Two Games I Didn't Really Like for the Opposite Reasons

I say "really like" because, in the end, I did enjoy these games. Just not much.

I almost-disliked these games for the opposite reasons. And the first one I'll discuss is the foreigner-extermintion game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

One of the reasons I didn't like this game was because of its pacing. The rest of this sentence is not entirely true, but level after level seemed to have the same pace, which was composed of shooty shooty bang bang, followed by "more shooty shooty bang bang." It's not quite the never-ending gun fight of Black Ops, but that's not a comparison MW2 would want, as BlOps was shooty shooty bang bang porn. The near-non pacing of those games makes you feel like you're playing the previous Call of Duty's louder levels all over again. It's boring. Pacing, man.

But at least MW2's story was silly in the end, which brings me to the other reason why I didn't so much like the game: The crap story! Or the crap writing in general. I could first discuss the crap plot, but I won't discuss at all and yet will just say that it makes no sense and manages to be insulting to Russians (there's a xenophobia to the game that is not just stupid but random -- Call of Duty 4 had the Russians making sense, as psycho as we know they can be). That story is bad and, I think, what the critics would call the worst thing about the game. But to me, the worst thing is MW2's writing part of the writing. Mainly because it comes off as written for illiterate, shooting-obsessed jerk-offs. It tries so hard to be stupid! The writing is so stupid! STUPID!!! WHY IS IT SO STUUUPIIIID?!!!

I liked the co-op though. And I also like the stupid fist fight at the end. And, to be fair, it also lets you shoot Americans...

On to Braid! As I said, this game has the opposite problems (actually it doesn't, but just pretend it does). Whereas CoDMW2 has a pacing problem, Braid has a puzzle problem. Its gameplay is all puzzles. There's nothing wrong with MW2's core gameplay feature (understand the situations as fast as you can and kill Russians). But Braid's core gameplay feature is just: Figure These Out. It's all mental, well-paced mind-using, with some of the later puzzles being easier than the earlier puzzles yet still remaining challenging overall. There's no hand-skill. It too is no fun.

The other weakness in Braid is its writing. I think I may have called it pretentious at some point. It probably is, but I don't have an example of the writing with me to see if I was stupid when I played it. But pretentiousness aside, I do know though that it (even today!) has boring writing. How? Because boring writing is easy to remember. And when I say "boring writing is easy to remember" I mean that: it's easy to remember that it was boring. Interesting writing filled with knowledge is the same; it's easy to remember only that it was interesting. (With entertaining writing, it's easier to remember some of the actual words) Braid's writing? Boring! I could look up samples of the writing to analyze the words for boringness and prove my point, but it's boring so I don't want to.

Star-Ratings Abandoned!

That's right! I don't need nor want no stars! Why? Because I don't want to memorize the CSS that would let me do the half-stars.

"But you don't half to abandon the whole stars. You could just copy and paste those stars from other reviews and write '1/2' at the end of the score."

But I don't wanna! You know how much work it is to open up another Stage Zero tab and copy the needed stars from another article?

"Almost no work?"

Exactly! So no more stars! I'm switching to the number-over-10 rating system, like: 9.29381029/10. Also, I'm switching over because I don't like how I have a star system and a number system (despite what I may have said before about how I liked having a star system and a number system). This is also my way of supporting the 9/10 ratings. Although I've complained about how this is merely a way to suck-up to big game publishers, it's actually not only that, but also a way to express more precisely how one feels about a game.

The game is not an 8 but it's not a 6! What do you do in this situation, my dear readers? Give it a 5? No! That's silliness! Give it a 7? Yes! That's brilliant! You see? It all makes sense. And please don't ask me about games that are between 7.5 and 8 (7.75).

Super Meat Boy Review?

I started playing this game in 2010, and according to the Steam achievements list I'm only 33% done with it! Which is great, because I love it! And just now as I typed the last sentence, I realized that I have a late reviewer's problem. (Darn you -- Spending 2011 In the Jungle Gamer Hell!) All my readers (all of them I say!) already know enough 'review' of the Super Meat Boy; you heard all about it from others OR you've already played a lot of it. Reading my carnality-filled review of it would be a boring waste of your time. Here: ★★★★★! That's the Stage Zero Super Meat Boy review score!

So, in light of this, instead of a review, I'm going to write something of a How-to-Enjoy guide, because I won't lie: for my first ten hours of Super Meat Boy, I didn't really like it.

And now, my secret to enjoying Super Meat Boy, that I give to you, is: to play it a level or two a day. Not at first, of course! The Light World 'Forest levels' are so easy that you might as well play them all in a sitting or two. And the first Light World 'Salt Factory' levels are also easy enough that you might want to do half of them per day (for only two days). But as for the rest of the game, one or two levels a day. Why? Because the game gets HARD. There are actual people who claim to have spent ACTUAL DAYS on a single (actual) level (for the record, those people are terrible at Super Meat Boy). But gamer elitism aside, I do recommend playing only a few levels a day because, if you don't, you will feel frustrated. The stress of doing hard level after hard level after hard level will build up, and the game will feel monotonous (it is after all a 300+ level game based on only a few gameplay mechanics). And to reinforce this point, remember this: Edmund McMillen (half of the Super Meat Boy team, Team Meat) said in a Gamasutra interview: "I don't want people to invest more than an hour plus into a play session, it seems unfair. That's not what I'm about." Is this a quote about not making evil marathon-game-session games and is therefore awesome? Yes! Is it taken out of context? Definitely not!

Another smaller tip, which doubles as purchasing advice: when you play with the gamepad (PC players! You'll want a working gamepad! I'm not sure if it's better than the keyboard but I act like it is! I'm not sorry!) Use the right trigger as your run button. Trying to hold down the blue X-button and the yellow A-button at the same time with the same finger will tire out that thumb and make you press "run" or "jump" when you don't want to.

And one more purchasing tip (Oh good! This is sort of a review!). It is: if you have a 360 and don't have a PC that can run 360 games at 1080p, and you want Super Meat Boy NOW, then go ahead and get it (for 360). Both versions come with certain perks, but the nice thing about the XBOX 360 version is that it won't have any bugs. I.e. the PC version may have bugs. Not game-ruining ones, but still, bugs. It's just the issue of having a developer of two people patch a game for every PC configuration: AKA impossible. But if you really really want SMB on Steam, go ahead and wait for your PC to upgrade. It's not a beautiful game, but it is a cool-looking one with a very particular aesthetic that you'll want to play at at least 1080p at 60-ish FPS.

Super Meat Boy (by Team Meat) is available on XBLA and Steam for $15.00 (800 gamerpoints). The PC version was released on Nov. 30, 2010. The XBOX 360 version was released on October 20, 2010. Since then it has been downloaded over one million times. It is also available for Mac and Linux.

