Irish Coffee, August 14th, 2012

Been a while. The sci-fi world I'm building is starting to eat my head, and as I stare - day after day - at nearly 1000 pages worth of research material and character sketches, the common thread emerging is a political one. Even in my fake sci-fi world, politics is unavoidable. As such, much of my research has been all too real world and political. I know this blog is called "Whiskey and Video Games," so I guess politics is the "Whiskey." Or actual whiskey is the "Whisky." I'm not sure. Either way the gaming world is always dead in the summer and until I have something new to play the game related content might grow a bit sparse. I'll just pretend that the title of this blog was deliberately meant as a metaphor to begin with.

I’ve let my focus on politics slip in the past few years. It might have been the exhaustion of grappling with an absurd course load in college while volunteering for the Obama campaign in 2008. It might have been my generally being disenchanted with the ludicrous stances of The Right in this country, whose sole purpose seemed to be winning the 2010 mid-terms by any means necessary, so that they could better make Obama look like an ineffective leader by blocking legislation. Or it could be that, as I get older, I realize how little opinion really matters in politics. In my youth I thought opinion was all it took to be politically relevant, but that’s certainly not the case. More than anything else, as you get older, you must grapple with the bottomless and mercurial nature of politics. Which is unfortunate and ultimately humbling.

But lately I’ve felt the need to be informed and involved again. I thought at first it was the crackling energy of an election year that did it, but that wouldn’t explain why I’ve been reaching into the past for information; explanation. For the myriad similarities between the present administration and political climate, there are as many reasons to disregard aspects of the past for their seeming irrelevance in the modern world. While we must understand the past lest we be doomed to repeat it (trite quota met for the day), the super-connected world doesn’t like to be burdened with the truth. We rush toward idealism, take 140 character proclamations as fact, and value reinforcement of our own beliefs over harsh realities; how else are we supposed to handle the landslide of information we’re presented with every second of every day? Good old fashioned, evolutionarily relevant generalization.

So maybe that explains my hesitation to wade back into political commentary/activity. The knowledge that, try as I might, my own bias and desires will leak into my work, and that bias in 2012 will only serve to reinforce the beliefs of those most dangerous to the future of human kind; those that firmly believe in any cause (even those I embrace) without a firm grasp of why they believe the things they do. Some can site sources, some can argue their point, but I the frightening lack of introspection by most politically active people cultivates blind, obsessive belief with prescribed edicts and a poorly calibrated moral compass. I don’t want to add to that dog pile. I’m not yet old or experienced enough to know whether I’m helping or hindering by broadcasting my opinion. I don’t know whether I have healthy enough understanding of the world, and even if I did, even if I’m well informed and base everything I think on fact without even a whiff of bias, the best case scenario reinforces the groupthink opinions of those that treat politics like a sporting event. I suppose I don’t want to pick a side, but I have to. I (we) have an obligation to the fate of the human race, and we have to try our best not be wrong or stupid or dangerous. Opinion in 2012 has become a facet of radicalism, and the breaks have to be put on that immediately.

And that is why Mitt/Ryan is so dangerous. It’s not their financially backward, socially insensitive policies that are unapologetically designed to appeal to the rich and morally bankrupt. That would be opinion, and opinion is dangerous. The real danger is in the unwavering belief of the ill-informed middle class that makes up a large block of their potential voters. Voters that stand to lose the most from a Romney presidency. The only people in the country that can take an honest look at the history and policies of these men and still vote for them are the rich people that would rather burn the occupants of their village to stop an uprising than feed and clothe them. They’d rather starve to death on the parapets than feel like they gave an inch; that they lost. As Jenna Jameson put it: “You’d vote for Mitt Romney too if you were rich.” She is a Romney supporter.

While far better, more informed people than I have written about the policies, mistakes and demeanor of Mitt Romney, the past 48 hours have resulted in a landslide of information about his vice-presidential pick. For the sake of letting you sort out what you think of this man for yourself, I present to you the best (most factual) of this information, and I would encourage you to check the sources of these sources. Dawg.

ThinkProgress - This is a bit biased, but does provide a fairly great bullet point to jump start research on Paul Ryan.

Slate - Ryan and the stock market.

New York Magazine - Ryan, Rand, and budget that even Bush could hate. 

Paul Krugman, NYTimes - A highly opinionated, but well sourced editorial about Paul Ryan. 

One final note, before I sign off and devote my energy to my vision of global politics in fifty years for my sci-fi novellas. I like to be humorous. My entire life, I’ve used humor as safety harness to protect myself and those around me from despair. I’m worried that the humor is finally draining out of politics. Every ridiculous move made by policy makers and the powerful in the world certainly has humor in it, but the reality behind that which is easily laughed off is becoming more and more terrifying. Too terrifying. For evidence, look no further than the eyes of an ever aging Jon Stewart. He’s been the balm for reality’s burns for nearly fifteen years, and as he laughs his way through the ridiculous nature of the modern American political machine each night, you can see the pain in his eyes. He doesn’t think it’s funny anymore. Nor do I.

Unless somebody else gets shot in the face.

Irish Coffee, Tuesday July 31st, 2012

So, this actually kind of turned into an article. Not a bad thing, but lately I've found it difficult to combine the serious tone indicative of quality journalism with my patented dick joke delivery system while maintaining a consistent pace and tone... Penis.

If the Wii-U’s desperate attempts at relevancy are any indication, there are few tricks left in hat of the traditional game console. If their best strategy consists of tacking an overpriced tablet to an underpowered video game console, something less than epic is clearly afoot. But what about Sony and Microsoft? As coy as they’d like to be INRE the release of new consoles, they’re certainly going to make the damn things. While the specifics of their hardware releases remain a mystery to the average gamer, the rumors stink of desperation. Out-of-the-box Kinect for Microsoft, some bastardized version of PSMove for Sony. Which makes perfect sense... they don’t have a choice.

