's also pretty fun to watch a morbidly obese "Doughnut Drake" swing about on streetlights and climb like an acrobat, stealthily tackle enemies from behind, or float languidly into the distance like a flabby dirigible.

All things said, Uncharted 2 is more fun to play than it is to nitpick. It may not have the most groundbreaking gameplay (though there is a fair amount of environmental destruction), and you shouldn't go in expecting a deeper experience than what you'd get out of a good summer blockbuster, but everything the game does blends together very well, and it respects your time as a player by being consistently entertaining with little filler. The plot and dialogue is well above the usual standard, and though the last 20 minutes or so is a little anticlimactic in light of what's come before, the overall experience manages to remain engaging from beginning to end, which is no small feat. This is helped a lot by the ongoing banter between Drake and his entourage which, while not always gold, is frequently fresh and fun, and really makes the whole experience a lot more immersive. I must confess that I have not yet played the original, though the consensus seems to be that this game improves upon it in basically every area, and I have also not had the chance to try the multiplayer component, so I don't know if that aspect warrants a purchase. Just for the singleplayer though, I can heartily recommend this to nearly anyone as, at the very least, an awesome weekend rental.

Escapist News Network

2009-10-07T10:53:00.000-07:00

I'm enjoying The Escapist's new segment ENN. A proper comedy news show seems like something the videogaming industry needs.

Star Wars the Old Republic Trailer

2009-10-06T03:15:00.000-07:00

Holy frak is this trailer awesome.

Too bad it's an MMORPG and the gameplay will be nothing like this whatsoever.

Brutal Legend Will Rock

2009-10-04T20:48:00.001-07:00

I'm calling it now: Brutal Legend is going to be awesome. You've got Tim Schafer of Day of the Tentacle and Psychonauts as Designer/Creative Director, and Jack Black and a number of what Tim has referred to as "Rock Gods" narrating. I will be both surprised and disillusioned if this game somehow manages to suck.

God of War I/II Review: Deicide, Ribaldry and Quick Time Events

2009-10-03T04:49:00.001-07:00

Greek mythology encompasses an enormous treasure trove of ideas that can be culled for various media. Its characters and creatures are evocative, well known and, better yet, in the public domain. Greek myth may be particularly well suited for action/adventure videogames due to the simple but resonant plots, the larger-than-life personalities, and the items and upgrades the heroes get along the way. This was suitably demonstrated with the critically acclaimed God of War back in 2005, and again in 2007 with God of War II, seen by many as the bittersweet finale of the PS2 era. Having recently played through both titles for the first time, I'd like to continue my series of reviews on games that everyone has already played by sharing my opinions on the franchise, and by-proxy some of my thoughts on the genre in general.

Right from the start, it's clear that the main aspiration of God of War is over-the-top awesomeness. The first level pits you against a massive Hydra and a legion of undead soldiers on a sundered ship, and the action rarely lets up as you travel through a beautifully realized fantasy vision of ancient Greece beating the crap out of all manner of mythological creatures. The combat is polished and visceral, but after your titanic clash with the Hydra (get it, 'cause you're on a sinking ship, hehe), there is a conspicuous lack of of epic boss battles, though this is mostly remedied in the sequel. I might have preferred if some of the more generic enemies were weaker and more numerous, but this may just be personal taste.

It is good that the combat is solid, since this is strongly the games' centerpiece, though the gameplay in God of War is actually surprisingly diverse, throwing in bits of platforming, exploration and puzzle-solving to keep things interesting. Predictably these other elements aren't as polished as the combat, since that was what the controls and camera were designed around. Some sections that involved pushing heavy blocks or statues around grew rather tedious, but I was actually surprised at how clever some of the puzzles were. The designers wisely refrained from trying to incorporate physics-heavy puzzles, and the solutions tend to rely more on logic than skill. They also didn't seem to repeat themselves. I was also surprised at how little the fixed camera got in the way compared to some newer titles. The climbing and swinging bits got decidedly amped up for the better in the sequel. It was clear that a lot of effort was put into these ancillary sections, and I appreciated the variety despite occasional frustrations. The game presents the option to lower the difficulty after the player has died one too many times at a particular checkpoint, and I appreciated the thought, but what was rather annoying was this only ever came up after I'd screwed up one too many times on a tricky platforming section, and the option clearly stated that lowering the difficulty would only effect the combat. This is rather like offering to lend a blind man a city map after he has just walked into another signpost.

This is essentially the videogaming equivalent to 300: disposable testosterone-fueled mindless entertainment. It's edutainment in that you might be influenced to learn more about some of the mythological personalities depicted, but that's sort of like saying S.T.A.L.K.E.R. teaches you about Russian cinema, or that The Lord of the Rings: Conquest teaches you 20th century literature. It doesn't come off as particularly mindless when compared to other games in the genre, which should tell you something about the general level of videogame plots. In this case, as with 300, everything is clearly meant to be over-the-top and larger-than-life. No punches are pulled, gleeful violence abounds, and that's a large part of what makes the games so fun to play. You are a man on a mission, you will let nothing get in your way no matter how much stuff you have to break, and the game lets you revel in that. Frequently the game actually forces you to kill innocent civilians who have gotten in your way or who must be sacrificed for the greater good. There's no namby-pamby moral choice here; you are a selfish, violent bastard, and your goal is to bust heads.

This pervading theme of violent retribution provides a necessary balance to the often frustrating challenges you are faced with. You will frequently be irritated with the tasks you are trying to perform between or during bouts of enemy attacks, but these very enemies also provide you catharsis. It all fits with the theme of fighting back against the uncaring Gods who mistreat you, though here "Gods" can be replaced with "Game Designers." It may sound like I'm giving this game an unwarranted pass on its frustrating segments, but I honestly felt everything fit together nicely most of the time, building up frustration and then giving you monsters to satisfyingly unleash that frustration on. The liberal use of checkpoints didn't hurt either.

A couple of parts did go over the line for me though. As with Castlevania, I found one or two sections involving gorgons exceedingly aggravating since they can temporarily turn you to stone, and if an enemy so much as sneezes on you while you are in this state, you shatter and die (yet it takes considerably more to shatter a stone enemy). Also, never jump near a Gorgon, since a three-inch fall when turned to stone is enough to shatter you. (Unlike the myth, averting your eyes doesn't help either.) This game is also one of the first to use the much-beloved quick time event, though here I find it fun rather than frustrating because, unlike the gorgon stare, it seldom means instant death should you screw up. Other developers borrowing the "press a button!" mechanic should note this important detail(!)

The relentless feeling of the game did also get to me at times. In the vaguely similar Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the Prince is frequently conversing with himself or his female companion Farah, and these bits of dialogue did a lot to hold my attention and make me want to keep going. In God of War, the protagonist is silent, and you are forced to contend with seemingly herculean tasks before each tidbit of story is begrudgingly unraveled. This helps the overall theme, but it also makes the experience feel oppressive at times. You will be frequently presented with fresh new challenges, perhaps more so than in Prince of Persia, but you will be alone. It works with the theme they were aiming for, but at times I was tempted to pull out my iPod. Luckily the games’ music is excellent, and I particularly liked the score for the sequel.

There are some RPG elements here: different weapons and a few magic spells that can be powered up, which introduces the familiar issue that the experienced players will find all the powerups that make them stronger while the noobs face an increasingly difficult uphill battle, but then they can switch to a lower difficulty or play “tea party” or something. I also would have like the option to downgrade weapons and spells since for me the fun is in trying different approaches and combinations. It’s good that there is some long-term reward for killing things (experience orbs) since you’ll be doing it a lot, and the limited number of enemies, as well as the relatively modest change in your abilities, prevents grinding from becoming an issue. Aside from some nifty spells that can summon lightning or legions of the undead, there’s also a nifty rage mechanic which I feel works much better in the sequel since they included an off-switch.

If you look past the flashy combos and fine motor control, God of War’s combat can be seen as a game of resource management. You are attempting to preserve your health through an uncertain number of enemy waves, and you have a number of resources at your disposal to help with this. You use your magic and rage meters to deal with enemies in ways that are less hazardous to your health, and you pick up orbs from fallen enemies to replenish your meters. Treasure chests will completely refill one of your meters (depending on the type), but in battle these can only be opened if there is enough of a lull in the action, so when to go for them might be key. You want your magic and rage to get you to the end of the fight, but if the meters are left at full, then the corresponding orbs you pick up will go to waste. There are also the questions of which spells or abilities to use on which enemies, and which enemies to fight normally in order to recharge your other meters at the potential cost of health. It’s all a delicious balance, assuming you’re willing to go in expecting more than a button masher. (On the other hand, when a chest had the option of refilling health or magic, in the first game I invariably chose health due to higher spell costs.)

There are many other games that I’d look at in resource management terms, but this aspect of God of War is quite polished, and more importantly a lot of fun. The basic job of hacking up foes is great fun as well since it’s less about mastering combos and more about using the right maneuver at the right time against the right opponent. If you like action/adventure games and haven’t gotten around to playing these, I heartily recommend you give them a shot. I thought the sequel was a little better overall though a few aspects of the first game felt more polished to me, but with either title you can’t go wrong. They were on the cutting edge in a lot of ways when they were released, and they still hold up solidly today.

Alternatively the whole franchise was a big ripoff of Hero of Sparta for the iPhone.

Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000

2009-09-29T17:25:00.000-07:00

Insert one thrupenny bit.

With Lyrics 2

2009-09-29T03:12:00.000-07:00

Here's another awesome video from brentalfloss. If you're an old-school gamer, I heartily recommend you check out his other stuff. If you aren't familiar, he takes mostly classic videogame songs and adds hilarious lyrics to them.

Warning: occasional blue language, but only when it's comedically appropriate.

The REAL Mario

2009-08-25T19:46:00.000-07:00

What if Mario were real?

Videogame ABCs

2009-08-23T23:11:00.000-07:00

A’s for Atari the first of its sort

B is for BloodRayne who’s movie fell short

C is for Capcom with zombies about

D’s the Duke Nukem that never came out

E is for EA who think they’re your wife

F’s for FF which takes over your life

G is for Gradius, more guns came next

H is for HD for reading the text

I is for Infocom eaten by grues

J is for Jumpman whose name he did lose

K is for Kremlins who walk back and forth

L is for Link who plays tunes to a horse

M is for Myst which was somewhat surreal

N’s for Nintendo who switched up their seal

O’s for Okami a dog in reverse

P is for Playstation’s high-budget curse

Q is for Q-Bert, like Pac-Man but not

R is for Racecars, you see them a lot

S is for Spoony the bard and the show

T is for Tales and Sonic’s lil' bro

U is for Unreal Tournament pros

V is for Virtua Fighter combos

W’s for WoW and the fans who don’t move

X is for Xbox and Xs on roofs

Y is for Yahtzee who gave Portal cred

Z is for Zero Suit Samus, ‘nuff said

BioShock Review

2009-08-19T14:26:00.000-07:00

As a gamer, I primarily like to play boardgames. I like the face-to-face interaction with other people, and I find the gameplay to be fresh and interesting much more often than with videogames. But between games of Amun Re and Crocodile Dentist, I occasionally like to return to the console world on which I was raised. Often I'll play retro games, partly for the nostalgia factor, and partly because there are a lot of old gems; but every once in a while a game will come along which piques my interest... and sometimes it's a game from two years ago which I never got around to playing until my roommate let me use his 360. Enter BioShock.

Now some of you may question the value of a review on a game which everyone has already played, finished, and written extensively about. To that I say: sod off, this is my blog, and I'll review what I like. There will also be mild spoilers, but nothing to get your knickers in a twist about, unless you like that sort of thing.

For the uninitiated (you're welcome, mom), BioShock takes place in a (I hope) fictional underwater city called Rapture which was built in the 40s by a visionary businessman named Andrew Ryan. Ryan ascribes heavily to Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism (even their names sound alike), and the entire game is basically about the hyperbolic consequences of such a philosophy to the point where the last boss is made to resemble an Atlas statue. Personally I want to see it face off against the Lenin statue with the missing buttock.

Now I admire a videogame for tackling ideological concepts which haven't been previously explored much in the medium, but frankly the bad guys end up coming off as cartoonishly evil, and the game kind of seems like it's just condemning the idea of an unregulated market in order to seem sophisticated, rather than presenting multiple facets of a complex issue. Granted most of the inhabitants of Rapture are supposed to have gone batshit insane by the time you show up, but a little less mustache-twirling would have been appreciated.

That aside, the general atmosphere of the game is exquisitely well done, and the opulent art-deco style and early 20th century music meshes excellently with the foreboding horror atmosphere to create a really unique and memorable experience. Sadly the "horror" part sort of wanes once you get used to Rapture since after the first couple of hours you've seen most of what the game has to throw at you, and there's really nothing but the same creepy ambiance to frighten you. That's not necessarily a bad thing; one of my favorite horror games is Eternal Darkness and it's not overly scary... except that one part. The atmosphere for BioShock is unique and well done, but after an unnerving encounter with a mad surgeon about an hour or two in, I found myself wishing for more by way of frightening opponents and setpieces rather than the continual stream of generic mutants who began to remind me of the disgruntled zombie-mutant-vampires from Vincent Price's The Last Man on Earth (in a good way, mind you). The problem is with all the nifty abilities and weapons you can acquire, you start to become much more frightening than anything else you're likely to come across in Rapture.