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX Review

This week Stage Zero reviews the thirty-seven thousandth, three hundred and ninety-ninth Pac-Man game! This one is Pac-Man Championship Edition DX, the DX version of the Championship edition of the XBOX 360 and PS3 versions of Pac-Man! Did we like it?! Did we loathe it?! Did we make love to it?! Find out by reading this potentially sex-filled review starring Pac-Man and our muscular, oil-covered reviewer Paul Fenoglio!

Before Pac-Man XXXXXVIII Championship Edition DX Turbo, I had never played a Pac-Man game. I'd only heard the legendary, early gaming sounds, the ones that go "waka waka" and "Dudaduduuhduuh. dudiduddiduuhduuh -- duhdiduhdiduduehdiZork!" And now after having finally played it, I can confidently say, "I played a Pac-Man game."

NO seriously! It's excellent! That there are games this good that have only four inputs! When I see these games I'm amazed. And in other words, since this is Pac-Man, I'll skip the part where I explain where it's from and what makes it original from other games. You already know that stuff.

So the big question in this review is: What does one get from this 1080p Pac-Man? Well, one thing you get is: Pac-Man in 1080p. With nine mazes.

Now, the mazes are worth describing for your purchasing info, so listen carefully. The first six of its mazes come with three trial modes. The first trial mode is the maximize-your-score one, the second trial mode is the eat-as-many-ghosts-within-a-power-pellet-rampage one (you'll be given less than ten minutes to accrue ghosts on the screen). And the third trial mode is a lot of eat-set-amount-of-fruit-as-fast-as-you-can ones. The last three mazes offer, if I remember correctly, only the fruit-eating one, yet are interesting because parts of those mazes change when you eat fruit, and also because the last maze is dark. In it you're a light and you'll end up guessing where the paths are, feeling good about yourself when you guess right.

In case you were wondering: there are leaderboards; they are posted on the Internet and immediately accessible within the game. The game tells you where you place and in what percentile, and not just per maze but per trial. That it informs you by trial helps identify where you need to compete harder.

There are two more noteworthy features.

One is that, on any maze, you can change the way everything looks, from the maze to the dots; you can make everything look super retro, or super modern, or both. The other big feature is the slow-down mechanic, which might be a new thing (to Pac-Man). Basically how it works is, when you're near a threatening ghost, everything will go into slow-mo and zoom the camera in on Pac-Man, allowing you to pull off Matrix Pac-Man moves. It is also the reason why you will probably never die enough to lose any trial (along with all the bombs you'll have). Avoiding death isn't the point. It's the time and the dead ghosts and the scores and the split second decisions and strategy that bring the thrills.

The almost-downside to the slow-down mechanic is that you might go in and out of slow-mo and zoom-in and out really really suddenly, and thus throw your vision and rhythm off. I don't consider this a drawback to the game, though, as all players -- all your competitors -- have to deal with this issue, and also because the too-rapid slow-down speed-up zoom zoom rarely occurs. It happened to me only every two hours.

The other near-drawback is the lack in variety of the first six mazes. But having said that, the mazes ARE different from each other. And, if you feel like a maze is too similar to another maze you've played, just play another, differentier one.

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX is not one of my favorite games, but I can see why so many love it. It is elegent in its simplicity, almost always fun, not-addictive (in the WoW sense), and fifteen dollars. And did you know that the Pac-Man character is based on a pizza with a slice missing? And does that random sentence mean this review is over? Almost. For I've one more thought: If you've played lots of Pac-Man before and have had enough, I don't see this Pac-Man bringing you an original experience. But if you just want Pac-Man in your house, or have never played it before, then get this one.

★★★★★

My NEW Reviews Policy

I decided not to rewrite my other reviews policy post because, shortly after publishing it, I read it and realized that even I didn't understand it. So here is my NEW reviews policy, different in that it is simpler and ends in anti-troll explications.

My Game Reviews Policy:

☆☆☆☆☆ means that it's "Terrible."

★☆☆☆☆ means that it's "Really Bad."

★★☆☆☆ means that it's "Bad."

★★★☆☆ means that it's "Good."

★★★★☆ means that it's "Really Good."

★★★★★ means that it's "Outstanding."

For those of you in too much of a hurry to read my beautiful reviews, just note, as you scroll down to the bottoms looking for the scores, that any game that gets ★★ or less I advise you don't get. Also you should read the review anyway because I'm amazing.

Also! Instead of doing half-stars, I'm going to use the odd-number out-of-ten score, like 7/10. Is this an ugly-looking solution? Yes! Do I want to learn any CSS just to make half-stars? No!

My Writing Cycle

This is about how I write! But first, a talk on reviews:

Another challenge with writing game reviews lies in the amount of boring game information that needs to be shared. [And yes, I did just actually say that] Game information can be (incredibly) boring. Especially the stuff about a game's mechanics. If you don't believe me, then consider this: most computer game mechanics these days involve cliches, like, "You shoot your M-4 at Russian Arab Terrorist non-Americans." Or the mechanics simply involve inherently boring things like, "Use sand to make a land bridge before the tsunami comes and kills the people." (Actually both of these sound interesting; but, pretend I'm right) The point is: when I feel bored writing about something -- like gameplay mechanics -- my audience will too. And it is a problem. But luckily I've stumbled upon a tool to make the boring interesting, the cliche novel, the shark purple, and I call it the Good-Show-Quality Interest Curve. And I'll discuss it later amid the oncoming chat about my writing cycle.

"Oh no! Not the writing cycle! I'm going to another website!" Okay, calm down, please. I promise to keep this short and that it is not "the writing cycle."

Because it is my writing cycle. And before you can complain I will get right into it.

In my writing cycle the first thing I work on is having an idea. This may sound like an obvious first step, because it is. There's a big catch in this first step, though. "Work" isn't the right adjective. For I find that ideas usually come from nowhere; work just gets in the way of ideas; I prefer to just feel the idea come onto me, from my dear subconscious.

After the idea comes, I do the following step: research. Research often means I'll need to do some sort of "investigative journalism." What is that exactly? you ask. Well for example, if I want to write an article about what it's like being in a sorority, I would do some investigative journalism by sneaking into a sorority during the night and watching them while they sleep. I'll also take a lot of their stuff, just in case. After I've collected a lot of info I reevaluate my idea, seeing if it needs to be changed or abandoned. If it gets changed than I might do more research.

After that stuff comes structuring. This means I actually map out, on a document, in what order I'm going to say things. And if I don't have a lot to say, I won't have to structure much (if at all).

Something that should go into the structuring of inherently boring material, like those two samples above (wink wink) is the Good-Show-Quality Interest Curve I mentioned, the one where the beginning of a show starts with a hook and leads up to a bang, and then eases, relaxing the now over-excited audience into the show, and then builds up again to something exciting, and then another relaxing part, followed by another buildup and climax, all ending with the dénouement. Things that are inherently entertaining normally do not need to be structured according to this curve, but things that aren't, like most gameplay mechanics, should be presented in the most interest-holding way possible.

