Poverty Sucks--Pinball Rules

Originally published in January of 2011 by Classy Hands.

Proof that I am an immortal. In Fayetteville, NC, anyhow.

 

 

Poverty sucks, so I went to the cheap theater.

Now, when I was a kid, this joint was called the dollar theater, because… y’know… all movies cost a dollar to see. But due to inflation it’s gone up to two or three bucks a ticket, which is a real tragedy because “dollar theater” has such a nice ring to it. Regardless of the increase in price, however, you get what you pay for. These are the movies that have been available to rent for months, and aren’t terribly high caliber stuff anyhow. Even when I was little and was perfectly content to watch the afternoon lineup of “Step By Step” and “Full House”, I could tell that most of the movies at the dollar theater sucked. Stuff like “Ernest Rapes The Milkman” or “The Pebble and the Penguin 2: Gacy’s Revenge”. But what did we have to complain about? We were kids, and alone in a movie theater that we could afford–it was a level of freedom we had not yet seen at that point in our adorable, rapeless lives. We were bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked, filled with excitement, mirth, and not even a teaspoon of undesired semen. I mean, none of us were catholic, so that put us at a disadvantage right there, but really–not even a case of having some dude in a trenchcoat expose himself to us. I mean, that’s got to be a break of some sort of statistic–I don’t know. But we weren’t really a good-looking bunch of kids, so that might explain it. But seriously–not even once.

…Anyways…

I was in poverty and bored–funny how the two go together. I went to the cheap theater to see Aaron Sorkin’s “Guys Who Speak With A Better Vocabulary Than You”. It just came out, and I hear there’s a lot of Oscar buzz around it, largely because the members of the Academy fear Aaron Sorkin, who is known to roam the streets of Los Angeles, wielding an Emmy like a club and muttering darkly about “Sports Night”. Hollywood executives warn their children that if they don’t eat all of their gefilte fish, Sorkin will creep into their room while they’re sleeping and edit their screenplays into small piles of dust, leaving the fledgling screenwriters so demoralized that they’ll settle for meager jobs in the upper echelons of the Smithsonian Institute or the Federal Reserve.

The movie wasn’t half bad.

But what really struck me was where I ended up next. Everyone was filing out and I followed them. Because it was Saturday night and a high school girl had made eyes at me? Hell no. Because it was Saturday night and several high school girls had made eyes at me. A door near the rear of the theater lobby was opened, and dozens of them filed through. I crept in the background, hoping that they were leading me to a poorly-lit alleyway where they experimented with their first tabs of LSD and group sex. What I found behind that door was so much better.

Arcades are getting harder and harder to find. But when you do happen upon one at my age, you are filled with various degrees of excitement, fear, and a little bit of horniness. The trepidation comes largely from the arrival of a few new faces. “Dance Dance Revolution” and “Guitar Hero” have squeezed their way between the old cabs of “Street Fighter 2″ and even “Joust”. Even more frightening is the fact that it costs more than a quarter to play a stinking game of Ms. Pacman (which I will not play out of fear of getting beaten up by one of these surly teenagers). The most popular games in my old arcades were mostly concerned with beating the shit out of your opponent, whether with a gun, or more likely your oversized fist.

But nowadays, the most popular games are based on rhythm and matching colors and shapes to the tune of popular music. Think “R. Kelly goes to Kindergarten”. On second thought, don’t think that.

Ever.

Happily, the new mixes fairly well with the old. All the same, visiting an arcade in your late twenties is like attending your high school reunion. You see a collection of old friends that you haven’t seen in a decade. Like the “X-Men” or “Star Wars Trilogy” arcade games, some of them are just as freaking cool as you remember them. And you remember having a huge crush on the wild and crazy antics of “Mortal Kombat” (who had C cups as early as 7th grade), but now that you see her again ten years later, you can’t help but wonder what the big deal was about. And then there’s those other games, like “Revolution X: Featuring Aerosmith!” where music was the fucking weapon!

No, seriously–you blasted bad guys with CDs.

And if you’re like me, the gauntlet of nostalgia and fear brings you to the pinball machines. Like the girl you dated for a year and half as an upperclassman, you greet each other with a bit of awkwardness, but a definite twinkle in your eye. You make small talk, casually graze her flippers, and before you know it, you’re grunting and banging away in the corner while everyone pretends not to notice. Yeah, that’s right girl–tilt for me, baby. But the pinball machine is a fickle bitch–the only game in the world where you can rack up 9 million points and still feel like a damn loser. And tattooed in red ink she still has the initials of all the guys who did a better job than you. And you’re a freak and a failure (but mostly you’re out of tokens), and in the shadow of the nearly-as-cheap-as-a-dollar theater, you know that you’ll be back tomorrow.

Tomorrow that bitch will feel the pain.

Also, while I have your attention, I'd just like to say, "Fuck Sagat".

Let's Be A Bad Guy.

In my latest editorial at Bell of Lost Souls, I asked a simple question: What attracts us to the bad guy?  The response was varied in both passion and opinion.  Some posited that everyone sees their actions as justified, and therefore there are no real villains.  Others drew cultural lines.  Others still argued that villains tend to have the best uniforms.

No comment.

Certainly this has been a question on everyone's lips, as it seems our culture just can't get enough of the villain lately.  Everything from the resurgence of the vampire as an antihero, to zombie fixation, to Walter White and Tyrion Lannister--we just can't help but root for the bad guy.  My hypothesis is that we envy their freedom.  Villains follow no code or logic beyond their own, whereas even the roughest, toughest good guy has some sort of moral compass to follow.  That's what makes him a good guy. 

In theory, anyway.