Between services like onLive and the inevitability of PC gaming dominance (if we are to believe nVidia) what room is there for the console? After all, the iPod was one of the most important technological advancements of ten years ago. It let everyone in the hep world know that they could carry their entire music library in their pocket. It made tangible a concept that could previously have only been grasped by hardcore geeks (and, if you were a geek in the late 90s, you had no option but to be hardcore... it was a lifestyle choice). Surely, the proliferation of the iPod helped the world wade into the digital revolution. It became a new standard. All at once, CDs and DiskMen alike became irrelevant.

And integration pushed forward, and we are left scrambling. As consumers, we have no option but to upgrade every 5 years, 2 years, 6 months. It’s baffling how quickly we went from camera phone to smart phone. It’s baffling how quickly we went from 28.8kbps to 5mbps. From games delivered on disk, to digital download. From digital download to streaming.

Digital download prevails as the disk fails. Soon, as fiberoptic worms its way into every first world home, the digital download will fall to the streaming game. To a universal console. Video game communism. But the content of the gaming landscape will be chosen democratically, as we now choose our political pundits and Reddit threads. The market won’t have room for a game with a 6 hour story sequence and repetitious multiplayer. Such games will be played briefly (adds and all), and dropped for something better. Certain games will be played frequently enough to warrant a “purchase.” Pay a one time fee for permanent access to the streaming version of GTA VII. Or buy it on launch night for exclusive content. Either version delivered to our televisions at a moments’ notice. A split second. Clearly, as denizens of the first world, we can’t be bothered to wait for anything. We have more enlightened pursuits that demand our attention. Like gaining weight and not reading.

Presently, companies like onLive aren’t living up to their potential. There are issues with delay, resolution, etc. But that’s not to say that it’s a bad idea. Eventually the quality of a streamed game will match the quality of one you’re playing live from your computer, and all one would need is an app for the TV and a controller to game with. So I suppose there is some hope for console manufacturers. We’re always going to need game controllers.

Gone is the world in which a consoles exist solely as a game delivery mechanism. These days most of the hardcore sit with a dusty PS3, an XBOX used exclusively for on-demand video content, and a computer full of Steam games. Consoles can exist as technological filler, but they will soon become a redundancy which demands exile. Our televisions will handle everything. One hard drive/router will store data that we access with a tradition desktop computer (which doesn’t seem to have any interest in leaving our homes), or the overpowered tablet/life remote of tomorrow. 

Far flung visions of the future aside, at present PC gaming is just... better. You can hook a toy like a Wii or a Kinect to your TV, but it’s just that. A toy. The only games I ever play on my console are console exclusives. Nearly every game that’s important to the gaming industry comes out on PC, looks better than it would on a console, and is given a huge bump to replay value via the modding community. In addition, it doesn’t take much effort or expertise to hook a controller to a PC and that PC to a television. But that’s just me. For now. Soon, it will be everyone.

There is still some hope that a game console of some sort will find itself hooked to the televisions of the next decade. For proof of this, look no further than Microsoft’s scalable console patent, which looks to combine the upgradeable characteristics of PCs with the convenience of an out-of-the-box game console. Then the question becomes: “Why would you bother with proprietary upgrades from Microsoft when you could have a completely customized gaming PC hooked up to your TV?” Why indeed.

Irish Coffee, July 27th, 2012

Hmm... kind of all over the place today. Sorry for missing a couple of days, but everything I wrote was a huge downer. Both because of the events in Aurora (which I still can't shake... completely, anyway), and because I've been doing character sketches/arcs that are pretty fucking depressing. Anyway, today's collection of errant thoughts seems to be about Superhero movies.

If you know me IRL (“in real life” for those of you not hooked on the “net lingo”) know that I complained vocally, frequently, and drunkenly about the the distinct lack of a Spider-Man cameo in “The Avengers.” How could (I reasoned while trying to remember how you’re supposed to hold a beer) something as epic as a full on alien invasion of New York go down without Spider-Man even swinging in for a quick “Everybody gets one?” It’s his city. Was he in the sewers chasing down The Lizard? In Brooklyn having some alone time with Mary Jane? Special alone time. Ehh? Ehhhh!?! Fucking. I’m talking about fucking. Probably on the ceiling.

Then, once sober and again capable of utilizing Google, I found out that Spider-Man is a Sony property, not a Disney property. As such, we’ll never get the amazing Secret Wars crossover that we all so crave. And don’t tell me Secret Wars is a bad idea. They said the same thing about the Avengers and hah, that totally worked.

It’s just unfortunate that it’s come to this. One of the great things about being a comic fan is that all the comics collectively paint one, cohesive universe. Granted, there are side-universes, and confusing single run mini-series alternate timelines, but you know that if some shit goes down in New York that’s of any significance to the Marvel universe, that Spider-Man is going to have something to do with it. Unless he’s off doing something else really important. Seriously. On the ceiling. Think about it.

Avengers not only managed to capture that magic, but used it to make what is arguably the best comic book film ever. When Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man are having a conversation it’s Captain America, Thor, and motherfucking Iron Man having a conversation! But the magic can only go so far, as our beautiful comic book universes are sub-devided like so many arid tracts of land.