One of the other things that tamps down the horror-factor a bit is the way death is handled. When you are killed, you immediately respawn in the nearest "Vita-Chamber" at full health with no real consequences except sometimes a bit of a hike. What's more, enemies don't recover any health (everything is as you left it), so you can essentially defeat any foe by continually respawning and beating it with a wrench, assuming you have the patience. Now I can understand peoples' gripe with this mechanic, and it does make the enemies a little less threatening, but how to handle death in this sort of game is always a real challenge, and I much prefer this method to the Mass Effect you-have-to-load-when-you-die-but-we'll-quick-save-for-you except-at-times-when-you-really-need-it-thereby-lulling-you-into-a-false-sense-of-security mechanic, but we'll get into that another time. The way it's handled here isn't perfect but I'm not sure how one would improve it. It's actually rather similar to the death system in another highly admired game, Planescape: Torment.

The story is cleverly presented through in-game radio transmissions and recorded audio-tapes, and the plot is quite interesting and well-constructed. However I didn't feel as emotionally drawn in as I have in some other games such as Mass Effect, and I never really got caught up in the story despite some interesting ideas. Too often it turned into "you need to go through this door to chase after someone, but first would you kindly wander around and collect fifty boxtops." The ending is also far too abrupt: you get a quick 2-minute wrap-up that paints you as either a saint or a monster depending on whether you saved the Little Sisters, and then rather than fading to the credits it just boots you back to the main menu. Imagine if in Star Wars the heroes get presented the medals, and then the movie just stops and the lights in the theatre go on. I feel like I'd have a much more favorable impression of Bioshock's story if it had given me a little more time to savor my victory.

This game also has the same misunderstanding of moral choice as the Fable expansion. In that game, you could be evil and take the evil sword, but if you don't, you instead end up getting the good sword, which is just as powerful. In BioShock, killing mutated children called "Little Sisters" helps you upgrade your abilities, but if you cure them instead, they reward you by helping you upgrade your abilities. It's not a moral choice if the good choice and the evil choice both benefit you in pretty much the same way! It seems the lesson in both of these games is that being selfless sometimes involves mild inconvenience. This is a stupid way of handling moral choice, both dramatically and philosophically.

I also found that the Little Sisters fell right into the "unlikeable" section of the uncanny valley even after you cured them, and the other characters were similarly unsympathetic (though occasionally rather entertaining).

This review might sound fairly negative so far, but I'm really just searching for things to gripe about since in most respects BioShock is an excellent FPS/RPG that is more than worth playing, and technical-wise it's near flawless with enthralling environments, excellent water and particle (and hornet) effects, and a solid framerate on the 360. The battles often play out in very interesting ways due to the wide range of powers you can spec yourself out with, and the game is forgiving enough that you can screw around and try out different strategies. My favorite ability (or "plasmid") is the one that creates a target dummy for enemies to attack, and a ploy I used a couple of times was to hack the security systems and then place one of these dummies in view of the cameras to lure in unsuspecting foes. There are quite a number of possible approaches and combos, and the game encourages you to come up with plans other than the standard "walk in and shoot everybody."

There are also some good memorable moments both emergent and intended. My favorite was after a lengthy sequence where a crazed artist forces you to kill a number of individuals and then take their photos to add to his "masterpiece." When you do fight and kill him with triviality, you can then snap his photo for the Xbox achievement "Irony."

In closing, I thought BioShock was good, and it made me want to play the System Shock games to which it is billed as a "spiritual successor." I didn't enjoy it as much as Mass Effect, though I'm not sure why I'm comparing the two games as they really have fairly little in common. It sure knocks the pants off Crocodile Dentist though.

Dark Knight at the Roxbury

2009-08-15T13:54:00.000-07:00

This made me laugh.

More relevantly to anything, we've put out a free novelty app called the FUBAR Detector. It beeps depending on how you tilt the device, and you can change the text and use it to "detect" whatever you can think of such as which of your friends are commies, which ones are being sarcastic, and which ones are about to hit you for making annoying beeping noises at them.

The First Level

2009-08-05T17:56:00.000-07:00

Well, it's bloody taken long enough, but we've finally received our first user-submitted level for ThreadBound. Thanks Landon Du! I haven't tried your level yet, but chances are good that it will make it into the next update since user-content has been a lot scarcer than we expected so far.

So send us your levels everyone; the chances of them making it into the game are inordinately high!

(Disclaimer: I promise not to include any levels in the next update which are unfun, unpolished, or in which the designer has used game objects to spell the word "poop.")

Jokes?

2009-08-05T17:42:00.000-07:00

And now it's time for Unfunny and Comicaly Mispelled Meta-Humor!

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Yo mamma’s so fat, she brushes her teeth with mayonnaise!

Well, actually she’s not particularly fat. Apparently she suffers from an injury she sustained as a child which impairs her sense of smell, consequently causing her to occasionally mistake the tastes of radically dissimilar substance. It’s rather unfortunate really.

She is kind of fat though.

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How many economists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Well, since the average grownup has little trouble screwing in a lightbulb themselves, and economists are likely to be adults who have reached a level of education at least marginally above that of the general public, the odds of such a task requiring more than one economist seem minimal at best.

They just don't know jack about the economy :P

Voice Hackting

2009-08-04T06:53:00.000-07:00

If you find the voice acting in some of today videogames to be stilted or downright bad, that's nothing compared to what we had to live with about a decade ago. At least now developers usually try to find some actual "actors" rather than just borrowing one of the code monkeys from down the hall. For some reason, zombie games seem to be particularly prone to bad dialogue, as though the actors are infected with the virus just to the level where their lines become completely bland or bizarre. Example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAWxw0wmeNQ

This guy's taken some already ridiculous lines from Resident Evil 1, and swapped them around for hilarious results:

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/new-guys/phelous/10135-reshazard#josc115381

The moral: be thankful for the voice acting we have today, regardless of how shoddy it may often be, and be particularly thankful if you're a boardgame player like myself. At least the meeples don't try to speak.

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On an unrelated note, here's a trailer for the ThreadBound 2.0 update which is currently in review.

What's that? You say this is a related note? Well screw you!

Dim Waiters

2009-07-20T19:37:00.001-07:00

Here are a couple of comics for a webcomic I'm considering starting, titled either Dim Waiters or Waiters of Los Tart. I'm using eyeballs in darkness because I can't really draw, but these still took a surprising amount of work, so I might just give up out of lazyness anyway.

Enjoy :D

Open Feint

2009-07-15T04:07:00.000-07:00

I'm officially announcing here for the first time the upcoming release of our first update: ThreadBound 2.0! It will have more polished graphics and animation, and we're currently in the process of integrating it with Open Feint, which is sort of the iPhone equivalent of Xbox Live.

There are a couple other options such as Scoreloop, but Open Feint has a nice community feature which might help us get the word out about our game, and they also have the largest user base at the moment. It also has an achievements systems that works very much like on Xbox Live, and we're adding a whole whack of achievements that can be unlocked that range from trivial to nigh-impossible (such as beating my score >:D). You'll be able to submit your scores as well.

Up until a couple of days ago, Open Feint was charging developers for the service based on number of users (and we were going to go with it anyway; like Mr. Hammond, we've spared no expense). Now they've decided to make the program free for independent developers, which is great news, assuming the community doesn't consequently get flooded by a bunch of iFart players.

Terminator Salivation

2009-06-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

Some of you may or may not be familiar with a little series of indy films called Terminator. It follows the wacky exploits of a man named John Connor all the way from fetus to Batman through four movies of varying quality. The latest of these films doesn't have a number because they're frowned upon by today's discerning movie-goers, and is instead called Terminator: Salvation. Frankly I'm happy they didn't just call it Terminator again, as is the zeitgeist.

Having recently watched the fourth installment (though admittedly I dozed off a few times between explosions, having been up late the night before, or at least I'll assume that's the reason), I will now give a very brief review and once-over for each individual film simply so as to collect together in my own mind the various fragmented elements of an iconic sci-fi series which has so amply explored the spectrum of quality. Yes there will be spoilers, and also you were adopted.

Let's start at the beginning. Or is it the end? It's all a bit muddled since Terminator's protagonist, Kyle Reese, shows up in the '80s on a mission that he won't be sent on 'till after the fourth movie. He's sent back so that he can protect (and knock up) Sarah Conner, who will one day be mother to the hero of the human resistance against machines in a post-apocalyptic future littered with an implausable abundance of human skulls. Wow. As movie concepts go, that's as mind-blowing as the first Matrix, and considerably more mind-blowing than Ghost Dad. By now it's all old hat, but can you imagine going into a theatre in 1984 without knowing anything about it ahead of time?

The film starts as a fairly ordinary thriller with Arnold Schwartzenegger killing off everyone in town named Sarah Connor for reasons that are at first unclear, and which are later explained by one of the most awesome backstories in movie history. Sure some of the effects are a bit outdated, and everyone already knows the story by now, but Terminator easily deserves a rental, and is still the optimal movie by which to be introduced to the franchise, particularly if you've been living under a rock and have no idea what the films are about.

Next is Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Awesome. I won't argue with the consensus that this is the best in the series as it showcases great action, an awesome villain, a dark yet compelling plot, and the perfect role for Arnold. However there are a number of things that begin to bug me at this point. Arnold's T800 allegedly has to be sent back in time buck-naked and without any weaponry because only organic matter can be sent through time (why?). "But hold on," you may ask yourself, "isn't the T800 a robot? Surely it's made of metal." Aha, but the T800 is living tissue over metal endoskeleton! (and don't call me Shirly) So they couldn't have given him a futuristic energy-blaster inside his forearm why?

And then we have the T1000, which is made of liquid metal and can take any form. I'm willing to believe that a blob of mercury can function as a living organism, and even that it can refract light to take on different appearances, but how can a blob of metal become living tissue in order to be sent back through time? Living tissue is fairly complex. If it can do that, then why can't it turn it's forearm into a futuristic energy-blaster? Or a nuclear warhead, just to be on the safe side? Luckily Sarah Connor is wiser and more jaded than in the previous film, and she has a T800 to protect her rather than a normal dude, so she is able to defeat the T1000 and escape SkyNet's wrath once again. Which makes me think... why didn't they send the T1000 back to deal with her in the first film? They could have sent him alongside the T800 they sent, and finished her off then. If SkyNet had the resources to send back exactly 3 Terminators (4 counting Summer Glau), why send them to different points in the timeline? And why not at least send your most advanced Terminator to the point when the enemy is at her weakest, and not to when you've already given her 11 years' warning?!

Alright, next we have Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and here is where the series begins to go downhill. There isn't anything particularly bad about T3, and personally I rather enjoyed it, it just doesn't really bring anything new to the table. In this installment, SkyNet sends back Bloodrayne to fill in for Silver Surfer, and she inexplicably has a futuristic energy-blaster inside her forearm?! It might make sense that SkyNet is figuring out new tricks with their Terminators except that they're all presumeably being sent from the same point in the future, not to mention this incarnation seems considerably less powerful than the T1000 (who easily could have survived getting smooshed a little). She's referred to as the T-X, which means she's either 80-times less advanced than the the T800, or SkyNet fell victim to the Hollywood formula for naming sequels.

Again, why wasn't this model sent back to help out the T800/1000? If SkyNet wanted to cast their net wider or something by sending the Terminators to different points in the timeline, why send your most primitive model to the point when you have the most chance of success? And if SkyNet sent back the T800 before it had developed the T1000, and then realized later that Arnie hadn't done his job, then why not send another Terminator to help him rather than sending it to a different point in the timeline, or at least split the difference and send the T-X back to help the T800 and the T1000 to some other point? I'm probably overanalyzing all this, but none of it compares to the intense tomfoolery displayed by SkyNet in...

Terminator: Salvation (seriously, spoilers). Now here's where I think the whole franchise runs off the rails. It's not that this is a bad film, and the craft is definitely there. The problems only really start to emerge in the last act. In this film we have Batma- er, John Connor heroicially leading the remnants of mankind by shooting stuff and getting injured, and we have Kyle Reese as his extremely young father, which is slightly unsettling. We also have Marcus Feni- er, Marcus Wright as a sort of half-terminator who thinks he's human and has been sent to lure John into a trap. This trap involves having Kyle captured and brought to SkyNet HQ, and then having Marcus disable the defenses so that John can go in and be murdered by UNARMED-NAKED-CG-ARNOLD! As evil supervillain plans go, that's pretty retarded.

What's more, after Marcus has done his part, he is filled in on the plan by SkyNet's representative, Helena Bonham Carter (who I actually quite enjoyed in this film, and who I think could have totally pulled off the Borg Queen). After realizing he's been a pawn this whole time (which should have been bleedingly obvious due to the fact that he's half-terminator), Marcus predictably yet stupidly rips the control-circuit from out of his head, and runs off to save John Connor. A sign of a bad movie is when there are plotpoints which are both blatantly nonsensical and also painfully predictable, and this film has these in abundance. A better list of plotholes can be found here, but allow me to go into a few of the reasons why T:S makes no freaking sense.

