>pardon the cobwebs

>I would say that there’s no excuse for the absence of posting here over the last month, but that’s not entirely true – there are several valid excuses I could come up with, and I’m sure I could make up a bunch as well. 

But here’s the deal:  the last entry here talks about my failure at Starcraft 2.  Since then, here’s what I’ve played:

  • Madden 11.  I’ve always been one of those long-embittered 2KSports football fans who hated Madden and EA and everything it stood for.  But Madden won, of course, and if you have a serious jones for videogame football, it’s Madden or bust.  And, as it happened, I started getting inexplicably excited for football season to start, and this year’s Madden got good reviews, and I had some credit on Amazon that was burning a hole in my virtual wallet, and so there it is.  I’ve played about 10 or 11 games in my Franchise, which is set on Rookie difficulty, mostly so that I could get all the Achievements I cared to get as quickly as possible.  FUN FACT:  It is almost impossible to get the “Return 2 kicks for TDs with the same guy” Achievement on Rookie difficulty, because the opposing team is so terrible that they almost always go 4 and out, and you’re lucky if you get to return just one kick – the one that leads off a half.
     
  • Lara Croft & the Guardian of Light.  It’s pretty good for what it is, and I imagine it would be a ton of fun if the online co-op ever got turned on.  Unfortunately, I think I’ve played all I’m ever going to play of this one, because now that Halo Reach is out I’m not sure that anyone will care enough to go back to this. 
  • Mafia 2.  I actually did prepare a blog post for this; I had taken a sick day right after it arrived from Gamefly and accidentally/inadvertently finished the whole game in about 10 hours.  Here’s what I can salvage:

Sometimes you can tell, just from the first 5 minutes of play, if a game was cared about in development.  After all, in today’s ADD world, where developers have the balls to charge you to participate in a “beta”, 5 minutes might just be all you get, and so it’s probably a good idea to put your best foot forward (while still keeping the big guns for later in the experience).  Sometimes it’s painfully obvious – the frame rate might be shitty, or the controls might be clunky and unresponsive.  Or, perhaps, it’s just that certain areas of the game received more attention than others – sure, things explode pretty good, but the dialog and the voice acting both feel like first drafts; or, the driving model is responsive, but the combat sucks.

Mafia 2 was cared about.

But that doesn’t make it a great game.

I was out sick yesterday, and I convalesced by playing the entirety of Mafia 2 (and, also, something else that I am not at liberty to discuss, wink wink nudge nudge).  And when I was going to sleep, I started thinking about how I would write about it, and I had this really well-written opening paragraph all set out, which was going to reference both this Joystiq article about how venerable games industry analyst Michael Pachter thought that Mafia 2 would probably be unprofitable, and this very well-written Rock Paper Shotgun review, which (among other things) made the salient observation that comparing Mafia 2 to GTA4 totally misses the point, and how Mafia 2 really needs to be compared to Mafia 1.

  •  Anyway, yeah, there wasn’t much to talk about after I finished Mafia 2.  It is a bland experience in an otherwise beautiful world.
  • Professor Layton & the Unwound Future.  This just arrived in the mail on Monday, and… it really bums me out that I don’t like these games anymore.  And the reason why I don’t like these games anymore is because the puzzles, i.e. the reason why this game exists in the first place, have a tendency to be poorly written.  They can be unfairly difficult.  Or, most egregiously, they can only be solved with a walkthrough, and even then, the explanation for a puzzle’s solution is obtuse or unclear.  The story is interesting, though, at least.
     
  • Mass Effect 2: Shadow Broker DLC.  This is kind of a big deal, if you’re a Mass Effect nerd.  The nuts and bolts of the DLC are pretty much just more combat, with a cool little vehicular chase scene (with the requisite shitty controls); so in that regard it’s nothing special.  But from a story perspective… wow.  The ending of the DLC seems to be a pretty big deal, in terms of the ME universe, and yet the fact that a lot of ME2 fans might not see it would indicate that it won’t really have that big an impact on ME3, which is kind of a bummer.  Anyway – if you’re an ME2 fan, it’s highly recommended.
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum.  I got excited for the sequel and decided to give this another playthrough.  And it’s still as good as it was the first time.

