tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335130408990095452024-03-05T17:53:32.456-08:00Electric Dragon 80,000 VFrom the hinterlands of your Google search, a blog about games, movies, music, comics, etc.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-81521704241282031932013-09-15T16:20:00.000-07:002013-09-15T16:20:37.144-07:00Saints Row IV: A Collection Of Thoughts About Storytelling & Open World Gaming<b>As usual: Spoilers! Spoilers everywhere!</b> <br />
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Discussing the quality of <i>Saints Row 4</i> seems a bit of a moot point by now. It's got a Metacritic rating between 77 and 86, depending on your console. It's a fan service heavy love letter to the fans who helped a <i>Grand Theft Auto</i> also ran evolve into a satirical, over-the-top orgy of comedy and violence. As Volition's fourth entry in the series, they've streamlined the experience in such a way that it makes the pace of other recent open world games like <i>Sleeping Dogs</i> and even <i>GTA IV</i> look plodding and slow by comparison.<br />
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What really makes <i>Saints Row</i> stand out is it's populist streak and it's inclusiveness. It's more than just the character creation or the fact that the game never penalizes you for how you choose to present yourself, male, female or otherwise. (If I want to cruise around virtual Steelport naked wearing only a horse head mask, and believe me I <i>do</i>, so be it.) They also aren't afraid to offend the homophobes by tying achievements into doing everything you can with a character. Including having The Butt Sex off-screen. With Dudes!<br />
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Given that the plot of the game involves the Saints being imprisoned on an alien spacecraft, there are numerous sci-fi references, including several to the still controversial <i>Mass Effect 3</i>. At one point, still early in the game, you are given a choice between going through one of two doors (red and blue, 'natch) each with their own arbitrary and ridiculous list of consequences that have no bearing on anything we've experienced up until that point. Faced with this choice, all your character can do is just sigh dejectedly and choose. It doesn't come off as mean spirited but as a bit of pointed satire... however, if you're like me and you spent months waiting for game journalists to talk about narrative logic, story mechanics and subtext only to hear them drone on about more meta concerns like "artistic integrity" and "fan entitlement" in-between wildly condescending to, or even outright insulting, their audience then hot <i>damn</i> does this feel like a bit of validation. <br />
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(And, seriously, the next schmuck who whinges about "it's the journey, not the destination" is getting a Ralph Waldo Emerson book thrown at their head so they can read that quote in context and finally realize why it <i><u><b>does not apply to art</b></u>.</i>)<br />
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Even the romances, if you can call them that, are used for parody. There's no conversational courtship, gift giving or friend/rival bars to manage, it's just a button press. And you can press that button as many times as you like. So if you're one of the many dudes on my Twitter timeline who are madly in lust with Kinzie, you are, at any point, a button press away from a punch in the face and some wild (off-screen) sex. It doesn't effect your game in any other way and, if you listen to the audio logs, you'll notice that all of the characters other than The Boss have unofficially paired off with each other. Yet somehow, even as parody, there's something satisfying about the instant gratification. <br />
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Ultimately, the romances in BioWare games are pretty tame affairs that result in an equally tame sex scene. Once you succeed, you may get some additional in game dialogue and a mention in the epilogue but otherwise that's it. You don't have to manage it and you never have to worry about breaking up unless you initiate it yourself. (Just like real life!) As much as BioWare fans invest in these romances, they're actually very, very surface level. So having Volition point out the very real silliness of them works as another little love tap to the series and their fans.<br />
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I do have my quibbles with the game but none of them are too serious. I experienced some (unintentional) glitches and several system lockup's when transitioning from the spaceship that serves as your hub to the simulation where you spend most of your time. (Which might be the game or a sign my 360 is about to poop in it's hard plastic casing.) Once you unlock superpowers, driving becomes not only pointless, but an annoyance when the game forces you back into a vehicle for story or loyalty missions. The addition of superpowered running and gliding also cuts the overall game length by probably 2/3rds since you can cross the city in a handful of leaps and bounds. The side missions, while fun, still feel like busy work yet upgrading your superpowers are tied to it. Also, while the definitely slapped a coat of paint on Steelport there's literally no variation between <i>The Third</i> and <i>Saints Row 4</i>. It's entirely cosmetic.<br />
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What interests me more are the storytelling improvements and how Volition treats the formula of open world gaming and storytelling, in good ways and bad, and how developers can improve the formula going forward. Especially with a new <i>Grand Theft Auto</i> dropping in only a few days for everyone to chew on.<br />
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<i>Saints Row</i> was a pretty standard crime story. Not necessarily poorly told but not memorable either. <i>Saints Row 2</i> wisely doubled down on the comedy yet still had some effective dramatic moments as well. <i>Saints Row: The Third</i>, despite all the pointless excess typified by the in-game porn stars (apparently at then publisher THQ's behest), still told an effective, if silly, story. The big drawback has always been that the other Saints were always plot devices or caricatures as opposed to actual characters. Nowhere was this more clear than the case of Shaundi.<br />
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In <i>Saints Row 2</i> she was a lovable, easy going stoner chick who mostly just got damselled. In <i>Saints Row: The Third</i>, she underwent a complete 180 into a hyper capable, well-dressed, no-nonsense businesswoman. Who, again, mostly just got damselled. <i>Saints Row 4</i> attempted to reconcile her odd personality transplant by splitting her into two different people. Because <i>Saints Row</i> ain't exactly subtle.<br />
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The push and pull between O.G. Shaundi and the real thing was the best written and best handled subquest line in the game. Shaundi's shame at her past indiscretions and lifestyle and how it lead her to overcompensate into what O.G. Shaundi, acting as the de facto voice of a lot of <i>Saints Row</i> fans, considered a humorless stuffed shirt was great fun to watch. It's also important that they didn't choose favorites. O.G. Shaundi, while unorthodox, was still effective while Shaundi was to-the-point but equally so. And the whole thing culminated in what initially seems like another damsel moment where you have to choose between them before they take control and save themselves. It not only works to reconcile the both sides of her but as a clear statement that the writers are thinking a bit differently about how they approach their characters. (And a special shout out should go to her voice actress who nailed present day Shaundi as well as O.G. Shaundi's hoarser, smoked out tones.)<br />
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Unfortunately, this doesn't extend as much to the other Saints, but they present different problems. Pierce, as comic relief, doesn't particularly need a more clearly drawn character. More pathos would just make him harder to laugh at. You can't do much with Johnny Gat either without running into the Wolverine Conundrum: how do you explain how a badass character becomes a badass without making them less of a badass? Cleverly, his mission involves being dropped into a <i>Streets Of Rage</i> style brawler from back when no one gave a damn about believable characters or motivations. Bottom line: Johnny Gat was always a badass. The End. You could have argued that his "death" in <i>The Third</i> was due to a death wish brought on after Aisha's death but since they've retconned that... nevermind, I guess.<br />
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While people who played the first two games are well acquainted with Gat, some more examples of Gat actually <i>being</i> badass would have been nice. There's a lot of deference shown to the guy without a whole lot good reasons for it. Especially since the mission I had to replay the most was one where Gat was in a chopper and kept getting shot down. Which isn't very badass.<br />
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Not being very emotionally connected to the other Saints meant their missions were a little more by the numbers. The only real oversight was the one character who, after Shaundi, could have benefited the most from some actual characterization: Kinzie. We know that Kinzie is a riff off of Lisbeth Salander from the <i>Dragon Tattoo</i> novels (in personality, at least) and that she's ex-FBI... aaand that's about it.<br />
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The extent of what I got from Kinzie's missions are: she's doesn't want to be "normal." Well, okay. Putting aside that it reused the 50's setting from the beginning of the game and a character from <i>The Third</i> with no direct connection to Kinzie and who they had to really stretch to make fit, it didn't really tell us anything new or interesting. Since she's the character you interact with the most over the course of the game, it felt like a lost opportunity.<br />
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This leads to something that's less a criticism of <i>Saints Row 4</i> than open world gaming as a whole. We're rapidly reaching the point where the typical cycle of "go here, talk to this person and get a mission" is becoming stale. Many of the missions in <i>Saints Row 4</i>, for example, are gained by choosing them from a text menu. And that's fine. It's tried, true and easy to program. Nonetheless, with the number of games offering open world experiences increasing, the way developers approach interacting with the world is still largely the same.<br />
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We're given these huge worlds to travel through however we like, but the minute we undertake a quest it becomes an entirely on rails experience. Obtaining quests is also completely simplistic. Good writing can cushion the blow a bit but we're still able to see the strings being pulled. So what you end up with are games that constantly remind you that, when it comes to advancing the story, your freedom is a sham. And if you want to make it a question of immersion in the game: am I The Boss of the Saints because I'm the best? Or am I just the best at being told what to do?<br />
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Obviously most development teams don't have the time to implement a more progressive approach to quest gathering in open world games. Even <i>Skyrim</i>, which is arguably the best example of presenting a non-linear open world with dynamic subquests, is hamstrung by the fact that Bethesda has a reputation for games that are nearly broken on release which have to be patched over the course of months to be playable.<br />
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Part of the problem can be solved through things as simple as dialogue or misdirection. Having the character only grudgingly following orders or just changing mission objectives on the fly because your character decides he has a better course of action, just off the top of my head, would lead to a sense that you are still in control. Much moreso than just blindly following whoever is chatting at you in your ear. However much of a pain it would be to script entirely optional semi-hidden subquests or encounters that aren't listed on your mini-map with big gold stars, it would pay dividends in creating a world you actually feel a part of. In certain ways, I almost prefer the <i>L.A. Noire</i> style of open world where there are no distractions from the main plot. It had a story to tell and it told it.<br />
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Going into the next generation of gaming and seeing big publishers rely as heavily as they do on "open world experiences" some actual thought is going to have to go into how they present them. <i>Assassin's Creed</i> is going to eventually run out of notable time periods and locations to plunder for their yearly installments and even <i>GTA</i> is essentially presenting the same basic urban framework only bigger and more complex. Fatigue is going to set in, if it hasn't already. With the additional horsepower of the PS4 and Xbox One, hopefully we will some additional innovation to go along with it.<br />
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In the meantime, we still have games like <i>Saints Row 4</i> which mine from a rich vein of potential parody in an industry that often, with the hundreds of people involved and potentially millions of dollars at stake, takes itself far too seriously. The series seems primed for a next gen reboot, unless they find some way to top taking over an interstellar alien race. (Time travel for an <i>AssCreed</i> riff?)<br />
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Parody and satire are a reaction to something rather than a facilitator, so while I don't expect the gang at Volition to redefine the genre, they've certainly proven themselves capable of evolving. We, as gamers, just need to keep the pressure on developers to keep evolving along with us rather than rehashing the same tired gaming mechanics.<br />
Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-68517378344295015312013-06-22T15:38:00.000-07:002013-06-22T15:40:16.845-07:00Review: The Last Of Us<b>As usual, my reviews are pretty spoiler-heavy, but I've cordoned them off after the end of the review for people who don't want to be... y'know, spoiled.</b><br />
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It's very heartening to me that the three video games that have provoked the most discussion in the last year are story-heavy games that center around a relationship between two people. This generation of gaming is rapidly coming to a close and we've gone from a situation where having a good story is a pleasant surprise or a bonus to an actual selling point. Telltale's <i>The Walking Dead</i> went for huge dramatic crescendos, <i>Bioshock: Infinite</i> went for more of a headfuck, and now we have Naughty Dog, already proven in cinematic game experiences, trying their hand at the post-apocalyptic action/stealth/survival horror genres.<br />
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<i>The Last Of Us</i> and <i>The Walking Dead</i> do share a lot of the same DNA, to the point that I was worried that Naughty Dog's offering would suffer from over-familiarity. "Older man with a violent past tries to escort an innocent young girl to safety during a pandemic/zombie apocalypse" is a pretty well-worn genre at this point. We know how it ends: "I can teach you no more, son." "<i>Nooooo! You're like the Dad I lost/never had or whatever!</i>" "You'll be okay, kiddo. I'm gonna die now." "<i>Nooooo!</i>" *fade out*<br />
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<i>The Walking Dead</i> played these genre conventions to the hilt but was saved by giving us a sense of choice in how we survived the world and a young charge we actually felt invested in saving. <i>The Last Of Us</i>, it turns out, follows the same basic story beats but ends up in a different place by the end. Telltale's episodic series is, by comparison, a celebration of the human spirit in comparison to Naughty Dog's bleak, hopeless, uncompromising world. <br />
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It's a world that is being slowly reclaimed by nature. Buildings, unused and unmaintained for two decades, have decayed, fallen apart, sprouted grass, and attracted wildlife. It's a kind of sad, frightening beauty that even extends to the areas taken over by the plants that spawn the cordyceps spores, which look almost like human beings turned inside out: petals that resemble skin and stigma, anthers, and filament that almost resemble human organs. It's a world that's devolved, slowly erasing or reclaiming every inch of human advancement. Whatever the world is now, it's not ours. Human beings have, naturally, devolved right along with it.<br />
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What were originally conceived as quarantine zones have becoming permanent city-states ruled over by fascist thugs. We see their handiwork right away, murdering anyone for any infraction they feel warrants it. It's a brutal utilitarianism that has no time for due process or empathy. In the wilds, you're constantly on the run from nearly feral hunters who have zero qualms about killing and possibly eating any unlucky travelers who wind up in their crosshairs. We occasionally hear bits of conversation that hints that these people are just trying to survive in a world that's actively trying to kill them, but the fact that they immediately default to remorseless killers whenever you're spotted makes them ideal cannon fodder as we shoot, stab and strangle our way through waves of them later on. There's a bit of every reviewers favorite new vocabulary term "ludonarrative dissonance" in that they never try to negotiate or surrender but that's still, to me, within acceptable levels.<br />
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Our protagonist, Joel, has no moral high ground to stand on himself. After the events of the heartbreaking intro sequence, he's been whatever he needed to be to survive: a murderer, thief and smuggler. He's a survivor but his loss and his subsequent experiences have turned him into a cold, selfish, stubborn, and largely unlikable man. He's very much the "grizzled hero" archetype but without anything resembling a heart of gold underneath it. I got the impression that if it weren't for his partner (and presumably his lover) Tess, he wouldn't be doing much of anything at all. She's the driving force of their smuggling operation while Joel seems to mostly just go through whatever motions are called for. Though the motions usually seem to involve killing someone.<br />
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The game proper kicks off when, after confronting a double crossing colleague, they get roped into escorting a young girl, Ellie, to the militant freedom fighter faction, The Fireflies, where they hope to use Ellie's seeming immunity to the cordyceps to come up with a vaccine. Joel, unwilling to invest in a quixotic cross country trip for some pipe dream, is ultimately forced into it. The notion of hope has apparently become so alien to the man that even the risk of believing in something is enough scare him off. Throughout the game, I never so much <i>liked</i> Joel as understood him.<br />
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Ellie, on the other hand, is immediately likeable. The "perky teenager" thing could have easily rubbed me the wrong way but as the only real bright spot in a cruel and fucked up world, she became a pressure valve. The foul mouth, bad jokes and general know-it-all teenager-ness of the character is usually the only thing to look forward to. You're playing as Joel but Ellie is clearly our point of view character. The first time she tried to help me take down an infected runner, I cheered. I had been busy trying to find cover to desperately flip through my weapons to find one that had more than a bullet or two and out of the corner of my eye I see her leap on the thing's back and start stabbing it with her pen knife. The little brat just saved my life and I loved her for it.<br />
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While the game is thankfully designed to not be an escort mission where you need to hold Ellie's hand the entire time, it was the thing that kept continuously breaking my immersion. Ellie is effectively invincible and invisible so there were many, many occasions where I'd be creeping around and trying to find an angle on an enemy and Ellie (or another partner) would literally walk right in front on them to huddle next to me. In a world designed to be so engrossing and intense, something like that makes it impossible to suspend disbelief. Frankly, I would have preferred if Joel just kept continually insisting that Ellie hang back in combat situations and she rejoins you when you've cleared the area out. Neither is a perfect option but to have my immersion interrupted repeatedly like that was the biggest obstacle in maintaining the experience Naughty Dog tried so hard to create.<br />
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Other reviews and comments I've read have complained here and there about the scavenging you have to do, but I loved it. Not only did it give me a chance to explore and admire the amazing art design of the game, it provided an opportunity to interact with it as well. What you see usually isn't just some background on your way to another combat scenario. Houses aren't just empty, they're abandoned. You can still see family photos on dressers and toys littering the floor in some child's room. They're interrupted lives rather than just some empty space that exists in the game. Finding some scissors or bandages or bullets was just a bonus for me.<br />
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The violence in the game is particularly noteworthy in that it fits the world perfectly. When Joel strangles someone, he actually strangles them. No Schwarzenegger-esque instant neck snaps. If you linger at enemies you've head shot, sometimes it looks like you can see the entrance and exit wounds. Other enemies, depending on the gun you use, will have their heads explode when you hit them. As in little tiny chunks of skull debris around their body. This game is definitely not pulling any punches. Occasionally Ellie will make a surprised exclamation when you brutally murder someone and I'd be lying if I didn't say that I didn't occasionally share the sentiment.<br />
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My only other major criticism of the game stems from the combat. Frankly, I was fine with the infected taking multiple headshots to kill, but when it came to the human enemies, things got very frustrating very fast. There are a couple of weapons that offer armor piercing upgrades but ammo is so scarce that you can't be guaranteed to have any when you need it. While I like the scarcity of the ammo as far as giving things a survival horror feel, the way that the ammo is parceled out made sure that there were long sequences where we are never given <i>any</i> hunting rifle or shotgun ammo, etc... so if you didn't save any from the section where it was more plentiful, you're just out of luck.<br />
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This lead to multiple situations like this: I'm in a firefight. I'm behind cover. I poke my head up and headshot a guy wearing a helmet. The guy falls down and pops back up again sans helmet. I pop up again and headshot him again. He falls down again. Assuming he's dead, I try to move to the next bit of cover only to get knocked on my ass by the same guy who is <i>still shooting at me</i>. I understand that this is a game where you're not supposed to feel like a superhero and many gamers would likely breeze through the combat if a headshot meant an instant kill but nothing breaks the spell of the game faster than an enemy surviving multiple headshots. It's one of two imperfect options but, like with Ellie's invisibility, I would have preferred the option that didn't take me out of the game.<br />
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That said, the scarcity of ammo and the strength of the enemies, especially the infected Clickers, make for some wild sequences. Shivs become mandatory in not only stealth killing them but saving you from their insta-kill attacks. Runners are easier to deal with but are big trouble in packs and Bloaters need to be shot in specific areas to be killed efficiently. On Hard difficulty, I rarely had more than ten bullets for any gun at any given time and every missed shot was enough to make me wince. Even scavenging as much as I could there would be lengthy sequences in which I was missing a specific ingredient for a much needed shiv or med kit. Every combat situation seemed to dissolve into panic by the end of it. Only a couple of times was I able to successfully navigate a sequence without being spotted and it felt goddamn triumphant when it happened.<br />
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The game is broken up into seasons which take place during specific locations including my hometown of Pittsburgh (it looks pretty much like I left it, to be honest). Each section has it's own unique vibe to it, which keeps things from getting stale, and the games take care to break up the style of play, so you may find yourself on horseback or hunting deer to change things up. Much like the <i>Uncharted</i> games, though, when you see oddly placed cover, prepare to start shooting.<br />
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After a blockbuster sequence during winter, we move onto the real finale which feels oddly like anti-climax. And I'm fine with that. Actually, I was oddly tense and keyed up for the final section the game because I kept expecting the writers to go for the obvious and easy ending but they never did. After an occasionally frustrating fight against some armored enemies, everything gets wrapped up in an intriguing ambiguity. You don't have to worry about the game leaving an important questions unanswered but it does leave you with a final scene that allows you to draw your own conclusions.<br />
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As a game, Naughty Dog is still perfecting it's cinematic experience. They're still not quite there in terms of making everything perfectly seamless from a gameplay perspective but it <i>is</i> a very well told story, even if it hews very close to what we'd expect up until the end. It's certainly a step up from <i>Uncharted 3</i>, which fell a little bit too in love with it's own characters. As a capper for this generation of gaming, it's a fantastic send-off. It's uncompromisingly bleak and gorgeous to look at. If you're open to the experience, it <i>will</i> take an emotional toll on you. Here's to a new generation of games that hopefully follow suit.<br />
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<b>SPOILER WARNING! Here's where I start talking specifics about what I thought of the story, so back out now if you haven't played yet!</b><br />
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Joel is a dick. He's the character you control through most of the game but, as I mentioned in the review, I never liked him. <i>Understood </i>him, but never liked him. The loss of his daughter, calcified by twenty years of murder and robbery, had made him into a hollow shell. It isn't until Utah that he feels comfortable enough with Ellie to joke with her (having the shared experience of killing people who want to eat them is a pretty good bonding experience, it turns out) but by then she's lost in a melancholy of her own.<br />
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What makes Joel's decision at the end, and our complicity in it, work is that we know that Ellie is more mature than just about every character in the game, so when the Fireflies decide to operate on her <i>without her consent</i>, they've essentially compromised themselves into being the villains. As much as Joel's decision is driven by selfishness, he's not wrong to do it.<br />
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The irony is that if Marlene had taken the time to talk to Ellie instead of treating her like a non-human, something she felt she likely <i>had</i> to do in order to make what she felt was the "right" decision, there's a good chance Ellie would have agreed to the surgery anyway.<br />
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Ellie's melancholy at the beginning of the Utah sequence, I thought, was originally just her coming to grips with the events in David's camp. Until she has that conversation with Joel about what he thinks the Fireflies need to do in order to get vaccine. Joel, re-energized and hopeful, dismisses it as just doing some tests and taking blood samples... but Ellie isn't convinced. I think she was preparing for the fact that she was going to have to sacrifice herself to save the world. And was trying to be okay with it.<br />
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Marlene isn't evil, she's just lost herself. She got the means and the ends all mixed up. She knew that there was no guarantee the surgery would provide a
vaccine. She was willing to kill a child she was tasked to care for on
the off chance it provided something useful. Ultimately, she was just using Ellie to her own ends. Joel is precisely the
opposite. As much as he wants to save <i>this</i> child the way he couldn't save his own, he's also doing it for her benefit. That's what makes Joel's actions ultimately heroic to me.<br />
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I get the argument that he is essentially damning the world but I don't agree with that either. There's no supporting evidence for this, but I think Ellie isn't just a genetic aberration, she's the next stage in human evolution. There's no way of knowing how many kids born post-cordyceps have developed an immunity until they get bit. But the chances of surviving an attack with just a bite are slim let alone other people letting you stay alive long enough to prove you won't turn. And considering you have as much chance being killed by hunters or dying from starvation or disease, there's no telling how many kids being born are just like her. But that's all supposition.<br />
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Ellie is "The Last Of Us" because she represents everything that's still good about humanity. She's the only character who doesn't act from a place of selfishness. Joel is Joel. Tess is out for herself and only sees the light when it's too late. Marlene cares only for her mission. Bill is a solipsist. Sam puts everyone at risk by not telling anyone of his infection. Henry blames Joel and then kills himself because he can't take responsibility for himself. Ellie is the only character who remains true, even after her run in with David who is arguably the worst humanity has to offer.<br />
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Joel represents all the bad decisions, selfishness and shitty, violent impulses that were ingrained in Humanity Mark 1. Protecting Ellie from those who wanted to harm her, even if she was prepared to sacrifice herself had anyone bothered to ask, and then lying to her afterwards are proof of it. Joel is not a redeemable character but neither is he truly villainous, just sadly human. <br />
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The question at the last scene is, to me, can Ellie believe the lie? She says "okay" but there's nothing in her face that particularly sells it one way or the other. And if she can, what does that say about her? Has she had enough of being the Golden Child and wants to get on with what passes as a normal life? If so, is that okay given what she's capable of? (Personally, I don't think the lie is sustainable.) The fact that they switch Ellie to your control in the lead up is a nice touch too, making it more like Joel is lying directly to <i>you</i>. Not only do I like that they left it pretty ambiguous, I like that they had the balls to not go with the dramatic-strings-and-weepy-send-off ending. It's ultimately a very personal story.<br />
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Like I said in the review proper, I really liked the game despite some flaws. I just hope more people follow Naughty Dog's lead and make more story-driven games that don't revolve around easy, smug horseshit like <i>Far Cry 3</i>'s whole "you're a terrible person for enjoying all this carnage we lovingly provided for you." This game is a great example of meaningful violence. I'm definitely interested in whatever Naughty Dog does next.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-45671671771029500222013-06-20T01:11:00.000-07:002013-06-20T01:11:03.795-07:00Anything Is Better Than Nothing: #Hashtag Culture & The XBox OneThis afternoon, Microsoft essentially threw a Molotov on a grease fire when they announced that they were backing away from the DRM, used games and online check-in features for the Xbox One that have caused so much consternation amongst gamers. After being flanked and decimated by Sony during their E3 press conference, and after a near terminal case of Foot In Mouth Syndrome in the wake of it, we knew Microsoft was on the defensive. However, adhering to the well-worn rule that corporations on the level of Microsoft <i>never </i>admit that they're wrong, many people just expected them to slide quietly into a second place showing in this generation's already carnage-fueled Console War.<br />
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However, in comes today's announcement which amounts to a full strategic retreat. It's not worded as such, naturally, (it's been pleasantly PR'd into almost sounding like it was their own idea) but just about all of the issues that stuck in people's craw were addressed: No daily online checks which will brick your system if you don't have a stable connection. You can resell or trade your games to whomever you like at the cost of announced features like family sharing and disc-free gaming. DRM will be up to the publishers and, after seeing the fit people have thrown in the last few months, there's a good chance they'll only institute it slowly and quietly. Also, to match Sony, the system will not be region locked. Unless you're like me and you mistrust the notion of cloud computing and/or hate the notion of an always on Kinect watching you like the quietly judge-y eye of Sauron, there's no reason the Xbox One shouldn't regain a place at the top of your Christmas list.<br />
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This has naturally provoked the usual responses: gamers cheering victory at having won a rare battle for game ownership and at the same time decried as a loss to publishers and developers by guys like <a href="https://twitter.com/therealcliffyb">Cliff Bleszinski</a>. It's also been the subject of a lot of empty cynicism, typified by <a href="https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/statuses/347474583823200256">this tweet from John "TotalBiscuit" Bain</a> (proof that not all <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition">bowler hat wearing British video game personalities</a> are created equal) in which he turns his nose up at the idea that the hashtag culture and Facebook posts had any bearing on changing Microsoft's position because... dead revolutionaries in Turkey?<br />
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First of all, that is some wild, <i>wild</i> false equivalency there. To somehow equate actual dead human beings with a consumer rights issue in regards to a video game console reeks of an almost Autistic disconnection to reality. Mothers are mourning their dead children right now. You're arguing about video games. These two things don't belong anywhere near each other. For any reason.<br />
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To be fair, Bain clarified his position in subsequent tweets, almost to the point of completely neutering his original statement (unless you happen to be one of the ten people in the world who truly believes that their tweets were <i>solely</i> responsible for Microsoft's change of heart) but I bring it up more as an example of a particular worldview. Bain is far from alone in his assessment. There's a lot of people supping on sour grapes tonight.<br />
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To listen to the few developers and publishers willing to speak on the subject publicly, you get the impression that they aren't so much angry as exasperated. Like kindergarten teachers wrestling with a particularly unruly child. To hear them tell it, we just don't understand what they're trying to do with the Xbox One. We don't understand how badly developers are being hurt by used game sales. And if we did, we'd be completely on board with Microsoft's new all-in-one entertainment box of pure joy.<br />