And so, despite all the horrors a villain submits his friends, family, and community to, we're thrilled and awed by his or her ability to do just anything that they want.  And if they can do it with style?  Even better.

Now this is all very well and good for a passive form of entertainment like a book, movie or comic--but what about a game?  The infamous "morality meter" has been a hook for many games over the past decade, and our heroes are getting more antihero by the second (see: Max Payne vs. Max Payne 3--in which they somehow did the impossible in making Max even more broodish and hard-boiled).  And when it comes to making choices in games, I tend to go with the more tenderhearted route. 

But does playing a villain effect my overall enjoyment of the game?

Thus I am planning a reoccurring series of essays entitled "Let's Be A Bad Guy", wherein I will take you through my experience of playing a video game as the villain.  This might involve choosing less than moral choices on a morality meter (Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic), games where your protagonist exists permanently in the gray area of good and evil (Papers Please, GTA), and games where your character is clearly on the side of scum and villainy (Overlord, Deadpool).

Of course, the very notion of what makes a character "good" or "bad" is highly subjective, and there's a good chance that people will argue about their opinion, and that will lead to fighting which will lead to murder and blood in the streets.

And then I'll ask if pushing that domino effect into existence makes me evil.

A Snippet From "Why Do We Love To Play The Bad Guy?"

I keep writing and I don't know how to stop.  Here's a love tap from my latest editorial for Bell of Lost Souls.

"So how did I get there in the first place?  Everyone has their "main", and at gaming events you can see the line drawn in the sand.  An obvious example of this is Warhammer 40k, where the divide appears to be between the Imperium and the Xenos/Heretic.  And you Black Library fans out there can affirm that our supposed "heroes" of the Imperium are... well...

Well, they're just bad, bad people."

Soak up my drippy words with your ShamWOW eyes here.

A Snippet From "Counts As Awesome"

Here's a rumbling from my latest editorial for Bell Of Lost Souls:

"Citizens of the Imperium lie awake in their beds imagining the horrible screams of terror as a horrendously scarred and babbling Pinkie Pie leads the charge of swarms of vicious little ponies.  Their cries of agony go unheard as bones are torn from the socket by the most adorable monsters the universe has yet seen.  Seriously: through all the blood, the whole thing's just precious."

Read the whole ridiculous thing here.

Why Books Are Books And Movies Are Movies.

I'm getting sick of adaptations--even when they're good.

When I taught playwriting, there was always a very important lesson that I tried to put as early on in my schedule as possible.  The lesson was fairly simple, and began with a single question:

Why are you writing a play?

I didn't (and don't) mean that in some sort of extreme, existential way.  Indeed, my least favorite day of any art school class was when the professor insisted on writing "What Is Art?" on the dry erase board.  No, I mean that question in a very practical sense: why is your story a play?  Why not a short story?  Why not a poem, or a screenplay?  The question came from years of watching myself and others write plays that included a couch dominating the center of the stage.  Or a hundred thousand scene changes.  We weren't writing plays, we were writing teleplays and screenplays. 

So why did we keep falling back on plays?  Well, it's simple to pull off a play, in the grand scheme of things.  People have been doing it for millennia.  You've got the high school auditorium and fifty bucks to spend at the goodwill on ill-fitting costumes?  You've got yourself a play, my friend.  And I don't care what your friends smoking skunkweed outside of the Starbucks told you: plays are not inherently better than film or television.  Not as far as the medium itself is concerned.  A medium is simply the ocean you float your story-raft on.  And with recent word that the World of Warcraft movie is officially a thing that is happening, I think it's important to remember that video games are a medium that is just as valid as any other, and that adapting them to any other medium isn't necessarily some sort of victory, whether that adaptation is a film, television show, or even a book.

Daniel Hope recently published a column on LitReactor entitled Five Video Games That Would Have Made Better Novels, and I'll admit that it pissed me off.  Daniel didn't set out to do that.  Indeed, his column is well-written and not snarky toward gamers in the slightest.  He clearly set out to make the piece fun and as non-controversial as possible.

And yet I was still angry.

If you parse the comments section, you'll see a tepid response from me, and that was only because I knew I needed to go home and eat an egg salad sandwich and collect my thoughts before I became some sort of gamer troll that blows up at the tiniest provocation. 

That'll do, internet.  That'll do.

 

My frustration stems from the notion that books as a medium are superior.  That any story or any idea is made better by it being a novel.  Which, I'm sorry fellow nerds, is nonsense.  Games are having a hard enough time being taken seriously as an art form without it being implied that everyone involved in making them is essentially too lazy to tap out 100,000 words instead.  That notion is insulting and ridiculous.  Take, for example, his choice of "Any LucasArts Adventure Game".  He says that "every last one of these games are perfect".  Well, if that's true, why are they on the list?  Curse Of Monkey Island isn't made somehow superior if it's written out as a novel.  It's already done.

 

Don't misunderstand me: I love books.  I truly do.  Anyone who utters the words "I don't like reading" around me might as well not exist--they have been written off in my mind.  But interactive activities such as video games are no less an artform.  Sure--we've got 12 year olds screaming slurs into headsets all over the country, but that doesn't make Papers, Please or Spec Ops: The Line any less magnificent.  Neither would accomplish half of what they do as books or films, because they are saying something that only properly comes across when being played.  You need to interact with them for them to work their magic.  And as long as Twilight, Pride & Prejudice With Zombies, and Snooki's autobiography exist, books aren't allowed to claim some sort of immunity to the disease that is cultural idiocy.

