Of Master Chief and Men

For a videogame production class I’m currently taking, I’ve been reading the book Man, Play, Games by Roger Caillois. The book was written in 1961, but it is still incredibly, if not disturbingly relevant to modern athletic games and videogames. It’s an anthropological look at the games of men and a categorical classification of them all, while also being a smaller study of some of the similarities between the games of men and animals that emerge within nature.

When Reading Callois’s opinions on the important role of social dynamics in games, certain modern multiplayer conventions bear a striking resemblance to those of antiquity, such as Eskimos being the cosplayers of yore. In Caillois’s description of mimicry games, he says, “ [The disguise] serves to change the wearer’s appearance and to inspire fear in others.” He also adds, “ Acts of mimicry tend to cross the border between childhood and adulthood. They cover to the same degree any distraction, mask, or travesty, in which one participates, and which stresses the very fact that the play is masked or otherwise disguised, and such consequences ensue.” This observation certainly holds foreboding echoes of what is now the most popular, present-day disguise that can be used to intimidate (or at least attempt to) and obscure the act of play to the point of either borderline or imagined legitimacy; the avatar and all of its anonymity.

Play does in fact “lack something when it is reduced to a mere solitary exercise." I know this all too well. Some of my darkest, loneliest, most forlorn moments have been while playing Mario Party with me, myself, and a platter of cream cheese and pepperoni sandwiches I made. As we crawl out of the doldrums of self-imposed digital purgatories, we venture out into the wide social world of online gaming. But as Caillois posits, the social agon (competitive) game is more of a rivalry-motivated, glory-reaping exhibition than a brotherly communion. I told myself that playing Halo 3 online would strengthen long-distance friendships and maybe forge new ones. The game fulfilled this desire to an extent, but the beast quickly took over.

Suddenly, you start to see your rank go up. Your melee elbow becomes battle-hardened. You see and hear the cruel face of interactive war; teenage kids accommodating every fresh corpse with a post-mortem teabagging and guys with ‘DJ’ somewhere in their gamertag rap battling their way to victory (forfeits where the degree of annoyance was too great for our team and resident rapper, Jeff, to endure). You see your service decorations get shinier, bigger, more ornate. You enter games and see guys in the pre-game lobby that have all sorts of crazy emblems. “ A silver phoenix? A golden spatula? I don’t know what the fuck rank that spatula represents, but I’ve never seen it before and I’ll probably never want to see it again after this match,” you tell yourself.

A little bit longer and you’re thirsting for victory and that fearsome, intimidating veneer, that golden spatula to call your own. It’s fun when you’re sober as well as blood-drunk, but karma quickly comes back to you for every white, nameless, cross-shaped data archive you helped erect in the vast graveyard known as the Bungie.net stat server. With the sour taste of defeat still in your mouth, you start playing as a ‘lone wolf’ because you think your team is bringing you down. Once that adrenaline-fueled war high starts to wane, post-traumatic stress takes hold. You come full circle, become reformed, start playing by yourself again and looking for meaning, purpose, and God in the serene fields of Hyrule. But every now and then that trigger finger becomes itchy, you start hearing things, the sound of your maiden whispering into your ear. “ Say my name,” she demands. “ PWNage,” you respond… “sweet, sweet PWNage.” Continue?

Fuck Kevin Petrasceni, Fuck Him in His Fucking Face

After the revolting and horrible news about Fallout 3 now being censored in all territories, I was a bit pissed off. Lets just say I may have had one end of my dvi to hdmi cable tied to my neck and the other end to the ceiling fan, with an old plastic picnic table chair underneath me. Luckily in what might have been my last moments, I saw the post on gamevideos of Ken Levine’s PAX keynote. I slowly loosened my fate from my neck, cleared my keyboard of the last remnants of my volcano taco from my taco bell big box meal, grabbed a small amount of hand lotion, moved the box of Kleenexes over to the monitor and began loading the Levine Keynote.

As I readied a turkey sandwich, (because nothing goes better with Ken then a good ol’ American sam-itch) I began to ponder what he would discuss during the keynote. Smearing the mayonnaise on the top of the bun, I remembered that I had read that he did not even talk about the development of Bioshock or any of his other games for that matter during the keynote. I’m back at the computer now, I take a bite, I feel the lettuce crunch, put my right hand on the mouse, left hand in my pants and click play.

Ken whispered sweet nothings into my ear for a full half-hour. He talked about growing up in the seventies, reading comics and fearing for his life. The more he spoke it reminded me of an episode of the wonder years if the wonder years sucked shit. I was shocked to think that Ken was an outcast for most of his life. Some fuck named Kevin PetraWEENIE (see what I did there?) used to punch him in the arm everyday on the bus. He used to read comics he hid inside his textbooks during his lunch period. He was as he said “a closet nerd”.

Mattel’s Closet Nerd Ken TM showed me a very surprising side of himself that may be hard to picture because of the tone of his games: his sense of humor. Ken Levine is a funny and clever son of a bitch. He spoke about his secret love for Magneto's daughter, the Scarlet Witch, described talking about D&D at the front of a bus full of Jocks and Freaks as being similar to singing in Hebrew in Nazi-occupied France, and when he proclaimed “when the dark lord of the sith offers you five, you give him five.” He described his childhood stutter so vividly that you would think he was baffling you with his speech impediment at twelve years old right next to you.