Now it makes sense that the SkyNet in 2018 knows that John Connor is apparently vitally important in the future since I'm assuming emails can be sent back in time if living tissues can (or they could send back a post-it note made of skin), and I'm even willing to accept that they know Kyle Reese is important, but considering the fact that they can mimic human voices, why not simply kill Kyle Reese and pretend you have him held hostage? If he never gets sent back in time, then logically John Connor shouldn't exist at all. (In fact, John Connor shouldn't exist at all since Kyle never would have gone back in time if it wasn't for John, but that's another issue.) And if you're going to go to all this trouble to lure John into an elaborite trap 15 years in the making, couldn't you at least give CG-Arnold a gun? Or, like, a switchblade? Or a pointy stick? You're not sending him back in time this time people! By this point, the only rationalization I have for these movies is that SkyNet's AI chip was severely damaged somewhere along the way, and it just happened that the bit that researches time machines was the only part left unscathed.

Now all the perimeter defenses have been shut down because of Marcus, but if this was part of the plan, then couldn't you just pretend they're shut down until John walks in. I'm not a programmer by any means, but this sounds like something I could code up, and we already see that the machines are capable of playing dead because they do so in response to a magical signal that the resistance is testing out to see if it will disable them. A perfectly sensible plan would have been to have Marcus think he's deactivated the base's defenses, and then when John walks in turn everything back on and blow the crap out of him. An even better plan would have been to outfit Marcus with some of those nuclear power cells (which SkyNet conveniently leaves out on tables in the middle of their headquarters), and have him detonate as soon as he meets John Connor. In fact if Terminators have explosives inside them and can detonate Predator-style, then why not do this in the previous films?:

"Hey kid, c'mere a minute." Boom!

I guess the answer to that last one is obvious: because then we wouldn't have a franchise. These movies are best enjoyed by turning off that voice in your head and just going with it. Sure the whole thing begins to unravel if you look at it too hard, but that can be said about a lot of films (like The Matrix), but the point is to enjoy the high concept, and half of that comes from making fun of it. I just wish they had been willing to explore the ideas more fully. Like so many Sci-Fi franchises before it, all the interesting ideas are presented in the first film, and the rest just start to feel like cash-ins. There are so many interesting ways you could take a story that involves time travel and the apocalypse. There were numerous rumours floating around the internet about how the fourth film was going to end, and each of them was far more interesting than the way it was actually handled.

In the actual ending, John Connor is injured by getting thrown around a lot, but is saved by a heart transplant. I'm not even going to go into how stupid that is. Once again money triumphs over artistic merit, and another potentially interesting series is lost to the unwashed masses, or at least to the Hollywood producers' vision of them. But me, I have a little more faith in humanity. I feel that as long as you have an acceptable quota of explosions and giant robots, you can still tell a proper story.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to some proper Sci-Fi. Doon's calling, and the demonic martian sandworms are running amuck in the spice reserves again.

First Reviews

2009-06-17T12:36:00.000-07:00

We're hoping to see more and more reviews pop up in the next little while as we sent out a whole lot of promo codes, but here's our first official review, published in 'iPhone in Canada,' and it rocks! We've already made it into the top 30 puzzle games in the Canadian store, and some kind German guy says you should "KAUFEN!"

In the US market things aren't so good though, probably because the only review in the American store is a 1-star from someone who didn't seem to realize you can adjust the control sensitivity:

"the game is cute it's just im having a hard time turning the butterfly stick to keep the bug guy from walking off. wish there'd be an easyer and faster way to turn and move it!" [sic]

That doesn't sound so bad, but a 1-star rating is pretty effective at turning people away. That's why we need you Americans to start buying our app (c'mon, it's only 99 cents. I know the economy's bad, but c'mon!), and more importantly to start leaving us some decent reviews so we can get out average rating back out of the toilet and onto the top lists like we've managed everywhere else. You're our biggest market, so please lend us a hand. If your friend has an iPhod, forward this to him/her. If he/she doesn't, buy him/her one (they're neat!), then forward this to him/her. We're all counting on you!

Aw c'mon, craZcat says it's cute!

ThreadBound - Approved!

2009-06-15T04:51:00.000-07:00

I am now proud to present to you the game which I have been helping develop for the past nine months, and which has just been released on the apps store for iPhone and iPod Touch. The game is called ThreadBound, and it's a puzzle/platformer (or "puzzle/adventure" on the apps store since Apple doesn't have a "platformer" category) which, if I may toot NeverBored Studios' collective horn, is very unique and unlike anything you've ever played before.

The basic idea is that rather than controlling Spindle, the anthropomorphic blue spider- er-thread bug who wanders around like a character in a regular platformer only without any regard for personal safety, instead you play as Stickler, a stick bug tasked with the difficult job of protecting these creatures which by all rights probably ought to be extinct, but they're just so cute! You may be reminded of the old classic Lemmings, though gameplay here is significantly different, as this trailer will attest:

The game has 54 levels now, but the built-in level editor allows you to send your own levels to us, and we will be periodically updating the game and including those submissions which we feel are the most awesome.

Best of all, the game is only $0.99, so get it now before we change our minds! If you start sending us tons of great levels, the value gained from your dollar's investment will only go up!

And for anyone who cares, my official roles on this project were Game Designer, Level Designer, and Music Composer, though as with any startup, there were a lot of other nitty-gritty things which I ended up taking care of, such as the above trailer.

In future, I'd like to try and give more information about projects that are in development, but obviously the amount I can reveal early on in development is somewhat limited, and as projects near completion, it will be my time that ends up being limited. Nevertheless, I will try and give out enough details during future projects that it will be worth your time to come here and get the inside scoop straight from the designer. And if you find the quality or quantity of information too paltry, please feel free to write something up about us yourself.

Submitted!

2009-06-06T03:48:00.000-07:00

We've finally submitted our app to Apple. Huzzah!

Admire our beautiful thumbnail:

Further Gameplay Footage

2009-06-03T19:27:00.000-07:00

Here's part 2:

TechVibes Article

2009-05-31T15:02:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted, but for good reason. We've been working overtime putting the finishing touches on the iPhone game we've been developing for the last nine months, and we'll be submitting it to Apple as soon as they get around to updating our account! (You hear that, Apple? You're impeding the enterprising businessman! It's stuff like this that's put the economy in the state it's in! Not to mention too many people listening to iPods while on the job! And another thi- ooh hang on, I love this guitar riff, Niew-niew-neener-braaakow!)

Sorry. Anyway we've posted another video on YouTube, now with much-updated art.

And we were also recently featured in the electrozeen TechVibes (thanks for the kind words, Henry!):

NeverBored Studios Set To Launch ThreadBound For The iPhone

Posted by Henry Finn on Sat, May 23, 2009 9:42 AM

Waterloo based startup NeverBored Studios is days away from submitting their debut title ThreadBound to the Apple App Store. The game will cost only .99 cents when it hits the app store yet provides unlimited entertainment with hours of game play, multiple challenges and even a level editor.

Unlike most games where players control a character, ThreadBound lets its users control the platform. In the insect themed game you control a 'stick bug' that assists a 'thread bug' trying to work its way across each level. You can also interact with several other elements in the games environment, for example; coat your 'stick bug' in honey to make it stickier or use it to swat away enemies.

ThreadBound offers a huge amount of value for its low price. The game is incredibly sophisticated for a casual iPhone title. For only .99 cents the game includes 54 levels with over 4 hours of game play, additional challenges for the hard core gamers and NeverBored has also included an option that allows users to listen to their own music while they play. Another innovative aspect of the game is the level creator. Users can create their own levels, submit them to NeverBored Studios and the best levels will be included in future updates.

NeverBored’s members Jimmy Ho, Thomas Ang, Orin Bishop, Morgan Hall, Steven Truong and Chris Killoran are primarily former University of Waterloo students working with several artists based out of British Columbia. The team has a great mix of talented individuals with some solid game industry experience. Jimmy Ho formely worked for Microsoft and Electronic Arts on Xbox and Wii titles. Thomas Ang another former EA employee gained experience developing sports titles and is responsible for ThreadBound’s physics engine. Orin Bishop brings a different kind of gaming experience to the team; he has been actively developing board games, including Nameless Island published by Steve Jackson Board Games.

If you enjoy gaming and own an iPhone keep your eyes peeled for ThreadBound’s launch.

Company:: NeverBored Studios
Website:: http://neverboredstudios.com/

(and check us out on facebook as well)

Midi-chlorians: My View

2009-05-09T02:57:00.000-07:00

Alright, so I realize I'm about a decade late, but as a geek and a Star Wars fan, I feel it my duty to at least voice my opinion on this divisive issue.

Now let me start by saying that I was quite young when I first saw Menåce des los Phantasms, but at the time the concept of midi-chlorians didn't really have an effect on me. I was old enough to understand it logically (to the extent that there is logic to be teased out from Qui-Gon's somewhat feeble explanation), but I guess I wasn't yet at the age where one needs to actively seek out wonder and mystery in the world.

Now that I'm a little older and wiser and jadeder, I believe I can understand some fan's ire at the concept of trying to explain a mystical and omniscient force away with microscopic organisms (though ironically if you turn that around, you get religion). It still has never got to me though. I agree that the midi-chlorians explanation is kind of lame, but it is also so hand-wavy that I find it impossible to be particularly disillusioned by it. In my opinion, the whole thing speaks to how quick we are to assume something is understood once we have applied a name to it. How does the force work? Midi-chlorians. Why do things fall? Gravity. Why am I afraid of chopsticks? Consecotaleophobia. How are the Rolling Stones still performing? Spackle. You get my drift.

The truth is that midi-chlorians explain practically nothing about the Force, they just raise more questions. Why do microscopic organisms in my blood allow me to send an object flying across the room? Do they send a telegram to it's molecules in the preferred format, politely requesting a relocation? Do they fly out of my hand in an invisible cloud and manually carry the object away? Do they all just wish really hard? No, I'll tell you how it works: Magic. The same way it has always worked.

Now I guess Lucas wanted to use midi-chlorians partly as a plot device, so he could explain why Qui-Gon was so insistent on bringing Anakin along, and also so he could explain Anakin's divine conception without getting sued by that guy who wrote the Bible. Personally though, I feel that the whole thing would have been better and more interesting if he'd instead had a conversation with Obi-Wan that paralleled and foreshadowed Vaders ominous talk with the Emporor in Strike-Back des los Impériosøs.

OBI-WAN: What is thy bidding, my master?

QUI-GON: There is a great disturbance in the Force.

OBI-WAN: I have felt it.

QUI-GON: I just met some kid -- Anakin Skywalker.

OBI-WAN: Yes, my master.

QUI-GON: He can race pods.

OBI-WAN: He's just a boy. I disbelieve his ability to race pods.

QUI-GON: The Force is strong with him. I totally believe he can race pods.

OBI-WAN: If he could be made a Jedi, he would become a powerful ally.

QUI-GON: Yes. Yes. He would be a great asset. Can it be done?

OBI-WAN: He will join us or else have to make Jingle All the Way 2, my master.

Stupid Internet...

2009-04-27T01:01:00.000-07:00

I can't believe someone's already used my idea!

NeverBored Studios - YouTube Channel

2009-04-20T00:47:00.000-07:00

We now have a youtube channel.

More to come soon.

New Car

2009-04-18T14:25:00.000-07:00

There's a distinct lack of ads here at blogger, so this will have to do: I absolutely loved Friday's xkcd comic.

...oh, and Gene Wilder wants you to buy this terrifying baby.

Uncomfortable Plot Summaries

2009-04-17T14:11:00.000-07:00

"Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again."

-Marin Independent Journal's Rick Polito - synopsis for The Wizard of Oz.

I stumbled across this delightful list of "uncomfortable plot summaries" of various movies and tv shows (spoiler warning obviously). Here are some highlights:

BATMAN: Wealthy man assaults the mentally ill.

FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF: Amoral narcissist makes world dance for his amusement.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: Peasant girl develops Stockholm Syndrome.

ROBIN HOOD: Disgruntled veteran protests taxes.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: American yahoo murders soldiers and desecrates religious artifacts for money.

FIREFLY: In an analogue of the post-Civil War west, a white man on the losing side bosses around a black woman.

V FOR VENDETTA: Dystopian government overthrown by faceless conformity.

STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE - Religious extremist terrorists destroy government installation, killing thousands.

STAR WARS: EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: Boy is abused by midget, kisses sister, attempts patricide.

W.: Unspeakable disaster afflicts America. Then terrorists attack.

GROUNDHOG DAY: Misanthropic creep exploits space/time anomaly to stalk coworker.

ALIENS: An unplanned pregnancy leads to complications.

TERMINATOR: An unplanned pregnancy leads to complications.

TITANIC: Crazy old widow disregards lifelong memories of husband, children, and grandchildren in favor of that one time she fucked a bum.

THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST: Mel Gibson fulfills fantasy of showing a Jew beaten to a bloody pulp and killed on-screen.

THE GOLDEN COMPASS: Critique of Catholicism upstaged by polar bear fight.

LORD OF THE RINGS: Midget destroys stolen property.

Be Fruitful and Multiply

2009-04-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

It's time to address some shenanigans which I feel have been allowed to continue for far too long. I'm speaking, of course, about RPGs. Now don't get your controllers in a knot, I'm not bashing every RPG, and I'm definitely not bashing every game that has "RPG elements" (though for the record I find that term rather silly, but we'll talk about that another time). What I want to talk about now are those games about inflation, where the goal is to achieve ever-higher numbers to keep up with the enemies. Where the gameplay at level 1 is fundamentally indestinguishable from the gameplay at level 55 except that you're dealing 6000 damage per attack instead of 8. Now I know what you're probably saying: "The bigger numbers make me feel like I've developed my character and really come a long way." Well that's stupid because the game is exactly the same.

