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.

Irish Coffee, April 13th, 2013

Promise kept! Little short today, but rife with videos, so prep your short attention spans. Absolutely gorgeous day in Charleston, and I'm going to get out of the house if it kills me. And, considering the intensity of the summer sun and my pasty French/Irish countenance, it just might. There shan't be a post tomorrow, but I shall return Monday morning. Oh, and if you haven't, check out my latest contribution to VentureBeat. TO ARMS! (Sorry, I watched The Hobbit last night.)

Sit on your hands and wait. Maybe, if you’re lucky enough, the gods on mount Gamelympus will smile upon you, and release a reboot of your favorite franchise. That was a fact of life for starry-eyed gamers as few as five years ago, but is no longer the case. Major developers and publishers, you’re officially on notice. If you don’t give us what we want, we’ll take matters into our own hands. Case in point:

That’s right, a new school Road Rash with all the trimmings. Just watching the forty-five seconds of gameplay from the beginning of their Kickstarter video put me at half mast. It seems I wasn’t alone in my cries for a reboot of this deserving franchise. I watched in horror as undeserving IP was given the new-gen treatment, all the while wondering why no one was willing to scoop up the giant pile of money that could be had with something as simple as an HD re-release of the Genesis classic.

And, for once, there’s a Kickstarter project to which I will contribute my hard earned dollars. Look out gaming world, there will be a character named Ned or Mr. Ned or King Nedrick in Road Redemption (though they really could have spent a little more time on that title). Duke Nedrick? I'm open to suggestions.

But more important than the half role of quarters in my pocket or the fact that a deserving concept is being rebooted, is the fact that Road Redemption perfectly represents the changing landscape of game publication. Designers no longer limited by platform or technology are creating the games that they want to create and that gamers actually want to play. And Road Redemption looks pretty damn good in spite of its lack of AAA money. It’s certainly no Battlefield 4, but it doesn’t need to be. All the elements of Road Rash are present and accounted for, as are the technological advancements to improve core gameplay.

The road looks pretty rough for major game developers and publishers (see what I did there?). They can scoop up indie studios all day, but in the gaming world of 2013 new developers are cropping up like weeds. Rend one from the ground and two more appear in its place. And let’s not forget about the modding community.

That is a multiplayer test of Sleeping Dogs for PC, a game that fans (myself included) thought was deserving of a multiplayer mode. So they made one. 

Gamers are crafting the future of gaming, and that’s fucking awesome. And if all of this was too upbeat for your Saturday morning, you have to understand where I’m coming from. Summer has arrived in Charleston, SC.

BRING IT, DAYSTAR!

Heyo!

Edit: I wrote a thing for gamesbeat! You can find it here. If you just can't get enough of MrNed. Who can?

Sorry, everybody, I've been a bad blogger this week. Allow me to explain:

I'm presently working on a video project and it has completely consumed my time and my brain, because it turns out these things are really fucking hard... I mean difficult. Get your mind out of the gutter.

I now have a great deal more respect for people like EgoRaptor and AngryVideoGameNerd.

My days have been a blur of enormous file sizes, cropped videos, crash courses in audio editing, and bolstering of my After Effects kung-fu. Even after writing a script, it's still difficult to work out the order in which things are to proceed. As in: where do reaction clips go, etc. So, yeah, this shit is no joke. A little project that I thought would take me a few days is now looking like it's going to run about two weeks.

But I think it will be worth it. While there's always the danger of spreading oneself too thin, I've always liked the idea of doing a project like this, and I really need to get it out of my system. So I'm gonna. As penance for only posting two real blogs this week, I'll throw one up (that was intentional) tomorrow morning. That is if my girlfriend doesn't decide that we need to "get out of the house." Whatever the hell that means.

The Day Star frightens me.

Irish Coffee, April 10th, 2013

Ok, I had to get this out. It was tearing me up inside. The entire gaming world is fawning over Bioshock Infinite, and well...

I didn’t like Bioshock Infinite.

