By the end of this post, I will present a list of demands. But first, a dramatic preamble.
Half a lifetime ago I stumbled upon my first real girlfriend. Shortly after we started dating, she moved to India. That was the last time I let my parents send me away to summer camp. Instead of spending an extra three weeks with a chick who actually liked me back, I got to be the weird guy who wore a trenchcoat and a fedora in 80-degree weather, played role-playing games as much as I wanted, and met a really cute gymnast who wanted maybe only one thing more than to read the first draft of A Christmas Tree From Hell.
Put that way, I guess I should have given performing arts summer camp one more shot. I wonder if I'm too old to be a counselor.
But I digress. After my girlfriend left the country, I wrote her letters once a month, every month for a year. I didn't even think of dating anyone else until January. Of course, I never heard back from her until a year later, when I wrote my "this is my last" letter.
It was then that I finally heard from her. She claimed to have been horribly depressed and missed me all that time. She finally sent me a picture, albeit one where she appeared hardly bigger than my thumbnail. (She did say she lost some weight.) I wrote her back, informing her that, yes, I did finally have a new girlfriend, which prompted her to write that she had only gone out with me on a dare, to which I responded not too politely, which was countered with a "How dare you think that last letter was true? I was only mad!" response, and continued until I finally discovered my superpower--the ability to destroy friendships on purpose.
If my abnormal ability sounds depressing, it's really more of a blessing than a curse. I think of it as Delayed Blast Karma. I have yet to meet anyone who can take that many d6 of emotional damage. Let's see Heroes rip that off.
And now we'll skip to the part where my flashback becomes relevant.
I don't have the window on Tuesdays and Thursdays I used to. Considering that I didn't necessarily post until late on those days and I live on the west coast, this may not make any difference to you. But I don't know that for sure because no one has said anything.
I realize that our current audience is composed of friends who may not be as hungry for Internet content as Mr. Bile or myself. But I have a vague plan to expand beyond our core demographic and that requires feedback. I have requested input several times and recieved none outside of phone conversations or the occasional e-mail. If I wish to expand our influence, and I do, that can no longer be considered sufficient.
Therefore, I will not post again until I recieve significant answers to the following questions, either in comments or by e-mail. Have fun on the pledge drive, Mr. B.
1. What days do you read our blog? Would you object to a traditional M/W/F schedule?
2. What do you think of our current font/color scheme? (Whenever I try a large font to accomodate sleepy eyes, it looks stupid. Agree/Disagree?) I hear it takes a toll on readers above the age of 30.
3. What features should we follow up on? More metaplot? Short story movie reviews? Wal-Mart muckraking? Original fiction that would be otherwise unmarketable?
4. It's late and I'm tired. I'm forgetting something.
5. Do our comments and e-mails even work?
Until I hear from you, Narraptor out.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Gray Friday
Black Friday did not live up to its hype. The promised insanity consisted of customers asking me where things were.
Wal-Mart had slower than expected sales and blamed a weak economy. I would've chosen to blame the special deals that were meant to lure in customers from 5am to 11am. There were plasma televisions sold at cost, but those were all snapped up by 4am. Other items offered included a mediocre 5 megapixel camera sold for 88 dollars, as opposed to the other 5 megapixel cameras sold for 88 dollars in previous weeks. If that didn't work, the twin-pack of Chutes and Ladders and Monopoly was supposed to be a one-two punch of pure entertainment sure to lure people out before noon.
There was a selection of two dollar DVDs that seemed quite popular. By 7am the cardboard bins were dominated by large veins of Red Heat and Mazes and Monsters, constantly stirred by customers trying to find The Hulk.
I will tell you this: There is no book to be had about working at Wal-Mart. Which is a shame, because it ruins my plan to pretend I'm a respected author, diving into the sordid world of retail to gather a slew of poignant slice-of-life stories, excerpted over weekends on NPR. I've always fancied my voice has the idiosyncrasies that they look for.
As it is, I'll have to get a truly terrible job if I want to bluff my way into the sordid world of nonfiction.
Wal-Mart had slower than expected sales and blamed a weak economy. I would've chosen to blame the special deals that were meant to lure in customers from 5am to 11am. There were plasma televisions sold at cost, but those were all snapped up by 4am. Other items offered included a mediocre 5 megapixel camera sold for 88 dollars, as opposed to the other 5 megapixel cameras sold for 88 dollars in previous weeks. If that didn't work, the twin-pack of Chutes and Ladders and Monopoly was supposed to be a one-two punch of pure entertainment sure to lure people out before noon.
There was a selection of two dollar DVDs that seemed quite popular. By 7am the cardboard bins were dominated by large veins of Red Heat and Mazes and Monsters, constantly stirred by customers trying to find The Hulk.
