THUMBS ON FIRE

Why I haven't Posted a Damn Thing in...Forever

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:41:43 -0800

Hey, just a quick word to the…seven-and-a-half of you who enjoy reading what I have to say. It’s likely become all too evident that I haven’t posted a damn thing and have gone on to assume that, like 98% of bloggers the world over I’ve gotten bored and lazy and have stopped posting anything.

Well this is only half-true! Turns out I’ve got something of a gig with a local Vancouver gaming and tech website, and I’ve been news-editoring for them for the past couple of weeks. So I guess this is my official plug: if you enjoy my occasionally liquor-fueled take on electronic nonsense then I suggest you head on over to http://geek-badge.com/ and give them a look!

I do still plan on putting up the occasional editorial here, though it will likely be on a less often scale than I was doing in the past.

My Top Five Games of 2011

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:23:00 -0800

I don’t want to get too hyperbolic here, as I feel like this next statement could be seen as potentially “controversial”, but after a lot of internal debate and soul-searching I’ve realized that 2011 was the year that saved video games. For myself, at least. This may have just been the first tentative steps of adulthood breaking through this warm coat of arrested development I’ve knit for myself, but the last couple of years and especially 2010 started to sour me on the entire video gaming experience. I mean, last year could have been largely defined as “more of the same”; so much came out that was either a painfully derivative sequel (see Crackdown 2), buggy to the point of near-broken (sorry, Fallout New Vegas), or just chock-full of motion gaming garbage that looked and felt less like video gaming than it was an attempt by publishers to chase the Wii casual-market dragon. There were a couple of gems in 2010, to be sure (Mass Effect 2, Bayonetta, and Super Meat Boy quickly come to mind), but it felt like a year of high promises eventually being proven empty. So I walked into 2011 with less than stellar expectations.

I guess there was some magic still left in video gaming though, because I ended up having a blast this year. Though like most years 2011 was indeed the year of the sequel, it was a year with continuing series managing to get things done right. Batman Arkham City, Saints Row the Third, and the triumphant return of Mortal Kombat were all games that, though at their core had been seen before, were just done exceptionally well. This was the first year where I can honestly say all the games that I was excited about actually managed not to hit and even exceed my expectations. And though I’m still a complete cynical curmudgeon when it comes to motion gaming of any sort, the release of titles like Child of Eden and Gunstringer showed that the Kinect may actually kind of possibly have a slight potential chance of maybe one day sort of being acceptable in my mind. And lets not forget The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword came out and finally proved that the Wii Motion Plus may have actually been a good idea for Nintendo. I had a lot of fun gaming this year, more fun than most years prior, and it’s made me actually optimistic about the future of gaming.

And now, without further ado, here is a list of the five games, with of course my attached reasoning/argument/rambling as to why they’re my favourites of 2011. Please be advised this is by no means a conclusive, exhaustive list. I have a disgusting pile of games next to my television I’ve yet to play this year, including a couple (see Skyward Sword and Saints Row the Third) that I have a sneaking suspicion may have made a bid for this list. If your favourite title isn’t up here, and you feel like I have committed a cardinal sin, then I’m sorry? (Note: I’m not really sorry)

5. Dead Space 2 (Xbox 360)

I adore this entire series. With Resident Evil having gone away from horror to the more popcorn-action thriller genre I think that Dead Space 2 is the last one holding up the blockbuster horror style of gaming. I love the atmosphere of this game, the claustrophobic concept of “horror in space” that chills my spine in a way few horror tropes can. Walking through the decayed husk of the Ishimura, hearing soft foot-falls and ambient noises off in the distance, constantly looking behind me to make sure nothing unpleasant has followed me, these are all moments of pure horror gaming bliss.

Plus the gentlemen over at Visceral Studios have done a great job of crafting a world and a backstory that I find myself getting completely involved in. Case in point, this is one of the few times where I’ll actually admit on record I’ve seen the Dead Space animated films, and even read one of the damn Dead Space novelizations. It wasn’t great. Actually, scratch that; it was pretty fucking bad, but that didn’t matter to me, as I just wanted to know more about the world of Dead Space.

All of this wouldn’t mean a damn thing though if the combat couldn’t pass muster, however, which is something you need not worry about. This game has officially written and closed the book on how people for the next couple years need to do third-person shooters. The guns feel powerful and accurate, with even your starting weapons working so satisfyingly well that you’ll likely find yourself using them the entire way through. Plus shooting the limb of an alienified-monsterman stimulates the most intimate pleasure centre of my brain. So that’s also quite nice.

4. Deus Ex: Human Revolution

I thought it couldn’t be done. I had made my peace with the idea that there was never going to be another Deus Ex, or at least another Deus Ex that felt true to the series. The PC RPG style of having dozens of skills all controlled and manipulated by a myriad of numbers which affect your character’s abilities in profound ways seemed like a game system that had gone the way of the lens flare (I know Deus Ex 2 does exist, and I guess since it does have the name Deus Ex in the title I should consider it a part of the series, but I prefer to pretend it doesn’t exist so should you).

But then earlier this year Eidos Montreal dropped a damn bomb on it and showed the world that you can take the old-style mechanics of early 2000 computer games and infuse them with modern-day gameplay styles. The wondrous mechanical man that is Adam Jensen was in many ways fully customizable, and allowed you to go through the world and scenarios in numerous different ways, all of which could be tailored to your play-style. I know that last sentence can be boiled down to the “You don’t have to kill everyone ‘cause stealth” bullet point that every open-world video game has on the back of the damn box, but I felt like I truly had agency over how I wanted my game to go. It also wasn’t exactly a true open world, but if you took a couple steps back and squinted real hard it looked a lot like one, while still managing to retain the action and feel of a good first-person shooter, which is a feature few open games can actually put on the back of their box.

The story of Human Revolution as well was something that truly spoke to me; placing the world in a William Gibson-esque Neuromancer cyberverse, and giving this incredibly difficult moral issue (the use or potential abuse of cybernetic implants changing the evolution of humanity, and their socio-economic consequences) some real weight was something you never see in video games these days. This game precipitated a number of hour long shouting matches between my friends and I discussing the pros and cons of cybernetic enhancement and it’s role in society, which I don’t think is something that can be said about Call of Duty.

3. Shadows of the Damned

If you’ve never heard of this game, then as much as I no longer like you I do understand. Released in the summer to an almost aggressive level of indifference, this EA Partners release with two of the biggest contemporary names in Japanese game development (Shinji Mikami of Resident Evil fame, and Suda51 of every fever-dreamed video game made in the last five years) spearheading the development was criminally ignored. When this game had originally been revealed there was some decent hype behind it, as the idea of “Resident Evil but (more) insane” seemed like one a lot of people could get behind, especially for those hungering for some Japanese-styled crazy. Then the months crawled along, the game got delayed and reportedly scrapped to be re-made from the ground-up, EA went dark on the title, and it was finally released without even a modicum of marketing behind it earlier this summer. I think the last NPD sale count was something in the low thousands.

Which is a damn shame, because this game was my most pleasant surprise of 2011. I bought it at a reduced price (which I’m guessing is probably the case for Shadows worldwide at this point), and didn’t expect more than something to play while I waited for Deus Ex to be released. But the pitch-perfect combat, the dark and beautiful environments, and the out-of-its-fucking-mind writing and dialogue won me over in minutes. You play Garcia “Fucking” Hotspur, a demon hunter who alongside his poshly-British-accented flying skull compatriot (who naturally can turn into a number of guns as well as a damn motorcycle) have to go and save your girlfriend from the forces of Hell, mostly by shooting over the shoulder a variety of gross zombies and demons. Though considering the developers heading Shadows I suppose this was to be expected (Suda51, though my favourite Japanese developer working today, may actually be crazy), but it really did feel like someone had put Resident Evil 4 in one hand, No More Heroes in the other, and then just smashed them together as hard as they possibly could. As a concept it really worked. It isn’t without some problems, a couple scenarios are more frustrating than fun, and if dirty, borderline-eye-rolling humour isn’t your thing than Shadows of the Damned may not be for you. But, damn, it certainly was for me.

2. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

This game. This goddamn game, people. This game.

I remember there was a point where I was having a discussion with someone about Skyrim, and I’d told him at the time I’d dropped roughly 40 hours into it (that number has now nearly doubled, by the way), and he in shock asked me what exactly I’d done in all that time.