And that, of course, brings us to The Mouse. Disney isn’t exactly going to be kid gloves about regaining the rights from Sony and Fox for the rest of the stable of characters that were sold off in ‘98 by Marvel. Disney spent $4.3 buying Marvel property in 2009, and since we’ve seen three pretty fucking good Marvel movies that weren’t exactly slouches at the box office. Then we have The Avengers, which cleared $1.5 billion at the box office all by itself. Obviously, box office alone won’t pay the money back, but I’m sure it helps. Besides, buying a production company that proceeds to crank out The Fucking Avengers isn’t exactly bad business. We’ve seen that bringing a comic book universe to life in its (near)entirety can work. For once, Disney, use your powers for good. Bring all the properties under your warm, mouse-shaped umbrella. Make a Deadpool/Wolverine/Spider-Man fight a reality and I swear I’ll feed my future kids the Disney Kool-Aid at a young age. Their brains are yours. 

While a move to bring together the Marvel Universe together under one umbrella is an intriguing concept, quite the opposite is true of DC. I speak of the now announced, forever inevitable Justice League movie. That will suck. Oh yes. It will suck. But it will happen, and soon. All Time Warner had to do was get that pesky Christopher Nolan out of the picture before he mucked up a perfectly good money press with all of his “artistic integrity.” Without him, they’re free to slap together a Batman movie whose only criteria need be: “He’s the goddamn batman.” That’s it. They can give him supernipples, make his costume purple again, give him some sort of hilarious medical disorder like narcolepsy or IBS. It won’t matter. And even if it did matter it wouldn’t matter. The only purpose of the next Batman movie will be to establish a new Batman with the public in time for him to appear in the “Holy shit I didn’t see that one coming” event of 2015: The Justice League. If they were concerned with making a good Batman movie, they wouldn’t be making another one at all (or any time soon). But they’re not concerned with making a good Batman movie. They’re concerned with getting a Batman movie out of the door before the superhero bubble bursts. Nipple lasers.

Then comes Wonder Woman, and believe it or not, this is actually something I feel rather passionately about. It wouldn’t make much sense, as I’ve never really read any Wonder Woman comics (just comics she ended up in) and I don’t exactly follow her with the stalkeresque eye I keep on Deadpool or Captain America. I’ve always just kinda dug Wonder Woman. As a concept, anyway. I know her costume is as ridiculous and over-sexualized as the next super-heroin’s, but as a concept I can really see a properly feminist (properly feminist) and modern version of Wonder Woman as an extremely compelling superhero. And while the vague concept that Wonder Woman is badass has been floating around in my head since a young age, it didn’t really become pronounced until I saw Haywire. At this point, I realized that there should be a modern Wonder Woman movie for no other reason than to not make one right fucking now would mean that we missed our opportunity to use the perfect actress. I mean, she is Wonder Woman; Gina Carano. We’ve been colluding to create her for years by stuffing RBGH into all of our food, and now that she exists we do society a disservice by not casting her as Wonder Woman. If for some reason anyone else is cast, I will... I’ll... I’ll probably just get drunk and write a blog condemning Hollywood for making another bad casting choice.

Huge Wonder Woman tangents aside, there’s a more clear and present danger at the moment: The Man of Steel. Zach Snyder, let’s talk: Don’t you fuck this up. Don’t you DARE fuck this up. I grew up actually liking Superman before I wised up and started reading comics about compelling superheroes that don’t have one over-exploited weakness. So I’m not the biggest Superman fan... But I grew up watching quality Superman movies. Ok, two quality Superman movies, and in all honesty I’m feeling a bit starved. My body is ready for a good Superman movie. I’m really rooting for this one. But if you pull a Sucker-Punch/Watchmen/300-... if you pull anything other than a Dawn of the Dead remake on this Superman movie, we’re not friends anymore. Seriously. No more Candygrams. THEN where will you be?

I seem to have wandered dangerously off topic. Thanks for spending another morning entertaining one of my maddeningly sideways warm-up exercises.

Irish Coffee, July 24th, 2012

I didn't want to talk about this publicly until I saw last night's Daily Show. I thought it was inappropriate until Jon Stewart made a very good point: Now is the perfect time to talk about it. The only time. For what it's worth:

I wrote a blog yesterday and it was pretty shitty. That’s what usually happens when you don’t write about what’s on your mind. I didn’t want to talk about the shootings in Aurora because I never really find it my place to discuss such things. Especially on the internet. I’ve never seen anyone die, or been shot at. How could I possibly hope to empathize on even a basic level? I can pretend to, but I don’t have any honest understanding of the kind of loss and fear they felt.

But this situation is so infuriating that I feel the need to speak out. To say something. Even if it's selfish, I need to know why this situation bothers me on such a base level. And maybe someone on the internet will read this and be as upset as I am, and maybe they’ll feel a little better. Who the fuck knows? I just need to say this stuff.

I haven’t been this angry about an event that didn’t have a direct impact on my life since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. That was the first thought I had when I was trying to decipher why the Aurora shootings were effecting me in such a visceral way. After all, Katrina was a natural disaster. This was caused by a person (if you can call that useless pile of shit a person). But in the aftermath of Katrina, no one lifted a finger. The crimes against the people effected by hurricane Katrina were committed in the days and weeks after the storm ended. While there is no one person to blame, blood is certainly on someone’s hands.

I realized there was no great answer to the mystery of my rage. It was simple, really: I can relate. Even if I’ve never experienced anything approaching what those killed in Aurora have, I can relate to who they were. In the case of Katrina, I’m southern. It hit close to home. Even in ways as simple as aesthetic similarities. New Orleans looks a lot like the South Carolina low country. I’ve also been evacuating for hurricanes since I was 8-years-old. I slept through Katrina in my car in a Miami parking lot while on “vacation.” (Long story.) The bulk of my youth was spent living below the poverty line, and I know what it's like to live life with a pervasive sense that you've been forgotten by the rest of the planet. In the case of New Orleans, it wasn’t just a “sense.”

