As I haven’t written anything here in a while, I figured I’d bring over one of my articles from Every Game that I wrote a few weeks ago. I think it has a lot more to do with this blog than it does that one, anyway – just ignore the fact that it was supposed to be a sort-of-review of a SNES game called Space Megaforce. I’ve edited it a bit to make it less puerile, and less about the game, and added a bit of content.

Video game nerds, not entirely unlike music or film or sports or whatever else nerds, are not without affectation. Some have more than others: the ones who unabashedly like “low” forms, like cartoon-breast-filled JRPGs and generischlock FPSes, or are more interested in a particular title than the medium (WoW geeks, Call of Duty/GTA/Halo etc. fanatics), are often the least guilty of this, I guess, in the same sense that someone who lists The Matrix Reloaded as a favourite film is probably a lot more honest to themselves than someone who considers a typical laundry list of “important” films their favourites (the displayed level of sophistication of such an affectation can run the spectrum, from “I heard Citizen Kane is good so I like that because I like smart movies” to “my favourite films are those that predate and perhaps began the New Wave movements in their respective countries such as the Czechoslovakian O něčem jiném or the French Bob le flambeur (this isn’t to say that Bob le flambeur and O něčem jiném are unlikeable movies by any stretch: I’ve seen neither of them, but I know (of, Internet-wise) someone who has a very close place in his heart for the latter (side note: I don’t know if this is “a thing” but it seems that foreign language movies only have the first word capitalized in their names. Is this a normal thing? Is it only English names that are So Important That Each Word Requires the Gravitas of a Capital Letter?))).

The thing is, some games and even genres get labelled as “important” and “relevant” and therefore a lot of people front like they like them a lot more than they actually do. Take Shadow of the Colossus. It’s insane how many people call this their Favourite Game Ever (the name of my new film) because it did a few things that weren’t really popular to do in games. All of the battles were boss battles! They were pretty well-made! There’s a story thing that surprises you! Here’s the thing: people toss love-cookies about this game all over the Internet. It is one of the sacred-est cows in the Video Game World. And not in the “this is a ‘safe’ sacred cow to lambaste” kind of way, like the Final Fantasy series; it’s in a “we who know best deem this the best” kind of way. But really, there’s a lot of this game that isn’t good. Riding around on the horse can be confusing, and it can be a pain in the ass to control, in that way that pulls you out of what you’re doing when it irritatingly bounces off of a cave wall or doesn’t run in the direction you’re pointing the stick. The story isn’t that goddamn innovative (although, yeah, I applaud the developers for, you know, doing a thing with a story, but this is akin to buying a Corvette for a four-year-old who just learned to stop using diapers). The game’s pretty at times, but at others, it’s kind of — yeah, I’m saying this — ugly. I’m not going to pretend it’s a bad game, but best game of the decade (I’m sure many people have said this but I can’t be bothered to source it, let’s just pretend for the sake of the argument it isn’t made up)? Seriously?

That’s affectation for you. For all but the absolute least pretentious, Top Favourite Whatevers (script forthcoming) is a list made not to service the media that is on the list so much as it is to service the image of the maker of that list. By putting Shadow at the top of my fave video games list, I would make it clear that I like art. By putting Earthbound at the top of my list, I show that I value metered nostalgia. I put Space Megaforce (although if I were to put this on a list I’d probably also be one of those folks who calls it by its “real” name, Super Aleste) at the top of my list, I show that I care enough about video games to really dig in and find out about things you don’t know about. I put Super Aleste not because it should be my favourite, but because I am representing myself as an obscurist. I want you to be aware that I know a lot of games and you don’t and some of the games I know and you don’t are actually pretty good and you’re missing out and my life is more full of wonder than yours because I Am A Renaissance Man (the studios refuse to pick this one up). It makes the games feel better, too, which is the purpose of games (that is, to make you feel good while playing: if it weren’t, it wouldn’t be entertainment, probably), if you don’t feel a tinge of guilt while playing them; that is to say, if you know that Shadow has some it-factor that makes it relevant you won’t feel as sheepish about playing it as you might, say, Just Cause 2. I played that recently, and I felt like I was stupid for playing it, because it had no redeeming qualities beyond being kind of fun and making me laugh a lot. Well, you know what? The time I spent playing that I think I still had a better time than the time I spent playing Shadow despite its clear “artistically irrelevant” handicap.

Don’t mistake this for some sort of Anti-Intellectual Kneejerk Reaction (Jenny McCarthy will be playing the lead role of Sarah Palin in this flick, if my agent actually gets it made) and don’t mistake it for The Double-Pretentious I-Hate-What-Sheep-Love Gambit (starring Taylor Kitsch reprising his role as Gambit (fun fact: to find out that someone named Taylor Kitsch played Gambit in an X-Men movie, I had to go to a Wikipedia article called “Gambit in other media,” which was its own goddamn page)). From one occasionally-affected game nerd to another (that is, me, and you, the reader, almost certainly, if you are reading this), I’m just trying to be goddamn honest. I’m not immune to this. I used to say my favourite genre was the shmup. I loved them, to be sure, but it was, at least, in part, affected. I started playing every shmup in the same way that I started drinking bourbon; not appreciating them at first, and their differences, and finding them difficult to swallow (ha), but developing an appreciation over time, all because I thought there was something kind of cool about it.

That’s the real problem: we, as game nerds, are too embarrassed by our pretentiousness to call it what it is. We don’t have two separate favourite lists – one for the games we like the most, and one for the games we appreciate most (and I’m not advocating we do, that sounds stupid). I like Just Cause 2, but I appreciate Shadow of the Colossus. I like Tetris 2 but I appreciate Super Puzzle Fighter. I like Hackers but I appreciate Loves of a Blonde. I like The Bends but I appreciate OK Computer. It’s like we can’t decide if enjoyment or relevance is more important, so we sandwich the two together and directly compare them to each other. But it’s impossible. It’s like comparing apples to Jackson Pollock. Worse, we separate ourselves from the enjoyable and irrelevant by calling it a “guilty pleasure.” What a weird, loaded turn of phrase (and one I use when I’m not thinking about it, to be fair).

There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of affectation or pretentiousness. By convincing yourself you like something that’s “good” in some way (assuming it is “good” in a way that’s, well, good), you can develop appreciations for things that you may have missed before. While the bourbon metaphor falls apart here because it doesn’t really benefit you so much as it probably makes you a bit duller when you drink it and makes your chest burn a bit and costs you money and can mess up your liver, look at, like, music. You could have listened to Top 40 and/or MOR classic rock radio for your entire life. Nothing wrong with that. But you, person reading this, at some point got into stuff off the beaten track, musically. This might have been, to some degree, an affectation – you got into some band because you thought it’d impress potential mates, or make you look cooler to a clique at school that you respected. But that probably opened you up to other stuff that was really great. Without pretending you were into Fugazi, you never would have actually gotten into Fugazi, and without Fugazi, you wouldn’t have found out about Bad Brains and Nation of Ulysses, and your eye for racism and satire (respectively, not jointly) might be a bit less sharp. Without lying and saying you were into Fellini, you might never have actually checked out Fellini and read about why you should actually like it after watching 8 ½ and wondering what the hell the big deal was, anyway.

I know this hasn’t been about Space Megaforce, but, I promise you, it kind of is. Among a certain type of video game nerd, this game is a Shadow of the Colossus (although that perhaps does this game too great a favour). And, yeah, for a shooter it’s kind of cool. All sorts of candy-coloured shit is going on all over the screen and you can get some neat powerups or whatever. But (and I don’t mean to get too nihilistic or existentialist or whatever the fuck is the right word here) what’s the point? Big upping this game is just big upping yourself. It places the self above the medium. And that’s fucked up.

The results will be posted online at http://cointandplick.wordpress.com/, slowly, to maximize the drama/suspense/EXCITEMENT, complete with YOUR blurbs and some choice pictures (because Internet needs pictures).

If I keep writing, you’ll lose focus, since you play video games and therefore your brain is mush or something, so I will just get to the list.

0 Story
Alien Hominid
Amplitude
Ape Escape 2
Ape Escape 3
Ar Tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica
Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana
Beyond Good & Evil
Bombastic
Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter
Bully
Burnout 3: Takedown
Burnout Revenge
Capcom vs SNK 2
Chulip
Contra: Shattered Soldier
Crazy Taxi
Dance Dance Revolution: DDRMAX
dark cloud 2
Darkwatch
Def Jam Fight For NY
Def Jam Vendetta
Devil May Cry
Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness
DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou
Dragon Quest VIII
ESPN NFL 2K5
Everybody’s Golf 4 / Hot Shots Golf Fore
Evil Dead: Regeneration
Eyetoy
Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy
Fatal Frame
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X-2
Final Fantasy XII
Fire Pro Wrestling Returns
Frequency
Get on Da Mic
Gitaroo Man
God Hand
God of War
God of War II
Gradius V
Gran Turismo 3
Gran Turismo 4
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Grandia II
GrimGrimoire
Growlanser V: Generations
Guitar Hero 2
Half-Life
Haunting Ground
Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction
Ico
Jak 3
Jak and Daxter
Katamari Damacy
Killer7
Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts 2
Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil
La Pucelle Tactics
Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King
Madden 2008
Madden 2004
Mana Khemia
Manhunt
Marvel vs. Capcom 2
Max Payne
Maximo: Ghosts to Glory
MDK2: Armageddon
Medal of Honor: Frontline
Mega Man Anniversary Collection
Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction
Metal Gear Solid 2/ MGS2 Substance
Metal Gear Solid 3/ MGS3 Susbistence
Micro Machines V4
Mister Mosquito
MLB The Show 2006
MVP Baseball 2005
NBA Street
NBA Street 2
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
NHL Hitz Pro
Odin Sphere
Okami
Onimusha
Outrun 2006 Coast2Coast
PaRappa 2
Persona 3
Persona 4
Prince of Persia – Sands of Time
Pro Evolution Soccer 2005
Psi-Ops
Psychonauts
Ratchet & Clank
Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando
Red Faction
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil Code: Veronica X
Rez
Ring Of Red
Rogue Galaxy
R-Type Final
Shadow Hearts
Shadow of Destiny
Shadow of the Colossus
Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1 & 2
Silent Hill 2
Singstar
Sly 2: Band Of Thieves
Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves
Smuggler’s Run
SOS: The Final Escape
SoulCalibur II
Space Channel 5 CE
Spider-Man 2
SSX
SSX Tricky
SSX 3
Star Ocean: Til The End Of Time
State of Emergency
Street Fighter Anniversary Collection (w/ III: 3rd Strike)
Street Fighter Alpha Anthology
Street Fighter EX3
Stretch Panic
Stuntman: Ignition
Sub Rebellion
Suikoden III
Suikoden V
Taiko Drum Master
Tekken 4
Tekken 5
Tekken Tag Tournament
The Mark of Kri
The Suffering
The Warriors
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3
Tony Hawk Underground
Transformers
Twisted Metal Black
Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria
Viewtiful Joe
Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution
We Love Katamari
Wipeout Fusion
Worms 3D
Xenosaga I/II/III
Yakuza
Yakuza 2
Zone Of The Enders 2: 2nd Runner

So GET VOTING!

