"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. "
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
