Will Write 4 GP

I’m back in scenic Seattle, Washington! This marks the fifth time I’ve attended the Penny Arcade Expo, an event steeped in such geeky fanfare and terrifying body odor that I’m a bit embarrassed to write about it — and this is from a guy who writes a blog exclusively about videogames.

In case you’ve never been to Seattle, there’s this odd phenomenon that has been documented and experienced almost universally. Seattleites are notorious for an outwardly warm disposition that masks a general aversion (maybe even disdain?) towards other people. Basically, everyone you meet in Seattle has the disposition of someone waiting in line at the DMV.

I’ve seen this kind of attitude in Portland as well, of course, but Seattle’s got it bad. What better place to host a convention for people who wear their pride on their gamertag?

Currently, I’m mapping out my 72-hour convention schedule. I’ll be sure to post some highlights and expectations before the expo begins, but for now I’m spending time with family. If anyone wants me to look for any specific games/developers/publishers/events/creepy cosplayers, let me know!

And if you’re heading up to PAX as well, get in touch with me. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.

Contrary to Paul Dano’s situation pictured above, today is a pretty auspicious day for my brain. Remember how I’ve been plugging away at Picross DS for the last year? Well, I closed the lid on that one; all 400-something puzzles have been solved. Nintendo and Jupiter packed in what amounted to literally hundreds of hours of brain-straining pictures to puzzle out, and yet I find myself lusting for more content, just mere days after I polished off the last picture-puzzle. (It was a DS Lite, which revealed itself to me in a moment so surreal — I was holding one of the damn things, after all! — that I felt sure I was losing my grip on this reality in favor of a two-dimensional, numbers-based one.) In a decidedly non-Nintendo move, Picross DS supports downloadable puzzles from previous Picross games as well as brand-new puzzles every couple weeks; however, I managed to run through most of them within a couple hours. 10×10 grids ain’t got nothin’ on the dozens of 25×20 behemoths I’m solving in my sleep.

In any case, while my friends and family wait with bated breath for my nervous, twitchy Picross withdrawals to pass, I dove headfirst into Braid. I mean that quite seriously; I played the game to completion in one protracted (four-hour!) sitting, from innocuous introduction to mind-fucking conclusion.

Seriously, you need to play this game.

The last time I sat in one place for four hours straight was when I was staring down the long, cold barrel of my honors college thesis deadline. The few times before that were likely either related to last-minute final essays or malevolent stomach virii.

So! With those titles out of the way, I can look forward to:

1. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune: The prettiest game I’ve ever laid my tender eyes on. It’s shaping up to be a great rental.
2. Bionic Commando Re-Armed: A love letter to one of the greatest NES games ever made. Fun fact: The original Japanese version was called Top Secret: Hitler’s Revival, and was the second best Hitler-killing game ever made. Hitler’s about as fundamental a villain in human existence as any, but a Hitler with chain-gun arms? You simply can’t top that.
3. Doing Something with My Life: Despite my efforts hire I think this me one’s still hire out of me reach for the please hire me time being.

That’s all for now. Have fun, kids.

…and I, for one, am mad as hell!

How dare the tyrants at Micro$oft charge me a 50% increase over the standard Xbox Live arcade game price? It’s ludicrous!

It’s not like I’m paying for an independent developer’s finely crafted product, painstakingly produced and hauntingly beautiful in its ambiance.

I can’t say it any better than this:

What’s that? Fifteen dollars is too much money to pay for a downloadable game? Fine. Whatever helps you sleep at night, you stingy bastard. More Braid for me.

I’ve found it difficult to come up with a consistent method for assigning a value for a game based on its cost. I’ve mentioned my year-long love affair with Picross DS on several occasions, a game that — at a mere twenty dollars — has sated my appetite for portable gaming single-handedly for hundreds of hours. At the other end of the spectrum is the spectacular Portal, now available as a standalone purchase for $20. Portal takes only a few hours to complete, but the innovative gameplay and mind-bending experiences surely contribute to the game’s lasting value.

It should probably be noted that Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 1 cost $20, a price point that effectively raised the bar for how much a developer can charge for an Xbox Live Arcade game. But that was also $20 well spent in my opinion; the Penny Arcade team put together a petty damn creative game with hilarious scenarios and dialog and stylish artwork, and their endorsement of Braid seems more like a rallying of arms for creative game development than an attempt to justify PAA:OtR-SPoD:E1’s hefty price tag (and bafflingly long title).