I’ll cut straight to the chase, because you’re a busy person. I am running a poll to define, completely arbitrarily, the best video game ever released on the PS2. It’s with a website I frequent called ILX, but that’s beside the point. The point is GAMES, and LISTS, and POLLS. And GAMES. Did I say GAMES?

Firstly, I implore you: visit this website. There’s a list of nominated games there: this is part of the first step. Only games nominated can be voted for, to avoid vote splitting and confusion and such; however, nominating a game is as easy as commenting on this blog, or commenting on that blog, or emailing me (that’s magacid, by the way, at gmail). Nominations are due by March 14th.

After that, the fun part: BALLOTS. You would send to my email (not by comment, we wanna keep the results SECRET until the end) your list of favourite PS2 games: as few as 1, as many as 15, in order (ties are allowed!). Ideally (but optionally) one would also include small blurbs, frmo one sentence to one paragraph, explaining why it is an awesome game to you. The results would slowly leak out on the previously-mentioned blog, complete with delicious youtube links and pictures and blurbs from other voters (AND YOU!).

If you think your list will suck, FRET NOT. It’s easy and you should send one anyway. A lot of the people contributing are not “gamerzzzz” in the hardcore sense; in fact, our year-end lists often end up with free flash games and iPhone puzzle apps near the top of the list because, well, that’s how we roll.

THE PS2 IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE PS2.

Diplomacy is a game where you take control of a dawn-of-the-20th-century European superpower, and, through diplomacy and war, attempt to dismantle the continent, piece by piece, until it belongs to you. The rules are incredibly simple, and rightly so: they are not the centrepiece of this game. In essence, it is a game of two being stronger than one, and three being stronger than two, and so on. Without allies, you will lose. But, everyone playing wants to win in their own right. What results are a series of shaky pacts based on delivering a blow to the player/empire with whom you’ve just made another (obviously even shakier) pact.

What made it truly great is that I played with six other people who I consider to be among my best friends. We (almost) all went to high school together, hung out together virtually all the time (before half of us moved around the country) and know each other incredibly well. And, since this is a game of psychology, it made for an incredibly satisfying game. All of us were engaging in our first game of Diplomacy, and we all had pretty different ideas of how games work, and how we intended to win. If you’ll indulge me, I am going to try to explain the seven of us, and I’m sure you can see where the conflict might occur:

Austria: Matt. Unfortunately, Matt didn’t get a chance to leave his imprint on the game, having three handicaps going in: one, Austria is surrounded by three nations and a glut of resources, making him an easy target; two, a reputation for being very good at strategy games, which painted a bullseye on his back very early; and, three, his own brother in nearby Italy, meaning an alliance was incredibly likely (this didn’t exactly work out, though, as I’ll explain later). Matt was the first player to be eliminated.

France: Will (that’s me!). Somehow I was one of the two “winners” (not technically, though). One of my greatest strengths going into this game was that I am, as far as I know, a pretty agreeable person. I was constantly brokering deals, taking only what was mine, at first, waiting to see what aggressive actions other would take before deciding what I would do. My greatest weakness, this game has taught me, is my trust of other people. I had (what I thought were) unwavering alliances with three players over the course of the game who betrayed me at one stage or another. This nearly sank me; thankfully, a combination of good positioning (France is great for stalemating those who are trying to crush you) and infighting among my enemies allowed me to strike back and survive until the end.

Germany: Gavin. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite like Gavin. He’s a high school teacher with an almost Aspergerian obsession with game mechanics (or, at least, that’s what I screamed at him, replete with expletives, at least once in Skype conversation). I first started hanging out with Gavin years ago when I joined a D&D group. He was the one who had the combo wizard-priest that could win virtually any encounter alone, due to his exhaustive knowledge of third edition (and his blatant disregard for taste, as far as metagame exploitation went). It became evident after a few turns that he was probably the best player, game-wise, out of all of us. His ability to use logic to support his moves was virtually untouchable. However, he was the king of the backstab, and this led to his undoing (which, to this day, he states, never happened: in his mind, he was part of a three-way draw, as that’s what the rules state. Since “surrender” is not an in-game order, he maintains that he could not and did not surrender, and is one of the three “winners”).

Italy: Greg. Greg has been one of my closest friends throughout my life, but I still think the best way to describe him is as an enigma. He is a competitive gamer: at one point, he was a part of the semi-professional Counter-Strike circuit, and only quit because he was in high school and his parents wouldn’t let him fly to Texas to compete for a big cash prize. If there’s one thing he loves about games like this, it’s the ability for him to unleash his unpredictable nature and fuck with people. If you don’t believe me, ask his brother, Matt, who was out in four turns because his alliance with his brother ended just because Greg thought it’d be more interesting that way.

Russia: Angus. The token pacifist, Angus is the kind of guy who doesn’t want to fight with people, and only will if an ally asks him to. Where my philosophy is more of an isolationist, “wait and see” approach, his is much more Gandhi. While this is an awesome way to look at real life, it didn’t really translate to success in-game, as he never ended up taking a single territory from another player, and was the second player to lose. Still, gaining him as an ally was vital for two of the game’s major players, and he played a pretty big role in the Eastern theatre.

Turkey: Andy. A leader at heart, Andy has always been the one who convinces everyone to come out and do things when we all hung out in real life (before half of us moved halfway across the country). Andy’s pretty much an open book, and there are two things you can be sure of in any situation: he is as loyal as anyone comes, but if you cross him, he will never forget. In a game like Diplomacy, a reputation like that makes you incredibly powerful. You can be confident knowing that you will only be attacked by people who are sure that they can take you because if they can’t, you will chase them to the ends of the Earth (or Europe, I suppose). Out of the three people who survived, he’s the one I’ve written least about, and I think that speaks volumes about how he plays these games: it’s simple, but it’s powerful. He’s charismatic and clever.

United Kingdom: Travis. If there’s one word that describe’s Travis’s MO, it’s “diabolical.” He’s not a griefer, but he delights in crushing his enemies. Where Gavin can be almost robotic in his drive to win games, Travis brings a touch of evil to his playing. He doesn’t get anything out of simply winning– he believes that winning can be hollow, and losing can still be fun, sometimes. But he wants to compete, and as such, he can be mercenary. Finding the Achilles heel of his enemies is where he shines.

I will be posting more about the results of the game in the near future, but I realized that this article is already in “page down several times” territory, so I am going to split it up. I will do a series of articles on how the game unfolded, and a final article on my impressions.

I mean, do you remember me? I used to write things here. However, I haven’t been around in quite some time. For those who are interested in where I’ve been, I’ll keep it short, since this isn’t a personal blog: working 60-hour weeks in a QA position on games that most of you will never play, left said job, started my undergrad (finally) at Concordia University, started testing somewhere else on games you’ll almost DEFINITELY never play, dropping my PSP on the floor and breaking the LCD, writing articles for Everygame, chasing down late reviews for Everygame, and playing many more games without even remotely thinking about what I’d write about them.

But, this leave of absence from my blog (which may have killed its readership—I suppose we’ll see) is about to end (this is entirely unrelated to the fact that I recently got the bill for another year of owning this domain—at least, that’s what I’m telling myself). I’ve been gathering topics that I want to talk about. Instead, though, of talking about the stuff I’ve been playing more (which has been covered to death—a lot of Left 4 Dead, really, and Shadow Complex, and Scribblenauts, Trials HD, Final Fantasy Tactics, and some other stuff that I can’t even now remember) I have decided for the next couple of months to pontificate on some stuff I haven’t heard that much about on the Internet at large lately.

Here are some of the topics I intend to cover:

1 vs. 100, one of my surprise favorite games of the year.

Brickbreaker again. It’ll be short—I promise. But I hit the next “level” of play and quit the game forever. I think you’ll find the “why” entertaining. I hope. Maybe.

Dai Senryaku VII, a game I accidentally found at a pawn shop and bought on a whim, which ended up being proof to me that even in this Internet age, there are titles that I and everyone I know have never even heard of.

Diplomacy (as in, the board game), which I am currently playing by e-mail with some friends.

How do we create fun in losing? This is prompted by a piece that I read a few days ago (I will link it in the piece) about “sprayparks,” those places where kids shoot water at each other. Can there be games where getting shot is as fun as getting shot with water at a water park?

Everygame, again—I’ll go over some stuff that the writers have written that I have dug, and maybe a couple of my own pieces that have intrigued me, as well. Since, you know, we just hit the halfway point in our multi-year endeavour to cover all of those 720 SNES games listed.