I will tell you this: There is no book to be had about working at Wal-Mart. Which is a shame, because it ruins my plan to pretend I'm a respected author, diving into the sordid world of retail to gather a slew of poignant slice-of-life stories, excerpted over weekends on NPR. I've always fancied my voice has the idiosyncrasies that they look for.
As it is, I'll have to get a truly terrible job if I want to bluff my way into the sordid world of nonfiction.
I Can't Believe I Saw Happy Feet
The marketing campaign behind this was really slick. The previews kept people like me at bay and enticed unsuspecting masses. It was only a matter of time before the inconvenient truth was learned and the rest of us said, "Uh, two for Happy Feet, the movie that destroys childhood ignorance?"
My preview would have looked a little bit different:
"From the director of Mad Max and The Road Warrior...an animated musical that will make you feel bad...Featuring the voices of Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman in a limited amount of screentime, and Robin Williams at his most tolerable."
[cue E.S. Posthumus' "Pompeii" to a montage of penguins fleeing realistic animal predators]
"Happy Feet."
[pull back on Earth with three dirge-like percussive beats]
"This Thanksgiving, embrace guilt."
My preview would have looked a little bit different:
"From the director of Mad Max and The Road Warrior...an animated musical that will make you feel bad...Featuring the voices of Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman in a limited amount of screentime, and Robin Williams at his most tolerable."
[cue E.S. Posthumus' "Pompeii" to a montage of penguins fleeing realistic animal predators]
"Happy Feet."
[pull back on Earth with three dirge-like percussive beats]
"This Thanksgiving, embrace guilt."
Friday, November 24, 2006
Risk: Godslow (Supersized 11/25/06)
That took longer than expected. "That" being a friendly game of Risk: Godstorm and preparing Straight Guy Ambrosia. What made it straight? The fact that I can't properly peel or cut fruit. Without Rachael Ray as my guide, I probably couldn't slit my wrists. Of course, having her there to instruct me would be added incentive to get the job done right.
As it turned out, the ambrosia dish was a bit of misnomer. The only person not to partake of the Straight Guy Ambrosia was the straight guy. I followed the directions in my Williams and Sonoma salad recipe book and it called for several fruits that I don't eat.
I inflict board games on my friends once or twice a year, usually on holidays. I hope to increase that frequency in the future, perhaps running Advanced HeroQuest on Valentine's Day and Descent during Fashion Week. (I can't believe I forgot to put that on my Christmas list!) I also have a wedding anniversary to plan each year. But in case I continue to slack on the board game front, I have some helpful advice for my future self.
"Dear Narraptor,
Hi. Has Lost Adama Caused the Destruction of the Colonies'ed yet? LOL. ADCtDothC is the new Raped By a Panda. Should I worry about Bernard and a polar bear? No spoilers!
It's been six months, so you've probably forgotten about what happened last time and are thinking of having a board game night. You might want to break out the tokens the day before and play two rounds. That way you can avoid game-breaking misinterpretations and rules omissions that need to be re-looked up on the Internet before the real session reaches the point of no return. In the case of Risk, that's two hours, after everyone has finally placed their armies.
Oh, and unless you plan on taking it, make sure the card that sinks Atlantis is in the proper spell deck next time, though that did lead to an amusing chase scene on the Atlanteans' part.
See you in May."
After consulting Mr. Bile, I came to the conclusion that there are four annoying player archetypes common to board gamers:
1. The guy whose turns take too long
2. The guy who gets bitchy when he decides he doesn't understand how to play
3. The guy who throws the game
4. The guy who can't tolerate being back-stabbed in back-stabbing games
You'll notice all of those examples are male. In my admittedly limited experience with unconventional games--the ones that you won't find at Toys 'R Us--the only time I've ever seen a female player pissed was in response to the intelligence scores of female brains in The Great Brain Robbery. Our first reaction was, "Aww," but it quickly became scary. That's why Kate the Simple Housewife has an extra zero added to her IQ with a Sharpie.
Mr. Bile pointed out that each archetype may have different reasons for acting the way he does. One might take too long on his turn because there are too many options, another might find it necessary to calculate every single one. The guy who throws the game might do it because he no longer sees the possibility of winning, or maybe he refuses to ever use a failure card on principle.
Full disclosure, I myself fall into the second archetype, as I learned when I was exposed to Robo Rally. Mr. Bile acknowledges to exhibiting tendencies of the first.