And that brings us to yesterday, when my copy of Halo Reach arrived.

I’ll have more to say on Halo as I get further into it, but basically:  it’s Halo.  And, also:  I don’t know if I like first-person shooters anymore.  Or, rather, that the third-person action genre has gotten so good that first-person shooters kinda feel a little antiquated.  As in:  how come I can’t use cover?

>Strategery

>My relationship with real-time strategy games was, for a time, very much like my relationship with vegetables; I shunned them at all costs.  Well, to be fair, I never had much of an opportunity to even play RTS games; my PCs were never robust enough, and anyway if I was ever gaming on my computer it was generally for Quake 2. 

This all changed, though, when I played Civilization: Revolution.  I’d never played any of Sid Meier’s games until the Xbox version of Pirates!, which I adored, and I figured that CivRev would be a good introduction to the Civ experience, however dumbed down it may have been.  (My understanding is that the Civ games aren’t even really RTS games, but more like their own specific thing, but the overall principle is somewhat similar.)  Anyway, I got hooked on the 360 version of CivRev, and then I bought it for my DS, and then I splurged on Civ4 for my PC, and even though I really only played one game, I loved it.

So, then, I’m really looking forward to Civ 5.  So much so that I got back into CivRev this weekend, and then, when I kept failing miserably at gaining a military victory with the Germans (you’d think that would be a slam dunk), I remembered that old 360 Arcade title, most notable for being the first In-Avatar game, A Kingdom for Keflings.  K4K is kind of a weird cross of CivRev and Farmville?  There aren’t any enemies, and nothing can really go wrong; you just need to keep building various buildings and growing your city, and eventually it gets pretty hectic because you have 30 little dudes running around, say, chopping down trees and then delivering them to lumbermills, and then delivering the newly-crafted planks of wood to other workshops, etc.  Anyway, it’s incredibly charming and the music is great (even if a bit repetitive) and I found myself getting totally sucked in.  And in these dry, dry summer months, you take what you can get.

But there’s this other RTS game that just came out, and it seems to be causing a bit of a fuss; and yet I still feel a bit intimidated.  In the wake of CivRev, I tried a handful of 360 RTS titles, and they all made me feel incredibly stupid.  But I am a grown man now, and if I can eventually grow to enjoy vegetables, perhaps I can eventually learn how to not totally suck at Starcraft 2.

Not bloody likely, though, if the first few missions are any indication.  As much as it bends over backwards to remain accessible, I still feel so very stupid.  I want to move all my guys at the same time, but they don’t all stay together.  I want them to attack everything in their path as they move from point A to point B – and there’s a button that specifically makes that happen – and I keep forgetting to push it.  If there’s a resource thing on the way, I suddenly forget how to activate it or make it work or whatever.  It is humbling.  It is clearly a well-made game, and the way people are freaking out about it leads me to believe that there is gold to be found, if I am willing and patient enough to figure out how to sift for it.  I remain cautiously skeptical.

>Weekend Recap: Dark Star, RDR, Limbo

>I am feeling compelled to post something, anything, even though I’m not sure I have anything truly compelling to say at the moment.

The weekend was gaming-heavy, as it turned out. I’ve been dealing with some anxiety issues lately and having my mind occupied helped a great deal in getting over the hump. I finished Limbo, did some online co-op in Red Dead Redemption, and put in quite a few hours into Dark Star One, which is probably more than it deserves.

