Read anything interesting lately about leaked specs for the new Xbox?
…yeah. About that.
http://x-surface.tumblr.com/post/41282771026/x-surface-dont-believe-everything-you-read
AND THAT’S WHY YOU DON’T ALWAYS BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ ON THE INTERNET
(I’m not the source, FYI. OR AM I?)
(I’m not, though.)
I don’t have many rules when it comes to maintaining this site, but I do try to adhere to two primary goals: (1) post on a regular basis, and (2) don’t get overly personal, if it can be avoided. Rule 1 is mostly in place so that I can keep a consistent audience, even if it’s just a few people, but it’s also just so that I keep my chops (such as they are) from getting rusty. And Rule 2 is there because, among other things, getting personal can mean getting lazy. There’s a difference between keeping a personal voice and going over the deep end; that’s what personal blogs are for, and this is not one of them.
I bring this up because I’m going to be violating both of these rules over the next few months; I’m probably not going to be posting all that much, and whatever I do post is probably going to be personal. It can’t be avoided. My personal life was already going to be overwhelmed by the impending arrival of a newborn child; but now I have the added (and unforeseen) stress of trying to find a new place to live before the baby arrives, as the owner of our apartment has decided to sell. (Without telling us, I might add; we found out by accident.)
We found this out on Saturday morning. The baby’s due date is early April; it is now the second half of January. The owner of our apartment has not yet found a buyer, but we’re obviously not being kept in the loop on how that’s all shaking out, and so we have to take matters into our own hands. We would rather move before the baby’s born, so there’s not much time to work with. We’ve spent the last 48 hours scouring Craigslist, calling brokers, following leads; we’ve already begun purging our clothes, books and DVDs in preparation for packing for an unscheduled move to an as yet unknown destination.
The beauty of New York City is that there are a thousand real estate agents ready and waiting to help us; the soul-crushing tragedy is that the Venn Diagram representing the type of place we want at the price we can afford yields a wafer-thin slice from which to choose, as well as a thousand other people looking at the same apartment.
This is all to say that posting here is going to be light. You have to understand that any time I spend playing games is time I’m not spending actively trying to secure a new place to live, which makes me feel guilty; and all the stuff that I’d be playing if I weren’t going through this madness – like the stuff I bought during the Steam holiday sale – is all violent and stressful and not necessarily the kind of stuff that takes my mind off the stressful things I’m going through.
Frankly, the only thing I’ve been playing is the newly-released Temple Run 2 on my iPhone, because that’s about the extent of what my nervous system can handle. And even that sucks, as my poor old iPhone 4 has a hard time running it without stuttering; I’d bet that at least 90% of my deaths are because the phone seized up and didn’t register my finger swipe.
Anyway. You get the idea.
I will keep this blog updated as much as I can, but, well, the situation is what it is. Hopefully we’ll find a place sooner rather than later, and we can get set up and unpacked and organized, and THEN have a baby, and then go through the normal, expected stress of being new parents. That’s a stress that I’ll gladly welcome. For now, though, it’s going to be a bit of a bumpy ride.
Thanks for bearing with me.
I’ve been feeling weird this month. A little disconnected, perhaps; a little bit untethered. I haven’t been sleeping particularly well, and it’s entirely possible that my excitement about being a new dad is starting to turn itself into these late-night, staring-at-the-ceiling worry-fests about all the millions of things there are to worry about when you become a parent for the first time – am I making enough money? Can we actually afford day care, even though we don’t really have a choice? How much baby poop am I prepared to handle? Am I going to be a good father?
Consequently, my brain has been all over the place. My plan for this weekend was supposed to be focused on working on some songwriting for an upcoming project, but everything I did sounded terrible. This happens, sometimes, and I try not to get too discouraged about it, but I also know that my window for indulging in shitty songwriting sessions is rapidly closing, and so I’m feeling a bit of pressure, now, to get my act together and make something happen.
In any event, I’ve been spending more time in my music room, which is also where my gaming PC happens to be; and, well, it turns out that I’ve turned into a PC gamer. I haven’t turned my Xbox on since Christmas, when I plowed through the DLC for Mass Effect 3. My ever-increasing bounty from the winter Steam sale means that I’ve got a ton of great stuff to play, and so I’ve been kinda playing all of it.
Well, that’s not entirely true, I suppose. FTL intimidates the shit out of me; even the tutorial feels overwhelming. I suppose I’m glad that I bought it, if only to support the indie developer, but I don’t think I’ll be playing it.
Also, I ended up buying Hitman Absolution even though I said I wasn’t going to; Steam sales trump the weak-willed, even when the weak-willed are taking principled stands on abhorrent marketing campaigns. I’ve played through the first few levels, and my experience is largely similar to my previous experiences playing the earlier Hitman games; the first tutorial level holds my hand while showing me all my different options and paths to my objective, and everything makes sense; and then I get to my first open-ended mission and suddenly everything goes to hell immediately. I get suspicious looks from people 50 yards away; bodies that I thought I’d disposed of are found by people who couldn’t possibly have been looking for them; my disguises are largely useless. I do appreciate that the missions are designed to be played multiple times, trying different tactics and experimenting with different methods, but in my multiple fail-throughs of these missions I do try alternate tactics and methods and I still get found out. It’s all very frustrating. (Ironically, the stand-alone Sniper Challenge is a lot more enjoyable, even though it’s only one mission that can be finished in under 3 minutes. I played that for around an hour or so, finishing a bunch of meta-challenges and killing henchmen in increasingly bizarre ways.)
