An Excercise

Among entertainment media video games are unique in that they have a barrier of entry. Anyone who is literate can read a book, and pretty much anyone can watch a movie (sometimes you don’t even need to know the language), but a video game requires a certain level of hand-eye coordination and a set of specialized knowledge. This barrier of entry is both a curse and a blessing. On the one hand this keeps gamers from sharing their hobby with non-gamers. It’s no secret that not too long ago a “gamer-girl” was considered a mystical creature, as rare and sought after as the mythical unicorn. However, on the other hand this barrier makes it so that all gamers share a common set of skills and knowledge.

A gamer can watch someone else playing a game and infer a good deal more information about how the game is played and how fun they may find it than a non-gamer could infer  from the teaser on the back of a book or from a movie trailer. Interestingly enough, this knowledge is compounding. Someone who has played three games can infer more about how a fourth game works without playing it and can learn how to play it quicker than someone who has only played two games.

To demonstrate this ability I am going to link to a teaser-video for an upcoming game and tell you everything I can about it. I have read very little about this game and its mechanics, though I do know a bit about the developers involved and the series the game is from. When I am using outside information like this I will make a note of it. Shall we begin?

Video Games | Metroid: Other M | Exclusive Action Trailer HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

0 seconds - ***Information I already know about this game: This is the latest Metroid game for the Nintendo Wii. The game is being developed by the same studio that made the latest ninja gaiden series on the Xbox and I believe Xbox360 (and the PS3 ports). The Metroid series has the player taking the role of Samus Aran, a female bounty hunter in space that has a number of unusual abilities gained from both her suit of armor and her childhood being raised by the Chozo (mystical bird people). The games have been both 2-D sidescrolling games and 1-st person shooters (technically). In both cases the Metroid games have put an emphasis on exploration and a distinct sense of loneliness. Story has never been a particular concern of the Metroid series, and the enemies usually consist of indigenous life-forms and space pirates. This latest Metroid game is supposedly going to have a focus on the story. That’s about what I know so far.***

0:20 - Everything so far has been in-game cutscenes. No actual gameplay footage. ***Upgraded suit suggests that this is early in the game before the player loses their upgrades (a Metroid staple).***

0:20-0:23 - Some kind of throw technique. Player likely has to run up and press a button combination and then the game goes into a canned animation (player input does nothing). Probably breaks through enemy guard, if enemies can guard. May also be only useable on enemies who have been “stunned” in some way. Upper left corner shows in-game HUD (heads-up display). First bar and the 84 refer to current health. ***Small dot below 84 represents extra bar of life from an e-tank.*** 9/12 with the small missile icon is current missile ammo (previous Metroid game knowledge helped recognize that there were missiles and what the icon was, but I could have discerned it from the missile icon without having played a Metroid game before). ***Blue bar that turns gold during the attack represents how charged the gun is. Throw may not be as uninteractive as previously believed. The player may be able to charge the shot while the animation is playing.***

0:23-0:24 - Mini-map in upper right shows current location and a zoomed in version of the map. Most likely you can access the full map in the pause menu. Assuming standard Wii controls, nunchuck and remote, the remote controls movement while the remote is used to target and fire at enemies. Samus is performing a dodge-roll here to avoid being hit, the dodge roll is almost-assuredly performed by moving the analog stick on the remote in a direction and pressing a button, most likely on the nunchuck as well. Samus may or may not be impervious to damage while in the dodge roll animation. Fire enemies killed by some sort of ice weapon (***most likely the ice beam or some move involving it***).

0:26 - First person mode activated to fire at an enemy. Most likely you can activate first person mode at any time by pressing a button. ***first person mode will undoubtedly control like Metroid Prime 3 on the Wii (I have never played Metroid Prime 3).***

0:27-0:30 Same throw as before, but with a slightly different animation I believe. Confirms that it’s some kind of move you can use regularly, most likely a dash attack you can use while running. Enemy death leaves much to be desired, they simply disappear. Fast-paced combat with enemies that fade away quickly suggests that you’ll be facing lots and lots of enemies throughout the game. Lack of mini-map and circular room structure suggests you will fight a lot of enemies or a strong enemy in that room. Too indistinct to be a boss room though.

0:32 - Pause menu to select a new weapon.

0:38-0:39 Sudden cutscene. Slight jerkiness in movement and the slowdown suggest that the player has to manually move Samus out of the way. Failure will either result in damage or instant death. Switch to normal camera and fighting suggests damage.

0:48-0:54 - Grapple beam demonstration. Player will use grapple beam to attach to specific places and swing across gaps. Back and forth motion suggests no real penalty for failure to release properly during the first swing. Weird momentum when releasing suggests that it will be very difficult to screw up, but the disconnect will also make it annoying rather than fun.

0:54-1:00 - Unique looking enemy combined with dramatic entrance and a turn to face it at the end all suggest a boss or mini-boss fight.

1:07 - Weird graphics around are that gets bombed to reveal tunnel is most likely how secret areas are denoted. Further reinforced by mini-map showing it as a dead-end.

1:14 - ***Bombs in morph ball mode are used to activate switches and blow up structurally weak areas exactly like Metroid Prime 1-3.***

1:17-1:23 - Speed booster acts like a rocket pack, letting Samus run very fast in a straight line and crash through obstacles like walls. Straight paths suggest you can’t alter course much if at all while using the speed booster. ***Jump at the end is much like the super jump used after a super dash in Super Metroid. Speed Booster allows the jump, letting you jump very high and most likely through obstacles like weak ceilings.***

1:23-1:27 - Another circular area filled with enemies. Fight rooms will likely be a regular occurrence. Also another throw, probably activated the same way.

