Played Out: Video Game Stand-Up

With nerd culture being so hot in comedy today with things like The Big Bang Theory and Dane Cook dominating the headlines, I've decided to draft the beginnings of my own, game-inspired routine. Check it. Here is exactly how it will play out:

The host begins: "Our next comedian is..."
(I jump on stage) Me! Sonic the Hedgehog!
(Audience murmurs): Is that really Sonic the Hedgehog? I thought he was a hedgehog not a human? This drink minimum is a total rip...

That's a brick wall behind me.

Just kidding. It's me, DoktorPeace.
(Audience sighs before transitioning into impressed applause).
I'll be your avatar for the evening.
(Laughs)
Seriously, though. Have you seen those XBox 360 avatars? They actually look like people... except that last time I checked, I don't really wear cowboy boots! I don't know why I put them on my avatar!
(Applause)
Anyway, thanks for having me tonight. I have to admit, I was afraid I'd come out here and lay an egg. Once I got to the dressing room, though, I looked in the mirror and realized, "Hey! I'm not Yoshi!"
(Uproarious applause).
I met Tino the stagehand backstage. He reminds me a lot of those New Yorkers in Grand Theft Auto IV. You know, the ones I run over with my car!
(Even more uproarious applause. A couple people fall into the aisle).
Have you guys been following the news? Herman Cain is a guy, and he's a lot like Bowser, don't you think?
(Laughs).
No no... I shouldn't say stuff like that about other people. I actually feel really good today. I met Ulala, the dancing reporter from Space Channel 5 at a Starbucks this morning. All I can say about her is... "Ooh La Larection!"
("Yes! Yes!")


Honestly, though, I don't think it's gonna work out. The only regions more uncharted than the game Uncharted 3 are my nethers! No wait... Kirstie Alley's nethers!
(The cops arrive. They immediately crack up.)
How many of you have kids?
(Some raised hands, but not too many cuz my crowd is young and cool).
Tell me: Are they all really as annoying as Baby Mario? Crying all the time? I mean, it's gotta be tough. I haven't even unlocked the code to the wahhhmbulance yet!
(Every safety code is violated).
Baby Mario is a pretty good kart racer, though. Anyway, that's my time. Gotta jet!
(I put on red sneakers like Sonic and run away.)
(Audience whispers): Wait... That really was Sonic?

Played Out: Uncharted 3: Sonic's Deception?

About a month ago I served my American duty and took advantage of a buy-2-get-1 free offer at Target, with the main target of this patriotic venture being Uncharted 3. The new Batman game was my high #2, and the third was a toss-up until I got to the store. A myriad of new sports games shone at me from the shelves, offering countless hours of entertainment... hours that ultimately turned me away. I simply don’t believe I’m currently in a place where I should be giving video games in general that many hours, so I turned to the hedgehog instead.

That’s right. Despite my recent posts attacking Sega for its complete obliteration of the Sonic series and collateral disillusionment of sexy animal fanfic, I bought the new Sonic Generations. What can I say? The demo convinced me that it would offer something a Sonic game hadn’t offered in a while – a legitimate, tight platformer; and, most importantly, one with minimal story.

I did get stuck with some crappy scenes about Sonic and his friends having a picnic, but otherwise the decision has proven to be one of my best. Note: I make a LOT of good decisions (I ate broccoli tonight). I’ve ended up dedicating a ton of time to this game –- not sports game time but still life-dying time -- , and mostly enjoyed myself doing so. It’s meant to serve as a celebration of Sonic’s 20 years, and there’s a lot of good nostalgia to be had, with every stage an iteration of a previous one, the ability to play old chiptunes over the new, and those sweet red sneakers. Some areas are still messy, with bizarre deaths punishing you for straying even an inch off the directed path, the controls still feel a bit heavier than they did way back in the original Sonic, and the final boss is absolute garbage; yet this appears to at least be the beginning of the evolution that always should’ve happened.

Window dressing. That’s the evolution. Beautiful, relevant, rewarding window dressing that serves to elevate the same gameplay that worked twenty years ago.

On the opposite side, we have Uncharted 3. Oh, I finished the game in three days and generally had a decent time, but this former the apple of my eye far too often succeeded primarily in demonstrating what happens when all the window dressing of so many modern games fades away. What remains is a semi-interactive experience far more dependent on entertaining you through its storytelling than its mechanics.

I didn’t love this new Nathan Drake adventure – it’s all becoming a bit too National Treasure for me, where the characters simply bounce unbelievable historical revelations off each other until they figure out the next place to go – but riding through the amazing set pieces Uncharted delivers is still a treat. Unfortunately, the main attraction is so finely produced that every inadvertent death is a literary disaster, completely removing the player from the adventure as they restart from a checkpoint and try to determine where they should have run slightly left instead of slightly right. In Sonic, everything is very obviously a game, and your remaining life cache is proudly displayed in the corner of the screen. Uncharted has the burden of offering the opportunity for failure without disintegrating the illusion of verisimilitude, and I just don’t think they know how to do it.

Whereas the original Uncharted was a decent Tomb Raider clone – supernatural craziness and all – I feel the series has progressed past the polish of Uncharted 2 and into a zone where the series' primary gameplay mechanic weighs down the game. As confessed by its multiplayer, this game wants to be a shooter, yet every battle ends up a bothersome interruption. I won’t get into the control problems I had this time around, as the developer has already released a huge aiming patch in response to user feedback. However, as I did get myself constantly killed, I found myself exasperated at the logic behind what was happening onscreen. Where are all these enemies coming from? Why do they keep coming? Why is the insane number of guys I’m killing never addressed in a story that still seems to accept a premise that every life is sacred?

I don’t know if this is any more of an issue than it was in previous games or than it is in any product of the James Bond archetype, but the more I had to replay the same shootouts, the more I realized just how silly it all was. And unlike Sonic, silly in Uncharted feels wrong.

