Girl Talk All Day / Girl Throwing Puppies into The River - Lawsuits Waiting to Happen?

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Just for the record, do not Google "girl throwing puppies into the river", because you will find a video of it. It's not a good way to start your day. Trust me. But still, when we have teenage girls laughing and hurling puppies into rivers, do we really care if Girl Talk is pickpocketing from the music industry's deep pockets? Deep thoughts indeed.

So Pacman Buzzed this link with some rather insightful thoughts about why the industry isn't suing Greg Gillis (Girl Talk) saying that he is the ultimate Robin Hood posterboy of copyright law, and that lawyers from all around the world would gather around him, prop him up on a chair, march him into Time's Square and declare him Galactic Emperor of Musical Copyright laws. This might be part of it. However, I'm also willing to bet that if they wanted, the music industry could easily pony up for some equally powerful and talented lawyers to fight their fight.
They also have a pretty powerful precedent on their side, there's a number of cases where if someone doesn't get properly credited on a sample, there are ramifications. Even artists who stole from Creative Commons liscenced (looking at you Crystal Castles and Timbaland) artists have had to give credit where credit was due. Danger Mouse's The Grey Album (which mashes up Jay Z's Black album with The Beatles' White alubum) caused some pretty intense disputes between Danger Mouse and EMI, at a certain point EMI even held his OTHER album (Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse Present: Dark Night of the Soul) hostage, refusing to release it for almost a year until the issue was resolved.

Exactly how the issue was resolved is actually pretty important when we're considering Girl Talk. Basically, the labels backed down when it was decided that there was not going to be a commercial release of the album (and sure enough, it's still available, online, for free, right here).

I'm sure Gillis took his queue from this and released "All Day" for free, on a pay what you can basis. Basically he's saying "Pay for it if you feel like giving me money." He could probably turn around in court (if it ever got to that) and say that people were paying him directly as an artist, and not paying for the actual work. As though we were all just kind hearted philanthropists. Which may be so.

So where are we? Oh yeah, he's not selling the album, so he's not making a profit directly from the copyrighted material? That sounds right.

So if I'm a big music industry fat cat, and someone comes into my office, sits down on the huge padded leather chair across from me and looks at me from across my enormous treated oak desk that overlooks Los Angeles and asks me what's to be done about Girl Talk, the conversation would go like this:

Me: Is he selling it?

Them: Nope.

Me: Let him be.

Them: Why?

At which point I would hold up the picture you see to your right and say:

Me: Do you see these people? I've seen these people for the past 30 years (in this scenario I'm 65), they only listen to demos of bands you've never heard of. But not anymore. What are the odds of these people bobbing their heads to Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA" or rapping along with Soulja Boy's "Pretty Boy Swag"? The odds SHOULD be zero. But they're not. Because of Girl Talk.

And then I would tell whoever was in my office to get naked, put on boxing gloves, and fight my pet monkey.

When I listen to Girl Talk, there's a lot of guilty pleasures that are indulged. Do I want to listen to all 4 minutes of Bananaram's "Cruel Summer"? No. Will I throw my hand up at a club and gesture approvingly to a DJ when he samples it for 10 seconds? Yes. And that's what Girl Talk taps into, he masterfully weaves a lot of ultimately cheesy samples into an enjoyable experience with solid beats (which are also stolen). He takes just the right amounts of music you ACTUALLY listen to, music you're nostalgic about, music with gangster cred that makes you feel less white, and pop music with undeniably catchy hooks that would never listen to in public and whips it into something awesomes.

Taken apart I would say that a good 70% of the music Girl Talk samples I would not listen to at all, let alone on a regular basis (I've been listening to "All Day" more or less *ahem* all day since it came out on Monday). But there I am, music snob and all, on the metro, nodding my head to Lady Gaga (mixed together with Iggy Pop and the Beastie Boys mind you).

And I think the record industry is aware of this. They spend a good portion of their marketing budgets making sure some of these artists get as much radio play as possible, but no amount of spending would ever get a lot of these tunes into my MP3 player. Girl Talk did it. And he's not even selling it. If even a handful of people legally download and pay for Rihanna's "Rude Boy", even if they did so ironically, the record labels win. That's to say nothing about the 371 OTHER songs on the disc (or Girl Talk's previous efforts).

That might be the real reason why, even though he's "shrouded in controversy" the labels just let him do his thing, because bottom line he's probably doing them more good than harm.

PS: Fun Fact, even Girl Talk has never sampled anything from The Beatles catalogue. I guess there are lines you just don't cross.

Imaginationland

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So I was having a conversation with a few of my colleagues about whether or not it was fair to lie to your children and tell them that Santa Claus, the toothfairy, and the Easter Bunny exist. The results were pretty much astounding since people who are staunchly opposed to religion would still instill their kids with a form of faith (in a jolly fat man or giant rabit, both of whom seem to break into your house and reward you based on your deeds). They're like low-rent Jesus replacements.

The worst (in my opinion) was that they said that it was so their children could have a sense of wonder in the world, a belief that there was more to life than there really was. Which is an even harder pill to swallow. Teaching your kids about religion when you believe in it is one thing, misleading your kids so you can confuse them about what is real and what isn't is another.
I find it a very strange line. One of the guys involved in the discussion was like "before I had kids I thought it was wrong to lie to them about the holiday mascots, but now I think I'll do it". Because it makes you feel good to see your child being an idiot and believing in something you don't even believe in? Where's the logic?

Anyways, one of their counterpoints was that I was raised without these things and now as an adult I still have an overactive imagination.

I took that as a compliment.

Is Batman Gay? The Long Halloween

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So, I recently ordered a small stack of books from amazon, namely because I wanted a particular book that I was unable to track down in any local bookstores. Once I get book shopping though, I usually can't stop myself from buying at least 4 or 5 in one go. Naturally, as is the way things go, the book that initially brought me to the site was backordered, so they sent me the other books that I ordered and the original reason of even going online book shopping has still yet to be delivered.

Such is things.

One of the books I picked up was When in Rome, the (if I recall correctly) awesome Catwoman story that takes place in the same timeline as The Long Halloween. Long Halloween being one of my all time favorite Batman stories ever, I felt that before getting into When in Rome, I would re-read The Long Halloween.

That was at some point around dinner time yesterday, and now, it is about an hour and half before dinner time, and I'm done.

It's that awesome.

370 pages long and a work day to get in the way of reading it and I still raced through it, enjoying it just as much as the first time (this would probably be the fourth or fifth time I've gone through it).

You can find a ton of lists and top tens with this book on it, and I'll just share a few reasons why it comes close to the top of my non-existant list.

First of all, the artwork is absolutely stunning. I had the pleasure a few years back of sitting in on a sketch duel between Tim Sale and Alex Maleev, both doing their renditions of the Batman. While Maleev's was without a doubt awesome, I found that Sale's version and style absolutely illustrates Batman the detective (as opposed to the goddamned Batman).

