Bioshock Infinite

The talk of the video game world these days, the “belle of the ball” so to speak, is most indubitably Bioshock Infinite.  Everywhere you roam on review sites it’s getting perfect or near perfect scores.  It’s unanimous, the game is amazing, but what I want to know is why?  What sets this game apart from all of it’s contemporaries.

Let’s start with the basics.  The game looks gorgeous, bright, colourful, and inventive, creative environments abound.  The environments are so detailed and lush that the first 30 minutes or so of the game is literally you just wandering around taking in the sights and sounds of the world, and it’s not boring in the least.  The game is set on a floating city. Streets, building, parks, even a beach, float on connected platforms that bob lazily up and down and stretch out and far as the eye can see as clouds drift amongst them.  In this story it is 1912, so all the aesthetics reflect that, clothing, architecture and music, right down to the floating stage with a barbershop quartet signing merrily.

Second is the gameplay itself.  As any gamer will tell you, this is of paramount importants for any game, for obvious reasons.  If a game is hard, confusing or frustrating to play, it doesn’t matter how pretty it is.  Lucky for us Bioshock Infinite has some of the tightest most precise gameplay I've ever seen.  Combat, which is the core of any first person shooter is extremely satisfying.  The weapons are plentiful and easy to come by, no matter how you like to play it, there is a perfect weapon for you.  There is a mechanic in the game called “vigours” essentially special ablities that give you a little extra edge in combat.  Things like lightning bolts, fire grenades, and my personal favourite the “bucking bronco” which launches all the enemies in front of you into the air, flinging them like ragdolls which you can then pick off at your leisure.  Even the environment itself can be used as a weapon.  You get a grapple hook of sorts that you can latch onto rails.  You hang from the bottom of them, zipping around like a roller coaster, peppering enemies with gunfire and leaping down on unsuspecting foes.  It’s fast, furious and it never seems to get old, it’s just plain satisfying.

Now if we were to just stop there what have we got?  A good looking fun game, in a nutshell.  There are plenty of good looking fun games out there, that alone is not enough to garner perfect or near perfect scores.  There must be something else.  Something that raises this game to a different level.

Subject matter.

This game takes on topics head on that most developers would never dare to.  Racism, racial segregation, oppressive religious ideologies, choice, free will, and redemption.  Simply put, this is a mature game.  Normally when we refer to a game as mature, that means in the ESRB sense.  That little “M” in the corner of the box to let parents know that a game has blood, violence and naughty language.  Well, BS:I has all that, but that’s not why I would call it mature.  It’s mature because it deals with these heady topics in a way that feels very “grown up” for lack of a better word.

Right near the beginning of the game, as you are wandering around this idyllic setting you come across a stage where the inhabitants of the city are hosting a raffle.  You character grabs a baseball from a basket with the number 77 written on it.  They make the draw, and of course you win.  You’re thinking “yay I won!”  Then the curtains parts and behind them are a couple tied up, one white, one black.  There is a moment of confusion before the announcer say, “Come on…are you going to throw it, or are you taking your coffee “black” these days.  Then you have to make a choice.  This is when you realize this game is going to go a lot deeper than your typical, “your mission is to blow shit up” style game that the industry is known for.

The archetype main character of a FPS shooter game is usually a blank slate.  Take some popular games like Halo, or Half-life.  Gordon Freeman doesn’t speak, and nobody has ever seen Master Chiefs face.  The reason developers do this is so players can fill in the blanks with whatever they want, after all, they are viewing the entire game through the character's eyes.  Essentially they look or sound exactly how you want them to.

This is another way BS:I sets itself apart, you play as Booker DeWitt, a down on his luck detective who is charged with going to Colombia, the floating city, and rescuing a girl names Elizabeth.  Booker is not who you want him to be, he is a fully flushed out character with personality traits that are all his own.  When you finally meet up with Elizabeth, you get to watch as her and Booker get to know each other, and slowly build a relationship.  You get to see though Bookers eyes as he upsets Elizabeth, or comforts her.  You get to watch as Elizabeth does the same for Booker.  What makes this so powerful is that you are not a passive observer, your are right there, in the moment with them riding the same emotional roller coaster.

