This is near the thrift shop called “Out of the Closet”.
I find it interesting that porn shops around here feel the need to put big signs in their windows advertising “ALL-STRAIGHT XXX VHS“.
Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance
by [name redacted]
Originally published by Next Generation.
With the public rehabilitation of the shooter in games like Ikaruga and Gradius V, the industry is apparently looking to the brawler for its next miracle; this year we can expect to see at least three significant attempts to remodel the genre into something people might want to play again. Of these, Cavia’s Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance can claim both the worst title and the oddest implementation.
On Licensed Fare
Occurs to me, the best way to structure a Lord of the Rings videogame is to make it from Frodo’s persective, and Frodo’s perspective alone. Everything else is spiralling around somewhere in the background, out of his control, adding to the atmosphere. Assuming this game were based on the movies rather than the books, it would begin, with no particular prologue, outside the Green Dragon. The player, as Frodo, would amble, slightly drunk, back to Bag End; Sam would be around to help show the way. If the player were to go too far off-track, Sam could say, in a comforting voice, “‘ere, Mister Frodo, you’ve had a bit too much. Best follow me.” And Frodo would stumble around and take a step back toward Sam, with a bit of an acquiescent shrug. Sam would leave the player at the gate to Bag End, maybe pushing a bit, allowing the player to trot up through the door and walk around a little before Gandalf jumps out of nowhere, scaring the player half to death, asking about the Ring.
Within the context of the game, the player of course has no idea what’s happening. Frodo mumbles to Gandalf something about how he thinks he left it in the chest over there; the camera moves to frame it, the player is left free to wander Bag End; Gandalf will start to grow irritated if the player doesn’t go straight to the chest and open it, though. Once open, Frodo automatically fumbles around and draws out the envelope; Gandalf snatches it away, the whole sequence plays. Eventually the player is left free to scramble around for a few moments (there’s an invisible timer of sorts — long enough to be sane, short enough that the player can’t take however long he wants; Gandalf starts to get impatient if the player takes too long) and take whatever in Bag End seems of use. If the player seems confused, Gandalf will bark out suggestions. “Take some food! And try that walking stick over there!” When the player is done, he goes to Gandalf. (If the player just dallies forever, Gandalf interrupts and says they’ve delayed long enough. He might shove a generic pile of stuff into Frodo’s hands.) There’s another short bit of discussion, before Sam gets yanked through the window. Then the game cuts to Gandalf and Frodo walking along the road, toward the edge of Hobbiton, Sam scampering behind, Gandalf berating him. Gandalf offers his advice, and the player is left alone.
From then on, it’s forward. The player isn’t allowed back into Hobbiton. (“No… no, I can’t go back now. I’m afraid it’s no longer safe.”) Otherwise, it’s mostly free reign all through the Shire. Not much will happen aside from exploration. The hobbits become visibly exhausted and will begin to stagger if they don’t rest and eat from time to time. The general idea is to keep off the road, although it’s a good idea to keep the road in sight, lest the player become lost. Stray too far and you might have some strange run-ins; with wood elves or dwarves or even orcs. Sort of a Zelda or Dragon Quest idea of borders: although you can go anywhere, it’s on your own head if you act like a fool and stray far. Likewise, the farther from the path, the darker and more menacing the woods get; the greater the ambient noise. The game will send psychological signals, telling the player he shouldn’t be there (especially given the lack of any real means of self-defense except, perhaps, the occasional stone). Maybe if the player strays really, really far, Sam will be there to freak out and plead with Frodo to get back to the road.
The player probably won’t get actually killed or injured. He might be visibly (if subtly) stalked by wolves for a while. Just to give the player the hint. Perhaps if the player does get attacked, and injured a little, a ranger or a wood elf will pop out to slay the wolf and advise the player back to safety. Of course, if the player runs into someone on the road, that person will probably recognize Frodo and start making a big deal about it: “Why, FRODO BAGGINS, fancy seein’ you ‘ere! Why, wait until I tell the blokes at the pub who I ran across out in the middle of nowhere, why won’t they have a scream!” Frodo will automatically respond “Y…yes, nice to see you again. We’d really best be moving on.” “Oy, now that’s friendly! Well, have it as you will… (mutter mutter)” And the passerby would continue walking down the path. The idea is to give the player the idea that maybe he should avoid being recognized.