There's no grand conclusion to make beyond my own bafflement in preferring one to the other. There's also no grand conclusion to make because I'm going to play the new Zelda now. It's one of those great decisions I make, in absentia of real decisions. Note: I'm going to drink some apple juice, too.

Played Out - Tommy Wi-Show

I have another confession to make: One reason I haven't been so prevalent around here of late is because I'm torn over the role of pop culture in my life. Now don't get me wrong: The Blogulator still provides a valuable -- nay, essential -- service within a social spectrum in which media has become so reflexive that even the most amazing bloggers are stuck using Foo Fighters lyrics to introduce their feelings. I'm no neo-Luddite. I'm simply concerned that life is passing me by while I watch old Star Trek episodes.

That said, I've really enjoyed what I've seen so far of a web-series in which The Room guru Tommy Wiseau plays video games.

On the surface it seems like the exact brand of self-consumptive garbage I wouldn't want to introduce to my palette right now. A guy who's famous for making an atrocious movie playing popular video games? It sounds like too much. However, I'm here to attest that it kind of works, in fact, because it's not really much at all.

The concept is basically Mystery Science Theater, with short vignettes that bookend the episodes explaining that an alien has capture "T W" for the purpose of making him play these games. So far, this frame story is refreshingly cheesy, thanks to the star's iconic "acting" style and a distinct absence of memes. Audiences don't need a history lesson in cheese to enjoy the ham, making it that special kind of humor that only goes stale when the fridge is broken.

High marks go to the creative team behind this show, who I feel have a good grasp on minimalist production. The series is by no means under-produced; it's very easy to see and hear and follow the action, even in a small youtube window. What I mean is it avoids the pitfalls of trying too hard to be something that it isn't, aka a "real show." Real shows struggle with formulas and time-fillers, whereas The Tommy Wi-Show can simply be what it is - 6 minutes of watching an idiot act stupid and play games.


Regarding the idiot, it's another testament to the producers that they can extract entertainment from a man whose fame is almost definitely beyond his ability. The Room is amazing for what it is, sure, but Tommy Wiseau is so incapable and, as evidenced in these videos, so unaware of basic sentence structure, that the editors really have to monitor how much they reveal of their mentally-deficient star. I can't help but laugh when Wiseau runs his game character into the same wall over and over again because I think the man is sane enough and, you know, modern controllers do have a lot of buttons; but I'm not gonna keep smiling if I ever start to worry that the freak is in a cage.

For what it is right now, though, I can't help but recommend the simple, stupid, and sufficiently self-contained Tommy Wi-Show.

And now I'm off to live free of these media boundaries! To the city! For the Yellowcard concert!

Played Out - El Shaddai (Addendum)

The morning after my last post, I read it over in the hopes of being awed by my own lexical splendor, as I am wont to do. Instead, I discovered some underdeveloped opinions that would surely shun me from the prestigious world of new games journalism. I would like to address said shortcomings here, with the simple caveat that I become a literary hero after doing so.

What's that? Literary heroes are better defined as people who are able to convey an authentic human experience through story? They don't simply beg you to accept their point-of-view by arguing it in a blog post? Well, I don't want to brag, but I just read Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, and it was totally sad, and that's gonna make this two point add-on to what I wrote last week really good.

The first point I stumbled on was being a bit too whiny about the confusing plot and lack of substance in purely mythological tales. Granted, it's in my nature to be whiny as an overexposed American; yet I feel the game deserves more credit than I seemed to give it. El Shaddai succeeds automatically through its exclusion of aliens and the military, and it's probably the only surreal, anachronistic take on a Bible story any medium is going to see for years. Whether or not that experiment works on an emotional story level remains debatable, but it definitely works on enough levels to warrant a play test.

This playing part segues into my bigger failing, which was to curtly dismiss the fighting mechanics. I said something about not feeling comfortable translating my button inputs into onscreen actions, and this concern is legitimate; however, its legitimacy may be largely personal. I have played a number of 3D action games, yet I've never excelled at executing the complicated combos that ostensibly determine the player's success against various opponents. I over-rely on techniques I find to work early on, sometimes struggling to adapt to enemy pattern changes later. El Shaddai seems to react against these possible complexities through a limited control scheme and a simple 3 weapon, rock-paper-scissors... but it adds a different layer of complexity by not clearly revealing the success of your attacks. Enemy armor does break off during the battle, but between these strict visual changes progress can be hard to decipher. I don't even know whether I would have figured out the rock-paper-scissor mechanic without reading the instruction booklet.

In comparision, I've been playing Zelda II for the NES lately, which -- despite its limited technological capabilities -- delivers obvious and pleasing visual and audio cues that you're damaging your opponent. Sure, doing so makes the game more gamey, and El Shaddai does not want to distract from its immersive art environment. However, I don't think inserting some aesthetically appropriate effects to demonstrate that you are effectively fighting would have been distracting or difficult, and it would have personally encouraged me through some of the dragging battles. Interestingly, after beating the game, the option to display the enemy's health status does appear, suggesting that its absence during the initial playthrough is an entirely creative decision.

Regardless of the effectiveness of this decision, knowing that such a decision can be made in so profit-dependent an industry made me happy enough to feel guilty enough about the resultant feel of my last post to return here. And maybe I failed and ended up whining again, but it doesn't matter, because A Farewell to Arms is really good, and I read it, and you effectively read it too by reading the above, awesome prose.

Played Out - El Shaddai

In my boldest move yet towards beatification, I recently tithed my paycheck towards the teachings of an ancient Biblical book. Sure, the Book of Enoch may only be canonical in Ethiopia and Eritrea, yet I am now certain that this Dead Sea Scroll starlet has more to offer than the papal tabloids want to credit. I mean, some Japanese guy made a video game based on its story. And yea, God spake, that is totes cool.

The game of which I speak is El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, the meaning of which I have absolutely no idea despite having finished the game just last night. The good/bad of that ambiguity is pending, before which I'd like to specify the aforementioned Japanese guy to be Takeyasu Sawaki, who was also a lead designer on Devil May Cry and Okami. The lineage is obvious, with El Shaddai being very much a 3D-technique brawler (Devil May Cry) encased in a stunning cel-shaded atmosphere (Okami). In other words, I shouldn't be at all surprised with the feeling left me by El Shaddai.

