So this last weekend I ,once again, binged on video games. And afterwards I noticed some things that one might call 'indicators' of this not so wonderful behavior. And a quick word or two about how you're becoming an awful human.
You've Been Playing a Lot
Firstly, and most obviously, if you've been playing a shit ton of video games, it seems like that could go without saying, but there is a clear difference between playing a contextually appropriate amount of games and binging. You can play a lot for a night so long as you've friends there with you, but if you've been maxing out solo, you're probably not looking all the better for it.
Haven't Moved
Well there's your primary hint right there, if you're not moving around somethings wrong. If you're feeling a general sense of lethargy, or just a plain old hatred of the world, this is a sign that you've been binging on slothliness. Enjoy.
Ripped Potato Bags
Call it strange, but if there is more than exactly one bag of chips or something of the like, which you have ripped a side down in order to get at the chips with more ease. Then you are binging. Its just deplorable behavior, and if you catch yourself doing it with frequency, you're probably not being very healthy. Also, you're getting the controller all greasy, or your shirt if you're wiping it there, point is something is getting greased up.
Previous Meals in Vision
If you can see the remains of anything more than the last thing you've eaten from your perch, you're doing it wrong. Likewise, if your countertop is a beer and taco graveyard, it's probably time to get out of the couch-lock and do real person things.
Fixed-Point Hedonism
This is a big one, if you can't even get up to get fucked up, you're either depressed or in the thralls of gaming or both. If you do the things you do to yourself normally to get twerked, while sitting and not moving, they're going to lose all the things that made them twerky in the first place. And that's a damn shame. It's like you're sucking the reverence out of social deviancy with a plastic controller and comfortable pillows.
Basically, the point is that if you can see everything that you've been doing for the past couple days, without moving, it's time to get up and do things.
FEELS GREAT. ABSOLUTELY SPECTACULAR, THIS IS TRULY THE MOST BITTER SARCASM, all my friends went.... I'm just here, being normal. shit.
Mostly I feel bad because it's really cool that there can be events like that that just draw in those people, my people into the kind of social environment that they might normally avoid in order to nerd out at full power. Which is a damn good feeling.
But a three day anime convention for 65 bucks? nope, can't do it. saaaaawry. My friends even dressed up like a badass Vega and Ryu. granted, I'm not nearly in shape enough to do that..... ehhhhhh.
Okay, so when you had your LEGO'S and K'NEX while growing up, how meticulous were you in their designs? Personally, I was of the K'NEX persuasion and would lose whole days sitting in my room building and breaking apart massive structures, down to the details. Yeah, 9 year old me didn't have lots of friends. Anyways, I knew of my love of customization early on, so when Custom Robo came out on the GameCube and I could make my own robot to battle others? Raw happiness.
That didn't last long however, as there's only like 300 possible creations you can make and they're all easy to remember and use. I got pretty absorbed by it. I later got a hold of the Armored Core series, which features some of the most crazily in-depth customization options of all time. It consumed me. My brother and I spent a good portion of every day taking turns on the Xbox re-tuning our mechs in order to one-up the others latest design.
You can even apply air diffusers to redistribute the weights of each part in, or out of motion. Yeah, and then you fight them, and it's fucking ridiculous. Annnnnnd~ there's a new game coming out this Septemberish for it. Armored Core 5: Verdict Day. Basically it's the best game ever because there's such a slim chance of having the exact same build as someone else, almost more certainly the same programming, or weapons, (like I said, this game is ridiculous)
But with the newest installation in the series comes some crazy new adaptations. To the multiplayer, which absolutely needed to happen, the shittiest thing about that game was not being able to trounce every feeble human in existence with your Death Machine. But now it appears as though they have some sort of commander position, or an overarching commander of some sort, and it looks totally badass.
I can already tell, I'm going to lose sleep over this.
For those of you paying attention, clearly not me seeing as I just remembered, the new Xbox is getting 'talked about' like in an official context, streaming live in the next hour. I am so thoroughly excited for it.