Coupled with what Jeph Loeb's undeniably noir storyline and it's a perfect mix. The silent black and white kill sequences of Holiday particularly lend themselves to the style, and I found myself spending longer on these sequences than any of the pages with words. The visual storytelling of the kills is top notch.

Hard to believe that Tim Sale is colour blind, although it may explain Daredevil: Yellow.

The storyline is also amazing, without revealing too much, it bridges the gap between how Gotham city went from being a corrupt town in the clutches of the mob to a corrupt town in the clutches of the absolute and criminal insane. What starts off as a mob story ala Year One, ends up with the full gallery of rogues coming into the mix, just about every Batman villain worth anything plays at least some role in the story. Which is something I enjoy, I've always said that Batman's cred as an all time kickass superhero is owing an awful lot to the fact that his cast of villains is second to none. This also explains why Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth is another of my favorite Batman stories.

And finally, the story is about Batman the detective. The thing that seperates Batman from a lot of other heroes is that he figures shit out. Superman sees through walls or listens to conversations in other countries to find bad guys, bad guys just sort of find Spiderman, and Iron Man often relies on a secret multi billion dollar organization to do his digging, but Batman? He figures that shit out on his own. Long Halloween spanned 13 issues, and there's maybe 5 or 6 major action sequences. Somebody gets killed every issue, but it's not about the action. It's about the mystery.

I think Batman is at his best when he's a detective and not just a tough guy who likes to dress up as a bat, and this book has that element in spades.

If you have not read it, sit on a dick.

PS: This has nothing to do (as you may have noticed) with Batman being a homosezual (that was a typo, but I like the sound of it). Say it with me... homosezual. Maybe put an accent on the "a" so that it's pronounced "homo-sez-oo-al"? Homosezuàl. I like it.

I digress. It has to do with Scott and the gay hulk.

Brain-in-a-Jar!

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Man, look at that thing. It’s a brain in a jar. I’ve always felt that as a villain, a brain in a jar is a little lacking in the intimidation department:

DM: You enter the darkened room cautiously, on a pedestal in the center, emitting a pale green pulsating phosphorous light is… a BRAIN IN A JAR!
Thief: I knock it over.

As you may have heard, stem cell research is growing all sorts of human body parts on the backs of rodents. I was going to track down some links and stuff to interesting news articles for you to read, but then got sidetracked and found myself looking at pictures of treeman (and now that I’ve seen it I must share). Seriously though, stem cells. Brain-in-a-jar. These things are linked… at least, they are to me.

We can grow any organ using stem cells, so I was thinking, could we grow a brain? The obvious answer is yes, we could grow a brain. The problem is that we could not teach that brain anything, or that it would be very very hard to so. If we could manage a way to simulate and manipulate memories and dreams, we could teach a brain in a jar. We could hook it up to a network of cameras and have it operating a whole building or something. The building would be alive!

We discussed the problems with this at length, and someone who knows a whole lot more about the human brain than I do feels as thought the brain would be suicidal and it would end in disaster, which it probably would. The part that I thought was super cool is that the idea of a brain controlling a building should be pure science fiction, but that we’re getting close to a point where it almost seems feasible.

That shit is whack.

PAX Wrapup

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So PAX has come and gone. And now I’m back to Monday to Friday, in Montreal, unsure of what to blog about in the future. But there’s still this entry. Which is going to be a rapid fire rundown of my personal and first PAX experience… starting NOW!

Zoom!

Thursday: With the MP3 players loaded up with Anamanaguchi, Metroid Metal, Frontalot, Freezepop and a some old timey radio plays, we hit the road around 1:00 pm.

PROTIP FOR ROADTRIP: Old time radio shows are free to download from sites like this one and are some of the best entertainment for a long roadtrip. We listened to the first few chapters of Doc Savage and the Thousand Headed Man, and we learnt several important things. For instance:

1) Doc Savage makes a weird whistling nose when he’s discovered something.
2) Johnny Littlejohn’s (one of Doc’s assistants) catchphrase is “I’ll be super amalgamated!”

As you can imagine… we were super amalgamated for lots of things. The roadtrip also brought some cheap booze into the car, and later that night I would teach my companions that Hendricks is the best gin in the world. Moving along…

Friday: Neither JonJon nor I wanted to risk not having a spot in the Omegathon, so we rolled into Hynes around 10:30 am… and set up in line… we were seated precisely in an area where both Get In Line Game screens were blocked… awesome… I ducked out of line to pick up some T-Mobile sim cards for our Canadian phones and to do a quick supply run because we needed more coffee, then of course back in line (didn’t wanna be gone too long, had to maintain Wheaton’s Law in the lineup.)

JonJon exhibited his remarkable Metroid prowess by speedrunning through the entire NES Metroid in a single sitting with no deaths… I even took a blurry camera phone picture of Samus in her bathing suit… but it didn’t look so good, so whatever. We made it to the keynote and the good Wil Wheaton once again knocked it out of the park. We were not named as Omeganauts, but you can’t be too bummed about that now can you? Moving right along in the first Penny Arcade Panel, it was fun, but I have to say… PA fans need to step up the quality of their questions… ask them something interesting! Seriously! It’s not hard! We get it! They’re awesome! Stop it. Seriously. Oh yeah, there was this terrifying display as well.

We then strolled around the center, had some drinks at some bar near Hynes that was playing video game tunes, played a round of Chez Geek and then foolishly got in line for Friday Night Concert… I say foolishly because it turns out we totally could’ve just walked right in without the hour or so of waiting around… oh well… we learnt that lesson for the Saturday night and Kid E just strolled in about 2 minutes after the Saturday show started… which was a good call. Friday night concert started late, but all the bands killed it… Protomen lived up to my expectations of putting on an over-the-top theatrical live show, Anamanaguchi was just tons of fun and holy crap they’re doing the Scott Pilgrim video game music!? Alllright. Metroid Metal was both of those things in awesome amounts, and even though we were exhausted and didn’t listen to the whole set, Frontalot looked like he was having a lot of fun putting on a great show… off to sleep.

Saturday: JonJon and Kid E woke up early to try and register for a D&D DarkSun adventure, they failed at this or something… meanwhile, I discovered that in Boston it’s ok to drink at breakfast. Guiness? Why yes, thank you I will. After bagel, bacon, eggs and beer with my friend Andrew, it was time to make my way to the convention center to catch about 2/3 of the make a strip panel… ducked out for a few minutes to go find the Mad Catz guy who was giving away sweet little tournament stick keychains. After the panel we played a round of Nanuk which was pretty sweet, I thought about picking it up… but then realized I can make my own deck with two regular sets of playing cards, and then opted to be cheap about the whole thing. After that it was off to Freezepop across the street, who, as I tweeted, killed it. We all went separate ways again, I met up with Andrew and his former WoW guild, bonded with one of the guys inappropriately about Cyanide and Happiness (“Go back to Africa!”) to the chagrin of almost anyone within earshot, had a lambwich for dinner and then opted to fool around at PAX instead of going to see a movie with the guild. We walked into the Classic Arcade freeplay just in time to see some kid beat Dragon’s Lair while Rush’ Tom Sawyer blared in the background… kick ass.