That feeling is... I liked it?

Question marks signify uncertainty I possess about the fighting mechanics in all of these games. Even though Devil May Cry is ostensibly the prototype for modern brawlers, I have serious trouble latching onto exactly how my button presses are playing out on screen. I generally adapt well enough to succeed, but I'm constantly frustrated when I believe I've blocked an attack or nailed a combo in accordance with the established norms and find myself flailing against the ground (in real life, in front of my chair, after throwing my half-empty soda can across the room). El Shaddai never drove me to this level of fury, as I trounced through the game on "normal" difficulty only having to replay a few sections, and only once each time; but I'm just not sure how much fun I'm deriving from these key battle components of Sawaki's games.

It's the worlds that keep me coming back, and not even in the narrative sense. Devil May Cry is good, campy neo-punk, but Okami and El Shaddai are heavily influenced by religious mythologies (Japanese and Judeo-Christian respectively) which I'd hardly classify as good storytelling. Tightening the focus back down to El Shaddai and its retelling of the Book of Enoch, what we find is a number of fallen archangels who, for one reason or another, are f'ing with the Earth and humans instead of staying up in Heaven where they belong. I dunno. A lot seems to be going on, but it never really coagulates into a purposeful story that made me believe my plight was against anything more than a series of video game bosses. One is a giant pig, one transforms into an insect... There's something about the fall or rebirth or loss of innocence or gaining of free will or something going on around it all, but I really don't see how anyone would figure that out by playing this game...


Not that this shortcoming is specifically El Shaddai's fault in any way other than its source material selection. My 28-year familiarity with ancient religious texts seems to reveal a genre heavy on mythological battles between superbeings, somewhat interested in humanity's physical and philosophical status below these battles, and loose on finalizing -- or even recognizing -- meaningful story arcs. Think about all those Greek and Roman stories about the gods and Titans and stuff... Are they really any good? They're attractive, in a way, because they truly are "classic," hearkening to the most base human interests of blood and romance and the like, but I contest that few of them really leave the audience with anything more than, "Gods, huh." The stories aren't necessarily purposed towards satisfaction. They're largely purposed towards simply emphasizing the power or insanity or whatnot of the deities, just as a banal action movie today would be purposed towards instructing the audience that cool, good guys always beat the baddies. It's a reaffirmation of faith in something, and therefore does not require logic. It simply requires that characters exist and do things.

To give an example, consider the idea that the fallen angels featured in El Shaddai are attributed with fathering the Nephilim, which are Titan-like giants who stomp around and have a bunch of sex and, in some interpretations, therefore inspired the great flood of the Old Testament. This is intriguing on the surface, yet there's no real reason for any of this to be happening, is there? It can provide cool visual options for storytelling -- which is the major triumph of this game -- but emotionally it falls flat. El Shaddai also features a female human named Ishtar who appears once in a while and whose bones you're supposed to collect in some hidden stages. I have no idea who Ishtar is or how she relates to Enoch. Ambiguity can be cool, but it's not gonna make me care.

The most captivating story tool the game features well is its use of Lucifel aka Satan before he fell from heaven. He's the only "friend" in the world with Enoch, and, although he appears very superficially as a save point, he is constantly injecting the world with the life it needs to be at all relevant as anything other than visual art. You can often hear his cell phone (yes, Satan's cell phone) ringing before you see him, which he then picks up and carries on a one-sided, nonchalant conversation with God. The snippets of chat seem so casual that you almost get the impression that neither God nor Lucifel could really care less what happens to Enoch or the fallen angels or even humanity.

Maybe the game is about a game that God himself is playing with His minions and creations. It's a deity-type that Mark Twain touches upon in "The Mysterious Stranger," in which an angel named Satan (actually the nephew of the his more famous uncle Satan) visits Earth with so little empathy for humans beyond anything as toys that his disinterest comes off nearly as contempt. Maybe God really doesn't care what happens, so long as something does happen, because that, in itself, is entertainment.

For me, I can only empathize with this version of God because El Shaddai is so beautiful to experience. It's like The Science of Sleep of video games, in which you want to keep looking, but your eyes keep closing on you. There's some kind of interesting message to latch onto (probably), and it pops out now and again in a phrase or movement that genuinely means something, but it never forms into much more than an astounding piece of visual architecture. Things are happening, and they're wonderful to see, but I'm not sure they're leaving me with any genuine human emotion. Yea, the emotion may merely be God-like.

Played Out - Cream the Rabbit

As you may have noticed, I've been absent much of the summer, justifying myself to the powers-that-be with stories of sun and theater. My true preoccupation is, as usual, much darker.

I began the summer by bashing those Sonic the Hedgehog fans who helped drive the franchise into the ground through their romantic obsession with the crappy, lifeless B characters who litter the modern games.

I did that before I met Cream.

"Cream is a princess-like figure; she is polite, just, follows manners (and never forgets them) and does what she is told. She's very friendly and tries to be close to everyone she meets. She is brave as well, usually not afraid to go out on an adventure. She’s a bit naive however, and doesn’t always see things right away. " (Sonic News Network)

All I know is that summer romance is the best. Especially when you're nibbling on the forbidden lettuce of love that's forbidden cuz it's over in the neighbor's yard and they get real mad about that stuff.