Now, Aurora: I’m a huge nerd. The kind of people that attend the midnight release of a comic book movie are... my people. They are my people. The geeks, the nerds, the fanboys/girls that will show up four hours before a movie starts and pay triple normal ticket price so they can spend two-and-half hours not living on this planet anymore. Living somewhere that is bigger than you, bigger than reality. It’s the escapism that a true nerds crave. Either because of social anxiety, or a mind that can’t turn off and feeds on grand concepts. The people could have been me. The people that died are people that I could easily have called friend, and I don’t even need to concentrate very hard to know the kind of decent, friendly people of which I’m speaking. I’ve been getting together with huge groups of them my entire life. In front of comic book shops or movie theaters or video game stores.  The majority of geeks aren't just "not assholes," they're the sweetest, most caring group of people on the planet. In my lifelong experience hanging out with them, they never judge and they are always pleasant. I not only relate to who these people are, my entire identity is one I share with them.

If the geeks of the world (many of whom had to suffer crushing societal pressure that kept insisting they be someone else) can’t escape in a movie theater, where the fuck are they supposed to feel safe? We need that security and it’s gone now.

Not just geeks... I feel like I’m being some kind of exclusivist here, and that’s certainly not what I want to do. Humans need artistic escape. We always have. The moments when we can forget who we are and where we are and can just be for a time. How dare that useless piece of shit take that away from us. I don’t care what his agenda was. It’s not anyone’s right to take away the comfort inherent is something as universal as “going to the movies.”

It’s the destruction of innocence. For some reason it stings less when this sort of thing happens on the street, or on a subway, or near a target of political/military significance. And it does happen in those places and many others, every day, all year, all over the world. But this was just a movie theatre. A movie theatre with kids in it and people that weren’t guilty of anything other than being fans of Batman. They weren’t rallying for or against a cause. They weren’t working for “the man,” or even doing anything quintessentially American.  They were just going to see a fucking movie.

I don’t want to put undo attention on James Holmes, because who gives a shit about human filth like him... But I hope you rot in the deepest corner of the darkest prison with the largest dick in your ass.

And a quick note to the media: Now is EXACTLY the time to talk about gun control. Not to ban cosplay from movie theaters.

To those in Aurora, and to those who know the victims: I am truly sorry.

Irish Coffee, July 23rd, 2012

Another day, another disclaimer. I've been hard at work on a series of sci-fi novellas, and building a universe from scratch isn't the easiest thing in the world. As a result, today's warmup is shit. I'm experiencing some sort of creative hangover. But it's still here, and I think it makes at least one decent point. Without futher ado.

I know. I know. I said I wasn’t going to see Rise of the Dark Knight this weekend. Vows were made, and I broke all of them. Though my viewing of Rises last night had less to do with my desire to see it and more to do with my being sick of navigating the minefield of spoilers that the internet had become. Oh, and before I go any futher: Spoiler alert.

I won’t say that I disliked The Dark Knight Returns, though I’ll need at least one more viewing before I can speak to its minutia or its place in the Dark Knight Trilogy. As of right now, I only have one cohesive thought on the film: It was Rocky III. Bear with me.

In Dark Knight Rises, I found the most relatable version of Bruce Wayne that Christian Bale has ever been able to convey. It didn't make any sense. What had changed? Aside from the ridiculous voice, I didn’t really have a reason to dislike Bale’s portrayal of BatWayne. It occurred to me that it might be Nolan's fault. He never gave Batman any motivation. Sure, he wanted justice and was emotionally destroyed as a child, but that’s almost implied BatLore at this point. They never bothered to focus on Bruce Wayne as Bruce Wayne until this movie. They only focused on Bruce Wayne as Batman, leaving an entire well of potential character development completely untapped, save for a less than burning romance that was somewhat diluted when they replaced Katie Holmes with Maggie Gyllanhal.

If Rises accomplished anything, it was in its finally making Bruce Wayne a character. It took the elimination of Batman (twice) to let Bruce Wayne come through, and when you can see Bruce Wayne behind the mask, or know that Bruce Wayne is the Batman and you can relate to that character, then it makes his actions inside the suit carry that much more weight. And what do you do when you need to make a hero relatable? You follow the Rocky arc. It’s Hero 101.

In case you’ve somehow never beheld the majesty that was part three of the Rocky pentalogy: Having taken the title of World Heavyweight Champion from Apollo Creed in dramatic fashion at the end of Rocky II, we find Rocky Balboa on top of the world and extremely comfortable. Complacent even. Meanwhile, a violent upstart from the same school as Rocky (The School of Hard Knocks) named Clubber Lang has been pummeling his way through the heavyweight ranks, and publicly calls out Balboa on national television. Not one to be taunted, Rocky agrees to fight Clubber lang against the advice of his trainer Mickey, even after Mickey informs him that all of his fights were setups. Clubber lang is hungry, he has something to prove and Rocky doesn't. Rocky is defeated, and must again find his passion for victory through a series of training montages involving body oil, short shorts, and man-hugs. Having regained a reason to fight, Rocky makes himself into a better fighter than he has ever been, and destroys Clubber Lang in the ring to regain his heavyweight title, and the respect of a nation.

If you’ve seen The Dark Knight Rises, then the connections are already obvious. Come to think of it, they were probably obvious from the moment you read “It was Rocky III.” But just in case: In the Dark Knight Rises, having sacrificed his reputation so that Gotham could have the Hero It Needed, Bruce Wayne has become a complacent shut-in. Meanwhile, a violent young upstart from the same school as Bruce Wayne (The League of Shadows) named Bane has been forming an army to finish his dead masters’ business and destroy Gotham City. Deciding that he needs to come out of retirement and stop Bane, Bruce Wayne once again decides to don the cape and cowl against the advice of his friend and mentor Alfred, who warns him that Bane is hungry and capable in a way that Bruce used to be. Batman fights Bane and is defeated, and must again find his passion for victory through a series of training montages involving body oi-... Wait, that was Rocky III. Anyway, Bruce again regains his reason to fight, and comes back a better than he has ever been and destroys Bane in battle. He saves Gotham, and regains the respect of an entire nation.