I think the thing that made me cum the most about his keynote was the level of appreciation he had for his “tribe”, one tribal brother being his friend and co-worker that did not make him feel ashamed for being himself. I don't think I ever had it even close to as tough socially as Ken did, because I had always had a “tribe”. Once all the kids moved up to middle school they got tired of playing fake gun games, but my friends and I bought airsoft guns as soon as we were allowed to and just kept the dream alive. My “tribe” would gather in a dark, dank, dingy basement and put in the latest Resident Evil or Silent Hill game. We would often take turns playing them together in complete silence while one of us traversed this horrific world until they could handle it no longer and had to pass the journey on to another. My fondest memory of this was deep into our first playthough of Silent Hill 3 when we entered a room with a giant wall-sized mirror. Suddenly the side beyond the mirror began to be covered by this living tissue. Then the tissue covered our side of the mirror. We froze…we literally turned off the game and watched infomercials for a half-hour because neither of us could continue. We still game together. Alex and I played the last boss of Gears of War for almost two hours trying to figure out the trick to him and why we kept dying. Turns out we just had to shoot him a lot. My friend Chris and I played (or mostly watched) Metal Gear Solid 4 for twenty-two hours straight until we beat it. I still play with my “tribe” now, but my new “tribe” usually involves beer and other illegal means and ends with me getting into a rap battle victory over Xbox live during some inebriated rounds of Halo.

The point is if I did not have my tribe when I was playing games, I may have tried to find some other social outlet. But my “tribe” has only encouraged and influenced my current love of games. Sorry for all this sentimental posting, but Ken reminded me again why I love games. But I still hate everyone from Australia for renaming my real drugs in Fallout, you Aussie rating board fucks. Continue?

Big Trouble in Little China

I have convinced myself that these ramblings are vaguely relevant enough to post. The summer games may not have been games of the video variety, but they were games nonetheless, and that’s enough of a viable excuse for me.

I don’t wish to speak too much about the opening ceremony of the summer Olympics because I’m still scared shitless. It appears that China is assembling an army worthy of Mordor. It really seemed to me while watching it that this event would be in history books if (and by if I really mean when) China becomes the next dominant world superpower. This would be the event that kids would learn marked the beginning of the end (or long decline, depending on your degree of pessimism or optimism). First it starts with beating ancient drums that have been tricked out, presumably by Xzibit and everyone at Far East Coast Customs, then it becomes invading countries, but don’t worry… they will come smiling and smeared in face paint.

In all seriousness, it’s not that I think someday China will bring about the end of the free world as we know it, but I am uneasy watching this. Noam Chomsky has said that China’s global dominance will be inevitable. And just seeing how China treats the individual, exploits their tireless dedication, loyalty, and spirit to favor the whole (and by whole I mean the exceptional individual: government figures, celebrities, and glowing beauties who gracefully dance on the backs of the hundreds lifting her and her platform up) is troubling. Every nation does this to an extent, but the scale on which China operates seems completely foreign, well maybe apart from the hive mind mentality of domestic honey bees.

I will, however, speak about certain adjustments and new practices I think the Olympic Committee should adopt to add a bit of honesty and pizazz to this wearisome, tradition-steeped event.

1. The silver and bronze medals should be replaced by clumps of human shit. Silver will now be Shit 1, and the neck ornament formerly known as bronze shall become Shit 2. Shit 1 is sun-dried and solid. Shit 2 is wet, bloody, and at the rate it drips, it wouldn’t even last you the whole day. Elderly men would definitely have to be the primary donors. Just think about the potentially awe-inspiring spectacle of watching thousands of elderly Chinese men defecating into LED light-laden, ceremonial bedpans while smiling widely. If only that could have been included in the opening ceremonies for Beijing.
2. Coaches who slap gymnasts’ asses deserve a medal themselves. Those gluts are like concrete for fuck’s sake. Similar to a pommel horse routine, this is a risky procedure that requires courage and years of practice.
3. Interpretive dance should be added as an event and judged mercilessly on a numerical scale.
4. Most athletes it seems are just genetically more ideal for success in certain events than others (Phelps and his large fin-like hands and feet, tall guys in basketball, volleyball, and running, etc). For the most part, it seems like we are just rewarding athletes for their arbitrary genetic identities coupled with an absurd amount of years spent mastering one task. I propose that in the future, when the necessary technologies emerge, we should just make purebred athletes spawned from medal-winning fathers and mothers. The Olympics will then consist of running a gamut of tests on these babies (blood tests, cardiovascular tests, genetic tests), entering all of that data into a computer which will then determine through accurate simulation, which of these babies would have won their assigned event at a future Olympics. They will then either be given gold teddy bears or pacifiers made out of shit.
5. The next-gen Olympics aren’t going to be interesting if the Olympic committee preserves this stance of theirs on doping. When nanotechnology becomes commonplace and little kids are hitting baseballs out of townships and men are enjoying a leisurely 4 hours at the bottom of their pools before surfacing, how are the “true” athletes going to compete against this new shift in human abilities without the aid of technologies that the average person has? I suggest a merger between Rapture and the Olympics, the NanOlympics©. The committee can still keep their beloved element of chance and suspense, but in the form of syringe injections and which athlete can manage them the best during a given event… that is until a new nanobot emerges that exponentially increases proficiency with syringe injection management.