Character growth and development in fiction is something that must come from more than mere combat prowess, but it is a common element of fiction that a character will grow more experienced at whatever they do over the course of the story, be it slaying goblins, baking bread or baking goblins. The thing is, their increasing expertise at this task usually has some ramifcations on the story. Harry Potter figures out how to summon a patronus and is able to repel the dementors, and Zoolander figures out how to turn left and is able to finally open a centre for kids who can't read good (and who wanna learn to do other stuff good too). In a good game like The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (to pick a hugely underlooked installment), finding the hookshot allows you to do new things, and it appreciably changes the gameplay somewhat. In an ultra-conservative design like World of Warcraft, you will never find anything other than a sword or a helmet or a breastplate which gives you bigger numbers. Then you can travel to some strange new land with different scenery and fight enemies that have bigger numbers, but you'll be prepared because of your bigger numbers.

Now, to be fair, part of the difficulty here is with the open-world design of a game like World of Warcrack-*cough*-craft. Zelda, being a much more linear experience, is able to lay everything out so you find your hookshot at the right time, rather than finding it too soon and errently pwning a bunch of noobs who were minding their own business. WoW on the other hand involves gaining items and skills pretty much at random (at least as far as the developer's concerned), so very little plot or gameplay ends up being built around particular skills or items unless they are special McGuffin quest items. (On the whole, WoW is a very conservative game. Things like the Corrupted Blood incident illustrate how entertaining the game could be if the designers ever decided to start taking some risks. But I'll get back to the many reasons why I don't play WoW in a future post.)

Games that have even less of an excuse are single-player RPGs which may be as linear as Donkey Kong yet still refuse to confer anything to you that results in anything more than bigger numbers. Sure, as in WoW, there will occasionally be a semi-interesting ability which perhaps stuns an enemy or heals your party, which should change gameplay dynamics a bit, but you are likely to have something of every type fairly early on, at which point the game just starts jacking up the numbers. "You can already heal? Well now you can heal twice as much! You can already encase a party member in a protective field of energy? Well now you can do it for 1.3 times as long! Hooray!"

The worst of all this is that in many games, the abilities have no bearing on the story or the gameplay outside of the battles. Again, the problem is that the game may not know exactly when you will have gained a particular ability, but why in the bloody hell can't you cast cure or use a phoenix down on a wounded ally outside of combat? I'll tell you why. Because, in the words of Yahtzee, "the story and gameplay are kept either side of a rought-iron fence made of tigers."

Anyway, I don't mean to give the impression that I hate all RPGs (just most of them). I have no particular problem with numbers in games going up, just as long as I don't have to waste my time grinding through uninteresting battles in order to get my character to the level at which he can defeat the next boss. This is called filler, and it has long been one of the vilest scourges of the gaming industry. But rather than get totally derailed, let me get to the point of today's ravings: in-game purchases are a load of bull. You shouldn't have to waste valuable time or money just to get big enough numbers to play a game properly. It's like if you went out to have a good game of tennis, only to discovered that your opponent had bribed the judges into letting him use a Maxim gun instead of a racket. That may be a poor example, though, because it would appreciably change the gameplay.

The only ethical way I can see of doing paid content is if it actually opens up new parts of the game to you. Paying to download new levels or areas seems fine, as you are getting more of the game. Paying real money for a digital sword that does x2 damage goes against everything that I stand for.

Noir to Hide - Film Adaptation

2009-04-08T23:47:00.000-07:00

Well, the bigwigs in Hollywood apparently took a liking to my short period piece, and they have already released the theatrical version. Obviously it doesn't hold a candle to my original, since you don't even have read it or anything, but I do feel it to be quite a faithful adaptation, all things considered.

I was hoping they might get Sam Raimi to direct, and maybe even Bruce Campbell as the lead. I feel Raimi might have shot the film more provocatively, and I'm sure Bruce could have added that extra touch of charm. Sadly, they seem to have left this sort of intricate drama behind in favor of more surreal, arthouse-style films, and were both tied up with this other project:

(Bruce Campbell is playing the tambourine in this scene. He is expressing the transient irony of reactionary postmodernism.)

(Or he's just shaking it randomly.)

All in all, I feel that Noir to Hide the movie was a solid effort, but I'm not sure if I'd want more of my work to be adapted. I feel that some of the subtler messages are inevitably lost in translation, and there's simply a technological limit to the number of banana slugs that can be rendered simultaniously.

Noir to Hide

2009-04-04T22:25:00.000-07:00

The following is a short novella I wrote in the irreverent style of Marcel Boulestin, or perhaps the late Thomas Keller.

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Noir to Hide - Ghostwritten by Orin Bishop

"That's some office," I mused loudly as I decried the Mesopotamian wallpaper and crocheted egress. I regretted leaving the keys inside.

That's when I saw, for the first and third time, the dame who would change my life so tangentially. She didn't seem to regard it as an egress, and strode through it with something resembling the character of someone who was once confident, but who lost it all one day to the blind yammerings of lady liberty. She opened her mouth loudly to speak, but I already new what she was going to say.

"You want me to find the man who killed your husband." I absentmindedly tipped my ashtray out the window to the familiar and comforting screams of the city. She looked at me with surprise, her flawless features diminished somewhat by her sad eyes and dripping gun wound.

"No, my husband's fine; he's been dead for weeks. I want you to find the man who nearly shot me."

Apparently I hadn't known what she was going to say.

"Ma'am, I think he more than nearly shot you." I indicated her charming laceration.

"This? No, I tripped on the stairs on my way up here. The man who shot at me was..."

She paused, scanning the room with the air of an ardent quadruped. After several hours, her gaze fell upon the shadowy figure atop my desk.

"That's him! On your sofa!"

"It's a desk," I pointed out, with the manner of a tollbooth operator who has just been refused parole... again.

"I'm not a desk," said Bob.

"Look," I offered, attempting to lighten the mood by hurling a Molotov cocktail, "perhaps we can discuss all this over some cold jazz and a warm martini."

"Alright," acquiesced my bleeding client as she loosened her sombrero, "but I must warn you that I like mine practically scalding."

I took this as a sexual advance, and called the police on speed dial. It seemed I needed an adult.

ThreadBound Footage

2009-03-26T23:44:00.000-07:00

Here's some footage from an iPhone game currently in development by a small team, NeverBored Studios, of which I am the lead designer. I toot my own horn in you're general direction!

Obviously a lot of the art is placeholder, and the audio also has a ways to go, but we are hoping to release it on the apps store in late-April or early-May, and at a limited-time discount. Buy it now! (or rather, then!)

(I'm the one playing, my friend Thomas is the one trying to centre the iPod in front of my laptop's camera. Just pretend this is Blair Witch or something.)

Training

2009-03-25T03:15:00.000-07:00

I knew I was learning something.

Jean Reno?

2009-03-17T01:35:00.000-07:00

There's this relatively new series over at the escapist called Unskippable where these two guys make fun of videogame cutscenes MST3K style. I particularly enjoyed their latest one, partly because I thought the humor was really spot on, and partly because I remember that my friend Dan and I thought this cinematic was totally freaking awesome back when we saw it in the Onimusha 3: Demon Seige trailer years ago.

I also remember that we were totally smacked upside the gob when the trailer declared - and this may count as a spoiler if it's possible to spoil a trailer - that Jean Reno was a character in it. I mean, he doesn't just add some voicework, they've got his likeness in there and everything, fighting alongside a ninja in feudal Japan against an army of, uh, demons apparently.

Um - setting aside for a moment the fact that Jean Reno kicks ass - why?
Well, because apparently the demons are invading present-day France as well as Feudal Japan, so we need a French guy. I guess I'm just dissapointed the demons aren't also invading Mars and Krypton so Superman and Marvin can join the fray. Actually I don't see why they couldn't join the fray, but apparently Jean Reno is just a prick who doesn't care about Feudal Japan and only cares when his own Jerry-loving people are in peril.

(It's interesting how in this context, Jerry could refer to either Jerry Lewis or Nazi Germany, and they're conveniently both offensive.)

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Speaking of irreverent mashups, there's a new book called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies which is exactly what the title implies. There is also a similar-sounding movie coming out called Pride and Predator, produced by Elton John. That's like if...
...nah, I got nothing.

All I can say is, I'm gonna feel really jipped if they doen't have the actual Predator in the movie. And zombies in pre-Vctorian literature are awesome. If you have doubts, read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

To be academicaly honest, I learned about both of these lovely Jane Austen butcheries at Wondermark, one of the very few webcomics I read. This guy David Malki swipes pictures he finds in 19th century periodicles and combines them with word balloons for surreal and often hilarious results. He also has an enlightening and sobering section called The Comic Strip Doctor where he valiently tries to fix the zombie-like abominations that are todays newspaper 'funnies.' This was where I found out about the wonders of the Garfield Randomizer, but that's a post for another day.

Seriously, read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Jean Reno demands it!

Bugdom 2 isn't good...

2009-03-06T01:03:00.000-08:00

I realize that the technical realities of the iPhone are somewhat limiting (being part of a team who are developing for it, I'm learning more about the various constraints all the time), and frankly the graphical aspects of Bugdom 2 are quite impressive. It looks about the same as the original Bugdom on the iBook lo these many years ago. It's just a shame that the game itself is... not good.

First, let me start with a disclaimer. Many studios have been good about fixing the various problems in the games they have released by way of updates, and it is quite possible that many of my criticisms have in one way or another been rectified by now. What I am about to review is the Bugdom 2 that I played. Your mileage may vary.

I will start where the game does, with the bee; the big bully bee which comes down and steals the hobo-stick from our protagonist who is, by the way, one of the dumbest looking videogame characters I have ever seen in my life, but that's just my opinion. Anyway, this stupid bee keeps appearing throughout the game, and often flies right next to you, and yet you can't touch him. Run up and kick him, and he completely ignores you. This wouldn't be so frustrating if he wasn't significantly smaller and less threatening-looking than many of the enemies you defeat on a regular basis.

Anyway, let's move on to some more valid criticism; the controls are awful. Now I respect Pangea for trying something new and different, but tilting the phone to move a character in 3D just doesn't work very well. You have no precision, so trying to complete a simple task like picking up an acorn or hopping onto a box becomes an infuriating chore. You can adjust the sensitivety, but then it becomes impossible to run, so your choice is to either slowly meander everywhere or dash around like a maniac on Ritalin. What this game needs, more than anything else, is a RUN BUTTON!

Anyway, the control scheme is at least interesting; that's sadly more than I can say for the rest of the game. Let's list some of the other crap that is wrong with this game.

Everyone in Bugdom 2 is a jerk. Seriously, everyone you meet either wants to kill you with rusty bottlecaps, or they want you to do some stupid fetch quest so they'll give you a key or a checkpoint. The really dumb thing is that the acorns, which the squirrel always wants you to bring her, are literally everywhere. Often they're within arms-reach of the squirrel. Bringing her an acorn is not so much a fetch quest as a stand-still-for-three-seconds-while-managing-to-face-the-right-direction quest which, believe you me, is harder than it sounds. Oh, and the 'friendly' characters' voices were evidently engineered by the US military to be the most painfully irritating voices possibly. Seriously, these guys could easily be weaponized.

Demon-Squirrel: "If ya brring me an acouorn, I'ul give youou this checkpoient."

Irritated stereotypical-terrorist: "Sweet Allah, reach down and pick one up yourself! They're frigging everywhere!"

Speaking of fetch quests, the entire game feels like one long fetch-quest. All you are ever doing, it seems, is wandering around trying to find some arbitrary McGuffin or another. Sadly, draw distance has been sacrificed for graphics and framerate, so the whole thing starts to feel like groping around in the fog for your contact lens. Navigating the world would be significantly more entertaining if you could hover around everywhere, but sadly you are provided with a 'hover bar' which depletes surprisingly quickly. You can replenish it with blueberries, but this involves tackling hundreds of butterflies (don't even ask). I don't understand why the bar is limited. Sure, hovering everywhere all the time would make some of the enemies less threatening, but surely that could be resolved by changing their behavior. And anyway, I see no reason why the bar couldn't steadily replenish on its own, rather than you having to find blueberries. You know a game is bad when it makes you hate blueberries...

And speaking of the enemies, all the battles in this game are super lame. Your only attack (other than launching bees, the non-hobo-stick-stealing kind that is) is this stupid little kick thing that has no range and requires you to be correctly facing your target (which, as I've stated before, is harder than it should be). This attack does, as you might expect, very little damage, but it does stun the enemy for a while and push them back a little. Therefore, most of the 'battles' in the game degenerate into me repeatedly kicking an enemy who is hunched over in the corner. It looks quite ridiculous, and makes me want to play a different game.

