Photo by King Frankenstein

“No, I’m not being dragged by my wife or anything, but it was her idea.” Not that I asked, but a male attendee answered, “we just heard about it, lived in the area and had to walk our dog anyways.” Many "lived in the area" to the casual poll of icebreakers, acting like being there was some secret pleasure or glorious drug. Some weren’t so blushed, one family had told me they were in from Ohio, and the fact they had their dog on them was strangely no more than a coincidence. Why was I there? Honestly, I don’t think anyone needs much reason to embrace nature’s happiest hype device, digging two hands into their wavy fur, and honestly I’m embarrassed to say that my actual excuse was, in all honesty, profit.

Now now, don’t hiss. It’s true, I was there for the skrillz, true, and I don’t even own my own dog. I do love the scruffy buds, I just have this philosophy that the true joy is not had by owning a dog, just surrounding yourself with those that do. My dad’s company made an investment into dog clothes under the inspiration of my aunt, and while it wasn’t a bad idea, their eyes were wider than the stomachs at the buffet, so to speak, and an overwhelming back stock was starting to smother the other fluffy merchandise their services provide. We decided to take the product to the people, the people who’d like it most, and boy their stomachs were larger. It was like hopping from the hunger of a tapas patron to an Applebee’s regular. We gave em tiny jackets, tiny sweaters, tiny vests and kimonos for four dollars apiece so the people came in bulk. Where this put me, however, was in a prime spot to snuggle every medium to XXsmall doggie dog dragged by their owner into our merchandise tent.

Photo by King Frankenstein

A dog took a dump in front of our booth. It was the greatest threat to our mental health next to the elderly woman who spent forty five minutes hunting for the bomber jacket in her dog’s size that didn’t exist. The owner of the lil’ pooper was also having a panic attack. Caught off guard by her pup’s digestive system, she didn’t have a bag to clean up the mess. She frantically called her boyfriend while meandering pedestrians stepped in the slushy landmine. By the time a bag finally came, what was once a mound was just a smear on the pavement. We took some water from the jug we brought and just washed the mess away.

Dogs in sweaters, dogs in biker jackets, dogs in goggles, dogs in hats, dogs in soccer jerseys for teams they don’t know are being rooted for in the World Cup. And while some dogs were much more elaborately garbed, it didn’t mean the owners were not also dressed to impress. Almost every dog/pop-culture pun imaginable was on display, like a moving gallery of the least subtle in-jokes in the world. All except for one, anyways, as one man wore a black tee that read “Beware of Frog” which meant he was either at the wrong event or dabbling in echelons of humour most are too pure to touch.

Photo by King Frankenstein

While I’ve been to many conventions, some of which I’ve written about, this is probably the only one where the object of appreciation is as alive as the fans. If not more. Celebrations that celebrate bring out odd philosophies, as well as drastic rivalries. While at, say, comicon, you’ll encounter bucking between comic, manga and gamer fiends if not full rivalries between those umbrella trees. There were certainly classes of separations, each breed came with their own fan clubs, upon clubs upon clubs. Rescue clubs, breeding clubs and even just photography clubs had shirts, cards, and booths revolving around the centrifuge of Shopsy’s sausages and whatever the hell a ‘potato omelette’ is. But there isn’t that rivalry, this isn’t about chest beating or pet petting. No one was trying to one up another species with size (cause some dogs did look like horses), colour (cause some dogs were painted) or celebrity (because some were look-a-likes). This was just about loving the lovable. A comic can’t love you back, most of the time.

June of 1998 was the first appearance of a fan favourite book called Young Justice which followed the adventures of the teen heroes of the DC comic universe. The entirety of its regular series, issues 1-56 (plus various special issues), was written by Peter David, a prolific comic book and novel writer, with a special twist. It was funny.

Instead of nonstop drama, we were given wordplay denouncing such expectations, goofy villains, and often times equally goofy heroes at a time when there was very little else like that around. It worked, and it was popular - not every comic can last to 56 issues. In fact, most don’t.

As the comic series was winding down in 2003 a couple of things happened. First was the creation of the Teen Titans cartoon show, again featuring teen heroes of the DC comic universe (though none were the same characters used in Young Justice) in a fun and usually kid-centric show. Its series finale aired in 2006 after 5 seasons and 65 episodes, which isn’t any length of time to sneeze at. While Teen Titans could certainly get very dark and serious (“The Prophecy” was an episode about how one of the heroes was destined to end the world, it’s a downer), my favourite episode is about a guy saving the world via driving around on a moped and capturing sentient tofu. Pretty crazy.

^{Young Justice | Courtesy of Dark Horse Comics}

And the second thing to start at the end of Young Justice was a new Teen Titans comic book. Was this an example of the clever utilization of synergy between a new cartoon show and new comic book? Not at all. Half of the characters appearing had the same name and appearance as those in the cartoon and, while still being wildly different characters, the other half were leftover members of the Young Justice cast, with a very different tone.

One could almost say that the narrative was rebelling against ever having been subjugated to the role of “being funny” as expertly demonstrated when one character Kid Flash (formerly called Impulse), far and away the most fun guy in Young Justice, the only character trying to hold on to that lighter atmosphere in this new Teen Titans book, has his kneecap shot in the first story arc.

Fast forward to the present and the only thing still on the market is that Teen Titans comic, for some reason. I don’t know who’s buying it, I can assure you I stopped a long time ago. But I don’t know, maybe people like it, the book has managed to stick around for 80+ issues, and it doesn’t sound like they have any intention of canceling it.

However after all this time there will be something else new on the horizon: it has been revealed that come this fall there will be a new cartoon starring, you guessed it, the teen heroes of the DC universe. There’s a teaser poster readily available online, and the designs look pretty good, though a little serious. Why should looking serious make a difference, you ask, when the last man standing among all the merchandise I’ve talked about is the serious Teen Titans comic? Well, I’ll tell you. It makes a difference because this upcoming cartoon will be called Young Justice. You know, after that series that hasn’t been around for seven years.

Obviously I’m nonplussed by the timing of the guys in charge - where was the Young Justice cartoon seven years ago? Maybe it takes seven years for a fanboy to ascend to the position of a corporate bigwig that gets to approve comic based projects they enjoyed in years past. I should mark my calendar now.

Although I’m wary of this new show, it seems to have a pretty impressive pedigree: produced by Sam Register, who did the Teen Titans cartoon I enjoyed so much, as well as Greg Weisman, who did the recent Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon. Between the two of them, there has to be a fair balance between humour and the more serious stories, as well as a lot of respect for the source material. As a result I am, like many other Saturday morning kid-at-heart show lovers (in spirit if nothing else), cautiously optimistic. It’s still a weird move as far as I’m concerned.

Back in May, Offworld editor Brandon Boyer told a packed bar full of starry eyed nerds that, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Toronto is the city that all game dorks envy.” Landing somewhere in between smug, flattered and sceptical, it was a large compliment that was also a little hard to take. Maybe we’re just used to it, maybe we’re just spoiled, but if you scrape each item to the sides of the plate you eventually get to picture what sort of combo meal we’re swimming in. We’re home to Capybara, Jonathan Mak, Metanet among others. Societies, festivities and communions that nurture the scene. A handful of independent game stores dashed around to distract from the littering GameStops. My Dad will sometimes ask if he’s ever told me how many arcades used to reside around town (he has). Plus with Scott Pilgrim going Hollywood, there is an actual chance that ‘cute game nerds’ may become the new Toronto youth stereotype. I guess what I’m trying to say is I had always assumed San Francisco had something to trump us. Guess not.

For five years, trained and untrained imagineers have been gathering at George Brown on King with one singular, yet incidentally varied, task. Get there, get three days, get thinking, get sweating, make a video game. Programmers, artists, musicians, wizards, genies, onlookers panic about as they all team up to make great fun in record time. It’s called TOJam, and it’s serious play.

“It started five years ago as a way to get people to start building games instead of talking about what they wanted to do,” said co-founder Emilie McGinley, “we’d run into them at all these different events and we’d always be talking about all these great ideas they had. The next time we saw them, about a month or two later, they’d tell us again about the great idea they had, but hadn’t actually started on them. So my husband and I, along with a couple others decided to create the Jam. Now these people can come in for three days, focus, and actually walk away with something.”

For those who prefer to touch things and mash buttons over looking over the shoulders or busying workers, there’s the TOJam Arcade, a near month after the initial birthing of these efforted pieces. Located at the rustic Imperial Pub, one drinking bottom floor, one warm top floor and an appropriately dark room in the back are set with tables, laptops, projectors, screens and an audience of minimum three, maximum imagination standing about a rotation of games. Over my shoulder I overhear word of a game entirely about throwing a boxing match, though according to the piece of paper I had missed it by mere seconds. Not to delve on the past I loom over to the nearest glowing sheet of a screen.

A fat blob of a dog hobbles about as nuisance rabbits ambush his patch of tasty carrots. Zen Rankin and his wife Joanna aren’t professional programmers. They aren’t fat dogs either. But having picked up programming as a hobby and impressed by what they saw last year, they decided to pit their stuff with the others for the occasion with Fat Dog: Garden Security Enforcer. “Basically you’re going to lose,” said Rankin, “but you have to act as fast as you can, while you can.” The chubby pug lumbers about, desperately barking at the hopping vermin who stand between him, a safe garden and a high score. When asked why they decided to participate instead of simply gawk, Joanna replied, “We don’t like sleep.”

Creeping upstairs I found a more confined space more jostled with fans, drinks, and huffing projector motors. Off in the corner was one screen described to be ‘the best of the best’. Or at least according to Dave Hill, one of the members of The Sofa Kings, creators of Last Hadron Collider. A game which just happened to be playing at the station when I asked. Inspired by the recently completed quasi-doomsday device of the same name, this title has you playing as a frantic scientist, trying to outrun a quickly growing void after accidentally creating a black hole. “This was the first time I heard about it, actually. I do a lot of work on my own time, my own ‘work’ work. This just seemed like a good opportunity to get some kick in the ass, y’know?” I couldn’t get my own time in with the game, due to its drawing popularity. Typical. I scouted to the other corners to see what was being neglected and why.

“We’ve got brand new programmers, people who program other things like databases for a living,” said McGinley on the variety of turnout, “people in the game industry but told to work on something else other than their personal ideas, sound technicians, students who’ve never built games before, people who’ve never worked in the game industry before and just want to try their art style or their music in a game.”

On the south side of the top floor, corner pocket, a videographer was tying his shoes. I had assumed he was overlooking his game, a simple gem puzzler where you destroyed blocks to match up four of a symbol, but he was just anticipated the place to rest his bum. The other pocket, South West, was a game of a different flavour. “I don’t really know what this is, I think you are supposed to be a child in a house or something,” said the woman in a nearby chair, trying to explain MissTeen USA 2007’s Huas. Best described as a 3D, JPEG compressed art installation, you simply wander around a house with little furniture and less things to do. So not really a game, but certainly interactive. In it, I found a door that led me outside, where out of the darkened brown walls and corners were lush trees akin to that of a escapist postcard. “Yeah,” the aforementioned woman told me, “but wander too far away and you sort of just warp back into the house.” And I did.

In a room full of openly admitted nerds, there is no way to tip a pretty bartender without the unsettling sensation deep down inside you are hitting on her. But a whiskey sour had to be sipped and I certainly didn’t bring my own. I swapped cash for alcoholic commission and went back downstairs to see how things were winding down. By a fishtank, a man sat by a younger girl explaining how his Ghostbuster homage functions. Simply, all you needed to do was hop about a spectre, blasting it with the uncanny particle beam until it gave in. But even for a spectators glance I could tell the jumping was a bit ‘breezy’ and any difficulties she suffered wasn’t just from lack of experience. Or an older programmer breathing down her collar. Immediately after she got up and the games were swapped, I got my hands on a fairly broken title where I played as a ghost looking for my body. The creators admitted it was a work in progress, and that what I was fiddling with wasn’t even the most recent build. To their benefit, a game where you fall through the floor accidentally does go down pretty well with Jack and lemon water.  Better yet, you can’t judge. I’ve never made a game, no less in a month, no less in three days. I’d be lucky to one-up a buried Newgrounds page. So props to anyone for everything.

“Very rarely will you see just another Asteroids clone. People are motivated to do something different, they don’t have any restrictions, no boss standing over telling them what to do.”

Toronto’s a great place for nerd kind. It makes these articles easy. But I never wondered if it could match wits with other urban dorky heavy hitters (mostly out of never knowing what they have in store.) Boyer’s passing, though heavy compliment will probably stick with me. Next time I see a man wearing an NES belt buckle, I’ll tally it up. Word of yet another independent game launching off of a Spadina loft, another tally. Friday night I decide to stay home in favour of Ecco the Dolphin? Actually let's just forget about that one. All of them.

NYC indie game developer Mark "MESSHOF" Essen, creator of the provocative sensory experience, Randy Balma: Municipal Abortionist, the excruciatingly punishing Punishment and the hilariously bizarre game collaboration with Pixeljam, Cream Wolf, knows just how to both engage and aggravate players within a matter of seconds. But no matter how consistently punishing his games can be, they are also some of the most intense and fulfilling experiences yet.

His latest work, Nidhogg, is a 2-player territorial dueling game in which either player can become the opponent, thus breaking the boundaries between 1 and 2-player games. The tendency to believe you're playing a 1-player game is totally apparent, but with the AI component replaced by another person there's certainly a greater sense of humanity involved. Yet in the end it's not the players who are in control, but instead the omnipresent arrow forever guiding the players as they attempt to reach their ultimate goal, as ambiguous as that goal may seem.

I talked with this inspiring developer to get a sense of where he was taking his latest installment.  I've also included images from both his new and old games alike.

Erika Szabo: You're definitely an inspiration to a lot of fans and developers alike. How/When did you start out in the game industry? When did you start gaining notice for your works?

MESSHOF: I don't work in the industry, I've just been a hobbyist since high school. I think the first game that got pretty popular was Punishment which I made in 2005. Flywrench also gained a lot of attention after Jonathan Blow did a sort of parody game called Nicewrench that tried to take away the game's steep difficulty curve. Flywrench was also exhibited in a big group show of artists under 33 at the New Museum in New York.

M: Mainly this arcade game called Great Swordsman which is a really cool one player fencing/kendo/gladatorial game. I really liked how the collisions were pixel perfect and you had to memorize all sorts of distances and animation times based around that. Will you step into his sword when you lunge at his head from this far away? You have to hit the sweet spot. The one problem was the game was really slow and only one player which made fake outs sort of unsatisfying.

The tug of war came in because I wanted to keep the one hit kills for some realism and to add some more weight to less actions. It still needed to be quick so instead of rounds I modeled it as through it were a one player game and the other player was controlling the enemies that would spawn off screen.

ES: How long did it take for you to develop the game?

M: Six months off and on.

M: It all comes back to the idea of it being a one player game with the enemy as the other player. Since roles can change quickly I just needed something to show who has control of the screen. I think the arrow is all I need.

M: Yeah I definitely played a lot of them growing up. I don't play a lot of the more recent games out.

M: Right now I'm leaning towards two player games because they're a lot more fun to play.

M: In a blimp.

M: Nidhogg will be out soon!

The premise behind Civil War by writer Mark Millar and artist Steve McNiven: after a tragedy in small town America involving some super hero types, an exploding man, and a schoolyard full of kids (here’s a hint: the exploding man was fine afterward), the government wanted to register all the super guys (a big part of which meant revealing secret identities) to try to stop that sort of tragic craziness from happening again. Some super heroes were for this idea, or at least “OK, whatever” about it, and others were dead set against it.

For years, issues of comic books have been devoted to “good guy X meets good guy Y… and fight!” This trope has long since been relegated to the status of cliché, but Civil War was a valiant attempt at re-imagining said cliché with substance behind the in-fighting. The biggest problem from the creator’s standpoint was how to convincingly divide the characters up equally, and then how to keep these various long time allies at each others' throats. Neither problem got a satisfactory answer.

Filling up the ranks of the against side was easy: some fighting for civil liberty/personal freedom and others against “Big Government” seems to appeal to either end of the political spectrum. This is the side of the status quo, as with any long running serial story, the status is always quo.

The “for registration” side was tougher to fill. Despite the fact that Millar wanted both sides to be legitimate options for characters, the “for registration” side invariably came across as the bad guys. The side that creates crazy clones of old friends, takes the dirtiest of shots, and recruits super-villains for their team, as a rule, will be the bad guys.

The characters whose loyalties were the most important for the story were Captain America and Iron Man. If you knew nothing about Civil War and had to guess which side each character was on, I’m pretty sure you’d try Captain America as the for registration/pro-government representative, with Iron Man opposing him on the “good” side. That Captain America, of course he’s a stooge to the man, right?

Well, nope, good guess reader, but that’s not how it went down. You may be surprised to hear that the exact opposite affiliation was the case.

Captain America is, turns out, pretty awesome. Not one to blindly listen to authority, but instead is devoted to the ideals of the mythic America, when Cap is approached to be the figurehead of the “for registration” forces (or else) he busts angrily out of the room and surfs away on a jet fighter. That last part isn’t me trying to sound cool, that’s what happened. The only way it could be better is if the comic could start playing “Free Bird” while Cap soared off into the distance.

What sucks is that the way it all played out, it probably would have been better to make Captain America the “for registration” bad guy, because that would have at least made sense to readers. Instead that role fell to Iron Man, a character who historically subverts authority on all fronts, thinking he knows what’s best despite what he’s told, and does whatever HE wants. A vigilante.

I’m trying to figure out the thought process behind making Iron Man the “for registration” front piece, aka the bad guy, and the best I can come up with is some nebulous idea that because he’s rich, he’s bad? That because he’s a wealthy business man he’d support the government for the sweet contacts and contracts? That ties too much with cynical real world perceptions, forcing Iron Man to fit the mold of a Dick Cheney and Halliburton scenario isn’t fair to the decades of character we’ve been given before. (As a quick aside: sorry, Dick Cheney, but when you shoot a guy in the face and make him apologize for it, the reality becomes Cheney=bad guy. Do I really have to explain this?)

But see, it could have worked. Instead of making it sound like Iron Man was a fan of registration for everyone, like this was a philosophy that he would gladly have agreed to join up himself when he was just starting with the hero thing - let him admit that he’s a big hypocrite. Let him say “listen, I don’t trust you to be able to put on matching socks in the morning, much less go out and try to save the world, but that’s okay. I just need you to go through all these licensing and training programs I’ve deemed sufficient, and then maybe you can be useful. At least you’ll be insured.”

In that scenario, the story could have boiled down to stopping a bad guy, Iron Man, who couldn’t be appealed to using the intellectual argument that you can’t know all the variables and be right all the time, that someone else can know better and help you, who couldn’t be appealed to because he couldn’t get past his innate arrogance and self-righteousness.

The result of that story would have been a reversal: Iron Man would have represented many of the ideals espoused by the anti-registration forces, personal freedom, but hoarded wholly unto himself, while the actual community of anti-registration forces, in joining together against Iron Man, provide the accountability and experience to each other that the common man felt was lacking and started the whole Civil War crisis off in the first place.

This is in contrast to the actual ending: the anti-registration side gives up. Except for the members who don’t. Compelling.

Before I begin proper, for those of you who have not read the series and plan to do so, I shall type in big all-cap letters “SPOILER ALERT!!!” just for your benefit. I know, considerate of me, right? Right. Now that’s out of the way...

I had high expectations going into this series. Several friends had recommended it, and I was hearing lofty praise flying left, right, and center (no political puns intended), comparisons to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, people telling me Fables is their favourite comics series of all time, etc. Now, I’m not going to dump on Fables and say it’s bad, because it’s not, but it isn’t brilliant either. It is what it is, which is entertaining, witty, at times ruminative, and not afraid to ask a few hard questions. It’s nowhere near as complex and nuanced as Sandman. Sorry people, it ain’t. But it’s still kept me reading for a whopping 85 issues thus far, and that’s something... though I do hope it ends at some point, preferably before it reaches, say, 150 issues. At most. Please. I think that’s a reasonable request. Anyhow, it’s a well-written series, enjoyable, but not one with which I’ve fallen in love. And I swear the politics have nothing to do with my luke-warm affections. I swear. Believe me. We’re being honest here, remember? Oh, right, you weren’t supposed to remember that. My bad. Didn’t mean to remind you. Off-topic again. Apologies.

That said, I would like to address what has, for many readers, been a burning issue with regard to the series. I’m talking about the politics, of course -- for those who didn’t catch my subtle “foreshadowing." Par example: Willingham’s “Israel Analogy” made in issue 50 (Vol. 8). For some readers, I have heard, issue 50 was where they stopped reading, so I suppose they’re ex-readers now as opposed to readers. Obviously I did not stop. I’m still a reader. But some did. So what’s so offensive you may ask? Well, first, let me describe the basic premise of Fables, for those who haven’t read the series and ignored my spoiler alert. Basically, there are all these fairytale characters in the public domain that Willingham has appropriated, like Snow White, the reformed Big Bad Wolf (Bigby), Prince Charming, The Frog Prince (a.k.a. Flycatcher), the old witch from Hansel and Gretel named Frau Totenkinder, Pinocchio and his father Gepetto, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White’s less popular sister Rose Red, Jack (of beanstalk fame), Boy Blue, Cinderella, Sinbad, Bluebeard, the three little pigs, Mowgli from Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” and many, many more. Long story short, an ominous force called “The Adversary” started conquering the fable lands, spreading his fascist Empire, killing millions in the name of peace for billions, and those fables who managed to escape the faceless Adversary’s evil Empire took refuge in the “mundy” (mundane) world. They settle in New York city back when it was still called New Amsterdam, in what they call Fabletown, a section of New York that’s wholly theirs, though the non-human fables are relegated to The Farm just outside the city. The fables are immortal and have been living among the mundys for hundreds of years in secret, though many dream of one day returning to the homelands.

Eventually the Adversary finds them and attempts to destroy them. The fables discover the identity of the Adversary to be Pinnochio’s long lost father Gepetto, who’s a grumpy old man living in a cabin, his wooden puppets controlling the Empire. As retaliation for Gepetto’s attacks on Fabletown, Bigby sneaks back to the homelands to destroy Gepetto’s precious sacred grove from which he carves his various minions. Here’s where we get to issue 50. In order to explain his actions to Gepetto, Bigby outlines for Gepetto an analogy with the mundy world between the fables and Israel. I’ll quote some of Bigby’s words for you:

“Here’s what you need to know about it. Israel is a tiny country surrounded by much larger countries dedicated to its eventual and total destruction... they [Israel] stay alive by being a bunch of tough little bastards who make the other guys pay dearly every time they do anything against Israel. Some in the wider world constantly wail and moan about the endless cycle of violence and reprisal. But since the alternative is non-existence, the Israelis seem determined to keep at it. They have a lot of grit and iron. I’m a big fan of them.”

The internet uproar and debate that resulted was predictably heated, and Willingham has since had to field the issue and defend his pro-Israel stance in every interview he gives. Willingham has said in interviews (see this and this) that Fables is no more political than most comics and that the whole Israel analogy is “just” an example of a real world parallel to the fables’ situation. I too, upon reading issue 50, though realizing said views fit with Bigby’s character, was rather annoyed by the blunt and grossly oversimplified analogy, and which, as an extended conceit throughout the series, paints all opposed to Israel in any way as bloodthirsty evil fascists... though I suppose that’s a problem inherent in the nature of fairy tales. Only in a fairy tale can such an absolute and bipolar conception of morality be viable. Let me be clear, however, in saying that Willingham has every right to offend me in such a way, and despite being offended, I read on. Though after issue 50, I could not help but see the Israel analogy everywhere in the series, as I’m sure Willingham intended. And as Willingham points out in one of the interviews linked above, I could not help but be acutely aware of Willingham’s “right-of-centre” politics throughout the series, perhaps simply because in the comics world writers of the “leftist” persuasion are currently the norm.

My goal here is not to debate over the Israel-Palestine conflict. Go find a forum discussing issue 50 for that. Suffice to say that I do not agree with Willingham and think the issue far more complex than as represented in Fables. What I would instead like to question is how one approaches a work of literature with political views so dissonant with one’s own, whatever one’s politics may be. Do we give up on the work and say, I can’t read this because of its politics? Where do we draw the line? This issue of course is not limited to politics. We could extend it to, say, religion. Do I decide not to read a work of literature because it engages with religious themes? Obviously such a stance is limiting. It would eliminate much of the literary canon, in fact, and many writers of whom I am rather fond. And of course it goes beyond literature. Does an atheist like myself dismiss Neutral Milk Hotel because “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” devotes a whole song to praising Jesus? I would say no, I love the album, but then, there are also some so-called artists whose preaching on whatever the issue, even when I’m in agreement with the stance taken, I cannot stand. So can we then separate the quality of the art from the views of the artist and the views expressed through the art, keeping in mind that views expressed in art do not always reflect those of the artist?

A major problem with asking this question, I think, is precisely the bed-time story characterization of politics as swinging one way or another, that is, falling upon a spectrum of left to right with the end I’m on being good and the other end being evil, and the middle being the wishy-washy shades of gray. Such a one-dimensional take on politics and morality presumes that if someone’s views are A on one issue then they must by necessity be B on this issue and C on that. Furthermore, certain poles of the political spectrum in mainstream culture often do not adhere to their own purported ideologies. For instance, I find it fascinating that the political “left” tends to voice the most opposition to police and military power, while the “right” tends to voice the most support of police and military, whilst the “left” is supposedly for central governmental control and the “right” supposedly for laissez-faire self-determination. Or how the “right” claims to support self-determination yet imposes government restrictions on behaviours like recreational drug use (i.e. marijuana and Stephen Harper’s insane crusade against it), limiting personal liberties that don’t harm anyone aside from offending ‘neo-con’ sensibilities. These are just some of the more obvious contradictions of the left-to-right political spectrum. For how can political beliefs, that is, beliefs pertaining to how civilization should be structured, fall upon a one-dimensional line? What sort of sad statement is that regarding political culture in the world today?

What’s frustrating about Fables is that on the one hand Willingham is capable of subtlety and complexity, but on the other, he often participates in this flattening of politics. Take, for example, issue 76 (vol. 12) in which there is a scene depicting Gepetto’s “integration” into fable society after his Empire is destroyed and he is pardoned by a general amnesty only because Pinnochio volunteered information about the Empire during the war that made its destruction possible in exchange for Gepetto’s life. Seems like there’s some moral texture and dimension going on here, and there is, especially in the Boy Blue storyline, which is my favourite, but the same writer that giveth may taketh away. I refer to Gepetto’s “Luddite” rant against the noise of cities, the obscenity of over-congested city streets with automobiles, the oblivion induced by cell phones upon modern humanity, and Gepetto’s biggest peeve, technological warfare. In Gepetto’s Empire, technology was not allowed for fear it would “empower” people -- because you know we citizens of technologically advanced society are oh-so-empowered by all these fancy gadgets. In response to this, Gepetto’s escort through fabletown, the goblin butler Hobbes, says, “Which nicely argues our point, doesn’t it? Machines: good. Oppressive Empires crushing freedoms along with actual lives: bad.” Here we have an explicit flattening of politics, justifying the use of science to develop better methods of killing and presuming that anyone who opposes technology is in line with Gepetto and his evil ways. A truly peaceful world, according to this logic, is one in which every citizen has access to grenades and automatic rifles and nuclear missiles so as not to concentrate these weapons in the hands of the overbearing few? Of course, this political scale immediately falls apart as soon as we find ourselves facing a pro-Israel Luddite.

To return to the question of whether we can then separate the quality of the art from the views of the artist and the views expressed through the art, I would say no, we cannot, but only in the sense that part of what constitutes the quality of the work is how the writer’s views are presented. I may not agree with an artist’s views, but if they are presented artfully then I will get over it and maybe even adjust my worldview accordingly. In this respect Willingham fails far too often, for it seems that at times when he seeks to present metaphors for the world “as it is” he fails to recognize or perhaps denies that there is no such thing as “just” an analogy. An analogy that claims to be “just” an analogy flattens politics and makes for clumsy writing and dull reading. Why don’t we call a fish a fish and say that an analogy is an analogy, but not just an analogy, for it is an analogy! Damn right.

Comments

• May 17, 2010, Devon Wong writes: As an example of how Jewish does not equal Zionist, check out this website: http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
• May 21, 2010, Isaac writes: it's been a while since I've read some Fables- but is it at all possible that when they say technology should be in as many hands as possible it isn't necessarily weapons to which they are reffering, but information and communication technology (such as we're employing at this moment). And is there any chance you'll agree that saying "Stephen Harper’s insane crusade" is a tad hyperbolic? He's hardly some mad scientist, raving to all listeners.
• May 23, 2010, Devon Wong writes: In Fables, Willingham is certainly referring to communications tech, which certainly is better democratized than concentrated in a few hands, but he is also referring to weapons, and he makes that rather explicit. My point is not that technology shouldn't be democratized but that all technology is not inherently good no matter whose hands it's in. The technology debate is rather complex and i can't get into it here, as i simply don't have the room or time. Maybe another article. I would have to then get into the expert-"layman" divide, and biotech, etc. My point here is simply that Willingham makes one-to-one associations that tech is inherently good and its proliferation associated with a certain set of political views. I want more nuance than what Willingham provides. As for my hyperbole, of course it`s hyperbole. That`s what I do. Though I do believe the fear of marijuana, which exists both on the `right` and the `left` currently, is if not insane at least irrational. Perhaps I should rephrase myself and say `Stephen Harper`s irrational crusade`. And he`s not raving because he doesn`t have to. He has the power to implement legislation makes life more difficult for growers and users and drives the market for marijuana underground. Not only does he have the power to do this, he has done it... ie. Bill S-10 and the recent rash of anti-drug ads. If you want Harper`s take on marijuana, here it is, from the man himself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFp210pZSKk He certainly isn`t raving, but he`s not making much sense either. Marijuana is inherently corrupting, apparently. By this logic we should ban alcohol, too. Certainly cigarettes. If these things can be legal, why not marijuana. Old argument, of course, but we should ask ourelves why culturally marijuana is so offensive to the sensibilities of people like Stephen Harper. I would say it`s less the danger of the drugs and the growth and trade of marijuana, which doesn`t have to be seedy, as the ideological baggage attached to marijuana that many politicians find frightening. Again, perhaps for another article.
• May 23, 2010, Devon Wong writes: In short, tech not inherently good, marijuana not inherently evil. Weapons, however, do kill by their very nature. They are made for the purpose of killing. The trade of marijuana only kills if it`s driven underground, and marijuana itself, unlike shit like cocaine, does not kill.
• May 25, 2010, Isaac writes: cool, yeah thanks for the reply, just wanted to make sure the readers at home had a bit more context for your statement regarding the Harper thing, too often I hear vitriolic statements that don't communicate anything as far as our gov't is concerned.

“You get what you pay for” says any reasonable passing thought, but summer is so ripe with objection is it not? A second Dairy Queen Blizzard? With the purchase of any Dairy Queen Blizzard? This is insanity, a crazy world! You should have seen the look on my brother’s emoticon when I texted him the news. 31 cent scoop night at Baskin & Robbins? I love ice cream! I love the world! Free comic books?

Oh, Duck Tails? No, no, I like DuckTales it’s just that. Oh it’s a good DuckTales? I was just hoping you’d have like, I don’t know, something like The Flash or some Ultimates you are trying to haul away. No? War of The Supermen? No, dude, Superman's been lost for like the last year, I'll pass. Oh okay. But this Fraggle Rock is good? Fraggle Rock? Sure, fine then. Okay then let’s check it out.

Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock ~ Archaia ~ Free as freedom

Interesting. I thought the rushing craze of reviving every property that gets a Youtube comment died a few years ago, but I guess I’m wrong. Sure, people watched Fraggle Rock, but aside from nostalgic charm there isn’t much for anyone to get invested with. Regardless, everyone’s favourite funky bunch of pseudo-Marxist Muppets are back and ready to once again spread the ‘be yourself’ message through a myriad of simple anecdotes. In this freebie we get two quick stories, first has Boober deciding to join the Doozer work force after being called a wet blanket, and the second is about making art out of garbage. Oh, and the first page is also a maze with some turnips. Wonderful stuff. The first story’s art (by Jake Myler) is actually really good, with sharp line work and very fluid colouring, while in contrast the second (with art by Jeremy Love) seems inconspicuously incomplete. The rough drafting pencils are sort of smudged all over, you can try to defend the ‘style’ of it, but the ‘style’ is awful. I guess that’s about all I can dig out of this. Yeah, smack your cheek that I haven’t been totally inspired by a free Fraggle Rock comic adaptation, but there’s another event altogether to leave the mind scrambled. No, not the Weed March you weenie.

Free Comic Book day isn’t the only thing putting the staples to paper. In fact it isn't even the only event to get rained on. TCAF has decided to shed its old shackles of bi-annuality to full blown annual. Aware it can put up the dukes towards other comic print gatherings for the uncanny nature, dweebsters to zinesters can once again commune somewhere in between psychedelic scribblers and webcomics. Of course, while the event is free, things will probably run you a small fee. Actually even that’s a half truth, because some artists seem all too willing to pass on their work in exchange for a great anecdote. But regardless, free is free and this is not. So which is better?

Sword of My Mouth ~ No Media Kings ~ A fair 14 dollars

I had heard about Jim Munroe’s unique apocalypse on other sites before but this was my first dip into it. I can see why and how people have been hooked by this post civilization depiction. It's so eerily casual. It's the end of humanity but personality marches on. In a world where the rapture plucked individuals off the planet, leaving the rest to be mutated and laboured under the tyrannical angels, people still remain being people. Free people, no matter what. They love, they live, they laugh and they cry. There's a rich sensation of community made stronger from being demolished, and it shows the Munroe's strength to recognize realistic individuals without siphoning caricatures. Though this isn't the end story to end all. While I love the characterization, the plot leaves a lot to be desired. It is almost completely without tension, which I suppose is 'realistic,' but that very same realism is juxtaposed at other times by near brushes with conventional super hero material surrounding a skeleton handed antagonist and his schemes. It's an interesting and mature read, but there's a sort of 'so-what' sensation by the time you put it down. A good completion to any post-apocalyptic fiction set, but not a corner stone.

I’m at the Beguiling for a return trip. My brother departed to meet friends and I, coincidentally, ran into some other friends who had yet to rail in their freebie haul. The rain’s quit too, and company is nice. You are only supposed to take five free comics, and while the second visit would be a good opportunity to abuse the system, I don’t like to be a jerk. I mean unless I see something really offensive that needs a ripping. They are free and ho-hum for the most part, but I don’t want to come off as a total... Oh wait what’s this? Oh man, I am half surprised they did this. Actually I’m not surprised at all. Well, I guess I can take ONE extra comic, I’ll just slip it into the tote and hope nobody sees that I put my hand on a copy of...

Fame Lady Gaga ~ Bluewater Comics ~ Love don’t cost a thing yo

No self respecting comic website has gone without a massive fan based rant about Blue Water Comics. The publishing house seems to have no quarrels with pumping out an otherwise embarrassing flood of unofficial biographies on whoever is currently making headlines. Obama, Pelosi, everyone who has something to do with Twilight. This isn’t a creative enterprise and I’m not sure it’s a business one either. What’s even weirder is while, if you saw this on the shelf, you’d think it’d actually be about current pop sensation Lady Gaga, but it isn’t. It’s actually about some fat guy whining that music doesn’t inspire him like the Queens, Bowies and other acts most famous before he was probably even born. But then, ah, like a glittery disco ball beam of sun on his inconsistently drawn TV set is none other than Lady Gaga. He heavily investigates the glam stud via the internet before building enough confidence to leave the house to buy an album (people still buy albums?). This is... Hhuh... This is pretty bad. I mean it’s free yeah, but I’m pretty sure the version you pay for may be more of what I’m looking at. I bet it wasn’t without experience that the story follows a fat guy who never leaves the house. No one in this talks like real people. I’ve browsed a fair share of HMVs but no one’s ever uttered the words, “Get your groove on, guy” in stores and or otherwise. There are also missing commas, which is kind of the entertainment in itself. The art shares the fugly too, and anytime someone sweats it looks more like they are melting into glue. Don't worry, I'm not saying that you were going to pick this up anyways. I'm just saying I did and then continued to be awful and read it.

I didn’t know Michael Deforge was actually going to be at TCAF. This would have been a pleasant surprise, but I decided to earn a lot of fist props and ‘hey cool shirt’ referrals by wearing a tee he sold at Canzine. I feel like I wore the band shirt with matching hat to their show. Oh god did he see me? He’s going to think I’m such a dweeb. Okay, maybe I can just try to nab a copy of his new book and slip away. Just inch a little... Almost... DANGIT. I think he saw. He thinks it’s funny. OH MAN I’M SUCH A LOSER.

LOSE #2 ~ Koyama Press ~ Run ya bout’ five bucks.

What made me learn to love the first LOSE was how easily I identified the plight of the artist. Victims of the pop culture saturated world can be helpless to discover uniquity, especially when it finally comes to putting the ink pen to paper. I spent all of high school drawing Batman fan art and I’m sure many reading a series entitled 'NERDVENTURES' have been in similar places. Despite how immensely dark the imagery was, it was difficult not being charmingly entertained by Deforge’s cartoon flooded interpretation of hell. While his abilities as a captivating artist and a designer are holding up their end of the bargain, Deforge has moved on to entirely new themes. Without a TV allusion in sight, we new play witness to the story of Chip, a wee lil’ cowboy who befriends the end of humanity. We’ve sort of swapped to the other side of the mirror, discovering the sublime in bleakness instead of bleakness in the sublime. This issue is overall trimmed. While the first was a bit of a loot bag hopping between Teen Green Lantern and the main misadventure, two is more focused, which will probably cheese off as many people as it will pleasure. As much as I enjoyed it, this isn’t the issue that captivated me, but I’ll probably pick up three when it comes out just to discover how miserable a man with an awesome hair cut can actually be.

I’m not saying that nothing good in this world is free, I’m just saying don’t be too shocked when free things are awful. Free Comic Book day is about getting pretty pictures into the hands of adolescents. TCAF is about silk-screening naked women with eyes for vaginas. Everything has its purpose. Your wallet included.

What made you dare to draw things, then put them on the internet, for all to complain about?

There were two different things. What made me decide to draw things was animation. As a kid I really got into cartoons, I didn't read a lot of comics outside of, y'know, the newspaper stuff, maybe some Archie, Sonic the Hedgehog, things you find at the grocery store. I remember thinking, "Oh WOW, SONIC!"

"HE'S ON THE SEGA GENESIS!"

"I llloove that game!" I drew because, in my head, I was always thinking about cartoons. That was when I was in kindergarten... first grade... but then you get into Jr. High, ninth grade, that's when I discovered web comics. I was still drawing comics the whole time but then I discovered people actually put them on the web. I didn't understand how they did it, but I just thought, "that's interesting." That would be 2001, 2002, when I was all like, "YAAAY!" Wait, maybe it was 1999...

Just so you can feel being on the edge, pre-millennial. WHAT'S WITH THIS SEGA DREAMCAST THING.

Just to make people feel really old, saying I was in Jr. High in 2001.

I was in Jr. High in 2001!

~YAYYYYYYYYYY YAYYYYYYYYYY~

*Fist Pound*

Yeah we pounded that.

What was the process with that? Did you just dip your foot in the pond with that? Tested the market, see what you did and if people liked them, if they reacted to them?

I think I was just excited with the prospect of people reading my comics. Other people, other than just my friends and immediate family reading my stuff. That was really exciting to me. I had no way of figuring out how many people were without the use of old school site counters and shit like that. It wasn't like a 'dip my toe' it was more like a 'I gotta get my shit up on there NOW.' So I learned how to scan, I learned how to use Photoshop as best I could.

Which is still a lot more than most webcomic attempts can vouch for.

It's a trial and error thing. A lot of trial and a lot of error. I sort of had a lot of Geocities sites all connecting to one another. I gradually learned some HTML and eventually a friend lent me a copy of the old Microsoft Frontpage and eventually 'found,' quote unquote, a copy of Dreamweaver, which helped me a little more.