My answer? Nothing, really. I hadn’t started the main quest, and had barely done any faction quests. I’d just traveled the world, helped out with people’s random problems, raided some tombs, and apparently had forty hours go by in the process.

Skyrim isn’t even really a game in my mind anymore. It’s a world, that I don’t so much manipulate and control as I do just inhabit. My Breton spellsword is just another member of this nation. I feel like this is what I dreamed video games would maybe one day be when I was a starry-eyed kid imagining where the future of my ~~addiction~~ hobby would go, until I became too cynical to think it would ever come to fruition. And in a world where games these days are five hour interactive movies, where the term “roller coaster ride” is a printed blurb on the back of a box, it is nice to know that the core concepts of games of old, like exploration, adventure, and whimsy, can still lead to a game that sets the industry on fire.

I’m aware that I’m talking in overly grandiose terms, but this has been the only game I’ve played since it went into my 360. I likely need to stop soon, because I’ve only got about a month before new games start coming out again and I never find the time to ever play Zelda or Assassin’s Creed, but I don’t care at this point. I am the Dragonborn, and I’m not gonna quit until everyone else in Skyrim damn-well knows it.

1. Portal 2

It likely seems weird that I’m not putting Skyrim in first after the amount of adoration I just gave it, but I can’t not give my favourite game of 2011 to Portal 2. It’s just the best game I’ve played in recent memory. There isn’t a single thing wrong with it. It’s perfect. Everyone else can go home because Steam won video games with this one.

Where do I even begin with Portal 2…how about the fact that it is easily the funniest video game I’ve ever played? Or that the puzzles are so well-designed that you will always, always manage to find the solution to the problems, yet still feel like a mixture of Einstein and Jesus every time you solve one? Or that the story manages to take the tight and restrained ideas of the original and expand them in an organic and completely understandable way, yet successfully “raise the stakes” of the world, and further illuminate the universe that Aperture Science inhabits.

Also Cave Johnson. My goddamn Man of the Year.

From the music to the atmosphere to the characters to the puzzle to the story to the co-op to anything else you could possibly want from a game, Portal 2 does it perfectly. It’s my 2011 Game of the Year. Hands down.

Why Gaming Sucks: Retailer-Specific DLC

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 02:38:00 -0700

Despite the protestations among the wide-eyed navel gazers within the world gaming community, the video game industry is, at its heart, very much a business. Individuals (such as myself, oftentimes) can go on ad infinitum about the jaw-dropping technical majesty of a car taking a perfect turn in Forza 4, or the beautiful art direction of games such as Okami or Kirby’s Epic Yarn, and a tear may even glisten in their eye as they’re discussing just how they felt when Sephiroth stabbed out Aeries in Final Fantasy 7*; but to the cold-hearted businessmen who produced and financed these games every previous example I just gave was to them nothing more than an excuse to write something marketable on the back on the box.

*Yes I’m aware I chose the most cliched video game death possible, but it was still emotional to me damnit!

Video games are a business, and in fact a rather large one these days, outstripping every other non-pornographic form of media entertainment. So of course when one has a goose as golden as the video game industry, what else can you do but throttle it for all it’s worth in an effort to squeeze as much money out as possible? I mean, that’s just Business 101.

Don’t fool yourself, if a businessman got the chance he’d eat you and everyone you cared about

Enter, retailer-specific downloadable content. Now, the concept of downloadable content for minor add-ons, such as different costumes or player models, never really struck a chord with me in the first place. Granted I’ll grudgingly hand over ten digitized dollars for something interesting or substantive, but a couple dollars just to see Ryu wear a differently coloured karate outfit, or to allow Dead Space Guy to wear a different set of space engineering armour, seems like a dumb waste of money even for someone who has prided themselves on spectacularly bad purchasing decisions.

They may have cost over a hundred dollars but it’s a small price to pay to watch my neighbours sleep through their bedroom window

But when game producers started making business deals with distributors over exclusive baubles they could give away only within their store, alarm bells began ringing. And although the trend started coming into the public fore some time last year, it wasn’t until this year where things went, scientifically speaking, f’ing mad.

Our first culprit? Netherrealm Studio’s release of Mortal Kombat in April. Depending on which store you went to buy a copy, you would get one of three different costumes for the “classic ninjas”, Sub-Zero, Scorpion, or Reptile, as well as a the ability to use a classic fatality. Considering that people only ever play as the ninjas in a Mortal Kombat game it was kind of a big deal for some. Especially if you consider they were essentially locking out two fatalities regardless what you did.

And the reason why most came to Mortal Kombat in the first place is to see gut-wrenching fatalities like this

Gears of War 3 also went down this path earlier this year, making a number of multiplayer skins exclusive only to certain retailers, as well as recent release Battlefield 3, which had different retailers giving out skins, gamer icon designs, and most controversially exclusive weapons based on what retailer you bought from.

The piece de resistance, however, has to come from Batman Arkham City. Not only were there over seven different retailer-specific costumes, the information about where one could go to get which costume they most preferred became so confusing and convoluted, especially when factoring in the different retailers for different countries, or how some countries were getting a specific costume while others weren’t, that a damn guide had to be written and distributed to clarify. Look at it here, and tell me you didn’t get a little dizzy trying to read all of that.

That’s a hell of a lot of Bat right there

The fear from retail-specific dlc, in my mind at least, isn’t so much regarding the fact that “Oh damn, I can’t pimp out my batman seven different ways and I’m torn up about it”, it’s an unease at just how far producers and retailers are willing to push these agreements. Sure today it’s just baubles and trickets, but what if multiplayer maps or modes become retailer specific? Wait, never mind, they already did that. What if producers even decide to start cutting out parts of the stories of high-publicity games, selling the purchasing rights off to the distributor with the highest offer? I can’t imagine game developers would allow that without making one hell of a fuss, but at this point it doesn’t seem crazy to me.

I mean the guys that made Mortal Kombat allowed fatalities to be locked away. FATALITIES. Anything is possible after that.

Evolution and Revolution: The Changing Face of Gaming

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:30:00 -0700

When I started playing video games, a wide-eyed child fascinated with the concept of taking the moving pictures on the television and telling them what to do with my NES controller, the core ideas behind gaming were simple and concrete; you’d move Mario to the right because that was the only damn direction to go, you`d jump on top of enemies for points, and it ended with you fighting some inscrutable boss creature. Essentially the idea of distinct levels, a lives system, and points, hoo boy were there points to accumulate.

This was in many ways the original archetype of video gaming, the arcade-styled tropes of having a game session start when you turned the machine on and finish when you hit “power”. Though I’m aware I’m painting the games of the Atari and NES era in incredibly broad strokes, I feel like this style of gaming was the de-facto standard for video games throughout the eighties.

There were changes and gradual evolutions made to this formula, as design standards elevated and game programmers made up and implemented newer and crazier ideas. Case in point, the original Super Mario Bros placed against the pinnacle of the NES era, Super Mario Bros 3; though if you squinted your eyes and turned your head a little bit both these games could look largely similar, it’s obvious that the original concept had evolved substantially.

Jump on stuff for points: the definition of video games

Like all paradigms, though, shit eventually goes and done gets shifted on the public’s respective asses. Hence the idea of revolutions in gaming. Though there are almost certainly far more than the couple I’m going to try to chronicle here, there have been a number of watershed moments in the history of video games that stand out as a clear revolution in how we think about video games, and using little more than my disgusting knowledge of video game history I’m going to try and take us through a few of these moments in a series of articles called “The Changing Face of Gaming”.

Today’s first topic, one which pushed me forward and inspired me to start looking into and writing this nonsense, is the revolution we currently see ourselves in the eye of today: casual and mobile gaming. It’s no secret that without even really meaning to Apple and the iPhone have changed the landscape of video gaming. Even moreso than the Nintendo Wii and all the hullabaloo it created, Apple’s system of cheap, easy to download games have caused people to question some of the most entrenched foundations of video games: Should games cost 40-60 dollars? Do we really need development studios with staffs in the triple digits spending hundreds of millions making a new AAA title when a couple of dudes with a basement and a bachelors in computer science can create a kitchy idea involving infuriated avians and make exponentially more money?