Let me retail to you my experiences with a level that took me 90 minutes to complete. 90 minutes! Keep in mind this game is intended to be played on a phone, and if you were to receive a call during that time, the only thing you'd be able to salvage is a name for your to-kill list. Yes, the last I checked, there was no way to save your game and quit in the middle of a level. Sure there are checkpoints, but a save file only brings you back to the beginning of a level (though as I say, they may have rectified this with patches by now). This game takes commitment; if you start a level, you're in for the long haul. No matter how much the game begs you to hurl it against the wall, you've gotta stick it through 'till the end, or else start over from the beginning of the level. You'll never get the time back, but you'll never have to play that horrible level again (just the next horrible level, and then the next, and so on, until you grow old and die!).

Anyway, somewhere during this well of madness they call level 5, I came across the absolute worst racing section in any game I have ever played. It's not because the controls were broken, it's that, well, all you had to do was tilt the phone forward because the car was on a freaking track! I had to race against another toy car by... tilting my iPod at an angle and waiting until the race was over. It would basically be the equivalent of a quicktime event which required you to hold the A-button down for four minutes. The really sad part? This was by far the most entertaining part of the entire level.

Now don't get me wrong, Bugdom 2 has a few highlights, one of which is rolling around on baseballs. These baseballs were liberally scattered around this particular level, I can only assume as an intended means of slightly quicker transport for its vast corridors, yet some bug (no pun intended) prevented me from riding any of the baseballs, and so I was forced to walk everywhere. This was particularly exasperating because about two-thirds of the level was devoid of anything at all. It almost felt at times like I was playing World of Warcraft, but luckily the combat was much more enjoyable (zing).

The music in the game is decent, but when any song is looped for 90 minutes, it gets rather irritating (with the exception of this one). The game also doesn't let you play your iPod's music during the game unless the sound is turned off, and you need the sound in order to hear the annoying characters tell you want they want you to fetch next.

At a few spots in the level, I was required to push some crates around in order to hop over obstacles (always everyone's favorite part of any game), and I discovered that if you walk about 30 bugfeet away, the crates reset themselves to their original position, forcing you to position them again. Getting the crates in the right spot wouldn't be so hard if the controls weren't such a broken mess!

You know what? I'm done with this game! Life's too short, and I could derive more pleasure from shoving my face into an anthill! I don't recommend you get this game no matter what the price is. I got it for 2 bucks, and I want my time and dignity back! Augh!

Oh, and Nanosaur 2 is pretty good.

Springtime fo' Fitty

2009-02-26T00:26:00.000-08:00

A breaking news flash regarding 50 Cent's new game.

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is... good?

Apparently the game has solid gunplay, sound AI, decent controls, and an entertaining story.

All I can ask is... what the hell went wrong?

They had everything so perfect: A crappy predecessor; a story about a "gangsta[sic]" rapper fighting terrorists in the Middle-East to retrieve a priceless skull-McGuffin (which clearly worked so well for the Indiana Jones franchise). The whole thing was clearly destined for the bargain bin. Yet somehow they managed to screw it up and produce a good game.

I highly suggest Max and Leo get outta town before all the bling-sporting little old ladies come to collect.

With Lyrics

2009-02-25T23:51:00.000-08:00

I find this song endlessly entertaining. Whether you remember the old Final Fantasy games or not (I'm only old enough to have grown up with VII), I think we can all appreciate poking a little fun at the sadistic nature of the average videogame protagonist. I mean, look at Kirby. He's senselessly devoured countless hapless creatures and stolen their essences. This seems, frankly, kinda evil; and all King Dedede ever did was take his little wand thingy.

But ultimately I guess a protagonist is only as good as his player.

...I'm looking at you, ya sickos.

Office Story

2009-02-23T17:37:00.000-08:00

Here's a short story I wrote recently. It doesn't really have anything to do with games, but is that a crime I ask? (That's really a rhetorical question more than anything.)

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Office Story

By Orin Bishop

Jim and Brad crossed the threshold separating the light-rail and the platform as several car alarms went off.

“Did you see that guy back there?” Brad asked, “He had, like, a bun in his hair. Doesn’t that seem weird to you?”

Jim thought about it for a moment.

“It seems okay to me,” he concluded. “ I mean, it’s the 21^st century. I think in this day and age we can reevaluate the traditional gender roles we’ve previously seen ourselves cast in, you know?”

Brad looked confused.

“Wh- no. No, I mean like a hotdog bun.”

They were silent for a while as they crossed out to join the downtown crowd on its way to do the morning’s business.

“Maybe he was going to eat it later” Jim finally offered.

“What, his hair?”

“No, the bun, I mean.”

“Mm.”

Brad seemed somewhat satisfied.

They rounded the last corner and pushed their way into the cool lobby of IndustraCorp, pausing for a moment to watch the old woman who seemed to be caught up in the revolving glass doors. Jim briefly contemplated trying to aid her, but she didn’t look to be in any particular distress. He waved hello to the security guard, and Brad did some kind of friendly fist-poundy thing which the fellow seemed to regard as slightly offensive.

“Any hopes for the day,” Brad asked as they made their way to their cubicles.

“Only that Trent doesn’t need me for anything,” replied Jim, “that guy drives me nuts. He’s got that whole fake-o British accent and everything. Gack.”

“He’s British.”

“Well he’s a jerk!”

“Agreed, but, I mean, it’s not really ‘fake-o’ if he’s British, is it?”

“It is when he does it.”

“Hey look, there’s a note here from Stan the overlord.”

Jim pulled off the sticky and read it aloud.

“ ‘Jim, I need you to deliver the Stevenson account. Tube thingy isn’t working today. –Stan’… Well that’s alright then; we don’t hate Stan.”

“No,” said Brad,” we just think he’s clinically insane.”

“Shh, he’ll be listening through the carpet.”

They both had a good laugh until Brad spotted the second note.

“Hey, Stan left you another one below that.”

“ ‘P.S. – the Stevenson account is with Trent.’ Dammit!”

He cursed loudly enough that several people looked up reproachfully from the water coolers.

“And I think he also did this other one with a t-rex fighting a robot,” said Brad.

* * *

Trent was holding a meeting when Jim reluctantly slipped into the room, awkwardly knocking aside the projector which had inexplicably been placed in front of the door. The room was silent so he cautiously spoke.

“Uh, Trent, can I talk to you for a m-“

“Epepep,” Trent stammered, looking up irritably, “Jim, we’re in a meeting right now, and we don’t really… like you all that much. Jeffrey, you were reading the minutes.”

“Eight forty-five, Jim waked in. He was being annoying.”

Jeffrey emphasized this last bit by pausing to stare balefully at Jim. He looked back at his computer and continued.

“Eight forty-six, Jim left.”

Both he and Trent stared balefully at him.

“Probably in a huff,” Jeffrey concluded, apparently reading off his monitor. Then he gazed at Jim some more, and when this didn’t seem to be working, he began making encouraging circles with his hand.

“Look, would you stop reading the min-“ began Jim

“Continue reading the minutes!” screamed Trent.

Jeffrey glanced briefly at his enraged supervisor, then looked back at Jim and, failing to think of anything else, began moving his hand again.

“Look, I just need the bloody Stevenson account.”

“Yes yes,” said Trent, “it’s in your desk. Somebody around here actually reads the notes you get.”

“What?” Jim said, taken aback, “why do you think I’m in here?”

“Out!” yelled Trent, “and put that projector back the way it was.”

“I don’t think both of those tasks are physically possible, sir,” said Jim.

“And that is why you are not management material, Chris.”

“It’s Jim, actually,” he said, mostly to himself, as he awkwardly closed the door while positioning the projector by its cord and gratefully headed off down the hall. “It was in the minutes.”

The meeting resumed its silence.

* * *

Jim returned to his cubicle in a less than jovial mood, but the Stevenson account was in his desk just as Trent had promised, along with several fliers advertising some sort of Lithuanian cruise. It seemed Trent wanted him to leave the country.

He hurried out through the lobby past the revolving doors in which several more elderly ladies appeared to have congregated. The Stevenson account felt inordinately heavy under his arm, and though he was unsure of the contents of the bulging manila envelope, he had a peculiar feeling that his task held great importance. Spotting the InnovaTech building (with which the package was addressed), he hurriedly bustled his way through the downtown crowd, and collided with something short and loud.

“Blaaa!” said the old gentlemen he had just knocked over.

“I’m terribly sorry!” said Jim as he helped the man back onto his little stool. “Er, why are you sitting on a stool in the middle of the road?”

“Because you kindly helped me back up, young man,” said the fellow in a voice that reminded Jim of pemmican. “Otherwise I would be lying beside my stool.”

Jim couldn’t really argue with this conclusion. He was about to bid the fellow a good day and take his leave when the man spotted the envelope tucked under his arm.

“Could I see that?” asked the old man.

Jim felt rather bad about knocking the man off his stool and embarrassing him (though in truth no one in the surrounding crowd seemed to be paying them any attention), so he reluctantly ceded the package. The fellow tilted it this way and that, held it up to his ear and shook it, and then began trying to wrap it about his knee.

“Er, could I have that back now,” said Jim, “I need to-“

“It’s a good envelope,” interrupted the gentleman, “I’ll give ya that,”

He looked thoughtful for a moment and then said “I’ll give ye four magic beans for it.”

Jim was taken aback. “It’s not for- uh, beans, did you say?”

“Fine, five beans, but you drive a hard bargain, son.”

“Look,” explained Jim carefully, “I can’t just go around selling important documents. I’d be fired from my job, and… uh, magic beans?”

“Well they ain’t Tijuana beans,” said the man, taking five lima-bean-esque objects out of his coat pocket and holding them out for Jim to examine.

“Er, how do I know they’re magic?” asked Jim.

“Are you kidding?” said the man, “these are the most magical beans I’ve ever owned, and they’re guaranteed to make your dreams come true.”

“Ah,” said Jim, “and I suppose that’s why you’re sitting on a stool in the middle of mainstreet?”

“Exactly,” smiled the man softly, an enigmatic glint in his eye.

“Uh huh…” said Jim, “well okay then.”

He handed over the Stevenson account and took the beans.

* * *

Jim experienced the first pangs of buyer’s remorse about half way to InnovaTech. Then he stopped walking.

“Why did I sell the Stevenson account for beans?” he said out loud to himself, taking them out of his breast pocket to examine.

‘And why am I still walking this way?’ he thought. ‘Am I going to deliver these beans instead?’

He half considered it, just to get the accursed things out of his possession, but then he realized that perhaps the old man would let him trade back. After all, what use would a bunch of papers be to him anyway? Unless he were some sort of corporate spy… with beans.

Jostling his way through the crowd, he came to the place he thought the man had been, but there was no trace of him or the stool. Maybe he had imagined the whole thing. He looked down at the beans in his hand and discarded this theory. Beginning to panic a little, Jim frantically wandered around for a while, and then gave up and decided to go back to his office. Perhaps Brad would have a suggestion. He dashed into the lobby past the revolving doors. The old ladies were gone now, but they had left behind a surprising amount of graffiti.

“You gotta help me,” Jim pleaded when he reached Brad’s cubicle. “I traded the Stevenson report to an old guy for some beans!”

“Why?” asked Brad.

“The guy said they were magic!”

“Are they?”

“I severely doubt it!” Jim leaned in close. “Look, you gotta help me. What should I do?”

“Well, my wife sometimes makes a nice stew, and we-“

Jim shook him by the collar,“I’m not asking you what I should do with the beans!”

“What’s all this then?” demanded Trent as he rounded the corner with Stan. “Did you manage to deliver the Stevenson account?”

“Who do you think would win in a fight?” interrupted Stan, “A t-rex or a robot?”

“Err,” responded Jim, “I suppose it would depend on what sort of robot.”

“Hmm,” said Stan pensively, “I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

“The account!” Trent cried exasperatedly.

“Ah yes,” said Stan, “did you deliver it?”

Jim looked awkwardly at the floor, and Brad looked awkwardly down his own shirt. Finally Jim decided to come clean.

“I was going to deliver the Stevenson account,” he began, “but...”

“But what?” demanded Trent, “You instead spontaneously decided to wallow in your own incompetence as usual? Is that it?

“I sold it to a man on the street.”

Trent said nothing. He looked as though he had been slapped with a wet fish. Finally he turned to Stan.

“I assure you, I did not tell him to do that. I gave him specific instructions-“

“So the Stevenson account is currently in the hands of some random fellow you met in the street?” Stan asked slowly.

“Yes,” said Jim ashamedly.

“And you don’t suppose this fellow has any intention of delivering it himself?”

“No, sir. I’m very sorry, sir.” Jim looked away.

For a moment, no one said anything. Then Stan gave a huge sigh of relief.

“Thank god. I’ve been terribly worried. I realized there were all sorts of errors and typos in that report just after you left, and I had feared the worst.”

“What kinds of typos?” asked Brad.

“I accidentally called the CEO’s son a persimmon,” said Stan.

“What did you mean to say?” asked Jim, feeling greatly relieved.

“I meant to call his son a terrorist,” said Stan, laughing at his own ineptitude.

Trent was reeling. He said nothing, and looked ready to vomit.

“You did well, my boy,” said Stan, clapping Jim on the shoulder. “Now if I could just find something to eat around here, everything would be perfect.”

“I think Jim has some beans,” said Brad.

“Shut up!” said Jim.

“Yes,” said Stan, “it’s impolite to offer another man’s beans, when that man might want them for himself later on.”

Trent looked as though he were in a strange fantasyland and couldn’t understand the local dialect.

Jim took the beans from his pocket and presented them to Stan. “I just have these five here. If you want them, please feel free, sir.”

