20090406.outOfControl

The dying-a-slow-death aggregator of women/comics sex issues, When Fangirls Attack, pointed me today to an interesting article evaluating the position that female protagonists enjoy under the male gaze as instigated by contemporary videogame developers. Here's the summary of the part that I found interesting, if only because I disagreed.

Using Tomb Raider as a test case, the author decides that one of the primary features game developers build into games of this sort centers around the concept of control. And particularly, control of and—most importantly—over the female avatar.* As games are often built upon the proposition of virtually-realized fantasy, the author extends this to include the persona of control—as evidence of gamers' and developers' previously internalized desire to control women. If the author had recently read Bolaño, he might attribute this desire to the conscious/unconscious fear men hold for women.

In Tomb Raider, instead of becoming another—you can control another. The prospect of controlling another, as is made possible by video-games, acts as a form of interactive voyeurism as the male gamer may not feel as if they themselves are implemented within the game which may change the way they react to different situations.

The author believes that the way male gamers play a game in which the avatar is a clearly sexualized characterization differs markedly from playing with alternative representation, positing among other actions, that male gamers will intentionally bring about character deaths in particular ways that might (and this could just be my read on what he's saying) draw upon or even help exorcise male fear of the female. He additionally makes the point that when these avatars are presented in-game from the first person camera-view, players feel less of this desire to control a third party and are more likely to inhabit the avatar to the point of creating a vaguely intimate bond with the character's plight.

Speaking again of third person avatar control and specifically citing Tomb Raider's protagonist as example, the author continues:

This level of control could also act as a means for the male audience to self-assert an attitude of dominance over the opposite sex both directly and indirectly. Directly, it would satisfy the male gamers’ satisfaction of control and leadership by directly having control over the female character, and the actions she performs, to the extent where you can choose whether she survives or not.

The author sees control of the female avatar as speaking overtly of the male desire for patriarchy, the male dismissal of the female as full-fledged person, and the male desire to dominate the feminine Other that he fears. He sees this as a conscious-or-not assertion of patriarchal hegemony.

The thing is, I think he's right that a character like Lara Croft is an outright participation in the common patriarchy despite the fact that I find his theory of male dominance here overstated simply on the basis that it is stated at all. Rather than citing awkward psychological needs arising from the male cultural distinctive (i.e. the dominance/control scheme), there seems a much simpler answer to the dilemma. There is a straightforward reason for the main of male gamers who enjoy playing through female avatars that concerns neither the desire to dominate a female nor the desire to engage a feminine view of the world (something which videogames rarely capture).

The simplest answer, I think, is this: if given the option of spending twenty-plus hours watching the backside of a strapping young man, chiseled to perfection, or that of a cutish, physically desirable young woman, a large number of heterosexual males will choose the latter. (There are still a number who will associate the avatar closely with their own persona, breaking down the cipher aspect of the representative, and will feel uncomfortable choosing a female avatar when given the opportunity.) My own theory is that many heterosexual males will find it more comfortable to dwell on the appearance of a female avatar than to do the same with a male avatar, well-endowed with strength, speed, and cool, good looks. This reaction, I believe, stems from the same psychology that made the light homophobia that ruled my high school pretty much the status quo.

So rather than an overt bid for control, I think the use and popularity of female avatars such as Lara Croft speaks of the sexual preferences and appreciation of the female form intimate to the heterosexual male. I believe this principle may be comparable to the male proclivity for the use of female pornography. The desire is not so much for control as it is for sexual expression (though the difference between playing Tomb Raider and using pornography is stark enough).

I could, I suppose, argue that pornography too imposes a patriarchal psychology of male-over-female dominance and that even the theory I forward speaks to shades of similar desire to control the female (if only her form). I think those could make for fair discussions, but they seem to be some distance from the direction our author proposes.

In any case, from examples such as Tomb Raider and a host of other videogames, the male gaze is relentlessly supported and the origin is unquestionably an institutionalized sexism that rides on the back of our long history of patriarchal hegemony. There are changes that ought to be made within the industry and without—and recognition of the flaws these changes should address is an important initial step.

---

Notes:
* For those unfamiliar with avatar terminology, the character one controls is referred to as one's avatar. One's onscreen representation is the cipher through which the players is masked and interacts with the game environment. In Super Mario Bros., one's avatar is a squat plumber with unspeakably large moustache. In Tomb Raider, one's avatar is an ill-proportioned** young woman in hot pants and hiking boots.

** For the movie version of Tomb Raider, Angelina Jolie had to wear artificial boobs to fill out protagonist Lara Croft's prospectus. That's on top of Jolie's already artificial assets.