They may look stupid, but these birds may as well CRAP GOLD

To be fair I am in no way arguing that AAA video game titles are going to go the way of the dinosaur any time soon. I love my Halos and Gears of Wars as much as if not more than the next person, but the pure cold numbers being shown by the profitability of companies such as Popcap (makers of Plants Versus Zombies, which had you killing zombies with the use of smiling, oft-suicidal vegetation) and Zynga (makers of Farmville, where you…I dunno, planted crops and harassed your facebook friends? I guess?) must have a number of game producers, or at the very least their shareholders, wondering if there’s a way to grab onto this train and cling to it for all it’s worth.

And if you start looking at the potential long-term effects of what casual gaming could have on the face of video games, look no further than the apparent hardware stagnation of current consoles. The Xbox 360 and PS3 came out six years ago, practically a century in console lifespan terms, and there still hasn’t been any real discussion of the next hardware drop, other than vague unsubstantiated hints of top men connecting wires in the bowels of Microsoft and Sony’s black ops hardware design skunk works. True the Wii’s successor the Wii-U is dropping at some point next year, but at this point I don’t even know what to make of Nintendo’s hardware decisions so I’m just choosing to ignore them for the time being.

NO SERIOUSLY NINTENDO, WHAT IS THIS? I WOULD HONESTLY LIKE TO KNOW

One could argue, certainly not prove mind you but definitely argue, that with the rising wave of casual games crashing down upon the public, and their focus less on graphical sheen and hardware capacity than pick-up-and-play kitschy fun there has become less and less of an impetus for hardware developers to push out something new and more powerful, which in turn has given us this era of games where everything looks the same degree of decent. It feels like the gaming world is slowly but surely starting to shift away from games founded upon the newest and strongest hardware, back to a point where things don’t need to look beautiful, they just need to be entertaining.

Which may not even be a bad thing! Hell, I remember spending years of my life discussing how the best games ever made were for the Super Nintendo, and the rush to graphical realism made games a less entertaining experience. But at the same time when I think of games I want to play I envision the sweeping epic, the hours-long journey of larger-than-life characters saving the world, and you just can’t get that from casual gaming or a mobile touch screen. At least not yet, I suppose.

It’s just strange and ominous for this crusty, cynical 20-something to see the seismic shifts already occurring in gaming right now, and looking at the potential hypothetical futures. If games are no longer as intrinsically tied to powerful hardware, then (and we’re going full William Gibson, future-punk here folks) it’s not hard to imagine that with so much media going “to the cloud” these days, with services such as spotify or netflix streaming, than, christ, there could come a day in the relatively near future where everything we play runs instantly on a cheap, simple piece of technology, with the game’s themselves even likely being free thanks to the invention of freeplay video games.

Though I think that’s the topic for a future article.

Games You Should've Played (But Probably Didn't): Jet Set Radio Future

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:18:00 -0700

Remember when you were a budding post-adolescent and started having this almost instinctive urge to start “raging against the machine”? That feeling of needing to fight The Man, whoever That Man may be, though in retrospect probably juvenile and almost assuredly stupid, has become the basis for untold stories, films, and video games, though none have been created with such bravado and outright Japanese insanity as one of my most treasured experiences from my youth, Jet Set Radio Future.

I feel the need to start this off by saying that as I put digital ink to fictional paper, I’m listening to the JSRF soundtrack, which if you haven’t had the chance prior is something you need to remedy posthaste. And I’m not even saying that in the sense that it’s good for a video game soundtrack; if you’ve ever had even the slightest interest in jpop, jrock, electronica, or The Beastie Boys (of which one of their side projects, The Latch Brothers, is heavily featured), then you should at least go on youtube and give a track or two a listen. In fact, here, there you go.

Though without a doubt JSRF’s lasting influence on me definitely dwell’s within its soundtrack, there’s a hell of a lot more to appreciate here. In a time when developers were just starting to get their legs for showing off modern, realistic modelling and graphics, the developers over at Smilebit (a now defunct in-house team over at Sega) went in the complete opposite direction, showing just how wild and wicked one could go with cel-shading, resulting in an art-style that (to my plebian eyes) looks like what you’d get if you dropped Andy Warhol, neon, and punk rock into a blender. It was beautiful, but moreover it was something unique; you just didn’t see a game that looked like this.

…Unless of course you consider JSRF’s prequel, Jet Grind Radio, for the Dreamcast, which I guess technically “started that gangsta’ shit”, but I have to admit my lack of owning a Dreamcast stopped me from ever getting a chance to see how JSRF’s predecessor played out.

As for the story of Jet Set Radio Future (and, getting back to my original point in as long-winded and laborious a manner as I can), you play as a gang of rough-and-tumble street youths called The GG’s, with a devil may care attitude, a set of roller blades, and a penchant for graffiti art. Unfortunately, they reside in a future Tokyo where the insidious Rokkaku Group, a mega-corporation with ideals about what you’d expect a mega-corporation to have, rules the roost. They’ve got the cops in their pocket, and they’re damn well determined to make sure the streets of Tokyo go untagged.

So what better way to fuck with the man than by drawing sweet street art on as much of the cityscape as you possibly can? Hence the foundation of JSRF’s gameplay, roller-blading around the beautifully detailed Japanese landscape, graffiti-tagging as much of it as you possibly can. The movement was fast and fun, graffiti-tagging was simple and satisfying, and you could even create your own graffiti art in the editor mode.

But there was so much more going on! There were rival skater gangs, looking to get into your turf with their own graffiti. And we’re not talking about modern-day interpretations of gangs here; this is some straight-up The Warriors shit here, with gangs like The Love Shockers, The Immortals, or The Doom Riders, you half-expect at any moment to turn a corner and come face to face with the Baseball Furies. It’s gangsters at their most stylized, and like everything else Jet Set Radio Future was putting down, I couldn’t get enough of it.

Yes, they were actually called “The Doom Riders”. How fantastic is that?

Whether it was their art style, the setting, the story, or (and I say without hyperbole) one of the best contemporary soundtracks in gaming, Jet Set Radio Future was a goddamn work of art. It’s too bad the IP’s gone completely silent in the years since its release; I would personally go to Japan and plead my case to Sega’s Board of Executives why they need to take the craziest developers they have on staff and have them make a new Jet Radio game. It would certainly beat the hell out of throwing an emaciated and downtrodden Sonic out once again to the blood-thirsty masses.

Video Game Violence, the Norwegian Tragedy, and Bullshit Journalism

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 14:06:00 -0700

Last week one of the worst domestic acts of terrorism this century was committed in Norway, with the coordinated bombing of a government building and the shooting of a labour party youth camp leading to the deaths of over 80 innocent people, many of which having not even been given the chance to reach adulthood. It wasn’t perpetrated by a terrorist cell of bearded, Islamic fundamentalists, as was initially predicted, either, but rather (allegedly, we are all innocent until proven guilty) from a sole Norwegian citizen, Anders Behring Breivik, who was motivated through his own twisted political ideology.

The world sits stunned, even a week later, that any one man could go through with such a crime against humanity, and as is common with the after-effects of such inconceivable tragedy, people are grasping for any sort of explanation as to why. And, sadly, there are those who seek a scapegoat.

As was previously (and honestly much more eloquently) reported over at gamefront by one Ross Lincoln, there are individuals within the media who’ve decided that the catalyst for Breivik’s act of monstrous inhumanity was due to his proclivity to playing fantasy and military video games, specifically Dragon Age 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

In his expansive journal/manifesto, Breivik discusses (quite briefly, actually) his love for the Dragon Age series. This, as well as the coincidence that Breivik shares a first name with a character within DA2 (a mage also called Anders) seems to be enough evidence for Post-Chronicle reporter Jim Brogan to headline and scream from the rafters video gaming’s supposed responsibility in Norway’s tragic loss.

In his articles, Brogan states that the storyline arc of DA2 shares some similarities with that of Breivik’s own crimes. Specifically, how the video game charater Anders blows up a church due to their persecution of magic. This coincidence, according to Brogan, is enough to believe that the story of DA2 was what pushed Breivik over the edge, and gave him his inspiration to commit one of the largest domestic terrorist attacks in human history.

Fuck you, Jim Brogan. Fuck your insensitivity to the loss and mourning of the dozens of families in Norway by stating their loss was due to something so trivial as interactive entertainment. Fuck your lack of willingness to try and come with up any sort of real insight into this tragedy, to be happy instead with providing an “easy answer”, and fuck your use of an international tragedy to push your own stupid, anti-video game agenda.