Let me clarify that last bit. I bought Dark Star One on the PC however many years ago, played the first few missions, and then put it away. I liked the idea of it – it was basically Grand Theft Outer Space – but for whatever reason I didn’t really bond with it. (Ever since consoles really came into their own, I’ve had trouble really getting into PC gaming; I think the last PC game I truly got lost in was Grim Fandango.) But I was curious about the 360 port, because let’s face it – there aren’t any space combat games anymore. And these are the dry days of summer, after all, and there’s nothing else to play, and Dark Star One has hours and hours of (the same) stuff to do.

Anyway. It’s a straight-up port of the PC version, which means it’s ugly as hell, and features some of the worst voice acting this side of Sacred 2. And yet there’s something charming about it. The combat is actually quite exciting, which turns out to be quite important because in spite of all the story and side missions you need to do in order to advance the plot, all you’re ever going to do is blow up other ships. There’s also a sort-of economy system, wherein you can import and export certain goods, but it’s not really all that necessary in order to make any money (which is good, because it’s also never talked about or explained in any way – it’s a good thing I still had my PC manual, because otherwise I’d still be confused as to what everything means). And the game feels… ambitious. This was not just a hack job done in order to fill in some numbers in a ledger somewhere (at least, the PC version wasn’t); you can tell that a lot of passion went into the design and feel of the game, even if the talent wasn’t necessarily in place.

It’s charming enough that I’ve decided that I want Rockstar to stop making GTA5 and start making GTA Outer Space. Because if this sort of thing is going to be done right, then the right company needs to make it. (Also, I’m thinking that at this stage of development, Mass Effect 3 will not have space combat.)

Playing the online co-op in Red Dead Redemption reminded me how much I miss that game. I haven’t really played any of it since I finished the game however many months ago; I dabbled in some post-ending Achievement hunting, and did a little bit of Free Roam with friends, and then that was about it. But the co-op was fun as hell, and I wish there was more of it. Maybe I’ll start getting back into Free Roam again…

I am reluctant to talk about my experience playing Limbo. It’s a wonderful game, don’t get me wrong; it’s just that I ended up using a walkthrough about halfway in and once I started I couldn’t stop. I blame the Achievements. I do feel obligated to give it another go without the walkthrough, though, just to experience it the way it’s supposed to be experienced. Hopefully I’ll have forgotten everything by the time I get around to it.

>SFTC Post #200!

>I must confess I don’t really have anything planned for this, the 200th post here at Shouts from the Couch. I came here today to talk about DeathSpank.

DeathSpank is a downloadable action-RPG, which sounds like it ought to be terrible. But it’s written by Ron Gilbert, of Monkey Island fame, so that’s promising. And it’s got a fascinating and unique art design, which I’m not sure I’ve ever seen outside of something like Animal Crossing. And it’s legitimately funny, and probably features the best voice acting of any game in 2010 (yes, better than Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption), and the combat is simple but not totally mindless, and there’s so much to do, and it’s so well done.

The quest is a search for The Artifact, which appears to be a piece of bacon. The side quests are mostly of the “fetch this for me,” or “kill 10 of those things” variety, but they are all very funny, and I’ve found myself doing as many quests as possible just so that I can hear more of the incredibly well-written dialogue. And sometimes there are little puzzles that go on top of these quests; they’re not terribly difficult, but they certainly make an easy side quest that much trickier, and everything is just so goddamned witty and awesome. At one point I found myself getting mobbed by tiny little Irish dudes and they all laughed and cackled and I nearly had to put the controller down, I was giggling like an idiot.

In short: highly recommended.

And I’ll promise to have something more interesting for post #250.

>Weekend Recap: Orbs and Time

>I wouldn’t say that I’ve had a change of heart regarding Crackdown 2, but rather a change of attitude. It’s still not a very good 3rd person open-world shooter, but I think the mistake is on our part, for assuming that it’s trying to be.

As with the original Crackdown before it, the game is merely a playground, and the main treat – the collection of Agility Orbs – is the real goal. All the people that you end up killing are merely obstacles in your path. It’s sort of ridiculous that such a simple premise can make for such a compelling experience, but there it is.

