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| Adventure and deathly illness go hand in hand. |
So why isn't everyone quitting their day jobs to comb the ocean floor for shipwreck salvage or to collect rare rainforest spiders? When I tell my friends a story about an "adventure" I had recently, the end of the story usually less like, "And then I sunk my sword deep into the traitor's heart!!" and more like, "And then it just scrambled off into the night... if it wasn't a possum, it was a really nasty-looking cat, you guys." Why is that?
Well, it's because real adventures are fucking dangerous.
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Tags: Adventure
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Tuesday, May 8, 2012 at 1:55 pm
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| Bow and arrow -- regular weapon, regular violence. But some of these other things... |
If there's one thing I've learned from playing a lot of Minecraft over the past few days, it's that bashing heads isn't always the best way to deal with your adversaries, even in video games, where bashing heads is almost always a good option. Sometimes the best way to deal with an angry horde of foes is to simply lock your doors, take a nap, and hope they're gone by the time you wake up again.
But even when complete nonviolence isn't an option, weird violence is. Weird violence is like regular violence in that it harms people, but it's like nonviolence in that it warms the human heart. How does it accomplish both of these seemingly diametrically opposed goals? Well, weird violence causes injury in ways that are so goofy or dumb that it's impossible not to smile.
In video games, the available weapons are usually mainstays like firearms or swords. But sometimes a game will give you something different, something a little kooky that still manages to neutralize your enemies. Weird violence ensues! Hilarious!
The following are five indisputably odd ways heroes of video games have destroyed their adversaries.
Tags: Weapons
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| "Go Right," a video posted by YouTube user RockyPlanetesimal, is just about the most inspiring two-minute montage of platformers that you'll ever see. |
Why A part of it is certainly the gorgeous, sweeping Michael Nyman music that the video is set to. It makes the sight of goofy heroes like Darkwing Duck and Rayman seem downright portentous.
The other obvious reason that this might tap into gamers' emotions is the nostalgia quotient. And it is certainly fun to see so many old standbys in one video, patched together so seamlessly. But seeing old favorites from systems past is no new thing -- you can watch a playthrough anytime you want.
So what about the imagery of "Go Right" is so entrancing and, ultimately, so moving?
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Wednesday, April 25, 2012 at 10:00 am
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| Some fighting games seem less concerned with action and more concerned with haunting my dreams. |
Fighting games satisfy a very specific corner of the mind. They don't provide the same type of gaming experience as Heavy Rain or Mass Effect 3; they affect me on a much more basic level. If I were to take a CAT scan while playing Soul Caliber, I imagine it would prove that fighting games engage the same parts of the brain as activities like binge-eating Doritos or watching porn. There is no clearer expression of my id than Mitsurugi in a ready-stance with his daikatana out.
I don't play fighting games often, but they're part of my history as a gamer nonetheless. When I was a kid, my brother and I would play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters for the SNES for huge stretches of time. For the uninitiated, this is a game where our turtle pals compete in vicious bare-knuckle brawling tournaments in order to win stacks of gold. I also have fond memories of playing King of the Monsters at a friend's house and button-mashing until the controller had actually inflicted a wound upon my thumb.
But there is a dark side to fighting games. Perhaps it's because they serve that very basic part of us that wants to use punching as a solution to every problem, so sometimes they come across as oddly hostile. Or perhaps it's just because I'm not as familiar with fighting games as I am with RPGs or FPSs and so some of them seem foreign, strange... wrong somehow. Whatever it is, there are some fighting games that freak me out.
They just kind of make me uneasy, okay? Something about them gives me the willies. Not all fighting games, obviously I don't have nightmares about Super Smash Bros. or anything. Just a few of them...
Tags: Fighting Games
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| Can a man consider what it is to turn a video game into a movie and not lose his mind? |
If you were ever six years old (and most of you have been at one point), you've played the game Telephone. This is an important game that reveals to each participating child whether they are boring, deaf, or an asshole. Everyone sits in a circle, and a message is passed around the group by each kid whispering to their neighbor. The boring kids will pass the message on dutifully ("Mr. Reynolds looks like my grandpa."). The deaf kids will garble the message unintentionally ("Mr. Reynolds shook Mike's lamp. Ha!"). The asshole kids will pass on whatever they god damn feel like ("Mr. Reynolds kisses donkeys all day long!").
The same basic Telephone archetypes apply to people adapting a work of art from one medium to another. Sometimes the original vision will be preserved faithfully. Sometimes it will be somewhat distorted or marred in adapted form, despite good intentions on the part of the creative team. And sometimes the original vision will be so horribly disfigured by that process of adaptation, so mutilated beyond any bit of its former self, that you have to wonder if somebody somewhere is just having a laugh.
But I realize that a lot of times I don't appreciate how tough it is to take a story meant for a completely different form and make it work in a foreign medium. Maybe it's not that people don't get it or don't care; maybe it's just really, really hard. I feel like this is a point I don't instinctively grasp.
Which is why I came up with this exercise:
What better way to really distill what makes adapting video games difficult than forcing myself to adapt the same source material over and over? So, to better understand how challenging it is to switch a story from one medium to another, I've decided to theorize about what would happen if Super Mario Bros. was repeatedly adapted from game to movie and back again, on infinite loop.
Interested? Follow me! Frightened? Me too! Confused? You're about to be more confused!