Now, it’s well beyond the scope of a recently graduated post-teen suffering from arrested development who spends his spare time writing jokes about video games to deconstruct the reasonings behind Breivik’s horrific actions, but anyone with enough sense to casually glance at the unfolding event and Breivik’s own writings can see the stark reality that there’s something much deeper going on here than how a disturbed man spent his leisure hours. He discusses in his manifesto in detail how the rise of multiculturalism and leftist politics will be the death of Europe, and how the solution to Norway’s problems can come from racism and violence, and you’re going to sit there and tell me a game where YOU FIGHT DRAGONS is fucking responsible?

That’s like saying John Wayne Gacy killed because he enjoyed painting. Ban water colours.

There are shades here of the aftermath of the Columbine massacre, where instead of people wanting to tackle the difficult and frightening issues of teenage depression and high school bullying people blamed Doom and tried to get Marilyn Manson off the air. There are rumblings of political and racial hatred in nations throughout Europe and the world at large, and instead of people willing to take a look within at the direction society is going, we look for easy answers. Blame music, blame film, blame the pixelization of fucking dwarves and dragons. Just don’t ask the difficult questions.

Jim Brogan says this may be “the saddest moment in video game history,” to which Ross Lincoln says, and I agree wholeheartedly, that while this may not be the saddest moment in gaming history, it definitely is one of the saddest in the history of journalism.

I'm Taking A Slight Sabbatical

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:22:38 -0700

For the (slight) number of individuals keeping up on my insane electronic rantings, I’m sure you’ve noticed it’s been like a month since I’ve written, well, anything. Without boring you with the details, let’s just say I’m going through something of an existential crisis, and I’m likely going to be taking the rest of the month off to get real life in order before I come back to pontificate on the intricate meta-art that is Duke Nukem Forever, or why Chrono Trigger remains the most bitchin’ game of all time, or some other such nonsense.

To tide you over though, here’s my 8-second synopsis of E3 2011:

Gaming is apparently just military-shootin’ dudes now
The Wii U and Playstation Vita have made me give up on caring about console names forevermore
No Microsoft, I don’t want to yell instructions at the imaginary characters on my television screen
I will never forgive Ubisoft for not announcing Beyond Good and Evil 2. When the revolution comes Mr. Caffeine will be the first against the wall

Games You Should've Played (But Probably Didn't): E.V.O.: Search for Eden

Fri, 13 May 2011 03:44:00 -0700

The prehistoric theme has been vastly under-utilized in the world of video games. I mean, what comes to mind? Jurassic Park for the Genesis? Christ it was difficult. That cancelled BC game for the xbox? Just another case of Peter Molyneux being the step-father of the video game world, promising the world and then letting us down. The Dino Crisis series? The first one was terrible, the second one was mediocre, and the third one was in goddamn space. You have officially broken through the bottom of the barrel when you’re taking your game with a prehistoric-enemy theme and putting it in space.

“WHY DID WE BRING RAPTORS ONTO THE SPACE STATION? WHAT POSSIBLE PURPOSE COULD THEY HAVE SERVED UP HERE?”

For my money, the best game that ever revolved around prehistoria was a little-known Super Nintendo game by the name of E.V.O.: Search for Eden. Released in Japan in 1992 and North America in ‘93 by Enix, EVO was an incredibly weird action-platformer that focused on the concept of evolution on Earth. Starting off as a lowly fish wallowing in the ocean, you’d eventually grow and develop into a land-dweller, then (potentially) a mammal, ending finally as a human being.

I’m well aware how that sounds less like a good video game and more like “that class I never went to in high school”, but imagine that you’re the one controlling the evolutionary process.

You think your fish-character you’re controlling is cool, but want him to be a bit more deadly? Then give him some razor-sharp-goddamn-teeth. Think your weird, hippo-looking creature is way too slow to survive natural selection (and by natural selection I mean those asshole alligators gnawing off your tailbone)? How about “evolving” some tiger legs.

It was possible, through careful evolutionary decisions and exploring the world to find hidden power-ups (it is still a video game after all), that you could eventually become a club-wielding human being, using your mastery of basic tool craftsmanship to whip the asses of all around you. But personally? I preferred making my creature an ungodly murderous abomination, some Lovecraftian horror of claws and tentacles and crystallized hatred that would devour the souls of anything slow and/or stupid enough to stumble in front of it.

Go forth, my clawed tricera-monster. Go forth and FEED

The gameplay itself wasn’t anything too revolutionary for its time, but EVO managed to find a cool niche between the “jump-on-its-damn-head!” form of platformers that were in vogue at the time, with a surprisingly robust and in-depth RPG system.

There was some semblance of a storyline within EVO, something involving Gaian Earth Goddesses trying to create a creature worthy of ruling the planet, or something to that effect. I felt like it was some kind of mix between Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” and “Battle Royale”, but to be honest I wasn’t paying too much attention; like every SNES-era platformer, you weren’t really playing for the engrossing story.

EVO was something of a rare treasure; it was generally over-looked during the time of its release, and the few reviews that came out for it at the time generally didn’t look too favourably on it, and so it kind of fell off into obscurity. It’s also true that since this game is likely more of a rare collector’s item than a video game it’d be difficult to get a chance to play today, and I would never be so crass as to suggest something illegal and immoral like downloading an emulator.

…Specifically, I would NEVER tell you that you could type the words “SNES emulator” into google and find an emulator in mere seconds, or that there are dozens of easily discoverable websites that would have ROMs of all kinds of Super Nintendo games, including possibly the very game I’m discussing here.

This. Don’t do this.

No, I would never suggest something like that.

8-Bit Musicality: Queens of the Stone Age: No One Knows

Tue, 10 May 2011 02:29:04 -0700

It’s been a while since I’ve had any real discussion on video game music, largely because I kind of ran out of VG music that I liked and wasn’t already a lot like the stuff I had shown previously.

But! I’m back, with music of the quasi-video variety! In my travels I’ve come across a curious hobby of individuals who frequent the internet, specifically the idea of taking popular songs and 8-bit-itizing them. It’s an honourable profession and one I wholeheartedly endorse!

So I’ve decided that whenever I find an 8-bit song of something I love, or just something generally awesome and crazy, I’ll pass it on to!

Tonight’s first showing, one of my favourite songs from one of my favourite bands, “No One Knows” by Queens of the Stone Age. Enjoy!

US Government Officially Considers Video Games Art

Mon, 09 May 2011 01:49:13 -0700

And somewhere right now, Roger Ebert is screaming into the night.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a program under the federal government created to decide which art projects are deemed worthy of federal funding, recognized video games this week as an official art form worthy of endowment, in a move that’s sure to have gamers across the globe smiling in a smug, “I-told-you-so” kind of way.

In an official statement, the NEA outlined their new revisions to what is and isn’t considered worthy for a grant application. Specifically, they changed their grant category of “The Arts on Radio and Television” to “The Arts in Media”, stating officially that “Projects may include…multi-part webisodes; installations; and interactive games.”

This brings up a great deal of intriguing new situations for video game developers. Aside from the distinct PR victory that is official government recognition of their work as “art”, there can be created in this funding an entirely new kind of game developer, one whom creates games for the public for free, to be enjoyed as art, while still being able to, you know, pay rent and eat food thanks to federal funding.

Though I feel safe in suggesting that EA and Activision won’t be clamoring for art endowments anytime soon, this could potentially allow the next Jonathon Blow (creator of Braid) or Playdead studio (the dev. house behind Limbo) to be able to create something beautiful, without the need to compromise their visions in attempts to “maintain fiscal solvency”.

Or, you know, the almost-certainly old men in control of the NEA could decide not to give a dime to video games, because they probably still don’t believe games can be artistic. Either-or.

Mortal Kombat: A History of Secrets, Glitches, and Outright Crazy Rumours

Sat, 07 May 2011 03:28:00 -0700

The latest iteration of the Mortal Kombat series seems to have struck a chord with the gaming public, as critics and the gaming public agree that the image of a man with his name tattooed across his chest punching the head off of a scantily-clad woman is just what they’re into. (To see exactly what I just described in all it’s brutal glory please click here!)