I bring this up because board games are a social activity, and I think it's important to know under what circumstances you start to ruin it for everyone else. For example, in our second round of Godstorm, I succumbed to my board game shadow. After depleting many of my troops in spite I sat back, had another half-tumbler of wine, and remembered there were other people there trying to have fun. Why should I throw off the game balance just because I hadn't got the rules right from the beginning? After that, I did the best with what I had, just like when I resigned myself to sending all of my Johnny 5's into the same pit round after round in that stupid robot game that doesn't make any sense.
I lost terribly.
I had hoped to play Puerto Rico, but it's been so long I can't remember why I liked it. With only vague memories of fun, the gameplay instructions don't make it an easy sell to newbies. "The players go from round to round in different roles and initiate the associated actions." Hell, yeah!
As it turned out, the ambrosia dish was a bit of misnomer. The only person not to partake of the Straight Guy Ambrosia was the straight guy. I followed the directions in my Williams and Sonoma salad recipe book and it called for several fruits that I don't eat.
I inflict board games on my friends once or twice a year, usually on holidays. I hope to increase that frequency in the future, perhaps running Advanced HeroQuest on Valentine's Day and Descent during Fashion Week. (I can't believe I forgot to put that on my Christmas list!) I also have a wedding anniversary to plan each year. But in case I continue to slack on the board game front, I have some helpful advice for my future self.
"Dear Narraptor,
Hi. Has Lost Adama Caused the Destruction of the Colonies'ed yet? LOL. ADCtDothC is the new Raped By a Panda. Should I worry about Bernard and a polar bear? No spoilers!
It's been six months, so you've probably forgotten about what happened last time and are thinking of having a board game night. You might want to break out the tokens the day before and play two rounds. That way you can avoid game-breaking misinterpretations and rules omissions that need to be re-looked up on the Internet before the real session reaches the point of no return. In the case of Risk, that's two hours, after everyone has finally placed their armies.
Oh, and unless you plan on taking it, make sure the card that sinks Atlantis is in the proper spell deck next time, though that did lead to an amusing chase scene on the Atlanteans' part.
See you in May."
After consulting Mr. Bile, I came to the conclusion that there are four annoying player archetypes common to board gamers:
1. The guy whose turns take too long
2. The guy who gets bitchy when he decides he doesn't understand how to play
3. The guy who throws the game
4. The guy who can't tolerate being back-stabbed in back-stabbing games
You'll notice all of those examples are male. In my admittedly limited experience with unconventional games--the ones that you won't find at Toys 'R Us--the only time I've ever seen a female player pissed was in response to the intelligence scores of female brains in The Great Brain Robbery. Our first reaction was, "Aww," but it quickly became scary. That's why Kate the Simple Housewife has an extra zero added to her IQ with a Sharpie.
Mr. Bile pointed out that each archetype may have different reasons for acting the way he does. One might take too long on his turn because there are too many options, another might find it necessary to calculate every single one. The guy who throws the game might do it because he no longer sees the possibility of winning, or maybe he refuses to ever use a failure card on principle.
Full disclosure, I myself fall into the second archetype, as I learned when I was exposed to Robo Rally. Mr. Bile acknowledges to exhibiting tendencies of the first.
I bring this up because board games are a social activity, and I think it's important to know under what circumstances you start to ruin it for everyone else. For example, in our second round of Godstorm, I succumbed to my board game shadow. After depleting many of my troops in spite I sat back, had another half-tumbler of wine, and remembered there were other people there trying to have fun. Why should I throw off the game balance just because I hadn't got the rules right from the beginning? After that, I did the best with what I had, just like when I resigned myself to sending all of my Johnny 5's into the same pit round after round in that stupid robot game that doesn't make any sense.
I lost terribly.
I had hoped to play Puerto Rico, but it's been so long I can't remember why I liked it. With only vague memories of fun, the gameplay instructions don't make it an easy sell to newbies. "The players go from round to round in different roles and initiate the associated actions." Hell, yeah!
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Between Consuming And Consumers
For the holiday, something I can't believe I'm thankful for:
At night, Wal-Mart's radio shifts from The Lite FM to a call-in show. And god help me, it's far better than any of the music stations I can get on my radio.
I say that in spite of the fact that there are people out there who still request Who Let The Dogs Out every other day, to say nothing of Sexyback. I might hate a lot of what they play, but there's variety to it, and some songs I like that I have never heard on the radio before. This meets the low standards it requires to be better than everyone else.
At night, Wal-Mart's radio shifts from The Lite FM to a call-in show. And god help me, it's far better than any of the music stations I can get on my radio.
I say that in spite of the fact that there are people out there who still request Who Let The Dogs Out every other day, to say nothing of Sexyback. I might hate a lot of what they play, but there's variety to it, and some songs I like that I have never heard on the radio before. This meets the low standards it requires to be better than everyone else.