“Excellent job, my boy. You save me from both embarrassment and hunger in a single day, and all before ten-o’-clock in the morning. I’m promoting you to manager.” And with that, Stan took the beans and strode off.

Trent fainted. Behind him, Jim spotted the old man waving to him from outside the window. Jim regarded this as odd since they were currently on the 32^nd floor.

Your Ammo Upgrade is in Another Castle...

2009-02-15T08:34:00.000-08:00

So I just watched The Good The Bad and The Ugly for the first time (I know I know, I'm an uncultured plebeian). It's a near-perfect film, with one of the best musical scores of all time, and it got me thinking about storylines and suspense. At the confrontation at the end of the film, it isn't clear exactly which men are going to walk away from the gunfight. With the level of formula that we have come to expect, a film has to go a long way to achieve this level of uncertainty, where anything might happen.

With games, we have this uncertainty in abundance, and yet we squander it. Sure, I may or may not survive this level, but if I don't, I'm just going to try again until I do. The plot is still going to end the same way. Sure, some games go for multiple endings, and I think this is a step in the right direction, but it always feels a little tacked on. Games like The Sims have plenty of emergence and unpredictability, but they don't feel, to me anyway, like they have much of a plot. When games do have a plot, it always feels separate from the actually gameplay mechanics because I'm almost never concerned with the same things as the protagonist. He's bent on trying to find the princess or save the world, and I'm trying to get that ammo upgrade or make sure I don't run out of lives.

I feel that if a game is going to have a storyline, it needs to match up more closely with the game's mechanics. Players are sad in a very personal way if they permanently lose a good item, so why not make that item a person? Instead, the people in games usually seem totally irrelevant, and are only important when we have to keep their stupid butt alive in an insipid escort mission. If we fail in our task, that should be that. The character is dead. We shouldn't have to play it again because we didn't conform to the plot that the game had in mind. Can you imagine if, in a game of D&D, the DM said "I'm sorry, but you weren't supposed to let that character die. We're going to have to start over from the staircase again. Jim, erase that battle-ax you picked up, you haven't found that yet."

[upcoming spoiler for anyone who knows nothing about Final Fantasy VII yet intends to play it in future; all three of you may wish to leave the room now.]

Many gamers were deeply affected by the death of Aeris in Final Fantasy VII, and I think this is largely due to the fact that she was a good healer. She healed you party. And then she was dead. I don't mean to sound callous here. I just think people are particularly sad about things that are gone if they once contributed to our happiness in some way. I mean, sure it's sad when a random person in Peru is hit by a bus (unless, perhaps, they were a supervillain?), but we are sadder when the person who died personally contributed something to our lives which is now missing, whether it be companionship, snappy dialogue, or in the case of Aeris, nice healing. It would be nice to miss someone for their love, compassion and strength of character, but there's only so much that you can do to make someone care about a 2-inch tall, 32-bit sprite with a bad hairdo.

If a game is going to have a plot that we are supposed to care about, that plot needs to be part of the game and not just something running parallel to it, like a television in another room that someone has neglected to turn off.

We also have the potential to create things which could be virtually spoiler-proof. I can tell you about some awesome thing that happened to me in FarCry (it involved some dangerous serum and a lack of familiarity with the controls), and it doesn't ruin your experience of the game one bit. It's true that we cannot design a branching storyline to accommodate everything that a player might do, which is why we need to work towards making more of the storyline emergent and procedurally generated like the gameplay. You may say that this can't be done, but all I really ask is that the game's plot and dialogue acknowledge its gameplay in some way.

For example, in his recent review of Thief: The Dark Project, Yahtzee expresses how impressed he was when, after hopping back into the shadows after being spotted by a guard, the guard yelled "Don't think you can just hop back into the shadows, boy!" This sort of thing shows that the game is acknowledge you as the protagonist and not merely as the audience. If I'm playing a first-person-shooter and decide to search the level for machine gun ammo before facing the boss because I'm running low, I want one of the characters to say "maybe we should find some more machine gun ammo before we go in there." This makes what I'm doing feel like part of the storyline and not just part of the gameplay.

If we as designers and developers can tap into this power of uncertainty and agency, we can redefine the whole concept of a hero's journey, and potentially reinvent the story. "Are games art?" Psshaw.

(I do believe that games could one day make spoilers obsolete, but to be fair gaming does open up the potential for a whole new type of spoilers, namely "strategy" spoilers, but we'll talk about that one another day.)

"A Beautiful Animal..."

2009-02-03T19:55:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's been a while.

I haven't posted for a bit as over the non-denominational holiday season I was frantically attempting to finish designing, playtesting and prototyping a new game, which I did actually manage to do about an hour before I had to leave and catch the plane back to Ontario.

It's a cardgame. With zombies. Pretty much sells itself I think.

Anyway I don't really have anything to say gamewise at the moment, but I stumbled upon a couple of comic gems in this malignant cesspool we call the internet (some people call it the blogosphere, but those people are stupid).

The first is a fabulous show that everyone should watch. It's called SPACED, and involves most of the Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz crew before they did those slices of fried gold. Contrary to the title, it is not in fact Sci-Fi, but it is definitely for geeks. I just watched it on YouTube but you should all go out and buy the DVD box set ya cheap bastards.

The second thing is this. It must be watched to be fathomed. Er, ... I'll get back to you.

(Disclaimer: some profanity and a whole lot of peculiarity.)

Betrayal at House on the Hill Review: Very Nearly Great...

2008-12-27T23:41:00.000-08:00

This isn't so much a review, as an exploration of what I think is "off" with this game. Don't get me wrong though, I actually really like this game. (I tend not to play games dozens of times if I don't.)

I'll get back to the vaguely similar Arkham Horror in a future post.

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This isn’t going to be a detailed exploration of how this game works, or even why I think it’s good. I simply wish to explain why I feel it has the potential to be really fantastic, and why I think it falls short of this.

All things considered, I think BaHotH (worst acronym I have ever seen) is a very good game that definitely deserves a reprint, and if you have a chance to snag it for cheap, I’d go for it. There’s a lot of "game" in here, not in the sense that there is any real depth to the gameplay, but that you will have many very different experiences, and two games will virtually never play out the same way. That said, I feel that the game was designed in a rather silly way, which I think needs to be addressed for any potential reprint. Allow me to explain...

For the uninitiated, the way the game works is that, after exploring a creepy old mansion for a while, a "haunt" (scenario) will start, at which point one player will automatically and titularly betray everyone, and the remaining players will frantically work together to fight against some threat ranging from zombies, a giant spider, or even the whole house slowly sinking underwater.

Some scenarios are definitely more balanced than others, and the revised scenario booklet seems to be a bit better than what you get in the box, but as long as you are into the story and theme, and don’t take this sort of game too seriously, this shouldn’t be a problem. Personally I like being thrust up against impossible odds and desperately trying to prevail, though I did run into one scenario (with an alternate dimension and a lot of poisonous gas) which, if I read everything correctly, seems utterly broken.

The problem, for me anyway, is not in the game’s balance. Because the way that the game unfolds is always a little (or sometimes a lot) different, it would be basically impossible to make every scenario balanced for every setup, and I think this variability is a large part of the game’s appeal. The problem I have with the game is this: There are 50 different scenarios, yet only 45 event cards. For most games, the number of cards would be more than sufficient. The problem here is that, while you will only see one scenario, in each game you will see at least a dozen events.

I’ve probably played this game about 20 times, and I’ve never been bored by the scenario itself, but the buildup, where you explore the house drawing cards, begins to feel extremely stale. For example, in at least one out of three games you are likely to be menaced by the ghost of a gardener. When he’s already menaced you in five previous games, he ceases to be particularly threatening or interesting.

From a gameplay perspective, there isn’t all that much variation in the events, and adding more would be a bit redundant, but from a thematic standpoint, the limited number really begin to make the game feel all too familiar. The first 2/3rds or so of the game really isn’t about gameplay anyway; by exploring the house and drawing cards, you are basically randomizing and determining the layout of the house, and the items and stats every player will have when the "real" game starts. This could be done in a far less time consuming manner with some sort initial rolling and shuffling, but the point of it is that it is thematic. You are warily creeping around a house as the tension builds, waiting for the haunt to be triggered. It’s actually a lot of fun... the first couple of times. By the twentieth time it feels like playing a game of Candyland in order to randomize the map for Settlers.

Despite some balance issues, I congratulate them on managing to pack in 50 scenarios, but frankly the game just doesn’t need this many. I’ve played a couple of scenarios more than once, and I can say that they definitely didn’t play out the same way each time. (In fact, I think there’s a lot more variability between two games of Betrayal with the zombie haunt, than two games of Zombies!!!) As I said, I’ve played this game about twenty times, which means that I’ve only seen about a third of the scenarios in the book. Granted if the book were smaller I would have seen more of the same scenarios multiple times, but as I said I don’t see this as a problem. I’d love to face off against Crimson Jack again, but it’s very unlikely that I’ll end up with that scenario a second time. Sure I could simply choose to play that one, but my point is that less time should have been put into making scenarios, and more of it should have been put into making cards. Perhaps the cards were significantly more expensive to produce than pages, but then I say that more events could have been fit onto each event card, and you would have only one of them based on which floor your character happened to be in, like in Arkham Horror.

Personally I much prefer this game to Arkham Horror because it scratches roughly the same itch for me and is far shorter (about 45 minutes), but I say you should go even further. The rules state that the haunt starts after you roll under the number of revealed omens with 6 dice, but I say make it 5, 4 or even 3 dice. You may have to do something to help the good guys out in some way, as they won’t have as much time to beef up, but this will really cut down the tedious early game and get things moving along, and it is how I intend to play from now on. If a new edition is ever released, I hope it either has more event cards (and perhaps fewer and more playtested scenarios), or at least does something to accelerates the early game in some way.

All in all, I really believe that this game deserves a reprint. It has produced very memorable gaming sessions, and I’m very glad I decided to pick up a copy. The way the scenarios work, where the traitor goes off and reads a different set of rules from the good guys, feels very different from anything else I have played. The heroes might need to get a particular item and perform a ritual in a particular room, and the traitor likely has no idea. Maybe the zombies can be killed with the gun, but you won’t know until you try.

This aspect of the game is fun, but the concept of hidden rules has a lot of potential that isn’t fully utilized here, as anyone who has played Mao knows. You could have all kinds of stuff like maybe a witch who curses any player who says a certain word or who has their character pawn facing a certain direction. The possibilities with hidden rules are practically limitless, but the concept is utilized in fairly repetitive ways here. Generally the heroes have to perform one or more skill checks in one or more secret rooms, and the monsters have some stat or item weakness that is unknown to the heroes or the traitor. One of the reasons that there are so many scenarios is so that players won’t remember how to kill zombies, or in what room a ghost must be exercised, but I feel that if the concept of hidden rules isn’t going to be utilized to its fullest potential, these hidden factors might as well be determined through a separate deck of cards denoting particular items or rooms as being important. In this way, the scenario could simply be read aloud by everybody, and only the heroes or the traitor would be allowed to view the cards with the pertinent information such as which rooms were important. I’m not saying that it should have been done this way, I merely wish to reinforce my point that the huge number of scenarios is unnecessary.

Another area in which the game simultaneously succeeds and fails is in the components. They are rather nicely done, and quite durable and nice to handle, but there are also far too many little tokens. In fact, nearly every scenario utilizes a different set of tokens, so there are literally hundreds of little tokens to hunt through when you need twelve of the little round ones that say "Bat." There is nothing particularly thematic or menacing about a little cardboard chit with a word on it, and they all could have been easily replaced with two-dozen generic tokens of some sort. Instead of a scenario asking for some bats, it could simply ask for some of the generic purple triangles, and I assure you that this would be no less thematic. (Bats do not wear little "Bat" nametags in the same way that Radioactive Man does not wear a T-Shirt with his picture on it.)

By shortening the early game, and generifying your tokens so that you don’t have to hunt for the correct ones (or even have to bag them all in the first place), you can cut at least 10 or 15 minutes of fat from what is already an agreeably short meal.

All things considered, if you at least like the concept of B-Horror, and don’t take your lightweight gaming too seriously, BaHotH is almost certainly worth adding to your collection. I’m fairly tired of it now, but it was definitely a fun ride while it lasted, and easily worth the 40 bucks or so CDN I paid for it. There’s really nothing quite like it that I have ever played, and I hope that it or something similar once again sees the light of day in future. But now I have to go. As it turns out, I’m the traitor. Bwahahahaha...

Happy Haunting!

Thesis and the Minotaur

2008-12-11T04:15:00.000-08:00

I'm finally finishing up the first draft of my undergraduate thesis. There's definitely a different set of skills associate with writing a long document, specifically one which is non-fiction. A few times I've found myself explaining something which I then realized that I had covered in a previous section, and the question arises whether to take out or shorten one of the descriptions, or whether to go ahead and explain the same thing twice. Most books seem to go for the latter, which irritates me a bit. I don't need you to tell me the same thing five times, particularly if it's in the same chapter.

And if you are going to go ahead and state things multiple times, should the things stated more often be the things that are more important and/or confusing? I've encountered the same dilemma when writing rules. If one adopts a policy to restate everything until the ratio of concept-statement to concept-difficulty is achieved, the whole thing begins to resemble that Marx Brothers routine in which one side of a mustache is trimmed a bit too much, and then the other, until finally there is no mustache. I want my thesis to retain its mustache, damn it!