Though I suppose this was to be expected, as the fighting game revival (started back in 2008 with the release of Street Fighter 4) is now going full steam ahead. With the success of the aforementioned Street Fighter series, Marvel Vs Capcom, and now Mortal Kombat, not to mention the ever-growing interest in Street Fight X Tekken, it’s become pretty clear that the world of gamers really, really enjoys punching people.

I’ve never been too into fighting games, since in the formative years of my nerdery those games were really only considered legitimate at the arcade, and I had neither the quarters nor the patience to allow oily-haired teenagers, with their angst, Marilyn Manson shirts, and terrifying skills, to beat my virtual ass time and again.

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Mortal Kombat, though, and not just because of the fact that my mom forbid me from playing it. Rather, it was the weird mystique that seemed to hang around each iteration of the game, especially in its heyday of MK 1, 2, and 3. All these strange rumours you’d hear surrounding the game, of all the hidden characters that you could unlock if you beat the game without getting hit or blocking, or the crazy hidden fatalities that made the violence of the regular fatalities look like daytime TV.

Sub-Zero is a terrible, terrible chiropractor

While I suppose other fighting games have had this history of rumour-mongering (case in point, the Sheng Long April Fool’s joke(s) for Street Fighter 2), few developers relished and fed into this phenomenon like the creators of Mortal Kombat. No one else would take crazy, obviously fake rumours about hidden aspects of the game and decide to add them in to the sequel.

And that’s what the crux of this article is about, the crazy whisperings that came out of Mortal Kombat; specifically, the ones that were true, the one’s that most definitely were not true, and the ones that best of all became true.

The Various ___alities

Fatalities are in-arguably the foundation of the MK series. If it wasn’t for the ridiculous, hilarious, concerned-parents-up-in-arms level of violence that only Fatalities can provide, MK likely would not be the video game staple it is today. Because of this fame, though, it’s unsurprising that there have been endless rumours discussing the existence of hidden, even crazier finishing moves.

With the initial release of MK 2, there were rumours of the ability to turn your opponents into babies after winning a match. Though the concept seemed absolutely crazy, it turned out to be true. There was also a growing discussion about finishers called Animalities, where upon victory the winner would be able to turn into an animal and…well, do something animalish to their opponent. This rumour turned out to be false, and was likely started from a Fatality by Liu Kang which had him turning into a dragon.

BUT! Like all good things, it eventually became true, as Animalities were included for Mortal Kombat 3. Why? Because MK creators Ed Boon and John Tobias love screwing around with gamers!

Video Games: Where a ninja can turn into a polar bear to maul a four-armed woman he’s fighting in Hell

There were also rumours that individuals could cause fatalities using the arena itself, which was in a way both true and untrue. Some levels, such as the famous Pit stage found in multiple MK iterations, could have you uppercut your opponents off the stage and into the spikes below.

The rumour that you could feed your opponents to the living trees in MK 2’s forest stage, however, was false, despite people furiously believing it to be true, and trying every possible combination to make it occur. Best of all though is that, like many things in Mortal Kombat, it became true, as the latest Mortal Kombat has a revision of the old forest stage, and guess what? You can totally feed your opponent to the trees!

At its craziest, MK games had the famous Fatalities, Babalities, Animalities, Brutalities (where you’d pull off a crazy combo the would finish with your opponent explode), Friendships (where instead of brutal murder the winning character would do something stupid and friendly, like share a balloon), and even Hara-kiri (where the losing character would kill themselves instead of allowing their opponent to kill them). And though that may have been a bit too much, there were still rumours of other hidden kinds of finishers, including my favourite, sexalities.

I’ll leave that one to your imagination.

I’m Afraid Of Lizards…

Likely one of the most famous secrets of any video game, ever, is the inclusion of the character Reptile in the original Mortal Kombat. Though his existence wasn’t openly admitted to by developers initially, hints were displayed between fights as to how to fight the infamous lizard. And as people started discovering the method to fighting him, word of mouth began spreading, eventually leading to an MK fervor that led to the emptying of quarters from pockets across the continent.

This here would often be the reward you’d get for fighting Reptile

And how does one unlock the ability to fight Reptile? Oh, simply by beating an opponent, while on a certain stage, flawlessly, without blocking. Oh, and there had to be shadows across the moon in the stage’s background, an event which only occasionally occurred. Needless to say, not a lot of people had the chance to discover Reptile for themselves. But for those who did? It was like magic, and the Mortal Kombat series became forever ingrained into their minds.

“No, that’s not a secret character it’s an error messa..alright fine, you know what? It’s a new character now”

With the tradition begun by Reptile, however, many started believing that each new MK iteration would have other, also-crazy-to-discover hidden characters. Many a false rumour was created around the frenzy of people doing anything they could possibly think that would bring secret characters out of their hiding places. And the developers at MK would do anything in their power to insure that the fuel for this fire was continually fed.

Case in point? There was occasionally a glitch in MK 2 which had one of the characters, Mileena, showing up in red instead of purple, and MK fans lost their minds believing it to be a new, secret character. The reality of it simply being a palette glitch didn’t seem to matter to fans, who kept the dream of “Skarlett” alive. So much so that she’s now going to be a downloadable character for the newest Mortal Kombat, set to be released soon.

“It’s a secret character!” “How do you know?” “She’s red!”

The best story of all however involves the character Ermac, whose rumoured existence began with the original MK. In the arcade version of the game, there was an innocuous line at the bottom of the cabinet’s diagnostic screen which kept track of the number of error macros that happened during the game (if you don’t understand what that means don’t worry, I don’t really either), but to save space they used the shortened display term “ermac”.

Of course, to the fans of MK everything means in something, and so rumous exploded about the secret character “Ermac” hidden somewhere in the game. And, as MK fans are want to do, spent their quarters furiously trying to find him. The creators themselves even debunked the rumour, but it came back in full force when the magazine EGM reported as an April Fools Joke (they seem to have a history of doing terrible things to gamers around April Fools) that Ermac had been found.

Finally, as with all rumours in the Mortal Kombat universe, this one too eventually became true, as Ermac became a new playable character in MK 3. He’s now even something of a foundational character for the series, and can even be found in the latest release.

This is just the tip of the weird and expansive iceberg that is the history of Mortal Kombat secrets. I could’ve gone into more detail about a couple dozen other false rumours and glitches, but I think this article may already be far too long. I just hope you walk away from this article with the knowledge that the only people crazier than fighting gamers chasing rumours are game developers creating them.

Mass Effect 3 Delayed Until 2012

Thu, 05 May 2011 02:14:00 -0700

One can almost hear the chorus of despair coming from gamers the world over.

A note was published on Bioware’s message boards and facebook page earlier yesterday, with executive producer Corey Hudson stating “today we have confirmed that Mass Effect 3 will be released in the first three months of 2012,” adding that “The development team is laser focused on making sure Mass Effect 3 is the biggest, boldest and best game in the series, ensuring that it exceeds everyone’s expectations. We’ll have more details about specific dates as we get closer to release.”

Though it’s certainly a sad day when the most anticipated game of the year gets delayed, I for one feel like breathing a sigh of relief. First and foremost, have you seen the list of games expected to be released from September to November? Off the top of my head, I can name:

Rage, Resistance 3, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Batman: Arkham City, Uncharted 3, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Gears of War 3, Deus Ex 3 (though that may technically be in August, I’m still counting it), and Twisted Metal. And that’s even before the inevitable deluge of release announcements that E3 is sure to rain down upon our heads.

Don’t get me wrong I want to shoot Reapers as much as, if not more than, the next guy, but there’s only so many hours in a day! Plus, if Mass Effect 3 were to be released during the holidays then that would have been a turn-around time on a game’s development of about 18-20 months, which is a little fast for what many are hoping to be the Game Of The Decade. Let Bioware take all the time they want, because I have a funny feeling it’ll be worth it.

Crazy Portal 2 Cube Tricks

Wed, 04 May 2011 01:56:00 -0700

Portal 2 has by this point been out for, what? Two weeks now? That sounds like an appreciable amount of time for the internet to take the game, break it down, and abuse its mechanics to commit acts of insane virtual chicanery.

CASE IN POINT: The following video, by a guy or a group I believe is calling themselves Schrodinger’s Geek (an awesome name to which I give a hearty thumbs up, by the way), who show how in a matter of days they’ve already been able to master Portal 2’s mechanics and pull off some outright insane stunts. If any of that sounds intriguing then I suggest you give the video below a watch.