I made this:

Played Out - Timeshift (sic Sonic the Hedgehog)

Video games being my medium of choice, I believe in experiencing the entire spectrum - good, bad, and mediocre. If I'm perusing a store and see a game for $5 that I remember hearing something remotely interesting about, I'll probably buy it, even if that point of interest was its absolute terribleness. Such is the reason I own a copy of Superman 64. The bad is equally a part of history, and it makes the good that much better. Plus, it's not like I'm going to spend the x number of hours necessary to play the bad games to completion, even if this was my recent intent upon purchasing Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). I wanted to be able to tell people that I'd played the game in which Sonic ends up making out with a human girl, voiced by Lacey Chabert. Disappointingly, the game is fundamentally broken in almost every way and not worth that already inherently worthless story progression. Did I waste my money, though? I think not! I'll always have this great story to tell, as well as an instruction booklet with totally hot pics of CGI Lacey, which is a joke I'm posthumously retracting in the interest of what I've written below. I was going to insert a video here of Sonic and "Princess Elise" kissing, but I ran away from YouTube after discovering that almost every result of my search was a fan-made music video commemorating their love. To each their own, but this is an embarrassment for all mankind. And hedgehogkind, and also I guess whatever the offspring of this unholy pairing would be.

As usual, most of this text strays far from the original intent of my post, as I have sitting next to me a list of talking points I meant to breach regarding both the promises and pitfalls of mediocrity vis-à-vis the 2007 first-person shooter TimeShift. I was even going to have myself a great time bashing Avatar in my discussion of environment versus life and motivation. Nevertheless, if my summer reading of Mark Twain's autobiography has taught me anything, it is to talk about what your mind wanders to at that moment, and my mind right now is on the sick section of the gaming public that has allowed a once-great video game icon to descend into one of the worst examples of modern storytelling in any format. It's been decried elsewhere, ad hominem, but now it's my turn.

I know I said "To each his own" before, but I was lying. There are valid alternatives in lifestyle, founded upon reason and logic, and then there is blind idiocy. It's probably our education systems's fault or something, but Sonic and his Shi*tty friends (as Tails and company have come to be called) are a plight upon pop culture. I'm not even going to start on some of the deviancy his anthropomorphic evolution has inspired on the internet. Peruse at your own risk. Rather, let us here simply study the legacy of his love for Elise.

First, an example of an actual interaction between the two during a cutscene:

Please note, in case you missed me mentioning it or missed the visual section of the video, that Elise is a human, whereas Sonic is a blue hedgehog with big shoes and no other clothes. His head is also five times bigger than hers. True love has overcome greater odds, to be sure, but without a drop of irony? Impossible.

Or so you'd think. I am going to spend the remainder of this post listing songs that have been set to a montage of Sonic and Elise's scenes from the game - scenes which involve the same intensity of relationship witnessed above.

Song: "I Still Believe" -- Hayden Panetierre.
Top-rated comment on the video: "This is a very beautiful, very true song. It certainly does express Elise's emotions for Sonic in a very romantic yet beautiful way."

Song: "Can I Have This Dance?" -- High School Musical 3
Comment by SONICandELISE4everAJ: "Your girlfriend appreciates all of the beautiful and wonderful videos you make for her ;) thank you my sonic :)"

Song: "Sweet Dream (Japanese)"
Top comment: "Sonic doesn't like Elise or Amy. He hasn't girlfriend because he lives for his own rules. So the title is inadequade."
Ed. note: Amy Rose is a pink hedgehog infatuated with Sonic and soft-serve ice cream. There is a huge divide between SonElise and SonAmy fans, I'm learning.

Song: "Miracle" -- Cascada
Comment by Midnightsbeautiful: "I LOOOOOOOVEEE SonElise so MUCH!! It's the best couple!"

Song: "One in a Million" -- Hannah Montana
No more comments. It's too sad. These are not kids having their fun. These are developed minds devoting effort to a couple that exists in a single Sonic game that, once again, is damn near broken and unplayable.

There is a serious thesis to be made here regarding societal arrested development facilitated through media, and I think I just wrote it.

Played Out - E3 2011

I've been waiting anxiously for the sun to come out this year, so of course it finally did the days I'd already set aside to sit inside and watch corporations put on stilted performances meant to convince me to buy their products. This week is the video game industry's biggest circus - the Electronic Entertainment Expo - and circuses often feature stilt-walkers, hearkening back to the adjective used in the first sentence. Last year Microsoft even hired Cirque du Soleil for the unveiling of their controller-free motion device, the Kinect, and Cirque means "circus" in French...

So yeah... I watched all the big company conferences, and I'm going to summarize them here for you, the non-gaming audience. Or at least that's what I intend to do before I inevitably veer off into some crappy philosophical diatribe against my own derivativeness, blogging on the same subject half the internet's already rambling about, with the same, nonexistent level of direct perspective on the matter. You know what everyone has a direct perspective of? The sun! I should really be recording my personal tale of weather, and thus contributing real, experiential, anecdotal evidence to the human archive. Yet instead I've chosen to bypass atmosphere for the vacuum of opinion, relaying to the reader information already infinitely accessible through modern media. I am not a reporter. I am not a recorder. I am little more than a self-fulfilling rambler, only just now beginning on what he purportedly intended a paragraph before...

MICROSOFT
Microsoft's conference got me super-excited. For books. The only exclusive, non-Kinect game I recall being featured was Gears of War 3... a game that is already finished and admittedly delayed to serve as this year's big holiday release. Meanwhile, the entirely too long Kinect section of the show seemed to be aimed at really young babies who have had their brains removed. I'll admit that, almost 5 years into the Wii generation, I've grown skeptical of motion gaming's potential... or at least its potential to thrill. Yet Microsoft approached the subject as if nobody knew the Wii existed, hiring a bunch of ham-fisted Kohl's models to demonstrate incredible innovations like *gasp* sports games! Please watch this video, especially the football part. It demonstrates the complete contempt Microsoft's conference planners must have had for their audience's intelligence.
Undoubtedly some great motion and voice applications remain for gaming. Microsoft seems to believe its greatest potential lies in generating internet memes.

ELECTRONIC ARTS
EA started out by poking fun at the conference cliche of bringing celebrities on stage to sell, when it should be all about the games, right? Fast forward 30 minutes...


UBISOFT
Hosted in previous years by a Joel McHale whose asking price surely jumped, Ubisoft this year put their show in the hands of a character titled "Mr. Caffeine." I DON'T UNDERSTAND!!! This is your multi-million (billion?) dollar company's biggest public platform of the year, and you put your message in the hands of a man who opens with a Wii dick joke.

