Deus Ex: Human Revolution (PC) Review

This prequel to the original the Deus Ex (which itself was an overrated game, sorry) is a Jekyll and Hyde. It is the first 50-50 game I've reviewed (by the end of this review). For every good thing in DE:HR (pronounced "Durr!") there comes a boring thing. It makes it so that I can review this via a list.

DURR! -- The List Review!

1) Every good voice actor speaks through a stiff face.

2) Every interesting bit of text about our future comes with a ho-hum bit of text about office life.

3) (Almost) Every well-written bit of dialogue is stuffed in an awkward-sounding conversation.

4) Every interesting city (there are two cities), is surrounded by (and has many) offices and office buildings.

5) Every fun mini-hacking game is accompanied by boring drawers and lockers, any of which may contain a level-up "Praxis" that makes you want to grind-open all the lockers and drawers.

6) Every unimaginative, stupid annoying boss fight is made less horrible by being short.

7) Every interesting NPC isn't standing too far from another NPC who has a twin who says the same things and with the same gesticulations.

8) Every cool-looking animation or gun comes with the repetitiveness of the no-longer-cool-looking animation and the gun that doesn't sound or look cool when it fires. And sometimes the sniper rifle sticks through the ground, and the tranquilizer gun's butt likes to stick through your jacket.

9) Although the upgrades for your protagonist and weapons feel more dramatic this Deus ex, there are still pretty useless ones.

[The swimming skill isn't in this game. Probably because there is no swimming.]

10) And, best and worstly, the game's challenging hard mode (which is the mode you should play it on) is accompanied by the good ole' PC save-almost-whenever-you-want system. In this game, the uber save system takes away almost all the tension and makes the experience very pausy (I could not find a quicksave button). Why should I worry about what I do next when I can just save?

And no, not even saving rarely (or never) will make the challenge fun, as you'll end up having to put up with the auto-saves being far back in time, making all your patient stealthery a grind of an experience as you die and have to do it all over again. And yes, stealth is the real way to play this game. I can tell because Durr! rewards you much more XP for more stealth, plus the shooting isn't fun.

The non-stealth way to play the game isn't fun because, like most cover-based shooters, in order to win, all you have to do is stay behind cover, keeping enemies away with a good short-range weapon, and wait for your health to slowly recharge and for your enemies to die.

11) The music sets the mood.

★★★☆☆

We Need to Hold Long, Addictive Games to a High Standard

Let's admit it. We don't do this. Just look at our disgraceful metacritic scores!

Mass Effect (XBOX 360): 91%

Mass Effect 2 (XBOX 360): 96%

Mass Effect 3 (XBOX 360): 93%

Diablo 2: 88%

Final Fantasy Past VII: 90%

Empire: Total War: 90%

Napolean: Total War: 81%

Many more addictive, long, boring games: 90%

Most of these games offer repetitive, drama-less, intellectually bankrupt, poorly-written, ridiculously time-consuming, addictive experiences. Yet games critics keep rating them as wonderful experiences!

How can this be explained? In the only way it can be: there is something wrong with most games critics. How can they so highly rate such boring games? It makes me ask myself as I shower, "Have the games journalists ever lived? Have they ever been in love with someone? Have they ever made love to someone? Have they ever been around the world and seen the amazing graphics and heard the exotic sounds? Have they ever done interesting things in their lives outside of games?

Some of them, yes. But the way metacritic paints this, "some of them" means, like, "five."

Playing Dues Ex: Human Revolution

I'm in the middle of latest Deus Ex game, and so far I'm actually not very disappointed by the boss fights, simply 'cause they're short.

But I'm not a fan of all the drawers and lockers. Opening them is boring, and the game convinces you to go through them by putting (now and then) an awesome object in one, like a "praxis," which lets you upgrade one of your skills.

So no post today. I'm addicted.

Shadow Complex Review

Shadow Complex is a summer action movie game. It came out on XBOX Live for a summer of arcade years ago and got an 88% on metacritic. Do I agree with this scorage? No. It makes me question the unhappiness that characterizes most games critics' lives.

And now I'll talk about the game. Shadow Complex is a Metroid/Castlevania style side-scroller in which you're given a shadow-filled complex full of high-tech terrorists preparing to assault San Francisco. You play as a less annoying version of Nathan Drake, and what begins as a date in the woods ends up being a mission to save your girlfriend, and America. Although for some reason the developers, Chair, decided not to make this a comedy, the game's backed up with decent action-movie dialogue, good voice acting, the Unreal 3 engine, and well-placed ominous music. It's intellectually bankrupt but it doesn't attack your brain.

So is it fun?

Yes, if you just stick to the main quest, and maybe pick up a few powerups on the way to the end, and maybe do the speed run achievement on your second playthrough, if you actually want a second playthrough, which you probably won't since the game's fun surprises will be gone.

The game definitely isn't fun if you decide to retrace your steps, scouring the entire complex for powerups you couldn't pickup when you first passed them. (Some "entrances" to powerups can only be blown apart by weapons you get later in the game, thus encouraging you to go back through the base with your new "entrance-opening" weapons, like the rocket launcher) Again, if you like happiness, don't do this. There's an achievemnt for it; do not go for this achievement. Getting the vast majority of the powerups makes you so overpowered that, unless you're terrible at games, even the final battle will be a cakewalk. Also, going back for those items, retreading old places over and over again, is such a chore, with almost no surprises; worse, most enemies and all destroyable "entrances" respawn; this probably has something to do with the level up system, which goes up to lvl 50.