So, instead, I’ve been playing through a bunch of stuff that I’ve already played through. I finished Batman: Arkham City again, including the DLC, and I may continue to nibble away at various Riddler challenges over the coming months. I’ve also been replaying Mark of the Ninja, and MAN that game continues to impress. (It also looks phenomenal on my PC.) I’ve been giving Bastion another look; I bought it for the iPad a few months back, too, but I’m not crazy about the touch controls. That game works with a controller; it is what it is. I’ve been trying out Borderlands 2 as a Gunzerker, though I haven’t yet unlocked his special ability, so I haven’t yet noticed a difference. And last night I tried Darksiders 2 again; the PC port feels a bit janky, unfortunately – I don’t recall the camera being quite so terrible on the 360.
On the iPhone, I’ve been playing the shit out of Joe Danger Touch, which might be the best version of that game on any platform. It looks fantastic and utilizes touch controls perfectly – because you’re no longer worried about speed, you can simply focus on obstacle avoidance and stunts, and it just works beautifully. Also – Hundreds, which has been getting lots of buzz of late. Word of advice – if you have the option, play it on an iPad; the iPhone’s screen is too small and makes some of the puzzles a lot harder than they need to be. (Maybe it’s a little easier on the iPhone 5’s wider screen; I’m still rocking an iPhone 4, though.)
You can maybe start to appreciate how weird I’ve been feeling lately by seeing how much different stuff I’ve been playing; I feel like I’m unable to focus on any one particular game. Or, maybe, I’m anticipating not being able to play anything once the baby arrives, and so I’m trying to play everything?
Daddy needs some sleep.
I feel like it’s been pretty quiet here of late, which I suppose is understandable; there’s no new games to talk about, and pretty much everything I am playing is old and already talked about. (I will get around to discussing that Steam box, though there are still some details that need to be disclosed (i.e., price, form factor, etc.) before getting fully invested.)
Still, I feel the need to liven the place up, and so I present this gif I found on Tumblr that more or less embodies my experience when playing shooters online.
(source)
I just finished a great book last night – “The Way of Kings”, by Brandon Sanderson.* And it occurs to me that I’ve read a lot of good stuff of late, and this is as good a time as any to cover what I read last year.
First: the stuff I didn’t finish.
And as for the stuff I did read, here it is, listed in the order in which I read them.
Alan Lightman, “Einstein’s Dreams”. Don’t quite remember why I picked this up; I’d heard about it for a long time, and I guess I was finally in the mood to give it a go. Each chapter is, essentially, a re-imagining of linear time. As someone who was obsessed with the concept of linear/nonlinear/relative time back in college, this is very interesting subject matter, and it’s written well enough to get the points across. But it also feels a bit slight and ethereal, and not in a good way. Still, an interesting read if you’re into that sort of thinking. 7/10
Stephen King, “11/22/1963”. He’s still got it, man. And while he still has certain mannerisms and tics that are incredibly distracting, which is odd considering that they’re in every single goddamned book he’s ever written, and I’ve read most of them and so I should be used to them by now – like how every town in every city has vaguely racist, misspelled signage along its main street – he’s still knows how to tell a great story. This was a ton of fun to read. 8/10
Hugh Howey, “Wool (Omnibus Edition)”. My wife got hooked on these books and finally convinced me to jump on board, and I’m glad I did; they’re remarkably well written and relentless in their tension and pacing. He is the golden boy of DIY publishing, and with good reason; he’s a naturally gifted storyteller. We had the pleasure of meeting him at an author meet-up earlier this year, and he couldn’t have been a nicer guy. 9/10
John Sullivan, “Pulphead”. I’m having a bit of trouble remembering this one at the moment. But here’s my quick reminder to myself after I finished it: “pretty well done, although some essays are better than others. 8/10” That’s a high grade for what seems like a lukewarm review, but I meant it at the time, so it stays.
Rich Walls, “Standby Chicago”. One of the cool things about that Hugh Howey author meet-up I mentioned is that, in addition to Hugh being a super-nice guy, every one of the fans who showed up was also super cool. I’m friends with a few of them on Xbox Live and Steam now, and while Rich isn’t a gamer, he is a rather accomplished author in his own right. This is a very sweet, delicate, sincere novella, and I found it engaging. (Also found it hard to relate to, if only because I’ve never had so many strangers talk to me ever in my life.) 7/10
Hugh Howey, “Wool 6”. A prequel to the Omnibus Edition; this actually raises a few more questions than it answers. Required reading if you’re at all invested in the Wool series; it won’t mean as much to you if you come to it fresh. 8/10
Chad Harbach, “The Art of Fielding”. Beautiful, heartbreaking. Takes a startling turn at a certain point; I thought it was going to be the origin story of a mythic baseball prodigy, and it turned out to be something else entirely. Well worth the journey. 8/10
China Meveille, “The City & The City”. I tried to read another one of his books a few years ago – “Perdido Street Station” – and found it impenetrable and, for lack of a better word, un-fun. This was a lot more my speed – a multi-dimensional murder mystery. I still find his writing style a bit annoying, but he’s unquestionably one of the most imaginative authors out there. 8/10
Patrick Somerville, “The Universe in Miniature in Miniature”. A marvelous collection of short stories that are all sort-of interwoven. Inspiring and brilliantly written. Very much looking forward to reading more of this guy. 9/10
Erik Larson, “The Devil in the White City”. My GoogleDoc comments: “thrilling, gripping, depressing.” It’s an interesting read, even if the two stories that he attempts to tie together aren’t quite as evenly balanced as I’d anticipated. 8/10