1:27-1:38 - All in-game cutscene.

1:38 - Song here couple with the music elsewhere suggests a wholly forgettable soundtrack and certainly much weaker than Metroid Prime 1, though I very well could be wrong.

Final Impressions: Looks like a decently fun action game, lots of fight and killing. Exploration and loneliness is most likely going to receive the most gutting in favor of more combat and a mediocre story. The way the enemies die and their rather generic design makes me think that the combat while fun, will quickly turn repetitive and lack any of the visceral “oomph” needed to make it have any staying power. Recommendations from this trailer alone, avoid it unless you see in on sale for like $20-30 unless you’re a hardcore Metroid fan, in which case you will buy it day 1 and be disappointed.

Now you can see why gamers get excited at events like E3 where you get to see video-game trailers. Even from less than two minutes of footage we can learn an enormous amount about a game. About the only thing that excites us more are hands-on demos, which can just straight-up let you know how you'll like a game (with a few exceptions). Now I'm curious what a non-gamer could learn from this clip. Anyone care to share?

Fear Is The Mind Killer

Today I would like to talk about a subject very close to my heart, fear. Since the beginning, fear and death have been mankind’s two most loyal companions. Whoever you are, wherever you go, whatever you do, you will one day die, and you will always be afraid of something. Whether you’re afraid of clowns, cucumbers, or global destabilization, you are absolutely terrified of something.

Fear is natural part of our lives, and I believe an essentially piece of what it means to be human. Fear makes us cautious, careful; fear bands us together. Without fear, true courage would be impossible, and there could never be something as noble as a “hero”. For all the boons it may grant us, however, fear is also the one and only true enemy of mankind. Fear paralyzes us, robs us of our reason, our intelligence, our will to fight, even our compassion. Fear can, and has all too often, driven humanity into meaningless destruction of itself. Everything that makes humans better than other animals, fear can remove.

For years, I have watched as fear has spread out across the land. I have sat by and witnessed silently as it has claimed the minds and the hearts of countless men and women. Fear of global warming. Fear of autism. Fear of H1N1. Fear of dangerous playgrounds. Fear of muslims. Fear of christians. Fear of homosexuality. Fear of fitness and musculature. Fear of fat. Fear of everything under the goddamn sun.

Fear has become the Ever-Tyrant, God-King of the human race.

And I stood by saying nothing, because I was one of his most loyal supporters.

I am one of the harbingers of a new generation. A generation of children who grew up in a society that allowed fear to rule them completely. Our world is not one of sticks and stones, but plastic and foam. Once upon a time there were children who were told to suck it up if they broke their arm; my generation gets the day off from school if we so much as scratch our leg. I remember in middle school it was snowing and so the administration placed guards at all the doors to keep us from going outside during lunch. Why? Because we might slip and hurt ourselves. I’ve seen parents force their kids to only ride their bike in the driveway for fear of them getting run over. Hell, Halloween is on its way out as a holiday because of fear. Parents now drive their kids around during the day to pick up candy, and even then they don’t let them eat it, lest the candy turn out to be razor blades or drugs (which has happened less than a dozen times and in each case it was the family themselves who did it). Two years ago I got a huge bowl of candy set up for Halloween at my apartment, hoping that kids would come by so I could be one of those awesome people who gave out too much candy at Halloween like when I was kid. Not one person knocked on our door that night, and that was with a family with no less than four kids right next door to me.

The real world is filled with violence, disease, and so many unknowns that our knowledge may as well be a single candle trying to light all of the universe. So how do we prepare our children for this world? Do we show them the dangers and how to deal with them? Do we teach them how to defend themselves from violence? Do we bolster their immune systems to fight diseases? Do we teach them how to walk into the darkness and not be crippled by fear?

No.

We hide the nature of the world. We teach them that violence is never the answer and can always be avoided, and only after we can no longer hide it from them. We wrap them in bubbles so that they never get sick, only to have them killed by the colds and flus. We teach them to fear the darkness and to always avoid the unknown. And so our children hide from the world.

By allowing fear to rule us, we have doomed our children to an even deeper slavery than our own. How much longer until we no longer leave our home states? How many generations until we stay in the city of our births? How many centuries until we never leave the borders of our neighborhood like our medieval ancestors?

We cannot fight fear; it is a part of us. We will always be afraid, but there is nothing wrong with that. Let that fear enter your body. Let it pass through you. Once you accept your fear, it can no longer cripple you. Your heart may race, your body may shake and sweat, but you can move. You may not be able to fight fear, but you can press on in spite of it, and that is what courage is.

Courage is not a trait, but a skill. The ability to muster one’s will and press forward through fear’s debilitating poison. All humans have the ability to do this, everyone has courage, you just have to practice it.

Roughly one year ago I couldn't even work-out because of fear of others and my own body. For nearly twenty-three years I couldn’t go somewhere I’d never been before or meet new people without someone else with me. My heart may still beat faster, and I may still sweat, but today I can go somewhere I’ve never been before, on my own, and talk to someone I’ve never even seen before without my shirt on. It’s not because my body started looking better, it’s not because I became more charismatic, and it’s certainly not because I became more adventurous. I can do these things now because I stopped letting fear rule my life. I was afraid, so I went out and challenged that fear.