How conscious are you of other webcomics and how does that affect your own work? Is it something you feel makes you need to justify your own efforts or do you just stand among your own?

I'm very conscious of other webcomics because I was made excited by the idea of other people doing it. It's interesting to just see the other stuff out there. I was always into the other stuff. Maybe not so much now-a-days, but as a kid I was like, "What is this? What is that?!" Total kid in a candy store. "Other people do these things that I do also?!" I'm still very conscious of comics I just don't read everything I see. I don't mean being snobby about it, just that I'm working more on my stuff and I'm just reading the ones that I've been reading for a long time. Everything on my link page is everything I read.

Or just links to your site.

Yeah, that too.

A website that sells mirrors.

I'm aware of the scene. There are some aspects that I couldn't give less a shit about.

Comics about video games?

Yeah, sort of. There are some comics about video games that are funny. It's more of like the community of some of them. The old communities I used to be a part of like Drunk Duck, I appreciate that they give people a place to put their stuff but at the same time, I don't give a fuuuuck. I'm not going to be a part of that. I'm not part of that like I used to be but I am still somewhat aware of what's going on. Usually from other people.

You're in the balloon floating away, waving.

And I'm still watching everyone below, going 'interesting' but most of the time I like to focus on my own work.

It's the part of the movie where the boy must leave the mystical tribe he discovered in the other dimension.

But I have a magic mirror you see, and it lets me see them from the other world.

Plus you brought some weird creature back with you.

And it tells me things sometimes but I'm like, "Dude, just shut up. I'm busy."

Why do you think that self-loathing and the internet go hand in hand?

I don't know if it's just self-loathing and the internet, but a lot of artists have that self-loathing. I think that's just due to their up-bringing. I don't know about the up-bringing of all the others, and it's not like I had a rotten childhood, it was fine, but... I don't think I can even pinpoint mine. I just grew up this way. Not unsure of everything. I guess I'm waiting for someone to tell me if I'm doing a good job, which is maybe where that comes from. Self-loathing just sort of happens. It just pops up.

You appear to base a lot of your material off real life anecdotes. What's your sort of filtering system as to what makes it online? Is it just what sends you into a giggle-fit or have you started to fine-tune your process to something more specific?

Whatever I find funny. Like, sometimes if I'm walking around and I see, even in a crowded place like this, I'll see something that'll spark a quick idea and then a small like scene in my head that'll just make me really laugh. Sometimes it's just the timing of it. The timing of a scene where someone's getting so mad they knock over a book shelf. A full shelf of books, in such a fit. "I'm not going to talk to you anymore, I'll topple these books, THAT'S HOW MAD I AM!" I used to do this all the time within friends. We'd try to say something that would just try to be a joke but would end up a stupid pun, we'd look at each other and pretend to knock the movies off the shelf. Just be like, 'NO.' NO. That was our way of saying 'DON'T.' Do you remember the squirrel comic from Gunshow? It was just about a squirrel that decided to start a business, shuffling papers out on the lawn and it goes through the whole process lickety-split. He started. He got a bad deal. He killed himself. That started because I saw a squirrel out of a window when I was driving with my parents out in Arkansas, I thought it looked like he was shuffling papers and the idea just evolved from there. After a while you know what you find funny. You'll find it in day-to-day things. I look for the weird situation. That's what I'm good at. Some people are good at finding punchlines. R Stevens is a great example. Even when you talk to him it's insane, he's a really witty guy.

It's to the point where you aren't sure if he's even enjoying your part of the conversation.

Actually yeah, I wonder when I'm talking to him if he even knows what I'm going on about. But he's a really nice guy.

It's a scary thing to think about, but generations after ours are not going to know a world without the internet. You said you got into webcomics in Jr. High, what do you think is an appropriate age to divulge into this activity? What's a good age to start.

It differs for everyone. Kate Beaton started just out of college and look at her now. I was just in Jr. High when I started, and while I went through a lot of shit I would still, looking back, have just made comics even if I didn't know about the web. It's completely different for anyone else. I want to say a young age. It might just be full of shit for a while, but you know what? It takes a while to get better. I'd say a young age. I know a lot of people would say no to that, but imagine a guy who is, say, 30, staring his webcomic. Maybe he has a pretty good amount of confidence in starting his webcomic, but people are telling him, "No dude, this isn't good, but here's what you could do better." That thirty year old dude is going to go, "Yeah, shut up kid." He's probably not going to listen to some 16 year old punk. A kid would be more adept to taking advice at that age. Honestly I think any age is a good age to start a webcomic, as long as you're open to criticism.

Whenever I’d ask about Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Preacher I was greeted with a tilted head and a searching gaze. “Uh, well… I’m not sure you’d like it.” Okay, but what does that mean exactly? The clearest answer I got was that there was a lot of swearing. Not really the craziest thing out there.

There are several reasons why people have a hard time describing this book. There’s a natural reluctance to pin down and describe this kind of material to someone when you don’t know how they’ll react, and Preacher, with its rampant gore, gross-out moments and not-so-old-fashioned blasphemy is certainly that kind of material. I’m sure at least subconsciously these guys are worried I’ll judge them harshly for enjoying Preacher. Thankfully, I’m a bit more open minded than that. And alright, maybe it isn’t always easy to nail down this book.

In the broadest sense it could be described as a modern day western, fitting in honour, a self-sufficient spirit and the willingness to just beat down the bad guys into the mix.

I’d like to relate to you a few of the things that struck me as I read the series:

Tulip O’Hare is the girlfriend of the protagonist Jesse Custer, and I was really impressed by the fact that with her, the reader gets a leading female character that wasn’t a stereotypical comic book beauty - she was really tired-looking when she first arrived in the story, and I thought it added some dimension to her. It wasn’t until much later that I realized she was written as though she was that stereotyped vision - the artist Steve Dillon just didn’t manage to get the look right.

While I’m on the subject of Tulip, I may as well bring up something that really bothered me: each time Jesse left her behind to go save the day she got really offended. Irritatingly offended. For whatever reason, after Jesse would explain that he was just scared to death of her getting hurt - in what were immensely dangerous situations no matter how good with a pistol you are - it would somehow equate in Tulip’s mind with Jesse not trusting her, and Jesse would quickly agree that he has no excuses for what he did. Being scared for someone does not equate to a lack of trust. But the characters act as though that is the case because if they didn’t, Jesse and Tulip wouldn’t have been manoeuvred into the proper situations to facilitate the plot.

Unfortunately this is an example of really forced writing that can be found throughout the run of Preacher. But hold on, if that’s the case, why is Preacher so popular?

Well, there’s the shock value for one. Graphic violence is appealing for the wish fulfillment of those with darker appetites, and Preacher certainly delivers on that score. But it would mean nothing if we didn’t want to see some violence, see some retribution done. It’s necessary then that the Preacher Jesse Custer be really good and the bad guys really bad.

In fact the differentiation between the good guys and the bad guys is so stark, so black and white, as to render the characterization as unduly simplistic.

Jesse always knows the right thing to do. He may not want to do it, but he knows what he needs to do. Even when that action is convincing an old man to kill himself for the crimes he committed in his youth. Whether or not death was the suitable punishment for his crime isn’t important, but that Jesse could just decide right away that someone was beyond redemption. That takes either the greatest arrogance or the good fortune of being a cartoon character whose every action is scripted to get the best result. Luckily Jesse is a cartoon.

The bad guy comes off even worse. Starting off as an impressive, intimidating foe with lofty goals, he degenerates to the point that everything about him is stripped away (the guy even loses an ear, leg, and genitals through the course of the story) and he becomes the poster child for the Saturday morning television villain, devolving to the point where all he cares about is revenge. He will happily shout from the rooftops that he is the villain of the piece.

So what is Preacher? It’s anti-intellectual pop entertainment. Maybe that sounds pretty bad to you, but you know there’s something to be said for a nice break from a heavy read. Just sit back and enjoy the ride, root for the good guys, and remember to relax: it’s just another story. I’ll try and do the same.

Comments

• April 16, 2010, Erika Szabo writes: Nice article! Preacher has to be one of my favourite graphic novel series. I think it was the cover art that initially captured me, but once I dipped into the story I was hooked. Vertigo never seizes to amaze me with its wonderful selection of comics.

While no SDCC, in Toronto, Hobby Star’s Fan Expo is the biggest boy. A-listers? Debatable, but listed enough make face. Fans come in wolf packs, the Saturday ticket line wrapped around the Metro Center like a thick comforting arm to investors and exhibitors. Though the power over fans is a dangerous power. Many have cried out against Fan Expo. There are ghostly expositions online of rogue dedicators, explaining Hobby Star’s abuse of their might. The evidence isn’t subtle. In the past, Hobby Star has had an uncanny habit of sniping smaller conventions for no reason aside from a show of power. The immediate weekend after any Paradise Comics showing or any alike, Hobby Star would throw a free “fan appreciation” event to siphon away interest. Eventually Paradise Comics would close the doors on their tried and true Paradise Comicon, the emptiness removing Fan Expo’s biggest competition and removing some of the spring in local dork’s steps. Enter the Wizard.

Wizard, aside from being a magical old man, is an American publication, the largest, in fact, on the topics of comic books and nerdity. They throw a series of Wizard World conventions across the US, in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and publicly expanding. They are fairly big deals, once again, not SDCC big deal, but a pretty big deal. Their interest in the city piqued interest in local conventioneers. The idea of having a Wizard World in Toronto inspired the thought that Paradise’ demise was not to be in vain. Oddly enough, there is another event called Wizard World in the same month, but that one is just a bunch of bouncy castles and you need a 12 year old to get in. I was there on behalf of CTV, sent to take some photos of our important panels and then later write a fluffy little blog post.

If you are hoping for a real Rocky Balboa of a story, this is probably the part where you should stop reading and pretend Wizard World went swimmingly and Hobby Star learned a humble lesson.

Eliza Dukshu, actress and girl who was topless in a bunch of Dollhouse promos was to be the star attraction at the three day event. Was to be. She cancelled. In her place was alternative Whedon choice Jewel Staite, black Ghostbuster Ernie Hudson, America’s last next top model Adrianne Curry, her Brady Bunch boyfriend, the dude who was inside the Gorn suit, some people who were unlucky enough to appear in the SAW movies, some lost and wandering post-reality TV contestants and a whole lot of fat retired wrestlers. There were two things I started to hear about from peers when I got there that Saturday morning. That no one showed up on the Friday before, and that the Iron Sheik went on some seemingly homophobic rant about Hulk Hogan.

Not having any concrete task to kill the day with, I started meandering towards the handful of things that I cared in some way about. So I shook the black Ghostbusters hand. It’s sort of disappointing but really believable when pseudo-famous people are, in fact, normal, boring, quiet people. I wish I had a story about some quotable anecdotes and antics thrown down by Mister Hudson, but instead, well, he’s nice. Like he’s a nice guy. His son used to live in Toronto. Now he lives in Trinidad, if I remember correctly. I took a photo and moved on.

Adrianne Curry, on the other hand, spoke as if she was trying to ‘fit in’ at a party. She would go on and on about her level something-something orc on World of Warcraft. How she’d love to boink all the Stormtroopers and how big a turn on Darth Vader is. She was dressed like Wonder Woman, the day before she was apparently dressed like a Droog, the day after I heard she was Leeloo. Eventually I managed to get her talking about travel ethics, triggered by my generic back up question of “so how’re you enjoying Toronto?” She said that, while she had actually never been to Canada in her travels, she would always tell scoffing Europeans that she was native to the land of the proud maple leaf. I took a photo and moved on.

One of the few responsibilities I had was to cover CTV hosted panels. There were two cast members of Battlestar Galactica openly discussing the on-set antics and what it was like to be flushed into a cult phenomenon. I discovered how hard it is to take a photo of four talking people without anyone making a goofy unflattering face. I got some ‘okay’ photos and moved on.

The exhibitors weren’t too happy. The entire retail devoted back end of the hall was kind of glooming, the vendors I spoke to couldn’t get over that, even while there were more fish in the pond this day, no one was biting. I hung around with my friends from A&C Games, and it was a sentiment they kept mature about. A chubby stubby youngster saw the booth and remarked “Yo, these are all old games. Gay fuckin’ shit.” I pointed out that A&C did, in fact, have plenty of current PS3 and Xbox games. He gave me an, “Oh, whatever” and nothing else. I spoke to a jack of all trades booth, selling everything from manga to vinyl. I asked him how many browsed through the LPs and he told me more than I was probably second-guessing. “My store’s out in the middle of nowhere, cottage country,” he said, “I brought a lot of my mainstream, classic stuff and some of the few obscure things (like a Hank IV release) because you never know what’ll sell. There are collectors here. You can’t risk the odd stuff safely from where I am. Wish I could though.”

I bought a six-dollar hot dog (on CTV’s dime and dollar) where I encountered my first old bearded fat angry guy of the day. At first I thought he was being ironic about how the concession stand being out of ketchup was “like a nightmare” but he followed it up with a passionate expose of his offense after receiving pepper when he firmly requested salt. Then someone triggered the fire alarm.

I’ve never seen a convention hall full of people evacuated, but it is a slow, and heckling process. Some went outside to the windy Exhibition grounds, most refused to take gravity to the could-be threat and just hobbled in the lobby. When crammed into a more precise space, the attendant attendees looked more in-folds than ever. I used the opportunity to take a photo of a ‘full house’ and later play it up as a tribute to Wizard’s success instead of a mild bumble.

Wizard World’s try isn’t going to fix the damage that Hobby Star has done. Twenty-five dollars doesn’t sound like much, but pitted to admission and the average fan to tween will only pay it for one and not the other. One gets Kevin Smith, the other gets a finalist from So You Think You Can Dance. One gets Spock and Kirk, the other gets Ax and Smash. One struggles to prove itself while the other, by the end of its opponent's Saturday announces Fan Expo will have Stan Lee. I didn’t take a photo of ex-wrestlers sitting in an empty convention center, because it’s an image that’s both unsettling and hard to shake.

There was a blackout two days ago in my current basement. I wasn’t in the middle of a video game and my laptop would survive well long enough to check my email again again and again. This new basement is not the same as the last. The walls are much cleaner, though there are doors that lead to nowhere. Two days before we moved in a pipe burst, causing the need of full reparation, afterwards leaving us with a fresh room to clutter. Clutter we did. There’s an unused foosball table, boxes of old toys chocking both walk in closets. Bins of scarves and mismatched gloves. Ugly as the last one was, I don’t remember it ever getting this messy. Or cold, this one gets cold, and currently, is cold. I could build a fort in the dark out of pillows and blankets, but experience seemed so much more lonesome as a solo act. Instead I had alternative plans. While it would be an hour commute up to York, not to mention in the rain, I would be given the opportunity to join some other friends. In some other basement.

I packed up the obvious necessities (Street Fighter II, Joe n’ Mac, Mystical Ninja), debated the worth of hoisting along a single beer, and then hustled against the tiny flowing rivers that spittle down my road. On the bus I dried off my bag under the worries that water would infiltrate my precious SNES carts, while conscious of the grey plastic clacking that would arouse curiosity in strangers.

I get to the Vanier building and head to the basement for the annual York NERDSTOCK. I walk into the ballroom to be greeted by applause at the other end of the room. They don’t notice me, of course, the claps are for my friend Jason Brennan, who had just finished a power point presentation on surviving the zombie apocalypse. Not one to rock the boat, I slip to a hard right and ask where the nearest port to plug in my Mystical Ninja and am directed towards two televisions. One preoccupied by two boys going at the latest Smash Bros, the other preoccupied by a kid given the task to complete Ocarina of Time before the event comes to a close. It was 3:30 and he was at the Forrest Temple, not the landing strip but there’s hope yet. After the presentation formally closes, the lights come back on and the group scatters.

I make myself known by the lords and dukes of the event, Dallas Kasaboski and Michael McKenna, also confidents. I had helped them out in previous years, supplying games, trivia and playlists, though this year I was bogged down with work and had to mostly take a sidestep this time around. I asked how things were going and was given a somewhat exhausted “Great, man.” This is the first time the event had migrated out of Winters College (the residents where the two masterminds dwell) and into the interior of another college, almost on the other end of campus entirely. They spent the night before postering the walls with Batmen, Supermen, Ring Lords and printed scientists.  Tables are smothering in comic books, dungeon manuals and chip bowls.

In the back, an active D&D game, next to them two boys trying to build a trebuchet out of K’Nex, next to them a table with untouchable action figures, next to them a couch with two napping girls in superhero clothing. While there’s only a little over baker’s dozen of people in eye’s reach, the ones who are present are truly holding the namesake. It’s not a big event, or a loud event, it’s more dressed than it is active, but it is a basement. A basement where we feel cozy with our exercises and one with our hobbies. Hard not to argue the Zen in its humility, and even harder to tear yourself away from.

I’d know, when it came time to say my dues, and more specifically see a movie with my brother, turning head from Star Trek being projected on an honest bundle of printer paper tacked on to the wall is a trial in itself. When I left, the player left Link at the fire temple, low on health and arrows and the Nintendo Wavebird controller sinking into a sofa. The Kool Aid, pizza and chips were long since finished off. The trebuchet abandoned. A table full of scrap fabrics for costuming left virgin. An impressive spread of comics undisturbed. It’s a space that took effort, and in it pride, but in rewards gives the strangers who wandered in and out throughout the day a space free of judgement to wallow in nothings. Or to take home Stargate on DVD, one of the many prizes offered for just staying a healthy amount of time. I got Power Ranger stickers. It’s a basement, and I’m returning to my own.

I’m sorry basement, I should have never left you. I enjoyed the vacation but I’ve come to learn that each one is a beautiful thing and worth their appreciation. I miss the one I used to have, even if it was ugly and creepy. You keep me warm. Though not literally, it’s freezing. The power is still out when I got back. My brother and I play a patient game waiting for the other to cave in and call hydro. Both losing that game, we just play Scrabble by candlelight. I forfeited because I kept getting nothing but A’s and U’s.

The power comes back, but the heat will take it’s time. I go down into the basement to grab some extra blankets, the same denim Looney Tunes ones that nuzzled me back in the last house. It’s chilly but I take in the basement a few more moments before returning upstairs.

Cover | Amazing Spiderman #601 | Marvel Comics

In Amazing Spider-Man #601 Peter Parker gets drunk and has sex with his roommate, whom he doesn't even particularly like. To boil down the responses to that event on the letters page, which the Amazing Spider-Man editors have printed, it sounds like there are basically two responses here: those that think Spider-Man should be an example to people (and therefore should not have done those things), and those that want Pete to be a regular guy, who makes mistakes.

To be a bit more specific I've read it said that Peter Parker is an “everyman,” not a saint, and can make these kinds of mistakes. That particular point I take objection to.

See, Peter Parker is an everyman in a more psychological sense, constantly battling with his own self-absorption, sense of responsibility, and very often a sense of worthlessness (to counter that self-absorption a bit I guess). But as far as Peter Parker's actions and abilities go - nope, not really an everyman. Unless we can all go by the description "orphaned boy grows up with cash-strapped elderly relatives, has a completely alienating personality and therefore no friends in high school, is an absolute genius, and takes a job as a photographer before finishing high school to help pay the bills." Granted, that photography job probably wouldn't have kicked in without the super powers, but who can say for sure, right? Hopefully my point still stands that this isn't really a "normal" guy.

To contrast, a more normal guy is Matt Murdock when he's not Daredevil. Oh, he's smart, no question, but it's pretty clearly part of his narrative that Matt spent years working and studying hard to become the top in his profession as a defense attorney. So to my way of thinking, if I want to see a character make the kind of poor choice that Spidey displayed (and everyone will freely admit to it being a poor choice, even if they're in favour of having it portrayed) in Amazing Spider-Man #601, and it’s an “everyman” mistake, well, I'd turn to Daredevil as the real "everyman" character.

But more to the point, I'd turn to Daredevil because that is actually the kind of mistake Daredevil has made in the past. He’s kind of a cad - it would be an action well within his established character as far as I'm concerned. I don't think we need two supposedly different characters published by the same company (Marvel Comics) to make the exact same kinds of mistakes, otherwise we don't need the other character! Let Spider-Man be Spidey, and Daredevil be ol' Hornhead!

The mistake in Amazing Spider-Man #624, the latest issue, is a far more believable one, that Peter Parker would fabricate photographic evidence to re-create a scene he knew existed at one point, and would help his old frienemy Jonah Jameson get out of a pickle. It's a mistake tied into the mythos of Spider-Man's world, specifically his photography, and raises a very valid concern regarding Peter's career (and by extension all news-people-by-day, superhero-by-night types), and the question of how much leeway does he have with his reporting to safeguard his identity?

In Amazing Spider-Man #33 there is a bit of dialogue to the extent of "and now I will exit this door with my camera snapping so it looks like Peter Parker is taking my photo." Spidey was fiddling with the pictorial truth as far back as 1966! And seeing as how we haven’t heard his conscience bugging him for the past forty years, I’d say Pete is morally good with that action. Whether you personally think it’s right or not, well that’s a different matter, but down through the years it has certainly been a simple and consistent form of chicanery.

Returning to the example in Amazing Spider-Man #624 however, he is actually cutting and pasting (computer-wise) his photo together, a completely premeditated action. The result is he makes a visual anachronism that makes it clear that Peter is peddling phony photos and he’s called on it in front of a huge crowd by Jameson himself, who urges all news media sources to stay away from that untrustworthy photographer!

That sucks! But it’s a risk you take when you fake the news.

And that’s another thing that’s out of character for Peter Parker, for there have been plenty of times when a doctored photo could have done as much good as a well placed web-line, but it’s never come up before because that isn’t how Parker thinks and operates. For whatever reason, he’s conditioned himself to believe that the only good he can really accomplish is in the persona of Spider-Man (for better or worse). In times past, Spidey would have said “Nuts, I wish I got that photo when it was, you know, real.” Then he would have gone out to catch the bad guys and find the real evidence.

What if there was no real evidence you ask? Then that’s one of the Spidey stories that ends in a “can’t win them all” lesson.

The point is, these breaks from established character as I’ve pointed out don’t strike me as the writers making an honest mistake. I’ve got the impression that we’re being fed plot points to get to the next type of story the editors want to tell, regardless of natural character development. “Okay, for the next story Peter’s going to be dealing with losing his job and all of his friends. And you have to get him to that place in a single issue.”

I don’t need to tell you this, but that is sloppy storytelling.

Comments

• March 17, 2010, Paul writes: Saw this reposted (with credit) on noscans-daily.livejournal.com. It's well said. I should point out, though, that there's even greater precedent for Peter's faking a news photograph. There was a time, way back in the beginning (I believe ASM #4), when Sandman attacked Peter's school. After, Peter locked himself in the janitor's closet, grabbed a bucket of sand, set his camera's auto-timer, tossed the sand in the air, and punched the cloud. He justifies the fakery by telling himself that it did happen and he was there. He's just "reenacting" it. He then sells those photos to the Bugle. That's original run, first year, by Stan Lee. Peter's made a lot of mistakes. The writers lately have made even more. But you're right - this one is in character.
• March 21, 2010, Isaac writes: What? I was reposted somewhere? That's awesome

Getting off the bus, we were pinned in between the sign that said ‘Welcome to Toronto’ and another that said ‘Welcome to Markham.’ Across the intersection’s two cold crosswalks was a mall. Now I know, Toronto has plenty malls. Dufferin, Eaton, Yorkdale, there’s plenty options of places to shop and overcrowd on Boxing Day. But there’s one mall that’s different, has an identity so to speak, which isn’t hard when you exclude a Banana Republic from your innards. It was a mall that me and handfuls of friends would venture to after the slower winter high school days. And despite the ethnic flair, it hugs the line of dozens of identical suburbs. Pacific Mall is Toronto’s most authentic attempt at a taste of Japan. You can bet your illegally bought swords it’s full of white anime nerds.

Karen and Curran join me on this hour-ish TTC pilgrimage. I promised them a swell lunch, my now surprisingly foggy high school memories telling me that the food court is the highest priority. We piledrive through the parking lot, the crowds, stores and escalators to the top floor. Passing through some pagoda frames and wacky dragon murals we make our way to an ambush of erotic smells. Sweet pastries and savoury soups conflict my senses with my wallet. The final nail is hammered in by the loud slapping noise of a chef subduing a worm of noodle dough. Each barrowing slam echoes like a masculine mating call. I shell out a fair seven dollars for a noodle soup and coca cola. The deal comes with a complimentary cold soy drink, which tastes exactly like it sounds, so I’m glad I grabbed a soda pop along side. Karen wanted to nosh on some spring rolls as well, whipping her head about to spot an ATM through the crowds. I ask an old white woman sitting parallel to where we were standing. She just tells us she’s also clueless, and that this is the first time she’s even been in the damn mall in the first place. I assure Curran that I didn’t ask her first simply because she was white. She was just the closest is all. That’s all.

The soup is delicious, and leaves all standard mall food court fare sore in the rain, totally earning the shrivelling laminated Toronto guide articles placed along the order counter. Finding a table was not necessarily as cherished a memory. The most scenic, pagoda themed ones filled the fastest. We settled with some just off to the side, at view of a Japanese magazine shop and “The Emperor’s Chair.” The lavish chair has a paper taped to it asking that people do not sit in it. I’m sure plenty jackasses on a regular basis make boorish spite to the modest piece of white paper.

Once we finish our meals we head back out of the most cluttered end of the mall back into the main circle. We rotate around booths clinging on to the elevator, selling swords and jade, all of questionable legitimacy. After closer inspecting a karaoke establishment so tightly built up we half expected a moustached dwarf to pop out and tell us no one can see the wizard, no one no how. We burrowed into the arcade. The arcade, like the food court, I more vividly remembered. One night, me and two other desperate nerds went all the way up to participate in a midnight madness, free play event. Endless attempts and headstrong import arcade titles. Dance Dance variations, horse betting simulators, but none so struck out as much as the Fist of the North Star punching game. The game, a stand up red box with a screen and deep indent, had you punch red targets that popped out of the sides of the hole as they frantically clicked in and about. You are supposed to be supplied with light gloves to spare your knuckles, but not knowing this I went bare Balboa and left my hands red, more scarred with adrenaline. Though upon this visit, I found that cabinet to be gone.

The arcade was now rebranded with Playdium, a slight shock because I had no idea that the dying establishment had the energy to spread. Many of the zanier imports were gone, though the Japanese style fighting cabinets remained, where foeing players sat opposite on separate screens. Curran asked me if I was going to go a round of Street Fighter IV, and after I wiped the drool from my lip I told him there were better uses for my money than to pay someone to beat me up.

While the top level is the most cramped, the main floor feels much more like an ambush. All stores are boxed in glass spaces. The retail doesn’t so much receive an abode as much as they get a cubicle, feeling much more like a trade show than permanent residence. To make up for the lack of solid walls, some stores get creative. Postering the glass with product, posters of pretty boys, hypersexualized booty shorts, and Gundam. There was an intense Disney fetish. While I may have forgotten Lilo and Stitch, Pacific still holds the zany alien runt near to their heart, making him plush at every opportune moment. One of the most outstanding oddities was a gemstoned Donald Duck phone, which struck Curran so hard he had to alert me and then wait for a post-shopping Karen to alert once again.

It’s easy to get lost, despite the layout being no more than rows. Competition must be fierce, as many story types repeat so often you feel as if you were walking through an animation cell. Dry ingredients that look so visually salty you get thirsty thinking about it. Computer part store that I can’t even chip any knowhow into. Bootleg DVD emporiums that so proudly post yellow “NO ENGLISH” signs upon the merchandise. Pink, cutesy girl boutiques and capsule toy basins. With the glass walls and hobbles of people, it’s like focusing on an infinite repeat.

The trip didn’t feel as much as a journey as it used to, though perhaps it’s because the sun remained up for the first time I’ve been. One thing that I can say has changed is just how much I noticed people enjoying the mall. With the one exception of a woman scolding her child, families and especially children had no trouble smiling. Kids dancing about a game counter while their dad played an exceptionally high definition NBA game. Teens pointing, noting and gagging about all the strange novelties. This is the mall for those who hate malls: where the shopping experience itself so often instills monotony, Pacific is like an invasion of an outside tradition. I’ve never been to Japan, perhaps for a Yorkdale to land there would stir the shit out of them. But here, I’m glad we have Pacific Mall.

Comments

• February 16, 2010, Riaz writes: Oh man, I totally want to hit up Pacific Mall for the DVD's alone.
• February 23, 2010, vickie writes: This place sounds really cool. I'd like to see that gemstoned Donald Duck phone.

Both are deconstructions of the superhero comic, picking through conventions to try and paint a “real” world setting while illuminating certain quirks and abolishing others. Neither story relies on the conceit that the bad guy will escape from prison every other issue to wreak havoc, nor will that story takes place in some limbo time where no character ever ages and the status quo is eternal.

Dark Knight Returns has an advantage in being about a character who is truly world renowned, and especially in having the campy 60’s Batman show in the public consciousness which perpetuated an image of Batman as a boy scout, a duly deputized guy who’s wholly adherent to traffic laws and whatever the guys in charge says. It was a show played for laughs (although to be honest I took it as completely serious while growing up) and as such Dark Knight Returns is all the more striking for its ugly, brutal action.

The motivation behind throwing on a costume and fighting crime is something that had been only sparsely explored in the past, and is a key element of these two stories. In Dark Knight Returns it’s implied that dressing up as a violent bat is a compulsion which goes beyond a simple altruistic spirit. Watchmen takes the idea much further, exploring characters who love the violence of it, the publicity, the eroticism, or they simply require an alternate persona to hide away from the ills of the world.

Whatever the reason, it’s a valid one as far as Watchmen is concerned - it helps that no single character is the focus (or “the one we readers are supposed to agree with”) and the complexities and contradictions of each character create a situation where we as readers are never comfortable saying “that guy’s the villain.” Each character is so beautifully constructed that any one in a starring role would be a triumph of creativity, but to have each character exist and interact, each giving their own views that bounce and mutate in relation to each other characters viewpoint, it’s like the difference between a single melody and a symphony.

An essential comic technique is the juxtaposition of images: say one panel has a guy carrying a ball, and the second has the same guy with his arm extended and the ball hanging in the air beyond his reach, the reader would decode those images as being “a man throws a ball.” Obviously different effects can be created depending on the contexts and images, and I’m particularly struck by the juxtaposition used in Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen.

Dark Knight Returns takes the panels and gives them to us out of order - we’re given a single panel that can stand on its own as a poetic testament, but then a page later we’ll find another panel that expands on the previous idea, fleshing out what’s going on and threading everything together. The effect is a re-creation of the real world perspective, of getting one part of the story on a single channel before getting more information on another channel. Who needs an omniscient narrator, right?

Watchmen takes an opposite tack where the images may differ one from the other and jump to other characters or subplots but with an overwhelming adherence to a particular theme which reinforces everything being expressed. Not only is this interweaving incredibly complex, but it comes together in such a way that the story could only end the way it does. Though you never see it coming, it makes perfect sense, and that kind of tight creation is what the best stories are all about.

I haven’t told you anything specific about what happens in these books, which is especially important for Watchmen seeing as it’s a murder mystery. I have to make sure you read these at some point, which means warning you that these aren’t easy books to read! I remember that the first time I read Watchmen, the prose backups to each issue felt like they take forever to get through. They aren’t really that long, probably the same as four pages of a scholarly magazine, but I know a lot of people that can’t deal with them. It sounds like they’d rather skip that section or stop reading the whole book. Don’t do that! If you’re tired, quit for now and pick it up later, rather than just skip over to the more fast paced images of the comic book proper (though even those are pretty packed with text - Watchmen is a dense read, no doubt about it).

Dark Knight Returns is comparatively a much easier read, it helps that it stars a single mega-star protagonist Batman, and is much shorter. If you want to jump into one of these books, start with Dark Knight Returns.

And now that I’ve piqued your interest in these two famous books, I’ve got to hold you back. Both of these texts engage thoroughly with established comic language and history. If you’re going to get the most out of these books you’re going to have to warm up a bit first. Read a couple of Archie comics, some old school Justice League of America, or something… and then dive on in and impress your friends.

Comments

• February 19, 2010, Jen M writes: Isaac.. I would like to read both. I have heard the same about the Watchmen and how difficult it can be to get through. I will take your word and start with the dark knight returns

I'm sure you're real jazzed about turkey and stuffing, and frankly I can't blame you for being jazzed about stuffing, but Thanksgiving falls right after the high holidays. Me and my people, by that point, are pretty exhausted on the whole grand feast front. This isn't anyone's fault, but those years when Easter eclipses Passover can be dreadful, while the good Christian folk get to lick the remnants of chocolate off their finger tips, me and my people struggle with the surprisingly compromising exclusion of sandwiches. Then comes Christmas.

"But you get eight whole days of presents!" says everyone in grade five. And while I would hold that up smugly back then, the reality was, 'eight days of presents' translates to two Mad Magazines, some chocolate bars, a Weird Al tape and a video game. Me and my brother weren't exactly sitting atop a mountain of Mighty Max playsets. My parents 'tried' Santa Claus once, but I became suspicious after opening the  stocking to find a product packaged Jurassic Park figurine. Having assumed Santa had elves build the gifts by hand, it was the last phase before I finally came to the searing truth that most others would learn from a teasing bully. I think the only thing I was actually envious of were Christmas trees, something about hanging a bunch of junk and chachkis on a tree once a year stroked the pack rat in me.

But I'm older now.

The shallow comparisons don't float anymore. I have other things to do on that oh so magical day of the year. Though not many things. My people roll differently. While you feast with family, showcase the haul of gifts between each other and hug or whatever you do, my people have a whole other set of traditions. It is known as a Jewish Christmas, and with or without family at our side, we will cherish the memories just as much.

Tis' the night before Christmas in New York City. My mother wanted a good ol' family vacation, somewhat jostled and distraught from me having just moved out of the house for the first time AND about to take a trip with friends soon after. We took a horse carriage through the park to humour my mom, we went to the Carnagie Deli, just so we could say we went to the Carnagie Deli and after that? It's Christmas Eve, and even though we were in exotic lands we, as Jews, had a tradition to uphold. We went to see a movie.

This was before an AMC had moved into Toronto's downtown core, so experiencing their brand of theater-going had a bit of a charm. The seats were clearly designed for the plus sized with plus sized expectations. You could liberally tilt the cushioned seat back and lift the arm rests up and down. Two brothers knowing not to miss an opportunity to goof felt obliged to pretend to be space pilots in hyper speed instead of obeying pre-movie trivia. As luck would have it we weren't the dumbest looking ones in the room. Down by the front of the cineplex were a bunch of kids, so jazzed about seeing Night at the Museum, they appeared to be taking vanity shots of each other in the near empty movie theater. It was also the days of proto-Facebook, and I know everyone would use any excuse for more photos to exploit them, but I'm sure most of us can agree 'OMG NU BEN STILLER' is kind of a low.

The movie was pretty good. I was expecting worse.

The next day, taking advantage of being in the city of the movie we had seen, and many movies before it take place in, we walked over to the actual museum we had seen Ben Stiller and Robin Williams antic around in. To our surprise, the museum was actually closed on the day after the night the movie was released, making it one of the most unfortunate missed advertising opportunities in recent memories. Plus we awoke to learn that James Brown had died. That day had all sorts of disappointments.

A different year in a different city, the home turf, and close to home to boot. We are bowling. The same crew, the same time killer holiday. Our parents call us over to start the game, though we still had two credits in the Lethal Weapon 3 pinball machine. We agreed we'd just catch up on it later, but after exiting that corner of the alley, the employees shut off the arcade's power, we lost our quarters. We could have made a 'thing' out of it, but in truth the machine kept giving us gutter-balls anyways. We were more pumped about the machine giving the player an option to choose either a midi ZZ Top or C&C Music Factory tune to accompany the skill shot.

Our Dad says it is still a warm up as long as we keep sucking, sometimes we'll be 'warming up' for the entire duration of the game. Halfway through our two game venture, the lights turn out, the disco balls turn on, and like no one warned us, because well, no one warned us, glow-in-the dark bowl has begun. "Aim for the middle" says my Dad, as if that was some ancient secret passed down in our family. He'll say it every time I get less than four pins. There's a mix CD playing now, some awful one. It sounds circa 99', but as me and my brother soon realize it's actually brand new, playing the newest Lady Gaga and Black Eyed Peas with so many needless additional beats and siren effects that it's like we've been teleported back ten years or to Eastern Europe. Dad wins, taking victory in the sort of way he wishes someone else could beat him. My brother, mother and self duke it out for the rest of the respected places.

We saw Benjamin Button. It was boring, I was expecting better.

It's raining on Spadina, not exactly a white Christmas by any means. In a fairly quiet town these restaurants are packed. The rest of the city may be celebrating, but Christmas truly comes to China Town. Like any other day, it's hard to go wrong. The large yellow Bright Pearl, the unfortunately named Kom Jug, but we have no fears settling with King Noodle. Tables are so loaded parties will without gripe seat with strangers. The chair and people sitting in them cover so much of the ground space, servers and trolleys are congested from movement. We will eat delicious, awful things. Soups, fried, fish, beef. Pork. Yes pork. I will celebrate Jewish Christmas but it's God's own fault he made the pig so tasty.

We saw Dr. Parnassus, it was okay. I don't really know what I was expecting.

After the movie, or, after Chinese, depending on our ordering, it would appear that now the city has come to a halt. Finally a silent night? No, my people know better. We don't have to listen to anyone else's holiday, the night ends when we say so.

We walk up the stairs to a bubble tea cafe. This time, we truly are the only white people there. We drink from large glasses of milky, fruity cold beverages. I don't get tapioca. What? I don't like it. We could play board games or we could play the complimentary arcade machine. "There's a Mega Man fighting game?" asks my sidekick. "Yes," I answer, "but I must warn you, it really sucks." And it does. We could have played Street Fighter. "I didn't know it was on there." says my sidekick. "How could you play the Mega Man fighting game and not assume that Street Fighter isn't on here too?" While sitting at the table, a gaggle of Asian girls approach me from behind. They tap my shoulder. "One, two... MERRY CHRISTMAAAAAAHS" they cheer to me.  They scamper back to their table, giggling.

Now we are home. We are in bed. There won't be any leftovers waiting for us in the morning, we ate all the General Tao hours ago. Snow probably won't be waiting for us either, knowing this city. No, we rest knowing something else. We know that instead of warming up by the glow of a TV special, we did something different. Not much different, but different enough. We left the house. We lived a little more. That's what my people do.

A Christmas Story is playing on TV. Now that's a great movie.

RETURN OF THE BEST GAME YOU DIDN'T BUY

... Because after all, it's not like there are efforts underway, you are all just really stubborn. Oh boo-hoo, it's not an first person shooter, there are only two multiplayer modes and... and... Offline?! You mean I'm actually supposed to have FRIEDNS?! Yeah, you can just rot and rot and rot asshole.

~ Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection (AGAIN)

So even after I gave it top nods for most ignored last year, Crave decided to do the noble but oh so foolish thing as to listen to the critics more closely than the gamers. And so, here we are. The Williams Collection made it's way, gracefully onto the next-gen systems for all the next-gen gamers to ignore. And ignore you did. Even after they added Medieval Madness, just for you. I can't trust you with anything.

~ Afrika

Ever have one of those days where you go out to buy a pair of gloves only to come home and, upon opening your closet, discover you in fact already have a pair of really good gloves. Sony had one of those days. In arguably the first year they've let their system relish in exclusive content and support, Sony seemed to completely forget they had already made an exclusive game years before, neglecting to port it despite having promised to do so oh so long ago. And then? Well, much like how they forgot it, so did you. Admittedly, you just take pictures of animals and nothing else. But that never stopped you from jumping on Pokemon Snap.

~ You, Me, & The Cubes

If I hear one more person say there aren't enough original games on the Wii without any hint of why that is, I'll.. I'll... D'ooohhh I'll post such a blog.