ITS THE FUTURE! Which sounds a bit dramatic, but it totally is, the technology in that thing will be one of the most powerfully commercially available for years to come. Squeeeee I wonder what they're gonna say!! I hear it even has an HDMI IN port. Like, what? you can import video into it? I'm so curious, I'm becoming deathly ill with salivation. imagine that.
I'm pretty dorky all around, but one of the things that makes me embarrassing to be around in public circles would have to be how excited I am about first person Melee games.
Like, that's awesome. You can have a simulated sword fight that's all about timing, like it should be, AND knock a guy's squished up brains through his ears.
And especially in an MMO because then you can do all sorts of wacky things with other players while murdering each other jovial. Like this,
Mothafuckin' shield wall. Thats actually a killer strategy, and if the chat is accurate, they cleaned up house that round, Shield Wall for the win.
I suppose I should just take off talking about this game then, because it's a perfect example of an MMO first person fighter. Shit, that's what it is. It's more or less just that, but they also have objective style rush/defend objectives and a buncha cool game modes.
It's called Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, and I'm pretty sure it was made by the dudes behind Age of Empires, its a game about storming castles, sabotaging water supplies, and learning about the modalities of Medieval times! But also about hurting people.
(mostly about hurting people)
But I like it because everyone's on the same playing field in terms of damage taken and given, skill becomes the determining factor (along with random chaos) to make a really balanced battlefield. Where a stray arrow can actually end you, leaving you screaming bullshit at a computer. I miss games like that, where it's as easy to kill someone in a game as it is in real life, I mean face it, we're squishy meat sacks filled with shatterable material. We're really not as damage proof as we'd like to think, these games that stress the 'anything will kill you' ideal tend to promote a more skillful gameplay, at least in my opinion.
What a concise and non-foreboding acronym. Well, actually it stands for, "how to blog really fast without actually creating shit. At least creatively, I suppose this is a form of arms against deadlines. I hate deadlines, they're usually lively occasions, those 'night before OH FUCK moments' but now this really fun new past time of mine seems like a bunch of annoying work. Especially since this is going to have to get nice again, but not right meow.
Anywho, lets talk about something fun. Did you ever play pikmin as a kid? Fun little game where you arrive on a strange planet with a broken spaceman ship, forced to repair it with the 'help' of locals. Because you fucking enslave them. It's wonderful how veiled in childish delight the game actually is, but much like Lemmings, the game is inherently about this:
1. You land derelict on this strange planet.
2. You encounter new fauna of unknown intellect.
3. Upon interacting with the creatures, you decide that you are congenitally smarter than these creatures can possibly comprehend.
4. You enslave their whole species. Trodding over their lifeless broken fruit sized bodies in an effort to further your goal of....getting the fuck off of the island.
That's the fucked up part, Olimar never strays from his goal of getting the fuck up out of there, which makes the pikmin nothing more than tools in his strange, beady little eyes.
Basically I think of Olimar as the anthropological explanation for why, if there are any pikmin left, they are very distrustful of anything that's not a pikmin.
I mean, I haven't really played it yet, but I know in the second game you return to the planet and brutally exploit them right down into their genetic memory. To them, the game could have been called, "Return of the Tyrant".
We live in a digital world. However, 'digital' is a slightly subjective term, as even the most advanced commercial laptop is not entirely electronic, there's always a mobile unit, in this case a hard-disk. But even cooler about electronics is the battery, most batteries these days are either of the AA or AAA persuasion, or li-ion. Li-ion is a Lithium Ion battery, I'm not entirely sure how it works, other than that two electrophilic chemicals interacts against one another through a baseplate to create electricity. That, and that they can totally explode. All I can remember on the subject.
Anyways, I love that this is a thing, the whole "My book is running low on power!" kind of deal. Its just awesome how for granted we take the whole idea of 'power.' And no, I'm not about to advocate some green-style, "we're killing the earth!" spiel, rather, I just want everyone to appreciate how fucking awesome it is that we're deriving such applicably universal power from a tiny little cylinder filled with chemicals. Really? Explain that to someone 100 years ago, using their finely tuned lanterns and what not.