Fear and Death are our two companions. They are mankind's two greatest enemies, but when you accept them, they become our two greatest allies.

Why So Serious? (I'm Sorry)

More interesting than the actual game.

Recently, after beating Saint’s Row 2 I decided to go back and play Grand Theft Auto IV just so I could compare the two with less of a memory based bias. After spending roughly an hour in GTAIV driving around, I realized that I wasn’t having any fun and promptly quit playing. This is a very unusual occurrence for me, so I decided to compare Saint’s Row 2 and GTAIV. This way I hoped to discover why exactly I wasn’t having any fun with GTAIV. In the end I came to a rather surprising conclusion: GTAIV is a mediocre game, and a thoroughly terrible sequel. As there are quite a few of you out there who may disagree with me, I am going to go over why GTAIV is a mediocre game and why Saint’s Row 2 is better in almost every way point by point.

Art Direction

I chose art direction for this category rather than graphics because the fact is that despite what most video game developers may try to tell you, good graphics are not the end-all be-all of video games. Super Mario 64 as an Nintendo 64 title is inherently ugly video game (graphics-wise), but it is one of the most fun video games of all time, and its worlds are pleasant to look at and memorable. Regardless, GTAIV does have some decent art direction going for it. Liberty City looks and feels like a living, breathing city, and all of the characters look appropriate. What they are not, however, is memorable. Outside of Niko Bellic, the main character and poster child for the game, I would challenge you to remember what any character in the game looks like. The fact is that Rockstar designed the characters in GTAIV as an odd mix of a real-person and a cartoon caricature (if you don’t believe me take a look at the picture of Vladimir Glebov, one of the first villains in GTAIV, shown below). Realism in itself is not a bad thing to try for in a video game, but you cannot allow yourself to forgo making your art interesting and memorable for its sake.

Believe it or not, this is one of his more realistic expressions.

Music

I have nothing to complain about when it comes to the quality of the music in Grand Theft Auto IV, it is a nice mix of various genres and artists,  what I can deride is the method in which this music is delivered. As with all Grand Theft Auto games, music is only played from the radios in cars. This in itself is not a bad thing as it adds an element of realism to the game, and it certainly made sense in the previous titles. However, with the addition of the mostly-useless cell-phone mechanic in Grand Theft Auto IV they completely neglected a chance for the player to be allowed to play music anytime they’re on foot. Cell-phones today can act as media players (iPhone anyone?), so there is no loss of realism, and I sincerely doubt that there is any mechanical reason within the game’s code that would keep such a thing from being possible. Furthermore, there is no way to customize the radio stations within GTAIV. If there’s a song you don’t like on a radio station, then you better pray it never comes up, because there’s no way to skip it.

Saint’s Row 2 let’s you make your own playlist from the songs in the game, hell, even Perfect Dark for the N64 let you customize your playlist for multiplayer. Adding insult to injury, the GTAIII games (GTAIII, Vice City, and San Andreas) all had a separate station for PC players that they could add custom music to. There are games on both PS3 and XBox360 that allow players to utilize the music they have saved to their hard-drive within the game, but GTAIV ignored this capability. Even better, the PC version doesn’t even have custom soundtrack capability.

Story

Ah GTAIV’s much vaunted story. I don’t know how much they spent writing the story for GTAIV, but judging by the number of voice actors alone, it must have been quite the pretty penny. They should have spent a bit more. You want to know the story for GTAIV, here we go. Serbian gets into trouble and flees to America. Trouble follows Serbian to America and he deals with it. There you go. Any new characters that would force some sort of growth in the main character or change the situation at all are conveniently killed off. Rockstar touted regularly how you would be given choice in the game, and the actions you chose would alter the story. Guess what, that’s a lie. You decide not to kill a guy, 9/10 times he’s gonna come back and attack you and you have to kill him. In the end, no matter what you do, the people who are going to die, are going to die, and where Niko ends up is going to be the exact same.

Let’s talk about Niko actually. Niko Bellic, the main character, a Serbian who has fled to America illegally to escape some bad men he pissed off. Niko is “supposedly” a nice guy who doesn’t want to live a life of crime and violence, yet constantly gets sucked in. Already we have two problems. One, Niko BellicVercetti, is a sociopath and perhaps even a psychopath. When you go one a killing spree in Vice City, it is completely in character. Saint’s Row 2 offers you a full character creator, and the choice of six (or more if I remember right) voice actors, and yet even without the ability to make any kind of decisions I never felt any of my actions were out of character.

In the end, Grand Theft Auto IV has the same exact story as Grand Theft Auto III (whose main character is completely mute) except without the interesting, “my ex-girlfriend betrayed me and I want revenge” angle. Hilariously, the first girlfriend you can get in Grand Theft Auto IV, does in-fact betray you, but I’ll refrain from talking about that for now, since she’s the most interesting character in Grand Theft Auto IV, and I could write an article as long as this one, just about her. In the end Grand Theft Auto IV’s story is like watching a season of The Soprano’s except all the parts that aren’t criminal activities are cut-out (i.e. Tony’s family, the therapist, talking with his friends, etc...).

One of these two characters will actually grow as a person in Grand Theft Auto IV. Hint: It's not the protagonist.