I had a couple more ideas but I won’t write them for fear that I’ve already oversold myself here. I was going to put deadlines, even, but I can’t promise I’d even come close, even if I set them very conservatively, but– hello again, world.

My favourite film of the fest was Best Worst Movie, which is surprising because it was one of the ones I was least excited about going in. It’s… well, it’s a documentary about Troll 2, as I mentioned before, but it ended up being one of the most hilarious, heartbreaking, and charming filsm of the festival. Absolutely see this if you get the chance. The two “protagonists,” Michael Stephenson and George Hardy (the son and dad of Troll 2) seem like two of the most genuinely nice people ever– especially George, who was at the screening of this and Troll 2 and too kthe time to shake every single person’s hand in line before Troll 2 played– some 800 people or so. I have to go to the dentist soon to get a tooth filled, and I am tempted to go down to Alabama to get him to do it (since he’s a full-time dentist now).

The next best, in my opinion, was also a documentary. Playing Columbine could have been awful– a discussion on games as a means of expression, directed by the guy who made Super Columbine Massacre RPG!– but he manages to make his point without being arrogant, or dickish, or insensitive. He comes off as a bit of a messiah, but it’s still a very thoughtful view on the current censorship battles that games are going through, and provoked some great discussion.

Daytime Drinking was probably my favourite non-documentary of the film. Slow, but meaningfully so, the lead actor’s incredibly muted emotion during the whole film makes for the perfect vacation-turned-crappy flick. That is was shot on such a shoestring budget is impressive, but it stands among the best of the festival even without knowing the amount spent on it. Similarly, Cryptic is the new Timecrimes, or even Primer; a microbudget (done for $250,000, and everyone who worked on it was unionized or at least paid fairly, which is insanely impressive in Hollywood) sci-fi time-manipulation flick about a cell phone that, for some reason, can call back in time. I barely even roused enough interest in myself to go see this, but I am so glad I did. It is another amazing addition to this decade’s scantily-funded science fiction flick glut.

There was a special thing on pink eiga films, which are Japanese skin flicks of approximately 60 minutes in length with five sex scenes. Aside from those two restrictions, the directors of these flicks — many would become premier Japanese auteurs after getting their feet wet making these films for the Japanese sex cinemas — were free to do anything they wanted. Blue Film Woman was one of the films screening — a stylish, dark (almost Greek) tragedy about a man who can’t pay his debt to a ruthless debt collector. It devolves into a bunch of people’s lives really sucking, with some really fucked up sex scenes inbetween.

The last film worth mentioning is Breathless, yet another amazing Korean flick this year. Written, directed, produced and starring one guy (who sold his house to fund the production), it tells a story about an incredibly unlikeable person who beats people up for money. Yet, it shows you why is is how he is, and by the end he becomes one of the most sympathetic anti-heroes in recent film history.

Any of those five films I would highly recommend. Now, that’s enough film-related talking for this blog for a while– back ot video games at some point in the future, I suppose!

That all changes in July, though, when Fantasia rolls into town. Instead of stupid chair kickers and dumb middle-aged dudes who tell you what’s hpapening on the screen you get a bunch of film geeks who are really excited to see the source material. And, even more important, you get to see a bunch of movies that you ACTUALLY have to see in theatres– because you will probably never find a DVD or even a torrent of some of these obscure flicks from around the world. Or, since it’s basically a “genre” film festival, there’s some stuff you have to see in theatres because it so damn scary that you need to experience 300 other people SCREAMING (last year’s [REC] for example).

Last year, [REC] and 4bia and ESPECIALLY Adrift In Tokyo (I feel like an idiot for not putting it on my top 5 movies from last year) blew me away. I’m hoping this year will be as good. Here are some of the highlights, at least, for me now (I have yet to actually watch these, so they might be disappointments– we shall see):

Daytime Drinking — in Korea, there’s a rule: never turn down the first drink someone offers you. A dude goes to a resort town in winter (not exactly when it’s packed with people) to meet friends who aren’t there. He wanders around and people keep giving him soju (rice-based alcoholic beverage, about 20%, vodka-esque). It was shot on $20,000 and it’s apparently beautiful and funny.

Thirst — Have you seen Oldboy? Because the director of Oldboy has a new movie. About a priest. Who is a vampire.

Dream — I suppose all I can say is that Kim Ki-Duk directed this. If this means anything to you, you’re excited. If not, well, watch 3-Iron, The Isle, and Spring Summer Fall Winter And Spring. Especially 3-Iron, though.

Power Kids — Okay, it’s a kid’s movie, but… damn it, lsiten to how amazing this is. It’s the same producers as Ong Bak. They got four kids and trained the hell out of them to make them Muay Thai machines. They made a movie with them. They do their own stunts. This is like Tony Jaa meets SURF NINJAS. From THAILAND. How could that not be incredible?! SO MANY KID KNEES TO THE FACE!

Grace — Dead babies and crazy moms scare me. This seriously looks scary as hell.

Instant Swamp — the trailer’s only in Japanese so I won’t link it, but it’s by the Adrift in Tokyo guy, so here’s that trailer. It was one of the most charming movies I ever saw, so I am gonig into his next movie blind.

Hells — some really crazy looking anime movie. Don’t know much of anything about it, but I’ll check it out.

The Chaser — While the director of Oldboy has a different film at the festival, this is apparently the REAL spiritual successor– keeping that awesome Korean New Wave brutal flick thing going.

Playing Columbine — A documentary about Super Columbine Massacre RPG? Well, okay. Seeing it in Montreal, with the bit about Kimveer Gill… there are gonna be some not-impressed people, I reckon. It’ll be interesting to see a film open a dialogue about games as more than just mindless nerdy entertainment.

Black — film from France about a Senegalese dude stealing diamonds with an awesome funk soundtrack and scenes that look like they’re out of every 70s exploitation or 80s action flick. I am really excited for this. Also, the pun at the end: “L’afrique? No. Le fric, oui.” Amazing. I guess you have to understand a bit of French for it to be funny, but it is.

Best Worst Movie / Troll 2 — Troll 2 is considered one of the worst films ever made. It has an insane cult following. This documentary, directed by the guy who played the kid in it, explores the phenomenon. It’s followed by a screening of Troll 2.

I’m also seeing a few other movies: Blue Film Woman, Canary, Cryptic, Deadgirl, and Breathless… I know next to nothing about them though, so perhaps I’ll talk about them once I see them. I am seeing the first 5 movies on my list over the next three days, so expect to hear back!

That lead me to something else I have been thinking about a lot recently, as prompted by Angus’s recent article on game morality: creating artificial barriers to overcome.

I’ve seen it in countless other scenarios in games since I found myself staring into the 16-color abyss of a Netscape Navigator window in 1997: beat Final Fantasy with four white mages. Survive a Roguelike with only the items you can forage within the dungeon. Finish Ikaruga without firing a bullet (or, you know, finish it while playing two players simultaneously). Solo Onyxia. Beat Mirror’s Edge without using a gun. Don’t kill anyone in a Metal Gear Solid game. The list goes on, I’m sure.

I, on the other hand, never have the patience or skill to do any of these things; they require qualities (namely, hand-eye co-ordination and/or unemployment) I’m devoid of. However, I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty clever kid (my imagination is at least good enough to imagine that I’m an imaginative person) with a decent grasp on the English language (I know great nouns such as “dirge,” “colugo” and “arthrodesis”), and as such, I see Scribblenauts as a fantastic way to get creative with arbitrary rules.

I know it’s a bit early to start coming up with arbitrary “hard modes” for the game, but it’s been on my mind for a while. As such, I’d like to solicit ideas from my audience!

Here are some of my ideas so far, ranked in ascending order of assumed difficulty:

1. Played-Out Mode: Beat Scribblenauts without summoning zombies. ZOMBIES ARE PLAYED OUT.

2. Acrophobic Pacifist Mode: Beat Scribblenauts without use of height-assisting items or weapons (although, in true Pacifist style, tools which are also weapons can be used for their original tool-like purpose, so a chainsaw can be summoned but only to cut down a tree).

3. Fantasy Mode: Beat Scribblenauts summoning only items that only exist in the realm of fantasy. If a replica has been created of an item, it is okay, but use your discretion: a Bat’leth is okay because it is strictly from the realm of fiction, but a robot may not be, despite its birth in the realm of sci-fi.

4. Alphabet Aerobics Mode: Beat the first “level” (or stage, or starite, or whatever they end up being) using only items that start with A. Beat the next with B. The next with C. You know how the rest of the alphabet goes. Flip back to A, I guess, if there are more than 26, flip back to A, I guess. Have fun on level 24! (For the record, though, Phi-Life Cypher did the ABC thing better only a year later.)

5. Conversationist Mode: Beat Scribblenauts without destroying any of the environment. Summoning animate objects to do the destruction for you is also not permitted.

6. Breath of Life Mode: Beat Scribblenauts summoning only items that are alive upon their summoning. A tree is okay; a wood pole is not.

7. Midas Mode: Beat Scribblenauts summoning only gold-coloured items.

8. Intangible Mode: Beat Scribblenauts summoning only items whose noun is an “intangible.” While they typically become tangible once summoned in the game, words like “dream,” “temptation” or “theorem” are acceptable while “pillow,” “chocolate bar” or “right angle triangle” are not. Homonyms are a cheeky way to get around it, but are not allowed if the word you’re pretending is allowed isn’t a noun. So, no using stalk and saying “but the verb is intangible!”

9. Gadsby Mode: Beat Scribblenauts without using the letter E.

10. Summon Nothing Mode: Beat Scribblenauts summoning only items that rhyme with wolf. Remember that wolf does not rhyme with wolf. They’re the same word no matter what terrible rappers may try to trick you into believing.

11 (yes, THIS LIST GOES TO 11). 43 Mode: Beat Scribblenauts summoning only words that are a part of George W. Bush’s active vocabulary.