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This speaks, in bold and italics, how little they think of their audience. And yet I still can't see them as mustache-twirling villains. I believe that <i>they</i> believe what's coming out of their mouths. Having worked for a Giant Unnamed Corporation for six years now, I see how these decisions happen. The people in charge are so removed from the way normal people operate that they're completely unable to relate. They think they're being magnanimous but they don't actually know anyone who is being directly affected by their policies. It's not evil (not normally), it's just out and out ignorance. So, yes, people like Cliff Bleszinski have yet to find a burden they aren't willing to unload on gamers to line their pockets, but they've convinced themselves, though ego and love of money, that <i>we</i> don't really understand what we want.<br />
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The Xbox One is not a carefully crafted compromise between what gamers want and what publishers and developers need. It shifts the playing field so far away from the rank and file user that a backlash <i>had</i> to happen. Microsoft would have us believe that they're essentially giving us Steam in a box with some bonus accoutremounts like "cloud computing," an always-on Kinect and TV integration. They also continue to completely miss what makes Steam appealing.<br />
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Valve's genius lies in the fact that they aren't a publicly traded company at the constant mercy of perpetually paranoid and frightened millionaire investors. They also have an unconventional management structure that companies like Microsoft, Sony, EA, Activision, et al, would never have the bravery to implement. They want the money Valve makes and the goodwill it's gotten them without the sacrifices and risks they've taken to get there.<br />
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Microsoft wants the cheap and dirty answer to Steam. (Sometimes called "EA Origin.") Some game journalists, <a href="http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/the-death-of-used-games-and-control-of-the-second-hand-market-could-be-the">most of whom should know better</a>, have talked pie in the sky fantasies about the Microsoft equivalent of Steam Sales and whatnot, also completely ignoring exactly how unique Valve's position is. Want proof? Look at Microsoft's attempt to steal Sony's shine with the Playstation Plus and their virtual library. Microsoft's offer? <i>Halo 3</i> and <i>Assassin's Creed 2</i>. Games you've already played and sold years ago. Games that are multiple iterations removed from that by now. Games you can pick up for the low, low price of $3 or $6 used on Amazon, respectively. Games that have been cross referenced and double checked on spreadsheets for their minimum effect on the bottom line. Meanwhile, Sony is offering interesting indie titles like <i>The Cave</i> and <i>Thomas Was Alone</i> as well as smaller games like <i>Sleeping Dogs</i> and <i>Spec Ops: The Line</i>.<br />
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So, yes, Microsoft is clueless. They're looking at numbers and missing the big picture. Sony is only marginally better, having had their own descent into hubris with the PS3 announcement. Even now, their position is to just maintain the status quo, allowing them to pull ahead by virtue of doing absolutely nothing. Certainly GameStop is no hero, having sketchy policies that undercut their consumers as well. (Personally, I go to Mom and Pop used record stores for my game trading.) And while Microsoft soils their chinos? Valve is already floating the possibility of digital used game trading which will put them another generation ahead of their console brethren and win them a whole new round of plaudits.<br />
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These corporations exist to make money and will only give back as little as they can to maximize profits. That's business. Not good, not evil, just business. Yet corporate types and their apologists are only part of the problem. Some people are evidently immediately suspicious of what they see as an angry mob which steamrolls over any nuanced position.<br />
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While there's certainly no shortage of pointless, free floating anger on the Internet, it's often given far too much weight by virtue of the fact that people are drawn to negativity. A lot of these angry social media commenters are professionally angry. Acknowledging them validates them. Most people have a hard time keeping in mind that when it comes to dealing with trolls, you are actually the least important part of the equation. Their anger and whatever wires got crossed in their heads are the real issue. You're just a convenient target. There's a certain amount of ego you have to let go of if you're ever going to survive the Internet.<br />
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Which brings us to the courageous souls rolling their eyes at the idea that this angry mob of people who don't want to give up their consumer rights have somehow deluded themselves into thinking their voices matter, even if all they could do is change a Facebook photo and tweet at some monolithic corporation. Because, y'know, people are dying fighting for freedom in Muslim countries and that.<br />
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Firstly, if you're doing something, you're not doing nothing. That just seems like common sense. I'm a hack blogger no one cares about, I like talking to people about subjects likes this, but most people have lives and jobs and kids. This is of interest to people insomuch as they like games, but they're limited in the amount of time they can spend. There are no trenches here. There are no battles to be fought. You commiserate amongst friends, you refuse to pre-order, you tweet your displeasure at Microsoft. That's more or less the extent of what you can do. Because, at the end of the day, you're arguing about a luxury item.<br />
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If you really hold people gathering together around a common cause to be such a useless endeavor, what were you expecting to happen? An actual movement? Occupy Microsoft Headquarters? You'd just mock them for that too, for taking things too seriously. The reality is that every little bit helps. It fosters an atmosphere for discussion and gets the information out. Just because they don't wear the slogan on a t-shirt or tattoo it on their skin doesn't mean they aren't helping.<br />
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I consider my cynicism towards giant, multinational corporations to be an informed cynicism based on experience. In a sense, I admire Microsoft for being so ballsy with their wanton greed. Usually there are systems in place to hinder creativity, foster a sense of homogeneity, and avoid risk. People, on the other hand, are endlessly surprising. This isn't some kind of soppy, wet Liberal hugfest either. Microsoft's decision, I'm sure you'll find, was motivated by not wanting to lose money. They're worried about losing money because people were taking to social media and talking about how much they don't want what Microsoft is selling. Which translated into slower pre-order numbers. Which, compounded with the messaging problems they've been having, translated into A Problem. Twitter wasn't the only factor, but it was <i>a</i> factor.<br />
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One of my biggest problems with this industry is about how the gaming press, developers and publishers treat the people who make their livelihood possible. There's a disdain in a lot of people I find very disturbing. As if somehow we random dudes wield a power equal to the multi-million dollar corporations who provide us with our entertainment. Where all people remember is the troll who told them to "fuck off and die" and not the ten people who praised them. As if that's everyone else's fault and not the fault of the troll and the failing of the person's own ego.<br />
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We don't have any real power. That's what makes Microsoft's reversal all the more delicious. No one with any sense is claiming full credit for it, but nor are we just buzzing flies, fit only to be swatted away by those with a bigger soapbox to stand on. We won a very minor victory in a not-particularly-important fight. If someone wants to make a comprehensive chart about how much money the industry is losing to used games sales vs. how much they're losing to bloated budgets for bland sequels with diminishing returns, I'm down... but, if you don't mind, I think I'll take my victories where I can find them. Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-33127626038464284572013-05-12T22:53:00.000-07:002013-05-12T23:15:43.095-07:00Review: Dead Island: Riptide - ¡Viva la sangre!<i><b>Publisher:</b> Deep Silver<br />
<b>Developer(s):</b> Techland <br />
<b>Platforms:</b> PC, PS3, Xbox 360 </i><br />
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<i>Dead Island</i> is an easy series to criticize. A resolutely B level zombie game from relatively little known European developer, Techland, it only made it's way into the average gamer's radar thanks to a head turning zombie-attack-in-reverse cinematic trailer going viral. Up until that point, the only other console offering from Techland had been the middling Western shooter, <i>Call Of Juarez</i>. The trailer for <i>Dead Island</i> was a huge stroke of luck for a game that likely would have come and gone without making much of a ripple. It also raised expectations to an absurd level given the developers previous output.<br />
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Reviewers slapped it for it's graphics, it's clunky interface, a plethora of bugs, uninteresting characters, laughable dialogue and a nearly non-existent story. I even heard people complaining that the game wasn't like the trailer which boggled my mind because... how would that even work? (Does anyone think that the live action trailer for <i>Call Of Duty: Ghosts</i> means you're going to be able to play as an aborigine warrior? It was just a cinematic trailer, guys.) The game was carried mostly by it's melee-focused action/RPG combat. Guns and ammo were very hard to find and almost useless to anyone who wasn't playing the gun specialist character, Purna. Hitting zombies in the face with electric sledgehammers and poison katanas was a surprising amount of fun, even if the charm started to wear off by the last fourth of the game. This was enough, however, to carry the game onto being a modest hit.<br />
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I wasn't at all surprised when they announced <i>Dead Island: Riptide</i> last year. Careful to frame it as more of an expansion than a sequel, with a slightly lowered price point to match, it seems meant to serve as a place holder until a proper sequel can be released down the line. It features the same cast of character, with one new character who specializes in fist fighting, on a new island fighting the same zombie threat.<br />
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Most of the criticisms of the game are, in fact, pretty accurate and not much has changed for <i>Riptide</i>. The story is still very silly and the plot is advanced mostly through your characters being very, very dumb. There's still plenty of bugs to be found including glitchy weather effects that stop and start at random, very hinky frame rate drops when things get crowded, weird collision detection moments and a mini-map that has regressed into near uselessness whenever you're out in the forest or boating.<br />
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Techland hasn't completely ignored our pleas, though. We now have a proper reticule. Importing your character allows for a raise in your level cap to even further buff up your character. There are also additional leveling you can do in each of the weapon types, hand-to-hand, blunt, sharp, and firearms, that will increase the more you use them, meaning finding that sledgehammer when you wanted a machete doesn't mean it has to be completely useless. Co-op play scales so that your level 66 Xian can play with someone else's level 10 John with no ill effects. Something you can't even do in a snazzier, higher profile co-op game like <i>Borderlands 2</i>. Guns and ammo are more plentiful and once you level them up a bit you can explode heads with your shotgun like a champ no matter which character you play. They've also added Dead Zones which are separate areas ruled by a much-tougher-than-normal mini-boss. These mini-bosses all have roughly the same abilities, though, so it would have been nice if Techland put a little more effort into giving these mini-bosses some extra flavor.<br />
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As is becoming the trend, the game also introduces a number of different holdout sequences with options like electrified fences, minigun placements and environmental hazards to slow down the horde. They game also introduces mines as a grenade type for some additional defense. Unfortunately, after the first couple, it starts to feel like a chore. It doesn't help that there are never enough zombies at one time for you to feel like you're in danger. Even on single player I never lost an NPC. Siege sequences like this need stronger direction so that it feels like you're barely keeping everything together as you rescue NPC's, erect new barriers or lay down some covering fire with a minigun. Without that, they feel kind of tepid and overlong.<br />
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That said, if you liked the first game, <i>Riptide</i> is an ever-so-slightly more streamlined expansion of the original. The quality I like the most about it is precisely the thing that keeps it's Metacritic rating in the mid-60's. While recent games like <i>Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon</i> trade on silly 80's nostalgia, complete with ironic homophobia and sexual encounters of questionable consent, the <i>Dead Island</i> games are what <i>Blood Dragon</i> tries so hard to be: the modern video game equivalent of a grindhouse movie.<br />
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As someone who grew up on weird cult movies, the one trait that they all share is the earnestness with which they were made. It's the difference between <i>Evil Dead</i> and <i>House Of 1000 Corpses</i>. <i>Dead Island</i> wants very badly to be a tense, gripping action/horror game. It isn't. From Sam B's omnipresent one hit wonder "Who Do You Voodoo, Bitch?" to the frighteningly cross- and dead-eyed woman in the makeshift hospital who drones her sad life story every time you pass her by, it lures you into it's absurdity so often that it's impossible to take it seriously.<br />
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However, just when you think the whole thing is a joke, you take a trip through some pitch black sewer or sparsely-lighted building that surprises you with some real tension. You can hear the zombies moaning and your flashlight is almost dead, so you hurl a flare ahead of you to see a small squad of zombies standing there, staring at nothing and just waiting until you get close enough for them to lurch at you. Then it's back to the comedy as you pop it's head like a grape with a shotgun blast and kick it's still teetering corpse to the ground as it's arms weave around where it's head used to be, as if asking itself "wait, it was just here a second ago..."<br />
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I'm not sure if the debt<i> Dead Island</i> and<i> Riptide</i> owe to Italian horror movies by guys like Umberto Lenzi or Ruggero Deodato (or even Lucio Fulci if we're feeling generous) are deliberate but the parallels are certainly there. Other franchises base their zombie games firmly in the early George Romero model as far as clarity of tone and the simplicity of the concept. In Italian horror, the result is the thing. Whatever it takes to shock or appall, that's what they'll do. Slow zombies? Fast zombies? Big, hulking monsters in straightjackets? Sure, throw 'em all in. <i>Left 4 Dead</i> has the same approach but the setting and the atmosphere is vintage Romero.<br />
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<i>Dead Island</i>, on the other hand, is total Eurosleaze. The severed torso special edition that the <a href="http://kotaku.com/5976075/this-games-special-edition-comes-with-a-statue-of-a-bikini+clad-severed-female-torso">gaming commentariat got so incensed over</a> a few months ago is straight out of something like <i>Cannibal Ferox</i> or one of Sergio Martino's Giallo films. They can't go nearly as far as a Fulci movie without getting slapped with an AO rating but the basic components are all there: boobs, blood, bad acting, sub par design and copious gore wrapped around a little nothing of a story. And that final scene? Straight out of something like <i>Nightmare City</i>.<br />
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If you've been on the fence about the <i>Dead Island</i> series, that's all you really need to know going in. It's purely cheap thrills and low brow fun. If you can revel in the B movie cheese of it, you'll have a blast... especially with a team of four friends and a couple of beers. <i>Riptide</i>, in particular, cuts the fat that weighed down the first game so that it never wears out it's welcome. If Techland continues to release <i>Dead _____</i> games of roughly this length at this slightly reduced price point, I think they could really be on to something.<br />
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If that sounds like damning with faint praise, it's genuinely not. The slightly sleazy Euro edge to the series is what makes it stand out in a crowded field of zombie games. I hope Techland delves further into that end of the pool for it's inevitable next gen sequel. I can be moved to tears by something like Telltale's <i>The Walking Dead</i> and still appreciate smashing a zombie's head into paste with a giant sledgehammer in <i>Dead Island</i>. The game is critic-proof, really, because it does exactly what it says on the tin. So long as Techland keeps the series fresh, they can have a perennial hit on their hands. It may never win awards but it can certainly be satisfying.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-1341500655035005482013-04-02T02:54:00.000-07:002013-04-02T02:54:16.301-07:00Crossed: Badlands - #1-25I am an unwavering Garth Ennis fanboy. Which is not as easy a task as
I might like. The Irish born writer is notoriously unimpressed with
social media and the internet, so unless you're following comics news
sites pretty closely, his books can come and go without much fanfare. This leads to a lot of criminally underrated comics.<br />
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In the last couple of years, he's finished up his very uneven superhero piss take <i>The Boys</i> and he's done the opening arcs for a couple of other titles: suburban housewife/vigilante <i>Jennifer Blood</i> and a reboot of <i>The Shadow</i>,
which were excellent but quickly dissolved into mediocrity after his departure.
The former demonstrated his proficiency for mixing the violent, profane
and funny while the latter indulged his meticulous knowledge of
military history through the lens of a pulp hero. His empathy for
soldiers and unromantic attitude towards warfare are also the basis of
his rock solid <i>Battlefields</i> series and the fantastic <i>Fury MAX</i> ongoing for Marvel.<br />
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However, of his recent work, none was more wild than <i>Crossed</i>.
Ostensibly a book about rage virus-style "zombies" taking over the world,
it was legitimately shocking while occasionally indulging in some
of the darkest, most pitch black humor I've ever read. However, at it's
heart, it was a character piece about a small group of survivors coming
to terms with the new reality and the harsh, demanding rules that came
with it. When any weakness can lead to a hideous death or a hellish
un-life, where do you draw the line? It was truly rough stuff, sort of a comics version of <i>A Serbian Film</i> if the movie had any interest in the interior lives of it's characters.<br />
<img class="mcePageBreak mceItemNoResize" data-mce-src="http://assets.tumblr.com/javascript/tiny_mce_3_5_5/themes/advanced/img/trans.gif" src="http://assets.tumblr.com/javascript/tiny_mce_3_5_5/themes/advanced/img/trans.gif" /><br />
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For <i>Crossed: Badlands</i>,
they took a slightly different approach. It's a bi-weekly book with
Garth again contributing the opening arc but subsequent work done by
regular Avatar writers like Jamie Delano, David Lapham, David Hine, and
Si Spurrier... and much like <i>Jennifer Blood</i> and <i>The Shadow</i>, the stories in his absence range from inconsistent to utterly tedious.<br />
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I have two main problems with <i>Badlands</i> as a series of minis. The primary problem is that they all seem to follow the same pattern: look at us humans... boy, aren't we similar to the monsters when you really get down to it? Which isn't nearly as interesting as a survival story involving people you might actually kinda like. This was at it's nadir for David Hine's arc about a writer's retreat lorded over by a debauched megalomaniac that was so rote and by-the-book that you could predict every beat of the story. Jamie Delano, on the other hand, was the most successful at this, throwing together a series of modern American archetypal characters, but he ultimately lost the fight in making those characters interesting precisely because of their archetype status. The disconnection I felt made the ultimate goal of the story feel muddled.<br />
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In the Ennis-penned <i>Crossed</i>, he embraced the absurd (a soldier with a bandaged face who claimed to be Prince Harry) but only to lighten what is otherwise a bunch of relatively grounded characters. His first two leads were quiet pragmatists who bounced off of characters who were either cold and capable or otherwise normal people trying to reassert their normal lives onto a world that doesn't work that way anymore. They were relatable people you could, for the most part, see existing in the real world.<br />
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This leads to the second main problem of <i>Badlands</i>: I don't care about anything that's happening to these characters. They are so cartoonish (David Lapham's Yellowbelly from the third arc) or so over-the-top in their hideousness (everyone in Hine's run) that they repel your interest. <i>Badlands</i> essentially opens the <i>Crossed</i> universe to any genre the writer's like so there's certainly room for <i>Crossed </i>as absurdist black comedy (Lapham) or star-crossed romance (Spurrier) but the whiplash in tone you get going from writer to writer makes it hard to invest. I'd be more forgiving if these were all separate mini-series but connecting them all to the same title leads me to expect a consistency of tone that's not there.<br />
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It's not all bad, though. While I found his arc involving a Russian criminal falling in love with his parole officer a bit too melodramatic, Si Spurrier's Annual about a mad Scottish soldier trying to trace the beginnings of the <i>Crossed</i> epidemic was a lot of fun and the webcomic where the character originated, <a href="http://www.crossedcomic.com/category/the-webcomic/"><i>Wish You Were Here</i></a>, are also really good. (Think <i>The Walking Dead</i> in the <i>Crossed</i> universe with a more interesting lead character.) If someone other than Ennis is going to have their hand on the till, Spurrier is the one I like the most.<br />
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David Lapham is a tremendous writer but none of the characterization and inventiveness I loved so much in his Eisner winning crime series <i>Stray Bullets</i> has made it's way to <i>Crossed</i>. His Yellowbelly arc was too cartoonish to carry the weight of all the black comedy. His <i>Psychopath</i> mini and it's <i>Badlands</i> follow up were both better in theory than execution and his <i>Family Values</i> mini-series just kind of laid there on the page, inoffensive (by <i>Crossed</i> standards), predictable and kind of boring. At this point, it feels like he's just pulling a paycheck.<br />
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Jamie Delano's arc was probably the best of the bunch in terms of overall concept but it didn't quite fulfill it's potential and the less said of Hine's arc the better. This brings us to current day and the return of Garth Ennis to the title. His first arc, about a pragmatic young man who learns that it's much tougher to make hard decisions when you actually have skin in the game, was the best the series had been since his original mini. Given the spotty quality when he's not around, I expected a return to form. So it's surprising how little I was bowled over by it.<br />
<br />The story involves four soldiers, an Irishman, a Scotsman, a Welshman, and an Englishman, on a mission to wipe the Crossed from Great Britain and start over. Fair enough. It seems to be everything Ennis excels at: military characters, bawdy humor, and ultraviolence. So why am I not more on board with this?<br />
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The soldiers, outside of the Irishman, are a bit too broadly drawn. They're defined by their stereotypes and I've yet to see anything approaching a real personality from them. These are not the "normal people" from his first two stories. Over the course of the issue, the soldiers rescue a priest and a group of children who are painting their faces and cursing to try and pass for being Crossed. Ennis has really hammered home his disgust at superstition as a refuge for the stupid/ignorant over the course of the series, an idea that returns here as the priest is mocked repeatedly for a fool. Most annoyingly, the book makes no pretense that it's being written for trade with a final scene that ends on a reaction shot that's clearly meant to continue on the next page.<br />
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The whole issue just feels overly familiar. It has all the standard Garth Ennis characters and tropes but they don't feel like they're being rearranged in some kind of interesting way. You have the introspective narrator, the macho soldiers, the naive priest, innocent children, and a quixotic mission. You have the bad jokes, the blood, and the monsters sticking things in other things that should not have things stuck in them. It just reads as Ennis on autopilot.<br />
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That said, this is the first issue of four, so there's enough time left to draw things out and hopefully take the story into uncharted territory. Ennis on autopilot isn't a terrible thing, he's entertaining even when he's repeating himself, but as the creator of this world and the one who made the most lasting impact with his stories, the stakes are a bit higher. Clearly there's no way the soldiers can succeed in their mission, so our interest will have to be in why these hard men fail. Which is an idea I'm interested in.<br />
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In an interview I read, Ennis has mentioned that he wants to introduce recurring characters and while I don't think anyone should be "safe," I think this is a stellar idea. This is a book in dire need of a direction and a mandate. Lapham and Spurrier already have recurring characters, though Lapham's seems to have had a logical end point and Spurrier's is still in the webcomic. Finding some kind of consistent through-line is very important in maintaining interest. For awhile there, the only reason I haven't stopped buying <i>Badlands</i> was because I was too lazy to hit "unsubscribe" on the Midtown website, so there's nowhere else for them to go but up. I'm still interested in the idea and the world, they just need to populate it with people I actually want to read about.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-800408695521562852013-03-23T17:25:00.001-07:002013-03-23T17:55:37.987-07:00Gears Of War: Judgment - Campaign Review<b>This post contains spoilers!</b><i> </i><br />
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<i>Gears Of War</i> is a series I'm constantly on the fence about. As much as I love the series for it's cover-based gameplay, giant setpieces, and huge suite of modes and options giving the player great value for their money, it's not a series without some deep flaws. The characters are all cartoons, right down to their thick-necked, impossibly proportioned character models and ridiculous "ooh rah" mentality. Unless you're willing to read the novelizations and comic books, there's not a whole lot of interesting stuff going on from a story perspective. It's a bunch of war movie cliches and melodramatic nonsense that telegraphs every character moment and plot twist by signal flare.<br />
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The first <i>Gears</i> game is, to my mind, the only one that had the right tone: it was a romp. There were serious moments, or moments we were meant to take seriously, but it was all in service of blowing shit up. It seems that, once the first game set the world on fire, the writers never quite found their footing. They had to make the narrative more and more grandiose to match the level of attention heaped upon the game and it's never really been to the series' benefit. It certainly made for some excellent setpieces but the stubborn refusal of characters to act human rubbed against ham-handed moments so incongruous to what came before that my reaction was to sputter with laughter, not get choked up.<br />
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As a sidenote: there's plenty of people who like to act as though the narrative of the <i>Gears</i> games are bulletproof. Why question something so resolutely stupid? Well, for the same reason I was one of the guys criticizing the storytelling issues in <i>Mass Effect 3</i>: if the writers want us to take their story seriously, we have to oblige them and judge it as such. If this were <i>Bulletstorm</i> or <i>Vanquish</i>, I'd let a lot of things pass because they never wanted to be anything more than a ridiculous shooter. While <i>Gears</i> may have started as a ridiculous shooter, it discovered ambitions along the way they could never pull off. If you just want to shoot stuff, you can pretty much stop wasting your time with this article now. It's still really good at that.<br />
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This was all supposed to change with <i>Gears Of War: Judgement</i>. Developers People Can Fly, those responsible for the aforementioned <i>Bulletstorm</i>, are solid developers picking up a very tried-and-true series. There's no pressure to reinvent it, merely give it a twist while Epic proper works on the first next-gen <i>Gears</i> game. It's role as a placeholder actually works in it's favor because it means they can take more chances than <i>Gears Of War 4</i> can. They picked game journalist and respected author Tom Bissell to write the game, lending a little credibility to the series and hopefully moving it beyond the Random Quip Generator it had been up to that point. Based on the hushed tones other game journalists spoke of Bissell in, I figured good things were in store.<br />
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Sadly, the campaign is only a marginal success... mostly due to the unimpeachable gory action the series is known for.<br />
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The first thing I noticed when they previewed the game was the slightly tweaked character models. While still exaggerated, they seemed a little less beefy and more realistic. As a prequel, this could either be because the characters are younger or because of a commitment to a slightly less bro-ified attitude towards the series going forward. Choosing Baird and Cole as the leads was a smart choice as they were the characters who had the most personality in the original trilogy. A game where we see Baird become the increasingly bitter and sarcastic man he is in the first <i>Gears</i> is very much a game I'd like to play. Turns out, I'm still waiting.<br />
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People Can Fly know their way around arcade-y score-based action games and <i>Judgement</i> sort of smashes together the vanilla story mode and the arcade mode from the previous games into one. The idea is to collect stars through your performance. Each area has three stars to collect depending on how well your team does. Die or go DBNO (Down But Not Out) and you lose stars. Kill your enemies in various creative ways to earn Ribbons which increase your stars. Collect enough stars and you unlock bonuses including an extra couple of campaign chapters called Aftermath which are a side story to <i>Gears 3</i> and the only part of the campaign that has no Declassified modifiers. It's also the best chunk of the story in the game, partly for that exact reason.<br />
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Every significant firefight in the game has an option to be "Declassified," which imposes any of a number of different battle conditions on you from limited arsenals to increased difficulty to visual impairment which will allow you to earn stars faster at increased risk. It'd be an excellent system if it didn't hamstring narrative momentum and pull you out of the game.<br />
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By interrupting you every ten or fifteen minutes by asking you to click on a big COG logo to see what the Declassified factors are for the next fight, <i>Judgement</i> is constantly reminding you that it's a game. I'm a little shocked that Declassified wasn't offered as an optional mode or unlocked after beating the game. The single player wouldn't have been particularly compelling anyway but at least you'd have been able to focus on the story and the flow of action unhindered. Every Declassified logo was an opportunity for me to stop for a bathroom break or a bite to eat or a "Oh, hey, I should go back and continue my <i>Persona 3</i> game... I'll come back to this later." <br />
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The fragmented nature of the narrative gives added scrutiny to the story that it doesn't particularly need. In addition to much quieter, more sober iterations of Baird and Cole (not <i>once</i> are the words "Cole Train" uttered over the course of the campaign), your other squadmates are by-the-book cadet Sofia Hendricks and scarred, grizzled Russian-analogue Garron Paduk, who sort of becomes the game's Baird despite the presence of the <i>actual</i> Baird.<br />
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Paduk is far and away the best character in the game. He has a history, a point of view, motivation, a disrespect for authority, and a sharp tongue. And then there's poor Sofia. If you were thinking that a respected writer might mean a well-drawn female character in a video game... not so much. At the military tribunal, Sofia is the only one to try and pass the blame to her squadmates. Later on, it's revealed that she was schtupping an ancillary character they've been searching for, a married man and father. And at the end of the Aftermath chapter it's revealed that she moved on to sleeping with Garron and was brutally murdered off screen to attempt to add a bit of dramatic weight to the story. The Feminazis Coming To Destroy Gaming will not be amused.<br />
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The game is ostensibly about Baird's Kilo Squad trying to stop a rampaging Locust leader named Karn by dropping a missile on his head. However, Karn is a just a walking boss fight waiting to start. The real antagonist of the story is Loomis, a moustachioed avatar of myopic military arrogance. After disobeying orders and dropping a Lightmass missile on Karn's head, Loomis has Kilo Squad arrested for treason. The game itself happens in flashback. (I was hoping there'd be some element of Baird and crew as unreliable narrators but that's a bit too ambitious, I suppose.) When you Declassify a section, there's normally a bit of text about how Kilo is alleging something that runs counter to Loomis or the COG brass' intel, illustrating pretty clearly how badly the Locust were underestimated. It's an additional shade to the series I actually quite liked given how black and white the conflict has been portrayed.<br />
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By insisting on court martialing Kilo Squad in the middle of a city that's at war, with Locust literally breaking down their doors, there's no interpretation of Loomis' actions that doesn't fit the definition of cartoon villain. Regardless of Kilo's testimony, it's clear he intends to kill them for their disobedience. Between the Declassified text and putting soldiers in harm's way needlessly out of ego and single-mindedness, they spend the entire game building and building up to a reckoning for Loomis and... it all ends with Baird essentially shaking his hand and going their separate ways. No harm done.<br />