It will take a long while to walk from one place to the next; that’s a big part of the point. It’s all about the journey, about the sense of place along the way. Sense of distance. Sense of foreboding, as well. The idea that maybe the player is being watched. That the farther you get from home, the more treacherous the world feels, to a point. (This is before the wonder of travelling starts to really kick in, and when turning back still seems like a viable option, even if you know you can’t.)
Likewise, the game will somewhat funnel the player along the “right” path just by virtue of level design, carrots, and the above psychology. Farmer Maggot’s fields, say, will be the most obvious route to go, just because going any other route will be so unpleasant and slow, and Sam will whine so much, that it will in effect be the only viable option. If the player happens to miss Merry and Pippin one place, they will continue to wander around such that the player will meet them eventually, somehow, in some incidental manner. The level design will also ensure this. How the meeting transpires depends on the circumstances. If the player is being chased by black riders already, the dynamics will be different from if they bump into each other in a corn field or along the road.
As for the black riders: it should be immediately obvious to the player when they are coming — from visual, aural, and tactile cues. The idea is to make the player realize he really, really shouldn’t be where he is, and that he should get away and hide somewhere. It’ll be an ongoing menace for a while, keeping the player from standing around too long. If the player gets caught, maybe Merry and Pippin show up and pelt the rider with rocks, causing it to drop Frodo, and tell the player to follow them. Maybe the game is simply over right then and there. The rider rides off with Frodo, leaving Sam behind, weeping. And after a few moments, the screen fades to black, the player hears the sound of Frodo screaming, and the text “This is not the end…” appears.
The player should have the option to put on the ring at any time. Should be tempted. Perhaps when the Riders are near, the game interface does something to sugest to the player to use the item.
The game continues in this manner throughout the entire quest; things that are out of Frodo’s control are out of the player’s. The player is tempted and guided and manipulated just as Frodo is, all for the psychological effect. The idea is to make the player really feel like Frodo. To eventually confuse the hell out of him, and to make him want to take the easy way out of things.
I don’t see this game getting made. It wouldn’t be all that hard, of course. Not really. It’s certainly feasible. It’s just… not where we are, yet. Not how we think about videogames, yet. A shame, as I want to play it.
The Blessing of Fatal Death
So. Collectively, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances is by far the most nuanced, well-written, well-directed, well-edited, well-scored, probably well-acted serial of the season. The best use of effects and lighting. The best premise. The best supporting cast. The best resolution. Even the best pre-title synopsis. This is just stupidly good. And it’s kind of melancholy in that the way this ends, the balance that it finds — it’s a kind of perfection. This is the TARDIS at its height. The relationship between the Doctor and Rose, the presence of Jack, the comfortability level. It feels like everything has finally come together, after a long lead-up. This is the classic formation we’ve been waiting for. And it’s about to end. Next is, in effect, the three-part finale.
Did you hear? Next season is going to deal heavily with the Cybermen. That should be curious to witness.
I haven’t been saying much lately. I will soon. The last month has been nuts. I have other things to do first.
Smart Marketing – How an Intelligent Approach to Research Can Boost Your Bottom Line
by [name redacted]
The idea behind Creative Domain Executive VP of Marketing Craig Relyea’s panel at this year’s E3 was to explore and maybe debunk what he described as misconceptions about “strategic information gathering”; marketing speak for focus groups, surveys, and other consumer data-raking. His thesis was that current videogame marketing “relies too much on gut instinct,” a tendency that, from his perspective, has “slowed the industry’s progress in becoming a dominant medium.” He fears that “we’re becoming smothered by over-dependancy on analysis”, resulting in a trap where, unless it is an extension of an established brand, nothing new gets made.