Tiff Chow and I are curating what will hopefully be a totally dope and expansive repository of great examples of text in videogames. From unforgettable splash screens to thoughtfully-placed speech bubbles (ooh, that reminds me… Comix Zone), anything where the text makes you sit up and say “I like the way that looks” will be up there, a couple entries at a time.

But, then again, chances are you’ve already seen this at Offworld. Or Destructoid. Or Infovore. Or Waxy. Or Tiff’s blog. Oder Nerdcore. Ou Graphism.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m late to the party on linking to someithng I had a part in making. Still trying to figure out if that’s sad or awesome. If you’re not already, follow us on Tumblr (or make a Tumblr so you can), and we’ll transport you to…

…sorry. Lame joke.

Aside from criticizing the “invisible hand of God” that keeps a fully tabulated and annotated count of how many “good” points and “not so good” MoralityPoints™ you have, he raises interesting ideas as to how one might truly present moral quandaries to a player, and, therefore, add new depth to “playing” and “beating” a scenario.

But the most interesting parts of moral conflict, the ones that separate pulp and genre from literature, are the ones that are ambiguous and dependent on situation. I ran an Unknown Armies (a pen and paper role-playing game) game for some friends awhile ago where everyone played sort of idealized selves and put them through any number of horrible events that have no grounding in life. Players reactions were surprising. People acted out of panic, anger, fear, attachment, all of the things that many simplified moral codes urge us to deny.

Definitely worth a look, if this sort of thing is up your alley.

1) 150-450 words, roughly, unless it’s a special case;
2) At least one screenshot;
3) No number scores (6/10, 85%, etc).

It was a good idea, though. I brought it back and started recruiting friends to write for it. It started with myself, Scott, Angus, Brian, and Mekki. From there, it began to flourish. Monday through Friday, we’d bravely wade into the sports-game-infested waters of the SNES catalogue. I had (and still have) an ulterior motive, though: by forcing deadlines and topics, I got some of my most gifted writer friends motivated enough to actually write something. Looking at those previous blogs will show you how long it’s been since they even wrote something of their own accord.

And, despite my own shoddy writing on the site (my own official excuse is twofold: one, my focus is now on badgering people who are late to submit ASAP; and, secondively, I’m experimenting with copying other people’s writing styles or toying with my own on a weekly basis), it’s going fabulously. We’ve since doubled in authorship. Scotty joined the team, bolstering the ever-important “dick jokes” quota required for a modern website; Travis, too, was recruited for another quota: pretentious English Master’s student-style existential pontification. Adam found the site through my blog (I think) and expressed interest, so I hooked him up to help with the load. Alex showed interest, and contributed to the noise with his debut article on Chessmaster– in all-caps. Tiff Chow joined the team to round it out to a nice, even ten.

Since the site gets little traffic, aside from some very weird search engine results (my favorite at the moment is still last week’s “where can a condom get lost in vagina”), so I thought I’d highlight some of my favourite articles from the site over the past few months. I’ve included links that will allow you to read just that author’s works, as it’s a lot more enjoyable to read one author at a time and develop a sense of their style. These are in random order, except for the first two who I recommend above the rest of us (sorry, everyone, but Scott and Travis truly have this thing locked down — step up your game if you wann be at the top of the next roundup in a few months!).

TRAVIS makes you want to read from the get-go. From his review of the diabetes edutainment title, Captain Novolin: Captain Novolin is a brilliant metaphor for the struggle with obesity and diabetes, but also the simple yet unending fight against temptation that we all face as ultimately flawed human beings.

Also check out his Chrono Trigger review. It’s some of the best game-related writing I’ve seen on the Internet. It’s a crime he isn’t writing more about the games and the industry. But there is a difference between your standard unsophisticated video game story, upon which I now smirk from my ivory tower, and something like Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger is a fantasy/sci-fi genre epic translated from Japanese, and it wasn’t written by professionals in either language, I’m fairly sure. This is, generally, not a recipe for the most delicious of successes. But it’s something special. It has a rather intricate narrative of time travel and the alteration of the future through your actions; it has characters that, to some extent, come alive. It has a nasty, big-boss villain who you can even convince to come to your side, if you do it right. It has multiple endings and a terrifying final boss that destroys worlds and waits for you at the terminus of every timeline, like a living, breathing dark god of entropy.

SCOTT manages to turn many of his pieces into hilarious little bits of short fiction. From his review of Andre Agassi Tennis: I’m glad these 16-bit graphics don’t allow the detail necessary to see the disappointment on the faces of my family as they sit in the audience and hold back tears of shame and disgust. How did this spastic even find his way to the tennis court? I knew there was something wrong with him…spends his whole day watching Mr. Belvedere re-runs and eating Sun Chips out of a dirty wooden bowl.

Or, check out his write-up of California Games II: I hoped that once the drug testing was done, I’d be banned from the California Games forever. Too many dark memories, scattered fragments riding a wave of victory that took me through the silver-lined gutters of stardom. Once you’ve won a California Game, the ultimate test is detoxing from the heady fallout of athletic recognition. Party people. Opiates fell like candy from the sky into my open mouth and I twitched slightly and pulled the hair of a supermodel. She screamed in outrage, but there were others waiting to take her place.

WILL (that’s me!) misses the simpler times. From Brett Hull Hockey 95:Originally I was going to talk about the weird 3/4 perspective in this game, and the even weirder old guy with greasy hair who POINTS at your coaching resource allocations with his HAND, in effect being a living cursor, but what’s the point? You don’t care about that. I don’t care either. I do, however, care about a bygone era where kids had artifacts other than the ones you see in poorly-encoded Youtube videos.

SCOTTY hates rudders, even though the word sounds sort of dirty. I hate flying games. Flying games are way too complicated and there’s usually no pay off. It’s like trying to sleep with girls that listen to NPR and check Pitchfork every 5 minutes. I just don’t have time to devote to something that won’t end in burgers or orgasms, or if I’m lucky, both, in any order I see fit.

MEKKI gets why Battletoads included two modes. From Battlemaniacs: The game is full of great times for two players. You can select between two modes. In one mode, you can hit your teammate. In the other mode, you can’t it each other. The first is great for trash talking. The second is great for actually making it anywhere in the game.

BRIAN managed to truncate every story ever quite succinctly, with Art of Fighting: (the) Art of Fighting’s plot is simple enough. Ryo’s sister gets kidnapped. Ryo and his friend Antonio Banderas go save her. Along the way you uppercut some dudes. The end.

ANGUS has been MIA for a while (finals tend to do that), but he’s coming back with a vengeance. From his recent article on Beavis and Butthead: It would be a beat-em-up if there was any sort of combat system. It would be a platformer if it had platforms. It would be a puzzle-platformer if it had any puzzles. It plays a little bit like A Boy and His Blob. Except the blob doesn’t do anything. And you can slap it. Repeatedly.

ALEX hasn’t been with us long, but his first review, of Chessmaster, is a lot of fun:
THIS AIN’T YOUR GRANDMA’S CHESS VIDEO GAME, FUCKERS! THIS IS ON SOME REAL, STREET-LEVEL SHIT. TOP OF THE LINE MOTHERFUCKING CHESS GRAPHICS! INSANE MOVES! WHITE KNUCKLE ACTION! THIS IS THE BAD BOYS 2 OF CHESS VIDEO GAMES FOR THE SUPER NINTENDO!

ADAM, as well, is new to the site. He has two reviews up (should be three later today!) and he was lucky enough to start with everyone’s archnemesis: the snackfood tie-in. But maybe I’ve been asking all the wrong questions. Would it sell a pack of Cheetos? Probably it would!
“Screw this, Cheetos are heaps better than this game. Wanna get some Cheetos?”
“HELL YES.”

Please check it out. While they can’t all be hits (I turn beet-red when I think about how bad some of my articles were. My Axelay acrostic poetry stands out as one of the most embarrassingly pathetic jokes I’ve ever commited to a computer), there are gems worth looking to as great pieces on games you (and, usually, the author) have no interest in.

And if you’re interested in writing, let me know. We may add a couple more in a month or so.

Instead, I got a bunch of comments that challenge my position, and that really put my brain into overdrive. I think we fail to challenge people’s opinions far too often on this whole Internet vidyagame blogging sphere thing, and I truly appreciate the feedback. So much so, that I’m writing this response! It might be worth reading the first article before this one or else it may not make sense.

Matthew Gallant was the first to post, and he said:

Of course memory == binary, so that’s another direction you could take.

This is in reference to my use of the word “mems” to replace “videogames.” He’s right, and mems is close to memes, so… bines? I like bines.

From commenter mad, I got this response:

There is history here; see Chiptunes, 8-bit, 16-bit.

Naming it after the memory makes it feel static, like data. Naming it after the processor makes it dynamic, which is what games are typically all about.

Compare also to processes, executables, etc.

I see what you’re trying to do here; but, the only problem I see is that it assumes that a… a mem… (you know what? for the sake of the argument, I’m jsut going to call ithem mems for the rest of this entry) must be dynamic. Why didn’t they name “the film” after the projector? Because to name an artistic medium because of a characteristic you assign to it does a disservice to anything that wishes to use that medium to illustrate the opposite of that characteristic. What if a mem’s purpose was to communicate stasis, or stagnation? The only truly neutral way to name it is to simply name it for what it is on (ie. film, memory/binary)… not what takes it from that form and displays it (as a projector or processor would).

mad adds:

also note:
video games are about graphics
computer games are about numbers
most players don’t care about the other stuff :P

But, they don’t have to be. They can be about whatever the originator wants them to be about.

teh_red_baron says:

And then there’s ‘movies’, or ‘moving pictures’.
I think ‘videogames’ is fine. It’s inextricable. All it takes is exposure for people to respect the medium.
But I still like what you’ve attempted here.