I do not care about the story or the objectives or anything else – I’m just all about leveling up my dude. I’ve collected a little over 300 Agility Orbs so far, about 30 hidden Orbs, 5 or 6 of those Renegade Orbs, and so my Agility level is now just over 5. (The gliding ability that I just unlocked is not quite as awesome (or useful) as it could be.) I’ve started to relent and actually do the “game” stuff as well, if only so that I have more respawn points (such points also let you keep any new weapons you find out in the world), and that stuff continues to be uninteresting.

I’m still of the opinion that it feels more like a huge expansion pack, rather than a $60 retail purchase. If you’re a fan of the original, you’ll know exactly what you’re getting here. If you’re new to the series, this is certainly a good place to start, and (probably) well worth a rental.

————–

I also did a little dabbling in Singularity over the weekend, which looks and feels a lot like some sort of high-concept Bioshock mod. (Seriously – it looks just like Bioshock.) It’s not bad! It’s got some neat time-manipulation puzzle business mixed with all the shooting and the killing. I’m maybe 2 hours in, so I’ve got a lot left to see, but it’s definitely better than I was expecting it to be.

>Compulsive Collecting

>I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating (at least in terms of giving this post some sort of thematic focus): of my 57,908 Achievement Points, the points I’m most proud of were the 50 I earned for finding all 500 Agility Orbs in the first Crackdown. Yes, I earned them. I didn’t use a walkthrough, I didn’t cheat; I found all those motherfuckers on my own, and all the hours I spent in doing so were totally worth it.

The hunt for Agility Orbs more than made up for the game’s many flaws, and the rewards for leveling up were tangible – Crackdown’s Pacific City was made for running around and jumping, and having a maxed out Agility stat meant that running around and jumping was more awesome. In retrospect, I can acknowledge (well, admit) that the first Crackdown was not a particularly good game; it’s just that it did this one particular thing exceedingly well, and that one particular thing was so much fun that it kinda became the heart and soul of the game, for me.

And so I pre-ordered Crackdown 2 without thinking twice. You can’t put something as addictive as Agility Orbs in a game called Crackdown and not have collection junkies like me foaming at the mouth.

I got my copy yesterday, and guess what? It’s almost the exact same game as the first one. This ought not to be too big a deal – hunting Agility Orbs is still fun – but the sense of deja vu is overwhelming, and the game’s differences are mostly superficial. More importantly, the game’s flaws are much more apparent, especially when compared to games like InFamous; the shooting is janky as hell, the driving is more or less unnecessary (and certainly feels like it was under-designed, as a result), and the city feels somewhat lifeless (which is odd, considering how many people are wandering the streets). Hunting Agility Orbs is pretty much my only real motivation for finishing the game, now, and I’m not entirely sure that I want to “play the actual game” unless I have to, in order to access a new part of the city. This makes me a little sad, frankly. This makes me feel guilty for slogging through a shitty game just so that I can find a new Orb.

—-

My wife was out of town for this past 4th of July weekend, which meant that I had the TV all to myself. And this meant that I could play the hell out of Lego Harry Potter. There’s not a lot that needs to be said about this game; if you like the Lego series, this is the best one of the lot. If you’re a fan of the movies, you will appreciate this game a lot more than if you’re just a fan of the books. If you’re totally unfamiliar with the Harry Potter brand, this game will not make any sense, but it’s still incredibly approachable and easy and if you’re a compulsive collector, you will have a hard time pulling yourself away from it. I decided I’d had enough when I got up to 98% completion; I was never going to find every last character token. But I did get all 200 gold bricks, all 50 students in peril, all 20 red bricks, and the few Achievements I missed are not necessarily that hard to get; if I really need to, I’m sure I can go back and get the full 1,000 without too much trouble.

Cut Off: A Redemptive Tale of Addiction and Clicking On Things

It’s been almost a week, now – that’s probably long enough for it to have sunk in – so I think I can manage to avoid jinxing it if I announce that I have finally conquered an addiction.