On the other hand of the spectrum we have the absolute public speaking ineptitude of so many of the presenters across all the conferences, with much of the problem arising from detached over-scripting, but there has to be a happy medium. You know, maybe someone who can talk normally and sincerely about their product? Smile when a normal human would smile? Realize that people stopped laughing at Wii dick jokes a long time ago? Jesus. It's not that hard. Hire me.

SONY
Although Sony was the last of the major console manufacturers I patronized, I've actually come to anticipate their announcements the most (especially since Nintendo's never gonna give me another Earthbound). Sony seems to be the company most willing to invest large amounts of capital into niche products such as Flower and the upcoming Last Guardian, aka the products self-conscious gamers constantly bring up in the fish market when you're trying to pick out the day's best haddock and they're screaming in your ear, "Games are art, man! They're Dicaprio's, or DaVinci's, or whatever! Art!"

That said, Sony didn't really didn't inspire with software this year. Games such as Uncharted 3 expectedly impressed; however, the remainder of the presentation was hardware heavy. They're still pushing their Wii variant -- Move -- for no discernible reason. They have a new handheld coming out this winter, which is called the PSVita and is impressive in most aspects other than its name (including a $249 starting price point). And, being the television manufacturers they are as well, Sony continues to push 3D, something in which I have no interest at all...

Or don't I? If the goal of E3 were to sell me on something I otherwise wouldn't have bought, Sony comes out the victor. Two aspects of their 3D presentation impressed me. One was their offering of a $500 television package later this year, and the other was the possibility that multiple players, each wearing their own set of glasses, could essentially play split-screen on a single television without splitting the screen, through polarized imaging displays or something. If it works, it's cool, and it's totally future.

NINTENDO
Here's the narrative, in short: The surviving forefather of modern games simultaneously has to play catch-up with (above all) the processing power of its competitors whilst offering something worth a new investment, and it already announced it would be attempting to do so Tuesday with the reveal of its next-generation Project Café. Interesting branding, eh? Well now that Tuesday is over we know that it's actually going to be called WiiU. All I can think about is how that name rhymes with Peeu, as in "That stinks!"... whether it actually will or not.

And I truly hope it won't. After all the fun I have with every other system and every other game, Nintendo is my Cameron Richardson - the one to whom I want to come home and not have reject me for constantly and creepily referencing her in every one of my posts. I can't help it that they're replaying Harper's Island on the Chiller network! We're all watching it!

Not too much is certainly known about the console itself, but journalists are already getting their hands on the WiiU controller, which is generally agreed to be the love child between a classic controller and an iPad.

The high-def screen in your hand can be used to display alternate images, or to completely absorb the image from the television in the case that your naggy wife comes in and demands to watch The Voice. I don't really think the latter example is something Nintendo should be focusing its design around. Real gamers have dedicated televisions and learn how to control their wives, or can at least tell them to watch the DVR feed via the cloud or something.

What I care about is/are games, and the WiiU is far too early to speculate upon in that area right now. Buzz surrounding the controller functionality is good, and third-party developers seem to be on board -- a welcome presence in the face of the Wii's desolate software decline -- but Nintendo has nothing to show so far beyond a few inconclusive tech demos. Here's hoping...

And if I were to make any grand conclusions about E3, from my aforementioned distant throne of irrelevant judgment, it probably would be, "Here's hoping." The potential is there for everyone. This is still a major growth industry with tons of money to be made. All the game-changing risks being taken right now, however, seem to be with hardware, leaving the same crop of games to be remade with different shades of polish. They're good games, to be sure, but I've yet to see a new intellectual property this year with any sort of intellect. It's mix-and-match style with shooting and slashing, with almost nothing to be seen on story.

In other words, I hope there are surprises waiting for me beyond the press conferences, when I'm actually playing the final game products. And I hope those surprises don't include Mr. Caffeine.

Played Out - Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game

It was nary over 9 months ago that the Scott Pilgrim media blitz swept upon us with the finale in the graphic novel series, a high profile movie, and an arcadey video game tie-in. Sadly, the public at large sloughed it aside, and the pop culture creation most hilariously reflective of so many of our lives remains the largely undiscovered gem it was before...

Except that it's probably not sad at all, given the tragedy befalling so many pitch-perfect series upon their transition to "franchise." It's certainly disappointing, however, that Hollywood is, as a result of the box office flop, unlikely to greenlight many more experimental blockbusters...

Or is it? I mean, Watchmen could be considered a similar sort of project, and I'm with creator Alan Moore in the opinion that the book should have been left well enough alone...

THEN AGAIN, Scott Pilgrim always was a specific fiction concerned with our world of metafiction, and therefore almost begging some sort of video transformation...

Bah. Just ignore all these ramblings and read the books. Here's an awesome image excerpt to convince you to do so:
{Insert creative segue that doesn't make it obvious how detached my thoughts are.}

Downloadable on XBox 360 and PS3, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is a circular mash-up of inspiration whose three main strengths originate in the same source. The books from which the material is drawn, the pixel art informing the visual design, and Anamanaguchi's chip-tuned post-rock all derive first and foremost from video games themselves. It is the informed child of beat-'em-ups the likes of Double Dragon, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game, and, most directly, River City Ransom, in which some sort of non-linearity grants the player reign to explore the side-scrolling world and improve their skills by spending the money that inexplicably emanates from defeated enemies.

It really is the perfect game to play with your friends... which is why I follow the many before me (including Scott Pilgrim's creator, to a degree) in absolute pouting over the lack of online multiplayer. Sure, I can sometimes lure my brother to play in-house with me; other than that, however, I really have no chance to play this game with as many people as I want to when I want to the same way I would in the halcyon world of the '80s pizza parlor. The internet is the closest thing we have to Chuck E. Cheese without having to rent kids from craigslist.