We also played some PowerStone in the Classic Console Freeplay and took on some random challengers… we naturally ripped them up. Andrew and I have both put unheard of amounts of time into PowerStone, so it wasn’t really fair. JonJon explained why us playing against strangers at this game was funny to his non gamer girlfriend: “Trash playing against some guy at PowerStone is like Kasparov playing against your mom at chess.” I’m flattered. We then headed over to the normal Console Freeplay to try some games we didn’t own. I was pulling for Tony Hawk’s ride, since I don’t own it, have no intention of buying it, and know nobody who does, but Andrew had zero interest in it, so I still don’t know the agony of a little plastic skateboard beneath my feet. We settled on Bayonetta, and were actually pleasantly surprised. It’s like a cross between God of War and Devil May Cry, and that’s a good place to be when you’re making a game. Not the most creative place to be, but still a pretty fun place to be. We poked our heads into the Paul and Storm concert and it wasn’t really doing it for us, so we bounced for the day.

Sunday: All the panels that we had interest in had lineups beyond belief… so we swung down to the expo hall floor, played some BlazBlue: Continuum Shift and then decided to head home out of exhaustion, the thought of our own beds was a powerful lure.

All in all, I could have had a better time I think, particularly if the lineups to panels were not broken, but still had an overall good to great time most of the time. Is that vague enough for you?

PAX’d!

Road To PAX East : Starting Now

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Right now we have a couple of articles, weekly columns, bi weekly webcomic. Soon we'll have some videos up there too. So go there... go there now. Add it to your favorites. Share with your friends.

Please... I beg of you. For the love of all that is good, visit my site. Now back to the old and out of date blog you've somehow found:

Or rather, in about 20 minutes... my car is packed, google maps are printed, T-Mobile location found so I can buy a SIM card, PSP is charged, badges and passports are ready... I don't think anything could possibly go wrong at this stage.
I have thought of everything, because I'm awesome.
This will be my last pre-PAX entry, though I do intend to updating on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/50moretrash ... so yeah, there's that (the twitter feed is also over there on the right, if for some reason you don't do the twitter thing).
Weee-ooo.

Pumped for PAX Spotlight: Steve Jackson Games

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I took a break from updates yesterday since I was shifting to an earlier time slot at work, I also couldn’t think of anything to update since I was tired and busy. How did karma repay me? Someone stole my tickets to the hockey game last night.

Good times.

But here we are on a Tuesday morning, 3 sleeps between now and PAX East, and we’re returning to our regularly scheduled programming. Today’s topic, one of the esteemed PAX East vendors: Steve Jackson Games.

To me, Steve Jackson Games are pure college nostalgia. Back in college, there was a plethora of geeky distractions, table top RPGs a few times a week, an arcade that you could get to without going outside (attached to a bar), laser tag down the street, even a bi-weekly Vampire larp, oh yeah… there was some classes involved too, I wouldn’t know too much about that though, I didn’t go very often. Even with all that going on though, there was still an absurd amount of time that needed to be killed off during any given day (there would probably have been less time to kill if we went to classes). That’s where SJG came in.

Founded in 1980, they specialized in mini-games, often just using cards and a few tokens to track points or character locations. These games were highly portable, originally sold in 4x7 ziploc bags, and later in 4x7 pocket boxes. The gameplay of these microgames fell somewhere in between traditional card and board games, and more complex “German style” games (ala Settlers of Catan). Not overly complex, easy to pick up, but with a little more strategy involved than a game of Sorry!

Oh sure, SJG published some traditional tabletop games, using the very competent self-designed GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System) mechanics, which was a universal (duh) system designed to be adapted to any setting. Fun side bar: They even released GURPS versions of existing properties; you could play World of Darkness GURPS, Hellboy GURPS, Deadlands GURPS, etc. I will admit that I never played GURPS myself, but I’m told by reliable sources that it’s a good system. GURPS is not why SJG holds a special place in my heart though.

As I’ve already alluded to, the microgames were the draw. My first SJG was Car Wars. An old beat up deck from a time possibly before I was born, every card dog eared, held together by browned scotch tape would hold a world of car combat, and by the unofficial rules, as the newest player of the game, I was fresh meat. I think I was destroyed in about 10 minutes. This was standard fare amongst my friends; the new guy playing Car Wars was ganged up on by the other 3 players, sort of a Car Wars hazing. However, I was hooked, the next day; I wanted to play Car Wars.

Sooner or later, someone would show up with a new SJG. The Awful Green Things from Outer Space was a favorite (and I’ve since found out it was an old favorite, originally published in Dragon magazine in 1979), followed by awesome games like Illuminati and the still popular Munchkin. You know that jerk that you might’ve gamed with in college? The guy who was all about the loot and occasionally even screwing over other party members (I’m referring specifically to tabletop Munchkins here)? Well, even though you’d be a dick if you played like that in a tabletop, in the card game it was the whole point. It was tons of fun, tweaking the rules to equip a great-axe and a chainsaw at the same time against an unstoppable gazebo? Hells yes. Behavior that was frowned upon became ok, just for this one game. There was also the entertaining Ninja Burger, where you played burger delivering ninjas! Did it make sense? No! Was it fun? Yes! And who can forget 4 hour long games of Knightmare Chess?

Steve Jackson was even kind enough to publish a set of rules for the sure-to-get-you-in-trouble-with-school-administration game Killer (or Assassination by any other name). In my extended group of friends a game of Killer could start off with 20-30 people, and sign ups were done anonymously, so you never knew who was even in the game, let alone who might be after you, add into the mix that we were all going to school, gaming, drinking and generally hanging out with each other? A healthy dose of paranoia was injected into our daily lives (“Oliver never comes out drinking with us, what gives? Oh my God he’s gonna kill one of us!”).

But of all the SJGs that we played, there is a game that holds an even more special place in my heart, a sub-chamber within the previously mentioned special place already reserved for SJGs: Chez Geek. A game where you played a group of geeky friends living in an apartment building, trying to slack off as much as possible by: hanging out at cafés, playing video games, playing RPGs, sleeping in the middle of the day, watching B movies, getting drunk… THIS GAME WAS MY LIFE!! There was not a single character in the game that didn’t have a real world counterpart (even negative status characters like the Chode Warrior… we knew that guy! He could eat your girlfriend if he hung around too long!). It was a little strange, as we grew up and graduated or otherwise moved on from college, and we all started getting our own places instead of living in overcrowded apartments, the game’s popularity sort of dwindled amongst the crew. Did we grow out of it? Or does it just remind us of better, simpler times? Or maybe it reminds us of how shitty living below the poverty line with roommates you used to be friends with but now can’t stand because their goddamned cat wrecked you new coat and they stole your booze and their friend has been on the couch for 3 days!?

Maybe it’s that one.

No matter what though, Steve Jackson and his (relatively) humble gaming company has provided me with countless hours of entertainment, and even though I played most of them in another time in my life, I will definitely swing by their booth to see what sort of new stuff they’re pumping out these days that is just as entertaining as the stuff that I was into back in college (that Nanuk game looks pretty cool!). Seeing them on the list of merch guys also made me toss my old basic deck of Chez Geek into my bag too.