I don’t want to discuss the plot too much, but story is like a twisting turning road snaking it’s way up a mountain.  The higher you go, the tighter and more urgent the twists and turns become.  Hints, clues, little insights, keeping popping up, sometimes causing, sometime clearing confusion and intrigue.  it builds and builds until you get to the top of the mountain, where you get a full view of everything that has transpired.
If your were to go on Youtube and search for “Bioshock Infinite discussion” your will find dozens of videos of people sitting around deconstructing what they experienced, discussing and sharing concepts and ideas that this game presents to the player.  to me it’s more powerful than watching a really good movie.  Each person who played, didn’t just watch, they experienced the story.  you can seen that in their conversations, hear the enthusiasm in their voices. 

I think people will be talking about this game for a very long time, which to me is the real reason for it’s perfect scores.  In a medium where a game is played, loved dearly for a few days or weeks, and then forgotten, this is the tremendous accomplishment that BS:I has achieved. 

-jer

Playstation 4 Officially Announced!

Oh my goodness!  The internets are all aflutter about Sony's press conference this week as they officially outed their shiny new next gen console, the creatively named PS4.

Hey!  Wanna hear an angry, cynical, baseless opinion on how the conference went?  Well, too bad, you’re gonna hear it anyway!

This gong show of a press conference was a dismal, awkward failure on so many levels.  Let’s start with the hardware itself.  They showed the fancy new controller, that’s all well and good, but they said nothing about how and why the fancy new controller is awesome.  Hey look, you can share video clips on your Facebook page with a press of a dedicated share button!  Wow, that adds a look to the game experience.  What’s up with the camera sensor type thing they very briefly mentioned?  The one that tracks the motion and position of the controller?  What is that for?  How is going to apply to new games, if at all?  The touch pad, how is that gonna work?

The actual “console” itself was nowhere to be found.  I put “console” in quotations because in my mind, the PS4 is still just theoretical.  If seeing is believing, then I am having a crisis of faith right now.  All the specs they did showcase falls squarely into the “no shit!” category.  Lot’s of fast memory, copious amount of cores in the CPU, new graphics chip, and a faster Blu-ray drive.  Was anybody shocked and surprised?  Anybody at all?  Basically after all this time in design they just said ”fuck it” and made a PC with a custom interface.
What’s the price of this bad boy?  When is coming out?  Where is the damn thing?  What does it look like?  I have a lot of unanswered questions.  A lot of people have come to Sony’s defense on this one, stating that they need to leave some details for E3.  Here’s what I say to that, “no they fucking don’t!”  The cat is already most of the way out of the bag, just let the damn thing go.  You think anyone is going to go crazy at E3 when they stand up on stage at the press conference and say, “you know that console we told everyone about months ago?  Well, here’s the last few little tidbits of info that we inexplicably left out, for no discernable reason.  Yay.

What does it matter what gets shown where?  What they should have done is flushed out ALL the hardware details this week, and not bothered with those shitty tech demos and 7 month old trailers.  Then when E3 comes around, blow everyone out of the water with all the excellent eye popping software.  That’s what gaming is about after all, games, the hardware is secondary, just a means to a end.  Now, if Sony doesn’t have any killer software to show off by the time E3 rolls around, then I think it’s time to pack it in.
The software that they did show, stuff like Killzone and Watch Dogs was very much a “been there, done that” sort of affair.  Not to mention that they looked very current gen to me, as did the new title “Knack.”  Everything else was nothing more than cutscenes and tech demos.  I’ve heard some argue that developers need some time to figure out how to develop for the new system.  Well, if a developer can’t get a game to work on what amounts to off the shelf PC components, then the whole industry is in a hell of a lot of trouble.

I really don’t give a shit what the possibilities of the system are, I want know what it is ACTUALLY doing.  Most of the presentations were desolate at best, devoid of any real substance.  Square-Enix was particularly lugubrious.  They showed a rendered cut scene that they’d showed months ago, stating that that was what their goal was.  Then they had the audacity to stand up on stage and say, “oh yeah, one more big announcement!”  Everyone watching leans forward, curiosity piqued.  “The big announcement is that there will be a big announcement at E3, LOL!”  You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

Yo dawg, I hear you like announcements, so we put an announcement in our announcement!

A quick word about backwards compatibility.  There is none.  That quick enough?  Ok, to be more specific, none of the software is backwards compatible, that includes PS1, 2, and 3 games.  Not as of yet.  They coyly hinted that they might be at some point.  Translation: “We have no idea what we are doing.”  Old Dualshock Controllers are also not compatible.  However, move controllers are.  Sony.  Stop trying to make move controls happen, they are not going to happen.