Extra: sorry to reference a Tony Danza film in my title. I realize that was in unquestionably poor taste.

20080909

Yesterday, I was curious about Fallout 3 (the new game coming out from Bethesda that has everybody so excited), so I checked it out on Amazon. Looks fun. Post-apocalyptic radiation fun.

But that's not why I'm here and talking to you today.*

While glancing down Amazon's page I came across the products they were recommending based on my evident interest in Fallout 3. One particular game stuck out as I'd been hearing about it for, well, ever. Spore had been The game to look forward to since it was first unveiled at some gameshow or another. And here it was.

With One Star.

Intrigued, I clicked on the link. I had seen that the game was getting only fair ratings across the gaming press, but One Star out of five was something new. Out of 623 reviews, 567 gave the game a single star. (Currently, there are 1523 reviews and 1423 of those are One Star reviews.) And it quickly became obvious why.

DRM.

Digital Rights Management is a thorny issue because companies want to protect their wares from piracy and theft, but their solutions tend to mostly punish their legitimate customers. The particular form that EA uses to protect Spore may be particularly difficult for some legitimate users. EA will only let a user install the game three times before the copy goes dead.

Personally, I as a legitimate user who only plays legitimate games, use this number up for most of my games. Not counting evolving through computers and maybe wanting the ability to play a game on more than one of the computers I own or use, I still install, uninstall, and reinstall any worthwhile game many times over the game's lifetime. I've installed WoW four or five times now. Morrowind five times. Counter-Strike seven. Half-Life closer to eight. Riven about the same. Age of Mythology maybe twelve. The thing is, when I'm done with a game, I typically uninstall it to make room for other programs.

Let's say I really liked Spore. I'd probably reach my limit within the space of a year. EA does allow me the option of calling them, and begging for another install. I have to explain my case—which makes perfect sense in that I, as the legitimate customer, am likely not legitimate but am instead a nefarious copyright infringer.

So then, to explain, customers seem to have organized an online protest of this form of DRM and have carried out this blast on Amazon's review board. I'm not sure how well it's working though. On the Fallout page, 27% of those who had looked into Fallout had then gone on to buy Spore.

But maybe that's all from before the protest began. (Though now that number is up to 34%.) In any case the internet is fun in the way it (as a fake world) shapes and affects the real world.

One other note of interest is the single review of the Spore strategy guide:

Guide is infested with DRM like the game!
Do not buy this guide. I put it on my bookshelf, and it meshed with the other books and re-wrote parts of them. Now I can't read those books correctly. Also, you can only read this guide 3 times, at which point it explodes in your hand. You are then required to call EA and prove to them you bought the guide, and which point they MIGHT send you another one. If you're not convincing enough, you are out-of-luck.

---

*note: High fives to those of you who immediately added, "I'm here to tell you about some girls I know... and why I'm being fired."

20080416

First:
In light of tax day, I just wanted to send out mad props to Kent Hovind, the national mascot for taxes.

Second:
Get out your fives, dust 'em off, and raise 'em high, because tomorrow (Thursday) is National High Five Day once more.

Third:
Darwinia is an awesome game and you should download and play the free demo. It presents a whole self-contained level taking place generations after the actual game and can really give you a feel for how the game works.

Fourth:
I've been reading the Book of Mormon and it's awesomely bad. Like seriously. This Mormon cat came over to my house the other night and was like: "It's such an amazing book that a man couldn't have written it." My thought was How could the person behind the book actually be considered a writer? This stuff is worse than The Lovely Bones. Silly Mormons. That probably sounds mean to you. But that's only because you haven't read this thing. Maybe I'll devote a post to the thing but here's a taste.

Beyond the clownishly overwrought impersonation of Elizabethan English (written 200 years after Elizabethan English was the pops), the book features expressions such as Hosanna (3 Nephi 11) and I am the Alpha and Omega (3 Nephi 9:18) and Mammon (3 Nephi 13:24). Keep in mind that this book is written (between 600 BC and AD 400) in some fantasy language called Reformed Egyptian (like Quenya but senseless). This particular section of anachronisms occurs after the resurrection of Christ and so terms like Hosanna (a Hebrew term) and Alpha/Omega (Greek letters) would be gibberish to both audience and author (none of whom speak Hebrew or Greek). That their Jesus would come to Native Americans and introduce himself as the Alpha and Omega kinda lends to the picture that their Jesus is kind of dumb in the head.

No really.

20080410

Just two reviews today: a book and a videogame.

• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
• Bioshock (PC)

---

Book: Novel
Author: Haruki Murakami
Year: 1997
Pages: 610.

Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is actually probably the best novel I've read in a long time. Granted, many of the novels I've read over the last two years have not been spectacular. There was The Lovely Bones. And then The Ass and the Angel. And then His Dark Materials. And others, none of which I would recommend spending any time with.

Wind-Up Bird on the other hand was worth every moment spent burning through its 610 pages. It was mysterious, absorbing, and informative. Murakami writes in a form and style that makes the act of reading as simple as consuming a volume of Harry Potter. His prose is neither dense nor confusing. It's not his words that propose depth but his ideas.

On top of engaging philosophies of death and identity and epistemology, Murakami couches his world here in a system of reality far more encompassing than our own. His is both reality and meta-reality and the boundary between both permeable and malleable. Things from the realm of mystery make themselves known in the realm of the normal. And contrawise. A wound taken in a dreamworld manifests itself in the waking world and a weapon carried in the waking is available in the dream.

So then is there really any difference? And if so, then does such a difference matter.

At heart, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle seems to be an exploration of fate, of destinies unbidden and prophecies unalterable. Murakami's flaccid protagonist, Toru Okada, moves from passivity to activity as he struggles either to engage his destiny or bend fate to his own need (which one, which one?). There are so many aspects to the story that move characters around outside of their own willpower that Fate clearly has the upper hand, but still, it's fun to watch the struggle.

The story begins when Okada's cat goes missing and his wife Kumiko asks him to find it. Or maybe it begins earlier, when Kumiko gets pregnant. Or maybe it begins still earlier when Kumiko's sister dies. Or earlier still, during the years leading up to WWII. Whatever the case, everything is connected through gossamer tendrils of fate and pain and anguish and collective identity.

And then there's the wind-up bird, the unseen bird whose cry sounds like a spring being wound—the bird who winds up the world, a stand-in for fate who propels things and people to and fro, loosing and stanching the flow of life and the stream of reality.

This was the second book of Murakami's I have indulged—the first was Kafka on the Shore, a number of years ago—and I can't wait to read it again. Wind-Up Bird is actually far more easily understood that Kafka and despite the same presence of such a magical reality, the story elements more easily combine to paint a sensible landscape. Still, Wind-Up Bird leaves plenty robed in mystery and will give readers a feast of afterthoughts (I spent my lunch break scouring the internet for critique—to little avail, alas!). The dialogue is crisp and occasionally crackles, especially where the Kasahara character is at play.

I have only one thing to say in criticism of the book. In a climactic chapter, the protagonist explains everything (to some extent) to the reader and another character. I felt ripped off by this, as if the author couldn't trust me to be engaged enough to piece things out on my own, though my conclusion had been identical. (Though from reading some of the Amazon reviews from people who still didn't get it, I suppose it was necessary after all.) Unless we're not meant to trust Okada's interpretation... Okada certainly has his own doubts, but it didn't seem to me that Murakami was trying to capitalize on the whole untrustworthy narrator bit—he seems more interested in more interesting matters.

In any case, awesome book. High recommendations for everyone except stuffy evangelicals. Who will burst from the pressures of the lust/anger cocktail the book's more unseemly narrative pieces will likely stir up.

Rating:

---

Book: Videogame
Platform: PC
Game Length: @20 hours.

Bioshock opens with our protagonist (through whom the player experiences the games sprawling tale of dystopian objectivism) swimming free from an oceanic plane wreckage and finding himself (sorry ladies!) all too conveniently surfaced an easy distance from the entrance to a great undersea city. Rapture is a marvel to take in. Tycho described it as a meditation on human loss and he spot on here. The city, even in its entropic state of disrepair and evidently decreasing lifespan, is staggeringly gorgeous. While once a spotless tribute to the mettle of the human spirit, carved of Art Deco lines and hailing the glory of German Expressionism, Rapture has decayed—rotted from the inside as its organic creators have curdled and fouled the nest.

Rapture, by the time of our arrival, is undone.

The city was built in echo of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Andrew Ryan, the metropolis's father, felt deeply the unjust burden that society had placed upon the shoulders of the great minds of the time; and so, he devised a sanctuary, a city constructed deep below the ocean waves, in which the greatness of the human race could explore that greatness emboldened by an absence of moral constraints. Doctors and researchers could experiment and develop without fear of ethics boards. Artists and writers could explore their own thoughts and philosophies without worry for the ostracism by the weak-minded who would necessarily fear their work. Ryan hoped his submarine Eden would become the bastion of truth and knowledge, while the outside world would continue to rot, engaging war after war, small-minded and petty.