Time Traveler: What you got there, friend?
Old Timey Folk #1: Lighting the lantern so that we can see the way.
Time Traveler: Oh, Well hold up, I'll just lock a heading on my phone.
Old Timey Folk #1: Your what?
Time Traveler: It's like..... Pshhhhheewwww okay, its like everything that you'll know throughout your entire life will eventually be proven false, or re-established as something that you thought it wasn't, or redressed to become another similar belief, and this thing contains not only the fully inclusive recored of how wrong you were, why you were wrong, and what inspired you to believe in such whimsical fantasies in the first place.
Old Timey Folk #1: There's a gypsy in there?
Time Traveler: Yeah, her name's Siri.
Old Timey Folk #1: a name befitting of a gypsy.
Time Traveler: And you can look up the entire etymology of the word 'gypsy' while letting your porn load.
Old Timey Folk #1: Eteh...mo... Porn?
Time Traveler: Oh boy... We don't have time for this.
Old Timey Folk #2: Did somebody say 'Porn?'
Is just how I see it going down, because who doesn't watch porn, clearly not all the people who haven't invented it yet. And I wish I could manage a proper segue out of this 'porny premise.' But nothings happening on that end, so let's just end on porn.
First of all, I play what too much Double Dash, entirely too much. It's ALL my roommate plays. And after a year of toil I finally manage to almost beat him occasionally. But then I played some other friends, and realized that I'm the only one that knows how to boost. Long story short, no one but my roommate wants to play Mario Kart with me anymore. Lugubrious? Slightly. But on nights with a box of cheap shitty wine or a 30 rack of keystone light, drunk driving became an exquisite way to pass the time. And from this, game after game of rapid boozage, I learned a fast lesson: the winner is whoever downs the beer first, usually, accounting on skill and what not. But if you slam that alcohol faster than they do, you've got a huge lead. Boosh.
Plus, you lose time with that whole 'pick up the can' and 'put the can back down' spiel. Why not just eliminate the need altogether by just drinking the whole thing? See, this is where I think video games get dangerous, Mario Kart is a bigger gateway drug than pot, because just a few minutely adult moderations on the rules and Bam! you're well on your way to full-blown alcoholism!
I suppose that same comparison could be drawn similarily with ape-headed face-eating crackheads getting their good ol' happy roots from violent video games too, so I'll cool it on the slippery slope fallacy, but still. Think about it. Similar comparisons right there.
Not that I think that video games really fuck with your head like that, well okay, except for Postal, and stuff like that.
(There's really only so much 'cat silencer' that the mind can handle)
That being said, this game is almost more fun than you can handle, you can light things on fire and then piss them out, and snort cat nip that makes everyone but you go into slow motion (life advice: don't snort catnip) And you can kill a fully grown elephant with an anthrax filled cow head. (life advice: If you're even thinking about it, at this point I can't really tell you not to) what a sweet, wholesome game.
Wow, so talk about shifting focus, but we're talking about how ridiculous Postal 2 was now. Just because I say so.
(Well, sums up my blog, guess I'm done here.)
You can kill Gary Coleman. Which, I realize, is a bit of a dicey scenario nowadays (in the wake of his great loss?) But that part of his soul will be forever immortalized as the part of a game where you get into a huge shootout in a mall full of children to kill a midget black celebrity. Rare occurences of great splendour in which the fourth wall is not only broken, but totally shit on in such a manner that renders said wall tainted for all of time. There is just the strange sense of corruption that games sometimes emphasize that I think should really be viewed under a microscope.
Remember how excited you were when the iPhone first reached the markets? Remember how weird it was seeing grandma with an iPad for the first time? Think about how commonplace it is to see old ladies playing Angry Birds. We live in the future, folks. So of course it makes sense that there are now some totally kick ass phone games on the market.