On the plus side, this leaves Microsoft plenty of time to figure out what not to do.  Sony put on a damn clinic about that.  The victory is there for XBOX 720 to simply reach out and grab.  That is, assuming MS doesn’t fuck it up somehow.  I guess we’ll all get to see in a few months how this all pans out.  Rest assured, I will be there to spout, angry, cynical, judgemental, obscenities.

-jer

P.S. Blizzards announcement of Diablo 3 coming out on console deserves nothing more than a post script.     

Retail is Chasing it’s Tail

It’s that time again.  Time for another baseless, highly uninformed, talking-out-of-my-ass opinion.  Today’s topic?  The state of affairs in the traditional “brick and mortar” retail business model.  Specifically, whether said business model simply needs an overhaul, or needs to be “old Yeller’ed.”  Taken out back and shot like a rabid dog.

Game Stop announced that it would be shutting down 250 stores in 2013.  Best Buy closed 50 stores in 2012, their stock down a whopping 94% from the previous year.  Sears has closed, or is in the process of closing 100 to 120 stores, K-mart closing 26.  Zellers stock dropped by close to 100% in the past year, it’s last gasping breath was punctuated by a large Target logo, who bought them lock, stock and barrel in 2012.  In addition to these tragic downfalls, I would also like a brief moment of silence for the following fallen:  A&B sound, CompuSmart, Radio Shack, Blockbuster, and Rogers video.  Cue the “Runaway Train” music.
Does this mean that retail all over the world is crashing, I mean, the world economy has gone to shit, we all know that.  Surely that is to blame.  Not so fast hot shot.  If you do some snooping around you will find that businesses like Safeway, Loblaws, Shell, Bell, and Rogers are showing year after year growth, it’s business as usual.  The difference of course is that all these companies provide what would be classified as essential services, food, clothing, gas, phones, things of that nature.  They can pretty much continue business are usual, people won’t simply stop buying food anytime soon.

The first list of companies however, sell commodities, non-essentials, luxury items.  Almost all of them involved in technology in some form or another.  you can blame a depressed economy all you like, but I’m here to tell you that is not the case.  The reason for all these failures is not unlike the recording industry trying to sue a 7 year old for piracy.  It’s the inability to cope with and adjust to the changing landscape modern business.  it’s a sad, sad downward spiral.  Sales start to get soft, so they start to cut corners.  First and foremost companies will cut payroll.  They do this mainly because it’s a really easy stop-gap.  It requires minimal effort to do, and saves a ton of money.  Now all their stores are understaffed, and all the staff that survived end up doing the job of two or even three people for the same or less pay.  They get surely, disgruntled, and unhelpful.  It becomes a terrible experience to go shopping, and sales get softer.  Now the company starts cutting stock.  That saves a few bucks on purchasing, but now someone walks into the store and there is sweet fuck all to buy, everything is a special order.  Well, if I’m gonna order it anyways, why don’t I just cut out the middle-man and order it myself from the comfort of my home?  Sales start to get even softer, and the company starts closing stores.  Eventually they just fade away, all the time wondering what went wrong, blaming everyone except themselves.

Here’s the thing, a store like Best Buy is commonly known as the “Amazon show room.”  People go to the store to shop for products, find what they like and then go home and buy it online.  Now why do they do this?  Is it really because it’s 5 bucks cheaper?  No, it’s because it’s pretty much the same experience either way.  That is, you are going to be helping yourself.  You won’t be getting any sort of meaningful help from anybody, remember those payroll cuts?  How many times have you found yourself wandering around a store, craning your neck over the shelves fruitlessly searching for non-existent, unhelpful staff.
When is the last time you walked out of a retail outlet of any kind, feeling like you actually had a good time shopping there?  It happens from time to time, but the majority of retail experiences these days go like this:
You walk into Bob’s Thing-a-ma-Bob’s.  You either get ignored completely, or get a half-hearted, distracted greeting from someone who would rather be literally anywhere other than here.  You walk over to the widget section display.  You find that the display is dirty, and in complete disarray.  There is ten slots for different widget display models, five of them are empty, and of the five full ones, three of the display models don’t work.  You keep moving to the widget accessories section, right beside the sorry displays.  Half of the accessory pegs are empty, most have the incorrect price, or no price at all.  You don’t see the model you are looking for, so you begin the epic quest of finding a staff member.  If you find one, you have to be quick, because chances are they have three different jobs to do all at once, and they are scurrying like crazy.  You finally manage to snag someone, they look up the model you are looking for, they don’t have any.  So you ask about the model that they do have, one that is similar to the one you want.  They can’t tell you anything about it that you couldn’t find within 30 second on your smart phone.  You say screw it, go home, and order it online.  Bob’s Thing-a-ma-bobs gets one step closer to the grave. 
Now, when I was a retail manager I had a saying, “don’t come to me with problems, come to me with solutions.”