During one gymnastics routine I was watching, a Chinese gymnast launched himself off of a vault, whirled through the air and spun down toward a blue mat beneath him like a beautiful, dancing leaf falling from a tree branch above a serene vernal pool. As he landed on the mat, he made the supreme mistake of losing his balance temporarily and wavering before finding his center of gravity once again. After raising his “I’m done now” arms into the air, he walked off of the mat and gave an embarrassed smile. A commentator then said something to the effect of “ I don’t like that. I don’t like when gymnasts laugh after making such a crucial error.” I concur. How dare he! How could he possibly not take doing flips and revolutions through the air while wearing spandex seriously? The nerve of some people. How beautiful is a leaf if it doesn’t stick its landing in that natural body of water? Not very fucking beautiful at all. Then it’s just a rogue leaf, a smartass leaf that chooses to succumb to external forces and other variables by just simply landing anywhere it, or the wind, pleases. Only the supernatural, the exceptional, truly beautiful ones land in the pool in front of you. They become miniature boats that sail you away to the realm of fantastical daydreams and relaxation. The ones that land on a bed of their rotting peers are just ordinary organic material, not worthy of note. This fucking gymnast, he should sulk, languish, brood, mope, self-mutilate, self-immolate, beat himself up and squirm till the end of his days with the knowledge that he failed himself, his sport, his dead ancestors, his dead cat, but most importantly… his country.

It seems the idea of country is most of what this comes down to, a prestige contest (or dick size competition) between nations with athletes serving as their playthings. As if it was America that made Phelps such a fast swimmer. America isn’t the only place that has water to swim laps in, although I could see how some might get that impression in light of some of these commercials. But perhaps it is the only place that has pH-controlled freedom water that seeped into his skin and gave him that motivational shot of the American dream. No, lots of fucking, a few people who gave them guidance (not Lady Liberty), how much of one’s life and soul are surrendered to the cause, and in the case of long-distance running, a healthy whiff of smelling salts have more to do with an athlete’s success than nationality. But try telling the majority of Americans that. It’s no surprise that Michael Phelps got that early, fake copy of CoD: World At War, he’s the greatest soldier we have.

Aside from this ridiculous notion of national pride, the display of man’s conquest over obstacles and essentially, nature, or his will to power, seems to be the other big draw of the Olympic games. We can be dolphins, we can be eagles, we can be cheetahs, we can be… whirling dervishes, we can overcome the limitations of our bodies and take out our frustrations on water, land, and shot put balls. We arose, quite literally, out of a defiance to nature. Some biologists have argued that one of the only logical reasons why our species at some point decided to walk on hind legs, neglecting bad balance and becoming visible to predators above tall grass, was out of this cultivated and now inherent spirit of defiance. The Olympics are not the only home to the exhibition of the will to power. It can also be argued that art and technology are also similar conquests, but at least they aren’t solely conquests... for the most part.

It was during this summer games haze that I started to notice that as much as I criticized athletes for foolishly trying to challenge boundaries, limitations, and nature for no particular reason, I myself am responsible for my own vendettas against nature; the gamer’s will to power.

I used to be a 360 achievement whore. I’m reformed now, clean. At the peak of my habit, I would have done anything to get another fix, to see just one more cheaply-designed binary bauble come up on the screen and tell me reassuringly that I had accomplished something in this world. I felt like a depraved boy scout who lived and died by the promise of getting that Eagle Scout status. I would have sold skooma to children, if there were children in Oblivion, if it meant being handsomely compensated for it. I would have swabbed 50 q-tips worth of crime scene semen in Condemned, had a restraining order issued against me in Sneak King, I would have done anything short of signing up for the Battlefield newsletter, pre-ordering Bad Company, naming my first-born ChallengeEverything©, or whatever other absurd and inane marketing tie-in hoops you needed to jump through in order to unlock new weapons in BF: Bad Company.

But, like I said, those days are well behind me… that was until a patch was released for Super Stardust HD that supported trophies. Then, I relapsed. I bought the $5 expansion in this whirlwind hysteria of trophy collecting I was in, thinking that was more than enough money to unlock all the meteor-blasting content and frustration there was to be had. Then I discovered that the co-op trophy can only be unlocked by buying yet ANOTHER $5 add-on. What’s next? Only after buying the chrome ship color add-on can you then unlock the ‘admired your cool new ship color for 20 seconds’ trophy? This was where I drew the line and what prompted me to sober up again.