Games You Should've Played (But Probably Didn't): Mischief Makers

Tue, 03 May 2011 01:37:00 -0700

In a day and age where it feels like the world of Japanese video-gamery is becoming more and more marginalized, with the only genre’s from across the sea still at their best being bullet-hell shooters, discomforting hentai adventures, and Tekken, I feel the necessity from time to time to think back on the days when Japanese video games weren’t just the gold standard, but the gold standard in crazy. Enter Mischief Makers, a Nintendo 64 game released by Treasure in 1997. Called Go Go! Trouble Makers in Japan (in my opinion a far superior name), MM was the flag-bearer for insanity. You played a robot maid, Marina, who’s owner Theo is kidnapped while vacationing on the planet Clancer by his estranged evil brother who just so happens to be the planet’s emperor. So, in true video game fashion, you’re thrust into a colourful world packed to the brim with crazy, where you end up fighting with the planet’s resistance in an effort to save Theo and, eventually, the entire planet.

Oh. And you also end up winning the planet’s Olympic games (which includes such luminary athletics as “dodgeball” and “math”). And you fight some weird anthropomorphized version of the Power Rangers. And I think in one level you hunt ghosts. And the world’s inhabitants look like this:

Upon first glance at Mischief Makers one knows they’re in for something strange. The colour palette could faithfully be called “eye-searing”, while Marina’s main form of attack is grabbing characters or items, and vigorously shaking them. She even says “Shake shake” while doing so!

You’ll traverse from inappropriately-styled theme parks, to Volcanoes, to snowy mountain villages (where, if you want, you can beat up the innkeeper for gems and then go play jump-rope), to crazy aerial battles with precious little to connect it all together. But it didn’t matter, because a great deal of what was compelling you forward was to find out just where the hell you’d end up doing next.

In short, it was magical. You would play this game with no idea as to what could possibly be around the corner. And, chances were, what ended up happening was something you never would’ve been able to guess.

What in the hell is going on here?

More importantly, Mischief Makers was more fun than it had any right to be. The grab-and-shake mechanics seemed odd as all hell, but worked surprisingly well for the action-adventure genre.

And while the over-arching story may be too many doses of twee and silly, the individual scenes and dialogue were downright impossible not to watch. Why is that giant ape-monster trying to get me to join its fan club? Why is that creepy old man sexually harassing that robot? And are those vehicles forming together Voltron-style to create a giant robot? Why, I believe they just might be:

No, seriously, what in the hell is going on here?

Which is why it’s sad to say that MM never really managed to hit it off, with either the public or the critics. It averaged 70 on metacritic, which by all accounts is pretty alright, but in this era of a “8-or-higher-or-you’re-fired” game review mentality, it may as well have averaged 40.

There’s also the fact that, for some odd reason, a cartoon game in the 90’s about a female robot shaking her way to a revolution just didn’t hit the gamer zeitgeist like you’d hope. To be sure Mischief Makers has a strong cult following, of which I’m definitely a member, but if you’re one of the many who never gave this game a chance you sorely missed out.

How Nintendo’s Vague Announcements Make an ex-Nintendo Fanboy Feel in his Swimsuit Area: In C Flat

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:37:00 -0700

By Bill McDonnell

Ignoring how stupid that fucking tag line is, I think “Curious Boner” is probably the most accurate description. For the longest time I was a Nintendo fanboy. Kind of all through my youth. I had every iteration of gaming technology they put out, save of course the Vietnam flashback inducing Virtual Boy, and the Gameboy Color (since I was satisfied with my forearm workout Gameboy Classic).

As a young man I fruitlessly argued with my schoolyard counterparts about why the N64 was a more worthwhile console than the Playstation, at the same time I was shamefully paying weeks upon weeks worth of allowance to buy single games that in many cases weren’t very good. Things came to a screeching halt upon the release of the Gamecube, I didn’t beg my parents for one for Christmas (which really you should stop doing by the time you’re 13), because I just didn’t feel it anymore. And when a company stops making games for you, when you start to grow out of them, even though you’re not very old, how do you stay loyal?

Now I don’t mean to sound like one of those guys who can only play games with refrigerator sized Space Marines who kill everything in site, because that’s not the case; two of my favorite game series remain to be Harvest Moon and Katamari. Even so, I’ve kind of kept Nintendo at arms reach since 2001. Though when the Wii was announced a couple of years later I remember telling my Sony fanboy friend in Calculus class that Nintendo was going to knock it out of the park, that inferior graphics weren’t a deal breaker anymore, and that price point mattered, as did innovative controls. I was right, in one respect, since Nintendo sold a metric fuckton of those things.

I mean really a ridiculous amount, as anyone who was conscious of the gaming world in 2006 and 2007 can remember how fucking impossible it was to get a hold of one of these things. The “groundbreaking” control system, however, wasn’t fucking groundbreaking. It was gimmicky. It didn’t live up to any of my visions, and was disgustingly shoehorned into pretty much any A-plus title when a Gamecube controller would have sufficed. The Wii my roommate and I had in our apartment very quickly became a mechanism to watch Youtube videos when we were too drunk to leave the couch, and play Virtual Console games.

Everyone can name Wii titles that are good, there’s no question that they exist, no matter what people tell you on the Internet, but it’s been almost five fucking years since the console came out, and no Wii game has ever drawn me in the way that games like Red Dead Redemption and Castlevania have on its two beefy competitors. The fact that I have to keep myself under control when I start looking at what 360 games I want to buy, when I can barely name 10 Wii titles I’d want to play through is shameful. And maybe those 360 titles are by and large sequels or rehashes or other bullshit like that, but it doesn’t change the fact that Microsoft and Sony make me want to give them my money, and Nintendo doesn’t.

I wanted to love that little white box, I wanted it to change the industry (which, I suppose it has, given the rush for Sony and Microsoft to adopt motion controls), and I wanted it to prove that the technical arms race was over and that game quality came first and foremost, but it just didn’t. The Wii did not make a strong case for the (and I hate fucking saying this) “hardcore gamer crowd”, and you can see in some of their press releases that they’re aware of this, and that dominating the so-called “casual crowd” (which is code for ‘people who don’t get summer vacations and have fucking jobs’).

tl;dr: The Wii was promising, made shit loads of money, but ultimately didn’t give me a rager.

So everyone knows that they’re not going to give up, that there is a “Wii 2” (Or Wii-Wii, as I prefer to call it) on the horizon, and just now the truth is coming out. “Project Café”, well ahead of E3 and announcements by competitors. Of course very little is known at the moment save what Nintendo has actually announced, but here is what is known or rumored:

- HD output likely, with the possibility of Blu-Ray.

- Backwards compatible 2 generations, back to the Gamecube

- Supposedly an incredibly easy SDK to ease the process for developers

- A new controller seems likely, and the rumor that it’s a more classic style controller is rampant.

- Some sort of touchscreen of 3D quality is possible.

- The system is expected to be a great leap forward from the Wii in technical aspects.

- Playable this summer at E3, which likely means a more comprehensive announcement at this Fall’s Spaceworld.

- 2012 release is a real thing. Like usual, probably in Late Fall-Early Winter

- Rainbows and tulips and fucking unicorns

So that’s not actually a lot of information. Being a scholar of video games, and also a gentlemen, and also that I started drinking at 11:30 this morning, I’m going to tell you what the next-gen Nintendo needs to keep doing, or to start doing, or to really fucking stop doing, in order to win back my boner, and also my heart.

Price Point: The Wii’s price point was a marvelous thing to behold, and was probably more damaging to the PS3’s image than the PS3’s own price point was, given that they both released at the same time. There’s no question that $250 and $599.99 USD look like The Cat in the Hat sitting on a table next to The Count of Monte Cristo. Getting the console in homes is key to convincing developers that it’s a good idea to build for your console, it’s also crucial to getting that momentum that kept the Wii at the forefront of media attention for well over a year, and if there’s one way to do that, it’s by keeping the price point down. I’m not saying that the console needs to be Wii cheap, you get what you pay for at that price point, but keeping it below competitors absolutely makes it more appealing.