What I meant by that was, any of my staff could come to me to complain about a problem they were having, as long as they brought with them a few possible solutions to said problems.  It insured that my staff weren't bitching for the sake of it, and it encouraged problem solving and critical thought.
So, I have to abide by my own rules here.  I need to come up with a possible solution to the sorry state of retail.  Given all the changes in the way people shop today, retail needs to adjust to stay relevant.  They need to offer something that cannot be experienced with online shopping.  Simply having the lowest possible price is not the answer.  If you try to engage in a price war with a website you will lose, as Best Buy is going to find out soon enough since they started price matching websites.  The brick and mortar experience needs to transform into the “premium” version of shopping.  It needs to be great.  Lots of selection, neat, tidy, clean stores with an abundance of well paid, well trained staff.  If you talk to any retail executive today, or believe the commercials on the ol’ TeeVee, you’ll find the claim that their business is exactly that.  They will beak about striving for excellence and all that crap.  There is a colossal difference between talking the talk, and walking the walk, and I have yet to see too many businesses walk that walk, from the inside as a manager, or as a customer.

I will leave you with one great example of a business that “gets it.”  I fully endorse this company for what it’s worth.  That company is Memory Express.  They sell technology, computer parts, TV’s, cameras, laptops, tablets, etc.  Now you can get that kind of crap just about anywhere.  Amazon, Newegg, and NCIX come to mind.  In a way they are direct competitors, these websites all sell the same stuff Memory Express does, and usually for just a little bit cheaper.  Here’s the thing, every time I walk out of Memory Express, I feel good, even if I didn’t get anything.  I feel good because they do all the things I talked about, they walk the walk.  The staff are plentiful and knowledgeable, not hurried or stressed, even though they are very busy.  Everything is neat and orderly, and they actually have lots of stuff in stock.  For that, I am perfectly willing to pay 5 extra bucks for a video card.

Obviously there is still a place in this world for businesses like Wal-mart, where it’s expected that corners are cut for the sake of lower prices.  Employee treatment not withstanding, but if all you sell is non-essential, specialized, products, you’d better step your damn game up, or it’s just a matter of time…..old Yeller…..

-jer                

Much too Old to Feel This Damn Young

I’m a mind reader you know.  I know exactly what you are thinking right now, and it goes a little something like this.

“Oh for the love of Neil deGrasse Tyson, it’s been two months since there has been a new post from this asshole.  I though he had finally lost interest in polluting the internet with his insane rambling and gibberish.”
Well, I regret to inform you dear readers, that I have in fact, not given up on this blog.  If you were to click on the link to my photography site, you will notice that it no longer goes anywhere.  I did have to give that up, simple economics really.  It was costing me $150.00 a year, and was recently upped to $250.00 a year. 

After running the site for 3 years, I have made a total of $40.00 in sales.  You don’t have to be a math wizard, (or mathemagician as they like to be called) to figure that one out.  As for the blog itself, it’s not going anywhere, last year I wrote 35 posts at an average of 1000 words each.  This year I regret to inform you that you will likely have to endure another 35,000 words, possibly more.  So, as they say to inmates facing the death penalty, (according to movies) “may God have mercy on your soul.” 
It’s been a wild couple of months, hence the lack of updates.  I moved into a new place, I continue to grow sicker, and the medical powers that be still don’t seem to be taking me seriously.  It’s seems that as long as I’m still on my feet, they don’t appear to give a damn about my health.  I’ve also fallen into complete and total financial ruin.  Don’t worry, it was self imposed and necessary.  I am not ashamed, it was the right thing to do.  As I posted on my facebook a few months ago, “Sometimes, if you want new growth, you have to burn down the old forest.”