I hope my correlation was deliberate enough... And as I’m suffering a creative hangover, I’ll leave you with that. Talk amongst yourselves.

Irish Coffee, July 20th, 2012

These things are getting more and more rambly (it's a word, shut up) and I can't tell if that's a good thing. They are, however still serving their purpose as a warm up. And I'm pretty sure I didn't tell a dick joke today. Pretty sure... Progress?

All right, quick time events. You’ve served your purpose. Please exit the premises or I’ll have you tazered. Yes, that means now... Yes, tazers hurt. Bad. How do I know? Well I’ll tell you this, never take your pants off when you’re- wait a minute, quit stalling. And stop crying, you’re embarrassing yourself. Look, you’ve had a good run, but let’s face it: You were a stop-gap at best. No, there’s not a severance package. Stop giving me the finger. It’s juvenile.

Best I can tell, game designers have been using QTE’s in the same way that rednecks use duct tape. They asked themselves how they could best convey complex in-game cinematic moments in a way that still engages the player, and (after three beers and a hearty shrug) decided that a series of predetermined button presses at just the right moment could hold the whole thing together while they waited for a part to come in the mail. Unfortunately, it took over a decade to get the part and in the mean time they had company over and had to make the duct tape look attractive, so they decided to draw some designs on it. Then they forgot it was there for a while and by the time the part showed up they’d already started doing meth and completely forgot what the damn thing was for and-... Ok, this metaphor seems to be getting away from me, let’s take a step back.

I don’t know that QTE’s were ever intended to be a permanent solution, but they’ve certainly become pervasive. If you have a narrative heavy video game, then by god you’re going to have some quick time events. How else is the player supposed to feel like they’re part of a interactive storytelling experience? Actually control it? Madness. Not that game designers can really be blamed. They’ve been grappling with the magnificence of their own creation. Utilizing a relatively new artistic medium to tell stories in a way that they’ve never been told before isn’t exactly a precise science. As graphics and physics and story quality and acting and every other aspect of game creation has improved and evolved over the past decade, the delivery method has remained decidedly unchanged.

I’d nearly lost hope that a better solution would present itself until this year's E3. During the torrent of trailers and gameplay demos that normally come with E3, I always find myself turgid with excitement when I see a pre-rendered trailer, only to be let down when I finally get to see a gameplay demo. It’s the same story that’s been playing out for years: The hero does amazing things in the trailer, things that blow gaskets in my nerd boiler, and then I'm completely incapable of doing any of them once I'm actually holding a controller in my hand. This was not the case with Assassin’s Creed III. For the first time in my life, I was more excited by the gameplay demo than I was by the pre-rendered trailer. And that’s quite the feat considering the disconnect between the cinematic aspects of the AC1 trailer and the gameplay it afforded. That was only five years ago.

Then there is, of course, the crown jewel of this year's E3: Watch Dogs. Most seem to point to its being one of the truly "next-gen" titles on the show floor, and they'd be right. But it seems that inordinate focus was put on its technical achievements, missing its most important contribution. We all drooled over Watch Dogs as though we were staring at a Nobel Prize winner that models on the weekends. Yes, we could marvel at their contribution to society, but we're too busy having impure thoughts involving goat cheese and a bullwhip. At the time, I was no less guilty of this sin. It wasn't until the end of the demo, when the protagonist enters a car and drives away that I finally realized what I was seeing: A sandbox game. At any point, as a player, you could have veered off in a completely different direction, handled the presented situation in your own way. And the inherent cinematic elements of the game would turn those choices into something amazing. 

Time is eventually going to make a fool of the quick time event. It served its purpose for a while, sure, but we seem to have broken through the barrier that was preventing us from experiencing in-game narrative in a truly unique way. We'll have it all: The cinematic aspects of a QTE-driven experience like Uncharted or Heavy Rain, with the gameplay mechanics of a sandbox title. No more strings to hold us up. The player is left in complete control of the cinematic aspects of the gameplay. The story will be written for us, but the quality of the action will be a direct product of our skill level. 

And that would seem to be rub, wouldn’t it? That to truly break through the chains of Hollywood’s linear storytelling guidelines, it will be up to the player to really make it happen once the controller is in their hand. Not everyone can do that. Not yet, anyway. Lend me your ears, fellow fuddy-duddys: While we were drooling in the carpet over the magnificence of our shiny new PS2s, there were five years olds playing it. Not well, but they were playing it. Those five-year-olds are now in their late teens. They’ve been holding the same controller (or a close approximation) and playing games as complex as Grand Theft Auto 3 or Metal Gear Solid 2 since the age that thirty-year-olds started playing Super Mario Bros. or Double Dragon. Prefer PC? Unless you’re using a game pad that resembles the aforementioned, the control scheme has remained unmodified since Quake 1. WASD, mouse. The new generation of gamers is more than capable of being given the cinematic reigns. They won’t even give it a second thought. They’ll just be really good at video games, and the cinematic moments will fall into place.

Part of me can envision a world in which quick time events still have their place. A world in which the iPhone generation saddles its withered, girdled form up to a dusty old 3D TV in the game room next to the ping pong table and mindlessly presses square, triangle, circle or x while they wait for that hot nurse to bring them their meds. You hope that your grandkids are coming for a visit today, but a combination of dementia and- “Ooh, look at that Nathan Drake and his toned buttox! Hey Skyler! You remember the good old days when games were really games and not these brain-operated whatevs that the kids are using these days? Lawl!” Then your colostomy bag bursts. And while that might sound a little depressing, fret not. It’s pizza day in the commissary!