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Yeah, really, that's it. It's a moment every bit as stupid as the finale of <i>Gears Of War 3</i> where they tease the idea that there's something more to the Locusts before... well, committing genocide. There's no case to be made that Loomis is just a hard man making hard choices. He's willfully doing wrong because he cannot admit that the Locust are any smarter than "animals" and because he can't see beyond hardline military doctrine. There's a moment in Aftermath where Kilo Squad comes across a statue dedicated to Loomis and I would have been fine with that as a "the real heroes never get recognition" moment if it was clear that he got the ignominious death his actions warranted.<br />
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There are action genre rules, the same as in horror. If a character is a dick in the first act, usually an officer or bureaucrat, he gets his just desserts in
the third. Hopefully in a fun, ironic way that will make us cheer. Because that's what we're here for. Maybe he dies due to his own arrogance. Maybe he dies despite Kilo's best efforts to intercede, thus making them seem more heroic. Maybe he survives despite all odds and Kilo helplessly watches him leave to continue to lose the war for them, but you don't have your hero characters <i>absolve</i> the villain without the villain changing their ways. If you're going to buck action genre conventions, you need to make your intentions very clear as to why or else it seems as though you're wildly out of sync with the genre you're working in. Because what we got was a very unfulfilling, sour ending.<br />
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If only this were the game's only story-related problems.<br />
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The game is woefully in need or memorable setpiece fights. The only one that stands out to me is a Normandy-like beach invasion followed later by a defense of the same area, which only stands out due to how tired of a concept it still is and how it will be nakedly reproduced for multiplayer.<i> Judgement </i>seems to have fallen in love with wave-based hold out sequences too. There's several dotted over the course of the game which only make the absence of a proper Horde mode more curious. It also becomes a crutch they lean on by the end of the game. By keeping you penned up in one area, they don't have to generate new areas or sequences. The combat mechanics are as solid as ever but nothing stands out after you're done as being memorable as far as settings or enemy types. <br />
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Loomis isn't the only character in the game who has no arc. Character development on the whole just doesn't happen. The opportunity to see Baird and Cole start as rookies and move towards the characters we know from the main series was tantalizing yet is absent in the game itself. Baird has a couple of quips but it otherwise bland as can be. We're left to understand that any serious adjustments to his character were made between the end of <i>Judgement</i> and the first <i>Gears</i>, which is an utterly wasted opportunity.<br />
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The handling of Cole is even worse. He has none of the boisterous personality he's known for and doesn't show any by the end of the game. At one point Loomis tells him that he's been "uncharacteristically quiet" and I had to chuckle. Where's this loud Cole he's talking about? The only lines of Cole's I remember are him off-handedly reminding us of how rich he was as a thrashball star. Using his inside voice, no less. There's a case to be made that Cole needed to be a bit more grounded in reality but, at the same time, it wastes Lester Speight as a voice actor. Dude does not do "demure" well. There's a middle ground to hit with the character that the game has no interest in.<br />
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These are all things that could have been handled in a few lines of dialogue or a short cutscene. I'm not asking for the game to be based around it's characters, merely that it give us something, anything, to chew on while we play. The <i>Gears</i> series has always struggled in this respect. While <i>Judgement</i> represents an attempt to grow the series up, it's still a long way from meeting it's potential. It still has the smooth, gratifying gameplay we expect from the series but there's only so long you can coast on that. Mechanics get repetitive over time and familiarity will eventually cause people to move onto the next thing. However, if your characters and your world are compelling, that will go a long way towards extending the life of your franchise. Given how sober and ponderous and mishandled <i>Judgement</i>'s story turned out to be, it's a lesson Epic is still learning.<br />
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<i>Gears Of War</i> is not a series that needs to be taken seriously. It just needs to be a well-written action game. Well-written action, contrary to being "dumb" as people assume, actually means being clever rather than high-minded. There's no Terrence Malick film hiding somewhere in the <i>Gears Of War</i> universe. There are series that can get away with Big Thoughts but <i>Gears</i> isn't one of them. All we need is solid action and to not have our intelligence insulted. They've long since mastered the former, now we just need them to start on the latter.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-85976317524132910302013-03-20T11:35:00.002-07:002013-03-20T11:35:15.569-07:00iOS Review: DDR Dance Wars<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Dance Dance Revolution: Dance Wars</b><br />
<b>Developer: Bemani</b><br />
<b>Publisher: Konami</b><br />
<b>Price: Free (with microtransactions)</b><br />
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Rhythm game institution <i>Dance Dance Revolution</i> has seen better days. The genre has seen a huge contraction due to an over-crowded market. Those of us who played it when it hit American shores have gotten older and more fearful of having our future political ambitions derailed by photos showing up on Facebook, so we're not as likely to pull out the dance mats as we once were. On the upside, just about anyone has time for a quick two minutes of tapping our smartphones to cheesy dance music while pretending to work.<br />
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There's already a proper mobile <i>Dance Dance Revolution</i> game, <i>DDR S+</i>, already available which offers the classic DDR experience, so seeing a more social media based, competitive, freemium game show up in this market was a little surprising. Making an impression in a crowded field is no easy task even with name recognition, especially if that name is well past it's prime. So... does <i>DDR Dance Wars</i> [dance metaphor] or does it simply [dance metaphor]?<br />
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The first thing I was struck by when I started the game up was just how chintzy and low budget it looked. While <i>DDR S+</i> feels like an actual app, <i>Dance Wars</i> seems like a glorified browser game. There's plenty of free-to-play games with a solid presentation so having Bemani fumble on even that was not a hopeful sign.<br />
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It took me a little while to find my footing in the game because I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be clicking on. Some of the buttons just look like generic headers or graphics. I found myself futzing my way through the screens until I figured out what was where. Not nearly enough thought went into a clear, easy-to-use layout.<br />
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Once you figure that out, the game opens up a bit. You have a your standard Free Play mode where you can practice what is initially a very small batch of songs. Mission mode allows you to unlock more tracks by completing various songs under various conditions as well as stickers, the currency of Battle mode. At the end of a song, either in Free Play or the Mission mode, you have the option of setting it as your Battle Track. The idea is to set your highest score as a Battle Track which others will play against in Battle mode.<br />
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Battle mode is not a direct competition but simply pits your high score against the score of whichever opponent you choose. You're competing for stickers which, in turn, unlock even more songs. Each song is divided up into five stickers and if you can collect and hold each sticker for the song, you unlock it. You're given up to eight different opponents to choose from which actually results in a bit of strategic thinking. Is the guy with "Max 300" on Expert some kind of savant or is he bluffing with a D rating to keep the scrubs away? On the other hand, is the low level player with the generic batch of numbers and "Kind Lady" on Basic just some random dude who played the game once and quit or did he AA or AAA the song to lure in the suckers?<br />
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Either way, the game attempts to keep you on your toes by speeding up the song a couple of times during the course of the battle but since these always happen at exactly the same point of a song, you can pretty easily train yourself. The people who set up a "war cry" to accompany the sped up sections, which is just a random line of text to taunt your opponent, actually succeed more because you eye is automatically drawn to reading the text which can then throw off your timing. You can also buy traps to put on your tracks for an additional level of difficulty to whomever challenges you.<br />
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If you're looking to stack the odds in your favor, there's always buffs available in the Store for the cost of either the Respect Points you gain from completing Battles or Missions or DDR Points which cost actual money. You can also use your Respect Points on any of four different power ups which can be leveled up for increased effects.<br />
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Your biggest boon in Battle mode is your Crew, friends who also play the game. The game allows you ten initially but the size of your crew can be increased through items bought in the store. In order to join a crew, however, you need to sign up for Japan's mobile gaming social network site GREE. Sign up can apparently only be done via the game, so you can't start an account from your desktop and log in later which is a pain. If you don't have any friends of your own on GREE, the game will auto-populate a number of people you can randomly invite. These crewmembers will go with you into Battle and buff you. There's a cooldown period afterwards but having a couple crewmembers along for the ride and a score boosting power up means even inexperienced players can essentially buy a victory.<br />
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Even in the mildly diverting Battle mode, the general sense of a game that's been tossed off in a fortnight follows you everywhere. The game will not notify you if you've leveled up. You need to go back to your profile screen to check. There seems to be some sync issues occasionally where I'll fail out of a mission because of a long string of Great and Good ratings but if I immediately replay the song in Free Mode on the same difficulty, I'll be scoring Perfect or Marvelous.<br />
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This is a free-to-play game, though, so your biggest obstacle to play is managing your Stamina meter. It defaults at 500, which essentially means you can play five Battles or Missions before exhausting it. There is a power up that reduces the amount of stamina each match costs as well as an item in the store that can permanently raise your stamina and consumables items for a one time boost, so the amount you play will be decided on how invested you're willing to be in a very mediocre game.<br />
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Old school <i>DDR</i> fans will appreciate the returning characters or the songs which have become old favorites. New players will likely be put off by how low budget and cheap the game feels, even at the low, low price of free. The game will be supported by community events that will allow you to unlock accessories for your characters, bonus items or even new tracks. They already have a cross-promotion with another Konami beat-matching game, the vastly superior <i>jukebeat</i>, which will unlock three remixed game tracks for <i>Contra</i>, <i>Lethal Enforcers</i> and <i>Frogger</i>. Being optional tracks, though, they're only available for Free Play mode.<br />
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Nothing in <i>DDR Dance Wars</i> is overly offensive but when there are so many classier rhythm games for iOS, including it's sister game, <i>DDR S+</i>, the game really doesn't make a case for itself. While there's a bit of fun to be had and the freemium model is not used in a particularly odious manner, you can easily forget the game in on your phone. Ultimately, it's a solid idea with a poor presentation.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-10385162597022656182013-03-03T14:08:00.001-08:002013-03-03T14:08:25.095-08:00On CliffyB, Micro-Transactions, and EA vs. ValveYou've probably already read <a href="http://dudehugespeaks.tumblr.com/post/44243746261/nickels-dimes-and-quarters">this</a>. Just about anyone who follows gaming news sites has read and developed an opinion about ex-Epic design director and video game gadfly Cliff Bleszinski's Tumblr post about micro-transactions. Some sites, like Kotaku, <a href="http://kotaku.com/5987864/nickels-dimes-and-quarters">printed the article without comment</a>, which reads like a public co-sign. Other places, like Destructoid, wrote a <a href="http://www.destructoid.com/on-cliffy-b-microtransactions-and-electronic-arts-247379.phtml">polite but assertive counter-argument</a>. Comment threads have grown bloated with rage. Fingers have been waggled at people on both sides of the argument. It's a thing.<br />
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Regardless of whether or not I agree with Bleszinski (I don't), I do respect the man's candor. Developers and publishers are notoriously squirrely about doing <i>anything</i> openly. The fact that Cliff is willing to let us look behind the curtain at what a AAA game developer really thinks is undoubtedly a good thing. He has a top down perspective of the industry most of us never get to hear about. However, as informative as it can be, it also illustrates how disconnected he and his peers are from your average rank and file gamer.<br />
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It's very eye-opening how little sympathy he seems to have for his audience, shrugging off valid complaints as the simple mechanics of doing business and laying blame on the shoulders of the people buying his games for the state of the industry, ignoring that we're only working with the tool <i>they</i> are giving us. At any rate, given that he's stepped down from his position at Epic in his prime, he's also rich enough to not give a fuck what anyone thinks of him.<br />
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One of the major points of his argument, about the encroachment of micro-transactions in AAA titles, is not something that's going away. For better or for worse. Nonetheless, where Cliff (and many of his colleagues, I'm sure) see this as some kind of inevitability, guys like me see the kind of myopic, single-minded, fear-based corporate thinking that's hobbling the industry. It's greed, rationalized.<br />
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There's nothing fundamentally wrong with micro-transactions in games, just in how they're being implemented. Micro-transactions are a tool. Multiplayer is a tool. Basic common sense dictates that you use your tools efficiently depending on the project you're tackling. If you try to install a window using only a hammer, you'll likely end up with a lot of blood and swearing. And no window. Cliff has a <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/170144/what_if_cliff_ran_the_world.php">history of missing the point</a> on this issue, like insisting that games like <i>Shadows Of The Damned</i> would have been improved by multiplayer despite Grasshopper Manufacture not having a large enough team, funding or any kind of logical in to justify it.<br />
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For years now we've been in a vicious circle, watching publishers chase after Activision's omnipresent <i>Call Of Duty</i> franchise in hopes of mimicking their success. EA threw more money than I'd care to count, including a PR blitz that seemed to last for months, at <i>Battlefield 3</i> in hopes of unseating the champ and still fell short. Yet they keep trying the same tricks over and over again on every franchise under their umbrella expecting a different result. You don't need me to tell you what that's the definition of.<br />
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So when Cliff gets exasperated at the terribly low opinion people have about EA, I get exasperated right back because I cannot understand how any intelligent person doesn't get it. This isn't a question of people picking on poor, poor multi-billion dollar corporations like EA over something as ridiculous as marketing... this is people catching on to a company that insists on making the exact same mistakes over and over and over again. No one is blaming EA for wanting to make money, they're blaming EA for being <i>bad at it</i> in the long term. They're blaming EA for introducing cynicism into something they love. For reminding us that the industry is owned and managed largely by giant corporations who look at us as walking billfolds rather than people with brains and the ability to walk away from something we don't like. Respect must be earned and maintained.<br />
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The argument against EA is multifacited. EA wants uniformity. They want the same rules to apply to everything, because to approach each property or franchise differently would require thought and long-term planning. Simply sayings "add micro-transactions and multiplayer" is something a bunch of shareholders who know nothing about games can understand. It may mitigate risk but it also results in burning their bridges as they're building them. It gets much harder to build a head of steam when everyone is waiting for the day where someone makes a big tentpole, franchise game that can't be beaten without micro-transactions. Because, based on their history, that is the exact kind of thing EA would do.<br />
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The <i>Call Of Duty</i> bubble is going to burst. Every year there are contenders and every year they're knocked out but people will eventually tire of the feedback loop. And right now, the video game industry doesn't have anything else to pick up the slack other than the seemingly evergreen sports franchises. Millions and millions of dollars have been thrown at MMO's that have under-performed and been shuttered. The handheld market has given way to smartphones and tablets that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo don't own. We have a new generation of consoles coming and rumors of Microsoft releasing an online-only, EA-partnered system swirling that will likely hand the console crown back to Sony. A good PR team can dazzle but it only takes one well-informed friend to kill the buzz.<br />
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And when the dust settles, Valve will still be there. Not because they are inherently good and righteous people but because, as others have <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-02-saturday-soapbox-voting-with-your-wallets-isnt-the-whole-answer-to-abusive-micro-transactions">mentioned</a>, they're smart and they're privately-owned. They make bucketloads of money because they treat their audience like people who will leave if they feel they aren't getting a fair deal. <a href="http://www.gamefront.com/response-to-cliffy-b-micro-transactions-will-never-make-games-better/">Other people</a> have broken down the differences between EA's approach to DLC and Valve's, but it boils down to respect. Valve's<i> Team Fortress 2</i> micro-transactions do not hinder the game, they personalize it.<br />
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While EA is confused at why they're being voted the worst company in America, Valve seems to understand the power of not underestimating your audience. (I quoted Valve head Gabe Newell in a <a href="http://thdefenestrator.tumblr.com/post/41429452437/you-have-to-stop-thinking-that-youre-in-charge">Tumblr post</a> not too long ago that illustrates the kind of thinking EA has yet to grok.) Being a Capitalist doesn't mean you have license to treat your audience as disposable and there's no rule that you can't be richer than God and also well-liked. So long as Valve remains a private company, you can expect their hot streak to continue.<br />
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People use the term "vocal minority" like it's derogative. They tend to
forget the operative word there, which is "vocal." Your average casual
gamer who buys only <i>Madden</i> and <i>Halo</i> and <i>Call Of Duty</i> may not
have an opinion about Day One DLC or micro-transactions but you can be
sure he has a friend who does. If that friend tells him not to buy the next Xbox because you have to be online at all times to use it, he'll listen. These aren't numbers you can plug into a spreadsheet. It's a human factor and it's an area corporations like EA have a damnably hard time understanding. Get enough people crowing about something and others will listen.<br />
<br />
So, while I respect Bleszinski for providing gamers with an insight into how high level suits in this industry think and I admire him for the foresight to take a step back to see how the chips fall before making his next move, his insistence on blaming his audience for his own short-sightedness means that, even after the future of the industry has been written, there will people waiting in the wings to bring that bad old cynicism back. And the whole thing will start all over again.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-48879222513800703952013-02-24T15:47:00.003-08:002013-02-25T22:38:58.126-08:00Aliens: Colonial Marines<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Aliens: Colonial Marines</b></span> <br />
<br />
<b>Publisher:</b> Sega<br />
<b>Developer(s):</b> Gearbox... and TimeGate, and Demiurge, and Nerve... <br />
<b>Platforms:</b> PC, PS3, Xbox 360, & WiiU (eventually)<br />
<br />
<i>Spoiler Alert! You shouldn't play this game anyway so I'm going to spoil it in full...</i> <br />
<br />
Walking in on your grandfather watching the chestburster scene in <i>Alien</i> when you're nine years old is every bit as scarring as you'd think. A few days later, after I stopped hyperventilating, I convinced him to let me watch the entire movie and the crusty old bastard actually agreed. It's very likely the source of my arachnophobia and my fear of being raped in my face. No matter how many facehuggers, chestbursters and xenomorphs I've gibbed in various video game incarnations since then, it's always remained a primal fear of mine.<br />
<br />
When I found out that Gearbox was developing a first person shooter and supposedly canonical sequel to the second movie, I was immediately on board. When I saw the demo footage they showed at conventions, I got excited. Rumors of a troubled six year (!) development and a lack of any real gameplay footage prior to release tempered that excitement but I still picked up the game on day one figuring, well, even if it's crap it'll give me something to write about.<br />
<br />
And... I am definitely writing about it.<br />
<br />
Watching the explosion of pointed fingers around this game happen (which has been <a href="http://www.destructoid.com/products_detail.phtml?p=Aliens%3A+Colonial+Marines&category=">well-documented by Destructoid</a>) seems like it could threaten to overshadow the actual content of the game. The game has been roundly (and rightly) panned by critics but reading those reviews you could pick out a lot of criticisms there were simply nitpick-y. The game failed so utterly at getting you to suspend your disbelief that suddenly everything became suspect. So, is it really as bad as all that? Is it possible to salvage some sense of fun from it?<br />
<br />
Thus far, the only people I've talked to who defend the game are avowed fans of the series. This confuses me, for reasons that I'll get into later, but their argument seems to boil down to the fact that you <i>can</i> successfully play it from beginning to end... and they managed to get a lot of the fan service right. Ripley's pulse rifle/flamethrower combo was a pre-order bonus. Scattered through the game are things like Hicks' shotgun, Vasquez's smart gun, Hudson's pulse rifle that you are free to use which, I guess, evoke some nostalgic feelings for a movie that's become a cultural touchstone. You can also find dog tags for the now-deceased <i>Aliens</i> marines, recreations of certain areas from the movie, and other callbacks. Clearly, the developers (whoever they ultimately were) are familiar with the lore. Honestly, though, unless you're the kind of person who is enchanted by the idea of "oh, that's a thing I recognize from another thing" there really is nothing to recommend the game. It is, at best, a mostly functional FPS that ties into a beloved series.<br />
<br />
I should note that the least worst experience you can have with this game is on the PC where it looks marginally better. Plus, savvy PC gamers have already come up with mods to improve the graphics of the game. If you absolutely, positively <i>must</i> play the game, go for the PC version. I played the game on the 360 which is clearly the worst available option.<br />
<br />
It's hard to know where to start when talking about a game that fails at absolutely everything it tries to do. As shooter, it looks and plays like a last gen title. As an <i>Aliens</i> game, it insults established canon, hand waves away giant plot holes, and misses all of the subtext inherent in the series.<br />
<br />
Slogging through the single player campaign, I witnessed so many bugs and glitches that the whole thing become a comedy to me. Kill a xeno on a wall and it'll stick partway into the wall and twitch endlessly. Gib a xeno and little bits and pieces will hover in the air, spinning in circles because they can't touch the ground. The stealth sequence, already widely mocked for the hilarious stick-up-the-butt walk of the Boiler xenos (which neuters any tension of crawling in a dark sewer without a gun), had the additional hilarity of one of the xenos just walking on top of the water like Suicide Bomber Jesus Alien. During a co-op run, one of my teammates fell halfway into the ground and we had to execute him in cold blood in order get him to respawn. Those are just the ones that come to me off the top of my head. You can find gifs and YouTube clips of other people's experiences with the glitch-y, damn-near-broken game for additional laughs. I couldn't even do a quick 100% of the game because it glitched a pair of dog tags, robbing me of the achievement for collecting all of them.<br />
<br />
Co-op was the most fun I had playing the game because it allowed myself and three other people to <i>Mystery Science Theater</i> our way through the game but even that presented a whole host of other problems. If you imagine what a focused Gearbox <i>Aliens</i> game could have been, four player drop-in-drop-out class-based co-op (like a more linear <i>Borderlands</i>), it only highlights how much of a mess the game really is. You load up a map and you are simply dropped into the shoes of one of four random character models. There's nothing exciting or different about them. The game only plays differently in the sense that it's infinitely more crowded and hard to manage, especially when you factor in having additional brain dead, computer-controlled AI characters. The game shudders nearly to a halt the minute you get into a big firefight. Misery loves company and there's laughs to be had but it's not enough of a justification to play the game.<br />
<br />
Plenty has been said about how ugly the game is, especially in light of the infamous "vertical slice" demo and the promises made by Gearbox, and what you heard is true, and it's especially true on the 360. The game looks not unlike a launch title. Dynamic lighting was promised and not delivered. The screen tearing, lazy textures, the flat animations. It looks genuinely, shockingly bad. Enemies crawl out of black squares that are supposed to pass for vents. A broken light fixture hanging from the ceiling will completely block you from moving. These aren't nitpicks, these are things that any B-grade shooter has evolved past years ago. Where <i>Alien</i> made the chestbursters a drawn out, horrifyingly painful experience, <i>Colonial Marines</i> has them popping out immediately (through body armor) like a game of Whack-A-Mole.<br />
<br />
The actual story of the game is astonishingly amateurish. As one-note as the characters in <i>Aliens</i> were, their one note was usually interesting and had a logical arc. The protagonist, Winter, starts and ends the game a hyper-competent bad ass. Your AI partner, O'Neal, on the other hand, looks like a biker and acts like child. The dialogue between him and Winter is terrible, most of the quips landing flat because they sound weirdly self-conscious, not like self-possessed bad ass marines. It's clearly nerds trying to write tough guys and falling well short. (It doesn't help that the voice acting is wildly uneven, vacillating between "okay" and "fucking terrible.") O'Neal doesn't even have a character arc so much as a bunch of stuff happens to him and he reacts to it. Other characters drift in an out of the narrative like the pilot, Reid. Voiced by Ashly "Tina Tina" Burch, she gets a couple of the only good lines in the game but, again, she has no arc. The plot randomly demands that she act like a bitch for a couple of minutes and then it's dropped.<br />
<br />
This leads into a larger problem the game has: in a series that gave us characters like Ripley and Vasquez, where the xenomorphs are essentially rapists, there are no strong female characters to be found. Reid goes from smart-ass pilot to pulling rank out of cowardice for no reason. The other female character, Bella, who looks like she's on her way to the Bikini Bowl, is introduced as having already been face raped by a xeno (with the hilariously dead line reading of "It's dead now") and spends the entire game needing to be saved, first from her hidey hole and then on a Quixotic mission to have her chestburster removed. She doesn't even get to die with dignity as the chestburster pops out (through her body armor, 'natch) before anyone has the decency to put a bullet in her head like she asks. What should have been a tragic moment earns nothing but an eye roll.<br />
<br />
Oh, and the whole fuss about adding female character models to the multiplayer last year? Well, the guys all look and dress like standard grunts but the women don't wear helmets and show more skin because... well, of course they do. I can hear the closet misogynists grumbling about being able to differentiate between the two but that's the whole fucking point. Vasquez only got to dress the way she did because she was lugging around a giant smart gun and it played into her badass character. Other women in <i>Aliens</i> like Ferro and Deitrich wore standard military uniforms. For crying out loud, they're called "uniforms" for a reason. Misinterpreting a call for equality by giving special treatment (and a bit of sex appeal) is such a standard dudebro move that you can't help but facepalm.<br />
<br />
The bad decisions don't end there, though. Remember how bummed you were when you found out that Hicks and Newt died in the crash at the beginning of <i>Alien 3</i>? Well, never fear, because the game brings Hicks back from the dead, complete with Michael Biehn sleepwalking through his dialogue like he knows what bullshit he's reading. They don't even have the basic decency to give it a proper explanation. Nor do they explain how the Solaco went from crash landing on the planet's surface to back in space again. They could have brought fan favorite Hudson back, as he never died on screen, but instead you find his dead chestbursted body in the sewers. They can't even capitalize on such an obvious loose end.<br />
<br />
The writers take such astonishing liberties with established cannon that it boggles my mind how even fans of the series can defend it. Generally, when writers play fast and loose with series canon, the fans are the first to get up in arms but it seems to be the one thing people defending the game fall back on. Considering fans still loudly disagree on which movies in the series are good, I suppose it should be expected to some degree. Is <i>Aliens 3</i> crap or an underrated film with a troubled development? Is <i>Prometheus</i> utter shite or an ambitious failure?<br />
<br />
The game ends with a resounding "thunk" as you eject a Alien Queen from an airlock by running around and hitting buttons. No need to fight her or even fire a bullet. Just hit a few buttons. To top it all off, they have the utter temerity to end this amazing crapfest with a cliffhanger. As if the game would ever get a sequel in the state it's in. For the sad, sad people who actually were invested in the story, you'd better hope that your $30 Season Pass nets you some single player DLC because that's the only resolution you're ever going to get. This is a game that will be quietly swept under the rug and ignored as quickly as possible.<br />
<br />
If you were thinking you could justify your purchase by playing the multiplayer... not really, no. It's a serviceable but completely uninspiring suite of modes you've seen many times in the past. There's the requisite Aliens vs. Marines Team Deatchmatch and a couple more modes cribbed from <i>Left 4 Dead</i>. Controlling Xenomorphs is more of a chore than a good time with wall and ceiling crawling poorly implemented so that only there are only certain walls and ceilings you can crawl on. There's only a couple maps to choose from so the replay value is nearly non-existent. The persistent leveling system is fine, allowing you to level up in single player as well as multiplayer but the amount of customization you can do is fairly limited. One of the four pieces of DLC with the Season Pass is a Horde Mode that absolutely should have shipped with the game. Add a couple of much needed Map Packs and you'll be lucky if you get one piece of Single Player DLC to try and wrap the story up.<br />
<br />
I haven't been reviewing games that long and I generally know enough not to waste my money on stinkers but I thought I'd buy this strictly for review purposes and the hope that it would be so-bad-it's-good. But it's not. It really, really isn't. It's a cynical, greedy mess only on the market to try and make SEGA back the money they spent in the six years it's been developed. If you paid $60 for it, you've been played. Allegations are already flowing from anonymous sources about who took advantage of who. Between this game and <i>Duke Nukem Forever</i>, Gearbox has crippled any goodwill they gained from the <i>Borderlands</i> games. You <i>will</i> hear this game mentioned the next time Gearbox puts a title out.<br />
<br />
Ultimately, <i>Aliens: Colonial Marines</i> will be more famous for the questionable practices surrounding it than the game itself... but don't let that fool you into thinking you should give it a try, even just to see what the fuss is about. This game should be retired the bargain bin as quickly as possible and forgotten as a thick, black stain on a beloved series.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-60982868672170762862013-02-09T12:12:00.001-08:002013-02-09T12:12:53.172-08:00Favorite Albums Of The 2012Again, real life seems to interrupt my attempts at writing. Things are back on track now, so I hope to be back to weekly updates. In the meantime, I've started a Tumblr page and have been doing some micro-blogging with reviews and assorted weirdness. Be sure to check that out:<b> <a href="http://thdefenestrator.tumblr.com/">http://thdefenestrator.tumblr.com/</a></b><br />
<br />
<b>Converge - <i>All We Love We Leave Behind</i>:</b> My love for
Converge can be summed up in an anecdote: I got to see them live for the
third time last year headlining a show the day before Halloween that
awesomely had Torche and Kvelertak opening. I was waiting to use the one
bathroom stall in the men's room when lead singer Jacob Bannon came
literally bouncing out of the stall and out of the bathroom like he was
lit on fire. He didn't look like he was late for anything. In fact, he
seemed to be smiling. Dude doesn't even slow down to take a dump.<br />
<br />
(Also,
my butt touched the same place his butt just touched so I think that
means we're now lovers. I'm pretty sure that's how it works, right?)<br />
<br />
To
me, that's Converge in a nutshell: bursting with restless energy.