Then writing takes place. Follow whatever the structure may be and write awesomeness.

After the first draft comes the first break. If it's a very short piece, maybe an hour-long break. If it's a longer piece, maybe a 12-hour one.

Then I begin re-writing (which comprises writing and omitting). From here I can spin off into two directions. The direction I usually spin off on is the one where I rewrite until the composition's good enough to publish. Usually I will take another day off between the 2nd and final drafts. The other direction I can spin off on is the one where there's no strict deadline, where I rewrite, and then reread and restructure (if needed) and rewrite some more. After these 2nd and 3rd drafts I take a week off, and then do more rereading and rewriting, after which I will take a break and then read the piece and decide again if it needs more restructuring or just more rewriting (or nothing). In short: I restructure and rewrite (and take potentially long breaks) until I can't make the piece better.

The final stage is editing, which for me is actually the publishing stage. I publish the thing and wait for readers (or myself) to notice things that don't work; then I fix whatever thing. Either way the composition is done at this point.

Rewriting Usually Means More Rewriting

I find it near-astonishing that I haven't noticed these until today, despite having written since the age of fifteen. They're basic lessons on rewriting.

One of these lessons is that, when you rewrite or add something, you will almost certainly need to rewrite or add stuff afterwards. The other lesson is that, the bigger the change, the bigger changes you'll need to make onwards. So, if I change a whole sentence, I'll probably have to rewrite most or all of the paragraph, which will probably cause minor changes in other paragraphs. But, if I utterly rewrite or add a paragraph, than I'll need to rewrite even more. Meanwhile deleting usually means less work.

Deleting equaling less work raises another thought: can you imagine having a definitely deletable problem with something you composed, and yet you keep rewriting the thing and everything after it, just because you made it and it is special? I can! (probably because I've actually done this) Sooo many artists fall into this trap. For this we must embrace today's time-saving lesson. Rewriting makes for more rewriting; consider deleting anything that ain't working.

As I think of this lesson, and think about how this is a games blog, I think about how a games designer must accept today's lesson, too, and I realize how much respect we artists deserve for our crafts. Just ponder this games-related example: a games designer realizes that a unit in their RTS game isn't balanced; he or she can't just change the numbers of that unit; they'll have to change probably many other unit's numbers (if not all of them), as a change in another unit will prompt a change in another unit and etc.

The summary of this post is: Bacon-soaked-in-butter fly effect

On Writing Reviews

Well, one thing's for sure, I'm going to have to structure my reviews before composing them. Up until now my "structuring" has been: listing the things I wanted to say about the game. And then later on I'd consider the first draft done once the listed got checked off.

A couple problems came up every time I reviewed this way. One problem was the lack of a hook. Normally I just went straight into why the game was good or not, maybe talking about some of the game's features. Future reviews will have something to ease the reader into reading the rest. (The Empire: Total War review did have a hook, but it wasn't a very good one)

Another problem was that the reviews seemed to be a little longer than they should be. Structuring should get rid of this problem.

So from now on I'm structuring reviews. Now they're going to be more like essays.

And now that I'm doing these more like college essays, I think I should note the following to myself (on the blog, so that you can hold me up to this) that I should avoid writing things like, "You the player should or should not get the game." Indeed, that's what the rating at the end of the review is for (at least, before the rating became about being considered a legitimate games journalism outlet). Not writing such a thesis statement is not just about not writing a thesis statement. It's also about not telling the players what to do with their lives. I really don't want to be bossy. The review should humbly be about why I did or didn't like the game.

Also, I've decided to use the star-rating system (I like stars). I've thought about what each star, out of five, will be worth, and I gave up. So for now consider the following as my ratings policy: one star means the experience the game provided me was almost entirely bad, two stars means it was merely mostly bad, three stars means it was merely mostly good. Four stars means it was an almost entirely good experience. And five stars means that, if you can, you owe it to yourself to try it out. Therefore a five star thing is rare. And zero stars means the game was absolute shit.

Self-Encouragement: The Hardest Thing About Writing

The hardest thing about writing is that feeling I believe I'll have until I'm finally employed as a writer: that my work affects no one in any good way until then.

For this reason I must not waste time. I must practice writing as much as possible.

And I must get a writing job (dur), ideally one about games, since I'm obsessed with those.

If I can't be a writer for a living, then I don't see the point of living in today's world, outside of volunteering. To just help decent people do what they care about, that's the only other thing. I see no point in stuff like raising my own family, for example, since I don't think there's anything about me worth attempting to reproduce, and also since our world is overpopulated in general, with nothing to indicate that we're on track to expand out from our planet anytime soon; plus, humanity currently appears to be aimed toward its own self-destruction, with the proliferation of nuclear weapons and unanswered, rising green house gas emissions.

Plus I fear death, or rather, I fear not really trying to do what matters to me before I die. And what really matters to me is creating good company, gaming, and the beautiful, truthful use of words.

From Dust Review

I remember the E3 video of From Dust giving journalists massive erections over what its game would be. The video showed us apocalyptic tsunamis and lava-ly lava; we would play God or something; and there would be these brown, half-naked, masked, aboriginal people who would definitely worship us; and the game was being made by a French games designer everyone called "Eric Chahi" (because that was his name). The journalists' loins were throbbing.

And now we finally have The Game: From Dust! Or I finally have it. It was released for XBLA in July of 2011, to a metacritic score of 80 (which is a good score, by the way). There's a PC version, but it got bad reviews, thus I got the XBLA copy. And man -- did this game blow me away!

With boredom.

I believe From Dust wants to be a sandbox more than a game (my favorite piece of evidence is that the final level in Story Mode gives you incredible powers -- for example, 'make a tsunami' -- and then tells you do whatever you want. I opted for deleting the game).

And when I say 'sandbox,' I literally mean: you're going to pick up and drop lots of sand, within levels that are boxes (with invisible borders). With this sand you build levees and land bridges and make plants grow (From Dust's plants grow on sand). You can also pick up water and lava, the water-grabbing useful primarily for getting rid of the water and putting out fires, and the lava-grabbing useful for forming solid land and killing your people in frustration. You can also pick up trees that give water, fire, and explode.

Your goals in the Story Mode levels are to raise villages around each level's totems and then send five villagers to a hideous Easter Island statue and meet them there, where you'll see the same level-ending cinematic every time. With the exception of the final level, which has no ending.

One of the reasons I didn't want to finish the Story Mode (although I did for this review) was because of the "story." Most of it is told in readings you unlock, and they are basically a trite history about From Dust's characterless world. And I say "characterless" because the game has no real characters, no personalities, and nothing interesting to say about you, anyone you know, or anyone you're bound to know. It's so crap that it almost makes me angry. Did Ubisoft really think a thinking person would want to read a fake history about a non-personality? I have to yell it: THERE ARE NO CHARACTERS IN THE GAME!