And now, I go to experience Black Friday from inside the belly of the beast.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Enough To Die For
The Hamiltons:
A family of serial killers tries to survive, now that their mother and father are gone. It has the twists that you'd expect, and features actors who aren't Crispin Glover or Rose McGowan, but would like to be. Victims go to amazing lengths to die, but my main issue with the film is how terribly psychopathic most of the family is. Whether you root for or against the family, the kill-crazy brother has to die, and the movie never twigs to that fact.
Gravedancers:
This starts off as a very typical going-for-creepy film, and if you're going to watch it you ought to skip the rest of this paragraph. Anyway, dancing on graves with your drunken buddies is bad. Our hero and is wife become puzzled over a mysterious stalker who keeps rattling the water pipes and turning invisible. All standard stuff, until they visit their screwup friend who was smart enough to hire Tchéky Karyo, paranormal scientist extraordinaire. The movie shifts directly into adventure mode, and then the fun starts. While the movie will does dive into the glorious excess of driving a humvee through a mansion while being chased by the giant floating head of a piano teacher, the rest of the film is played mostly straight. So now that you're expecting this sudden shift, the movie's going to lose a lot of its punch. Sorry. You can still enjoy Tchéky Karyo.
But it also raised two points in my mind: First of all, this was the only movie where some of the characters who are utterly screwed react in ways that, you know, normal people would. It really can't be that hard to do in a movie. Secondly, people being trapped on opposite sides of a door is boring.
In the end, I did enjoy watching all of the films, except for Penny Dreadful. What I can't do is recommend them to you without knowing how many flaws you're willing to put up with.
I'll go out on a limb and say that if you thought Descent was a genius piece of filmmaking, you should see all three. If you hated Silent Hill, then none of them. If both of those are true for you, then I foresee many disagreements in our future.
A family of serial killers tries to survive, now that their mother and father are gone. It has the twists that you'd expect, and features actors who aren't Crispin Glover or Rose McGowan, but would like to be. Victims go to amazing lengths to die, but my main issue with the film is how terribly psychopathic most of the family is. Whether you root for or against the family, the kill-crazy brother has to die, and the movie never twigs to that fact.
Gravedancers:
This starts off as a very typical going-for-creepy film, and if you're going to watch it you ought to skip the rest of this paragraph. Anyway, dancing on graves with your drunken buddies is bad. Our hero and is wife become puzzled over a mysterious stalker who keeps rattling the water pipes and turning invisible. All standard stuff, until they visit their screwup friend who was smart enough to hire Tchéky Karyo, paranormal scientist extraordinaire. The movie shifts directly into adventure mode, and then the fun starts. While the movie will does dive into the glorious excess of driving a humvee through a mansion while being chased by the giant floating head of a piano teacher, the rest of the film is played mostly straight. So now that you're expecting this sudden shift, the movie's going to lose a lot of its punch. Sorry. You can still enjoy Tchéky Karyo.
But it also raised two points in my mind: First of all, this was the only movie where some of the characters who are utterly screwed react in ways that, you know, normal people would. It really can't be that hard to do in a movie. Secondly, people being trapped on opposite sides of a door is boring.
In the end, I did enjoy watching all of the films, except for Penny Dreadful. What I can't do is recommend them to you without knowing how many flaws you're willing to put up with.
I'll go out on a limb and say that if you thought Descent was a genius piece of filmmaking, you should see all three. If you hated Silent Hill, then none of them. If both of those are true for you, then I foresee many disagreements in our future.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Horse: The Beaten
Pardon me, Mr. Bile, but the significant other rules from the core system are indeed in effect. You must have confused them with the "f@!# buddy" modifier, which grants you extra points for friends you can have sex with with the illusion of no strings attached but hidden emotional damage.
Forgive me for the censorship, but I can't bring myself to acknowledge that such a term exists. That's part of the reason why we ignore the new simplified rules.
For the record, significant others are scored as follows:
Significant other: 100 points
Additional significant others: 25 points
Most important, friends with significant others are worth half normal point value, rounded down to the nearest multiple of 5. That means I'm only worth 10 points to you, but you give me a full 25.
Forgive me for the censorship, but I can't bring myself to acknowledge that such a term exists. That's part of the reason why we ignore the new simplified rules.
For the record, significant others are scored as follows:
Significant other: 100 points
Additional significant others: 25 points
Most important, friends with significant others are worth half normal point value, rounded down to the nearest multiple of 5. That means I'm only worth 10 points to you, but you give me a full 25.
After Darker Mints
Penny Dreadful:
A direct-to-DVD film that happens to be on the big screen. Mimi Rodgers plays the world's worst psychiatrist, dragging a girl terrified of cars along on a cross country car trip. Soon, the girl is trapped in the car by a hitchhiker who gets magical powers by keeping a hood over his face. Meanwhile, we are treated to long shots of Mimi Rodger's corpse straining not to blink.