I haven’t even talked about the moments in Braid that provoked a verbal “aha!” where the last cog in an untouched corner of my brain sprang to life, turning what was once a mind-numbing riddle into a clever puzzle unlike anything I’d solved before. I didn’t mention the brilliant, dark and distinct writing, or the myriad brilliant uses of the game’s core mechanic — time manipulation — and how it comes to a brilliant and heartbreaking crescendo in the game’s final, eponymous level.

I didn’t mention how important a game like Braid is to the medium as a whole. But I probably should.

Braid is one of those rare titles whose impact will be felt throughout game design for years to come. But more importantly, it’s a very heartfelt and personal story presented through a beautifully ethereal musical score and endearing hand-painted imagery. It’s unlike anything you’ve played before.

Being unemployed is somewhat like being trapped under a big, stinky weight. The more resumes and cover letters I carefully stitch together and polish to a sheen — only to receive no reply — the more difficult it becomes to keep at it. Of course, I need a job, so I’m keeping at it. But to break up the monotony and alleviate the pressure, I’ve been working on playing through a number of games I’ve either never bothered to finish or simply overlooked in the last few years.

I know a number of you are probably going through a similarly tedious experience right now, so I thought I’d take some time to post impressions of these games. Many of them are well-regarded, but my experiences have varied wildly.

World of Warcraft - I can quit anytime I want, gorrammit. I’ve flung myself wildly off the wagon, and it’s never felt better. Thanks to the new, smoother leveling progression and a few good friends to run with, I’ve been having a great time with the game.

Most WoW players argue the game’s only fun once you’re at level 70, the peak level. That kind of argument is the fabricated solace of the “hardcore” gamer: the sort of person who lives and breathes competition but can’t uproot himself from his swively office chair. Sure, WoW’s got some great end-game content and it caters to a variety of playing styles (including my casual approach) but I’ve never seen a reason to play a game unless I’m consistently enjoying the experience. For the first time in four years, I can honestly say that WoW has been enjoyable every step of the way. I’m currently level 45 and going strong.

Picross DS - Yeah, it’s a puzzle game for the Nintendo DS. It’s also practically the only game I’ve played on my handheld in about a year, and for good reason; I’ve never been this addicted to a casual game in my life. With more than 330 puzzles to solve (the later ones typically taking upwards of 30-45 minutes) I’ve spent many an evening in bed hacking away at the last picture-based puzzle before finally going to sleep. For $20, this has easily been the best value for my money in any videogame, ever. I’m finally down to the last five puzzles, and once they’re done I’m certain my brain will begin to atrophy.

You can check out my review of the game here.

Ico - Well, I need something to play on my PS3 until LittleBigPlanet finally arrives. The much-lauded game from the team that later created Shadow of the Colossus - one of my favorite games - has been sitting in my CD wallet for about five years now, and I’ve never had the patience to finish it up. For such a simple game, it’s got an eerie way of playing with your mind. It’s something I’ve never really been able to wrap my head around until recently.

Ico fools the player by looking and ostensibly playing like a Zelda-style game: you run around in a three-dimensional dungeon where you’re tasked with rescuing a princess while fending off swarms of bad guys. However, the controls are laid out in such a way as to intentionally disconnect the player from the experience. While two of the face buttons control jumping and attacking, the majority of your time is spent manipulating components that aren’t directly tied to your protagonist: examining the environment, zooming in on details, and –  most importantly — holding the princess’s hand.

The deaf-mute princess is consistently in peril, but as the player you’re never sure why. She’s a total mystery, and the communication barrier is thick and off-putting to a casual player. The only humanizing action in the game is grabbing her hand and guiding her from place to place, the controller shaking occasionally and abruptly as your strides fall in and out of step. More than anything, Ico is for videogames what John Cage was to modern music composition. It’s everything a game shouldn’t be, and by virtue of that it is a beautiful experience.

It’s a slow burn effect, but I’m realizing as time goes by that Ico is challenging me to shift my priorities as a gamer. It’s not about performing difficult combos to wipe out throngs of enemies as rapidly as possible, or sitting through cutscenes with half-assed one-liners and cheesy choreographed action. It’s about humanizing the experience by making the entire game focused on that bond between the characters, and emphasizing that bond by placing them in an austere, stark environment. Like any important work of literature, it’s often uncomfortable to confront, but the message is infinitely meaningful.

Ico is a cold and distant experience, but the longer I stick with it the harder it is to put it down.