The terms movies/moving pictures, while not perfectly accurate (after all, there are experimental films where the pictures does, in fact, never move), is restrictive but nowhere near as restrictive as forcing every piece of computer-assisted interactive entertainment/art to be a game. While exposure is key, so is changing some of the very language we use to describe the medium. After all, respected games are still games.

Eric J:

in the middle days of Infocom, they decided that the moniker “interactive fiction” was too clunky to go on, and announced a contest to have it renamed.
The contest ended without a winner, nobody was able to come up with anything decent.

I rather fancy the term interactive fiction. What else could explain it better? Plus, it shortens to IF, which is bloody brilliant for so many reasons.

Travis‘s response will need to be broken up, I reckon, if I’m going to respond to it at all properly:

The problem goes beyond nomenclature. The medium of which we speak is largely composed of, yes, games. It is to games that we look when we want to make some kind of critical artistic analysis.

It is indeed largely composed of games, but it doesn’t need to be. I agree: the nomenclature isn’t the only issue, but, it is one that needs to be assessed.

Can a game be art? Is chess an art? What about Puerto Rico? Is good game design an art form – establishing balanced choices and keeping players entertained and stimulated throughout? What about playing a game – is there art in being a mindboggling Street Fighter expert? Does that mean polevaulters and gymnasts are artists too?
There is a philosophical distinction between “design” and “art,” one that only became pronounced after classical times. Building a beautiful chair that is like a minimalistic sculpture is surely art, but building a GOOD chair became delineated from that. Some would suggest that the gap between them is narrowing again.

This skirts the original question, which is, why must the medium only be games? There is interactive scuptural art which is certainly not called a “game”– immediately to mind springs an exhibit where a robot was sweeping a floor. When people approached it, it would sweep more feverishly. By the end of the night (accidentally, I might add), it had managed to etch a design in the buffed concrete underneath it. That’s not the point, though; while the generative art it created is interesting, the point was the interactive structural piece. Why does all computer software need to be a “game,” then? That robot wasn’t a game. Whether the creation of a game is art or not is meaningless — the question is, why must we call any attempt at art within the medium a “game”?

Beyond that, should “video games” remain in the arena of gaming, or should there be attempts to move beyond entertainment to a more artistic realm? As you say, most art is not “fun” in the same sense of the rest of its medium. I have fun reading a good entertaining story, but when I read Joyce or Faulkner it’s not “fun.” It’s satisfying, it’s engaging, it’s fulfilling, it’s mind-broadening, but not fun.

I think that, as a medium, there’s absolutely no reason that it shouldn’t be explored in pursuit of experiences other than fun. I can’t justify that; it’s an opinion. I don’t think humanity would be where it is now had film or literature simply stayed in the realm of fun, though.

But how else can people be motivated to engage in something so interactive? How else can their interest be gained, especially in terms of a medium so deeply embedded in our minds as a game? The video game is so closely tied to the engine of industry, and so young, that I don’t foresee it breaking away from being fun – usually mindless, shallow fun – for profit. Of course, film and books and music are massively profit-based as well. There exists still a strong current of “art” film and “literature,” at least, which is driven by artistic needs and desires rather than entertainment = money.

There exists a similar current within gamemaking. It’s a lot smaller, and much more stunted, but in time, it will be a force, given the current trajectory.

I really don’t foresee the imminent success of a game that isn’t “fun” to play, but on the other hand we are seeing some now – the one where you play a grandmother walking through a cemetery, and all you do is walk and wait to potentially die, for example. Probably not “successful” but it has been published and received news stories from various major websites.

Exactly. It moves away from gameness, but is still called a game. Wherefore?

mad again:

Games of poker, chess, football, war, the heart…. with money, pride, life or love on the line, all games contain anticipation, drama, conflict, hope, tragedy, catharsis. There’s always a context, a history; there are colorful characters, their developments and revelations. To win or lose is simple and pure; but it provides a reason, and a meaning to everything that surrounds it.
Games aren’t supposed to be fun because they are fun, but because that’s what can sell to people who just want to have… fun! Trying to distance oneself from games not because of what they are but how they’re sold is kind of meh…
..‘Game’ is the perfect word though. My argument is that the only reason it seems like an improper term is because the markets, media and even academia, have co-opted the term to suite their needs. To rebel against the word ‘game’ because of how they use it, is to implicitly buy into their worldview.

The question isn’t, though, what defines a game: the question is, why must “game” define so much? It’s as much a misnomer as when someone calls commissioned urban aerosol art (yeah, I just called it that) “graffiti.” It misses the point. Furthermore, I’m not sure the word game is being misused. Sure, there are dozens of entries in the dictionary for “game,” but to me, it means something that’s meant to challenge in a way that can be defeated. Art can’t be defeated; it does challenge, but that’s a different definition of the word “challenge.” You can interpret a piece of art; you cannot master a piece of art, though. I want this medium to have the opportunity to be interpreted without being mastered.

Ben Abraham writes:

I think that “video game” (or videogame if, like me, you prefer) comes close to describing what they’re usually “put on”, since they’re usually on some sort of video screen.
I also think that the conventions around memory say that something is stored “in memory” rather than on memory derails your argument a bit.
What’s wrong with ‘Computer Games’? That *is* what they are played/put on, after all – some kind of computer. In fact, ‘computer games’ used to be my defacto term for video games before I picked up that convention.

Whether it’s in or on, memory is the place it is put to be worked on, distributed, and consumed. But, the point is twofold– not only is “video” outdated, but “games” is as well, in my opinion.

And, finally, Tellurian writes:

There’s the constantly ongoing bitchfight between consoleros and PCgamers wether you’re talking computer- OR videogames, since one term supposedly doesn’t fit the other’s contents.
Going in the “Movie” direction, the term “Interactive” could be coined there, since that IS the common element of these.
“Yesterday I watched a movie and played some online interactives.”
Yeah still sounds a bit like a 70s sci-fi version of today.

Interactives is indeed another possibility. Originally I was going to try to work with that term. But, at some point, I decided that I couldn’t derive a punchy, one-syllable name from it. Certainly nothing that could invade the public arena like “games” already has. As far as computer vs. video goes– do people actually argue about this? I call it whichever comes to my mind first, generally.

The point is, basically, that I have a problem with calling the entire form “games” when the medium has potential to be more than games. Calling it games means that people are not only less likely to make non-”games” due to the name, but people are also less likely to accept those non-”games” for not being fun, even if they have something else to offer.

I had a conversation with Matthew Gallant recently about the term “video games” and how it’s useless and paints the entire medium into a corner. I mean, clearly the video part needs to go. There are entirely auditory games. I heard about an XNA one recently where you have to sue your speakers to evade a monster of some sort. He brought up “interactive art” or “interactive entertainment” but who’d say something like that? I think at a certain point we decided that, since it’s software, and it’s art, why not software art?

The thing about software art is that it works insofar that you might refer to filmmaking as “the cinematic art.” Or, you know, when you’re in school and you have to study “language arts.” That’s not what we need, though. We need a good, solid noun.

So, I decided to do a little research: where did other media get their everyday names from?

BOOK: From Old English bōc { Proto-Germanic *boks, probably related to *bōk- (“beech”) (perhaps originally used to make writing-tablets). Cognate with Dutch boek, German Buch, Swedish bok. Compare beech. — Wiktionary

Right, so the book is probably named after that which they were originally put on. That makes sense, right?

MUSIC: Now, hold up a minute. Music isn’t the product that you have. You have singles, or albums, or MP3s or whatever, right? Let’s look at album, here. From Latin album (“blank white writing tablet”) { albus (“white”). That’s Wiktionary again. So, it seems like the musical album was informed by the more traditional book-like album, which is a word for what it’s on. Again. I am seeing a trend here.

FILM: A film is on film. I never call it a movie anyway. It sounds like a kid’s word. Besides, film supports my argument.

Books, albums, and film are references to what they’re on. What’s a “videogame” or “video game” or “piece of interactive entertainment/art” or “software art” on? Well, probably a number of things, potentially. A punchcard. A USB key. A GD-ROM. A hard drive. A website.

Thing is, it’s always on memory.

So what if we called them “mems?” It’s short, catchy, doesn’t pigeonhole itself by explaining only one facet of itself, and refers to the one thing it needs to exist: the memory upon which it is imprinted.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think this is going to happen. I just needed to put a cease fire on the war going on between my blog and the massive writer’s block in my head. I banged this out in… well, by the time I finish this paragraph, 20 minutes. I needed to make sure my blog still works. Or I can still press buttons on a keyboard. Or something.

So, yeah. MEMS. It’s the new slang. Someone tell Michael Abbott, Ian Bogost, N’Gai Croal, and Geoff Keighley to start saying it– they’ve got the blog, academic, enthusiast media and mainstream media pretty much locked down. Those four are like the Voltron of changing our lexicon. I implore you, gents: MEMS.

It could’ve used a few more QA runs. Its physics are dodgy. I assume you know a thing or two about Breakout clones, if you’re reading this; if not, try this for about 30 seconds and i’m sure you’ll know what I mean. You get a paddle, and a ball, and a bunch of bricks that the ball breaks, and you have to break them all. It’s Pong Vs. A Wall. It’s ubiquitous.

There are good Breakout clones out there, to be sure: the DS title “Nervous Brickdown” played around with the formula a lot, to pretty good results. Arkanoid is an arcade classic. I’ve not played Arkanoid for the DS, let alone with the custom paddle controller, but I bet it’s fantastic. Brickbreaker on the Blackberry is mediocre when compared to the vast multitude of clones out there. Its entire existence is designed to waste a bit of time here and there and make you consider buying more games on your phone.

And yet, I play it — hardcore.

I can think of few other games with a more broken physics set. Balls will bounce at weird angles and go through walls and the paddle will completely miss balls it shouldn’t miss at times. The controls aren’t exactly good, either: the trackball on a Blackberry Pearl isn’t exactly the most high-quality device (more on that later). Maybe, though, it’s that it’s on my phone, and I don’t look like a total dork staring at it on the metro, but I end up playing it a lot. Far more than my DS, anyway. I have a couple other games for my Pearl, though. A friend of mine worked for a place where he could get me a few for free, but nothing touches Brickbreaker as far as play goes. It’s so lightweight that it boots immediately and requires virtually no battery, and you can pause it at any time.