 

Daniel Hope isn't some video game virgin--reading his article proves that he knows his business well enough.  But to suggest, for example, that we're missing out on something in Bioshock by actively experiencing the world around us instead of reading about it through the eyes of a third person, is damned insulting, and misses the point entirely.  The failed paradise of Rapture, the dream of Andrew Ryan, the terrifying Big Daddies, the sweeping twist and the illusion of independence--all of this is experienced, firsthand, by the player.  I have no doubt that a talented author could make something terrific out of that. 

But it's already done.  And it's done incredibly.  And to suggest that it would have been better as a book seemingly because "books are better" only relegates this artform into the kiddie pool when it has barely cracked the shell that surrounds it. 

 

Hope was clearly trying to make something fun out of this list.  His addition of Duck Hunt to the list makes that clear.  And that's fine.  But I seriously doubt that I'm the only person who found this whole notion pretty insulting.  Games are capable of so very much--but the longer you pigeonhole them as a medium that is somehow "less than", the longer you have to wait for the next work of art to hit your computer or your console.

 

And Fifty Shades Of Grey would have made a better Mario game, so bite me.

Bullets And Creativity: Thoughts On Shadowrun Returns

Everything about Shadowrun Returns intrigued me to the core.  Kickstarter-funded with some lofty ambitions, gamers all over the country were waiting to see if they would pull it off.  Because what the fine folks at Harebrained Studios were aiming for was simple, but at the same time something old-schoolers could salivate themselves into dehydration for.  Namely, a new spin on the world of Shadowrun, based heavily on its two equally epic (and vastly different) 16-bit games--but fully moddable, so that lonely gamemasters could create works of roleplaying goodness for strangers all over the globe, Neverwinter Nights style.

This is an odd time to talk about a game like this one, I'll admit.  This week, Grand Theft Auto V will be decimating you and everyone you know.  Its gameplay, storyline and soundtrack will set your brain on fire like an LSD-dipped Jolly Rancher.  And yet I insist on talking about a low-tech indie RPG.  I'll explain.

To me, the greatest experience I've ever had as a gamer was the ability to shape the world around me--to see consequences to every action I make.  If not in the story itself, then with the character I was playing.  Hell, at least let me name the guy.  It's this kind of mindset that got me into the grand old world of paper and pencil roleplaying games.  Of course, I still played video games (Shadowrun for the Genesis smashed my teeth in with a ball-peen hammer of nuyen-flavored goodness), but I still craved that level of customization. 

To put it bluntly, I wanted to make the game mine.

Shadowrun Returns is this year's attempt at letting us do that very thing.  With a mod system built right into the game, it allows you to create your own metamagical adventures and invite everyone to try it out: friends, strangers, family members and the chainsaw-wielding child molester down the street.  The pre-installed campaign itself is excellent, entry-level fun.  Seasoned 'runners will find it linear and a bit routine, but I feel that the point was to introduce you to the basics of what the mod was capable of. 

Playable races include (from L to R): Dwarf, Troll, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ork, Elf.

 

Reviewers have often kindly dismissed the lack of bells and whistles on the part of Shadowrun by pointing out its limited budget.  While I'm sure that this is true, I think that the game does better without voice-acting or lengthy cutscenes.  The game is meant to feel like something of your very own, and I believe that Harebrained Studios pulled this off with flying colors and flashing lights.

 

I was surprised to find the game in the App Store for my iPad, and gave it a download.  I have always been eager to see what the future of gaming is as far as tablets are concerned.  It's true that there have been some amazing games that have been ported to tablets (take Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and XCOM: Enemy Unknown for starters), but I'm more interested in what will be developed specifically for my favorite touchscreen--it just feels like there's so much to mine there. 

 

Shadowrun Returns, unfortunately, is a fraction of itself when transported to the iPad.  The level modding application has been removed, and the game crashes constantly.  This is made all the more frustrating when you consider that the save feature only comes around at the end of each level.  Without modding, Shadowrun Returns is reduced to a fairly enjoyable 15 hour campaign: fun, but not the impressive environment of a game that Harebrained Studios released. 

 

That aspect aside, though, Shadowrun Returns is absolutely a success on the desktop computer.  This is the sort of game that was created for writers and designers to drool over--it's the sort of game that creates these people.  So I am very excited to see what sort of campaigns come down the pipeline in future months and years.  I'm convinced that it's capable of amazing acts of creativity. 

 

With Friends Like These: Thoughts On Virtual Ascendance By Devin C. Griffiths

In every age of culture there have been those few stragglers who refuse to adapt and enjoy the microchip-infused fruits of the most recent generation's labor.  From radio to television--from silent films to talkies--we put on our 20/20 nightvision goggles of retrospection and laugh at those people, pausing between heaving breaths to opine that the Xbox One is going to suck, not knowing that Microsoft's next-gen console will be eventually outfitted with nuclear-powered Godzilla mods designed by a power-mad Bill Gates, and that those mods will transform our Halo engines into skyscraper tall beasts that will annihilate any home with a Playstation or a Wii in it--and who'll be laughing then, you bastards??  It'll be us!  The people who bought local!!!

Ahem.

So every age needs a little prodding along.  Written by a former gamer of the Golden Age (he wistfully recounts playing games like Zork, Joust, and Ultima), Virtual Ascendance seems to be the book for just such a need.  And while it covers no new ground for a seasoned game historian, it's fairly intriguing to see Griffiths peer at the gaming world from without.  His eagerness almost seems as if he's finding out some of this information at the same time the reader is--you can imagine him practically shouting "People get paid to play video games??  Holy shit!" 

Right off the bat, it becomes clear that this book was written for a fairly specific audience--one that I don't belong to (one of the chapters is subtitled "Casual Games (or, Gaming for the Rest of Us)).  Indeed, Virtual Ascendance could be a terrific primer for involved parents concerned with little Skyler as he bends himself into a C shape to play Pokémon on his Nintendo DS.  The anecdotal introduction lags, and the writing feels first draft at times: Griffith actually spends time explaining the metaphor of an iceberg to his reader, something you'd think he or his editor would recognize as one of the most well-worn chestnuts of the creative writing world. 