Ryan's dream began to show cracks with the discovery of Adam and development of plasmids. Adam was modifiable genetic material and plasmids were the means to altering human DNA. People could now become super-human, or better, post-human. With the new availability of plasmids and the chance to become more powerful (and conversely the fear that others would become more powerful), the greed and fear inherent to the human frame took hold of the city and madness ensued.

Now the city is done for. Though still inhabited, its denizens have been driven to insanity through the voracious and unsafe degree to which they spliced their DNA over and again. They are not zombies, but they aren't far off. And here you are, stuck in a leaking city, surrounded by a plagued and dangerous humanity, and trapped between struggling factions built up by the few remaining sane men and women who rule the skeletal city from its shadows.

The game design is beautiful. Every section of the city bleeds design. The atmosphere is captured perfectly and the many instances in which one is able to view the rest of the city through its gradually flooding windows to the ocean outside are always a treat. Bioshock may be among the five most handsomely designed games I have ever experienced.

The story design is equally impressive. Through radio messages from various survivors and via cassette-recorded diaries lying around (an admittedly stilted storytelling mechanic), the story of Rapture unfolds, its citizens and its lords, and even of its protagonist. Piece by piece different stories, perspectives, and chronologies are unveiled, giving the tale a sense of anticipation and mystery that culminates, perhaps, in the climax to the second act.

And of course, as in any contemporary FPS (first-person shooter), one's choice of weaponry is paramount in judging a game. Bioshock certainly holds strong in this respect, offering both the standard array of improvable FPS weaponry (e.g. blunt weapon, pistol, shotgun, machine gun, grenades, etc.) with several choices where ammunition is concerned, as well as the interesting option of taking on plasmids yourself. From more mundane abilities like shooting lightning or flame from one's finger-tips to more interesting options like controlling a swarm of bees. In any case, the options for building your character are impressive.

Beyond the typical mechanic and the personal genetic manipulation available to players (including the sensational means for obtaining genetic material), the game features other things that work toward making it interesting, including the ability to hack security systems and turrets as well as the multitude of vending machines in the city and the ability to research different kinds of enemies by photographing them in action. I'll admit that while each of these mechanics had valuable results (researching different creatures could give you new abilities), they soon got pretty tiresome. Especially the camera. But, as they were an option part of the game for the most part, I can forgive.

In any case, Bioshock was an awesome game dipped in great atmosphere. Like any strongly story-based game, its replay value will be limited. I could probably play it through again sometime soon, but after that, I'd probably need to give it at least a year. It's no World of Warcraft in this respect. But then, what FPS is?

Rating:

---

20070829

---

Novel.
301 pages.

While not the worst book I've every had the displeasure of reading*, Nick Cave's work here may be the worst that I've both read and finished. Eragon? Gave up with extreme prejudice. Da Vinci Code? Accidentally left it in an airport bathroom in Denver with eleven pages left and did not care enough to visit the library to see how it ended. The Lovely Bones? Granted, I did finish it and it was bad, but it was a shiny, gold-plated sliver of heaven compared to And the Ass Saw the Angel, which I was unfortunately compelled to finish.

Ah, the joy of being in a book club.

The first thing one will notice in Cave's book is that the prinicpal narrator is dense with a lugubrious sort of prose made up in striking part by words that won't be found in any dictionary (as they are made up). So dense, in fact, is the narration that it stifles to the point of petrification. The author himself describes the language as, "kind of a hyper-poetic thought-speak, not meant to be spoken - a mongrel language that was part-Biblical, part-Deep South dialect, part-gutter slang, at times obscenely reverent and at others reverently obscene." Cave forces the reader to invest a lot of work into deciphering a story that is far too slight to merit the effort. And I hate him for that.

Well, not really. But maybe.

In any case, with the exception of the first and last chapters, the entire tale is told in flashback by a single narrator, named Eucrid, using two different voices (one fantastical and the other only slightly more grounded in reality). Eucrid Eucrow, dying from the start, tells the tales of the divine vengeance he wreaked upon the odd religious community in his isolated Southern town and how he now dies with his glorious work complete. What is not at all clear until the last third is whether we should believe any of it. Euchrid, a mute from birth, is the product of mentally disabled man and a woman whose only nourishment is the moonshine she stills in their yard. He is, to be plain, quite insane.