What I love about Brickbreaker is… I can’t believe I’m saying this… the depth. I am absolutely convinced that a lot of the depth is accidental (to be fair, I am convinced a vast majority of quality in games is accidental, over the history of video games), but it’s there nonetheless. The powerups are as bland as cornmeal, but open the game to interesting permutations. Multi makes many balls, but they shoot in four upward directions from the main ball the second you get it. This means waiting a split second might mean the difference between uselessness and quick finishing. Gun allows you to blow up any brick in one shot, even the “unbreakable ones.” This means you can break some levels by popping holes into boxes with only one rather inaccessible hole in them. One powerup flips your controls, offering no bonus other than the usual 50 points coming with a powerup– making it poison to a new player, and free points to a veteran.

The longer you play, the faster the ball moves until you lose a life. If you aren’t directing every shot with precision (as much as the nonsensical physics will afford, at least), the puzzle starts dropping towards you, applying even more pressure. There are levels I am convinced are unbeatable if you let it drop all of the way, so it often makes sense to drop a life that these points like some sort of ablative armor. Throw a steak to the hungry wolves outside to spare your life-meat.

Once you beat the 34th level, you loop back to the first stage. It took me months to realize this, because some of the levels leading up are so brutally difficult to the learning player. Once you loop back to 1, though, you think “boy, I can just play infinitely!” However, the puzzles start dropping from shot ONE in this playthrough.

My high score when I started writing this was 28000 points. Since, it became 32780. I made it to level 31 of the second playthough. Sadly, I’ll probably never beat this score, because Pearl’s trackball has a pretty poor lifetime. Mine sticks intermittently, now, and I lose dozens of lives because it decides to crap out mid-move.

Recently, I’ve been playing Dwarf Fortress. If you’re not familiar, it’s a wildly inaccessible and “hardcore” game, in alpha stage for the PC. You take control of seven dwarves, who are dropped somewhere on a very detailed, randomly-generated planet, and must fend for themselves with the meager supplies with which they start. Oh, and the graphics are ASCII– so, really, they look more like floating hpapy faces than they do like dwarves.

The thing is, this game is intense. The game’s unofficial catchphrase is “losing is fun!” There’s no mouse input, so it relies entirely on a cryptic keyboard input system. It’s geared to kick your ass over and over, and appeals to the most hardcore of roguelike-loving, masochistic super-simulation geeks.

And yet, I play it. Casually.

It may not make sense, but allow me to paint a picture for you of my typical playthough. It starts with generating a world, a massive processor-buster that takes ten minutes and procedurally generates a geography, a thousand years of culture, and the constantly shifting borders of good and evil. Once done, you can begin a new game, and set up your seven dwarves with skills, items, and a location. Picking a location is important. You want water, at the very least; however, you also want a mountain to dig into from the start (you don’t have to, but it makes things a bit easier on you). You want nice types of stone, to sell or make into things, and you want to avoid aquifers, which make your structures leak. Unless you play hardcore, anyway. Which I do not.

Once you’ve picked a location and setup, your little dudes hit the great wild and need to make a home. Here’s where I get casual about it: I turn it into a game of The Sims. I make little bedrooms for my dudes, make sure they have food, make them do jobs (like making doors out of stone and chairs out of wood), make their living space good… and, by the time the first year is over, and they have a nice little place, I start losing interest. I don’t particularly care about fighting badguys or trade routes or traps or weapons. To paraphrase something I’m sure I’ve already paraphrased this year, in this blog, I just want four walls and limestone slabs for my dwarves.

But, really, this is yet another reason the “hardcore/casual” indicators are sloppy, particularly for games. There are many “hardcore” games that are, for lack of a better term, played in a “casual” manner. I picked up Halo 3, a holy grail of hardcoredom, and played a match here or there online and appreciated it. I thought it was fun to be able to jump really high. I hardly touched it after the first few weeks. I might pick it up again if some friends decide to have a round, but I require little more. I play a bit of Rock Band when drunk, but only on medium, and I don’t really care about challenge so much as I do pushing buttons and making lights blink. Starcraft? I dig the colors, but you lose me once you talk about build trees or click speeds. I like to pick up Street Fighter every once in a while, but I still don’t know what a link or chain or focus or cancel are. I just like tossing hadokens. My Dwarf Fortress games are just that: the equivalent of doing a few hadokens, enjoying myself, and turning it off.

It’s not to say I’m simply a casual gamer, however. There are casual games I play in a hardcore manner. I’ll tell you a bit more about that in my next post called “Casual, played Hardcore: My Experience With Brickbreaker.” Yeah, Brickbreaker. As in, the free mobile game that ships on Blackberries.

I’ve been looking at 2600 games recently, and there’s a real magic to the package design back then. Maybe it’s because there weren’t unwritten, unbreakable rules set by advertising “gurus” and stiff-collared CEOs. Maybe it’s because the games’ art was intended to describe, not complement, the in-game assets. There was a certain amount of imagination that needed to be had; not simply InDesign wizardry and wads of cash and an “artists’ liaison.” Here are some of my favourites, and current points of comparision (click for full-sized images):

Possibly the /best/ game cover of 2008.

But 25 years before, Enduro.

Take, for example, the covers of these two games: Burnout Paradise and Enduro. Now, don’t get me wrong: Burnout Paradise has one of the most attractive covers in recent memory. It takes some risks: a (relatively) huge amount of whitespace, a rather cartoony drawing of a car, an off-angle shot of a city in the distance. But, in my opinion, that’s where the awesome ends. In the cartoony drawing of a car, you’ve got a screenshot of the gameplay. You’ve got the same blurry, zoomy coloring method that you see on virtually any other console. The box doesn’t tell me what the game’s about in any way; it’s just a piece of (in this case, better than average) corporate art meant to entice. I think it only entices accidentally.

Against it, look at Enduro. This is a fantastic drawing. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Burnout Paradise cover took at least a little bit of inspiration from it. The name alone evokes thoughts of, well, endurance. It doesn’t necessarily tell the viewer that it’s about driving. The image, however, looks at an image of the game (see the four “tracks”), and translates it into a beautiful, fantastic image of a folding journey through night and day. It escapes the box that attempts to contain it, even, and continues right into the bleed.

A modern re-branding of a classic.

A classic cover for an unknown game.

To the left, R-Type Dimensions. It’s not a real box cover, no. It’s also not a new game. However, it falls into all fo the irritating trappings: trading-card shading, mascot worship, no real concept of what’s happening in the game, overuse of orange and blue… it comes off as perhaps mildly related to Halo 3, I suppose, which might stimulate sales, but it doesn’t inspire the imagination.

To the right, Rescue Terra I. Perhaps it’s not a sterling representation of excellence, but I appreciate its use of color and perspective. The game’s title isn’t just crossed thoughtlessly across the top of the image; it adds to the dynamic of the forward-lurching image of the spaceship battling what was probably once an evil alien. Again, it’s maybe not the best, but it’s exciting compared to what’s put on covers these days.

Ubisoft's most transgressive title. That's saying something, huh?

Hey, more rabbits.

Okay, these two have a tenous link: rabbits. But, still: this is about boring vs. exciting cover design. First, Ubisoft’s Rabbids; blueish background, some orangey-yellow mascots, same old shading, no real relevance to gameplay. Just some art loosely based on the game. It implies mischief, I suppose, but not enough to inspire me to buy it for my hypothetical child. Second is Wabbit, which looks like something I really would buy for that child: a dreamlike, pastoral fairy tale of an image that proudly displays a main character who’s some girl who lives on a farm. Content aside, cconsider the design: Avant garde ITC font used somewhere other than a Rock Band game, with angles within the design that compliment such a dramatic font. It’s weird that the company’s name is so much bigger than the game’s name, but I still dig it. A myriad of colors not always seen on covers. Creepy, surreal perspective. I’ve never heard of Wabbit, but I want to play it– or, at the very least, watch a kid play it (not in a creepy way, don’t bother making the joke).

Colorful gem-breaking game 1.

Colorful gem-breaking game 2.

I know I railed on orange and blue, but LOOK AT THE SHADING ON THAT DUDE. He looks like he’s made of a blob of sentient mercury. Again, the realer-than-real-in-a-Surrealist-way thing is going on here, and Ram It rocks it. Peggle’s box is one of the most boring, uninspired, lazy bits of box art I’ve seen in ages. I suppose I shouldn’t expect more considering the art IN the game. At least the ball is the “mascot” and not that stupid unicorn. The latter dude, though? He looks insane. I love it. Based on box art alone, the second I would play sooner than the first.

That is, if I were interested in breaking gems. Which i’m not right now.

Space! Again!

Spa--whaaaaaat?

Mass Effect: Blue. Orange. Some people. Space-ness. “Sci-fi” font. Game name at top. This looks like everything ever. EVER. Earth Dies Screaming isn’t much better but let’s tlak about HOW AWESOME THAT FONT IS. It’s called “Shatter,” it’s an ITC font, and it looks insane. It’s my favourite font of the moment– I even put it in my new site banner. The picture’s got wicked grids and crazy perspective and all that, but the name? Wow. That’s important. Mass Effect doesn’t mean anything. It’s like the name and the box were afterthoughts. “I dunno, make it look… spacey. Make it sound… spacey?” The Earth Dies Screaming, though… that’s a name that makes you think someone over at 20th Century Fox found someone on the street and gave him a nickel to name their game. Luckily, he was already yelling “THE EARTH DIES! SCREAMING!!!” as they asked him, so he didn’t even have to think about it or hear that it’s a sci-fi game. Apparently there’s a movie of the same name from the olden days. Who cares, though? That game looks awesome. Mass Effect? If I didn’t know I wanted the game already, I would’ve skipped it based on the box art alone.