Oh, and I hadn't come across this game before, and found it rather interesting, though I mostly just wanted a pun in my title.

Gnome Man's Land - Explaining Das Book

2008-12-05T03:18:00.000-08:00

I recently purchased a game called Red November about a group of drunken, communist gnomes on a flaming submarine. (You can go ahead and reread that last sentence.)

It's co-designed by Bruno Faidutti, one of my absolute favorite designers who also gave us Citadels and Mission: Red Planet, as well as many others. The theme for this one is great, and so far the gameplay seems top-notch as well, but sadly the rulebook is a little lacking.

Fantasy Flight Games does this a lot. They put out a good game with high production values, and then they apparently get a roomful of monkeys with staplers to organize the rules. I mean, I can see not wanting to hang around supervising the monkeys when there are staples and feces flying about, but when your rulebook is 40, or 80! pages long, it needs a friggin' index and table of contents, not a bunch of advertisements!

Luckily Red November's rulebook is only 23 very small pages, but sadly these pages appear to have been combined in a seemingly arbitrary order, making the learning of this otherwise fine game unnecessarily difficult. Therefore, I have taken it upon myself to basically rewrite the rulebook, and I have posted my extended explanation here. I didn't include it in this post because it's frackin' long and I don't particularly suggest reading through it unless you want to learn how to play the game or you suffer from insomnia and an excess of time. Instead I recommend silently making puns to yourself about gnomes for the next few minutes if you gnome what I mean...

Mini Games: Unwarranted Experiments in Timesaving

2008-11-27T09:26:00.000-08:00

I've started a geeklist with the intention of compiling a collection of variants for reducing the playing times of various boardgames. You won't get some of the in-jokes if you only play videogames, but lucky for you those never drag on.

iPhod

2008-11-19T08:19:00.000-08:00

So I got an iPod touch (2nd Gen. 8Gig), and after using it for about a week, I have to say that it is perhaps one of the greatest things ever created by man. I may be somewhat biased towards Apple, what with their products not constantly crashing, but this thing is an absolute joy to use.

The main thing is the touchscreen interface. When I think touchscreen, I think irritating bank machines that hassle me and beep a lot, but the touchscreen on the iPod and iPhone are a whole different animal. The thing always seems to know what I want it to do, and the touch keyboard is in a totally different universe than the awkward graffiti feature of oldschool PDAs. My personal favorite feature of the interface is that when you scroll past the bottom of a list, rather than just stopping, the thing carries on and then bounces back, as if to say "oop, that's the end of the list, but I cheerfully acknowledge your request to scroll farther and can fully understand why you might want to do so. Please have a pleasant day." Apple understands that controlling something directly feels inherently different than controlling it with a mouse wheel, which is something Wii developers need to learn one of these days.

When I do something like press a button or move a joystick or a scroll wheel, I know that I've done so and if I get no other feedback, I just assume that nothing is supposed to happen. But when I do something more vague like move my finger or swing a Wiimote, I need some sort of aknowledgement that I entered the command and that it didn't do anything. There is almost nothing more frustrating in videogames (and realize that I grew up in the days of Battletoads) than continually waving your arm to no effect and then finally realizing that either you're not doing it right, or that you can't do that action there. (But I'll have plenty to say about bad (and good) Wii controls in another post.)

Anyway, iPods and iPhones are all the rage right now, despite the questionable phone plan Rogers has for us in Canada, which led me to opt of the iPod. New games and apps are constantly flooding onto the device, and I am actually working on a game myself with some fellas in my dorm. I'll keep you posted when we get further along in development.

As with anything, 90% of all of these apps are presumably completely terrible, but luckily some of them are quite interesting, and a surprising number are completely free. There's also a handy ratings system to help sift through the muck and find the gems, and personally I think ratings systems should become a mandatory feature on every product. Like if you go to a restaurant, and look at the menu, and think 'maybe I'll get the clam risoto,' but then you look at some of the ratings, and one guy says 'was like eeting poo :p' and another says, 'CLAMB BIT ME!!!1!!' Maybe you want to consider something else, I mean sure, people who post comments on the internet are clearly morons who can't talk, but if you've got enough of them, they've got to add up to at least one functioning brain. That's right, I said it: the internet is like a hive mind of idiots. "We r teh borgz... u wil be asimalated tottaly pwnd... resistins is fewtilz ftw lol :D"

...um, soz aniwayz [cough] anyway. Being the nerd that I am, my favorite app so far is the amazing lightsaber app. Using the built in accelerometer, it turns your iPod/iPhone into a Jedi weapon of death. This thing is extremely cool. It just buzzes menacingly when you wave it slowly, and then makes clashing sounds when moved quickly, and features include optional Star Wars battle music. Plus, if you are using it with earbuds in, the buzzing and crackling actually plays louder out of one earbud or the other depending on which direction the thing is tilted in. This means that if you swing the lightsaber to the left, you actually hear the sounds coming from your left. I quality feature to be sure, but honestly I don't think I'll be using this thing with earbuds in very much. Some guy with earbuds swinging his phone around just looks like an idiot, whereas if everyone can hear why I'm swinging it around and grimacing fiercely, I come across as the suave gentleman that I am.

There's also a character creation option which I fully abused by creating the famous Jedi "Harry Potter." You see, when I was younger, I used to look frighteningly like Harry Potter, to the point where everyone would call me Harry and small children would ask me to lift up my hair in hopes of seeing a scar (oh, the state of today's youth). I actually won a copy of the fifth book for free in a look-alike contest. So I cut the face from an old Halloween picture (okay, first year), and voila! I also gave my Jedi a nice pumpkin-juice colored lightsaber, as well as a character bio:

"Working as an Auror for the Ministry of Magic, he rides across the galaxy on his Mellenium Firebolt, seeking out Sitherins wherever they may be and battling them with the lightsaber that once belonged to Godric Gryffindor himself." (that's "Sitherin," by the way. I realize that not all Slytherins are evil and need to be hunted down, but all Sitherins do.)

I would have made it longer, but I was worried that I was stretching the joke to the point of hemorrhaging. I also didn’t want to inadvertently spoil anything for the people who still haven’t read the last book as I’m sure they’d both be very upset with me. Of course, Star Wars is explicitly stated to take place “a long time ago” so none of the adventures of Jedi Potter necessarily have to take place after the end of book seven. He’d just have to use a time turner at some point. I’m not sure whether the wizarding world has any magic/technology capable of sending him to a galaxy “far, far away” though. By the way, I may have given this waaay too much thought.

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Okay, so how are the actual games on the iPhod, seeing as that is what this blog is allegedly about? Actually, they seem to be quite good. The accelerometer and the touchscreen open up a lot of new control options, and the complete lack of physical buttons force some much-needed innovation on the part of game developers. If you're one of those inconsistent people like me who is both cheap and also bought an iPhod, the best free game so far is probably Tap Tap Revenge, a rhythm game in the vein of Guitar Hero where you physically poke the notes as the reach the bottom of the screen.

The first minor gripe I have with this game is that you are supposed to touch the notes when they are too close to the bottom of the screen, so it is a bit awkward to hold the Phod and you are in danger of poking somewhere below the touchscreen (which, as you might guess, doesn't do a lot). You can poke farther up the string/fret, but then you end up obscuring the notes with your own fingers. I've found this is one thing developers are still learning with the iPhod, that you shouldn't have players doing things with the touchscreen that force them to hide the game from themselves with their own fingers. Sounds obvious but is more of an issue than one might think.

The other minor gripe I have with TTR is that some of the 'notes' require you to shake the Phod in one direction or another. You're gonna want to disable this as soon as possibly with the merciful options menu, because this feature just doesn't work very well, at least form me. It's not so bad on the easier settings, but if you want an actual challenge, you'll quickly lose that combo when the game asks you to shake the Phod left and then decides 'meh, that wasn't really left enough for me, not enough tilting. I'll just reset your combo there and -oh, was that supposed to be left again. That... I'm sorry, that was just dreadful.' If there was the option of just one 'shake' command, it would be fine, but the diections just make it far too picky. Luckily, you can turn it off and go back to being the pokeyman. Aside from these very minor complaints, the game is really a lot of fun. I'm not even sure why, but I just can't help grinning and bopping my head while I play it, and I don't even like most of the music. If it could somehow auto-generate notes for any song in your library, or had a built in level creator so you could make them yourself, this game would be frickin' epic.

I think racing and piloting games also have a good home on the iPhod. They use the accelerometer the way they are meant to be used, namely as a sophisticated detector of subtle movements rather than as an extra button (I'm still looking at you, third-party Wii developers). I bought Moto Chaser (upgrade to Moto Racer) at 99 cents, and it was worth every penny. Not really much to say about this game except that you ride a motorcycle really fast and hilariously punch people off of theirs, and that you are apparently trying to rescue a cat. Um, why not?

The third game I've been playing a lot is the fabulous Enigmo (I got it for 1.99 and I've just completed level 40). When I first started playing this game, the experience was absolutely sublime, somewhat vaguely akin to my first playthrough of Portal. I've really played nothing quite like Enigmo, and that's rare these days. Sadly, the novelty wears off after a while, but what you're left with is still a very solid game. I don't really want to say puzzler, because though there is certainly a puzzle element, there is also a large element of simply trying to rig up everything so that it works the way you've envisioned. I like this, because rather than in most puzzle game where there is only one correct solution, this game offers you a fair bit of creativity. It lets you use whatever crude or harebrained solution you want to so long you can actually get it to work.

This brings me to my only major complaint, which is that the touch controls are awkward. I don't care what anyone says, they could have been vastly improved if the rotation area for the objects was a bit larger. What often ends up happening is that you are trying to rotate a carefully placed object and end up dragging it across the screen instead. I've managed to cut down on this by zooming in on objects when I need to fiddle with them, but you shouldn't have to do that. Oddly, you can make the circles bigger, but this requires putting your finger on the circle (which is the hard part) and dragging it outwards, and after you let go, the circle returns to normal size. What's the point of that? The rotation circle pops up only when you select an object, so the game knows you are trying to manipulate that particular object, so why couldn't the circles be larger? For that matter, why do they need to get smaller when you zoom out? It's like if I zoom out on a page of text and the elevator bar shrinks too.

On the topic of object rotation, one place where this game really wins is by having real-time feedback as to whether you have the object rotated correctly. You see, the object of the game is to guide a stream of water to a destination, except that the water behaves like a bunch of little ping pong balls. Because there is a constant stream of these little guys, rather than having to estimate angles, you can simply place an object and then watch as the path of the 'water' dynamically changes with its movement or rotation.

The game is very good, but after a while the levels don't feel like they're throwing anything new at you. I think they could be using the temporal element a lot more, such as requiring more elaborate multi-step solution, rather than mostly just having puzzles that can be solved by plunking each object in a particular place. The somewhat awkward controls also hold the game back from being as relaxing and sublime experience as it should, though in all honesty they are quite good, and I am being fairly picky. It's just that when a game is this good and original, I really want it to go that extra ten percent and reach legendary status. As it stands, I don't think this game holds the meaning of life anymore, but then I haven't quite gotten to level 42 yet.

Polly Pocket Monsters (Call me, Mattel)

2008-11-10T01:54:00.000-08:00

I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was. To catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause.
I will travel across the land, searching far and wide. Each Pokémon to understand the power that's inside.
Pokémon! Gotta catch 'em-just you and me. I know it's my destiny. Pokémon! Oh, your my best friend in a world we must defend.
Pokémon! Gotta catch 'em-a heart so true. Our courage will pull us through. You teach me and I'll teach you. Pokémon.
Gotta catch 'em all, gotta catch 'em all. Pokémon!

And I haven't seen the show in at least five years! This is all from memory! This is the legacy of a craze that captured the minds and wallets of a generation. And you know what? Rampant consumerism aside, Pokémon was pretty cool. (I may have some lyrics wrong; I didn't check them. Feel free to comment and correct me.)

Many people will reasonably object to me using the past tense, as the cards and games are definitel still coming (the latest being Pokémon Platinum for DS), and there are definitely still hardcore Poke-fans out there. I myself dropped out when the number of Pokémon was still at 151, and as far as I'm concerned, the 50,000 Pokémon that have come since are not cannon.

Okay, I do think a couple of them are cool. Cyndaquil is just so darn cute, and there are a few more that came out after I stopped collecting the cards that I do think are kinda neat, but I also think somewhere along the line it all started to get stupid. I mean, the whole idea was that these things were supposed to be like real-world animals but weirdly different, and in the first batch of 151 there were only a few archetypes missing: we didn't have any dolphin/shark/whale Pokémon, and we didn't have a penguin Pokémon. That was about it. Nintendo could have released a mini-expansion with these Pokémon and called it a day (haha, good one).

But noooooo, instead we now have a complete Pokédex of 493 different Pokemon ! And some of them are just stupid! What, prey tell, is a Drifloon? What is it, and how did it get in my Pokémons? And this one, Luvdisc, this is just a shape! Or what about Ludicolo over here? It looks like something the Taco Bell Dog would have a nightmare about after eating some bad taquitos! My point is that the standards for becoming a Pokémon seem to have gotten a bit lax. I mean okay, I'll be the first to admit that the first 151 weren't all gems (Magnemite and Magneton were always a bit inscrutable, and Voltorb and Electrode were pretty much a Pokéball and then an upside-down Pokéball. Cool.), but most of them were cool, and what's more they embodied the innocence and simplicity that was Pokémon.