Braid - This just hit Xbox Live today, and despite its relatively steep price point ($15) I know it’s a must-own title. Spend just a minute with it and it becomes clear the game has something special to say. Brilliantly understated writing, breathtatking visual and aural design and some seriously clever gameplay mechanics make Braid one of the most excitingly original — and endearing — games I’ve played this year.

Facebook has been good to me over the years. Aside from enabling friends to stay connected, forge new bonds and check out pictures of that time Steven got wicked hammered and totally pissed on the drive-thru of the Dairy Queen in front of that five-year-old, the Facebook platform has opened its arms to thousands of application developers to create an environment where social links on an already passionate and active userbase can be adapted into popular applications.

Take Scrabble, for example. The classic game of word-on-word action made its way to the Facebook platform by way of Scrabulous, a fan-made, no-holds-barred arena for duels of the hyperliterate.

On Facebook, Scrabble was transformed into the online multiplayer arena called Scrabulous — the goddamn Thunderdome of word games. This game was hotter than Edward R. Murrow (who is classified as a “level-9 super-fine” stud) around the journalism school.

And then it was gone.

Hasbro most likely saw a potential threat to the Scrabble name and property in Scrabulous, and it brought on Electronic Arts to craft a Facebook-tailored version of Scrabble to replace Scrabulous in the United States and Canada. Scrabble can already be found online at EA’s Pogo website, but it costs money to play.  But EA’s Facebook Scrabble application would offer online play among friends, just like Scrabulous, only it would include the Scrabble branding. What could go wrong?

The answer: A whole hell of a lot. EA and Hasbro royally screwed themselves over with a hat trick of gaffes:

1. They had Scrabulous taken offline
2. Scrabulous users weren’t able to port their win/loss records over to Scrabble
3. The offical Scrabble app didn’t fucking work

In case you weren’t aware, this is serious business. BBC News reported it as one of the top stories on its main RSS feed, after all, and it was featured on the front page of CNN.com

But hey, this is the Internet! If you don’t like it, hack it into submission!  And that’s just what the fans did.

So, hey, Electronic Arts and Hasbro: Don’t jerk your fanbase around. People love Scrabble, and protecting your copyright is fair and the right thing to do, but when you’ve got 500,000 daily users (making it one of the most popular applications on Facebook) you can’t just leave them high and dry. Keep the Scrabulous engine, let the Scrabulous guys do their thing, and retain the rights to the game. Slap the word “Scrabble” on there and keep your half-baked substitute offline, and everybody wins.

So here’s the good news: I am now a college graduate!

Unfortunately, the bad news: My only directive in life is now obsolete.  The moment I printed and bound my thesis was when I signed away my academic career.  Now I’m faced with a whole mess of job listings on craigslist, Monster.com and JournalismJobs.com, none of which is particularly viable.

A few dozen job apps down and I still have yet to get any real feedback. You’ll forgive me if I’m beginning to sound a little jaded.

So in the meantime, I’m making money where I can (at least I’m not working the streets yet!) and taking this time to do what I do best as a writer: spew. I’m hoping to stick to a reasonable schedule with my blog and hopefully give the Internet something worth reading.

In actual gaming-related news, I’m attending the fifth Penny Arcade Expo in a month.  I’ve attended every year, and each year’s left me with a slew of ridiculous stories to tell.  Highlights have included:

• Playing Munchkin with MC Frontalot
• Sleeping on hotel room floors with eight other people
• Not really sleeping
• Being able to identify friends based on who’s actually wearing deodorant

Being at PAX is probably a little bit like having a baby.  It’s the rite of passage into a divine new light, a journey that could forever change your life; you just have to be ready for not eating or sleeping well, physical and sensory torment, and the occasional spontaneous bout of vomiting.

In the meantime, I’m examining my backlog of games and blazing through them ravenously.  Apparently I never beat Ico?  What the hell is wrong with me?

So that’s what’s up.

Remember Guybrush Threepwood? How about Bernard, Hoagie and Laverne? Sam and Max? Manny Calavera?  Zak McKracken? Ben Throttle? Commander Low, Dr. Brink, Maggie Robbins, Ken Borden and Cora Miles? Gabriel Knight? April Ryan? Sirrus, Achenar and Atrus? Maybe even Putt-Putt?

Chances are you’ve had a run-in with an adventure game at some point in your life. And if you’re like me, those games stuck with you with an unusual tenacity.  Something about the characters, probably, or the unique, bizarre narrative that advances in such a peculiar way.