My name is Jervo, and I was a Zyngaholic. I was into Mafia Wars and FarmVille, I was a serious Treasure Isle junkie, and I even dabbled in FrontierVille, Cafe World, and I think there was a fish tank one also. I spent actual U.S. currency on intangible enhancements to virtual places, and I spent more than I care to admit. More than the money, though, I spent time. I kept a calendar in the back of my mind, making sure I’d be near a computer when it was time to harvest something, or if a reward was about to occur, or if I had enough energy to finish clearing an island. I had a routine – I’d get in to work, turn my computer on, grab a cup of coffee, check my work e-mail to make sure nothing was needing to get done, and then I’d take a deep breath, process the shame, and start clicking.

The magic had left a long time ago, of course. It had stopped being “fun.” (Had it ever been fun?) It was a commitment that no longer felt reciprocated. I had long since stopped being “social” in these games. I never announced anything in my Facebook feed (unless it was really early on a weekend morning and I knew that other junkies players were online, and that they could hook me up with whatever it was that I needed and then I could hide the announcement). I never visited other people’s farms/islands unless I needed XP. It became a solitary grind towards infinity; these games have no endgame, there is no final boss, there is nothing except the next thing, and if you act now, you can get this cute little decoration for only 10% off!

I think I knew I needed to stop a few months ago. The tipping point: I had built up a serious stockpile of fuel in FarmVille, and I’d also had a serious hoard of virtual cash. And I guess I had decided that when I was out of fuel, and out of money with which to buy more fuel, then that would be it; I wouldn’t spend any real money to buy any fake fuel, and if that meant that I’d have to manually click on every goddamned square 3 times, then so be it, and if that meant that I was no longer interested, then that would be that. (If you don’t understand, you’ll never understand.)

As it turned out, that day arrived last week. I was out of fuel, out of virtual cash, and I suddenly felt free – I didn’t have to click on anything today. And if I didn’t have to spend money on a fake farm, then I certainly didn’t have to spend money on energy packs for Treasure Isle, and I definitely didn’t need to spend money on stupid mandatory items that I’d need to finish missions in Mafia Wars, and FrontierVille was fucking stupid anyway.

And now it’s been almost a week. And I don’t miss it. Well, sorta. It helped smooth out the idle hours at work. It was fun seeing other people’s creativity when they designed their own personal spaces, and I certainly didn’t mind helping them out when they needed something. But I don’t miss the schedule. I don’t miss the abstract sense of obligation. And I definitely don’t miss the pressure to spend money on this shit.

You know what’s sad? It’s been so long since I’ve been playing these games that I kinda forgot why I got into them in the first place. I guess it was mostly just that I’m the kind of gamer who likes to grind without the pressure of failure; there was always some sort of reward for finishing a task, and when you first start out in these games there’s a ton of rewards. There wasn’t necessarily any sort of strategy or critical thinking, unless you wanted to power-level – and once I figured out how to do that, then that’s where these games started to get insidious. With Mafia Wars and Treasure Isle, it was figuring out the timing – if you timed it right, you could level up and get a free energy refill without having to use any items, which also meant you could be that much more productive; with FarmVille, it was mostly about seeding high XP crops (hello, peas) and being as efficient as possible when harvesting, so that there was no wasted time, and then saving up money to buy Mansions which basically granted you a new level once you placed it.

If that last paragraph sounds ridiculous, then you have no idea how it actually feels.

Anyway, it’s done. I’m done. I’m done with Zynga. I’m done with farms and treasure. I’m done with it all. I am free.

I am also available for Scrabble and I will kick your ass in Bejeweled.

>Weekend of Sloth

>The wife was away this weekend, which meant NO PANTS. Um, sorry. It meant I could play games all weekend without feeling guilt or shame, and let me tell you – I AM NOT YET SATED.

