Fight PIPA, Call Your Sentator, Save The Internet

- Do you believe in the founding principles of our country?
- Do you like using the internet?
- Do you think the government should be able to shut down the internet to protect certain corporate interests?
- Do you support innovation, creativity, and productivity?
- Do you think we have any hope of getting out of this depression if Congress clamps down on ingenuity and freedom?

Click here to phone your Senator and urge him or her to oppose PIPA. Just do it, it only takes like five minutes.

http://americancensorship.org/

Happy Veteran's Day

Today the world celebrates Peace and Freedom -- and we acknowledge and remember those who have made it possible.

I, for one, am eternally grateful for the dedication and sacrifice of all the family, friends, and complete strangers who've worn the uniform.

Thank you, veterans, and may God bless you. I'm proud to be an American because of you. Happy Veterans Day.

50/50: A Movie Review

50/50 is a movie about dying of cancer. That's the premise, not a spoiler -- I won't reveal whether Joseph Gordon-Leavitt's character (Adam) lives or dies, but that's not the point anyway. This movie exists to document the preparing-for-death process.

One must admit it's some low-hanging emotional fruit. We all probably know somebody who has died or might be dying of cancer. 50/50 shows how intentionally manipulative material can still succeed when executed masterfully. It isn't overly sentimental, has a conspicuously contemporary sense of pacing and natural dialogue, and plenty of that fashionable sort of situational awkwardness you'd expect from a Seth Rogen "bromance."

Rogen is great, by the way, bringing exactly the sort of irreverent levity needed to dilute the mood without undermining the film's sincerity. Death apparently forces us to meditate on Love, manifested in 50/50 in three forms: romance, family, and friendship. The friendship part wisely ends up forming the movie's core, and thanks to Rogen, it works -- 50/50's portrayal of loyalty and devotion is believable, touching, and inspiring.

On the family side, Angelica Houston gives a show-stealing (Oscar-quality?) performance as Adam's mother. Personally, I thought her on-screen moments were the best the film has to offer and are worth the price of admission.

Romance-wise, I must be a victim of my own biases... I've never found Anna Kendrick very appealing (her shtick fails to redeem her plainness, in my view) and I'll probably always see JGL as the little kid from Angels In The Outfield, no matter how much he now resembles (former 10 Things I Hate About You co-star) Heath Ledger. I found myself rooting for the film's romance in spite of the actors, and then probably just because I've been conditioned to do so.

50/50 excels at pushing those sorts of pre-programmed buttons in an audience. While it certainly doesn't glorify or romanticize dying of cancer, there's never much ambiguity about what you should be feeling at any point, and even less so during the film's multiple heavy-handed musical montage sequences. This on-the-noseness can be both a weakness (in the case of Adam's cheating girlfriend, a revelation so telegraphed I wouldn't consider it a spoiler either) or a strength (as when Seth Rogen's character confronts the cheating girlfiend in a particularly memorable "Hell yeah!" scene). After all, on some level it's a movie about how "real" people react when finding themselves in on-the-nose situations.

Readers will no doubt be aware that 50/50 is based on the true story of the writer's own untimely cancer battle. Unfortunately, this means a 30-year-old writer relating his experience at 24 as portrayed by a 30-year-old actor playing a 27-year-old character. These various maturities and mentalities all find their way into the story and dialogue, rendering the film quite age-incoherent.

And it's too bad that audiences apparently require a young, hot person in order to feel the impact of the tragedy of cancer death, but I suppose it's justified -- no matter how old you are, your demise seems tragic; and, likewise, you don't perceive yourself as old, you perceive yourself as you.

Heavy, funny, corny... it's an important movie that certainly leaves an impression, and worth watching.

Steinbeck: "There are no good collaborations"

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in art, in music, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

--John Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 13

Top Five: Side Ones, Track Ones

First, watch the following clip from High Fidelity:

Now presenting my Top Five Side Ones, Track Ones:

5. The Doors - "Break On Through"
   The Doors - First track, first side... of their very first record!
4. The Joshua Tree - "Where The Streets Have No Name"
   U2 - This one even gets the haters excited.
3. Love Over Gold - "Telegraph Road"
   Dire Straits - Perhaps Knopfler's greatest masterpiece.
2. Tattoo You - "Start Me Up"
   The Rolling Stones - Also the song they use to open their live shows.
1. The Beatles - "Back In The U.S.S.R"
   The Beatles - I have to agree with Jack Black on this one.