It’s during these moments of clarity that you realize how outlandish and hollow your actions were that received an empty symbol of recognition, not unlike Olympic competition. Kicking gnomes to gain potions or simply riding the ‘Cockatrice’, shooting unsuspecting pigeons, collecting yarn, Cyrodillic brandy, vampire dust, skeletal remains, COG tags, getting 50 headshots, killing two enemies with one Spartan laser blast, killing 1,000 enemies during one game and head biting 50, killing enemies with a curb stomp, an airborne toilet, and road flares is just some of the behavior I have regretfully participated in to gain decorations for my service. It could be worse I suppose. I could be touting how my PC can run Crysis and posting videos of it as evidence. It seems like we’re almost at the point where people are going to be demanding recognition, accolades, and trophies just for wasting enough money to get a sub-par game running properly.

Oftentimes, conquest takes president over all other gameplay mechanics. And the ridiculousness of what you’re doing is neglected in favor of this spirited conquest. It’s not that there will never be a place for mindless games on my shelf, it’s that the achievement, trophy, what have you, knows what I can’t resist, knows my own inner circuitry better than I do, and exploits these innate desires to give a game an unearned, unnecessarily long, and fruitless arfterlife.

Sober, I watched the ending ceremony to the Olympics with my mother and father. The upper rim of the Bird’s Nest crackled and spew out fireworks into the night sky. Call it withdrawal paranoia or trophy-induced mistrust, but for a minute I thought these so-called fireworks were actually disguised inter-continental missiles hurdling toward various international cities. No amount of “oohing” and “aahing” could change our fate. I tried to get my family to go into the basement, but they were hypnotized by the dazzling display. That’s the desired response the Chinese wanted I told them. I began to prepare for impact. What wishes had gone ungranted? What aspirations had been left unfulfilled? What should I accomplish before the end? … Earning the coveted platinum trophy. Continue?

Hoes Before Bros: Building Meaningful Relationships in Harvest Moon

In Mid September, myself and many other farming simulation fans will be picking up the first installment of the Harvest Moon series to come out for the Nintendo Wii system. If you pre-ordered the game, you will also be receiving a stuffed cow, an offer which is too good to pass up (he's smiling!). Stuffed cows aside, playing Harvest Moon is much more than just toil and hard work...planting little seeds and watching them grow into beautiful plants, showing the whole goddamn town what you're made of and proving to your father that you can make it on your own, it's so much more. At the heart of every Harvest Moon game is the village you now live in, filled with people you will grow to love. You can get the guys in the town to confide in you regarding girl troubles, and then use that information to romance the girls for yourself.

This is always where I had the most fun in Harvest Moon games. My femininity allows me to be excited about this, but playing as a male character changed the dynamic a bit. When I played the N64 version of the game I found myself becoming the biggest sleaze ball ever. Was it enough to have one girl fall in love with me? No, certainly not. I wanted all of them to fawn over me. Even after my character was married, I continued to give the other ladies gifts daily, while my wife stayed at home ( My real-life gameplay audio excerpt: “...In the kitchen, where she belongs! It took alaaaaata lumber to build that kitchen, doll-face.”) In the Wii installment you can choose to play as either a male or female. I will be forgoing the privilege to play as my own gender in this game. Even in the wonderful world of Harvest Moon, the double standard still applies: If you have a lot of guys as a girl, you are a harlot. If you have a lot of girls as a guy, “eeeeeeeeey!”.

Eventually you will have to pick one of these ladies to be your wife, and I intend to help you make that choice. Let's take a look at what good 'ole Waffle Town has to offer.




Anissa: The gentle female farmer. She will most likely be the most useful on the farm. She'll also stick by you even after you come home from the milk bar high on beef Endorphins and beat her with a fresh turnip in a tube sock.



Kathy: The local bar-maid. She's tough and resilient. She answers to no man. Be the first to break her fiery spirit!



Candace: Only you will know whether the quiet weird girl is into the freaky stuff... like cross breeding watermelons and bananas.



Leena: She loves animals. She loves them so much, she'll hardly mind sleeping in the barn when you have your buddies over for poker nights.



Mai: She loves food more than anything! Make sure to constantly remind her where those cupcakes are going (the thighs).



Phoebe: She's an inventor. After you get married, you can force her to work many sleepless nights on complex Rube Goldberg machines that complete pointless tasks that would normally require minimal effort.



Roomi: She's eight (going on 30)!



Shiela: Her hips are like "BLAM"!



Juli: This is a DUDE! DO NOT HIT ON!


Now that I have given you an overview of the ladies you have to choose from, go forth and be fruitful. And don't forget to put whatever you want to sell in the bin before 5pm, that's when the buyer comes. But not on holidays.
Continue?

The Dramatic Conclusion of 'LittleBigTrouble In Paradise'

(click to enlarge)

The mild irony of this epilogue (not to imply it was justifiably episodic) is the sheer anguish that went into its conception. The initial notion of copulation between Evan and I's efforts into what you see above you was nearly innocent at my end... if he was aware of the harrowing consequences of those 2 minutes in which we mutually consented (to a comic), the gestation may never have occurred.

What I mean is, I never in my wildest brooding expected the light hearted vengeance to blossom into something so evil, the very attempt at describing its foundations would bring about untold misery to its architect. I couldn't say who is to blame for it, it may be me, it could (probably) be photoshop, but in the end, are we not all doomed to make the same old mistakes in new ways?