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Wednesday, April 4, 2012 at 1:00 pm
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| Licensed games -- source of occasional brilliance and common hilarity. |
Last week I reviewed the new XBLA game South Park: Tenorman's Revenge, and it brought a lot of questions to mind. Some of them were personal questions, like, "When was the last time I watched the Chinpokomon episode of South Park?" Some of the questions were deeper questions, like, "Do I think the idea of door keys made out of poop is funny?" (The answer is yes.) But mainly it got me thinking of video games based on already-existing creative properties: how wonderful they are when they succeed and how miserably disappointing they are when they fail. Tenorman's Revenge, for me, is the rare licensed game that falls between these two poles -- not depressingly bad but not especially good, either.
Usually when a licensed game converts its source material to game form in an effective way, it's near-phenomenal. The best licensed games take characters that you know and love and put you directly in their shoes; they take the indescribable tone of a movie, TV show or book and somehow transplant it into an experience that you, as a gamer, control directly. When it works, it's quite a trick. Not to mention an almost guaranteed cash cow.
But for every really amazing licensed game, there are four hundred that are horrifying bastardizations of the source material, interesting ideas that have been brutally jammed down into something resembling a video game to make an easy buck.
I thought I knew about most of the licensed games out there. The great ones, like Arkham City and Goldeneye. The hellish ones, like E.T. and Superman. But after having my interest piqued and doing some research, there are a feast of crazy licensed games that I never had any god damned idea existed. I hand-picked the five licensed games that most frayed the portion of my brain that controls reason and logic and listed them below. I haven't played these games, but I've included the traits that I think could make each one superlatively good or abjectly terrible. I will now list them in ascending order of dumbness.
Tags: licensed games
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| Television's in the middle of a golden age; what about video games? |
I'm excited for good reason: Game of Thrones is objectively awesome, as are many TV shows now. People often cite this era of television as a "New Golden Age of TV." More than a few of the shows that have aired over the past ten years or so have advanced the theory that TV shows can be smarter, subtler, and more complex than previously thought possible (or at least than previously thought marketable). From The Sopranos to Breaking Bad to Arrested Development, there are signs that television producers are understanding in larger numbers that choosing substance over style can actually get you viewers.
I have a couple questions about this concept of a new golden age. First: does a golden age occur naturally when a medium reaches a certain level of maturity, or is it caused by innovators in the field boldly pushing the boundaries instead of remaining content with the status quo? And secondly: if the latter is true and golden ages are made instead of simply lived through, what are the ways developers can incite one in video games?
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| Super Nintendo and its glorious, glorious music. |
This entry's going to be shameless, shameless nostalgia-mongering, friends. Like the dude at the party who brings up his favorite episode of Doug without any kind of conversational prompt, or the girl next to you at work who turns to you one day and out of the blue asks if you remember what pogs you had, I will now trudge back unbidden through the mist of time and dwell upon things that once were.
And I invite you to follow!
Is there a reason for this sudden urge to trot out some of my favorite Super Nintendo soundtracks? Will it enlighten us in any way or shed some kind of light on the current state of video game music?
Kind of!
Tags: Super Nintendo, Video Game Music
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Tuesday, March 6, 2012 at 4:00 pm
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| Mass Effect 3 potpourri -- an epic and fragrant mix of emotions and tidbits. |
I don't know about you, but I live my life at a level of about 0.03 N64Ks usually. As I've gotten back into modern gaming over the past several months, there have been new releases that have kicked this number up. Foremost among these was Skyrim, which had me at a legitimate 0.85 N64Ks. I have the main theme, with the manly chorus bellowing shit about the Dovahkiin, on my mp3 player, and there have been times recently when I've actually had strangers catch me saying "Fuuuus... RO DAH" out loud and giggling to myself on the streets of Manhattan.
But nothing in recent memory has moved me on such a basic gamer level like the release of Mass Effect 3. A true 1.0 N64K moment.
I'm nowhere near done with ME3, so this isn't in any way a review; we'll have a proper write-up of the game in the coming days. But I kept starting articles on other stuff, or "Top Five" lists on unrelated subjects, and I couldn't do it. I want to live in this moment, I want to feel the rush of a full-on 1.0 N64K experience.
So, I've put together a little blend of initial reactions, meditations on the series and stupid jokes for the Mass Effect fans out there. It's not very cohesive, but I think it's an appropriate homage to the hype of release day.
Tags: GameStop, Mass Effect 3
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Tuesday, February 28, 2012 at 3:01 pm
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| This type of guy tends to turn up a lot in video games. |
I want you to do something for me. Go to the nearest video game retailer you can find. Bring duct tape.
Don't worry, I'm not asking you to do anything illegal! I'm not asking you to kidnap a Gamestop employee or anything. No, I don't think this is illegal. Though it may get you banned from the store.
I want you to stand outside the store, wrap duct tape around your face until you are effectively blind, and then go inside. Fumble around until you find the game displays. Now select a game, entirely at random, and flail about wildly until you get a sales clerk's attention. (Don't worry, someone who has covered their face in duct tape and is waving a video game around in the air is probably only the third or fourth weirdest person this sales clerk has had to deal with today. Retail is a harsh, unforgiving world.) Now buy the game and exit the store. Apologize if you've accidentally body-slammed anyone during this process.
So now you have purchased an entirely random game. Drive home (please take off the duct tape first) and fire up your console or gaming computer. Pop the random game in and start playing. Now take a good, long look at your player character. What kind of person are they? If you had to describe their personality in one word, what would it be?
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