A quick recap:

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
I rented this a long time ago, hated it, sent it back. Figured that was the end of it. But: my wife is the biggest Star Wars nerd I know, and when she saw an E3 preview of the sequel, she was like: dude, you need to play that. And play the first one again, so we know what happened. So I did. Turns out that it still sucks. Well, no – it’s just janky as all fuck. The story is interesting – the ending is pretty gigantic, when you think about the canon – but the actual gameplay is repetitive, the controls are unresponsive, and most of my player deaths felt awfully cheap.

Puzzle Quest 2 (DS)
It took a little while to grow on me, but I’m definitely on board for this sequel. That said, it’s awfully sluggish – at least it feels that way for someone who plays a shitload of Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook. The RPG elements are still neat but the menus are hideous – there are far too many button presses to see what you have equipped, for example. There’s a few other things that it could steal from Facebook – it would be nice to get credit for linking up corners, the way you can on BB. In any event, it will replace the puzzle void left by the excellent Picross 3D, which I did end up finishing 100%.

Split/Second
My goodness. When I had to choose between S/S and Blur, I chose Blur, and I chose wrong. I’ve spent the bulk of the weekend finishing the single-player season, and it’s amazing. I’m hoping that my friends who have it will continue to play it – it ought to be incredible online.

Games v. Art v. Time

I was hoping to avoid entering the “Games as Art” debate, because I felt that the question was (a) insulting and (b) obvious. Of course games are art. Or, rather, they can be, if that’s what they strive for. Film is an art form, but I defy anyone to defend a piece of crap like, say, “Transformers 2” as art. Similarly, Roger Ebert saying that games can never be art is, ultimately, meaningless; no matter how smart he is, or erudite, he has not actually played any games, and therefore his argument – however well-constructed – is irrelevant. My personal opinion is that if you haven’t experienced a thing, you are not inherently qualified to have your judgment matter.

But I had an epiphany of sorts last night and I figured I might as well bring it up, especially as I was a bit surprised at what side of the fence I ended up on. Let me set the scene, then, as the prelude has everything to do with the conclusion.

A great deal of my down time yesterday at work was spent reading various Rock Paper Shotgun articles about the 10 year anniversary of Deus Ex; this one is as good a place to start as any. Deus Ex – at least the first one – is still held as a pinnacle of game design; it did the whole “choice” thing long before Peter Molyneux and Bioware started offering it as a bullet point. You could pretty much do anything you wanted to – you could be stealthy, you could be lethal, you could be manipulative, and the game responded in turn. I, like a few of the participants in the RPS article above, played and enjoyed the game when it first game out, but hadn’t played it since. And so, by the time I got home last night, Steam had put both Deus Ex 1 and 2 on sale for a ridiculously low price – I think they were $5 combined – and I felt obligated to download them and re-experience a masterpiece.

Let me offer up a quote from the RPS article now, because it’s somewhat crucial to my eventual point:

I want to cling to my memories and experience, not have it tainted by age, creakiness and other people’s bluster. Even looking in on it last night, I was horrified by how not-huge the levels seemed now. I didn’t want to destroy their grandeur in my memory, so I couldn’t stay for long.

So while I was downloading the Deus Ex games, my wife and I watched Wipeout (ridiculous TV, not art) and then, because we’re in that weird point of our Netflix queue where the movies we have are good, classic movies that we’re never in the mood to watch, we decided to watch “Visions of Light,” a documentary about the history of cinematography that I’d heard was great.

If you’ve read this blog with any sort of regularity, you’ll know that I am a graphics whore. This also extends to film – my favorite directors (Kubrick, Gilliam, Jeunet, Gondry, the Coens, etc.) are all absolutely brilliant with the camera and use it as much as anything else to tell the story. I am a big big fan of Gordon Willis, Conrad Hall and Roger Deakins; the biggest reason why I liked the most recent Harry Potter movie was that it was shot by the same guy who did Amelie, which is one of my all-time favorites.