The other gameplay issues involve the camera and the sorta-auto aim system. The camera has a tendency to not show the people shooting you; you'll soon find that you and your enemies can shoot rounds into off-screen land and that you'll often need to rely on enemy bullets to know where their originators might be. And then, when you can see them, you might have to suffer the sorta-auto-aim, usually when there are enemies both on your 2D plane and in the background; this background and hereground enemy situation makes it so that if those enemies are towards, say, your left, you'll need to do some praying to quickly aim at the target you want to first. This can make the early game seem impossible on hard and insane difficulties without lowering the difficulty level (which you can do at any point).

In Short: buy Shadow Complex if you want an above average summer action movie in video game form, and stick to the script (and maybe do the speed run achievement).

★★★☆☆

Dustforce

Dustforce! You're so hard!

(What is Dustforce?)

Dustforce is a PC indie platformer in which you play as a ninja janitor on a mission to dust the world, one level at a time. The controls are a bit many, but it's manageable if you put in the practice. The game has soothing techno music.

Why's it too hard (for Paul)?

To proceed to another level, you need to get an "S/S" rating in some other level. The "SS"-soundingness of the challenge is appropriate. Unlike Super Meat Boy, which gives you the option of doing its super hard challenges, Dustforce requires it, like a nazi (an indie nazi). With its many buttons you need to master, and its increasingly spike and monster-filled maps, it ends up feeling like a frustrating grind much of the time (especially since the levels can be a couple minutes long). It never feels impossible, due to the happy music and the many replays you can watch of the best players, but it does feel hard enough that it makes me rethink my life whenever I play it. So I stopped and will not review it.

My favorite things about Dustforce are its original concept and this song: http://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/album/fastfall

A Game Critic's Manifesto

I promise to know what makes a great gaming experience. I promise to write comprehensive reviews of games. And I promise not to give five-star ratings to games that aren't "Outstanding." With the exception of the Pac-Man game; well I just shot myself in the foot...

No seriously, that Pac-Man game should be played by everyone who has never played a Pac-Man game. I don't personally care for it, and it does have the one design flaw I mentioned in my review. But it's a unique, elegantly-designed game. I use elegant in the five-star sense of the word.

The first paragraph I promise to uphold (until I decide I'm done). I may not like "playing" the vast majority of games, but I will do this work so that you can know what few games are worth your time. (I.e. Read my reviews, particularly the ones that have four or five stars)

INSULTING POST TIME!

Yes, this post is about the Mass Effect ending. WHY THE FUCK DO WE CARE SO MUCH ABOUT IT?!

Not to say that I'm anti-children. The Take Back Mass Effect Campaign, which is currently at over $76,000 in donations, is, I realize, not just a cry for the changing of the ME3 ending, but sorta-primarily a helping of children. (Conspiracy theory time: Maybe Bioware made the ending bad on purpose, so that they could get more people to help children. A conspiracy to help children! Genius!)

But seriously, what's wrong with us? Why are we so worked up over an ending to a trilogy that wasn't even that good?!

Yes, I am not shitting (on?) you! And I will now make references!

For example, one of the reasons the Mass Effect games weren't particularly good was that the power, the interestingness of their average sentence (let's admit it) was low; this was probably because many of the characters were weak.

What's the best way to get rid of fun/interesting sentences? Get rid of fun/interesting characters! (Likewise, what's the best way to get rid of boring sentences? Kill off characters like Miranda Lawson, Kaiden Alenko, Ashley Williams, and Jacob Boringface)

And let's also admit that Bioware's take on 3rd person, chest-high cover gameplay was almost never "fun." And this is a way bigger negative thing then the ME3 ending, as shooting was at least a third of the experience. Not to say that, say, Gears of War was particularly fun to play either (to actually "enjoy" the GoW 2 -- the one I played -- you had to play it on at least hard difficulty, with a friend, whom you could talk to).

So with these major cons, what's the deal? This is, of course, a rhetorical question, for I think I know the answer.

The deal is, many people invested too much of themselves into the narratives and characters. There are people who played the first two games multiple times (wtf?) -- they suffered the boring gameplay and dialogue of the first games more than once -- in order to make different Commander Shepards. The poor souls. How meaningless their lives are! Oh, just thinking of them makes me feel sad. I can't write anymore....

Why Games Can Make For Boring Conversation

SHORT POST!

If it weren't for reviewing games, I'd have little to say about them. The reason has less to do with most games being cliches, and more to do with their inherent lack of nouns and verbs. Compared to other things, like movies and books and life, games tend to not have much wordage.

"What can the 'characters' in the 2D/3D space do?" "They can run, jump, explode, shoot, stab, 'interact,' go, stop," and yes there are more words, but not like there are in life or literature or film. NOT TO SAY THAT ALL GAMES ARE LIKE THIS. But you understand what I mean.

Therefore, being able to review a game is important. If I can say why it works or not, I can say something about it.

Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism Vs.The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms

HELLO!

Today we compare the classic in literary criticism Anatomy of Criticism, written by Northrop Frye, a man considered a genius by PhDs in English, to The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms (2nd edition), written by Murfin and Ray, two dudes (I think). Then we will pretend that this post is gaming-related.

Although the authors Murfin and Ray have names that sound like fish species, their book is better. It's better than the "classic" Anatomy of Criticism. And to not incite the rage of the literature world I will say fire-putting-outing remarks, such as, "You don't need to be angry, because you will never visit this site," and "I am talking about games criticism."

How is it that the Ray Fin book is better? Well, it is better by giving you its literary words, defining them, and then giving examples of them from the various arts. Frye's book, however, goes on a near stream of consciousness in which he analyses a ton of literature yet gives me, the games journalist wannabe, nothing with which I can analyze a story. To demonstrate this, I will select a passage from random, first from Frye's book: "The conception of art as having a relation to reality which is neither direct nor negative, but potential, finally resolves the dichotomy between delight and instruction, the style and the message. 'Delight' is not readily distinguishable from pleasure, and hence opens the way to that aesthetic hedonism we glanced at in the introduction, the failure to distinguish personal and impersonal (snoooooore)."

