BMW, Bioshock, and Buying Our Way to "Freedom."

Presently, there are a couple of things rattling around in my brainpan like loose chunks of head gasket. And that forced automotive metaphor certainly has its place, as one of those things is BMW’s new i3 electric car. The other is Bioshock: Infinite’s Burial at Sea DLC. Also, somewhere on the back burner, the sense of crushing guilt dealt to me by the fluttering southern tones of a nice old lady that answered my call of apology to the dentist’s office when I forgot my appointment this morning. I haven’t heard disappointment in a woman’s voice that condemning since I lost my virginity. BOOM! I’m back. Class all the way.

I swear there’s a common thread between these events/announcements and if there isn’t, by god, I’ll stumble around my keyboard until I can duct tape them together well enough to give the impression that I have a vague sense of what I’m doing. First, the BMW i3.

I’ll keep this brief, as I doubt many people visiting a blog called “Whiskey and Video Games” yearn to read a diatribe about a disappointing automobile. But I must say (and bear in mind that I say this as a BMW owner/enthusiast): Seriously, BMW, what the fuck?

On its surface, the i3’s not really that horrible. Ok, well, on its surface it is because just look at this damn thing. It’s uglier than the wart on a wart. It looks like it should have “Playskool” written across the side of it. It makes the Pontiac Aztec look like a Jaguar E-Type. It’s the automotive equivalent of Donald Trump’s combover. Ok, I’m done.

No, I'm not. Seriously, if it were a human it would be the result of inbreeding and botched plastic surgery.

It’s certainly comparable if not better than the Nissan Leaf and its ilk, it’s built by BMW, a car company that can’t make a machine that’s unpleasant to drive (except for the X6), and has a 0-60 time of around 7 seconds. In these ways it’s certainly not an automotive affront, but that’s not the whole story.

As pointed out concisely and without use of extraneous expletives on Slate.com, the i3 commits the cardinal sin of being “good for an electric car” in a post Tesla S world. The Tesla S, which aimed simply to be a good car that happened to be electric. And in a move that’s as hilarious as it is ironic, included in the price of the BMW i3 is a loan service that allows you to borrow a combustion car should you need to do anything that “real cars” do. Let that sink in. Part of BMW’s marketing strategy for selling you an electric car is that their electric car is mostly useless. A rental SUV would certainly not be a requirement if the i3 was “a good car” not “good for an electric car.” 

(There is absolutely no way, at this point, I’ll go on a tangent about how ridiculous the electric car is as an environmental savior as their production is more environmentally damaging than that of a traditional car, and they receive their energy from coal fired power plants. Totally not going to do that. And I certainly wouldn’t link you to a study by the Journal of Industrial Ecology discussing just that. No way.)

One rattle down, one to go. Ok, two. I seriously can’t believe I forgot my dentist appointment. It was a long one too. Probably fucked up the day of a few people. The siren song of Old Lady Guilt has crashed the ship of my self-worth against the rocks of You Fucked Up and Should Feel Bad About It Island. Better get back on topic and finish this blog so I can go lie down and reevaluate my life choices.

And now the tale of DLC I hate from a game I love, and DLC I love from a game I hate. If my Ezio costume and blogs from March and April are any indication, I love Assassin’s Creed and hate Bioshock: Infinite. I honestly couldn’t tell you; my opinions change like the wind. What I will say is this: The multiplayer DLC for Assassin’s Creed III is utter shit. Compared with the DLC packs for AC: Revelations and AC: Brotherhood, AC3’s paltry character and map upgrades (for which I shelled out $10 I didn’t really have at the time) are an affront to fans of the series everywhere. Though, this was almost to be expected, as Ubisoft slapped supporters of its franchise in the face with F2P style microtransactions so absurd that they make Dead Space 3’s similar system look fan-friendly by comparison.

And Ubisoft’s cynical money grab is the perfect example of DLC gone wrong. Too much money for too little content that does nothing to improve upon the experience players shelled out $60 for, and instead feels like content that was created with the main game, then ripped from it to be sold back later. But at least there’s monetary evidence to back such a strategy. At least they didn’t add more content to the worst aspect of the original game and attempt to sell it for $5. That would just be ridiculous. And stupid. And would make any thinking person’s brain hurt. No one would ever do that.

Oh.

Clash of the Clouds is an extremely stupid idea, but in a brilliant bit of PR on its release day (today, as of publication), Irrational announced this. 

And all is seemingly forgiven (at least by players. Game journalists are having a fucking ball trying to drum-up support for a pitchfork party). 

But before we get to why Burial at Sea is so brilliant, let's get the ugly out of the way. It’s no secret that I really didn’t like Bioshock: Infinite, and the ire I hurled its way was mostly the result of its failed potential. All its impressive story beats were undercut by moments of cheese dense enough to be illegal in the US. All of its impressive environments were undercut by NPC’s that more closely resembled the animatronic denizens of a Disney ride from the 1970s than living, breathing people. And the entire affair was undercut by combat so abysmal that the act of actually playing the game felt like more like turning the crank on a phonograph than palpably engaging a digital space. 

In spite of all of this, I applaud Irrational’s Burial at Sea with a fervor that would make my hands sting if I weren’t a complete powerhouse that hasn’t felt pain since 1996. What they are offering to not only Infinite fans, but fans of the Bioshock franchise as a whole, is - from what can be gathered - a piece of single player DLC that is tonally and aesthetically so different from the original game that to say it doesn’t add value to the initial Infinite experience is impossible. And yes, Rapture is back, Rapture was used before (twice), but in an interview with GameTrailers, Ken Levine says that all the assets for the city had to be recreated to work with Infinite. That’s work. That’s many man-hours of human effort. And despite what assholes with gaming blogs (hi!) might say about the game, the Burial at Sea add-on is (seemingly) a good product at a reasonable price that fans of the franchise will love. It’s not just “good for DLC” it’s not simply "good enough', it's "good" period.

Oh shit. Didn’t think I was going to be able to make that connection didja? Huh?! Well I fucking did! JOURNALISM’D!

At their core, both the BMW i3 and DLC the likes of AC3’s multiplayer add-on commit the sin of being “good enough,” while the likes of Tesla and Irrational Games aim for simply “good”. In a world of NSA monitoring, governments and corporations that are accountable for nothing, once great cities filing for bankruptcy while their law enforcement officials rob the populace, riots, coups and corrupt interim governments, We the People are exceedingly disheartened with our lack of control. The only way to have any control at all, the only means of conveying our collective discontent in a manner not completely impotent, is to speak with our wallets. Sadly, the only control we have left is control of what we buy. We the Informed Consumer. 

If events like the XBone debacle and gay bars refusing to buy Russian Vodka have proven anything, it's that we might let our rights be destroyed, but we’ll choose the form of our destroyer. We might not have any power. We might not stop eating fast food long enough to revolt. We might do laps around a Wal-Mart exercising our “control” until a S.W.A.T. team kicks in our front door and breaks everything we own because we accidentally said “bomb” on the phone while having a heated debate about The Lone Ranger. But by God, if you release a product that's highest aspiration is to be “good enough”, you’ll have hell to pay. On Reddit.