In any case, I hope my demoralized compatriot can be coaxed (or tricked) into something similarly nefarious again. Until such the time, enjoy the tips (there were some suggestions for the devs in the toolkit and you inquisitive individuals), and my high hat is off to you Evan.

-BH Continue?

You Can Point-And-Click Me Anytime, Babe.

I have a laptop I use this laptop for various things. I got it for school. I edit things on this laptop and type papers. I do not want this laptop to have too many things on it. The first thing I did when I connected my laptop to the internet is download Audiosurf. That's a lie. The first thing I did when I connected my laptop to the internet was do a Google search, then I downloaded Audiosurf. (The Google search was for “boobs”. This was to insure everything was right on the internet). I vowed Audiosurf would be the only game I got for it. Alas, it was a vow that was to be broken. There was another gaming mistress waiting for me there on the internet... not your World of Warcraft or your new fangled, dime a dozen (free-a-dozen) flash games, but something older, somthing much more special.

Her name is SCUMM, and I loved her before I knew her name.
What does a 5 year old know of engines/programming languages? All I knew was that there was a something beautiful placed upon a platter in front of me, and boy, did it glisten. Let's go back to that sentence. When I say “platter”, I really mean “computer running Windows 3.1”, and when I say “glisten”, I mean “blow my goddamn mind”. I downloaded ScummVM soon after I made my vow so that I could once again play my beloved adventure games. Lucas Arts Adventure Games were really the first games I ever got into. My cousin was more of a Sierra person. She played King's Quest and I respected that (no I didn't), but who wants to worry about dying when there are puzzles to be solved*? This was long before my household had the internet so we were very much on our own when it came to playing these games. If we got stuck, you better as hell believe we would move our character through every possible place using every item with everything until we found a way. I believe I was keener then, before reality TV would dull my mind and game guides would hand me forbidden secrets. I was very young, but I understood the wonderful feeling of achievement when Indiana Jones finally told me that he can use these things together (Kerosene and a wall carving).

So now I can play these games again; I can re-dig, The Dig, time travel in Day of the Tentacle and punch Nazi's in the face and steal their belongings...in real life. I'm content to play them on my laptop, but I long for something more. I have seen the future, and it is good. I'm of course talking about those tech savvy modders who are able to port these games onto the DS or Wii. I want that too. Why can't I have that? Is it because I can't figure out how to do it? Well, yeah that's precisely why, but I still want it. Luckily, Tell Tale Games games has decided to release Season 1 of their Sam & Max series on the Wii. I can literally point and click. Literally. It bothers me that it has taken even this long to utilize so obvious a function as POINT and CLICK. Are there not enough people longing to play Adventure games anymore?

There is nothing I want more than for new life to be breathed into the genre, and I remain extremely optimistic in light of a few games. The popular Homestar Runner web series, paired with Tell Tale released their venture into Episodic Adventures onto the computer and Wii Ware, and I trust it will do well. Tell Tale is really carrying the torch here, keeping it safe and dry away from the rising tide of apathy and the falling rain of indolence (Someone should kill me now). I give them snaps for supporting the genre, although I would love to see a whole game produced at once rather then this episode business. I end up just waiting until all of them are released at once. It takes about an hour for the gears to really start turning when I play an adventure game, and I would hate for the present adventure to be over before I really get to use them. I can't really complain though, they are making really top notch games. I must say though, I am very excited about Daedalic Entertainment's upcoming “The Whispered World”, which looks like its going to be gorgeous in the very least. They recently announced that they are looking to port the game on the Wii and DS, also promising a few more adventure games are in the works . This makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, like simultaneously hugging a puppy and a kitten while being fed a cupcake by a Cappucin monkey wearing a frilly dress.

It is my fondest wish that more and more people will want to play adventure games. There is something so charming about them, something that no other genre can replicate. Not only do they reward you with feelings of accomplishment, but they also offer you amazing stories that you more or less get to play out on your own. I used to wonder how much work went into writing all the possibilities on their dialog trees and responses. It's a whole lot. Those Lucas Arts adventure games were packed with so many witticisms it was mind boggling. We are all very fortunate that you can still find them floating around the internet and can still play them with help of ScummVM. Of course I've long since memorized what to do in every game, so I need some new challenges. I have yet to complete Beneath a Steel Sky, which is free on the ScummVM site (with voice acting! I turned it off because the robot Joey's condescending tone was getting to me). My adult mind fails to see the simple solutions a younger me would have been all over. The game is wonderful though, I would pay to play it if I had to. Other than that, I've been playing the (also free) games that famous game cynic Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw has created. They're worth a look for the price (free).


I'm going to close by telling you to go play a point-and-click adventure game. Go do it right now. I need people to be excited with. If its not your “thing” for whatever reason, at least play Professor Layton, or Braid. These will also make you feel like an intellectual giant, in different ways of course.

It's important to not give up when playing these games. Even if you really want to, don't. There is a solution. You're brain may begin to leak out of your ears as your stare at the screen, confused This is normal. Put it back in and try something else, ass.