If Cave would have either held personal restraint or kept an editor worth more than the cost of a community college education, And the Ass Saw the Angel would have clocked in at novella-length of slightly more than a hundred pages - and would, by that measure, have made a terse, quirky, intriguing look at madness. Instead, Cave shows no wisdom of this kind and remorselessly fills over three hundred pages with a sprawling, cacophonous garble of madness. We cannot even say that he explores Euchrid's madness for there is neither consideration nor reflection. Only revelry.

There were moments when I thought I might have a good (if offbeat) book in my hands. Moments of interpretive joy when it could be realized that things might not be as they seem. Pieces of prose that made me think that Cave really did know what he was doing, such as his description of a particular woman as a "xylocephalic ogress." But such rays of warm and happy light were always and inevitably to be short-lived, as Cave would draw the reader, nails scrabbling for some hold on light and sanity and good reading, inexorably back into his drearilous swampfief of monotonating garballations.

Not, by any means, recommended. I read somewhere that Cave himself doesn't even think the book is any good. This would have been good to know three months ago when I started reading this tripe.

*NOTE: I really have no justification to say that it isn't beside the fact that I'm being generous.

Rating:

---

Video Game.
PlayStation2.

As a sizable fan of the Guitar Hero series (I simply adore both I and II), I greatly welcomed the idea of a new addition to the franchise while I waited for Guitar Hero III to be released in October. And well, as far as Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the '80s goes, there is good news and bad news. And to be sure, the good news really does outweigh the bad news.

A brief word about mechanics for those who live in a cave (though thankfully not in a nick cave). The Guitar Hero franchise is built around what amounts to a rhythm game, similar to Dance Dance Revolution (you know? that one where you stomp around on the squares on a mat in time to the music ostensibly simulating the footwork side of dancing?). Essentially, this is the game: as a more-or-less famous song plays, the player holds down particular buttons on his guitar-shaped controller's neck (which buttons he should hold are indicated onscreen), and strums a strummer switch right about where one would strum on a regular guitar. And so on as one progresses through the song. And no, this activity has no use other than just being more fun that you can shake a gopher-covered stick at. So you won't lean to play guitar, but you may learn to have fun.

For a video presentation of what it may be like for you to play any of the Guitar Hero games, please refer to this helpful performance. This is pretty much exactly what it's like when The Monk and I play:

So then, let's imagine that I had given Guitar Hero II a whole four stars (which I would have). What then shall we shall about it's expansion?

First and foremost to the franchise are the songs and Rock the '80s is largely successful in pulling out both recognizable songs and songs that are actually fun to play. Some of the more recognizable songs include:

• "We Got the Beat" by The Go-Go's
• "18 and Life" by Skid Row
• "No One Like You" by Scorpions
• "Heat of the Moment" by Asia
• "Turning Japanese" by The Vapors
• "Hold on Loosely" by .38 Special
• "The Warrior" by Scandal
• "I Wanna Rock" by Twisted Sister
• "What I Like About You" by The Romantics
• "Only a Lad" by Oingo Boingo
• "Round and Round" by Ratt
• "Ain't Nothin' But a Good Time" by Poison
• "Seventeen" by Winger
• "Play With Me" by Extreme

Personally, I was especially excited to see some Oingo Boigo and Winger included in the mix. But some of the other choices (both what was included and what was excluded) are mysterious. Some of the songs aren't just not all that emblematic of the '80s but also aren't fun to play. X's "Los Angeles" neither sounds all that great nor is it in any way fun to play. Other choices are equally strange. They choose a song from The Police but go with "Synchronicity II"? Shrug. And where are some of the bands that really signified the '80s? Where's Van Halen with "Panama" or "Hot for Teacher"? Joe Satriani? "Ice Nine" seems tailor-made for Guitar Hero. No Pixies?? Def Leppard? Motley Crue (maybe "Dr. Feelgood")?

Well, whatever. Most of the songs are still great fun.

Now then, extras. Rock the '80s has no bonus tracks. In previous episodes, players could make money in game to purchase songs by starving artists to add a little extra flavour of the unknown. In Guitar Hero II, you could even unlock Strong Bad's "Trogdor" (Rock the '80s also has a Homestar Runner song, but its thrown in to the mix of full songs, so that's one less real song we get to play). Then there's the rest of the extras. honestly, it's a pretty light affair. There's fewer characters to play and the only unlockable is the lame reaper character. Granted, they have dressed and styled the available characters in regalia of the day, but you can no longer purchase alternate costumes for the characters. The venues are still the same, only with more day-glo colouring to simulate the '80s' affection for neon. So yeah, the extras are pretty light.