World of Warcraft (Windows/Blizzard) **1/2
by [name redacted]
This review was composed under strange conditions. I was flat broke; a reader sent me a copy of the game and said he’d pay to see my take on the game. Then after the review went up, I think four out of five responses were objections over the fishing example. Hmm.
I’ve stopped playing World of Warcraft. Actually, I stopped a few weeks ago; I only turned the game on twice in the last few days, to buy that orange tabby that I couldn’t name and to see if I had reason to pay money I didn’t have for another month of forgetting the game was installed on my hard drive and downloading a hundred megs of patches whenever I chanced to start it up.
Until I got to level twenty, I enjoyed the game. I wandered around, I improved my skinning and my leatherworking. Maybe those weren’t the best choices for a mage, since I couldn’t wear leather. Why be tidy, though.
It started out well enough. I found a nice role-playing server, where I presumed I would have less bullshit to put up with since everyone would be concerned with etiquette. The Internet is backwards that way. Give a real person a fake identity and he’ll use that as an excuse to go wild. Get into strip clubs preternaturally. Rent videos with no intention to return them. Speak in tongues, go to ren fairs, and wear fursuits. It’s a trap door from the monotony and the conformity of the suburban right-wing hate media spewing public school adolescence we all carry into our thirties.
Give an Internet person an identity, it becomes an anchor. It’s fake, and you know it’s fake. Deep down they know it too. It’s one of those lies you live with, comfortable lies, to grease the gears and keep the project moving. You all know you’re there to escape, so why rock the boat. Let’s pretend, they say. Don’t remind me of my real life. And it’s fair enough. We all have our problems. We all need to be someone, even a fake someone. The role-players are harmless and a little sad. They want to play the game right, and that sounds good to me. Let’s do it, I figure.
People are bitching about Tennant’s age.
So. Age range. Most Doctors began in their early-to-mid forties: Troughton, both Bakers, McCoy, Eccleston.
Two began in their early-to-mid fifties: Hartnell and Pertwee. (Hartnell sure seems a lot older, doesn’t he.)
Davison and McGann were in their thirties; early and late, respectively. Tennant turns thirty-four in two days.
In order:
55->44->51->41->31->41->44->37->41->34
There’s a certain regularity here, although the trend has been toward younger Doctors. Davison was the watershed; where before forty-one was a “young” Doctor, now it was comparably old. And that’s the pattern we’ve had since.
It’s a little odd how often the actors are exactly forty-one, or something-one. It’s either that or something-four, the only exceptions being Hartnell and McGann.
So it’s true that Tennant is the second-youngest Doctor; the transition is a lot like the one from Tom Baker to Davison or McCoy to McGann, except that both Baker and McCoy had aged by the trade-off and were then closer to the range of Hartnell or Pertwee. So the trade-off was to an appreciably younger man, much as it has usually been. There’s a certain significance to that concept: age trading itself in for youth. Now, we’re going from a Doctor who is still pretty young to a Doctor who is even younger. That’s a first. And that’s probably where the noise is coming from.
If Tennant sticks around for seven years — as long as Tom Baker, and as long as anyone’s held onto the role — he’ll only be as old as Eccleston is now. This means we’re not going to see a “mature”, paternal Doctor any time soon. At least, not unless McCoy comes back for a visit. Although Davison’s Doctor was younger, he had a short life before regenerating into older men. Although McGann was around the same age, he only ever appeared the once. In contrast, the idea here is that Tennant is supposed to persist for a whilie. He’s the Doctor we’ve really been waiting for; Eccleston was just setup.*
I guess this brings up the question of why he diidn’t just bring back McGann for the first season, if that was his plan all along. The only answer I have there is that McGann’s been done. He wanted a new start with the audience; a Doctor without a history to him, that we could get to know from the start. Rose is the audience; if we already know the Doctor, we’re too far ahead of her. He wanted the audience to feel ownership over this Doctor — like he was new out of the wrapping instead of a hand-me-down. Then when Davies kills him off, it will have more weight.