Everybody keeps talking about all this “new” stuff it did. Am I just that thick? What exactly did Infinite do that was new and interesting, or is there some sort of tacit agreement with Irrational Games that I’m unaware of, and they send a hit squad to your house if you don’t repeat the PR verbiage? It’s a shooter (and everyone seems capable of admitting that it’s not very good at that job), set in a very pretty place, with powers very similar to those in the last two Bioshock titles, and a twist ending that’s designed to make people feel dumb if they don’t get it when in fact it doesn’t make any damn sense anyway. Sorry, but Infinite just bored the piss out of me.

Sorry, Lizzy, this only gets worse.

I loved Bioshock 1, played all of an hour of Bioshock 2 because it was retread, and must have finished Infinite because I’m a masochist. Yet the whole world keeps talking about it like it's gaming's second coming. Please, somebody, help me out here.

If I say Bioshock Infinite is a bad game, I’m the idiot. Why the hell is that? Because it’s a boring game with dead backgrounds, gameplay that feels more turned based than anything else, a floating city that does very little to convey that it’s floating, and a rehashed (and paired down, for some fucked up reason) version of a combat mechanic from Bioshock, which has been out for six years and is a far better game in nearly every respect? Is it fun to shoot at bad guys that don't react to gunshot wounds for hours at a time for the privilege of experiences an awkwardly scripted cut scene?

Yet Infinite gets amazing reviews... Why? Because they “tried something new.” Everybody keeps fucking saying that, but what exactly did they try that was new? Anybody? Please someone tell me, because the reviews don’t. They just leave it there. Bullshit, they tried something new. It’s Bioshock on a floating city. Bioshock did some new things, Bioshock Infinite doesn’t.

Does ambition preclude fair assessment of the end product? What the fuck did Infinite actually do so well? Everyone keeps saying that Columbia’s "brilliantly realized," but it’s just fucking not. It’s inhabitants barely say a word, don’t move (how long will that paperboy wave his product in my face? Until time rends itself from the universe?), and fucking vanish when combat begins. They don’t run away, they vanish. Do mothers carry their children on the skyrails? Did I miss that explanation? Why can’t I talk to anyone or buy anything, or in any way interact with this big, pretty, city they spent so much time designing? The whole of Columbia feels like the Wounded Knee exhibit from the end of act one, or a movie set from a spaghetti western.

Oh, they must be talking about the plot. The over-the-top, cheese dripping swill the likes of which I haven’t seen outside of a Lifetime movie. Other games have had better plots, or at least similar plots as far as their means of conveyance and execution, so it can’t be that.

So... Skyhooks?

But I would still be “wrong” if I wrote a bad review for it. Why? Because it was expensive to produce? Because everyone on the development team tried so hard? Has the real world started handing out fucking achievement ribbons? Do we now reward mere effort like the judges of a fifth grade science fair? I blame metacritic.

I don’t have a problem with a lot of what Infinite does, but it certainly isn’t new, it certainly isn’t innovative, and it certainly isn't blowing up any skirts in the gameplay department. I felt bored and unsatisfied every second of the Infinite experience. I’m playing Journey and Tomb Raider again to get the taste out of my mouth. Maybe a bit of Far Cry 3 or Bioshock 1. Y’know, good video games.

Really liked Elizabeth, though. 5.5/10

Doesn't make any sense to me, either.

Some stuff, not really a blog.

Hey there!

No blog today, as I have a pretty serious case of writer's block and about five projects to finish. The overload is making me shut down. It's not pretty. Working eleven hours a day for no pay and an audience of zero isn't the most rewarding thing on the planet, either. You are out there right? Is this thing on? Is the comments section broken? Are you following my Twitter feed? Sharing with your friends? It's cuz I'm a shitty writer, isn't it? LOVE ME DAMMIT!

Told you it wasn't pretty. Back tomorrow, I promise.