Service resumes, Grand Theft Auto V, and the Great News Vacuum of 2013

Do you have any idea how hard it is to start a Youtube channel that operates on a level above “foreshortened face breathing heavily into a webcam”? And to do so alone? Answer: Really god damned hard. So hard, in fact, that my creative brain has now died, and what’s left has been topped off with Premiere and After Effects walkthroughs, pixel widths, and file locations (so many files...). Also, with the limited budget at my disposal (did I say “limited?” I meant “non-existent”), getting my first video just the way I want it is a bit like working on a car without the proper tools. All the anger and swearing in the world won’t help you get that bolt out if you don’t have the right socket.

So, putting this project that is now three months in the making on hold before I stop shaving and haunt my own apartment in nothing but a bathrobe and Ninja Turtle slippers, I figured a return to my blog and daily updates was in order. And here we are.

Today? Grand Theft Auto V. Because everyone seems to be hurling opinions on the console war into the news vacuum left in the wake of E3 like the Planet Express crew trying to clog a black hole with Earth’s garbage. Oh, there you are forced metaphor. And before 11am. Lovely.

So this GTAV gameplay trailer everyone has been talking about (and by everyone I mean, well, everyone. Twitter, Reddit, NeoGaf, every game news blog that looks and sounds exactly like the next game news blog) does look pretty fucking fantastic. Max Payne 3 style shooting, GTA: San Andreas depth, polished GTA IV graphics, Beyond: Two Souls character switching. All good things. But I’d like to focus on one important aspect of the trailer that everyone seems to have missed. Oh, I've embedded the trailer below in case you haven't seen it. Or need to watch it again and don’t want to open a new tab. Believe me, I understand dilettante levels of laziness. Borders on sloth, but you work out every day to hide the truth from the world? But it's there, just beneath the surface... Oh shit, that went weird. Nevermind. Watch the shiny:

Let’s focus on Trevor, dismissed (sort of) in the trailer with the line “...the less said about him, the better.” From what’s been revealed so far, Trevor is completely out of his mind. Lives in the desert, is constantly getting in trouble with the law (as shown during the character switching portion of the trailer) and generally comes off like a bat-shit crazy meth cooker with a drinking problem and no hair. 

It’s not much of a leap to imagine him driving over a pile of pedestrians on a sidewalk, beating a hooker to death with a blunt object, or shooting at a police helicopter with a rocket launcher for no reason other than shits, grins, or perceived persecution. He’s completely unhinged, mad, wrong in the head. Unrealistic.

Rockstar is known for putting characters in GTA games that are so over-the-top as to be satirical, adding to the landscape they’ve so painstakingly cultivated in the years since the original GTA, but these characters were always supporting characters. In spite of the madness around them and the occasional silly situation, the main characters have always been more grounded than the schizophrenic theme park around them, conceivably to aid the player in connecting with the game world. Or simply for contrast.

Now, this might be a bit of a stretch, or not (and it is the internet, so someone else might have come up with this already) but I think Trevor is us. The players. The representation of what we all become when we enter the GTA game space. All the errant aggression without a whiff of consequence, all the urges that don’t exist or are suppressed in real life. He is our lizard brain. Our id.

Expanding on this: Michael, the ex-criminal (for a moment, anyway) that attempted to leave it all behind and put on the mask of a stand-up, Beverly Hills (or whatever they call it in GTA) family man. The super-ego. The opposite end of the spectrum from Trevor. And, based on what we can tell as he’s “convinced he’s surrounded by morons,” we have Franklin. The ego. The mediator. Somewhere between the polished criminality of Michael, and the “fuck it blow things up” attitude of Trevor. Of course, this is based on what little we can gather from the story and gameplay trailers, but there could be something to all of this.

Trevor, Franklin, Michael. Id, ego, super-ego

Or I could be reaching. Freud’s falling out of favor anyway ... Does that I mean I can start openly hating Kafka now?

E3 Day 1 Video wrap-up

So, I made this video, which certainly took longer than writing would have, but that particular voice was broken, so I went with this. It's poorly edited, I say "like" and "uhh" a lot, and the fucking YouTube page doesn't have any info on it because it's god damn 2:30am and I need some sleep. There's also probably lip-smacking noises because I've been drinking. Whatever. I hope the following at least makes some sense. Footage of things starts at about 2:30 if you don't like my voice. Until Day Two:

I'm getting the impression that the last bit was slightly incomprehensible. All I was attempting to say (in my own drunken way) was that the PS4's concern for its audience is indicative of a larger movement in consumer products sector. A movement defined by a consumer base that won't have products shoved down its throat, but that dictates those products through effective use of social media. So: Millennials don't put with any shit. Sleep now. Why did the video feel like it needed to take so long to render/upload? Oh, right. Macbook's are evil.



Also, here's the Reddit roundup for E3 2013, Day 1:

E3 2013 Coverage: EA Conference wrap-up.

This EA thing is late and brief, as I honestly enjoyed Ubisoft’s presentation more in spite of its regurgitation of repellent words like “connectivity” and “friends.” And yes, not just because of Aisha Tyler, though she’s a far better hype (wo)man than a fat, middle aged white guy with no social skills. But let’s try to stay on topic.

EA loves them some fake applause. And with good reason. There was little applause coming from the audience. There’s this really weird movement that’s been knocking around social networking and forums lately, that seems to state that those at a reveal conference shouldn’t applaud as it shows some sort of weakness to The Beast, and I just can’t get on board with that. If I see a game reveal that blows my skirt up I will - in spite of my cynicism - put both my hands together in the oddest of human traditions. I don’t know if this phenomenon was responsible for the lack of audible hand-on-hand action from the audience at the EA conference, but such a shortcoming made the entire affair noticeably awkward. 

It was so bad, in fact, that during Bruce Buffer’s introduction of UFC people I’ve never heard of or care about they actually piped in fake applause through the sound system. This was representative of the entire EA sports reveal, and what I feel will be the defining ethos of this entire E3. These are industry people, those watching the feeds are huge fans, and there will be hell to pay if the upgrades to a game are strictly aesthetic. We'd like true innovation. Not later. Now.

In other news, paltry asides like Drake’s presence the term “realistic ball handling” trended on twitter for a while, and Battlefield 4’s 64 person multiplayer looks good if not another case of “bigger and better but not substantively different.”

Then they showed 30 seconds of Mirror’s Edge 2 and I came a little bit. As I’ve mentioned before, I fucking love that game. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try to come up with some sort of cogent analysis of the Ubisoft conference while I stroke it to this trailer... Again. At least EA gave me something I wanted.

E3 2013 Coverage: Xbox conference wrap-up.

As I mentioned, this isn’t going to be strictly a news update thing, because that’s not what you’ve come to expect from me. Just slightly buzzed commentary, as I’ve been playing the most dangerous game since the beginning of the Microsoft press event.

The following was announced at the end of Microsoft’s Xbox conference, and is fresh in my mind/the most important aspect of this whole thing: $500 fucking dollars?! I can put together a passable gaming rig for that much. That won’t watch me while I masturbate on my couch. With the mayonnaise. Because I can’t be bothered to stand up and it was already on my coffee table. I don’t need to explain myself to you. 

In the Matrix, everyone sees you fap.