Are we supposed to care about From Dust's people because they are brown, didgeridoo-playing aboriginees, as if this were a substitute for an actual cultural exchange (and characters)? Hint: no. Although if Ubisoft intended for the "cultural" part then I want to call out their game for being racist, as the game's people have the pathfinding of retards.

"Why can't you guys just take the short route?!" I say to these idiots I've sent to a totem. "The game says you can! Why are you taking the long way?!!"

Then one of my villages starts screaming for some reason (a flood-warning has appeared over their town symbol). I move the camera over to the place, which takes four seconds longer than it should. I inspect the town and see not a drop of liquid, which may have to do with the PlayStation 2-quality textures, or maybe just incomplete liquids-on-solids work.

Then I hear another complaint. It's from the people I sent off to colonize that totem. I pan to their position. This time the camera takes an annoying amount of time to adjust, as I end up having to fiddle with controls I'm noticing too much; the camera keeps moving my view into awkward positions; I'm wanting a mouse and a keyboard! Finally I have the camera angle I want, and the people are literally making bird noises about how they can't proceed because of lava that suddenly flowed into the longer path they chose...

I pick up this lava, or at first I try to pick up this lava. It's difficult to get your cursor, which is always in the middle of the screen, to the exact location of the small thing you want to pick up. Even more annoying is that the cursor, when not being moved, moves by itself around in a circle like a worm (it actually resembles a worm), so it's hard to immediately tell what the cursor is directly over because the cursor's worm body only forms a semi-circle, and it keeps moving! The other option for grabbing small things is to just try to grab it, pulling on the left trigger again and again, until you get it.

So twenty seconds later I get that bit of lava out of the way. Then I wait a minute for the fools to get to the totem where they will summon up a village from the Earth.

Waiting Waiting Waiting. There's too much waiting in the Story Mode. It got to the point where I left the game running and went to the kitchen, coming back with food so that I'd have something to do.

Perhaps the game thinks we'll be interested in its liquid effects. And okay, the tsunamis and lava look cool when they wrap around a town (or destroy one). Also cool: seeing an island form from a volcano. I'm just kidding of course. It's actually kind of boring. As I watched it I thought, "Wow, that liquid is good coding work! Why aren't I doing something else with my life?!"

The Challenge Mode levels are not as boring as the Story Mode ones because they immediately put you in the action, the kind where you're given goal, there's a threat coming to ruin everything in a matter of seconds, and you must quickly figure out what to do and do it. One of these levels, for example, has you escort people across a bunch of waterfalls; you must pick up water that intermittently flows down those waterfalls, preventing the people from being swept away as they hike towards their destination. Your completion time gets recorded for the leaderboards. These challenges, in theory, would be fun, but what they really do is highlight how crap the controls and the camera are (this is called a broken interface).

You can bore yourself with From Dust for fifteen dollars.

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Why Super Meat Boy's Hell Boss Battle is better than Rayman Origins' Underworld Boss Battle

This is not a thinly disguised rant against Rayman Origins. Rather it's descriptions of why the Hell Boss Battle in Super Meat Boy is both similar to and a thousand infinity times better than the Underworld Boss Battle in the Rayman game that has disco.

So first, similarities:

One way they're similar is that both fights are in Hell, despite what Rayman's E10+ ESRB rating says. Another way is that there's lava on the ground and that you shouldn't touch it. Another other way is that there is ugliness and gender involved; the Underworld boss being an ugly woman, the Hell boss being an ugly man; #4 is that the boss battles are nothing to write a blog post about.

Oh! And the big important similarity is that you are extremely likely to die on your first five or ten tries to defeat those bosses; i.e. there's stuff you'll need to memorize.

So now, what makes SMB's better? And the answer is: it's the amount of time you have to wait between death and play. Normally in Super Meat Boy, when you die, you're five or ten seconds behind that moment of death. In the Hell Boss Battle, maybe thirty seconds if you died near the end of the fight. However, in Rayman Origins you're a minute or two or three from your death to the moment of you'll hope you've memorized. And it's really annoying. And it's extra annoying not being able to start the battle within the first five seconds of respawning.

And that's it.

My 2011 Game of the Year and Me

It's not Portal 2, as entertaining as it is. And I'll admit that I haven't played every one of the games competing for first place. But I've played enough to know what to expect, more or less, from the games I haven't touched.

I haven't yet played SpaceChem, but I imagine that it's a puzzle game in which you impress yourself by what you can solve.

I haven't played Batman Arkham City, but the best critics don't seem to all think it was better than Batman Arkham Asylum, which to me wouldn't compete with Portal 2 if it had come out this year.

I haven't played Dues Ex: Human Revolution, but I heard that it has rotten boss battles and some poor character work.

I haven't played Saints Row the Third, but apparently it features lots of poorly designed levels and that its personality is its strong point.

I haven't played Cart Life.

And I haven't played Total War: Shogun 2, but I already know it's great weaknesses just from playing its parent games and imagining a perfect version of them. Those weaknesses: that Shogun 2 cannot be as fun as some of the other games on this list, and also that it uses addictive RPG mechanics and the ole just-one-more-turn button to keep its players interested - not to say that that's not worth experiencing, but it's a cliche I feel we've seen too much of.

Yah. My Game of the Year is Bastion. I'm not saying Portal 2's singleplayer isn't great, 'cause it is, and every gamer owes both games to themself. But Bastion does a few things better than Portal 2 and every other game that came out last year. Bastion gives you a couple emotion-provoking and intellectually-stimulating decisions to make (and boy is the last one a strong one). It has imperfect but funner gameplay than Portal 2. And it is simultaneously innovative and awesome, which I think is the reason why we celebrated the original Portal so much.

Perhaps I am too in love with indie games; I want to remind you that Portal was one.

Empire: Total War (Singleplayer) Review

Would it not be cool if you could rename cities in Total War? Like, if you could change the name "Istanbul" to something like "Yo Mommaville," so that the game would give you messages like, "Yo Mommaville is under siege by the following nation: France." Yeah. The developers should have put that in.

Empire: Total War is 2009's Total War game (for PC of course. Beautiful, powerful PC...). It's set in the 18th century and introduces naval battles to the series. So muskets and galleons and whatnot.

Like previous titles it's an RTS involving thousands of 3D troops whom you deploy via the turn-based, Risk-like campaign map (complete with diplomacy and provinces and blah; an addictive game with its end-of-turn button). The naval battles are real-time and beautiful, too; but don't play them. In fact, don't play this game. You can stop reading now.

Just kidding.

I have written a list of things about the game that ruin it. Here is that list:

Thing #1) To auto-resolve a battle usually means to have more casualties, with a greater percent chance of losing what otherwise would have been an easy, average (boring) battle. (The average battle lasts fifteen minutes)

Thing #2) The game crashes, a thing extra-annoying in Empire because the last saved game might be an hour or more before the crash.