For now, enjoy this leaked footage of Farcry3: Blood Dragon, starring Michael Biehn. You read that right. Bask in the glory of the Biehn's gravely, dulcet tones. That is if you can hear past the player that seems to think someone, somewhere, is interested in him swearing at the game in heavily accented English.

Irish Coffee, April 8th, 2013

My weekend involved a few regrets, many drinks, and a gaggle of IMAX dinosaurs. This morning will involve a few espresso shots, many crunches, and some personal time with Dishonored, a game I'm finally getting around to. Good luck with your week and see you tomorrow.

I should just write up all of my predictions. That way, when facts finally come along to support them, I can firmly lay claim to my desired title of “gaming soothsayer.” Because predicting the future is groovy, and who the fuck else is going to voluntarily call themselves a “soothsayer?” 

It seems, based on the latest rumors, that the next Xbox will offer two models: One subscription based and running $300, and a non-subscription flavor, clocking in at $500. Seems that a persistent internet connection is also “confirmed,” or as close to such a thing as we can hope for this month.

Now to my “prediction,” and this didn’t relate directly to the coming console cycle, but the world of tomorrow. 

Presently, tablets are in a race to provide power comparable to that of the game console. While it will surely take them a few years, they will eventually catch up, and the landscape for home gaming will change completely. Steam box and the Ouya are bringing mobile games to the television, and it takes little more than a bluetooth capable controller and an HDMI cable for any compatible device to output in a similar fashion. Devices like the Razer Edge.

The titles that can benefit from this coming together of devices don’t run anything like their AAA console counterparts, save for those running on Razer’s holy-shit-why-ow-my-wallet-expensive gaming tablet, but time will cure that particular affliction. What this will create - and rather unceremoniously - is not the death of the game console, but its inevitable transformation. The game console market will change as well, because if the tablet that replaced your laptop can hook up to your television and run a AAA game, why on Earth would you buy a separate machine to do that job?

The world of mobile gaming and independent publication will create an environment in which not just Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft create game consoles, but Motorola, LG, and Apple do as well. And how, prey, do these mobile companies provide most people that can’t afford a $700 smart phone with a yearly or bi-yearly upgrade? Contracts. Sign with Verizon for two years, and that $700 Droid is now $200 ($150 with a mail-in rebate! Act now!)

Microsoft’s only real problem, if today’s rumors prove to be true, is that they jumped the gun. This will certainly be the last generation for the traditional game console, but this is the last generation of the traditional game console. A move such as this would make perfect sense once technological convergence has had its way with the gaming world, but we’re not quite there yet. Further, Microsoft is in fact releasing a traditional game console, not the jumped-up, TV/Oculus Rift-ready tablet of tomorrow. The market is simply not ready for this sort of thing yet, nor is Microsoft’s console.

All signs point to the final console cycle being dominated by Sony, bookending their superiority with the PSX and the PS4. If even half of the rumors surrounding Microsoft’s next console prove to be true, I’ve already made my decision.

Also, my 30th birthday is next month, and I’m hoping someone buys me a Vita. Hint hint.

Irish Coffee, April 5th, 2013

Livid. I'm fucking LIVID this morning. I should calm down, but if I drink alone before noon it'll be time to seek help and I hate hospitals. I think I'll just go outside and kick a tree until it falls over. Also, happy Friday! I'll try to get a blog up this weekend, but if I don't manage it, see you on Monday morning!
Mahalo.

Rut roh Raggy. Someone’s been a dipshit.

Meet Adam Orth, creative director at Microsoft, who is probably being unceremoniously spanked as we speak. If there is such a position in Microsoft’s PR department. I can’t imagine why there wouldn’t be. He took to twitter to espouse the virtues (if I could be so generous) of an always online console. The conversation in question can be found here. Shortly after this exchange, Orth set his twitter feed to private.