Games Early, Games Often: The 360 proved that there’s significant value to releasing early, getting a whole year of traction before Nintendo and Sony even made it to the market ensured that when all three consoles were to be compared side to side it look as though the 360 had fewer issues and more games. The next Nintendo console is going to be making it to the market well before its competitors, and will likely cause them to rush their consoles out to respond, but it’s important that Nintendo have a steady stream of decent titles to back that up. I’m not saying that its necessary to be releasing A+ titles monthly, or even quarterly, but you can’t just release Zelda on launch and then hope that the shovel ware will hold people over until Mario comes out, they need to insure that the image of their consoles library and future releases doesn’t become this:

I feel like I’ve been at this party…

Motion Controls: I don’t think there’s any question that the Wii’s flagship functionality, the motion controls, have changed the industry. Sony quickly shat out then redacted the Six-Axis controller, later to release the Move controller which is as silly and useless as the Wii-Mote, and of course Microsoft put out the game-changing Kinect. If there’s one thing I hate about the Wii, its motion controls. They’ve irreparably damaged the consoles usefulness by making all the 1^st party titles, which are from some of my favorite franchises, have these silly shoehorned mechanics that don’t add anything except confusion when a regular controller would have sufficed. It’s a gimmick. It was impressive and fun for the first 2 hours, or maybe even less, but few titles have actually made it a desirable feature to me. If anything, motion controls should follow the Kinect model and be part of a highly developed peripheral rather than a base console feature. The Kinect puts those controls on the market for people who actually want them, and allows people like me who have no interest to steer clear. Keeping something like this, which is part of Nintendo’s image and also clearly not going away, on the back burner is likely to allow developers to produce more bedrock, solid titles, during the consoles head start, without forcing them to develop for some new finagled, confusing, mechanic. I think that this is likely to lead to better games early on, and less WAGGLAN. This is probably highly desirable to investors as well, as it insures lower development costs and the opportunity for a high profile, expensive, likely useless, accessory at a later date.

Oh, you mean like this?

Multifunctionality: I used to decry this when it was starting to become a reality. I’d like to think it started with the PS2 being a DVD player, but then I remember that the Famicom had a modem that allowed you to make stock trades from the same system you played Megaman on. I always thought that it would detract from development of games and push more “everyday” functions like news, Internet browsing, chat functions, and other media. I’ve since come to accept it with open arms, as its way easier to get my friends to watch a silly video, or to have people be active in choosing music, when it’s not my archaically organized computer, but rather my video game console and my TV, that they interface with. So there are things that the Wii does well. The Internet browser is better than the 360’s, of which there is none at all, and also better than the PS3’s, which is something of a nightmare to navigate sometimes. But then you have to purchase an adapter to play DVDs? I can’t simply port in movies or music from a USB stick or an SD card? Nintendo doesn’t produce DVD players or MP3 players or anything of that sort, so I can’t see why they wouldn’t feel obligated to get into that market by allowing these functions without the need of homebrew. The next Nintendo console needs to keep up the browser development, and add some additional multimedia functions in order to compete in the future.

Online Functionality: Friend codes are the most ill conceived idea I’ve ever heard. This shit is beyond archaic. It was easier to play Command and Conquer over my 28.8kbps modem with one of my friends than it was to get one of these codes and enter it so we could play a laggy fucking match of SSB:B. And then we can’t even fucking talk to each other? I understand that Nintendo was trying to promote in living room multiplayer, but may I remind you that this console came out in 2006? And that X-Box Live made matchmaking and playing with your friends a fucking reality in 2002? Or that the Dreamcast shipped with online support, albeit short lived, in 1999? DID THEY EVEN TRY? The Wii online gameplay is a joke. Plain and simple, its worse than the PS3 by far, and is just plain dwarfed by the omni-present X-Box Live which has more subscribers than there are people in Australia. Something needs to be done, and regardless of how derivative it is, it probably needs to mirror XBL in order to make the Wii’s successor a competitor in the market.

Having this guy call me a fucking loser has
really improved the experience.

Put a Stop the Casual/Hardcore Debate: Let me go on the record here and say that theres nothing fucking wrong with casual gamers. It’s not a God damn disease to only spend a couple of hours, or less, playing games a week. It’s not God damn leprosy to have other shit you need to accomplish. But it’s almost like Nintendo has been trying to alienate the people who put off doing other stuff to play video games, the very people who brought them to the top of the world in the first place. Nintendo’s marketing stopped being in your face 90’s and started being more about family interaction, and games that even Grandma can play. Which is funny because that’s just ageist marketing, I’ve met a grandmother who plays Final Fantasy 11, and has been for years, and I don’t think that games get any more life draining or “hardcore” than that. It’s almost as though Nintendo thinks they can only cater to one crowd. That they can’t produce the fantastic titles that seem to gravitate towards their competitors while still making something that everyone can enjoy. Anyone who has been gaming for 15+ years can tell you that its absolutely become a hobby that everyone can enjoy, and isn’t nearly as complicated or difficult, or insular as it used to be. It’s simply about people finding the right games for them, rather than corporations telling people that they can only enjoy certain kinds of games because of their age or gender (or in the case of Resident Evil 5, racial superiority). If Nintendo can leave behind the image they’ve built the Wii on, the casual, everyone join in (but only if you’ve spent $200 on controllers), perception, and move closer to the middle ground like the 360, I think the gaming world will be a better place. The Wii’s successor is coming out at a time when this argument has had years to ferment, when “hardcore” gamers are no longer the majority in the gaming world, when Angry Birds outsells every Space Marine, and they have to tread that line carefully. The console could very easily become the go-to next gen console for the average, 5 hour a week, user, but in doing so it would probably kill the interest from the old school die-hards, and lose a lot of steam and hype in the process. Nintendo’s coffers are packed, they’ve got plenty of traditional media good will, they just need to prove that they can release a system (Wii-Wii) that’s as much for me as it is for Atlus fantards, and also, for your mom.

I would be lying if I said this wasn’t all so I could make a joke
about your mom and my Wii-Wii

Sony's Got Some 'Splainin' To Do

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:26:00 -0700

If you consider yourself fairly technologically “tuned-in” then I’m sure you’re well aware of last week’s Amazonocalypse (or as I like to call it, “the day the internet died”). Though I am by absolutely no means a man of the techno-scholarly nature, from what I can glean out of the confusing techno-babble is that Amazon cloud services has a direct tie to a surprisingly large number of website servers, and when it went down last week it was like taking out part of a building’s foundation. Except replace the word “building” in that last sentence with “the internet”.

A few days later, however, and everything’s back to sunshine and cat memes…with one notable exception. PSN, the Playstation 3’s online gaming, internet and market service (otherwise known as the lynchpin of their product) is still down. Initially it was believed to have been brought down for the same reasons as the rest of the internet last week, but as of this writing it is still currently down.

But, it’s understandable right? I mean do YOU know how an international server database works? I didn’t think so. And with a program of such complexity you can give them a bit of lee-way when it comes to something out of their control exploding in catastrophic fashion. However, that seems to no longer be the story that’s coming out of the Sony Press pipeline…

As of a recent interview with PC World, Sony reps were blaming the continued service outage on “an external intrusion” into the network, and were currently working as hard as they could to rebuild and strengthen their network’s defenses and insure a repeat offense like this would never occur.

When I hear the words “strengthen our network’s defenses against attack” this is the image that comes to my mind

Oh, but I’m forgetting the best part, with a little tidbit that actually has me sweating and pacing. Sony isn’t certain that the private information of PSN users wasn’t compromised during this “outside intrusion to their network”. If you’ve ever bought something off of PSN, then congratulations! Your credit card information may now be compromised!

Christ, Sony. Je, sus, CHRIST. They’re going to need to do a lot of damage control before this fire’s been put out, and I don’t think Kevin Butler doing another show and dance is going to solve the problem this time.

Though if anyone could see Sony out of these troubled times, it’s The Butler…

Quick Review: Mass Effect 2: The Arrival

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 01:40:38 -0700

I guess it’s time for Shephard to go on another suicide machine. I swear, he must just be quoting John McClane constantly by now. “Join the Alliance, they said…have a good tiiiime, they said…”

I’ll keep this quick, because I honestly feel that if you’ve played Mass Effect 2 you know exactly what it is you’re getting into with this downloadable piece of entertainment, and if you haven’t played ME2, then you shouldn’t be reading this, you should be remedying that problem as soon as you can. This and everything else can wait.