~THE WEEPER IS~

~ DJ HERO ~

Okay, so the turntables aren't quite like the real deal. But don't bullshit with me, no fake plastic instrument is going to bring you any closer to legit musical talent. This is about as original as Activision bothers to get these days, and they took a big risk on this one, and unlike Tony Hawk's RIDE, this one was kind of worth it. So maybe the price is higher than the average gaming outing, imagine how much it sucks for the developers to have these pricey lil' plastics gathering dust in their storage?

MOST OUTRAGEOUSLY FULL OF ITSELF

I'm all for artistic expression in video games, but some, and you know who you are, need a good bucket of cold water thrown at you. You aren't artists you're just not making Halo, let's make sure you know that. These are the games that are so high on concept they seem to forget what fun means. Or if not that, just obnoxiously pretentious.

~ Flower

Isn't a game eh? Just supposed to 'relax' eh? You know, Flower, for a game that isn't supposed to play like a game, you sure play like a video game. Oh no, you're pretty, you're a very pretty Flower, but you're still a video game. You have an objective, you even have a health system, and for a game that wants me to 'take it slow' you also seem to like throwing in a bunch of speed boosts. Face it, Flower, lean a lil' bit closer see, roses really smell like a vid-e-o game.

~ Half-Minute Hero

No More Heroes was a test of just how much we were willing to let the game be 'a gag.' But even beneath it's intentional irks, there was still a fulfilling game underneath it all. Half-Minute Hero, while fun, is almost entirely a gag. The main levels, intended to last only thirty seconds, are but constantly overshadowed by drawn out intro segments and sun setting outros. It's all good and fine if you like to laugh but, oh god, what if I didn't?!

~ The Path

What hopes to be loaded with meaning has around the same artistic ambitions as any given Suicide Girls shoot. Of all the entries, this is the only that seems to still be in high school art class.

~ Nobi Nobi Boy

See Flower? Now THIS is a game that really isn't at all a game. What do you do in this game? Nothing really, just goof around. How do you play it? You buy it. How do you win it? Everyone buys it. Gosh, and here I thought it was all in the name of art.

~ BUT WHAT IS TRULY A WINNER BUT A ~

~ Flower, Sun & Rain ~

Ahh Suda, of course you win. You'll always win here. Though this is only a port, not to mention probably your least popular game of them all, you still just had to make the most confusing and alienating thing this side of the touch screen. Like a map with no directions, and gameplay that seems to try really really hard to be confusing, you don't so much play this DS game as much as it just plays with you. Unless you be the bigger man and turn it off.

RETURN OF THE MOST UNINSPIRED

~ Section 8

I have as much to say about this bland team based shooter as it does to say about itself. No it's not based on that Neil Blomkamp movie, you're thinking of Halo.

~ Band Hero

Apparently the place to go once you run out of instruments is nowhere.

~ Ninja Blade

Well, in their defense, being mistaken for other, better video games is a really good marketing strategy.

~ Why Should I Come Up With Anything Witty Here Anyways?~

~ Science Papa ~

I guess the only thing Activision has to improve upon Majesco's creation is a more masculine figure and side stepping PETA's wrath. Though I actually haven't played this thing, anyone know if there's animal testing?

There Are Too Many Video Games About Zombies Acknowledgement

~ Left 4 Dead 2

No

~ Plants vs Zombies

Really

~ Zombie Apocalypse

There

~ Burn Zombie! Burn!

Are

~ Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned

Way

~ Too ~

~ Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad ~

Many.

Return of the Dorkiest Game

~ The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition

You know how dedicated a nerd is when they purchase a game they have already bought several times before. For the achievement points alone.

~ Dragon Age: Origins

If it looks like Dungeons and Dragons and plays like Dungeons and Dragons it is probably played by the same weenies who play Dungeons and Dragons.

~ Blood Bowl

Though seriously, if you know what this game is based on without googling it, you are probably a virgin.

~ Uhh Excuse Me, I Think You Are Wrong, Let Me Tell You How I think You Are Wrong~

~ Scribblenauts ~

This inventive and totally broken little title is intended to be fueled by the player's creativity, but it in truth it is only fueled by two other things altogether. Dorks who want to see Lovecraftian monsters take on internet memes and nerds who wish Scribblenauts was a better game than it is.

Worst New Female Character

Now before your blood boils, make sure you know what I'm talking about here. I'm all for female characters in video games. As long as they feel like characters and not just female cut-outs. I understand that many male gamers may not know what girls actually act like, but games further illusioning them isn't about to help anyone. These are the obligitory love interests, the 'girl,' the tits and the ass.

~ Ghostbusters The Video Game

I know they couldn't get Sigourney to come back, but to just replace her with a much younger-than-Bill-Murray Alyssa Milano as the hates-Venkman-at-first-but-later-kisses-him only degrades both characters.

~ Brutal Legend

At first, Ophelia seems like a really rad chick who, well, if I was a roadie in hell would be an obvious courtship. But then halfway through the game the plot seems to really want to errupt, and then like a blood sacrifice throws her into the plot device pit and instead of say, anyone talking with each other, just has her abandoned, cries a whole lot then ambush you with an overpowered goth army. Though I guess I'm most irked by the cries a bunch part.

~ Bionic Commando

Arguably, there are two female characters in this. Less subjectively, they both suck. Appearing only in cut scenes for really hammed pathos, your wife and what's-her-legs make for rage fodder. The robot runner lady seems to only exist to get later killed, which makes you question why they bothered at all. While Mike Patton's wife only seemed to not exist in order to aggravate players with a cheap twist ending. His wife is... His arm... At least we can guess what he spent the honeymoon doing.

~ Oh Look, A Girl~

~ RESIDENT EVIL 5 ~

Whether it's being obviously betrayed by Albert Wesker in a failed attempt to screw him or doing nothing at all, Resident Evil 5 is truly the winner in losing when it comes to fleshing out female roles. It's only a bigger shame since the series used to have nothing but female protagonists. Alas. Sheva Alomar, your African sidekick, seems completely unfazed that the nation she's spent so much time in has become over run with drooling mutants. I guess Josh is supposed to bring Sheva out of her shell a little, but he, like it's some kind of achievement, does even less. He doesn't even die! And I had money on that! It only gets sillier in pivotal boss battles when her role, and any little brother playing as her, becomes to take a bunch of pot shots at Wesker, who seems completely transfixed on male leadier lead, Chris Redfield.

THANKS FOLKS, NOT GOING TO DO "MOST LIKELY TO GO UNDER" BECAUSE LAST YEAR I THINK I JINXED MIDWAY.

HOPE NEXT YEAR'S JUST AS AWFUL

NO I DON'T....

... Yes... Yes I do...

My chilling legs stamping up and down along Sherbourne street, breathing the fresh new ghost out of my mouth into the cell phone.

Devo was in Toronto tonight. I could not miss it, I’d be dishonouring myself and everyone who thinks they know me. I couldn’t deny it any longer, friends. I must come out, I cannot live this lie anymore. I am Devo. And so are you.

“Hey Alex, I’m here. Sorry if I’m late, unless you are late, then I regret nothing. I’m in line, are you also in line? I’m standing next to this British guy in a striped sweater. He says he’s seen Devo before back in the UK, so I guess his return trip is a vote of confidence.”

“Yeah King, I’m just inside. I’m standing by a bunch of tall people. You probably won’t be able to see me. Oh wait there you are.”

“Oh, there you are.”

And sure he was, strong, sturdy, mustachioed. Excellent.

I was wondering how much the beers were, and whether it was worth it to squeeze my way through the crowds towards the bar, and while there`s one at three of the four ends of the Phoenix`s room, all seemed miles away from my vantage point peering over the landscapes of human heads. I had never seen the Phoenix so absolutely packed with living human people before. Every time a new sliver of space opened up between us and the stage I would motion Mister Armstrong to move ahead.

So then we waited and I relaxed, having absorbed the orgones.

“How much for that plastic energy dome? Got it at the merch booth?”

And we continued to wait.

“Thirty bucks? Man, that’s moulded plastic. That is a profit margin.”

And then the opening act came on.

Instead of a band of middle aged miscreants dabbled out a single soul in a blue suit and fake beard. In a corny fake voice he addressed us, thanked us for coming, and taking full advantage of our confusion led us into his act. He was JP Incorporated. He ran a fake TV station. Which ran fake TV shows. All which have fake TV theme songs. And fake TV advertisements. With fake TV advertisement jingles. All of the aforementioned which requires rhapsody he sang live for us on stage with the accompaniment of a screen to his left.

“Wait, the Phoenix has a screen?” I would long later question after the screen rolled up.

“What do you want?” Huh? “You want it all!” Well yeah. “You want a cool new TV show” Of course.“But that’s not all. It’s gotta have a monster truck” Yeahh. “That robotically transforms” Okay. “But since we’re adults shouldn’t it transform into something more mature and sophisticated?”

“LIKE JAZZ”

I found myself compelled to holler and fist pump to a photoshopped image of a monster truck with flaming saxes for horns. Like I had suddenly become a puppet to this man’s reality. He sang songs about shows about transgendered basketball coaches, time traveling breakfasts and the people who work at the internet. Every individual in every video had the same face, JP Incorporated’s face. While these sort of off kilter gags make for good Youtubing, marathoning the joke in front of an impatient crowd waiting for their fifty dollar band caused a storm. A cold front of old no nonsense goers started to indirectly clash with the warm front of open minded youngsters/weirdos. JP Inc is brave. As half the crowd booed and hissed, the other half tried to overpower the singes with cheering and woots, JP had no delusions. He knew the shriveled up had no patience for him. He thanked us all for having him. Each and every one of us. Then he finished with a song about spicy noodle hot ramen and left the stage. Then we waited in the well lit darkness.

While waiting some real tall Devoid motherfuckers came and stood right in front of us average-heighted dudes.

I remember that one specific dude, with the Devo glasses and brown leather jacket, fate dealt him an obnoxious height.

Obnoxious as well, or maybe just noxious, were the buxom spudbabes he carried on his right and left shoulder, who were not quite as tall, but equally Devoed and Devoid.

“Do you think people dressed like this in the 80s or is Flickr lying to me?”

“Are we close enough to the front? There are a lot of larger people in front of us.”

“I don’t know, maybe a mosh will break out, there are some rock and roll looking dude’s squeezed in around here.”

“A mosh pit? Here?”

“Alex, ‘balding’ isn’t the same thing as ‘pussy’.”

And eventually.

"Hello Booji boy, do you have the papers the china man gave you?" Robert Mothersbaugh, Sr., says to his son Mark wearing a baby mask and orange jumpsuit.

"In the past this information has been suppressed, but now it can be told. Every man, woman, and mutant on this planet shall know the truth about de-evolution."

"Oh Dad," the son replies, "We're all Devo!"

This lead to a bizarre boardroom performance of the band's signature tune, Jocko Homo, in which they chant hypnotically the title of the album that we were there to see: "Are We Not Men? WE ARE DEVO!"

Surprisingly, the band did not take the theatrical distraction to sneak out on stage, and in fact, there was still some dead air in between the video and the set, but not much. The massive light stands came to life, finally. The room erupted in illumination, as a million eyes were blinded by luminous flow and a million ears tingled to a harmonious welcome.

And thank spud, the band rushed onstage and jumped right into their car-commercial hit, "Uncontrollable Urge." This tune always excites the Freudian in me, with its sense of urgency and id-driven chorus: "yeah yeah yeah yeah YEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAH YEAH YEAH!"

YEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAH

I’M OUT OF CONTROL NOW

They were dressed in clean yellow jumpsuits, separated by black belts, black glasses and gray hair. They seemed jazzed about everything. I hope they were jazzed about being in the city. It’s been 25 years, said the paper. I don’t want to date myself, but that’s longer than I’ve existed.

If I was high on the orgones of the audience before, the energy leaking out of their powerdomes, I was completely ripped at this point. The air vibrated. The audience jerked like robots. King Frankenstein belted many brash laughs at the onstage hijinx of the band.

“Who wants to see in 3-D?” Shouts out Mothersbaugh. The whole cabal tosses out their glasses in sync, hands fluttering about to be the lucky grip. Mark would toss out giveaways like Halloween treats. Guitar picks were scattered about like confetti. Each Devo member shredding off slivers of their shirts, though given the momentum cloth gains in the air, it tended to be the same row of people scoring each time. Eventually Mothersbaugh gave away himself, diving into the crowd, jumping about, being touched, acting like an ape while two roadies awaited on stage to help him back up.

One change (or possible mishear) I particularly liked during their cover of "I Can't Get No Satisfaction": "I'm watching my TV/and a man comes on to tell me/how white my CHICK could be." For the rest of the show Mark punctuated his best lines by smoking an invisible cigarette.

Mark appeared to have rehearsed being freaked the hell out. He would constantly press his hand against his head until it lifted his hair like he had been slowly struck by lightning. Though it would make sense, he was probably keeping the sweat out of his eyes. The guys were sweltering more than me. I was wearing three layers, while they had it whittled down to one (if that).

Praying Hands, a song which accurately connects masturbation guilt and organized religion, roped the audience into a game of body-echolalia. The best Devo lyrics come off like instruction manuals for strange actions: "You got the left hand diddling/while the right hand goes to work... Okay, relax, and assume the position/go into doggie submission/Wash your hands three times a day/Always do what your mom and dad say/Brush your teeth in the following way..." The praying hands of the song refer to a particular style of pleasuring oneself. But maybe I am now getting too far away from the review at hand.

Devo got to their first two singles, Mongoloid and Jocko Homo. Mongoloid sizzled and said some un-PC things. Jocko Homo sent the crowd into a full-on punkoid frenzy. And of course we all responded to "Are We Not Men?"

“We are Devotes”

It usually doesn’t feel this good to sing along. All other times you have to drink away that guilt of being a total dweeb. Maybe it was how the words came out like a motor function, maybe it was paying fifty bucks to go, but there was nothing stopping me from jabbing the punch lines along with everyone else.

All of the songs that they played were written over 30 years ago. These songs are older than the King and I. Not our ages combined, mind you. The point is, Devo knows what they are doing. They know exactly how to do these songs so that they are awesome every time. They have been doing it for years. This is what their reputation is built on. The problem is that once you've done something for this long, it loses its edge. The concert was great, but obviously Devo-by-the-numbers. In the 70s and 80s these guys were raw and somewhat dangerous. Now they are nearly a nostalgia act. I will give them credit though, they did rearrange some of the songs and are certainly more fresh and relevant than most "comeback" bands you see touring around these days.

I don’t want come off as soggy, but there was something about the whole affair that felt too well practiced, too by the books. Maybe I haven’t seen many, if any other acts who had been at it this long and I can’t even construct in my head doing the same thing for so long. But there wasn’t that grizzled filter that you see in most other acts. They came, they rocked, they did just that, but only that. I wanted to throw a wrench in the system, I wanted something more personal or reflexive. It was more Harlem Globetrotters than new age. There’s something about the song "Gut Feeling" that feels more like a “classic rock” song now, rather than something “weeeiiird” of yesteryear. Maybe it’s the pace, or progression, but while amazing live, it suddenly felt like a trucker’s ambiance. What happened to oddity? God, what standard am I holding things up to...

Nowhere was it more apparent that the boys of Devo, and most of their fans, are old men than the concluding song, "Shrivel Up." This song, which closes their classic album, serves to remind the listener of the facts of life, death, and decay. Devo was looking a little gray, there's no denying. It's a good song, and maybe I was thinking too deeply about the lyrics, and maybe the orgones were hitting me hard, but I was left depressed.
And so came the end of the album, Q: Are We Not Men, which was what we were going to get, promised by the ticket.

And then

Luckily

Yessss

There was an encore, which kicked ass.

I waited for Alex to get his ticket before I got mine. Even after transacting I felt torn between the two nights. Both albums have so many stellar songs, but they weren’t coming to the city just to play my customized set. Or so I should think. Oh Devo, you cards. You took one of the songs I was feeling shamed to miss, and another no one saw coming.

It was only two songs, but in my opinion, it was the two best choices they could have made. The first was "Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA," the epic centrepiece of the aforementioned and unplayed "Duty Now For the Future," which posits Devo as a band of time bandits set to save the world. Following this, and closing the show, was "Gates of Steel," a fantastically catchy tune from "Freedom of Choice." I am very thankful they played it, considering that I could not make the following night. This song hit King Frankenstein so hard he danced like there was no tomorrow, nor nerdlingers surrounding him.

I did this shoulder jerk I saw Mothersbaugh do in an old live recording during the chorus, though he didn’t.

I left the show feeling disoriented.

I left the show and lost Alex, being washed around in the masses of Devo funneling through the Phoenix’s narrow exit halls like a flushing toilet. The old people kept popping up again, popped up on other things. I’m pretty sure for some of these seniors it was the first night on the town in a while. Uncles and aunts, slurring about, high on whatever for the first time in decades. Laughing with the kind of hysteria that looks like they only now discovered joy.

As we were walking down the street, a fat monkey-ish man in a powerdome was hiding behind a fence. He scared the spunk outta me.

We spent hours trying to get it back.

Comments

• December 15, 2009, Sarah writes: Sounds good. Woulda loved to be there.

Do Not Add More Fodder For The Discount Bin (TRUE CRIME)

Remember True Crime everyone? No, that was Dead To Rights. It was the one that... No that was Saint’s Row. You’ve got the... No that was NARC, and don’t pull that bullshit with me I know you didn’t even play that one. Okay, so True Crime is no heavy hitter. It was among the many that rushed through the door GTA opened, and it wasn’t even one of the better ones. Giving it the spotlight next to the Halo prequel was probably finger crossing that it would reign in on some of that glorious glory. Call it my gut, but I’m getting the ol’ feeling that True Crime, like the True Crimes before it, will be making buddies in an a red marked shakey cage.

Do Give Us What We Want Even Though We Didn’t Know It Existed (ARKHAM 2)

Yeah that was a slow clap. The last Arkham Asylum still has that tingly feeling, and I’m willing to bet the farm that goes for myself and many others. So colour me clown face and call me Batman Jones, sometimes it ISN’T too soon for another go. And it wasn’t even a shitty teaser! It was a good teaser! We see a new scenario, a new location, a sick Joker! And unfortunately the same store bought nurse costume! Okay so you have to take the good with the bad.

Do Not Look Desperate (MEDAL OF HONOUR)

Poor Medal of Honour. Once the flagship for war games, people grow to realize we just couldn’t learn any more fake things about WWII. Then came along mean ol’ Call of Duty, changing things up, giving people super lazer missile weapons. It’s not fair, I admit it, Medal of Honour was given a bad hand. But come on bros, don’t come back grovelling. If you took someone who didn’t know, had them watch that trailer and edited out the title screen, they would probably guess it’s the next Modern Warfare or something, which is either really flattering or totally depressing. It’s just troublesome that it seems we are about to slip down that awful road again, where instead of a bunch of different games we’ll be subjected to the same game made by several different parties. And in some cases not even remade, here we have it demade.

Do Affirm That You Are In Fact Getting My Letters (DEADLIEST WARRIOR)

I wish I could make a bylaw that demands every debut game trailer has someone throwing some sharp things into someone else’s eyes. Of all the stupid mindless entertainment Spike TV dishes out, Deadliest Warrior takes top radical spots. Pirates fighting Shaolin monks, gladiators slapping around yakuza, Shaka Zulu taking on the IRS. Doesn’t that sound dumb as hell! Doesn’t that all sound great! Don’t you want to do that?! GUYS?!

Do Not Make Your Trailer “We Don’t Have A Trailer” (GREEN DAY: ROCK BAND)

It doesn’t help that you are launching a title that will already have mixed reactions with your audience, I mean, Harmonix really couldn’t find a band culturally significant between The Beatles and Green Day? But to make your trailer, “thanks for watching but we didn’t have time to make a trailer” is kind of like spit on dirt. Green Day was too busy doing other stuff to plug a game that plugs them. Meanwhile half a year ago Ringo and Paul walk around an Xbox booth, bringing two widows with them. Meanwhile right now Tony Hawk defends his shitty new game, his shitty game that he stands by! I bet Dookie era Green Day would have been all over having a DOOM mod made after them, the Green Day that wasn’t so easily distracted by the hunt for matching ties.

A few moons back, I visited local game developers Capybara who had given me two recommendations of things to hit up. One was a ramen noodle place that is apparently behind city hall. The other was The Hand Eye Society. They seemed to bring up this mysterious organization quite a few times in our little sit down, hammering in their importance to the point that I began to wonder if they were some shadowy Illuminati type that ruled over our local game makers with invisible vices. So, stricken with fear, on one of the many nights during a why-am-I-doing-nothing spells I decided to take a deep breath and several finger-steps forward and, ah, googled them. And what good fortune! I saw that they were holding another meeting but just a week away, so I put on my hat, grabbed some business cards at Kinko's, and headed off to The Unit Bar to see this gaming underground.

I had never actually been to Unit Bar before, and because, like so many other establishments in the area, Unit Bar has no sign, I had to ask upon entry "You guys are a bunch of nerds right?" They nodded their heads, I shook their hands, things got underway. I was one of the few "outsiders," not because it was my first time being there, but because I had no formal place in the game making community, indie or not. I tried to pass myself off as "press" or even "aspiring" but alas, none of that really seemed to matter, for you see, they did not care. I mean, they did not care that I did not work on video games. As long as I could keep up in conversation on such grave matters as video games, which I'm sure by now you NERDVENTURERS have come to some grasping that I indeed can, I was welcomed into this bar with open bottles. Holy damn, Unit Bar serves La Fin Du Monde? And discussions of Metroid Prime? Hello second home!

"A bunch of us - Raigan, Mare, McG, Jon, Miguel and myself - were interested in supporting and bringing together the varied game culture things that were going on in Toronto, and we committed to each hosting a Social," says Hand Eye overlord Jim Munroe, "We program some demo or talk each Social which is pretty interesting. But mostly it's a small bar, so it's hard to not overhear or accidentally fall into an interesting conversation about games."

The demos and presentations began. Metanet was first up to bat. The Toronto based duo, yes there's only two of them, who were responsible for the runaway hit about a running ninja, N+. They announced a new upcoming title, Office Yeti, which much like it sounds will be a game about a regular bloodthirsty Yeti looming around in an everyday office. They didn't have a working demo, but they did have a working copy of a Skool Daze fan-remake, the original a 1985 Commodore 64 game. I kept silent to the fact that I had not yet even been born at the time of the originals release, but appreciated that I learned more of my geek tribe's history.

Next came the guest of honour, Alex Austin, one of the creators of Gish. He had to be the guest of honour, of course, the trooper came all the way down from Cal E For Nai Yay. If only the computer was aware of that, as when he tried to demo his first new project, things didn't seem to go exactly according to plan. The room, packed with people who were BORN for this kind of thing, started to publicly unravel the error. Opening up DOS lookin' windows of numbers and codes, pointing and yelling at zeros and ones, like a techie stock market. "CHANGE THAT ZERO TO A ONE. THAT ZERO SHOULDN'T BE THERE THAT'S A ONE'S PLACE." They couldn't get the thing working, but it didn't kill my buzz, hell I have to throw my laptop off my roof about three times before iTunes will start, I'm impressed they even knew the first step to recovery. But Faust didn't make a deal with the Devil just to pull a quarter out from behind his nephew's ear and Austin didn't hop country just to show off one game. He had not one, but several mini-games, all delivered in one package, like a showcase. Each title was basic, from destroying a city made of blocks with another block to another game where you try to successfully land on the moon, each used a similar engine and I can imagine any sprout like myself wasting endless time with each.

I ran into some Hand Eye folks again at Canzine. They were displaying their Torontron arcade cabinet. A gorgeous machine, that while to the naked eye appears to have been dug right out of Flynn's, was actually jam packed with local indie games. I played one where you played as a man in a business suit ducking out of the way of miscellaneous falling objects objects, like balls, anvils and open top cars. I would have tried out more titles, but behind me was an anxiously awaiting child, writhing his hands to grasp the joystick. I remember little me, I remember how no matter where I was or how far from home. The second I saw any video game to play, I would simply succumb to my will to play it. I would not deprive little me of that moment and I would not deprive little this guy of this moment. Instead I investigated another going on in the Toronto gaming scene. From similar minds that brought you Hand Eye, I give you a new event to mark on your calendar. Ladies, gents, orcs, introducing Gamercamp.

"Jaime and I created Gamercamp because we're big, nostalgic video game nerds. Over some food one night we started talking about the old Funland arcade on Yonge St and how awesome it was. As we traded our early gaming stories we realized that retro games were never more relevant than right now. The early Atari and NES games, for example, were hardware constrained and had to be fun because the graphics alone sure weren't enough to keep your attention. Modern platforms like the iPhone, PSN and XBLA similarly have constraints that require designers to distill down to what makes the gameplay fun. There's something really beautiful about a game so simple you can't believe you didn't think of it but so fun you can't believe you're still playing it at 3 in the morning," says Gamercamp organizer Mark Rabo, also member of Hand Eye, "We also created Gamercamp to be accessible to everyone, not just those in the Toronto indie dev community, but also those who are curious about game design or just enjoy playing them. Whether you're elbow deep into code, just enjoy iPhone games or anything in between, there's something for you at Gamercamp. Learn what makes games fun, see how they're made, even give feedback on indie games in progress at the demo sessions. And of course there's the unlimited freeplay on classic arcade machines at our 1UP closing event. No quarters required!"

I know Summer is long gone, and going back to camp would feel weird, but these are video games we are talking about. Video games! The camp takes place on November 21st at the Lower Ossington Theatre. More of a conference and full day event, Gamercamp will be more publicly focused, with speakers representing Toronto's indie game makers and playable demos to get yer mitts on, all wrapped up by a bumpin, bleepin, afterparty. Early bird tickets are fifteen bucks, a worthwhile alternative if meeting indie devs in a small unmarked bar makes you shaky that your inquiries won't be answered by a drinking, poutine craving nerd.

More info and tickets can be found here:

Gamer Camp

Hand Eye Society

Comments

• November 16, 2009, kSilk writes: What I love about this edition of Nerdventures, is that you left me curious about that ramen noodle place, which is apparently behind city hall. Old City Hall, or the science fiction one!?!

• DO make it hell (MODERN WARFARE, MEDAL OF HONOR)

War is not a fun place to be, so why are we so entertained by grim depictions of mortality? I'm not making a statement, I'm just stating. Millions of Halo fans decided to subject themselves to playing as a puppet government head on the way to his public execution, and then be executed. These same gamers were then killed slowly and painfully in the dusts of a nuclear bomb. While saying these depictions are realistic is a stretch, there is something to be said about games that, while fun to trudge through virtually, make the field of war somewhere you'd prefer to stay far away from.

• DO NOT make it exxxxtreeeeme (SHELLSHOCK: NAM '67)

Making it hell is one thing. Trivializing human death as a selling point is another. From the makers of Killzone, a hyper exaggerated space Nazi invasion, came Shellshock: Nam '67. When a game hinges it's entire selling point on how "edgy" it's being, you probably aren't looking at something that's going to be that fun to play. Or respectful to human life for that matter.

• DO twist the war around to the point I personally forget what war this is supposed to be (CONTRA, ADVANCE WARS)

Okay, let's quit being grim here. Games are fun, have been since they were little bits on our fuzzy screens. It's hard to recognize the brutality of war in 8-Bit, nevermind recognize what is a man and what is a dragon, so I'll forgive the old-schoolers for making things hard to identify. Contra started out as a blazing tag team shooter that didn't so much take place in a war but a bunch of war looking places. Destroyed city landscapes, trenches, dark tropics, all seemingly in walkable distances from each other. Before you know it you're fighting aliens or aliens possessed by Satan, so fuck it, who cares anymore.

DO NOT... Do... Wh... Whatever the hell you'd call this (VALKYRIA CHRONICLES)

Now, I did say twist the vision till I can't recognize it, but come on Sega, you can't go half way. There's something very wrong about a game that turns WWII... Into an anime. And not an anime that looks like a war but a war that looks like an anime. I don't really like having a century's greatest tragedy easily relatable to catgirls. I guess both have a fondness for using belts, but at least the soldiers used them to tie things.

DO take it to the skies (1942, BATTLEFIELD, CHUCK YEAGER'S AIR COMBAT)

Maybe the best way to avoid dishonouring the fallen would be to depict it from a perspective that all the carnage just look like tiny little ants anyways. Dog fights are fast, frantic, fun and full of rewardable tricks. They are everything games should be. They are great in space and great on earth. They can be straight forward tackling of waves of bogies, or just an alternative form of combat in a polished experience, it's hard to think of a bad way to do air combat. Unless it's tirelessly realistic and boring as hell.

DO NOT forget that thing I said last month about movies (HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, PLATOON, NAVY SEALS, M*A*S*H, PLATOON AGAIN)

I don't know why they made two games out of Platoon. I don't know why they made a game about Platoon. I don't know why they made a game of Navy Seals but that's for an entirely different set of reasons. The best films about war are remembered for their message. These messages usually don't make it to the Game Boy version of these ventures.

There were life sized dolls of dead bodies, strewn up through the trees and peeking out from under piles of leaves, their suggested wounds oozing with Scooby Doo pasta. A strobe light seemed to claw at the trees and the black gate that hugged the front yard, nay courtyard, making it the perfect candidate for such a haunt. My whole family would get into it, my grandfather, or zadie if you will, would park his twenty year old van, which if called a tin can would be a compliment, dressed up like a madman, waiting to pop out the side door to scare oncoming kids. In retrospect, that was extremely uncharacteristic of my zadie, which is a tribute to the spirit of this most blessed holiday. My uncle always stole the show though because he knew how to get me, he knew the one thing that would send me reeling. He would wait at the door in this gorilla suit, a gorilla suit that scared the soul out of me. I was so terrified of this suit that if at non-Halloween related visits, I would so happen to notice the gorilla mask to be visible in an open closet, I would dash away to the nearest floor to request a grown up to remove it from sight. My uncle loved that I hated that suit so much, I could always hear it in his gruff snicker. Even when I was past the gauntlet, sitting safely inside the undecorated interior, he would sneak up on me to initiate the jungle terror. And man, I miss the things that scared me. I miss those Halloweens.

Everything since then has felt pale in comparison, scary sound effects tape and a headless scarecrow just never cut it. It's been years since my aunt put up the grand haunted house, she said she just didn't have the energy for it anymore. As time goes on I find myself more starved for the Halloween spirit in my suburban environment. From the declining amount of TV specials to the disappearance of enthusiastic trick or treaters, year after year I worry that it may be the last year I see a bag of candy. Then last year I learned that I'm just blind as a bat. The internet, of all places, informed me that less than a block away from my current abode was in fact a delightfully, frightfully, enthusiastic haunted house.

Every Halloween night, Rachel Brown transforms 164 Old Forest Hill Rd into THE HAUNT ON THE HILL. A treat for the senses and a treat for the tricksters.

"I think I got bored of handing out candy and I was too old to trick or treat, I saw a few decorations in a store and it kind of took off from there. Now I make everything myself. I like to make everything myself, because when you go into the Halloween stores, as much fun as they are to look around, you see ten people buying the same thing and not really doing anything unique."

What was before a common home (well a common home on Old Forest Hill) becomes a graveyard, strewn with open caskets, a mad laboratory, littered with leftover skeletons, and a giant arachnid, spinning its web above the heads of visitors.

"Usually I start by fixing things I broke the previous year and making them more sturdy. Then I just get new ideas off the internet or things I've always wanted to build."

The inside of the house was not nearly as gloomy (though I bet myself I could make it look legit haunted tweaking the right settings in Windows Photo Viewer), but instead has the level of organization and cleanliness that makes me wonder how such homes are possible. She told me the bulk of decorations were in her garage. Only debatable clutter was in her living room, a skeleton, err, not literally, like a frame for some new construction. I thought about asking what it was going to turn out to be, but judging by the eight long spindly legs and large orb body, I, well, I hope you follow. It's not just in the decorations alone - anyone can nail the grim reaper to a tree and call it a day - but Rachel aims for a more specific aesthetic than just flatout flatlining kids.

"I've seen things and houses where people just take anything they think is Halloween related and throw it anywhere. Like, here's a devil and witch and a skeleton and a mummy and they're all next to each other, and there's Freddy Krueger and Jason and there's just no reason. When I put something out I make sure everything fits together, and I really think where I'm going to place them. I also like to make things that aren't necessarily going to jump out at kids because then they'll just run away and won't stay to look at everything. So it's the overall feeling of eeriness and not just something jumping out at you."

And it's not just the every day upper middle class Joes either...

"I once went to a haunted house at the EX and somebody jumped out at me and I was wearing my sunglasses on my head and they said, 'Hey nice sunglasses!' and I'm like, 'Way to break character!' My favourite haunt ever is the Haunted Mansion at Disney Land. Just because again, it's not just another dark room where there's someone about to jump out at you in costumes. The overall effect is just amazing."

It's people like Rachel that reassure me there is spirit in this holiday yet, beyond goth kid candle merchandise and sexy nurse costumes. The holiday's about the kids, because that's what kid me was all about. I remember my elementary school having us parade down the halls to show each class the costumes our parents slaved over. I remember the novelty glasses my teachers would wear almost a la Miss Frizzle.

"I don't think there's any problem with kids being scared. I have a five year old nephew and he started out being scared of everything I did but I now let him name things that I create so he's not afraid of them anymore."

So in the end, Rachel, with your dedication and hard work, after a day attacked by political correctness and paranoia, what is the true spirit of Halloween?

"The night is special because kids dress up and they're allowed to eat candy."

Amen to that.

Comments

• October 15, 2009, » Archive » Bananas! writes: [...] was recently interviewed for online magazine Steel Bananas.  Click here to read the [...]

DO make me a wimpy, powerless human being (FATAL FRAME, SILENT HILL, CLOCK TOWER, CONDEMNED)

It seems generally packaged that within the concept of video games comes the concept that you play as somebody special. Someone who can withstand their environment and agitators, and even the most human seeming still manage to crawl out of five consecutive car crash slash gun battles uncared. It sheds their mortality, which of course is the scariest aspect of the human construct. Even if it means we cannot unlock the missile launching power glove I'd prefer to see ourselves fairly play as generally useless people in horror games. In Silent Hill and Condemned we could only find aid from the likes of two-by-fours, and even our fire arms gave out on us before the demons were slain. Clock Tower seemed to have you figure out how to get your enemy to fuck up more than defeat them yourselves. And Fatal Frame armed you with, well, a god damn camera. So it goes without saying...

DO NOT make me super duper macho buff Sgt. Cliff Kickass (F.E.A.R., THE DARKNESS, DEAD SPACE, PREY)

I can understand why the aliens in Prey were so intimidated by me, as it became pretty clear early on that I could not die, and even when I did I would respawn in the exact same spot with roughly the same amount of ammo and even more health. It certainly declaws the shadows when you can go into bullet time, and slow down your enemies. It declaws them even more when you have a gun that shoots remote controlled chainsaws.

DO make me feel like there's no turning back at this point (BIOSHOCK, DEAD SPACE, THE SUFFERING)

It's one thing to be yelling at the blonde in the movie to just leave the damn haunted house, but it's another thing to be in control of that blonde. I want to feel like as if I don't have a say in the matter, that I'm tied to these conditions, because after all I'm in control, and if it were up to me my stupid sibling/daughter can wait till god damn daytime for me to enter this spook riddled pagoda. There's plenty of options too, the void of space isn't the only one y'know? Get creative, hell I'll even take "fell into a deep fucking hole."

DO NOT assume zombies are actually still scary (RESIDENT EVIL, HOUSE OF THE DEAD, OKAY SO REALLY JUST RESIDENT EVIL)

Come now folks, let's be honest. Zombies just aren't scary anymore, and on the other end of the controller you tend to be chuckling, not shaking, when you are blowing their pixely brains out with a sawed off. Resident Evil has for a while almost been testing us, pushing just how not-scary zombies can be. I think somewhere during the Lollypop Kid's army of centipede Spaniards was when I started to bite my tongue. Though professional Lorne Michaels impersonator Albert Wesker sure wasn't helping.

DO be aware how unsettling the mystery is (CONDEMNED, 7th GUEST, SILENT HILL)

There's something hard to pinpoint about puzzles and mysteries, something vague, obstructive and down right creepy. Someone so obsessed with puzzles, or a world revolving around the windings of the brain just ain't right in the head. Being distracted by the "why" makes the spectre standing behind you all the more startling. The entire finale of Condemned is a tribute to this idea, where even though you're surrounded by only forensics to be done, you're still on your toes that somethings about to slither through the floorboards and take your life. And speaking of the places things come from...

DO NOT reuse set pieces (DOOM 3, RESIDENT EVIL, DEAD SPACE)

Better known as monster closets, these are the factors that turn horror survival games into Where's Waldo. Though replace Waldo with air vents, lockers and the ever tempting glass window. Sure, it'll get you the first time, but after a few dozen rotations you'll just enter rooms with your cross-hairs ready for the well memorized enemy animation about to unfold.

DO embrace sound (DEAD SPACE, SILENT HILL, ALICE)

Horror games are the only genre of games entirely dependent on tapping into the senses of the gamer, and to do so it's only wise to aim for ALL senses of the gamer (though maybe I'll generally pass on smell and taste (unless Cooking Mama tells me otherwise...). There are plenty of games that could proudly replace your Halloween sounds tape cassettes, though you may accidentally leave the lil' kiddies with cold feet to take your candy (more candy for you though). Find a sound guy who knows scary sound, and it's not like the equation for eerie music is so dense but I would highly recommend avoiding wicked guitar solos during boss battles.

DO NOT make games based on actual horror movies (FRIDAY THE 13th, NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST., BLAIR WITCH, EVIL DEAD)

For most slasher flicks, half the fun is the betting pool you make on who's going to make it to the credits, but even that thrill is murdered because the safest bet goes to whoever it is you are playing as. The things that make great cinematic horror great just don't translate well to video games, add on top of which the general tendancy for movie tie-ins to be sloppy and un-inspired and you end up with, well, trite.

I spotted Abi further down the third necessary escalator. The second my foot hit stable ground I sprinted past a handful of people to nudge her shoulder and yell her name. She was dressed in a light orange apron and other otherwise field working (but far too clean) clothes. She gave me a hug and asked me if I knew what she was. And I was in trouble. "Ehhhh... Someone from... Harvest Moon?" She pouted. "No..." she said, "I'm Cooking Mama." "Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit" I thought, I actually KNOW who Cooking Mama is. She wasn't really holding this against me and offered me a cookie from her basket regardless. I wondered if she could sneak such delectable noshes past the con security. Though I guess if put in such a tight space she could always bribe them with cookies, hell I'd crumble for it.

I told Abi to come with me to the press room, which to be fair was only about a three foot detour. This was the first year I was getting into Fanexpo as press, though the year before not having a press badge didn't exactly stop me from harassing guests for interviews, though I'd be lying if I said getting into the weekend affair for free didn't put a spring in my step. In fact, the surplus of interviews I did at last year's comicon is sort of what landed me here on this very site. Heh, this is sort of like a homecoming, y'know what I mean? In the press room I ran into another familiar face, in fact, wouldn't ya know, I ran into this very woman in that same comic book store on that same day that I ran into Abi. Yeah this was getting weird. Two in a minute, the stars are aligning, or maybe that is just the nature of this place, these places, the places for our kind. The woman was none other than Natasha Eloi of SPACE network fame. I said hi, to just be nice, and told her I had actually ran into her before at that aforementioned evening. As I was about to recall what we talked about that day she beat me to the punch. "Yeah I remember, we talked about Bond villains". I was a little taken back. "Yeah," I paused, "that's exactly what we talked about..." I think about how Eloi, who I am sure has talked to thousands of individuals on who knows how many different topics just remembered a brief conversation that even I barely remember from five years ago when I had ratty high school locks and no facial hair. I got my pass, turned around and saw a dude dressed like the Blue Beetle. "We're all here," I thought, "we're all home."

This is Toronto Comicon, geeks, dweebs, nerds, dorks, all of them from Toronto and around, spiraled in like water to an open drain. All the nerds in one single basement.