I’m starting to see some saplings.

Enough of that shit.  Let’s get to the point of this post.  Here’s a though that has been rattling around in my so-called brain for a while now.  It’s has to do with comparing ones self to the expected societal norms.  As soon as you mention something like that, brace for a torrent of quips about being your own person, not caring what other people think, etc. etc.  The truth of the matter is that everyone does it, if you claim that your never have, your are a liar, or deluding yourself.  Either way, I hereby sentence you to 30 minutes of quiet introspection.  May dog have mercy on your bowl.

Now, by commonly accepted standards, I could (should?) have a family by now, also a career, and my own home.  Where does this metric come from?  Well, some of it comes out of the societal ether, some of it comes from the influences in my life.  No small influence is of course my father.  Where was he at 35?  Where am I right now?  I can tell you they are a far cry from each other.  I know that every one is different, I know that that different people have different priorities and different life experiences that shape them if different ways.  I just can’t seem to shake the feeling that NOT having all these “normal” things, like children and a career have a negative connotation.  I could technically have a teenager by now.  Really?  I look around my house, books, movies, video games, computer, consoles….It would be a like a teenager raising a teenager.  I sure as hell don’t feel qualified for that sort of responsibly, nor do I desire it.  I can’t even manage myself, let alone a mini-me.

I feel like I’m suffering from Peter Pan syndrome.  My body has gotten older, but my mind didn’t follow suit.  I am an adult, it’s easy to say that, but for me, it’s much harder to DO that, be an adult.  I don’t feel like it.  I can’t escape from that childhood feeling that adults have all the answers, and take care of everything.  If I don’t, and I can’t, am I?  Is being a grown-up a physical state?  Or just a state of mind?

That’s a lot of questions.   I know one thing, it’s all a matter of perspective.  Way back in high school, all us teenagers were petty, overly emotion, insecure, and immature.  We were all trying to figure ourselves out, who we were, who we are, who we will become.  Years later, everyday you meet people who, are petty, overly emotional, insecure, and immature.  I think even the most together people you ever meet have some sort of emotional train wreck they are trying to clean up, you simply cannot travel through life without packing some bags.  How scary does that sound?  A whole world full of people masquerading as responsible grown-ups.  No offence to those of you who truly have all your shit together.  You magnificent bastards you!

I know what I need to do.  I need to shuffle away the expectations that I think people place on me.  I need to be ok with the fact that I will not be living my life the way my dad has, or the way that the model of standardized society expects.  There is no correct way to do it.  You have to make your own life, I truly envy people who have got that figured out.

As for me, I will continue to struggle against the artificial insecurities, limitations, and hang-ups that I have placed on myself.  Someday I hope to truly find my own path, and travel down it without compunction.  I can’t feel guilty for being who I am.  If I can’t manage that, then blog have mercy on my goal.

-jer

Left, Right? Left.