Tana French, “Broken Harbor”. The fourth in the Dublin Murder Squad series; this one was not quite as good as the previous three. Still bleak and depressing as all hell, of course. GoogleDoc comment: “might be the first time that the lack of a proper ending was a good thing.” 7/10
D.T. Max, “Every Love Story is a Ghost Story”. After DFW’s death, D.T. Max wrote a beautiful celebration of his life and work in the New Yorker, and it seemed logical for him to follow that piece up with a full biography. I’m not sure how this book would read to someone who isn’t a hard-core Infinite Jest fan; but I am a hard-core Infinite Jest fan, and so this book revealed a lot of interesting information about the creation and inspiration behind that particular work. The ending is a bit sudden, but then, it was in real life, too. 8/10
Iain M. Banks, “The Hydrogen Sonata”. I’m a big big fan of the Culture novels – I’ve been wanting a videogame adaptation of that universe for a long time. As far as those books go, though, this is a minor entry at best, and made for a disappointing read. 6/10
Robin Sloan, “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore”. I flew through this one in about 3 or 4 hours, which is why I’m not rating it higher; it feels too slim and it winds up too quickly. But I loved everything else about it; it was fun and smart and did a lot of the things that I’d hoped “Ready Player One” would do, but didn’t. 7/10
Justin Cronin, “The Passage”. I re-read this to prepare for The Twelve, and it was even better the second time around. An absolute gem. 9/10
Justin Cronin, “The Twelve”. I’m glad that I read these two back-to-back; I felt very much on top of things when the second book got started. It must be said, however, that Cronin is not nearly as good at action scenes as he is with everything else, and there’s a lot of action in this book that just kinda falls flat. This is the middle book in a trilogy, and I must say that I have absolutely no idea where the third book can possibly go; the ending of this one ties up about 90% of the loose ends. 7/10
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* No, I haven’t read any of the Wheel of Time stuff, and I’m not planning to, either – this particular book came recommended specifically on its own merits, and since it’s the first volume of a projected 10-volume project, I’ll be more than happy to stick with this for the foreseeable future.
A challenge, issued from Critical Distance’s “Blogs of the Round Table”:
“The past few years have seen a resurgence of challenging games: Dark Souls, Spelunky, FTL: Faster Than Light, XCOM: Enemy Unknown to name but a few. Do you think videogames have more value in providing a stern challenge for the player to overcome, or does difficulty serve to alienate and deter potential players, impeding their potential for inclusiveness?”
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The EASY way to answer this question is to simply say: “It depends”, and then leave it at that.
The HARD way to answer this question is to get into an analysis of what difficulty actually means; and then figure out what a given game’s intent is and how that aligns with the player’s expectations; determine what the player actually wants to achieve; explore different kinds of challenges in games (i.e., how many bullets will it take to kill this enemy, what kind of il/logical thinking is required to solve this puzzle, is my hand/eye coordination quick and accurate enough to get me past this area); and then, once enough context has been established, ultimately form some sort of conclusion that more or less says “It depends.”
The way I’m going to answer this question, though, is to start by admitting up front that I am maybe the wrong person to give this question its proper due. The games listed in the question above – alongside other notoriously difficult games I could mention, like Ninja Gaiden and Super Meat Boy – have never tickled my particular fancy. I’ve played them, of course – I am enough of a consumer whore that if a game (regardless of genre) gets universally good word-of-mouth, I will more often than not play it – but I’ve never finished them. I’ll do as much as I can do, but once the going gets tough, I either get a walkthrough, or turn the difficulty down, or move on to something else.
I guess the thing about this question that makes it tricky – at least for me – is that I don’t necessarily play games because of the challenge. I tend to gravitate towards single-player open-world adventures like the Elder Scrolls games and Grand Theft Auto, and my favorite parts of those games aren’t the story missions, or even the actual gameplay mechanics – but, rather, when the game lets me do whatever I want, free of consequence (though not necessarily from danger). If I’m enjoying a game’s story and characters and atmosphere but the game is suddenly throwing too many enemies at me (like, say, Uncharted), I’ve got no problem with turning the difficulty down just so I can get past that stuff and get on with the adventure. The endorphin rush, for me, is simply tied to winning.
I love Civilization V, for example, but I’ve never played it on anything other than the easiest difficulty setting. It’s still difficult for me, though, because there’s a part of me that, on a fundamental level, doesn’t get strategy games. I don’t possess the inherent vocabulary; I feel like I’m always messing up. Therefore, if I manage to win a single-player campaign in Civ V on the easiest difficulty setting, it’s a remarkable accomplishment for me regardless of the perceived level of challenge.
That being said, sometimes I do need a little bit of a challenge in order to stay interested. I play lots of puzzle games on my iPhone, and the key to keeping me engaged is that the challenge must always feel fresh. Right now I’m playing Poker Knight, a neat little RPG-ish puzzle game where you create poker hands to deal out damage. While I’m always a sucker for getting RPG (chocolate) in my puzzle (peanut butter), my character has become so powerful that most of my battles end in less than 3 hands, without me even taking a scratch, and so finishing a level is now rather tedious, since there’s tons of enemies to fight but very little challenge. But in other iOS puzzle games like Chip Chain and Pixel Defenders Puzzle, there is always a difficulty curve, regardless of how good you might be at the mechanics, and so the challenge there is to try to do better than you did the last time out.
