We All Fall Down

Cybermen

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Mm. Tomb is really the only time I think they’ve been used well — as objects of creeping fear and mystery. There’s a sense they’re this contained force; they’re the snakes in this box that you absolutely must keep closed. And they just keep charging forward, blank, expressionless, incomprehensible. They’ll charm you, try the back door, use every crack to their advantage. (Much like Captain Jack?)

Mostly they’re just used as generic shuffle-monsters. Or, in the ’80s, alien race. Or as a droll bit of wank, as above.

Actually, I thought that Cyberwoman did a good job at capturing their threat. They’re like a plague, is what they are. A schlocky B-movie plague. The kind of thing you should be making up arbitrary rules to protect yourself from. Don’t dangle your feet over the bed. Don’t step on the red squares.

I’d like to see Moffat write for them.

Snips of conversation

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A nail clipper is a pretty interesting little bit of machinery — the construction, and the principles behind it. It’s very simple, yet it’s also oddly complex. And on a level it seems like some ancient baroque thing. Like some awkward eighteenth century invention, that just happens to work as intended. And on top of that there are some curious concessions to convenience — the complex way the top swivels back around so you can close it flat, and the nail file.

The idea behind it is… a bit odd. Nail scissors aren’t good enough. What we really need is a finger guillotine! No gradual snips here. Just snap ’em off, one quick motion! And the way it achieves this is by a rather simple yet oddly complex lever and spring system, that transfers a huge amount of force to a tiny area. (To make up for the lack of the falling distance, you see.)

It’s such a strange invention.

Where is Zar? Zar is gone.

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Classic screenwriting (both film and TV) does take on something of a middle school essay structure, doesn’t it. Tell the audience what you’re going to do, do it, tell the audience what you just did. I guess with a new medium it’s seen as necessary. Then when people get more comfortable with the grammar, you can stop patronizing them and get down to business.

What’s weird about videogames is that mainstream games at least have kind of gone the other way. Now you buy a top-shelf console game, you won’t even be allowed to play it properly for the first half hour. Unless it’s Zelda. Then you might have to wait three or four hours before you get started. Whereas in 1987… plop. There you are. Make sense of it the best you can.

Is there a good reason in there to assume the audience has, on average, grown less sophisticated over the last twenty years? And Wii Fit aside (which is kind of a different issue), is there much evidence that patronizing the audience leads to greater sales? Generally the only people who buy videogames are people who buy videogames (which is where Iwata comes into the discussion, and then leaves by the back door). And generally they only get to play them after they’ve made a purchase.

It’s one thing to make a game accessible. Not to overburden the player with complications right from the start. That’s just good design.
The hand-holding that’s been going on, the last ten years though — that’s something else. Something insidiously banal. It’s not just that the art hasn’t been progressing since 1998; it’s been moving backward.

The definition of a great movie

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One where every scene makes you think, okay, this is the turning point. It’s all been building up to this. Now everything’s really getting started.

Including the final one.

Lacking the How-Do Ken

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I wish it were still possible to go into an arcade and wander around, seeing new things, doing things I hadn’t done before in a videogame. Like when the arcade was full of new things like Rolling Thunder and Double Dragon.

I remember what a revelation it was that you could run over and pick up the bat, or duck behind the tires. And any multiplayer was generally cooperative. You watch someone play, you think “hey, that looks neat”, and you jump in to help him.

When Street Fighter II was new, I could just go in and play it the way I’d play Final Fight. It was like a complicated eight-stage boss run.

Then everything became about penises, and today there’s no point even going into arcades anymore. The moment you start up a game, someone more obsessive sidles up to punish you for the affrontery and take over the machine. It would be neat to go out and see some of these new games, like Street Fighter IV and KOF XII, but the novelties have mostly become a thing of nuance. And if I’m not going to be allowed to play them unmolested, and study them at my own leisure, why bother? I’ve got enough things waiting in line to irritate me, without actively seeking them.

The thing is, this is all an aberration. Today the hardcore competitive aspect has gained dominance, but that’s what happens to unchecked hardcore competitive anythings, usually to their eventual downfall outside of that core group that enjoys butting heads. Some people just like to eat their soup without others homing in and pissing in it. I’d wager they would stand in the majority, actually…

Doesn’t help that games are rarely just a quarter anymore. I spend my dollar, whatever, I want to get the most out of it. If I choose not to pay the panhandler, I don’t want to get chased for a block and shouted at. (Which may sound familiar to San Francisco residents.) Maybe it would be different if there were, like, a set fee that you pay going in the door. But on a pay-by-play basis, fuck that.