Griffith's focus shifts across a great number of video game specifics.  His brief history of gaming time periods is well-researched, and never once do you question his enthusiasm.  What you do question, however, are his intentions.  Initially, I found moments that heartened me to what Griffith was doing with his book.  At times, it felt that he truly believed video games to be the next great art form.  But time and time again, he came back to the money involved--professional gaming, movie adaptations, and the big budget AAA games that explode onto the scene out of cocoons woven out of their billion dollar budgets.  The desire here, I suppose, is to shake people by the collars and force them to understand that video games are legit because look at all this money!  When he isn't paying too much attention to the explosions and flash of dollar signs, he brings up negative aspects that are in no way related to games on the whole.  Too much of Virtual Ascendance focuses on fringe elements of gaming culture for me to take it all that seriously in the long run. 

Not to suggest that he doesn't try to cover his bases.  When he focuses on marriages being destroyed through virtual infidelity, or a case in which a Chinese man was murdered over a virtual theft, he makes sure to point out that these events are in the minority, and that they are exceptions to the rule.  He then points out examples of people finding love and creating trust-filled relationships with others, using video games like Second Life as a buffer.  And then he goes right back to horror stories of virtual rape and PTSD. 

Now, to be perfectly fair, Mr. Griffith's intention here was to illustrate how very attached a player can become to their avatar, and that there is scientific evidence to back a very real emotional connection between the two.  But by focusing on the negative events as he does, his interest in how far games have come turns into a quiet sort of fear that puts me back in the mindset of parents blaming Doom and Marilyn Manson for the Columbine massacre.  This is made doubly damning when you remember that Griffith has made a point to say that he's never played MMO-style games like WoW or Eve, "for fear of becoming irretrievably lost in their virtual realms".  He takes several opportunities to say that his cited examples of violence and rape are extreme examples of what could happen in a virtual world, but when you dedicate as much space on the page to the negative 1 percent as the positive 99 percent, it feels like the damage is done.

Shortly afterward, Griffith extols the virtues of using game technology for military training--a fascinating idea that deserves an entire book to itself.  And therein lies the problem: what sort of book is he writing here?  The subtitle, "Video Games and the Remaking of Reality" tells us nothing beyond the generally vague notion that this is a book about games.  It's too editorial to be a history book, and it touches on several subjects without cracking them open and getting to the deeper nougaty center within.  So what we're left with is another vague book about video games that implies a great deal and only says a little. 

But what it does say is important.  If I had to pinpoint Virtual Ascendance's main virtue, it would have to be an overarching theme of "We're All Gamers".  This message is one that I think we could use a little more time to ponder.  The fact that a love of games doesn't set you apart from society, but does the exact opposite, pulling you deeper into the fold of humanity. 

Despite all the vagueness of Griffith's ideas, he clearly has an affection and wistfulness for his subject, and a desire to see their wonders go even further mainstream than they already are.  At best, Virtual Ascendance is an enthusiastic piece, perfect for the gamers and open-minded parents of gamers who don't understand the background behind their favorite flashing lights and sounds.  At its worst, it's a book that feels vague and undercooked--something that could take the paranoid mumblings of uninformed politicians and parents and make them into shouts.  This is exemplified when Griffith says that video games are neither good nor bad, that "video games simply are".

Personally, I'd like to see him pick a side.

Virtual Ascendance was written by Devin C. Griffiths, and is available on Amazon for hardcover and Kindle.

A Snippet From "Gamers Do It On The Table"

Here's a snippet from my latest editorial at Bell Of Lost Souls.

"A cousin of the Fluffball, the Scribe has taken it a step further.  Not content to let faceless authors and designers decide his army’s fate, he creates an original background for every one of his armies.  This is the guy whose Space Marines have bits from Black Templars, torsos from Blood Angels, Space Wolf heads, and Tyranid biomorph weaponry (because why the hell not?).  He explains between die rolls that his chapter, The Emperor’s Nukes, is armed with a violent bioweaponry that they gained through meddling with new types of science forbidden by the Inquisition—that they count as Blood Angels when battling Chaos, Tau, Necrons, and Tyranids, but count as Chaos Marines when they fight anyone else. "

Read the whole thing here.

My Childhood Was Incubated In Green Slime: Thoughts on Mathew Klickstein's "Slimed!"

As a child, there were few theme songs that carried as much emotional weight as those of The Adventures of Pete and Pete and Ren & Stimpy.  This reaction wasn't so much based on the groovy melodies or the beat (though both contained a little of each).  No--my blissful heartstrings twanging in harmony with those songs came entirely from the fact that they were the opening of the gates to a half hour of humorous insanity.  Those were my two favorites.  For other kids, it was Clarissa Explains It All or the dulcet tones of Doug, Rugrats, or Salute Your Shorts.  Nickelodeon, with its initial "us versus them" attitudes of kids and parents held a very important place for people of my generation. 

The belief that Nickelodeon defined us is no hyperbole.  It was the first time that an entire television station was dedicated to children's programming.  And the purity and earnestness of those first golden years is perfectly encapsulated in Mathew Klickstein's labor of love, Slimed! An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age.  More than just telling the stories as they objectively happened, Mr. Klickstein interviewed the people who made Nickelodeon possible: from actors to writers to animators, directors and producers.  The immense amount of history here is impressive in and of itself, but Klickstein's care and tenderness for the subject makes this collection of reminiscences impossible to put down.