Anyway, so this documentary was really, really fascinating. It covered a general history of American cinematography, and showed lots of out-of-context clips which did a terrific job of illustrating the cinematographer’s relationship to the art of storytelling. There were a few notable omissions – no mention at all of Eisenstein’s influence, which seemed surprising, and only one Hitchcock movie (“Rebecca”, which wasn’t even identified as a Hitchcock film). And, of course, the film was released in 1993, which was right around the time when CGI really started to become prominent, and the transition from film to digital would seem to be as big a technological leap as the transition from black & white to color. But I digress; the documentary was really just about the evolution of the form through the years, from early silent films to the noir period of the 40s and 50s, and then to the Scorcese films of the 70s, with some specific examples of absolutely fantastic shots and how they were designed and filmed.

And one of the films that was brought up, again and again, was Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane is rightly held up as one of the greatest films ever made, and a great deal of the film’s genius is due to the cinematography of Gregg Toland – indeed, Orson Welles placed Toland’s name and credit right next to his, as a rightly-deserved tribute to his contributions. Just about every cinematographer interviewed in the movie held up Toland’s work as the pinnacle of the profession, and as a deep influence on every film that followed.

Here’s the thing: Citizen Kane still holds up. If you watch it now, nearly 70 years after its release, it doesn’t seem nearly as stodgy or stiff as a lot of films from that era can, and most of its camera moves and shots are still breathtaking and jaw-dropping. It is, in short, timeless.

And this is where it started to occur to me that this notion of “timelessness” has a lot to do with the games as art debate. Because here’s the thing: if you play the original Deus Ex now, as I did last night, it’s…. kinda terrible. It’s clunky, it’s poorly acted, it’s ugly. Its relative ugliness is perhaps unfair – 10 years is an eternity these days in terms of technology – but, still, if you took today’s Call of Duty-playing teenager and sat him or her down in front of Deus Ex, they would probably say “this sucks” about 5 to 10 minutes in, and move on. And this is important, because Deus Ex wasn’t just another first person shooter; it was incredibly ambitious and state-of-the-art for its time, and now, only 10 years later, it feels like an ancient relic.

The thing about “great art”, I think, is that it can be appreciated and enjoyed regardless of when one is experiencing it. Shakespeare is still resonant today, even if the language can sound foreign. Mozart and Bach can still stir one’s emotions; Michelangelo and Picasso can still inspire awe and wonder.

Gaming, however, is hampered by a multitude of artistic difficulties. One could certainly make the very valid point that the vast majority of games have absolutely no intention to be art. They may be beautiful to look at, but they are ultimately meant to exist as product. But there’s more to it than that. 2 points to consider:

  1. The technology used to make (and play) games is evolving at such a rapid pace that there’s no real “constant.” Simply in terms of graphics, a game that looks fantastic now will eventually look shitty in a few years; but if you just factor in how a game controls, a game that you loved dearly 5 years ago is damn near unplayable now. Your memories of playing Goldeneye in college 10 years ago will not stand up to the reality of playing Goldeneye now, not after Halo and Call of Duty and everything else. My memories of GTA3 are all that game has going for it now that GTA4 has come and gone, and my experience with Red Dead Redemption has made GTA4 seem archaic in many respects.
  2. Moreover, a game that you loved dearly 5 years ago is probably on a console that doesn’t work anymore, or that you no longer have hooked up to your television – or that you are no longer able to hook up to your television. I still have my Dreamcast and a somewhat large library of Dreamcast games, but I’m not sure that I can get them to work with my HDTV without going out and buying cables (not to mention that it’s also a near certainty that the VMUs in my Dreamcast controllers are dead). It saddens me to know that I’ll probably never get to play Skies of Arcadia again, simply because I can’t. But in a way, that’s good, because my memories of Skies of Arcadia do not seem to include the relentless frequency of random encounters…

So then. What now?