Thing #3) Buildings in the Middle East, real-time battles are the same buildings from the American Revolutionary War real-time battles. This takes away from the immersion factor.

Thing #4) Artillery doesn't always fire in the direction it's aimed at. It looks lame.

Thing #5) Troops have trouble walking around buildings. They have a tendency to walk (or charge) into walls.

Thing #6) Many of the dramatic combat animations are too dramatic. It really feels...not good, seeing two soldiers doing their Star Wars Episode I duel animations while surrounded by hundreds of guys, most of whom themselves are awkwardly shuffling around the crowd, looking for an opponent whom they can do the animations with.

Thing #7) Cavalry aren't enthusiastic enough about attacking lines of fleeing troops. Instead of galloping up to them and totally killing everyone, they'll charge the enemy and then awkwardly run along side them at a distance of ten meters for half a minute before attacking again. Who do they think they are? Sharks?! Just kill 'em!! Your ancestors in the other Total Wars had no problem doing it!

Thing #8) A lot of the melee that kills people doesn't hit anything. You know how the punches in fake wrestling look a lot like slaps? Well in Empire many of the musket and saber swings look a lot like they're fighting the air, and that the person on the other side of the air dies (often overdramatically). (To the developer's credit: the game does feature some good stabbings).

Thing #9) Sometimes artillery crews, after they've been involved in a melee, will not resume firing their cannons.

Thing #11) There are floating bodies.

Thing #12) Sometimes a drummer will drum with no drumming sound.

Thing #13) Of the three types of agents you have on the campaign map (which are the Spy Assassin Saboteurs, the Bearded Scholars, and the Monks) two of them are wrong. First those proselytizers the monks: they can only convert people, and they're not very good at it, so thinking about where to send them feels less like fun and more like boring. And as for the Bearded Scholars: they shouldn't exist; Creative Assembly probably refused to scrap them because they spent too much money on the sword fight movies that sometimes occur when there's a scholar duel. Also, Creative Assembly should have included some role-playing game mechanics in which the agents level up and have skill trees that give you choices on how to improve them, like 2011's Total War game, which has no scholars.

I've stopped with the list. You can probably tell just from its length that the game was so annoying that, when my game didn't autosave between two long battles and crashed, I said: "#*$@ this @*!$." And deleted it. And now I here write the reminder summary: This game, don't play it. It's a potentially addictive one that, at the end of a month of play, will probably make you wish you never did, as it feels so anti-quality.

Instead, get an awesome PC and wait for the addictive Total War Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai expandalone. (And read reviews) The coming game also features shooting, and it has gatling guns and ninjas. Empire: Total War has crap.

Empire: Total War -- Part 3: Oh Austria! How I Love to Shoot You!

Austria has been the most annoying major nation so far, mainly because they keep invading me. First they offer to "have me sell them my provinces" in exchange for "infinite military access" AKA "please die." I refuse to die, and they attack! They take EVERYTHING north of Greece and Istanbul, which is my capital (at least, I think it's my capital; I guess being the leader I should know where my capital is). Anyways they take the provinces and ravage the lands just west of what is definitely my capital Istanbul for years. But they don't attack Istanbul for some reason. I'm guessing they're confused. Or maybe they're so at war with Prussia and Poland that they forget I exist. Or maybe the strategic AI is dumb.

Near the end of defeating the bastard evil minor nations in the previous post, I attack Austria-controlled Bulgaria with melee troops and lots of musket, chainmail men. They win! Against peasants! (literally, peasants) And then Austria responds with three armies of linemen (these are the typical, European, white, 18th century, triangle hat-wearing troops; they have muskets and are better than my chainmail men; just think NFL). My army, personally commanded in realtime by me, utterly destroys the first army. But then I retreat, because my 1,200 unprofessional, casualty-ridden army is no match for the oncoming, fresh, 3,200, triangle hat army. I retreat to Istanbul, and they attack! And I hold it, killing 2,700 troops! Then I train the few new elite troops I can afford for a counter-attack.

Elite Ottoman troops in the early 18th century! Yes! They look like pornstars! Exclamation mark! These men are half-naked! They're dressed in funny, Turkish sultan hats! They look like genies in their green, revealing jackets, that surround washboard abs and pectoral muscles! And they have a perfect tan and a mustache that would make any woman blush! Or hell, any man blush. Oh, those mustaches!

Also they do lots of damage with their big rifles, and, in the case of the grenadiers, with their exploding balls. Although somehow they can't do the square formation, which my scientists spent years on!

Oh yeah! The Austrians! So they kick me back to Istanbul and fail to defeat me there. I have already fought one of my two epic battles (in the last thirty hours of gameplay!) with them; seriously, they're army seems bigger than what their budget can afford, and also this game needs to produce more epic battles because 30-hours is a long time!

I attack Bulgaria again. Waiting for me are three armies, two Austrian and one Venetian. And we fight the 2nd epic battle of the last thirty hours. With my 1,800 troops versus their 3,000, I win the battle with 350 troops remaining. O' it was epic. I saved the replay because...I like to save replays. My pornstar grenadiers threw so many of their exploding balls onto men.

And then the Austrians died. Their seven province nation was overwhelmed by all their enemies in a mere two years after that battle.

Empire: Total War -- Part 2 (Killing Minors)

In this part of the Empire: Total War series, Paul the God of the Ottomans talks about killing off those pesky minor nations.

After realizing my nation was crap, I spent most of the next years not being destroyed by my neighbors. There were no threats to the south, since I owned it, but to the north there were the Russians, and to the north west there were the Austrians, and to the east there were these minor nations who actually thought they could "declare war" on me and "attempt to conquer my provinces." Then they marched into two of my provinces and conquered them.

First I lost Iraq to a mysterious minor nation called "Persia." For some reason I auto-resolved the battle for Baghdad (you can auto-resolve any battle). It set me back a bad five years!

So I made my # 1 conquering goal to unconquerify Iraq. I built barracks-ez with the anemic Ottoman treasury, and trained up some Peasants with Guns. It turned out this was a bad idea, because they died. And then the Venetians, from Sparta of all places, attacked Athens. I built some of my finest warriors in response (swordsmen) and, after five years, took Sparta. And this resulted in a rebellion in which I lost Sparta to a the Greek army; I ended up fighting with them for four years (eight turns on the campaign map).

Also the war at sea was bad. The Russians conquered a province held by one of my few allied minor nations, and they started building ships in that conquered province at the northern part of the Black Sea. Said ships easily conquered my portion of the Black sea guarded by my non-existent navy, which had already been destroyed by the Venetian navy. And yes, the Venitians are a minor nation.

But for the most part, the bigger nations of France, Russia, Austria, and Poland, although they declared war on me, didn't really attack me, unless you count Russia and Austria taking all my provinces north of Istanbul. This is why I talk now again about Persia and Georgia.