If there’s a reason that arcades barely exist anymore — well, I’d put this at the top of the list.

Newton’s Initative

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The hardest part of anything is getting started. Then once that thing is started, it takes more energy to stop than to keep it rolling.

All right, I’m working, I’m working…

Unpacked Excerpt

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The point in having things is that they possess some practical value, that to some degree empowers you.

This is no less true of art than of a wrench. A wrench is a physical tool; a novel or a painting or a videogame is an intellectual or emotional tool. Every perspective we absorb further helps us shape our own ideas, much as a hammer and saw help us shape a room full of lumber.

Lack of food makes you obstreperous.

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Bangai-O Spirits is like Treasure Sudoku Challenge. No structure, no context; just a smörgÃ¥sbord of random levels. It’s… kind of hard, right from immediately. And the controls and rules are both way more convoluted than the Dreamcast version.

It does, however, have the best level editor ever, and (apparently) the best means of sharing. Not seen fit to reach out yet, however. This reminds me of my NES Lode Runner days. All those “programmable series” games with their non-functional save functions, fresh and unedited off of their Famicom Disk System and jammed into a solid-state pre-battery cartridge — who needs a save function? A blackboard and colored chalk did me fine.

I always wanted one of those NES controllers for handicapped people, where you moved a D-stick with your chin and you used a straw for the buttons. Suck for A, blow for B. Imagine combining that with the Power Pad and Power Glove. Eat your heart out, Fred Savage.

(Still need to reply to a few people. Hurm.)

Gitchy-good

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After procrastinating for over a year, I got Earth Defense Force 2017 at the same time as Bullet Witch. It is equally awesome in different secret ways.

Something to consider, however. Bullet Witch traces the future of Earth, year by year, until 2013. Earth Defense Force traces the future of Earth from 2013 to 2017.

So why didn’t they just use magic to blow away the aliens?

Braid Day

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Just to mention, Braid is out today on XBLA. Go download it.

(I’m in the credits.)

It’s basically the Portal of 2008. Or in my chronology, Portal was the Braid of 2007.

Anyway. Some people seem to like it.

Desaturation

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Generally, I find whenever something is stylistically heightened to the point where it’s difficult to take seriously, ditching the color immediately improves my suspension of disbelief. There are, I think, two aspects to this. One is that a black-and-white world is clearly not reality; this is an idealized, simplified dream world, that must be taken on its thematic strengths rather than its plausibility. The other aspect is that a loss of color helps to blur the edges. When everything is reduced to light and shadow, CG no longer looks so false. Wonky sets and costumes are easier to take at face value.

Basically, black-and-white strips away the distraction of an expectation of realism. Which in most cases, to my mind, can only be a benefit to storytelling.

Now don’t get me started on sound…

BE A PATRIOT – BE AN INFORMER!

  • Reading time:2 mins read

So a week ago I got my hard copy of The Slip. Almost pointless, except for posterity, yet it is nice to have on the shelf. And it’s a limited edition. (I’m #48,960/250,000.)

With that in hand, I ordered the rest of the recent NIN stuff I hadn’t bought — Year Zero, Y34RZ3R0REM1X3D, Ghosts I-IV. I did pay for the download of Ghosts, back when; again, though, hard copy. That all arrived today, and I notice he’s using the same packaging for everything now. Which is interesting. He must have gotten the digipaks in bulk.

Furthermore… well, his latest three halos, in order:

  • Halo 25: Two discs. Left disc, music; right disc, Garageband files. (This was just before remix.nin.com.)
  • Halo 26: Two discs, both music.
  • Halo 27: Two discs. Left disc, music; right disc, DVD of rehearsals.

I see a pattern forming. Will his next album come with an Xbox game?

Something else hilarious. Up until With Teeth — maybe and probably starting with the leading single, The Hand That Feeds; I don’t have a copy, because none of the singles after The Perfect Drug have been worth it — you have Trent’s standard, hugely elaborate packaging, plus the standard parental warnings and publisher copyright info and vague threats about unauthorized reproduction and whatever.

With Teeth era: really simple packaging, and huge, fugly, obnoxious FBI warnings all over the back cover, that imply anyone who buys the album is a potential criminal.

That’s not from a NIN album; the With Teeth ones are far uglier. They’re just a painfully incompetent piece of graphic design. On Year Zero, that’s still there, if a bit more polished (so it looks like a negative image of the above) — and so is an even bigger parody warning, right next to it, in the same style.

And the disc uses heat-sensitive paint, so your fingerprints are clearly left behind.