By care and tenderness, I don't just mean the mere ability to record and transcribe the dozens of interviews and put them together in some way that is comprehensible.  That alone isn't enough for Slimed!  Klickstein knows his audience, and has somehow found a way to ask questions of his interviewees that perhaps the reader didn't even know they wanted to know.  A great example includes the droopy gibberish that makes up the lyrics to "Hey Sandy", the Miracle Legion-penned theme song to The Adventures of Pete and Pete:

"Sandy" being a street name for bubble gum-flavored heroin.

 

If the lyrics seem incomprehensible to you, it's probably because frontman Mark Mulcahy hasn't told anyone:

 

"I'm pretty sure, like anything, people would be pretty disappointed about the truth...No one knows but me, and that's a rarity, so I'm hanging on to it.  Even the other band members aren't aware of it.  I came close to telling somebody, but I didn't.  So I haven't told anybody.  Don't feel left out."

 

The entire tome of Slimed! is filled with beautiful tidbits like this one.  It'd be nice to suggest that it's nothing but a wistful romp through the orange and green landscape of our childhoods, but as sure as a VH1: Behind The Music has a whiskey-soaked overdose halfway in, greed and infighting rear their ugly heads.

 

If the surge of show moms, lawsuits, and creative struggles sounds like something that would ruin your reception of Nickelodeon's history, that's only because you're straining to look at it with your prepubescent eyes.  As an adult, I found watching the Emperor sans undergarments to be fascinating.  The Pollyanna nostalgia bug chewing at my insides and begging to be satisfied with wholesome Willy Wonka-style antics is immediately silenced with the fantastic stories of fear and infighting between parties that genuinely seemed to care about the network. 

 

The ousting of John Kricfalusi from his own creation of Ren & Stimpy is heartbreaking, but morally vague.  The decision to side with the perfectionist, dragging-his-feet creator or the money-hungry corporate machine is entirely up to the reader, and no one side is polished to look better than the other.  This is made all the more impressive during Klickstein's Acknowledgements, when it becomes clear that he's a dyed-in-the-wool John K fanatic.  Just like any endeavor taken over by highly creative individuals, there are differences of opinion and feelings get hurt.  To hear it told by so many different perspectives is utterly amazing. 

 

The greatest and most unique moments in Slimed! had to come from the young actors who made up the eclectic casts of Nickelodeon's many live action TV shows.  While Salute Your Shorts and Hey Dude inspired the childhoods of people like you or I, this select bunch literally lived out their adolescence on Nickelodeon's stage.  Their various transitions into adulthood are as diverse as the people you went to high school with.  Our earliest heroes, crushes, bullies and laughingstocks all make appearances, and their perspective is rich, varied, and ultimately satisfying. 

 

Mathew Klickstein has done us a service with this book, feeding our whimsey-hungry baby birds with nutrient-rich slime.  Expertly compiled and blissfully executed, Slimed! will probably take you four times as long to read as a book of a similar size, as you pop from the book to Google and back again.  Though rich with childhood abandon, Slimed! still takes the time to remind you to occasionally come back to the ground for air, as Clarissa mom Elizabeth Hess perfectly summarizes:

 

"Sometimes now my students say, 'Let's have a Clarissa party!' And I'm like, 'Nooooo!  No, no.  For you, it's nostalgia.  For me, it's a really beautiful time in my life I don't need to revisit."

 

And perhaps that's the greatest lesson Mathew Klickstein and Slimed! teaches you: for every whiff of your childhood, there was a crew member somewhere, mixing green food coloring into cream of wheat.

 

Slimed! was written by Mathew Klickstein, and is available for pre-order on Amazon for both hardcover and Kindle.  It will be released September 24th.



Quacking Down Memory Lane: Thoughts On DuckTales Remastered

There is nothing in the world quite as satisfying as crashing your life to a screeching halt with some finely cut lines of nostalgia.  Nostalgia has been the name of the game for years now--indeed, it's easy to argue that nostalgia is our generation's greatest commodity.  And between grindhouse schlockfests that spend millions to look low budget, trust-fund hipsters buying top hats at Hot Topic to wear as they ride the rails like hobos, and zombies, zombies, zombies as far as the eye can see, it's easy to get burned out fast.

It has been my experience, however, that the video gaming industry has mostly gotten our lust for yesterday just right.  Perhaps this is because it really hasn't been around all that long, but has changed the most.  Levels have gone from left-to-ride side-scrollers to endless swathes of breathing landscape, chippy little tunes have been replaced with full-scale orchestras, and graphics are just ridiculous.  It's something that many of us are always aware of--and by "us", I mean those of us who can (and do) effortlessly switch from the haunting snow flurries of The Throat Of The World to the greys and reds of Mario's first face-off with Bowser.  It's with this awareness that I bring up Capcom's DuckTales: Remastered. 

Pictured: Scrooge McDuck, in the snow, sans pants.

The original 8-bit DuckTales was arguably one of the best (if not most important) platformers for the NES.  In it, you played Disney's favorite 1 percenter, Mr. Scrooge McDuck, as he pogo-hopped from one vista to another, in search of treasure and adventure.  DuckTales stood out because it was one of those rare games that shunned the linear nature of so many games of the time.  You chose your levels in any order you pleased, and often backtracked and returned to many screens that you'd already visited.  This is something we take for granted these days, but it's games like DuckTales and the Mega Man series that blazed the trail for the open worlds we see in gaming today.

DuckTales: Remastered did a great job of capturing the flavor of its original predecessor, while adding some modern updates that, while fun, may have exposed a bit of a flaw in how we look at gaming today. 