Pumped for PAX Spotlight: Jason Scott, Get Lamp and Text Adventures

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Remember how on Monday I talked about the serious amounts of geek cred that Wil Wheaton has? Sure ya do. Now think about how there are no “gamer achievements” in a game like Donkey Kong. That doesn’t make getting a kill screen any less cool, does it? Well, if Wil Wheaton’s cred is like getting gamer achievements on a modern console, Jason Scott’s gamer cred is like getting a kill screen in Donkey Kong (no, not that Jason Scott). He’s old school.

And he made (another) movie about being old school, Get Lamp. Get Lamp is a documentary about the birth, rise and (presumably) fall of text-based adventure games. If you know me, you know I’m a sucker for documentaries, so when I heard there was a doc about text adventure games, I had to look into a little more. When I found out that it was being made by Jason Scott, it made me even more interested.

So, who’s Jason Scott and why should you care?

Jason Scott is the proto-geek. He was busy laying the foundations for geek culture while many of us probably weren’t even born. You see, Jason was born in 1970, this puts him nicely in the 80s as a teenager. A teenager with a computer. Jason at some point got into (as many of his contemporaries did) BBS culture, and in fact, would go on to make a documentary about this awesome phenomena called BBS Documentary, which, if you’re at all into such things will give you a pretty good idea of what things were like back in the day. Jason has also made it even easier to get into that BBS mindframe by creating and up keeping the internet’s secret time waster: textfiles.com. This page documents and archives every textfile Jason can get his hands on that were circulating BBS’s back in the day (the collection is insanely impressive, cataloguing 58,227 textfiles on even the most obscure topics).

This has already set him up as an authority on 80s internet culture, but he’s gone on to even further this credibility. How? How does being a speaker at DEF CON, Notacon and PhreakNIC grab you? Not enough? Fine. How about working for over a decade as the UNIX administrator for the gaming company Psygnosis?

Let’s just say that when it comes to the techy side of geekiness, Jason Scott knows what he’s talking about.

5 years ago he decided to turn his documentary making lens on the world of text base adventures, and has seemingly scoured the world to find the people who made, make and enjoyed these games. Judging from the kind of digging that was done for BBS Documentary and the fact that 5 years have gone into this film, the research and quality of contributors for Get Lamp will be top notch. I think anyone who’s ever played an old time text adventure has a secret (or not-so-secret) soft spot for them. There’s something completely captivating about partaking in what is more or less an interactive book. Of course, these adventures were often completely insane word puzzles, and the clues to figure out what to do next often border on impossible. But they all had their charm (the part that got me in the trailer was showing the hand drawn story ‘maps’, it completely blew my mind)

It might even surprise you to find out that people are still making these games at all, but apparently, they are. The Get Lamp website sums it up rather nicely: “Before there was the first person shooter, there was the second person thinker.” Nice.

The version being shown at PAX is going to be a shortened version of the full length film (and by shortened I mean an hour and half, the full length DVD is likely to run at over 2/1/2 hours) and is going to be followed up with a panel consisting of many of the contributors to the film. Basically, if you’re thinking of spending your Friday doing something a little more “low key” at PAX, I think that checking out Get Lamp might be a nice chill way to do so.

Text Adventure PAX Bonus: If you’re suddenly completely enamored with text adventures (or maybe always have been) there’s also a panel on Saturday afternoon regarding their importance “Storytelling in the World of Interactive Fiction” and on Sunday morning there’s a special treat for fans of the genre: Action Castle! Which is basically an interactive live text adventure where you control a human instead of a cursor! Sweet deal.

Pumped for PAX Spotlight: Mega64

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Friday night, the people of Mega64 will have their own ‘Panel for the Soul’. I had heard of these guys before, but never really took the time to check out their videos. Until today!

So I read up on them a little bit, and was a little excited to find out that they’ve been described as “Jackass meets videogames”. I love Jackass! I love videogames! Surely these fellows are making a brand of entertainment just for me! Why don’t they call their troupe Mega-JustFor50%MoreTrash-64?

Unfortunately, they sort of fall flat with their delivery. Oh I mean, I get the comparison definitely, and if someone asked me what most of the videos are like, I’d probably respond with a similar description. I would say: “It’s sort of like Jackass but with videogame references, only sucky.”

Here’s a brief little description of some of their recent videos:

Rock Band: The Beatles: It’s them dressed as the Beatles running around like the video for Help singing the Beatles at people on the street... that's the joke.
Super Mario Bros 2: One guys is dressed as Mario and he's hold a key, a guy with a big mask costume chases him, but stops when Mario drops the key, just like in the game! They run through the streets being slight disruptive... that's the joke.
A Boy and His Blob: A guy with a bag of jellybeans throws the jellybeans at the floor saying "Ladder, Hole Hole Hole, Licorice” and obviously nothing happens, and people look at him funny... that's the joke.
Bayonetta: One of the guy's comments that he can summon demons with his hair and shoot guns from his shoes just like Bayonetta, the other guy is like "yeah right". This is followed the tubby guy in a wig sort of spinning around in public with gun blasts edited in over his feet to show that he's like Bayonetta... and you guessed it, that's the joke.
Halo ODST: Halo had the same release date as Cabela's Big Game Hunter, so they dressed as hicks (posing as the creator's of the Big Game Hunter) went down to game stop and demand that they don't sell Halo, then the manager came out, they sort of giggled and put up a little bit of a fight and ran away... the end.

PunchOut: The only video I found to be really and truly entertaining was where one of the Mega 64 guys dressed up as Doc Louis and had him rattling off some of the lines from the Wii version of the game at people.

“What’s your favorite flower? Mine’s chocolate.”

The only reason this one was continually funny was that Doc Louis’ lines are funny anyway, so they had very little to do with the comedic results. Still good times.

It took me a second or two to sort soak up the problems I have with these videos. The first thing that I noticed was how long they were, all the videos clock in at around 3-4 minutes… but as you can probably tell, there’s only really one joke per video. If they cut these down to about a minute, they might have been able to retain the comedy instead of beating it to death. The second thing was that most of the videos had the same joke: take something that’s a little bit weird in a videogame, then perform that same action in a public place… isn’t that quirky? No. It’s just an annoying guy on the street. The other thing that prevents these videos from ascending into Jackass type territory is the lack of any real danger. The Jackass guys are continually in situations where they could get actually hurt or arrested. Lowbrow? Sure. Engaging? Definitely. The lack of any sort of actual peril makes the Mega64 seem deflated in comparison.

Take the Bayonetta video, the guy just sort of gets near people and then does his Bayonetta moves, there’s even some shots where the people that he’s poking fun of are unaware that he’s even there. It would’ve been much funnier of him to try antagonizing them a little bit and then showing of his Bayonetta moves to try and intimidate them. A little more dangerous yeah, but probably more entertaining. It’s just a question of raising the bar.
I also checked out a couple of their videos that don’t involve live-action recreations of games and was equally unimpressed. Basically they just rehash jokes that the entire internet has already made (ie: Dante’s Inferno is a God of War clone, Sonic games are all the same but we’re still always nostalgic for them) a hundred times and then beat the joke to death. And there’s the same problem with time as in the other videos, they drag on too long.