Alan Turing, Pablo Picasso, Fredrich Niezche, Barak Obama, Bill Clinton, Robert NcNamara, Winston Churchill, Bill Gates, Jim Henson, Mark Twain, Nikola Tesla, J Edgar Hoover, Paul McCartney, Buzz Aldrin, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendricks, Albert Einstein, Ludwig Van Beethoven, H.G. Wells, Douglas Adams, and Henry Ford.
Can you wager a guess as to what all these people have in common?  If you said they were all born with 11 toes, your would be dead wrong, also what the hell is wrong with you?  If you said they were all astounding, impactful people, contributing greatly to the world as we know it today, your would be partially right.  No, the tie that binds these people is that they are all left handed.  Now, the reason I point this out is to illustrate that left handed people are not gimped, we are not handicapped in some way, we are not invalids.  We are a rare and beautiful thing, making up less than 10% of the population of the planet.  Now you might think I’m cherry picking all the good left handed people and leaving out all the amazing right handed people to further my own left-handed agenda.  You are correct.  There are both good and bad people who are left or right handed, but that data doesn't skew in my favour to prove my point, so I shall ignore it.
Some time ago I posted a blog entry talking about introverted personalities.  In it I brushed upon the topic of left-handedness, comparing the similar reactions people have to our “condition.”  That reaction is of course, “if I don’t understand it, or can’t identify with it, it must be bad.”
So lefties, much like introverts, get relegated to a second-class citizen.  You would never patronize, or look down upon any one of the people in my aforementioned list.  That somehow changes if you are just a regular lefty, now you are broken in some way, you need special care.
I remember kindergarten, the teacher was trying to teach us all the basics of writing, specifically, how to properly hold a pencil.  We had these special pencils with little triangular rubber grips to help us get a feel for where out fingers should go.  Now, most people take a skill like this for granted, but to this day, I cannot hold a pen or pencil properly.  The teacher couldn’t figure out how to teach me, she couldn’t comprehend how to show me, so she just gave up, told me to figure it out for myself.  It’s bad enough that I have to drag my hand through everything i write, staining the heel of my hand with graphite or ink.  The same scenario happed a bit later when it came to shoe tying lessons.  I would use the opposite hand for the loops and bunny ears and the what have you.  I had to do it myself, nobody could teach me.  To make matters worse, when it came to arts and crafts time, all the left-handed scissors looked markedly different from the other scissors.  It made me stand out, kids would wonder why I needed special scissors, was there something wrong with me?  I took it upon myself to learn how to use the same scissors that all the other kids used.  The problem was, the teacher would see me using them, and take them away, saying I should use the proper scissors, designed specially for my ilk.  Why couldn’t the lefty ones look the same, you would just need to put a little “L” on the handle or something.  So if your think I'm being overly dramatic but using the phrase “second-class citizen” then why was I treated as such?
Here’s where things get really insulting.  I was looking to buy a new mouse. Normally it just use a symmetrical mouse, basic, but functional.  Then I got to thinking, there are all these cool-ass gaming mice out there, with thumb buttons and extra controls all over them.  Maybe I could find something like that, but for a left hand.  So I did some poking around, this is what I got:
        
What in the hell are these unholy abominations!?  What am I, fucking retarded?  I need some crazy fucked up awkward, backwards ass piece of crap clearly designed by a right handed person who thinks we need some sort of special help.  I have a great idea, how about you take that awesome right handed gaming mouse, and make a mirror image version of it?  I’m perfectly capable of figuring out your “big boy” mice, you condescending prick.
Here’s where things degrade into the comical.  The one gaming advantage of being left handed is the number pad on the keyboard.  I have my mouse on the left, and my right hand on the keypad, it’s a perfect fit.  Right handed people have the use WASD, or turn their keyboard  at a weird angle to use the number pad.  Behold, the left handed keyboard!
   
The one advantage I did have has been striped away.  See, what right handed people don’t understand is this:  Right handed people’s left hand is next to useless to them, they can’t do anything with it.  Left handed peoples right hand is quite capable of many tasks.  For instance, this keyboard assumes that lefties are like righty's, to do data entry effectively on the number pad, you would need your dominate hand.  This is not true, I can do it just fine with my right, I can even use a mouse with relative proficiency, not quite good enough for gaming, but well enough for everyday tasks.  This keyboard is useless!
Finally we come to the absurd:

   I’m speechless.

-jer

Dark souls (Or maybe light grey-ish Souls)

 

So I bought darks souls for PS3 about 3 months ago.  Ever since then it’s been sitting on my desk.  A looming danger, like a school-yard bully just waiting for the perfect opportunity to beat me up and take my lunch money.  All this time it’s been sitting there, and I hadn’t the nerve to played it.

I need to back up a bit.  You have to understand that I have some weird, possibly unhealthy fascination with this game.  There’s just something about it that keeps drawing me toward it.  I must have watched at least half a dozen let’s play’s of it on Youtube.  I’ve seen ultra skilled masters of the game, who make it look like they might be playing a Disney princess game instead of one of the most punishingly difficult games around.  I’ve also seen newbies, fighting tooth and nail for every single inch of progress they make.  What is it about this damn game?

I though about this a lot, and I think I have it.  This game simply does not give a single fuck about the player.  It doesn’t go out of it’s way to ease you into the game, doesn’t have difficulty settings, it doesn’t give you direction.

It uses unconventional controls, that force you to unlearn every convention that has been ground into players for years.  Everyone knows for action games the face buttons do the important stuff like attack, jump, shoot and the like.  The shoulder buttons are usually for secondary things, switch weapons or targets, lean, special abilities, that sort of thing.  Not Dark souls.  Now don’t get me wrong, the controls make sense, left triggers for you left hand, right triggers for your right hand, face buttons for everything else, roll, use item, switch stance.  For me, that was the first biggest hurdle.