The nice thing about Persia (for me) is that their army was composed of what look like thousands of Lawrences of Arabia, with their white cloaks and their British accents. I'm just kidding, of course. I don't remember what their army was like; I should have written this right after I played. And now that I think of it I was the one with a clone army of the Lawrence of Arabia! I also had camels! These were mounted by men. Anywho, I, in ten years, took back Baghdad, and then marched an army into Iran and took Iraniville or Tehran or whatever. And it seemed easy (despite taking ten years). Many of their armies had pikemen! Pikemen in the 18th century!

And then the Georgians came down and took Baghdad.

Long story short, I defeated the Persian armies roaming around Iran, expelled the Georgians from Baghdad with a new, mostly gun-toting army (almost putting me into bankruptcy). And then weird stuff happened. Although it was nice seeing the Persian armies all die after I took their last province northeast of Iraq.

The weird stuff: By the year 1735 I had formed a military alliance with the Maharatmahal...The India! And shortly after that, with the amazing amount of money they had, they bought one of the two Georgian provinces. I'm going to repeat this to show you how much money they had: The Georgians were their enemies; India had so much cash that they bought one of the two provinces of one of their enemies! Even more annoying, the province that India bought was a province I had previously owned -- and defended many times in long real-time battles!

After India bought half of Georgia, I sent an army of chainmail musketmen and conquered the filthy rich remaining half. It was so rich that, before I took the province, they managed to build one of the best universities in the world! And now it is mine! And I use it to research things, like the square formation! That's right, your brilliant scientists study things like "how to get musket-troops to make a square." The research takes years!

CUNT - The Game

Today I played Cunt, a 2D flash shooter in which you play as a penis, flying around an STD-shooting vagina face. Your mission: to blow up the vagina a bunch of times.

You have weapons to do this. The semi-automatic sperm drop is your basic attack; it shoots out every time you left click in the direction your mouse is. There are temporary power-ups you can pick up, which are an automatic pee-gun, an automatic sperm gun, and a thrusting melee attack. If you take damage the game will drop what I think are viagra pill med packs.

To defeat the vagina you must shoot or hit it till its health bar empties. Not the vulva; the vagina itself is pretty open. And I say earlier 'blow [it] up a bunch of times" because it will blow up and then respawn with stronger weaponry.

Below is a link to play it. It's a fifteen minute game, and it's free. My only real complaint about it is that sometimes my mouse will stray from the game screen, and the game won't recognize that my mouse isn't in it, and it won't pause, and I'll end up clicking the browser, and annoyance occurs.

http://www.komix-games.com/game.php?game=cunt

I Also Stopped Reading Rules of Play

It happened! First The Game Design Reader! (a 900-page version of Rules of Play). And now Rules of Play! The "great" book on theories behind game design!

And yes, there are actual reasons I made up to stop reading it; and here they are:

Reason number 1: It was too long.

Reason number 2: It was too boring.

Reason number 3: Based on peekage into Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design, most of the non-obvious info in Rules of Play appears to be in Schell's shorter, well-written book.

And there you have it. Rules of Play. Done! Now on to The Art of Game Design.

Empire: Total War -- Part 1

Hey Kids! This is the first in a fifteen thousand part series on the turn-based, real-time strategy game Empire: Total War (I knew you always wanted this! And it's here!! :) I've been playing Empire: Total War as the last of my addictive, 'vacation'-only games, with the purpose being to write a review. And one of the things I've noticed about the game, and I want to point out right now, is: I have no idea how any game critic managed to play this game and write a video review and write a written review, in only a week. Although I suppose they could play it constantly, minus food and sleep (and maybe poo poo and pee pee). And I suppose they could just play a short, 100-turn campaign (1700-1750). Unlike me, who's doing the 200-turn "long campaign" (1700-1799) on Hard Campaign and Medium Battle difficulty.

Now that I've established that I'm special, I should actually talk about what you're going to read. I'm going to review the game in parts. I just want to see what it's like to review a long game this way. And the last part will be a verdict.

Now that you understand what's going on, let's begin, with a description of what the game is:

Empire: Total War is a turn-based, risk-like strategy game with real-time battles, on land and at sea, that can involve thousands of men manning it out in beautiful 3D! It is set in the 18th century, and you can play a fifty or hundred-"year" campaign as any of the major players of the century, like Germany or Antartica (just kidding, Germany didn't exist back then). You essentially play as the god of the nation you lead, and you can end up fighting in the plains of Texas to the tundras of India.

Right now I am playing as the Ottomans in a "long campaign" (i.e. 200 turn, 100 year campaign). The winning conditions: to own 30 provinces, including eleven particular ones, before the 18th century. Loss of all provinces equals death.

The first thing I noticed upon starting was that I began with a lot more provinces than most. I had Baghdad to Egypt to Bulgaria, and what today is Turkey and Greece. And in the next few "years," (again, each turn you take by clicking the next-turn button equals half a year) and perhaps due to the skills I had developed in previous Total War titles, I managed to lose a third of my provinces. But just so you remember that I'm amazing, the Internet people told me that this would happen on anything harder than medium difficulty. One guy wrote something like, "Just give your provinces, that are too Christian, to the Austrians; this way you'll get a few more turns before they attack you." I didn't do this and the game made me feel like a loser. Later on, to prove to myself that I had learned this diplomacy thing, I gave a province, via the diplomacy menu, to the French! -- just to see what it was like -- so that they would like me more. Then they declared war on me. The Internet people say that, on hard campaign difficulty, the AI, for the most part, hates you and also builds stuff and trains troops faster, AKA cheats.

Another thing the Internet people said was that, upon beginning an Ottoman campaign, I had to fire my government. Not the entire government, of course (the game doesn't give you the ability to fire your entire government :(

No, fire the secretaries. So I went to see who my secretary of the treasury and whatnot were, and yep, their personal descriptions included things like "everyone hates him" and "sucks" and "Please! Fire me!" So I fired everyone! Except the sultan. You can't fire sultans for some reason. Anyways, the fired men disappeared forever, and they were replaced by younger, less corrupt men, half of whom I fired.

The Internet people also advised that Ottoman players should immediately inspect their army and realize that, until late in the game, the European troops are going to be better. So I inspected my army, and I noticed two things:

1) I didn't really have an army.

2) One of the few units looked like a bunch of peasants with pitchforks.

3) It turns out they were.

4) Their unit description said something very similar to: "Why?!"

5) The turn after I inspected my clown army, Austria invaded me (my empire, that is).

The Replay Value and I

Sometimes while I play games I am reminded that there exist things outside of games, and that these things are admittedly mildly interesting. Like books. Books are interesting sometimes. Reading them, that is. I am reading one right now during my unemployment time, actually; and it is called Rules of Play; and it is not very well-written. But I'm getting sidetracked. Other things. Yes. There exist other arts in other art forms that remind me that we should act like replay value is hard to come by.