One thing this has taught me is that, if I continue to make any youtube clips, they need to be punchy and fast paced (it almost makes me want to re-edit my unboxing video, but instead I’ll just take these lessons forward) or else the viewer will get bored. For that lesson I thank you, Mega64.

If the guys from Mega64 also learn that lesson, and make their videos a little more edgy and a little better paced, they might be onto something lasting and entertaing, but as it is right now it’s just not for me. One entertaining video out of six isn’t that good of a ratio; I think I’ll be taking a pass on their panel.

Me = Still Pumped For PAX East, and pumped that I’m not going to waste time with Mega64, sorry guys.

Pumped for PAX Spotlight (sort of): Freezepop!

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This is a little bit of a cop-out post, I’ll admit it. To make matters worse, it’s only PAX related in the loosest possible sense (and by that I mean, not technically PAX related at all). I’m also sorry that I’ve now done two music related posts in a row.

But I still think it’s important, and when I found out about it, I got super pumped, and since the underlying theme here is getting pumped for PAX, I felt this qualified today’s topic.

Freezepop is playing PAX East! Not really. But they are playing across the street! For 10$! Buy tickets now!

I have to admit I was a little disappointed that Freezepop wasn’t playing at the first edition of PAX East. It seemed like such an obvious fit. They make synth-pop music that appeals to a lot of gamers, their music is featured in a bunch of video games, they’ve played PAX Prime in the past, and to top it off, they’re even from Boston! You’d think that’d be a big enough to get them a gig at PAX East, but I guess not. Don’t know what went on there, maybe they wanted more cash? Maybe it was a snub? Maybe Freezepop were jerks or something backstage? Maybe the PA guys were jerks or something backstage? The band has apparently said that everything was cool and it was just a rotational thing, which I hope is true, my little brain can’t stand it when artists that I like don’t like each other.

If you’re not familiar with the band, they’re worth checking out (check out the “fun” section of the website, there’s a link to most of their videos there). In fact, you may come to realize that you’re already familiar with them.

Their music has been in a number of Harmonix games like Frequency, Amplitude and bigger titles like Guitar Hero I and II and Rock Band. By the way, if you haven’t played Frequency and/or Amplitude (they’re more or less the same game with different songs) you’re missing out on seeing the humble birth of rhythm games like GH and RockBand. To be fair though, Freezepop cheated; one of their members was a sound designer at Harmonix. This probably helped get their music in games. Just saying. Probably.

Anyways, I got my tickets and will be journeying out across the street on Saturday to catch Freezepop play.

Pumped for PAX Spotlight: The Protomen and Anamanaguchi

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In this installment, I'll be taking a look at two of the musical acts performing at PAX East. They're two acts that I've never personally heard, which is one of the reason I chose them, I know what Frontalot sounds like, but these guys? Not so much.

The Protomen - Self-Titled:
The self-titled debut of The Protomen is a concept album of sorts, telling the story of Protoman's creation, rise and fall. It has a very "rock opera" feeling to it, and you could easily see it being produced as such. That is, if you could find an audience for a Megaman themed rock opera.

The album starts out with a nice little guitar melody, with a scratchy record effect on the recording. For about 20 seconds, you can almost convince yourself you're listening to an old timey guitar picker vinyl, then the voiceover comes on, the mood isn't broken, but he does start
talking about robots.

"No one who would do anything, No one who would oppose the robots, no one who would challenge their power... or so Dr. Wiley believed."

And we know where we stand, and we have an idea of where we're going.

Distorted synth guitar and drum sounds blare as the opening track "Hope Rides Alone" reveals the origins of the Protoman. Its not bad, but its not great, if it wasn't deeply rooted in geekiness, it wouldn't be that memorable. The strange melodic singing doesn't do much to help it either,
its like they're trying to be the geek(ier) version of Muse, but the vocalist isn't nearly as skilled.

After an entirely forgetable second track (an instrumental which consists of midi bagpipes or something) we get to what in my opinion is the best track of the album "Unrest in The House of Light" which has a cool old west vibe to it, lone gunman sort of thing. Somehow Megaman being created and told that his purpose is to go forth into a losing battle lends itself very well to western motif. There's also no hint of that wailing vocal element that was so offputting in the first track

But don't fret, it returns in the 4th track, and its bleh. The 5th track "Vengeance" is pretty badass in content, telling the story of Megaman basically blowing the shit of everything that gets in his way, but the high pitch wailing is very present, and thus once again detracts from an otherwise enjoyable track.

"The Stand (Man or Machine)" has a dramatic piano intro, that builds to a very foreboding 8-bit tune, and keeps that overdramatic feeling the whole way through. This works well since we know this is about Megaman vs. Protoman, and the epic 8-bit battle that should almost definitely be playing in our minds gives the track a cheesy dramatic feeling, you can just see them bouncing around, Megabuster to Megabuster. Good times.

The 7th track goes out of its way to be epic, with a full chorus behind it, thunder crashes, and a 2 minute outro. There's a couple of well placed original Megaman 8-bit sounds that helps add to the atmosphere of the track. As the track closes out, the record scratching from the first track
returns as we hear wind blowing, after about a minute of that, we are treated to the final and probably most "8-bit" sounding track of the album. "Due Vendetta" names off some classic Megaman characters with a decent riff and loose distorted drums. Closing off witha preditable "Game Over".

But it isn't really over, is it? Last year they brought out their second album "Act II: The Father of Death"... and while I haven't had a chance to hear it, I've heard it is more of the same, which is a good and bad thing. If they drop the high pitched wails, or the singer has taken some
vocal training to get them more in tune, I think they'd be onto something a little more polished and enjoyable. The band really seemed to be at its best when they were experimenting with styles that weren't their own.

Apparently the band never breaks character and always performs in costume, known only by their codenames (which are somewhat awesome like: Turbo Lover and K.I.L.R.O.Y). I have never seen them live, but I assume they must perform at least one of their albums in entirety. If they didn't, the songs would be out of place. I'd also bet that if they do play full albums, they would play their second. Given that there are four acts sharing the stage though, they might play an abridged version? Something to consider.

Considering the overall "epic" feeling of the album, and that they perform in costume and don't break character, I think the PAX show should be at least entertaining.

Anamanaguchi

I managed to get my hands on what I believe is both albums from these guys, Dawn Metropolis and Power Supply. This stuff is straight up
chiptune, supposedly using NES and original Gameboy soundboards in the synth stuff... I don't have a perfect ear for this sort of thing, but it
does certainly sound legit (there's been several allegations against a lot of chiptune bands claiming to have old video game soundboards in their setups but turning out to be bogus). So more power to these guys right? Right. Another cool thing is that they back up the straight chiptune with real instruments, giving a much fuller sound over a lot of their contemporaries.