Which wouldn't be a big deal except that Activision is charging full price for what amounts to an expansion. We're talking a question of value here. Both Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II (which retailed at the same price point: $50 for the game alone) have songs coming out the wazoo and a fistful of in-game extras. In comparison, Rock the '80s, despite a pretty good set list comes off as an after thought. I think $29.99 would have been a good value for the game. I'm happy to have new songs to play, but I do feel either a twinge of buyer's remorse about the price I paid or a bitter anger toward Activision for cheating me. But I'm leaning toward the latter.

I still recommend the game, but would advise waiting 'til the price drops.

Rating:

---

What's in a Name?

So the other day, CP posted about Metroid and that got me thinking. A lot of video games aren't titled with future marketing in mind. Game producers are only thinking in the now.

Case in point: Metroid. In the original game for NES, a space bounty hunter named Samus Aran (who is nowhere near as cool as Spike Spiegel or Faye Valentine*) travels to the planet Zebes and fights space pirates and their leader, Mother Brain, in order to destroy the danger organism the pirates has hijacked, the silly jellyfish-like creatures called Metroids.

So you've just created the game and now you want to name it. You really have six directions you can go with the title. You can name it after: 1) the hero; 2) the villain; 3) the geographical locale; 4) the goal; 5) the primary action; or 6) the McGuffin device. So, here are some titular possibilities:

The Hero:

Samus. Samus Aran. Space Hunter.

The Villain:

Space Pirates! Mother Brain.

The Locale:

Zebes. The Battle for Zebes. Zebes: Deathtrap!

The Goal:

Plantary Quarantine. Planet Wipe.

The Primary Action:

Space Fight. Bounty Hunt. Space Hunt.

The McGuffin:

Metroids. Bio-Hazard. Drainers. Space Jellyfish.

For a single game, any of these titles are acceptable (if not great). The problem comes when producers opt for a sequel. Or worse, sequels. This is where a game's title can become a liability. Take, for instance, Metroid.

The game is named after the McGuffin, the meaningless detail that gets the ball rolling. So what happens when you want to make a sequel? You have to shoehorn in the device again, because you're almost forced to rep the brand in your sequel. 'Cause nobody's gonna know that Space Hunter II is the sequel to a game called Metroid. So you're stuck with Metroid 2. And now, you've got to stick the dumb little things in every single episode of the game.

Poor Samus. She's basically stuck fighting against the same villain over and over and over again. All because a publisher didn't think.

And lest you think that stupid names are rare, here's a couple more:

The Legend of Zelda

Named after the game's trophy, Zelda, who you don't ever see until the credits roll. It would be like if Super Mario Bros was called Peach. Legend of Link makes more sense.

Grand Theft Auto

Probably made sense at the beginning, but by GTA: San Andreas, you're really not doing enough auto thieving for that to be even considered your principle activity.

Myst

Granted that in the first sequel, they called it Riven: Sequel to Myst, but in later installments, they just call it things like Myst III: Exile or Myst IV: Revelations (neither of which games have anything to do with the island of Myst).

Contra

Contra had always mystified me as well. I suspected that it was meant to capitalize on the vaguely recent Iran-contra mess. But the game had little to do with Central America (the heroes were what? American mercs fighting off an alien menace?) or illicit arms sales. And by the time Super Contra rolled around, none of those kids in the target audience probably even knew what Contra ever stood for - an example of simulacra (the copy becoming its own original).

So yeah, I'm just sayin' is all.

*note: or even Ed or Ein for that matter.

Silly

GameStooge (GameStooge?) has a silly, silly article about one of my favourite games. In it the writer complains about the Guitar Hero franchise's demand that a player unlock new songs through a process of leveling. His gripe is that though the packaging advertises the availability of songs like "Sweet Child of Mine" and "YYZ," such songs are not available until you have unlocked them by proving you've got the stuff on easier songs. The author, therefore, alleges false advertising and decries the illegality of Red Octane's marketing (Red Octane produced Guitar Hero I and II).

For those who don't get it but are still reading along, here's how Guitar Hero works. Though there are about 70 playable songs ("over 70 jaw dropping tracks," as the packaging declares), only a small number of songs are available when you first begin to play. I think it's like eight songs or something. These songs (songs like "I Love Rock and Roll" and "I Wanna Be Sedated") are pretty easy and as the player succeed in burning down the house while playing these covers, other songs become available. These songs are slightly more difficult to play, but once mastered, a new level of songs become available. Once a song is made available, you can play it any time you'd like.