So socialites, you may be wondering, "What the hell IS comicon anyways?" And to be perfectly frank that's a pretty good question. Even attending year after year, the answer to such a question isn't very clear. If your first thought is a communion of doughy hawaiian t-shirt addicts who are really REALLY concerned about the fate of Black Canary in the next year, I cannot blame you, I think that's somewhere in the word Comicon's Latin origin. But things are different now. Comics aren't stupid anymore, comics are important. To you, to me, to all. Thanks Dark Knight, thanks Watchmen, you've ruined it for all of us. San Diego's Comicon, for example, has in the past few years has gone from forum poster mecca to blockbuster Cannes, more of an omni publicity event which tempts the public interests with promises of Depp, Diaz and Rogen. SDCC has become the beacon, it's where every loser and non-loser wants to be. To be tantalized about Iron Man 2, to be teased with Where the Wild Things Are, insulted with Alice in Wonderland, to finally figure out what the fuck Avatar is. It's what every other comicon, no matter how humble, deep down inside aspires to be. This past SDCC seemed to be the biggest yet, continuing it's escalating popularity with guests, turn out and hysteria. Where does that leave Fanexpo? Toronto's big budgeted comicon, who's site proudly proclaims to be North America's third largest? It leaves it with a very aggressive ambitions.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Fanexpo has been some sort of annual let down, it just seems to be, how to put it, the middle child of comicons. The guests have been getting exponentially larger year after year. Last year had none other than Buzz Aldrin in attendance which, if anything, sort of cuts down all the other guests. No offense Fonzie, you jumped the shark but that dude stepped on the fucking moon man. I think where the sorrows really seeped through is on the panels. In every other comicon across the nation, things tend to be announced. Films, developments, new runs, revived Captain Marvels, but Toronto's Fanexpo never seemed to summon much to bullet point. For example, one year me and my friend Alice had some time to kill and just wanted to sit in on the most interesting panel on the timesheet. We saw one for the, at the time, upcoming 30 Days of Night movie, series creator Steve Niles to be present. We thought "Oh neato, I wonder what this panel has in store. New footage? Juicy anecdotes of on set shenanigans? A preview that will make or break our twelve dollar movie ticket?" Well folks I will tell you how this tale ended. This panel was not about the comic, despite mister Niles' seat, or new developments on the movie, or footage or previews for that matter. What this panel WAS dedicated to was an in depth and vivid look into the promotional web series that would lead up to the movie. An hour long panel dedicated to a ten minute viral video loosely connected to a movie that would become sub par at best. Niles looked very tired during that panel. That's what Toronto comicon has for you. It hurt, yes, and it had hurt for years. While every other major city gets to learn who's been a Skrull for twenty years, Toronto gets to learn that Alpha Flight still in fact exists.

Sorry for alienating all the normal people there for a second, but please, this is a nerd's ballad.

There's a naked man being spray painted to look like Green Lantern.

This year was bound to be different, I started to feel it in my bones. This year would not only top the dork-charts, but somehow try to reel in the sort of spotlight SDCC so effortlessly consumes. There was a chariot for this angel of hope to ride in on, my friends. Oh you should have seen this chariot my family. It glowed a heavenly blue, and as you stared into it you saw not just it's rider, but your inner self. It hovered upon it's pedestal and surrounding it an ensemble of followers telling passing strangers, "Please, folks, feel free to take a photo of the Lightcycle". Oh god, is this it? Is this really happening? They never bring this shit here! I always see pics of like, the floating Nite Owl ship at SDCC and think, "man, THAT'S what they got". But here, oh here shedding off a heavenly aura, this publicity angel. What else is here?! Could there be more! Folks, let me melt down.

Zxxt*

Fzzzzzzzzrt*~*~*~*~*~

Dccccccccccccccccccccst**************8888*

Mr Mxxxxxxxxxxxxyyzzptttlk***

The year before hosted a fairly impressive gaming section, with rotating previews of Gears of War 2, kind of a big deal at the time, and this year had not lost it's momentum. There was God of War 3, which I waited for but the guy in front of me managed to... break the game somehow and a key predesignated event simply wouldn't trigger. Shame too because
I woke up that morning really really wanting to jab a manticore's eyes out with it's own horns. There was Uncharted 2, but I uncannily seemed to suck at it, so let's stop talking about it. One game I did seem to manage to make things happen with was Bayonetta, Sega's upcoming sexy librarian game. It sure felt like a spiritual successor to Devil May Cry alright, only while those games gradually rewarded you with Dante's nudity episode after episode, this title delivered you with that titlation much more immediately. It literally seems to reward the player for executing more intricate combos with the lady protagonist's skin. She grows butterfly wings when she double jumps, which I don't remember from any trailers. Combine that with enough porcelain fountains and statues to make even the most trashy inner city Italian stereotype blush and it starts to look like a fantasy calendar in motion. Soon I start to feel like I'm actually
losing control of the game and it just takes me wherever. I'm shooting angel demons, I'm ripping off a giant's skin as he swings the floor I stand on around and then I crush his head with a dragon just I made, but it all starts to feel really lucid and I think throughout this course I only used three buttons. I think I'll rent it.

Okay what's next folks.

TRON!

MORE TRON!

There's a Tron panel! What shall we see? What shall we hear?! What shall we feel. They confiscate all of my recording devices, which too juiced to see some glamorous footage I eagerly oblige. Hell, why did I give them my cellphone? The thing doesn't even have a camera... In this panel we waited while a somber digital track laxed us in, I wondered if it was a sample of Daft Punk's score (it was). They showed us concept art from the film and it all seemed like Tron was rhino charging through the major sci-fi of the decades from then till now, slipping in some inspiration in the key of Blade Runner until what it starts to seem like is along the lines of Tron Noir. Oh and we saw how those flat space invader looking things *may* look. The only new footage they showed us was of the boring, non-Tron world, where Flynn's son returns to the arcade to discover a hidden passage and the magic of Journey's music.

Okay off to, shit, fuck, what next I'm having a sensory overload.

Fuck, that's the Iron Sheik over there! That's so cool that he's here! And there! That's the Soup Nazi! I don't know why he's at comicon but he is and that's so great! I asked him how sick of saying the line he was to which he surprisingly replied that he wasn't, that there was still charm to when he says it and according to Larry David, it sounds just like it did back in the day when he says it. NEAT. O.

There's a boy over there asking his mom to buy him a sexy anime school girl wallscroll. Okay.

Let's talk about the costumes. I for one am more fond of the humble, home made, don'tknowhollywoodmakeup types, taped together with packing materials and garage sale clothes. There's a boxy Soundwave accompanied by a youthful Solid Snake, according to Snake it's taken them twenty minutes to cross the convention hall due to photograph requests. Wicked.

Shit you should see the fucking line, I've never seen it go outside the building like this before, it's actually curling around the outside of the building like Princess Python's perilous pets. I kept hearing mumbles about them over ticketing the event and moments where they impromptuly close off escalators to other floors due to crowding make me believe it.

There are a lot of dude's "dressed like Kevin Smith" though that may be less of a costume and more of a nature of their being.

Me and noble photographer Matthew dove into the pool. He had never been to a comicon before. After organizing all of my interviews, I decided to take Matt to a panel that he and I may get some charm out of. Actor and celeb panels are usually the best, as they usually have the best stories. Last year Sid Haig told us all how he once was nearly forced to marry the princess of a headhunter tribe and then began tearing up when talking about slackers compared to his grandparents who built their own house. We went to Dave Thomas' panel, another guest who what exactly has to do with comics may leave me puzzled, but it's charming none the less. We walked in the middle of an anecdote about Buzz Aldrin's old-man-liness. He went on to give insight that the real reason they never had guests on SCTV was because they couldn't afford them, making the low budget the accidental source of comedy for most of the show. An avid fan of shoestring affairs, I got to wondering that on top of all the dorky interviews I could do maybe a more publicly welcoming one couldn't hurt. He didn't have the time, unfortunately, though his agent was really nice about it. She took us to wait outside an unmarked room while she saw what she could arrange.

This room. This unmarked room. What is in this unsuspecting room.

A lanky old man in a downturned baseball cap locomotives past me. Who was that man, who was that old man. That old man was. Matt's tapping me on the shoulder. That old man was. "Zack that behind us looks like Lou Ferrigno".

That old man was...

"Matt, that is Lou Ferrigno."

That old man was Leonard Nimoy.

God bless comicon.

Galactus bless comicon.

Comments

• September 22, 2009, KWSilk writes: Second time I've read it, and it holds up. Got to love the stream of consciousness Nerdventures column. It is indeed the cherry on top of this monthly sundae. Galactus bless Nerdventures!

The fact of the matter is that imitating another medium isn't going to get you very far in finding all the cool shit you can do with the actual medium you are working in. But there's also a delicate balance where you need to understand what makes the other related mediums work. Film figured it out after dicking around with theatre conventions for awhile. They eventually figured out that "We are Art" scout badges were granted for understanding the finer effects of editing and montage. But, they also needed to adapt the finer points of mis-en-scene and dramaturgy from the world of theatre in order to move forward. And this is where gaming in its current form fails so completely, like Michael Bay making a film, evoking emotion.

The problem is that so many studios spend so much time trying to emulate its non-interactive cousin with lots of film-like cinematics without understanding any of the key ideas that makes film work. Kind of like someone watching a brain surgery and then deciding they can now lay down a tarp and do it at home. How else can you explain the characters with the depth of a frying pan, plots written in crayon and absolutely no consideration for creating anything meaningful through where you put the damn camera. At least read a book like "Film for Dummies and Game Developers." Spending so much time trying to be flashy means that the interactivity design goes down the tube and we are left with an unfulfilling experience that we dick around with for a few hours looking at pretty explosions, but ultimately trade in at Blockbuster.

"REPLAY VALUE"

Is one of the stupidest terms ever invented by douchebag game critics and then, in turn, completely misunderstood by game developers reading the trite written by those game critics. Replay Value now means cramming so much useless crap into the game that only some psychopath could spend the 70 hours unlocking all the achievements for a perfect 1000G gamer score so they can jerk off on Xbox Live. Extra maps, bonus endings, extra characters, hidden weapons, bonus side quests... YAWN. Replay Value comes from it being a FUCKING GOOD GAME. Like a movie, I will watch it again because I enjoy it, not because I want to see all the shitty endings that got cut for good reasons on the second disc. All this bonus crap just muddles up the main part of the game because I feel like I should be doing that other crap. DVDs with special features don't annoy to this level because it doesn't invite you to watch the special features during the movie. To make matters worse, the studio spends so much time creating all that extra content that the storyline somehow doesn't get written and gets chalked up in the "AFTERTHOUGHT" column. Which leads me to:

"SANDBOX ENVIRONMENTS"

A lot of people are probably raising their eyebrows at this one since every idiot in the world like a chorus sheep cried out "GTA IV is the Messiah of Mankind". FALSE. Sure sandbox environments make the world seem big, epic and interactive, letting the player choose their own path, but ultimately all gamers are morons (myself included). Letting a gamer choose their own path through a good story is like letting that same moron direct Schindler's List. How can pacing be meaningful when you spend thirty minutes running down innocent pedestrians with a tank?

"But Matt, games shouldn't imitate films you contradictory (steel)bananahead."

Right, but like the novel, the theatre and the cinema, there is this underlying blueprint called PLOT. Structure is the central part of the dramaturgical process and how can it be meaningful when you can go tear-assing around the city for hours on end doing nothing - like if Oskar Schindler went for a three hour walk to admire the plumage (or run over pedestrians in his Volkswagen). I am not saying the story of GTA IV is Schindler's List either. All the fanboys saying it would be "Oscar-worthy if it was a screenplay" don't know anything about screenwriting and probably think Halo novels are Pulitzer-worthy. The story is so foggy and generic around 'the dark side of the American dream' because getting too specific would inevitably get fucked up because the Hero has a fetish for vehicular homicide. GTA IV talks and talks but never says anything.

I think a balance needs to be found between linear storytelling and freedom. Allow choices to create the illusion of freedom, but not so many choices that the easiest choice is just to start blowing everything up. This will probably be the hardest bit to figure out and I imagine the next few years will be "The Age of the Sandbox". To side with my game maker friends, I will say there is also a fundamental problem with AUDIENCE. If people sit down to spend a few hours jacking cars in broad daylight, gunning down grannies and launching the protagonist through the windshield of said jacked car, then what the hell is the point of trying to mix in Schindler's List? Is linear gaming the answer? No. But can we at least figure out how to develop storyline in one fracking hour of enjoyable gameplay before we try to spread it across a massive sprawling city like butter spread on too much toast. And the butter is being spread by Cloud Strife's sword. Maybe once an hour of meaningful gameplay can be mustered up and people actually sit down at a game console for a "meaningful experience" we can start dicking around with butter-spreading.

ULTRA-CUSTOMIZABLE HERO CHARACTER

Sixty shades of eyes? A billion hair dye colours? A virtual hair stylist that can craft anything from weird spiky JRPG nonsense to a crappy mullet from the local sports bar? In other words, you (the gamer) are spending time doing the art direction for the game you paid $60 for. When I dish out the cash for a game, I want a hero that's ready to go. I could say a lot of things I said about the Sandbox so I won't repeat myself. I will reference Schindler's List again, though. It's like if you could choose Neeson, de Niro, or Perez-fucking-Hilton to play Schindler in the DVD menu.

The problem is, video game theorists (if they exist yet) don't understand how the the protagonist fits into this unknown game plot structure. There is no model for protagony like there is in the novel, the theatre or the cinema. It's like trying to fit a square peg through a round hole, only through all this character customizing you now have six-thousand square pegs, none of which ultimately fit because they are still square pegs. And because gaming plot structure isn't really understood it's like there isn't anything to put the pegs into yet and you are just jabbing square pegs in the air like a crazy person.

MORAL-CHOICE SYSTEMS

There is nothing wrong with the IDEA of a moral choice system. It's just become a marketing/Peter Molyneux buzz-word for something that just means "you can be good or evil". The real meaningful experience should come in the grey area of these moral choices where you don't know which is the good choice and which is the evil choice. All the "choices" are black and white (give the puppy a massage or cut its limbs off with a machete?) and not only that, the insanely awesome awards are given for either making Mother Teresa look like Satan or making Satan look like Mother Teresa. What do you get for doing a bit of both? A steaming hot pile of "meh". It also kills the buzz of being a Satan-blowing douchebag when the game gently consoles you and says "it's okay, I will always love you scary demon child" and lets you continue without any consequence.

QUICK ACTION EVENTS

Also known as "Press X to Not Die". (The New) Prince of Persia was an absolute whorish bitch for this, but also put Elika nearby who is a hell of a lot better than frequent quick-loads or quick-saves.

Quick Action Events just feel like a lazy way of keeping my attention - like glancing away briefly to locate the snackies somewhere at my side is some sort of mortal sin. Or if I slapped you every time you looked away from this article. Testing reflexes is fine but not when it throws it at you at random intervals to try and kill you, the game laughing "ha ha, guess you shouldn't look away, bitch" when it does.

GREY/BROWN = REALISM

Mirror's Edge at least had the balls to do something colourful with its art design, even if it was so devilish bright that you couldn't see a damn thing through the glare. You remember colour? Those bright, fun markers and crayons you had as a kid? Well those don't seem to exist in the regular art director's palette because apparently the entire world is different shades of brown and grey. I realize the post-apocalypse is bound to be a little dreary but who wants to look at different kinds of dirt and cement for hours? I live at York University and see more than my fair share of cement every day.

PREDICTABLE AND BORING PLOT TWIST

Game studios seem to have a hard-on for Shyamalan-style fuckery. And somehow they manage to execute it even worse than that dickhole. Oh, the government I was working for all along was evil? Oh, my best friend was the evil assassin? These devices not only do not surprise because they are so predictable via shallow characters but they tend to piss me off. Is having some epic twist supposed to make the plot "deep and meaningful"? It's a gross misinterpretation of the term "plot" if you ask me when these entities turn on you for no fucking reason other than to give you something else to deal with.

ULTRA-REALISTIC VIRTUAL ACTORS

I am talking to you, Heavy Rain. Hours of motion-capturing, modeling, texturing and lighting to make a 3D model walk across a room in a convincing way, when you can do the same thing in 2 minutes with a video camera and any idiot who will walk across a room. You know which video game character I had emotional attachment to? Atrus. Fucking Atrus from Myst in 1993. Funny thing how emotional attachment occurs when you film actual people instead of spending 3-year development cycles texturing the pores on some stiff 3D-generated dickwad. At what point is it just too excessive and taking too much manpower? It is possible to make a 3D character likable, a la Grim Fandago. But Grim Fandago is old and the characters are nothing more than a handful of polygons and some bright colours. 'Realism' isn't going to make a character any more interesting making all those hours of drawing pores seem like a bit of a waste. I guess it helps with immersion but who is immersed when they don't give two shits about the hero they are prancing around as.

THE GAME DESIGN DOCUMENT

This is the ONE THING holding back the future of game design: the fact that everything starts with a game design document. In other words, the game designer is ultimately considered as the "auteur". The problem is that the characters and plot are written IN to a game design concept, or even worse, the game designer tries to write the thing himself. And there's the fundamental pitfall: PLOT as AFTERTHOUGHT.

What if game designers downsized their massive egos and let a knowledgeable writer develop a story first and then work from a script as a blueprint where interactivity can be cleverly implemented like filling the dimples of a waffle with hot maple syrup? It sounds like MGS4 all over again with its long-winded cut-scenes but I am talking about fusing good design with good writing (which MGS4 is not). Game designers should not be the "auteurs" in the game-as-art fantasy universe. There needs to be another entity higher up the creative ladder who can protect plot and character, telling the game designer when he has fucked up and needs to go back to the drawing board. Because right now, I think everyone who is making a penny off games is fucking up. They've burnt the waffles and are pouring liquid shite instead of syrup.

So, I seem to have laid out one big contradiction: games need to be more like movies, but also less like movies (and you were all excited to call me out on this glaring contradiction, weren't you?). First gamemakers everywhere need to understand the fundamental concepts that makes film and theatre work before they run stupid and dazzled into the flowery meadows of game development. Right now game designers come across as lost children who read nothing but comic books and cereal boxes. Imitate films WELL by considering plot and character first and THEN you can move on to make game art everything it can be.

It's a 3-step process:

1. Create plots and characters on par with a good film or play so people are actually interested to hear what they have to say instead of running around the game world punching anything that breathes.

2. ???

3. Profit!

Comments

• September 16, 2009, Colin Fallowfield writes: Awesome stuff, Matt. I'm not a gamer and I loved this piece.
• September 18, 2009, B-Rad writes: Matt, keep writing about this, someone has too. There may be existing material on this subject already, who knows?
• September 22, 2009, KWSilk writes: How does acknowledging the glaring contradiction inherent to this rant suddenly excuse said contradiction? I agree with about 1/3 of your points. Video games should play to their merits and not the merits of film -- Absolutely! Then you turn around and tell us that video games rely too heavily on their merits! Customizability, freedom of experience, digital environments and characters -- these are the things which make the Video Game medium unique, and, if utilized correctly, have the potential to turn it into a legitimate art form rather than Film's retard brother. Better writers and stories, obviously, cannot hurt Video Games; if that's your point (it was kind of hard to tell). But just as you said Film needed to fully embrace editing techniques and montage in order to realize it's potential as art, Video Games need to fully explore the possibilities offered by the medium in before people will begin to take it seriously. Why would a talented writer choose video games over film, stage or print unless there was something unique that could be offered by way of the method in which the story is conveyed? The story told using a sandbox environment, customizable characters, morality choices, etc., is inherently different than the linear story told on celluloid. So I say let them have their "Age of the Sandbox." Let them go crazy exploring the boundaries which video games allow, and believe that the visionaries will follow. Allow Video Games their adolescence, and trust that in time they will mature.
• October 7, 2009, Marc Boggio writes: Let me guess, MGS4 is the only Metal Gear game you played? I don't believe that a person who understands the story to that game would ever even suggest that it's poorly written. The storyline for the Metal Gear series is an epic that spans from the early 1900s to 2018 and forges a rock solid (if slightly anime influenced) alternate history to illustrate its themes of freedom, slavery, anarchy, legacy, life and redemption. It's a few steps above "jump on bowser, save the princess"- concept -wise I'm not even going to touch how hard i disagree with your criticism of GTA IV either- but answer this; if GTA IV's sandbox gameplay defines its story telling, why is its story so much better than other sandbox games like Saints Row 2; the answer is that the Hauser brothers are good writers- which does account for videogames requiring artistic skill to be executed effectively. So if you're going to write about videogame theory in the future, you should probably take some more time to understand them- because as of right now, you just sound like a hater who thinks he's right.

In case you don't keep up with all the little ways Ontario has been spending their money, the government announced that they would be investing well into the millions of dollars in an initiative to attract, specifically, video game designers. So far it has reeled in big studio Ubisoft, creators of Rayman, Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell. A savoury house, yes, but as it currently stands they already had a main Canadian location, so don't expect it to usher in any new canuck bragging rights. Capybara, however, is just on the other end. Small, young and just on the horizon of releasing their first console title on Playstation's PSN for the PS3 BTW, Critter Crunch, a puzzle game about eating and barfing that was previously welcomed on mobile platforms, now receiving an HD makeover. So what, pray tell, do the people at Capybara think about Ontario making the skrilla rain for Ubisoft, and what it could mean for Toronto's game dev community?

Take it away Nathan.

"The local game scene got a ton of attention when the Ubisoft deal came through but I think for us it’s been around for a while. N+ by Metanet, those guys are just down on Queen Street, Jonathan Mak of Everyday Shooter will soon be in the building. You have groups like The Hand Eye Society bringing everyone together and community is the theme, teaching people who don’t know how to make games how to make games and then there’s tonnes of awesome individuals, we could probably spend about four hours listing all the awesome people and the awesome things they’ve done in the area. You just get the benefit of having someone to talk to, working out your idea if it doesn’t work for you, and you also get the benefit of just that comradely."

Do you

Wait I need to stop for a second.

Okay.

So.

It has been recently brought to my attention by others on the team that when I type in all caps as if I was screaming as loud as I can go when I recorded these is hilarious. So in the spirit of being critter crunk, sit back, breathe in and let your imagination determine the volume of my voice. Alright, good thing that is out of the way.

And now continuing on with King Frankenstein's, Critter Crunk~

HEY, SO GUY DO YOU LIKE THINK THAT ALL THIS ATTENTION WILL AT LEAST BRING CLOSET DEVELOPERS OUT OF THEIR DANG SHELL YO

"Here I think people are pretty much already out there, a lot of people are just doing their own thing already. I think with all the attention based on Ubisoft I think it will be interesting because it will cause a lot more people to come to this city to make games, some will love big studio work, someone who will love to be part of a two hundred person team working on a big retail video game. Some of these people are not going to like it, some of them will come to us or Metanet or any other smaller studio or start their own. There’s going to be this weird by-product of sucking a lot of developers in and the ones that don’t gel perfectly will be spat back out."

THEN HOPEFULLY WE'LL BE A MORE RECOGNIZABLE SCENE CAUSE WE BE REPPIN AN' SHIT

"Oh yeah!  I’ve been asked a bunch of times about Ubisoft and what’s my kind of opinion on them coming and what do I think about it and I believe there are some negatives that you can’t help, they’re a giant studio but they aren’t some mean cloud. As much as there are downsides as long as we are bringing in more people to make more games it’s good, you can’t really find many harsh criticisms for Ubisoft or the government for bringing them here. Not to mention we’ve been making a new Heroes of Might and Magic DS game with Ubisoft and they’ve been super cool to us."

SO WE AIN'T TALKING BOUT LIKE A GIANT STEEL SPIDER MOVING INTO THE BLOCK

It was at this point that my always trusty tape recorded decided to tell me that one out of two bars actually meant no out of two bars and made the same incessant beeping noise it makes whenever it does... anything at all. Not one to be so easily defeated by technology I tried the waters of my camera's recording abilities for the first time. That said.

SO YO, ANOTHER RECENT DEVELOPMENT IN THE INDIE GAME COMMUNITY, TORONTO AND OR OTHERWISE IS THE RISE OF DOWNLOADABLE GAMES. STARTING TO FEEL LIKE NO GOOD DEED GOES UNREWARDED Y'KNOW, GAMES THAT WERE FREE OR OBSCURE GETTING CONSOLE RELEASES, LIKE N+ AND CAVE STORY

"Yeah, and I played the new Wii Cave Story and it’s ssssssssooo good."

KRIS QUIT SITTIN THERE AND START YAPPING BOUT SHIT

"I think it’s great, I think it’s created a better sized platform for smaller studios. I think even just going back four years or so starting a studio meant a whole different thing than starting one now. There are a lot of people now starting off as much smaller teams because the end goal isn’t creating the next Bungie or Bioware game. Now you have downloadable stages, you have iTunes, you have Steam, PSN, XBL, WiiWare and to a lesser extent DSi, you have these things that make for much more financially viable sort of platform that’s stilted towards much smaller games that, at least now, seem to be weighing more towards uniquely artistic over the commercial stuff. When you make a commercial game you have a lot less freedom, you have to make something that’s very market driven or else you are taking a gigantic risk on a project with so much weight on it. I think the most progressive game design, the things actually pushing the medium foreword are seen right now are in these smaller downloadable spaces."

To which Nathan added, "It makes it a lot less scary to make crazy shit, if you made crazy shit four years ago it would probably be a PC downloadable title and it would probably be free, but now you can put a small investment in. Well, I don’t know what you consider small, and still try to hit this small niche group and you can still make money off that and who knows, it may even get bigger than that. N+ is a great example of a game that is punishingly disgustingly hard and yet you still see totally non-hardcore people getting into it."

I SEE DUDES IN LECTURE CLASS HITTING THAT SHIT UP LIKE A PINATA COVERED IN BEETLES

"For sure, but at the same time you have like, my girlfriend’s little brother who’s eighteen, he’s a gamer gamer for sure but he’s not like the type of guy who would go online to find freeware titles. He just saw it on Xbox Live, thought it looked neat and bought it. And I didn’t even tell him to."

THEY GROW UP SO FAST~

Kris then added, "I think this isn’t a trend, it’s only going to continue. Downloadable is becoming a much bigger priority with retail becoming more and more difficult. You see Sony doing a lot of this, releasing Wipeout HD on PSN despite there being no reason that game couldn’t be a full retail release. That movement has removed a lot of the initial barriers for independent developers. It seems that certain games just have a better chance at succeeding in a downloadable state."

YA FOR SURE AIN'T ABOUT TO SEE ANY FUTURE BARGAIN BIN GAMES CHARGING FULL DAMN RETAIL FOR A THREE HOUR RIDE

"Exactly, I would hate to walk into a Wal Mart and see Critter Crunch in a bargain bin. I would rather see it on sale on PSN, even if it’s the exact same price it’ll still feel totally different."

At this point my camera too had decided to disappoint me, not due to batteries oh no, but due to memory card space. Now see the only other thing on the camera was one, just one single photo I took of my friend's wedding, so you can imagine the slithering defeat I was feeling, knowing I'd have to slow this train down so my pen and paper express could keep up. But these guys, oh no, these guys, they would see to that. Like a mighty eager hunter, they tracked down some AAAs, scavenging every remote they eventually found one, one that they did not even know what function it served, and passed me mighty power dingies. So we gracefully continued.

SO NATHAN, TO WHICH I ADDRESS BECAUSE IN TURN I KNOW DUE TO POWERS I PREFER NOT TO DISCUSS FORETELL IT WILL BE YOU TO FIRST COVER THIS QUESTION, HOW'D Y'ALL GET STARTED

"After we started meeting weekly at Paupers Pub we decided to make some cell phone games because it was cheap. We thought it was good you know, small games, great way to figure out if we could do it and after a while we figured out that we actually COULD do it. Made a couple of games, one which actually ended up getting published, then started a studio when we convinced Disney to let us make a mobile game for the movie Cars, we got that game without an office or staff or computers or anything we just all worked at home in our spare time."

GAMES LIKE THAT JUST GOTTA GET MADE YO

"I have no idea why they gave it to us, honestly no clue."

"We had a good pitch." Kris interjected.

"Yeah we did have a good pitch. I think we probably pretended we had an office. We spent a long while on mobile games. We kind of made mobile games not only to step our foot in the door but to really get some experience developing games. But the end goal was always to do full games and games for gamers, so after we got really frustrated with mobile games and the business of being an indie mobile game developer, which by the way is pretty much the worst idea ever. We decided to do some iPhone stuff and DS stuff and some console downloadable stuff and now that’s what we’re doing right now. We got Critter Crunch for the PSN coming out, we got Might and Magic Clash of Heroes coming out, we are starting a new iPhone project and a Wiiware project with some other stuff on the side as well, and that’s where we wanted to be. We really wanted it to be this way, with HD, with crazy visuals, it’s why we worked so hard to make this studio."

HEY I GOT AN IDEA, LET'S TALK ABOUT BARFING

"The original ending of the cell phone version of Critter Crunch, spoiler alert, is Biggs the main character returning back to his family and barfing in their mouths, this big glorious finale."

Kris adds, "He regurgitates all the jewels he ate and over the credits is a big barfing scene."

"We always thought that was uhm, really fucking funny so when this version came around we were thinking 'so okay what is the best way to introduce people who have never seen this game before' and we decided to instead of having the end of the game being barfing in your son’s mouth to actually make that a key component. Hopefully that would draw in people who otherwise never have the chance to experience that."

WHY BUY ANY OL' PUZZLE GAME WHEN YOU COULD PLAY A PUZZLE GAME WITH BARFING INTO ANOTHER PERSON'S MOUTH

"People like different things, and you know what, it is both a gameplay element and it is barfing in something’s mouth. It’s a win win situation."

"It’s actually neat how people latched on to that concept. The signature thing  about the game now is this guy barfing a rainbow into another guy’s mouth."

"And that’s pretty awesome, it’s something we’re very proud of."

"More of that to come in the future."

"Yeah!~"

BARFING IN TWO GUY'S MOUTHS

"Barfing and uhm, crapping."

"No"

"Crapping into some guy’s mouth."

"I don’t think we want to get into that territory."

"Part two."

"Barfing has just became a great hallmark of this game and gaming. It’s awesome that people liked the barfing because I like it. I think it is funny."

THAT'S MY STANCE AND I'M STICKIN WITH IT! THERE ARE ENOUGH FART JOKES, TIME TO MIX IT UP, VIVA LA BARF JOKES

Kris responds, "I think Castle Crashers had us covered for fart and poo jokes. They missed a key joke, the barf joke. We've hit a niche market."

YOU GOT A PIE CHART FOR THAT? BODILY FUNCTION DEMOGRAPHICS?

Nathan answers, "You got all this porno shit, we’re not going to touch that, farting that’s a huge chunk, poop that’s a huge chunk, hey what’s this little sliver here..."

NO ONE'S COVERING THE EIGHTEEN TO THIRTY-FIVE BARF DEMOGRAPHIC!

"And an idea is born."

"You think we’re like a bunch of artists, we’re really just genius business strategists. We just mark some numbers, name some figures."

"Per capita calculations, demographic density."

"Polls."

DEAR SIR HOW MUCH BARF WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE IN A GAME?

"A LOT"

"If I show you this much barf how would you feel? Now if I show you THIS much barf how would you feel?"

"Nerds like us like jokes about barf so... That’s the way it goes."

And so comes the end of our Nerdventure. I returned their batteries and skipped along my merry way (well okay, it wasn't that merry, damn streetcar driver wouldn't let me use my damn transfer). And I think we learned a lot today, about games, about community, about initiative, and about barfing into people's mouths. Critter Crunch will be out on the PS3 later this year, Might and Magic Clash of Heroes for the DS around the same time.

For more info visit, www.capybaragames.com

For barf, get crunk B)

Comments

• August 15, 2009, Matthew Filipowich - Steel Bananas: August 2009 writes: [...] Joel Plaskett, an essay on elitism, Twilight, and an exclusive walk through of indie game developer Capybara Studio’s [...]
• August 17, 2009, Sarah writes: Swayyyt!!!

Lowdown: A Sentiment Torontonians Have Uncomfortably Grown Accustomed To.

-/+ For People Looking For Another Tetris

Tetris-like is usually the best description for any arcade puzzle game, but Trash Panic throws a wrench into the machine, and a lightbulb, and a desk, and a hamburger. Where many puzzle games will test your focus, tidiness and planning Trash Panic is much more about rolling with the punches. By which I actually mean...

- - Game Mechanics Are Really Hard to Wrap Your Head Around, Even Harder to Predict

Not many puzzle games have a physics engine, and sometimes you’ll wonder what maniac designed Trash Panic’s. Okay yes, rubber balls bounce and it is pretty clever that you need to work that into your strategy, but aside from that certain techniques never seem to work the same way twice. Just as you are getting cozy with your strategy something goes askew and you’ll never know why. Using the fire, water, and decay techniques are also key to success and yet despite this the game is very vague on how these mechanics properly work. Right when your entire plan hinges on having all the wooden chairs go aflame is usually when the fire just refuses to start. So with all this said this is...

+ For People Who Like Tetris Looking For Something That Isn’t Tetris

Many puzzle games have the same layout as Tetris and even more play like Tetris, but what is so honourable about Trash Panic is that in no way does it play like Tetris, and just like how Tetris’ multiplayer was so great...

- Multiplayer is lacking and thensome

There is only one multiplayer mode, and I can’t believe I’m complaining about this but the one mode isn’t even online. You basically need to sabotage the opposing player’s side until they flub up and drop ONE piece of trash from their half-the-regular-size can. This will usually take about thirty seconds, and it’s hard to get riled up about something only double the time it took to load.

++/ Alarm Heat

I can see where Trash Panic was going but it just hasn’t found the right balance between chaos and order, though if anything it could be good practice for stacking your backed up garbage for the returning pickups.

Rock Band Unplugged (PSP, Pub: EA/MTV Games, Dev: Harmonix, Rated T)

Lowdown: New Rock Band introduces revolutionary technology by not filling your apartment space with more fake plastic instruments.

+ Gameplay of Amplitude, Song Cred of Rock Band

I loved Amplitude, I remember sacrificing way too many sunny days for that gem. And yes I guess if there was one complaint about it, it was that with nameless DJs and a remix of the one Bowie track no one’s heard of the song list was not setting off too too many fireworks. So here we have Rock Band Unplugged, which is actually a new version of Amplitude that looks like Rock Band and best of all, has the same sort of song access as Rock Band. Now the initial on-disc tracklist may not be everyone’s rock and roll heaven, but it is for better or worse varied with a handful of zingers, not to mention it’s hard to whine when in the back of your mind you remember that in only a couple months you’ll have an Ipod Shuffle’s worth of downloadable tracks on PSN. And hell for a PSP game the...

+ Graphics Are Surprisingly Spry

There’s been some trims, tattoos and facepaint now absent, but the character customization is near identical to its console brother. And of course, that means you could still be too ugly to be mirrored in Rock Band. Regardless the polish and visage of virtual rock life is still here, though there was one moment where I noticed their on-screen playing was in no way synched with the song, but you’re concentration as usual will be elsewhere... In fact only you are looking at the screen... And that’s because...

- - - There’s No Multiplayer Whatsoever = Taxing on Initiative

Rock Band made it through its gauntlet by letting the whole posse join in, the way the pacing works usually pits you with the same song repeated in less than an hour’s worth of play, but who cares you’re drunk as hell and having a good time. No more, this is a solo flight, not even the multiplayer offered on Amplitude is seen. And it was around that time of realization that I remembered why I even bothered unlocking all the tracks in the first place, I did them ahead of time so that later I would have a ball with my buds. The whole thing just starts to feel self gratifying, or even depressing, when the only person you are really showing up to is yourself.

- Some Amplitude/Rock Band Gameplay Elements don’t Play Well together

For whatever reason, despite taking most all of the gameplay elements of Amplitude, they left in the health bar system from Rock Band... Which isn’t the smoothest combo. It’s no longer if you are overall doing bad, it’s if you have one instrument that is specifically lagging behind, and if it goes down you don’t die but you probably will with those magic rock powerups seemingly harder to come by in this rendition.

+++ Alarm Heat

It doesn’t improve on the formula, but it doesn’t destroy it either. If in this online, social gaming day and age still okie dokie with playing a music game alone and was like me, head over heels for Amplitude than there is probably something to see here, otherwise you could always spend your forty bucks on, I don’t know, an actual music album or something if anyone still gets those.

I told the kid manning his post. My right arm leaning on the table, elbow pressing into a flakey laminated sale flyer. The kid twirled a pen in his jaw, eyes fished by the ending light of the display window. “Excuse me,” he said, “pardon my low wage distraction, how can I disappoint you today?” My back crawled a little narrower and I tilted my dusty hat to the heavens. “I’m looking for Mad Dog McCree,” I proclaimed, “I heard word from a reliable source that Mad Dog McCree was to be expected around these parts sometime around the time it is at this very moment. So,” my fingers fall, sliding flat on to the grimy counter, “where is that rancid son of a bitch?” The kid’s face grows flush, “I have never heard of Mad Dog McCree.” I stand a pace back. “Really? Hmm.” My back hand rides the stubble of my face. “Let me tell you a tale kid, a story from a long long time ago. Back when my eyes would barely meet the top of this a’ here PC bargain bin. Hey wait is that Tropico? I see that thing everywhere I wonder if it’s any good.”

“Uhm, sir, there are Forza demos I could be playing.”

“Right, As I was saying I was but a fawn, could barely remember my own damn name...”

We were on a family trip, I think this may have even been before my brother was born but then again I never really noticed the squirt until my parents moved him into the same room as me where we would fight from dusk till dawn. Regardless of that, the first time I had encountered Mad Dog McCree was in the arcadia of a friendly hotel, the big kind, the middle class fancy kind. The kind of hotel that doesn’t want you to leave, probably because they locate themselves in places with nothing else to see. Suffice it to say, this hotel was stocked with distractions, decked out in jungle themed props, something exotic from a child’s embodiment of the world at far. But there, among all the other glowing pleasures stood one massive one, between the digital casinos and crocodile mini putts. He was larger than the others, boxy with no imaginative flash, just a large black chariot which he rode in. While other delights specialized in ghoul blasting or pin balling, McCree had a talent unlike all the other ones, surreal features. While other toys were vibrant and animated, McCree was more real, barren down by believable age. He was what you’d call an FMV. Full Motion Video.

Back before no ten-eighty-pee or high definition, back before everything was spectacular through jumbled gizmos, there was a dog ballsy enough, brave enough, and probably frugal enough to simply put himself, the human visage in an otherwise world of fantasy. But the addition of realism came at a price, realization. Suddenly the violence was a beast intimidating. Not playful or blasé, seeing a real man, with real flesh, shot with a real fake gun was something that froze me in my small feet. While I would have always been rearing to lose at Altered Beast, fail at Dragon’s Lair or make a total embarrassment of myself with an Adam’s Family pinball machine, I could not even approach Mad Dog McCree. It was the game I could not play. The bearded laughter of the brutal gunslinger haunts me to this day. It was a shame that, me being what I am, would keep my nights long and dreams tormented.

“Oh, I see,” said the kid, “they released some shovel wear dumpy anthology thing on the Wii, it’s in the release schedule. We don’t carry it, waugh waugh.” I tipped my hat down and smirked. “Heh, fine by me then.” I rotate the mechanisms of my upper body, brushing off the gears to an warming and unstoppable device. “After all, I am a hunter.” I interrupted his Petz stocking. “A what huh?” I open my duster wide open. The receipts of previous victims hanging decorated on the lining of the coat in a swinging gallery of my pride. “You see kid, I’m a...”

“You know what I don’t think I actually care afterall.”

“hunter, there has been game in the past which tried to remain elusive, keeping astray and illustrious. I hear them all calling."

“Do you want Tropico? Take Tropico, it’s five bucks and we have so many copies of it I bet it is great. I'm going to leave Tropico on the counter for when you stop talking and buy Tropico."