Far as I can remember, well over half the film consists of the girl waking up, getting scared, and going back to sleep. I did get a good laugh when the villain finally opened his mouth, and let his prepubescent voice wreck any specks of menace remaining in the film.
A direct-to-DVD film that happens to be on the big screen. Mimi Rodgers plays the world's worst psychiatrist, dragging a girl terrified of cars along on a cross country car trip. Soon, the girl is trapped in the car by a hitchhiker who gets magical powers by keeping a hood over his face. Meanwhile, we are treated to long shots of Mimi Rodger's corpse straining not to blink.
Far as I can remember, well over half the film consists of the girl waking up, getting scared, and going back to sleep. I did get a good laugh when the villain finally opened his mouth, and let his prepubescent voice wreck any specks of menace remaining in the film.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Podcast Pimping
Three notable shout-outs.
The November 13th Games For Windows podcast (also linked on our sidebar) has some interesting news bits, like the White Wolf MMO and a mad scientist who has invented an unbreakable game controller. It concludes with a storytime session detailing game reviewers' worst experiences with PR people. If you play games, check it out.
Also worth a listen is the latest Things On. I'm on the fence in regards to their tolerability. Sometimes their thing doesn't seem to be on. This week's podcast contains a long interview with Garrett Wang, Ensign Kim from Star Trek: Voyager. There's some good "Why did that suck so hard?" dirt in there.
Finally, for those of you who don't visit Something Awful on a regular basis, you might have missed a .mp3 interview with Mike Nelson of MST3K.
The November 13th Games For Windows podcast (also linked on our sidebar) has some interesting news bits, like the White Wolf MMO and a mad scientist who has invented an unbreakable game controller. It concludes with a storytime session detailing game reviewers' worst experiences with PR people. If you play games, check it out.
Also worth a listen is the latest Things On. I'm on the fence in regards to their tolerability. Sometimes their thing doesn't seem to be on. This week's podcast contains a long interview with Garrett Wang, Ensign Kim from Star Trek: Voyager. There's some good "Why did that suck so hard?" dirt in there.
Finally, for those of you who don't visit Something Awful on a regular basis, you might have missed a .mp3 interview with Mike Nelson of MST3K.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Krigeworthy
You would think a movie where Henry Rollins wears pink sweatpants and is used as a battering ram would have a recommendation coming to it. Especially if that movie contains the quote: "Monster cock stuck in the door!" (I may be paraphrasing that one. You try Googling "feast" and "monster cock.") But the same should be expected of a horror film set in an all-girl's school from the director of May.
The characters in Feast are shot from the waist up in almost every frame. That might not sound distracting, but Henry Rollins spends half the movie in pink sweatpants...and you can't see them. It was like watching a bunch of manananggals trapped in a bar with a floating head that was supposedly a kid in a wheelchair.
The Woods was a disappointment. Imagine Suspira with too much mystery revealed instead of too little. On the upside, any one of the teachers could have brought enough dignity to Alice Krige's Argento-worthy role in Silent Hill that Mr. Bile wouldn't have to defend it anymore.
What more can I say? Mediocre movies don't fill my criticism meter. Feast wasn't clever enough to forgive its amateurish production. (The alternate ending--the monsters are hurt by sunlight!--reveals a huge continuity error in the final cut of the film, just in case you missed it.) As for The Woods, evil roots aren't enough anymore.
There was one surprising thing about The Woods. Bruce Campbell was damn good in it.
The characters in Feast are shot from the waist up in almost every frame. That might not sound distracting, but Henry Rollins spends half the movie in pink sweatpants...and you can't see them. It was like watching a bunch of manananggals trapped in a bar with a floating head that was supposedly a kid in a wheelchair.
The Woods was a disappointment. Imagine Suspira with too much mystery revealed instead of too little. On the upside, any one of the teachers could have brought enough dignity to Alice Krige's Argento-worthy role in Silent Hill that Mr. Bile wouldn't have to defend it anymore.
What more can I say? Mediocre movies don't fill my criticism meter. Feast wasn't clever enough to forgive its amateurish production. (The alternate ending--the monsters are hurt by sunlight!--reveals a huge continuity error in the final cut of the film, just in case you missed it.) As for The Woods, evil roots aren't enough anymore.
There was one surprising thing about The Woods. Bruce Campbell was damn good in it.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Blueshirt Confessional
It's true that I currently have a pool of 2 friends available for wacky hijinks. However, during the lightning round all points are doubled, so it's still anybody's game.