So really, I'm having a hard time figuring out what the problem is here. Guitar Hero, as I've presented it, is no different from any other video game. I don't begin Super Mario Bros. as Super Mario. I have to work to get it. I don't begin Final Fantasy with a party of intrepid explorers. I have to work to get one. I don't begin World of Warcraft with a pet. I have to work to get one. It's kinda the nature of the playing field. Unless you're talking old school games like Space Invaders or Missile Command. Those were pretty straightforward and you mostly had everything from the start that you'd have after playing through ten levels (well, you would necessarily have the cold sweats like you would after ten levels, but...).

Essentially Guitar Hero's marketing that reads "over 70 jaw dropping tracks" is comparable to saying "over 70 jaw dropping levels." This is pretty much the way things work across the board in the video game industry. It's expected. The World of Warcraft box suggests that players can combat the Black Dragon of Blackrock Spire and the undead hoards of Stratholme; two things I have never been able to do as my level has never been high enough. Half-Life 2's packaging promises "new weapons," but the player won't see them until he battles through several levels of play. And most game boxes show screen caps of scenes that don't play out 'til much later in the game - as end-game content is generally more dynamic and picturesque than low-level material. Heck, the scene featured on the front cover of Riven (the first sequel to Myst) shows a world unreachable until the midpoint of the game (and then, never again).

So yeah, the author of the GameStooge article, like so many before him, serves to make me feel better about myself. So yay for that I guess...

Randomocity

Thing One:
Why do feminists have to hate fish so? Why can't they just leave their poor bicycles alone?

Thing Two:
This is the cover for the mixtape CD I'm making for our CD club.

Thing Three:
I love/adore the antics of fringey Bible people. Missler would be proud?

Thing Four:

EVE's mired in the space equivalent of a world war. After the JumpGate story broke, all but a few of the big alliances in the game declared war on BoB, the alliance who benefited from the cheating devs. BoB controls the southwestern corner of the map, and they're defending pushes from the southeast and northwest. They've committed the majority of their forces up north, so their strongest ally in the south, Lotka Volterra, is getting crushed by a RedSwarm attack. I'm just doing my part, zipping around in interceptor-class ships during 200-man fleet engagements and leading small groups behind enemy lines to harass supply lines and the like. It's pretty fun, kinda like raiding in WoW, only you're always moving and the things you do have an impact on the world around you.

—The Escapist

I find this stuff utterly fascinating. I played EVE Online for a week once on a free trial they offered and found it to be a gorgeous game that I'm sure wouldn't have been all that boring if I persevered and become a rad space pirate or something (unfortunately, I didn't continue with the game and only content myself with reading about all the crazy stuff that happens in it).

EVE is fascinating because it's one of the most truly boundary-free games I've ever heard of. It's got PvP play like PvP play should be. It also encourages the building of huge corporate structures by which players can truly make their mark on the game. EVE also exists in a persistent environment, and one that can be affected by its players.

So, currently, in this online space-game involving battlecruisers and mining ships and whatnot, a recent scandal involving the in-game mega corporation, BoB, has caused other megacorporations to declare war on the entity. Now, BoB is just made up of regular joe players like me or you (if we were playing EVE and more than slightly addicted to it). So are the members of the corporations that are declaring war on BoB. And this is the thing, if BoB loses and is crushed by these other groups, their assets - I guess - can be stripped and stolen from them just like in real life. That's what fascinates me. It's kinda like real life - only with 200-man space fleets.

1. Lesson: PvP stands for Player vs. Player and is used especially to describe those online games in which one person has the ability to challenge other live players.

2. Lesson: Persistent environment means that the game never stops running and continues even after you've logged off. If you leave your character off floating in space, he'll be right there when you come back; but he may not be in one piece if some ne'er-do-well came across him while you were out.

Oblivion vs. the Neverine Nerevarine

In the wee hours of Friday afternoon (a.k.a. around 9:00pm), my avatar, F'nor F'nagel (a nod to ill-written fantasy fiction), finished the last of the main quests in Bethesda's latest game in the Elder Scrolls series, ESIV: Oblivion. After finishing the final quests to all four guilds (the Fighters' Guild, the Mages' Guilds, the Thieves' Guild, and the Dark Brotherhood), I decided it was time to finish off the last pieces of the Real Story. With relative ease, I trounced an enemy not remotely prepared to meet my thorny resistance (and superbly cowardly style of combat). So then, having finished both ESIV:Oblivion and ESIII:Morrowind (which I tackled two years ago), how do I think they compare?