Let me switch gears for a moment, if I may. A year or two ago, I was starting to work on a novel. My protagonist was, among other things, a struggling crossword puzzle author. (I’ve been into crosswords since I was a little kid, but I’m not a hard-core crossword puzzle solver, by any means – when I’m at my best, I can whip through a Monday NYT in 5 or 6 minutes, and can solve 90% of a Wednesday or Thursday in around 20-30 before petering out. Fridays are usually too hard for me, and so I don’t really bother with them.) When I was attempting to develop his character, it was important for me to determine what kind of puzzles he wrote, what kinds of newspapers he was hoping to get published in, and what kind of audience he was hoping to attract. While I never actually got around to building a grid of my own, I wanted his puzzles to be reminiscent of Brendan Emmett Quigley, one of my favorite grid authors. BEQ’s puzzles in the AV Club were often very witty, opted for popular culture references instead of obscure trivia, and – most importantly – were compulsively solvable. If I ever got stumped on one of his clues, I never felt that the clue was unfair; I just needed to think a little differently and come at it from a different (literal) direction. The point, though, is that I could solve his puzzles while being pleasantly challenged, and that’s what gave me the endorphin rush.
I don’t necessarily mind difficult games, as long as I feel that the game is teaching me something – or, rather, that with every defeat, I’m learning something. The Portal games are great examples where the later stages are fiendishly clever in their design, but they’re never unfair. Especially since the game goes to great length to teach you how to play it, and also to give you ample opportunity to figure it out without feeling punished or pressured. If you engage with the commentary tracks in either of the 2 games, they talk about the extensive playtesting they do to make sure that the player is never without the proper tools; they don’t mind if you’re stumped, but they want to make sure that you’ve been given enough information – whether through literal tutorials on mechanics or more subtle things like specific lighting to guide your eye – to figure out the solution.)
The truly special thing about the Portal games, though – at least for me – is that although you only get that Eureka moment once, the games are still enjoyable to play even after you know the solutions; the solutions themselves are elegant and are uniquely pleasurable in their execution, and the world of each game is rich with extraneous things that keep you entertained as you explore.
* * * * *
The games cited in the challenge at the top of this post offer very different kinds of difficulty. I’ve dabbled in three of the named games, but haven’t finished any of them. My impressions of them are as follows:
* * * * *
To get back to the actual question posed in the challenge – for me, personally, I’d prefer a game to be as accessible as possible. I know a lot of people are freaking out about an “easy mode” for Dark Souls 2 and are equivocating such a change to blasphemy. My answer to those people would be: (a) calm down, and (b) don’t play it on easy mode. The truth of the matter is that game design is a business, and if more people buy Dark Souls 2 because of an easy mode (like me, for example), then that makes it much easier to develop Dark Souls 3. I’m fully aware that there are millions of gamers out there who prefer harder difficulty levels – they’ll only play shooters on the hardest mode, they’ll avoid single-player entirely to play multiplayer (which is generally much harder than single-player anyway), etc. I don’t begrudge them their tastes, and I tend to stay out of their way.
In the late 90s, I worked as a receptionist at an internet company; I was given a relatively powerful laptop for the time, and my friends in the IT department would hook me up with games. At the time, I’d had very little experience playing shooters – I’d played bits of Doom in college on other people’s computers, and whenever I was home from school I’d play Duke Nukem 3D on my brother’s PC, but that was pretty much it. In any event, I remember being somewhat obsessed with Quake 2 because it looked absolutely incredible – leaps and bounds over Doom and Duke – but I wasn’t very good at it.* It was then that I found out about God Mode. God Mode removed the challenge entirely, which meant I was free to explore every nook and cranny of the world without fear of being blindsided by enemy rockets – which was all that I wanted to do in the first place.
Here’s the point, though – God Mode existed for a reason. And while that reason may very well have been legitimate – i.e., it might’ve been an easy way for developers to show off the game without getting killed, or to squash bugs, or other such game… building… stuff… – it was available and accessible for retail consumers, too, and it was a popular feature to have. It filled a need that some of us craved. I wasn’t necessarily using it to cheat – I was using it to explore. I play shooters but most of the time I get bored with the actual shooting, and so this was a way for me to get past the boring stuff and get on with the rest of it. Maybe that’s not the pure experience I’m supposed to have, but I still had a fulfilling experience; I got my money’s worth.
To answer the question of “value” as it applies to difficulty… well, that’s tricky. If a game is difficult because it’s designed poorly – i.e., it has a broken checkpoint system, or it breaks its own rules, or if its rubber-band AI is so atrociously unbalanced that it feels like the game is cheating (and here I’m looking squarely at you, Need For Speed Most Wanted), then that just feels like a waste of time and money on everybody’s part – both the consumer and the developer.
But if a game is difficult on purpose, and is advertised as such, it will attract a certain kind of player, and I imagine that the players of those games will feel like their money was well spent. And perhaps those games aren’t meant for wide audiences, just as certain films and books and music aren’t intended for wide audiences, either. There’s nothing wrong with that; there’s no obligation for a game designer to please every potential customer, and such an effort would be impossible anyway. Does it mean that I, personally, will enjoy it? No, probably not. But like I said before, I’m not necessarily in it for the challenge.
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* I guess I’ve always been a graphics whore. The difference between my Atari 2600 and my younger brother’s Sega Genesis was profound enough to make me angry at the universe for being born in 1975 as opposed to 1982.
1. As promised, the wife and I finally finished The Walking Dead. What a hell of a thing that was. There’s a part of me that wants to nitpick a little bit, that sometimes a character will suddenly change their entire outlook in a matter of seconds, as if there was a transitional scene that was cut, or as if a different writer took over the scene without looking at the previous pages; or that, all things considered, the “game” part of it could’ve used a little work; or that, at least on the 360, there are a lot of weird graphical hiccups and frame-rate stutters that are somewhat jarring. But all that aside, it tells one hell of a story, and we were fully invested from the very beginning. And that ending! Oh God. Gred, my SFTC podcast co-host, said it’s his favorite ending since Red Dead Redemption, and I’m inclined to agree with him.