In spite of their insistence that this whole thing is “about the gamers,” (a point they attempted to drive home more than once) a $500 console that requires a persistent high speed internet connection and a yearly service fee separates a lot of gamers from their chosen pastime should they decide to go with Microsoft. But, gaming is an expensive hobby. As much as it sucks, many people are left out in the cold with old tech because of this fact. So I’m not going to harp on it. After all, we live in a world where people ride the bus to a job at McDonald’s rocking a $600 smart phone.

As to the rest of the conference: They have a couple of good exclusives. But - and here’s the important part - not great exclusives. The only hope Microsoft had to overcome the recent PR gangbang that has surely increased the company's interest in acquisition of KY was to hit the stage today with the most amazing titles they could possibly come up with. What did they show?

A sequel to a increasing dated genre title whose flower has blossomed (Dead Rising 3), a remake of a 2-D fighter that I’ll regret not being able to play as I’m not buying an Xbone (Killer Instinct), and Spark, which, while interesting, I’ll need to know more about to pass judgement. New Halo? Meh, Bungie’s taking their new IP to PS4 in the form of Destiny. Titanfall doesn’t look bad, I genuinely want to play it, but it’s another FPS on the FPS console. It’s nothing groundbreaking, and nothing that breaks the mold for Xbox. 

And if they ever needed to break the mold, now is the time. We’re stepping into a whole new world of gaming in the coming months and years, and not just because of new consoles, but fresh tech like the Oculus Rift. First person shooters on a game console that doubles as a Big Brotherian cable box hardly resemble the forward thinking technology that gains traction in 2013. Or what consumers want. All Microsoft really managed to do with that conference was reinforce the position that they're not going to give the consumers what they want, but tell the consumers what they're getting. An increasingly dangerous business model for a consumer product company.

More as it happens today. There’s a bunch of footage being piped in from Gametrailers, an EA conference in a little under an hour, and a fuck-ton of already released info to digest. My twitter feed (which is 95% game related) is starting to stress me out. I’m also two beers and one shot into my drinking day, and not smoking for the duration has gone out of the window. The corporate greed and PR verbiage is already driving me to the brink. I’ll try to maintain, but only for you, dear reader. I hope you appreciate that. I could go mad.

Once more unto the breach.

E3 2013 Coverage Overview /or/ Drink my way through E3 Part I.

Blog below, but here are all the relevant links so you can keep on top of today’s press conferences and coverage:

E3 Official: http://www.e3insider.com/press-conferences/

Game Trailers E3 coverage: http://www.gametrailers.com/e3

My twitter feed... Do it: https://twitter.com/DrNed

My friend Jeff Grubb is boots on the ground at E3: https://twitter.com/JeffGrubb

It’s that time again. Time to have staggeringly repetitious corporate-ese shoved down our ear holes. Time to begin waiting impatiently for debuted games that won’t release for a further three years. Time to wonder at the top of our lungs (or caps lock keys) how the fuck Microsoft fell so far off the wagon. Time to use alcohol and the ensuing drunk as a coping mechanism. Time for E3, ladies and gentlemen.

So, here’s the deal: I know the blogs have been a little scant lately. Can’t be helped, I’m working on a number of huge projects and the concept of stopping for even a moment feels like a defeat. So I haven’t stopped, haven’t blogged. For that I’m sorry. But there will be E3 coverage here... Well, not coverage as much as drunken, possibly angry, possibly starry-eyed analysis of big announcements. Also some small announcements if I think they’re important enough/hilarious.

To that end, this is how it’ll work. I’m going to upload either written or recorded commentary all day on the front page of the blog, I’ll be hurling brain feces at your screen near constantly from my twitter feed, and I’ll do and end of day wrap up (again either recorded or written... though my speech may be slurred by that point). All of the preceding will be filled to the brim with relevant news/video links.

Now, to my drinking: There will be some. Audio logs might be a bit slurred. Words might be missing from sentences. Video editing might be nonsensical to the point of bordering on a Tool video from 1995. Jokes, however, might be hilarious. We won’t know until we get there, will we? Join me, won’t you? 

It’s time to drink our way through E3.

Irish Coffee - Microsoft, you dumb bastards.

I'm back baby! Slightly different stuff in the title. There's a date stamp on these things anyway. Don't know why I was typing it in manually like an old lady that licks a stamp and pastes it to her monitor before she sends an email. I was in New Orleans last weekend for a bachelor party, and, well... It was something of an event. I've only just regained my faculties (they're at about 72% charge), and the emotional damage is probably permanent, but whatever. Good times, good people, lots of alcohol. Now back to the video games. I'm going to yell at Microsoft again, because it's just so god damned easy lately.

This might sound a little unprofessional: Ahhh hahah hahah! Hahhhhh! hah! You dumb bastards!

In an attempt to yet again prove how detached they've become from the “core game market” they thought they had a grasp on and so desperately need on their side after over a week of bad press, Microsoft has officially announced that they’ll spend $1 billion on games for their next-gen, weaponized, TV stand.

I mean look at it! You could beat a man to death with the Kinect alone.

While I haven't any moral qualms with throwing money at a problem like a trust fund baby that just found a dead hooker in the trunk of his car, the real issue here is Microsoft’s industry viability moving forward. First off, one billion dollars in the scope of modern AAA development doesn’t go a long way. Modern Warfare 3 spent $300 million, all told, after an absurdly expensive advertising campaign. Granted, it’s actual budget was only $100 million, but even at that comparatively bargain basement rate, Microsoft’s big number announcement will only pay for 10 games. Hardly impressive for the life of the console.

But let’s say the money is spread out a bit. Drop money on indie titles. The kind of art house games that give the industry some much needed set dressing. Granted, it’s a bit like putting roses on the hood of a tank, but it’s better than nothing (and a topic for another day). Microsoft has certainly made it clear that their focus isn’t indie gaming. Meanwhile, Sony courts indie devs left and right, providing them with a friendlier environment. Even if Microsoft would like to get some indie devs back on their side, it’ll be quite a while before we’ll see a company-wide change in policy - such as allowing indies to self-publish on the Big Black Bocks -  significant enough to draw indie studios back to the dark side.  

"Did I say 'zero creative freedom?' I meant 'All the money. Ever.'"

Plus, indie devs are a temperamental lot, and will not work in a close minded, creatively limiting environment. “Give me money, let me make my game, leave me the fuck alone and you’ll get it when it’s done,” seems to be their mentality, and one of which Sony seems keenly aware. Also, one I can get behind. Microsoft has said recently that they’re going to have indie support on their console, but it’s clearly not a focus, and clearly not a large portion of that Big Shiny Number they put up today. Unless they want to come out and say otherwise. Until now, it's a vague "yes" that fades into cacophonous repetition of words like "integration" and "experience," and announcements that center around massive AAA titles.

Microsoft is definitely a company that pushes hard for the Bro Gamer portion of the market, and this was made no more evident than in their reveal last week. The only games shown were sports titles and Call of Duty, the only games on the beer-soaked TV stand at the average frat house. [Source: I used to sell weed to frat boys.]

Microsoft can lightly dance around this subject all they want, but everyone knows exactly what to expect. No amount of “yes, we’ll support indie devs” is going to change the reality of your big E3 “game” conference. It’s going to come up wanting. There is no way that any number of AAA titles being presented are going to outdo what we’ve seen from the more powerful and game-oriented PS4, nor are you going to convince anyone that the primary focus of the Xbone is "game console "when you came out of the gate waving your “media center” sword and screaming about integration like a prophet that stepped out of a time machine from 2006 having not realized he’d gone forward in time instead of back.