After R3M1X3D, Trent is free from his contract, and the album backs… well, here’s what they say:

©2008 NIN
Manufactured and Distributed
in The United States by
RED Distribution, LLC.
79 Fifth Ave, 15th Fl
NYC10003

And there’s a bar code. Then in the back of the booklet, there’s a note that everything is Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial Share Alike. There’s a link to explain what that means. And again, “©2008 NIN”. And that’s it.

Midnight Mulling Moldy Mulder

  • Reading time:3 mins read

The X-Files‘ time really is past. When I was in high school and college I adored it as I had never adored a piece of pop culture — except maybe the Sega Genesis. Between “Shapes” (the werewolf episode, and the first I saw) and the middle of season eight, I only missed two episodes on first broadcast. Then I just stopped, and have never made up the final season and a half. I really liked the first movie, and I’ve got the full set of action figures. Three Scullies, even, in two outfits! Yet I can’t even watch the original show now.

In tone and pacing and theme, the show is such a 1990s phenomenon. A product of the Clinton era (which the new movie seems to wink at), and an age just before people figured out how to write for television. Yes, it helped to bring this age on; that doesn’t make it part of it. And the new movie is an epilogue to the TV show. It’s shot the same way; it uses the same subtitles; it’s got the same ambling Chris Carter pace and tone and cluttered sense of theme to it.

It works as a movie; it works as an afterthought to the TV show. It is distinctly not a relaunch of the franchise. It’s tired, and it makes no attempt to be current or vital, or even to reach outside its core audience. It’s basically just saying goodbye, and wrapping up some character threads. After an hour and a half of genial if not particularly interesting story, the best part is hidden after the credits. In context especially, it alone is near worth the admission — provided you care for the characters.

I went to the 9:45 showing at the Grand Lake. They had free popcorn, and a balcony! And flirtatious concession stand women. I think there were three other people besides me, and none who stayed through the credits for the Cracker Jack prize. One of the ushers came in toward the end and sat in the rear corner; when it was over and I stood up, he bade me good night. And… it was 11:40 exactly. It’s a twenty-minute walk from the theater. I walked in silence. Though I had my mp3 player, midnight in Oakland is no time for clouded senses.

Quiet is never so loud as when there is no noise.

I think work is progressing…

Purple Clothes

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On that note, I have recently begun to dress myself. That is to say, as I near twenty-first century adulthood (at thirty) I have begun to actively seek clothing that I think will flatter me — compared with wearing whatever may fall into my possession. This has mostly come out of the sudden realization that I am an attractive individual. Or as someone recently described me, “tall, dark, and very handsome”. Not at all photogenic, to be certain. It’s like a rock concert; you have to be there. Just add a dash of the confidence of ownership, and bingo. Instant sexpot.

I’m calling my new look “glam fop”. I hope it doesn’t catch on, as I don’t often get this creative anymore.*

These days, half my mind is taken up with angst about things I can’t possibly change and another quarter with hope that I can change them anyway. It seems the only way around that is to say to hell with everyone. If I’ve only got so much energy, I might as well focus on bringing myself as much joy as I can. I’m so unused to paying active attention to what I want, and what I need. For me, life is like standing up after several hours of frustrating work and realizing you’ve had to pee since two o’clock, and that’s what’s been making you so cranky. Then finding the toilet is backed up.

At least now I look gorgeous while I’m doing it.

*: I’m strongly in the market for a pocket watch with a built-in mp3 player. I’d call it an “iFob”.

Portrait of Rumination

  • Reading time:2 mins read

You know, having initially dismissing Portrait of Ruin — I only played for maybe half an hour before rejecting it; hadn’t played it in a year and a half — I went back to it the other day. And… it’s actually pretty good, once you’re past some of the initial tedium. Thanks to Mr. Koshiro, the music is the best since Harmony of Dissonance. It controls really, really well. The animation is pretty good, actually. A lot of the enemies are redrawn — though there’s a big disparity in style between the new ones and the recycled ones. The new ones all look like they’re by the Circle of the Moon guys, and the old ones are so clearly Sorrow carry-overs.

There is actual, legitimate level design in places — which is novel. More of it than in Dawn of Sorrow, in fact! It’s just, 1/3 of the real level design in DoS was right at the start, whereas in PoR it doesn’t come in for a couple of hours. (Until then it’s a combination of tutorial and convoluted system introduction, against monsters-on-shelves design.)

And it does actually feel different enough as not to just feel like another GBA/DS Castlevania — which is the fate suffered by Dawn of Sorrow.

I’d say this is definitely not the worst handheld Igavania. Harmony and Aria still compete for the best; Harmony for its feeling and Aria for its reason. I’d have to play some more, but I think I’m now enjoying this about as much as Circle of the Moon…