Oh yeah, I'm supposed to update this occasionally

So, it's been a while since I posted anything. Thankfully, Paul has had time to pick up some of the slack (I love you Paul!). Back in the Fall, I didn't have class on Fridays, so I actually had time to write something when I felt like it. This quarter, however, I didn't have Fridays off, and you'd be surprised how often you don't feel like writing after finishing classes that day. Regardless, if everything goes right with my schedule this quarter, I'll have no classes on Friday again, and ample amounts of time to write about games! :D

Of course there's a more pressing and serious reason why I haven't been updating lately: I have waaaaaay too many games to play. The list keeps growing, and I'm starting to get buried under the stack of games I have left to play. Don't believe me? Here's the list of em, along with why I'm playing them, and why I haven't finished them yet.

Fallout 3

Why I'm playing it: I played a little bit of Fallout 2, but other than that my knowledge of the series is limited. I'm a big fan of the premise though, and the gameplay and story elements seemed to take a lot from what made the Fallout 1 & 2 classics in most peoples' minds. Plus, it's the first game my dad has been interested in for a long time, which means I can actually talk to him about it and he won't zone out.

Why it's not finished: After approximately 10-15 hours of playing, I just recently received the second quest in the main storyline. The rest of the time has been spent doing different sidequests and exploring the world. This game is massive, and it's going to be a long time before I can finish it.

Mass Effect

Why I'm playing it: As a fan of previous Bioware RPGs like Knights of the Old Republic, I thought I'd give this one a shot, especially since the combat looked more active than the d20 system in KotOR. Also, I was intrigued by the revamped branching dialogue mechanic.

Why it's not finished: Technical reasons mostly. The game was scratched by my Xbox 360, making it impossible to finish the game. I cleaned the disc and had my 360 reparied. The next time we tried it, my 360 got the Red Ring of Death, so I had to get it repaired again. It seems to be working fine now, but I still think I may have to actually get a new disc.

Halo 3

Why I'm playing it: According to many people, if you don't have Halo 3, you don't have a 360. I have Halo 3, ergo I have an Xbox 360.

Why it's not finished: There are two reasons for this. The first was that the game was another victim of the disc scratching incident, so I didn't play it for a while. The second reason is that frankly, I'm over the Halo series. Halo 2 was an amazing game that added a lot to the Halo experience. Sure the cliffhanger ending was annoying, but the game was a great evolutionary step in the series when compared to the first game. Halo 3 didn't do any of that. It was more of the same, and didn't even look that improved from the previous title. Since then, I've played a number of shooters (mostly Valve games, along with Bioshock), that have surpassed Halo 3 in every way possible. Because of this, my motivation to finish the game has diminished. Plus, I'm tired of dealing with fratboy douchebags that think Halo is the only game worth playing and feel the need to criticize me because I'd rather watch someone play Braid than play Halo. At least I'm open to new experiences.

Mega Man 9

Why I'm playing it: It's a new installment in one of my all time favorite series. And it's done in a retro 8-bit style. What's not to love?

Why it's not finished: It's really really hard. But not hard in the controller breaking, rage-quit sense. More like, "Man, this game is hard, but I keep playing it. WHY DO I LOVE IT SO MUCH?"

Super Mario Galaxy

Why I'm playing it: It's Mario doing what Mario does best, except this time there's no squirt bottle to lug around.

Why it's not finished: I got this game around the same time I got Fallout 3, and I've found myself playing that game more. I love both games equally, but because Fallout 3 is so much longer than Mario Galaxy, I feel like I need to work on that game more often.

Metal Gear Solid 3

Why I'm playing it: This was a series that I sadly missed out on when it was first released (see my article about fanboys), and it came highly recommended by my friends. I've played through the first (which was absolutely amazing), and the second (which while having an incredibly self-indulgent storyline, was still pretty fun), and now I'm on the third game. Hopefully it won't be much longer before I get to watch the fourth one.

Why it's not finished: I reached a part in the game where I had to avoid soldiers on hoverboards, by swimming past them in a river. Unfortunately, they had flashlights that were searching the river I was in. After multiple tries, I became frustrated and haven't touched the game since. I'll work on this again soon though.

Final Fantasy VII

Why I'm playing it: It's Final Fantasy VII. Apparently I need to actually beat the game once to regain all of the nerd/gamer points I've lost for never beating it. And to answer the obvious questions: yes I know Aerith dies, and no I won't be crying when I get to that point.