Or in other words:

THE VAST MAJORITY OF TODAY'S NEW GAMES HAVE ALMOST NO REPLAY VALUE!

This is less because they are all bad (sort of), and more because there are just too many high-quality, original experiences that are not games. Yes, I'm not kidding. For example, there are many books I myself haven't read and want to read....and...and that's pretty much it. I'm not really into non-computer games.

Why am I saying this? It's because I need to write something everyday to improve my writing. But also it's because of the grand "high replay value" title that exists out there. We should award this title only to the awesomest non-puzzle games (sorry Portal). Because we have to stop pretending that there aren't other arts to do, although in a sense, since the only way to do the other arts is to make them, there aren't really other arts to do unless you're going to make'm, in which case there aren't any other arts to do. But you know what I mean. I know I do?

The Challenge of Reviewing Games

The challenge with writing game reviews is: WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO SAY?

I know the writer person in me would say: "Whatever me want say," but the problem with this is that all me really want say are your mom jokes (I always figured these to be my great contributions to our species).

Despite that, there's this conflict between needing to review a game in a game review, and just wanting to entertain readers. I'm going to look at Rockpapershotgun.com right now to see an entertaining review from those very entertaining writers.

Hmm...The beginning of a Rockpapershotgun review of The Darkness II starts with quick description of the game and a lovely joke about how gruesome the game is, ending the italicized paragraph with another lovely joke about wiping a lung from your face and reminding readers that this is a "Wot I think."

The beginning of another review is also italicized and has subtle uses of alliteration. This intro claims that the "Wot I think" is a "Wot I think."

I see a pattern. It is that the writers tell their tellings very.....well. Yeah, "well's" the best I can do. They're just really skilled writers.

OH WAIT! How could I not notice this?! Pacing! The article began with some entertaining thing, such as a joke in the intro or alliteration in the intro. And then, in the 2nd or 3rd paragraph, we get the hook. Interesting, interesting...Also, that Darkness 2 review ends up not being entertaining, yet good.

Rayman Origins Review

Rayman Origins is a 2D sidescroller by Ubisoft Montpellier. In it you play as Rayman, an armless, legless, but not footless or hand-less, man-thing, who wears a hoodie and sneakers, OR you play as one of his three friends: a frog, or one of the twin "teensies." Your mission (in the game) is to save the world from the bad guys who became bad because you woke them up with your snoring. Does it make any sense? Yes, for snoring is evil. But later on the narrative doesn't make sense. And who cares? THE STORY DOESN'T MATTER.

[Disclaimer Thingy: I played the game by myself (i.e. not with another living thing, dead ones yes). The game offers up to four-player, local co-op, and many game critics celebrate this fact at parties.]

As for my overall opinion of the singleplayer experience: Is my answer meh? Yeah. Meh sounds about right. Which once again puts me in opposition to the professional game critics of the world, although there is a lot of good in the game.

For one thing: it looks beautiful. In fact, it might be the prettiest 2D game ever made. Think of lava levels, storm clouds levels, flying robot world levels, ice levels, desert levels, jungle levels, and swimming levels, imagine them done in paint (and painted by professionals and not by kindergartners), played in 1080p at 60 frames per second. Or you can just click on this hyperlink: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_fz4m74nJw

Are the level themes cliches? Yes. But although the level themes are cliches, what Ubisoft fills them with are not. There are giant didgeridoos you can fly through, there are flying spinal cords that make a different sound per bone. You will fly a lot on a mosquito that fires phasers and sucks in enemies. There are undead safari adventurers. And the faires you must save are dressed like pornstars and have boobies that jiggle.

Yes, there are indeed at least a couple reasons to get the game. It is one of the almost charming videogames of our century. It has a light sense of humor and never seems obscene, at least not to me, which means that it is probably obscene; but note that it's rated E10+, so I am right, which makes everyone else wrong...

Moving on to the sound: The sound in the game is filled with cliches, too, but also does it in a fresh way. It is filled with cartoon explosions and martial arts movie punches and a fake language in which most words end in "aye." And the music covers various genres -- Jazz and Asian Mountain Monk and Australian and Sleepy (I'm not a music expert). And, in short, the presentation of the game is only marred by the disco music that you're exposed to when you collect enough "electoons" in any of the levels. Said terrible music is played in a three second loop every time you collect enough "lumes (AKA sonic rings)."

Now the volta of this review: Yes. The presentation is great; but we don't buy games just for presentation (at least I like to think we don't). And unfortunately for Ubisoft and its players, Rayman Origin's game part of the game is its bad point: I find that the first half of the game is too easy and that the second half of the game is too annoying, making the whole feel like a chore.

The basic gameplay mechanics, though, are very good. You are given the ability to slow your fall and sometimes fly; you're given the ability to swim without oxygen, and the ability to run up curved walls, and something else. Fairy boobies! Rescue a fairy (you must) and you'll be rewarded one of those abilities, giving you time to master the previous one you just learned. My mechanics quibbles center around: not being able to jump while in the middle of a run-attack; and also never having a use for a fully powered-up punch. The Popeye the Sailor Man punch certainly looks more powerful and reaches out farther, but I never needed to hit anything so far away nor with so much power. And one more quibble: probably the lamest mechanics issue occurs when you think you should be able to grab onto a ledge or a platform -- Rayman's done it so many times before -- and then he doesn't and dies. (It's just these weird ledges or platforms that you can be on -- walk on, run on, etc. -- but you can't grab onto. But this issue occurs few times.

Again, the real problems with the game part of the game is that the first half of it is too easy --unless you're trying to speed through the levels to win the trophies -- and that the second half of the game is too infuriating.

Why is it infuriating? Well, a lot of the last half of the game requires you to move quickly through levels or die. It seems that Ubisoft France failed to realize that human beings are incapable of reacting to things when the distance between the person and the thing closes too fast. (This is elementary driving school knowledge) You'll be running at 60mph, and then a bunch of stuff will appear in roughly the direction you're running, moving more or less in your direction at up to 30mph (AKA 90 mph). You won't have enough time to react, and you'll die. And it gets really annoying when you die far away from the previous respawn point, making it so you start up to a minute behind the point of death. And to add insult to irritation, after dying a bunch of times in the same spot, the screen turns black, and a stupid-looking fly tells you "Yikes! This place is really dangerous!' Do you want to STAY here?" And offers you to "stay" or "leave."

I sweared a lot playing this game.

And that's really all that needs to be said, minus the note that says "I liked the first (jungle) levels." Therefore, if I had to rate the singleplayer experience based on how enjoyable it was, I'd give it a 6.1923801/10.