2. I am also replaying Mass Effect 3, now that I’ve got the DLC installed and a renegade mindset. Finished the Omega DLC last night, actually, and being a renegade was kinda awesome – Aria T’Loak very much appreciated it. But, man… it’s hard to be a renegade all the time. Granted, the choices I’ve had to make aren’t anywhere near as devastating and as ethically dubious as the ones in Walking Dead, but sometimes it’s just rough. I have to remind myself that I already went through the game as a paragon, and part of the reason why I’m doing this again is to see all the stuff I didn’t see last time. Still, though… it’s tough. I’m very much enjoying the game, though, even if all the stuff on the Citadel bores me to death.
3. If any game developers are out there reading this, please make a true GTA in space for the next-gen consoles. That is the game I want to play. I’d do it myself except I can’t code, draw, or design. (One of my new year’s resolutions that I’m coming up with right at this very moment is to teach myself Unity, but who knows if that will stick once the baby arrives.)
4. The Steam Sale continues to torment me. I’ve managed to be pretty good, for the most part, although I did pick up three things last night: Little Inferno, Rochard, and Closure. I haven’t yet tried the latter two, but Little Inferno is an interesting little puzzler that is threatening to get subversive. And a few days ago I picked up Retro City Rampage and Mark of the Ninja, which looks absolutely gorgeous on my PC monitor. I’ve been slowly going through it again; it’s even better than I remember it being.
5. I was going to do a big “Predictions for 2013” post, but I’m not really feeling it. Honestly, there’s not a hell of a lot to say about 2013 – there’s not very much coming out that’s all that exciting besides 2 or 3 big titles, and in any event, once the baby comes in April I’m sure that my gaming time will decrease dramatically. Basically, I’m just hoping my 360 survives long enough to get me through GTA5, and then I’ll take it week-to-week until the new consoles come out. I’m still toying with the idea of getting a 3DS; I’m also toying with the idea of upgrading my iPhone 4 to a 5, but also perhaps waiting until they announce the 6 (or the 5* or whatever).
In non-game news, I might do a Books post here later today (or later this week, depending on time). I’m currently reading Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings, which came highly recommended from a million different people. I’m normally not very big on fantasy novels, but this one’s particularly good, and I might be checking out his earlier stuff – I’m not sure I’m prepared to dive into the Wheel of Time series, though.
I will not be doing a Music post, though. I haven’t done a music post in a few years, actually, and this year I felt particularly out of touch with the music scene. That being said, I have been keeping a Spotify playlist of my favorite 2012 songs, and while it’s not as thorough as I’d prefer it to be, it’s still pretty good:
It would figure that I’d need to make some serious additions and edits to my Games of 2012 post, because not 24 hours after that post went up, Steam had another sale.
Those fuckers.
I’ve gone and done foolish things.
I’ve managed to avoid buying both Borderlands 2 and Hitman: Absolution, even though they’ve both been 50% off several times over the course of this sale. (Leaving aside that I’ve already beaten Borderlands 2 and bought its DLC Season Pass on the 360; didn’t I already say that I wasn’t ever going to play Hitman, because that marketing campaign was so hideous and because I’m tired of gratuitous violence? Why am I even still considering it? Am I that much of a slave to sales?)
The only other thing I’d like to pick up is Little Inferno, which has been holding steady at 33%. If that goes down to 50+, it’s mine.
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And in spite of all these new pickups, I’ve been playing a bunch of old stuff, actually.
On the PC, I’ve been playing Batman: Arkham City, which I’m enjoying possibly even more than I did the first time around. I’m not really paying attention to every single Riddler challenge unless it’s something I remember the solution for and/or currently have the right equipment to solve, but I am doing all the side missions, which are fun and involving and interesting. And GODDAMN, that game looks incredible. I’d been playing Far Cry 3 at high resolution but with a somewhat shaky framerate; Batman:AC, on the other hand, is at a high resolution and is at a blazing 60+ FPS. The difference is striking.
On the 360, I bought some of the DLC for Trials Evolution, and was instantly reminded of 2 things: (1) that game is really, really fun, and (2) that game can be really, really difficult. But my main focus has been on doing a Renegade playthrough of Mass Effect 3. I guess I’d been thinking about it lately, and I’d heard good things about the DLC, and since I hadn’t even thought about the game since I first beat it in March, I figured it’d be a (somewhat) fresh experience. And it is, it really is. That game is still excellent. And porting over my completed save – where my FemShep was at level 58 – means I’ve got crazy powers right from the get-go. I’m not quite yet at the part where I have full control over the Normandy and can go wherever I want to go, but I’m pretty close, I think, and I’m very much looking forward to checking out the new DLC.
And on iOS, I picked up Poker Knight and Gua-Le-Ni. Poker Knight is a puzzle/RPG where your attacks are based on creating poker hands – it pushes a lot of very good buttons. And Gua-Le-Ni is something I heard about earlier today from SlideDB – it’s a really unique puzzle game for the iPad with a fantastic art style and a very neat gameplay hook, somewhat akin to a set of children’s letter blocks.
Here’s hoping you all had a lovely holiday. Did you get everything you wanted?
This post should’ve been finished already. Sure, time has been limited of late, but it’s always crazy in December, and in years past I’ve always found the time to work on it. But, well, in this post-Newtown era, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’m feeling a little down about games. And it’s hard for me to reconcile what I enjoyed playing this year back when I was actually playing those games with what I’m currently feeling.