They've been doing this with a consistency and a pace that left most of
their peers wheezing in their wake. They all seem to have creative
endeavors and side project outside of Converge that keep them busy.
(Dear Nate, more Doomriders, plz?) Rather than run out of ideas on their
first couple records, they actually seem to be getting better as
musicians and taking more chances with their sound as time passes.<br />
<br />
After what might be a career highlight with 2009's guest-heavy <i>Axe To Fall</i>,
they've responded with a tighter, more focused album. They can still
batter you with sound but time has also taught them where best to hit
for maximum impact.<br />
<br />
<b>Baroness - <i>Yellow & Green</i>: </b>According to my <a href="http://www.last.fm/user/Luciferous">Last.fm stats</a>, I listened to 674 Baroness tracks in the last 12 months. "March To The Sea" 89 times and "Take My Bones Away" 86. That sends a pretty clear message: I am deeply disturbed. Or I have a desk job and I listen to a lot of music. Y'know. Whatevs. Honestly, the worst thing about Baroness' switch up from dynamic sludge metal to a more palatable hard rock was watching music journalists contort themselves into uncomfortable shapes trying to describe it. The vocabulary for talking about hard rock music has completely atrophied from disuse so seeing comparisons ranging from Nickelback to Thrice to Foo Fighters were kind of inevitable.<br />
<br />
Baroness, of course, sounds nothing like any of those bands. They're similar only in the sense that no one in them are legally considered dead. The imagery of the lyrics alone should separate Baroness from the pack. Bones and water are recurring themes. Textural interstitial pieces help the album flow and keep a sense of atmosphere. Lyrics about bones and bodies of water give everything a sense of immensity or expansiveness. This is not a pop record.<br />
<br />
Downshifting from the exhilarating <i>Blue Record</i> still leaves the band cruising at a healthy speed. "March To The Sea," "Take My Bones Away" and "Psalms Alive" all sound fantastic blasting out of a car chugging well over the speed limit. "Eula" is gorgeously dark, one of their very best songs. "Cocanium" and "Stretchmarker" allow them to experiment more with the listeners expectations while remaining very much a Baroness song. In the end, I guess it's okay that music journalists couldn't find the right words for this band. No one else is doing it like this.<br />
<br />
<b>Golden Void - <i>Golden Void:</i> </b>Based in the Bay Area, named after a Hawkwind song, and with a sickly yellow cover of dead tree limbs, you can get a good idea of what you're going to get from Golden Void's first album before you drop the needle on the platter: gauzy production, hazy psychedelic atmosphere, and some champion level guitar playing. This is no empty throwback, though. Isaiah Mitchell's limber guitar playing cuts through the smoke with ease. I could listen to the guitar solo on "Atlantis" for days on end.<br />
<br />
In true record fetishist fashion, the album is a brief seven track, thirty-seven minute and change affair, perfect for two sides of a thick slab of vinyl. (You get a bonus live track on the iTunes version.) While the atmosphere is thick throughout, they still try on a fair share of styles. Mitchell's vocals may recall Hendrix one moment or Ozzy the next. They may go at a more languid pace on "Jetsun Dolma" only to charge straight through on a song like "The Curve." It's all foreplay to get to "Atlantis," as far as I'm concerned. It's rare for a song to so clearly hit me where I live. All the promise of the earlier tracks comes together for a nearly eight minute ride that begs for big headphones and a volume dial broken at 11.<br />
<br />
My only hope is that this isn't a one off project.<br />
<br />
<b>Pig Destroyer - <i>Book Burner</i>: </b><a href="http://electricdragon80k.blogspot.com/2012/11/pig-destroyer-book-burner.html">Read my review here.</a> Easily the best grind band working today. <br />
<br />
<b>High On Fire - <i>De Vermis Mysteriis</i>:</b> <a href="http://electricdragon80k.blogspot.com/2012/04/high-on-fire-de-vermis-mysteriis.html">Read my review here.</a> I follow guys named Matt Pike on Twitter who aren't the <i>actual</i> Matt Pike in hopes that one day they'll miraculously transform into him and play a gnarly riff that will make you HEAR WRITTEN WORDS. Because that's how awesome Matt Pike is.<br />
<br />
<b>Unsane - <i>Wreck</i>:</b> <a href="http://electricdragon80k.blogspot.com/2012/04/unsane-wreck.html">Read my review here.</a> The last and best of a dying breed.<br />
<br />
<b>Killer Mike - <i>R.A.P. Music</i>:</b> Sometimes all a rapper needs is a distinctive voice. Not "voice" in the sense of his overall approach to music, just the way words come out of their face hole. There's plenty of rappers who don't have much in the way of technical skill but can convince you solely through the power of their voice. Others have technical skill to spare but no personality or charisma. Atlanta's Killer Mike is the total package. <br />
<br />
Buoyed by El-P's most accessible production to date, Killer Mike tears through twelve tracks without stopping for penny ante skits or instrumentals. This is a lean, mean, no bullshit rap album. The album opens strong with monster track "Big Beast" that has a sly turn from T.I. and a confident Bun B but most of the album's guest stars are only there for the hooks. This is Killer Mike's show and rightly so.<br />
<br />
The album's centerpiece, the incendiary "Reagan," is soaked in well-earned paranoia as he tears down sacred cows in his own culture as well as the government that enables them. It's strong stuff and an album full of similar political rap would have blunted (pun intended) it's impact. While the tone of the album certainly isn't light, it's not oppressive either.<br />
<br />
I don't often buy instrumental albums but after hearing his beats on this record, I picked up El-P's instrumentals just to admire them in their original form. I love El-P's records but seeing him try his hand at a more mainstream friendly style only highlights the range of his productions. When you put Killer Mike over top the beats, you end up with a really killer collaboration that I hope continues on more records in the future.<br />
<br />
Easily my favorite rap record of the year.<br />
<br />
<b>Swans - <i>The Seer</i>:</b> While my 2012 wasn't exactly rose-scented, two high points of the year were standing front and center on Halloween night to witness the mighty Earth play Phoenix for the first time in fifteen years. It was fucking transcendent. The other was watching with awe as Michael Gira and company (including a Nordic-looking guy named Thor who naturally played shirtless) absolutely wreck the audience at Crescent Ballroom. Lucky for us, what makes them so captivating live is very evident on record.<br />
<br />
Their latest album, a double CD titled <i>The Seer</i>, is not casual listening.<b> </b>Swans records never are. Each disc is weighted down by dark epics like the 32 minute "The Seer" on disc one and the one/two punch of "A Piece Of The Sky" (19 minutes) and "Apostate" (23 minutes) on disc two.<br />
<br />
If you're willing to put in the time, Swans can open up a whole new world of oppression and darkness. Wielding a different kind of heaviness since their reformation, the band is continuing down a path of apocalyptic folk and psychedelia. In other bands, that would be hyperbole but with Swans it's just facts. It's absolutely pummeling in it's bleakness to the point that comparisons to other bands would be doing Swans a disservice.<br />
<br />
It's an exhausting, emotionally draining listen but it's well worth the trip.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-25486700147747123622013-02-09T09:10:00.000-08:002013-02-09T09:10:49.311-08:00iOS Game Review: Pixel People<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXMy-dLR0fNbXo2g2GDiC_rLZ9ZIwhLVTRcmnUSUyRr21aUJ-50tnLJ5k2U3rpeeqyBqO3j96kCr9CERXgkZy7zdPr6pTCUZ0T0qotLtXZnb_sdtrruHw2D1zaly1ChIhPgeFYQFm1Zw1R/s1600/pixel-people.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXMy-dLR0fNbXo2g2GDiC_rLZ9ZIwhLVTRcmnUSUyRr21aUJ-50tnLJ5k2U3rpeeqyBqO3j96kCr9CERXgkZy7zdPr6pTCUZ0T0qotLtXZnb_sdtrruHw2D1zaly1ChIhPgeFYQFm1Zw1R/s320/pixel-people.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<b>Pixel People</b>
<br />
<b>Devoloper: Chillingo</b>
<br />
<b>Price: Free With Micro-Transactions</b>
<br />
<br />
Tip toeing through the minefield of free-to-play apps can be a
grind. Due to poor planning or outright greed, you can find yourself
with an app that gives you as little as fifteen minutes of game time
before you herding you into their store to buy a fifty pack of Star
Dollars for a bigger gun or a stat boost. So when a game hits the sweet
spot where it's compelling enough to make you volunteer your hard earned
rather than hold you hostage, you almost audibly unclench.
<br />
<br />
<i>Pixel People</i> is a city building app not unlike a smaller scale <i>Sim City</i>
with a cute 8-bit design. You start the game with only a clone factory
and create new jobs by splicing together two different people. New jobs
generally create new buildings to populate your world which generate
money to continue your nascent career as an urban planner.
<br />
<br />
Depending on whether or not you are splicing a character with a new
job or a new kind of building, there's a timer that always ticks down.
These can go from ten seconds to twenty-four hours depending on the size
or complexity of the task. However, rather than make you wait around,
the timer continues even when you back out of the app. This allows you
to essentially check in on your city a few times a day for maybe ten
minutes at a time rather than grinding your way through an endless
series of in app purchases to speed things along. Tap your buildings to
keep the money flowing, assign clones to their new jobs and go back
about your business.
<br />
<br />
While <i>Pixel People</i> doesn't punish you for taking their app
and never giving them a dime, it's certainly not removing the option. In
addition to standard gold coins, there's a secondary currency called
Utopium that can be used to speed up creation, to build higher end
buildings or to trade for more coins. You may occasionally be gifted
some Utopium for creating parks or trees or completing a brief series of
"secondary experiments" that regularly pop up but otherwise it's only
available via the in game store. Even in the game's more advanced
stages, you aren't required to buy anything. It's just a matter of
dutifully maintaining your city until you raise the money.
<br />
<br />
With a maximum of 150 jobs, you could potentially play <i>Pixel People</i>
for days and not fully unlock everything in the game. If you don't
purchase more Utopium, it could take more than a month. I've had the app
for about a week now and the urge to check in on my miniature city is
still strong. Not even <i>Temple Run 2</i> hooked me that long.
<br />
<br />
So far, my only niggling complaint about the game is that creating
roadways is entire optional. It doesn't give you any bonuses or speed
anything up. It's purely aesthetic. Given how every other decision in
the game has a tangible bonus, making roads merely a design choice seems
out of place.
<br />
<br />
Ultimately, I think the best compliment you can give a free-to-play game is whether or not you <i>want</i>
to give the game your money. Not "I was frustrated at my lack of
progress" or even "I must level up because: feedback loop." I bought
four dollars worth of in app purchases because I was enjoying myself and
I wanted to reward the developers for making an addictive yet fair game
that didn't treat me like a spigot full of money. Well made games that
respect their audience are few and far between. It's worth it to support
them.
Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-47630736969829927662012-12-29T22:36:00.000-08:002012-12-30T11:20:16.999-08:00Favorite Songs Of The YearMandatory overtime, 120 hours (and counting) of <i>Resonance Of Fate</i> and a house full of puppies haven't left me with a lot of spare time for writing. I'm going to try and knock out a couple more Favorite ______ Of The Year posts before the end of the year, so keep an eye out for them, Imaginary Person I Think Is Reading This. Up first, my favorite songs of the year. Favorite, not Best Of, because... well, I'm uncomfortable with the semantic difference between "Favorite" and "Best." This is the stuff that most interested me and, as most people aren't into throwback 70's style rock and gay bounce music, I'll make a lame play for being humble by not trumpeting them as The Best Of The Year.<br />
<br />
<b>Burning Love - "Hateful Comforts":</b> My issue with punk rock, even going back to my teenage years, was that most of it was exasperatingly vague about what, exactly, we should be rebelling against. Mostly it was just an excuse for mohawks and facial piercings and I'm sorry, The Offspring, but I don't need your permission for a tattoo to bum out my parents. This is where Burning Love frontman Chris Colohan comes in. "Hateful Comforts," off of their sophomore album <i>Rotten Thing To Say</i>, is the most exhilarating four and a half minutes of punk rock I've heard in years. The lyrics and vocal performance are mostly what sells the song for me. It is painfully specific about post-9/11 paranoia, witch hunts, and the easily led cable news junkies. This is everything punk rock should be aiming for. And, god<i>damn</i>, that guitar solo...<br />
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<b>Future Of The Left - "Beneath The Waves An Ocean":</b> Most people who have heard Future Of The Left's most recent album, <i>The Plot Against Common Sense</i>, would probably argue that "Robocop 4 - Fuck Off Robocop" should be the song you mention first. (Actually, they probably wouldn't argue, they'd just mock me, but... shut up.) While I think it is some of Andy Falkous' best work, the lyrics overpower everything else in the song. "Beneath The Waves An Ocean" feels like a more even balance. Catchy as hell with the entire band firing on all cylinders. Falco's arch delivery and the fuzzed out bassline from Julia Ruzicka really sell it.<br />
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<b>Local H - "Sad History":</b> Saying that Local H is the most underrated and under appreciated band in rock music would probably be cold comfort to singer/songwriter Scott Lucas. Every Local H record feels like it could be the last one, it's been that way since the 90's, but "Sad History" could very well be the swan song for a couple of puckish Midwesterners who never quit. While most of his peers have been reuniting for club shows to help pay off their mortgages and drug addictions, Lucas has never stopped writing and touring. He's never released an album that was anything short of rock solid. As a songwriter, there's no one in America who wields bitterness and cynicism the way he does. As a live act, they're still a freight train... thanks in no small part to Brian St. Clair's monster drumming. That said, Lucas has never seemed more tired than he has on this song and this album. Even if the lyrics could easily be about the band themselves, he still ends on a note of hope. Because if Scott and Brian have proven anything, it's that writing them off is a bad idea.<br />
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<b>The Afghan Whigs - "Lovecrimes":</b> The idea of Greg Dulli and the recently reunited Afghan Whigs covering a Frank Ocean song only sounds like a strange idea for about the first ten seconds. Dulli has covered everyone from Bjork to Billie Holliday to Kanye West in his other band, The Twilight Singers. His rough, working class soul croon never sounds better than when it's paired with Rick McCollum's instantly recognizable bluesy guitar. They may have broken up more than a decade ago but no moss has grown on them in that time. If the real criteria of a cover song is whether or not a band can make the song their own, this is a success. It sounds like the exact kind of dark psychodrama Dulli was always fond of. I'd never have known this was a cover if they didn't advertise it. It's also <a href="http://theafghanwhigs.com/">a free download on their website</a>, so there's no excuse not to pick it up.<br />
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<b>Diplo feat. Nicky Da B - "Express Yourself":</b> New Orleans Sissy Bounce is a subgenre of a subgenre but it's also been some of the most irrepressible dance music I've heard since Baltimore club music was in vogue several years back. Built around lo-fi, homemade beats and repetitive chants, and anchored by openly gay or transsexual emcees like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eau1qHxI-8w">Big Freedia</a>, the gravelly voiced <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5n7BK6Mt_E">Sissy Nobby</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZAOV1Yu9Ps">Katey Red</a>, it somehow manages to be dirty as hell and unselfconsciously fun at the same time. Probably because it doesn't have the macho douchebag energy straight men seem to take with them wherever they go. Diplo wisely maintains the basic aesthetic of sissy bounce but gives it a budget and clean production while Nicky Da B jump onto the track with confidence and control. Straight up the best dance music I've heard all year.<br />
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<b>Psy - "Gangnam Style":</b> Nope, still not sick of it yet. Usually, when there's a foreign language dance craze, like the Macarena, we can all agree that it was always ridiculous and it's charming or enduring for exactly that reason. Not only is Psy the only real Asian pop star who broke through in America despite several tries (sorry <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpqTJySA5Sc">Utada</a>), he was legitimately funny AND in on the joke. Nothing he does will ever be remotely this big again, but damned if it wasn't entertaining while it lasted. And without Psy, I wouldn't have had <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTin-eTnkOM">the single most panic attack inducing four minutes of my life</a>.<br />
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<b>Baroness - "Take My Bones Away" / "March To The Sea":</b> Most people I know seemed leery when Baroness went on record about going in a more hard rock direction for fear of permanently scarring the vocal cords of singer/guitarist/lead songwriter/artist John Dyer Baizley. I was not. I got turned onto the band when they released their first EP (yeah, yeah... music nerd bragging rights) and while the heavier-than-thou sludge metal was part of the appeal, you could never deny their songwriting chops. Take out the sludge and you're still left with some very solid, catchy rock music of a sort that doesn't get made anymore. Hesher music of the highest order.<br />
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<b>Unsane - "No Chance":</b> It's always gratifying to see a band perfect their artform, whatever it is. Unsane have honed in on a very specific brand of angry, working class noise rock. The stark lyrics, the awesomely distorted bass guitar... no one else could pull it off with this kind of velocity or single-mindedness. A good Unsane song barrels right through you and "No Chance" is one of their best.<br />
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<b>Pigs - "Give It":</b> There's no part of the Unsane trio that's less integral than the other but Dave Curran's singular bass tone tweaks the pleasure centers of my brain the way nothing else does. When I found out he had a side project (this time on guitar and vocals) I jumped at it immediately. The album is still very much in the noise rock template but it opens up a bit more than his other project. It's less suffocatingly bleak, but only just. "Give It" could stand alongside the best Unsane track without question. An excellent song on an under-appreciated album.<br />
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<b>Golden Void - "Atlantis":</b> All you had to do was mention guitarist Isaiah Mitchell and my ears perked up. A guitar hero in the purest sense of the word, his other project, Earthless, is the essential modern psychedelic rock band. Songs stretch out for twenty minutes or longer, enough to break the patience of any casual listeners. However, the hypnotic repetition and guitar solos that seem alternately endless and far too short help it go down easy. They hinted at what they could do in a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsOj1mFzlHM">more conventional song length</a> on a three way split with Danava and Lecherous Gaze last year and now we have Golden Void. It's an excellent album that I'll write more about later but it culminates in this epic track, incorporating my favorite of Mitchell's guitar work yet.<br />
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<b>Aesop Rock - "ZZZ Top" / "Zero Dark Thirty": </b>The thing that jumped out at me first about Aesop Rock's new album, <i>Skelethon</i>, were those killer live-sounding drum samples. They knock <i>hard</i>. I wasn't expecting a huge change in his sound jumping from the "B-boy brainiacs" at the much missed Def Jux to the Minnesota-based Rhymesayers crew, and the star here is still Ace Rock's flow, but <i>Skelethons</i> is definitely funky in a different way than his previous album, <i>None Shall Pass</i>. "ZZZ Top" (incidentally my favorite video of the year... go Patti Li go!) and "Zero Dark Thirty" are probably the best examples of this. Ace is every bit as dense and dizzying as always but this new vibe gives him an extra kick I haven't heard from him before.<br />
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<b>Killer Mike - "Reagan":</b> I'd heard of Killer Mike before this year's awesome El-P produced <i>R.A.P. Music</i> but this album was a revelation. Not many emcees would be able to jump from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8-RmM5py1c">axe murdering with Bun B & T.I.</a> to taking down his own culture and the government that enables it and oppresses it at the same time, but Killer Mike managed it with aplomb. In addition, it contained El-P's most accessible production work, marrying boom bap with the sort of layered darkness he uses on his solo work to outstanding effect. The best track on an excellent album.<br />
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<b>Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - "Death's Door":</b> Adding this song is a bit of cheat. It came out in Europe last year but was only released in the States in November, giving me a chance to talk more about it. Willfully mysterious, this Cambridge trio are gaining a lot of momentum. The entire album is a strain of doom metal of a type that's been out of fashion for awhile. They've been lumped in with bands like the Merciful Fate devotees <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PakoE1eBps">Ghost</a>, but Uncle Acid prefer to wallow gleefully in the B-movie themes and grimy lo-fi production. The rickety vibe and the hazy claustrophobia gives the entire album a unique 70's vibe I never get tired of. Essential listening.<br />
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<b>Graveyard - "Goliath":</b> There's something about Sweden. No other place can reproduce discarded and marginalized genres of music with so much faithfulness and soul that it doesn't come off like some kind of rote mimicry. There's desert rock Kyuss worshippers like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD6w9Fklp-A">Truckfighters</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU_o8AQAmqc">Astroqueen</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EAxm50p5JA">Dozer</a>, etc. (Are there even deserts in Sweden? I don't think there are any deserts in Sweden...) Then there are the 70's rock revivalists like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tyv2h2NvRM">Spiders</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fELhPgQgDVY">Horisont</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izDbmohmUug">Witchcraft</a>, and Graveyard. Their previous album, <i>Hisingen Blues</i>, was flat out brilliant. It was everything I love about what is usually dismissed as dinosaur rock in an updated form without coming off like some lunkheaded, lowest common denominator-baiting Jet single. <i>Lights Out</i> aims for a tighter, more streamlined version and mostly knocks it out of the park. In a mainstream where The Black Keys are seemingly the only remaining rock band people take seriously, the world needs more bands like this.<br />
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<br />Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-81821928739812401802012-11-05T15:50:00.000-08:002012-11-05T15:57:36.721-08:00PCG Media To Gamers: Stop Projecting Rape Onto Lara Croft<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Today I found an interesting, if wrongheaded, take on the "Lara Croft attempted rape" controversy from a few months back. <a href="http://electricdragon80k.blogspot.com/2012/06/e3-impressions-pt-1-attempted-rape.html">I wrote a blog post about it then</a>, so I figured it was worth checking in.<br />
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Here's the link: <br />
<a class="externalLink" href="http://pcgmedia.com/why-is-everyone-obsessed-with-projecting-rape-onto-lara-croft/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://pcgmedia.com/why-is-everyone-obsessed-with-projecting-rape-onto-lara-croft/</a><br />
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And here's the trailer that got everyone worked up (the grope happens at about the 2:18 mark):<br />
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The author's overall point seems to be that if you saw anything rape-y
in that trailer or the comments by the executive producer at E3 then YOU
are a rape-obsessed sicko. Which is facile and ridiculous. I'm all for
bashing Kotaku now and then but they weren't the only people covering
the story. I found it initially through <a href="http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/news/a387062/tomb-raider-rape-attempt-encourages-players-to-protect-lara-croft.html">Digital Spy</a> and <a class="externalLink" href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-06-13-lara-croft-attempted-rape-will-make-tomb-raider-players-want-to-protect-her" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Eurogamer</a>,
which eschewed the rape innuendo for some generally creepy quotes about
the character from the executive producer. (I see what he was trying to
say but, man... gah! He sounds like a mouth-breather.)<br />
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My gripe with the scene has always been the utter laziness of
using a sexual assault against a woman as a cheap shortcut to building
character. For one thing, it's the kind of trope that would ONLY be used
on a female character. Rape as a trope in fiction is entirely fair
game, it's just not for beginners. How many times have you seen a movie
or read a book where a woman overcomes sexual assault to become a
stronger person? Now how many times have you seen a male
character overcome molestation or sexual assault the same way? There's no comparison. It's a giant, neon-lit double standard: women in
fiction can only be strong because of men.<br />
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The only instance in a video game they can bring up involving dudes is the attempted prison rape in <i>Mafia II</i>, which you can see here (and try not to laugh when you see a bunch of guys in a prison showering in their boxers):<br />
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I understand that some outlets saw a headline and leaped at the <i>Tomb Raider</i> story. ("Lara
Croft In Island Rape Hell" is kind of a funny title.) I even understand
people being genuinely angry. I'm just annoyed that people still haven't
learned how to tell a story with a strong female character. I find this
comparable to the annoyance I felt at <i>Metriod: Other M</i> for
utterly neutering a strong character like Samus by making her dependent
on a male character she had a crush on. It utterly and completely
misses the point.<br />
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The "torture porn" label, while not entirely accurate, does kind of fit.
Seeing a woman get shot, stabbed, beaten, bloodied, cut, groped,
tortured, and fall from great heights has an inherently different
context then a guy. Especially if she's being portrayed as a young,
naive girl going in. Unfortunately, there <i>is</i> a dance to writing a
strong female character you have to do. It's not a matter of right and
wrong, it's reality. Christ, in America we still can't decide if a woman
should legally have control of her own body. Jumping straight to "felt
up by a creepy dude in a video game" is just a fundamentally bad idea.<br />
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Writing a strong female character can be done without pandering. It's actually not that hard and it doesn't have to be entirely the work of female writers. <a href="http://io9.com/5912366/why-i-write-strong-female-characters?tag=Greg-rucka">Comic writer and novelist Greg Rucka is pretty great at it</a>. My rule of thumb about writing strong female characters in video games still stands:
when in doubt, look at Naughty Dog. <i>Uncharted</i> is still the high
water mark for strong female characters in video games. They aren't the
lead, but they are strong through their words and actions, not because
of their proximity to a guy.<br />
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I understand the argument that this is her origin story and you need to
build her up but there's ways to do that which don't involve torturing
the living hell out of her. It can be done with something as simple as a
look... instead of, y'know, throwing her off a great fucking cliff or
stabbing her with big stick in the torso or something.<br />
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The bottom line is: female characters, particularly in games, are coming from a weak position. There's not many of them and most developers don't want to take the chance on them for fear of losing their young, male audience. They are still very much the princess who needs to be rescued or the girlfriend/wife/mother/child you are avenging. With more and more women joining the gaming community, more emphasis is put on the few remaining heroines we have to give them some sense that they are being represented. Female protagonists don't need to be broken down and built back up again, they just need to be built up. That means a lighter, smarter touch... and Crystal Dynamics haven't exactly given us reason to believe that they are the people for the job.<br />
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This is all a shame because <i>Tomb Raider</i>
looks, in a visual sense, like a really good game. The idea of a female
Nathan Drake has amazing potential. It's just that, from a storytelling
standpoint, everything I've seen about the game makes it look like it
was plotted by a hyperactive twelve year old boy. In the trailer, she
actually says "I hate tombs." Which was maybe intended as an Indiana
Jones "I hate snakes" moment if the line delivery sounded like it had a
sense of irony about it. Instead, it just sounds obvious and
groan-worthy and forehead-slappingly inane. And it's <i>that</i> impression that makes me leery of dropping sixty bucks on it.
Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-75154923443132368232012-11-04T16:05:00.002-08:002012-11-04T16:38:09.677-08:00DishonoredIt's kinda crazy how many dudes I've choked out while they took a pee. Don't get me wrong, it was fun. Still: lots of dudes were waking up in dark corners with their pants around their ankles. I try to rationalize that their confusion and sense of violation was earned by the fact that the clockwork heart I've been carrying around keeps telling me that they are violent, fascistic douchebags. They kind of deserve it.<br />
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These are the kinds of thoughts you might have during the course of Arkane Studios excellent stealth/action game, <i>Dishonored</i>.<br />
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As stuffed with ideas as the game is, they never overwhelm you with exposition or cut-scenes. It's a world absorbed through books, visuals and overheard conversations. This allows for people like me, hiding in nooks and crannies, to develop my own story as I play. For instance, I used an item given to you towards the beginning of the game as a way to track down collectibles, the aforementioned clockwork heart, as a way of weeding out the people just doing their jobs from the willfully evil and visiting bloody retribution upon them. As events in the game turned and I got more invested in the fates of certain characters, I found myself getting more and more unhinged and violent, silently wiping out anyone and everyone until the entire level was empty except for me, blinking across the rooftops in search of more prey. <br />
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Keep in mind, this narrative was entirely in my own head. The clockwork heart spits out a series of canned responses whenever you click it on someone so you'll hear the same phrase repeated over and over again. It just seemed like a neat way to approach a game that offers so much freedom in how you approach it. Once you enter a stage, there's no hand-holding whatsoever. You can explore and find optional side missions and collectibles that enhance your abilities or you can beeline right for your target. The game becomes whatever you want it to be. I chose to create my own story-within-a-story to go along with my "avenging angel" playstyle. By the end, my desire to burn down the entire dying, corrupt city and
everyone in it was reflected by increased guard patrols, plague-infected
Weepers and swarms of carnivorous rats. Once I became conscious to how my approach to the game was changing, I embraced it. I did a completely non-lethal second playthrough but damned if the game didn't give you plenty of good reasons to murder everything in your path.<br />
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That's not a coincidence either. Morality is a very important aspect of the game. As Lord Protector Corvo Attano, framed for the murder your Empress, you are always given a choice on how to go about achieving your vengeance. People are watching you and some react to you differently depending on how much death you deal out. Every main target has a non-lethal option, usually fates worse than death, if you can find out how. I knew how far down the rabbit hole I had gone when a young girl I talked to told me that she wanted people to fear her the way they feared me. From that point on, I knew there was no going back.<br />
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The game allows a bit of leeway between, as they call it, Low Chaos and High Chaos. You only have to do a completely non-lethal route if you want the 100 point/Platinum achievement. Otherwise, a couple of deaths here and there, by accident or necessity, can be tolerated, so you don't have to worry about absolutist morality. Between the overarching story and some of the things you read and overhear, you'll probably find it hard to avoid wanting to toss these people screaming into the Void. A minor complaint would be that the High Chaos route feels more fulfilling, not in the sense that YOU are acting as an agent of their death but that the characters who have wronged you meet ends more appropriate to their levels of ego and hubris. (It didn't slip by me that my initial attempt to kill only those I felt deserved it was eventually twisted into something much darker, making for an excellent symmetry at the end.) The final scene of the Low Chaos path has a nice, well-acted monologue about what you lose in pursuit of what you think is right when you stop considering the consequences of your actions but it felt comparatively anti-climactic when compared to the more brutal High Chaos route. Seeing the people responsible for your misery and betrayal implode and destroy themselves felt more appropriate. Being a witness to other people's well-earned self-destruction might have made a better ending than the people involved just sort of... giving up.<br />
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Another complaint about the game is some very hit or miss voice acting. <i>Dishonored</i> boasts a very high powered cast of actors that, unfortunately, reinforce the idea that great actors don't necessarily mean great <i>voice</i> actors. John Slattery (<i>Mad Men</i>'s Roger Sterling) does an excellent job as the resistance leader Admiral Havelock and Chloë Grace Moretz (a/k/a Hit-Girl from <i>Kick Ass</i>) does the unthinkable by making a child character in a video game likable and someone you actually want to save. Others don't fare so well, including Susan Sarandon badly miscast as the insane Granny Rags. There isn't a whole lot for her to do, so she doesn't do much of anything. A professional voice actress might have given the doddering yet dangerous character a little more... well, character. Compare that to voice actress April Stewart (one of the go to cast for <i>South Park</i>) who gives a chilling performance as both the Empress and the clockwork heart and you wonder why people would rather hire "name" actors versus people who do this for a living. However, in a world so fully realized, it's pretty small quibble.<br />
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I've seen some criticism about the game being too overstuffed with ideas but I think they're coming from the wrong point of view. The Steampunk-ish setting, the magic, the whale oil, virulent plagues, the capricious demigod figure, teleporting assassins in death masks, the stilt-waking robot men firing explosive arrows... it can all be a little too much but it felt more to me that Arkane Studios are trying to world build here. Any one of those aspects could be central to another game in the series. Given that even surefire concepts can fail once the game is in stores, throwing every single fucking thing they can think of at you given them plenty to build on in sequels. The game even goes out of it's way to tie off Corvo's story with a big red bow, so they aren't forced to use him as a protagonist in any future games. (He's treated as a player avatar and not an actual character, so there's no great loss there.) Arkane now has a very interesting world to revisit depending on it's success.<br />
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The gameplay itself is solid but has some curious choices. The game is presented in the first person so you are unable to lock into cover and rely mostly on leaning in and out of cover to get a sense of your surroundings and enemy routes. There's a designated stealth/crouch button but the game gives no clear idea as to whether you're able to be seen. Twitchy enemy AI has led to multiple situations where I can either sidle right up to someone from a position where I should be in their line or sight or others where an enemy spots me from behind cover from across the room. It doesn't occur very often but using the convention of a blue screen tint or on-screen prompt to designated being in stealth mode would have solved a lot of problems. When stealth fails, combat holds up pretty well. Put a couple levels into stopping time and you'll easily slice through any unfortunates who catch you creeping around before they can raise an alarm or call for reinforcements. You'll probably rely on your sword and crossbow more than anything else but there's also proximity devices and a pistol for more desperate encounters.<br />
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The actual set pieces are never less than strong. You have multiple points of entry and lots of variety in how you approach your targets. Usually, you aren't just restricted to a lethal or non-lethal option. Many stages have varying modes of dispatching your target. Sure, you can creep up behind him and slit his throat but maybe you can sneak into his room and trick him into drinking poison or possess a guard and get him to do your dirty work for you. I was partial to siccing a swarm of rats on them and letting them get eaten to death while screaming for help that never arrived. (I did warn you about my propensity for bloody retribution.) One standout moment was during a mission where you infiltrate a costume party. You're dressed as yourself, the creepy killer terrorizing the city, but the nobility at the soiree simply compliment you on your provocative costume. After doing my dark business, I sauntered back in, signed the guest register in my own name, and walked casually out the front door. Much evil cackling was had.<br />
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Little moments like this, things you could easily never catch, make the overall experience that much more fun. All missions are available from the stage select screen at the main menu after completion. The only thing the game is really missing is a proper New Game+. I didn't have much trouble on Normal difficulty. Enemy AI is dumb enough that you usually only have yourself to blame for mistakes. You can decimate an entire barracks worth of guards and the last remaining guy will just note that more people should be patrolling and never change their routine. This is something I wish more stealth games would rectify on harder difficulty levels. Having your enemies react to squadmates who disappear would promote better situational awareness, planning and quicker, more decisive action or just force you to not engage anyone at all.<br />
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Taking my time and exploring everything I could means my initial run took me almost twenty hours, including restarts. Having a firm idea of enemy placement means my non-lethal speed run took me less than eight hours but I've heard people have been able to beat it in as few as five. The length of the game will be entirely dependent on your approach.<br />
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I keep coming back to the worldview of <i>Dishonored</i> when I think about it. The writers managed to hit just the right notes. It doesn't matter what political views you have but throwing such sharp criticism onto the idea that the kinds of people who actively seek power being the ones least qualified to hold it is an idea I think a lot of people can rally behind. Not only is the world of <i>Dishonored </i>very full and fleshed out, the ideas behind it work just as well.<br />
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Ultimately, this is an odd game to review since so much of it's story is dependent on whatever is going on in your head (which was pretty fucking fantastic, thanks) and your patience for waiting around for the best time to strike. If you approach this as an action game and stealth elements, you'll likely find it short and unsatisfying with a perfunctory plot. As a stealth game, minus some small issues easily ironed out in a sequel, it offers a lot of very satisfying sneaking and combat. <i>Dishonored</i> might very well be the best new IP of the year.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-56741730462638933292012-11-03T17:01:00.001-07:002012-11-03T17:10:04.312-07:00Pig Destroyer - Book BurnerMusic, for me, is all about searching out some kind of authentic experience. I have no patience for cheap imitations. Guys like Nick Cave and Tom Waits can hide behind all the theatrics and artifice they want, but the truth of their music is always staring you in the face. PJ Harvey hits every bit as hard on <i>Dry</i> as she does on <i>White Chalk</i> or <i>Let England Shake</i>, it's just a question of where she chooses to punch you. Nothing makes me feel joy the way The Meters or a live James Brown performance do. Suffocating dread and menace? Unsane. Unwavering strength in the face of adversity? It's got to be Black Flag or Converge.<br />
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But if you want the purest form of utter nihilism and viciousness, you go to Pig Destroyer.<br />
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There's no Devil worship or Satanic masses in Pig Destroyer's world or any of the other typical iconography associated with the genre. You get the sense reading their lyrics that Satan is as big a joke as everything else and his name would only be invoked in order to piss off the squares. There's no costumes here. If you want a glimpse into the worldview that gives P.D. their engine, vocalist and lyricist J.R. Hayes' short story included in the deluxe edition of <i>Book Burner</i> is the place to start. Dedicated to Christopher Hitchens, "The Atheist" is more of a rough sketch than an actual story but it's a perfect example of where these guys are coming from. One man, smart, educated and alone, in a survivalist paradise running from a theocracy gone insane. It's everyone's biggest fears about the direction of our country put in plain language and shoved right under your nose; a Ted Kaczynski manifesto as fiction.<br />
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Five years on from their last album, <i>Phantom Limb</i>, the Pig Destroyer sound has gotten fuller, more lush. They've retained the fury and velocity of a 747 spiraling to the ground but the addition of noise man Blake Harrison and the experience of guitarist/producer Scott Hull has given the music an extra dimension. Seth Putnam's joke that "grindcore is very terrifying" no longer seems very funny. This is harrowing stuff.<br />
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There's a lot of other good grindcore bands working today but the intelligence and unpredictability of Pig Destroyer is what puts them at the top of the heap. No one else in metal can match the compact yet detailed crime scene photos that are J.R. Hayes' lyrics. There's no political agenda and no right answer. We're all fucked. We're going to die scared, alone and covered in our own blood. And when you listen to him tell you, you believe it.<br />
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Songs like "The Diplomat" and "The Boston Strangler" are lengthy for a P.D. song and give them time to stretch a bit and explore while other songs like "Eve" or "Burning Palm" run roughshod in under two minutes. Track by track descriptions sort of miss the point. Grindcore is abrupt and crushing by nature. You're getting nineteen tracks that clock in at just under 32 minutes. The band has clearly broken drummers in the past but Misery Index drummer Adam Jarvis acquits himself nicely in his first album with the band <br />
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Not much else needs to be said. Along with Saint Vitus, High On Fire and the new Converge, this is one of the best metal albums of the year. All veteran bands at the peak of their powers. Miss this record at your own peril.<br />
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If you pick up the album, be sure to get the deluxe edition. Not only does it include "The Athiest" but also a bonus EP of classic punk covers called <i>Blind, Deaf And Bleeding</i>. It includes covers of the mighty Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Negative Approach, Minor Threat and a really killer version of Angry Samoans "Light's Out."Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-79651123568680866952012-09-15T22:00:00.000-07:002012-10-19T22:11:14.452-07:00The Problem With Silent Hill...<b>Contains light spoilers for Silent Hill 2 and heavy spoilers for Silent Hill: Homecoming and Silent Hill: Downpour!</b> <br />
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Last month, I was lucky enough to attend the anime convention <a href="http://www.sabotencon.com/">Saboten Con</a> after hearing at the very last second that video game composer and producer Akira Yamaoka would be performing songs from his legendary <i>Silent Hill</i> soundtracks along with collaborators Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, Joe Romersa, and Troy Baker as well as doing a Q&A. Not only is this an extremely rare occurrence in the States, it's extra rare for a place like Glendale, Arizona. Having followed the series since it's initial release, I showed up without hesitation.<br />
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The Q&A ended up being mostly about sound design but Yamaoka-san did answer one question in a way that I found fascinating: when asked about technical limitations that may have hampered previous games and what he'd do now, he responded instead that the lack of limitations were the problem. Given my hearing problems and the J-Rock show going on the next room, I'm pretty sure that he was trying to make a point about horror games that many have made about horror movies as well: with an unlimited budget and the ability to create anything, how do you find the scares? Horror is about being in some sense confined, inside the game and out. Without deliberate limitations, there's no fear. For a psychological horror series like <i>Silent Hill</i>, one that's been looking down the barrel of declining sales and quality for at least the last decade, I'm wondering if the series isn't in the best possible place for a resurgence.<br />
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Survival horror games filled a hole in my life I didn't know was empty. Back when my brother and I were renting Playstations from the grocery store for the weekend, <i>Resident Evil</i> was a constant. The atmosphere, the helplessness, the long odds of survival, it hit home for me in a primal way. I never did beat the game. I never felt like I had to. <i>Silent Hill</i> was the same for me, but moreso. With all the goodwill in the world, <i>Resident Evil</i> did had a level of cheesiness to it that was hard to dismiss. <i>Silent Hill</i> felt more grounded... just a normal guy looking for his daughter and dealing with all of this insanity that's just thrust upon him. I never beat that game either.<br />
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I did beat <i>Silent Hill 2</i>, though. Played it right through to completion without a second thought. Not only was I in a dark place in my life personally, it also tapped into that post-9/11 sense of doom that seemed to pervade everything. The story, a man returns to a haunted town after receiving a letter from his dead wife, worked in a way that very games had at the time. While it did have problems (the original voice acting was pretty flat) it represented everything that video game storytelling could be in a world that was, and still is, dominated by cookie cutter shooters. It was a psychological horror game in the truest sense of the word: the enemies were drawn straight from the lead character's subconscious fears and desires. Akira Yamaoka also turned in his best soundtrack of the series, with his usual range going from pants-wetting industrial clangs to sad and gorgeous guitar solos.<br />
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<i>Silent Hill 3</i> was a return to the original game's rather convoluted mythology, which was fine, but it didn't resonate with me the way that the second game did. It was more notable to me for introducing Yamaoka to his musical muse, voice actress Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. Her voice, alternately smoky or strident depending on the mood, matched perfectly with what Yamaoka had been trying to accomplish in his instrumentals. <br />
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A more experimental approach went into <i>Silent Hill 4: The Room</i> but not necessarily to it's benefit. I have a bit more fondness for it then other people I know. The first person sequences caused a bit of head-scratching but I liked it's return to telling a story independent from the earlier mythology. Yamaoka also turned in another brilliant soundtrack including a dark seven minute hymn about hating your mother, "Room Of Angel," that ranks up there with the best in the series. Sadly, this was Team Silent's last game in the series as they dissolved after the tepid response to the game.<br />
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I never played<i> Silent Hill: Origins</i>, largely because it was initially a PSP exclusive that was ported to PS2 after my system had gone kaput. I've tracked a copy of the PS2 version down but until I buy a replacement PS2 system, I'll hold off on talking about it.<br />
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<i>Silent Hill: Homecoming</i> represents one of the lowest points of the series, only eclipsed by the most recent iteration, <i>Downpour</i>. While Double Helix had a good grasp of atmosphere, spurred on by Yamaoka's (arguably weakest) soundtrack, the story was very, very flimsy. The <i>Silent Hill</i> series has used the "children in danger" trope quite a bit but <i>Homecoming </i>and <i>Downpour</i> hammer it right into the ground. There was a time you could use it for an easy bit of sympathy but it's since been overused to the point of being meaningless. It only works if we're given a reason to care about the child, something that <i>Homecoming</i> and <i>Downpour</i> forgot. Instead, we spend the game chasing the <i>idea</i> of a child, which just doesn't work. Unless you're going to take Telltale Games' approach to <i>The Walking Dead</i> games and actually let us spend time with and bond with the child that's in danger, I don't think you can get away with it anymore. Not easily, anyway.<br />
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But <i>Homecoming</i> has much bigger problems then just that. The lead character, Alex, is initially presented as a soldier returning from war looking for his missing little brother which leads him to a bigger mystery involving the children of all of the town's founding families. Alex is presented as a sure-footed fighter, both in melee and firearms, due to his "combat experience" but, in the game's bid for a twist, it's ultimately revealed that he's an escaped mental patient, not a soldier. So why was he so good at combat if he's spent his adult life doped up in a mental institution? Moreover, the game introduces actual human enemies for the first time, which Alex dispatches as easily as the monsters. These human enemies are representatives of The Order, a shady group of people who... y'know what? It doesn't matter. It boils down to Double Helix trying to explain something that no one wanted explained in the first place. If you know the basic rules of how the town of Silent Hill operates, that's all you need. Conspiracies and cover up's and convoluted explanations just complicate things and ultimately lead to unsatisfactory outcomes. (Ahem, "midichlorians.") It slipped, a couple years later, that Double Helix wanted to position <i>Homecoming</i> as the first in a trilogy of games and I think that <i>Silent Hill</i> fans really dodged a bullet there.<br />
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This is why I found <i>Silent Hill: Shattered Memories</i> to be such a breath of fresh air. A Wii exclusive, <i>Shattered Memories</i>, is the strongest entry into the series since the third game and very underrated. The biggest hit the game took from critics was completely removing combat in favor of occasionally annoying chase sequences and, while I see their point, it didn't hinder my enjoyment of the game at all. <i>Shattered Memories</i> turned out to be Akira Yamaoka's final soundtrack in the series and he went out on top. Despite how little blood there was in the game (to the point where actually seeing it became a little startling) the developer's use of snow and ice and Yamaoka's oppressive soundtrack lent it a lot of atmosphere.<br />
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The game reuses the premise of the original (Harry Mason searching an abandoned town for his missing daughter) and instead focuses on puzzles and exploration. It was the first time since the second game where I found myself questioning whether or not I wanted to open the next door. They present "psychological horror" as a literal thing, using a framing sequence of a visit to a psychiatrist, to bookend the chapters. Even more than that, the game is recording and cataloging how you play the game and offers you an ending (and occasionally costume changes) based on numerous, completely invisible, factors. Much like the second game did, just to a much smaller degree. Because you don't have the option of a binary choice, your ending feels more authentically <i>yours</i>, instead of just reloading a save to see what was behind door number two. And it works. Spend too much time in the brothel staring at pictures of scantly clad women? Spend too much time staring at the asses of the couple of women you meet in town? You'll get an ending that represents that. And so on. I got what I assume is the "good" ending and it actually made me misty eyed. <i>That</i> is a helluva success. During the credits, the game actually lists off an actual psychological profile based on your choices, which, while not entirely accurate, is a cool addition. (You could write a dissertation about <i>Silent Hill</i> and it's attitude towards mental health. <i>Shattered Memories</i> is the only example in the series of psychiatry not being presented as evil.)<br />
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One of the boldest sequences, which I won't spoil, follows the idea of making a player helpless to it's logical conclusion. An event happens and you are literally trapped. There is a longer-than-you-might-think period of time where you can't do <i>anything</i>. That initial panic of "what am I supposed to do!?" slowly gives into "shit, I'm fucked." Which is as close to an honest representation of what you'd actually<i> feel </i>in that situation as a video game could give you. The only downside is that, in an world of online walkthroughs, most people would probably see this as a puzzle and that they're just missing the right piece. Still, it takes balls to force a player to stop playing the game and my hats are off Climax Studios for it. While it wasn't a hit, hopefully it will eventually reach the cult status it deserves.<br />
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Which brings us to <i>Silent Hill: Downpour</i>, which I just finished yesterday and... it's pretty bad. Not broken, just bad. Much like <i>Homecoming</i>, the game has a strictly straight-to-video plot, paper thin characters, and a serious deficit of tension or scares. It's by no means a total loss... there were some aspects of the game that worked: the addition of a UV light to help with certain puzzles. The graphics look great. As your progress through the game, the loading screen starts adding phrases like "She's lying to you" or "They know what you did" in-between the tips and tricks. And there <i>are</i> a couple of good sequences here and there. Unfortunately, the game can't seem to capitalize on even the things they got right. The UV light is never used beyond a bit of puzzle solving. The graphics don't matter if they have the most boring representation of the Otherworld yet. And the best sequences in the game are optional side quests and easily missed. Not to mention "a couple good sequences" being not nearly enough for a 10 to 12 hour game. Much like the creepy loading screen phrases never build to anything, neither does the entire game. It's perpetually halfway there.<br />
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As the first game without Akira Yamaoka's score, <i>Dexter</i> composer Daniel Licht had really big shoes to fill and, in the end, was not equal to the task. He's fine for atmospherics but whenever the game needs your heart rate above normal, particularly in the Otherworld sequences, he's nowhere to be found. Part of the joy of Yamaoka's soundtracks were the effort that went into playing with sounds designed to make you uncomfortable. There's no sense of that in Licht's work. It's standard horror score paint-by-numbers. This pervades the entire game, including the endings which (in addition to the story problems already there) are almost silent. Worse, someone had the bright idea to waste good money hiring KoRn to do a song for the soundtrack. Putting aside that the song they turn in is really cringe-inducingly bad, if the idea was to attach a name to the game to get some attention, why on Earth would they use a band that hasn't been relevant for at least a decade? If they wanted an inappropriately emo band for the soundtrack, My Chemical Romance would have been a more timely choice and even their popularity is fading fast. Poor Mary Elizabeth McGlynn is reduced to a couple of tracks of humming.<br />
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The problems with <i>Downpour</i> are systemic. Nothing in the game is better than mediocre. The melee combat is perfunctory: block, wait for an opening, hit, repeat. All melee weapons are breakable and, apparently, breakable at exactly the same rate. Wooden sticks break exactly as often as lead pipes and metal axes. Gun combat is occasionally broken. I've missed enemies with a shotgun blast at ultra close range because my reticule wasn't just so.<br />
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The story is a mess. Everything about it is surface level. I was one step ahead of the story at every turn. Much like <i>Homecoming</i>, the protagonist is a sort of masculine ideal: a "soldier" or a prison inmate. Manly men. Not easily relatable and not as prone to being scared as you should be in a survival horror game. Nobody's reactions make logical sense. Murphy's first reaction to the Otherworld is practically non-plussed. The only time he shows any emotion is when he's being hurt during an Otherworld chase sequence (and his screams sound a lot like Homer Simpson) or when he does the groan-worthy "fall to his knees and scream at the sky" bit. The other characters fare even worse. The only female character in the game never gets to do anything other than screaming, threatening to kill you, or crying. The radio DJ is introduced and forgotten, never to be seen again. They even have a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro">Magical Negro</a> character. It's like reading a laundry list of every horror/suspense trope you can think of.<br />
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The game introduces side quests, all of which are easily missed but provide some of the game's best moments. There's a sequence where you play a gramophone backwards to see a murder scene in reverse that might be the best scene in the game. But unless you have a particular item and notice a second floor light on, you'd never see it. There's another cool sequence in a cinema that ends with you going into the screen to look for an item, complete with an old school survival horror control scheme. Other side quests are utterly pointless. They're provided with no context and no payoff. Maybe you get an item or two but for a game that should be trading in scares, what does an extra Medkit matter?<br />
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The Otherworld looks dull and the your time there is usually just puzzles or chase sequences. You're not even being chased by a creature but a translucent red ball... which is hardly the most threatening visual in the world. Other than a couple homages to that old silent movie <i>Safety Last!</i> there's nothing any real interest there. The "normal" world is appropriately dessicated but lacks the nuance to drum up anything other than the odd tense moment. The game allows you to peek into a room before opening it but then does nothing with the idea. Gone is the handheld radio that spits static whenever monsters approach despite really needing the extra level of tension not present in Licht's score. <br />
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Creature design? Again, completely surface level. <i>Silent Hill 2</i> had all manner of weird monsters representing parts of James' subconscious, from the enormously phallic Pyramid Head to two pairs of women's legs connected at the hip. The man clearly had issues with women right down to the Mary/Maria thing. What does Murphy Pendleton have? Uh... prisoners? Which represent... umm... his time in prison? (Seriously, when the big prisoner guys put their arms out and do the "Come at me, bro!" move, you will laugh at loud.) The Screamers and the Weeping Bats are just generic designs. They have nothing to do with his dead son or the child molester or the prison guard he may/may not have killed. They're just sort of there.<br />
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Everything caps off with seriously lunkheaded endings that actively work to undo the character's journey. Both "good" endings shake out with the truth that Murphy wasn't responsible for killing the child molester that murdered his son OR the prison guard who tried to help him. In which case, what was the fucking point? Silent Hill exists to force you to come to terms with the things you try to hide from yourself and the people around you. Or else. It's about forcing you to take responsibility, in the most traumatic way possible. If you eliminate that, you've killed the character's entire arc and his reason for being there. You're then turned loose by the female character to... what? Spend your life on the run for a crime you didn't commit? Thematically, it doesn't fit. It would have made much more sense for Murphy to own up, go back to prison until he's cleared of assaulting the guard, and once he's out of prison, he can be <i>truly</i> free.<br />
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The "bad" ending has Murphy being put to death for the murder of the guard AND his son, even though the guy who raped and murdered his son had already been caught, charged, and imprisoned. He's injected, his eyes close... that's it. Cue credits. There's nothing to suggest that it's the town's influence at work. No hints of Otherworld influence. No stinger scene. Not even any music. It just sort of farts out there and that's that. Yet another wasted opportunity. I'm not even going to get into the special "surprise" ending which is neither as amusing or non-sensical at the previous ones. The only ending that works is the "Full Circle" ending where Murphy is caught in a loop and has to do the whole thing all over again or the ending you get if you fail the final scene where the female guard is forced to take your place. Those, at least, made sense.<br />
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The worst part is that all of these endings change through strictly binary choices. At a couple of points, the game stops and presents you with the option of trying to save someone or killing them/letting them die. Ultimately, your choice doesn't matter, (that would open a can of worms I don't think Vatra could handle) it just boils down to whether or not you're willing to try. The only other factor is whether or not you choose to kill the enemies you fight or simply leave them twitching and unconscious. This doesn't work for a couple of reasons. One, it flies in the face of ingrained gaming logic that says that enemies need to be killed or else they'll just get back up and keep attacking you. If it felt like the devs were trying to make a larger point about violence in gaming, that would be one thing but instead it just seems like an arbitrary choice. For another, not killing the creatures doesn't matter. They're not humans. They're not even alive. They're constructs that are (supposed to be) created from Murphy's subconscious. That means that there's no moral quandary about killing them which invalidates the idea that finishing them off is somehow "bad." Like everything else, it doesn't seem like a thought out decision but an easy way to tabulate what ending you get. Compare this to games like <i>Silent Hill 2</i> or <i>Silent Hill: Shattered Memories</i> where your ending would change based on things as esoteric as not slowing down so a character could keep pace with you or letting your gaze linger too long on pictures of some scantily clad women. It's hard not to see it as step back or a lazy design decision.<br />