[Rayman Origins is available for XBOX 360, PS3, and Nintendo Wii (the last one if you don't want it in 1080p); it will soon be out on PC. At this time it can be purchased for around $30.00 U.S. on Amazon.com]

[Tips: Play it with a friend, or you're likely to suffer instead of enjoy. And play as a character who looks best to you, because mechanically they're all the same; I think that the frog is better at grabbing stuff and hitting things and getting hit due to his large size, while the teensies are the opposite, and Rayman's somewhere in between. Also, look online to find out how many electoons you need for the "rewards" you want. You will probably only want enough electoons to get the skull teeth, which lead to the annoying-but-thankfully-lume-less Undead World]

Decided Not to Read Much of the Game Design Reader

Last night after I posted that I was going to read the "869" page The Game Design Reader, I said to myself something like, "IT'S 869 PAGES?!!"

And today I received my copy of Schell's The Art of Game Design (464 pages), and I read its intro bits; it's so well written! It makes Rules of Play seem so boring. Schell is both funnier and a better writer. (This might be because he was a comedian and a writer.)

But back to the Game Design Reader. It just seems so redundant. Why read the "Rules of Play Anthology" after reading Rules of Play? Yeeeh, I can't think of an answer. So I'm just going to look for the very interesting essays in the book I'm not going to read, and move on to Schell.

In gaming news, today I tried the Total War: Shogun 2 demo (yes, I consider this news), and I wasn't pleased with the frame rate. On "High" settings the game dipped under 30 fps when there were thousands of troops and a lot of terrain onscreen, and I had already turned the resolution down to 1,200 X 950-ish. So, I have decided not to get Creative Assembly's best game until I get a new PC, which will probably be in 2015. Although it's very possible that I won't get the game period. Why? Well, in short it is because I suspect that the game is actually mind-numbingly boring.

No seriously! I suspect that it's mostly boring; the whole point of a Total War game is to build up to the epic battles, battles that are "really close" and that will decide the fate of a group, a province, Japan, Earth. But in between the epic moments is a lot of humdrum -- i.e. managing the province or empire, moving people around, making and breaking treaties. And because most of the game is humdrum, what the player gets is a mind-numbing boredness.

I'm going to play lots of Empire: Total War to test my theory.

Deep Thoughts

Rayman Origins has jiggling fairy boobs in it.

The faires are called "Betilla and the Bodacious Nymphs of the Glade." Rayman Origins is available on Amazon for $29.99.

In other news, I was talking to a psychology minor today about MMORPGs and Diablo and World of Warcraft (i.e. MMORPGs). He told me that the "random" chance-based item-getting in those games is comparable to playing the slots. I wasn't sure if he considered my detailing of how bosses in those games drop, on average, the good loot, but it doesn't matter. The point is you play the slots because, given enough time, there's a chance that you'll win something cool, like a $1,000; meanwhile you continue to play WoW or Diablo because there's a chance that, with enough time invested playing, you will win epic loot. See the analogy? Study it for your SATs kids! Do they still do analogies on the SAT? You bet they do!

In other other news, I'm reading Rules of Play, a 600-page book on theories behind game design. The first hundred pages are a little dense and boring, as it spends most of them defining terms to be used in the following 500 pages. But after that it's really interesting. I feel like my ability to judge a game's worth has increased a lot! (Although, it hasn't.) I am a little better at picking at games now. I am on page 300. After this book I will read The Game Design Reader, which is 869 pages of essays. And after that I'll read The Art of Game Design (by Jesse Schell), which is supposed to be the best book on game design.

Blackjack (in Red Dead Redemption)

I had fun twice while playing Red Dead Redemption. Unless you count all the fun movies. But you can't. You don't know how many of Red Dead's movies I watched!!!

Anyways, the two times I had fun in the video "game" were:

1) During the horse race -- During the horse race I rode what animal experts would call a "slow-moving" horse. I could translate that, but let's keep the writing concise; my having a "slow-moving" horse led to a very close race. And I mean VEEERY EPICALLY CLOSE! (If you thought D-Day was very epic, or close, you should have seen my Red Dead Redemption horse race!) The 2nd place guy and I were neck and neck for the last third of the race; I nearly lost control of myself and shot him; but then! right before the finish line, I exciting-writingly pulled ahead and won with my amazing skills. Then my horse was killed by wolves.

2) The first time I played blackjack was the other time in Red Dead that I had fun. When I started my first blackjack session, I didn't actually know how to play it (yep), and when it started I played it for three hours straight. I was fascinated, figuring out how to win as much money as possible without killing the dealer; and after three hours I figured out how to do it (without counting cards). I won all the dealer's virtual money and was happy about it.

(Of course eventually I learned that money was pretty useless in the game)

So near the end of Red Dead's plot, gambling felt utterly pointless, "utterly" pointless, I say, as I had already learned what I thought was the best strategy for winning blackjack, and because Texas Hold 'em in Red Dead Redemption was broken (for example, when I held up two kings, the game said I won by two fives and two twos...). I knew there was nothing to get, and learn, from playing more blackjack. Knowing this I ended up playing it again for fun (?). And it was boring.

Why I'm not Excited about Diablo III

Because it will be evil.

Okay okay, I'll be more specific:

Diablo III will be very very very evil.

I won't lie: I'm excited about the game's bosses -- what they'll look like, what they like, etc. -- but, I know that the game will have a way of addicting people (HA! HA!), specifically: addicting people to a never-ending search for "better" loot. Oh yes, I know: that even after many people have beaten the game on all its difficulty settings, even after seeing all the level types and monster types and bad writing, said players will keep playing the game -- maybe for centuries (yes, they'll be undead in their computers; or they'll remain addicted in the afterlife) -- and they will do so, they will play it, in marathon sessions! Burning the little spare time they have on experiences already experienced, until they die, alone and unwashed and skeleton-like.

So yeah, Diablo III will be evil.

And yes, I still won't lie. I am a little (or completely) biased against a game whose gameplay is composed mainly of beating foes not by skill or cunning, but rather by stats-boosting items accumulated over a billion+ hours of play.... How sad.

Not that I'm saying I MYSELF won't get Diablo III. I mean, I probably won't. But maybe Blizzard will prove me wrong; although I don't think they will; but maybe they will.....heee.

Need a Whole Week to Play Another Game

I'm trying to get through three thick books on game design. Or in other words, I don't have much to say about the game's I'm not playing.

In the meantime I want to post this!

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/02/unbound-ed-mcmillen-talks-with-design3/#more-92366

It's a Rockpapershotgun wrapped around a YouTube video that itself is an interview with Ed McMillen, the visual artist and level designer (I think) behind Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac. It's excellent.

Another subject: Something I want to write is a series of essays on video gaming in the poor indigenous mountain town in Costa Rica I lived in. But before I write it I want to be more skilled as a writer, and maybe publish it on a site like The Escapist. I don't think most people will find it interesting, but I do think the subject is interesting. The essays would constitute a portrait of people loving the few games they have in the middle of nowhere, and with good writing I think The Escapist would publish it.

End.