Mascot party!

Holy awesome.

Here are two games for kids with “adorable” main characters. The former has the excruciating committee-built feel all over it. I mean, really? Why not just “Boom Blocks?” Or, even better, why not any other name in the universe? Something like “I Want My Mommy.” OH WAIT THAT’S TAKEN. By the GREAT looking game on the right. Huge, unhappy teddy bear takes up the whole image, as if it were some sort of insane portrait, ONLY OF A TEDDY BEAR. HE’S CRYING. But seriously, look at the design. The rainbow? The off-center, off-angle title in a very attractive san-serif font against the black background. It commands your attention; Boom Blox’s cheesy title demands it. Boom Blox’s characters are an embarrassment to an amazing game. Mommy’s teddy bear, if anything, makes the game look better than it inevitably is.

Look, I get that the other game is weird. But, the thing is, the design is spot on. I’d go so far as to say it’s Swiss-inspired (aside from the image, which creates an interesting juxtaposition between adorable and streamlined). The former is from the Videogame School Of Boring Case Design. With Capital Letters. Seriously.

Yuck.

I can get behind THAT flying saucer.

Mid-budget current-gen games are the worst for it. You know that they do it to look like the big guys, but they can’t quite do is AS well. They also don’t want to put too much thought into it for fear of not selling like the also-rans they want to be (note: the also-rans that their investors and marketing teams want them to be: obviously the design and programmers and such would love it to be the best it could be). Here’s a poem to describe this cover: I see orange, I see blue, I see mascot, hey, eff you. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “But the latter is boring too! It has lots of orange and blue too!” Well, you know what else it has? It has the cover of Independence Day. A DECADE BEFORE INDEPENDENCE DAY HAD IT. It also uses the orange and blue differently; not to create “Coooool” blending effects, but to create stark contrast. It has the kinds of sci-fi art I can get behind– takes itself seriously, but has a flying saucer. It also has a Futura stencil font, which is awesome on anything. Also, what’s it shooting? A crazy wall? Probably something that is represented in-game because it has the extra duty of EXPLAINING THE GAME (there’s probably… a blue wall, or something). Whatever, I like looking at it. I HATE looking at the other one.

————————————

So, what’s my point? My point is, the homogeneity in designs these days is excruciating. I didn’t pick these 360 titles just to prove a point: I just picked a few RANDOM 2600 covers, and tried to pick games that were somehow tangentially related to them in modern releases. I am REALLY not trying to “game” your opinion. I am just showing you some observations. And, yeah, a lot of these old games looked like each other. But, they don’t look like anything now– so using their design motifs, however retro, will make you stand out. Actually, no. It wouldn’t even be “retro” if you did it right. They use timeless, Swiss-inspired (I said it… AGAIN!) design rules. And those parts, at least, will stand the test of time.

I’m gonig to be writing reviews for Mirror’s Edge, Fallout 3, Operation Darkness another mystery game in the future. I had been close to finishing them, but stupidly, didn’t save the notepad, and my computer crashed. This has actually happened more than once; my home computer has some sort of internal hemorrhaging which prevents it from staying on an unblue screen, and my work computer occasionally loses power because the wiring in Montreal’s Old Port is uniformly miserable. This is about the fourth time I’ve written this, and the other reviews were written at least twice, as well. But, this time, I think I finished it! And saved! Now all I have to do is put it into WordPress, huzzah!

CRAYON PHYSICS DELUXE

http://www.crayonphysics.com/ — Get it for $20 on the website.

ADD: Crayon Physics Deluxe doesn’t have a too-long, boring tutorial. It ramps up in an engaging way. You always have something new to do, and none of the levels are too boring or same-y. It looks pretty. There’s nothing to criticize in this category; you can sit down, start playing, enjoy yourself, stop whenever, and pick it right back up again. 5/5

OCD: When I bought the game, it was maybe a 2 or a 3 in this category. While the game flowed very nicely and the difficulty ramped up well, there was a certain point where it started to look irritatingly difficult and it was easier to use two fall-back tactics (gameplay spoiler alert: pulleys with silly giant boulders attached, or blocks stuck underneath the ball that raise it artificially, can solve nearly any problem in the least graceful way imaginable). However, the later addition of a second star per level for “cool,” “old school” and whatever the other one is (graceful or something) solutions forced you to go bak ot levels where you might have been lazy, and resolve them for maximum reward. It’s a surprisingly complex game, assuming all of these levels actually can be solved in such a way. 4/5

Escapism: You wouldn’t think this is a game that would incite a high escapism rating, but it turns out to be an incredibly engrossing game, indeed. Some of my most favourite music of the past few years is included in here, a sort of Boards Of Canada-infused dreamfugue with notes of the overworld music from Rome: Total War. This combination pleases me. The simple graphics are not drab and annoying, as I was worried they’d be; they are perfect. They willingly take a backseat, at once clear and subtle, allowing the game’s central mechanic to breathe. Indeed, it’s only when you think about them that the graphics really become a focal point, and when you do, you’re rewarded with washed-out, fuzzy nostalgia for your developmental days. And, unlike the current “nostalgia” trend in games, this one doesn’t cash in on Saturday morning cartoons and NES. It speaks to something for universal: the joy in drawing and creating and imagining those drawings to life. 4/5

Histrionics: The indie game zeitgeist certainly means a lot of people will be talking about this game, particularly due to its interesting presentation and method of gameplay. With Scribblenauts on the way, and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, there’s high interest in games where you get to create your own stuff. However, when it comes to this game, there’s only so much you can say: something this simple, both in front of and behind the scenes, means that there won’t be a lot of staying power. It’s also not exactly the first game to do what it does; those two games whose names I forget were pretty similar (one is a flash title and one was a four-letter free PC download). Still, 4/5

VERDICT: Pick it up. It’s something you can play when you’re tired, or you’re not playing something else. It’s a frontrunner for one of the best games of 2009. It’s relaxing, and addicting, and easy to pick up, and difficult to conquer, and intriguing to even watch others play. There is little higher praise than those things combined. 3/3

The score: 81%. This game represents the top quintile, and, in the opinion of the reviewer, is deemed “an excellent experience, and a lovely way to spend a lazy evening.”

The thing you need to recognize is that the ultimate point of the scale is “should I play this game?” <--this becomes important!!!

Histrionics is defined as "Exaggerated, overemotional behaviour, especially when calculated to elicit a response; melodramatics" (thanks, wiktionary). As such, any gamer who intends to talk about games (and, in the end, these reviews are intended to be read by those two like to talk about games) might, from time to time, be a bit guilty of it. But that's just the name.

To write about games, you need to play games. And to write anything that people might read (a histrionic without an audience is perhaps the saddest of things) you need to play what other people might play. This is where the ultimate question comes in: should I play this game? A mediocre game that is nonethless lucky enough to be drenched in hype should be played more than a mediocre game that nobody's playing, simply because it allows the player to engage in the conversation occurring about the game's quality.

Imagine for a moment that there are two games of roughly equal quality to the gamer. In this example, I am going to talk about Clive Barker’s Jericho and Gears of War. Overall, I’d probably give the two of them about 10/15 total in the other three categories (OCD, ADD, escapism). While somewhat engaging (3ish ADD), and somewhat technically interesting, they left me cold emotionally. However, I maintain that Gears of War is infinitely more important for the average consumer of my review to read. Why? Because Jericho is just another shooter, while Gears is currently insanely important to the landscape of shooters (and games in general, really) out there (due to its massive fanbase, Cliff being insane, the ten shitloads of memes is spawns, “introduction” of cover mechanics to games (which I’d more chock up to Clancy games than GOW but I digress), etc). While I don’t think GoW is better, I think it’s more important to play.

Therefore, 15 points are “is it good?”, and 5 points are “…but does it matter?” This is the essence of the histrionics category.

Keep in mind, also, that a game can get a 5/5 without any hype whatsoever. It doesn’t need to be an indie darling or a September blockbuster. It can be virtually unheard of, really. But, if it is wildly new, or introduces a nugget of gameplay that needs to be remade and formed into something new (and therefore needs to be noticed by people) it would also score high. Imagine Assassin’s Creed, for the sake of argument, was virtually unknown. Even though it has zero hype, and isn’t the greatest game, really, I’d give it big points in this category because the free-running mechanics, while imperfect, are worth talking about.

My auxiliary point was that it “removes hype from the rest of the equation.” In my opinion, this is true: if you are consciously aware of the hype and are attaching it to one part of your review, you are far less likely to let it color the rest of the review. Look at Grand Theft Auto IV, for example: to say that its reviews (98 on metacritic? Really?) weren’t colored by hype would be ludicrous. But, if you played through the game, and recognized that it was excruciatingly important to play for those who wish to stay relevant, you could say that in the end and continue to mark the game on its other points. I mean, I’d give GTA IV a 5/5 in Hist, but in ADD only a 3 (good because it lets you destroy shit for a laugh, bad because every five minutes are punctuated by a phone call asking you to play a shitty minigame or ruin your in-game friendships), OCD a 2 (the engine is sloppy and irritating, the pigeons aren’t sufficiently entertaining to addict) and emotion is 3 (the radio stations are as always a high point of immersion, but the character is again impossible to feel empathy for). So, for ‘Is it Good?’ (the other three categories), that’s a 42% score.

Obviously, a 41% score would outrage people. I don’t care if people disagree with me, but they’d be right in one respect — the review only tells them part of the story. They also want to know if it’s worth playing, which, in my opinion, it is, because it’s a shared experience for so many. The 5/5 in histrionics would bump it up to a 56%, by my scale, which at least puts it in the direction of “play it.” Heck, I might even give the hist on GTAIV a 6/5, but that’s another argument for a later paragraph.