<br />
Am I being hard the game? Yes. Does it deserve it? Also, yes. It's a game full of missed opportunities, unfulfilled potential and half-assed design. If you want an idea of exactly how luckless the Silent Hill franchise has gotten, note that <i>Downpour</i> was meant to be one part of an entire <i>Silent Hill</i> themed month this March along with a <i>Silent Hill HD Collection</i> and a PS Vita game called <i>Book Of Memories</i>. Well, as it turns out, <i>Downpour</i> was extremely mediocre and undersold. The XBox 360 version of the<i> HD Collection</i> was a buggy mess <i>that Konami REFUSES to fix</i> and <i>Book Of Memories</i> was delayed until next month, presumably to be in sync with the new movie (which looks <i>Resident Evil</i> movie level bad).<br />
<br />
So, yeah, things are about as bad as they can be.<br />
<br />
But they can get better.<br />
<br />
Survival horror, as a genre, has faded into the background. The best work in the genre is being done by smaller indie developers, which I think validated Yamaoka's feelings that limitations, self-imposed or otherwise, are where the scares lay. Look at <a href="http://www.parsecproductions.net/slender/"><i>Slender</i></a>, for instance. The last man standing for big budget console survival horror, <i>Dead Space</i>, has given up and gone action. Other than Frictional Games, the field is nearly empty. It's all about mainstream multiplayer games now. <i>Silent Hill</i> will, in all likelihood, never reach the heights it once had.<br />
<br />
So stop trying.<br />
<br />
You can do what the <i>Silent Hill</i> movies seem to want to do and throw a bunch of potentially scary images at you with no logic or context, hope people don't notice and just milk those diminishing returns as long as you can. Or you can lower the budgets, hire on passionate, talented fans looking to tell stories in that universe and let them loose to make the scariest, darkest things they can think of. Lower your expectations and focus on quality storytelling. Build up a reputation for pants-wetting scariness and make your money from your cultish audience willing to follow you anywhere and buy anything with the <i>Silent Hill</i> name on it. Even if it isn't the biggest selling series in the world, make it <i>mean</i> something. And, for Christ's sake, get Akira Yamaoka back.<br />
<br />
That would be the smart play. Now for the realistic one:<br />
<br />
Developers and publishers need money... and since there's nothing about the <i>Silent Hill</i> premise that lends itself to space marines, giant explosions, and cover-based gunplay, they're limited on how to exploit the franchise to their best ability. Multiplayer is, according to EA anyway, a mandatory component of gaming now. Find some kind of creative way to integrate it into the franchise. They seem to be attempting that with <i>Silent Hill: Book Of Memories</i> but, if <i>Downpour </i>is any indication, I'm not so much against the idea of a non-canonical four player action co-op multiplayer <i>Silent Hill</i> game as I am suspicious of their ability to pull it off. PS Vita's don't exactly have the largest install base right now so even if it does well, it's only doing well for a PS Vita game.<br />
<br />
Don't make the mistake of going co-op. It's easy and fans see right through it. Look to how <i>Dark Souls </i>and <i>Dragon's Dogma</i> used multiplayer and work from there. Allow other players to invade a person's world and cause havoc or act as some kind of invisible director, setting traps and enemy spawns. Think outside the box. The name <i>Silent Hill</i> still means something, even if it doesn't have the same meaning to kids as it does to 30-somethings like me. That should be enough to at least get you the benefit of a doubt.<br />
<br />
It's crunch time for the franchise. <i>Downpour</i> was disappointing enough that there's only enough room for maybe one more game before people like me, people who have been in since day one, give the franchise up for dead. Bad movies aren't helping. Handheld co-op games aren't helping. At this point, only a "reinvention" could get enough people talking for it to matter... but for that you'll need more creative people on board then you already have. Go big or get small, just don't settle for mediocre.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-87191329154848820352012-08-23T02:34:00.000-07:002012-08-23T02:34:04.708-07:00Borderlands 2's "Girlfriend Mode" & Feckless JournalistsWorking up to the mid-September release of <i>Borderlands 2</i>, Gearbox Software has been in full on PR blitz mode. It has all the earmarks of a smash hit. The original was a fast, funny and addicting mix of first person shooter and <i>Diablo</i>-style loot farming. Everything they've released about the sequel so far makes it seem as though they've worked on their weaknesses and expanded on their strengths. I don't think I'm jumping the gun by saying that it's going to be an excellent game. Unfortunately, gender politics in gaming has been picking up speed (as well as pageviews) this year and Gearbox has had to deal with a few mini-crises as a result.<br />
<br />
First there was the release of <i>Duke Nuke'em Forever</i>, which was a terrible game by anyone's estimation and really missed the mark on everything, including some creepy scenes involving Duke's bimbo hangers-on. Not kitschy, tongue-in-cheek, exploitation stuff either but legitimately mean and unfunny crap better left unused. Gearbox mostly scooted past criticism because the game was mostly done when they bought it from the defunct company who had previously been developing it. It was a Gearbox game in name only.<br />
<br />
Then, a couple of months ago, Gearbox decided that they weren't going to add female Marines into the <i>Aliens: Colonial Marines</i> multiplayer that's due out next year. The assets were there in the single player but for as-yet-undefined reasons, they won't be included in the multiplayer. Women are fundamental to the <i>Alien</i> mythology, both thematically and in characters like Ripley and Vasquez, so their absence was curious. You can get skins of <i>Aliens</i> characters like Hudson and Apone as a pre-order bonus from GameStop, but no Ellen Ripley? A dedicated fan started a petition to have women added that went well beyond expectations (and garnered articles about it on most of the major gaming news sites) but Gearbox is still silent about the issue.<br />
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Most recently, in an interview by <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-08-13-borderlands-2-gearbox-reveals-the-mechromancers-girlfriend-mode">Eurogamer</a>, lead designer John Hemingway referred to a skill tree for the <i>Borderlands 2</i> DLC character class, The Mechromancer, as "girlfriend mode" for it's ability to essentially dumb down gameplay for beginners. Because... haha... girls are pretty bad at games. Am I right, guys? Right? Up top! Yeah! Crack a brewski!<br />
<br />
It's pretty clear in the interview that Eurogamer was not needlessly sensationalizing Hemingway's comments but merely reporting exactly what he said. At no point did they editorialize, they just printed his quotes. It didn't stop Gearbox head Randy Pitchford from taking to Twitter to defend Hemingway, referring to his use of the "girlfriend mode" phrase as a "personal anecdote" and doing some old fashioned "blame the messenger" PR moves.<br />
<br />
To be fair, on the continuum of sexism, Hemingway's comments rank somewhere alongside your average issue of Maxim magazine. As a guy, it seems like a fairly standard dudebro thing to say and I'm not particularly offended by it. The sticking point seemed to be his lunkheaded insistence on repeating the phrase several more times in an attempt to sell the non-joke. Fine. Poor choice of words, questionable judgement, no big deal. A good opportunity to continue the discussion of women in gaming but not all that dire of a situation.<br />
<br />
However, if you look at the same article on other sites, the "Girlfriend Mode" comments were completely removed. They just wrote around it. Some sites reported the kerfuffle others, predictably, went the other direction and decried the evils of political correctness that are presenting a clear and present gamer to the future of gamizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. For instance, the typically facepalm-able defense from <a href="http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/14/opinion-borderlands-2-and-the-girlfriend-mode-farce">IGN's Colin Moriarty</a>. (Because it wouldn't be IGN if they didn't find some way to blame the fans for the industry's problems.)<br />
<br />
Just as a sidenote: How about we wait until women are better represented in games before we jump straight to the apoplectic shrieks of political correctness killing gaming? Women now represent around half of all gamers but there's no way you'd know that from the games come out every week. The fact that people like Moriarty overreact to even the notion of discussing sexism in games is a pretty clear sign that we're on the right track. It means that the section of people who reflexively fear change are getting worried. That's a good sign and, if nothing else, the precursor to a lot of primo schadenfreude at their expense.<br />
<br />
Since I started this blog, my two biggest fascinations have been sexism in the gaming industry and the failures of gaming journalism to accurately represent the fans. This "Girlfriend Mode" issue is a good example of both. Developers and publishers have a reputation for being astonishingly petty and defensive. Give a bad review or bad press and you can kiss your previews, exclusives, review copies, and ad buys goodbye. They can ostensibly hold you hostage for telling the truth. That means that dissenting opinions happen mostly on smaller sites where they are open to smirking accusations of pandering for pageviews. (For a recent example, see Gamefront and the Forbes bloggers in the wake of the <i>Mass Effect 3</i> ending controversy.)<br />
<br />
I'm cynical enough at this point to know that it's not going to change anytime soon. Until developers and publishers start thickening their skin (and stop pretending that they don't know when they're releasing sub par products) and journalists start toughening up and ignoring comments sections trolls and Twitter threats and write for the silent majority, your best bet is supporting the smaller, hungrier people whose sense of self-preservation hasn't kicked in yet. Or making sure you support places like Eurogamer when they refuse to back down for doing their job right. Those big sites aren't going anywhere.<br />
<br />
The ball is already rolling in regards to treating women better in games and it will only pick up steam as it goes. The real turning point will happen when enough women join the industry that the casual misogyny that comes with working in a male dominated industry becomes untenable. (And you can believe that guys like Moriarty will be dramatically shaking their fists at the sky the entire time.) This is still a very young industry in a society that still has a bad habit of treating women as weaker or lesser than.<br />
<br />
Likewise, the gaming press has a hard route to travel trying to balance staying in the good graces of tetchy developers with being honest with their very mercurial readers. The industry already has a very bad habit of blaming fans to cover for their own fragile egos. It's an easy excuse and usually disingenuous bullshit. In that respect, fans aren't the only ones who need to grow up a little. The difference is that a lot of the worst offenders amongst the angry fans are young enough to possibly learn better. One article with one developer's loose tongue doesn't matter much one way or the other but it's still a conversation worth having, however inconvenient it might be.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-84200812315751109332012-08-12T14:47:00.000-07:002012-08-12T15:11:25.862-07:00Walking The RoomNew Media has been pretty awesome for comedians in the last few years. Twitter has proven to be a meritocracy where people like Megan Amram and Rob Delaney can build followings out of one liners. Podcasts have gone from a substitute for terrestrial radio (<i>The Adam Carolla Show</i>), an opportunity to do some long form improv (<i>Comedy Bang Bang</i>) to career rehab (<i>WTF With Marc Maron</i>) and career kickstarters (<i>You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes</i>). Now it's being used as a cheap way for comedians to hone their talent and hang with friends while also, if you play your cards right, being a testing ground for TV show pilots. <i>Comedy Bang Bang</i> is already running on IFC with pilots by guys like Paul F. Thompkins, Jimmy Pardo, Pete Holmes and Marc Maron in various stages of development. Adam fucking Carolla is in the Guinness Book Of World Records because of his podcast.<br />
<br />
And then there's <i>Walking The Room</i>.<br />
<br />
Y'know what? No. Fuck it. Too easy. I'm going to be that special kind of asshole who talks about comedy seriously. (I'm expecting to write for The Onion A/V Club any day now.) The term "walking the room" is comedic shorthand for bombing so badly that people walk out on you. Cuddlahs, the nickname for hardcore <i>WTR</i> listeners, know all the lingo but I need to ease you in. If I just start blathering about how I'm clown from the neck down and I saw a hobotang shoving oranges into his meat pockets screaming "You got friiiiien'" while wearing Grip-'Em-Ups you're going to think I'm a fucking idiot.<br />
<br />
Okay.<br />
<br />
<i>Walking The Room</i> is a comedy podcast starring Greg Behrendt and Dave Anthony. They've been friends and stand-up comedians off and on for (and I have no intention of looking this up to make sure it's accurate) I'm going to say about two decades. It's crass and sweet in almost equal measure. More than most podcasts, they talk almost about their lives. This isn't an interview show or an excuse to do long form improv. This is two (sometimes three) funny people sitting in a closet making each other laugh.<br />
<br />
About a year ago, I was looking for some new podcasts. After listening to Adam Carolla every day at work for more than a year, I was getting worn out. He used to talk a lot about how friends and family tuned him out after awhile and I found myself doing that exact the same thing. He had a finite number of stories and repeated themselves regularly so I was looking to jump off. All I had known about Greg Behrendt at the time was that he was the <i>He's Just Not That Into You</i> Guy and that he did <i>Loveline</i> with Adam once and allegedly wasn't funny. However, after seeing Greg on Jimmy Pardo's <i>Never Not Funny</i> be very goddamn funny thanks, I reconsidered. Then I heard about Patton Oswalt's tweets about the show and that pushed me over the edge.<br />
<br />
With the first episode I listened to, #56, all it took was sitting at my desk and work and listening to them joke about not being mad at Greg's wife for possibly leaving him because she would be "jumping out of the toilet mid-flush" and I was sold. Then, after making Greg laugh so hard he couldn't speak, Dave started shouting "Are you dying? YES! DIE! FINALLY!" I had to run and hide in a bathroom stall for five minutes because I was laughing so hard that people were popping their heads out of their cubicle to stare at me. That was it. I dived in completely. At a rate of about four episodes a day. Which, in retrospect, may not have been either healthy or wise.<br />
<br />
Greg and Dave's willingness to talk about their lives, their foibles, neuroses, and career worries is part of what makes the show unique. Greg achieved success with a couple of best selling books (one of which got turned into a movie) and a daytime talk show that spun out of something that wasn't really part of his forte: self-help. He'd been a professional stand-up for over a decade by that point but when he achieved popularity, it wasn't for the things he'd been working at for so long. He could have probably rode the self-help thing into the ground but instead he's been focusing in his surf/ska band, <a href="http://www.thereigningmonarchs.com/">The Reigning Monarchs</a>, and <a href="http://www.outdresstheenemy.com/">fashion</a>. Trying to find some kind of balance in his post-self-help guy career between comedy and other pursuits is a regular source of content.<br />
<br />
Dave, on the other hand, had a lot of promise as a young stand-up but also a penchant for anger and self-sabotage that kept dragging him down. (For a more detailed explanation, you can listen to his episode of Paul Gilmartin's excellent <a href="http://mentalpod.com/Dave-Anthony-podcast">Mental Illness Happy Hour</a> podcast.) He's since course corrected and now has a wife and son and finds work as a writer, stand-up and occasionally a commercial actor. There's also the <a href="http://lapodfest.com/">L.A. Podcast Festival </a>he co-founded that starts in October. He's also an absolute beast on <a href="https://twitter.com/daveanthony">Twitter</a>. Always more the aggressive of the pair and less willing to take shit from people, they get a lot of material out of Dave reacting to other people's stupidity. (It rarely ends well for them.) <br />
<br />
When you put them together, the result is a pretty classic comedy dynamic... provided you can take it. The twisted stories that Dave opens most episodes with are designed to weed out the weak and easily offended. Chances are, you'll know in the first five minutes if the show is for you. Compared to shows like Comedy Bang Bang or The Nerdist which, by virtue of their format, keep you at arms length and away from the personal lives of their hosts, WTR gets you uncomfortably close. Their family lives are usually a prominent feature. As you'd expect from comedians who've known each other for so long, their ability to annoy each other is unparallelled. (Listening to Greg get under Dave's skin by merely making a noise is always a joy.) There's also precious little Rogan/Carolla-style macho chestbeating. As you'd expect from a show recorded by two grown men in a closet, there's a lot of aggressive male energy but it's never misogynist or homophobic. Guests like Jen Kirkman, Karen Kilgariff and Nikki Glaser more than hold their own.<br />
<br />
One of the most endearing traits about the show is how they don't seem to put themselves above or separate from their fans. You're right there in the clown car with them. Insulting Greg and/or Dave as a joke is practically an initiation ritual. They're accessible via their forums <a href="http://hotdogthunderdome.walkingtheroom.com/">The Hot Dog Thunderdome</a> and <a href="http://hotdogthunderforum.com/index.php">The Hot Dog Thunderforum</a>. They're both on Twitter and Facebook. Bonding through failure and sadness is what the podcuddle is all about. There's a lot of other podcasts out there that are just a couple of dudes talking, but the pedigree of Walking The Room and the frankness with which they talk puts them well above the rest. This is mandatory listening for all comedy fans.<br />
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Links:<br />
<a href="http://www.walkingtheroom.com/">Walking The Room</a> - The homepage which features updates, a webstore and a handy glossary for catching up with all of the in-jokes and short hand that's popped up over the course of over a hundred episodes.<br />
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<a href="http://walkingtheroom.tumblr.com/">The Walking The Room Tumblr page</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/WalkingTheRoom">The Walking The Room YouTube Channel</a><br />
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<a href="http://walkingtheroom.libsyn.com/">The Walking The Room Libsyn page</a> - Direct downloads for those who don't want to subscribe via iTunes.<br />
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Suggested listening:<br />
<i>#22: Hobo Orange Thieves</i> - WTR's greatest contribution to the English language, "hobotang," begins here.<br />
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<i>#24: Candy Insanity & No Snitching Ellen</i> - Probably the best episode to start with and the easiest way to figure out if the show is for you.<br />
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<i>#44: Brian "Piranha" Posehn & Hobotang Skin Pockets / #50: Patton Oswalt / #81: Patton Oswalt & Drop Some Bass</i>: Three more good choices for beginners who need the safety of more popular comedians to help ease them in. Pussies.<br />
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<i>#43: Wheelchwitz & The Heckler</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>#56: Mid Flush Jump & Elephon</i><br />
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<i>#59: A Lift To Babytown & Get Off At Murder</i><br />
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<i>#86: Junk Pics & Napalm Dixon</i> - One of my favorite Greg bits: "He's good, he's good, he's good, he's dead." <br />
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<i>#114: Wood Master Paul Gilmartin</i> - In which Dave asks the single worst question of all time.<br />
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<i>Live Cuddle #2: What Can Brown Do For You?</i> - A live show for $2 on their website where guest Dave Holmes tells possibly the best shit story of all time.<br />
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Get into it, Cuddlah!Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-8096331768672187572012-07-14T16:04:00.001-07:002012-08-12T15:31:24.592-07:00Mass Effect 3: Failure To Communicate<b>Spoilers! Everywhere!</b> <br />
<br />
Okay, so I deleted my initial review of the <i>Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut</i>. Honestly, it hadn't been sitting well with me since I posted it. It was cathartic at the time but, in retrospect, it wasn't fair to the things BioWare got right and only harped on them for the things they got wrong. In my defense, I wrote it after being awake for about 30 hours non-stop... which isn't helpful for anything let alone gathering your thoughts and writing about them. I hadn't allowed myself time (or a good night's sleep) to think about what I had experienced, I just went straight for the throat. At any rate, it was a bad, hacky piece of writing and I'd rather it went away. So I deleted it. I still want to write out my thoughts but in a slightly less sleep deprived, angry and spiteful way. So let's try this again:<br />
<br />
<br />
More than three months, eighty thousand dollars donated to charity, sixty thousand plus Likes on the Retake Mass Effect Facebook page, countless blog posts, news story comments, and message board posts, BioWare has released the final <i>final</i> word in their landmark sci-fi/action/role playing trilogy <i>Mass Effect 3</i> with the <i>Extended Cut</i> DLC. It comprises of some additional scenes, dialogue choices, an epilogue sequence and a brief additional ending fleshing out a finale that many felt was perfunctory at best and broken at worst.<br />
<br />
BioWare and EA were hammered for months by outraged fans on every front. While there was a lot of disappointment over their previous offering, the rushed, buggy and unsatisfying <i>Dragon Age II</i>, those feelings never really went beyond message board posts and the occasional middling review. This was another beast entirely. Over $80,000 was donated to charity in protest. Fans organized letter campaigns, cupcake and M&M drives, and even reported them to places like the BBB with complaints of "false advertisement." Very much against their will, gaming websites were forced to cover the story ad nauseum. It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that BioWare had to offer some kind of substantive response. They were understandably defensive in the press, citing the plethora of critical praise they received and passive/aggressively blaming fans for not understanding the ending. (For more on how gaming journalists failed gamers on this subject, see my first entry in the archives from March.)<br />
<br />
It wasn't always like this. BioWare was a much loved company with a lot of experience mixing storytelling and role playing into memorable games. They're also one of the most progressive companies out there in terms of portraying women and the LGBT community as equal to men. They were often mentioned in the same breath as companies like Bethesda, Valve and Gearbox for their commitment to quality and their close relationship with fans. For things to go this badly wrong this fast, BioWare had to act. But is it enough?<br />
<br />
Well, as with everything on the internet, it's seen as a mixed bag. For the people who really only wanted clarification and a proper epilogue, the fight seems to be over. They're as content with the endings as they can be... in the sense that it's gone from abominable to merely bad. For everyone else, like myself, who see a much bigger, deeper problem with the endings, we have to resign ourselves to calling the game an artistic failure.<br />
<br />
The problem with the endings starts at the beginning. On the run after the Reapers (the Big Bads of this universe who are bent on consuming and repurposing all organic life to their own ends) the hero, Shepard, meets a young boy hiding in a vent. The boy makes a portentious statement about not being able to be saved and runs off. Later, as Shepard is leaving Earth, he sees the boy again as he crawls into a departing spaceship... which is then destroyed as it tries to escape. This apparently affects Shepard deeply as he has nightmares over the course of the game where he's chasing after the kid only to see him go up in flames.<br />
<br />
This is where they screwed the pooch. Not only does it foreshadow the events of the ending but also the exact mistakes BioWare will end up making. <br />
<br />
It's a good scene and illustrates the horrors of war in an effective way... but making the assumption that <i>all</i> players care deeply for this anonymous kid they've known only for a minute shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what kind of game they were making. <i>Mass Effect</i> is a series built around the concept of player choice. The only way it works is if you don't force the players to accept your own morality. By presenting them with different options on how to unfold the story, they get to choose how they feel about things. The writers and developers are simply following those choices to their logical conclusion. The idea that Renegade Shepards who have willingly sacrificed friends, teammates and innocent lives in the pursuit of destroying the Reaper threat will suddenly be struck with this heavy guilt because of one kid is silly. Even my Shepard, a humanist who is loyal to his friends and innocents, willing to give a second chance but merciless towards his enemies, didn't spare an extra thought to a single dead kid. Until they forced it on me. Naturally the game had to get you into the chute and sliding towards the endgame but there are hundreds of ways to do that without speaking for the player.<br />
<br />
It's telling that between the <i>Mass Effect</i> games, Shepard is always put on ice somehow. In <i>Mass Effect 2</i> he was dead and in <i>Mass Effect 3</i> he was grounded and confined to quarters following the destruction of a star system. As a character, he does not exist until you pick up the controller. He doesn't have a life that he's living in-between games. BioWare have gone out of their way to make sure you think of Shepard as an extension of yourself. Which makes their sudden decision to force guilt onto you for narrative reasons all the more confusing and wrong-headed.<br />
<br />
Fast forward to the last ten minutes of the game. Shepard is presented with three options by a Virtual Intelligence in the form and voice of the dead child from the beginning of the game. Two of them are poison pills that will end the Reaper threat and the last is presented as the best ending despite have the creepiest subtext. It breaks down like this: Control (a/k/a The Creepy Space Jesus Ending), Destroy (a/k/a Genocide) and Synthesis (a/k/a Happy Happy Good Times With Puppy Dogs and Rainbows). Again, BioWare makes the same mistake. Either all of the endings need to be poison pills or none of them. For one ending to be the "perfect" one, you're tacitly punishing players for choosing anything else. It's no longer <i>their</i> ending, it's the <i>wrong</i> ending.<br />
<br />
It doesn't help that the implications of the endings are all an utter mess. <br />
<br />
Let's start with Control. Control is what the secondary villain, The Illusive Man, has been after since he was introduced in the second game. By controlling the Reapers, Shepard dies and has his consciousness added to the Reapers where we will take control of them and use their power to rebuild the galaxy. Now, put aside the fact that there are exactly <i>zero</i> people in the universe who would trust the Reapers just because they stop killing everyone and say "Oh, hey, it's cool, bro. It's Shepard. I got this." We have watched every single character over the course of the series who has come in close contact to the Reapers become "Indoctrinated." No matter how strong they are, if you're too close to them for too long the Reapers will eventually turn you into a slave via mind control. It's implied that Shepard may be immune to Indoctrination due to events in the first game but it's never made implicit. And considering the voice over narration that happens during this ending of Shepard with a dead, monotone, slightly auto-tuned voice and the creepy music that accompanies it, you have to wonder if Shepard doesn't eventually lose it. It's not actually Shepard in the Reapers, it's just a copy of his consciousness so it stands to reason there's a finite length on his control. In which case the Reapers come back and kill everyone all over again. So clearly, for those reasons, Control is not the "good" ending.<br />
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Destroy. This is the option I think most people would like the best if not for the elephant in the room: you have to kill all synthetic creatures in the galaxy, including your teammate and friend EDI, in order to do it. It's easily the cleanest, most utilitarian option. You kill the Reapers, everything goes back to relative normalcy. The cycle of violence is broken. There's even a chance Shepard survives, though it's only a brief scene where a body lies in rubble and takes a breath and only really seems to be there to make that choice a little less bleak. The Destroy ending won't be a problem if you've chosen to play a Renegade Shepard where the ends justify the means, but if you're a Humanist and you're not interested in impregnating the galaxy with your essence against their will or becoming an immortal synthetic space God, this is clearly the best ending.<br />
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This illustrates the other big problem with the endings: BioWare's insistence that "Synthetics will always be at war with Organics." Over the course of the series there have been conversations about the role of synthetics and missions involving VI run amok and the centuries long conflict between the Geth and the Quarians. The Reapers themselves are even synthetic/organic hybrids. The problem crops up because the game always gives you more than one way to resolve the issue. Most famously, in the case of the Geth and Quarians, the third game allows you to broker a peace between them. Which means the game actively works against it's own assertion.<br />
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The entire idea is incredibly arbitrary and naive. If <i>Mass Effect</i> is a series that allows us to essentially build a universe out of our own actions, why is BioWare stepping in at the very last second to yank it out of your hands? Why is it working against itself to present a flawed premise that is easily dismissed? Most of the excuses organics use to go to war (religion, money, land) are completely useless to synthetics. The Geth only went to war with the Quarians because they were pushed into it. What's more, so what if synthetics will eventually go to war with organics? <i>Organics</i> will always go to war with organics. It's our nature. It's the risk you take for having free will. If you take the route of giving the Geth the ability to self-determinate, to give them "souls," then the biggest distinction between synthetics and organics is rendered moot. Because they can think for themselves, you'll never get the full force of the Geth going to war, you'll get a faction of them. Which also fundamentally ruins BioWare's point. The idea that they're putting all their weight behind this idea is forehead-slappingly ridiculous.<br />
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It doesn't help that the Starchild itself is an untrustworthy character. It created the Reapers and has a vested interest in seeing it's own ends brought to fruition yet BioWare uses it like an omniscient narrator and not an antagonist to be overcome. Which is what he actually is. Worse, it openly advocates a particular ending: Synthesis. This goes back to the problem at the beginning of the game of BioWare essentially forcing their morality on you. If Synthesis is the ending that BioWare wants you to pick, what's the point of having other endings? Not only does the Starchild <i>want</i> you to choose it, it's only available if your War Assets rating is high enough, making it "special." Both in execution and content, the other endings are clearly inferior. Synthesis is the reward, Control and Destroy are the punishment.<br />
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So let's talk about the Synthesis ending. Creepy, creepy Synthesis. BioWare positioned the endings to make a case for capital "A" Art, so I don't think I'm out of line judging the series as such and picking through it looking for subtext. Because what's important to note about the creepiness of Synthesis isn't on the screen, it's just underneath the surface.<br />
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What Synthesis means is essentially that all sentient life in the galaxy is smooshed together to create a single hybrid race of synthetic/organic beings. BioWare uses this as a jump off to tell you that everything turns out great: no more war, everyone likes each other and is now immortal. Yay! If all you are looking for is a generic happy ending, nevermind the subtext, this is the one to pick.<br />
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Unfortunately for BioWare, they can't have it both ways. They don't get to make Art and then tell us to ignore the obvious ramifications of their "happy ending." What they don't tell you in selling you the Synthesis ending is that you are making this change for every sentient being in the galaxy <i>against their will</i>. We're talking about genetic rape. Forced eugenics. It's presented as a Utopia but the whole thing reads like a sci-fi Nuremberg deposition. Hilariously, it's also what the main bad guy of the first game, Saren, wanted. So essentially the guy you killed a few years ago was right all along. Oops?<br />