Power Supply came out first, so that's the first one I'll check out. Its hard not to get instantly nostalgic listening to this album. Within about 10 seconds I was 8 years old again, playing the first level of a brand new video game. Upbeat and postive sounding beeps and blips come
together in a pretty solid composition, it's all original stuff, but stands up against the best tracks that ever came out of the 8 bit era. The other cool part is that these tracks are not designed to be looped, so they get to play around a little more with composition. Maybe it's because
I just listened to the Protomen disk, but I couldn't help but think of Megaman games while listening to this disc. Its got that Megaman vibe.

It takes a little bit of listening to hear the "real" instruments, but when you do you realize that their presence really fills out the sound. There isn't much of a point in reviewing track by track, if you like one, you'll like them all. If you like 8-bit NES music, you'll like this stuff.

The whole album goes out of its way to be super upbeat and positive, but I'll admit that after one or two tracks it just sort of blended into the background, still very enjoyable, but discerning one track from the next became more or less impossible. Not necessarily a bad thing, just an
observation. I can see myself giving this some future listens while I'm at work, plugging away at the keyboard was tons of fun and the time went by in a hurry.

I was expecting more of the same when I put on Dawn Metropolis... and that's what I got. There's only about 2 years between the release dates of the two albums, so I guess you really can't expect much of an evolution. So if you're expecting anything different, don't.

That being said, they do seem to get a little "tighter" on the second outing, willing to mix it up a little more than they did on the first. We're not talking about reinventing the wheel or anything, but Dawn Metropolis sounds a little more like something you could actually dance
to, as opposed to Power Supply's "head bobbing" tunes.

Throughout the two albums, they seem a little hellbent on keeping all their music "positive", the first moments of a track on Dawn Metropolis called "Danger Mountain" gives indication that the track is going to be a little darker, but a few seconds it gets pretty pumped up and happy sounding. It might be cool to see what these guys could come up with if they allowed to make something that wasn't super upbeat. One way or the other, I'd like to see how it all comes together live.

Pumped for PAX Spotlight: Wil Wheaton

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Man, you can tell that Wil Wheaton is an internet/geek celebrity based on the fact that his Wikipedia page is 16 pages long. Makes my task of trying to find cool stuff about him that you haven’t read before a little more of a pain in the ass… but I’ll try, God help me.

Fanfiction. The word evokes powerful emotional responses from most people, both positive and negative. For those people who are into it, joy. For the rest of, likely a deep sense of loathing. I’m not entirely sure when publishing fanfics became en vogue, but I wrongly thought it came about from the internet, it didn’t. It’s been around for since at least the 70s. At the time, fanfics were found in fanzines, and fanzines were largely operated by the geeks of the time, so naturally, there were Star Trek fanzines. Star Trek fanzines = Star Trek fanfics (it somehow seems appropriate that there was Star Trek fanfic before many of us where even born). Apparently, a popular theme in Star Trek fanfics was the idea that some underage teenager (often a girl) would somehow end up being an officer on board a Starfleet ship. Paula Smith, in her fanzine Menagerie, lampooned this idea to extremes with her character Mary Sue in her story “A Trekkie’s Tale”. The character was 15/1/2 years old, a lieutenant, and possessed an outlandish skillset to get herself out of any situation. This was in fact, the birth of the ‘Mary Sue’ literary standard; a young character with no reason to be as important as they are, possessing skills they shouldn’t, unbelievably saving the day again and again, usually fawned over by the authour and often reviled by the fans.

Sound like anyone?

In 1987 Wil Wheaton made his debut as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. His character possessed an uncanny resemblance to a fanfic character, only this was Gene Roddenberry’s fanfic, and it was on TV. And like it or not, he was right where a lot of us wanted to be: on the bridge of Starship Enterprise, saving the day. Even though he got (and probably still gets) a lot of flack for the role, it was undeniably iconic. I can imagine that everywhere he went in the 80s (and 90s, and you know… yesterday) someone recognized him as the ‘Star Trek kid’, which has to be frustrating. I think that people were probably just jealous. Personally, I like to think of him as the ‘Stand by Me kid’.


The part that we didn’t know at the time (and may have gone easier on him if we did) was that Wil was one of us. He wasn’t just an actor on Star Trek, he was a geeky actor on Star Trek. Not only was he living our dream, he was living his dream; if you follow him on twitter (and for shame if you’re not), you’ll see gems like this. That’s right, as a child, young Wil was imagining what it would be like to get sucked into a videogame, the age old dream of basically everyone I call a friend. Look at his twitter page, that pic tiled in the background? He’s wearing a fark shirt people. That’s badass. I’m willing to bet that if TMZ went around asking celebs what fark was, Wil Wheaton would be the only one with an even coherent answer (maybe Conan O’Brien?).

After Star Trek, people would only really get the chance to know him through sci-fi and comic conventions, his “geek cred” probably spread only by word of mouth. Throughout the 90s he would make some pretty terrible movies (he played in Python, a film regrettably not about Monty Python and Flubber, a film regrettably starring 90s Robin Williams), but would not become the beloved geek poster boy that he is now until July 2001, when he started blogging on wilwheaton.net. I remember hearing about the blog through word of mouth, and it quickly made its way into one of my “dailies” since his updates were pretty frequent and he quite quickly identified himself as a fan of many of the same things I was (and still am). The response was tremendous, and many of my geek friends were quickly singing his praises. Judging from his current fame, this response was unanimous. Only 2 years later he would release Dancing Barefoot, a book composed of excerpts and edited material from the site. A year after that (we’re in 2004 now) he’d release Just a Geek, an even further extended memoir. While I couldn’t find sales for these books, I’m going to go out on a limb and say they did well.

Here is just a short list of accomplishments and interests (that have nothing to do with being Wesley Crusher) that help cement Wil Wheaton as a stupendous choice as inaugural speaker of PAX East:

1) Hidden Character ‘Louis’ friend’ in The Last Starfighter (I say hidden because all his scenes were deleted and he’s only in the DVD deleted scenes, but seriously, it’s The Last Starfighter… seriously)
2) Was a fan of http://www.x-entertainment.com/ back in 2001, if you don’t know how cool that is then SHAME.
3) Was the voice actor for Ted Kord (the Blue Beetle) in Batman: The Brave and the Bold
4) His voice is secretly all over the new Star Trek.
5) Wrote a regular column in Dungeon magazine called ‘Wil Save’
6) Has done some regular voice work for video games like Grand Theft Auto and Ghost Recon.
7) He already knocked a PAX inaugural address out of the park back in 2007.


Internet cred, video game cred, table top gaming cred, sci-fi movie and television cred, cartoon cred… Jesus. That’s a lot of cred.

With that being said, assuming I can get in… I will definitely be attending his key note address.

Monday March 15th. Me = pumped for PAX.

PAX East - Unboxing

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I’m just trying to get into the swing of things with this whole blog/twitter thing that the internet seems to be so whole-heartedly about these days. I used to have a blog (a livejournal in fact) back when I was a mopey sad sack of a human who felt that the world needed to hear about my bitchings and moanings (the internet was a different place back then kids, don’t you judge me).