Microsoft has been very tight lipped about their next-gen offering, but rumors have been circulating  that the coming console (codenamed Durango) will require a persistent internet connection. What this means, for the uninitiated, is that the console will essentially cease to function as a game machine if your internet connection drops or you don’t have the internet period. Let’s say, some of the problems you might have if you live in a rural area. Something Orth seems to have a problem with as well:

If there’s one thing gamers have proven, it’s that we want control of our content. For evidence of this, look no further than the clusterfuck that was SimCity’s launch. Within a week, the more technically inclined of our ilk had found a way to make an “always online” game function offline, and publicly humiliated the game’s publisher. Uh-oh. EA, you silly little liars. Someone call the spank team from the PR department.

So, naturally, when Orth started saying stupid things in a public forum, the gaming community went into White Knight Mode. Here are just a few of the reactions from Reddit, from whence this story came:

Now, it’s not just that this guy is a towering douchebag (he is) or that a game consoles with persistent internet connections are a bad idea (they are), it’s that this is yet another demonstration of the ever-widening disconnect between the corporate structure of game publication, and the average gamer. Can they not see the signs? Do they not understand that the AAA title is rapidly becoming a relic, and that gamers can and will take their money to independent markets if they aren’t treated with at least some basic respect? This isn’t the movie industry, and companies like EA and Microsoft need to realize that. Video games and their distribution platforms are far too mercurial an entity to be controlled with an iron grip.

Additionally, in regards to Orth’s tweet that he should be able to say what he wants on Twitter: You have the words “Microsoft Creative Director” in your Twitter description, you fucking child. You are therefor responsible for the stupid shit that oozes out of your brain. If you want to spout this tripe at the populace, create a different twitter account that doesn’t have your name or the name of your employer on it and that doesn’t list your position. See if anyone wants to listen to your bullshit then.

Sorry, I went a little off the rails, there. It just makes me unbelievably fucking angry when rich, bitch-made little cocksuckers like Orth take offense to the idea that someone might be poor or live in a rural area. I did live in a rural area most of my life, and I was poor, and if I still lived on Daufuskie Island, I wouldn’t be able to own a console with a persistent internet connection, if I could even afford the thing in the first place. Why don’t you go somewhere in rural America and try saying this shit to someone’s face. See how well that goes for you, you impotent little shit.

Welcome to the real world, Sweet Billy. You’re going to be pantsed and stuffed in a locker.

No blog today

Hello all!... Five of you. Comment or something, I feel so lonely, here. 

No blog today, as I'm putting the finishing touches on an article about empathy in video games. Shouldn't be a bad read, and should be finished this afternoon. I'm also editing that particular piece, not writing it. An important distinction, as I gouged the tip of my index finger with a six inch German chef's knife yesterday. It's my kitchen excalibur! How could it betray me! Anyway, typing hurts.

I'll post an update when my article's online. Full blog tomorrow!

Irish Coffee, April 3rd, 2013

Oh boy! A blog that actually makes sense and has a point! I'm going to start calling this "Wednesday for Thought." Or something clever. Leave me alone, I'm finishing up an article for submission to gamesbeat.com, putting together my first video rant, and trying to keep my cat from going completely mental (I don't think she's had enough catnip this week.) Once more unto the breach. See you tomorrow!

I have a problem, and it’s all TED’s fault. Every time I come across a link to a TED talk, I go down a six-hour-deep rabbit hole of educational videos. When I emerge, I swear I’m an expert in cognitive psychology, astrophysics, or international politics. Someone give me a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, I’m ready for my students. I might think I’m in A Beautiful Mind, but it’s more like the episode of Futurama where Fry thinks he’s a robot.

My most recent adventure to the bowels of TED.com did lead me to something fairly interesting, however.

If you don’t have seventeen minutes to spend watching that video, I’ll give you the gist of it: Cognitive researcher Daphne Bavelier runs down the positive aspects of action video games on the brain, mostly as they relate to vision and multitasking. After espousing the positive aspects of moderate action game use, she goes on to say that she’d like to develop a game that was not only fun to play, but that nested the beneficial qualities she’d just finished covering.

And this got me thinking about games that have not only been improving my ability to track multiple moving objects or bolster my reaction time, but that have really taught me something subconsciously. One experience in particular stood out: Assassin’s Creed II.