....Oh! Sorry. I fell asleep for a moment. What just happened? Oh right, the Frye quote. Okay. Well...what's its problem (it being a representative of pretty much the entire book)?

Its problem is that it doesn't organize itself very well into all the terms and ideas it wants to tell. While the Bedford Fish book starts each section with the idea in bold, and then defines the idea and gives an example of it, the Frye book often gives you an example and says what literary terms could be ascribed to it, and then the author moves on. Thus what happens in Frye is that the learning becomes little. And when I say little I mean nothing.

But with the Fish, it becomes a lot of learning, about critical terms, with which I can use to critique things. To prove that the Bedford book does what I say it does, here's a random example from it: "anagnorisis: A term used by Aristotle in his Poetics (c. 330 B.C.) to refer to the moment in a drama when the protagnoist "discovers" something that either leads to or explains a reversal of fortune -- that is, the protagonist gains some crucial knowledge that he or she did not have. In a tragedy, the revelation is usually closely associated with the protagonist's downfall, whereas in a comedy it usually signals his or her success."

BAM!

And then they site examples from Oedipus Rex, The Crying Game, and The Sixth Sense.

With this not-famous-in-the-literature-world book, I can get tools that allow me to analyze almost any new narrative (including game ones). With the famous one, I can say something like, "Uh, Northrop Frye (he was a Genius!) said something about how....uh...poems are emotional sometimes?"

Not to say that Frye's book is useless to LITERATURE people who totally failed to notice themes in the canon they read. But that opens up a depressing conversation about being a PhD student in Literature. Games are more interesting.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light (PC Singleplayer) Review

OH NO! I have a game that is actually quite good but isn't great so I can't get excited about it! It's in that zone of "really good but nothing special." Unless you play the local co-op, where it is something special.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is a Bastion/Diablo-camera'd, puzzle-filled, action game, with a hint of RPG. You (in the singleplayer) play as Lara Croft (surprise!), and your mission is to save the world from an Aztec demon.

So the story and writing are cliches, complete with average voice-acting and never-have-had-English-lessons Aztecs who speak perfect English. But not important. Although the skin isn't good, the baby seal meat under it is. And said meat is made of collecting weapons and stat-boosters, getting achievements, solving puzzles, escaping traps, murdering.

In the singleplayer, Lara gets the following: guns, a spear (that you can throw over and over again, as it respawns in your hands), passive powerups, bombs you drop and manually blow up from anywhere, a grappling hook, and an ability you charge-up by collecting gems and/or killing things (the charge-up charges down when you get hurt). In the co-op, your Aztec time traveler friend will wield the golden spear and a shield; Lara loses the spear but keeps the grappling hook. With these tools split between Toltec and Lara, you and the person sitting next to you will help each other do everything. My experience of the online co-op was fun, using each other's avatar's unique skills and our ability to speak with our mouths. It was fun until the Online co-op lagged out. And then it kept lagging out. And then, after a year of patches, we tried again and it lagged out.

But this isn't a review of the co-op.

It's not the presentation that keeps this game from being great, but the combat of its first half; it's too easy; even on the hardest difficulty setting, I never came close to dying in combat until after half of the game.

But at least many of the puzzles are exciting. They often involve spikes and poison and lava and death. And when you die it ends up feeling almost funny ("Doh!"). Dying rarely feels bad since the game respawns you at the point right before you died, although with a smaller gem score.

Those gems. If you get a high enough of a score (racked up by collecting gems and killing things), you can unlock a something. If you do any of the other extra tasks, you'll be rewarded with a something. But almost sadly, many of the rewarded weapons and powerups feel useless (and many of them actually are; like half of the powerups boost something to the detriment of something; many of the weapons feel pointless when compared to other weapons you've already collected).

I think most of the time you'll play the extra stuff because either they provide a fast-paced challenge or because you're a completionist.

So in your busy lives, dear readers, should you buy this game? It has a low price of fifteen dollars, with up to fifteen hours of gameplay. It doesn't have amazing visual art nor sounds amazing, but it eventually becomes quite fun.

My answer: If you have someone in your home who'd like to play a game with you, on the same screen, then download the demo and see if you can get the controls for two people working (YouTube says that one person can use a keyboard and mouse, and the other a gamepad -- if you don't have two gamepads). If the controls work, then I highly recommend this one. You can do all the puzzles together and then one (or both of you) can do a speed run.

★★★★☆

Why I Stopped Playing Portal 2's Co-op Mode

You probably know how I feel about pure puzzle games: they're boring 'cause they're basically a bunch of puzzles. But I loved Portal 2's singleplayer. So why not its co-op, which gives me the ability to play Portal 2 with my friends?

There are two reasons.

One is that, as far as I could tell, there was no story. Or if there was one it wasn't gripping. After playing through nine puzzles it felt like the only thing coming up was more puzzles. And more of the watered down Portal humor, which leads to the other reason.

The wit in the co-op isn't anywhere as witty as the singleplayer's. And the game's wit and characters were the prize for doing the puzzles, no? It's like, you'd do a not-fun puzzle, and then, for your intelligence, you'd be rewarded with funny.

But in the co-op, GLaDOS isn't saying anything amazing, and there are no other interesting characters who speak, so it's just not that rewarding of an experience.

3 Ways Bioware Could Have Made Mass Effect 3's Ending Even Worse! (SPOILERS)

1) You finally activate the Crucible super weapon, and all it does is play "Soul Finger" by the Bar-Kays: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzP-Sh0qTsQ

2) Instead of a magic ghost boy, it is a magic ghost wookie who speaks to you, in Wookie. There are English subtitles.

3) You die (in real life).