The purpose of this space is basically just get me writing again, so I’ve decided to set myself a (perhaps) lofty goal.

PAX EAST PUMP-UP STARTS NOW!

As I’ve mentioned, I’m going to Boston in two weeks for the inaugural edition of PAX East. I’ve also mentioned my excitement about the schedule. But I don’t think that properly demonstrates my excitement. This video I made of me unboxing my PAX East tickets doesn’t even fully demonstrate the fervour I feel as the day approaches:



That was awkward.

Where was I? Ah yes, the goal that I am aspiring to. Each (week)day that passes between now and Thursday the 25th will have a special spotlight on someone or something PAX related. Stay tuned later today with the kickoff edition: PAX East Spotlight: Wil Wheaton.

When Was The Last Time Chris Jericho Hit The Lionsault?

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As you may or may not know, I, along with my good friend Scott watch a fair bit of rasslin' and consider ourselves to be "smarks" (a mark is someone who thinks wrestling is real, a smark is someone who knows its fake, but loves it anyways). Anyhow, a particular wrestler (shown here) Chris Jericho has a particular move called the lionsault. See that man in peril? Surely he is about to be flattened by the soaring superstar! A pinfall is surely seconds away! Jericho is about to win the match! Right?

Wrong.

He never hits the lionsault. Like, ever. He has it lined up, he looks at the opponent, gleam in his eye, bounces off the middle rope, arches into a back flip and one of two things will happen: the opponent will put his knees up, "hurting" Chris, or the opponent will simply roll out of harms way, having Chris fall on his chest.

Jericho is a wrestling heel currently, so this move is usually used as a turning point in the match, where the face will use the failed lionsault to regroup, turn the tides of the match and get one over on Jericho.

But still, seriously... he always misses, and its gotten to be a running joke amongst Scott and I (and I think many fans) that he will always miss the lionsault, no matter what.

I did some research, and from what I can see, the last time he hit the lionsault was in some midcard match against Kane in October 2009. a good 4 months ago.

Scott has suggested that the move is something that Jericho just loves to miss, much the same way the legendary André the Giant used to always get knocked back into the ropes and get tangled up in them... it was his thing. Is Jericho's thing missing the lionsault? Maybe.

At any rate... I've decided to start a facebook group:

When Will Chris Jericho Hit The Lionsault?

Basically, since I don't watch every wrestling event ever, I'm hoping that some other people can join me in this "lionsault watch". Join the group, and post a message every time you see a current WWE event (I guess even if you're lucky enough to be attending a dark match, those should count too), post a message when Chris attempts and hits or misses the lionsault. I'd love to track this sort of thing over the course of year or something... to see what kind of a hit/miss ratio Jericho manages with this move. Can you tell I have time to kill?

Important Discussion

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Proof reading that last post has brought my attention to that pic of the D&D nerds I posted. I may have erroneously referred to them as “guys”… when one or both might be girls… I just can’t tell anymore. One of them certainly looks like Jon.

Goin' to PAX East

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So I’ve bought my tickets to PAX East a little while ago. When I initially bought them I will admit I was sort of “meh” about the whole thing. Unlike some of my geekier associates, I’ve never really been into conventions (or “cons” as the cool kids call them… and by cool kids I mean these guys … oh sure, these are supposedly Halloween costumes, but a nerdy looking kid dressed as a nerd for Halloween? I think he just forgot what day it was, waking up in his computer chair, covered in stale Pringles crumbs, WoW character just standing there on the screen, his Google calendar reminding him he has a party to go to… no costume? No problem. He’s going as a nerd). Growing up I went to car shows on a pretty regular basis, but those were different, those were manly.

But all that changed a little over 2 years ago when I went to my first Fan Expo. Now a big part of the draw for Fan Expo was that I have a good friend who lives in Toronto, so I was basically just spending my cash on passes and gas (hee hee… pass gas…) so there was very little “risk” involved. While there were other things going on (costume parties, movie screenings, video game tournaments, lan parties, etc), I had two main interests, the big convention floor and the “celebrity” panels (celebrity is in quotes because they range from real celebs, like Bruce Campbell, to niche celebs, like artist Alex Maleev or writer Peter David). The floor was fun, like an enormous comic shop, and had the added benefit of having artists selling prints and sketches which helps spruce up my apartment. The most enjoyment of the show however, came from the panels, listening to people who work in various industries that I’m a fan of was tons of fun, hearing their anecdotes, what inspires them, etc was a little inspiring for me.

A high point from my con experiences was a Q&A session with Roger Corman (Fun Fact: Roger Corman has a producer credit on 388 films, and a director credit on 56. holy. shit.). There were only about 20 people in the room, and he was just this awesome old guy with the best stories about making B-movies spanning his 50 year career. I have a deep love for B cinema, so this was sort of awe inspiring. I was a little bummed for him that only 20 people (out of 60,000 attending the con) showed up for his Q&A (there was seating for probably 150), but this was totally made up for when he got a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars. I’d chalk that up into the “sweet justice” column.

So anyways… yeah… PAX. A videogame con, which I think is second only to anime dress-up cons on the geeky scale. There was a video game portion of Fan Expo, and other than a quick walk-by… it never really made a lasting grab for my attention. PAX, of course, is run by the good people of Penny Arcade and I figured that they’d have a pretty good idea of how to run one of these things, what with the success of the main PAX con out West and all. So I bought tickets since PAX, similar to Fan Expo, is being held where I have a place to crash (Boston), and of course will be going with a good friend, which greatly impacted my decision.

I was not truly excited about it though, until I checked the schedule. The scope of the panels have me giddy with delight: indie games, video game journalism, chip tune music, game design… basically stuff that I’ve always been into, but never before have they all been presented in a singular locale. Now I’m super pumped for PAX. Also, Will Wheaton. If he’s not a reason to get pumped, then I don’t know what is.
I think I’ll also take PAX as an opportunity to do a rapid-fire-update Twitter feed, I’ve had an account (www.twitter.com/50moretrash) for a while and never saw a purpose for it, but I think tweets about PAX will be fun to do. So bandwagon, here I come.

Review: Bioshock

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Yes, the original. With the internet buzzing about Bioshock 2 (and by buzzing I of course mean that it came out a month ago and has been thoroughly digested, haven’t you heard that Final Fantasy XIII is out? And God of War III is next week?) I was reminded that I had yet to play the original Bioshock. So I went to the store to pick up a copy.

Note to all: Bioshock now costs less than 20$ so you really have no excuse to not pick it up and play it if you haven’t already done so.

First Impressions and Setting:

The first thing that struck me about the game was the setting, I’ve heard a lot of people describe the setting as steampunk… but I would say that this is a little over generalized (that’s right, the very specific setting of steampunk is too general for Bishock, la-di-da). It is somewhat steampunk… but steampunk set in the late 50s, early 60s, which gives it a flavour all of its own. I would actually go as far to say that the setting is actually cyberpunk… but with the 1950s view of the word “cyber”. Regardless of how you try to define it, the setting is instantly compelling and draws you in almost immediately. The game is literally full of “Huh, that’s neat…” moments and imagery based on its own setting.