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Either they didn't know what they were saying (in which case it's crystal clear that the writing team at BioWare was fighting way above their weight class) or they actually <i>believe</i> it... in which case: ugh. Until one of the writers is willing to comment otherwise, I'm going to assume that they just didn't see that pretty obvious spin on what they presented. They wanted a rainbows-and-puppy-dogs happy ending and thought that this was somehow the best way to go about it, heedless of the really, really obvious subtext. Which makes me wish they would stop using the words "artistic integrity." They haven't earned it. <br />
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It feels like a bunch of people living in a bubble, working insanely long hours and drinking the corporate middle-management Kool Aid of "everyone should get along and work together and everything will be great." It's painfully naive and has no real application outside of a corporate culture. Hell, I work for a big corporation and even the people promoting "synergy" don't believe it. It's a tool they use to keep people in line. That's it. It's not about kindness, it's about control.<br />
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If we were all a part of some big, homogenous society, then there's nowhere you can go from there. You need differences and diversity. You need conflict. That's how you grow and learn. This is ultimately where BioWare's failings lie: hubris. Ego. If they had made all three of the endings "happy endings" then there would be plenty of room for speculation and discussion about the merits of each one versus the others. Instead, BioWare chose to advocate one over the others and it's blown up in their face.<br />
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None of this was a foregone conclusion. The former lead writer for the <i>Mass Effect</i> series, Drew Karpyshyn, <a href="http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/17086/mass-effect-writer-drew-karpyshyn-reveals-original-mass-effect-3-endings">had a much different idea on how to end the series</a> but he left halfway through the development of <i>Mass Effect 2</i> in order to work on <i>Star Wars: The Old Republic</i> before retiring from BioWare entirely to focus on his own work. In his place, BioWare installed Mac Walters as a lead writer. This is purely a matter of opinion but, having read some of Mac Walters solo <i>Mass Effect</i> work, the best thing I can say about it is that it's "workmanlike." I've personally found it to be very stiff and boring with very generic characters. The character in the third game he's most responsible for writing, James Vega, is the definition of a generic space marine. His only real personality trait is his propensity for giving people nicknames. He was salvaged somewhat by a good voice acting performance from Freddie Prinze, Jr. (yeah, I just said that) but he's hardly the most popular member of the cast.<br />
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Corporations are not a meritocracy, and I'm sure the position of Head Writer is as much about management as anything else, so it ultimately doesn't matter. Maybe he's just a really good Big Picture guy. Compared to Karpyshyn however, a talented and well-respected sci-fi writer, it's hard not to see it as a step down. The end results go a long way to proving that theory. <a href="http://www.gamefront.com/did-a-mass-effect-3-writer-slam-the-ending/">Especially when it was hinted that he and Executive Producer Casey Hudson wrote the endings separately from the rest of the writers</a>. BioWare and the writer who allegedly talked out of turn have both denied that it was him but... well, that depends on how much trust you have in a company that was already in serious damage control.<br />
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Neither Walters nor Hudson have endeared themselves to fans in the time between the game's release and now by insisting on sticking to their "artistic integrity" and passing off the litany of problems with the game by passive/aggressively telling fans that they didn't <i>get it</i>. I have never met a writer who was completely confident of his writing. Not once. They almost universally think they could have done something different or better. So when Walters and Hudson refuse to show the slightest bit of humility or humanity by addressing angry fans like people and not children, they've only made the situation worse. Fans are baying for blood and no amount of free multiplayer DLC is going to change that.<br />
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This situation casts a pall over the entire <i>Mass Effect</i> series, over BioWare's next game <i>Dragon Age III</i>, and over the entire company going forward. This is an albatross they'll be dragging around for ages. It also didn't help their parent company EA <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/09/why-ea-won-the-worst-company-in-america-award/">won Worst Company In America</a> while the controversy over the ending raged. To paraphrase a writer I'm quite fond of (who, ironically, liked the endings), corporations are beasts... and beasts need to be fed. If you don't feed them enough, you become the food. When you consider the amount of money BioWare left on the table with <i>Mass Effect 3</i>, you better believe that someone at BioWare is going to become a snack.<br />
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If they had stuck the landing to this game, BioWare would <i>still</i> be doing victory laps. They'd be on all the year end Best Of lists. Good word of mouth would sell even more copies. The multiplayer packs they've been releasing for free could easily have been sold for five bucks a pop and if I enjoyed the game all the way through, I would have been happy to pay it.<br />
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Artistic integrity doesn't keep the lights on. While they have paid single player DLC lined up for the future and micro transactions in the multiplayer, there's a lot of money that BioWare isn't making right now. The game was marked down to half price about a month into it's release (to compare, Bethesda's <i>Skyrim</i> was released in November and still sells at the full $60) and stores like GameStop were coming up with <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/06/15/mass-effect-3-is-about-the-journey-not-the-destination-according-to-new-gamestop-ad/">all kinds of desperate marketing</a> to get people buy it.<br />
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I deliberately avoided mentioning that final ending BioWare added to the <i>Extended Cut</i> until now for a reason. It's the Refusal ending and, intentionally or not, it's BioWare blowing a raspberry at fans. One of the most popular complaints was that no matter what, you had to blindly follow the Starchild's choices even though it didn't seem logical and none of them were appetizing. Not having the option to just say "no" seemed really out of place. To that end, you can now either shoot the Starchild or plead your case to him. As a result, he tells you "so be it" in a creepy voice and walks off. The entire galaxy then goes down fighting. The epilogue involves a beacon left by your teammate Liara giving all of the information on how to defeat the Reapers for the next cycle which they use to defeat the Reapers on their own. It was revealed in a tweet from one of BioWare's community managers, though, that the next cycle doesn't somehow preempt the Reaper invasion, they build the Crucible and use it themselves. Which means that not only does Shepard doom the galaxy, he dies a coward who couldn't pull the trigger.<br />
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What's interesting about the ending isn't so much the content but the meta idea behind it: fans now have a chance to give BioWare the high hard one and reject the game and all of the botched endings it contains. It gives you a chance to beat the game your way and damn the consequences. You're not just rejecting the game, you're rejecting BioWare. Despite the low blow they give you on your way out the door, you still get to walk away. It was probably the most cathartic ending in the game to me. Their petulant reaction to your denial ("So be it!") actually made me feel better for choosing it. Like BioWare was saying "Fine! Screw you! Just leave! We don't need you! We don't need any of you!"<br />
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Regardless of the critical praise heaped on it (mostly by journalists who have vested interest in staying on EA's good side) the ultimate fate of <i>Mass Effect</i> will always be seen by fans as a giant, glaring missed opportunity. Ambition is a motherfucker if you can't pull it off. While the stakes for the <i>Dragon Age</i> series aren't as high (they don't have the benefit of a single protagonist or overarching conflict that players have been sitting with throughout the series) we will hopefully see a game that learns the lessons of <i>Mass Effect</i> and makes a better game for it. Then maybe BioWare can start to win back the fans they so badly let down. If not? So be it.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-115114196127333022012-07-08T02:57:00.001-07:002012-07-08T03:26:45.349-07:00Quick HitsI just got back from seeing Twitter phenom <a href="https://twitter.com/robdelaney">Rob Delaney</a> perform stand-up and it was a great time. I'm not just saying that because the first words out of his mouth were to point out the Sleep t-shirt I was wearing which sent him on an anecdote about writing a letter to Glenn Danzig as a child. Or the fact that he's a very handsome man who rocked a Kyuss t-shirt in a room full of plaid hipsters and young professionals. (The guy sitting next to me was wearing slippers. Legit slippers. How I got through the show without putting him in a headlock and driving his skull into the stage I'll never know.) Or the fact that he spent about an hour talking about how much he loves women, boobies, vaginas, buttles and all the wonderful things he can do to them in a consensual sexual context. He's just a flat out great comedian.<br />
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First thing you should know: homeboy <i>loves</i> women. All of them. Not in a creepy, misogynist way either. When he talks about sticking his face in a woman's nether regions and motorboating it like a guy in the middle of a violent seizure, it's not coming from a place of objectification, it's coming from a place of real love. In fact, just about all of his stories come from a place of genuine enthusiasm: his wife, his kid, his penis, Serena Williams, all of it.<br />
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If you spend enough time around stand-up comedy you can start to get a sense of the comedian's rhythm: set-up, punchline, pause, tag. That sort of thing. If I had to describe Rob's style it would be: set-up, punchline, punchline, punchline, punchline. He's great at raising the stakes and wringing every bit of laughter out of a premise. It helped that this was a genuinely good crowd at a good venue who were really into the performer and the material. If anyone left that show unsatisfied, it's not on Rob.<br />
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He's apparently just recently filmed a special that will be released later this year. Keep an eye out because it's good stuff.<br />
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In the video game world, I'm splitting my time between <i>Lollipop Chainsaw</i>, <i>Dragon's Dogma</i>, and an Insane difficulty run on <i>Mass Effect 3</i> as well as some <i>Mass Effect 3</i> multiplayer. There's a lot to say about <i>Lollipop Chainsaw</i> and <i>Dragon's Dogma</i> so I'll have articles up about them at length sometime in the near future. I'm currently working 60 hours of mandatory overtime at work this month so my free time is severely limited.<br />
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On the news front, I'm finding the story that Gearbox Software has decided not to add female characters to the multiplayer for their upcoming shooter <i>Aliens: Colonial Marines</i> very interesting. Apparently there will be female characters in the single-player but they'll be absent in the multiplayer.<br />
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Looking back at my previous articles, female representation in video games is something I'm a lot more interested in than I would have thought. I can't remember ever having a discussion about misogyny in the gaming industry with people in real life. Nonetheless, women are a solid and growing demographic that regularly gets short shrift from guys in the industry whose idea of women is... well, let's just say "naive."<br />
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There's no reason to believe that Gearbox is doing this with malicious intent. In fact, their justification is still pretty hazy right now. It could be a matter of time, lack of interest, or perhaps not wanting to risk the perception of violence against women being okay. If it's the later, they may just need a nudge to recognize that violence against women in video games is only questionable if it's mostly women who are the focus of the violence. Gearbox has always been a very solid developer with a track record of quality. Every woman I've ever gamed with has the potential to be every bit as bloodthirsty as the dudes. There's really no reason to mollycoddle or segregate them. If you've ever been in the lobby of a <i>Call Of Duty</i> game, the loud, whiny, obnoxious dudes are the ones you should be looking out for, not women.<br />
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To that end, I've been organizing some low level Twitter bombs to try and get Gearbox's attention. There's already a <a href="http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/include-playable-females-in-aliens-colonial/">petition out there to be signed</a> and the story has gained a bit of traction on the major gaming news sites. There's really nothing to be gained from not acquiescing, so hopefully either female characters will be available by launch day or as DLC after the fact. Because, honestly, where the hell would the <i>Aliens</i> franchise be without women anyway? Ripley and Vasquez alone are more bad ass then all of the men in the series combined.<br />
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You can get more information about the story here: <a href="http://www.destructoid.com/aliens-colonial-marines-and-upping-the-female-ante-230535.phtml">http://www.destructoid.com/aliens-colonial-marines-and-upping-the-female-ante-230535.phtml</a><br />
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You can also contact Gearbox directly here: <a href="http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/contact/">http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/contact/</a><br />
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Or on Twitter here: <a href="https://twitter.com/GearboxSoftware">https://twitter.com/GearboxSoftware</a><br />
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Since I've been at work more than usual, I've been listening to a lot more music than usual too. I was lucky enough to see Southern Lord's Black Breath/Martyrdod/Burning Love/Enabler show a couple weeks (unfortunately missing the El-P/Killer Mike/Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire show as a result) back and was totally blown away by Toronto's Burning Love. They played so hard that a dude in the front row stroked out and had to be taken away in an ambulance as a result. At least, that's what I choose to believe caused it.<br />
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Burning Love is a punk band featuring vocals from Chris Colohan of cult legends Cursed and holy fucking shit their second record, <i>Rotten Thing To Say</i>, is the best punk record I've heard in years. So much music in that genre is just empty rhetoric and simplistic fist-pumping that when something like this band comes along it retroactively makes other music I listen to seem shitty by comparison.<br />
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The lyrics are dense and thoughtful, the music is intense and they aren't afraid of the occasional guitar solo. This track, "Hateful Comforts," is my favorite. It's been on regular rotation since the show:<br />
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Also in regular rotation has been Tokyo Jihen, a project headed by Japanese pop star Shiina Ringo. She's one of the rare pop stars in any country who can make a case for being an actual artist rather than a pretty girl with a decent voice pulling a paycheck by singing the same songs over and over again. Compare her recent Tokyo Jihen stuff to her early pop songs and she's clearly come miles since then. There's still a strong jazz and punk influence to her work that comes through.<br />
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There's also the new Aesop Rock album, <i>Skelethon</i>, that's due out on Tuesday. I liked the initial video he released, "Zero Dark Thirty," but this new track "ZZZ Top" just nails it. The video is pretty great as well... kung fu, throwing knives and baseball bats. Man, that beat just kills me.<br />
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And, finally, there's the mighty Baroness. People are apparently a little worried that they've gone in a more rock and roll direction since <i>Blue Record</i> but that's a load of bull. The band has more than proved themselves worthy of changing and evolving their sound. They were always a little too idiosyncratic to be a straight "metal" band anyway. If the rest of their double album, <i>Yellow & Green</i>, is anything as good as this, then the fairweather fans are more than welcome to suck it:<br />
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Hopefully, I'll have an article up in the next week or so about <i>Lollipop Chainsaw</i> or <i>Dragon's Dogma</i>.<br />
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</div>Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-68464410529921270092012-06-17T23:58:00.000-07:002012-06-27T22:23:24.932-07:00E3 Impressions, Pt. 2: Assorted Announcements & Dead Space 3 LamentationsContinuing from my last entry running down some of the biggest and most interesting announcements from this year's E3, there's plenty more to talk about so let me just jump right into it.<br />
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<i>SimCity</i> is still a thing, if city building games are your bag. I haven't played a <i>SimCity</i> game since middle school but I'm kind of happy to know they still exist. <i>Oregon Trail</i> wasn't as lucky. In typical EA fashion, you need to be constantly connected to the internet even for the single player, so buyer beware. New <i>Skyrim</i> DLC was always going to happen but I was much more surprised to hear about an expansion for <i>Dark Souls</i>. Which will unmercifully kill me over and over again until I cry a little and give up. Again. The game already beat me into submission once but I'll gladly give it another go to check out the new areas and enemies. That game is no joke. I still have a copy of <i>Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow</i> that I never played much of but, oddly, I never traded it in either. So I guess that means I'm down to give the sequel a try. I like the fact that they're trying to rebuild the franchise into a single, coherent universe rather than the plethora of seemingly unrelated games that it has been for well over a decade now.<br />
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One of the big announcements, which certainly brought a smile to my face, was <i>Gears Of War: Judgment </i>which will be co-developed with Epic by People Can Fly, who gave us the very fun and very underrated <i>Bulletstorm</i>. I watched the E3 footage and read the cover story in the July issue of Game Informer and I have a lot of reason for hope.<br />
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For one, they've visibly toned down the beefy, superhuman character models so that the they look like actual people. For another, the game is focusing on my two favorite characters in the series, Baird and Cole. Granted, they were my favorite characters because they seemed to be the only ones in the game who had any sort of personality, even if that personality was just "sarcastic asshole" and "over-enthusiastic goofball cartoon character" respectively. (Watch the Terry Tate videos on YouTube if you want to see Cole's voice actor tackling people and screaming "woooo!" in real life. It's really hard not to like the guy based on that alone.)<br />
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If Naughty Dog and the <i>Uncharted</i> series are my baseline for good storytelling, Epic and <i>Gears Of War</i> are my whipping boy for doing it poorly. A lot of people would consider the <i>Gears Of War</i> series critic-proof in that it's a big, stupid action game. Who the fuck cares if it's dumb? Fair point. Most people seem to be fine with it, but looking at big, dumb action movies, there's a difference between something like <i>The Rock</i> and <i>Transformers</i>. The former is a fast, funny, action-packed rollercoaster with likable characters. The latter is a giant fucking mess of loud noises and shit blowing up.<br />
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I mentioned this in my <i>[Prototype 2]</i> review but there's an acceptable level of stupidity you can have in an action game. The more serious you take the game you're making, the less stupidity you can get away with. <i>Lollipop Chainsaw</i> or<i> Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad</i> can be as gleefully dumb as it wants to be because we all understand what we're buying. Conversely, if you're a Triple A marquee title like <i>Gears Of War</i>, you should probably make at least a token attempt at decent dialogue, likable characters and storytelling.<br />
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When I say that <i>GOW3</i> telegraphed the Big Character Death halfway through, I mean that literally. I got a postcard in the mail months in advance warning me what was going to happen. They deserve credit for knowing enough to give you a long period of silence afterwards to digest the event but it would have worked better if they had given me a reason to care more. Let's not even get into the last second flirting with a twist on the Locust that was ultimately abandoned. Oh, and if you were able to listen to <i>any</i> of Tai's dialogue in the "RAAM's Shadow" DLC without either wincing audibly or laughing your ass off at it... I dunno, man. Congratulations? He's supposed to be a "tough, spiritual warrior" but ended up sounding like an steroid-enhanced autistic guy repeating shit he read in his parents' philosophy books.<br />
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As much as I shit on them, I still really like the <i>Gears Of War </i>games for the big set pieces, the unimpeachable gameplay, the bang for your buck that they give with different game modes and the amount of replayability they offer. If you add People Can Fly to that mix, I think we may get the best <i>Gears</i> game yet. Especially if they bring ex-<i>F.E.A.R. Agent</i> and current <i>X-Force</i> writer Rick Remender back to script it. <i>Bulletstorm</i> was definitely on the right side of stupid. It was just crass and funny and unsentimental enough to work. I doubt they'd outsource that to someone outside of Epic but I can hope.<br />
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This plays into my biggest disappointment with this year's E3: <i>Dead Space 3</i>. Man, where to start? I watched all the footage from E3 and read the coverage that was also in July's Game Informer and I got progressively more bummed as I went on.<br />
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I know I will be a minority here. I should probably state that in advance. I expect the game will be very well reviewed. If it gets less than an 80% on Metacritic, I will be shocked. It's clearly a good looking game made by an experienced team. It's just not a <i>Dead Space</i> game anymore. Let me explain.<br />
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<i>Dead Space</i> was always on the more action-y end of the survival horror spectrum. That's something that comes with the times. It's widely acknowledged that the survival horror genre is now a niche market. The more people you have playing games, the more people you have with no attention span and even less brains who simply won't tolerate a game where something isn't blowing up every five minutes. I've reconciled the fact that my love for survival horror will have to be confined to small, indie PC titles. (Please <i>Silent Hill</i>, just stop.) For the brand to survive, embracing the mainstream action aspects of gaming was inevitable. That said, you have a choice in <i>how</i> you embrace it and that seems to be where things are going off the rails.<br />
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There were always definite elements of old school survival horror in the <i>Dead Space</i> DNA: the corridor crawls, the claustrophobic atmosphere, inventory management and relative scarcity of ammo and health (on higher difficulty levels). Watch the E3 footage. Watch the <a href="http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/725095/dead-space-3-demonstrates-the-solo-vs-co-op-difference/">20 minute gameplay video they released</a>. Do you see any of that left?<br />
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It's now a co-op focused game. Which means the fear factor will take a huge nosedive. It's impossible to get immersed in something when you have a friend talking in your ear. What's more, and I think this is an important fact that hasn't been talked about much yet, level design. Designing a level for a single-player game and a co-op game are entirely different. You can't do a corridor crawl with two players because you'll constantly be getting in each others way. That means big, open spaces where both characters can run around independently. That also means another drop in scares because there's no way to have an enemy take you by surprise if you have a full 360 degree view of your surroundings and room to move and anticipate them. Watching the footage, they seem to be utilizing the "dead bodies hidden by snow" trick but there's only so many times they can pull that before everyone catches on.<br />
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There will also be many more human antagonists which brings up the question how the two can co-exist in the same place. Necromorphs do not give a single shit about the Unitologists even if the Uni's believe that the necromorphs are religiously significant. Logically, either the Uni's would kill themselves so that they necromorphs could transform them, like so many did in the first two <i>Dead Space</i> games, or just get the fuck out. That's the problem with being a member of a militant death cult: if you don't kill yourself, you kinda seem like a pussy. Also, it will be yet another drop in scares because, as a player, there's nothing less scary than another asshole with a gun shooting at you. I'm sure this will be explained in game, I'm just not sure I trust them to give it any kind of logic.<br />
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They're also gimping inventory management by making a single universal form of ammo for all weapons. So there will be no more sweating about which weapons to bring along, you just grab whatever you can carry and shoot until your heart's content. No more will you realize that you only have a plasma cutter and a pulse rifle when what you really needed was that line gun you left in storage.<br />
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The obvious choice to me would have been to completely segregate the single-player and co-op experiences, a la <i>Portal 2</i>. Let them share locations but give them both entirely unique areas as well. Tell two different stories with two sets of characters that intertwine so that you get the whole story. Make the single player more of a classic survival horror/action game and make the co-op more action packed. They seem to be trying to think around that problem by making the co-op drop in/drop out but that really doesn't help. It's still a co-op designed game, you're just playing it solo.<br />
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Which leaves the most annoying aspect (to me, at least) of this new co-op focused action game approach they're taking: all the blatantly obvious storytelling and character choices. The character of Issac Clarke was a total cipher in the first game, which worked in context. The second game notably gave him a voice and the beginnings of a personality but he was still very much a cipher. It was a success mostly because they didn't screw it up. He was still a lowly engineer massively unprepared for all of the shit he was forced to do. They also introduced Ellie Langford, a pilot and new friend as confused and unprepared as Issac who was a good foil for our quiet, contemplative man of action. In <i>Dead Space 3</i> we get Issac Clarke, Generic Action Hero.<br />
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If Ellie were your co-op partner, I think that would go a little ways towards making a game that skewed a little closer to the survival horror/action mix they had already established. Neither of them are trained soldiers which allows for a sense of danger in combat situations and allows for controls that are a little heavier and less responsive to illustrate that. That's always been another aspect of survival horror: slower controls make you more susceptible to attacks and force to to try and think ahead. Plus, from a visual sense, having a woman in one of those exo-suits Issac wears could be a really cool visual. As it stands, your co-op partner is a soldier, so they'll have to adjust the controls to make things more responsive to the action. They've definitely already added things like dodge rolls (In a heavy exo-suit? Seriously?) and cover-based shooting so you can probably expect other standard action game controls as well. (If you're still keeping track, that's another notch in the "not scary" column.) And, really, Ellie <i>couldn't</i> be your co-op partner because Ellie is a woman and women are icky. Besides, as we already established in my last entry about the <i>Tomb Raider</i> remake, all men are really dumb and can't project themselves onto a female character. We certainly would not want to ruin some guys' post-game high five by making one of them play a girl. We also don't want to acknowledge female gamers at all because... well, we just don't.<br />
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Let's talk about our new soldier friend, by the way, because he really pisses me off. He's indicative of everything I hate about this new direction. His name is Carver. Because we're dumb and all military types need really obvious on-the-nose names to show you what a bad ass they are. (Why not just call him "Killerberg" or "Murderstein?" At least then he'd be Jewish which would be <i>some</i> kind of atypical trait.) He's also gruff and scarred and doesn't much care for Issac because, as I said, we're all dumb and every male co-op game relationship needs to be a carbon copy of every buddy cop movie you've ever seen. "Oh, the Captain just made them partners... but, oooh, they have a personality conflict and don't get along... but, hey, they bond over mutual enemies... then, awwww, they come to an understanding and develop a mutual respect." There's roughly following basic literary tropes and then there's using them as a crutch and a time-saver. Carver is the latter. There's also nothing scarier than traveling around with a stone cold, tough talking killer with a gun. One more for the "not scary" column.<br />
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Everything about <i>Dead Space 3</i> feels like Visceral Games is taking the easiest possible approach. They could take any aspect of the complaints I've mentioned thus far and twist them somehow to make the fresh. Instead, they seem to be dragging along every sorry cliche they can find in search of mainstream success on par with that other third person co-op action series<i> (</i>and license to print money) <i>Gears Of War</i>. Hell, the swallowed-by-a-giant-monster-and-you-have-to-fight-your-way-out scene from the E3 demo was something that featured prominently in <i>Gears 2.</i><br />
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<i>Dead Space 3</i> is not an evolution, it's a regression into an entirely different genre. Either they're going to have to market <i>Dead Space 3</i> as an action game with some horror movie window dressing or risk the backlash when long time fans like me realize that the game just isn't what it was. If they try to market it as a horror game, they're shooting themselves repeatedly in the foot. They're trying to have it both ways and that almost always ends up in a muddy, unfocused project that fails at both. It won't matter to me either way because I've just cashed out on the series. <i>Aliens: Colonial Marines</i> is coming out within a couple weeks of <i>Dead Space 3</i> and that looks much more interesting. It'll be an co-op action/horror shooter just like <i>Dead Space 3</i> but at least they won't have completely compromised themselves making it.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-43062933743260281352012-06-16T14:40:00.000-07:002012-06-22T01:20:31.004-07:00E3 Impressions, Pt. 1: Attempted Rape & Assorted EphemeraI've already heard people talking about how underwhelming this year's E3 was... and if you're talking in terms of razzle dazzle or Big Huge Announcements then, I guess they have a point. That said, there was plenty of information floating around about next year's biggest titles and most of them are at least worth a mention.<br />
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Titles like <i>Halo 4</i><i></i> and <i>God Of War: Ascension</i> were no-brainers and straight-forward enough that I don't need to go into much detail. They'll do exactly what it says on the tin. <i>Far Cry 3</i> has boobs in it. Dante's character redesign makes him look like a bigger douchebag than he did before in the <i>DmC</i> reboot. <i>Metro: Last Light</i> and <i>XCOM: Enemy Unknown</i> both look fantastic but will no doubt be cult games due to the fact that they expect you to pay attention and try. There's not a lot of substance to say about <i>Watch Dogs </i>right now so you'll have to settle for "wow" and "holy shit" for the time being. I'm still leery about CAPCOM after some sketchy business practices around their disc locked content and charging customers for the "true" ending of <i>Asura's Wrath</i> which, coupled with a fairly stagnant <i>Resident Evil 5</i>, make the prospects for <i>Resident Evil 6</i> kind of grim. "Cross-over mode" looks like it could be an interesting gimmick but I'll need to see more to judge accurately. The <i>RE </i>franchise is perilously behind the times and just being able to move and shoot at the same time is not exactly a genre-changing event.<br />
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The <i>Tomb Raider</i> reboot looks interesting, if a bit rape-y. At one point in the demo, Lara gets fondled (sans permission) by a creepy guy while tied up... which is totally necessary to her development as a character or serves some definite plot purposes that will be revealed later, I'm sure. (Right, guys?) Honestly, I'm worried that Crystal Dynamics still don't understand how to write a female character. I respect them for trying to give Lara Croft a Nathan Drake-ish makeover (God knows other developers should be following suit...) but the key to what made Drake work was a sense of intelligence and charm and fallibility. Playing the <i>Uncharted</i> games, I believed that the characters had multifaceted personalities and lives of their own. That's what made me care about them.<br />