Mass Effect 3 Review

The Mass Effect Trilogy is finished! The Internet has exploded with complaints and games critics have showered ME3 with 90s! Find out what Paul thinks of Bioware's big budget, RPG space opera by reading more!

Oh fans are angry about the ending, and they probably should be. But I'll get to the ending at the ending of this. There's a lot of really good in Mass Effect 3, and I think many are forgetting it, due to that ending.

My biggest question when starting ME3 was, "Did they get their Gears of War combat right? Did they make it fun?" And the answer is: "(Of the singleplayer) Almost. However this combat does provide a 'good,' memorable experience." I know this opinion sounds whacko, "Something that's supposed to be fun, and is not fun, is a 'good' experience." But hear this out; the environments are larger, tend to be outside, look far more interesting, sound interesting; and the levels have good pacing -- many battles get interrupted by a short turret section, or a boss fight, or interesting dialogue, or an incredible view, or a cinematic. Although almost every battle has a dominant strategy that you already know when a battle begins, although your chances of dying on normal difficulty are nearly zero (Play ME3 on a harder difficulty!), and even though you might as well play the vanguard class because the dominant strategy for the other classes is the same one you've experienced in other cover-based, 3rd person shooters, the story told within battles, by its characters, enemies and environments, is vivid enough that the 'okay' mechanics aren't a game-breaker. Although, it does lower the replay value. (For you who were disappointed with Mass Effect 2's gameplay, to put the "good" of ME3's singleplayer gameplay in perspective, note that: I remember almost nothing about the places I fought in in Mass Effect 2; in fact, I can't remember a lot of the places. However, of ME3, I remember almost all the places and a lot about them. It's also worth noting that I was drunk when I played Mass Effect 2.)

My favorite things about this game (ME3) are its bold, grim story (minus the very ending) and the tough choices it'll have you make. Not only are there the old, gamey "sacrifice five-point knight for nine-point queen" type of choice, but also the newer "sacrifice something you, after playing this series for many hours, now emotionally care about, in order to get something else arguably more important. Or don't make the sacrifice, and tell yourself that you're doing the right thing." A few decisions are even more complex than that. And it's very effective.

Unfortunately the same can't be said about Mass Effect's writing.

The final game's plot is strong (I'm still not talking about the end of the game). The problem is the general lack of wit, and the mishandled attempts at pathos, that often makes the writing ineffective at evoking anything from me, other than increased understanding of the Mass Effect universe and its characters. (Not to say the writing is always like this, but it almost always is).

Too many of Shepard's friends seem to exist only to talk about their boring selves, plus add an extra bit of (not really) diversity to your fire team. With the alien characters, this isn't a problem; each one of them represents a different species, so they're interesting. It's the boring human characters I don't like. They do have 'character arcs' and 'almost-unique' backgrounds, sure, but they're still boring. Some counter-critics could argue that not every real person who does interesting things says interesting things, so why care that main characters aren't interesting, to which I would replay: 1) Usually, in real life, people with interesting backgrounds say interesting things, and 2) That filthy counter-argument to my argument is pathetic. Mass Effect is supposed to be a vivid, interesting universe. Give its main characters interesting things to say. Fill them with intellect or emotion or whackiness. I don't like having my time wasted, especially by virtual people.

The second most jarring thing is the clumsiness of when things can be said, or a lack of attention to detail (which may explain that most jarring thing -- THE END -- which I'll get to). There are conversations that get repeated. There are fires in the Citadel that never get put out; it's weird seeing the smoke go up for what could be weeks after their ignitings. There are conversations in which a man will tell me how his family basically died, and then I'm given the option to ask, "How's da family?" And then he responds as if I'm not insane. There's the canned "I love you" instead of creative writing. The ineffective writing and inattention to detail makes me feel like Bioware's writers didn't have all of their hearts into this game.

Side quests are more interesting than those of previous games, but still half boring. There are two types of sidequest. One type has you fly around star systems, scanning them for useful things (such as, a capital ship, hiding away on a random planet). The other type is more shooting-based and either takes place on a multiplayer map or on a large, interesting level, full of conversation and intrigue and killing. The challenge in the scanning sidequests is that, if you scan too much, you'll get pursued by Reaper ships, and if you get caught, you lose; yet there's no risk in the challenge -- as the game autosaves every time you enter a star system, and as the Reaper Altertness Levels reset to zero after you play any shooty mission. As for the shooty sidequests: these can actually be compelling, since the environments and characters bring unique dramas and views and sounds. Although the combat in the sidequests isn't fun -- for the same reason the main quest combat isn't fun: you already know the strategy to win any firefight.

The game gives you an extra reason to do its sidequests: to boost your "Effective Military Strength," which is the amount of military force you'll have during your assault for Earth. Although if you're unwilling to suffer the boringness of scanning star systems (which can get even more boring as some found objects will need to be delivered to random NPCs on the Citadel, NPCs whose exact locations aren't highlighted in the Citadel elevators for some reason)...although if you can't take that boringness, you can play the fun coop multiplayer, which boosts something called "galactic readiness" up to 100%, which, by doing your main quests, can boost your Effective Military Strength bar to full, a full bar allowing you the "best" ending. (Note that the galactic readiness percentage drops a point every X number of hours.)

I've mentioned that the coop multiplayer is more fun than the singleplayer combat. This is mainly because the coop multiplayer isn't easily bested via dominant strategies. On the Silver and Gold difficulties (the harder ones) the enemies will come at you and your three team mates from many directions. And since it's a horde mode, they will come in increasing force. And it's not simply a horde mode of increasing baddieness; now and then your team will be tasked to stand near a certain area for a bit, or the game will require that someone hold a button for X amount of time in four locations, making it so the other players have to defend the button-holding player. And there is leveling up; and there's item acquirement, which you randomly acquire by spending credits you earn; and these RPG things won't turn a bad player into a good one. And team work really matters.