“Kid, when I wanted Pinball Hall of Fame Williams collection, I couldn’t settle for the stocked Wii version. I pursued despite all of logic’s resistance to find the PSP one. When I was a kid, I was still collecting NES games years into the SNES era, Dreamcast discs as gifts far too long into the age of PS2. I don’t take no for an answer, I got R-Type Command after weeks of searching, and even if the game itself was mediocre, the satisfaction was unmatched.”

“Okie dokie artichokie, I am going to just ignore your crazy from here on, putting it out there.”

I stumbled into the game hunt by accident I suppose, it was a calling. My PS2 apprehension was hallmarked alongside with an abrupt and in some ways protested family trip out West. The Western frontier was littered with unchecked game, rampant bounty in pawn shops and neglected Blockbusters ready for any hunter to pillage. I just so happened to be looking to stock up my Playstation portfolio and just so happened to fall upon what appeared to be a plethora of prey marked with modest prices on their heads. So I began to capture. I took my collection of rogues back home with me only to discover their true infamy. Skullmonkeys? Brother to The Neverhood? No one had seem em’ in years. Even Clayfighter Sculpter's Cut had a reasonable if not completely unusual bounty over its head. Years later I got a copy of Marvel vs Capcom 2 (Playstation version of course) out of complete impulse, and ever since other hunters have been hounding up my leg for him, but I refuse to let go of the sucker. I am a hunter, I have a hunter’s spirit and a hunter’s will. I take in game even if I don’t have the strength for it. I take in game even if I don’t have the home for it. I take in game even if I don’t have the correct system for it. It is an impulse, and one of the things that, for better or worse, defines me. I live the hunter’s life, be glad you don’t hear the calling yourself.

“Hey dude, if you want to beat this game so damn bad just download a rom and save yourself like twenty five scratch.” I popped out of my frontier fantasy. “Excuse me?” He clacked away at his palmbound device. “Yeah man, according to Moby Games dot com it came out for the Sega CD.” A star glimmered in my eye. Once again the skin of my hand graced the rugged draft of my face. “Well I’ll be damned. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a Sega CD version with my own tired eyes.” I opened the shop door, the whirling open yonder swept in on a gust of wind, lifting my coat off from the carpet as receipts danced around my hunter’s body. There was a showdown waiting for me out there, somewhere the wind would carry me. “Kid,” I tossed him my hat, “you’re alright.”

Riding away from the store, I could have sworn I heard the scrapper asking himself why I never checked the Amazon.

Comments

• August 6, 2009, Tanya writes: Cool story!

Lowdown: Bionic Comando is back, and all the RAD and BAD is just MAD. REALLY REALLY MAD.

- God I Hate Nathan Spencer As Much As Nathan Spencer Hates Everything

RAD is now Nathan Spencer. Nathan Spencer is a total dick. Just looking at GRIN’s logo you can sort of guess they are the kind of crew that’d dig Mike Patton, and don’t be silly I do too. I like Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, I like Patton’s previous voice work in games like The Darkness and Portal. But holy damn gee willickers I hate him in this game. When I talked about Riddick a few months ago I mentioned a fine line that a video game protagonist needs to stand on to ensure their “bad-assidy” levels are in check, most games dip under the line, with unenthused voice acting and singeing weak writing. Patton as RAD, however, leaps far over that fragile line, waaaaaaay off into the obnoxious blue yonder. He’s crass about everything, every other line of his dialogue either a way of saying “shut up” or “this sucks”. The only time he’s happy about anything is when he’s killing people and it’s in that troublesome seeming pleasure movie bullies get out of giving movie nerds swirlies. If it wasn’t for the constant rehearsing of a very triumphant rendition of the original theme you’d be pretty tempted to just get up and hit mute. Which works well enough, what with functioning captions and...

++ Swingin’ Graphs Brah

The graphics are Bionic Commando’s biggest saving grace. By which I mean they are really really good. Animations are smooth and rarely chug, there are some very nice touches on background scenery. One moment comes to mind early on when you see a building collapse in the background and the shockwave rumbles back to you. And as far as pleasures for the eye go...

+ Fun Fun Loopy Ga Ga Environments

When I was a kid, I would demand my parents to pay for any fun house expedition my juvenile eyes could catch. Maybe that is why I’m so fond of firefights atop slanted rooftops and leaning buildings. There are so many urban/city action games right now, but here we see if you just mix up one little element, like say, destroying the city, and suddenly things feel refreshing again. If only these levels weren’t...

- Amputated Levels

Sit around children. Once upon a time there was something called a “level”, not chapters or objectives but the game would be fragmented into different areas having the player make it from one end. I’d like to think Bionic Commando is trying to herald the days of old, but even in old games there was usually a justification to each level, be it thematically, some having ice, others fire, or just to keep a good pace. For whatever reason, the way the levels are separated in Bionic Commando do no such thing. Loading screen after loading screen, it starts to itch on why in the world each level is chopped up the way they are, there are some moments where you basically take Spencer from one loading screen to another. And this is only one of the...

-- Absurdly Bad Design Choices

The city looks vast and pretty but in reality they are narrow and linear. In order to keep you in check, the guys at GRIN must have thought it was pretty clever to replace the tiresome old “invisible walls” with “invisible death.” Apparently your enemies nuked the city before invading, which clearly sucks a lot more for you than them. If you accidently swing into one of these “bad zones” you will probably die. The amount of time it takes the radioactivity to kill you isn’t even enough time for your momentum to swing you back in the other direction, it doesn’t help at all that sometimes just swinging too high in certain areas by complete accident can result in the same fatality. Fire and water also hate you. In water you will start to drown, and the camera will so cheekily choose the most obscured angle so only to make it more aggravating to locate a surface to grip on to. Fire is some strange supernatural force, which being in a three foot distance from will kill you long before you have a chance to realize what’s happened.

For a game based entirely around physics and momentum, those elements can be really off sometimes. Learning the gist of how the game’s variation of gravity works takes forever, and even by the end you may not be completely on top of it. If I had to pass on a word of wisdom it’s to not focus on propelling Spencer foreward (as you can be surprised just how bad overshooting it can result) but to just simplify it into when you hold on and let go of the grapple button. Spencer also only likes to jump on perfectly flat surfaces, which becomes a huge pain in the ass during that worm boss. Oh, speaking of, the last boss battle is boring, no wait, that was the second last boss battle. The LAST last boss battle is when the game suddenly becomes a quick time event. Hmph... What else should I talk about. Uhhhhh weeellll there’s...

+/- Really Well Hidden Collectibles?

Here I was thinking Spiderman 2 crafted me into the basset hound shit of collectible finding when in swings Bionic Commando to clock me on the head and prove me wrong. There are some levels which seem to be nothing but a straight and narrow corridor and even with an eagle eye you can somehow make it to the end missing four out of five glowing blue achievement/trophy fodder.

++/ Alarm Heat

We have here a game riddled with dumb design choices and desperately needs to be taken into the garage for some fine tuning, but the graphics are so nice and the gameplay isn’t awful enough to really throw this one in the trash. I’ll let you get away with it this time GRIN, but consider yourself on strike one.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game (PC/PS3/XB360, Dev: Terminal Reality, Pub: Atari, Rated T)

Lowdown:

+++ I don’t want to say “busting makes you feel good” but busting does make you feel good so if anyone can come up with another header-pun that hasn’t already been beaten to death please send it to kingfrankensteinATsteelbananas.com

Remember how well The Warriors game nailed being The Warriors game? Well they've done it again! (they being video games not they being Rockstar) The game knew that people would seek this game for one looming reason alone, over indulgent fan service. And you get it. You capture Slimer. You blast Stay Puft to goo. Proton streams look EXACTLY like proton streams. And may I make the suggestion to buy the slam dunk trap thing ASAP in the game, as not only does it make capturing the ghosts easier, it also gives the sort of satisfaction deservant of a high five for literally SLAMMIN' a ghost into your trap. Now I know a lot of you bigger nerds out there are wondering about the whole "they used the never used third script" thing they marketed early on. In a way I believe them, though only if they meant it incredibly loosely, regardless...

+ If you like the first more than the second I got good news for you. For everyone else, who are you?

Basically it's a near direct follow up to the first. After a mysterious chain of events resurrected the most merchandiseable foes of the Ghostbusters, the boys in beige discover that it is all at the hands of Ivo Shandor... You know, Ivo Shandor, the guy responsible for the Gozer summoning in the first place? You play as an un-named new guy, which would have been annoying if he suffered from "new guy in established series" syndrome, but these are some crafty writers. The rookie is mute, the only non-talker in the pack of yokels, not even encouraged to show character in case he ever blows up from malfunctioning gear and the last thing Venkman wants to do is mourn someone he liked. Yes, the game seems to have the pitch the second should have, only with the virtual ability to bypass special effects budgets and all. GB2 is pretty much mentioned in passing, you can chit chat with a depowered Vigo in the firehall and you get the slime blower sans animated statue of liberty but otherwise the game is all about servicing the first, which I'm sure many will appreciate. Shout outs to Tully are nice too, but it's weird that they only ever reference Dana as a sort of event instead of a character, nevermind Oscar. Okay okay I get it I'm dorking, fine let me complain about a legit problem.

-- Every kind of multiplayer except the one you want

You get some versus variations and a compacted concept of co-op, but if the first thing you want to do with Ghostbusters' is play through with a bud, nevermind one in the same room, through the main story, then tough. There is no story co-op, and absolutely no local multiplayer. You cannot go through the game with anyone but yourself. Which get's especially nervwracking with the...

+/- Bittersweet Life System

On on hand, ripping off Gears of War payed off by making the player add just one more bit of strategy and team work. On top of keeping on top of your proton pack's heat and enemy weaknesses, a player must maintain the health of fellow Ghostbusters. It means that entering a battle you should try to remain conscious of where your team is, keeping close enough to help but far enough from becomming a big ass target. Though that is only some of the time. The game doesn't seem to keep a head on a level structure, and sometimes there will just be moments of overpowered bosses and uncontrollable ambushes. In short it really sucks to be fallen and wait forty seconds for a teammate only to learn they aren't going to make it. A real shame in a game with...

++ Near Perfect Pacing

The most impressive aspect of Ghostbusters is how well balanced the pace is. You are never too overloaded with fighting, traveling, PKE spirit hunting or just looking at the scenery. On top of which, the character banter - all supported by original cast - is almost constant and always charming. It's just so damn right, it's spooky.

++++ Alarm Heat

I can't hate on the game. I had a dumb smile on my face so tightly plastered I should have an XBox achivement earned for being able to ever wipe it off. The game feels just one level short length wise. Which is a shame because later I read online they cut exactly one level from the gaming, the most "welp" moment of the month, but regardless those who are going to seek out this game already know who they are. And to them, yes, you will enjoy it.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (Wii, Pub/Dev: EA, Rated E)

Lowdown: Oh yeah, this guy right here knows how to buy a father’s day gift in style.

++ Yeah, WiiMotion Plus Sort of Rules

I know I know, the Wii has never really been the dream machine that guy you know that raved about Wii Boxing for the first time made it sound. The Wii’s never really been THAT great at tracking your movement as much as it just tracked your movements at all. Well, complain about how it should have been god’s gift from the get go all you want but this little dohickey work’s like a charm. It’s not some heaven sent miracle, it doesn’t track motion one for one, but it’s pretty close. The easiest time to tell is during Frisbee golf, watching the disc on the screen trace the motions of the Wiimote in your hand does warm the stomach. As great as this all sounds though, there is one embarrassing side effect...

- Things Are Harder Because They Are Better

If you are like me and have long since been over compensating for the Wii’s motion fussiness, especially the kind experienced way back in WiiSport’s golf, Tiger Woods may come as a bit of a function shock. Because the controls are so much tighter, you’ll pretty much have to re-evaluate everything you’ve ever known about the Wiimote and you. It takes time, a lot of time, and you’ll be lowering your head in shame alongside cyber Tiger (or cyber Weir if you got a bud) for quite a while, but other than that the game is...

+ Crazy Easy To Pick Up

I could leave it at, "my dad can play it". So I will.

+ But There's Still Junk For Golf Junkies

I could leave it at "my dad kept saying 'Hey that's actually the course they were playing on TV earlier today". So I will.

++ Best Throw ins in the History of Video Games

One of the most unusual points the game earns is for what is usually the most superfluous additions to any other game. Mini games. The mini games in Tiger Wood's are all charming, well crafted and most importantly addictive. The physics in the frisbee golf courses make it seem as if they originally concepted to make it it's own release. Even though getting a grasp on distancing takes some time, the game has a knack for rewarding a good throw over semantics.

++++/ Alarm Heat

I could leave it at, "my dad, brother and I had a real fun family blast playing this game, which hasn't been this mutually easy to do since Boom Blox." So I will.

Anime North is an annual, three-day, non-profit anime convention, Canada’s biggest with nearly 15,000 attendees, taking place a gunshot away from Lester B. Pearson International Airport between the Toronto Congress Center, the Doubletree Hotel across the street, and the Renaissance Hotel just over the bridge. Despite the name, the convention is a polyamorous embrace of general geek culture: video games, manga, and obviously Japanese animation. The illustrious King Frankenstein and I are attending the second day of the event, Saturday May 24th, and while this is my first encounter with an anime convention KF has attempted to psychologically prep me, insisting that it would be legitimately disappointing, stressing the crushing despair of anime fandom, groaning when I attempt a defence, relating to me the Tiers of Anime Fans, enumerating that I’m “the Downloader¹, the second tier. Below you is the Casual Fan, people with fond memories of a series like Dragonball Z, and above you is the Preteen who’s really into Dragonball Z like any other Saturday morning cartoon.” The last level, he explains, is the Relentless Japanophile, to whom if something is not Japanese it is not worth their time, and this will be the common stature of the Anime North population.

To the virgin convention attendee, the first dive into the cosplaying masses is a vertiginous one. If you’re emotionally distant and not especially scholarly on this stuff², the people seem to disintegrate into a maelstrom of fluorescent colours and cartoon cosmetics. I came with pretensions of playing Guess the Reference, immediately spotting one apt and three poor reproductions of Link³, a few sad-looking girls dressed as Princess Zelda, an in-shape Sheik, the recent red-on-black Team Rocket costume, two fat plush Pikachus, a mind-boggling approximation of Psyduck, and an onslaught of sickles and swords. Nevertheless, about 90% of the costumes go directly over my head, and I’m left staring bewildered at the crowds. Someone yells “YOU JUST LOST THE GAME” and frustrated people yell back. I’m feeling self-conscious about wearing a plaid shirt purchased at Black Market with a Kill Rock Stars handbag slung over my shoulder, like these minor fashion items set me off from the crowd by default when, in all likelihood, no one is watching.

In search of our press tags, we are directed across Dixon Road towards the Doubletree Hotel. Crystal Castles’ “Crimewave” remix booms out of concert speakers that will otherwise pump chirpy j-pop all day. Some of these costumes are just gobsmack-worthy, and some of these people genuinely look too cool to be here⁴.

We’ve been here for maybe fifteen minutes.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Punch-Out!! (Wii, Pub: Nintendo, Dev: Next Level Games, Rated E10+)

Lowdown:

+++ Can’t Knock the Design (Heh Heh WHAT A PUN RIGHT!)

If I’m the first source to tell you, Punch-Out!! is not really a fighting game, straight up. It’s a pattern recognition and reflex game. You go head to head with another ethnicity, memorize their tells until it is god DAMN chiselled into the ripples of your membrane and fight and fight until you win. It isn’t much, but for what it is Next Level have perfected it. The game never fights against you, it’s the classic struggle challenge, slanted not stacked, if you keep at it you will eventually come out on top. And it will feel great. So if it sticks so close to its dukes...

+/- Is It Really a Remake?

Which if that is the question, the answer is neither yes or no. It isn’t exactly a mirror image of either the NES or SNES gems, but at the same time there isn’t much material that isn’t lifted directly. Every returning fighter has all their old moves, but they’ve been tweaked enough for a much more bravado presentation, far more interesting and deep moments to exploit weaknesses. Depth has been added, yet everything is still exactly the same. Even as far as the fighter roster goes, there’s only one new fighter (two if you count “the secret”) who becomes the least memorable of the bunch. I guess I could whine about the roster being lacking, but sans Dragon Chan there aren’t any missing memorable fighters. Soda, Hippo, Glass, Bull, Macho Man, Flamenco, they’re all here in glorious looking new form. If only you could play as them...

+/- Multiplayer Sure is... There

Funny, I always had my fingers crossed that the new Punch-Out!! would have multiplayer, but it never really struck me how awkward the game would translate into a non-mono experience. It’s balanced, yes, and a creative translation of the gameplay to fit a multiplayer form. It’s just not very fun, and while whaling on your bud as the “Giga Mac” can be charming, it sure would have been swell to be able to play as, I don’t know, not Little Mac for once. Aw well, c’est la vie.

++++ Alarm Heat

Punch-Out!! is a triumph, and the sort of off the beaten path experience the Wii could use. It’s simple enough for anyone to pick up and play, but brutally difficult later on for only the dedicated to rise above. This is the part of the review where I would sneak in another boxing pun.

inFamous (PS3, Pub: SCE, Dev: Sucker Punch, Rated T)

Lowdown: Starting to understand why inner city thugs don’t receive better education. If they started learning super science and gave themselves a bunch of super mega powers we’d all be fuuuucked.

+++ Go Fast, My Cole, Go Fast

Sucker Punch had priorities with this one. There is the usual parkour with every action game these days, but it’s not something that’ll occupy you. There is a sandbox world, but you won’t find yourself digging in every little dark corner as the game does a pretty good job of having you traverse over just about every street and alley for missions. Sucker Punch wanted to focus on action, and action they did. The controls are easy, and while some snobs may scoff at how magnetically Cole snaps onto ledges and surfaces, it makes for a much smoother ride than constantly tripping over your own virtual shoelaces. This is the kind of game where...

++ You Can Do The Sort of Wicked Kool Action Shit You Never Knew You Always Wanted to Do

Able to control which specific hand I use to zap little thugs with? Sure it sounds a little semantic on paper, but when you are hanging of a ledge while shooting at foes below one sneaks past your flank it suddenly becomes so obvious you wonder why it isn’t more popular. You can zap people mid air. You zap people while you skate along zip cords and subway rails. You can float around easy peasy. Killing is easy...

- Living is Tough

There are like a dozen god damn bars and meters on the screen right now and you are telling me none of them are my health? It’s just the old Call of Duty “you die when it all turns moody” thing? Great, but despite that you don’t have the same auto-healing system you’d find in every other game that chooses to swing that way. You will heal, eventually, but it takes its sweet time. You can get an easy booster by draining electricity from any source, much like you do to refill your energy/ability bar/thing which oddly has nothing else to do with your health level. Wacky huh? On top of which, much like Crackdown, enemies have this wicked habit of waiting and ambushing almost automatically, and the enemies can fit in so easily with their surroundings you’ll start panicking trying to figure out where the hell the bullets are coming from.

+/- Morality Sure is... There

Yeah, another game with a morality system. And like in every other game it’s saving orphans or removing their legs. It is nice that they do in fact have a direct relation with the gameplay and not just another alternative ending. The powers you unlock directly coincide with how down you are with your good or bad self, and it’s also the difference between civilians cheering for you or throwing rocks when you pass.

+/- And as For the Plot

Nothing sparkling here, though the writing is fine, the pacing is great and characters are charming, it doesn’t have anything to make it become more outstanding (a big problem with Prototype being released on its tail.) The biggest problem with the story, as with any conspiracy based drama, as that it’s all about the twists, which seem to act far more sneaky than they actually are despite pretty much throwing you every bone in the skeleton. Mostly spoilers come through the “dead drop” audio recordings you pick up, which on occasion will flat out tell you what’s about to happen. Also why it seems everyone who’s heard of you managed to learn your phone number somehow as well? Okay I’m done.

++++/ Alarm Heat

It’s not the perfect action game, but inFamous takes so many steps in the right direction that it’s a must play for anyone who’s been antsing for a serious action fix. Or for the person who dresses up like Electro at comicons.

The Legendary Starfy (DS, Pub: Nintendo, Dev: TOSE, Rated E)

Lowdown: By “Legendary” they mean “was an assist trophy in Smash Bros.”

+/- How Cute?

If you are a ten year old girl this game is beckoning you. You play as a cute widdle star fish from cute widdle star fish land and explore a magical ocean filled with fun bubbles and sparkle rainbows. Actually you know what, listing it all down like that sort of peaks it. So on second thought...

- So... Cute

It gets a little obscene. Everything that moves makes a cutsey noise. Starfy particularly has this pressing whine it does every time, I don’t know, something happens. They also look like those bulk puppets when they talk, you know, those people puppets they sell at craft fairs with the beady eyes and mouth creases. They also do this really... weird thing whenever they speak to each other where their illustration will bob up n’ down, open and close their mouths and turn side to side rabidly, and it just looks a little too... Excited. Okay yeah, it’s an iddy biddy kiddy game, is it a good iddy biddy kiddy game?

- I Guess It’s... Alright

There’s nothing wrong with the lil’ whatsit, but there’s nothing at all interesting with it either. As a platformer, it’s flat and adequate. As a Nintendo effort, it’s disappointing. As a Nintendo effort stateside gamers have been requesting to get an import treatment, it’s puzzling. The graphics get the job done. There are collectibles, outfits mostly to make Starfy even more adowable. It strays far past the easy line, even for kids. There are puzzles but they’re as straight forward and vanilla as they come. You just breeze through this.

++ Alarm Heat

I’d say the game was aiming for kids, but come one, kids know better and are knee deep in Gears of War right now. If you’re a twelve year old at heart, have seen Finding Nemo more times than your brain can process and games that fight back scare you this will probably become your favourite thing. To all the other gamers that couldn’t accept that Nintendo had a franchise they were withholding from us, all I have to say is what was ever wrong with Kirby?

NiGHTS: Journey into Dreams (Wii, Pub/Dev: Sega, Rated E)

Lowdown: Listen I’m not moneybags, so let’s just pretend the following two games came out this year...

+/- The Gameplay is Fine... Mostly

For fans of the original NiGHTS, don’t fret. They have in fact dragged up the ol’ twirlin’ bird for the new generation. The missions based around the old style of gameplay work the best, interesting uses of the system for boss battles in a close second. Zooming around in circles is as sensitive as it used to be, and I’m torn to say if the new motion controls work because at times it felt perfect while others grew a mind of its own. Then again I was too lazy to sit up from the couch to look the screen head on, which may have played its own part. Levels that aren’t based on the old system however, cannot be so easily complimented. There are levels that then take a foreword on approach, placing the camera square behind NiGHTS as you fly into things and fly not into things. Unfortunately the trail which NiGHTS travels along is a schizophrenic one, and being able to control based upon where you expect the camera to lean next is a chore, even after the second, third time, suffice to say...

-- The Camera Sucks... Entirely

There is no fluid camera system fixated on this one. From walking around as your whiny kid avatar to it taking a sharp turn in mid-flight, it’s stubbornness and unpredictability make it hard to see what you need to be looking at. The things you look at on the screen, by the way...

-- The Graphics Suck... Practically

It feels as if there were several different teams tackling the game. Some character models look slick, smooth and imaginative with fluid animation. By which I mean NiGHTS and the bosses. Everything else is a wreck. Your human avatar look like the kind you see in browser side pop-ups, they’re even bigger eye-sores in 3D. Landscapes are practically a single texture draped down on the entire thing like sheets, and for a world in dreams there’s nothing anymore inspired that what you’d see in every other Team Sonic game ever made. So the vision of dreams is not aesthetically pleasing, though...

+ The Music is Good... For the Most Part

What, I’m not heartless. The music is pretty swell.

++/ Alarm Heat

I would say they should have not tried to revolutionize the wheel on this one, but that would insinuate the new material shoved into the NiGHTS world is revolutionary. NiGHTS is a mixed blessing, you get more of the classic gameplay that Miyamoto himself had been quoted for wishing he created, with a whole lot of garbage you really just want to skip to get to the next fun part. Plus loading times. It’s tough, but if you’re reading this still thinking “but man I still really want to play that” then don’t let me stop you. Wait what am I saying, at this point you probably already have.

Comments

• March 11, 2010, prototype game writes: prototype game... Your topic Arcade Feed: ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE " Breaking The Game was interesting when I found it on Thursday searching for prototype game...

Back down the corridors of my mind, in the darker ends, covered in dust and thorns lies a chest. A chest of guilt, of secrets and of poisons that the very passing of through the rest of my lobe sends shivers coiling down my spine. Somewhere among the clutter of these objects lay a doozie. A monolith package, covered in angry etchings of dark’d up robot masters and Offspring stickers is an anthology of memories - they aren’t all bad memories per se, but they are memories of an identity I would prefer to leave in a layer of dust on my shelf next to the Jr High till grade ten yearbooks which coincide along with it. But even left untouched it steams and rattles, broadcasting echoes that never silence. They tell me of a doesn’t-know-better youth who threw away what could have been a healthy social life style for viral video in-jokes and raggedy hair raging against the nothing. A youth I prefer to think I grew out of. A youth who liked anime.

Oh boy did that youth love anime. The hand printed t-shirts that faded after the second wash, nestling in the dust balled end of my closet will always remind me. Untouched Cowboy Bebop DVDs will always remind me. The relatives who I haven’t seen in half a half a decade whose anchor for conversation is, “Didn’t you used to like, what was it called? Japanime?” will always remind me. But it’s a skin I try to ravage off my flesh frantically like Lady Macbeth. If any cohort even so much as sort-of-likes anime I will usually distance myself and tease them, coining a phrase like, “it was pretty bad, yeah, but at least it wasn’t ANIME.” I don’t know what I’m afraid of, being associated perhaps, slipping back down more likely, but for these NERDVENTURES I wanted to explore all the aspects of dork living, and thus far I’ve either been rambling about events and occasions that already happened or that I was probably going to attend anyways. It’s time to push, do something that I not only did not plan to do but really did not want to do. I had to go back into the core of this black matter, a dense thick molasses that stains Anime North, the thing of the year for anime nerds. I remember back in the heaviest of times saying that Anime North was the best weekend of the year, having no other memorable weekend event for a basement recluse to get thrilled about. It was a place where I could ignore being the butt end of healthy social behaviour and instead relish among others who as well would like to keep their minds absent of the outside world. They were people, paper thin to boulder thick with a few all too unusually attractive girls garbed like ninjas I had never heard of sprinkled on top, celebrating this thing they devoted themselves to, or at least celebrating that they refused to devote themselves to anything else. I stuck in there, celebrating every moment of it. Any notable thing occurred would then become a year surviving anecdote. We ordered a pizza for our room ate it all and wrote “free pizza” on the box while it was in fact empty, leaving it in the lobby and gloating about it as we watched for twenty minutes from a distance to see if any poor fool would end up peering to see if there was delectable fate. I think I juiced that one for a few months on MSN. It came down to that. Changing people’s desktop wallpapers to anime porn, sitting in on screening rooms doing little behind your ear commentary thinking we were the king of comedy. It was the best of time, but man, it was the saddest of time.

So here I return, back to the Toronto Congress Center with Delan, who I can’t remember how sarcastic he was when requesting to be referred to as Young Deezy, as well as who’s article coincides with mine (though far more extensively (no seriously, Deezy, what the hell) ) driven by my dad who actually anticipated the event, remembering driving me up in the past looked forward to seeing what all the wacky nerds were dressed like this year (not as if he would actually know what they are, but a spectacle is a spectacle). Because Young Deezy has so vividly has gone over the specific events as new patron, I will open the window to you to see as a reluctant returner.

We stepped out of the car when I loudly farewelled my dad so that every nerd around could hear. I adjusted my classy cap of a hat rearin’ to start hating. Start hating the fat ones, the fursuits and the forced Japanese lingo. Mouth foaming to tear these Japanophiles a new one, I told myself that maybe I could come back seeking retribution from my Anime riddled past, but more modestly I would have to admit I mostly sought revenge. A jab for every wasted Friday night, a slit for every reference made during drama class that floated over my peers turning heads. So let’s go, come on bring it. It’s on.

We hit the mass head on. The costumed lurking towards the registration line, impromptu blockades condensing with little notice as Naruto group cosplayers readied for future Facebook pics. We floated past the line, awaiting press passes that awaited us, though it’s exact location seemingly unknown all volunteers at the information desk. Figuring out who exactly was staff was a task upon itself. There seemed to be attendees dressed like figures of authorities, military, police, robed death incarnate, hanging around entrances and exits, though it all eerily seemed to be “part of the act”. Deezy’s mood seemed to swing opaquely, like every time I turned to face him he was experiencing new shades of wonder, delight, terror and discomfort, while for the most part fiendishly taking down notes (which yeah I guess shows in his final product, the show horse). I on the other hand was still searching for which variation of spite I wanted to litter this piece with.

We met up with my pal Hannah, who would join me and Deezy in dodging cosplayers while keeping her radar active for any interesting blips. She ranted that it was impolite, or against some invisible code to photograph attendants without asking them to pose, but I couldn’t bring myself around to it, maybe because I prefer more natural captures, maybe because I don’t want a folder full of fifty cutesy peace signs.

It was when we were traveling over the bridge from one hotel to the other that something began to sink it. It wasn’t a tidal wave or rush of feelings, it was vague and almost apathetic, but most of all troubling. It came to a head when I was in the yaoi room, watching a film called “The King and the Clown”, which if it wasn’t for actually being in the yaoi room, I would have never associated the flick with two sandblasted androgyni floating down on top of each other. Seerus now, from memory I only recall a single dude on dude kiss. As for the feeling, no it wasn’t riled from the movie, in fact it was riled from something that happened but moments before. There was a vending machine in the hallway, the kind with the pansy wristed claw that couldn’t hold your soda if you asked nicely. In it was Punch-Out!!, the very game I intended on buying once the weekend was over. I got angry, I got really really angry. I knew that no matter how many dollars I would pump into the machine, even if it never equated to how much the game would cost in stores, I would never be able to claim the flat, ridgeless game case. I felt helpless, angry, disappointed and confused. And it was the only time I felt angry it the entire day, when walking into the day I had fully expected to hold that note throughout.

I had come to AN with my engine purring to stamp down my final judgement on my anime self. Slam the case shut, sealed and break free from the shadowing memories. Instead something else shined. It must have already happened, without even realizing I did it. I must have escaped anime some time ago, frantically sweating over something which was never even a problem (you know what, that makes total sense, I fucking do that all the time.) When I saw these kids, which they were, they were kids for the most part, I had at least three years on the bulk of them, I couldn’t find myself linking or digging into them. The rage or scoffing or groaning I anticipated experiencing seeing hopeful anthropomorphs and internet in-jokes on t-shirt mediums was absent completely. It started to feel my feet weren’t even standing on the ground below me, that I had become a complete spectator, outside of this bubble I came to submerge in. It wasn’t a crowd to despise or mock, just a crowd I had grown out of.

There was one last chance to rill up some feelings at the evening ending j-pop dance party. In past years it was sort of the swan song of the event, having spent what would be two full days nervously watching perdy to adequate anime girls from a distance it was the occasion to get up-closer and impersonal. It was such a big deal back in the day, one embarrassing anecdote comes to mind from the hours building up to the first encounter. One friend, who constantly spoke of the thing like some sort of Woodstock level event said that catgirls would be flashing their tits all over the place and drugs handed out upon a silver platter at the door. Which if I remember correctly, the evening ended with me and a bunch of nerds making a human pyramid, some homely girls coming back to my room to play DDR and be whined about by a roommate trying to sleep. So, did this year’s encounter spark any lights? It seemed to be a different beast altogether. For one, it was now outdoors, with an armada of ice cream trucks at the helm, I could only imagine an ice cream man locker room with an ice cream man coach prepping them for such a strange and surreal evening. There was loud Japanesey music blasting to levels that riveted the ears, but as for the dancing the most it mustered was a conga line. Sexual tension? I hope not, once again I felt like an Aztec temple there. Deezy, after telling me openly how pleased he was with the day, all day, suddenly turned grim and tugged at my sleeve to vamoose for the TTC bus.

Waiting at the bus stop by the hotel, cars cruised by, filled with norms honking in delight, though one vehicle full of rowdy dudes did shout out how retarded everyone looked. In the line in front of us was a girl, our age (I hope), dressed adorably like Link playing her ocarina quietly to herself. I told her I didn’t know the thing actually worked, as if it was only for show, which was a lie because having a Nintendo Power subscription as a kid I knew very well the thing could play. She smirked and asked me if I had any requests, though I didn’t have time to follow through as the push into the bus had us separated by two dudes that fashioned bike parts and Supersoakers into steampunk gear. Deezy and I proceeded to study for an exam that we actually had the following day, but I couldn’t get my mind to stop bumbling around ideas on how to re-break the ice with Link lass once we got off the bus. When we did arrive at Lawrence West, I picked up the conversation with her as if it had never been broken, though she told me she didn’t feel like playing much anymore and we were permanently distanced by the coming of my train and not hers.

Damn, I guess you can take the anime out of me but the loser is here to stay.

Bayonetta

Matt- Really not sure what to make of this just yet.

King- I think I’ve seen all I needed to see even before E3.

Matt- It seems every week someone is promising to turn the action genre around and change people’s lives forever.

King- Oh, I just meant that hot librarian’s butt.

Matt- Sometimes I think designers should be forced to go through a Canada Council of the Arts grant application to learn some modesty.

King- You can see her butt, Matt.

Alan Wake

Matt- This one seems to be under tight wraps. As the studio that produced Max Payne, I really hope the ‘psychological’ element is more than running around blood trail labyrinths in a dream.

King- IT’S ALL A DREAM. HE’S IN A COMA.

Matt- Neverending Story meets Max Payne meets Pitch Black? Maybe. I just hope that “story-driven” means more than “things happen”.

King- IT’S A BOOK. YOU ARE STEVEN KING’S CHARACTER. HE’S ALREADY DEAD. HE IS THE MONSTER!

Matt- It’s incredible how the video games will pitch “story-driven”, but many designers and writers do not fully understand plot.

King- THE GAME WAS DELAYED AGAIN AND THIS WHOLE THING IS IN YOUR MIIIIND

Natal

Matt- It’s kind of hard to talk about E3 without talking about Natal. Could easily be the most exciting thing on the horizon for games.

King- A little too freaky future for me, personally. I like the game, gamer voyeurism to be one way. What will the Xbox think of me when it finally sees my face. I wonder if this is what e-dating is like.

Matt- Of course, we need to see more than the nuclear Microsoft family demonstrating it, but initial reports are saying the movement tracking is pretty solid. I think there is huge potential for Natal to be combined with the existing controller.

King- Don’t be silly Matt, the Xbox controller doesn’t even have a iddy biddy strap. That’s a total hazard.

Matt- And I am sure porn game developers are getting a hard on.

King- Which brings me back to the fact this whole Xbox can see me is a little unnerving.

Not Natal

King- JUST HIT THE DAMN TENNIS BALL!

Matt- Pffft. Nice wands, Sony. I wonder if they were even planning on showing this?

King- HIT IT, HIT IT GOD DAMMIT.

Matt- Anyways… good luck with that, guys.

FF 13/14

Matt- In the same year?

King- Is that even legal?

Matt- Well, I guess that makes up for the long wait for 13. I just really need Final Fantasy to break out of the formula. This is a series in desperate need of some fresh air. It’s starting to feel like I’m buying the same game over and over again. But, if people are buying…

King- And they are.

Matt- I really hope they learned a lot about MMORPGs since 11 – which was atrocious in my mind (I was bored after grinding to LEVEL 10). They really should look closely at Guild Wars to find more appeal to the casual player, rather than the Red Bull chugging grinder with no life outside the basement.

King- Anyone outside of their basement is waaaaay out of their demographic.

Beatles

King- “The graphics sure are neat-o.”

Matt- Shut up Ringo.

Wii Vitality

Matt- I don’t even know where I can start with this.

King- Like an Onion article in motion.

Matt- It goes on your finger and measures how your blood is flowing. But if you build it, they will come. If Nintendo makes it, people will buy it. They aren’t some perverse mad scientist whipping up vile concoctions in a darkened lab somewhere, hoping someone will buy it in the long run. No, Nintendo is VERY aware of their demographic, especially the growth of fitness gaming. This was probably dreamt up in a marketing meeting.

King- Whatever, I don’t need this to put me to sleep. Kingdom Hearts 2 is doing a fine job.

James Cameron’s Journey into James Cameron

King- I think I know what it would be like to have James Cameron as my dungeon master.

Matt- Did Ubisoft get more than they bargained for? Was some French guy sitting back stage whispering “please shut up” over and over again like some sort of froggish sorcerer?

King- No just Pele.

Matt- I don’t even need to see the movie now. And I am not that excited about the game either – it sounds like many other games, only it’s innovative because the Titanic man says so?

King- When you make the highest grossing film of all time I guess it just opens up a lot of windows.

Women’s Murder Club

Matt- That’s the best name available? Really? I know it’s based on a series of shitty grocery store paperbacks, but REALLY? You are a writer and that’s the best you can come up with?

King- Lady Genocide Krew.

Matt- I’d buy that in a heartbeat, as would my girlfriend.

King- Little Girl Slayer Society.

Matt- *Dodges brick from Feminists*

Milo

King- Finally, my very own British ten year old.

Matt- I have a strict policy of never listening to Peter Molyneux. He always goes puppy-eyed when talking about how innovative his projects are, but still manages to make some of the most boneheaded design decisions ever. He is an over-rated hype machine. Does Milo look interesting? Fuck yes. Will it work as advertised? Fuck no. Lionhead did NOT turn into some state-of-the-art AI developer overnight. It will be a game. Milo will not have responses to everything you say and do.

King- But my day...

Matt- And I bet everything you don’t see in the PR video is going to so poorly design and sluggish that it won’t matter if Milo can respond to you dancing naked in front of the TV.

King- Imagine what it would be like to have Molyneux as your dad. “Yeah my son can tap into emotions unlike any other son. Truly evolves along with his peers. Dogs? Pfft, my son has fucking eight dogs.”

Orson Scott Card + Dude Huge = …

Matt- “…” indeed. This man has been very protective of Ender’s Game being made into a film because he has yet to find anyone to do it proper. But maybe they will manage to do Shadow Complex right, who knows? We will wait and see.

King- AS LONG AS I CAN BLOW UP A ROBOT FUCK YEAH

Gran Turismo

King- Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Matt- I’ll never understand why people get excited about car damage. I would come smash up your family minivan with a hammer free of charge.

King- Matt I think you are missing the entire purpose of video games.

Academy of Champions

King- If Space Jam taught me anything this is a great idea.

Modern Warfare

Matt- Good! I was in desperate need of a new medium to talk shit to tweens.

MAG

Matt- See Modern Warfare

King- More Angry Gamers

SAW

King- Dude, Jigsaw, I have thrown Nico Belic off apartment complexes on a flaming cycle. Tossed super Mario into a black hole just to see what it looks like. Intentionally turned the wrong way in Dragon’s Lair. What makes you think I won’t have this dude walk across some broken glass barefoot?

Matt- SURPRISE! Another game that is completely clueless about plot development. Story does not equal plot.

King- Somehow putting your arm into a toilet full of syringes loses its edge when it’s a minigame.

Other M

Matt- What the fuck is this?

King- Not M.

Splinter Cell

Matt- Never been interested in the series myself. Ummm… not sure why beating the shit out of someone for information is considered entertaining, but hey, if people watch SAW.

King- But finally a personality!

Matt- The objectives projected into the game environment is interesting. The industry is definitely moving towards a HUD-less world, and I think it’s a good thing – as long as the information is readily available and we don’t need to jump through hoops to get it.

King- By which I hope you don’t mean having Fisher jump through actual hoops, that could be pretty boss given the right circumstances.

The Old Republic

Matt- The MMO market it starting to get crowded. I am waiting for Star Trek online. Oh wait, we’re talking about Star Wars.

King- Hey, KOTR was like the only good Star Wars we can nourish from in these dark prequelly times. Oooh ooh. I wonder what a conversation between C3PO and HK-47 would sound like...

Matt- Ummm...