There's a lot of fun games you can play in your spare time, and I am now thoroughly addicted to a whole slew of them. Shit. I even do most of my blog drafts on my phone...
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING.
but let him watch..... My amazing Jetpack Run scores! 97th percentile. What what??
Seriously though, mobile gaming has progressed far and beyond what I ever thought it would have when I saw it first start on.
I think I noticed this playing Block Fortress, which has quickly become my new waking obsession on the iPhone. If you think of the bastard spawn of your basic tower defence game and minecraft, this is what should come to mind. And the game is gorgeous. Which is like, hey, this is my CELL PHONE!!! Just gotta love those little, 'you live in the future' moments.
Like when the creative side-apps on your telephone start surpassing the quality and scale of games you played as a kid and ruin you with a darkly lethargic nostalgia, the likes of which I am experiencing right meow. Right meow, as I sit here and type this with a degree of disdain for this particularly spherical world. Why can't everything be as destroyable and rebuildable as Block Fortress worlds???? SIIIIGH.
We all tend to make strange faces when we're focused on things we enjoy, we let our faces slacken and disregard the opinions of others, because they're not 'in the zone.' And they don't even know. Here is a sampling of faces that me and my friends make, notice the excess amounts of tongue moveage.
10:16 AM. The camera died we're still playing, I honestly have no way to edit this. Ohhhhh balls. This shall be difficult. There is a LOT of editing to do.
So, here's the thing.... I really like this blog, it kinda lets me write about the things that I can't really say in the public forum. Like, "Dude, last night I ate 4 doses of acid and then sat down and played Dead Space, and now I'm going to tell you why Isaac Clarke is actually Adolf Hitler"
But I can share that with you guys!!! Pejorative terminology on 'you guys' of course, as the primary discourse of this subject matter corrolates to my grade in a class :( Bogus, I know. But believe me when I say that the very lightly enforced filter really only removes the extremely awful content that just begs to be given words to match their incongruable obscenity (poetic, no?)
Anywho, here's what's going to happen this Thursday; I need to record some video of people losing at video games, there's something about seeing the hope drain out of someones face in one split-second loss that is truly beautiful and I want to show it to you!
Problem is, I'm kind of operating on a limited time frame at this point. If I had, say, a week, I could regale your eyes with the glorious splendour of heart-crushing failure. But I have 2 days.
SO. That's a problem, not unsolvable though, I drew the one card that let's you accumulate a buttload of video gamers to your house with haste. I told them I'd feed them, smoke them out, and get them drunk if they would only come play video games with me. Which, honestly..... is kind of how most parties at my apartment actually work.
So I'm going to have this veeerrrry roughly edited short to present. and then come about a week later, (after my central nervous system recovers from what I'm going to do to it after the last day of class) I'll put up a much cleaner, crisper edit with lots of corny sound effects and what not.
Side note: For whatever reason, this last week I have been unable to say the word, "what" in anything other than Hank Hills voice. I'll tell you what, I'm getting concerned.
The thing that differentiates life from video games the most is the ability to start it over when you fuck up, a feature sadly lacking from everyday life. It's the reason games are fun and the reason you can take an RPG to the face and just go, "Whoops, 12 seconds until I can try again." No big deal. New guns, fresh ammo, vengeance on the mind, what a great second chance to dodge that head exploding nonsense.
(Where the hell was my news team!?)
WOW. That is violent. I could literally watch this all day. Digressing, anyway the fact that you can't lose everything in a video game gives playing them a relaxing factor, a form of catharsis in which you're not worried about failure because there's no such thing. This was pretty much true of all games, with the exception of one or two when I was growing up. Namely, Diablo 2's Hardcore mode, where if your character died, they DIED. Permanently, name and all. I made one, but was personally too scared to log in ever.
Because the notion that all of your hard work could be lost forever is a truly harrowing thought to your average nerd. Yet that hasn't stopped games from implementing permadeath with untold levels of success. If you like Zombies, you've probably at least heard of Day Z. The zombie-filled mod of Arma 2.