One of the problems with the multiplayer combat, though, is that, just as in the singleplayer, one button (in the XBOX 360's case, the "A" button) is used to do all of the following: get behind cover, run, jump, climb over or up something, and interact-with-an-object. There are so many things littered around the environments that it is easy to accidentally get behind cover when you don't want to, or get behind the wrong cover.

Another combat (multiplayer) problem is that teammates tend to be bad at teamwork. Maybe this is especially true on XBOX live, where team work is against the law. (If you get this game for its multiplayer, be sure to have friends who get this game for its multiplayer)

And then I have nitpick, which mostly has to do with singleplayer: don't play as the soldier. Not just because you'd basically be playing Gears of War, but also because the dominant strategy is so simple: stay behind cover and shoot until enemies are dead. The other classes are pretty much like this, too (except the vanguard, which has its own dominant strategy, but at least looks cooler doing it).

And now, that ending. In my game journalist opinion it isn't as horrible as the fans are saying it is. But it demonstrates an astonishing inattention to detail from Bioware. It is a bold, bad ending.

It is bad because of the final character you meet, a character who looks and sounds ridiculous, whose existence makes no sense, a character Bioware should have cut and thus made a much better ending. This character is bad not just because of how it's presented and what it's needlessly supposed to represent, but also because it tries to convince you that a certain theme from the series is suddenly the central focus of the entire Mass Effect conflict. It is a revelation that makes no sense given what you might witness earlier in ME3 that so well counter-argues this new central theme.

Again, it's not actually a terrible ending, but I imagine that, the people who made many characters to import from the first two games, will feel like idiots, because of the end.

And after it all, I think: despite the not-fun combat and boring humans (not all of them, but too many of them), I got a lot from the experience. I cared about Commander Shepard, some of his friends, and their galaxy by the end of three Mass Effect games. And I enjoyed the trilogy and the many White Russians.

★★★★☆

Being Happy

Unless you're starving or something, chances are what is keeping you from being happy is not your lack of gaming or sex, but rather your attitude. (I could talk about the importance of having a non-horrible job and having friends, but I won't). Here are five things you can do to help you develop a positive attitude:

1) Write a praising email to someone in your social network (i.e. doing something random for someone).

2) Meditate, to help you focus, so that you don't automatically dwell on all of everything at once, like an ADHD person.

3) Journal about a positive experience you had (for a few weeks).

4) Exercise.

5) Write three things your happy about each day for a few weeks.

How to Enjoy Playing a Game By Yourself Even More

1. get game that you didn't like/had problems with

2. drink

3. game becomes good

-Joe Austin (my friend)

Hedonism and Helping Others

The answer is both. I find that I need to have both, to help others and to have fun. Until morals tell me otherwise, my life shall be dedicated to doing those things.

For this reason, few games interest me. This mainly has to do with the fact that many of today's big budget games aren't really fun or interesting. Also it mainly has to do with few of my friends playing the games that I am, which means I'm basically playing them alone, not having nearly as much fun. Games also aren't interesting me much mainly mainly mainly because there aren't many ways I can use them to help people. At least, since I'm not a paid, read games journalist it seems so.

This year was supposed to be the one in which I decide if I want to spend my spare time writing. But I suspect that I'll need another year. There's no question in my mind that I will lose interest in having fun by myself. (I am pretty much done with that now.)

In a Quarter to Three podcast, Tom Chick said something that I want to experience. Playing Rock Band with kids. He said that there is not much out there as good as the experience of playing Rock Band with kids.

Perhaps it is because I know what it is like to try contributing to the lives of younger people that Tom Chick's Rock Band with Kids thing sounds absolutely wonderful to me.

Spoiler Alert! My Little Mass Effect 3 Ending Issue

Again, please don't read this if you haven't finished Mass Effect 3. This is a spoiler!

Why is Garrus, who was just fighting alongside me in the streets of London, on the Normandy 2 when it crash lands on the random jungle planet? Wasn't he supposed to be fighting alongside his fellow Turians on Earth?

Oh, one more complaint. The science behind one of the three optional endings, the synthesis of organics and robots one, needs explanation. Sending a wave of information all over the galaxy that deactivates all synthetics? I can believe that. Instantaneously installing robot in everyone? That's God. Explain it? Gimme science. Make it sound believable.

And why is it that there's no logic explaining the relationship between your Effective Military Strength and the final cinematics, which show how the battle on Earth ends? The result of the battle on Earth is determined by the energy wave from the Crucible, which, if you didn't muster enough military force, can end up killing everyone on Earth. What? (Mass Effect 2 did its endings right, by the way).

And why do the Bioware writers think I'm willing to believe a magic ghost child's argument that the species of the universe will create synthetics that will destroy them, despite my playthrough of the game convincingly showing that the Geth and EDI won't attack us unless we attack them? I understand why the Reapers are killing us, but their killingness has more to do with them having super advanced technology.

And what's with the magic ghost child being the catalyst?! Why does that character even exist?!

And why is the Normandy flying away from the Crucible energy thing? And why does it damage the Normandy II, while doing no damage to the troops on Earth (assuming you got a "good" ending)? It also doesn't seem to damage the other ships in space (minus the Mass Relays).

I can't believe this ending is so....not well thought out.

ALSO! Why is there a teleportation (potentially Reaper-destroying) beam that goes down to Earth from the Citadel? Seriously, why have the beam? The Reapers seemed to do their job really well without it. (This could probably be explained with a really gamey excuse, like: the Reapers put it there to give the organics a fighting chance, as a taunt. They panicked when Alliance troops miraculously broke through their lines in London).