I just made myself sad. I’m going to go do something youthful and reckless while I play with my smart phone.

Irish Coffee, July 19th, 2012

Dear god it's rough this morning... I think I'll actually come back a few times today if I get bored and edit it for... Shit, it looks like "edit for readability." Whatever, I've only had one cup of coffee and I'm passionate about my Batmen.

Unlike nearly every other geek on the planet, I won’t be going to see The Dark Knight Rises tonight at midnight. Or this weekend for that matter. I probably won’t bother until its last week or so at my local IMAX. When the screening room is empty enough for me to open a beer without having to cover up the sound with a fart. And I’m going to need the beer.

I don't enjoy not being excited about The Dark Knight Rises. My tendency toward comic book nerddom has reached a fever pitch of late, and I crave new content more than I crave my next beer. Jesus, I can't shut up about beer this morning. No matter, I need to focus on my inexplicable distaste for a comic book movie that I should by all rights have an erection over.

Maybe it’s Christian Bale’s fault. He’s managed to grunt his way to the most unlikable Batman ever committed to page or screen and that’s a hard thing to manage with a corral full tight wearing or otherwise be-nippled Batmen the likes of George Clooney. Bale’s just so god damn one dimensional. I know there’s a wealth of character to both Bruce Wayne and Batman, but Christian Bale can’t capture any of it. Though to his credit he can stare intensely at the horizon with the best of them.

I really wanted to care about The Dark Knight Rises. I did. And I really tried. Scouts honor. But I just don’t give a shit. For a while I was worried that it was Batman as a character. That after a lifetime of hearing BatWayne bitch about his dead parents without embracing even a modicum of personal growth, I’d soured on the whole thing. Then I played Batman: Arkham City again and began to realize the real problem. Aside from the fact that Christopher Nolan seems to actually have his head crammed completely up his ass at this point… Just... Just the whole way up there. Chewing on his own colon.

And on that note, let's take an aside: If Avengers and Iron Man movies proved anything, it's that you can ground a comic book world in reality without actually making it "realistic." I understand that Christopher Nolan would like to make his vision of Gotham City a believable one, but he took it too far. Because, as much as he might like to forget, Batman is a comic book character. Comic book characters are our modern day greek gods. We want them to be relatable, even likable, but they certainly shouldn't be forced to suffer the crushing reality that we have to deal with on a daily basis. There's a fine line between a believable comic book world and a world in which Bruce Wayne gets audited the same week that his gallbladder flares up. Batman, as a concept, is as silly as Captain America or Iron Man or the Hulk. None of these characters could function in the real world. However, when put in the appropriate context these characters aren't silly. They're heros. And that's a hard context to nail down when you're bringing a comic book to life. Aside over. Back to the point.

The real problem: I grew up with the best envisioned, best captured, best voiced Batman to ever grace a gargoyle in Gotham City. I had Batman: The Animated Series. Kevin Conroy’s Bat-Voice is and should always be the industry standard. The Bat by which all other bats should be judged.

Then it hit me. It really was the voice. That was it. It wasn’t Christian Bale’s wooden acting, or that shooting Chicago/Vancouver for Gotham City was an extraordinarily bad idea, or even Nolan’s often misguided attempts at realism. It was that god damned ridiculous, obnoxious, pointless, embarrassing Bat-Voice. It all came flooding back. While watching the Dark Knight in the theater (opening night), I laughed alone and audibly just after Bale scream/cry/grumbles (I can’t even hazard a guess as to what he’s going for) “HE MUST HAVE FRIENDS!” The awkward silence and stare-daggars that followed made me slump in my seat, but I still couldn’t control my giggling.

Batman’s voice is Bruce Wayne’s real voice. Cocktail Party Wayne (I’m looking at you, Mattel. Make it happen) has the effected voice; it’s pitched higher with a subtle peppering of douchebag. Do you think, as intelligent and powerful as Batman is, that when he’s the middle of a fight to the death he really needs the extra distraction of remembering to talk like he gargled with bleach before he left the house? And why would he bother when he’s alone on a doomed tram (train? suspension train? that thing his father built that he blew up in Batman Begins) with his former master and mentor? A man who already knows his identity and presents a very real physical threat.

There's no reason for Christian Bale to risk polyps on his vocal chords for the sake of an over-the-top Batman voice. For my money, it'd be less distracting if he decided to pitch up like Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. That'd actually make some sense. Think back to the fear and anxiety that voice caused you when you were a child (or even an adult… that shit's just disturbing). Even more to the point, actual bats make a number of high pitched squeaks themselves. Now imagine being stalked by a shadowy figure on the darkened streets of Gotham. You head into an alley, thinking you've lost him. Then, like a ghost, he appears before you. You try to run, but the bolos around your ankles send you hurtling to the ground. As you struggle to free yourself over the searing pain of a fairly severe head wound, you freeze. The figure now stands above you. Gripped by fear, you babble in protest. Until he speaks, and you fall silent: "When I killed your brother, I talked JUST. LIKE. THIIIIIISSS!"

Excuse me I seem to have soiled myself. I usually fast-forward through that scene… Or I just watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit on the can.

Maybe there's a reasonable explanation. Perhaps Bale saw Batman and Robin and was appalled that Clooney didn't even bother with a Bat-Voice at all, so he over-compensated. That seems reasonable. Even Joel Schumacher thought Batman and Robin was shit. Maybe I'm being too critical. I'll watch the last trailer again…

God dammit...