During college, I had the good fortune of traveling around Europe for a semester on a literary tour. About a month in to the trip, I found myself in Venice. After getting settled in, I had some time to myself and decided to go for a wander. I didn’t know the city, and wanted to grab a beer at a local joint and soak in the atmosphere, as is my wont when I’m in a new place.

And wander I did. I was completely lost. Compounding my trouble, it was three days before the start of Carnevale di Venezia, and the streets weren’t exactly scant. So I kept turning, down one narrow alley to a dead end, back again and another narrow alley. Lost. That is until I rounded a corner and found myself in Piazza San Marco. 

Purty, ain't it?

Almost immediately, the entirety of ACII came flooding back, and I knew exactly where I was. Even without the benefit of Ezio’s parkour skills, I managed to find my way from Piazza San Marco to the Rialto Bridge, where I promptly wandered into a smokey bar full of locals, cheap beer, and salmon mousse. Memory synched.

It bothers me that more games haven’t taught me something as valuable as even my basic geographical understanding of Venice. Games rarely teach me much of anything. In some sort of ethereal way I might come to better understand character development or people in general, or I might find something like Bioshock Infinite’s city of Columbia interesting enough that I spend some time studying American exceptionalism, but games rarely teach me anything in the way that Assassin’s Creed II taught me the layout of Venice.

And perhaps that’s what games need. Not to suddenly bear the burden of the classroom, but to own up to a social responsibility inherent in their existence as an artistic medium. If games can improve the lives of those who play them, isn’t it the responsibility of developers to do so? If they already improve the cognitive functions mentioned in Bavelier’s TED talk, why can’t they take it a step further and give the end user not just an experience, but some tangible knowledge as well? 

Assassin’s Creed II was far from an “educational video game” in the derogatory sense, but it certainly educated me.

Irish Coffee, April 2nd, 2013

Something has my dander up this morning, and I like it. Oh, and I mention BBC's Sherlock in this morning's post, and I can't recommend it highly enough. All six ninety minute episodes are on Netflix. You have no excuse.

Games are stupid. Or at least they assume their audience is stupid. I suppose one hand washes the other in this case. There is an ever-shrinking bubble of technical limitations placed on the modern game designer, yet the under-utilization of modern techniques has left us playing the same games in the same way for well over a decade. It’s something like buying a $100 worth of Kobe beef to make a chicken fried steak. Complete waste of talent.

I recently finished watching BBC’s Sherlock series on Netflix, and if anything can be taken away from that show, it’s that the modern television audience is quite a bit smarter than it was when CSI debuted thirteen years ago. Even if the audience isn’t any smarter, show creators are clearly assuming their audience is more intelligent and acting accordingly. While there is a glut of stupid entertainment out there for the shoveling (I’m looking at you, American reality TV), there is certainly a market for “smarter” shows like Sherlock. Where are my smarter games?

Someone call Baker Street.

Before you jump all over me in an effort to point out that there are a plenty of “smart” games, let me just say: Yes, but they’re indies, and if I play one more quirky side-scroller in an effort to escape the Michael Bayification of the modern AAA title, I’m going to beat a hipster to death with their own pomade can. Even when taking indies into account, there aren’t many games that assume the player is smart. Hand holding tutorial sequences, hyper-obvious objective markers, plots that (even when complex) are explained to us like we’re five. Sure, there are plenty of games that are a little clever, a little complex, but nothing on par with complex, intelligent story telling in other mediums. Where's our Gatsby? Our Citizen Cane? Our Sherlock Holmes? At this point I’ll even settle for a Fight Club.

Now this could be chalked up to difficulty of conveyance for the video game. Game designers can assume their audience is intelligent all they like, but if the player happens to be a chimp that got a hold of a game controller or my girlfriend on tequila night, no amount of complexity is going to keep the avatar from jumping up and down in a corner and spinning around in a circle. But I don’t know that this is much of an excuse anymore. The entertainment world seems to care less and less about the lowest common denominator. They’re taken care of: just strap on TLC or Bravo like a feed bag.