As for the Internet, here's a pretty good synopsis on what they think: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b33tJx8iy0A

As for professional critics, here's the first of a RockPaperShotgun talk: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/14/mass-effect-3-the-end-of-an-epic/

Writing Tips from John Steinbeck

1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn't exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn't belong there.

5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.

6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

"If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story."

Another Note on StarCraft II Multiplayer

I forgot to mention another problem with StarCraft II's multiplayer. It is that Blizzard region locked the copies, that is, they made it so, when you log in with a copy of SC2: Wings of Liberty for the first time, you will need to region lock your copy to a region (like, Europe, or North America). And you can't change it. Once you lock it to a region, it is locked....to that region.

This is bad for SCII's long term multiplayer prospects because It distributes the noobs away from each other. So instead of having a large pool of noobs the noob can play with ,the noob has a small pool of noobs, which means longer waits for balanced matches.

Blizzard claimed that they did this region-locking (madness) in order to prevent laggy matches. In the short term, this made sense, but in the long term it won't (MAD), as every nation increases the bandwidth of its average Internet surfer. Today, in fact, we may already have capable lagless matches between, say, Europe and Canada. In the long term region locking doesn't make sense. I wonder if Blizzard will realize this and un-regionlock everything.

The State of StarCraft II

Today I played the Blizzard-developed StarCraft II mod "StarCraft Master." It is less like a mod and more like "thirty situations you can survive only via excellent micro." And I enjoyed it. It is a well-designed game in itself, while also being an improve-your-micro boot camp. It is also better than nearly half of the games I've played over the last two months. Games which I paid for.

After playing StarCraft II today I remembered that Blizzard is, still, one of the few great major games developers (in that, they know how to design a really effective game). And as much as I hate the fact that World of Warcraft exists, and as much as I hate that Diablo III will (soon?) exist, there is still StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. It may not have a good story, or interesting characters, but it is a great piece of software. I will never support Blizzard's MMO, addictive, money-making side, but I will support its StarCraft II side, providing that its expansions get high enough scores on metacritic.

Mentioning the expansion packs makes me want to discuss the state of StarCraft, which happens to be the title of this post.

The status: its multiplayer scene is becoming like the first StarCraft's, without LAN. What I mean is, it's becoming more of a game only for those who obsessively play it. And I think this is how it will be years after the expansion packs get released. And sadly for me (if I can say that about my relationship with a game) I do not think that I will be playing this multiplayer game much more. Watching its E-Sports matches? Yes. But playing it, no. Why? Because the coming expansion pack will have a separate ladder from the original one, making me think that the third expansion pack will also have its own ladder, all three of which will lead to the following players: those who buy the expansion packs for the okay-story telling and mediocre characters, those who buy them because they want the best version of the multiplayer experience, and those say, "I don't want to play MORE money for a game that has no LAN and gives a merely okay story." Although I hope that they realize that the level design, played on Hard or Brutal difficulties, is actually pretty good.

And in the end: oh well. I want to love StarCraft II multiplayer forever, but, if it's going to take long waits to play balanced matches (due to there being few non-elite players roaming Battlenet), then I don't see the point in trying to stay in love with it.

Radiant Silvergun (XBLA) Review

Radiant Silvergun is a vertically-scrolling, Japanese shoot-em-up where you play as a spaceship, shooting and dodging projectiles and enemies. Your mission: to beat the arcade mode and probably not the story mode.

The game features an arcade mode and a story mode (each of which feature two-player, which you can play locally or over XBOX Live). The differences between modes are that the story mode has more boss battles and is much longer than the arcade mode, and that the story mode has a story. I advise you not to play the meatier, storier portion of the game for a bunch of reasons, the first one being: Radiant Silvergun's story mode is boring. Despite featuring the same levels as the better arcade mode and featuring even more bosses, it ends up providing a boring experience, unless you start playing it using a saved game that has all the weapons leveled up and at least fifteen starting lives (I will explain).

You know how in most shoot-em-ups you upgrade your weapons and gain lives during a playthrough, and that the weapons upgrade pretty quickly, and that, when you game over, it's back to square one? Well, in Radiant Silvergun's story mode it isn't like that. Instead, weapons upgrade really really really slowly, and you're expected to save your current level of leveling up when you get a game over, so that when you start the game again, you start from the beginning with your ship as powerful as it was when you died. You also restart with more lives each time you game over with a sufficiently higher score.

I started story mode with a default three lines. I ended up finishing the game restarting with nineteen. In all it took me seventeen hours to beat the story mode.

"How did it take you, reviewer, seventeen hours to beat a less-than-two-hour game?" It's because of two things: my unwillingness to perform the same boss-beating strategies over and over, and also just the fact that I'm not really good at bullet dodging. Oh, and also it took me forever because of cheap deaths, but I'll get to that later. First I want to discuss the over-and-over thing.

Almost all the game's many bosses will require that you place your ship in a certain place and fire certain weapons to win. It's true that skillful dodging is involved, but half of the challenge is figuring out the puzzles: How do I defeat this boss? Figure out the best weapons combinations and ship placements to beat enemy X, and perform it perfectly. This I quickly found really boring, as I ended up doing what I had already figured out fifteen tries ago. And as I played the game over and over again, my subconscious would take over, forcing me to try new things for variety's sake, only to lose valuable lives. The game forces you to figure out its dominant strategies and execute them, like an actor being told to follow a script. Except in this case you don't get paid.

Now, those cheap deaths. You have to memorize when the game is going to do something you couldn't predict when you first saw it, and recall what that unpredictable was. There are probably only four or five of these cheap death-makers, but they're still there, and it's the most inelegant thing in the game. When you forget when one of the cheapnesses is going to occur, and you lose a life to it, it sucks. I've barely lost finale boss battles in part because of cheapness I failed to remember quickly enough.