I was about to predict that within the next 5-10 years, the technology curve will flatten out to the extent that it will not necessarily matter how many trillions of polygons you can render per second; the human brain is only capable of processing so much. 3D may or may not take off; I think it will, eventually, but not next year (which is what Sony seems to think); I personally don’t anticipate buying a new 3D HDTV until (a) the price comes way down and (b) there’s enough content to support it, and I think that (a) and (b) are still a few years off. But what the hell do I know – I didn’t understand the Wii, either, and the whole concept of Kinect seems more like science fiction than something I’m going to be using in a matter of months. Still, though, at a certain point, there’s only so many pixels the human eye can process; games will eventually reach a finite level of graphical fidelity.

Which means that creativity will have to take over. That’s what it’s always done, in every artistic discipline; the rules are laid out, the forms are given shape, the boundaries are drawn, and that’s when the artists can truly shine, because to break the rules will finally mean something. This is not to dismiss the truly outstanding artistic achievements in today’s games, of which there are many; it is only to say that once there is a standard form, a form that doesn’t require a new television and console and controller and eyewear every year, a form that every designer and artist and programmer can actually work with for more than six months without getting antiquated – it’s at that point that I think we can expect truly amazing things to happen. It is at that point that we can finally have our Citizen Kane.

>E3’10

>Someday, I will figure out a way to attend an E3 in person. I will behold all there is to behold with my very own personal eyes, ears and hands.

Because when you’re not there, and the only way you can learn about things is via hastily written typo-riddled liveblogs, inebriated podcasts and awful, awful G4 television packages, it’s just maddening.

That won’t stop me from casting ill-informed judgments, however.

In terms of the big 3, the clear winner of this year’s E3 is Nintendo, and you have no idea how strange it is for me to admit it. I covet the 3DS like a drug addict, and not just because it’s a super-snazzy update to an already super-snazzy handheld; it’s got games that look awesome. Epic Mickey looks amazing, and I loathe Disney. I keep hearing that Kirby looks good, but I haven’t seen it in motion yet and it’s not like I ever cared about Kirby before – but hey, if it’s a good game, then we all win. I don’t particularly care about Zelda, either, but if it’s fun, it’s fun.

Microsoft put on a pretty good show, too. I was unsure about Kinect, but I showed my wife Katharine the MS press conference and she was SOLD. And, really, that’s the whole point. The Kinect wasn’t ever designed or intended for someone like me; it’s meant for someone like Kath, who ordinarily doesn’t like most videogames. She doesn’t like buttons; she doesn’t like not knowing how things work. But moving your arms in a certain way and seeing it reflected on the TV – that makes sense. We both were intrigued specifically by Kinect Adventure (which had the river rafting mini-game and some other obstacle course thing), and Ubisoft’s Your Shape Fitness program (as we were already familiar with the Xbox’s YourSelf Fitness). Kath even was intrigued by Harmonix’s Dance game, although you will never in a million years see me playing it. But it’s not even just the games that Kath was interested in – the whole UI seemed ingenious. She was especially excited by the video chat feature, which she can get some use out of.

Sony’s press conference was kinda depressing. Kevin Butler’s appearance made a lot of hay, but when you think about it, what was he even doing there besides being amusing? He didn’t announce anything. When one of your press conference’s bullet points is a new marketing campaign, especially one devoted to the sad, sad PSP, that’s kinda terrible. The biggest coup, really, was that Portal 2 will be on the PS3 – and with SteamWorks support to boot. I already know that I’ll be playing Portal 2 on the 360 and my PC; if I have to play it on the PS3, I will.

Portal 2 is my personal game of the show. The 5 minutes of footage that emerged looks, in the words of Will Ferrell as Tony Lipton, SCRUMPTRILLESCENT.

But ultimately, the biggest thing I got out of this year’s E3 is that 2011 is going to be amazing. The second half of 2010, on the other hand, looks… I dunno. Kinda average, I guess. 2010 has already been a great year if only for Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption, but that can’t be it, right?