The top tier games (as far as budget is concerned) are running anywhere from one-hundred to three-hundred million dollars. What we’re being told, essentially, is that nowhere in that budget is there room to develop new and interesting ways for games to tell a story. I call bullshit. Even when considering corporate interests such as broad appeal and profitability, there is still plenty of room to improve the delivery mechanism for interactive story telling.

And yet, there seems a dearth of any real effort to do so.

How it is impossible, with all the money thrown into game creation, and all of intelligent people developing them, that the closest we can get to a Sherlockian detective tale is L.A. Noire? A game so poorly executed that any review over a 7.0 must have been the result of a reviewer taking pity on the careers of the D-list actors called in to have their heads digitized. “Look! Over here! A clue! Press ‘A!’ It’s the green button!” 

We deserve a better class of video game, dammit. Not because we’re all so smart, but because game creators should stop assuming that we aren’t.

I don’t want my games to come from a feed bag, I want Kobe, dammit.

Irish Coffee, April 1st, 2013

Not funny, kind of lame, and very short. Welcome to Monday's blog! No, this isn't an April Fool's prank. I don't think I have the faculties for such a thing at the moment. Try as I might, I can never write a decent blog on Monday. Funny seems to leave my fingers, and each word is a mountain to climb. Though today's issues might have more to do with the ten-or-so pounds of Easter Dinner's baked mac and cheese presently residing in my distended gut. Fat-glazed fog. Least I wrote this fucker. Oh, and mild Tomb Raider spoiler ahead. See you tomorrow. 

I just finished playing Bioshock Infinite, but I want to talk about Tomb Raider, a game I finished just minutes before stepping on to Irrational’s floating city. Specifically, I tend to feel a little empty inside when I finish a particularly engaging single player campaign, and while this feeling was equally pronounced in both Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite, something bothered me quite a bit more about Tomb Raider's departure.

Been one hell of a week.

Tomb Raider’s story certainly isn’t more engaging than Bioshock Infinite’s, and I don’t know that the former has the smarts of the latter. I say “don’t know,” because I don’t think even Irrational Games has a firm grasp of the paradoxical clusterfuck that constitutes the closing minutes of their latest offering. But Tomb Raider suffers from an often used, and unfortunately necessary feature shared by many action games: After the end credits role, you can once again enter the game world.

Ostensibly, this feature exists for the collection of items you might have missed, and general achievement hunting, but by its very nature it casts a cold pallor on the game you’ve just finished playing.

No one wants a game world to feel empty. The entire goal of game design (from indie to AAA monster) is make a world feel populated and alive. As mentioned, I often feel a little empty inside when I finish a particularly engaging title, and I jump at the opportunity to go back to the game world to fill the void. All that I find when I utilize this feature is a shadow of the world that I lived in minutes before. Never more empty, never more devoid of life, my avatar trapped in a purgatory that they can never escape. There is no goal marker, there is no ending, there are no battles to fight. There is no “life” for the character anymore.

The unfortunate side effect: If I choose to stop playing the game for an extended period of time after a brief visit to the netherverse, the netherverse becomes the defining memory of that game. Lara didn’t escape the island with her friends, she’s still trapped there. Hunting for a finite supply of collectibles in an infinite world. Fucking depressing, really.

And I’m more impacted by the departure of Tomb Raider for this reason. Its characters didn’t mean as much to me as those in Infinite, not did the plot hold the depth of Infinite's. But seeing Lara running around a lifeless game world left a bad taste in my mouth. The empty island almost begging me to start a new game.

But this is a personal problem, and not a broader game industry issue. Not much more can be expected from me on a Monday morning. I have completed two pretty fantastic AAA titles over the past week, each one draining my emotional reserves with their passing. I had damn good time with both, but I’m going to need some more time with Tomb Raider before I can move on to a third game.

I’ll be funny tomorrow, I swear.