There is a sort of tutorial at the beginning of the game, it teaches you a few of the basics, how to attack, block, and dodge.  It also teaches you how to die.  Dying is probably the single most important aspect of the game, you will die, a lot, and it will all be your fault.  There is no cheap deaths, if you die, it’s because of your lack of skill, not bad game design.  I died five times in the tutorial.  If you stick with it you will get better, and the sense of accomplishment is acute.

After the tutorial, you basically get plopped down right in the middle of this seamless, expansive and above all, dangerous world.  So, there you are, sword in one hand, shield in the other.  What do I do now?  Well, you go explore.  It doesn’t hold your hand, saying ok, now go here and pick up the treasure.  It say, “fuck you, figure it out.”  You go someplace that’s too tough for you right now?  Well, then you die, but you’ve learned a little bit about the game, try a different area.



Yes, you actually have to fight thing, and yes, it wants to kill your face.
 

The game also has no artificial limitations.  Most games, there are so many things that aren’t allowed.  You can’t kill the smarmy NPC who annoys you, he’s needed for the story.  Not so in Dark Souls.  If it moves, you can probably kill it.  If you kill an NPC, well, then he’s gone, game moves forward, and changes accordingly.  You kill a vendor that had a spell you wanted to buy?  Well, guess you’ll never have that spell, move on.  You can’t save and re-load if things don’t go according to plan.  The game continues to save, constantly.  Everything you do is permanent.  The world is yours in this game, granted, it’s a cold, violent, brutal, uncaring world, but it’s yours none the less. 

There is no right or wrong way to play it, but there is a LOT of ways to play it.
I’m aware that this game isn't entirely unique, the company that made this game, FROM software, released a game a few years before this one call Demon’s Soul.  In many ways, Dark’s souls is a sort of spiritual successor.  What blew my mind though, is that Demon’s soul isn't the first either.  One of the other reasons that this game draws me in is because it reminded me of something.  Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.  Then it hit me.  There was a series of little know RPG’s that were released on the PS, and the PS2, years and years ago.  They were the King’s Field games.  They too, were ball-bustlingly hard.  They too had seamless non-linear environments.  They too had creepy NPC’s found in the most unlikely of places.  They too most certainly didn’t give a fuck about you, the dear player.  Lastly, after doing a little investigating, I found that they too were made by FROM Software.

This is the FIRST boss in the game (not counting the tutorial boss)
 

All this time, FROM software has been quietly sitting, waiting, scheming, perfecting their stellar, yet punishing game design.  Getting ready to unleash the madness to the unsuspecting gaming public.
So, I finally manned up, and started to play it.  It’s rare when a game can continually feed you a real sense of accomplishment.  Every encounter, no matter how trivial, I treat like a boss battle.  Even the lowliest critters in the game can and will kill you, but only if you let them.  Keep your guard up, be wary, think clearly, be patient, and learn from your mistakes.  If you do this, you will have a great time.  Treat the game flippantly, try to just breeze along, the game will stab you right in the dink.

-jer

New Game Round-up

Well, it’s that time of year again.  The time when all the major game publishers start to poop out all of their AAA big budget titles for the upcoming Christmas shopping orgy.  I though I’d select a few choice morsels and dissect them right in from of you, spill out their gooey insides for all the world to gawk at in amazement.  Keep in mind the following opinions are just that, my ill-informed highly unprofessional, and possibly juvenile opinions.  Well, this train isn’t going to wreck itself, so let’s get started.

