Will Write 4 GP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I really don’t wanna pay for it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, downloadable content.

Last generation it wasn’t much but a half-hearted attempt to cash in on big-name Xbox titles like Splinter Cell and Halo 2. New levels and maps were offered at a premium (and then sometimes made available at no cost after a few months,) but that was the extent of it. Very few original games (barring the embarassing first attempt ) were distributed via the Live service, however; and with consoles lacking in storage capacity outside of Microsoft’s behemoth machine, a widespread attachment to downloadable content missed the mark with the previous generation.

But now we’re into the next-gen (can we please start calling it current-gen?) console era, and it’s almost like the videogame industry has shifted its interest (or at least the limelight) away from hard-copy distribution toward downloadable movies and TV shows, original and remastered games, and a bevy of downloadable add-ons and extras for almost every kind of game.

Take Oblivion, for example. Horses, once forced to roam the world of Cyrodiil nude and unprotected, were granted super-cool armor for the price of $2.50 US ($.0013 EU). Sure, giving a horse armor is like giving a potted plant a sword - it won’t do a damned thing, but for the right kind of weirdo with the wrong amount of financial stability, it’s apparently a godsend.

(Image cruelly wrested from Joystiq’s servers. My apologies to Mr. Ransom-Wiley.)

Unfortunately, we still don’t seem to have a good idea of what this stuff should be worth. The price point for recycled game content is still fairly nebulous, with Nintendo’s Virtual Console, Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade and Sony’s Playstation Store all offering up their own meta-currencies and price standards.

And then there’s the question of how content should be packaged. When Guitar Hero 3’s new downloadable songs are released - which are often without much warning or consistency - they are sold exclusively in packs of three songs, tied together by some sort of theme. Rock Band adheres to a strict once-a-week schedule with at least three songs offered every Tuesday (or Thursday for PSN users). Rock Band’s songs can always be purchased individually, or sometimes in packs at a discount. But by the same token, Activision offers up gameplay videos of all new songs for the Guitar Hero games so users can check out the notecharts and hear the songs before plunking down a chunk of change, whereas Harmonix provides no means to check out the songs before purchase.

Really, nobody’s figured out how to do it just right.

The convenience of downloading entertainment media straight to a console in a matter of minutes is too brilliant an innovation to pass up. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next generation of consoles went to a model consisting exclusively of digital distribution - that is, if a certain hulking corporate behemoth doesn’t trample the idea into the ground.

The more astute among you may have noticed that the last few posts on here in recent months concerned a then-upcoming game called Rock Band. Many moons later, I finally have returned to write something.

It’s not about Rock Band, though. I’ll get to that.

With a lengthy (and final) winter break now behind me, I managed to play through just about every major title of the fall.

I want to talk about Mass Effect first, though, because it’s probing my mind most unkindly with all sorts of lingering questions.

But I can’t summarize it as concisely (or wickedly) as Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, so take a look at yonder video:

I’ve gotta hand it to Bioware; they’ve single-handedly revived the classic adventure gaming genre for the mass market.

‘But Mass Effect’s an RPG, bro,’ you say.

Of course it is. It looks that way. It’s got the classic tweaker-friendly start-and-stop action that the company built its reputation upon through their Baldur’s Gates and Neverwinter Nights and Icewind Dales. But since it was tailor-made for the Xbox 360, it’s got this glimmery sheen (and inexplicably horrifying facial shadows) that - thanks in part to borrowed game mechanics and Unreal Engine 3.0 - gives it more than a passing resemblance to Gears of War.

But that’s fine, right? There have been some seriously impressive results with the engine to date, and the duck-and-cover gunplay that Gears brought to the forefront of action gaming certainly still has a few tricks up its sleeve.

But after investing 37 hours into the game (I got a little too interested in the minutiae of the galaxy) and seeing it through to the end, I walked away wishing I’d almost never had to fire a single shot.

And I finished every single quest I encountered - even the fetch quests - so I certainly haven’t made the mistake of having an incomplete experience. But for the first twenty hours of the game, I thought the combat was a wretched mistake.

From my perspective, the first twenty hours played out like this:

• Enemies run at you (often directly)
• You use every ability you and your allies have on the enemies
• Shoot the enemy and hope they die before you

Eventually I got to the point (around level 25 or 30) where my allies and abilities were diverse enough to allow for more tactical gameplay, and combat flowed much smoother - at certain points, with the grace of a buttered-up dolphin in a sea of wet wipes. The game really came into its own on Virmire (about thirty hours into the game for me - this was after I finished almost all the side quests) when my squad developed a wonderful cadence of tactical action and classic role-playing decision-making. Really, every aspect of that mission - every encounter, every optional quest, every arena - was on par in sheer gameplay excellence with some of the best Half-Life 2 or Call of Duty 4 can offer.