Microsoft, you've had every opportunity to make this just a little bit about video games, video gamers, and video game creators, but you've decided to dodge questions like the most teeth-grindingly frustrating of politicians and alienate the people that built the popularity of your console in the first place. (Oh the irony of mentioning that the Halo franchise built the Xbox while announcing a TV show version of it. It'd be delicious if it weren't so painfully barbed.)

As bullshit as their crisis management has been since their big reveal last week, it has been fun to watch the media fire shots at Microsoft’s feet and tell it to dance. 

"Metro: Last Light" first impressions.

Sorry I've not been posting, but this "video project" I keep mentioning is essentially a 15-20 documentary/comedy gaming show that I'm narrating in character, and as such has become the most difficult project I've ever tackled. I've been baring down on it every day, as much as I can, to the detriment of my blog and "social media presence." But whatever. I'm really proud of what's coming together, even if it completely sucks, and I hope people can at least get a chuckle out of it. NOW! Here's what I think of Metro: Last Light. My first impressions, anyway. I'll be back tomorrow, maybe a couple of more times this week. Now that I'm just editing video/audio, it's actually a welcome break to sit down and write a blog.

Metro: Last Light is a truly amazing game that I’ve been greedily devouring for a better part of the last two days. Every moment I wasn’t playing, I was thinking about it... I’m pretty sure my girlfriend thinks I’m cheating on her with a video game. A thought made no less painful by the presence of the “nudity” warning on the ESRB badge.

Can you blame me? Dat ASS...

The gameplay is well put together, the graphics are good, blah blah blah. Not what I really feel like tackling in a blog post. I’m just going to throw atmosphere up as a target and hurl thought-darts at it for a minute.

Thick, scary, eerily beautiful, profoundly well designed. The abandoned tunnels and sewers or the dilapidated surface world of Moscow in 2034 are some of the most engrossing I’ve experienced in years. If you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know I’m a environment freak. They are so principally important to what I find to be a quality gameplay experience that I’ll play through horrible games that have good environments just because I like where I am. They’re the reason I can’t play through good games like Skyrim, but can play through trash like Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City.

Unfortunately for my journalistic integrity, a lot of what I qualify as a good environment has little to do with anything the game designers do, and lots to do with what appeals to me aesthetically. I grew up in the middle of the woods - was a teenager in the middle of the woods. Therefor, the concrete and steel of an urban game hold favor over the woodland landscapes that dominate “medieval” rpgs and period shooters.

Can't it be both?

In the case of Metro: Last Light, I’m a lucky boy, and I get both a well designed environment, and one that appeals to my aesthetic sense. They also appear in the perfect context, lending an important but often neglected air of necessity to the tunnels and collapsed buildings. Appearing on a surface world long ravaged by post-nuclear environmental crises, a gust of wind picks up, hinting at the destructive and unpredictable nature of the weather. A button press wipes off your ever-present gas mask, just sprayed with debris. A distant howl of an beast not yet known to you. The sun obscured by a cloud, chases the horizon at a pace too swift to leave you comfortable as a player.

No matter the rest of my experience (my time with the single player campaign is nearly over) or the inevitable and obnoxious complaints that will come up as I come to better know this game, that particular moment I just described has stored itself in a rarely used drawer of my brain. It’s sharing that space with the first time I played Resident Evil 1 and the dogs burst through the window, or the final battle with Sephiroth in Final Fantasy 7, or my first leap from atop a church steeple in Assassin’s Creed. Metro: Last Light, for what may come, has given me a permanent gaming memory, and that’s a rare thing indeed.

Oh, and there’s a fucking revolver-shotgun that you use to shoot Wererats. And titties. Glorious Russian titties. Buy this game.

Irish Coffee, May 9th, 2013

I'm angry today. If you find this rant offensive... Good, that was the point. And stop being offended. It makes you look weak.

Jesus fuck. How sensitive is the world becoming?

Yesterday, this article popped up on Kotaku. I’ll save you the trouble of having to give them page views. The “author,” of that piece took issue with the use of a gay joke at the beginning of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon... Ahem...

Far Cry Fucking 3: Blood Dragon. A game with a crotch grabbing, misogynistic stereotype of the 80s action hero for a protagonist. A whole fucking game played as a send up to a particularly ridiculous yet inarguably awesome period in cinematic history, and you took offense to a gay joke? A game in which you shoot and stab HUNDREDS OF FUCKING PEOPLE AND TEAR OUT THEIR HEARTS! A game in which the damsel in distress takes her clothes off at the first opportunity and cyberfucks Rex Power Colt’s Metallic Wonder Cock. Yet you were offended by a gay joke?

Metallic Wonder Cock gives him +5  thrust capacity.

Ok, let’s take a step back for a second and assume that none of the rest of that stuff could possibly be construed as offensive, and forget for a moment that the entire fucking game is a joke. This is what constitutes journalism? A real conversation about important issues? A joke at the beginning of an 80s action cinema lampoon?

And is this how easily people are offended in 2013? Has it come this far? What the fuck is there going to be left to laugh at if I can’t make fun of someone’s race, sexual preference, taste in clothing, preferred fast food restaurant or favorite brand of anal lubricant? “You use astroglide? What a fag.” Will they come after The Daily Show for making fun of so many republicans? “That’s their choice and you have to respect it!” That last sentence, by the way, was in the most mocking tone I could possibly muster. In my head.

Our differences are what make comedy possible! Comedy, which has pulled us through national and international tragedy, made it possible to laugh in the face of death or danger, and was an extremely important weapon for me as a fat kid. Actual hate? Actual anger? Actually saying things or - more to the point - doing things that hurt people? Fuck that shit. Get back in your wagon and enjoy the early 20th century.

But god dammit, making fun of someone for what they are is what makes this country great (you can start humming the national anthem now). I’m proud to live in a country where someone can make fun of the fact that I’m going bald while I call them a fairy. I’m glad to know that they’ll still be my friend afterward. I’m proud to live in a country where comedians can build entire careers on making fun of another race or socioeconomic segment of society. I’m glad to know that no one thought he was being serious. I’m proud to live in a country that not only celebrates the differences in its citizenry, but pantses people for those differences.

Before I leave you with a quote from the immortal Louis C.K., I’d just like to say: If you’re offended by a joke at the beginning of a video game that is itself a bunch of jokes, you deserve to be given a wedgie and shoved in a locker. You are a little weenie. Also, you’re too young for political commentary, cuz we did over-offended already. It was called the 90s.

“In my day you didn’t call someone a faggot cuz they were gay. You called someone a faggot because they were being a fucking faggot.” - Louis C.K.

Irish Coff---CIGARETTE! NOOWWW!

Breaking format. Don't care. First things first, this is going to be another weirdly formatted blog in which I have to stick to the facts and type really quickly. Why? Because it's day TWO without nicotine and I'm having a really hard time maintaining. It's not even just that I don't have any cigarettes in my life, it's that I've never once worked without the benefit of a cigarette break, and as such I'm having a difficult time focusing. So type fast, focus focus focus, don't lose your mind. Another thing to bear in mind is that I'm really hyperactive now. Like a five-year-old in a candy store with a pocket filled with disposable income and a life filled with unfit parents. Seriously, why aren't they watching their kid? He's just going to eat all the fucking candy in the world and probably go into some kind of diabetic shock. I'm calling the cops.