In case you're curious, we're playing by the New Simplified Rules and using the base scoring system:
Available friends: 50 points
Unavailable friends (out of state): 25 points
Unavailable friends (in state, always too busy): 15 points
Mysteriously Vanished friends: 10 points
Acquaintances: 25 points for the first, 5 for every additional one
We did add a few house rules. Instead of reducing a friend's value to its square root when they have an asshole attached to them, we simply deduct 10 points. Also, we don't use any of the "Girlfriend modifier" nonsense the New Simplified Rules tried to usher in.
A lot of old-schoolers will tell you the game's heyday was back in the early 90's, when the "Skills and Thrills!" expansion set came out. It had its charms, but half of the rules are now either out of date, or depend too much on trying to rate the quality of your friends, which seems a bit demeaning. Personally, I just think there are people out there who like doing complicated math for its own sake. (I know I could download one of a dozen freeware programs to do the math for me, but I just don't have the patience.)
For no raisin, I should tell you about my own current employment.
The first step to recovery is to admit the truth: I work at Wal-Mart. It seemed harmless enough at the time. I had just moved, and The House That Sam Built was the first employer to offer me both a job and a wage that would pay my bills.
One thing I never figured on was the atmosphere of fear that wafts down from the management. Every person I've met in the corporate structure is concerned with Wal-Mart's many enemies, and is not hesitant to say so. The media is a prime boogeyman, looking for any opportunity to destroy Wal-Mart. The vendors who restock Coke and Frito-Lay are always suspect, because everyone knows that they really make their money by stealing product. Shrinkage can only come from employees recklessly destroying property in secret. Unless it comes from theft, which can come from anywhere. Every business Wal-Mart has destroyed now stands as an example of the store's own mortality. Only by constantly growing can Wal-Mart hope to outpace their enemies and live another day. But the bigger they grow, the stronger their enemies will become.
I've had to watch at least ten different training videos, and the only one to feature "real actors" was the one informing me about the dangers of union ninjas tricking me into signing away my soul. These actors are much worse than the random employees they hired to enact the skits on the other videos, and Wal-Mart missed a prime opportunity to hire Sean Bean to proclaim that "Wal-Mart has no unions. Wal-Mart needs no unions!" Instead, a number of people stare into the camera, and talk about how Wal-Mart is not anti-union. Wal-Mart is pro-employee. There is an "open door policy" that means anyone can complain to anybody at anytime, so it is impossible for problems to happen.
Then there are clips of union workers accosting employees, and giving them cards to sign. It is explained that by signing the card, you sign away all your rights, and will end up getting paid less due to union arbitration. The actual reason you'd get paid less, "Wal-Mart will raze the store to the ground to prevent the contamination from spreading," is never mentioned. I'm fairly sure it's illegal for them to say that, but the honesty would be refreshing.
This goes on for a while. Afterwards, a manager explained to us that since Wal-Mart is the richest company in the world, unions want to use us to become richer than Croseus. I'm willing to believe that, with the caveat that they'd try to make my life better in order to keep access to that font of cash. The part after that explaining that any monkey could do a union job for seven bucks, instead of the fifteen they demand, was less inspiring.
But that does lead into Wal-Mart's surprisingly seductive philosophy. They claim that by selling things for a low enough price, and paying out even less, they strive to lower the cost of living for the area. As Wal-Mart grows larger, this will ripple out until a dollar is equal to its 1950's value.
Sadly Wal-Mart is far from consistent about applying this principal. That's a shame, because I'm a sucker for economic theories that sound like they came out of a pulp novel. They don't even have an entertaining name for it, like Sam's Hammer.
In case you're curious, we're playing by the New Simplified Rules and using the base scoring system:
Available friends: 50 points
Unavailable friends (out of state): 25 points
Unavailable friends (in state, always too busy): 15 points
Mysteriously Vanished friends: 10 points
Acquaintances: 25 points for the first, 5 for every additional one
We did add a few house rules. Instead of reducing a friend's value to its square root when they have an asshole attached to them, we simply deduct 10 points. Also, we don't use any of the "Girlfriend modifier" nonsense the New Simplified Rules tried to usher in.
A lot of old-schoolers will tell you the game's heyday was back in the early 90's, when the "Skills and Thrills!" expansion set came out. It had its charms, but half of the rules are now either out of date, or depend too much on trying to rate the quality of your friends, which seems a bit demeaning. Personally, I just think there are people out there who like doing complicated math for its own sake. (I know I could download one of a dozen freeware programs to do the math for me, but I just don't have the patience.)
For no raisin, I should tell you about my own current employment.
The first step to recovery is to admit the truth: I work at Wal-Mart. It seemed harmless enough at the time. I had just moved, and The House That Sam Built was the first employer to offer me both a job and a wage that would pay my bills.