Why it's not finished: I have had so many problems with this game. When I first got it in 2006, the first disc couldn't be read. After cleaning it, it worked fine. Then after that I realized I needed a playstation 1 memory card to save my data, which I didn't have. Fast forward to early 2007, when I finally got my hands on a ps1 memory card and could start playing it. In the summer of that year though, the memory card I was using became corrupted and I lost all of my data. Towards the end of the year I finally got a new memory card, but the ps2 I've been using is very picky about when it wants to actually read the disc. I'm convinced at this point that the Gaming Gods do not want me to play this game. Despite all these setbacks though, I'm determined to beat this game...as soon as I beat all of the other games I'm playing.

Half-Life 1 & Half-Life 2: Episode 2

Why I'm playing them: After playing through the exceptional Half-Life 2 I had two sets of games I needed to play: The original game that started the series (and revolutionized the FPS genre), and the episodic games that continued the story of HL2.

Why they're not finished: Episode 2 was unable to run on my current computer, as opposed to HL2 and Episode 1. I can play it on other friends computers, but usually if I'm on a friends computer I'm playing Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead. This is also the reason why I haven't finished the first Half-Life. I forget that my computer can actually play some games (mostly any games made before 2005).

So those are all the games I'm actively playing at the moment. There's also a small group of games like TF2, L4D, and multiple Street Fighter games I decided to play instead of the other games on this list. This usually stems from the inherent replay value found in these games as well as the need for just a quick game to play when I'm tight on free time. Maybe one day I'll be able to reduce the number of games on this list, but with the rate new games come out, I suspect the list will become longer instead of shorter.

In other news, I'm heading to GDC in San Francisco tomorrow! Check the blog within the next few days for my thoughts about the conference.

Critique: The Darkness (XBOX 360)

The Darkness is a first-person shooter by Swedish developer Starbreeze Studios, developer of The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, a game made special by being a thousand times better than the movie that stars the same protagonist, Vin Diesal. But enough about that.

In The Darkness, you play as Jackie Estacado, a New York City, Italian hit man who wears black clothes and long, black, gothic hair. What makes him extra special is that he is semi-possessed by his friend The Darkness, a tentacled monster, demon thing that speaks to you with a voice that sounds like a mixture between Lord Sauron and Gollum. Because it is hard to understand what Mr. Darkness says, every time he speaks, words appear on screen in the font you would use when writing ominous, bloody messages on walls next to people you kill in real life. Other than putting voices in Jackie's head, The Darkness also gives Jackie tentacle-heads-with-razor-teeth-sticking-from-his-back, demon powers and the ability to summon imps who help you by yelling obscenities and killing everything. (Other than Darkness powers, you also get the usual assortment of cliché guns.)

Your goal in The Darkness is to kill "Uncle" Paulie, the worst family member you've ever had based on the number of times he tries to kill you. I won't tell you the plot, but I will tell you that the game is so replete with stereotype, New York City, Italian gangster dialogue that you'll come to realize that the writers nailed writing stereotype, New York City, Italian gangster dialogue in lieu of composition that would actually make you think about the meaning of life or not be bored into killing yourself. The writing is so bland that I didn't laugh or cry once. It's so stereotypical that the protagonist compares the New York City subway to spaghetti and meatballs. Even the dialogue's liberal mewing of "fuck" and "cocksucker" doesn't temper the game's eloquence deficiency since it is used boringly. Hell, I can write a more affecting poultry language sentence than any of The Darkness splurgings right now: Barney the Literacy Dinosaur walks onstage and says: "Hey Kids! Let's sing a song about suck focking! Hur! Hur! Hur!"

Speaking of unhappiness, the graphics do a wonderful job of reminding you how miserable you're supposed to be with its omnipresence of black and grey, the melancholy alleviated now and then by vandalism. And it's rendered using the Starbreeze Engine, which looks like the Doom 3 (id Tech 4) engine. Luckily for victims of the game, many of the animations are impressive; it's satisfying to see you grab an enemy and fill him with bullets. It's also satisfying to watch your tentacle heads eat your enemies' hearts for the first three times (there are only so many animations for eating a heart). At the same time, many of the animations are bland, like the unchanging facial expressions. The world slowly comes off as fake, especially when an old lady I retrieved a bracelet for kept staring into the subway rails looking for her lost bracelet; then there's the mob guy who I couldn't give a thingy to even though I had the thingy and the game instructions ruled that I must give it to him to get whatever trinket the developers forgot about; then there are your mafia friends failing to react to major events (usually at least one reacts).

Not that I am against unhappiness-themed games. But unhappiness themes only work when that and other factors mesh into an effective, interdependent, love-obsessed unicorn whole; and with games, the most important factor tends to be fun; that's where this entertainment fails. I played The Darkness on normal difficulty, and the game was so easy that, in the first half of the game, I only died a few times and only because I was prancing around fire fights like a gothic, pistol-wielding ballerina of retardedness. I was so bored that when I eventually saw a few WWI, British soldiers get their brains blown out execution-style by a German soldier, I felt like the game was presenting an allegory of itself.