Honorable Mentions:

• Led Zeppelin III - "Immigrant Song"
  Led Zeppelin - This song grabs you by the balls -- the rest of the album never lets go.
• Arthur, or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire - "Victoria"
  The Kinks - A real rollicking rocker. Might've been in the Top Five if it weren't so sarcastic.
• Nice And Warm - "Nice And Warm"
  Tab Benoit - Again, first track of the first side of the very first album.
• Damn The Torpedoes - "Refugee"
  Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers - We can all agree that this is Tom Petty's best song, right?
• Heartbreaker - "To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)"
  Ryan Adams - This really great lead-off song sets up an unreasonable expectation for the rest of an otherwise underwhelming album. N.B. - Technically not the first track.
 

Here they are again, for your listening pleasure:

Free PSN Games: Analysis

As you probably know, Sony is hyping the re-launch of PSN and the PSN Store with some free giveaways, including an offer of two free games from among the following for all PS3 owners:

LIST, BY TITLE:

Dead Nation

inFAMOUS

LittleBigPlanet

Super Stardust HD

wipEout HD+Fury

Woohoo! Thanks, hackers!

My gut tells me to go with Dead Nation and inFAMOUS. But if you’re anything like me, you suck the fun out of every decision by over-analyzing it.

This Kotaku post explains why I’d be getting a better deal with wipEout HD+Fury than Dead Nation based on the following price points:

LIST, BY PRICE:

inFAMOUS - $23.44
wipEout HD+Fury - $19.99

LittleBigPlanet - $17.98
Dead Nation - $14.99
Super Stardust HD - $9.99

There are several flaws in this line of reasoning:

     (1) Who knows if these prices will be the same after the PSN Store re-opens?

SOLUTION: N/A - With the PSN Store servers offline, it’s difficult (if not impossible) to know what the price of something was, is, or will be. Meanwhile, the Amazon prices listed are already out of date.

     (2) The price quoted for wipEout HD does not include the price of the Fury DLC.

SOLUTION: N/A. See (1).

      (3) Dead Nation, Super Stardust HD, and wipEout HD+Fury are all download-only titles. Comparing their prices to boxed-game prices is apples to oranges. What about having to wait for the box to come in the mail? What about shipping charges? What if somebody steals the box off my doorstep? What about having a hard copy, in case an EMP wipes my PS3 hard drive? What about saving a few bucks by getting a used copy? Heck, what about supporting local business by buying from a brick-and-mortar store?

SOLUTION: N/A. See (1) and (2).

Price, in this case, is clearly a hopelessly flawed metric. It is said that "A fool knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." Consider the following formula:

VALUE = QUALITY / PRICE

That is to say, given two items of equal quality, the one that is twice as expensive offers half as much value.

Assuming we want to max out our value, and since we’re talking about free games here, price isn’t a relevant factor. In this case, value corresponds directly to quality.

So -- how should we determine the quality of these games? For simplicity’s sake, let’s go with Metacritic score (I know, another deeply flawed metric, but this blog post is already long enough as it is):

LIST, BY METACRITIC SCORE:

LittleBigPlanet - 95

wipEout HD - 87

            + Fury - 89

                        = average - 88

inFAMOUS - 85

Super Stardust HD - 85

Dead Nation - 77

There you go. Any sensible person would pick LittleBigPlanet and wipEout HD + Fury.

Personally, though, I already played LittleBigPlanet. I’ve never cared much for racing games, so I doubt I’ll get wipEout HD + Fury. And I want a real game, not an arcade game, so Super Stardust HD is out.

That leaves Dead Nation and inFAMOUS. Sigh. The moral: trust yer gut.