Gameplay

Gameplay, the most important part of a video game. Some players, like me, can slog through boring gameplay for a good story, but we are a rare breed. However, all players will slog through a terrible story for good gameplay. Where to start, the fact that Grand Theft Auto III had some of the best driving mechanics ever made and they should never have deviated from them? The idea that having multiple checkpoints in difficult missions has been a video game standard since the middle years of the PS2? How about the fact that nobody has ever enjoyed having a limited distance they can sprint for, especially without an on-screen indicator for how long they can sprint? How about all those enjoyable, well-made mini-games that were in the Grand Theft Auto III games? What’s that, you replaced them with the shittiest bowling and dart-throwing minigames I have ever played in my life?

I could go on for quite a while, but I’d rather move on quicker, so let’s just go over what GTAIV did right. Regional damage, cover mechanics, and a hilarious physics engine. Three things they did right. Three. Ooh I almost forgot about the dating and friend mechanics. Why yes, I would love to go play that horrible bowling game with you every ten minutes girl who lets me keep my guns when I get sent to the hospital. Oh cousin, you want to go see some big, American titties? Of course I’ll go with you to the strip club that feels awkward and creepy enough to go to when I’m playing alone, much less when there are other people in the house.

In the end GTAIV did a lot of things wrong, but where they made their biggest mistake is in a category that I only bring up because of Grand Theft Auto 2, III, Vice City, San Andreas, Saint’s Row, and Saint’s Row 2 all have it in spades.

Humor

The Grand Theft Auto series was once a paragon of tongue-in-cheek humor. As irreverent as South Park, and as satirical as The Daily Show, the Grand Theft Auto series snuck humor everywhere. From ads on the radio that made you burst out laughing, down to the billboards you would see while driving, the games were absolutely filled with satirical and raunchy humor. However with Grand Theft Auto IV Rockstar decided to make a more realistic game. Rather than modelling Liberty City on New York, they literally copied it. Then they took out all of the color, traded the vibrancy and almost cartoonish palette of Vice City and San Andreas for grays and browns. Where once a mission might have you stealing an ice-cream truck so you could load it with explosives and crash it into your rival’s headquarters, you now have gravitas and people getting killed left and right. 

This is not to say that GTAIV completely forgot the humor; there are some genuinely funny fake radio advertisements, and almost the entirety of the in-game internet is filled with the same humor they had in previous GTA’s, but that’s it. All of the good humor is left to advertisements that play when you want music instead or in a single area that you essentially have to stop playing the game to visit. It seems humor has been replaced with people saying fuck, shit, and titties a whole lot. GTAIV tries to improve itself by ditching the humor and replacing it with swearing and mildly disturbing sexuality. The tanks, attack helicopters, and grenades have been replaced with a darker world and seriousness. Meanwhile Saint’s Row 2 added more humor, more attack helicopters, more rocket launchers, and it has not only more, but heavier hitting moments precisely because it did just that. When everything is rainbows and explosions, when someone dies, it’s a hell of a lot more of a downer than when your streets are rainy and filled with crack-whores.

Does this look more fun...

...than this?

The fact is that when you give someone a living city to play with, filled with civilians that have ragdoll physics, nearly every single person that plays in your world is going to prefer a rocket launcher to the ability to call 911 on some guy who started hitting you. GTAIV should have brought the series to a brand new level in absurdity and exaggeration, instead I had to go play Saint’s Row 2 to get my next-generation Grand Theft Auto. Even in a world where there is no Saint’s Row series, I would rather play any of the previous Grand Theft Auto games, even number 1, than play Grand Theft Auto IV, and that is why I say Grand Theft Auto IV is a terrible game.

Edit: I'm sorry about the formatting, but Blogger was being really annoying and not letting me change it at all.

And There's The Bell

Having just completed Final Fantasy XIII and Saint’s Row 2 have a deep-seated urge to discuss the two games’ differing design styles and why each is a paragon for their prospective genres.

In the blue corner we have Final Fantasy XIII, the latest in one of the oldest and certainly the most famous RPG lines. This title has eschewed the world map and free-roaming aspect of it’s predecessors in favor of a much stricter, linear approach. For today’s discussion Final Fantasy XIII will be fighting for the sake of linear, story based games.

And in the Red corner we have Saint’s Row 2, the sequel to Saint’s Row, most prominently regarded as a Grand Theft Auto 3 knock-off that didn’t suck. While Rockstar decided to make Grand Theft Auto 4 more realistic than it’s predecessors, Saint’s Row 2 was designed with the opposite viewpoint. For today’s discussion Saint’s Row 2 will be fighting for the sake of open-world, “sandbox” games.

The World

Saint’s Row 2 takes place in the fictional city of Stillwater, comprised of four islands total, the player is free to travel anywhere they want within Stillwater from the moment they complete the first mission. Stillwater is separated into 45 neighborhoods, distinct enough to tell roughly where you are, but seamless enough that you don’t notice exactly when you switch neighborhoods. The main draw for an open world game is that the player is completely free to travel as they see fit. If you want to steal a helicopter and fly up to that building you saw out of the corner of your eye, you can do so at any time. Saint’s Row 2 exemplifies this by allowing you free access to the entire city from the get-go, while other open-world games (GTA series specifically) deny you access to certain areas until you progress the plot to a certain point.