King- Probably like a nerd talking to himself in the mirror...

All Points Boobietons

King- Finally, breasts in a video game.

Matt- Someone should create a Booth Babe MMO. Fight off nerds, buy equipment and work the show floor to become queen of E3.

King- Hey have you seen my copy of Soul Calibur?

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (Multi, Pub: Atari, Dev: Starbreeze Studios, Rated M)

Lowdown:

++ Even if you don’t like Vin Diesel this is still the best of Vin Diesel

Vin Diesel’s professional role of being macho man pedal slammer to Disney movie hilariDad probably doesn’t fancy everyone, but if I had to choose just ooooone version of Vin to take home to Ma and Pa it would have to be Riddick. Sure, maybe Vin doesn’t pull any acting muscles as Richard B. Riddick but one can debate that Vin simply is Riddick. Minus you know, the killing and stuff. He gruffs machismos and while near the end his hopefully-poetry on being BFF’s with the dark may get a lil’ absurd it’s really hard to hate Riddick because he’s too psychotically likable. I can’t think of anything since M.A.S.H. that crossed over the realms of mediums so seamlessly till Chronicles o’ Riddick became a better game than movie. With this second entry, which includes the first entry, it is now a better game series than movie series. Playing both games side-by-side (and I’ll confess this is the first time I played through Butcher’s entire Bay) really makes the priorities stand out sore. So to put it blandly...

+/- Dark Athena isn’t inferior, just different

While most of the gameplay and story elements seem to bridge to Athena, purists won’t find a mirror image waiting for them on the other side... Well not completely. Many of the more role playing elements have been removed mostly if not entirely. If you were really really fond of the prison yard meet and greets of Butcher Bay then you will be slightly sour to find there is no spiritual successor in Athena, which is far more of a linear action experience (Personally I was always torn about those parts because while it did mix-it-up-a-notch crossing over three loading screens repeatedly to just talk to someone got a little tiresome.) There are side quests in Athena, two of them actually, and neither are major detours from what you as Riddick were doing anyways. Story wise the two go hand in hand. Athena takes place right off the heels of Butcher Bay, though the two stories side by side are almost a little too similar. I guess one can just argue Riddick is just really good at escaping things and causing jail cell riots. What’s really impressive and only noticeable when contrasting the two entries is just how...

++ Hand in hand plot goes with gameplay

When Riddick gets kidnapped for the umpteenth time, it’s not the same ol’ story all over again. Where the Bay was run by malignant assholes, Dark Athena is run by soulless malignant assholes. A major plot point is that this rogue bounty ship breaks all the rules and instead of trading their captives they kill them and turn them into android slave drones. Butcher Bay employees used DNA tagged guns, which won’t be found here, instead Athena play’s it safe and straight up superglues the guns to their drone’s hands, so instead of being able to pick up your kill’s rifle you'll need to drag the body along with you to satisfy your trigger happiness. This minute game detail, this tiny lil’ thing spins up the gameplay variety fourfold through new approaches to puzzles and strategy. And do make sure to thoroughly plot your course because god DAMN...

- Riddick is a bullet’s bitch

I don’t get it, I thought Riddick was some beef macho core don’t-mess-round kind of motherfucker. Why does it take three seconds in front of one knucklebrain to take down everything Riddick has. I know the game intentionally plays up the stealth, but it feels like no matter how much health I have it won’t matter come being spotted by a super guard. This whole fragile Riddick thing becomes a big issue for two different reasons in both chapters. For Butcher Bay, the game has this really uncanny ability to perfectly remember who was in what room when you last left it, so if you, say, miss stabbing a guard in the neck and come back to find that he rounded up some buddies to pummel your face in with gun at a particular end of the room with no cover, well, tough beans. In Dark Athena, just two words really, spider turret. Those little wieners turn otherwise action segments into, “memorize where each of them are the hard way” segments. And they make this noise... Augh.

- Oh, and Pitch Black mode should have been “all that.”

But it isn’t. Basically, in concept it sounds sweet. One person gets to be Riddick, while everyone else gets to be his prey. You all run around in the dark like a bunch of fodder goofs trying to kill the Riddick and whoever succeeds gets to be nu-Riddick. Sounds fun? Well it should have been, but the designers made it so that everytime the Riddick torch is passed on the game restarts with players at spawning points, which depending on skill levels can make for something really frantic and hard to enjoy. Yyyyeeppers.

++++/ Alarm Heat (Full five if you’ve never played Butcher’s Bay)

Alone, Dark Athena is a really slick experience with really good pacing and baddies so despicable you can’t help but claw their jugulars. Put Butcher Bay on top of it all, despite its age, it just don’t get much slicker. Vin Diesel founded Tigon studios, which oversees game development on titles which all end up starring Vin Diesel. It sounds dumb as hell but so far the bi-products are curiously better than most otherwise modest efforts, I don’t know what the un-vain are doing wrong but they really gotta pick up the slack before “massive un-checked ego” becomes a healthy politic in the gaming industry... Again.

OutRun Online Arcade (XB360, Pub: Sega, Dev: Sumo Digital, Rated E)

Lowdown: I got my girl, I got my sunshine, I got my Ferrari.

+++ Summer time = Funner time

Maybe it’s the sun peering through my window or my backyard plant life looking unusually spry but damn it to hell I think summer’s here. And you know what’s totally swinging with that vibe? This damn video game. You hop in a selection of Ferrari’s, from slick looking to boxy ol’ assumedly retro entries (I... Don’t know my Ferrari) and soon Tokyo drift into the sunset. This thing is simple, really easy to pick up, but challenging to conquer. In order to just finish the track you have to shave every wasted second and make your drifts count for every lifted speck of dirt and spark. It all looks really great for a ten dollar download, especially on an HD widescreen (aww yeah always wanted to say that.) The way horizons pop in and out as you travel from one area to another makes racing feel like your zooming through Michel Gondry’s summer vacation. Avacation which can vary from flower gardens to Sega’s patented Casino-type-place to a uhm... Barren arctic processing plant... But hey, regardless of how lonesome you are, every download comes with a virtual girlfriend, which with her brings...

++ Heart Attack mode, it’s a really neat mode, folks

Heart Attack mode is when you are pussy whipped by your fake girlfriend to complete quick paced tasks along the track followed by a standard Sega grade for each. Tasks include demanding that you drift more, collecting coins, passing between specific cars or hitting a bunch of pylons. It sounds basic, but so is the game, and this mode comes with a lot more uplifting variety to the title, which is great because otherwise...

--- This game is desperate for modes

Heart Attack mode is almost teasing, it proves that behind this title were some pretty inspired ideas, ideas that I guess just didn’t have enough fuel to come to fruition. Otherwise you have a standard race mode, time trial and multiplayer (online only to boot, sigh.) You also only get the one track, it’s a big track with many permutations admittedly, but no matter which way you race it, it’ll never last you more than five minutes each run. Okay those are the major issues... But what the hell, I am lord of this article. let’s nitpick two stupid things.

- Lobby waiting is long and dumb and I hate it

Whenever I tried to join an online session the game seemed to keep setting me up with rooms that had just started a race... without me. So, being the sugar blooded impatient need-action-now gamer I am, I exited the room and tried to look for another one... Which the game didn’t let me... Everytime I asked for a quick session it would just pair me back up with the same room over and over again, one which I think the host just left because nothing happened for a solid 15 minutes. And while you wait the game plays the sounds of ocean waves so it’s Xbox is just laughing it’s ass off at you. And speaking of audio...

-/+ Oh... Okay... Thanks for letting me choose my shitty music I guess...

It’s weird, I probably wouldn’t have noticed or cared how bland the music selection is but for whatever crazed reason the game, like your car, colour and driving style, actually has you SELECT which mediocre song you want to race to. I mean come on, this isn’t Crazy Taxi. Shit. Grade eight me fucking LOVED playing Crazy Taxi just to hear that Offspring song over and over.

+++/ Alarm Heat

You don’t get much in this package, but what you do get is pretty challenging, pretty and pretty fun. It’s just a stupid arcade racer that anyone can hop into, and the insanely impossible drifts you will end up pulling off may leave you walking away with laughing material you may have otherwise not expected. As a game, it’s charming. For a gamer’s way to herald in the summer, it’s perfection.

The Dark Spire (DS, Pub: Atlus, Dev: Success, Rated E10+)

Lowdown: Nowadays, RPGs are associated with acrobatic pretty boys for whom fangirls flock to. Atlus remembers a time when RPG’s were associated with lethargic basement dorks who have never had the eyes of a female gaze in their direction.

++ Well they sure know their demographic... I think?

The Dark Spire is a niche game. It’s the nichiest niche game I have ever... niched. They call No More Heroes or Katamari niche games but those games still sell well and have a withstanding audience. The Dark Spire, this isn’t going to sell well at all, but god bless Atlus for making a game that like, thirty people are just going to fawn over. Simply put...

-- You are probably not going to like this game

So what the hell is The Dark Spire? It’s a dorky mother fucking dungeon crawler, far more reminiscent to a fold up table game of D&D than a sparkle blazing game of Final Fantasy. Hard as hell to boot, the first bats you encounter are likely to mop the floor with your thief. There is text upon charming text, stats upon crunching stats, characters you create but never see (lest you doodle them shoddily in your spare time) dungeon hallways to crawl through that never ever seem to end and still frames of foes ripped from the slickest monster manual. So no, in ways of visual spectacle there isn’t much, but what is there I like due to...

+ A very authentic spooky comic aesthetic

I never thought I’d compliment a game on its colour tone alone. But I like the colour tone, it sort of radiates this twenty year old gargoyle barbarian arcade cabinet vibe that totally syncs with me and old school dungeon duelling. If I had my way, anything to do with warriors, mages and rancid bests would be splashed in the same glowing ink as this game, though this is not to say that the game couldn’t use...

- A lil’ more visual stimuli, please?

You spend a lot of the Dark Spire looking at walls, walls and doors, and you will trek through so many halls and walls and doors and walls that it may drive your deprived brain mad. Oh sure, the enemies you encounter are well drawn but static none the less, and on top of being monotonous making your way through repeating hallways also leads to getting immensely lost the second you stop paying attention. Why the hell doesn’t this map have a “You Are Here” dot?

+++ Alarm Heat (A full four if you are a recluse)

I don’t eat Coffee Crisp, I don’t like it. Don’t like the taste, not a dry toffee guy and I’m not huge on reg coffee either. But I can understand why people do like it. I feel the same way about The Dark Spire, though I’d bet the farm there are more Coffee Crisp fans out there than gamers readying for this title. This game didn’t capture my heart but I am positive in this situation I don’t speak for everyone, but that may be due more to my insatiable thirst for violence. Actually you know what that might not be it either because there’s this other game I played...

Tokyo Beat Down (DS, Pub: Atlus, Dev: Success, Rated T)

Lowdown: Atlus’ other end of niche.

-- No Tokyo Beat Down, I’m not going to “excuse you” for being a beat-em’-up.

A lot of reviewers seem to shrug off the faults of Tokyo Beat Down’s repetitiveness and poor game mechanics passing with, “it’s a beat-em’-up.” So? So it’s a beat-em-up! That doesn’t mean it’s by the passing of the tides going to be a summer day turd. Remember Turtles in Time? Remember how much that game ruled? Clonking the shit out of Baxter and his rubber arm gun? That stuff lit up the day! This game, Tokyo Beat Down, it’s not very good, as a beat-em’-up or otherwise. So...

- Why is this a bad beat-em’-up?

It would be in poor sport for me to just say “this sucks” and move along. Let’s just attack the problems one at a time. The combat is stale, you can perform combos of a kick, punch and a gun that doesn’t kill people but it all feels really flat. The pacing of fighting is rancid, every time anyone, including yourself, gets knocked down you wait for about five seconds while they lay on thier back looking at the sky thinking about how nice the weather is. I can’t tell if the hit detection is off or the perspective is skewed, or dare I say both, but it’s a lil’ depressing to shoot a guy, or get shot, only for the effect to occur about two seconds later. The levels never get interesting, and even when the game tells you the area of town is in chaos it sure won’t look it once you get there. Oh, and it only has single player. And holy hell, for an action game this thing sure is...

-- A long winded mother fucker

For a game that by very definition of its genre is all play and no talk, there’s a hell of a lot of talk. Aspiring to do nothing but play around with cheesy cop dramas, all the purposely stilted dialogue gets really trite really fast, and the story sequences seem to run till forever. Within an hour you’ll see about a dozen pairings of cops you don’t care about arguing endlessly about politics you know don’t matter referring to characters that haven’t been introduced swiftly ended by protagonist Lewis Cannon saying something about not caring or hitting people layered on pre-rendered backgrounds you just saw ten minutes ago. It’s one thing to recycle but it’s another thing to...

- Recycles often and always

You revisit the same sites quickly and often, cinematics always seem to begin with the same image of the highway and man, if you see one slouched over sleazy dude in a suit with a knife to pummel, you’ve seen them all.

+ Alarm Heat

Tokyo Beat Down feels like the product of a desperate pitch. Some back-of-the-mind idea unleashed at a slow meeting. “Oh yeah, how about we just make this uhm, cheesy cop drama game where you fight people and say corny lines after every load screen”

“Oh crap I guess I have to make this thing, huh?”

I have a confession to make. Wait did I already start an article that way? Whatever shame makes for a decent opener. So I’ve been a baaAAaad nerd, it’s goddamn Dexter season two all over again. I miss one small episode of the story, get lazy fall behind and some unenthusiastic anchor has just keeps me back behind the forum posting pack with no immediate energy to catch up. I’m sorry comic books. I don’t know how Secret Invasion ended, hell, what the fuck is Dark Reign anyways? I know, I could blame my overtime school for caging me back from my wonderful superpulp but it sure as hell didn’t stop me from playing Prince of Persia. I am a hollow shamble of the nerd I once was. So save me TCAF, bring me back Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Nay, be there most ridiculous twenty second hail storm that morning, nothing will keep me back from breaching back to my dweeby comic dork origins. Also indie stuff tends not to have any continuity so I’m game.

Even as it started the Toronto Reference Library was packed. I felt mixed about the change up from the previous location of Old Vic, the library was more spacious but almost too much so, figuring out where the artists ended seemed to leave some poor tables in the shadows, forcing volunteers to beg and usher visitors to acknowledge their lonely ends. But I digress, the thang was bumpin’. Ryan North is taller than me and everyone else even while leaning over. The Bryan Lee O’Malley line up unsurprisingly seemed to keep a steady length of un-ending for the entire duration. One of the study rooms was decked out in prints and freaky lights while Dopesmoker blasted as loud as the public computer let it. The dude who makes Diesel Sweeties pointed to my old school Bart Simpson shirt and commented that he couldn’t remember the last time he saw the phrase “Radical Dude” used genuinely without irony. And one table we saw was covered in these books from France, all looking like Gary Panter’s erotic nightmare. If me and my buddy Jakub had our way, we woulda folded up the table and just take it right out of the building. But alas, our green was limited, and if the first stage of any con is difficult, circling the floor, gauging prices with your fingers tightly clenching your wallet, it’s even more difficult knowing that all the vendors are poor artists. No, no please don’t ask me to look at more of your stuff. No, please don’t... Don’t give me that look see I’m poor too! I... D’aww... Aww man.

I caved, yes I did. So please, enjoy as I reveal the spoils.

Blood of The Imbeciles by Brett Von Schlosser

So I picked this up because it looked like there was a mummy bathing in a blood pool with a happy but fearsome snake. Turns out the mummy ain’t a mummy but it’s a dude named Sigmund covered in bandages, but he still LOOKS like a mummy so I’m deece with it. He drinks beers, parties, gets bitten by a snake and then has to get a cure. Apparently the cure is horse blood. Wicked horse blood. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll give this my rad seal.

Finders: Dream Sequence by Carla Speed McNeil

Okay I’ll be honest, again, first she sort of handed this out for free and second I am waaaaaaay too tired to read this right now. It’d be immature to wish it was just a bunch of kewl gross monster doodles like the other things I picked up, so I’ll just acknowledge I’m not in the state of mind. But the art is nice, it looks like it was made by the kid in early high school who read and drew a lot of manga but was smart enough to grow out of it. Oh neat, the cover comes off to become a pin-up sort of thing, that’s sweet.

Mail Order Monsters by... Shit that’s a lot of collaborating artists, I’ll just say, “published by PictureBox”

Now this is a treasure. It’s not a comic, it’s one of those mega-media collages you read about, or at least I dream of reading about. It’s a fistful of really good looking prints, some as promised, monsters, others just visually stimulating art works of indescribable things. The piece that greets you upon opening is by Mat Brinkman, sort of a hybrid between the Fallout mutants and a honeycomb. This thing is an onslaught of imagery, even the packaging doesn’t lighten up, and a total steal too, seeing as one print alone can run you about fifteen clams while I shanghaied this motha for twenty.

The Mage’s Tower by L. Milburne

Ah, but here is the star of my stash show. Presented in a shocking cover, with glaring eyes, glooming castles and gnarly wolves, you will just have to take my word that this is “the best thing”. The story, dare you press on, is about two cloaked mages, one apparently a werewolf , returning to their mighty tower only to discover that the third left behind to maintain it had transformed it into a gift shop and museum. This of course resulted in a wizard fight in front of the on looking tourist group. One guide had her flesh magic’d off. Fuck I should have read this in the room blasting Dopesmoker.

So... In conclusion. Uhhhh... Go out there, buy some local art stuff because... It’s super neat. The packaging in its custy form is almost more appealing than the neat glossy shape all other comics are wrapped in. Though mostly because I simply don’t have the money to do it all myself. So... C’mon man go. Go do it. No stop reading this, get going hurry along now.

What do I have to keep spelling it out for you? GO!

Comments

• May 15, 2009, Curran Folkers writes: Another one knocked out of the park.
• May 15, 2009, Sarah writes: It wasnt as mad on Sunday at all! In fact I think most of the excitement was all the day before... Yeah that was funny when you mentioned the awkward artist moment when you feel obliged to look at someones work, even if you dont like it... There was this guy who's stuff looked like it was design plans for a cheesy Pixar movie and he insisted that I look in his books for like 20mins. ANYWAYS, wonderful article!!!
• May 20, 2009, Vickie writes: It sounds like it was a lot of fun. I always enjoy reading your articles.

See, I like to think I’m scared by less and less as the years go on but no matter how hard I shake it the things that truly horrified me as a kid still seem to resonate. The deadliest of combos was that I was equally fascinated as I was horrified of the things that scared me. I knew exactly what was going to happen if I stayed up late to watch Tales from The Crypt, the restless slumber was my and my fault alone. Aside from in front of the TV the other two thirds of my childhood were spent in arcades and Clifton Hill (made up primarily of arcades.) Clifton Hill, for those with parents who had taste, is the strip winding down towards Niagara Falls with enough glitz, shine and wax museums to fool you into thinking you’re in Vegas, assuming you’ve never been to Vegas. I’ve never been to Vegas. While the strip has changed over the years, being constantly re-organized and polished to try to make you forget the basement gift shops the hill used to use as foundation, one delightfully dusty stain that never seems to rub out are the rumbling low-fi wails of the countless haunted houses jettisoning like dark satanic pillars from the otherwise colourful facade of Clifton Hill.

Now I had never dared to walk into one of these establishments, and be it parent or crowd gathering employee asking me to venture these professional fright houses, I would have always taken a ten second long pause followed by a gulp of pride and a shake of the head. It only seems to be the Clifton Hill houses that keep me at bay. In grade ten I went to Screemers at the exhibition grounds, discovering that all terror is mellowed by the employees not taking their job too seriously, telling me, “there are EXACTLY three dead ends in this maze” to taking their job WAY too seriously and responding, “how do I get to the washrooms?” with a stone faced stare. One incident stands out in memory in the neon intoxicated Carnival of Terrors, in which one room had a ball pit where me and my cohorts safely assumed an employee was waiting for us to pass by to jump out and thrill us. But we waited, we waited minutes and minutes. Staring down the ball pit, waving our arms over it, testing, teasing till we eventually gave up on it. Further down the attraction we ran into a person in a black nylon body suit with bright coloured balls attached walking back from what I could only guess to be a smoke break. As we awkwardly shuffled towards the person I commented, “Oh, there’s the ballman.” to which I could hear the person so softly mumble under their breath as we passed by, “It’s ballwoman”.

Okay, enough side tracking. End of last summer. Quarter to midnight. Me and my brother. Clifton Hill. The House of Frankenstein. I was just deciding to don the name King Frankenstein, and to christen the decision I decided it was finally time to trek through one of the haunted houses that plagued the frowning eyes of me and my brother for so many years. We were actually pretty casual about it, for the most part. We took little time in deciding to pay for the experience, of all the houses, Frankenstein’s appeared to be the largest and ergo the most bang for your buck. Also it’s hard to say no to a gigantic Frankenstein’s monster brandishing a Whopper. Our spirits and enthusiasm were steady, but after we handed over our parents cash and mere seconds before we walked into the dark hallway we noticed the discretion sign. Down past the warning smoke machine, further than danger use of lasers, there, at the very bottom. “Warning, Live Actors.” And suddenly our ankles froze to the ground. Live actors, somehow the utterance of the term sent horrifying omens ricocheting in our heads. The machine, the pop up traps and shocks, those we were okay with, those we could predict; point at it from the other side of the room and mention, “yeah, that fucking thing, that’s going to do something.” A spring trap would never do anything but a single motion and a buzzing screech. A live actor? That’s a total x-factor.

We opened the first door. We took a moment to actually open it though, concerned that we weren’t intended to touch anything we simply stood in front of the door waiting for some other path to present itself. The first room was a long hallway, and it was a real oddity. Dim, but clean, a dark red carpet and patterns of glowing lights spiralling down it, the sound was muted and we could only hear the muffled thumps of our feet to the floor like a dream or what a trashy night club owner would do if he had money. At the end was a window, and at this window was a button asking to be pressed. I let my brother have the honours. A loud buzzing noise was unleashed and a fake face on an animatronic head whipped down bashing its smudged grimace onto the plastic glass, bounced from momentum a few times and slowly reeled back up. I don’t know if we were relieved, disappointed or in the same hazy unattendant state we were in just moments before.

Things got dark, very dark, and the paths and corners became harder and harder to navigate. The fact that we took our steps cartoonishly slow and cautiously - one pushing inch at a time - wasn’t speeding things up either. We were too afraid to move into anything we couldn’t see, which was everything. Everything was so silent too, and while in the back of our skull we knew any minimum wage live actor would probably make a tumbling amount of noise we were held back by our own fantasy. But okay, it got ridiculous, we were totally lost. One path seemed to lead backwards and in the darkness we couldn’t even keep track of which way we just came from. I pulled out my cell phone trying to let the glow lead us. We eventually found a new winding jagged hallway with a dizzying strobe light. We were about to step in when something jolted us. A figure, there it was, a damn figure standing right before us in the flashing blackness. We both fell back and let out a silent yelp. I reached for my mighty cell phone to unveil what approached us to reveal the fiend. It was us. One of the walls in the twisting hallways was a mirror, letting us scare ourselves. Now I can’t guarantee that the creators of the maze were in on it, but it felt like they had accidently created a metaphor for the whole experience.

Eventually we began to hear the shuffle of other people’s feet. We picked up the pace to see if we could rush on by the pseudo-assailants only to discover it was a group of trembling pre-teen girls ahead of us. We let them stay on ahead. Oh no no no, not because we were afraid of triggering any surprises but, uhm... Well the... Their reactions to anything would have been worth the ticket price alone, right? Well okay, so it turned out there wasn’t much left to be shocked by anyways. They pulled the same mechanical head bang thing again, sans the button to trigger it, and we passed by a large crescent cage that SEEMED it would have been the ideal place for a live actor to hide. Instead the cage was just filled with props, impossible to distinguish in the dim light it just seemed like a janitor’s closet. Just before you exit they had a small theatre where you could watch the movie Frankenstein on a dozen odd screens fitted around a sphere.

We exited, found and joined back up with ma and pa. I sort of kicked the ground that the House of Frankenstein did not seem to have the Frankenstein monster himself. As we approached the van, we passed by Castle Dracula, our parents asked us if we wanted to give that one a shot after failing to significantly wet ourselves in Frankenstein’s pad. We took a ten second long pause followed by a gulp of pride and shook our heads.

Comments

• April 19, 2009, cara writes: I think the way you descirbe your fear is more amusing to me than it is to you. You never cease to amuse me sir frankentein. ;)

In a full game, five human-controlled heroes work together, splitting up to defend their lanes with the sporadic ‘creep wall’ which wanes and shoves down the lane depending on which heroes are more aggressive, gaining gold and experience along the way. The heroes receive an extra boost of these benefits if they are able to kill one of the opposing heroes, which gives a considerable edge as they gain levels, learn abilities and create item combinations, destroying towers and buildings en route to hack apart the opponent’s ‘ancient’: the Tree of Life for the Sentinel and the Frozen Throne for the Scourge.

To enter this world of Dota, I must first obtain a hero. There are many variants for choosing from the multitude of heroes available: the popular options are all random, all pick, random draft, or single draft. Random draft gives me an ascetically appealing circle of characters and I’m given a chance to choose depending on my position in the sequential order.

After receiving a hero, I submit them to my control; I have a certain amount of gold and one skill point to attribute accordingly and then I’m off on my way down one of the lanes for good or evil! Wait, did I say “I’m?” I meant the hero… I control the hero down the lane? These formulations bring an interesting question into play: where does the user fit in this intense, time-sensitive environment?

From the moment the hero is collected I have a vested interest in their well being; internal focus cathects on this avatar to the point that concrete attachment to mental processes are blurred. Yet this is not the only instance that this occurs in the day-to-day life: when watching a show I enjoy thoroughly, I certainly cannot think of much else other than the plot line until the episode finishes, at which point I return to my own register to quickly gush about the characters and what happened. In fact, even outside the entertainment world, the control center I operate from does not always stay within my grasp. The images that are present in every day life steal attention away from the self; as my mind is projected across space towards that object, thought separates from the body to the degree that I often forget the solid vessel that grounds me.

However, an argument exists that could completely shelve these notions within Dota: in these games, do I not have access to a chat format? That must keep me connected to the real world! Yes I do, but I’m also completely separated from the form of myself that operates in outer society. This chat creates a personality that frees me from the social bonds that I normally exhibit and as a result, shit talking in Dota is rampant, as a player of any online game can attest to. The racial slurs, noob references and lag-induced anger bring about an uncouth environment that never ceases, simply an aspect of the game in which all eventually are forced to participate. I separate myself from the outside world into an online entity that can say whatever pops to mind, no matter how vile a thought that may be.

Even if the thought is clean, it still filters through the discourse of the game content, as clearly shown through chat dialect. Particularly in very macro-specific scenarios, I must make quick decisions that require high level thought, which completely dominate any notion of the computer as an extension – completely internalized without conscious deliberation. Only when the action has died down can I back away from the situation, commenting on the incredible action that occurred moments ago.

The representation of the game gives one more option to lose myself among the millions available in the world – every decision I make is indicative of my personality outside. Similarly to the choices I regularly make, such as the clothes I wear, the words I use and the people I associate with, the virtual decisions of items, strategy and even hero hold relevance to myself; my ego has so detached from my person and vanished in these images that the choices I make are in no way different than those I make in societal situations, only distinct within the game rules and visual sphere. When presented with this alternate reality, my mind truly delves into the new material: completely immersed in a virtual reality scenario is similar to being encapsulated in a sensory deprivation tank filled with water, I lose all sense of proportion. Although I understand my position (that my feet are on the ground or that the tank is surrounding me), my mind cannot perceive these boundaries without the assistance of the senses, which are overwhelmed by this new experience to the point that margins don’t exist (Wennberg 375). In the gaming format, I forgo the objective reality of the senses, subjectively involving myself in a format outside myself as an avenue to a fresh realism. Human constructs such as time no longer even matter; if there wasn’t a clock at the upper right side of the screen, I would have no notion of how long a game had lasted whatsoever – time is subjective depending on the intensity of cathected energy in addition to the amount of action that occurs in a given frame.

In a game of Dota, wasted time is ultimately the difference between winning and losing a game; misplaced concentration has dire consequences. Strategy is crucial to winning a game: I recognize the possibilities of leaving the lane to overwhelm opposing heroes, must understand when to stay in a lane to gain steady experience, properly time attacks to get the last hit that kills a ‘creep’ to obtain gold and buy the proper item combinations at appropriate moments in a game. There are infinite minute strategies to the game, but one emerges with critical importance: to learn the ability of every hero in the game, otherwise there’s no way to succeed. I have no choice but to completely engross myself into this virtual competition or fall behind, running the risk of incurring the wrath of other, merciless users that will assault people with profanity as easily as they’ll be a friend. What do they care? They’re in a different zip code and so distanced from their everyday self that ruining another person’s day comes with the territory. Each game lasts approximately thirty minutes to an hour, and each game brings the possibility of another time byte of intense joy that comes with killing digital heroes in a world beyond my own. Limitless options create limitless entertainment.

This subversion of the senses comes at a cost: when I submerge myself within these alternative images and detached structures, I become a slave to Dota. The television culture has long perpetuated the intrinsic truth of images and for all intensive purposes, these virtual images replace our regular internal and external realities. Although the mind understands that I am sitting in my computer chair, pressing icons on my keyboard and mouse to control the action, my eyes perceive the rapid combat on the screen and escape the mind, relying on the game to make all the decisions, barely consulting the psyche at all (Wennberg 375). The advantage to Dota as opposed to other role playing games is the implementation of the end game scenario. In World of Warcraft (WoW), the user can easily live in the map forever, abandoning their old life for a more empowering one in which the avatar engulfs their personality; the user can no longer live as they once did as they embrace the discourse of the game and truly love the hero, guiding them through an endless amount of quests. Every update brings intense joy and, if the outside world was cruel, World of Warcraft has the tools to create infinite comfort.

For someone unconditioned to the constant stream of action that these games entail, gameplay will originally be completely disorienting. When presented with a new group of icons containing a unique set of governing laws, I feel as overwhelmed as I do in any scenario in which I am thrust with no frame of reference. Another example can be seen when reading complex theory: the author will often present words of their own invention that the reader must learn before comprehension sets in, which forces higher level thought. This elevation becomes addictive quicker than I’d like to admit, entire afternoons disappearing within these deep manifestations of virtual achievement. As the clear object is to be the victor, when I have a bad game or other users leave, skewing the power ratio between the two squads, regardless of the time I’ve invested in the game already I start another to try and rectify the situation. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to abandon a reality such as World of Warcraft, which can take hours to accomplish extremely minor, mundane tasks. Dota is enough to keep me interested for hours on end and for that reason I will never play World of Warcraft, which in my opinion contains a cult-like fascination. The draw of worlds such as this destroy lives, ruin marriages and suck all the energy from the external world, leaving the senses as obsolete tools in favour of a flashy lifestyle online.

My favourite avatar in Dota is a hero named Darchrow, known as an Enigma: “The result of a collapsed star entombed within a field of elemental magic, Darchrow is one of the most dangerous beings in existence, consuming hundreds of worlds into the void of his hate and hunger. Now serving the Sentinel for an unknown purpose, Darchrow turns his hatred upon the Undead Scourge, yet is not above using his own allies as portals for his own servants to come through. Capable of manipulating both void and shadow in combat, his greatest pleasure is to release the oblivion within him upon the world, creating an abyss that draws enemies ever closer to destruction.” This particular hero has the ability to stun others, create ‘Eldolons’ from ‘creeps,’ and has two area of effect attacks, one of which is his ultimate ability that unleashes the ‘oblivion’ in the form of a black hole; the closer the enemies are to the hole the more damage is inflicted. Enigma is an intelligence hero, which means that intelligence items benefit him the most, as well as items that create more area of effect damage. The ‘blink dagger’ can be a welcome addition, allowing Enigma to suddenly appear among his enemies and release his ultimate, stopping them in their tracks and allowing the remaining members of the team to pounce.

All of that discourse could be easily interpreted by another Dota player, but to the reader of this article is no better than gibberish. All games are escapist in nature, but games from Blizzard Entertainment have the ability to create entire networks of people that live within them, interacting in a stimulating environment that surpasses the allure of societal existence. What a completely fucked up concept.

WORKS CITED

Wennberg, Teresa. “The Growing Brain, the Shrinking Ego: Self and Identity Redefined in the New Media Age.” Leonardo. 32.5 (1999): 373-378.

Comments

• September 8, 2009, Mike S writes: NERD! HAHAHA yes dota!

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

AGGHHHHHHHHHHHAHGHSHHHHHH

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

UUUUUUUUUC

MadWorld (Wii, Pub: Sega, Dev: Platinum Games, Rated M and HOW)

Lowdown: What’s black and white and red all over?

+++ YEAAAAH

I think this game was just the sort of unchained therapeutic carnage I needed right now. The game doesn’t hold too many punches, and gets away with the sort of murder you just don’t see on any of the “not known for family play” systems. Disembowl, rip apart, slash, dice, deep fry, explode, burn, singe, maim, destroy, MadWorld treats killing like Tony Hawk treats tricks. You rank up points by killing, which in turn unlock new ways to kill in the wonderfully varied worlds which in turn earn you more kill points which in turn leads to more killing. There is a problem with the system though and that’s...

-- EHHHHHH

Grinding your way to the conclusion of each stage before the timer runs clear isn’t difficult, killing aimlessly without much decadence will typically get you on by fine. The entire scoring system feels a little transparent, scoring big points only serves your personal gamer ego, as multiplayer is strictly limited to the Deathwatch mini- games, polishing your level-by-level strategies won’t serve much justice in the long run. It doesn’t help that the game rarely drops many hints as to what’ll rank you the big points. And no, it’s not even obvious how certain kills stack up. Somehow throwing someone into the vacuum of space and watching them explode into innards earns you fewer points than jabbing them with a sign and throwing them against a spiked wall. Harder never seems to equal better kills, so while dramatics doesn’t ever seem to earn you the points you feel
they deserve, the drama is still strong.

++++ YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

MadWorld has a great story. Beat em ups usually don’t have great stories. Japanese-to-English games usually don’t have great stories. So imagine my surprise that MadWorld has a wonderful, compelling story. One thing the story does particularly well is the pacing, and many other games can learn a whole damn lot from this title. While the bulk of narration only bookend the action, no cinematic is wasted. They are all written and calculated to foreshadow, dig deeper or throw you off at all the right moments. And the ending is pretty satisfying and all around really tits. Helping even more is the sharp dialogue. Not every line is a zinger, but all the characters are played up as sleazy, dirty, beaten or bravado as they should. A special shout out needs to go to the on-going commentary tracks by game voice veteran John DiMaggio and Whose Line alumni Greg Proops
who’s bantering and raunchy witticisms play throughout the entire game, reacting to pretty much every action till the credit roll and beyond leaving me in genuine stitches the whole way through. Another, less obvious shout out goes to...

+++ YEAH GUY YEAH!!!

I really hate it when someone so obviously co-ops a style and aesthetic. So why am I not angry at MadWorld for so clearly taking a few pointers from Frank Miller’s Sin City? Well at first glance, yes, it’s pretty glass they saw some kewl things they want to make kewl for themselves, but it wasn’t like they were tracing it line by line. MadWorld successfully creates its own character and aesthetic, using the best lessons of Sin City and not exactly copying it. It also looks gorgeous. I know I know, waaah the Wii isn’t as powerful as those other fancy schmancy systems, but here’s just one of the many games that proves you can use good ol’ smarts to overcome technical shortcomings. My brother asked me if the black and white style ever got disorienting, and no, it didn’t. The visuals work like a dream and the comic book sounds popping out dashed with the blood of your enemies is a sight to behold. What is totally disorienting however is...

-- EHHHHH... Ehhhh...

Dear meatheads, I present some math. Camera issues + Sensitive context controls = DEADLY. Many of the tricks you pull off in MadWorld require you to be facing juuuust the right angle towards juuuuuust the right object. The horrid thing is, the one way to control the camera which rules over your precious context sensitive events with an iron fist is one itty bitty button that swings the screen behind your back. Oh, and this one button is also the same one button used to lock on to enemies, making getting specific targets incredibly infuriating. SO INFURIATING. AUUGH I JUST WANT TO HURT SOMETHING.

++++/ Alarm Heat

MadWorld is a short event, but oh so pleasing. There’s a lot of substance wrapped in this crimson juicy package, and the sort of gung- ho killemall originality the Wii could really see a lot more of from other devs. MadWorld is a game that knows you want to kill things, so it takes upon itself the responsibility to deliver as many imaginative and extravagant ways to do so.

World of Goo (Wii/PC, Pub/Dev: 2D Boy, Rated E)

Lowdown: Crippling frustration has never been so much fun! Fuuuuuuuuun!

+++ Neat beans

World of Goo isn’t an aspiring design, in fact it should be a familiar experience, throwing most back to elementary school group
crafts building towers out of tooth picks and marshmallows. Though the execution of the simple premise is still a sweet sweet thing (despite sans marshmallows). Each stage basically requires you to build your way from point A to point B, but the methodology and strategy in what and how you design is as important as your speed. Thinking players will be able to use the least amount of goo blots in finishing a level, which leads to one of the best things about this game...

++++ The dandy sense of achievement

See, you don’t need.... Sniff... Need dumb Xbox achievements to feel achieved. The feeling that you are really solving these puzzles on your own terms, using your own style makes winning a really warming thing to do. Though one thing that stands in your way...

- Bouncy physics

The constant physics in the World of Goo don’t sit parallel to what you’d expect in the real world. Trick winds seem to come in at inopportune times, slaughtering plans and crashing hopes to the ground. Eventually you get a sense of prediction, but coming back to it every time came make you pull some hairs.

+/- Burton as fuuuuuuuuuuck

Remember that aforementioned statement about lifting aesthetics? Yeah, 2D Boy are some pretty rancid Tim Burtonites, clear as gloomy day. The visuals and audio are all crisp and nice but the music pretty obvious aims to snuggle up to Danny Elfman while any merch of this game would find an easy home on a Hot Topic shelf. Mind you this doesn’t really detract from the game, and hell it could also be your sort of thing, just consider this a premonition of a pill hard to swallow for some.

++++ Alarm Heat

World of Goo is a title made by people who know that harmony is found in the simplest things. The concept is so easy to grasp your dad could probably give this title a swing, and the variety of puzzles, goo types and just sheer amount of content make this one a no brainer, though that’s not to say having a head full of sludge will make this an easy challenge.

Oregon Trail (iPhone/iTouch, Pub/Dev: Gameloft, Rated E)

Lowdown: I need to explain? This is like, the only edutainment you’ve
ever given a shit about.

+++ Wagon’s got a new coat of paint

Oregon Trail has received a complete facelift, by which I don’t mean you control a family of space marines racing against space
terrorists, I mean that the game has been touched up with excellent new graphics and animations. Everything is crisp, everything is colourful, everything is charming. Traveling along the ooool western trail is finally a scenic route. Buuuuut...

- You missed a spot...

The game hiccups quite a bit. As dazzlingly nice as many animations are, they also seem to bog down the game, sometimes to an unstoppable standstill. Sounds will gap, animations will clip, and god forbid your iWhatever goes on standby, soonafter returning to the game can cause a complete meltdown.

- Gosh darn these menus

The menu system is unfortunately clunky too. And in a game that is half a dozen mini-games away from being a text adventure this is a terrible terrible thing. Abraham Lincoln challenged me to a race towards some rock, river, whatever hill, when it came time to choose which path I wanted to go down I couldn’t backtrack the menu selections to the objectives screen, I had to decide right then and there and so sue me I forgot where Honest Abe wanted to meet. So if I have to physically write down my objectives on a piece of paper it kind of defeats the purpose of having one digitally. But not all’s deciding and managing, there’s tapping to do!

+/- This a’here nation was built on the backs of tapping

There are minigames scattered throughout this remake, though expecting the main demographic to be six year old kids too otherwise busy with Halo 3 and not twenty somethings who want to re-live the Oregon experience the creators had all these minigames top loaded. The touch games are mostly just thrown at you all at once in the first ten minutes of play. You’ll play them again and again, and thankfully the tapping mechanisms do work right, or at least I can assume because the screen is not covered in frantically frustrated thumb smudges.

