Holy SHIT, this thing's still here?!

Really? Three years since I updated this shit-heap? Fuck you, time! I thought we had a deal! You don't constrict as I age, and I don't mention that weekend in Boca with Einstein... Whatever, fuck you anyway. THEY PEGGED! I have photographic evidence!

No matter. To the point: I haven't updated Stir Fried Gaming in a while for a few reasons. Reasons I will condense into the only sentences worth reading if you're just dyin for s'more Ned... Coincidentally, "Dyin for S'more Ned" is the name of my new album. Only available on Tidal (fuckin TOPICAL HUMOR, AMIRITE?!) Moving on...

Stir Fried Gaming will (in short order) become Stir Fried Thoughts, because I have a fuckton more to talk about than video games, and I'm tired of being hamstrung by the whole "game" thing. It also makes way more sense as a title. Who the fuck would stir fry a video game? I've tried. No amount of soy sauce can save it... Because it's made of plastic. Or, y'know, data if you're like me and dumped physical media in 2012... Long story short; never lick your modem.

Also, as this transition occurs, I'll start uploading my mixed reality and VR enabled YouTube videos to coincide with the launch of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

Figuring out how to manage such feats and the time inherent to that process are precisely the reasons I never bothered to publish videos on how bitchy it was to hate the Street Fighter V release, or any of the other Stir Fried Thoughts (haHA!) I've had since February... Thoughts that would have made perfectly tolerable videos.

Service resumes soon, and... fuck it. I'll start updating this cobwebbed blog again. Good warmup if anything. But I'm leaving the banner as-is. A monument to my inability to Photoshop a god damn thing in 2013. Soooo... I suppose I'll see you Monday.

Stop touching that, you'll go blind,
Ned

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.