One thing I never figured on was the atmosphere of fear that wafts down from the management. Every person I've met in the corporate structure is concerned with Wal-Mart's many enemies, and is not hesitant to say so. The media is a prime boogeyman, looking for any opportunity to destroy Wal-Mart. The vendors who restock Coke and Frito-Lay are always suspect, because everyone knows that they really make their money by stealing product. Shrinkage can only come from employees recklessly destroying property in secret. Unless it comes from theft, which can come from anywhere. Every business Wal-Mart has destroyed now stands as an example of the store's own mortality. Only by constantly growing can Wal-Mart hope to outpace their enemies and live another day. But the bigger they grow, the stronger their enemies will become.
I've had to watch at least ten different training videos, and the only one to feature "real actors" was the one informing me about the dangers of union ninjas tricking me into signing away my soul. These actors are much worse than the random employees they hired to enact the skits on the other videos, and Wal-Mart missed a prime opportunity to hire Sean Bean to proclaim that "Wal-Mart has no unions. Wal-Mart needs no unions!" Instead, a number of people stare into the camera, and talk about how Wal-Mart is not anti-union. Wal-Mart is pro-employee. There is an "open door policy" that means anyone can complain to anybody at anytime, so it is impossible for problems to happen.
Then there are clips of union workers accosting employees, and giving them cards to sign. It is explained that by signing the card, you sign away all your rights, and will end up getting paid less due to union arbitration. The actual reason you'd get paid less, "Wal-Mart will raze the store to the ground to prevent the contamination from spreading," is never mentioned. I'm fairly sure it's illegal for them to say that, but the honesty would be refreshing.
This goes on for a while. Afterwards, a manager explained to us that since Wal-Mart is the richest company in the world, unions want to use us to become richer than Croseus. I'm willing to believe that, with the caveat that they'd try to make my life better in order to keep access to that font of cash. The part after that explaining that any monkey could do a union job for seven bucks, instead of the fifteen they demand, was less inspiring.
But that does lead into Wal-Mart's surprisingly seductive philosophy. They claim that by selling things for a low enough price, and paying out even less, they strive to lower the cost of living for the area. As Wal-Mart grows larger, this will ripple out until a dollar is equal to its 1950's value.
Sadly Wal-Mart is far from consistent about applying this principal. That's a shame, because I'm a sucker for economic theories that sound like they came out of a pulp novel. They don't even have an entertaining name for it, like Sam's Hammer.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
A Final Lack Of Gaming
In a few days, the Playstation 3 and the Wii come out, all my game systems will be obsolete, and I'll no longer count as a gamer. I suppose that I can eventually convince myself to purchase a Wii based on cheapness, and perhaps join hands with the Gamers Who Hate Games that the Wii is marketed towards. Not that I blame them, after seeing a friend manhandled by Bully's "We use every button on your controller, even the ones you didn't know existed!" design. The fact that the game waits to give instructions on how to use button #13 until a chase scene probably didn't help. It'll be interesting to see if cutting down on the number of buttons will end up making a more intuitive game or just an entirely different skillset to memorize. Replace "interesting" with "frustrating" in the previous sentence if the Wii experiment fails.
So, last week I never really did talk about games I didn't play, but still ought to. Here's a pair for your consideration.
A Game Of Thrones is a smartly designed boardgame that works in all the ways Axis-and-Allies style games usually don't. For one thing, a lot of the action happens simultaneously, so you don't have to deal with thirty-minute breaks in between your turns. Also, while there's a welcome element of randomness in the game, combat is wholly strategic. (At least, I'm happy about that, seeing as how I can count on my dice to betray me more often than not.) Unfortunately, the game balance pretty much requires that you have the maxiumum of five players. Otherwise, get used to the despairing wail of "King of the North!" as whoever plays the Starks gets beaten down.
Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers is the less-popular sequel to the original Carcassonne. Control an entire tribe of French cavemen struggling to score you points in a gleefully passive-aggressive game. Instead of attacking your opponents, you just happen set up tragic accidents wherein they're kicked out of prime hunting grounds. Since a number of the people I play with react poorly to being assaulted, this is quite a good thing.
The original Carcassonne is also fairly decent, but its scoring system feels unbalanced, although that is partially fixed in a number of complicated expansion packs. But it's the only version I ever see in stores when I remember that I need to buy my own copy of Hunters and Gathrers since I've moved, and I'd rather not pay thirty bucks for its weak sister.
So, last week I never really did talk about games I didn't play, but still ought to. Here's a pair for your consideration.