Obviously, Oblivion offers a sense of environmental empowerment that Morrowind just cannot match. Not only are Oblivion's graphical delights staggeringly beautiful (so far as video game vistas can, in this age, stagger), but you can interact with many of the objects in the world. And not just in the I'm-going-to-steal-that-goblet kind of way that you could in Morrowind. Oblivion lets you grab onto dinnerware, foodstuffs, weaponry, bodies recently divested of liveliness, etc. and fling them to and fro. My favourite was killing wild animals (boars preferably) and kicking them down mountainsides and then racing them to the bottom as they tumbled with increasing velocity down the slope. Unfortunately, despite being a funnish sort of diversion, this level of interaction with the environment bears little importance to the objects of the game proper. You really aren't called on to roll animals down hills, to hide bodies in the tallgrass, to throw spoons at kitchen drudge - all things you can do, but not things that will help you win.

Fighting is definitely more involved in Oblivion and its foes more tenacious. Well, it would be if you were sneaky and cowardly like me. Essentially, I like taking the paths of least resistance in these kinds of games. In Oblivion, that meant that I had a character who excelled in sneaking, alchemy, and conjuring people to fight for me - all the while wearing gear enchanted in such a way that I could stand in an ogre's way, close enough so that he's tripping on me, and he still wouldn't ever see me. What this boils down to is that I could sneak through entire dungeons undetected, reach whatever treasure guardian I needed to slay, and simply summon another monster to attack and kill my foe while I went in search of snacks and cokes. So then, not really all that much more involved than combat was for me in Morrowind - and in fact, maybe less involved.

That leads to a point in which both games are similar. The player who approaches the games with ingenuity could find simple ways to exploit your ability to do whatever you want to make the game much easier than if you just played it as it's presented. In Morrowind, I enchanted a staff so I could fly above all my enemies, not wasting time with fighting - as lesser players might. I also enchanted a ring to heal me character a small amount every second. This made me nearly impossible to kill; I think I died once after donning said ring. In Oblivion, there was no way to craft those exact items, so I simply went another route: near invisibility, extortionate conjuration skills, and deadly enchants on weaponry. In the end, there wasn't a single enemy who could match me in a fight - even if I wasn't wearing my cloaking gear. In the end, I think this ends up making the game funner for me because I really do find the constant battles to be wearying, and the fact that I could skip those without cheating and still see all the story was, in its way, a life saver for me.

One point in which Morrowind surpasses it's more evolved brother is in the scope of its architecture. In Morrowind, the variety of cultures and breadth of land are well developed in the visual aesthetic of its cities. I think all told, I count eight very distinct styles of structure in Morrowind (not counting caves). In Oblivion, I count five (not counting caves). Granted, in Oblivion, each city does have distinct architecture but the differences are far more subtle - like the difference between a Norse lodge and an Austrian cottage - whereas the various Morrowind architectures are very alien from each other (Redoran district buildings were made from the shells of giant crabs, while the Telvanni dwelt in tremendous mutated mushrooms!). Of course, all this is quite understandable as Morrowind spanned an entire continent whereas Oblivion supposedly occurs in a sixteen square-mile province. Still, I liked the feeling of transition that Morrowind's buildings offered.

Another point in Morrowind's favour is the storyline. Quite frankly, the prophecy of the NevarineNerevarine (cliche though it may be) presents a much more expansive story than Oblivion more straightforward quest to help the world of Tamriel react to the threat began by the death of its emperor. I was always more engaged in the journey to find myself the reincarnation of the only one who could save the world from the villainy of a long-dead-but-still-kicking threat to everyone. It was always the difference between reactive and proactive. In Morrowind, you're out to discover the truth and fight the bad guy in his lair before he can become a threat. In Oblivion, you're constantly reacting: Oh noes! He killed the emperor! Go find an heir! Oh noes! He's destroyed a city! Try to salvage what you can! Oh noes! All the cities are under attack! Help them! Et cetera.... Really, it's not as bad as it sounds, but it just wasn't as engaging. And the guild quests in Morrowind are more interesting as well. It had the great infighting between the Thieves' Guild and the corrupt Fighters' Guild with you walking the precarious tightrope between the two. It had the House Telvanni line of quests in which you gradually rise in their ranks and become their master, even getting to build your very own giant mushroom palace. I did tons in Morrowind and I still didn't even brush the Imperial Legion questline or that of the assassin's guild, the Morag Tong (not to even mention the other two ruling houses, Hlaalu and Redoran). Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood series of quests was pretty fun and entertaining and a couple of the odder Daedric quest were just hilarious, but otherwise: Morrowind FTW.

In the end, I think I would like to see Morrowind spec'd out with Oblivion tech. That would be the Yay.