So, before I begin, I need to link to Rock Paper Shotgun’s incredibly interesting, spoiler-heavy interview about Far Cry 3. There’s a lot to unpack in that interview – the questioner echoes a lot of my own feelings about the game, what it’s appearing to say, and how successful it is in that regard – but I’m specifically linking to it to highlight this one question, which never quite gets a satisfactory answer.
You talked about how in previous Assassin’s Creed games you questioned themes and tropes, and have gone far farther with that Far Cry 3. Do you think it’s a fair criticism to say, why not make a game that doesn’t make all these mistakes? Why set out to highlight the mistakes or the laziness, or the issues, or the laziness in the players – why not set out to make a game that’s really good?
And to follow that up, I also want to link to Leigh Alexander’s fantastic, devastating piece of her post-Newtown thoughts, because she gets right to the heart of the matter:
Obviously there is no causal relationship between Newtown and video games. But I have played the damn things since I was a very small child and only in the last few years have I, as an adult woman, begun to feel profoundly uncomfortable with their unapologetic celebration of gun violence. I kill things in games every day, and sometimes I even shoot people in the face, but even I have begun to’ve had enough. It feels dark.
Something is wrong with my country.
Any games writing that questions that right to bear virtual arms with joyful impunity is often accused of having some irrelevant political agenda, of ruining the fun, of refusing to accept the all-important fact it’s just a game. Like disassociating ourselves from any intellectual consideration of the content we consume or any emotional response to it is a basic requirement for participation in this community.
I can’t accept that.
The top-grossing games of all time are about marching in a straight line and shooting people. I’ve felt confused and sad about that for a few years now and I feel moreso this week.
This sadness I’m feeling about the hobby that I’ve been passionate about for over 30 years (?!) is very hard to shake. Games used to be about more than shooting and death. Games used to have more imagination than that. And it was, ironically, easier to lose yourself in the worlds those games provided despite how limited they were in their graphical and technical resources.
And so it’s hard for me to sit here and reflect about what I played this year and find cause to celebrate, since a great deal of what I did involved shooting and killing, which are activities that I’m having a hard time finding the fun in these days. “Shooter fatigue” does not just refer to the fact that every game is a shooter, or that the act of shooting everything stopped being a novel concept about 10 years ago; it’s that I’m tired of having “shooting” be my only option when I pop in a game.
When was the last time you played a game and experienced joy?
* * * * *
Anyway. The raw data:
Strictly limited to consoles/PC, I played 43 games that were released in 2012; I also spent the bulk of January playing 2011’s The Old Republic (up to level 40 or so), Assassin’s Creed Revelations (which I only got an hour or two in before wanting to set it on fire), the PSN HD remake of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, and a few intense sessions of Renegade Ops, an XBLA dual-stick shooter that got a lot of love in the Giant Bomb year-end podcasts. (My iOS purchases were considerably higher in number, but I think it’s also fair to say that I only really focused my attention on around a dozen of them.)
GAMES I FINISHED:
GAMES I DID NOT FINISH: looking at my Google Doc, which was kept, more or less, in chronological order, it appears that I finished none of the 11 games I started in between completing Borderlands 2 (last weekend of September) and completing Lego LOTR (2nd weekend of December). Now, 2 of those games include Forza Horizon (which is just massive) and XCOM: Enemy Unknown (which is super-intimidating and which I’ll address in further detail in a bit). But other games in that particular window of time include games that I actually sunk a fair amount of time into, including Resident Evil 6 (why?), Assassin’s Creed 3, and Dishonored. This category actually needs to be broken down into further sub-categories, for reasons that will become self-evident. (There’s also an embarrassing amount of stuff I bought during various Steam sales that will get its own specific list – I’m not even sure I even installed half of them.)
Did Not Finish, But Would Like to Finish Someday:
Did Not Finish, Couldn’t Get Into (But Still Respect):
Did Not Finish, Do Not Want to Finish, But Still Sunk Some Time Into:
Played for 5 Minutes or Less:
Games of Note that I Did Not Play:
GAMERSCORE: I am no longer the shameless Achievement Whore I used to be, but I do keep track of this stuff for some reason. I started 2012 at 77580. I am currently at 85485 (as of 12/19/12), and if that number goes up it’s only because I’m forging ahead in Lego LOTR, Batman Arkham City (on my PC), or Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, which I just inexplicably rented from Gamefly. Also, I do plan on finishing Walking Dead Eps. 4 and 5 over the holiday break, so there’s that.
Favorite Achievement: There isn’t any one particular Achievement that stands out to me – not like when I found the last orb in Crackdown, or when my wife and I did the Endless Setlist in Rock Band 3 – but I suppose I’m the proudest of whatever I was able to accomplish in Fez without using a walkthrough.
iOS GAMES OF THE YEAR: I’m not sure that these are all amazing games, but they were certainly absorbing, and addicting as all hell, and made my subway commutes hassle free (except for that one morning when I was so focused on Chip Chain that I missed my subway stop). Also of note: not a single gun.
So, yeah. Steam sales. Even though this section isn’t necessarily about the Best Games Of The Year, it’s still relevant because I found myself playing more games on the PC this year than ever. And because the notion of a “Steam Box” is suddenly sounding incredibly sexy. And if anyone’s going to be able to compete for the living room with Microsoft and Sony (and Nintendo, if the WiiU is for real), I think Valve has the best shot. And, as I’ll be a new father in a few months with a much tighter leash on my disposable income, the fact that I bought everything below for under $60 COMBINED is perhaps one of the most significant things that happened to me this year as far as my game-consuming habits are concerned.