Irish Coffee July 18th, 2012

Another day, another warm up post. As I'm now going to make this a regular thing, I've decided to call it Irish Coffee. Partly because the word whiskey is in the title of this blog, but mostly because I've got a pretty serious problem with alcohol.

I have two Grand Theft Auto IV saves that I load at least once a month. Both exist after the completion of the main story line and in both I’m completely stacked with cash. They do, however, differ in loadout. In save one, I’m in the pimpest of apartments with a complete array of weaponry. Two super cars idle outside. This is a save I load for friends who want to go on a  quick rampage over beers before we head out on a Friday night. Save two is my personal save. Nico is in his stock immigrant gear and has a shitty car parked in front of an apartment that I’d like to imagine is filled with lice and smells like bum urine. We’ll call this my connoisseur save. My personal stash.

When I load the connoisseur save, the goal varies in execution, but usually goes something like this: I exit the apartment onto a dark street, and get into a car that I would like imagine smells as much like bum urine as the inside of Nico’s apartment. As I slowly and legally make my way through the darkened streets of Liberty City, I call on one of Nico’s friends to meet him at a bar. To make sure he’s sharpened up for a bit of ultraviolence. Then it’s off to the gun store. I take the long way and listen to chill tunes.

After arriving at the gun store, it's time to shop. One of everything. Ten of some things. Hundreds of others. Then I calmly drive to the Ferrari dealership. Inevitably, it’s closed. No matter, now I have guns. I fire through the window and a woman shrieks as she escapes into the darkness. Having gained access, all I have to do is pick a color. Tonight it’s blue, but it’s usually black. Then I drive a luxury car through a plate-glass window.

Three stars. Right off the bat. Within a block the police are on me, but in this car I’ll lose them in ten blocks. That’s not how this night is to go. I need to park and let them know that if they manage to live through the night,  they’ll be telling their grandkids about the ensuing events.

I’d rather not fuck my car up for now. I’m going to need some breathing room. As their sirens fade into the night, I make a hard right and look for a shady place to park. It needs to be out of the way. The action’s going to happen in the middle of the street and there will be explosions. Ferrari’s hate explosions. Accessibility is also a necessity, as is a quick escape route. I find an alley that stretches for two blocks. It will do nicely.

I exit the car and walk into the middle of the street with my eye down the gun barrel just in time for the first and least lucky patrol car of the evening to come screeching around the corner. My first clip goes into his tires. He skids to a stop. The next clip rips through the windows of the car, killing both cops inside before they have a chance to get out. My grenade goes off just in time to detonate the gas tank as the next two cars come around the corner. The last telephone pole for a hundred yards falls on the burning rubble with an audible plink as I reload.

The cops keep coming, and I keep shooting, reloading. Four stars. It starts to get a bit heavy once SWAT shows up. I switch to a rocket launcher to clear the air. Just in time. A police helicopter sounds overhead, and I take it out as it banks for a clear shot at me. More SWAT now, and my position has become untenable. I lob one more grenade at an incoming SWAT van as I run away. I don’t care if it hits. Before it lands I’m half a block away, back on a my assault rifle, and in the door of my idling supercar.

A straight shot for two blocks down a narrow alley. I lose a headlight on the side of a dumpster while I try to switch to grenades. When I exit the opposite end of the alley, fresh cops have already spawned in front of me. I fishtail to avoid them, hoping all the while that I can get up to speed before the grenade I just dropped decides to detonate. 

I do. The cops can’t manage it.

Five stars now and the airport seems like the only reasonable option. As I hit the bridge I spot a roadblock. Car’s already showing some damage. Might as well speed up.

I catch a small gap in the roadblock and lose a fender. Not a big deal, but it slows me down and gives the FBI’s overpowered sedans a brief advantage. I switch to an MP5 and spin the car backwards, firing out of the window. I manage to catch a couple of tires, but the MP5s not cutting it. I switch back to grenades and j-turn as I leave the FBI their present. It hits. Their cars are crippled and on fire. Six stars. I’m not going to make it to the airport, but I shall lead the military on a merry chase.

Then I die in an alley that I'd like to imagine smells like bum urine.

As a gamer, at around the time I drop that last grenade my hands have started to sweat and I’ve leaned so far forward on my couch that I might as well have furnished my apartment with plastic kindergarden chairs. It’s not because GTA is the best game ever, or even my favorite game. It’s because of the investment. That if - in this case, when - I die, that’s it. I spend an hour of my life setting Nico up for his little rampage, knowing that this process will make me more involved with Nico's inevitable battle to the death. It's quite likely that I won’t turn GTA on for another month. I could load a save, but I never do. I’ve been sending Nico on rampages through Liberty City for quite a while now and once a month tends to slake my thirst these days.

But more than any of that: I like the fear. I like knowing that this is it. Even if it’s a self-imposed thing, I miss that visceral sense of consequence for fucking up in a video game. Like fighting the final boss of Ninja Gaiden with no continues and half of a life bar, knowing full well that I'm probably going to lose and that when I do, I’ll have a long road to hoe if I plan on trying again. Not many games offer than anymore. I know, Dark Souls, but the gameplay’s wooden and everybody knows it. The fear of loss is tempered by the nagging thought that my loss won’t be directly tied to my control, as Dark Souls (like many games) makes me feel more like I’m operating a prize crane in a grocery store than effecting any real control over the character on-screen.

I don’t find the fear in online gaming. I find frustration, sure. Nervousness bordering on panic. But no fear. No fear of consequence. I just respawn and get back to the business of getting my ass kicked while teenagers and grown men take turns calling me a fag. Then I turn off Battlefield 3.

Offline I have just as much difficulty finding the old school fear, often times having to resort to my own set of rules in order to create a gameplay experience that’s just the right combination of consequence and difficulty. The first time I fall off of a cliff in Uncharted, I wince, the second time I grumble, and the third time I giggle as Drake bounces off the rocks like a rag doll because I’ve stopped giving a shit. 