Final Fantasy XIII meanwhile takes place inside of a “man-made” moon, Cocoon. Every location within Cocoon is visually very distinct and most of them are so memorable I can conjure up the vistas just by closing my eyes. While the player is free to travel back and forth between areas within Cocoon (a feature not seen in other linear games), they are stuck to a specific path that they can take within the area. While this severely limits the players freedom it allows the art team  the ability to create some absolutely amazing vistas as they can control where exactly the player is within the world.

You can clearly see where the two games put their resources in the differences within the game world here. The argument basically comes down to whether you prefer having guaranteed extremely pretty locations, or if you prefer to have the freedom to go to any place you can see. Normally I would give this category to Saint’s Row 2 without fail, but the world the art team created in FFXIII combined with the vistas guaranteed by the limited travel paths help push this to a tie.If someone made an open-world game that was as pretty as FFXIII and with as many jaw-dropping vistas then open-world games would always win this category. As it is, the ability for a linear game to decide where a player is going to be gives them an artistic edge that keeps them competitive in this category.

Story

In Saint’s Row 2 you wake up in prison after being in a coma for 2 years. During that time the city that you took over in the first game has been stolen by a new set of rival gangs and the mega corporation Ultor basically owns everything. The rest of the story consists of your efforts to take back your city. The story in Saint’s Row 2, for all the kookiness and fun is surprisingly dark and enjoyable, perhaps even more so because of the general irreverence the game has. There are two scenes in particular, both dealing with dead allies that were particularly well done and really brought the story of this game up a notch. It feels a bit odd to say this, but Saint’s Row 2 has the best story for an open-world game I’ve ever seen. Yes I am saying that Saint’s Row 2, a game where you can run around naked with a katana, has a better story than Grand Theft Auto 4. Even better, the story in Saint’s Row 2 never diverges from the gameplay. While Niko Bellic in GTA4 may claim to be a guy who just wants to escape a world of violence, the player can have him brutally murder every old lady they see. Whereas In Saint’s Row 2 almost all of the insane minigames have a small story attached as to why you’re doing them, and the last words spoken before the credits role are, “...we do whatever the fuck we want.”

FFXIII is pretty much nothing but story. It’s hard to really say anything without spoiling, but it seems that Square-Enix has finally realized that it pays to hire writers and to have you characters actually animate their feelings rather than say them. Basically this is the first Final Fantasy game to at least begin to understand the phrase “show don’t tell”. In addition, the game absolutely shines up until your party is complete. All of the characters have different motivations and much of the beginning is just learning, through some of the most well-placed flashbacks I’ve ever seen, these motivations and where they came from. Honestly, this is the first game since I was in middle-school where I felt the need to keep playing, not because I wanted to, but because I just had to know what happened next. Sadly, the middle of this game does cut back a bit on the story as it makes the gameplay a little meatier, and while they give a decent effort, the story never gets back onto the same level as the beginning had. Further differentiating it from other, similar games,FFXIII actually explains why your team of people are super-powered badasses and makes it into the defining part of the story.

Saint’s Row 2 really surprised me with its story. I didn’t expect anything more than some fun and a few laughs, and while that was certainly there, I also got some heavier emotions that I wasn’t expecting. There was a whole point in the game where I would turn off the radio in the car because I didn’t feel it was appropriate. Unfortunately it’s up against FFXIII which is a powerhouse of a story. What it comes to in this case is I would rather be allowed to re-watch the first hour of FFXIII’s story then be allowed to see all of Saint’s Row 2’s. Still, the fact that I even cared about Saint’s Row 2’s story is a huge accomplishment for an open-world game. For reference I beat all of Grand Theft Auto 4 despite actively disliking the story, whereas I stopped playing Final Fantasy XII because I was merely disinterested in it’s story (open-world and story-based games respectively).

Gameplay

Saint’s Row 2 had good gameplay, no two shakes about it. Running over people who have ragdoll physics is inherently fun (seriously it really is funner than you think it is) and Saint’s Row 2 just provides you with a whole slew of ways to ragdoll people. The fact that you unlock extremely nice rewards (things that would be cheats in other games) by completing mini-games helps synergize the gameplay so that the more you do, and the more different things you do, the more things you can do. It’s like being given ice cream for eating your ice cream. My only real complaint is that the driving is less enjoyable than in Grand Theft Auto 3 (in all it’s variants). Of course, that’s not to say that it’’s unenjoyable, just slightly less enjoyable than it could be. What it comes down to is that in most sandbox games I’m going to want to be a whirlwind of destruction, and Saint’s Row 2 certainly provides that (though we’ll see how it compares to Red Faction: Guerilla when I get around to it). Saint’s Row 2 adds two amazing additions to it’s gameplay that is lacking from similar games. One is a plethora of checkpoints within missions so that a bad turn doesn’t force you to start the whole mission over again, and the other is that you are free to replay any mission you’ve completed at any time, something that doesn’t exist in any other open-world game I’ve ever seen.