THE STEAM SALE HAUL (Summer):
THE STEAM SALE HAUL (Thanksgiving):
OK, let’s get back to the awards!
BEST GAMEPLAY MECHANIC OF 2012:
MOST TIME SPENT IN GAME:
BEST MOMENT:
B3ST GAM3 With a 3 in the TITL3: There have been plenty of franchises that have made it to a 3rd game, but it wasn’t until last year that it started to get a little ridiculous. In keeping with the tradition, this year’s nominees are:
I was fully prepared to give this to a different game, but as I was writing the Best Moment section above, I had a change of heart. Even though Far Cry 3 has a lot of things going for it, I’d be crazy to not give this to Mass Effect 3. If the ending wasn’t as great as we’d wanted it to be, it was still an extraordinary experience, and a fitting conclusion to one of the most important intellectual properties of this generation.
BEST NEW IP:
BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT:
FAVORITE FRANCHISE THAT I’M MORE OR LESS READY TO GIVE UP ON:
BEST / WORST TREND:
2010’s MOST-PLAYED GAME OF 2012:
THE “SACRED 2” MEMORIAL AWARD FOR THE MOST TIME PLAYING A GAME THAT I ACTIVELY DISLIKED:
FAVORITE GAME THAT EVERYBODY ELSE SEEMED TO DISLIKE:
BEST GAME THAT I DIDN’T FINISH, EVEN THOUGH I WANTED TO:
THE BEST EXAMPLE OF AN HD REMAKE THAT MAKES YOU QUESTION YOUR MEMORY:
THE BEST EXAMPLE OF AN HD REMAKE THAT RESTORES YOUR FAITH IN YOUR MEMORY:
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THE TOP 10 GAMES OF THE YEAR
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
10. Max Payne 3. See above. I know it has problems, but I found it an engrossing experience, with action just as flashy and enjoyable as the originals.
9. Fez. This was near the top of my most-wanted list for years, and while it wasn’t quite the game I expected it to be – it was less of a 2D/3D platforming puzzle game and more of an abstract code-breaking journey – it was still a remarkable, singularly unique experience.
8. XCOM Enemy Unknown. I am afraid of this game.
7. Darksiders 2. I had an absolute blast with this one. This was, for a long part of the year, my top pick for GOTY. It wasn’t quite as good in New Game + mode, but I can’t hold that against it; the first time through, it was a great time.
6. Forza Horizon. If I was shocked at how disappointed I was in Need For Speed Most Wanted, I was just as shocked at how much I enjoyed this one. I fully expected this to be a cheap cash-grab, but instead it was a full-featured racer that took the best qualities of Forza and added a gorgeous open world, a satisfying variety of race types, a fun and engaging driving model which straddles the line perfectly between sim and arcade, a dynamic leaderboard that encouraged you to best your previous marks, and even some side stuff that gave you something else to do while soaking in the scenery. I need to get back into this one; there’s still a lot I left unfinished.
5. Mark of the Ninja. As noted above, this is perhaps the best set of stealth mechanics in the entire genre, be it 2D or 3D. The art direction and writing are top notch, and there’s plenty of replayability to be found after finishing the story.
4. Far Cry 3. This was almost my #1, to be honest. I’ve written too many words about it this week to give it its proper due in this post; it’s a fantastic game with some remarkable voice acting and a gorgeous open world to explore, but it’s also got a troubling narrative that threatens to drag it down, which is a very kind way of putting it. As it stands, I’ve chosen to not finish it, and instead spend the rest of my time with it finding all the relics and hidden items; what I’ve read of the ending sounds distasteful, and in any event, I’ve still gotten my money’s worth. Despite the writer’s intentions, I found the game I wanted to play in it, and I’m grateful that the game designers allowed me that much.
3. Mass Effect 3. At some point next year, I’m going to go back and replay this one. In each of the earlier games in the series, I played through twice – once as a paragon, the second time as a renegade. Alas, I never got around to the renegade playthrough for this one, and so, when I do, I’ll also have the benefit of seeing some of the DLC that’s supposedly enhanced the experience for the better. In any event, this is a remarkable entry in one of the most outstanding technical achievements of this generation – I’m still impressed at how it managed to do what it did. It’s a shame the side quests were so poorly conceived and executed, but whatever; the main story was engaging, the larger universe was a joy to explore, and the overall experience was nothing short of incredible.
2. Borderlands 2. My shooter fatigue has developed into a troubling malaise with videogames in general, which is a real bummer for a number of reasons; but if this is the last pure shooter I ever end up playing, I think I’ll be OK with it. It kept everything that was great about the first game, threw out everything that sucked, and then made everything funnier and more colorful and bigger and better and etc. I will continue to check in on this game’s DLC, as I’m glad to have any opportunity to drop back in and see this world. The violence is plentiful and gratuitous, to be sure, but it’s also very silly and cartoonish; the game is never taking itself all that seriously, which is refreshing in this day and age of gritty, visceral realism. There’s still not very much to do in this game, when I think about it; to re-quote Leigh Alexander, it’s still ultimately about marching in a straight line and shooting people, but at least it’s having fun while doing it. I might finish a session of Borderlands 2 and be exhausted, but I’m not emotionally drained.