Honey on "Alphabet Family Wedding"by Karen Muldoon

"Alphabet Family Wedding" appeals on multiple levels. For the youngest alphabet newbies, it provides a relatable point of reference for the otherwise abstract (and intimidating) building blocks of written language.  For more advanced readers, it’s an engaging reading challenge coupled with an enriching story about embracing maturity. For parents, it’s a warm window of perspective on childhood insecurities and an ornate allegory of growth, ambition, and the never-ending struggle for acceptance.

The clever premise and touching story both benefit from the foundation of Muldoon’s extensive background in education and psychology.  To top it off, Castaneda’s artwork breathes further life into the Alphabet Family world, evoking a magic realist style that reconciles the story’s high concept with very natural, everyday life experience.

I love this little book, and I’m sure you and your children will also. Click here for the Amazon page.

Venom on NPR re: Call of Juarez - The Cartel

I've recently found myself decrying the Republican slashing of NPR's budget, defending our nation's publically-funded liberal media outlet as a pillar of journalistic excellence and integrity in a landscape otherwise corrupted by pandering and money-chasing.

Then they go and make me look bad by running a story like this: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/23/133966367/critics-condemn-violent-video-game-set-in-juarez#commentBlock

This is shameful sensationalism, not journalism.  The piece reflects a complete lack of any attempt at veracity -- to wit:


"...a video game that glorifies murder and mayhem..."
It's pretty stupid to assume that artwork automatically glorifies its subject matter, especially if you haven't read/seen/played it.  Which I know you haven't, since nobody has, since the game is still months away from completion.

"...critics on the border are already condemning its bad taste."
Again, how could anyone outside of the publisher/dev team be in any position to judge whether or not this particular work is in bad taste?

"A screen shot of the game pictures an outlaw in a flak jacket and cowboy hat..."
Dead wrong.  He is the opposite of an outlaw.  He is a law enforcement officer.

"...people see it as really the ultimate dehumanization of people of Juarez..."
Even though this statement about what "people see" is technically true, doesn't a reporter have a responsibility to distinguish between misconceptions and facts?  Al Franken describes a technique employed by Fox News, the "Echo Chamber," whereby a speculative, baseless quote or sound bite is repeated so often that it loses the context of subjectivity and is perceived as true.

"Critics say the video game dehumanizes the people who have been killed in the Juarez drug wars."
Critics say a lot of things.  I'm a critic.  I claim that playing this game will make seven beautiful, naked virgins magically appear in your living room.  Why doesn't NPR run a story on that?

"...for people to mock them and make light of them is very, very insulting," Campbell says. "I mean, more than 8,000 people have been killed in the last four years; and it's not something to joke about." 
This guy is either misinformed, misquoted, or a total jumping-to-conclusions jackass.  Back in 2000, the movie "Traffic" won widespread praise for its depiction of the terrible situation at the Mexican border (as well as four academy awards). Nobody accused the filmmakers of trying to cash in on human misery. Nobody leveled charges that the film was "dehumanizing" or "mocking" or "making light of the situation" or "joking about" it.  And certainly nobody would have made such comments on the sole basis of looking at screenshots before the film's trailer had even been released. And CERTAINLY certainly no respectable journalist would report on such wildly inaccurate, unfounded speculation as matters of fact.

Obviously, video games still have plenty of new-medium stigma to overcome.  Venom on you, NPR, for helping to make our fight that much harder.  And here I thought you were the good guys.

Miel a "Redención Rojo Muerto"

As a nod to all my Spanish-speaking readers, I present my bilingual analysis of Red Dead Redemption, Spanish first.

El mejor videojuego nuevo del año pasado es, en mi opinión, Red Dead Redemption.  Con este no lineal de disparos en tercera persona, Rockstar ha logrado trasladar el formulario de Grand Theft Auto al Viejo Oeste de una manera inmersiva que nunca se ha visto antes.

RDR -- siguiente a Red Dead Revolver (2004) pero sin tener mucho que ver con él -- relata la historia de John Marsden, bandido que quiere dejar de vivir así y se encarga de buscar y matar a su ex-compañero.  El jugador se mete en la frontera entre Tejas y México en el año 1911, al principio de la revolución Mexicana y al cabo del Viejo Oeste, lo que va modernizando rápidamente con la llegada de electricidad y el ferrocarril.