After beating the story mode, with my save file having all my weapons leveled up to 33 and a nineteen lives restart, three realizations occurred that you should note if you decide to tackle this mode I'm saying you should not tackle: 1) When I finally beat it, I had eight of my nineteen lives left. The final battle wasn't epic because I had followed the script so well. 2) Most of my Radiant Silvergun experience up to that point was a pain. 3) With fully powered up weapons and nineteen lives, a noob could really enjoy the story mode; even the story mode's story is mildly entertaining, and has a pro-apocalypse, environmentalist message, along with subtitles that you are often too distracted by enemies to read; you don't see this type of story-telling often.

Although story mode is only fun if you play it on a leveled up save of someone who's sacrificed an entire day of their life, the arcade mode provides an entertaining experience the moment you start the game. On arcade mode's easiest difficulty settings, you'll still be challenged, but because you'll level up much faster and start with a lot of lives (if you choose the options to do so), and also because the arcade playthrough is shorter, I don't think you'll feel bored with it.

Before I close this review with a score, I should mention the unique score system. In the game there's something called a chain combo. How it works is every time you kill three of the same color enemy (red, blue, or yellow), you get a set amount of points, a pointage that gets squared whenever you stack another three of the same color. Interrupting the combo with the death of an enemy of another color ends the combo. In either Story or Arcade mode you can use this system to compete on the leaderboards by selecting "score attack." I mention this color combo system only 'cause it's unique. This isn't a game with a big leaderboards scene.

In short: Play Radiant Silvergun for its arcade mode; its bosses are among the most interestingly designed in the genre, and the game's only twelve dollars.

★★★☆☆

Spoilers in Mass Effect 3 reviews

Well due to not going out and asking for jobs, I got to spend today reading the Mass Effect 3 reviews. Basically the game is a 90+ on metacritic. No susprise. What is a surprise though is how spoiler-ridden many of the reviews are.

This is going to be a short post. I've just decided not to discuss what the spoilers were, nor who made them. But I will say what type of spoiler they were: they detailed what types of plot-affecting choices the player makes.

And now, back to trying to beat Radiant Silvergun (XBLA).

Razer Destructor Mousepad Review

Are you a member of the PC Gaming Master Race? Do you have too much money? Then you need a Razer Destructor Mousepad! (assuming you don't already have one) It's an 11X7 inch, 3mm wide, hard mousepad, kinda shaped like a trapezoid. It is grey and has its own case. It makes mouse movement silky smooth. I've had mine for two years, and it's still in top condition.

Right! Review: done!

OH WAIT! RAZER DOESN'T SELL IT ANYMORE?! So where are you going to get your overpriced, 'elite' mousepad now? Hmmm.

Well, Razer has a NEW super high end, hard, oversized mousepad for sixty dollars! And, SIXTY DOLLARS?! REALLY?! AND IT HAS SHIT REVIEWS ON AMAZON BECAUSE IT DETERIORATES AFTER ONLY TWO WEEKS?!

Well, in that case, help the underprivileged starving children in a developing country.

I'm just kidding of course. Get a cheap SteelSeries mousepad.

Best Buy Vs. Fry's

The answer is "Yes, I know this is like comparing a house cat to a nuclear missile." Best Buy doesn't sell as much of a variety of stuff, is too expensive, etc.

But there's something else that Fry's has that Best Buy largely doesn't. And it is a workforce of nerds. Today my parents and I went to Fry's, north of Austin, and two things about its employees struck me:

The Battlefield 3 PC footage they used to show off a Direct X 11 set up was filmed by a Fry's employee, and the footage was of him playing. And what was he doing in BF3? Flying a jet. And he was good; not once did we see him get shot down (and he killed a lot of people :)

The other thing awesome we saw was two dudes telling us how much they loved and hated certain gaming mice and keyboards. They even debated, IN FRONT OF US, how good certain products were. It was the nerdiest, best thing to see in the store, and I ended up buying the keyboard and mouse they agreed were the best.

What I Want to See In Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect 3 is about to literally take over the Earth! And actually-credible games journalists, with their early review copies, are going mad with happiness over how apparently awesome it is, how they've already played it and we haven't, and also how shocking its shocking surprises are, all of which they love and feel will galvanize many hardcore gamers, in the way only hardcore gamers can be galvanized, which largely involves message boards and illiteracy. And now you ask us, "Do you at Stage Zero even know what "galvanize" means?" "Not important!" We answer. But instead, what IS important is what Paul Fenoglio (the writer of this post) wants to see in Mass Effect 3. Yes, the website staff have agreed this is the important thing. We have convinced him, by giving him a new XBOX 360 controller (using money we stole from him), to tell everyone what he wants to see. Now he begins writing.

What I, the amazing Paul Fenoglio, want to see in Mass Effect 3 are:

#1 A fivesome sex scene. The Mass Effect series might be the first AAA video game to introduce interspecies girl-on-girlism, and this indeed is two steps in the right direction, but now I want to see five. And specifically I want ME3's sex scene to feature Fem Shep, Liara, Bro Shep, my XBOX Live avatar, and HK-47. Oooh yeeeeeah.

#2 I want to see some combat, but not too much. I've been analyzing the pre-release trailers of ME3, and I'm happy to report to you that it appears that the game will feature some combat. I just hope there isn't too much.

#3 I want ice cream to play a big role in the game. Specifically, I want to see every character holding an ice cream cone, including the reapers, including the giant Reaper ships. There will be ice cream cones everywhere! IDI will accidentally drop her ice cream onto Seth Green's pants. Ice cream will melt! I WANT TO SEE SOME FREAKIN' ICE CREAM!

#4 I want to see real money flow into my bank account due to my playing this game. XBOX Live achievements are boring. GIMME MONEY! Preferably every time someone in the game buys an ice cream.