A number of bugs also hold the game back from perfection, including noticeable, inexplicable lag any time you're perusing menus. It stinks of a rush job for release in time with the movie, further condemning franchising strategy at large. With Ubisoft choosing to hire one of the best pixel artists in the business (Paul Robertson) to emulate the best pixel-inspired graphic novels set to the best pixel-resonant music, it makes little to no sense that they wouldn't strive for perfection on the gameplay side as well. Gameplay, you know? The fun part that actually inspired all those other creators to be as awesome as they are?

I really do pout too much, though. Outside of the menus and a few of the many moves, the punching and kicking is as fun as it ever was. It just hurts when you've grown to love something as much as I love Scott Pilgrim and see little things holding its film and game counterparts - counterparts I very much enjoy - back from the greatness it all deserves.

That's another side effect of franchising, by the way. Whiny, ungrateful fanboys.

Played Out - Rock Band 3 Keyboard

I made a video, guys. It's a review of the Rock Band 3 keyboard peripheral. It works!

Played Out - Nier

For those of you more interested in another entry of the Hottie Count than my opinions on the meso-obscure Nier, here's a picture of the game's Kainé, a female character lovingly covered by shreds of trashy steampunk wear.
I'm not sure whether to admire Japanese character artists or shun them for their blatant disregard of female pragmatism, but, you know, who's to say fighting monsters in lingerie isn't the best strategy? The Greeks used to wrestle naked, and I'm not just talking about fraternity row holla at my Deltasssssssssssss!!!

Nier is a game with an uncertain identity. Whether or not the developers planned this uncertainty is difficult to tell, as big and small budget sensibilities criss-cross all over the screen. Much of the world is certifiably bland by today's graphical and creative standards, as the settings stay very much to the standard role-playing tropes (country village, seaside town, desert town...), yet the strangeness of the story and characters imply aspirations for something different. Similarly, a fairly straightforward sword-and-magic (S&M) battle system is frequently mixed up or completely taken away to facilitate sections imitating twin-stick shooters, text adventures, and farming simulation. If it weren't so normal, it would be experimental; and if it weren't so experimental, it would be completely normal.
Now, I'm not objecting to any of this. I've found my time with Nier so far enjoyably relaxing, and while this may partly be due to my conscious effort to enjoy games more and stop biting myself, I attribute a lot of credit to the above. It's like remixed comfort food. Even though I know my main quests will typically involve going to a standard location and fighting standard monsters, I'm excited by the possibility that the story or play style will throw me for a loop. I don't know if those loops are going to lead to anything more meaningful than a bearded lady sideshow, but I'm not sure that they have to. Sometimes something different is a holistic experience all on its own.

At its core, Nier is always an action role-playing game that requires an ability to sustain some amount of tedium and some amount of passion/tolerance for crazy Japanese storytelling to appreciate. For all of you reading this without that ability (sic all of you), here are three vicarious takeaways.

- Unique travel companions. Kainé aka that scantily-clad girl whose butt you can always see is actually a great character, if only for her constant, R-rated berating of friend and foe alike. She's like the Colonel Tigh of Nier. A young boy named Emil who whines about how his eyes turn people to stone (get over it) also tags along, but your patience is rewarded when he transforms into a hideously cool flying scarecrow.

- Dots. One town consist of residents who, when you agree to listen to their self-involved stories, simply drag on with page after page of literal ellipses. I mean the whole screen is covered by dots. It doesn't sound that exciting, and it isn't, yet it's a clever method of giving that village a distinct identity which promises to stick in my memory. When you play as many games as I do, memorability, for any reason at all, becomes a most important promise.


- Emi Evans. I feel like Tim Robbins' character from High Fidelity saying this, but my first inclination to play Nier came after hearing its Gaelic-inspired "Escape" theme on a video game music podcast. Turns out much of the environmental score was composed by a British expat in Japan whose non-national, constructed language rises beautifully against the game's retro-future pastoral backgrounds. Evans' outside music sounds a bit like Zero 7 (both good and bad) stuffed with thistle and shamrock, and her voice is enchanting regardless.

My dream is to be swept away by the siren song of a Celtic lass, beautiful or ugly, so long as she dresses like Kainé and is beautiful. Use that information as you will.

Played Out: XBox Live Parties

Instead of offering you some deeper glimpse into the video game industry - its origins, its futures, its pasts that aren't necessarily included in its origins but are still noteworthy - I've decided this week to offer you a deeper glimpse into something far more complex and far more connected to humanity's progression.

That's right. Once again I'm talking about myself.

But wait, you in the audience who have begun to rustle your coats! What I am presenting to you is no mere exercise in arrogance. In fact, it is a two person adventure, presented through dialogue and aimed to enlighten you as to how the disillusioned spend their sordid evenings. The XBox - a modern marvel many of you may have seen advertised down in the local steamyard - has a "Party" feature whereby an individual and his friends can get together and enjoy each other's company. Simply plug in a headset (included), press a few buttons, et voila! The obvious use would be to communicate whilst playing a multiplayer game. Via the Netflix feature, attendees can also sit down in a virtual theater and watch a moving picture with their faraway acquaintances. However, none of this complicated coordination is necessary. Enjoyment can be had by simply chatting with other partygoers as you play your solo, separate game. Think of it as a telephone, sans the handset, plus a controller, plus a console, plus a television, plus the internet, sans pants.

Enter myself (code-named "Ice" for the purposes of this script) and my friend "Yaba" (possibly not a code name). Ice and Yaba have spent many of their recent weekends attending each other's XBox parties. Let's listen in on how the events always play out...

ACT 1
Ice and Yaba sit miles across space and time in their respective armoires, which they each individually mistook for chairs when ordering and have consequently turned sideways and filled with pillows. Time reconnects and they keep sitting. Yaba invites Ice to an XBox Live party. Ice joins.

Ice - Heeeeeyyy!
Yaba - Hey! Can you hear me?
Ice - Yeah. Can you hear me?
Yaba - Are you there? Can you hear me?
(This goes on for five minutes)
Ice - Hello?
Yaba - Ha! I could hear you the whole time.
Ice - I knew it. Me too.
Yaba - Cool.
Ice - So how was that place you went?
Yaba - Suuucked.
Ice - Cool.
Yaba - What's new with you?
Ice - I watched a television show.
Yaba - Cool. Did I ask if you watch The Walking Dead yet?
Ice - Yes.