The Darkness isn't completely bad. The voice acting is decent. The heavy metal music that accompanies the fire fights gives that warm and fuzzy feeling of belligerence (at least, during the few good gun fights). And, you can watch To Kill a Mockingbird in the game. I don't know if the game has the whole film, but still, I like To Kill a Mockingbird.

But really, the game, when fun is the goal, fails. There is some dialogue about love and evisceration with decent cinematography that touched my heart, but seeing as that lasted, and I'm being generous here, for thirty of the 320+ heart-eating minutes I burned on this romance, I can't recommend this game over the comic book series it's based on.

Stay away from The Darkness.

Winter Gamefest '09 or Why UCSD's Sixth College is the Happy College

On Jan. 17 and 18, the Sixth College Technology Committee hosted UCSD’s 4^th annual Winter Gamefest where over 1,453 gamers, minus those who signed in twice, showed up at Price Center ballrooms A & B to play computer games. The gamefest was mostly a series of tournaments where hardcore gamers competed for glory and prizes.

28 Madden NFL 09 players competed, with their last game displayed on the largest projector for the fans of virtual football teams. There were 32 Starcraft players who competed to separate the noobs from the Koreans. There were 35 Guitar Hero World Tour players who, like the 28 Rock Band 2 drummers, showed everyone the power of spare time. There were 60 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare players and 144 Halo 3 players who demonstrated the importance of twitchy fingers and swearing. There were 75 Defense of the Ancients players who reminded me why my first year at UCSD was awesome. And there were 247 Super Smash Brothers Brawl players who showed us what 4,000 dollars in prize money can do, some of the competitors coming all the way from Florida, Oregon, Nevada, or Tijuana. (Despite starting at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, SSBB players stayed even when the SSBB tournaments didn’t finish on time in the Price Center at 9:00 p.m. on Sunday. They finished in the Sixth College Commuter Center, broadcasting their games through ustream.com late into the night.)

  Some casual gamers came too; they played LittleBigPlanet and Soul Calibur IV and Mario Kart 64 and Rock Band and Super Smash Brothers Melee and others on the two spare projectors and the five extra televisions. The other nine projectors and twenty-six televisions were mostly used for tournaments; StarCraft and DotA players brought their own laptops, keyboards, and mice.

I asked a casual gamer, Jessica Chaisson, a Sixth College junior, what brought her to play Rock Band, and she replied, “I am part of the Sixth College Student Council; I am here to support.”

I asked a hardcore gamer from Tijuana named TKD why he competed in SSBB, and he said it was because Tijuana is dangerous, and up north more people played SSBB.

The event was larger than last year’s and attracted attention from Channel 10 news and other organizations. If WGF continues to grow, perhaps someday gamers from all over the world will compete at the San Diego Convention Center because of Sixth College.

A Farewell to My Inspiration.

If you don't like blatant declarations of love that border on the fanatical, then I suggest you skip this post and read one of Paul's articles or wait for the article I'm posting at the end of the week.

Browsing the game blogs today I saw that Ugo Entertainment has acquired 1up.com. Along with this news came word that Electronic Gaming Monthly, one of the best gaming magazines ever in my opinion, would be discontinued with their current issue of the long running magazine being their last. Even worse is the fact that many of those people who worked on the magazine, as well as some of 1up.com's content were essentially left jobless. For a full list of the damage done, click here.

The reason I write about this is because 1up, EGM, and all of it's children were an important inspiration for my current game career aspirations. I've been reading EGM since I was young, and one thing I've always felt the writers and editors excelled at was eloquent writing. Let's face it, most game magazines and sites (including this one at times) suffer from terrible writing. With EGM, that never seemed to be an issue. The people at the magazine wrote well, and knew that their readers were intelligent enough to put up with prose. Their other strong trait was the amount of integrity they had. The editors and writers of EGM made sure that every opinion about a game was that person's honest opinion. People like Dan Hsu were not afraid to ask the game industry people brutal, if not perfectly valid questions. Everyone at EGM maintained as much integrity in their work as they possibly could.

At 1up.com, I became a frequent reader of the many of the employee's blogs. The overall experience felt more personal than many other game sites. The site's review show, aptly named The 1up Show, was an entertaining piece of internet television. The best part was not the cheesy acting in between segments, but the actual reviews themselves. Rather than just talk about a game in the traditional quantifiable way, they simply had a big group discussion about the game. The reviews were much more organic than just talking about the score they gave a game. It was through watching these videos that made me start seriously considering being a game journalist. Yes there was a lot more work involved then they let on, but I didn't care because all of it look liked a ton of fun.