#5 I want to see no objectifying of women! And I want the camera not to focus on the boobs and asses of the new female characters (with the old one's it's okay, for nostalgia's sake). I also want the new female characters to not have boobs that are so big that they distract the enemy during fights, causing them to drop their weapons and beg them (the boobs) to let them be their slaves. I'm just kidding, of course.

Actually, Maybe Structuring Reviews Beforehand Doesn't Work!

NOW I THINK I DON'T NEED TO STRUCTURE REVIEWS!

The problem with structuring a composition before actually writing is that sometimes (and when I say "sometimes" I mean "almost always") it is difficult to tell in what order information should be presented. What I mean is if I force myself to explain this-and-that in a pre-set order, then the explanations will end up sounding awkward. "Unnatural" is the word. Or perhaps "forced."

But if I, say, write a list of things I should discuss while I play a game, and just make sure to go over most or all of that list as I am writing, then it ends up sounding natural. Nature! NATURE GOOD! STRUCTURING (almost always) BAD!

Joe Danger: Special Edition (for XBLA) Singleplayer Review

This is the game that challenges the review-scorer in me to grow balls. The nice thing about having a simply-out-of-five rating scale is that it makes the purchase-making decision easier for the reader. The bad thing about it is that it makes me feel like the game is not getting the score it truly deserves. At the end of this review I will decide, finally, if I'm doing whole-stars or out-of-ten ratings.

Joe Danger: Special Edition is a cartoony, Trials HD-style game, developed by the ten-man studio Hello Games. In Joe Danger you play as Joe Danger, an overweight Evel Knievel man who must drive his motorcycle from the starting line at the left to the finish line at the right. In between the beginnings and ends he'll need to navigate around and through obstacles, collecting manifold, shiny, floaty things, all while doing daredevil tricks, such as "the Superman." Do it all and you'll unlock achievements, avatar costumes, and playable stereotypes (such as the Native American Joe-ronimo).

The game actually has plenty of personality, although I'm not sure if I like it. It seems determined to get an E10+ ESRB rating, with its plethora of smiling and its lack of blood and its use of colors other than brown. The game's few songs are of a genre I can't identify. And the word "groovy" is thrown around a few times, but I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the game.

The writing in the game, in general, is trite, and is never spoken by anyone, except for the announcer, whose vocabulary is limited to things like, "JoooOOOOOE DAAYNJERRrr!!" and "WOOOOAAaaaah!!" There are a few okay jokes that get repeated, like "The Must See Show, That You Must See," and something like, "An Unmissible Event, That You Can't Miss!" There are a few good rhymes, like "Joe Danger, Master of Disaster." But all these are swamped by the utterly boring, cliche wordings, like "It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Joe Danger!" and "Prepare to be shocked and awed!" I guess this game ain't for Iraqi children.

And it is not. It's not written in Arabic, and it is set in New Mexico/Arizona (often in the desert), and these are the locations of half of the game, along with a giant laboratory setting, which comprises another fourth of the game (that's a total of 3/4 of the game). A bit unfortunately, both of these locations' courses basically play the same, and even share the same music, cheering crowd, mole (the animal), and announcer. The other other fourth of the game is also set in labs or America, but comprises a two-player mode and a level-design tool, neither of which I touched.

However, despite the sameyness of the environs and sounds, and the blandness of the wordage, the obstacles and deaths are quite good. I heard somewhere that Trials HD has nuclear bombs as obstacles. Well, Joe Danger doesn't have nuclear bombs, but it does have for obstacles: spikes, frowning bombs, conveyor belts, possessed totems that go up and down and smash the ground, sharks, hurdles, school buses, and other stuff, most of which use the physics engine and the high speed at which Joe usually goes, to bring us joy; or annoyance. That last word being the cue to talk about how this game does goals and challenge and why it does and doesn't work.

I've basically mentioned that you must collect shiny things and do tricks and cross the finish line (preferably before the time runs out) to beat the game. Well actually you could just cross the finish line. But on almost every track: that is too easy. In fact, just focusing on one challenge at a time, like -- get as large a trick combo as you can to win the bronze-to-silver-to-gold trophy AND cross the finish line-- is too easy. If you want the game to be challenging at all before the very final courses, you'll need do the Pro Medal challenges, which are basically the following: In one run of a pro medal course, get all the collectables while doing tricks and cross the finish line before the time runs out. Some of those challenges are ludicrously hard! Partially because of the controls, which are most of the buttons on the 360 controller, but also because of the game's later courses, which can be long; some of them are a minute and a half long (and that's if you're driving fast)! Making sure you're always doing a trick and responding with the right button combinations to the obstacles approaching at 60 mph, as you try to cross the finish line in time, is, well, practically impossible without memorizing what comes after what on the track. Memorization, not mastering the controls, is the key. And I actually have no problem with this.

But I do have a problem with restarting long tracks over a hundred times because of random things I keep crashing into near the end of said tracks. Why? Because I don't like seeing the same things over and over again, especially when those things aren't particularly interesting or fun. "Why am I memorizing the locations of obstacles and the best timing for button pressings on this track, and seeing these now-boring cartoon things over and over again, when I could be playing Super Meat Boy? Or reading an interesting book? Or helping children? Or playing with my friends?!" Those are the thoughts I had while I re-"played" many long levels too many times.

The game also has a bug that prevented me from seeing an object I was trying to move around during some of the puzzle levels. Also, some spike traps get placed really close to other shiny objects that prevent you from seeing them as you approach at 60mph.

And now the rating! Oh, how hard it is for me to give what will be perceived as a low score, to a team of ten people. And will it be stars? Let me check below. Yes it will.

In light of everything I've said above (and please note: that I only touched the singleplayer aspect and didn't fool around with the level designer), and in light of that there are and will be other games like this of arguably superior quality, I call this, overall, a good game.

★★★☆☆