But I suppose it was to be expected. You can only expect a fan to buy so many Pikachu baseball caps, and eventually you want to introduce something new into the franchise. But that's the thing, the gameplay hasn't changed, the plot of the TV show hasn't changed, they haven't taken any risks or broken any new ground, they just keep pumping out new Pokémon. And you have to catch them all! With this simple mantra, Nintendo either brilliantly or unwittingly set the franchise up in a way that has allowed easy expansion with minimal risk. It doesn't matter if some of the new Pokémon are terrible (or are just shapes!), you have to catch them all.

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Alright, enough ranting. Chances are you either already know all of this or you don't care (or possibly you are plotting a death for me involving your stupid Nosepass or whatever), so I'll move on to what I think was cool about Pokémon and the stuff I sometimes get nostalgic about.

First of all, the concept is just so weird. I mean, I've come to accept that anime is weird, but although Pokémon wasn't the first Japanese cartoon to be shown on North American television, it was the first exposure that many of us had to it. The whole thing was so delightfully foreign. Videogames had sort of just reached the point where you could portray a living, breathing world to the player, and man was this one weird. This is the conversation I had in my head when I thought about how one might try to explain Pokémon to someone who had never heard of it before (though this person probably would have had to have been living in a fallout bunker with no contact with the outside world for the past twelve years or so):

"You see, Pokémon is like the real world except that you can capture animals and train them to fight each other... wait, you can do that in this world!"

I suppose in the real world that sort of thing is discouraged (for good reason), so in Pokémon the main difference is that the governments of the world condone this behavior. Also, there are magical devices called Pokéballs that you can put a Pokemon inside and release it whenever you choose. In real life we call them cages...

Oh, one more important point is that in the Pokéworld (Pokéworld?), when a Pokémon gains enough battle experience from knocking smaller animals unconscious, it "evolves" into a bigger, meaner version of itself. Just to make this perfectly clear: THIS IS NOT HOW EVOLUTION WORKS! I won't harp on this point, but sometimes I think it's things like this that lead creationists to disregard or misunderstand the theory of evolution. Charles Darwin did not go to the Galapagos islands and beat a turtle with a stick until it evolved wings and flew away. As far as I know, this has never happened.

So I think that we've established that Pokémon is kind of weird, but that was what was so neat about it. It wasn't your average kids fantasy story of brave adventurers fighting evil, it was a world eerily like our own but inhabited by a very different variety of fauna. And sure there were bad guys (Team Rocket or the rival trainer, I guess), but they weren't the center or the driving force of the narrative. It was all just a bunch of kids striving to become better and learning about themselves along the way. And there wasn't the imposed sense of authority you have in the real world. I could challenge you for your fire badge, and it didn't matter that you were older or bigger than I was, if I'd trained my Pokémon better than you and was better at deploying them, you had to give it to me. And if I hadn't, well that was that. I lost. No ifs, ands or buts about it. It removed all the grey area of the real world, and what's more it gave people an arena in which to solve their differences. There was no war in the Pokéworld, people solved their problems like gentlemen: with duels. Except that instead of the people getting hurt, just the animals get hurt... Okay, that suddenly seems bad again.

Point is, Pokémon was rad, and it will always have a special place in my heart. I may have outgrown it, but if they ever made a version of the game where I got to actually fight as the Pokémon in real-time, I'd buy it in a second. I also think the card game is quite good, mechanics-wise, and though I haven't played in years, I wouldn't turn down a game. (I also have a near-mint-condition Charizard from the first set, which could be my children's college fund some day if I can just convince the world that Pokémon is awesome again.) I never did manage to catch all 151 classic Pokémon, I only made it to 148, but I had a lot of fun along the way. Once I heard that if you catch them all, Satoshi Tajiri comes to your house and gives you a real-live Pikachu, but I'm pretty sure this is just hopeful speculation.

By the way, if you or anyone you know has Dragonite, Bulbasaur or Ivysaur, I want to talk...

Slices and Dices

2008-11-07T22:47:00.000-08:00

Today I want to get a little philosophical with you. The topic: Friedrich Nietzsche's perspectivist views on secular morality... ...nah, I'm just kidding, the topic will be randomness in games.

Firstly, I'll just come out and say that I do not believe in luck. I'm always surprised by how many intelligent people seem convinced that the dice gods will bring them victory if they roll the one that hasn't run out of luck yet. Probabilistic math makes sense and is readily testable, yet the human mind is extremely good at crafting stories and taking everything as some sort of sign. Sure it's surprising to roll snake-eyes three times in a row, but if you are a gamer and roll 2d6 a lot, this is very likely to happen to you at some point, and it is not because God did not judge you worthy to blow up that tank.

I've seen people play sub-optimally in Settlers because "3s always seem to come up more than 6s in our games." That's because you don't notice the 6s! Nobody cares when you roll a six, but when you roll a three for the second time in a row, everyone feels as though they have been betrayed by mathematics. This is why they sell a deck of all the combinations of 2d6: not to ensure that every number comes up the right amount, but so that when the opponent whines that there were too many threes, you can point at the deck and say authoritatively "no there were not!" Of course, as a casual game, this probabilistic fallacy is I think a large part of the game's wide success; When you lose, you can blame the dice, and there is no one keeping track to challenge your claims.

If you yourself are designing a game, please, please defer to the actual laws of probability, and not who seems to get "lucky" in your playtests. Believe in whichever dice gods you want in your spare time, but please try to keep gaming secular.

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All that aside, it's hard to say whether there is actually any such thing as random chance in games either. Einstein famously said "God does not play dice with the universe" (as well as a number of other amusing nuggets), and at the moment this appears to be false at least at the level of elementary particles, but can rolling a die be truly random?

Nothing on a computer is actually random as it is all procedurally generated, so can we really say that we can achieve something a computer can't simply by throwing a dotted cube? Neither result is predictable, yet both derive from a starting point via a set of rules and a sequence of operations, though obviously the rules and sequence of operations involved with moving a human arm are vastly more complex than those which a computer uses to manipulate a set of numbers. But doesn't it all come down to a set of rules and starting conditions leading to a deterministic outcome? Or is the real-world act of throwing a die in some way affected by truly-random outcomes at a subatomic level which create ripples of randomness that are not felt in the simpler computative mathematical operations? Hell, I don't know.

Have you ever notice how you can flip a coin and be reasonably unsure of which side will land face-up, but yet it's really difficult to shuffle two cards and not know which one is on top if you saw which was which beforehand? With so few cards, it becomes obvious which procedures you are applying to them to get a "random" value (put this one on the bottom; now put it on the top again), but with the coin I think there's enough stuff going on that it doesn't feel like a procedural operation anymore. So where does it slide over into actual randomness? Is a deck of ten cards suddenly enough to be random? If it could eventually be proven that throwing a die is in fact not random, then I find Einstein's choice of words ironic.

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And why are there rock-paper-scissors tournaments! Do these people have nothing better to do with their time?! ...Okay, that was unnecessarily harsh. I suppose it is probably the purest distillation of human competitive psychology, and there is something almost primal about the game (though it must only date back to a time after scissors were invented which was 1500 BC according to wikipedia). Granted there must be some psychology involved, and acting truly random is rather difficult (we tend to switch more than we should), yet this sort of guessing-game still feels pretty random to most people when we encounter it in a game and we still feel it an acceptable way to determine who picks where to eat lunch even though something like skill-at-tennis-playing usually wouldn't qualify someone to choose. What if your friend is the world champion at rock-paper-scissors and he likes haggis or something?

Barack Me Obamadeus [I didn't come up with that one]

2008-11-04T22:44:00.000-08:00

It appears that Barack Obama has won the 2008 presidential election, and I heartily congratulate him. Luckily this is not a political blog so I am not required to say anything intelligent on the matter. I will however use it as a segue into talking about 1960: The Making of the President, a Eurogame about the presidential race between Kennedy and Nixon. (By Eurogame, I'm reffering to the style and elegance of its mechanics, because the game was in fact designed by a couple of Americans, hence the subject matter.)

I confess that I haven't played this game enough to really give a proper review, but I will say that the game's presentation is absolutely fantastic. I mean, I'm not a sucker for nice graphics or bits, but this thing just oozes '60s political campaign, from the little candidate pins, to the mugs and fake coffee-stains on the board (which makes my brain confused because usually the sight of any sort of stain or blemish on a game board drives me up the wall, but here it just looks so awesome). So far the game seems tight, and reviews are high, and I look forward to playing again, mostly so that I can practice my Nixon and Kennedy impersonations.

It makes me think though; There aren't a heck of a lot of strictly political games, and almost none that aren't boardgames. Sure there are a lot of games that involve politics to some degree, but "politics" usually just means that the players are allowed to make deals and gang up on each other. A couple of games like Twilight Imperium or Warrior Knights utilize a mechanic where players vote on agendas that will add to or change the rules of the game in some way. If you like this sort of thing, you could take it to the extreme with Nomic, a game about only this (well, there's also a die and a score pad in there somewhere).

So is Nomic the ultimate political game? Well, by some definitions, but it's not themed around any particular political setting either real or make-believe, and I have a hard time categorizing any abstract game as the ultimate example of a non-abstract thing. I mean, politics is a real phenomenon, yet rather than try to simulate it in a meaningful way, games try to shovel in truckloads of event cards corresponding to real-world events, even if the gameplay bears no similarity to the events supposedly being simulated. I can easily design a game about World War II where all we do is play events back and forth: Maybe I play the "Seize Czechoslovakia" card and then you play the "Declare War!" card but I cancel it with the "Neville Chamberlain's Wacky Appeasement Policy" card.

My point is that this game has nothing to do with World War II. It might have taken me hours of hypothetical research to write all three-hundred hypothetical cards, but this doesn't change the fact that we're really just playing an abstract card game because there is nothing about the gameplay itself that has anything to do with the Second World War.

Now despite this rant, I am not in fact criticizing the abundance of historical event cards in 1960: The Making of the President. I do not know enough about this election or the American electoral process to assess whether the overall gameplay is accurate, but it is quite possible that it is overall a fairly good representation, and more importantly it is fun and the mechanics are engaging and not just an excuse for historical flavor text.

No, my objection is that it seems like every time a game tries to incorporate "political" elements, it just adds a bunch of simplistic, politically-themed events into the mix and calls it a day. To me, this demonstrates a lack of understanding for the subject matter. Politics is at least as complex a subject as warfare, yet we have far more sophisticated mechanics to simulate that. (And just wait for my rant on how lousy I think most tactical war simulations are.)

So this is your challenge, game designers of the world: Start inventing more interesting political mechanics. They say Die Macher is the father of Eurogames, but it seems like nearly all of his children must be adopted because almost none of them seem to have gotten the interesting-political-simulation gene. Some day in the future, when I'm playing 2008: The Making of the President II, I want to have to think long and hard, and consider many interesting factors, before I decide to play the "Sarah Palin" card, and if I do, then I'll just have to hope that my opponent doesn't play this card.

Orin Bishop Rambles About Games

Magic Cards With Googly Eyes

Pac-....*blam blam blam*....-ing

Seperating the Goal from the Faff

Great Game Ideas #1

Drop the SOPA

4 Things That Suck About Zelda Games

The Unspeakable Thinks You Can Think

The Musician as Athlete

GameStop can go die in a fire...

Why DKC 2 is better than DKC Returns

Battleship Trailer

A Gaggle of Group-Names

Nintendo announces their new console

The Met's Game

Portal 2

Top 10* Music Mashups

Dynasty Warriors

A Song of Ice

Humble Frozenbyte Bundle

Guiltless Pleasures: High Art, Pablum and Pretentiousness

Recommendations

Minecraft Store!

Sucker Punch Review

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Power Rangers Totally Ripped-Off Spider-Man

Back to Back to the Future: a Critical Restrospective

John Hughes' Legend of Zelda

Words of Wisdom

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The thing with The Thing

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Sintel

The Resistance Review: Voltage over Current

Sonic Doesn't Need a Story

Various Ideologies Analyzed in terms of Objectivism

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Return of Jokes?

Jack Sandler

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Michael Bay's The Dark Knight - by Michael Bay

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Emo Haiku Generator

An Emo Haiku (based on true events)

EA Rickrolls Yahtzee

Rev Rants

Charted!

Escapist News Network

Star Wars the Old Republic Trailer

Brutal Legend Will Rock

God of War I/II Review: Deicide, Ribaldry and Quick Time Events

Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000

With Lyrics 2

The REAL Mario

Videogame ABCs

BioShock Review

Dark Knight at the Roxbury

The First Level

Jokes?

Voice *Hack*ting

Dim Waiters

Open Feint

Terminator Salivation

First Reviews

ThreadBound - Approved!

Submitted!

Further Gameplay Footage

TechVibes Article

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Midi-chlorians: My View

Stupid Internet...

NeverBored Studios - YouTube Channel

New Car

Uncomfortable Plot Summaries

Be Fruitful and Multiply

Noir to Hide - Film Adaptation

Noir to Hide

Pac-....blam blam blam....-ing

Voice Hackting