FFXIII’s gameplay is streamlined to the core. The only mini-games you’ll see in FFXIII take place within the main plot and are so tied in that you barely even notice that you’re playing a mini-game. Really though, the vast bulk of FFXIII is combat. FFXIII utilizes any active battle system extremely similar to the one used in the miscriticized FFX-2. Basically everyone takes turns simultaneously, and after you have performed an action you have to wait a period of time before you can act again. FFXIII differs wildly from it’s predecessors by stripping away the mana bar that limited the use of special attacks and moves, adding the ability to change character functions (healer, buffer, tank, etc...) midway through the fight, and most notably, restricted player commands to a single of the three characters fighting for you. A lot of die-hard fans moaned and groaned about these changes, but honestly, they’re all for the better. What it comes down to, is that combat is faster, more challenging, and even looks nicer, all with essentially zero downtime. Finally the cherry on top is that you can retry any battle at anytime (within the battle that is). No longer do you have to reset if you just fucked up horribly, and even better, the retry option is available even if you get a game over. This is especially wonderful thanks to the fact that individual enemies can easily kill you like a boss could if you don’t pay attention. Now for my complaints. The side-quests in the game all take place during the middle of the game, and while you can come back and complete them anytime (even after the game is over), it’s incredibly frustrating to have them placed all so close together.

Basically they took all of the grind out of Final Fantasy XIII, except they stuck it all in the side-quests, which, despite having little to no story relevance, are pretty boring (outside of the challenge the special monsters gives you). In the end, gameplay-wise, FFXIII is one my favorite RPG’s to date, and is the best FF game hands down.

This, this is an impossible comparison. The fact is that the gameplay between these two genres is too divergent to reconcile for any kind of meaningful comparison. Saint’s Row 2 is fun, certainly moreso than GTAIV, (but that’s another discussion entirely) and FFXIII is fun. In the end it all comes down to what kind of fun you want to have at the time, and for me the kind of fun FFXIII has is the type that really tickles my fancy. Regardless, it’s another tie.

At the moment open-world games and story-based games are simply too different to declare one a better genre than the other. Ideally open-world games would have all of the positives of a story-based game and none of the negatives, but we live in the real world and have real-world limits. For now it’s safe to say that Saint’s Row 2 and Final Fantasy XIII are both good games, for different, and even contradictory reasons.

To be honest I didn’t really get to what I really wanted to say with this article, but this is my third time re-writing it, and after four hours of work I’ve decided to just put it up as it is and move on. Regardless, if anyone is confused or wants to talk, or even yell at me, feel free to leave a comment or ask for my e-mail/steam-id.

One More Time

It's been quite a while since I last posted hasn't it? For those who actually read this blog I apologize, even if I'm not really sorry. I started this site up to get myself to write regularly, but due to a job high in physical labor and my own discomfort with writing when other people are in the room, I decided to stop posting on this site for a while. However, now my seasonal work is over, and I've decided as part of recent attempts to grow as a person I need to get over my fears of letting people see my work before it's finished. As such, I will be writing regularly on this site again, however it's content may be slightly different than most are used to.

I'm now going to comment on whatever catches my fancy, be it a games' narrative structure, a recent development in quantum physics, or even a chapter from a story I'm working on. I do promise to limit posts relating to my personal life as much as possible, but if I have something to say that I can extend into a full discussion I will post about it.

Grading

In preparation for the future I am going to explain how reviews work on this site. Reviews will be based under a letter based system (A, B, C, D, and F) with each of the letters having the following meanings:

A - I cannot recommend what I am reviewing enough. (This rating will be reserved for only the best of the best)

B - I recommend this highly. (For products that are of superb-quality, but aren't perfect as A requires)

C - I recommend this. (It's good, but not a must-have)

D - I don't recommend this. (It is bad, you may enjoy it more than me, but it's unlikely)

F - This is trash (Only look at this if you like wasting money on terrible things)

In addition at the end of the year I will gather all of the A reviews under their respective categories (movies, games, television shows, etc...) and choose the absolute best for that year in that category to be upgraded to an S.

These letters will be assigned independently from the review itself, which will follow this format.

Name -
Product Type -
Very Quick Description - (I'll provide links for places to learn more)
Likes -
Dislikes -
Final Thoughts -
Letter Grade -

The review will consist mainly of my personal thoughts and feelings towards the product, with very little discussion on the technical aspects, unless they really impressed or distressed me. Basically, my review will tell you if I liked it, and why I did, or didn't. The most important thing to realize about my reviews is that the letter grade received has little to do with the review itself. If I dislike a product due to personal tastes I will tell you so in the review, but this will not be reflected in the letter grade. I am not going to be nice when giving out these grades, and if you think that most items are going to receive a B then you are in for a big surprise.

As a final note, my reviews are not solid, immutable things. If someone can convince to change something (such as the letter grade) in my review I will add an edit to the review and re-post it. Please feel free to leave a comment if you agree and especially if you disagree with me.

Everyone Wanted an Ocarina in Middle School

You know, if anybody actually read this site I would have been worried about letting people down over the past two months. Luckily for me, nobody does, as I've been spending most of my time job hunting and working on my friend's role-playing site. Regardless, that's not what I cam here to talk to you about (though you should go take a look at it), I wanted to discuss something very important to me, video game music.

For most people when they think of video game music they think of bleeps and bloops, or at best something like the soundtrack to Tron. This wasn't even really a fair estimation back in the 80's, but that doesn't change people's perceptions, instead you should listen to me and realize that men and women with P.H.D.'s in music agree that the best classical music in the last twenty years has come from video games. While modern, classical composers (that's a bit of an oxymoron) focus on making their pieces technically impressive, video game composers are focused with entertaining their audience, much like Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and all the great names had to. If you don't believe my words, then perhaps you'll listen to this:





This is a re-orchestration of the soundtrack for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, done by the wonderful people of at Zelda Reorchestrated found here. From their site you can even find links to download the entire soundtrack, a whopping 80+ tracks, absolutely for free. Go check it out, this is some of the best music you'll hear all year. I'm working on a secret project right now, but I may give a small hint as to what I'm working in the next week. Until we meet again!