I guess it also brings up the question of why Davies didn’t choose an older Ninth Doctor, to provide contrast. I assume it’s because he wanted this Doctor to be new, and it makes little sense to regenerate into a geezer. The only time the Doctor has regenerated into a substantially older man was in the case of Pertwee, and that was imposed on the character by the Time Lords. So it seems like there aren’t too many options here; to get the effect Davies seems after, you need a youngish man for the Ninth Doctor, and you need an even younger man for the Tenth.
How, then, does this clash with public expectations? It’s because we’re used to the idea of a paternal Doctor — even if the only one we’ve had since Pertwee is McCoy. We have this image in our minds of an elderly chap. After all, he’s been alive for so long! That’s a little odd when you think that we also most associate Tom Baker with the role — a weird-o beatnick cross between Harpo Marx and Dracula. Maybe it makes some sense if you consider how short-lived the following four Doctors were, and how many problems the show had through the ’80s. We tend to forget about everyone after Tom Baker, leaving us with some kind of a cross between Baker and Pertwee and some idle memory of Hartnell and Troughton. And where does Tennant fit into that!
Well, he doesn’t. What he does fit into is the established mythology and overall pattern of the series. The trend has always been toward a younger Doctor; now we’ve got another. And furthermore, the mythology is still growing. The pattern is no longer static. The show is alive again, and Davies has his own ideas. So really, everything is about as well as it might be.
She says I am the one
Just now, for the first time ever, I heard the hard “K” in “kid”. And by extension, I was able to pretend I heard a “D”.
All my life, I’ve heard the line as “but the chair is not my son”.
You’re the man, Zarak!
The Doors’ three middle albums each exemplify one aspect of the band, to the detriment of the other two; it’s not until LA Woman that they explore everything and arrive where they started, more mature for the meandering.
- Waiting For the Sun is their “pop” album. Listenable, polished radio stuff. Vapid.
- Soft Parade is their “progressive” album, where they try to make something more than mere pop music. Pretentious.
- Morrison Hotel is their “blues” album, where they dig for “roots” that aren’t really theirs. Embarrassing.
When the Doors are at their best, they are bluesy, poppy, and progressive without thinking about any of it. Their sound comes from who they are: a classical pianist, a jazz drummer, a flamenco guitarst, and a poet.
Of the three middle albums, I find Waiting for the Sun most tolerable. Although it’s shallow, it’s shallow in an organic way; they just were lazy. They fell into a pattern. The next two albums, they consciously tried to react against that and be more “real”. Which meant they were kind of fake.
The final album, they didn’t give a shit anymore. They just went about making something good. So that’s what they got.
Regarding “The End of the World”:
Holy shit. The new series is going somewhere.
EDIT:
Okay. About the Eccleston thing. Now that the shock is past, and now that it’s clear the season was scripted with this probability in mind, and now that we’ve seen episode two and what it suggests about how the new series will treat its characters, and now that we’ve gone back and read Davies’s comments about his ideas for the show — now where do we sit?
As uncomfortable as it might seem at face value, this could come off as an organic development. Consider the following:
- that the reason Davies “never even considered” bringing back McGann for a regeneration was that he didn’t want to confuse a new audience; he wanted a fresh start
- that the new series is about wonder and horror, and about the relationship between the Doctor and his companion
- that unlike the original Doctor Who, the new series is organized around long-term character arcs
So the question to ask is, what do we get if we kill off the Ninth Doctor and keep Rose on, after the first season? What do we establish by doing this? The answer: a hell of a lot.
It establishes the concept of regeneration right off — or, rather, once the Doctor and Rose have had time to bond, and she’s gotten to think she knows him and become comfortable with who she thinks he is. This allows the show to go into his backstory, and explain that he’s had eight other lives before the one she (and by extension the new audience) knew. And maybe even to visit or flash back to a couple of them, eventually. When the notion has settled in well enough.