ACT 2
Ice - Is your girlfriend there, Yaba?
Yaba - Yup. She just got back from the dentist. AGAIN!
Ice - Tell her to bake you something.
Yaba - I can't do that. She'll yell at me.
Ice - Fine.
Yaba (to girlfriend) - Hey honey: Will you bake me something? (to Ice) She said no.
Ice - Then ask her this other stupid question I just made up about beans.
Yaba - You know I can't do that... (to girlfriend) Hey honey: What do you think about beans? (to Ice) She says she likes some of them.
Ice (laughs) - Nice. Hey, aren't you going to that other place this weekend?
Yaba - Sure am.
Ice - You should tell that bird joke as soon as you walk in the door.
Yaba - Which one?
Ice - You know the one.
Yaba - What has one beak and two bones?
Ice - That's the one. It will make you super popular.
Yaba - Me doing a chicken!

ACT 3
Yaba - S*#!
Ice - Oh you must be playing that game you hate but always play because you want to beat it.
Yaba - It makes me so angry.
Ice - Hey! That guy from high school signed on. Should I invite him to the party?
Yaba - I hate that guy.
Ice - Our XBox parties rule.
Yaba - S*#!

ACT 4
(Yaba whistles.)
Ice - Hey! Is that our friend who whistles who I know isn't actually here whistling because he's not online?
Yaba - Nope. It's just me.
Ice - Aww.
(Friend signs on.)
Ice & Yaba (together) - FRIEND!
(Friend is invited to the party and joins.)
Friend (whistling) - Hey, guys. I was actually gonna watch a movie...
Yaba - I could watch a movie.
Ice - What did you eat tonight, Friend?
Friend - Thai food.
Yaba - I call it Yaba Thai.
Ice - That joke doesn't make sense in this script because we're using code names.
Yaba - Oh.
(Friend, Yaba, and Ice watch Paycheck. Friend enjoys the movie, whilst Yaba and Ice spend a majority of the time making their onscreen avatars do stupid gestures. A good time is had by all.)

ACT 5
Yaba - I'm gonna leave soon.
Ice - Okay.
(West Coast Guy signs on.)
Ice & Yaba (together) - WEST COAST GUY!
(West Coast Guy is invited to party and joins.)
West Coast Guy - What's happening, fellas?
Yaba - I'm going to bed.
West Coast Guy - So early? Oh...
(A five minute discussion of time zones occurs. Time zone jokes are also said.).
West Coast Guy - Before you go, you should watch my Hollywood thing.
Ice - I watched part of it.
West Coast Guy - Not good enough, jerk. Anyway, I have to go hang out on location now. Peace.
(West Coast Guy signs off.)
Yaba - Now I'm really going to bed.
Ice - Cool.
Yaba - Ciaozers.
Ice - Don't forget your trousers.

FIN

Sounds pretty awesome, doesn't it? Well, I have some incredible news for you. This entire article was actually a job posting, as both Yaba and myself have decided we desperately need a hot girl to round out our gang. Think you can add something (aka boobs) to this already double-stuffed repartee? Let us know by sending me your picture. XBox parties may be an aural medium, but I prefer not to suffer from NPR whiplash (you know what I'm talking about). No experience required! However, preference will be given to individuals who are Hayley Williams.

Played Out: Fan Remakes

All these years, I've been typing about video games that have to be purchased with money. What a fool I've been! You people are reading this on the internet, which means you must be those computer pirates I hear about. You want your games for free, just like you'd want your bologna sandwiches if your inkjet printer were capable of printing them out.

Well fine. I'll do anything for a hit, and I need that ad revenue (pending). But no I ain't talking about Farmville, so if you want to pick your cherries just go right on back and do that. I'm talking about two fan remixes that have, in a way, demonstrated the potential for video game "sampling." People have messed with games for years now, probably going back to all those nude skins I downloaded for my NES Barbie rom in college before realizing that I was about as attracted to naked pixels as I was to naked dolls (very). Only recently, though, have I encountered projects that appear to actually be worth paying for, in a hypothetical business environment where that would be reasonable.

Whether that environment will ever exist is one question. How likely is it that an extremely Japanese company like Nintendo will let someone else make money off their licenses? Surprisingly, they've actually been quite lenient towards the community of late, not shutting down enthusiast apparel/kitsch sites such as fangamer.net. And the fact that Super Mario Bros. X is still readily downloadable would have been a wow even a couple years ago. Maybe executives have realized that allowing such a community to exist translates into continued consumer support for future franchise releases? So long as the free community games remain blatantly community and entirely free, of course.


Super Mario Bros. X is, from the 15 minutes I've played so far, a pretty inspired take on Super Mario Bros. 3. A lack of cohesiveness (similar to this post) is noticeable from the beginning, with some spattered level design, but that's to be expected from creators who obviously put their focus on capturing the character of the Nintendo universe. Music and enemies from any-bit era threaten to attack you with nostalgia whenever you enter a new level, and the real joy is the ability to enter that level with a variety of varied characters (Those who've played Mario 2 know the purposefulness of my redundancy). Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Princess are more than palette swaps; they all have differing abilities, and they now have them together again for the first time since wood paneling, whatever that means. Plus, there's the awesome option to play as Link from The Legend of Zelda, which results in such appreciable changes as mushrooms transforming into heart containers and coins into rupees.

Nintendo hasn't exactly failed in the throwback arena lately, offering up New Super Mario Bros. Wii last holiday season to the joy of fine-tuned sidescroller fans everywhere. Having recently celebrated Mario's 25th anniversary by releasing a console equipped with an original version of Mario Bros. that does nothing but change the coin boxes to display the number 25 instead of a question mark, however, Nintendo definitely has room to remix... if it wants to. Until then, I'm glad they're letting the fans have their fun.