Se encuentre la mayoría de los mecánicos familiares de GTA.  Marsden puede cumplir misiones a su gusto para progresar o hacer colectas al lado para ganar dinero que gastar en armas y otras cosas.  En vez de manejar autos, monta a caballo (o por diligencia) tras el yermo.

Lo más disfrutable del juego no es solo perseguir el cuento bien escrito y lleno de personajes interesantes, pero además pasar tiempo en el mundo detallado y realístico que ha construido Rockstar. La gente de los pueblos (hablando el inglés y el español, donde sea apropiado) vive por los ciclos de día y noche tal como los aves y animales salvajes de la tierra poco poblada.  Los efectos del tiempo, cielos hermosas y paisaje rico son de una calidad muy alta, todo acompañada por música linda, y cualquier imagen del juego merece colgar en la pared como pintura.  ¡No sería difícil imaginar que el mundo persiste aunque se ha apagado el Xbox!

Red Dead Redemption entretiene los jugadores bien familiarizados con el género y ambos los que no jueguen y tienen la curiosidad de ver lo fascinante que se puede fabricar los desarrolladores con la tecnología del actual.

Last year’s best game, in my opinion, is Red Dead Redemption.  With this open-world third-person shooter, Rockstar has succeeded in bringing the Grand Theft Auto formula to the Old West for an immersive, altogether unprecedented experience.

RDR -- technically the sequel to Red Dead Revolver (2004), though barely related -- tells the tale of one John Marsden, an outlaw who must hunt down and kill his former partner in order to leave his past behind.  The game is set near the Texas/Mexico border in 1911, on the eve of the Mexican revolution and at the twilight of an American West now facing modern encroachment, electricity, and railroads.

Most of GTA’s familiar mechanics are present.  Marsden may complete missions at his leisure to advance the story or perform side quests to earn money for guns and other items.  Instead of racing around by car, he traverses the wilderness via horseback and stagecoach.

As fun as it is following the game’s well-crafted story full of interesting characters, the real joy lies in the detailed and realistic world Rockstar has constructed.  Townspeople (speaking both English and Spanish, depending on their location) lead busy day-night cycle lives, as do the birds and wild animals of the open range.  The high quality weather effects, beautiful skies, and epic landscapes are accompanied by a masterful soundtrack, and any given screenshot is worth framing and hanging on the wall.  It’s not hard to imagine this world persisting even after the Xbox has been switched off.

Red Dead Redemption is sure to satisfy both hardcore fans of the genre and non-gamers interested in seeing the best of what developers, armed with modern technology, are capable of.

More On Adventure Games

Robert Bryant, one of my design teachers, often asserts that "the essence of fun is surprise. During the late '80s and early '90s, adventure game developers pushed this idea as far as they could -- and adventure games eventually became so surprising as to be nonsensical (Gobliins 2 stands out in my mind as a prime example).

Developers simultaneously discovered that such designs boosted demand for game guides, and so a new pre-internet business was born. The guides had higher profit margins than the games themselves, and it was only a matter of time before adventure games were specifically designed to sell guides. This mild form of cheating eventually became the only possible way to get through the games, and it was common practice for pirated copies of the games to be distributed along with .txt walkthroughs or even barely-legible photocopied game guides.

Alternatively, you could ask one of your friends who had played through the game for advice on how to get past a certain sticking point -- a rudimentary precursor to the internet forum system we all leech off of today.

Perhaps the format of all media is determined by the constraints of its funding, presentation, and consumption. Is adventure gaming a valid storytelling mechanism, or merely a peculiar technological oddity that arose with and was only appropriate for a simpler age? An age of limited hardware, when there were few PC gaming options and adventure gaming was really the only show in town? When there was no internet to subvert companies who earned their keep by peddling the secret keys to their elaborate digital puzzles? When fan devotion to the pluck and humor of the folks at Sierra generated enough surplus of goodwill to offset all the are-you-f#@%ing-kidding-mes they put us through?