Adventure games have always been paradoxical to me in the greater context of game design.  While most popular genres have exploded in new directions with user-created content — think open-world sandbox game design, user-created content like Garry’s Mod and Halo’s Forge — adventure games have stayed the course like the saltiest lunatic sea captain this side of Melville.  But by and large (with a few disappointing exceptions) the adventure genre has benefited from sticking to its roots: brilliant writing, expert voice acting and clever context-based puzzle solving.

And now, thanks to companies like Telltale Games, we’re experiencing what could probably be called the dawn of a second renaissance of adventure gaming.  Sam and Max hasn’t been perfect, but the quality of the experience makes a new episiode’s arrival almost as exciting as the release of a new Tim Schafer game. (In other words, groin-grabbingly good.)

So then you have to wonder what happened at LucasArts that led them to abandon their acclaimed, albeit niche adventure titles.  Surely the steady production regurgitation of Star Wars-related games on every conceivable platform would have kept the company in a good enough financial state to fund these critical darlings?

Hard to say.  You might try calling LucasArts, but I’m pretty sure there isn’t going to be anyone to answer the phone before too long.  The studio laid off a huge number of internal developers, with the rest rumored to follow once Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (which admittedly sounds like an awesome rental at the least) goes gold.

These things happen in business.  In order for companies to stay competitive, sometimes major reconstruction is required.  But a company like LucasArts had such a unique legacy — the money and intellectual property rights of insane genius George Lucas mixed with the ingenuity of people like Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer — and it’s a tragedy to see how it’s dwindled into near-obscurity.  I hope the LucasArts staff finds a better home in the future.

Now, I told you this long story to make an important point. Many of the biggest publishers have found they are able to block out competition and generate Scrooge McDuck-like mountains of money by acquiring rights to franchises and iterating on them yearly. Look at Activision; they take established, AAA franchises like Guitar Hero and Call of Duty and essentially buy them up and squeeze out new spinoffs and iterations at a fever pitch.  Treyarch’s not a bad studio and Call of Duty 3 isn’t a bad game, but compared to a game like Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4 — with an incredible and unique campaign and the best online multiplayer experience on a console — you have to wonder why we need a new CoD game yearly if it means the property is licensed out to different studios each time.  And Guitar Hero, now developed by Neversoft, has lost both its aesthetic charm and its finely-tuned setlists and gameplay.  While not a terrible game either, it’s just unplayable for someone like me who got so deep into the previous two games.

Electronic Arts was guilty of this for the longest time, espeically in the sports genre.  While that’s largely still the case, their EA Partners program has created some gems like skate and Rock Band.

My point is that consumers will only put up with these rehashes before they tire of the product entirely.  By the time Guitar Hero: Steely Dan comes around, the userbase will have moved onto something else to spend their time — and money — on.  Companies that innovate are riskier initial investments, of course, but the ones that do it right generate the most press attention, the most rumblings on message boards, and the most engaging hands-on experiences.  I’ll never forget the thrill of the first time I played Rock Band on-stage at PAX, awkwardly belting out “Creep” in front of dozens of people.  Up to that point, I would have never sung in front of anybody, regardless of whether I knew them.  But the game was just too fucking cool; I didn’t really have a choice!

Clearly I don’t have the best idea of how a game studio operates.  I’ve never worked for one and I’ve only talked to game developers in passing.  But I know that in any market where intellectual property and the individual experience are king, innovation is of the utmost importance.  And as I’ve aged and played probably thousands of games, I’m much more eager to pay money for something that tried something new and didn’t quite succeed than something that plays just like fifty or a hundred other games but does it slightly better than ever.

I don’t think I’m alone in that regard.

But I really don’t wanna pay for it.

Having just graduated from college, I’ve got some time to spend indulging in things I was too busy to enjoy.  At the top of my list is Metal Gear Solid 4, a game I’ve been dying to play and have only been deterred from by its gianormous price tag.

When confronted with a choice in consoles back in 2006, I opted for the 360 simply because my friends were all jumping on the Xbox bandwagon.  Even today I only know a single person who owns a PlayStation 3.  It must be a lonely vigil.