When you start Day Z up you spawn a character along a beach, with very limited supplies, and a hunger and health gauge. As you play, you must always remember that death is permanent, and destroys your character along with all of their gear. Because of this cautious gameplay becomes vastly encouraged and you'll often find yourself on the edge of your seat, dropping to prone at the sound of nearby gunfire. Because other players can kill you, the choice to become a 'hero' or a 'bandit' becomes a segued affair, you can literally do whatever the fuck you want to anyone. Even using the games built-in microphone system to tell another player you've snuck up on to "drop all your shit or I'll put lead in you." Of course, I always shoot them even if they comply, can't have a jilted robbery victim following you around with revenge on their minds, right?
But this is just my point, games where you can die. Like die die. Encourage survival by any means necessary. And I just LOVE that about them, in fact, so do lots of people. Permadeath is slowly incorporating itself into way more games these days. Like the ever so popular 'Minecraft,' in which death in Hardcore mode not only deletes you, BUT THE ENTIRE GENERATED WORLD. Talk about bringing the world down with you. Also Battletoads, man, fuck Battletoads right in it's impossibly difficult asshole.
(If you can beat this, I hate you)
I guess what I'm trying to say is that even with the most advanced, realistic first-person shooter on the market, you can't die. You just keep respawning, and it encourages balls-to-the-wall, shoot everyone in the face at once, style gameplay. Whereas when you have one life, you're going to want to spend it as productively as possible, so you'll take it slowly and make sure that every situation is tactically analysed so that no one gets a cheap grenade kill and leaves you screaming at a failure screen like a 12 year old throwing a temper tantrum.
If there's one thing missing from video games it's movies. Name every movie you can that's either centrically themed about games, or about a gaming experience. They all suck. Did you see Gamer? How can that be Gerard Butler's rebound from The Ugly Truth? Seriously, is there a more heinous act of hostility against gamers than dropping a freshly emasculated actor into a crappy premise? No, there is not. It just turned into another Battle Royale knock-off. And they didn't even have bomb collars, lame.
There are tons of movies based off of comics and novels that are completely awesome in every which way you pick at them, but no live-action video game movie has ever incited a response from me other than groaning and face palming. A couple times I've actually just straight up left the theater in a huff.
(pictured: me in a 'huff')
With one exception. One glorious exception. Because there has only ever been one video game-themed movie that has ever satisfied me. ONE. Feast your eyes upon.....
Video Game High School!!!
VGHS is a Kickstarter webseries made by the fine folks over at RocketJump in order to woo and amaze you. It even has Zachary Levi!!
(I tried, I swear)
VGHS is great for me because it takes place in my ideal future, where professional gaming has completely and mercilessly overtaken sports. Pro's are revered as gods, and aspiring gamers struggle to get accepted into the brutally prestigious Gaming Schools. Amongst them, VGHS is the most sought after. The story follows the naive, yet skilled BrianD (oh yeah, everyone's name is their gamer-tag) who manages to kill The Law, the highest ranked player at VGHS in a surprise fluke. He's kind of on permanent douchey bossgod status the entire series, but you can't help but to love him. He's actually Brian Firenzi of FiveSecondFilms, which you should go check out because they're genius. But only if you've got five seconds to spare.
Anyways, the reason I really love this movie/ show (they combined all the webisodes into a Netflix Movie) is the way that they seamlessly integrate the 'gaming experience' so that it isn't just a bunch of nerds violently tapping away at keyboards for two hours. Instead, the virtual world in which they 'do battle' (most of the game is centered around a FPS called 'Field of Fire') is all live-action, with the characters representing themselves as the player. It's really confusing when I explain it like that. But just look:
(buh bye)
Fucking cool, right? Now, what if I told you that this same movie not only has lots of incidents of said badassery, but is juxtaposed against UNTHINKABLY cheesy puns, and absurdly trippy moments? Would you believe it?