Uh-oh, went a little sideways there, but it's going to happen. I've never had this much energy in my life... to the degree that I think cigarettes have been abating some pretty awful behavior. How am I going to control myself without them? I don't know. If right now is any evidence, not well at all... OH RIGHT VIDEO GAMES!

These...

...are a fuck-ton (sort of a fuck ton) of hi-res GTAV images, and my god they're gorgeous. It must be said that up until very recently, I wasn't very excited about GTAV, but upon hearing about live-switching between characters (as in, press a button or two, watch the camera swing across town to pick up the story of another character), the fully fleshed out underwater world (which can be seen in the above pictures), the Heat-style heist planning (taking knock off to a whole new level and making it into a bonafide game mode), and the sheer size of the map, I'm finally sporting a semi for the next entry in Rockstar's series.

I think my concerns were justified. The first trailer just looked a bit vanilla compared to some of the high end graphical offerings like Watch Dogs doing their turn on the catwalk. But what I should have remembered was GTA San Andreas. I should have remembered that it was the last GTA for PS2 and that it was gi-fucking-gantic. Graphically, nothing like the eventual GTA IV, but so stuffed with content that I boot it up more often than GTA IV when I want a GTA experience.

And that seems to be the case here. As opposed to wasting time and resources on a next-gen GTA, they just spit-shined (or didn't... you can never tell in promotional material from Rockstar) their existing engine, and set about adding gameplay elements that risk busting the edges of even a blu-ray for sheer size of content. Something I think will be interesting to see handled on the Xbox... how many DVDs are we talking about here?

Ok, that's it... Can't concentrate anymore. Desperate for nicotine. Going to go do some pushups and hope the exercise helps. Then eat something. PROTEIN!

Irish Coffee, May 7th, 2-SOMEONE GIVE ME A FUCKING CIGARETTE!

Weird blog, weird format, weird day. I quit smoking yesterday, as I promised myself I would upon turning 30, and good god has it made me weird. I didn't think it was that bad, but I just reread what I wrote here today and fuck... It's not very "Ned," I'll tell you that much. But whatever, it's not too bad. Back in the saddle again after one of the worst hangovers I've had in my life, but if you ever aim to quit smoking cigarettes, I have a plan for you: Spend the evening prior drinking yourself into a stupor and smoking enough cigarettes to feel like you were orally molested by Joe Camel. When you wake up, you'll feel so completely like shit and your desire to smoke cigarettes will be so completely removed from your thoughts that you'll have no difficulty getting through the first 24 hours of non-smoking. Historically the most difficult. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to curl up in the fetal position and sweat like Rent-boy for a while. See you tomorrow!

Saint's Row IV

Today in Atomic Nut-Kick news, there's a new trailer for Saint's Row IV that's showing off a bit more in the way of hand-to-hand combat and the superpowers to be expected from the protagonist.


While I'm as excited as I was when the original launch trailer dropped, it's fairly obvious that aside from the super-jumping, super-body-slamming, and super-nut-kicking, not a whole lot has changed. The last game was all about regular jumping, body slamming, and nut kicking, so without a major engine upgrade the whole experience could start to feel familiar in spite of its zaniness.

I'm sure there will be enough jokes for the whole thing to be worth the price of admission, but I can't help but think it would have been a better idea to wait until next-gen to give us more Saint's Row, rather than throwing this content into a nearly five-year-old game engine.

Either way, they've already got my money... What? There's gonna be boobs...

Next-Box

And if you missed it yesterday (and why wouldn't you have, I was too hungover to blog), it seems the next Xbox will not in fact require a persistent internet connection as has been rumored for some time (that rumor extending to one particular Microsoft employee leaving the company after publicly embarrassing himself on Twitter.)

However, the verbiage from their press release (click here for a look at it on arstechnica) is still a little bit vague, and exactly what is meant by a scenario in which the "users expect [the console] to work without an internet connection," hasn't been made expressly clear, and personally I'd imagine that's because the next-box will in fact work offline, but will be completely fucking crippled without an internet connection.

This will be especially true if Microsoft decides to make it impossible for users to play used games on their new console, a move that will more than likely sell a few PS4s. But again, all rumor at this point, and Microsoft fans are wringing their hands in the hope that their chosen console manufacturer isn't so unbelievably fucking stupid. The big reveal is only two weeks out (May 21st), so all (or most) of our questions should be answered soon.

Summer-summer-summe---ahhh, screw the whole thing.

So here we are again. In the summer lull. Nothing amazing coming down the pipe for quite some time. We were to have Grand Theft Auto V by now (today, I think, was the original release date), but they've held back until this fall. Not that I have a problem with that. I always approve of a game company taking their time and delivering a product that's as clean as possible and worth everyone's time. Yet now, I've nothing to get me through the summer. Again.

If there were a GTA game out right now that was bigger than San Andreas, it would have my attention for 3 months. But no. Nothing to play (FWPs all day). Blood Dragon has come and gone and was only a 4 hour affair (even though it didn't need to be any longer than that), and the landscape looks bleak. Why the fuck does the video game industry so consistently abandon my birth month? I'm sure there's some bullshit excuse like "Oh, a lot of big movies are coming out and people want to spend their time outdoors." Well fuck them and their tans. I want games dammit.

Ok, admittedly, this coming summer is looking a lot better than summers past. In just a little over a week we're finally going to be able to play Metro: Last Light, a game I can't believe more people aren't talking about. I watched the first demo video for the post-apocalyptic shooter (I know, we've never played one of those before), and I gotta say there are some really great mechanics and animations at work. Take a look for yourself:



Then, of course, in mid June; The Last of Us. I've never disliked a Naughty Dog game, and based on the "meet the infected" video from yesterday and everything else I've learned about the game, I don't think I'm going to start now. If you don't know anything about it, check out the link from the last sentence, Google "The Last of Us," then punch yourself in the face for reading a video game blog and not knowing anything about a game that will probably be at the top of many "best of 2013" lists. Here's a screen shot, slacker.

Much like God of War 2 on PS2, it's quite likely that The Last of Us will be the last truly good looking AAA game on the PS3. So enjoy it while you can, and before you get knifed waiting in line for a PS4. Or GTAV.

And enjoy the summer lull, I suppose. Come fall, we'll all be risking our lives for PS4's, Grand Theft Auto V's, and Watch Dogs's's's.

Not quite Irish Coffee, May 3rd, 2013

Short one today. My birthday weekend has begun! As has the whiskey consumption and - clearly - downer discussion worthy of my Irish ancestry. I kid! Iron Man 3 tomorrow! Whiskey! Poor judgement! Oh, and I also made another 10 seconds of rage video in anticipation of Iron Man 3, and if you haven't already, check out my review of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. See you Monday, people! (I'll be hungover)

Last night I had a small bout of game fatigue. More than likely the result of playing through the entirety of Blood Dragon and writing a review for it in less than 36 hours. And it wasn’t the game’s fault. At all. I was just done with playing.

But there’s a problem with that. I don’t know any other way to unwind. I’ve always just leaned back on the couch with a game controller in hand and let escapism massage my brain back to health. So, as opposed to doing something absurd like not playing a video game to relax (which would surely lead to some form of substance abuse), I asked myself what I really wanted to play.