The other great thing about the histrionics score: it makes it really easy to separate. So, if it’s something you don’t want in your score, then instead of (a+b+c+d-4) / 0.16, you could just also have (a+b+c-3) / 0.12 to reach a “hype-free” percentage. But, if my above summation is any indicator, hist is almost a “tilt” category, not simply a “how many dollars advertising” category, so I’m not sure why it’d require removal.

As far as 6/5 goes, I’m not sure what to say. All I can really say is that sometimes, a single part of a game is so good, so transcendant, that it makes up for other faults in a game completely. 6/5 would never pop a game over 100%, because in my process it’d cap there, but it could make up for a less perfect reaction somewhere else. Really, I can think of maybe one game that would reach a 6/5 in each category in each generation, one game that was so pitch-perfect in that one category that it would be worth that extra marker of success. Actually, scratch that: I’d be hard pressed to figure out one for each. The only game I can think of that I’d give 6/5 OCD would perhaps be Football Manager 200X, because nothing else is so complex, so uncrackable, and simultaneously so optional (you can gloss over ANY part you don’t like, like, for example, I don’t much care for the finance-side of things, so it’s automated) that you can spend months attempting to crack its chaos engine and still never succeed.

Is it kind of like “this one goes to eleven?” I don’t think so. 4/5 doesn’t imply something’s wrong with it; it just means it’s in the second-to-top quintile. Similarly, a 5/5 means the top quintile. a 6/5 means top quintile, AND great enough to make other shortcomings less relevant.

In fact, with 6/5, I think it’d be fine if I’d said nothing. If I had just given out a 6/5 at some point, people might say “wow,” but codifying it just made it worse. So imagine I never said it. But I will probably do it one day. Just a warning.

I, and many others, hate the state of review scores. 1UP was probably the best because it was completely arbitrary and subjective, and it wore that on its sleeve. They write their gut reactions, which I really appreciate. It’s not about graphics and sound and gameplay as completely stupid separate categories coming into a terribly useless aggregate. Many other sites and publications have taken this sort of review to heart, but I still think there’s something to the idea of breaking down the score and building your ultimate reaction from the sum of its parts.

To do this, I’ve invented a crackpot four-point review rubric. I can’t say I thought about it that much; actually, while on the brink of sleep it came to mind and I texted the idea to my friend Angus and promptly fell asleep. And forgot about it. I may have already been unconscious. Hey, don’t let that discount the idea though: at least one person thinks the lucid space between regular consciousness and batshit insanity is where the best ideas come from. I just use sleep because LSD is kinda illegal. I’ve given these four categories adorable disorder-based names that poke fun at things gamers are accused of having. Feel free to change them to less potentially offensive names if you’re interested.

THE SYSTEM

ADD x/5

The ADD measure is indicative of how immediately engaging the game is at all (or at least many) times. There are a lot of games I can think of that I simply didn’t like as much as others due to this. A great example would be Fable II; there were far too many times where I found myself bored just because it would take so long for something interesting to happen. What counts as interesting can vary, as can what takes too long; getting from point a to point b might take twice as long in one game, but if the journey is intriguing enough, it doesn’t matter. Now, don’t get me wrong: a game can definitely have parts that are tedious and still get a five. The question is, how often is the tedium broken up? How much of the game’s time does it dominate? Is the tedium rewarding? When it comes to Fable II, the answers to these questions were simply unsatisfactory.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I’ll use a game like N+ to illustrate my point. You go into your Xbox 360′s Game Library. You select N+. Once the game goes through its two (very quick, as these things go) company logo interstitials. A bad-ass BZHOOOOO sound happens and the menu drops in. You pick the menu, you pick a level, and you’re in the middle of the action. It takes less time to get into the action than it takes most disc titles to spin up. The difficulty ranges from enjoyably casual-yet-challenging to downright diabolical, but it stays fun as hell.

OCD x/5

If you are poring over GameFAQs looking for more information you already have the ability to beat, you’re probably playing a game with a 5/5 OCD score. This is a meter of a game’s technical immersion. Droves of games come to mind as high scorers: Street Fighter II and III, Super Mario Kart games, Final Fantasy Tactics, Tetris, earlier Armored Core games… I could go on. The ability to get lost in the intricacies of a game’s play and the urge to do so mean an easy high score, but it doesn’t need to be complex– sometimes it just simply has to be incredibly satisfying. There are certainly amazing games out there that wouldn’t score well in this respect; for example, while playing Ico, I found it technically somewhat tedious and unfulfilling but I continued because I liked everything else so much. But, as such, I could hardly call it a “perfect” game, and it’d be punished in this category.

Escapism x/5

If OCD relays the game’s technical immersion, escapism relays its emotional immersion. How much are you affected by the story, the characters, the world? If it’s something you want to get lost in, and every time you play you forget about your bills and your shitty job and you just want to marry the main squeeze and you wonder what happens in the world once the game ends, it’s a high scorer. Final Fantasy Tactics somehow achieved this. For me, Vice City did not achieve this at all; once I was done playing it, I didn’t think about it again– let alone feel any urge to visit it again. If it made you cry, it’s probably a 5/5. If you tried to skip as many cutscenes as were possible, it was probably closer to a one. There’s not much more to say about this.

Histrionics x/5

This is almost certainly the most controversial of the four categories, but I’ll try to justify it.  Basically, this is a marker of how relevant the game is or should be. Many games will get 5/5 before I even play them: Grand Theft Auto 4 and Braid would start with a minimum of five in this category simply because they’re something anyone who talks about games needs to play. They could have both been humongous pieces of garbage (which, thankfully, they weren’t), but they deserve to be played and talked about due to that hype. However, this is also a category where games that deserve that kind of conversation are highly rated; the “overlooked” gems like Team Ico’s releases that innovate and create fantastic new worlds are pretty important in their own way. Games that are far from perfect but invent a new mechanic that future games will exploit to become amazing are also high scorers in this category. I’m looking at you, Assassin’s Creed.

Some people would argue that a game’s hype should have no bearing on its score (and I don’t mean to sound like I care about material things, LIKE MY SOCIAL STATSSSSS), but here are three reasons I believe this is a valid category:

1. It means that you can easily justify not attaching it to the other categories, and get a more pure review score.
2. It’s honest. I mean, if GTA4 has an all-time Metacritic rating of 98, how can you say that it doesn’t factor into the score already? It’s not like it’s the best game of the decade like that MC rating would imply.
3. If you disagree with the hype, you can easily change this score in your head to something else and get what you consider a more “realistic” review score.

—

Each is marked on a scale of one to five. One is deplorable, three is honorable, and five is spectacular. The final percentile score is (a-1) * 6.25+ (b-1) * 6.25+ (c-1) * 6.25 + (d-1) * 6.25. Or, more simply, each score adds either 0%, 6.25%, 12.50%, 18.75% or 25% to the final score. The worst score is 0%, the best is 100%, and the exact middle is 50%. However, I would very occasionally consider giving a game a rating higher than 5/5 in a category; if it sets an utterly mind-blowing new standard in any of these departments (at least, for me), I’d give it a six. I would’ve given Football Manager 2008 an OCD 6/5, for example, because it dominated my life for months last year with its intricacies. I’d also give World of Warcraft a 6/5 in histrionics or escapism, because it was such an utterly new experience for me: for a year, I had dozens of best friends all over the US and Canada. Needless to say, a 6/5 would be incredibly rare. Like, possibly less-than-once-a-year rare.

However, on top of all of this, I’d still give a game an entirely separate score: it’s a three-point scale. One is “don’t bother,” two is “play it if you have the time and the money to do so and nothing better is available,” and three is “make this a priority.” A scale like that is just as important, if you ask me. Even if Ico scored low in one category and not perfect in others, it’s still a solid 3 in this entirely other system. You just need to give it a spin.

Anyway, that’s the system. I’m toying with the idea of using this rubric for all future reviews of games I write. What do you think?

Microtravel, in essence, is taking some time to see a part of the area you live in as if you were an explorer. By ignoring the little part of your brain that tries to pull you down the streets you normally walk to get home, you can make yourself enter some pretty weird areas and see great things. Taking it a step further, it’s often a lot of fun to take your main arterial public transit route (be it subway, tram, or bus) to an entirely irrelevant stop off at which you’ve never gotten and start walking. While it’s not always interesting or englightening, you’ll often find inspiring little crannies in the sides of walls. Cameras are recommended, though I tend not to bring one (my distaste for taking my own photos is another topic entirely).

What’s weird is how few people I’ve spoken to have ever even considered this, given the games that we play (you knew I’d work it in at some point, didn’t you?). Even the most open-world games give us only a city, or maybe its outlying areas, or maybe even a couple of other cities (I’m thinking of San Andreas at the moment as the largest one that comes to mind). However, these games encourage you to work in and explore what amounts to a relatively small amount of space (small is relative to, say, everything between Montreal and Mumbai, for example). There are always rewards for finding little places in the environment, too; perhaps there’s an agility orb in this previously unexplored cove, or a radioactive pigeon to shoot.

For many, the reward only comes from finding those scattered prizes (and the corresponding achievements/trophies that they lead to). But, for others, including myself, the reward isn’t the prize; it’s the exploring itself. I jsut don’t get why this itch doesn’t extend to the real world for many: if you don’t need to find an easter egg to enjoy it, why not do it where your field of vision is 360º and there’s no polygon count? Maybe Ottawa and Montreal are okay places to do this because you can be pretty confident that you’re not going to get shot, which isn’t necessarily true of every city in the world, but I’ve found this a pretty rewarding activity.

I’m not saying you should break into sewers like in that previously mentioned urban exploration wiki entry. In fact, the wohle UE thing strieks me as pretty needlessly “extreme.” But, there’s nothing wrong with taking a day to explore a neighborhood you haven’t checked out due to its lack of buzzworthy restaurants or its distance from your comfort area. In fact, it’s Brilliam-recommended!