The game has never looked so good.  Smooth and crisp, the game is coated through with Saturday morning cartoon paint.  DTR is bright and colorful, and sounds amazing.  Indeed, many of the cartoon's original cast were brought back to voice their old characters in brand new cut-scenes.  And that's where I ran into a conundrum.  DuckTales: Remastered is filled with little voiceovers and cut-scenes that stop you dead in your tracks.  Any modern gamer is familiar with these sorts of moments, but they were never meant to happen this often, and feel quite a bit like padding.

Mrs. Beakley: "Don't you talk down to me, you plutocratic piece of shit."

Not that the game needs it: it's just as challenging as I remember it being.  And I still play old-school games with feelings of dread.  NES is one of the last bastions of video gaming that has examples of games where if you lose, you fucking lose.  No save games, no passwords--if that boss kills you, it's just over.  I think many younger gamers who give this one a shot will be surprised to see that you can't just save right before a level's boss fight and reload if you die.  Sorry, you young punk--time to start the level all the way over. 

And that's where the major flaw of DuckTales: Remastered lies: it's an old school reboot, but some of the modern flourishes added to make it unique just don't belong there.  The first would be the aforementioned cut-scenes.  Too often do you find Scrooge stopping to ponder a piece of treasure, or berate an old enemy, or explain childbirth to Huey, Dewey and Louie.  It's an entertaining and wistful gesture the first few times it happens, but before long you'll be hitting start and choosing the "Skip Cutscene" option about ten times a level.  The heavier storyline is a nice thought, but feels unnecessary.  There's also the addition of unlockables (a standard for any game these days, reboot or otherwise).  And while I appreciate this as a way to draw out the replayability on a game with a $15 price tag (fucking ouch, Capcom), let me finish the Amazon thorn tunnel without dying before you start listing all the different ways for me to spend my cash.

Overall, I've had a great time revisiting this one.  Despite the a few hiccups and minor inconveniences, I think it's excellent to see such a worthy game getting a makeover as gorgeous as this one.

It's Hard Out There For A Geek: Thoughts on David M. Ewalt's "Of Dice And Men"

Y'know, being a geek is rough sometimes. Not so much as it used to be. Indeed, nerds of my age bracket have enjoyed the dubious pleasure of watching our obsessions go mainstream--this after long years of hiding, Liberace-like, deep in the closet.

Dungeons and Dragons, however, still sits wearily on the pinnacle of our kingdom. Telling someone you roleplay can still bring about that face. It's the face of someone who just walked into the toilet after you. And they make the face even though you considerately lit a match. They make the face even though they can only smell sulfur.

They make the face because they know what you did.

So the fact that a Forbes editor wrote a fairly mainstream book about the history of the nuclear bomb of the geek arsenal is damn impressive, and my feather-adorned hat goes off to Mr. David Ewalt for even having the notion to begin such an endeavor.

Of course, the very nature of writing something about geek culture leaves yourself open to criticism by geeks (something that is about as pleasant as it sounds). And while it would be a simple thing to prod here and jab there and argue esoterica until I'm blue in the face, I'll skip straight ahead to the most important point of this book:

This book is about the soul of D&D.

Between sharing his personal memories of the game (right down to fictionalizing moments in his campaigns) and engaging the reader in the emotional drama of the history of Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, TSR, and everyone else involved in D&D's creation, Ewalt has made it clear that he's done this for the good feelies. Of Dice And Men is warm, friendly, and easy to read. Indeed, I'd highly recommend this book as a jumping off point for anyone who's only ever heard of roleplaying and would like to know more. It's entry-level without boring the old salts to tears. Indeed, the wistful nature of the book is what kept me going chapter by chapter.

So in saying that, it's odd that what I found really jarring about this book also came from Ewalt's emotional response to the world of gaming.

Ewalt points out right off the bat that it's been some time since he played D&D. It was a childhood fling, essentially, and returning to the fold is much like puberty: he's got lots of questions, and he isn't always terribly comfortable. Because of that, Ewalt spends nearly all of the book firmly planted in the closet of his rekindled geekery. I say that in a cheerful way, but in all honesty: this is a massive problem within the book.

As a history of D&D, Of Dice And Men is entertaining, straightforward, and nostalgic. As a representative of nerd culture, however, Ewalt comes off as some sort of tourist, gawking at the notion that girls also play D&D, and cheerily comparing his love of the game to drug addiction. This is not only frustrating but confusing, given his admirable coverage of the idiotic allegations of Satanism and drug use attributed to the hobby.

This isn't entirely Ewalt's fault--he's a Forbes editor. He's a man of the mainstream, tossing himself headfirst (voluntarily, mind you) into an odd subculture that he barely remembers from his youth. Of course there's going to be a learning curve. And in all honesty, it's so much better that someone as understanding as he did brought this book to the masses (I sincerely hope that they read it). I'm glad that Ewalt brought our love to the table--I just wish he didn't have to go through the same old geek stereotypes to do it.

Of Dice And Men was written by David M. Ewalt and can be purchased at Amazon for both hardcover and Kindle.

A Snippet From "Buy Imperial War Bonds"

My first editorial for the great wargaming site Bell Of Lost Souls just went live!  Here's a snippet:

"Kingdom Death proved that a talented group with a quality product could literally raise millions of dollars, no matter how niche or esoteric that product seemed to the outside world.  Kingdom Death produces mature, boutique miniatures for a very adult consumer (read: boobs).  That alone was enough to get me intrigued, but now they’d added the bonus of getting in on the ground floor, so to speak.  And it worked."

Read the full article here.