I usually just reach for something current. In an effort to make this whole game writing affair “my line of work,” I spend all of my time trying to keep up with trends, playing games that are both relevant and timely, and I rarely dive backward into my collection save for some seriously retro romps in my ROM collection. But last night I skipped that stuff. I needed to relax. Again, I thought about what I really wanted to play.

In went Mirror’s Edge. In my darkest hour, when I didn’t think another game could be played, in goes a first person parkour game from five years ago. Jesus, was it five years ago? I’m turning 30 tomorrow and time is starting to turn into some kind of stew. No linearity at all, I just bump into memories like a fork hitting a chunk of potato. Anyway...

I thought I said "Don't look down?" Clearly you've looked down.

Mirror’s Edge was the last risk that EA ever took. It was an amazing experience precisely for that reason. Flawed? Certainly. That’s how experiments tend to work. Or you could call them the growing pains of a new genre. But Mirror’s Edge stands as proof that some really interesting things can happen when creativity and AAA money come together. Something there is a sore lack of in gaming just these five little years later.

All the creativity seems to rest with indie gaming, and while that’s certainly a great thing for gaming, I’d like to see the creativity return to the big budget game. But, gaming’s a business, so I don’t think that’ll be happening any time soon.

Explanation for gap in service.

And that explanation (excuse) is this: Vacation last weekend, birthday planning for this weekend, a sick kittie cat that had to go to the emergency vet (she's fine and coming home today), and lastly Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. A game I'm sure you're aware I was a little bit excited about.

I started playing it yesterday morning at 7:30am, spent all day playing it and typing out my thoughts/notes. Crashed out, and spent all day today writing a review that ended up being nearly 1700 words. That review can be found here. I haven't done a straight up review in a while, and I was really excited to play Blood Dragon, so what you'll find if you click that link is both a writing exercise and a test of my journalistic integrity. You tell me if it worked.

In the midst of all that I'm still exercising like a crazy person in anticipation of the coming surf season, and now I'm just completely shot. I'm going to shower, lean back on my couch, and maybe play a little more Blood Dragon without the burden of a review hanging over my head.

Oh, and I can't recommend the following video of Jon Stewart interviewing Robert Downey Jr. highly enough. I think they were both a little star struck. Pretty awesome.

Catch you guys tomorrow morning.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Robert Downey Jr.
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Indecision Political Humor The Daily Show on Facebook

Irish Coffee, April 30th, 2013

Took me twenty-four hours to recover from a weekend of relaxation, but I seemed to have at least honed by brain enough to cut butter, if not overripe banana so... y'know... Yaaayyy... Before we get into the blog, in case you're not aware, there's a new set of Grand Theft Auto V trailers out, and they can be found here. I'll save "trailer analysis" for people dumb enough to do that sort of thing for page views. ("Trailer analysis." Also known as pausing it every 5 seconds and yammering on like a jackass that has no idea what he/she is talking about.) It's my birthday week, and I'll be playing Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon in less than 24 hours, maybe as few as twelve if XBL gets their shit together. Happy almost summer, people!

Nothing has helped the average moviegoer understand the difficult task of production like “behind the scenes" featurettes and commentary tracks. Sure, in the land of VHS many might have understood the basics: It’s expensive, it’s time consuming... it’s expensive. But in the land of the internet and extensive “making of” documentation, viewers now understand the utter insanity that is the set of the summer blockbuster and have a greater respect for the process.

This is what Abrams did with $140,000,000? ... Wait...

And this understanding isn’t just a passive one. The internet will of course be the internet, and everyone demands their opinion be heard and fancies themselves an expert filmmaker because they watched all nine hours of behind the scenes content on the Lord of the Rings blu-rays. Much in the same way a dipshit commenter accuses a person with a literature degree of not knowing the definition of the word “satire” because he reads things on the internet. Oops, that last part was personal.

No matter the case, this knowledge has created an environment in which Michael Bay has rebooted his reboot of his Ninja Turtles movie in response to some extremely pissed off fans, pictures and video are coming from the set of Amazing Spider-Man 2 on a near-daily basis, and Star Wars Episode VII’s production has said that fans and their feedback are “important to the process.”

And we receive important information; Like how ridiculous Spidey looks before post.

This sort of fan-service could easily result in many bad decisions, but well worded, cogent arguments tend to rise to the top on the aggregate-driven internet of 2013 and most film productions seem to be benefit when they acknowledge these well-made points. The process of filmmaking and the inherent difficulty of that process is now understood on a basic level by the fans, and this seems beneficial as a community of inclusion is now being built in the industry.

So why can’t games do this?

There seems to be a lack of respect for the game developer. For some reason game players are far more critical of game creators (re: mean) than film fans are of film creators. It could be the cost of the product and the time spent with it, or the emotional attachment that extends from the inherent interaction of the medium, or it could be a lack of understanding that stems from secretive production cycles. Many movies keep an equally tight lid on their process, but that’s clearly changing, as mentioned, even effecting those directors that are notorious for keeping fans in the dark while they work. Directors like JJ Abrams, who is (and I’m sure you know this, but it bears repeating) at the helm of the aforementioned Star Wars: Episode VII. 

Even in the case of an ultra secure production, the doors are thrown open upon home release to reveal a McDuckian treasure trove of “making of” information. This extra stuff is in many cases the reason not to pirate, as download sizes of a full blu-ray disk are prohibitive for even the most ardent of pirate, unless they have access to uncommon and ungodly internet connection speeds. Another benefit to be had by giving gamers the “behind the camera” access that movie fans receive.

Shown: Explanation of "McDuckian." Also, JJ Abrams' house.

Let gamers be a part of the process to the degree that movie fans are. Then there’d be an understanding - a true understanding - held by the average gamer that game creation is difficult, and that it can be an emotionally taxing and creatively exhausting process. We don't even have the gaming equivalent of the IMDB yet. Not one that works to similar effect, anyway.

The only difficulty is whether gamers would be interested in such things. Certainly, games don’t quite have the visceral behind the scenes footage in which it’s revealed that it took 9 cameras, 6 gallons of green M&Ms, 3 dead stunt guys, and 37 blowjob machines to complete the scene in which the armored school bus blows up a nunnery, but post-production of a film looks a lot like principal-production of a game, and that stuff can be equally interesting. And with games like Two Souls finally drawing some real Hollywood talent to the game creation landscape, a culture drenched in celebrity worship would knock over their own grandmother for an opportunity to kneel at the alter and see Ellen Page in a skin-tight mocap suit.

Let us in, game devs! We have so much love to give!

Irish Coffee, April 25th, 2013

Good morrow! Blood Dragon, Blood Dragon, Blood Dragon. Yesss! Dammit, I'm excited about this video game, and if you need evidence of that, just read the following blog. It's a bit gushy. In other news, another ridiculous video (Iron Man 2 this time), and I think it's an improvement. I've just been making these damn things as a warm up exercise, then watching them in a loop for no reason other than extremely short attentio- SQUIRREL!... False alarm, sorry about that. Weird morning.