It is my fervent hope that torch-bearers like Telltale Games can continue to adapt and innovate this formerly beloved genre of mine. Otherwise, should adventure gaming go extinct within the next 15 years... you heard it here first, folks.

H2G2 Remake review: We Apologize For The Inconvenience

I was raised on graphic adventure games --they were the first video games I ever played and have profoundly influenced my approach to games ever since.  I was also raised on The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, so naturally I jumped at the chance to write about the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Remake, or H2G2 Remake for short.  Unfortunately, it seems you can't turn back the clock.

One of the original "transmedia IPs," there is no definitive version of the Hitchhiker's Guide story as such.  It has existed in various incarnations as a radio play, a novel, a TV series, a stage play, a comic book, a feature film, and of course, a text adventure game.  Released by Infocom in 1984, the text for the game was written by Douglas Adams himself -- allegedly a process Adams found frustrating, which is why the game ends abruptly near the story's midpoint. 

H2G2 Remake is a lovingly executed point-and-click adaptation of the original text adventure.  Credit is due to the developers for their obvious devotion and fidelity to the details of the original, but on the whole the experience left me questioning the wisdom of the game's premise, and even whether or not the adventure gaming genre is still at all viable. 

Text adventures are designed to be difficult and puzzling because, gameplay-wise, that's all they've got.  The joy of unraveling a text adventure comes not just from moments of insight arrived at by clever reasoning and deduction, but from the simultaneously rewarding, humorous, and annoying experience of exhausting every logical action, getting stumped, feeling like you've hit a dead end, and typing in something completely absurd that turns out to be the solution.  Many of the early graphic adventures added illustrations to the process, but remained largely text-based in the sense that gameplay consisted of reading and typing responses.

Although they were often maddeningly difficult, puzzles in text-based adventures could sometimes be easier than those of later point-and-click graphic adventures, because the text was there to clue the player in to everything he or she needs to know about the current situation.  If you walk into a room and the game mentions that there's a knife on the table, it probably has some significance -- otherwise, they wouldn't have mentioned it (unless it's a red herring, of course).

In point-and-click adventures, graphics have replaced text descriptions, and such previously explicit clues are no longer possible.  To balance this, most point-and-click games include some sort of mouse-over feedback that lets the player know which objects in the environment can be manipulated, which eventually led to the core mechanic of systematically exploring all of the game's essential and non-essential animations by clicking.  Moreover, where the player previously enjoyed apparently unlimited action options, point-and-click games simplify player choice by constraining it and abstracting all activities into standard touch / talk / look clicks.  The resulting evolutions eventually brought us the sort of brainless click-through interactive storytelling adventures that dominate the genre today.

Bearing in mind the interface and format discrepancies between text adventures and point-and-clicks, does it really any make sense to port the one to the other?  As a case study, H2G2 Remake seems to indicate that a radical design overhaul is necessary for such a translation to be viable.  Adams' recycled one-liners here feel tired and outdated, and fail to drive the story forward.  The game's word puzzles, especially the so-called "dark" sections, do not translate and handle quite awkwardly.

 
Alas, these are only the beginning of this game's problems.  The inventory interface is clunky and counter-intuitive, and the game's instructions / help section is so badly written as to be incomprehensible.  Though mostly stable, one of the game's prevalent bugs is that the cursor fails to flicker when held over certain interactable objects, an infuriating and almost game-breaking flaw.  With all due respect to whoever worked very hard on the artwork, the graphics are lacking to the point of having an adverse effect on the experience -- unless the designers mean to intentionally increase the game's difficulty by, for example, depicting the crucial knife on the table as only one of several misshapen, unrecognizable blobs of pixels on screen.  I wouldn't put anything past an adventure game developer.

Whether you're a bigtime Hitchhiker's Guide fan with nostalgia for the text adventure, or just curious about what it was, check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers.  It's the BBC's better-illustrated, browser-based version of the original text adventure without any point-and-click nonsense.  Just don't forget to pack your towel, and perhaps this IGN walktrhrough. 

Rest in peace, Douglas Adams.  We love you and miss you.