The entire game takes place in the underwater city of Rapture, built by visionary/rich crazy person Andrew Ryan. The idea here was that there would be a city full of people who were sick and tired of morality and government and wanted to get away from it all to do their own thing, free to pursue their own endeavours no matter what the rest of society thinks about it. It’s like a crash course in objectivism gone wrong. Did any of that ring any bells? Andrew Ryan? Pretty close to Ayn Rand, yeah? Ever read the Fountainhead? And that’s just one of many things that make this game badass. Yes it’s a fun game even on the surface, but if you want to dig deeper, the depth is there. It’s a little like Evangelion that way, sure there are some badass robot fights, but there’s also a lot more going on.

Anyways, naturally this sort of environment leads to people getting carried away, free to act upon their own ideals instead of society’s norms (the first area of play has some nasty examples of what happens when morality stops being an issue for a plastic surgeon, that gives you an idea of what sort of issues the rest of the game will tackle). As the rich and creative run free through the city, there are eventual class struggles (it’s a whole city after all, someone needs to clean the toilets, so there’s a working class in Rapture that’s not too pleased with how things are going) and the whole thing melts down and sends the city into a small scale civil war. Also, everyone has super powers. There’s that. You, the “hero” of the game shows up sometime after the conflict, city in ruins, with some of the key figures representing various philosophical ideals still surviving to hinder or help you along the way.

Gameplay:

At its core, Bioshock is an FPS. You run around shooting things to progress the story, as it progresses you get bigger and better guns, and you get bigger and better super powers.

Ah yes, the super powers. Scattered throughout the city are little girls, called Little Sisters, and they are protected by big guys in suits with drill hands, they’re called Big Daddys. Their purpose isn’t immediately evident, but without revealing too much I can say that they’re a key reason why everyone has superpowers. Of course, you get superpowers early on. These superpowers are called Plasmids, and have a variety of effects. Some are straight forward (ie: Lightning Bolt) and others are a little more abstract/strategic (ie: Decoy Dummies). Some of these powers will also let you impact the environment (flame melts ice, lighting overloads some machinery, etc), but these environmental changes are pretty few and far between. A closed wooden door will not burn down, or be destroyed with an RPG, and sometimes glass will break and sometimes it won’t, which can be frustrating. The game makes up for this by having a full map available to you at all times (not a strange Symphony of the Night map that shows you some stuff but not others). If you’re not sure where you should go, check the map, you can go to every place in every level with no backtracking needed hours later (looking at you Metroid Prime).

The bread and butter of the game is still a shooter, and you can get through most encounters using only your guns, but the Plasmids provide a nice little change of pace to set the game apart from its competition.

There’s also a sickeningly repetitious mini “hacking” game. Or rather, “plumbing” game. Throughout the game you will be invited to “hack” just about everything, vending machines, security cameras, health stations, gun turrets, safes. You name it, you hack it. The game mechanic that supports this is a mini game where you shuffle tiles around a square board to make sure water can flow from an entry point to an exit point, with different traps to circumvent and various effects on the water flow speed to mix things up a little. This game is fun at first, but you will be expected to repeat the motions no less than 100 times throughout the game. In later levels this mini game not only gets hard, it sometimes gets impossible, but by this stage you should probably be employing your auto-hack devices anyways. I got to the point where I was just destroying as many hackable things as I could, just to save myself the frustration of playing the mini game again.

Critiques:

While a good many things are right with this game, there are a few things that could have been tweaked or improved upon (other than the aforementioned “hacking” game).

First, boss fights. The game builds up to some of them (stage bosses) and has some of them just sort of roaming around (Big Daddy fights). The first problem is that stage bosses aren’t nearly as challenging as Big Daddys, and the second is that Big Daddy fights aren’t that hard either (you can YouTube some videos of people taking them down in under 5 seconds). Stage bosses are just a little harder than random encounters, and honestly, two or three normal enemies attacking you at once is usually more of a challenge than any given “boss” (up to and including the final boss, the final boss who I was able to take down to about 25% health by just running at him with no thought to strategy and hitting him again and again with a wrench and not healing myself). The point here is that once you figure out that bosses are a pushover, they lose their intimidation factor, and it sort of hurts the game’s mood. Big Daddys’ are portrayed as these unstoppable killing machines and if you so much as look at one funny they’ll tear you limb from limb, by the midpoint of the game I was picking them off for fun, which is a problem.

This brings me to my second point, which sort of encompasses the first point: overall difficulty. A friend of mine suggested that being a “veteran” gamer, you should automatically play any game you buy on the hardest setting, to make sure the game is challenging. I played through this game on normal difficulty, and it made me agree with him, the only time I ever died is when I messed around and tried to do something creative or stupid (“Hmm… I will light all the enemies on fire, then supernaturally enrage them so they attack each other, and instead of hiding I will join the fray swinging a wrench wildly! … Aww shit, I died… stupid game…”). Even set on “Hard” I can’t see it being all that challenging, there are respawn chambers all over the place and when you respawn, whatever damage you’ve done to the enemies stays intact, so if you don’t mind running around a little bit you can just respawn continually, chipping away at the enemy and not really worrying. You can turn these chambers off in the settings and you’ll just respawn from your last save point, and be respawn I mean reload from save point. And by reload I mean “watch the screen go to your save menu, slowly load the level, and wait some more”. This is incredibly time consuming and basically punishes you for trying to make the game more challenging. This is something you shouldn’t have to do. Think about it, in order to make this game challenging you need to play on a harder setting and disable certain gameplay features. That’s messed up

My third gripe is the “collect stuff” element of the game. Stuff is literally everywhere: chips, chocolate bars, ammo, health packs, money, tape recordings, booze, etc., can be found in every safe, bookshelf, box, corpse, trashcan in the game. To search for something you have to press “X”, a little menu will open up to show you what’s in the location (up to three items) and if you want one of them, you’ll have to take all of them, in the order that they appear. This occasionally and hilariously leads to you getting drunk off two bottles of booze to get to 5$ in someone’s pocket. This is a great image of our hero. Searching for stuff also gets pretty time consuming since if you’re like me you play games with a compulsion to do everything and get everything. Add to that there’s no visible inventory for everything non-ammo related: “Oh… I can’t carry more distilled water? Good to know game…” and it gets a little frustrating.

Finally, there’s the “morality system” that is boasted about on the back of the box. “Become the saviour of the city or the douchebag of the city”… or something like that. This actually boils down to “Save little girls or kill little girls”… THE CHOICE IS YOURS!! Not exactly a deep morality system here… I’ll let you guess which one gets you the “good” ending and which one gets you the “bad” ending…

Overall:

Tons of fun, highly recommended, the shortcomings are forgivable and are more than made for by the high points.

Edit @ 4:26 pm 03/10/10: Removed arbitrary score out of 10... I disliked it and it bothered me while I ate lunch so I got rid of it.