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.