So why wasn’t the gameplay very good up to that point? It may be partially due to my ignorance of the game mechanics. I probably spent more time reading page after page of the Codex (a veritable bible of delicious, wholesome fluff) and I didn’t fully get a grasp of how to yield desired results from leveling my characters up. But I’m not exactly a stranger to Bioware’s games, either, and I know the basic math and formulae behind their games (and all it requires is a grasp of multivariable calculus and a pact with the goddamn devil.)

Like Assassin’s Creed, a connoisseur of gaming must let Mass Effect age in one’s hands before passing full judgment - not unlike a fine cheese, or a vomiting infant. The cheese (or baby, as availability determines) must reach maturity and take on a whole new set of imposing odors before consumption is recommended.

Hello to any Joystiq readers who might come through here! I realize I don’t post much, but any and all readers are appreciated (and help motivate me to generate actual content.)

I drove up to Portland this weekend to partake in some Rock Band courtesy of the West Coast tour bus.

Our center stage performance - a very painful rendition of Faith No More’s “Epic” - was just uploaded and can be viewed here.

I last played the game at PAX, and not much has changed since then. However, I tried out/witnessed a few cool new things:

• Playing guitar while singing is awesome. It’s admittedly very difficult, but if you know a song’s lyrics really well it’s surprisingly doable (at least on easy - I tried Vasoline on medium and did pretty well, though, thanks to my junior high love of Stone Temple Pilots.)
• You can rock out too hard. My (admittedly talented) drummer got hell of into the song we were playing and broke the kick pedal. Bear in mind the tour isn’t using a final build of the peripherals (which have taken quite a bit of abuse to this point) but still, you can’t go apeshit on these things.
• Playing with a talented group makes the game infinitely better. When people know how to play their parts and keep the band going (when to deploy Overdrive, in other words) makes the game all the more enjoyable. Rock Band on Hard and especially Expert really is an experience to behold.

November 23 can’t come soon enough.

Thankfully, Guitar Hero 3 is looking and sounding better all the time.

Got a good selection of things on sale, stranger!

This article in Wired by Chris Kohler approaches Rock Band from the standpoint of a generic tech-friendly consumer. It’s a great little biography on the “music first, games second” company I love so very much.

spraynwipe of Harmonix explains the elaborate machinations behind their new solution for multifaceted response lag in rhythm games. Based on their productions at PAX, I’m more inclined to think it’s the residue of some black magic. Either way, I can’t argue with results.

Sit down a minute.

Hah! I remember when you were so little you could sit on my laptop.

*Sigh*

Look . . .

I miss you.

I miss the times we wrote together, we made subtle puns, we joked about the nerdiest of things.

Look, you’re my blog and I love you. But you’re getting older and you’re changing. You’re more aloof and distant.

I think it’s time we took a different course. Maybe just for a little while; you know, see how it fits.

LONG STORY SHORT:

I’m going to treat this blog as my all-purpose gaming outlet - not just an exclusive venue for commentary on journalism and gaming. As I play more games and follow the videogame industry closer than ever, I’m finding myself brimming with ideas I’m bursting to talk about but have no place to smear them.

This will be my smearing spot.

Nobody reads my blog.

I’m okay with that. Honest. I’m not writing this for attention, but more to get some experience under my belt and maybe have something interesting for a literate gamer to stumble upon.

But I will admit I got pretty excited this morning when I saw I had 121 freaking hits from the message boards on my beloved 1up.com.

121 hits | 3.13% | http://boards.1up.com/zd/board/message

That 3.13% denotes how much of the total traffic I’ve gotten in the last month. In one day, it became my primary source of visits.

I was elated! Maybe someone had read my blog and -

Nope.

It was this:

You may remember this dapper man, Mr. Jeff Green, from my earlier post.

It’s the ultimate cocktease of the Internet - image leeching. But I don’t care.

The poster, HotLatinTamas, wrote out the full URL to my website while posting the image. So that was flattering!

Basic reasoning tells me that the average user:

• Sees the image of Jeff Green
• Swoons
• Sees my website
• Goes to my website

It’s bulletproof!

HotLatinTamas, you win this round. Thanks for the attention and helping me feel loved - even if just for a single heartbreaking second.