*This is not to say playing King's Quest reminded you of your mortality, but rather that you could die in the game, which made it a lot less fun (for me at least). The ability to die wasn't included in majority of the Lucas Arts games, and if it was it didn't make you want to kill everybody. Okay, maybe it did a little.
Continue?

Hook Me Up With A Puzzle Piece, Son: A Braid Tale

I think the moment was when I was perched upon a chandelier, with only one horn left upon the beast’s head resembling a creature from the adult noir novella "Where the Wild Things Are." I cut the rope and took the mighty creature down knowing I was close to saving the princess, who was no doubt, achin’ for some firey man meat. I was only a few levels away from her, and I had to tap that ass while the getting was still good.

Jonathan Blow’s Braid was created by a star-infested threesome. Mario and the Prince of Persia were already tangled in a web of love and let’s just say Banjo arrived in the nick of time for the facial finale.

The main mechanics of this platformer are straight out of the first Super Mario titles. The jumping ginger truly wishes he was an overweight Italian stereotype with a mustache even Tom Selleck would envy. Braid even has its own take on the classic Goomba. In an impeccable comparison, Sir Evan Griffin so vividly describes their appearance as: “a disgruntled piece of cauliflower that won a Danny McBride look-a-like contest.” Hell, even at the end of the level it says: “Sorry, the princess is in another castle.”

The goal of the game is to collect puzzle pieces to complete portraits, which, in turn, unlocks the final stage where you save the princess. Most of the time, collect-a-thons resulted in me killing everyone’s first born, (permitting that there was no lamb blood on the door.) But Blow blew me the right way. A welcome change to the tradition of Nintendo 64 Rare titles like Jet Force Gemini, Donkey Kong 64, or any other fucking game that did not allow you to progress to the damn final boss of the game until countless hours are spent collecting every last fucking gizmo and gadget this side of go fuck yourself, In Braid, collecting is what’s fun about the game. Think of them more as stars from Mario 64 rather than those goddamn Jingos from Banjo-Kazooie. There are twelve pieces of the portraits in each level, but you can complete the tasks to get them in any order that you want. Surprisingly, the game’s progression reminds me of Professor Layton and the Curious Village. The puzzles are similar in the way that there is usually a trick to them rather than the straightforward answer you think you see at first glance; where you are welcome to pass on most of the puzzles in the game and figure them out at a later time, a welcome change to the foreboding sodomy of Dr. Quandry.

The only downside to this structure is that you always leave the hardest puzzles for last. This is the same problem with many platformers. For instance, the last 2-4 hours of Super Mario Galaxy was essentially the equivalent of attempting a Rubik's cube with a lobotomy. At one point, I was at the last puzzle of stage 5 and I was literally staring confounded at the television for a half hour. I decided that haphazardly guessing and checking the solutions was the best course of action. However, this flaw came with its perks. When I finally completed this seemingly impossible task, it felt as if I had just found the lord and savior Jesus Christ, and he told me and only me, that I was his chosen child, a perfect being... or at least that’s what I imagine it would feel like. This game is another among the few and the proud that makes you “think with portals.”

What Portal accomplishes with the controls of the first person shooter; Braid accomplishes with the premise of a 2-D side-scrolling platformer. You play these games like no other. They teach you their basic rules and you push them to their limits. In Braid, each world has an individual set of rules that you need to follow. This keeps the game consistently fresh, unlike most of the overpriced $60 green packaged pieces of shit that have come out for the Xbox 360 this summer. It really starts Jonathan Blowing your mind (sorry, had to) when you get to world 4; all the creatures in the level respond in time with you. If you move forward, so do the enemies, even the music goes to your redheaded lad’s speed.

The only aspects that were disappointing within Braid were the boss variety and the length. There were only three bosses in this game, which is only a problem because the bosses are awesome. One of them you had to fight twice which is a bit of a lame cop-out and the other was more of a final level that felt like a legitimate boss fight. If every level had a boss that was as well designed as the others, this could have been my favorite game of the year. Secondly, I wish it had followed in Mario’s footsteps and had a total of eight worlds. I wanted a wee bit more from the lad. I was fine with the fact that I completed it within a day (I played it in two sittings), but it was so uniquely presented and illustrated it left me hankering for more. It was not quite like in Portal, where I felt the length was perfect, due to the manageable pace and level design, despite being short for conventional gaming standards.

In the final will and testament of my previously stated buffoonery, or if you are one of those shit eaters that only reads the first and last paragraph of an article and then posts as if they know what the fuck they are talking about, Braid was well worth the $15 (1200 points in Xbox annoying peso pounds). For those delinquents who think $15 is too much of mommy’s money for a live arcade game, go play your copies of Dark Sector and Turok, leading the industry to continuously regurgitate such “original” and “well designed” characters as Master Chief and Lara Croft, rather than investing in intriguing, innovative pieces like Portal and Braid.