Joy For All

Merry Christmas everyone!

Turkey Day

Hahaha, I can't believe I completely spaced that Thanksgiving was this week when I wrote that last post. Needless to say, there won't be any posts until after Thursday. Expect the next post either Friday or Saturday, it depends on how tired I am after soccer.

Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone!

New Game+

I've never been good at beginnings. I don't know how to start things, regardless of what those things may be. This weakness plagues me in all aspects of my life; it is what made me spend four hours twiddling my thumbs before starting two-hours papers, and it's what keeps me from meeting new people. It doesn't seem to matter that I know all about this weakness, and can recognize it for what it is (fear of failure), I still have to summon up every ounce of energy available to me in order to start something. To gather that much energy is difficult, to say the least, but as a human being I should be able to at least have enough energy to do this at least once a day. So why then, have I not posted in over a month?

The answer lies within the Catch-22 that was my life.

Let me preface this by saying that I do not like to show weakness. I don't like to tell people about my problems, and while I may enjoy complaining about things with other people, I do not like to whine. One month ago I could not write down what I'm about to say, but I have changed, if only a little bit, since October.

Two years ago I nearly died of starvation. I didn't realize it at the time because what little mental energy I had left was completely focused on my schoolwork. Thankfully, my parents took notice of my condition, and after a few doctor visits I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease and was told that I had 0% body fat and that my body had been eating my muscle tissue to survive. Some people may be asking why I didn't eat if I was starving. The answer to that is in the Crohn's. The disease caused inflammation in my intestines that not only cut my appetite drastically, but also made it so that I was absorbing very little of the nutrients from the food that I did manage to eat. The outcome was that I was so skinny that I bruised the back of my ribs from sleeping on a mattress. Thankfully the specialist I found was spectacular, and after being diagnosed I began taking medication to help keep my Crohn's in check. My appetite began to return, and I got better, but only so much. For two years I was locked in my own little Catch-22: I couldn't work-out because I had so little of an appetite left, but I couldn't gain an appetite because I couldn't exercise. For two years I was stuck, trying to improve, to gain some weight, but I couldn't. I began to grow hateful towards heavier people, especially when they complained about their weight or always being hungry. I would think that these people are complaining about something I desperately wished that I had.

After two years of this scenario something changed. It may have been that I began to identify the foods that caused my inflammation, or the actions that did it, or maybe I was just happier, but something changed. I began to put on tiny amount of weight. I would gain maybe a pound in three weeks, and while other people had difficulty seeing it (it's hard to see a pound of difference on a 6'5" body), I could feel it. This summer my parents graciously let me back into their home and gave me the chance I needed to recover, and the gain increased. Last month I finally gained enough energy to exercise again.

You can not imagine how much this meant to me.

After one work out session I nearly doubled the size of my biceps. It sounds like an impossible feat, but you have to take my situation into account. I had almost no muscle left on my upper body, and I doubt I have more than 2% body fat even now. In the three weeks since that day I have changed considerably, and for the first time in two years I don't have to worry that my body can't do what I think it can do.

There's more to this story, more worries, and more memories that hurt me even now to think about, but I've let out enough of my secrets for one day. It's time for me to say what I really wanted to say. I'm not being paid to write this blog, I'm not pretentious enough to run advertisements, and nobody is forcing me to do this. For these reasons and many others I am no longer going to force an agenda on this site. I'm not going to talk about the history of video games unless I want to or somebody asks me to. Starting tomorrow I'm going to write about what I want to write about and you're going to see a lot more posts appear in this blog.

Introductions

The long wait is finally over! Today is the official grand opening of A Curious Tale! From here on out expect a wide variety of content filled posts, primarily related to video games. For those who are not interested in video games, or have no previous knowledge of the subject, worry not! My goal is to make my content accessible and interesting to all parties. To prove my point, I'm going to start with the beginning of beginnings: what is a video game?

Merriam-Webster defines a video game as: "an electronic game played by means of images on a video screen and often emphasizing fast action". This is a perfectly accurate definition, but it doesn't help a parent looking at the latest XBox360 titles for their eleven year-old son. And what exactly counts as a game? Do the "find the animal" games in Dora the Explorer count as video games. They are games and are played "by means of images on a video screen", and yet they aren't video games.

To me, a better definition for a video game would be: "an electronic game played by means of a controller device and images on a video screen." While this is technically untrue (there are video games that can be played by voice commands alone), it is, for the moment, a correct definition for more than 99% of all video games ever made.

A controller device, or more commonly, a controller, is essentially a simplified T.V. remote. You have a number of buttons, that when pressed cause an action on the screen (much like pausing a movie with a remote). Recent advances have even made wireless controllers (do I really need to explain?) commonplace, further cementing the similarities to a remote control. There a many different types of controllers; different video game systems (referred to as consoles) use different controllers, different games on the same system will use different controllers (Guitar Hero titles use a controller shaped like a guitar), and computer games will use a standard mouse and keyboard (most of the time).