My short-term happiness aside, the question of if video game developers should allow the sampling is undoubtedly more complex. It's understandable that creators would want total control over the legacy of their inceptions, and the trailer for MTV's new Teen Wolf series re-emphasizes the importance of simply leaving a franchise be. Then again, the new Battlestar Galactica was a great addition to pop culture and vastly improved over its original in the face of its grumpy progenitor.

So video games, right? Okay. Now sit down, Sally: In the video game industry, there is sometimes a beloved franchise that, for whatever reason, is consistently and continuously placed in the hands of developers who don't understand why players fell in love in the first place. That franchise is Sonic the Hedgehog, and Sonic Fan Remix is the number one reason I'm in support of game sampling.


The remix is only a 10-minute demo right now, but it's absolutely beautiful -- more beautiful, in my opinion, than the recently-released official sequel, Sonic 4. But where beauty is in the eye of the beholder, control is in his hands, and I defy anyone to play both the unofficial and the official and tell me that the latter feels better. And even if you do tell me that, I won't listen to you because I only respect my own opinion and I can't hear you nah nah nah. Sonic 4 is a floaty mess that feels too much like a budget Flash game, whereas the remix actually gives some weight to the hedgehog and makes his all-important jumps feel right. This arguable assertion isn't accurate because of some arbitrary physics expectation, either. It's right because it's the way that Sonic used to jump, back when his games were legitimately fun and successful because of it.

Right now, Sega is cashing in because people want Sonic to be more fun than it is. Sonic Fan Remix is a taste of what-could-be if the company put half as much soul into the project as their unpaid counterparts, and it's a strong statement in favor of letting the public mess with what came before.

It's not like there are any original ideas left in our meta-society, anyway.

Remix that dangling thesis as you please.

Played Out: My Mega Man 9 Football Team

I'm feeling a bit quirky tonight - it might be the bacon I picked up off the sidewalk? As a result, I've decided that my video game rambling will take the form of fantasy football fan fiction, as told through the weapons of Mega Man 9. Sit down, son, and let me break it down to you. There are 11 different tools Mega Man can use in the game to trounce his opponents. There just so happen to be 11 players a side in American football as well. I am going to translate the weapons into a team and then we are going to state.

Two quick disclaimers:
1.As much as it hurts, I'm sticking to the formula throughout the post. So as beautiful as he is great of a player as he is, Tim Riggins isn't going to see any playing time. Sorry.

2. Eleven is also the number of players on a soccer team, and I hate to disappoint our European readership; however, it's already been done.

Alright then. Here we go. Clear eyes, robot heart, can't lose!

Quarterback - Mega Buster. Old reliable. This is your standard point-and-shoot gun, and it's as dependable as they come. Despite a constant carousel of role players, M. Buster is always ready to play, and he's the perfect leader to build a gameplan around.

Halfback - Rush Jet. This metal dog serves one purpose, and that is to deliver its cargo from point A to point B. Barry Sanders he is not, and fans looking for a jukefest might as well head down to their local bowling alley, but I guarantee you R. Jet is not going to stop until he reaches his destination. The endzone. On a football field.

Fullback - Jewel Satellite. The beautiful thing about having diamonds swirling around your body, is that they tend to protect you from most linebackers. Now if I just dip those jewels in Pupperoni and send J. Satellite on his way, I guarantee you Rush Jet is going to follow him through gaps only the hardest minerals on Earth can create for an inside run.

Center - Concrete Shot. This thing is just a block of building material that stays where you put it and keeps everything on the opposite side from getting through. By placing C. Shot in the middle, I'm forcing the defensive linemen to work around the sides, not only opening up the heart of the field, but also granting my guards and tackles the foreknowledge and flexibility they need to work the wings as well. (Trust me. That means something.)

Left Guard - Plug Ball. Are you really going to come at my quarterback through this sphere of concentrated electricity? I don't think so. P. Ball is going to fill whatever space he needs to with however many Joules of electricity we need to move the ball, period. I love the guy.

Left Tackle - Tornado Blow. Yeah, so even if those pansies find a way to douse my electricity, they're going to have to deal with my power to simply blow them off the screen at the press of a button. T. Blow is one of the most limited resources of the game, only capable of 4 natural disasters a game (or one per arcade quarter); so long as P. Ball does his job, though, that number should be more than enough.

Right Guard - Magma Bazooka. Pretty self-explanatory.




Right Tackle - Laser Trident. The right side of my line has been dubbed the "Strong of Fire and Ice" for a reason, and that reason is that magma relates to fire whereas the trident represents water, which would change form into ice given low enough temperatures. Hot and cold, baby! Ain't nobody touching M. Buster all day long, which is 23 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds more time than he needs to be awesome.

Tight End - Black Hole Bomb. I love the idea of sticking this guy out there and just having him suck up all the linebackers into an unexplored realm of nothingness. And if we throw the ball to B. Bomb, even though it would disappear into the same nothingness, I assume it would have to count as a catch, right?

Wide Receiver - Rush Coil. He's got the junkyard dogged determination of his half-back counterpart, plus he can jump out of his shoes. Er, I guess his shoes actually stay on the ground whilst the rest of his body springs up like some kind of Go-Go Gadget machination, but yeah. Another contemporary analogue would be those Tecmo Super Bowl receivers who could jump high and catch the ball. References can be fun.

Wide Receiver - Hornet Chaser. Float like a butterfly, sting like a hornet... which I hear in fact hurts more than a bee. Whereas R. Coil's just gonna jet down the field and go up for the ball, H. Chaser is gonna swarm the safeties, bothering them to the point that instead of swatting the pass, they'll simply be ducking their heads and swatting at their ears, pleading for the buzzing to stop as they run for their mommas screaming, "Where?! Where are those damned hornets coming from?!"

So there's my team. If you recently played Mega Man 9 and then watched Friday Night Lights, as I did tonight while eating sidewalk bacon, you might have enjoyed that. If not...

See you at state.