It’s hard to describe exactly what’s compelling me to pick up the final installment of the Metal Gear Solid saga, because there’s to it than the game play.  It’s more of an obligation, I suppose, as someone who plays a lot of games and wants to believe there’s the potential for literary legitimacy or cultural significance to be derived from a game.  And while Kojima’s heavy-handed stories are filled to the brim with totally fucked up antagonists and melodramatic soliloquies, they’re also powerful in their intricacy and detail.  It’s not Citizen Kane and it’ll never be mistaken for The Godfather; honestly, it’s not even a far cry from Die Hard.  But it appears to be the best gaming has yet produced, and I’m eager to experience it not just as a single briliant game in a sea of rehashed ideas, but as the latest, highest benchmark for storytelling in interactive media.

Also, I’m really just curious why Snake has a gun in his mouth.  That’s just baffling.

I was going to title this entry with a more appropriate title, “Battling Fruit Fuckers in The Shithole” — because that’s exactly what I’ve been doing — but I didn’t want to cause undue duress to the more weak-hearted on my RSS feed. EDIT: Whatever; I’m doing it.

At its worst moments, Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One calls to mind a drab, streamlined console RPG. Its components boil down to a few basic tasks: Kill the monsters. Open the chests. Talk to the key characters. Fight a boss or two. At its surface, it looks like the same boring game we’ve played for years.

Having just played the demo, I was ready to dismiss it as digital garbage. But I stuck with it. Best decision in a looong time.

At its best moments, PAA:OtRSPoD:E1 (love that double-colon in the title!) does for the console RPG genre what Telltale’s Sam and Max games have done for adventure gaming: It’s brought it back from the stinking, rotting dead with a foulmouthed, off-color shot of adrenaline.

Over the eight-to-ten hours I sank into the game, I’ve ventured into the dark heart of New Arcadia. I’ve stumbled over the destitute and the urinating (often the same people, really) and battled the whirring-clicking amorous machines, the Fruit Fuckers. Clowns have thrown deadly oversized shoes at me, a barbershop quartet assaulted me with four-part harmonies, and an esoteric cult of mimes still haunt me with their wordless threats.

I’m still not done, which is a good sign.

Punctuating every action are reams of brilliant, sardonic, and totally aloof commentary from the comic’s scribe, Jerry Holkins. As a longtime Penny Arcade reader, I realize the value of the brand is split between the actual comics (drawn by Mike Krahulik) and the accompanying news posts, typically written by Holkins. Here, Holkins has a chance to shine as the demented, twisted dungeon master of this game.

The brilliance of the dialog intertwined with the ridiculous nature of the game’s missions (called case files) in a very natural way. It calls to mind the witty conversations that defined each of Tim Schafer’s games. (It’s no wonder that Schafer’s former coworker and legendary adventure game maker Ron Gilbert consulted on the Penny Arcade game!)

For all its little flaws (such as a terrible targeting system during exploration on the Xbox 360 version), the game is filled with so many comedic gems and bursts of gameplay ingenuity that it’s difficult to imagine anyone not having a fun time with it. The price point is somewhat unprecedented for an episodic game — a full $20 — but you’ll get more than your money’s worth.

Just prepare yourself for massive amounts of urine, fruit lovemaking and bizarre, foul-smelling characters. You’ll feel right at home within minutes.

It’s finals week, so be prepared for a barrage of posting from me.

My review of Brawl was published in the Oregon Daily Emerald today. I’m actually pretty happy with how well it turned out, given I wrote and edited it in about 45 minutes. While playing the game. It’s silly.

While writing it, I was thinking about the standard, lengthy game review that you might find on a number of mainstream gaming websites. Often sporting clandestine lingo and half-handed arguments, these reviews can be helpful to a fact-addicted nerd but detrimental to the general audience that’s trying to reach out and take a hold on gaming for the first time.

Sites like GamerDad and What They Play, a new startup from 1up’s John Davison, are some of the best outlets for boiling down the myriad details about texture processing and respawn counts and cutting into the content, the purpose and the pulse behind videogames.

They both target parents, but they’re written by serious gamers; rather than act as the first place Hillary Clinton goes to dig up dirt on the seedy dealings of the videogame industry, Gamer Dad and What They Play both operate as ambassadors to the medium. They promote the fun and social benefits that arise from gaming with friends and family while also not beating around the bush when questionable content is involved.

I’m not saying the core gamer demographic - your typical 18-to-24-year-old antisocial jerk who paid money for Nine Inch Nails’ new album “Ghosts” the instant it came out, but can’t remember who’s running for president this year - needs this sort of media treatment. But I do think the candor should be changing.

Nintendo has proven single-handedly just how ubiquitous the appeal of gaming can be. The DS and Wii have sold more effectively than the idea of destroying the Nazi regime did. So why not start treating our writing like it’s the real deal, too?