However these controllers look, they are all used for the same purpose, controlling the action shown on the screen (or more commonly reffered to as "in the game"). We'll start with the very first game (generally regarded), Tennis For Two. Actually, I lied the original Tennis For Two (pictured above) was played on an oscilloscope display and was significantly more advanced than the game it inspired, Pong, which will actually be my example.

Pong (for the Atari, I'll explain in another post) is played using a controller that has as it's primary inputs (the buttons you press to make things happen) a single button and an analog stick (a stick you move in a 360 degree radius, the Atari controller is pictured below to help you). The button does very little in the game, but the stick can be pushed up or down to move your "paddle", a white bar displayed on the screen. The game consists of two white bars and a small white square which bounces back and forth across the screen. If the square reaches either the left or right side of the screen the person controlling the paddle (the player) opposite of that side gains one point. The side that has more points when you stop playing is the winner. To see Pong being played, click this link.

As the years have progressed, video games have gotten more and more advanced, but this simple facet of using a controller (of some sort) to manipulate what appears on the screen has remained the central tenet of video games.

If you have any comments, concerns, or suggestions for things you would like me to discuss, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email at corynragsdale@gmail.com.

P.S. Sorry Oxford English Dictionary, but your site costs money to get a definition.

Tripping At The Start Line

So apparently I'm a big, fat liar. This last weekend was one of the first times in my life where I was so tired that any time I closed my eyes I would start to fall asleep. This pushed back my update date a bit, but the main reason I haven't made the promised post is because I've been having trouble trying to make it. It's been hard for me to decide exactly where I should start to introduce video games without ending up writing thirty pages of text.

Despite these difficulties the post will go up. I just don't know when...

Shift In Focus

While I've had fun with this blog in its current format it is time for me to change. Simply discussing what interests me at the moment often leaves me with no ideas. Add in the fact that new games are often the fire that lights my posting fuse and you can see that while I have no job, a broken PS3, and am facing the scariest job market of my life it's unlikely that I'll be able to post regularly for quite some time.

To rectify all of these problems I am switching the focus of this blog towards explaining video games to a non-gaming audience. I will be explaining terminology, trends, everything. For those of you who are familiar with gaming I apologize, as I will be treading over a lot of familiar ground for quite some time. Rest assured, however, that eventually I intend to return to discussing new games and such, though it will be written for my new audience.

Hopefully I'll be able to have the first post up by tomorrow late-night, but I can only promise that there will be a post before Tuesday 12:01 A.M.

Here's to new beginnings!

Update: Switched Monday to Tuesday because this weekend was ridiculous and I can barely keep my eyes open long enough to finish this post.

Compiling Error - Programmer Too Horny

Mods are created almost exclusively by fans of a particular video game. While there are some exceptions (kids looking into video game design will often practice by making mods) they are very rare. Video games are a recreation still dominated by males, especially younger males. While some say that males 18-25 are the largest gaming group, I would argue that this is only the case because of older males having more disposable income. Personally I would say that the largest group is males 12-18 years old. Including that teenage males tend to have a large amount of free time, and are often creating large projects individually for the first time, and it's not really surprising that most mods are created by teenage boys (note that I did not say "best" mods). Unfortunately having mods made by boys who are struggling with puberty leaves you with a problem that you might expect.

For every enhanced light shading mod you'll find three that add larger breasts. For every new area with content, there's a high chance that the new will include some type of brothel. Teenage boys are not the only ones to blame for this content, as males even before puberty often get such ideas in their heads, and if the content is homosexual in nature, odds are pretty much five to one that the creator is a teenage women (If you don't believe me check out the numbers on homosexual fanfiction for something like Harry Potter !FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY DO NOT DO THIS!).

Beyond these problems you'll find the inexperienced coders often have buggy code that leads to memory leaks or other game halting problems and it is rare to find a mod that isn't rife with spelling errors. Despite these difficulties, mods can add a tremendous amount of content to video games and extend their lifespan far beyond the usual six month maximum (most players get bored of a game in six months or less). Personally, I can't wait to play with the tools that Blizzard has announced will be released alongside Starcraft 2 when it comes out sometime in the next 6-32 months.

A Whole New World

Apologies for the late post, excessive heat plus too many cheese sandwiches turned me into a moron rolling around on the floor in agony.

As I said before, mods come in all shapes and sizes, one of the smallest and most common comes in the form of a cosmetic change.



The above image would is on the higher end of what one might consider a cosmetic change. In this case, the modder created unique models in a 3d modeling program and tied them with unique items the modder created within the video game's world-editor (in this case, Oblivion). Remember that most video games do not include a world editor or other modding tools. For each item that the programmers include, the easier it is for modders to add new content and the more likely it is that a healthy modding community will develop.

When the developer goes through the effort, and adds modding tools for their playerbase to use (especially one as relatively easy to use as Oblivion's world editor) modders can add wonderful (if copyright infringing) content like this to their games.

While this is a very impressive modification, and it represents at least a couple of weeks worth of work if not more, it is not as far as mods can go.



The above video is a sample video of gameplay in Half-Life 2. This doesn't include everything you'll see in Half Life 2 obviously, but you can see what it generally looks like. Note the first person perspective, and the realistic graphics, these are consistent throughout the entire game. The video that follows is a mod for Half-Life 2.



Obviously mods can add a ton of greatf content to video games, but there are dangers to such freedom. Tomorrow I'll give you a slight glimpse into the dangers of modding.