The Arrival is a quick, roughly 2-hour long addendum to ME2 which emphasizes largely on combat, and adds a nice little story bridge between Mass Effect 2 and the upcoming Mass Effect 3. I won’t spoil anything for you, but it’s your standard “galactic-scale calamity, scaly racist aliens can’t solve their own damn problems, and it’s up to Shephard to save the day again” type situation. Only this time it involves the Reapers!

Though the dlc is quite short, they do manage to pack a decent amount of storyline tension into it, and it actually gets pretty intense by the climax. The only problem is there isn’t really enough story content to keep ME fans truly happy; The Arrival is about combat, through-and-through, and moreover it’s almost entirely one-person combat, as the mission is played solely as Shephard (under some flimsy pretext of “silence and discretion”). I feel like Bioware must know this, but in case they don’t I (along with the rest of the internet, it seems) feel like I must re-iterate: people are playing Mass Effect for the story, guys! The combat’s cool, but it’s the icing on the damn cake!

What story there is in the dlc, however, is your typically-awesome Bioware fare, and I truly enjoyed an additional, if truncated, vacation back into the galaxy of Mass Effect. It is quite short, however, and at $7 for what’s mostly additional combat, this may not be everyone’s bag. Just keep that in mind when if you’re on the fence about buying.

Score:

Tekken and Street Fighter, Living Together, Mass Hysteria!

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 01:17:35 -0700

…It’s a Ghost Busters quote. Oh come on, you must’ve gotten that one!

…Anyways, though this isn’t exactly news of the earth-shattering variety (to be honest I’m mostly doing this for the Ghost Busters reference), new videos of the next major fighting franchise cross-over, Streetfighter X Tekken, were released by Capcom and Namco earlier this week, in “dueling videos” style.

For the unaware, Streetfighter X Tekken is going to be two different fighting games, one made by Namco, the other Capcom, with each made in their own trademark style.

The idea of cross-franchise games has always seemed really cool to me, although this trend isn’t necessarily new in the fighting genre, as Capcom’s been making VS games with other franchises, like Capcom VS SNK and the well known seizure inducement that is the Marvel VS Capcom series (click here to see what I mean), but this is likely the first time (in North America, at least) that two arguably well-known fighting franchises will go head to head. Granted Tekken’s stock may have plummeted a bit in North America in the last few years, but they’re still up there with Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat in terms of name recognition.

You’ve got two flavours of video, your Tekken:

…And your Street Fighter:

With the super-informative release date of “2012” all that’s been discussed, it’ll be a while yet before people’ll get their hands on some Ryu vs King action, though I’m sure the game will be previewed at all the big trade shows and exhibitions that are coming up soon.

Gaming and Aging, or, How I Learned to Start Worrying about my Dumb Hobby

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 02:45:00 -0700

I’ve been playing video games all my life. I don’t remember when I started, I just know that really as far as I’ve had cognition I’ve had a Nintendo system. I think that as the story goes my Grandmother got my brother and me an NES for Christmas, an event which I feel my parent’s sorely resent, looking back.

I guess I’m the definitive “2nd Generation” of gamer; I may have missed the bad ol’ days, when the Atari 2600 was releasing games that I can appreciate for their historical value but really never want to play, but I’ve been around long enough to see games evolve into what they were today. From Super Mario Bros to Mass Effect 2, gaming’s grown up alongside me.

And for the longest time I feel like I’ve been growing out of video games, and as devastatingly lame as it is to say it, it’s gotten me worried. Does anyone else remember being of the single-digit and just being uncontrollably stoked at the idea of coming home from school to play in front of the TV for an afternoon? Even though most of the games I was playing at the time were undeniably shitty (case in point: my first favourite game was Yo! Noid, a game in which looking back I have no fucking clue what was going on) it was still fun just to magically make the pixels move on screen.

I figured the only pictures that would coincide with this article would be illegal (read: frowned upon) usages of stock angry gamer photos

I can’t really do that anymore. If I game for longer than an hour or two a day I get incredibly antsy and need to do something else. Maybe with age I’m just becoming jaded, but I’m wondering if this is something that happens to all of us as we grow up. “Putting away our childish things” or some such adage. Even though “statistics” (and I put that in quotes because I have neither the time nor the patience to dig up and verify the proof of this statement) show that most gamers are in their mid-20’s to early-30’s.

It’s an empirical fact that the best games ever were the ones that you played when you were a kid. Case in point, the three best RPGs of all time are Earthbound, Final Fantasy 6, and Chrono Trigger. I don’t care what anyone says, those three are the heavenly triumvirate and no game produced today will ever reach that pinnacle in my mind.

And here’s another stock photo of an angry gamer. I don’t whether it’s awesome or sad that it took my eight seconds to find dozens of these

So it begs the question: is gaming something that can only truly be enjoyed to its fullest extent by kids? Granted, that question becomes naive and borderline insane when you factor in how most relevant games these days are blood-soaked murder simulators meant for me and jaded ilk. That’s not to say I’m about to stop playing video games any time soon, but it’s just something that I’ve pondered as of late.

And I don’t think I’m the only one. Look at how insufferably cynical so many gamers have become, how if one were to look at any gaming forum, and you’ll find dozens if not hundreds of posts of people bitching about every aspect of every game, be it a five-star blockbuster or the latest movie tie-in game (I know, it’s the internet, and should therefore just be ignored off-hand, but my argument remains).

Hey, look, a cartoon stock angry gamer picture

I’m no different, really. Case in point, I plan on finishing and reviewing Dragon Age 2 some time this week, but I’ll give you a quick preview: I kind of fuckin’ hate it. But it wasn’t until I started seriously deconstructing why I hated it that I realized that the me of ten years ago would have been endlessly excited to have played the very same game. And that caused me to, for some incredibly lame reason, worry.

So am I just becoming another cynical adult, has my “palate” potentially developed over the years, or am I just slowly starting this downward spiral into eventually hating gaming? Most importantly, am I just fucking crazy, or does anyone else feel this way?

21st Century Gaming and 21st Century Godhood

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:43:20 -0700

By Francis F. Dec

(Editor’s Note: So I’ve been trying for the past couple months to convince any of my friends, acquaintances, or really anybody passing by if they’d be willing to write something for me within the realm of video games. Finally somebody bit, and my associate Francis wrote this up for me. I’m hoping this becomes a more commonly-occurring theme in the future, so if I know you (hell even if I don’t but you just want to write something tangentially about video games) drop me a line and send me what you got. I’d love to put it up.)

According to a recent study released by a team of mathematicians from Northwestern University and the University of Arizona, religion may be headed towards extinction in the first world.# While some may celebrate this as the dawning of a new age of reason, the rapid secularization of the first world should be approached with caution. Voltaire’s utterance “If God does not exist, it would be necessary to invent him” rings as true today as it did 300 years ago.

The secular gods and religions of the past and present have been as destructive to the soul as any crusade or jihad. The Nazis of Germany were elected on the whimsical notion that race is the new God and purity of Germany is the same as purity of spirit. The North Korean dogma of Juche preaches that God is the national self-reliance with il-Sung, the father, is Jong-il, the son, is Mao the Holy Ghost as trinity. But what type of god could hold the attention of a society with a tragically low attention span and comically misplaced sense of entitlement? The answer, of course, is you.

At least, that is what video games teach us.

In the distant video game past, pale-faced children would use their allowance to buy magazines filled with cheat codes. Perhaps you remember some of the arcane scriptures of yore that would bless you with ability to make something out of nothing (unlimited ammo) , walk on water (noclip) or invulnerability (literally, God Mode).

Certain games would make these button prayers nearly mandatory if one wished to experience the full game.(Contra 3 comes to mind). In the past, you were the Viking praying to Woden for protection against the harsh realities of the game and life.

Then we pussied out. Games became easier as autosaves were introduced and health began to auto-regenerate. A veteran FPS player can likely go through a new full game without dying once. Some video games (Bioshock and Prey) relegated death to the realm of inconvenience instead of frustration.

No longer are we the Viking praying for safe passage, now we are Old Testament God, cleansing Sodom and Gommorah one Nazi demon at a time. This relatively new revolution in gaming is one of thousands of market innovations employed to increase our sense of individual power. Not only can we have a burger our way and have our dumbass initials etched onto our iPods for an extra charge, we can take out our impotent aggressions on virtual terrorists with fake military weaponry. The only difference between God and the consumer is that God is always right even after he maxes out his Visa.

Looking at it this way, it seems pretty obvious why God had to take a break after six days.