This whole concept ties into the innate wonder and horror of the new series. The horror that the Doctor is dead; the wonder that he’s not, and that there’s this whole extra dimension to him that he never mentioned; the horror of realizing even more than before just how alien he is and wondering what else that might imply; the horror of the very nature of the Doctor’s relationship with Rose, of everything she knows about him, coming into question as a result of it; the wonder that even with a new face and personality this can still be the same person; the wonder at all of the centuries and lives of experience and knowledge and pain that Rose had never even had a hint of before.
All of this feeds right into the concept of a character arc. It’s the juiciest kind of meat. This is a cornucopia of material for the Doctor, for Rose, and for their relationship. This is the kind of stuff that the series can work off of for years; that, once it’s established, can carry the series to its eventual end. And until the Doctor regenerates, it ain’t going to get established. All we’ve got is a kind of superficial setup.
Recall that the old series didn’t really get started until Hartnell regenerated into Troughton. Then, suddenly, we had something more to work with. So Hartnell stayed for three seasons, while Eccleston is leaving after one. Eccleston’s episodes are also paced more quickly. We have a lot to establish and we know the rules by now. As Davies said, today all you need to show is the cause and the effect; you don’t need to go through all the motions in between, because we get it already.
Of course it would sort of spoil things if the Doctor were to regenerate after every season. He only has a few lives left, and if the series is to work, he should only lose them when there’s a dramatic purpose to it. So whoever the Tenth Doctor is, he should expect to stick around for a while: Eccleston is a sacrifice to him, after all. He will be what we’ve really been waiting for.
EDIT AGAIN:
And hell. Seems this was all planned after all, and the BBC are just idiots for ruining the surprise.
Times Past
I’m watching a documentary on the new Doctor Who; in it is a retrospective of all the previous Doctors, and in that is enough footage to remind me why I like McGann’s. It’s a shame he never got more time; with some refinement he could have been close to the best. Almost ideal.
McGann’s was the emotional Doctor. It seems, after seven lives and a terrifying regeneration, something finally hit him. He becomes wistful, pensive, idealistic. At one point, he actually kisses his companion. It feels like he’s started to grasp the value of this life, of his whole situation. Of what it all means. He is sad, and fragile — and appreciative of everything. I guess he realizes that he might not have as much time as he’s always thought. Which must be weird, for a time lord.
All of the pieces are there. A roundness, a sense of dimension and balance. He gives the impression he’s looked through his past and decided who he is, and what matters to him. McGann brings a certain poignance to the whole arc of the series; he seems to imply that it’s going somewhere, that it has some internal structure, that there is some real evolution going on in the character. That we’ve been building to this moment. He makes it easier to go back and extrapolate, to get a piece of the Doctor’s mind. Just enough to understand him as a person, without robbing him of his mystery.
I say all this as I learn that Eccleston has ditched the role after a single season. After he leapfrogged all of the other actors in line to ask for the role, after he decided past Doctors were too foppish and that he wanted to modernize the character, and after exactly one episode has aired (to ten million viewers), away he goes. That’s… I mean. Hell. If you’re not up for commitment, then why bother with Doctor Who? Of all series? I taste lemons. There’s something weird when a companion hangs around longer than the Doctor himself.
This stunt puts Eccleston second to McGann in brevity, though McGann is to no blame for his part. Colin Baker was yanked out by the teeth, too. And McCoy just had the series cancelled on him. When Davison signed up, he only wanted to do three years; that was supposed to be a short run. And when his time was almost up, he regretted his earliier decision. So — yeah. Eccleston’s in a class of his own. Recall that the character is supposed to be running out of regenerations, and make of him what you will.
I still want to see McGann again. Surely there is some backstory to patch up here. We never did find out what happened to him — and there is plenty precedent for crossover.
EDIT: Or did we? I wasn’t aware that McGann had taped four full “seasons” of audio episodes. I knew he’d done some more work with the character; that these are actually considered seasons 27-30, however, is new to me. And this final episode was only released in December.