(nope)
I must warn you, if this isn't funny to you, or is too much, than this particular fancy feast isn't for you. BUT IT SHOULD BE the only real sucker about this movie is that I don't have a friend dorky enough to watch it with. But if I did, it would send them careening through a cathartically noetic experience, the likes of which might literally make them shit their britches. It's jam packed with innuendos and nerdy references so exclusive, that if you don't play games (A LOT) you might not even understand the jokes. "I've wanted to go to VGHS since I was rated E for everyone...."But even if you don't really get it, you'll still be absolutely blown away by the crisp cinematography, if nothing else.
This movie seriously has style.
I'll stop gushing, but only after I tell you where to find this glistening gem of dorky splendor.
Maybe this is coming from me being a Fiction major, but I think that the most important aspect of gaming is juxtaposition. I'm sure lots of people will be on the same page with me that it's an important part, but most will disagree with it being the most important part. Those people are likely to proceed to bring up issues such as controls, plot, graphics, mechanics, etc. And those make up the echelon of what makes a game good, agreed. But I think it is the discerning factor, a divining rod between two otherwise completely similar levels of production value.
As an extrapolation of that, I love games that go way over the top with violence. Because at a certain point, you can pretty much see how much more love and creativity went into the way the sun glistens off of the blood and skull fragments of an enemy's imploded face than other stuff, like story and dialogue, and even scenery. For me, this violent twist off of the context of the game is one of the funniest things ever. I don't get squeamish, gore doesn't upset me, and this makes me laugh without fail:
Because its like a kind of side-lined joke, you know? There's all this wonderfully colored scenery around you, and the music is just gripping you to the core of your very soul and then BOOM. You see this.
(couldn't find a clip of it, but this is the only way to kill that type of enemy in Bethesda's WET.)
Ouch. Was that necessary? did the audience need to see that?
OR this
Or this
...or this... see where I'm going with this?
(Gears of War)
What a classic. But all of these examples are more tied to the ridiculous, their violence is almost out of place with the sense that it's so easy to kill someone one-handed and then throw their lifeless leaking corpse 12 feet to the ground like a horseshoe.
(Bioshock: Infinite)
Because there's an aspect to that, a little voice in your head that blocks you from being drawn into the experience because of the silly lack of limitations on the playable character. I always feel like I'm playing less of a game when I achieve one of these Ultra-violent kills. More like I'm listening to some joke the developers had, because every instance of violence in every game ever made adds color to the style. But you don't want to throw neon paints all over the place unless you're aware that what you're doing is hilarious. But that doesn't mean that ultra-violence can't work in a game's favor without a silliness inherent, its all about the context. You need to be drawn into the experience.
Let us review more clips:
(The Last of Us)
The cool thing about violence in survival games is that it can easily mesh with the air of desperation that these games thrive off of. The point of a survival game is to always be alert, and kind of neurotic, always on the knife's edge of sanity. Following that principle, it makes sense that any instance of violence in that game will be a desperate action, like the bestial release of that sledgehammer into that dude's face. For the most part Survial-genre games get carte blanch on ultra-violence, having no real limits to the extent of the trauma so long as they can make it fit the context. Even Tomb Raider went and made the death of your character as brutal as possible to make you wince. Because you want to feel for the character and have them not die on you like this:
Caution: Look Away, like for the rest of this, it's going to get worse.
I think there's an acceptable level of OMGWTFDUDE in every game, and it varies depending on the story. Obviously Horror & Survival get the biggest pass, Take the Dead Space for instance. Isaac Clarke has to go through some pretty horrific trauma, and I would argue, has the worst death scenes. Because a lot of them happen in interactive cinematic events like the one above, where a tiny miscalculation of your hands leads to a tasty treat for your eyes.
(It took me eight tries to get past this part, eye gore is my weak spot, I didn't sleep that night)
The point I'm trying to get across in between all these pleasant little clips however, is that violence has a place in story. Books have been depicting obscenities with style for centuries and it only makes sense that with the expansion of media, that aspect is beginning to be achieved in gaming. I can only hope that we keep on board those wacky violent ones too though. I don't want to be the only one who looks at all of the above and thinks:
So I was at my friends house and he brought up a nazi reference in the midst of an unrelated discussion. I called him out on Godwin's Law. And then thought about Nazis in games. There's a lot of nazi killing in games. And a lot of games about Nazis. Ill think of as many as I can.