After noticing this phenomenon I stopped using autosaves. Which can be a fairly epic pain in the ass when a game insists on auto-loading every time I die. And having to access the pause menu so I can force the game to punish me for sucking kind of kills the immersion.

I’m not suggesting that video games aren’t difficult enough, or that I’m some kind of sadist that can't enjoy them unless they punish me like Ving Rhames in a gimp suit.  I just can’t help but think that games lost a little bit of a flavor when they completely removed consequence from failure.

I grew up poor. Wah. Not the point. Video games were a luxury. Needless to say my PS1 and copy Resident Evil 2 are sporting some pretty serious city miles. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a memory card and my mother couldn’t afford one until my birthday (which fell a whopping 5 months after Christmas). My only choice was to play through RE2 without a memory card. Which I managed. Then I managed to do it quickly. Frustrating? Sure. (My first PS1 controller rocked both electrical and duct tape.) But I got pretty fucking good at Resident Evil 2.  I can still get from Leon’s A game spawn to the gun shop with my eyes shut. Seriously.  I operate on the sounds of his boots hitting the pavement and the gaps in that sound when the camera angle shifts. What?

(To this day, when I play RE2, I try not to save. If I do, I only allow myself one [usually before the encounter with Birkin on the tram].)

I propose a simple solution to this problem that would also make truly difficult games more accessible to the average player. In the options menu, allow the player to set up a specific number of retries and continues. That simple. Checkpoint restart until you run out of retries, and level a more severe punishment for using a whole continue. Even if it’s not rigged in such a way that I can select a specific number of saves and continues, at least include it as a toggle option. I don’t want to play an impossibly difficult video game, I just want my death to have some consequence. It makes already immersive video games that much more engaging.

Just a thought.

Morning Warm Up: July 17th, 2012

Ok, so from now on I'm gonna dump a morning warm up on this blog. They'll probably be short, typo ridden and pointless, but hey whatever, it's a warm up. Jesus I'm grumpy without my coffee... Enjoy?

I would like to know where the fuck my good Dragonball Z game is. Seriously. It’s not funny anymore. Wherever you’re hiding it, just stop. Oh, you’re not hiding anything because it doesn’t exist? Oh, Burst Limit...? That’s swell. Ok, nevermind, I’ll talk to someone else. 


Hi there, someone else: I have this really amazing idea for a fighting game. Using the overpowered, technically monumental game creation equipment available to us in 2012, create a massive outdoor arena complete with mountains, caverns, valleys and cities. You can do that? Excellent.

Next, to the combatants. They’re powerful. Extremely powerful. Think Superman with no weakness to kryptonite, no moral code, awesome clothes, and the ability to fire massive energy blasts from his hands. Still with me? Good. The hand to hand combat is crushing. Energy charged fists crash into the faces of the fighters as their ever weakening energy shields buckle under the strain (did I mention they have energy shields instead of a health bar? No? Well, that’s kind of important).

As the fight escalates, the rage of each fighter increases, allowing them to execute more powerful attacks. Attacks like an energy wave that will send their opponent flipping backwards into a mountain. This action results in a silent battlefield. The fighter that unleashed the energy wave flies into the air, surveying his surroundings filled with the hope that his online opponent had a weakened energy shield when he hit the mountain. False hope. What starts as a glint on the horizon turns into a enraged superhuman in the blink of an eye. An enraged superhuman who grinds his opponent into the ground, sending boulder sized chunks of rock into the air.

The battle carries on for half an hour real-time, twenty-four hours in-game and it covers all the topography the open world has to offer. As the battle reaches its climax during a thunderstorm on top of a skyscraper in the middle of a futuristic metropolis, any gamer worth their Mario Bros. t-shirt will be sporting tears of joy. And a massive erection (if applicable).

Still with me? Here’s a napkin, wipe the slobber off of your mouth. It’s just Dragonball Z. Also, you're disgusting.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been plenty of Dragonball Z games that have attempted to capitalize on the epic conflicts that the show is famous for, but they always have stiff controls and hollow combat systems. Even as a fan of the show, these games are just temporary distractions that seem to serve the sole purpose of reminding me how unbelievably amazing a Dragonball Z game could be if proper care was taken to flesh out the more epic elements inherent in the combat. Even if it wasn’t necessarily a Dragonball Z property, where’s the video game that features a battle sequence like the one I described above? Not a battle sequence that takes place as a series of QTE’s, but one that embraces the depth of a fighting game. A good fighting game.

Furthermore, when did game designers stop dreaming big? In every game I play I just schlub around an oversized map that looks like it’s been diagnosed with a terminal case of England in search of gear that looks exactly the same as the gear that I already have so I can keep doing the same shit somewhere else. (I played D&D. You can’t impress me Bethesda.) Or I run around shooting a bunch of aliens or terrorists while a fuckton of really awesome things that I can't interact with go on in the background. Or I'm relegated to pushing one of four buttons like a glorified projectionist while my character does some awesome shit right in front of me that I have no control over. Every idea gets rebooted, except the unique ones.

Where’s Zone of the Enders 3? For that matter, where’s any fucking game that’s not a direct sequel of or identical to something I played last year? I shouldn't be able to sit here (with a complete and realistic grasp of how a video games are designed and produced and what they're capable of) and come up with at least ten completely different ideas for new or heavily modified game genres while video game companies with the best minds in silicon valley and budgets that would make the Romans blush are only capable of coming up with: “This year the gun fires farts!”

Seriously? Come on. Try harder. Or if you’re not going to try harder, at least admit it. As opposed to dressing up your rehash like it’s something original. How stupid do you think we are?