Well. Hell, then. I need to get ahold of these. I wonder how.
EDIT AGAIN: Jesus. It turns out that, after all of the novels and audio plays and junk, McGann is the second most well-recorded Doctor of all (following at 116 to McCoy’s 120). And a lot of stuff has happened during his era. And after the second episode of the new series, it seems that Davies considers it all canon. So maybe he hasn’t done that poorly after all. I still would like to see him in action again.
Shoulda used RenderWare
You know how, at the start of Space Harrier, the announcer says “Welcome to the Fantasy Zone. Get ready!”?
In the Sega Ages remake, it’s a little different. He says, “GET BUSY, HARRIER! DRAGON LAND IS SCREAMING!!”
That tells you most of what you need to know.
Sweat Meats
Okay, so white chocolate is chocolate made without the cocoa solids. Because of the lack of cocoa powder, it’s not considered chocolate as-such by the FDA (and other such organizations). Because of this in turn, it can be made with other materials in place of (the relatively healthful) cocoa butter — like, say, hydrogenated vegetable oil — and still be labeled “white chocolate”.
This deal with cocoa butter is also a major differentiation between chocolate and fudge. Fudge is actually kind of a variant of caramel (the candy, not the burned sugar). To make caramel, you boil milk and sugar together — otherwise also important ingredients in milk chocolate — to what is known in confectionary circles as the “soft ball” stage. To make fudge, you then beat the mixture while it cools. So fudge is basically beaten caramel that tends to (though need not) be flavored with cocoa powder. In contrast, to call something “chocolate”, it needs to be based entirely on chocolate products — mainly, cocoa powder and cocoa butter.* Considering that fudge need not contain any chocolate product, this does not describe fudge. Actually they’re pretty far apart, as far as confections go.
While we’re here, the difference between toffee and taffy basically comes down to one minor detail of production; they tend to be made from the same recipe (basically a caramel one, with butter), and by the same process. The only thing is, taffy is pulled as it cools, aerating it and making it chewy. Salt water taffy was invented (or at least popularized) in Atlantic City. I guess that explains why it’s so much more common on the east coast than over here. And why it’s all over the place when you go to the Jersey boardwalks. It doesn’t really contain salt water. Or even any more salt than other candy contains.
*: Chocolate liquor is the natural result of grinding cocoa beans to a smooth state; it consists of what would otherwise be extracted separately as powder and butter.
SNK: The Future is… Coming
by [name redacted]
I don’t know if this report even went live on the site. If so, it’s buried in the infrastructure. If not, well, that sort of thing happens at Insert Credit HQ. Either way, it’s here now.
Although my Wednesday plans called me to ask Akira Yamaoka stupid questions, on Wendesday Brandon called me to accompany him in asking SNK slightly less stupid questions.
We walked a dozen blocks, to a hotel decorated like a Roman bath. The door to the room was ajar; inside milled PR representative Michael Meyers, ensuring all was in place. On the enormous television to the right, the Xbox port of KOF: Maximum Impact; on the reasonable television head, the PS2 port of Metal Slug 4. On the coffee table to the left, a stack of DVD cases, the spine lettering on their temporary sleeves unified in all save size. Amongst these sleeves were The King of Fighters ’94 Re-Bout and Samurai Shodown V, and the new and unfortunate cover for Maximum Impact; to my recollection, all the sleeves were emblazoned with the Xbox logo.
While Brandon was drawn to Metal Slug, I asked of Michael Meyers questions that Brandon and I would again ask each subsequent person who entered the room.
What Makes Music for Games “Music for Games”?
by [name redacted]
One of the final panels this year discussed the nature of game music; video games, being their own mode of expression with their own demands, require a different scoring approach from other forms. Over the years, this has resulted in game music becoming something of its own super genre; as different as one game score might be from the next, nearly all are linked by some quality that makes their sound and purpose unique to videogames. In this panel, a sequence of five game music professionals explores the nature of this distinction, each in their own way.
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