Goddammit.
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The Shameless Art of Marketing Seduction: Part 1

Over the past couple years I’ve grown very fond of tech demos. I can’t recall why, but one day during my daily three hour long interweb trolling stint, I decided it would be a good idea to watch a demonstration of Boom Blox (at the time it was just called Blocks). Neil Young presided and spoke of Wii play dates between Steven Spielberg and Shigeru Miyamoto and how Spielberg’s next game, with all of its impactful images of dead birds and solemn characters wearing hoodies, will have an epic story and apparently bring tears to the collective dry eye of the gaming community. But the meat of the demo came when he showed off Blocks. With each Jenga skyscraper demolished and every “character” bombed (rectangular cows that waddle around absentmindedly apparently qualify for character status these days), he let out an artificial whimper of awe, even producing a guttural squeal (similar to what one might hear when veal is being made) during the collapse of a small, short-lived block city. Oh, anonymous block city… we hardly knew ye.

This video has kept me amused for some time, and now it will hopefully titillate all of you… if there really are any of you out there. I’ve made my own little trailer for Boom Blox. Check it out below.



A special thanks to Gametrailers for turning all of their videos into digital bouncers through code, and apparently Final Cut Pro is NOT on the list. I spent about 3 hours figuring out how to thwart this absurd safeguard. For anyone who also wants to figure out how to do this, all you have to do is download a video converter, I recommend Vilisoft, and convert it to something else so you can them import into FCP. AVI worked for me. So, you guys at Gametrailers own the work that other people put into making the presentation you filmed? You own the playthrough your shitty testers had with a game demo? I think basically what this comes down to is you own the super fuckin’ sweet, super fuckin’ loud, super fuckin’ obnoxious motion graphic at the beginning of all your videos, the hard drives that store the direct feed footage, or the cameras that filmed the demo. God forbid I should import one of your videos into an editing program for the sole purpose of vandalizing your sweetass motion graphic, like cleverly changing ‘Gametrailers’ to ‘GAYtrailers’. Who do you think I am?

The next video features MGS creator, Hideo Kojima speaking English. I have to warn you, it is rather disturbing. It’s not that I find this video funny because of Kojima’s broken English. It’s not like “look at the little, funny, elflike Japanese man trying to speak the only language that matters!” It’s his forced, manufactured inflection, overly exuberant and strangely reminiscent of Scooby-Doo. I’m not sure whether this was Mr. Kojima’s idea (possibly inspired by a Scooby-Doo episode he saw earlier that day) or if some Konami rep shot him full of uppers beforehand, but little did the rep know, his suppressed stomach acids made it possible for Kojima to swallow balloons filled with helium. As with most Kojima-related things, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt… but it’s becoming a weary, apprehensive habit by now. We may never know the answers to these questions, but they’re fun to ponder while watching.


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Shoot First, Have Children Later

I fondly recall frosty mornings in the winter of last year, getting up at 5 am, hopping in a friend's car and then driving off to the local "Everything -You- Could- Ever -Want" store to wait with three other schmucks in a dark parking lot for a Wii. My diligence and persistence were paid off with nothing, nothing, a claim ticket for a PS3, and finally a Wii. How joyful that day was. My whole family played a game of Wii Sports Bowling that night. "Look at us," I thought "Just like the commercial, minus the old people and multiculturalism". What a wonderful night that was. I believe it goes without saying that night would never be repeated. We would never get everyone together like that to play. My mother was not swayed by the Wii's cutsey allure and my father ... well actually my father loves it. Even after I grew tired of the spastic flailing, he continued to play at least one game of bowling a day. It would be cheating him to say he got better. He practiced and became great. The funny thing is he manage to boil down the movement needed to throw the ball into one quick wrist-flick, ignoring the full form throw idealized in the commercials. He did stand up whilst playing though, and that has got to count for something.

Wii Bowling was a breach of my father's normal gaming protocol. He has grown very fond of first person shooters and after he bowled a 300 game, he proclaimed "It was only going to go downhill from there" and took a hiatus. I convinced him to go in halves with me on an Xbox 360 a little down the line and he agreed after I showed him some trailers for upcoming FPS, mainly Bioshock. My Father is not the type of guy who cares about plot. He would opt to skip through cut-scenes in even the most emotional of stories and get to the killing. He is impatient and easily annoyed. He hated Portal purely based on GLaDOS' voice, getting up and leaving the room after Test Chamber 2. I don't expect to hear him start a conversation with me about a game unless it's to ask me what to do next. We have talked, albeit briefly about Half Life 2's virtues, but at the end of the day he would prefer games like Black. That's why his reaction to Bioshock came as a surprise to me. He, to this day has not defeated the final boss. This is not because he can't, but rather because he won't. He says it's because he doesn't care when you ask him, but I don't believe him. There was one time we were driving home and I asked him why he never finished, and he said in the most sincere tone I've heard, "You don't understand. I love Rapture." and I swear, it brought a tear to my eye.
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Journey to the Center of the Mirth

Recently I had the pleasure of watching Brendan Fraser’s well-defined acting muscle flex vigorously in 3-D. Oh, excuse me, “Real D”. I am speaking of Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3-D. The film was shot on a state-of-the-art stereoscopic 3-D camera that was designed in part by James Cameron. This camera is also being used to shoot Cameron’s upcoming iris-exploding 3-D epics, Avatar and Battle Angel, which sound promising and don’t have anything to do with the Titanic, thank god. If for nothing else, this movie was a great indication of what gifts the hallowed harbingers of technological wizardry are going to bear in Cameron’s next films. However, the journey itself inspired a personal discovery that lead deep into my own center of untamed thoughts where gargantuan, harebrained species of musings prowl and prey on reason and logic.