The Force, It Shall Be With Thee Always, Luke: Thoughts on "William Shakespeare's Star Wars"

Star Wars and Shakespeare are two subjects I'm quite keen on. The be honest, I would imagine most people who are crazy about one are very likely to be crazy about the other. As the author notes in his Afterword, the two are linked. Whether or not the two should be tossed together like a portmanteau is a matter of opinion, but the result was enjoyable enough.

I think I read through this one in the same way any Star Wars nerd would read through it: excitedly waiting for my favorite moments in anticipation of how Doescher would transform them with a Shakespearian treatment. And when it worked, it was laugh out loud funny. My favorite moment had to come when Leia's classic quip of "Aren't you a little short for a storm trooper?" was transformed to:

"Thou truly art in jest. Art thou not small
Of stature, if thou art a stormtrooper?
Does Empire shrink for want of taller troops?
The Empire's evil ways, I'll grant, are grand,
But must its soldiers want for fear of height?"

There are more than a handful of terrific gems like that here.

My difficulty with "William Shakespeare's Star Wars" came from the constant nudges to the reader. I'm aware of the fact that the very *existence* of a book with this title implies that there will be a few winks to the audience here and there, but by the time Luke is contemplating a downed storm trooper's helmet in parody of Hamlet's "To Be Or Not To Be" speech, I was shouting "For god's sake, I GET IT". These not-so-subtle allusions start with C3PO aping Richard III, and continue with Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar. Hell, Doescher even throws in a reference to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime Of The Ancient Mariner". The nerdisms, like Han's confession that "...whether I shot first, I'll ne'er confess!" go the same route: It's a cute idea, but the execution is a little hamfisted.

Doescher does a good job with the meter, which would have been a flaw I was prepared to forgive. However, his constant use of the Chorus (which isn't really something Shakespeare was known for) and his liberal application of asides to the audience feel like unnecessary padding. There are, however, exceptions to this rule, such as Obi-Wan's touching monologue before being cut down by Vader.

All in all, I had a fun time with this book. I expect that Ian Doescher will continue the trilogy, and can only hope that he'll learn from one of the men that inspired this book: "Brevity is the soul of wit."


William Shakespeare's Star Wars was written by Ian Doescher and can be purchased at Amazon for both hardcover and Kindle.

I Knew What I Must Become: What Tomb Raider Has Become In 2013

Originally published at The Arcade Philosopher on July 18th, 2013.

            In the interest of full disclosure, I suppose I should point out that I never played any of the original Tomb Raider titles.  I admit that this is odd, particularly when you realize that the first incarnation of this iconic series was made just as the drunken mechanical bull of puberty began body slamming me mercilessly into the hay-filled mattress of life.  But 1996 was a very strange time for all of us: Romeo was shooting Tybalt in the face, Atlanta was hosting the Olympics, and Tupac was speaking to us from the grave (or something).  It was like 1997 but with half of the good stuff.  So you can understand if I missed the first Tomb Raider. 

            I’d love to say that I was too mature for what Tomb Raider seemed to represent on the surface: an Indiana Jones-esque premise betrayed horribly by the questionable need to slap superfluous sexuality on everything (read: pixelated titties).  But that just wasn’t the case.  I would have experimented with the sexual design of postage stamps applied creatively if someone had even implied that it would feel pleasurable.  Also, remember: mine was a generation that invented an urban legend that involved seeing the two-inch tall sprite of Princess Peach naked—a task which would necessitate TV screens the size of which had not yet been invented.

            So no: remarkably early sexual maturity was not within my grasp.  I was fourteen: dignity wasn’t even within my grasp.  So it wasn’t a conscious decision I made.  Tomb Raider, like a high school cheerleader, just passed me up entirely.  And by the time I was aware of this game and its many sequels, I was old enough to pretend that I found it offensive and reprehensible as a symbol of femininity (read: I was trying to get laid). 

            Now I’m older, and things are different.  I actually do find the original Lara Croft to be about as accurate to femininity as a three-foot bong with blown glass breasts welded to the front.  We’re doing our best to ignore Baz Luhrmann, Atlanta is back to being a mediocre metropolis with delusions of grandeur, and Tupac is unequivocally dead.  We still play games, but those horndog teens have been replaced by… well… horndog adults.  But adults nonetheless.  And Crystal Dynamics and their thoughtful re-engineering of this iconic heroine is proof positive that, if so inclined, it is possible to paper mache a Botticelli angel out of back issues of Playboy.

            Tomb Raider is exciting.

            Everything about it screams excitement.  The jumps, the falls, the gun-fighting and the stealth are all designed to get your heart pumping and your brain glittering and shiny with endorphins and dopamine.  And it wastes no time roping you into that thrill ride. The first ten minutes of Tomb Raider is as adrenalin-pumping as being chased by a 1985 Arnold Schwarzenegger and a 2011 Jesse “The Body” Ventura.  It is sheer terror coupled with the whoops and shouts of a much younger gamer than myself.  By the time Lara has crawled out onto a cliff overlooking the island of Yamatai, you have completed a tutorial that smashes the teeth of scores of entire games released in years past. 

            This is derived, largely, from the unceasing nature of these sections of the game: just as you leap from a falling bridge, the forest explodes with fire.  As soon as you put out the fire, you’re ambushed by an army of cultists.  As soon as the last cultist dies, you get a cramp in your big toe and a quick time event is initiated to massage it out (not really, but I wouldn’t be surprised).  There is always something to do and some place to be in this island’s forest.  And what a forest it is: for infinitely gorgeous scenery, Tomb Raider can compete with any game on the market.  Lara herself is one of the most beautifully designed and implemented characters yet made.  And her beauty isn’t just in the traditional sense (though, let’s be honest: damn, girl).  

Pictured: Damn.