The excitement. It’s consuming me. Has the world ever given you a present - a game, a movie, a book, a song - that so encapsulates everything you love that you feel like it was made just for you? Oh, to be a unique and delicate snowflake. And to receive the gift that is Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. My childhood is one giant neon blur of cyberpunk movies, flux capacitors, ghost busting, and ninjafied turtles, and Ubisoft seems to have Inceptioned that particular part of my brain.

If you’ve read my blog at all over the past month, you’ll know that I’ve made no small deal about this game, and that deal is only getting bigger between now and Blood Dragon’s May 1st release date. Hollywood gives me Iron Man 3, Ubisoft gives me Blood Dragon. My 30th birthday shall not suck.

Movie time:

Even if, for some reason, the Day-Glo dystopian aesthetic isn’t making your tingly bits stand up in take notice, did you happen to notice the fucking cyber-dragon shooting down a fucking helicopter with a fucking laser it shot out of its mouth?! If that had no effect, you have no soul and I’m fairly certain you should be on a watch list of some sort. You frighten me.

But beyond the differences are the similarities, and this expansion is going to give me more Far Cry 3. A game that came out of nowhere to be my AAA game of the year in 2012, and that I’ve sorely missed. I’ve actually just thrown it back into my 360, as I know I’m out of Far Cry 3 shape, and I need to get limbered up for Blood Dragon. Sacrifice is demanded.

Far Cry 3 is a game most effectively played when you chuck survival out of the window and put your energy into cinematic destruction of your enemies. Yes, you can just sit outside of a base with a sniper rifle and slowly pick off every offending pirate, but that’s just a waste of gaming’s gift to us all: Infinite respawns. Pick up a bandolier of molotov cocktails, burn everything around the base, and while the enemies are distracted, jump off of a water tower and bury a machete in their neck. Maybe a throwing knife. Maybe you just run through their base being chased by a tiger like you’re in a Benny Hill sketch, leaving them to deal with the blood thirsty beast. The point is you can have fun with it. 

And there’s that word again: Fun. Games are supposed to be fun. And any bastard developer that forgets that is gonna have me to deal with. It won’t be pretty. I’m 20% redneck and I have a drinking problem.

Irish Coffee, April 23rd, 2013

I'm back! Last week was kind of... Well, it was kind of rough for everybody everywhere. Seemed like the world was coming apart, and I didn't really have game writing in me. I do, after all, love games enough to be really fucking angry at them half of the time, and anger was just not on the menu last week. Just a kind of thin veneer of sad. Not even depression, just sad (no, not sadness either). That said, regular service resumes today. Oh, and I made this ridiculous video as an editing exercise. The video project is coming, I swear, and it will be funny. Also, an article on The Man, The Myth, The Legend: Shinji Mikami.

Thank god for Guacamelee. After a number of a AAA titles that barely ruffled my feathers, a fifteen dollar indie game again proves that budgets don’t matter, and that gaming’s greatest pleasures can be had when we dial it back, and just have fun with the damn things.

Oh... Oh no. I think I’m turning into a game hipster. All these indies I’m so in love with: Journey, Super Meat Boy, The Unfinished Swan. That’s how it starts. Next thing you know I’ll be deriding AAA titles in my Ninja Turtle beanie while I take duck-face-self-shots of myself drinking craft beer.

NOOOO!!!

It’s too late. This is the only fate for the jaded gamer. Or maybe I’m being too hard on myself. Maybe the whole term “hipster” is just a recycled pop culture phrase from the 1930s, used as a catch-all to describe a particular set of interests. A set of interests that were never meant to be exposed to the harsh light of popularity, but have been adopted en masse by a world that uses the internet to find the best of everything. Maybe judging someone by something as shallow the content of their game collection, alcohol preference, or clothing choices isn’t going to result in an accurate representation of who they are as a person. Or maybe Allagash tastes better than Budweiser, Journey’s a better game than Bioshock Infinite, and fuck you I love my Ninja Turtle beanie.

But back to Guacamelee before I go any further off the rails. First, the small talk: Created by Drinkbox Studios, Guacamelee is a wonderfully executed Metroidvania game with extremely tight controls, a hybrid beat-em-up fight system, a well realized (if quirky) artistic style, and all the inside jokes and references expected of an independent game. (Independent games are, after all, by the fans for the fans.) Taking the role of a Juan the Luchador out to rescue The Princess from The World of the Damned, you’ll take great pleasure in body slamming skeletons with a move list the length of which normally isn’t found on this side of Final Fight. If you’re not a fan of the genre, then no need to apply, but if you are, this is best representation released in quite some time.

This is a tame screenshot. Very tame.

The sense of satisfaction and palpable sense of character control are really tying this one together. Without spoiling anything, once you’ve unlocked all of Juan the Luchador’s abilities, you’ll chain together some pretty epic combos with nothing short of a mile wide grin on your face. Buy Guacamelee, body slam some skeletons.

I’ve been thinking about something lately in reference to AAA titles, and maybe I’m wrong, but: All the flash and quicktime events and predictability are making the titles that are supposed to be the most immersive into the least immersive. I can categorically say that I felt more a part of Guacamelee’s Mexican inspired backdrop than I felt a part of Columbia in Bioshock: Infinite, or whatever-the-fuck the name of the island was in Tomb Raider. (For those keeping score, that’s one AAA title I didn’t like and one I did.)

It’s not that Guacamelee is doing anything that’s completely new itself, but there’s something about the average AAA title that’s just... Soulless, I suppose. I just feel detached from what’s happening in front of me. And while those games do give me “Holy fuck, that was badass,” moments, that’s about all they do. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Immersion is everything, and I don’t think the modern AAA title is all that immersive. They’re certainly not as immersive as a silly Metroidvania game that has more dick jokes in it than my average blog.

That idea’s not fully formed yet, I know. I have a question, but not an answer. I’ll be sure to tell you when I do.

Irish Coffee, April 18th, 2013

A week from tomorrow, and I'm heading down to Daufuskie Island (where I grew up) for 48 hours of top shelf chill time. And I need it. The monotony of my daily routine is starting to get the better of me. I've been writing, on average, 50k words a week like some sort of god damn...uhh... writing machine... Hey, I never said they were good words. See you tomorrow!

Ok Sega, what the fuck? To you, years of flogging Sonic’s long-dead corpse in hope of another ring popping out seems like a completely reasonable business practice. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, I can’t get my hands on a remake of the best series Genesis ever created: Streets of Rage. Oh, it’s not, you say? Just watch the opening sequence from SoR 1.

How does that not make you want to kick ass? Start screen and you’re already pumped like Vin Diesel.  Yeah! Rage! Gonna fuckin punch somebody! And you do. Oh yes, you do...

God dammit that was awesome. Balletic. Visceral... Pwn-...uhh, -tacular. Leave me alone, it's been a long week. 

Lately, I’ve been consumed almost exclusively with thoughts of quality gameplay. While it’s no secret that I wasn’t the biggest fan of the gameplay in Bioshock: Infinite, the world seems to have forgiven its sins. I haven’t. I’ll never forgive, Irrational. I’ll never forget.

I must need more coffee.

I just don’t understand what happened, exactly. For some reason I can turn on a Genesis beat-em-up that’s more than twenty years old and have a greater sense of impacting the game world than I do when I play Bioshock Infinite, or Kane and Lynch, or Fallout. Yes I’m lumping those three together. This is a discussion about gameplay. Don’t hurt me.