1. Journey. I finished this game very quickly the day it came out, and I was so taken with it that I sat my wife down the following day and watched her play it. Soon enough, a stranger arrived in her session – with one of the longest capes I’ve ever seen – and showed her around, helping her get through tricky platforming sequences, leading her to a bunch of hidden, secret stuff that I hadn’t found in my own playthrough, and staying with her throughout the entire game, right through the heart of the mountaintop. That this random stranger was able to do all of this without uttering a single word is truly remarkable. It’s true that the sand-skiing sequence is one of the most beautiful, joyous experiences I’ve ever had in a game, but it’s also true that the entire game itself filled me with wonder and emotions that I still can’t quite explain. There is no dialogue; there is no “story”; there is no violence; there are only two actions – move and jump. You are compelled to move forward and explore. That this game could be made in this day and age is something to be celebrated. That the game is so fucking good is something else entirely. I wasn’t expecting to give this my top slot; indeed, when I started writing this post, I was still pretty sure that Borderlands 2 was going to take it. But the more I think about it, the more I want to go back and play this game; I want to feel those feelings again; I want to be reminded that there will always be more to do in this medium than simply killing something. You can be touched. You can feel joy.
I’m feeling somewhat heartsick today. It’s a combination of a bunch of different things; insomnia/anxiety at 3:30am, a distressing situation at my job, a lack of productivity over the weekend… and, of course, the events in Newtown, CT.
I’m 37 years old; this is, sadly, not the first mass shooting I’ve lived through. But it is the first one that affected me this much. I watched President Obama’s speech at the Newtown vigil last night with my arm around my wife and my hand on her pregnant belly, tears pouring down from our faces, knowing that our little boy is going to be arriving in just a few months, and that there will be times when he’s out of our immediate line of sight, and that we will feel helpless.
I don’t believe that violent video games cause mass shootings any more than violent movies and music do. But in light of what happened on Friday – and in keeping with what I was already talking about last week before everything happened – I’m feeling a bit weird about playing shooters right now.
* * * * *
Let me back up.
Part of the lack of productivity I mentioned above was due to a hectic weekend schedule and a post-Newtown shitty mood, but it was also certainly due to the marathon Far Cry 3 sessions I engaged in, since I felt too lethargic and shitty to do anything else.
I’m at an interesting crossroads, as far as the game goes. I looked at a walkthrough just to see how far away from the end I was, and it turns out I’ve only got 2 missions left. The mission I’m currently stuck on, the 2nd-to-last one, is rather difficult. It’s difficult for a lot of reasons, not least of which is because it’s shockingly poor in design (especially when compared with the rest of the scripted missions).* I gave it around 5 or 6 tries last night before giving up, feeling that the game suddenly turned on me.
That being said, I’ve also ascended every radio tower, crafted every craftable, and liberated every outpost; this means that, aside from the wild animals, there is literally nothing else to shoot on the rest of the islands.** This means I’m free to actually explore – to find all the hidden relics and lost WW2 letters and all the other nooks and crannies that I’ve not had time to check out, all without having to fire a weapon. As this is the aspect of the game that made me fall in love with it in the first place, I think I’d be quite content to never actually finish the narrative.
The narrative is where the game’s more or less fallen apart for me, is the thing. While I appreciate that the game is actually attempting to say something (in that you start out as a whimpering trust-fund douchebag and gradually turn into a sociopathic killing-machine douchebag whose friends (the same friends who you’ve been trying to rescue) are super-creeped out by you and your murder-lust (they actually look into the camera (i.e., your eyes) as if they don’t recognize you)) – in other words, the game is saying that killing hundreds of people doesn’t necessarily make you a hero – the game also requires you to kill hundreds of people in order to advance the narrative; you don’t have a choice in the matter.***
(That the game also frequently turns key plot points into hallucinogenic metaphors is a bit much, too. It’s all a bit heavy-handed and ham-fisted and reeks of deus ex machina.)
Getting back to the crossroads, though – while the narrative is getting absurd and the act of firing a gun (even if it’s virtual) feels a bit distasteful, I still very much want to run around on the island and find all the cool stuff it has to offer. And if so I stay away from those last two missions, I’m utterly free to do that. And even if I never finish the story, I would have definitely gotten my money’s worth – I’ve sunk at least 20 hours into the game already, and to do all the side quests and find every last treasure would take at least a dozen more.
* * * * *
I was originally going to start this post with a hypothetical challenge; would it be possible for me to play any games in 2013 that didn’t involve the firing of a gun? Then I remembered that Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider and GTA5 were coming, and that pretty much ended that – I won’t be missing any of those games unless my wife or my newborn son is on fire. BUT. I think I’m going to try and get through as much of 2013 as possible without playing any shooters. This will dramatically lower the amount of games that I end up playing – I’m looking at my Gamefly queue and this one single criteria pretty much omits everything besides Tiger Woods 14 and the South Park RPG. That’s kinda fucked up, wouldn’t you say? No Dead Space 3. No Gears of War Judgment. No Splinter Cell, no Metro Last Light, no Aliens: Colonial Marines. No Metal Gear Revengeance or whatever the hell it’s called, although my history with Metal Gear games probably precludes me from enjoying it anyway.
I might just end up doing this by default – what with the baby, and the fact that I’m not particularly interested in those games, this might be easier than it looks. If anything, this will cause me to seek out the kinds of non-shooter games that I know are out there but that I’ve ignored. This might work out after all.
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* Why is it so shitty? Let me count the ways.
** I probably shouldn’t have used the word “literally”, since this is only true if you don’t count the bulletin board assassination missions, which I may or may not bother with. My growing distaste for mass carnage notwithstanding, I did enjoy the strategy that went into liberating the outposts; there were only a limited number of guards (unless you let them sound an alarm), and each outpost had its own unique layout, which meant that each scenario was unique. It could be looked at as a puzzle to be solved, is what I’m trying to say.
*** I can’t apologize enough for that sentence’s structure.
Shouts From The Couch 