+++/ Alarm Heat

There’s not much to bash in this revisit to the ol’ edutainment frontier. It’s the same classic experienced wrapped in a wonderful new exterior. No one’s going to force you to learn, but rest easy knowing that right here is a game ready for you if you do for the price of three cans of spaghettios. I’ve personally learned that had it been back in the day I could have survived the brutal trek across the American nation. I wish I could say the same about my family...

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (DS, Pub: Rockstar, Dev: Rockstar
North, Rated M)

Lowdown: Moral degradation now in the palm of your hand! AND MINI-GAMES

+++ Big city, tiny screen

This isn’t GTA abbreviated, Rockstar’s done a really swell job of hitting Liberty City with a shrink ray. Anyone who’s spent hours rolling along GTA4’s dark streets will feel right at home in this tiny reincarnation. Most of the city is back, and with it it’s
landmarks and carnage. But this isn’t just GTA4 for the DS, Chinatown Wars does manage to make itself...

++ A new entry, not a spinoff

Chinatown Wars brings along with it a new story, characters and missions, so it’s not just an expansion or a write off but a
competent stand alone title. The touch screen is embraced, not avoided, and there’s something cynically delightful about using touch based minigames to hotwire cars, steel merch off a van or escape from a sinking vehicle. The mission variety is shockingly diverse, and you’ll never be asked to do the same mission twice consecutively, or even within the same hour. The new drug trading mechanics alone become the maker/breaker between scrounging for change or rolling in
the skrilla. Nico Bellic is not your apostle of danger for this ride, it’s Huang, and Huang is...

-- A miserable protagonist

Huang is introduced as a snobby son to a crime lord by other characters, a reputation he crassly lives up to throughout the game. Huang doesn’t have the same “dragged kicking and screaming into crime” vibe that the charming Nico did, Huang basically feels obliged to commit any dirty deed, all the while soooooo sarcastically sassing everyone he works for. It sort of is a kick in the teeth that the first and only sign for pathos gets killed off in the third mission. Oh well, I guess with new platforms comes...

- Honourable sacrifices

Of course, you can’t take a full next gen platform game to the handheld world. The wonderful soundtrack we’ve been subjected to on previous GTAs is now replaced by fairly generic renderings, though not awful renderings, of basic genres instead of licensed tracks. Even the Ghostface/MF DOOM collab used to promote the game is left without lyrics and just the underlying beat. You now face the top down perspective, which if anything is just a familiar throwback to ye olde GTA instalments, the real gripe is that aiming against the bad thugs and not the innocent bystanders becomes a challenge when the two look identical. And your auto aim doesn’t seem to give a shit. Although none of this may matter if you also don’t give a shit for innocent bystanders.

++++ Alarm Heat

China Town wars is the gracious meeting of a triad of elements. The style of the original GTA games, the grab bag of things from the recent and most popular titles that we loved and passionate use of the DS’s capabilities. Nothing is rehashed, Chinatown isn’t stale and is not just a cash in on the ever popular franchise. There’s been a lot of heart put into this, a lot of twisted heart.

Rhythm Heaven (DS, Pub/Dev: Nintendo, Rated E)

Lowdown: Tap the screen a whole bunch. What? I’m tired you come up with something.

+++ Yeah yeah yeah? CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP!

Nintendo knows how to make things work. Okay, so maybe Drill Dozer wasn’t anything special and Odama is better left forgotten, but if Nintendo says they want to make a bunch of beat games controlled by three simple motions, tap, hold and flick, then power to them. Does it work? Oh yeah, it sure does. While a lot of the games follow a Simon says or follow the beat diagram, the creators did prove there’s a lot of different ways you can use three simple gestures. Some games ooze with catchy originality, the Easter Island head doo wop duet and love lab come to mind, so these guys were on some pretty high grade creative juices you can’t find on safe streets. The visuals are also delightful, and while they all share the same cutsey Japanese cartoon vibe, they at least showcase a variety of Japanses cartoon vibes. The remix levels are the best part of the game, combining the last rounds of mini-games into a frantic montage that has you bouncing between rhythms like a broken metronome. Oh, and it’s hard too, really hard, though if you ever get stuck on one challenge the game will graciously let you skip ahead.

- Sometimes OK is good enough~

Rhythm Heaven isn’t perfection either. While the remixes are the best part many of the games seem to play shorter than the prologue tutorials. This would not feel so odd if you spent a lot of time playing each style of game, but the only incentive to re-play is to achieve that illusive and highly difficult perfect score, made only more tedious that there’s no re-start button on any game. It would have been nice if there were alternative tunes for some games, and not just the jacked up harder versions of the same tune you achieve after being the main challenges.

+++/ Alarm Heat

There’s about as much to praise in Rhythm Heaven as there is to bash. Kind of like a hamster or something, a hamster will probably do exactly what you expect a hamster to do. Run around, sleep, poop. If it isn’t what you wanted you only have yourself to blame. Though on the wide scale of hamsters, Rhythm Heaven is a pretty rad hamster. A better hamster than my stupid Xbox anyways...

Comments

• April 15, 2009, Ted Killin writes: Oregon Trail! So many hours spent on the old mac at home seeing how much gold I could sift out of that damn river. Sometimes I accrued stacks and stacks!

Lowdown: It took thirty seconds after starting the game for me and my pal to exclaim, “Oh DAMN”

++++ This is Not Quite SFII (But Most Definitely NOT SFIII)
But not quite a total departure either. This is something magical. Returners will be very comfortable with SFIV, the original cast returns (sans T-Hawk and Deejay, alas, spilt milk) with all the moves we’ve grown oh so fond of. Hadouken is still Hadouken, Sonic Booms are still Sonic Booms,Yoga is still Yoga (but you know, Yoga) but it goes without saying, all have received heavy tweaking. New factors and skills have been implicated, most notably “focus attacks” which knock down rivals but need to be charged and more interestingly drains your opponents health into your own. Each character has also gone through no shortage of alterations in the either the name of balancing or simply sprucing things up. Dhalsim moves slow as if through molasses but his stretch armstrongs reach further than ever, Zangief has become as unstoppable as he looks and even Dan can put up a fight. It’s good to see the old gang back together again, though with that said...

-- The Roster Leaves... Something to be Desired
And that something is hard to pinpoint. You have the classics, a few beloved alpha’s like Sakura and Dan, some surprises like Rose and Gen, no third strikers, no EXs and, in my personal opinion, a bunch of new faces that fail to inspire. Sure, El Fuerte and Rufus continue the tradition of Japanese stereotypes of other countries, but for the most part the additions are not the most interesting we’ve seen in the series and with some of the greater oddballs of SF history left in the dust, maybe I’m just a little sore. Though fighter, be they mainstay or lame duck...

++++ Looks Great, Striking and it goes Beyond Just Being in 3D
This isn’t the first Street Fighter in 3D, but this is the first one to use the third dimension intelligently.  Of course it still plays in 2D, but the 3D is more than just frosting. The characters definitely utilize a fresh visual pastiche, focusing their throbbing force and muscles, facial expressions with detailed reactionions in ways unlike anything we've seen before and to cap it all off, smart camera angles to really pack a punch. Every time a major combo clicks, the camera chooses the most effective angle possible to show the brutal pain go down.

- Little Things I Feel I Should Whine about That Barely Matter
Anime storyline cut scenes fall short below the quality bar, though I doubt you ever cared about the storyline. Also, the music won’t keep you humming like past instalments, with some pieces even sounding more appropriate for Mario Kart. Unlocking everyone before your buds come over to get crunk and play this thing can be a chore. And Seth is about as cheap a final boss as, well, every other final boss in every other fighting game ever.

+++++ Alarm Heat
Dear Capcom, I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news as of late but humanity has been a bit of a drag. The economy is plummeting, we’ve doomed the planet and everything kind of sucks and it’s all our fault, I’m not sure how to express this but I don’t think we deserve this game, and if only a move of modesty I would request you take it back, though I would suppose it’s too late. This is the best fighting game we’ve had in all too long a time, and the fact it bears the name of Street Fighter only makes it sweeter. It’s not absolutely perfect, but it’s the best I’ve ever played and far more than we deserve.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (PS3/XB360, Pub: Capcom, Dev: Backbone Entertainment, Rated T)

Lowdown: Say that ten times fast buster.

+++ This IS Quite SFII
Yes, this is SFII. The moves are the same, the roster’s the same, the sound clips have not been altered at all and the memories will come rushing back like a TAIFOOON.  The biggest and more obvious changes are visual, though there are core changes, yes...

+ And These Changes are Up to You
The changes to characters here are far more subtle than the ones in SFIV, so subtle the non obsessive may not even notice them. But don’t freak Fighter freaks, the little altercations are completely optional. You can specify which changes you want and do not want in your battles, and it is INCREDIBLY specific. You can even turn off all the new alterations entirely and play it like it used to be, needless to say...

-/+ This is For The Serious Players
I gave this point a plus and a minus because it will strike a different chord depending on which side of the fence you are on. This is a game meant to be played competitively, the evidence is in the abundance of options that serve the kinds of players who bring their own joystick pads wherever they go. There are tournament mode options that will satisfy anyone, leaderboards and even an observation mode so that you can just sit back and watch the pros kick ass like you know they do. Though watching will give you time to meditate on what exactly the HD means in all this...

- It’s HD, Yes, But...
The new sprites are very vibrant and colourful, and their creation definitely had tournament players in mind while also serving the purpose of stretching out on an HD TV, but getting the job done isn’t the same as praise. The animations are basic, very basic, coming nowhere near the smooth form of Guilty Gear or even Street Fighter III, not to mention each background have an embarrassingly basic two frame animation, so don’t expect to be in awe by anything but the lack of fuzzy pixels.

++++ Alarm Heat
The title is absurdly long, yes, but that’s because it seems to surmise the game to a tee. This is Super Street Fighter Turbo, and now it’s in HD with a few interesting (re)mix-ups. If you own both an M. Bison shrine and an HD TV, this is pretty much a given, anyone else may find the package a little too bare bones or intimidating, but hell, it’s fun none the less.

Far Cry 2 (PC/PS3/XB360, Pub: Ubisoft, Dev: Ubisoft Montreal, Rated M)

Lowdown: You are sent in to a war torn African country to assassinate a savage gun lord; torn between warring factions it is up to the player to decide what the hell this has to do with the first Far Cry.

+ “FIRE! FIRE!” “Calm down Beavis”
Don’t play around with fire. Use fire seriously. The game makes a good utilization of the old phrase “look before you leap”. Every spot where a gunblazing showdown is about to go down has about a hundred different ways to run into them, the world is open, vast and of course, burnable. The fire adds even more possibilities to firefights (get it? See what I did there?) ergo wrapping your head around what to burn and how not to get burned can be the edge to put you on top. Think burning your enemies to death is too morbid? Well that’s too bad because there is no shortage of...

+++ Itty Bitty Nitty Gritty
Far Cry has taken the trip from the luscious tropical jungle to a devastated African nation, so while there is still green to be seen the tone is far darker, and I assure you grim is the word.  There’s depravity and danger around every bush and corner, everyone holding a gun has a trigger happy finger, you suffer from malaria, seeing your targets slaughter an innocent zebra certainly adds pathos points and the game does a good job at drilling in ambiguity between the political parties you decide to fight for. A little too good a job actually because...

- Is it Awful I’m Not Feeling Sympathetic When They are pushing Political Buttons?
You’ve come in to kill an arms dealer, that I understand. Who everyone else is, not so clear. Sure, we know the government is corrupt and yes the rebellion is just as corrupt, so much so it’s a little hard to give a damn about either side.  You never really encounter civilians, just assailants. All I know is the second I step out of the safe zone whoever from whatever side is going to go out of their way to kill me. It doesn’t help that either side will have you accomplish such similar jobs. Repetition is only enhanced by...

-- The Most Restrictive Open World in Video Game Land
The jungle is lush, detailed with many secrets and sights, and it’s all such a shame because the game doesn’t do much to encourage your exploration. Going off the beaten path always seems to result in getting either killed or helplessly lost. The more severe result of this however is the repetition it causes. Being forced down the same paths every time mean you’ll be seeing the same terrain often. The areas do expand as you get further, but not before you’ve gone over your own footsteps a few times. But you won’t go alone (kind of...)

-/+ Buddy System
The buddy system the game enforces is a mixed bag. On one hand, it does push the feeling of responsibility in helping others knowing that one day they’ll help you. On the other hand, the game gives you no alternative to the buddy system, so if you die it’s simply game over. This is great, no, awesome when it works, and waking up to a friendly face to tackle the aggressors is fun, but there are unfortunately a few bizarre bugs that hinder this. Your partner’s AI doesn’t seem quite up to snuff, and will usually stand static in the middle of the field taking potshots leaving most of the dirty work to you. They also aren’t entirely reliable, it’s hard to tell when it’s a safe time to die (yeah that does sound weird...) By far the most surreal occurrence was one time after dying from falling off a cliff I awoke to find out buddy impulsively dragged me into an active gun fight somewhere near by, if only to justify his inclusion.

+++/ Alarm Heat
Far Cry 2 has a lot of good ideas, but each play out with incredibly mixed results. The game is a nice mix up from a lot of recent first person shooter, offering a more open world experience. But a new experience doesn’t always equal the best one. Far Cry should be tried, but not a necessary buy, for trigger happy gunners looking for something different.

Sam & Max Season One (Wii, Pub: The Adventure Company, Dev: Telltale Games, Rated T)

Lowdown: “Gee Sam, you’d think a real fan would have bought all our adventures right off the bat.” “Not all of our die hard compadres are necessarily up to snuff with their computer hardware.” “What’s a computer Sam?”  “You crack me up little buddy.”

+ Everything I Complained About The Homestar Games Do Not Apply Here
Assuming you’ve bothered reading anything else I’ve written, the solves-themselves puzzles and watered down jokes in the Homestar Runner games, made by the same folks here, are not issues. The jokes aren’t always zingers, but there are enough witty punches in a game with NO shortage of dialogue to earn a “funny” badge. The puzzles are also a different story, in fact I’d say...

++ The Puzzles Truly Are a Beast of Their Own
The puzzles are tricky, and you’ll find yourself scratching your head for the solution far more often than you’ll be comfortable admitting. Many rely on you recalling on things encountered all the way from the beginning of each episode till the end. One thing to also keep in flux in the cranium, and also totally ingenious to boot, is the integration of comedy into the solutions. Coming off from a Marx Brothers marathon will totally prep you to tackle the challenges, some solutions laying entirely within your sense of humour, be it cartoonish uses of props, getting people to slip up or getting a foreshadowing sense of possible punch lines. So this is starting to sound like a real winner, right? Sigh...

---- Severe Frame Rate Issues
Sure, a lot of games chug when the action gets hot. Sam and Max on the Wii, however, chugs constantly. It is definitely to the point where it hinders the gameplay quality, just walking Sam from point A to B becomes a chore, as controls get choppy from uncontrollable detection glitches, unpredictable hang ups and loading times which I kid you not, caused the game to full out crash on me twice. The fun is drained due entirely from technical issues, even the funny lines, the game’s silver lining, get cut off constantly.

++ Alarm Heat
I got this game on the Wii because I’m used to having a computer behind the status quo. Instead I got a buggy, crashy experience regardless. It’s tragic that such a fun experience is as crippled by inexplicable technical issues as it is. Seeing Smash Bros’ screen filling chaos work with few hinges while this, a point and click adventure game, being constantly bogged down can’t help but earn scoffs. Sorry little buddy.

Retro Game Challenge (DS, Pub: Xseed Games, Dev: Namco, Rated E)

Lowdown: Finally a post modern game for this post post modern site.

+++ Takes Years Off You (If You Have Enough Years That Is)
Here is a game that’ll tap into feelings that have been collecting dust for some time, better yet for anyone who remembers blowing dust out the butt of your Duck Tails 2. From chatting about schoolyard cheat rumours to crawling on hand and knee over to the system, the game does a lot of adorable little things that’ll make you think “Hey, I remember that.”  Not to mention the games feel...

++ Authentic
Anyone of these games could have easily been in the NES library, any of them. The further into the game you get the more depth the games offer, and, oh yes, they go deep. Guadia Quest is a shockingly complete RPG, while Robot Ninja Haggleman and even Rally King (which everyone seems to hate on but I’m lovin’ it) offer complete experiences on their own. While the games themselves are solid and look as good as good NES should, the way they are delivered has...

- Pacing Issues
Nerd ghost Game Master Arino has his pattern. He gives you a game, then he gives you a challenge, then you beat that challenge and then you stop playing the game and he’ll give you a new one... regardless if you’ve already done what he’s about to ask of you. Maybe I’m being a whiney weenie here but it would have had a more progressive flow if say, you got a full list of challenges all at once to knock off or even two games at once with a handful of objectives instead of slowly and painfully chipping off one at a time, starting again (until Guadia Quest anyways) every time you succeed.  Having in-game sequels, re-playing the same experience over again doesn’t do much good either.

++++ Alarm Heat
Retro re-enactments are not a new concept, with Megaman 9 and the indie front doing their part on co-opting. Retro Game Challenge rises above the trend by not only having you re-live retro games, but having you re-live your mom calling you down for sandwiches just as you hit the final level. If you want the NES games that could-have-been, wrapped up in an original and adorable package, there isn’t anything else out there. No really, I can’t think of anything else out there that fits that description.

Moon (DS, Pub: Mastiff, Dev: Renegade Kid, Rated T)

Lowdown: Pfft, these space invaders can’t even find a real planet to have turned-out-to-exist-for-hundreds-of-years on.

+++ Yes Virginia, There is a DS Shooter
Moon is a first person shooter for the DS, it isn’t the first one, no, but it works like a charm. The frame rate is smooth as it gets, there are, shockingly, no hang ups whatsoever. The textures are detailed and the colours are intense. The sound...

-/+ May Annoy You
Sound is used with some strategy, they give you cues when and which dangers are nearby, which is good because the naughty little robots absolutely adore flanking and ambushes. The downside is that these sounds on top of the music are composed of glitchy computer bleeps and bloops, which could be harm or harmony depending on the player. While the sound may be creative, the rest of the package...

- Is a Little Uninspired
The story doesn’t fail, and isn’t necessarily in the backseat but it does lack a nice delivery of immersion so many other shooters have showcased. All the enemies are boxy little robots that are all too fond of hovering around in the air and shooting lasers that can be easily dodged by a simple sidestep. The underground techno-bases are colourful, well animated and vibrant but are repeated heavily, there is practically no environment variety, which thankfully can’t be said for the...

+ Gameplay That Does a Fair Job of Keeping it Mixed
You aren’t just shooting, dodging and repeating. While it is a very arcade or oldschool shooting experience, it doesn’t necessarily keep things basic. You have a remote controlled buggy buddy, who you can use to zoom around crawl spaces and unlock doors, there are driving portions and boss battles which successfully keep you from, well, doing the same thing for too too long.

+++/ Alarm Heat
Moon isn’t going to re-invent the DS shooter, but I wish it did. It plays it safe, though does a technically great job doing so.

For you nerds who don’t know what A&C Games is, and shame on you for letting your nerd brethren down, this little store with a WHOLE lot of heart is located on Spadina just south of Bloor, right next to a delightful little Mario Kart mural (but of course). This is no regular game store however, and while its shelves are stocked with a plethora of games both new and old, it goes far beyond collecting discs and cartridges. This store curates itself with trinkets, rarities and potpourri chronicling games and gamer culture. Expect to see NES gizmos you’d never seen with your own bare eyes, Final Fantasy spin offs you thought were mere rumours and Battletoad action figures. Oh and you can buy, rent and sell games, of course.

In short, A&C is about the gaming community and not just the games. Walking in there on any given day you’ll find kids on milk crates going berserk on Halo while an iTunes playlist cranks out 8-Bit chip tunes that are a-shoo-in to rub your nostalgia bones. Most game stores would just play a nonstop video of THQ ads and call it a day. Which brings us to Street Fighter, why Street Fighter you ask? What makes Street Fighter so special as a competitive game? Store owner Gar explains, “It’s the feeling of facing someone right next to you and not online, that’s where the roots are, from the arcades. There’s a special feeling from playing someone right beside you and beating them and seeing their emotions.” What better way to celebrate gamers, Street Fighter, joysticks and darkened rooms than throwing an underground (which I say because it was a subterranean basement floor on UofT campus, not because we’re pitting dogs against sharks) Street Fighter tournament and video game jamboree. Do you need a kicker? A room full of fun incarnate not good enough for you? Fine, the prize for the Street Fighter tournament? That’s right asshole, Street Fighter Four. THE game, the name which utter utterance causes button slammers to salivate. (Seriously we aren’t pitting dogs against sharks.)
I went to this event with my buds Jonny and Rodrigo, both in good spirits and exited to play some mother fucking video games.

“WE ARE HERE WHERE THE CHAMPIONS MEET, WE ARE HERE WHERE DESTINY IS FULFILLED WHERE TIME IS RE-WRITTEN, ROD, YOU’RE A CHAMP, HOW YA FEELIN’ HOW YA FEELIN’.” “I’m feelin’ pretty good.” “ARE YA PUMPED” “I’m pumped.” “WHAT DID YOU DO THIS MORNING.” “I ate three eggs.” “HOW WERE THEY.” “They were good, they were sunny-side up. So they’re good.” “OH... SO YOU COOKED THEM.” “Oh, yeah, no that’d be pretty gross. But they were good, and there were three of them.” “THAT’S LIKE THE SOPHISTICATED EAGLE I GUESS. ONLY THE STUPID EAGLE WOULD EAT IT RAW.” “Yeah I went to a diner.” “OH IT WAS AT A DINER.” “Yeah I wanted to get some air.” “OH, ALRIGHT. I GUESS THAT’S PRETTY CHAMPION-Y.” “Yeah, for sure. Oh and I walked here” “OH. OKAY.” “Yeah.” “DID YOU WALK HERE WITH PRIDELY STROLL?” “Well, I walked here, then I got some juice. It was apple juice.” “WAS IT GOOD.” “It was good.” “IS APPLE JUICE FOR CHAMPIONS?” “Yeah, yeah it has sugar, natural sugar for the brain to keep your reflexes very quick.” “WHAT’S YOUR OVER ALL STRAGEGY ROD?” “Oh, y’know, I gotta hit them, before they hit me.” “HIT THEM?” “Hit them really hard.” “YOU MEAN IN THE GAME RIGHT?” “Oh yeah, in the game.”

As we entered the doors to this room we, in the only way I can explain it, were swamped by video games. A room where on a normal day, students would be struggling to stay awake and take down doodle covered notes from their dry eyed classes had been transformed into a  mecca of FUN. Games on the tables, games projected on to the walls, games sitting next to games. New games, old games, sports games and shooting games, Goldeneye, Guilty Gear, Super Mario Kart and NBA Jam. The sounds and chatter ambushed the ears into a swirl of dorky bliss. But it was the center of the room where the main attraction was: two screens, one for Street Fighter Third Strike, the other Super Street Fighter Turbo HD Remix. It was at this point I discovered my friend Jonny had a much different attitude than my clearly cocky Rodrigo. “ALRIGHT JONNY HOW YA FEELIN’.” “Fucked.” “FUCKED? THAT’S NOT A CHAMP’S QUOTE.” “That’s because I’m not a champ.” “OH, JONNY, JONNY. YA GOTTA BE A CHAMP.” “IIIIII’m just here to have fun.” “YA GOTTA BE ONE WITH THE EAGLE. NOT THE HAWK, NOT THE T-HAWK, T-HAWK SUCKS.” “I would like to win Street Fighter four. Then I will be pro.” “YEAH, PRO, THAT’S THE WORD I LIKE TO HEAR.”

The games were off when they clicked the systems on. Gamers dug out their joystick pads brought from their personal collections. The fighters were ready. So how does one come out on top in Street Fighter? I asked Gar for the three golden rules. “Uhm.. I’m not all that good at it... but... as long as you’re good at all the special moves, know how to do a fireball and block.” Dammit Gar, that advice stinks. Maybe this random stranger has something better to say, “Good spacing, it’s really important. Learn what’s called footsies, people don’t really use the word footsies anymore, like back in the day it was very much about learning your pokes, learn the distance on your pokes. When people come at you they use certain pokes and to respond, the longer you counter you gain the advantage. And the third thing off of that is you need momentum. It’s crucial because it plays off people’s nerves, they make poor decisions, you gain the advantage, you push forward and you win your match.” There, much better, full of terms and references above me - it has to be from a pro.

I, being more the enthusiast than in any way talented, enjoyed from a distance. And by enjoyed from a distance I really mean played Smash Bros and doodled on the blackboards. But it wasn’t before long that I noticed something was odd, different, unexpected (aside from the fact Rodrigo forfeit because he wanted a slice of pizza). Where I had become so used to berating and badgering in online games I instead heard cheers, applaud and not a hint of cussing. I turned around, wiped the chalk dust off my hands and saw with my own eyes, winners, losers, viewers, all smiling and having the time of their lives. Just like games ought to be. Jonny lost later on, Chun-Li versus Guile, thirteenth place too. We left not bogged down by disappointment, but refreshed from a fun day doing something we enjoyed. Games are about fun, having fun with your friends, not trying to offend and humiliate someone half your age and halfway around the world. The next weekend I joined up with Rodrigo who bought Street Fighter Four. We got drunk, ate pizza and had the best night ever.

- King Frankenstein

Comments

• March 26, 2009, Curran Folkers writes: Dude, you just may be my new hero. This is the funniest thing I've ever read.

How did Electric Playground come to be in the first place?

It was 1994, I was getting some work as a professional actor and enjoying it but also getting really disillusioned with the idea of constantly auditioning for someone to discover me and someone to give me a big break, and as any actor can attest, there are many periods of down time and I didn't want to wait anymore. I thought, "I better come up with something I want to do." I was always a giant video game guy. I was the kid that everybody hung out with because I had all the game systems when I was younger.  So I put the concept together in 1994 for Electric Playground as a TV series and started talking to all kinds of developers and different people in the broadcast industry about making a show like this. People saw my passion and recognized it that I had a good idea. It didn't happen overnight but I never heard from anyone that it was a dumb idea or that it wasn't worth it's merit so that was enough, even without any income or any money coming back on the idea to just keep persevering and we got the website up in 95', elecplay.com,  shot some stuff in 95', more in 96' and pitched and pitched and premiered in 97' with the help of broadcasters across Canada, the West coast of the US and sponsors like Sega and Nintendo was always a big partner with us, Electronic Arts was a good friend of the show in the beginning, Activision, lots of different companies all the way along have really saw the merit of this program on the broadcast side and on the video game side and under industries as well. It's been a long road and I appreciate the support.

It's hard to look back and think that video games used to be such a niche market, but the most mainstream attention it ever seemed to receive was, like, The Wizard. Did you find many people surprised that you wanted to broadcast video game news?

Yeah, it kind of dovetailed with the Playstation One, I knew that E3 was coming in 94'. I knew that Sony was getting into the marketplace with the PS1. I knew that CDROM game systems were coming and there was going to be a lot more emphasis on better resolution and higher definition video and 3D technology and I had already become consumed with it. I was reading every magazine about video games and I took a guess that there was lots of people like me out there. The numbers were already strong back then, it was just an educated process of to show people how much an appetite there was for this, how many people were actively consuming this kind of media. Once people were shown the numbers and shown the quality of work in the gaming industry back in 95', 95' through 97' I think people's eyes really opened up. It would have been a very hard thing to pitch Electric Playground as a 16-bit show, to have 2D games be entirely what we were covering, but by that time we got to 3D games, with cutscenes and voice actors and beautiful graphics. Basically it was a pretty modestly budgeted news series that cut to these incredibly expensive works of art that people spent a lot of time and a lot of money building and if so consequentially we have a show that just looks terrific. We have cool looking interviews and this incredible gameplay footage, it's candy, it's candy that should be on TV and it's just becoming more appetizing candy with more technology, it just gets better every year! I think with EP, I was sort of the first person to go, look, let's make this behind-the-scenes, Entertainment Tonight-like show about video games, but, I think the idea for something like this was a destined thing. The business is too important, it's too cool and most of all it looks so great on TV.

You could say video games are the new rap music, it being under constant attack of major media, having every little break of taboo rubbed in its nose. Do you think video game's time to rise above this treatment, to be respected as an independent medium is coming?

I think the sooner we stop talking about it, as the consumers and the appreciators of this medium, as soon as soon as we stop worrying about getting legitimized, the better, because it doesn't matter anymore. EP was founded on the idea on promoting how cool this business is. Now? I don't care if you don't understand, I really don't, if you don't understand how great games are. It's too late and I feel bad for you but I don't need to bang a drum to convince you anymore. There's a lot of people that get it, I think more people get it than don't in my opinion and it's up to us as people that cover the medium to stop promoting the negativity by trying to respond to it. Screw it, y'know? It's another way to express a story. It's another way for human beings to communicate with each other in a very innovative, interactive way, it's exiting and people that want to get up and down on soap boxes about it don't play games, and that's the truth, so why talk about it? We're not going to be doing that on EP. The controversies that surround video games are when it stems from violence, concerns and all of that stuff. You know what? That's the easy road, that's a news person's easy opt out, they know it, they know it's a hot button, they know it will appeal to a specific person out there with that kind of coverage, they can go to it quickly and easily, it's a quick choice solution. It's like saying, "I heard somewhere else that video games are controversial so I'm going to talk about it here too because people think that that's good news, that that's good for news programming." It's not anymore.

I'm a dedicated gamer, I've always enjoyed being floored by not necessarily just the grandiose blockbuster games but the innovative ones, like Braid all the way back down to The Neverhood. What tickles you? What innovations or inspirations have made you take a step back?

I think it's tied to specific projects, but I think someone's only going to sit down and take a look at Ico or Shadow of the Colossus or even Earthworm Jim in its day and there's just so many amazing works of interactive fiction out there. Metal Gear Solid, the original and as a series is just so ahead of its time. It's such thought provoking content and it's really trying to get people to try and examine some pretty high minded interesting kinds of topics that are very prudent and very timely right now, like private military corporations, things like that, and put you into this vanish point on the battlefield so you see what it's like from that kind of perspective, being embroiled in wars that don't mean anything and child soldiers and all these other kinds of heavy topics. I'm kind of rambling here but games as an art form can be incredibly powerful. The way I look at video games is that they are an amalgamation of all of the ways that we've learned to express ourselves in art in one vehicle and they only exist as art when they are played. You as the player contribute to the art and that's a very profound thing, you aren't sitting passively looking at something, it's dead until you are a part of it and that's when the art really comes to life. I guess you could say that the viewer doesn't really make a movie come to life until they watch it, but it's not the same thing, you know that as a gamer. You have to sit down and you have to become a part of the story and that story becomes personal, it's yours, it's powerful. Of course I think some games have a more profound effect than others but it's a medium that has limitless potential.

It's also a medium that more adaptively evolves over time, now with the Wii and its interactivity or with online networks, you can't help but notice and see the sort of communities and involvement evolving around games. What do you think has been video games biggest triumph over the last decade? What shook the earth?

I think there's been several, I think moving to CDROM or DVDROM based medium was important, I think online gaming has been huge, I think the social infrastructure, I think MMOs have been incredibly important, I think downloadable content, I think what's being labelled as the "casual gaming" experience is important, though I hate that label. People shelve the technology when they talk about it, they talk about it in terms of features and things like that in a game but it's really eating the art and it is an art in itself as well. The thing about the way that games get made and the technology evolves, there's artistry in making these technological leaps, in utilizing that technology as best as you possibly can. To some degree that happens in the film business but in the video game industry it lives and breathes or lives and dies on the successful in inclination of new technologies. Technology as art, software as art is an incredible thing. It's really an incredible thing.

For all of us whippersnappers out there who want to make video games or be part of the process, what tips or advice do you have to give?

To have an appreciation for the fact that it takes a team to build anything, video games especially. One of the things that sets people back in the field they're in is an inability to have compassion for the other people that they work with, to respect their contributions and to communicate with them I mean to REALLY actively and effectively communicate with them. It takes a certain amount of skill to be able to verbalize or to be able to write down your thoughts, thinking about how it's going to be comprehended and taken for granted and appreciated by team members. No matter what discipline you want to get yourself into in whatever art form you NEED to understand collaboration. Fully. That's how you have success, that's how you'll have longevity. It takes a lot of people to build magic.

/

Since this interview, Electric Playground has gone daily. Clearly games move a whole lot faster than me, the guy who plays them...

Comments

• February 15, 2009, Slamm Dunkerton writes: I love Victor Lucas. I think he provides a hint of professionalism and decency to TV-video game programming. This is especially evident in comparison to the older X-Play show (although the new one has much of the same lame humor to it). He's the man, and has good taste in games. Nuff said.

Dragon Ball: Origins

(DS, Pub: Atari, Dev: Game Republic, Rated T)

Lowdown: Before there was a Z, there was a lot less powering up and a lot more things happening.

+++ Ge-Orgeous

The DS is just one of those systems that keep shocking me with its capabilities. Sure, the PSP can handle some slicker stuff on a wider screen, but the DS is the one constantly pushing itself and running on all pistons and I constantly forget just HOW nice the games on this thing look. DB:O has pretty stunning graphics, the colours are bright and alive, the effects and textures are explosive are just as animated as the series, which is important seeing as this game is...

++ A Fan's Wish Come True

This game was made solely for fans and fonds of the series. The visuals are spot on and the story completely intact. Buffs will probably be surprised at just how much of the series is reviewed in the game, including even some of the riskier material. But hey, if little me can handle it, big me's down for it. Of course all the cinematics would have been much more of a pleasantry if it wasn't for...

- Complete Lack of Voice Over

For a game so dedicated to pleasing fans, I wish I could feel my ears were more respectfully treated. The music is average if not heavily over-used, but the near absence of voice over is completely puzzling, especially given the marathons of dialogue thrown at you. And there's tons given...

+ All the Content

There is no shortage of gameplay here. Each chapter can be completed within four levels, BUT for the trooper there are tons of additional levels and collectibles to enjoy. Though you may want to pace yourself given...

-- It's More Repetitive than Dragon Ball Z

While the control scheme works (think Phantom Hourglass with more combos and less weapons) and the fighting is mixed up a little with some fancy techniques, overall most of the game is tapping monsters on the screen until they die. The puzzles and obstacles are just feel like diversions from the end of the level, your biggest threat above all seems to be...

- Bulma's Death Wish

Having grown up with the understanding that Bulma was more bark than bite, it's surprising to see her so enthusiastic to take on enemies. The second you enter an area she dashes off in the direction of the next adversaries, so if you want to go treasure hunting you need to keep in mind Bulma is probably somewhere else being used to mop the floor, once she dies it's game over. I'm not angry they threw her into the gameplay but I wish she was easier to manage. I know, she's supposed to be brash, but if they just threw in some controls for her, other than a charged attack I trigger accidentally more often than not, it would have been nice. Just sayin'.

+++ Alarm Heat

It's nice to see something different out of Dragon Ball. Sure, it's not an incredibly original attempt with the ol' dog, but it's a faithful and a pretty one at that. Had the gameplay felt a little more alive, it would have been a must-play, but instead it's a solid though debatable buy, suggested to be taken in chunks and not one ULTIMATE BAAAAAAAAAAAATTLE!

Goosebumps HorrorLand

(DS, Pub: Elastic, Dev: Scholastic Media, Rated E10+)

Lowdown: Yeah, they made a Goosebumps game. I mean now, and not ten years ago. Well they did make a Goosebumps game ten years ago and it had Jeff Goldblum playing Dracula. Hey does anyone have that older one? I really want to see Jeff Goldblum play Dracula.

++ It's not HORRORble

This... isn't the worst collection of mini-games I've ever played, on the DS or otherwise.  Some of the mini-games are charming and fun and the attempt at mixing in a harmless Goosebumps story and game progression with several different themed areas is admirable. The bumper cars and roller-coasters definitely stand out as highlights.

- It's not FRIGHTENINGLY Good Either

While it's better than the worst, it's not greater than the best either.  A lot of the minigames repeat in different areas, and a handful of them have either intense camera issues or just unusually steep difficulty curves. Though the biggest problem presents itself outside the minigames with...

-- GRUESOME Hub World

What in R.L. Stein's name is going on with these overworlds? What in gooey heck is going on with these overworld maps? Why when I walk right on the screen am I going left on the map? How the Curly-The-Skeleton am I supposed to get to Vampire Village?! I'm all for exploring (especially of the spooky haunted house variety) but some of these areas are unintelligible.  Invisible walls block off seemingly plausible paths while other routes are indistinguishable from the background. The fact that you move at a speedwalker's pace doesn't help. The fact there's a segment where you turn into a monster and walk even slower just adds insult to DISMEMBERMENT...

+/ Alarm Heat

There isn't much here to SCREAM about. Most minigames are competent, some exceeding the average and the story bumps it above just-another-mini-game-collection. It's an easier recommendation thousands of other carnival-themed-minigame-games, but it's easiest to recommend not getting any at all. Even a Goosebumps fan won't find much for them here, no Say Cheese or Die or R.L. Stein tagline in sight. But seriously, if you have the Goosebumps PC game with Goldblum Dracula in it, give me a call.

Alien Crush Returns

(Wiiware, Pub/Dev: Hudson, Rated E)

Lowdown: Earth's top defense against vile alien invaders is pinball. If that fails we flank them with an air hockey strike followed by a swift pachinko.

++ Groooooooooooooooosssss

Alien Crush looks gross. And I think that's awesome. The tables look like an HR Giger colonoscopy. Targets squirt goo or explode into pus, not to mention every other moving tentacle target looks like a sphincter. If you just want something full on gooey and gross, this will probably deal a fair fix. If you're looking for a good pinball game though...

--- Boooooooooooriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing

This is a small package. A slimy, gooey package but there isn't really anything to sink your teeth into. Three tables and two boss battles, all of which are surprisingly bland with layouts that have little to exploit, on top of which the boss battles sometimes play themselves. The tables are bland, no special bonuses, no interesting or difficult shots, nothing that really shows much thought. Just a bunch of targets that explode into goo, which gets dry once you wipe the slime off your face. One thing that upsets my stomach acids a little more is...

-- Where's the Local Multiplayer?

What? So I can't just play against the guy sitting next to me? He's just got to hound after my highscore once I'm done? If there is a local multiplayer option (which I mean, there has to be, right?) I sure can't seem to find it. Oh, but I can play against others online then (if there ARE others online). And do you really have to try to connect to the internet every time I start the game? Anyone who's ever wrestled with their Wii's online abilities will probably share my frustration. Game better hope there's something short and sweet on TV while it pursues a wifi goose chase...

/ Alarm Heat

You hurt me Alien Crush. Beneath your oozing exterior was a pinball experience blander than the Space Ranger one that comes free with Windows. There's a gross hole in my heart, Crush, and it's empty, and it's gross. Pfft... I always liked Devil's Crush more...

Kirby Super Star Ultra

(DS, Pub/Dev: Nintendo, Rated E)

Lowdown: Nintendo makes me wonder what exactly the definition of "ultra" is.

+++ It's STILL the Best Kirby

Kirby Super Star was the pinnacle of Kirby's career. Offering several smaller games, tons of gameplay variation with enough powers to make any hopping Kirby nut run through a wall, Super Star simply had it all, and it's all here. The only changes are some graphical and audio touch ups, with two "new" games thrown in the mix but...

-- The New Isn't So Much New as it is Remixed

The two new games are as follows:  A harder, beefed up Spring Breeze (that adorably makes fun of Metaknight's Revenge) and a run through of Metaknight's Revenge where you now play as Metaknight, massacring everything that stands in your way, which is as easy as it sounds. Though maybe I'm just not the desired audience for this as...