And now both of these, along with many of the people who made them possible are now gone. As I write this, a copy of the last issue of EGM ever sits on my desk. I bought it at the airport over winter break to give me something to read while I spent an eternity in Chicago O'Hare. Even to this day, everything I've said about the magazine still stands. It is still one of the most well written game magazines out there, and I enjoyed reading this issue just as much as I enjoyed the first issue I read way back when.

So to everyone at Electronic Gaming Monthly and 1up.com who have been affected by this acquisition: Thank you. Thanks for the memories and thanks for the inspiration. May you all go on to bigger and better adventures.

When Gameplay is Trumped by Presentation

"The great thing about a single-player game is that an entire virtual world can be made to revolve around you, the player. In a single-player game you can become the king or the galactic emperor or the metropolis's undisputed gang leader or whatever other supreme figure suits the setting because there are no other players for the designer to balance the game for."

Seth Schiesel, NYTimes Video Game Reviewer (reviewing Fallout 3).

I didn't like Bioshock. Why? Because it wasn't fun. And I was so disappointed because it has a 96% Metacritic score (lesson: don't trust Metacritic scores). Only two of my favorite critics (Yatzhee and Edge magazine) didn't like Bioshock. Eurogamer.net gave it a 10/10! I was so disappointed that I sold it to gamestop after beating it. 

Someone at Irrational Games/2K Boston decided that making great gameplay wasn't important. Once I was acclimated to the underwater, dystopian, anti-objectivism, Unreal Engine 3, horror-house, "game" space, I found the story boring, the main characters uninteresting, the gameplay insipid (made worse by your XBOX 360 inability to die, making developing your skill unimportant), and the game suck. From this I remember a gamer's fear, when the "game" part of computer "games" is trumped by the other arts. 

I saw this gameplay problem in GTA IV, too, but unfortunately for Bioshock, I liked GTA IV. I liked it because the radio and the city were awesome, especially the radio; even when GTA IV's NY City gets boring to future humans, the radio will still be awesome. Of the billion missions in GTA IV, I liked....lemme think....five missions (It takes a lot to get me to like an entertainment thingy; some of that $100,000,000 budget wasn't wasted).

So I am somewhat afraid. This summer, I'm going to play Fallout; so many are giving it Game of the Year.  Perhaps my fear is misplaced because Fallout 3 is an RPG, and the most important gameplay of a stereotype RPG comes from we gamers trying to understand and use the RPG elements (knowledge, knowledge, using knowledge); this may be why many RPG purists hate Diablo-style RPGs. But I'm still afraid because the harshest reviews against the game came, once again, from Yatzhee (who sort of liked it) and Edge-online (who didn't). I'm afraid because I think, for many, the fantasy is what is making many people love Fallout 3. Please me be wrong!

I want this blog post to make this question: How important is a game's gameplay for the purpose of maximizing fun? As much as I want to say IT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN GAMES, I can't (minus the part where I did). Gamespot's Kevin VanOrd, in explaining why MGS 4: Of Patriots The Guns garners Gamespot's Game of the Year award, posits the counter argument. He says MGS4 is one "seamless entity" of two kinds of entertainment, computer games and cinema, done "absolutely incredible" and "fantastic," "to the point where you're not even sure what kind of entertainment you're participating in." I'm not sure I will agree with his adjectives or his assumption of our schizophrenia, but his good entertainment = good entertainment is good. 

Maybe this is why Eurogamer.net gave Bioshock a 10. How many games do you see have an underwater, dystopian, anti-objectivism, Unreal Engine 3, horror house? 

And did the references to Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged tickle? For me, no. Having interest in something and having fun are different. And OH SHIT (I mean YAY), now we can argue about what "fun" is. (I say, "fun" puts a sincere smile on your face, unlike "interesting," which makes you constipated).  

This all is a call for games journalists to take time to watch the best of cinema and read the best of literature (the best, because we don't have much spare time; I recommend game journalists do the movie part with friends.). Since games are a transmedia art, we should be able to judge the other arts well, so when we tell gamers whether or not the non-game art in a computer game is making the game more or less fun, we can use fancy words like "romanticism" or "cubism" or "anti-establishmentenvironmentalorganicfoodism."

And that's the meat of the post.

(On a related note: I just played part of Metal Gear Solid; I died in the torture scene. I was amazed by how much I liked the terrible writing. Kojima's pertinacious iterating of the shittiness of war and the preclusions of healthy, sexual relations is entertaining, and the characters are interesting in a childish way I can't help but love. The scenarios offering varying kinds of challenging gameplay are fun.) 

(On a random note: I'm planning to curse myself by getting the XBOX 360 version of Left 4 Dead, spring quarter. Ah Hell, Horror, Fuck.)