Call of duty: world at war
Call of duty: Black Ops
Call of duty: Black Ops 2
Sniper Elite
Company of Heroes
Wolfenstein
Sniper Elite v2
Every Medal of Honor Game.
Battlefield: 1942
The Saboteur
Bionic Commando
Metro 2033
Really, there's just tons, and those are just the ones you can kill, theres plenty of Nazi related plots too. People just absolutely love to kill Nazis. It's like a video game past time, tried and true fun. A Sniper v2 expansion pack even lets you shoot Hitler in the testicles.
(at the end)
You should actually just go check out that his YouTube Channel. Robbaz is pretty amazing.
I think it's because as a society we've long been drawing a symbolism between Nazis and pure fucking evil. And what's more fun than shooting pure fucking evil in the face? Shooting lots of Nazis in the face, or lots of Zombies. I'm not sure which ranks higher as 'most fun to kill' but I'm pretty sure they're in first and second place. And then some huge FPS franchise had to go and combine the two to make the most addicting game ever.
I sincerely believe that there will never come another military group that will replace Nazis as the most entertaining thing to shoot at.
I've written many different types of posts on here, trying to be all dynamic and post-modern cynical on everything in a somehow positive light. That's hard, and tiring. So this is me succumbing. Here's a bunch of things that games have that I fucking hate:
DUBSTEP.
Okay, look. I listen to my fair share of electronic music. And while I can astutely inform you that there exists of modicum of tunes that are way more than just "womp" noises and ultra-bass, that doesn't mean that those wompy abominations don't exist in a major way. They're fucking annoying. And they're getting into my goddamned video games.
(gets old real fast)
Imagine a tasty steak plated before you, the decadent steam still rolling out of its porous goodness. Your mouth immediately fills up with saliva in anticipation when you slip the first piece into your mouth. It's amazing, all you hoped and more, you chew more feverishly, enjoying every single fiber of the meaty mouthful. You reach for another before you even swallow when all of a sudden you stop. What's that? Onion-infused hummus has started to ooze from your otherwise flawless steak. Grimacing, you muscle through, hoping that it's just that one piece that's tainted from the very core with the disgusting flavor. It's not, the more you eat, the more you notice that the shit flavor is becoming more and more prominent with each passing bite. Soon it's all you can taste, and you have to fight the urge to throw your silverware at the wall. You've reached a crossroads where you can either continue this disgusting endeavor in the interest of trying to enjoy the steak around its putrid interior, or giving up altogether and feeding it to the disinterested dog to whom everything tastes seemingly amazing. Even badger poop.
By the way, the dog in this scenario are the people who try to love every game. They're weird. But it's what I feel like when I hear dubstep tracks in my video games. They're super repetitive and no one likes them. Especially in FarCry 3 on the 'burn all the pot crops' level, because its really hard, you'll have to try at it a couple times, and the music is ALWAYS playing. There's only so much Skrillex that the ears can handle before they shut down completely. Every now and then could we just get a little bit creative. Please? Take a cue from Nintendo's full-on orchestra soundtracks, gosh.
Characters that don't die, ever.
Hey, I'm not dissing on immortality or anything. It's my #1 wished for super power, (not flying, we already have planes and jetpacks) but this is more of an injunction against unkillable side characters than the protagonist. I can only think of a couple games where your character is immortal and only one where they straight up can't die. The production company behind metal gear solid actually is making a game like that. Your character not only can't die, but can be dismembered, and patched up with the press of a few buttons. Giving the player the need to dice up in order to pass obstacles. Oh, and that game has Megadeth on the music. Now THAT'S an appropriate soundtrack.