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Particularly worrying was the producer on the show floor who went on about how men can't project themselves onto a female character and how <a href="http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/news/a387062/tomb-raider-rape-attempt-encourages-players-to-protect-lara-croft.html">guys want to "protect" Lara</a>. Um, no. There are some chauvinistic assholes whose idea of women is more "Madonna" than "whore," but you're still focusing on the fact that the character has boobs as a fundamental trait. You get people on her side by making her a strong, likable character or at least giving her the potential for strength, not by subjecting her to horror after horror in order to force us to sympathize with her. Still using the <i>Uncharted</i> games as a baseline, no on tried to rape Chloe or Elena and they are both much loved characters. Going right to "attempted rape" is the nuclear option. Not only is it an easy shortcut, it opens a can of worms I'm not sure an action/adventure video game is ready to deal with. If you need this explained to you, Crystal Dynamics, then maybe you're the wrong people for the job.<br />
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If people can't even write believable male protagonists these days then they're completely screwed when it comes to writing women. I'm starting to wonder if the real problem is that Amy Hennig, lead writer on the <i>Uncharted</i> games, just
doesn't have the time to write every single video game character ever. <br />
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In more cheerful news: The two games I'm most excited for out of this year's E3 are easily Quantic Dream's <i>Beyond: Two Souls</i> and Naughty Dog's <i>The Last Of Us</i>. Both developers have a reputation for ambition and quality that most lack. They could be doing <i>Donkey Konga</i> reboots and I'd still show up for the midnight release.<br />
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Quantic Dream is not a high output studio. They choose their properties very carefully. When <i>Beyond</i> gets released in 2013, it will be only their fourth game in fourteen years. Since <i>Heavy Rain</i>, the only thing they've released was a fascinating tech demo called <i>Kara</i> that I think people assumed would be the basis for their next project. The robot aspect may be gone but concept of a young girl in danger is front and center for <i>Beyond</i> which will feature a motion captured Ellen Page on the run and span over fifteen years in the character's life. (Which should be interesting because I can't imagine Ellen Page looking like anything other than a tiny little cherub.)<br />
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As original and interesting as <i>Indigo Prophecy</i> and <i>Heavy Rain</i> were, they were certainly not perfect games. The former was perhaps a little too simplistic, from a gameplay perspective, and <i>Heavy Rain</i> was a victim of the story and the technology not quite being there. The script sounded very much like it was written by a Frenchman who learned English as a second language (which it was) and, paired with the technology which rendered stiff character models and some flat performances, made everything feel a bit distant and unreal. The story often overcame the handicap but the issues were certainly there. It also made screaming "SHAUN!" repeatedly a low level meme. Hopefully having American actors with real chops and some upgraded tech will result in a more seamless integration.<br />
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The story seems to build more on the supernatural angle of <i>Indigo Prophecy</i> where you go from controlling Ellen Page's character of Jody to the mysterious invisible ghost/presence/force Aiden. It's my hope that this will also result in controls that aren't entirely in the <i>Heavy Rain</i> style when engaging in what looks to be fairly frequent combat situations.<br />
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Naughty Dog comes back in 2013 with <i>The Last Of Us</i>, a post-apocalyptic action/adventure game of a somewhat different breed than we're used to. It's a post-pandemic America so the setting seems to be more about crumbling cities where nature is taking over rather than your more typical nuclear wasteland. The gameplay seems to build off of the rock solid combat in <i>Uncharted</i> without the exploration/puzzle aspects. Story has always been one of Naughty Dog's strong points so I'm expecting good things as lead character Joel escorts his young charge Ellie on their trip. From the footage they've shown, Joel doesn't seem like he's <i>only</i> a gruff, cynical anti-hero and Ellie doesn't come off as some helpless naif who needs her hand held the entire time.<br />
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I talk a lot (and I'm sure I'll talk more in the future) about Naughty Dog's approach to character-driven storytelling, and how good they are at it, because it's such a contrast to other developers. Other than Naughty Dog and certain writers at BioWare, most developers are perfectly content to offer characters who are nothing more than cardboard cutouts. Maybe time restraints keep them from fleshing out characters or maybe they just aren't particularly good writers. Either way, it's hard not to get fatigued by the blatant adherence to stereotypes in the industry be it the rape-y attitude towards women or your lazily written macho douchebag. <br />
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This fatigue towards lazy characterization is part of the issue I have with another series that seems to be making a big play for the middle ground, so I'll hold my tongue until I finish my next blog post in a couple days.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-51401121794866994972012-05-24T01:03:00.000-07:002012-05-24T18:03:52.018-07:00[Prototype 2] (2012)I wasn't overly psyched to try out the sequel to Radical Entertainment's 2009 hit <i>[Prototype]</i>. It was a fine game with an interesting premise and some good action. Nonetheless, I was willing to step up and see how the series had grown for the sequel.<br />
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The first <i>[Prototype]</i> was an open-world action game centered around a lead character, Alex Mercer, a super-powered amnesiac in a New York City in the middle of a zombie infection brought on by a biological weapon explosion. There was plenty of hacking and slashing, free running, and Stuff Blowing Up around the city. It was all good, mindless fun. Nothing that stuck with you but still a worth twelve to fifteen hours of your time.<br />
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On the technical front, <i>[Prototype 2]</i> has all the improvements you'd expect. The visuals are sharper, it looks and sounds great, everything blows up nicely. The lead character switched from Alex Mercer to soldier James Heller, which is not altogether surprising given the revelations of the first game. There's also the usual RPG elements and character building. However, the game industry's habit of streamlining everything to make it easier and more accessible is readily apparent.<br />
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The first game gave you an entire city to play around in, but <i>[Prototype 2]</i> takes place in three much smaller zones entirely separate from each other. They jettisoned the first game's "Web Of Intriuge," a non-linear storytelling device revealing plot and character details by "eating" marked passersby, for generic collectibles in the form of black boxes and brief mini-games like Field Ops and underground lairs. The collectibles don't really add a lot of additional playtime and they're gimped by the game providing a GPS ping in your world map and alerts you whenever you get close. Fortunately, <i>[P2]</i> retains the mini-games from the first game and adds a leaderboard to track your friends' progress.<br />
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The biggest addition to the sequel are side missions called "//Blacknet Dossiers." They all work roughly the same way: consume a marked target to start a mission with a small, rotating number of objectives. Completing them rewards you with a power boost. They aren't particularly interesting and usually just feature the same tasks: checkpoint runs, destroy this base, consume that person. It extends gameplay by a couple hours but doesn't add much in the way of fun.<br />
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If there's an issue with the game, it's not the gameplay. That's rock solid. At no point during playing it did I get frustrated that the game wasn't reacting the way it should or that something was broken. The issues start cropping up whenever someone talks.<br />
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Simply put, <i>[Prototype 2]</i> is really dumb. Almost insultingly dumb. Start with our new anti-hero, Heller: He is every video game protagonist cliche imaginable. He's a Big, Hyper-Masculine Soldier Avenging His Family's Murder. He doesn't Play By The Rules. He has his own Code Of Honor. He's On The Edge and Takes No Crap. He's Mean and Cynical but still has a Soft Spot For Kids. He's also Incredibly Boring.<br />
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By contrast, Alex Mercer, the anti-hero of the first game, was much more interesting. Co-written by long time comic book writer Paul Jenkins, it borrowed liberally from Alan Moore's re-interpretation of the <i>Swamp Thing</i> origin story. While Mercer himself was fairly bland, the story around him was surprisingly interesting. It wasn't without it's problems, sure, but it's a narrative issue in both games. You can't expect a gamer to kill hundreds and hundreds of people and then expect them to care about the fate of a stranger. One character even changes allegiances towards the end of the game and it's so ridiculous and nonsensical given your prior relationship that I actually face-palmed when it happened.<br />
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There's an acceptable level of stupidity you can expect in an action game. Sometimes it's even endearing. <i>Gears Of War</i> is a good example. It's an incredibly stupid, obvious, lunkheaded, openly manipulative story but it works because the gameplay is so goddamn smooth and the set pieces are so big that it doesn't matter. <i>[P2]</i> isn't as lucky. It lacks the big "Wow!" moments you need to forget how awful the story and the dialogue are.<br />
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The opening of the game has Heller talking to his wife in a cut-scene while he's out of the country on a mission. He implores her and their daughter to stay in New York despite the biological weapon outbreak that's happened because he'll be back in just a couple of days. Which is an incredibly stupid move that gets his wife and daughter killed. You might expect the game to even casually address a sense of guilt for his decision but... nope. That would require something beyond a surface level. The character of Kratos worked in <i>God Of War</i> because he was almost a mythological figure, the personification of rage. Heller just comes off like a complete asshole.<br />
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This attitude is systemic throughout the game's story and characters. It's aggressively, willfully dumb. Everyone is exactly who you expect them to be and the twists are telegraphed miles in advance. The soldiers, always men, are one-dimensional thugs and killers. The scientists and corporate types, almost entirely men, are completely immoral. Of course the game needs antagonists but there was ample opportunity for any kind of nuance that the game completely ignores. By the end of the game I wanted to start skipping the cut-scenes entirely and only held back because I knew I was going to write about it.<br />
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Maybe you don't need a story to like a game. In which case, <i>[Prototype 2]</i> should be right up your alley. However, if you want any entertainment out of your games outside of the gameplay, I just can't recommend it.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-40728333498399591982012-04-27T02:31:00.002-07:002012-04-27T02:31:19.525-07:00Splatterhouse (2010)I've always been fascinated by what people consider a "bad game." As a guy who grew up watching shitty horror flicks interspersed with weird foreign movies on Cinemax and chasing down any music I could find in the pre-internet to pre-Napster era, usually by watching MTV after midnight (hey, it was suburban/rural Pennsylvania... we didn't get an "alternative rock" radio station until nu metal came along), I quickly learned that the best stuff wasn't necessarily the best-looking. To this day, I have as much love for something like <i>Critters 3</i> or <i>Cyborg 2</i> as I do bigger budget megaplex fare.<br />
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In the gaming world, I love tracking down the weird stuff. Buying a new copy of <i>Deadly Premonition</i> without having read a single thing about it or heard anything from anyone and diving into all it's terrible awesomeness has been a highlight for me in this generation of gaming. Grasshopper Manufacture's <i>Shadows Of The Damned</i> was a gleefully cheesy homage to B movies and cult horror classics mixed with a liberal dose of machismo that, despite some dated controls, was an absolute blast to play. It was also widely ignored by fans. There's also Atlus' demented dating sim from Hell/puzzle game <i>Catherine</i>. Hell, most of the games Atlus puts out have a wide streak of weirdness in them. And that's just off the top of my head. If you're willing to take a risk, there's plenty of rough diamonds out there to find.<br />
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That said, does Namco's remake of the gore classic <i>Splatterhouse</i> series fall into the category of "cheesy cult classic" the way the previously mentioned games do? Eh. Not really. But it's still worth playing.<br />
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<i>Splatterhouse</i> started as a blatant <i>Friday The 13th</i> rip-off done in the style of a side-scrolling beat-'em-up. It was cheap, crass, gory and tough. Like a lot of games of it's generation, the plot was largely incidental: boy meets girl, girl gets kidnapped by evil doctor, boy puts on cursed mask that turns him into a hulking monster and goes on a monster-killing rampage. It spanned a few different games that found their way to different systems with varying degrees of success. I have a lot of fond memories of smacking shambling monsters with a two-by-four but the series holds a sentimental place in my heart more for it's willingness to go for the gore in an age of very kid friendly platformers.<br />
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The remake stays the course with a fleshed out re-telling of the original story in the form of a 3rd person brawler. It's got boobs, blood and a surprisingly killer heavy metal soundtrack. On paper, it was a game designed perfectly for me. I mean, as a collectable, you pick up torn photos of your kidnapped girlfriend topless. Yes, goofballs like me were certainly the target audience.<br />
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Things got lost in the implementation, though. Most notably, combat. Most of it is a standard 3rd person brawling with a leveling system a la <i>Devil May Cry</i> or <i>God Of War</i>. However, weapons are rare and degrade quickly so you're going to be fist fighting through a majority of the game. Therein lies the problem. There's a wealth of different moves to buy but a lot of them seem superfluous and not as effective as I'd have liked. I found myself using the same five or six moves throughout the game.<br />
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Also problematic were the context-sensitive finishers. The game doesn't have a ton of enemy variety and all enemies have only a maximum of two finishers. Ripping a giant creature's asshole out might be worth a giggle the first couple of times but tedium sets in fast. By the time you hit the last third of the game, you've seen just about everything and merely repeat the same fights over and over again.<br />
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Creature design is so-so. Mostly they are variations of the enemy types you'd expect, right down to the evil clowns. Some of the enemies seem to be based on the original <i>Splatterhouse</i> designs and feel too generic. The levels also feel a bit too familiar: creepy mansion, creepy junkyard, creepy circus, etc.<br />
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The game picks up in other areas, though. The gore is fantastic. Without hyperbole, this is possibly the bloodiest game I've ever played. Everything is soaked in it. It's even the in-game currency for leveling up your character.<br />
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The biggest surprise was the story itself. Not necessarily the characters, they're very much archetypes. Rick, the hero, is metal nerd and a college student. Jennifer, the inexplicably hot girlfriend, is a screaming plot device with no personality. The villian, Dr. West, is a Lovecraft character dialed up to eleven. Though they were stuck using the thinly drawn characters from the original games, there was still room to play around with the characterizations to make things feel more interesting. Particularly Jennifer, who exists only to be kidnapped. They probably would have been better off making her either more nerdy hot (with the nude pictures you collect during the game showing a racier side of her) or a more righteous modern chick that doesn't enjoy being forced into a victim role. As a generic blond hottie, Jennifer is a character archetype better off updated for the times.<br />
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However, working within the confines of the original story, writer Gordon Rennie (a former writer for the legendary UK comic magazine <i>2000 A.D</i>) improves on things admirably. The Terror Mask that saves Rick from a bloody death is given a gruff, profanity heavy personality (voiced by Jim Cummings, who you might remember as Darkwing Motherfucking Duck) that taunts and teases the freaked-out and panic-y Rick throughout the game. Because they are symbiotically connected, the Terror Mask can comb
through the dark recesses of Rick's mind for all his dirty little
secrets and happily uses that information to make Rick more and more miserable and, as a result, more pliable and easy to manipulate. The mask has it's own history and it's own reasons for saving Rick and fighting Dr. West. The interactions between the two are your primary source of dialogue and as the game reaches the conclusion, the roles have shifted a bit. Rick grows more comfortable in his new reality and the Terror Mask doesn't like it. They may need each other to survive but a stronger and more assertive Rick is detrimental to the Terror Mask's plans and they both know it.<br />
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There's also the obvious similarities between the goals of Rick and Dr. West. Ultimately, both just want their loved one back. When the game starts introducing elements of time travel, it all ties together neatly in a way I won't spoil other than to say that West's centuries long acts of hubris had damned him from the start. It's a neat and unexpected bit of nuance in a game you would not expect <i>any</i> nuance from. Naturally, West is now completely bugfuck and would rather invoke Lovecraftian Old Ones to destroy everything than live without his Leonora. And without a sequel to look forward to (as you'd expect, the game bombed pretty bad), the game broadly hints that Rick may end up going down the same path as West, starting the whole thing rolling all over again.<br />
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It's not Shakespeare, as the hoary old cliche goes, but in a game mostly about boobs and blood, it's a damn sight more thoughtful than you'd expect... and with the combat such a let-down, it's good to have something to look forward to.<br />
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When you're done with the single player, the game offers an arena mode that, honestly, isn't worth the time unless you're achievement hunting. The real bonus is that all of the previous <i>Splatterhouse</i> games are unlocked once you finish the game, allowing you to go back and re-live the magic of reducing monsters to mush in 2-D. (Of course, you could always skip ahead and just get the original <i>Splatterhouse</i> for your iPod/iPad as well.)<br />
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You can chalk up this remake as a noble failure. Maybe if it had an extra six months or a year in development it would have been a game worth remembering but for a niche title like this, that was probably never in the cards. Unless you're die hard about owning the original games, <i>Splatterhouse</i> is the definition of a "rental" but if you're looking for something a little obscure and rough around the edges, you could do a lot worse.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-433513040899009545.post-23860099131568703592012-04-15T17:31:00.000-07:002012-04-15T17:31:18.717-07:00Mass Effect 3 Controversy con't: The Defense Of The Endings (And Why They're Still Wrong)Yeah, this is still a thing. Just to catch you up: BioWare has announced an Extended Cut DLC to be released this summer. As of this writing, it's only to contain additional cinematics for the purpose of providing "clarity and closure." No new gameplay, no new endings. So, basically, it's an epilogue. (Something that, frankly, should have been included from the beginning.) <b>As with my previous entry, I'm spoiling the hell out of it for you so you'd best turn back now if you haven't played it yet.</b><br />
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It's gotten very hard to find intelligent conversation about this subject. Most gaming news sites found it easier to trash anyone up in arms about the ending then to diagnose WHY they were pissed. It began and ended with "whiny, entitled fanboys" and the real-world mechanics of changing the ending, not the actual content of it. Which is not only intellectually dishonest, it's not even attempting to address the problem.<br />
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Most people (usually people on Renegade/Destroy ending playthroughs... the only variation that allows you to succeed AND survive) seem to stick with the argument of "I liked it so I don't see what the problem is." Which, again, isn't addressing the issues. I maintain that anyone who stops to think about the ending's details will quickly notice that the whole thing falls apart the minute you question it... which is not something that should happen in good fiction.<br />
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As a group, the people at <a href="http://www.facebook.com/DemandABetterEndingToMassEffect3">Demand A Better Ending... </a>and <a href="http://www.holdtheline.com/">Hold The Line</a> have put together articles on top of articles as to exactly what it is about the ending they are so viscerally opposed to. They're certainly willing to talk about it intelligently and argue the points if anyone was willing to take the counter-point. This is why, I think, we've all grown to distrust gaming journalists. If you can't debate the substance of why someone is angry, it makes it seem as though you either <i>can't</i> or <i>don't want to</i> for any number of reasons ranging from a general aura of smug condescension (hellooooo, IGN) to wanting to maintain your relationship with the developer to (if you're conspiracy theory minded) an outright exchange of money. All three options hurt your credibility as a "journalist."<br />
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Just as an example: Joker's fleeing the battle. Why did he split off from the fight? How did he pick up your companions, especially the ones with you on the final assault? Why did he run for the relay? How did he know that the mass effect relays were going to be destroyed or what the consequences of that destruction would be? It's been in both is own and EDI's character arcs in the game that they were both committed to what was really a final suicide mission for the sake of the galaxy. Even if Joker wanted to chicken out, based on your conversations with her, EDI wouldn't let him. It only makes sense if you chose the Destroy ending because he's trying to save EDI... but that still asks the question of how he even knew what was going to happen in the first place.<br />
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Answer? Because it was a "cool" visual and got them to the final shot they wanted. No internal logic necessary. It was for the "Joker and EDI as Adam and Eve" Creation Myth final shot for the Control/Synthesis endings... or to highlight the consequences of being a "whatever it takes" style Renegade player in the Destroy ending. Joker, a physically frail character most likely unable to survive on an uninhabited garden planet, with EDI dead and only a couple of teammates and crew members and a trashed Normandy... all of them likely to die alone because you were willing to sacrifice whatever you had to to win. So, yeah, it didn't matter to them HOW it happened or WHY, just that it got them the ending they wanted.<br />
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This is why I'm pessimistic about the Extended Cut DLC. As great as the team of writers at BioWare are, they're going to have to take something inherently illogical and torture the logic until it makes some kind of sense. The ending, whether you believe it was entirely the work of Mac Walters and Casey Hudson or a genuine team effort, was designed to be obtuse and speculative, not to make sense. Working backwards to explain it will only further highlight the flaws.<br />
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A month into this protest, the notion of "artistic integrity" has been argued right into the ground. It was the first and most knee-jerk reaction of the people defending the endings and they've fought against that idea hard. The "artistic integrity" argument only works if the end product wasn't already compromised to begin with. Look at the list of promises BioWare gave us and what ultimately didn't make it into the game at the end. The only way it makes sense is if they didn't have the time to implement the things they wanted. It's not a coincidence that <i>Mass Effect 3</i> released at the end of this year's second fiscal quarter. It's entirely logical, even inevitable, that EA wanted to bump their profits by releasing a tentpole series game right before the quarter wrapped up (March 31st). It's important to note this because it means that BioWare had to buckle under a hard deadline rather than simply claiming that it was their intention all along. And they certainly can't call EA out on it without some vicious consequences.<br />
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Also, original lead writer Drew Karpyshyn had an <a class="externalLink" href="http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/17086/mass-effect-writer-drew-karpyshyn-reveals-original-mass-effect-3-endings" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">entirely different ending</a> in mind for the series that was abandoned late into the development due to a leak. Which means what we got was a last second compromise and not a well-planned, entirely thought out finale. You can make the argument that it doesn't violate artistic integrity because the game hadn't been released yet but the point isn't to prove you wrong, just to prove that the notion is muddy at best. Claiming some sort of sacrosanct artistic notion is pure pie-in-the-sky nonsense.<br />
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We're not asking for a new endings/new Starchild choices because we're "whiny and entitled," we're doing it because we know that video games are <i>the only form of media where it's possible</i>. Comparing <i>Mass Effect 3</i> to books and movies and TV is apples and oranges and bananas. You can't even compare it to other video games. In other games, we play until we hit a non-interactive cut-scene. The cut-scene expands the characters or changes the plot/setting and then we play until the next one happens. At the end of the game, we're told what the ending is and we can take it or leave it. Maybe it's a thrill ride and maybe it's a ponderous, intellectual dissertation but we're never given the illusion of control. Other games have had light, usually very simplistic "choices" that define which of a limited number of endings we get... but that's it. THIS is why we're upset. In a series of games about choice, it's taken from us at the last second. It was objectively bad writing and, being a video game, BioWare has the means to correct that to some degree.<br />
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The few, more nuanced, arguments in defense of the endings like to state that we were never SUPPOSED to have more choices at the end. Thematically, they argue, it was always going this way. This is false for the same reason that the Indoctrination Theory was always false: it assumes too much of BioWare. Yes, from a design perspective, it was always going to have essentially a Boss Fight or button press for a finale. But thematically? No, that doesn't scan.<br />
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The notion of <a class="externalLink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmicism" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Cosmicism</a> and Pre-Determination, the idea that it was all some kind of inevitable Ragnarok event, were aspects of the series but never used as central themes the way "unity," friendship," and "sacrifice" were. What's more, the idea of pre-determination in the context of a video game about choice is outright silly and counter-productive. It actively invalidates the central premise. That's not a risky literary device, that's outright breaking the game. We have been trained from the minute we pick up a controller to believe that our actions in a virtual world effect the outcome... even if it's just shooting people until we reach the end of a stage. Going against that is not evidence that BioWare is playing on an intellectual level we never noticed, it's evidence of a fundamentally bad decision. The inherent lack of logic in Joker's actions, for example, is proof of that.<br />
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Even people who like the ending can admit that their implementation of the "synthetics vs. organics" argument was either flawed or an outright failure. For those of us who played as Paragons or Para-gades, the first thought in our heads was "but I <i>united</i> the fucking races!" The notion that it's been pre-determined that synthetics and organics will always be at war only fits during a Renegade playthrough. Because the Starchild doesn't deign to explain this fundamental flaw in his logic, it utterly takes us out of the game. Personally, I know that this was where the game lost me... which made everything that came after all the more unreal and false. I can suspend my disbelief for a Starchild taking the form of a child I feel guilty for not saving. That doesn't mean I can suspend it when he acts like a dumbass instead of an ancient synthetic StarGod.<br />
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Part of the argument is that it shouldn't matter that the Starchild doesn't explain himself. It's a VI without the ability to self-determinate. It's just going through it's programming. But if you are willing to accept that, why do the Reapers essentially give up when Shepard arrives? Why do they agree to allow themselves to be controlled or destroyed or to magically force the universe to integrate? If your presence is enough to make them give up and offer you three ways to save the universe, you should be able to reason with it for a fourth or fifth option by addressing their giant leaps of logic.<br />
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The casualties were always going to be high. A war without sacrifices would have felt even less logical than the one we got. Even if the mass relays didn't blow up and the Reapers just keeled over, you still have a crippled, nearly decimated galaxy... but one with hope. Not exactly a party-on-Endor "wub wub" ending, especially if you factor in the almost inevitable death of Shepard. Anyone being honest would admit that they were expecting or at least prepared for it.<br />
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The "you just want a happy ending" argument was always a facepalming over-simplification if ever there was one. What we always wanted, and what we were lead to expect coming off the first two games, was an entire range of endings from happy-ish to nihilistic. Achieving an ending where Shepard lives (without committing genocide) should have been very hard but not impossible to do. That's how you motivate people to continue playing the game: so they can see all of the different permutations of their choices and how those choices play out. That's what we got in the second game and we had every reason to expect it here.<br />
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If we're going by traditional literary trilogies, there's almost always some kind of epilogue or denouement to tie everything together. I've heard and read people defending the endings by saying, ostensibly, "well, they always end that way... don't you want something different?" Well, sure... if there's some kind of creative variation. The problem with ambiguous endings is that, in the wrong hands, they're an easy cheat and a time-saver. Instead of taking the time to tie everything up, you just cut to black. Clearly, this was not the right time for one. Yes, they are hopefully providing that in the Extended Cut DLC but why wasn't it planned from the outset?<br />
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An impressionistic ending at the end of a 15 to 20 hour game is fair... but at the end of a 100+ hour trilogy of games? There was no way people weren't going to get whiplash. Casey Hudson's attitude during the first press release about the furor over the endings didn't help either. He may have wanted the endings to provoke discussion but this is definitely not the kind of discussion you want your fans having. We're in this situation now because BioWare made a huge miscalculation about the kind of game people thought they were playing.<br />
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People wanted emotional catharsis and not ambiguity and Big Sci-Fi Concepts. This kind of disconnect from the writers is surprising considering how tightly plotted the series had been up until that point. The sense of ownership people have over their characters is only there because BioWare so successfully lead us to believe we had some illusion of control over the game. Under that light, it makes sense that people are demanding an entirely new ending. We're just playing out in real life what BioWare gave us in the game. This may be the ending the developers and writers have chosen but if it doesn't meet the standards they've previously set then you could argue that it was always going to end this way. Fans are angry because they've been genuinely mislead and lied to, not because we don't "get it."<br />
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More than a month after the games release, attitudes have cooled off a bit. That's lead to heads hardening and opinions crystallizing. I'm not expecting anyone to take these counter-arguments seriously. I'm just trying to push the argument forward and not just fall back on some facile statement of "entitlement."<br />
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Keelah se'lai.Brent F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08500774712635088117noreply@blogger.com0