The opening credits were shot into our faces like pearl bullets from a merciless bukake firing squad. Nearly everyone in the theater, myself included, waved their hands around in front of their faces for an obscene amount of time, pawing the buttery bile-saturated air like cats swatting dangling string. There was a prevailing, unifying atmosphere of kinesthetic comradery in the theater, where everyone reacted in unison and taught sinews made synchronized flinches in an attempt to lunge backward and escape as Brendan Fraser spit out toothpaste onto our grills. It was strangely reminiscent of the first Lumiere films screened in 1895 where theatergoers reportedly fled from the theater in hysteria, anticipating the barreling train on the screen to come crashing through the wall and flatten them all. Now, a mere 113 years later, our reactions and the cinematic manipulations aren’t that terribly different. Instead of trains we now have anglerfish, tape measures, and Brendan Fraser’s biceps.

Overall, the film was just one clay plate being fired after another. I haven’t had that many things thrown at my face since I was reprimanded by my parents for gambling away most of my earthly possessions in a Pokemon card trade. Brendan Fraser was larger than life as always, as were the immense pauses he made between words. “ Ladies. And. Gentlemen. I. Give. You. The center. Of the. Earth!” “ A. Paleolithic. Dildo?” “ Giant. Fossilized. Mushrooms?” Well, one of those lines isn’t actually in the movie. Let’s make a game of it, guess which one!

I must say though, my one real gripe with the movie came during a somber scene between Brendan Fraser and his nephew when they discover (SPOILER AMBER ALERT!!!) that Brendan’s brother, the father of his nephew, died during his stay in the warm, chocolaty center of the earth. They embrace each other tenderly and start weeping, but I was left wondering why the camera didn’t switch to an extreme low angle so their tears could thrillingly plummet onto my tongue (which was already extended out in anxious anticipation). Speaking of crying, Reid was almost driven to tears by the sheer number of Newton’s Laws that were being systematically drawn and quartered throughout the movie, with only their lifeless, severed limbs left to twitch beautifully in 3-D. Despite the hulking venus flytraps hissing violently on-screen and Brendan Fraser dealing out haymakers indiscriminately to them, I was completely transfixed by Reid’s despair and sat there wishing to myself that I could appreciate it more in Real D. The absurdity of this idea followed soon after, realizing that we see in 3-D as it is. But this brought up a tantalizing possibility. We may see in 3-D, but do we see in “Real D”, or more appropriately, Surreal D©?

Conventional 3-D vision is so banal. I think the next reasonable paradigm shift with vision is Surreal D. I don’t get the visual foreplay from someone pointing at me like I do in Journey. In Journey, the subtlest of gestures becomes an imposing declaration of war on your body and comfort zone. As the film demonstrates, a tape measure or Brendan Fraser’s saliva can be turned into an effective, entertaining weapon against the audience. So, what if Surreal D technology was applied to everyday life and vision, vision 2.0 if you will? Let us conveniently ignore the logistics of this technology and instead focus on the benefits.

I think people would devote so much more attention to certain things and appreciate them tenfold, no mater how pointless, ridiculous, or tediously boring they are. It certainly worked for this movie. Just picture employee training videos, wakes, sports, motion graphics-riddled commercials, raising children, spanking said children, community service, purgatory, bathing, election coverage, and church in Surreal D. Storytime at church would be accompanied by flying sheets on strings whenever the holy ghost is mentioned, and a massive payload of blue bouncy balls would be released from the ceiling upon the slightest mention of The Great Flood. I think this futuristic concept can be very succinctly illustrated by the song “Your Own Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode, you really will want to “reach out and touch faith.” The body of Christ being extended toward you would truly be a feast for the eyes. On a side note, whatever the hell are those Christ crackers? I always wondered as a boy if priests open up new boxes of them to eat if they happen to have a biblical appetite at the time.

Maybe they would begrudgingly sacrifice a lamb or some small, defenseless animal every week to satiate the bloodlust of parishioners who want to see blood flying past them in Surreal D. Perhaps they would even go a step further and save up a month’s worth of sacrifice blood and on one Sunday have it rain down on the congregation from sprinklers while they all rave, grind, and crack cross-shaped glowsticks, all to honor the Sabbath of course. And I guarantee when the collection basket came around, at least 3 or 4 times in each service someone would slap it up into the air just so everyone could enjoy the spectacle of coins raining down. With vision 2.0, you can get God 2.0 and next-gen Jesus for no additional cost. Consider how much more stimulating, appealing, and sexy church could be with just a simple plastic frame resting on the bridge of your nose. But I still wouldn’t go. I don’t think this would be a good idea for Baptist churches though. That would just be horrifying. The swaying of hips, the incessant clapping of hands. You would either be unequivocally converted or driven to madness.

We can all learn a lot from Journey, our modern day messiah, Brendan Fraser, and even Doom 3 that the advent and application of new technological veneers can make old things new every time. Continue?