(Game's called Neverdead)
If anyone's either old or dorky enough to remember Sonic 2, remember how hard it got? Well if you plugged in a second controller you could play as Tails. Who's almost as fast as Sonic, can float long distance, and is deathproof. He's invincible, he can drop his rings when he takes damage, or die when he falls off the screen, but he is instantly revived in some unseen two-tailed, sentient, flying fox factory somewhere off screen. Also, if you played your cards right, you could've used him to simply float up above the level and run to safety.
Also, THIS is fucking stupid. Some of them will just be 'unconscious.' Even if they take an arrow to the face.
(it's okay, they're just sleeping off the death)
Actually, okay. That's kind of funny
Un-skippable cut scenes, or any scenes I understand the need for cinematics, and lots of games deliver beyond anyone's expectations. The real issue comes with games like Metal Gear Solid 4, that boasts an unthinkable amount of unskippable cutscene time. Over 2/3 of the game. Granted that the one third of gameplay is completely fantastic. Or so I hear, I just know if you google MGS4 it's one of the first suggested search terms.
I paid for a game, not a movie.
And then there are some cutscenes that just kill small parts of you.
(Sonic 6 was a sin against humanity)
Bad Camera Controls
Nothing ruins a good game like not being able to tell what the hell is going on around you. It could be the most extravagant graphics and story, but if you have to spend twenty seconds groaning while you try to make it possible to see ahead of you, you're going to have a bad time. What's even worse is seeing an otherwise fun game getting totally ruined by a shitty camera. Looking your way, GTA: San Andreas.
I just spent the last 4 hours playing DigDug on a huge ass TV. Partially because I'm nostalgic, but also because.... I don't really have anything else to play.
Yep. My dreadful secret revealed, I don't have an Xbox. I'd been meaning to get one since me and my roommate moved out to our place in the West Loop a little over a year ago. We have a huge, awesome TV, all the cables needed to run any HD compatible console or otherwise, but nope. No Xbox, Playstation, or anything 'new'. What we do have is a little GameCube, and about a half dozen games. And honestly? That's a great way to get by. Not the best, but pretty good. And it makes you appreciate the classics.
(this was, and remains to be more effective than babysitters)
It dawns on me that I really don't play games as much as I talk and write about them, much like my interviewed friend. Except that I'm writing a video game blog, so the irony is not lost on me.
But, like a struggling alcoholic, I also tend tobinge on video games. Hard. Like every now and then, unpredictably, and sometimes in lieu of massive school projects, I'll travel to someones house and spend the entire day playing video games, procrastigaming. It's not a new thing, you can read all about it in this hysterically 'no shit?'article. Steeped in eloquent wording and what not.
At least we're not all addicted to Dig-Dug anymore though. Because now that I think about it, that game is pretty fucked up in a couple of ways.
What lovely chicago weather there is today, haaaa. The sky is roaring hell down with oceans and hulk winds, and I'm forced to question whether the weather is chaotically heinous because of global warming, or just by being in Chicago. Seriously, I think we're cursed by a jilted weather deity. That, or Storm from X-Men is a real woman living in Chicago, who recently developed a bad crack habit and started messing with the weather.
(she's certainly got that glassy-eyed qualification)
But what the weather really got me excited about is Ubisoft's upcoming game Watch Dogs, which takes place in an alternate reality version of Chicago, that is controlled by a supercomputer matrix that records the personal information of everyone down to their habits. Coming out in quarter four of this year, as one of the most hyped flagship games of the PS4, the 'hack & shoot' dynamic is fantastic looking. And they mapped the ENTIRE CITY OF CHICAGO. Check it out. They even turned Johnny Rockers into a nightclub/art show.
(meet Aiden Pierce)
It makes me practically giddy with excitement to think that the city that I know and love so dearly is about to be the main stage of some technologically charged battle for justice. Plus, you can just go around and fuck with traffic and stuff. I know we've all wanted to. More than anything though, I'm interested to see how the weather dynamic is played out. From the trailer, it's clear that the infamous windiness of the city is going to be a large part of the game. But I really want to see some Snowpocalypse action. Seriously