Taking it back even further, and the bad guys in fucking Double Dragon for NES reacted when I punched them. I drill a baddie in the chest with a machine gun in Bioshock Infinite or set him on fire and he seems not to give a shit until the moment all of his hit points vanish. This tangibility, this conveyance of task is fucking mission critical for immersion, and if games are going to tell the stories of the future, immersion’s an important aspect of achieving that goal. 

How is a game more immersive than a film if there is no gameplay? How does it bring anything new to the table? How are games going to be better than film? And yes, that's a question we should be asking ourselves. They'll always be two completely distinct experiences, but until games are as respected as film is, the goal shouldn't be "let's be the movies," it should be "let's tell better stories than they do in ways that they can't." Bioshock Infinite doesn't do this. It's not the future of storytelling. 

And it’s not just Bioshock Infinite. I’m just using it as a proxy for a myriad of games out there that don’t appeal to me. I am a gamer, and I like the gameplay in the video games I play to be a satisfying, entertaining experiences, not the afterthought to a story that could have been told on a movie screen or in the pages of a book. 

If the purpose of the action is just to fill space between one story element and another, why not just skip the action altogether? Why not make a movie?

Irish Coffee, April 17th, 2013

Sorry there wasn’t a blog post yesterday folks (or any word from me for that matter). I had the events in Boston on my mind, wouldn’t have been able to write without mentioning it, and didn’t want to mention it on a comedy(?)-gaming blog. So I didn’t. And honestly, there wasn’t much to write about in the way of gaming news yesterday. Nor is there today, it would seem. 

Oh, before we go any further, I'm completely aware of this morning's Nintendo Direct and Link to the Past 2. I just don't care. How is this a big deal? More rehash. Another tasteless cash grab that insults the original game by putting it on a gimmicky portable. Fuck you Nintendo, the WiiU is bad and you should feel bad. Moving on.

I know these blog posts are usually topical, but there honestly aren’t any topics to discuss. Not one stitch of gaming news out there that would make anyone react with more than a “meh.” Oh, look, Ace Attorney 5 has a release date. I don’t even know what the fuck that is. I’m assuming it’s the japanese DS game with the screaming anime attorney, but I could be wrong. Don’t care if I am, either.

Boooorred. I’m so bloody bored. I’m like Sherlock between cases, just not as smart or handsome. I am cranking away at my first video project ever, and it’s going well, but no one warned me how tedious video editing can be. They should’ve called it digital crochet. I should come up with some better analogies.

Oh, there is this live action Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon video released in anticipation of the game’s launch on May 1st, and it’s fairly amusing.

But that’s hardly news. And I’m consistently terrified by the lack perspective shown by 90s kids toward the 80s. I suppose that explains why they’re all wearing 80s clothes. They don’t realize how horrible it was the first time around... And why the fuck is youtube encouraging this shit with “VHS mode” on their videos? I... just... huh? 

We’ve spent all these years, clawing our way to 3D/HD video, only to optionally go back to low-def as a novelty? Is the world so lacking in substance that the concept of VHS seems a rich experience? Cuz it fucking wasn't. There's is NO REASON TO BE NOSTALGIC HERE! Turn back!

Do you kids have any idea how hard it was to masturbate to a blurry VHS pause screen? Do you? Cuz it was fucking annoying. Especially if you had a VCR that stopped the video after being paused for five minutes. So, twenty minutes for a blur-free boob-pause, and five minutes to finish up. Fucking horrible. If you want to relive the 80s so badly, buy a shitty Zach Morris phone that barely gets any reception, go to a store to buy your media, masturbate to pictures on parchment, and watch everything in low definition. Do that and I won’t punch you for wearing leg warmers.

I’ll try to think of any interesting topic for tomorrow morning. More interesting than fapping, I mean.

Irish Coffee, April 15th, 2013

Good Monday, everyone! My cell phone battery died after I hit "snooze" this morning and I slept an hour late. So the blog's an hour late. My apologies. I don't know if you noticed this, but after Satuday's blog on Road Redemption, a member of the dev team left a comment. Yet another reason to love indie gaming. Community involvement. There isn't a whole lot of gaming news out there today for me to comment on, but a lucky few have Oculus Rift dev kits in their hands, and they've started uploading...

Well this is sad, and pathetic, but I’ve spent my whole morning with my eyes crossed, watching YouTube videos of people gaming with the Oculus Rift. The dev kits have arrived, it seems, and the tubes are lighting up with gameplay demos. Here, for example is a demo of Mirror’s Edge on the Rift, complete with the dual screen I’m becoming far too familiar with.

Remember those Magic Eye books from the 90s? If you cross your eyes in just such a way, the above video will display three screens, not two, and the center image will be in 3-D. Then you’ll be me. Staring cross-eyed at a 2-D screen that suddenly feels ancient, dried drool on the edge of your mouth, wishing to god that you had your head inside of a proper VR headset. And so it will go, until you find yourself on the Oculus Rift website trying to bargain with the logical part of your brain, attempting to warrant a $300 dev kit while knowing little to nothing about game development. Then you’ll be sad, and return to YouTube, and spend another two hours cross-eyed, now considering whether it’s reasonable to duct tape your laptop to your face. 

As a person that grew up in the 90s, the dream of VR was always promised, never delivered. Nearly every month, in some lost corner of the news page in my favorite game magazine, a picture of a person, ear-to-ear grin applied liberally to their face, head strapped into what we all thought - nay, knew - was the future of gaming. It felt so close. Then the god damn fucking Virtual Boy came out and reality took our dream out back and beat it to death for its wallet. 

Shown: The 90s.

I do have one positive memory of VR from my youth, and it was at this moment I realized that the dream was not only possible, but necessary for the future of gaming. I was at Epcot center for my 12th birthday. My mom didn’t have a ton of money, but she got together what she could, as I was a kid and desperately wanted to go to Disney World. While there, we stood in line for one of those boring “behind the scenes of Disney World” tours, in an effort to get out of the crushing heat of a Floridian May.

While in line, random people were selected for something, I didn’t know for what and didn’t care. Until I heard someone ask “What are we doing?” To which the tour girl said “We want you to participate in a VR demonstration.” At this time, according to my mother, I “started wailing and acting like I’d been shot.” This continued until a middle aged woman said “you can go in my place, I don’t really care.” Suddenly I was exorcised of whatever demon had possessed me. I was in.

Inside, they sat me down on what looked like a black motorcycle seat with a u-shaped flight stick on the front of it (pretty much exactly what you’d see in the cockpit of an airplane.) Then it happened. They lowered the giant black headset on to me, and I was flying a magic carpet around Agrabah. 

I can’t stress enough that not only was I controlling the carpet, but that whatever that VR was did not become the magic carpet VR ride now found at Disney World. Nor can I find anything that even resembles a screen shot of it. But I will tell you this: That was one of, if not the most, important gaming experiences of my life. And now, the Oculus Rift is almost in my hands, and the anticipation is driving me to strange behavior. Behavior like staring cross-eyed at YouTube videos for hours at a time.

If everything we’ve been hearing about the Oculus Rift is true, then VR is not only going to be a reality soon, but will function better than anyone has ever dreamed. The world is finally going to deliver on a promise it made me when I was ten years old.

And they better hurry up. This laptop is fucking killing my neck.