There have been many travesties masquerading as x-com games over the years, some have been unleashed mercilessly on the public, some have been shit canned before completion, all have been horrible.  In X-coms case, I would say that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but that didn’t happen.  For 18 years now x-com has been fucked with and mess around with to the point I never though this day would come.  Yet here we are, a game modeled almost exactly after the original, fully modernized.  Of course “modernized” is usually a euphemism for “dumbed down.”  X-com mostly escapes this curse, mostly.  The new control scheme is easy to pick up and play, and is adapted to work with a controller.  The base building segments are fun and flow nicely, but there are a few annoyances.  New recruits come completely unskilled, they can basically shoot, and throw a grenade.  As soon as they level up once, they are assigned a class, and it’s random!  Just by sheer luck of the draw, you could unwittingly end up with a whole army of snipers with little or no heavy’s, scouts, or assaults.  You need some of everything if you want to not die.  Second, you can’t shoot unless you have an alien in sight.  Now that may not sound like big deal, but what if I wanted to shoot a gas pump, causing an explosion that might give me an edge?  It strips away a layer of strategy for no discernable reason.  Lastly, when you get a shot, the game always calculates the percent chance of hit, but, and I might be wrong about this, I don’t think that percent chance includes the evasion skill of the enemy.  So if the games says you have 50% chance to hit an enemy, it’s more like 40%, and if that enemy is an advanced one, possibly less, 35% or lower.  Add this to the fact that the game is punishingly hard, there are most assuredly going to be frustrating moments, like your star soldier whiffing on a 97% chance to hit, then getting his face melted off.  The sense of achievement you get from winning is an almost perfect counterpoint to this though, well played Firaxis.

 

Ten years ago, Halo was a launch title for the Xbox-not-360.  The aftershock of the impact this had on the console gaming world is still being felt today.  People had never seen anything quite like it, and clung tenaciously to their comically oversized controllers, finally getting a taste of what PC gamers had been enjoying for years.  I picked up Halo for PC, I played it, I finished it, I really enjoyed it.  Aside from some tedious backtracking, it was an extremely well crafted game.  There’s very little I didn’t like about it.  After it was done, I felt a sense of closure, I didn’t really feel like the story needed anything else.  I’m not a huge fan of making sequels just for the sake of making them.  I love unique IP’s, and wish game developers would take more chances.  All the Halo’s since the first one have been safe and secure games, cash cows if you will.  I am however, going to begrudgingly give Halo 4 some deserved respect.  Considering that this is the first full Halo game that 343 industries has made, they did an amazing job.  Bungie couldn’t have done it better.  The game looks, and feels very much like it’s predecessors, and it is absolutely drop dead gorgeous.  It’s amazing that developers are still managing to squeeze new things out of aging consoles.  If you are a big fan of all the others, Halo 4 will deliver the goods. If you are looking for something fresh, keep looking.  Much like the end of the last segment, I cap if off with a salute to the developer, well played 343.

All I could think about when this game was first debuted last year was, “I can’t wait to tomawk somebody right in the fucking face!”  I was so excited, it’s gonna be like last of the Mohicans, only in a game.  Now I understand that it’s a pretty long and winding narrative path to somehow shoehorn Conner into the AC universe, but this is fucking ridiculous.  When you are five chapters into the game and you still have yet to see that signature white hooded Assassins cloak, you know Ubisoft is doing it wrong.  I feel like every Character in the game should be wearing a Scumbag Steve hat.  I like the hunting aspect of the game, if only because it fits.  I mean, If you are a native American death machine romping through the forest, you’re going to stab a bear or two in the neck, there’s no way around this.  What would be the perfect compliment to that type of gameplay?  I know, navel battles!  What. The. Fuck.  I wanted to like this game so bad, but it just didn’t want to be my friend.  To end this on a positive note, Ubisoft continues to blow my ass away with it’s game engine.  Everything looks fantastic, scenery, characters, sound effects, and animation.  Anyone who’s tried to run in deep snow knows they nailed that run animation for those parts.  Probably helps that they are Canadian developers, and that’s how they get to work everyday.  Running though deep snow with a rabid grizzly hot on their heels.

  

Oh my goodness!  I was pretty sure the glut of Lego games had worn out their welcome a long time ago.  Then along comes a gem like this.  Of all the LOTR games that have been released over the years, this is by far the coolest one I have ever seen.  All the dialog is ripped directly from the movie, so the voices are authentic.  Take the serious dialog, and blend it with the trademark slapstick humour style of the Lego games, and you’d think it would be a mess.  You’d be wrong.  Somehow, it meshes perfectly, and it’s delightful.  It’s funny, fun, looks great, and feels great.  I could easily recommend this game to anyone, young or old, based solely on the demo.  Also it’s co-op, double your fun kids!
There you go, a completely unhelpful, quick little snapshot of the games that will be occupying millions of gamers consoles this season.  In the immortal words of Wayne Campbell: “Game on!”
As a close, I’d like to make a special mention of two more big games this season.  That would be Need For Speed: Most wanted and Call of Duty: Black ops II.  Go fuck your respective selves EA and Activsion.
-jer