+ It's for People Who Never got it the First Time

Or, you know, people really jonesing to play it again... On a DS. I drilled right through the thing easily, games feeling even easier than when I was just a kid. But I knew where to go, what powers to use against whom, the best strategies and most important of all, the location of every treasure in The Great Cave Offensive. If all this is new to you then you just HAVE to give it a whirl. Ya adorable newbie.

+++/ Alarm Heat

The best is still the best a decade later, so if you want the best here's the best, if you've played the best then just think about the best. If you've never played the best, you've lost your excuse. Play the best.

So lil' me, are you happy? I just dove into a fluffy pile of things that tap directly into YOUR desires. Maybe it's sufficed, maybe it hurt. Maybe I just really want to see Jeff Goldblum dressed like Dracula, so if anyone's got that... Or The Adventures of Pete & Pete on DVD for that matter...

As a result of this “artistic globalization” we never really get to talk about “European Games” or “Australian Games” or “Canadian Games”. Theatre, film and music are all very revealing about national identities. Yet with the video games everything seems to get lumped into either East or West. In my limited experience, most people don’t even know many of their favourite games have been developed here in the Great White North. So, I’m going to offer up a cross-section of just who the hell has been making games in Canada.

BioWare – Edmonton, Alberta

Specializing primarily in RPGs, BioWare has made quite a name for itself. Dungeons and Dragons-based Baldur’s Gate received overwhelmingly positive reviews in 1998 and snatched up RPG of the Year awards from most major publications including Computer Gaming World, IGN, Gamespot, and PC Gamer. Not bad for a company formed by some guys with Doctorates in medicine. And it’s just gone uphill from there with Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire and more recently, Mass Effect.

In Mass Effect, mankind is the new kid on the galactic block having just discovered the technology to leave the solar system without running out of air. Man vies for position and power among an entire galaxy of exotic, and, in some cases, ancient species. And of course, nobody wants to see those bratty humans on the Citadel Council and have any say in Galactic Government. Of course shit is going to hit the fan when an ancient race of cyborgs awaken and start throwing fists/lasers at remote colonies – threatening the Galaxy and all that jazz.

Mass Effect scores 91% on Metacritic – which could be considered the exact opposite of suck.

Relic Entertainment – Vancouver, B.C.

You can’t take about space operas without talking about Relic. Relic is behind Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and Company of Heroes, but their biggest splash came right at the beginning in 1999. To a group of Sierra execs, a Homeworld tech-demo looked like just another strategy game. Then founder Alex Garden spun the camera around 360 degrees and began moving units up and down in space. The room of execs proceeded to shit themselves and a Game of the Year was made. It doesn’t sound like much now, but it was a huge leap forward for strategy games. Players accustomed to the top-down view of StarCraft or Total Annihilation now had a new demon – the z-axis. Not only that, you could zoom right in and focus on any unit or groups of units, allowing the player to create cinematic views of the massive space battles they were waging.
Technology aside, Homeworld is also one of the more interesting stories in gaming history. The Kushan, living on the desert planet Kharak, find themselves in a strange predicament. They really don’t seem to belong on this desert planet. Then, in a most dramatic fashion, they discover a wreck at the centre of the Great Desert. In it was etched a galactic map showing them the way to Hiigara – ‘home’. So, like you or I or anyone else would do, they pool all their resources into a gigantic ship to take their population across the galaxy to find home. Of course, the galaxy is a dangerous place and a certain alien race kinda/sorta wanted the Kushan to stay on Kharak.

UbiSoft Montreal – Montreal, Quebec

And finally, you can’t talk about Canadian video games without talking about the behemoth. They may be a subsidiary of French publisher UbiSoft, but this Montreal studio is definitely the heart and soul of it all. With 1800 employees and 1400 more to come by 2013, UbiSoft Montreal is on track to become the largest game development studio in the world. Not only that, Quebec is giving them $19 million to do it. So what is this Canadian game titan doing that is so damn right?
Prince of Persia (the 2008 brand restart), Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry 2, and a whole slew of Tom Clancy games (there must be at least 80 Rainbow Six games now) for starters. Prince of Persia and Assassin’s Creed are highly regarded for art direction and overall finesse. Far Cry 2 was an innovative foray into an open-ended FPS with a unique node-based narrative design that allowed players to be presented with different paths and events every time they played.
From a design perspective, these games could be considered flawed (a discussion for another time) but I am drawing attention primarily to art direction. Hailing from the multicultural city of Montreal, this studio is quite capable of recreating the world be it Las Vegas, a small African country, or Persia.

The Canadian Gaming Identity

Is there anything to be learned? Based on the mentioned titles, I see two major themes:

•    Stories the explore multiculturalism (Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect)
•    A group of people trying to find their place in the Universe (Mass Effect, Homeworld)

While these are clearly broad themes that encompass much of the human experience, it is difficult to not draw parallels between these titles and the Canadian experience. I can’t help but think of the Canada’s collective struggle to find a place on this planet (beyond being the victims of Eskimo jokes) and our unique multicultural approach to how we do it.
Something to think about the next time you pick up the controller.

Badassery in Gaming: Stuff to Check Out

•    Quake Live (beta): Quakeworld seems to have become a relic that leaves us old fogies reminiscing about the “good ol’ days” when gaming was pure and ‘n00b’ was fresh new slang. Quake 3 Arena has been giving a web-browser friendly makeover and it only took 2 days to get into the Beta after submitting a request.

•    TribesNext: Sierra shut down the Tribes 2 authentication servers many moons ago. Luckily, some guys have fired up a new one and is offering the game to download for free. OH! And Tribes 2 is still a blast to play.

•    EVE Corporation ‘Band of Brothers’ disbanded by spy: I have tried to get into EVE on several occasions. In many ways it is a flying spreadsheet that I just don’t have the time for. Nonetheless, I am perpetually intrigued by it from a distance. “BoB” was the largest alliance operating in Low-Security space and a spy from rival alliance “Goonswarm” managed to get near the top of the ladder, disbanded “BoB”, and stole a bunch of assets. It’s raising a lot of interesting questions about crime in a virtual world – pirating, smuggling and espionage are all integral the EVE Online.

Recently I had the pleasure of meeting up and speaking with a group of multi-talented Toronto actors, who have all felt the joy and pain of being “starving artists.” The stereo-types associated with this particular lifestyle has led to the creation of the “Starving Artist: The Show.”

Co-produced and written by Melissa Berg and Lauren Stein, “Starving Artist: The Show” is a web-based series (webisodes) which can be found at starvingartisttheshow.com.

Webisodes have become an increasingly popular medium as of late. Many artists have begun to use the internet as an effective medium for not only creative expression, but also exposure. A couple of examples are “Clark and Michael” (starring Clark Duke and Michael Cera) and “Star-ving” (starring Michael Faustino aka Bud Bundy). For “Starving Artist: The Show,” choosing a website/webisodes as a launching pad was easy, “with the web we can do our own marketing and try to raise our own money, and it can be seen all over the world!” exclaims Stein, adding that “we’re not waiting for some studio executive to approve our ideas anymore. We’re making it, and then the people can decide what they want to watch.”

“We can all relate to being a starving artist, and the idea that if you make money doing it, you’re a sell out” says Stein, adding that “with the show, we also to look at the dynamics of friendship and roommates, and what happens if one is successful, and his friends are so unsuccessful that they will never be (successful), and you can tell they’re so untalented that it’s embarrassing.”

These dynamic, at times dysfunctional and embarrassingly untalented characters that Lauren Stein refers to are:

Casey Cassum (played by Tristan Bell) is an actor, and the only person in the household who has found any type of success at all. Casey landed a role as a heartthrob in the movie “Heaven Heartbeat” and because of this Casey has become a huuuge tween sensation!  Casey goes through his days trying to hide this success from the rest of his roommates in order to avoid hurting their feelings, as their careers seem to be going nowhere.

Jessica (played by Carrie Hage) has dreams of becoming a huge pop-star, the only problem is that she believes that she needs to sleep with producers in order to get her big break. As the website says, “she wants to get kicked out of rehab, like all her pop singer icons. Only she hasn’t even found her addiction.”

Steve (played by Isaac Kessler) is the brooding and disgruntled writer that nobody wants to read about, he’s part nice guy, part douche bag and will harass you until you provide him with a synonym for “pissed-off” (see episode 1)

Cassandra (played by Victoria Simmons) is considered to be one of the roommates, even though she lives in a tent in the backyard. Cassandra is more hippy than hipster, and doesn’t believe in owning anything, however, she will borrow everyone else's shit, which includes guitars…and…well…dildos.

Mark (played by Myles Stocker) is the unlovable and at times lazy actor who enjoys playing Zelda and drawing on his friends faces. Mark also kind of prefers the idea of being a starving artist more than the art-form itself, as he says, “yeah, I don’t think I have the nerve to actually get up on stage though, it’s kind of stressful. I’ll just stay here, and drink, and be poor.” (see episode 3)

These characters, although comedic and stereotypical in nature, are identifiable to the actors who play them. “In the words of Pavement the band, you’ve got to pay your dues before you pay the rent,” says Myles Stocker, adding that “the joke of it is that for every 100 people who are in the exact same situation, maybe one of them will make a living, 99 of them will not.” For Isaac Kessler, being a “starving artist” doesn’t carry the same interpretation as it does for many, “I live at home with my parents. I feel that in order to be a better artist I need to get out and have my own place to really explore my creativity, but I can’t do that because I don’t have enough money. So I’m starving when it comes to creativity more than anything else,” something that many people can definitely identify with.

Other than just representing starving artists, these webisodes also represent Canada, after all. With the use and reach of the internet, people can generally be whoever they want to be and market their identities accordingly. These talented Torontonians have something else in mind, and make it a big point to show that they’re proudly Canadian. Lauren Stein explains that, “the show is packed with layers of going at stereotypes, and one of them is that a lot of films always pretend that they are in Detroit, Pittsburgh, namely American cities. In movies Toronto is always pretending that we’re some American city and I wanted to make a point of the fact we are Toronto, we’re proud to be Toronto, and show that Toronto is under-represented.”

What does the future hold for the show? At this point they are planning on releasing new episodes. “We are trying to launch all of our careers with this. Getting us better known, getting us a wider audience,” says Stein, and with such awesome (and fucking hilarious!) actors, directors and writers, the future for these “starving artists” looks to be extremely filling.

So the next time you’re frolicking on the interweb, which is actually right now, as you’re reading this article and supporting your favourite post-pomo arts and culture zine (insert flirtatious wink here), make sure you also do your part as a citizen of said interweb, and more importantly as someone who has a sense of humour, and also support our friends at http://starvingartisttheshow.com (while you’re there check out their online store) you will laugh and learn valuable life lessons, but you’ll mostly laugh….And who doesn’t want that?

“Starving Artist Appe- teasers”:
Some hilarious quotes from the show:

“Really juicy Manga Hentai Breats”

“I do know that he tried to put his fingers in my bum, and not just one or two or three…Eight. Eight Fingers, and he got three of them in….And I’m not proud of that, but he massaged my prostate.”

“Fisherman’s friend, not a good substitute for human companionship. I had a cold and I took one, and I was fuckin' lonely!"

“Starving Artists Meal Plan”:
A guide for other Starving Artists:

Starving artist food ideas, tried, tested, cheap and true (which just might work for you too):

Myles – Potato soup or lentil soup
Cassandra – I’ve had lettuce and mustard only
Tristan – One time I was really desperate and hungry, and all my roommates had were processed cheese slices and all I had was Dijon mustard, so I would fold them into sandwiches and put Dijon mustard on them, then eat that. And I also had a teabag that I re-used from earlier that day.

Survivor Essentials for a Starving Artist:

Lauren - Towel, Toothbrush and a good book or journal
Tristan – Eggs, they’re cheap and have a lot of protein. And baked beans on toast!
Isaac – Kosher salami, tastes great with salad. Also rice, because it makes you feel full.

Best cheap & good spots in Toronto for a Starving Artist:

Lauren – Tristan’s house! Or stay at home and invite friends over…Spending no money is the best thing to do.
Cassandra – The Green Room (best avocado)
Isaac – Future’s Café and Bakery, as it has “free coffee with all day breakfast.” The Savannah Room and The Bad Dog Theatre have cheap and good impov.
Tristan – Any Value Village

Final advice for other starving artists:

Lauren- Tap water is drinkable, if you want to do it, do it yourself. Don’t audition, don’t wait for someone else to create your career for you.
Victoria- If you have to stand on a street corner to get people to pay attention to you, do it, because eventually the right person will come along.
Tristan- Keep truckin’ dude.

Before we get to the verdict, some background on the game. You take control of 'Faith' (think along the lines of Lara Croft with Asian roots) in a dystopian no-so-distant future. All electronic communication is monitored by a totalitarian government. Thus, the not-so-government-friendly folks rely on 'runners' (like Faith) to carry messages and packages across the rooftops of the City. One day Faith is on a routine run when shit hits the fan and the bullets start flying.

Faith, the protagonist, eyes the city from a dramatic angle.

The interface is very straightforward in that there is no interface. The only HUD present is your tiny reticle to indicate what you are aiming at. Health is indicated by the saturation of the overall image - once things start to get washed out, you are nearly dead. Your reticle turns blue to indicate you can activate slow motion to assist with the more tricky maneuvers. Direction is provided by "runner vision" - a representation of how a runner sees the world around them. In layman's terms, various objects in the world will turn red to indicate possibly pathways through the urban jungle.

The City is, to put it simply, stunning. While this dystopia is seemingly clean, you will quickly discover the dirty underbelly: sewers, air ducts, subway tunnels, etc. What was most appealing of all was the game's incredibly use of vibrant colour - something seldom seen in most of today's washed-out titles (Gears of War). Even blacks and whites are presented in a vibrant way I have not seen in any other game to date. While the architecture did not vary much from location to location, the use of colour helped establish a sense of place. The only major stumble the visual design takes is in some choices with overall brightness and the HDR lighting effects. Too often I found myself fiddling with the brightness and contrast because the outdoors were so bright and many indoor locations were so dark. While this was a major inconvenience, it by no means overshadows the rest of the game's unique visual design.

This is what colour in a game looks like.

The sound design of Mirror's Edge is also particularly effective. I will probably always be hunted by the bone crunch heard when falling to street level from an eighty-storey building. But most amazing of all is the game's electronica soundtrack composed by the great Solar Fields. A beautiful mix of Brian Eno-inspired Ambient and pumping trance seduce you into the world of Faith. I would tag this as one of the best game soundtracks in recent memory. Mirror's Edge also sports a theme song by Lisa Miskovsky titled 'Still Alive' which is alright but pales in comparison to the rest of the soundtrack. Unfortunately, there were also a few stumbles in the presentation that preventing true greatness. Too often the soundtrack was overpowered by radio conversations or the sound of Faith running or vice versa. I couldn't find a nice volume balance between music and effects. Eventually, I just turned on subtitles so I could crank the music and still be fed mission objectives.

From here on, Mirror's Edge becomes a bit of a mixed bag. Gameplay is both a blast and a bore. While the controls can take half an hour or so to get a true feel for, it's still fairly easy to pick up and play. Running can be both exhilirating and frustrating - but when you manage a few seconds of perfectly coordinated running it is a rush like no other. Combat unfortunately, is just frustrating. The combat controls are far too imprecise when combat demands absolutely precision. It feels lame to admit it, but some sort of auto-aim would have been nice so I could focus on timing jumps and kicks rather than keeping the tiny reticle pinned right on my opponent.

The game is fairly short, with less than 10 hours of storyline-driven gameplay. The storyline gameplay is mediocre at best. You will encounter chases, close-quartered combat, one-on-one fights, and jumping puzzles. While it seems like varied gameplay, it manages to feel overwhelming flat and repetitive. Too much of the game is looking for red pipes, ramps and ledges in order to get from point A to B. As a result, the game is as linear as they come. The best moments of the game lie in the fast-paced chase sequences where you frantically dash across the rooftops without a moment to think. These were the only moments I felt I truly exercised creativety rather than just blindly following the Runner Vision. The momentum of the game is broken up by mundane jumping puzzles and crawling around in air ducts. Due to the imprecision of combat, most of the combat sequences are trial and error, quite often luck becoming the dominant factor in your success.

Sure, combat *looks* awesome, but is difficult to execute.

The story, which also held promise, is total rubbish. As Faith, you attempt to unravel a conspiracy surrounding your Cop sister and an assassination. Much of the story are told through vector animated sequences which, on their own, are pretty but ultimately feel out of place in the big picture. Mirror's Edge does basically nothing to arrange the player's sympathies and antipathies and ultimately you don't care for the characters at all. The dialogue is also along the lines of the worst I've heard. Nothing interesting is done with the dystopia theme beyond beating you over the head with "INVASION OF PRIVACY IS BAD BAD BAD!" which is disappointing given that they had the potential to make relevant dialogue about current events across in the world and particularly the United States.

Mirror's Edge offers up some additional content in the form of time trials and speed runs through the storyline. While at times the time trials were a lot of fun they quickly became repetitive and I lost interest. I was surprised that there weren't any true multiplayer modes where you could square off against friends on the rooftops of this dystopian universe in the form of races, deathmatch or even capture the flag.

The Verdict

The Good:

• Outstanding visual design
• Soundtrack is one the best in recent memory
• Truly unique gameplay at times
• Immersive approach to interface

The Bad:

• For every fun moment there is a frustrating or mundane one
• Time trials and Speed Runs are exhilarating at first, but the novelty quickly wears off.
• Frustrating combat

The Ugly:

• The Characters and Story are very ignorable

Art?:

Mirror's Edge has executed established art forms like visual art and music very well, but ultimately, I would not associate Mirror's Edge with the term "game art" as it falls into far too many bad film cliches rather than truly making the story its own and presenting it in a way only a game could. I usually define good art as a dialogue about a given subject matter. Mirror's Edge feels too much like a one-sided monologue about invasion of privacy that doesn't stir up any unique ideas or argument which is a huge miss given how relevant that subject matter is in the post-9/11 world.

Last Word:

Mirror's Edge is an ambitious project that stumbles out of the starting gate. If anything, I feel that DICE just ran out of time in order to meet the Holiday release window. That, and they didn't truly understand what they had, putting too much emphasis on the game elements that were not fun. Do not get me wrong, the game is not terrible; however, it's biggest downfall is that I know it could have been so much more.

It was after maybe the 8th or 9th time that Gears of War 2 designer CliffyB used the phrase "bigger, better and more badass" that I started to wonder: "why the hell are games so damn different from fine art"? After all, I never heard of Peter Brook (a.k.a. PeteyB) chainsawing through a wall and declaring to an auditorium of minions that his next theatre production of A Midsummer Night's Dream will be "bigger, better, and more badass". Likewise, I don't think Lennon or Warhol attempted such feats either. If anything, the video game medium is an interactive movie. But if film started out as recorded theatre, then it is entirely plausible that games are an artistic medium, right?

Some grumpy old man has weighed in on similar questions, declaring (without chainsawing through a wall) that "video games will never be high art" and are "inherently inferior to film and literature". To me, as an artist, I think this is an absurd statement - especially from someone who gave Speed 2 a thumbs up. Most absurd of all was that a film critic was talking shit about a new medium when film itself is just over a century old - theatre, literature, visual art and music pre-dating film by thousands of years.

The fact of the matter is that film, even in it's youth, has well over 70 years of theory, technology, and bodies of work over the video game medium. Plus, film has borrowed heavily from dramatic theory already established in theatre. But, that's fine because video games borrow heavily from film theory. And just like films of the early 20th century, games are an entertainment, a "cinema of attraction". The earliest audiences of film did not flock to the medium for "high art" - they flocked to marvel at the technology/magic of moving pictures. It was COOL. How does that sound so different from video games when CliffyB talks about how badass his next game or is when random teenager 'X' says "Man, the graphics look sweet" as the only measure for good a game is? The art of video games is in its earliest stages. It is a medium of cool.

But as the art of film grew, so will the art of games. After all, if film is the "art of the moving image" then will games not become the "art of the interactive image"? It is already starting to happen. Braid was easily one of the year's best releases that could only be described as a kind of interactive poetry. A truly beautiful and ambiguous experience drawing on expressionism in way film, literature, or any other high art never could. Braid did not even need fancy graphics to get mainstream attention (some of which is not that desirable), which is impressive by itself - like a well-grounded indie film in a sea of crappy Hollywood summer blockbusters.

No matter what happens, there will always be demand to shoot at stuff just as there is demand for Hollywood to make movies about shooting at stuff. But as long as there is a community that in turn demands meaningful gaming experiences, then those games will exist as well - some of which will be "bigger, better, and more badass" than their big-budget FPS counterparts.

--------[MOST PAINFULLY AVERAGE GAME]--------

There are two types of games we love, the great games we play losing track of the hours and the games we have more fun barking at because we can barely play it for an hour. In the middle is the awkward middle child, the painfully average game, leaning on the cusp between fun and sickening is nothing but grey boredom. Nothing to call home about, good news or bad. These aren't the worst games, these are just the top games that are hardest to be enthusiastic about.

Runnerups

*Wario Land: Shake It*
While it had some of the more ingenuity uses of the Wii waggle we've see (something other than replacing button X with mindless shaking) it's awfully hard to get exited about Wario's latest adventure. There's tons of content but it's a lot of bland content. The main game difficulty is a breeze while the side missions are unusually like hitting a steel door. Most disappointing of all is the substitution of all the edge we've seen from Wario in recent years with carbon copy design. This is the only time I'll say it but man what happened to the fart jokes?

*R-Type Command*
With the PSP seeing some of it's strongest library aditions this year it was a little sour to see what was a genuine new direction for stale growing franchise to be just as stale anyways. While it does have great incorporation of R-Type lore (hey, lore is lore) victory in the feild of battle often feels like a flip of a coin.

*Strong Bad's Awesome Game for Attractive People*
Strong Bad's bland game for probably ugly people should have been a shooin recommendation, but instead I constantly found myself scratching my head to justify it. The humour's bogged down, game mechanics mysteriously un-used for some chapters and puzzles so easy I found myself solving them before I knew there was a puzzle needing to be solved. Strongbad, I'll tip my glass of cool Mountain Dew for you, but unfortunately it will be over my laptop computer.

*Spore*
One of the most painful "mehs" of the year came in the incredibly hyped package of Will Wright's supposin' opus, Spore. The master of tween-girls play-my-game mechanics baffled us with a cluttered mess that felt more like a collection of smaller games instead of one complete package. Though that's not to say seeing living recreations of your own butt doesn't have it's charm.

*Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe*
Don't feel bad, before I played it I thought it was a-shooin' to be awful, instead it was just mediocre. While the graphics and story are more polished than your average brawler, Midway should have taken more closer note from comic book cliffhangers and given the player a reason to come back again for another adventure.

WINNER!

FABLE 2!
Oh Peter, you promised us it would be different this time. But I am afraid a dog is not a difference. A gun is not a difference. Pirates are not a difference. This is the same thin experience we had last time Peter, just with more gameplay unusually centered around farting.

----------[BEST GAME NO ONE BOUGHT]----------

One day they will be re-discovered buried treasures, though unfortunately it will be years after the creators lost their jobs. Thanks alot assholes.

Runningducks

*Yakuza 2*
Your PS2 misses you y'know? It's just sitting there, show the guy some love. Hurtin'.

*Okami (Wii)*
You fucked up the first time and now you've gone and fucked up again. Oh go draw me a river why don't you.

*MaBoShi: The Three Shape Arcade*
Listen, if I can't remember the name of the game once I stop looking at the title then clearly it doesn't deserve my attention at all.

WINNER?

*Pinball Hall of Fame The Williams Collection*
This game is a cut above the rest. Regardless if it sold better than any of the others there is one undeniable fact. It was a painstaking labour of love. The creators of this game must have known during the entire development that it simply was not going to sell. They must have known this during the making of in-depth tutorials with voice overs for every machine. They must have known this during the careful recreation of the best pinball has to offer. They must have known this while polishing every facet of presentation. If they did not know this, then their minds must be a beautiful place to live.

---------------[MOST UNINSPIRED]---------------

I'm not going to try justifying this category since they didn't try justifying their games.

Runningbehind

*Score International Baja 1000*
Aww, that's adorable.

*Rise of the Argonauts*
Only true accomplishment here is making the next God of War look even better.

*Facebreaker*
Well, you could argue it's been a while since we last saw Punch-Out.... And Ready2Rumble... And Black and Bruised...

*Pirates vs Ninjas Dodgeball*
Probably the first video game to make me want to physically punch a video game.

WIN...ERRR

*Rock Revolution*
Oh yeah, we're seeing a slew of rock star music games, no doubt about that, Rock Revolution however has something the others do not. History. See, years before the fake plastic guitar boom, Konami had a lil' game called Guitar Freaks, which while big in Japan never got footing here. Western audiences simply could not be allured to rocking along famous anthems like *Hai Hai Butterfly Neko No Sushi*. When Guitar Hero did burst onto the scene, some could speculate Konami was a little flustered by the craze. Rock Revolution is the whining child of that contempt. What's the biggest clincher? Is it the uninspired "rock star" presentation? No. The song list made up of crappy covers of tunes already available in other games? No. The fact you need to already own a Guitar Hero/Rock Band controller in order to even play this knock-off? Ahh, there it is. Simply deeeevine.

---------------[MOST BROMANTIC]---------------

Yo guy like I heard there's this video game goin down tonight but before this shit goes down I just wanna tell ya how I feel man.

Running good bro running good

*Far Cry 2*
Like bro if you're ever stuck in Africa for any reason I got your back bro, and I know sometimes I show love in weird ways. Like if you fall off a cliff and hurt yourself bad and I carry you into a firefight miles away for no reason it's only because I wanna make s'more memories bro.

*Gears of War 2*
Yo bro I'm feelin so jack'd up right now, but I gotta say man I wouldn't want to be tag teaming these ugly guys with anyone else bro just me and you playing Horde mode. It means a lot to me.

*Left4Dead*
BRO BRO BRO! I need you bro! I need a healthpack bro! OH MAN, DUDE I'M CAUGHT SOME CREEPY TONGUE GUY'S GOT ME BRO BRO... OH, phwew, that was a close one bro, glad ya saved me. I woulda felt like a pussy if the chick saved my ass.

WINNER (DO A KEGSTAND)

*Army of Two*
Fist props bro.

--------------------[DORKIEST GAME]--------------------

Uhm, snrk, we prefer the term NERD.

Dweebs

*World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King*
The longest running franchise in the dorkiest genre still stands strong with a dorky expansion that brings you one step closer to making your avatar a mirror of your favourite GWAR member.

*Sins of Solar Empire*
When my video game begins to look like a star chart I think I might just call it a night.

*Megaman 9*
Here nerds, a gift, from Capcom to you. And only to you.

*Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe*
Finally, just like all those long sleepless nights I had my action figures go at it... As a kid... Yeah.. As a... Kid.

*Left4Dead*
Because the first word used to describe it is "zombie".

EXCELSIOR!

*Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness*
Steam punk?..... AND a webcomic?!

--[COMPANY MOST LIKELY TO GO UNDER IN NEW ECONOMY]--

The last hurrah to some long sinking ships.

*Swimmers THQ*
The most depressing of the nominations, THQ only just started to spread its wings. Showing some real balls and dropping their Nickelodeon dependant franchises for some truly creative concepts like DeBlob and upcoming Dangerous Creatures proved THQ had some bravado all along. A shame no one's buying their bravery.

*Gamecock Media*
It feels like just yesterday we saw some annoyingly outspoken programmer elites shout at the world (through a megaphone) that there would be a day when we'd be playing games of quality and creativity the likes of which never seen before. Over a year later, we are still waiting for that day.

*Atari*
Oh come on, shutting their doors has become like a hobby to them, it's no biggie.

*Codemasters*
Still praying people will drop their copies of Lord of the Rings rip-off MMO to play the Lord of the Rings MMO, Codemaster will sink in a pool of their own tears. The fact your first reaction was "who the hell is Codemasters?" isn't a great sign either.

*Midway*
It's been a fun, long ride Midway, we've had some great times. I'm not wishing you ill, but you're not giving me much to go on here. I'm not going to buy This Is Vegas, I think I owe you that much honesty in these final hours.

-------------------

Here's hoping we enter the new year with the same sort of integrity and spunk.

Fallout 3 (PC/PS3/XB360, Pub/Dev: Bethesda, Rated M)

Lowdown: America was destroyed by nukes but Americana wasn't so it's time to explore!

+++ This is an Adventure
Bethesda was praised for their last epic Oblivion, which I could never find myself attached to because three hours in all I seemed to find was forest and skeletons, five hours later forest and skeletons wearing armour. In Fallout 3, Bethesda took the best of Oblivion and combined it with the best of Fallout, simply resulting in the best. You make the game your own, whether you like it or not. You can choose which way to roam, to accept a quest or massacre the person who asked you and even which soundtrack will harmonize your venture. There are just the right amount of x factors piled upon your own moral judgement smothered in content and quests that lead to the guarantee that your adventure will be unlike anyone else's. Most of which was why Oblivion was so hot but now this time...

++ It's in Fallout Land
The world of Fallout is a dark, snarky and cynical one of Atomic culture, making it a blast to explore. And holy shit there is a lot to explore. Each town unique full of memorable different characters separated by a wasteland that treasures secrets, hideouts and surprises which makes even just doing absolutely nothing a greater joy than doing absolutely something in most other games. And whatever it is that you do...

+ You Can do Your Own Way
Fallout 3 isn't an FPS or an RPG but sits comfortably in the middle though being a master of either definitely doesn't hurt. FPS nuts will get infuriated early on when things they have dead in their crosshairs don't end up dead on the ground while RPG fans pulse will race when they can no longer depend on the V.A.T.S. turn based system to slow down the combat. It plays its own way, a new hybrid genre that gamers will have to adapt to. You can even choose to play it in third or first person (though I would recommend the latter greatly).

- The Main Story... Well... It's no Classic
Okay, so here's the hinging flaw I suppose. The main story of you, your wanderer following after your father whose escape from the bomb shelter for a reason great enough to get his friend killed isn't the most rattling one. It's a little predictable, it's not going to thunder your mind but it doesn't have to. There are so many side quests and other things to do aside from the main story that half the bliss is making your own legend instead of the one the game gives you. And of course...

+ It All Looks Really Sweet
Gone are the forests of Oblvion, here is the post apocalyptic wasteland of Washington DC. It's bleak, depressing, detailed and eerily beautiful at times. The almost fantastic environment draws you in completely, encompassing you in this world while the radiating sun fries you in the day or the desert moon cools you at night, while giant naked mole rats scamper just over the horizon. You will feel part of this vast world you explore.

+++++ Alarm
Easiest decision I've ever made. Fallout gave me that feeling, that rare blissful feeling usually reserved for Zelda titles where I felt like I was part of some sublime adventure. I cannot recommend a game more than Fallout 3, not an atom inside me is split over the praise.

Tomb Raider Underworld (Multi Platform, Pub: Eidos, Dev: Crystal Dynamics, Rated T)

Lowdown: Lara Croft and her twin weapons go on a grand adventure.

+ +Wandering Eyes
As time goes on most of our cherished game heroes tend to look better and better, Lara Croft is no exception. Her character animations are smooth and some of the environments, especially the lush or large scale are simply a marvel to look at. The colours are striking and they even added in some dirt textures on Lara's body for whenever she's done wrestling in the mud. Of course none of this applies when you're...

- Blind as a Bat
The first full level is an underwater cavern. With such little illumination and having just started to get your grips around this beast makes for a very underwhelming start. You can't see shit, it's hard to figure out where to go and what you can grab on to and your garbage radar map isn't about to help. I wandered around in this fucking cave for a half hour trying to figure out how to escape until I discovered a hole in the wall I missed right under my nose. But don't fret, despite this bleak start there is a light at the end of the tunnel...

++ The Game Gets Better as You Go Along
The further into the game the more satisfied I became. The obstacles became less cryptic and the puzzles became more interesting and fluid to the game design. The level in Mexico stands out in particular as this shining chapter of the game. You ride around on your motorcycle from tiny Aztec temple ruin to another through the jungle assembling parts to work a crank that unlocks an underground death tomb even more massive than the whole world thus far. It`s awesomely paced, packed with action and variety in tasks and I`d go out on a limb to tell any Raider fan to give this game a shot for this one perfect level alone. Of course one thing fans probably won`t dig is the...

-Vanilla Plot
Okay I`ll admit it, this was the first Tomb Raider I`ve played in a really long time. So I was a little jostled to find out Lara has this whole roster of arch enemies including a spoiled American bitch, a magical queen of Atlantis who hates your guts and a bizarro Lara complete with leather clothes and crimson red hair. Surprise, they`ve all teamed up, located themselves on a water bound hideout to plot Croft`s destruction. All the while Lara is searching for the entrance to Avalon of King Arthur lore which is opened with Thor`s hammer of Viking lore located around the world in a grab bag of other lores. As trite as it all is, the biggest problem with the story is it never seems to intersect with the game. There`s practically no interaction with any of the cast and evil Lara especially seemed to only exist within the cut-scenes. There is one strange thing about the enemies you DO fight...

- If You Love Animals You`ll Hate Tomb Raider
Thanks to Tomb Raider I now know how animals end up on the endangered species list. They keep attacking Lara Croft. Your hand will be forced to slay panthers, tigers, sharks, bats and even man-sized chameleons which if any other scientist discovered would have made extreme efforts to preserve. They go so far as to tease you with a tranquilizer gun you can choose to take into your adventure but the damn thing has an un-notified limitation ammo which will force you back into showering them with two pistons of unlimited death hail. Of course all this said...
+ If You Hate Animals You`ll Love Tomb Raider
But even then I assure you you're most hated enemy of all will be...

- - The Camera. I Hate You the Camera
The camera angle is almost a whole enemy within itself. So often does it sneakily love to hide the next jump just out of your vision. Lara will occasionally magically `snap` onto the next ledge herself to make these blind jumps a little tolerable, but it`s no less frustrating to have the game itself be your worst enemy.

+++ Alarm Heat
I had a fun time with Tomb Raider, and having been a non-fan before I think that can really say something. The game won't have a lasting effect, not to mention not lasting long, but there was definitely a smile on my face for most of the experience. I can now walk away knowing what Tomb Raider's appeal has been after all these years. Aside from Lara Croft's massive tits.

Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe (PS3/XB360, Pub/Dev: Midway, Rated T unfortunately)

Lowdown: The Dark Knight is hot shit right now so Midway has Scorpion beat the Joker senseless.

++ Surprise, Story Mode is Fun
Probably one of the most pleasant shocks from this game is the amount of effort they put into story mode. The last major fighting game having been Soul Calibur 4 it's a refreshing change of pace to have a brawler with a story that tries. Story mode is split in two, having you choose between either the Mortal Kombat challengers or the DC superheroes. Each side basically mirrors the other, while at the same time completing the other, so while you might be satisfied playing one you won't get the whole picture (or character roster for that matter). The story itself is the same ol' crossover tale. Gather round children to hear the story of side A's world merging with side B, both side thinks other side is out for their blood so they pummel each other into submission. As bland as it sounds the dialogue is fun, the cinematics hold their own and overall the generic crossover story works a hell of a lot better in a genre where the point is pointless fighting than in a comic. Story mode carries most the weight in this game because otherwise...

- - There is a Desperate Lack of Modes and Characters
No I am not salivating for the triumphant return of Kombat Karts, but this game just doesn't feel like a complete package. There's story mode, multiplayer, arcade and some combo challenges but that's all. This is all only worsened by the lack of characters. It's a little frivolous to whine about missing DC superheroes, especially from a DC fanatic, but even the MK side seems to have some unusual cuts. Jonny Cage, Reptile and Goro, MK staples, are mysteriously absent. Despite this...

+ Some of the Characters Present are Obscenely Fun to Play
The Flash is a combo nut, Luthor is a tank and there are some really great strategies to pull off with the Joker. I even fell in love with some of the MK faces like Liu and Sonya all over again. To make it even better...

+ The Characters Look Great
They all have really vibrant colours, freakishly detailed textures and there is even a damage effect far deeper than "he's hurt so he's all roughed up" and they all especially look great mid-air fighting and bashing each other through walls. Still, there are...

- Hiccups
Where things disappear, hits oddly miss and everyone seems to take a moment to realize they've died. And it is...

- - Pretty Shallow
This is about as a light as a fighter gets. There are only so many good combo strings and so much to master. All the characters have pretty similar move sets. While the "RAGE", the fall-fighting, the wall rushing and grab counters do mix things up none of them will really revolutionize the experience. And of course you've heard about...

- The T Rated Fatalities
That are wimpy and boring and half of them are just slamming the dude into the ground really hard but this is still...

+ The Best Mortal Kombat in Far Too Long

++/ Alarm Heat
So it's shallow, so it's lacking, so it's tame. It still isn't bad, it still isn't awful, it still is far better than what I expected and even as a ravaging DC dork I find myself un-offended. If you need a fleshed out fight, Soul Calibur, Street Fighter 3 and Virtua Fighter aren't going anywhere. If you want a fun little thing with Batman and goofy voice clips, here you go.

Mirror's Edge (PC/PS3/XB360, Pub: EA, Dev: DICE, Rated T)

Lowdown: The happy future hates you and now you have to run. Good thing you are pretty good at running.

+Don't Get Me Wrong, I am Really Fond of the Concept
A first person action packed parkour game? I'm down. Unfortunately...

- - - This game is the Ultimate Lesson in Humility
I've played hard games in my life, I've grown to know when the blood is on my own hands. Every task you have to accomplish in the game feels like crawling up a mountain by the ends of your nails. Everything from the landings to the fighting you will die you will die you will die until you forget what it means to live. The game is so fickle with the manoeuvres it made me wonder if the developers forgot the game was in first person. You don't have full vision, you have whatever you see on the screen but so often that just won't cut it. To make matters worse, many moves you have to make are made while being used as a bullet magnet by your enemies, so you can't take your time you have to just jump and prey you've jumped right. When you finally do land it, it could be the thirtieth time you've tried, it doesn't really feel like you finally did it, it feels like the game finally let you do it and the feeling of the reward is a little squandered. But if you think the jumping is frustrating...

- Boy Fighting Sure is Oodles of Love
EA did not play up the fighting in this game, promised the game focuses on running more than gunning. Though they never said you wouldn't be forced to throw punches. Of course there are rooms and places where you'll HAVE to fight, be it because the only way out of the enemy littered room is by climbing up a pipe at sloth speed or there just doesn't seem to be a don' gone way around this room without getting pumped full of lead. The fighting is awful, and I say that with all my pulsing heart. So many fights feel over before they even begin, a good third ending before I even got close enough to the opponent to land the first blow. A lot of people whine about the gun play but there isn't much of it and it gets the job done, you CAN'T say the same about yer own dukes. While the failed jumps were frustrating it was the combat where I felt absolutely helpless.

+ Okay, so It's not ALL Bad
If you saw any of the trailers of jumping across rooftops, blazing your own path and were peeked for fun then don't sweat it. Yes, those parts are fun, when it is just a bunch of rooftops to make your own way across using the fairly solid game mechanics, it is fun. But those parts don't come often enough, if you've watched enough trailers you've probably already seen it all. Thankfully time trial is always there to relive those moments. If you still have hopes for the story, welllll...

- It's a Decent Story Told Poorly
I wanted to be interested in this tale but it felt like the game neglected to fill in some very BIG issues. For one, why you are a runner and what the hell a runner does. When you find out the secret government master plan is a program to take down the runners I couldn't help but think "Yeah, because you're breaking the law and usually the city isn't fond of criminals." Your protagonist quickly shifts from underdog to aggressive trouble maker, which sort of justifies why so many of your friends backstab you by the end. To remove your interest even more, most narrative is told in bland flash animations instead of...

+ The Catchy Colour Pallet Graphics
While I took a tumble to the ground a lot at least it was a very pretty tumble to the ground. The city is made up of white pillars with streaks of pastel colours which play off aesthetically pleasing during miserable gameplay.

+ Alarm Heat
I wanted to like this game. Leading up to playing it I liked what I saw and I'm moping around wishing I also liked what I played. But there's no sense of reward by the end and the bulk of the game felt like a chore.