           Each wound is etched into the lines of her face.  Mud, water, and blood splatters, cakes, and dries.  Her cries of pain, cautious breaths, and self-conscious soliloquies are flawlessly voiced by Camilla Luddington.  In fact, the entire cast is outstanding, if a little standard for the course (an Indian survivalist, a grumpy Scotsman, and a take-no-guff black woman are just some of the usual suspects the storyline employs).  I can count on one hand the number of times the camera became problematic: indeed, most of the time I was marveling at how the angles of vision seemed to be chosen with the specific intention of giving you the most enjoyable panic attack you’ve ever had in your life.  The cinematics and cutscenes feel so effortlessly executed that you often don’t realize that they’re over and gameplay has begun.

            The gameplay is engaging without being too easy.  This is actually a good rule of thumb for everything that came with playing Tomb Raider on the default difficulty.  The ambush sequences were challenging without being frustratingly hard.  The puzzles were simple, but not insultingly so.  Everything about the game suggested that the designers wanted to keep you from being stuck for any serious length of time without it being a boring “push-button-to-win” endeavor.  I appreciated this aspect especially.  I don’t want to have victory handed to me.  If I wanted the experience of watching a character defeat every obstacle in his path with or without my involvement, I’ll watch an episode of 24.  But I also don’t enjoy games that are arbitrarily arduous (see: Catherine). Collectibles are plentiful, but seeking them out doesn’t feel like a chore you ought to be paid for (see: Assassin’s Creed, GTA).  I stormed the jungles and mountains of Yamatai treated as neither an infant nor Stephen Hawking, and I was satisfied.

            During these puzzles and shootouts, Lara gains confidence and an abundance of skills and abilities.  These skills, linked to one of three trees (hunter, survivor, and brawler), are lots of fun to experiment with, and enrich the gameplay at a pace that matches the storyline perfectly.  Unfortunately, there isn’t much customizing to be done here, as you’ll have maxed out each tree by the end of the storyline.  While this makes sense for what sort of heroine the storyline is shaping Lara up to be by its conclusion (a survivor—a savant of the wild places), it leaves no room for variation or different play styles.  To be fair, in this age of paragons, renegades, and customization, it’s easy to forget that a character or game style isn’t necessarily supposed to fit itself to your notion of how a game should work.  That said, a new tree or two would have been very welcome. The weapon system and its customization is a great consolation prize, though.

            A lack of heavy customization doesn’t mean that the game doesn’t have different “modes” to speak of.  Between platforming, puzzles and gunfights, there are moments of intense unease that made me nostalgic, though I couldn’t at first put my finger on what exactly I was feeling wistful for.  It came in moments alone in a chamber of ritual sacrifice, or climbing through the rotting timbers of a bridge, hoping the unsuspecting cultists above you won’t hear the soft sound of your breath beneath them.    And then I remembered: I was feeling the same wariness and fear that the early installments of theResident Evil series used to bring out in me.  Not so much regarding the supernatural or horrific flavor of it (though there are smatterings of both, to be sure), but the survivoraspect of it.  Tomb Raider has not exactly revived the (regretfully) dead genre of survival horror, but it’s certainly got fifty percent of the equation well in hand.  It wasn’t a massive part of the game itself, but it was something significant that I noticed and hope they expand upon in future sequels.

            These gameplay features are perfectly woven into an engaging, sometimes blistering coming-of-age story.  Lara Croft goes from a frightened young student of archaeology to a warrior-goddess.  This reboot Tomb Raider was no different from its earlier incarnations in the sense that it received its share of controversy early on. Cinematic sequences of Lara bound and beaten was just another handful of dried leaves tossed on the flames of the bonfire that a year of rape jokes built.  Having seen the finished product, these misgivings seem unfounded.  Don’t get me wrong here: throughout the course of Tomb Raider, Lara absolutely gets the tar whipped out of her.  She falls from cliff faces, hitting every available surface on the way to the hard, hard ground.  Tree branches, rock outcroppings, crumbling ruins, your kitchen sink, my kitchen sink—these are all smashed into your protagonist’s body at every available opportunity.  But if she survives it, Lara Croft stands back up.  Early in the storyline, she is terrified, but she is always infinitely strong and capable.  Later in the storyline, she is Artemis with her bow. She bellows calls to war and faces down scores of enemies.  In short: she is a badass.

            I didn’t spend a lot of time with the multiplayer, but the time I did seemed unnecessary.  While it had its charming points (the trap system comes to mind), multiplayer felt like the last thing this game needed.  It has become a sore spot with me when games add-on completely arbitrary multiplayer modes just to make a half-hearted attempt at attracting new blood to their game (see: Bioshock 2).  It is completely fair to point out here that I have never had much use for multiplayer games and/or multiplayer modes in single player games.  Ten year olds calling me slurs they could barely pronounce was bad enough in elementary school—I don’t need that crap in my life now that I’m 30.  It might be an older gamer thing to complain about, and I understand if you don’t agree.  But in my defense: you multiplayer whipper-snappers wouldn’t know a good single player campaign from a hole in the ground.  Now pass the Funions and get the hell off’a my lawn.

            I had so much fun playing Tomb Raider that I sincerely doubt that my lack of experience with any of its previous titles could have made me enjoy it any more.  And I think that is at the heart of what makes this reboot such a solid game.  The designers didn’t set out to create the next Tomb Raider game—they set out to create a great game.  The fact that it’s an existing franchise is incidental to the game’s genius.  At no point did they sacrifice playability to wink at the audience.  There are no significant “nudge, nudge” moments.  And most importantly, I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on a thing.  Nothing from the past of Tomb Raider has passed me by.  If anything, I feel like I’ve found a shiny new toy.  Okay: an archaeological artifact covered in mud, but still.