A Game Of Thrones is a smartly designed boardgame that works in all the ways Axis-and-Allies style games usually don't. For one thing, a lot of the action happens simultaneously, so you don't have to deal with thirty-minute breaks in between your turns. Also, while there's a welcome element of randomness in the game, combat is wholly strategic. (At least, I'm happy about that, seeing as how I can count on my dice to betray me more often than not.) Unfortunately, the game balance pretty much requires that you have the maxiumum of five players. Otherwise, get used to the despairing wail of "King of the North!" as whoever plays the Starks gets beaten down.
Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers is the less-popular sequel to the original Carcassonne. Control an entire tribe of French cavemen struggling to score you points in a gleefully passive-aggressive game. Instead of attacking your opponents, you just happen set up tragic accidents wherein they're kicked out of prime hunting grounds. Since a number of the people I play with react poorly to being assaulted, this is quite a good thing.
The original Carcassonne is also fairly decent, but its scoring system feels unbalanced, although that is partially fixed in a number of complicated expansion packs. But it's the only version I ever see in stores when I remember that I need to buy my own copy of Hunters and Gathrers since I've moved, and I'd rather not pay thirty bucks for its weak sister.
No Longer Play Because I Hate The Playas
Mr. Bile asked me to discuss the games I no longer play. I suspect this is an attempt to make me feel inferior to him, as he actually has friends he doesn't have to kidnap from their apartments and tie to chairs in front of a table full of Energon drinks and handmade sushi in order to get them to touch a pair of dice, much less some traitorous foreign game from Europe that involves tiles or bidding rounds. Or maybe he just wanted to lord it over me that he has friends with a "s", whereas I have friend.
Ignoring computer and video games, which I could go on about at tedious length, I don't have much to say about games I no longer play. I got rid of them when I moved. When I see the RPGs gathering dust on my bookshelf or the board games piled up in my closet, my perspective isn't that I will never play them again (or in the case of certain titles, for the first time), I'm just not playing them right now. I'm waiting for the right group of friends to play them with.
"Friends" is the key word. Since college, I've found gaming groups who were nice enough to let me join their sessions and tolerated my playstyle, and I've found groups of friends who I could hang out with, but games were an afterthought or of the junior high school DM versus the players variety. And of course, let's not forget the Wangomancers.
I have yet to establish a post-graduation group of like-minded individuals who will show up on Fridays with equal enthusiasm for alcohol, Battlestar Galactica, and existential horror meets Iron Chef in a game of furry action. One of the things my wife and I have found in LA is that people join groups just for meetups. With a few notable exceptions (also recently relocated) most of the people I've role-played with here are very secretive about their jobs and personal lives. Maybe it's me, but I don't feel comfortable inviting people over to my house for a game unless they're also interested in Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter night.
Ignoring computer and video games, which I could go on about at tedious length, I don't have much to say about games I no longer play. I got rid of them when I moved. When I see the RPGs gathering dust on my bookshelf or the board games piled up in my closet, my perspective isn't that I will never play them again (or in the case of certain titles, for the first time), I'm just not playing them right now. I'm waiting for the right group of friends to play them with.
"Friends" is the key word. Since college, I've found gaming groups who were nice enough to let me join their sessions and tolerated my playstyle, and I've found groups of friends who I could hang out with, but games were an afterthought or of the junior high school DM versus the players variety. And of course, let's not forget the Wangomancers.
I have yet to establish a post-graduation group of like-minded individuals who will show up on Fridays with equal enthusiasm for alcohol, Battlestar Galactica, and existential horror meets Iron Chef in a game of furry action. One of the things my wife and I have found in LA is that people join groups just for meetups. With a few notable exceptions (also recently relocated) most of the people I've role-played with here are very secretive about their jobs and personal lives. Maybe it's me, but I don't feel comfortable inviting people over to my house for a game unless they're also interested in Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter night.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Today Is Not That Time
During the last blog post of Canned Food And Shotguns, we will break all of our rules with gusto. Until then, I suppose I'll have to endure these unnatural restraints. It's much easier to obey the common-sense laws of Canned Food and Shotguns. For example, we don't need a prohibition on using the phrase "Jump The Shark." A healthy desire to maintain our self-esteem is more than enough to keep that at bay.
So instead of meager excuses for late posting, I offer swagger and braggadocio. Last night, I ran a game of Unknown Armies with players who I can trust to outsmart me nine out of ten times, and the tenth time is usually because they forgot about an obtuse comment mentioned by one person three months ago in the middle of the night. Plots were hatched, mysteries were plumbed, and I managed an accent that didn't careen into "Not Even Close To Sounding British."
And do not let Narraptor fool you with his devious trickery! Even though I've burned out on almost the entire genre of wacky card games, I still enjoy Give Me The Brain. Games like Munchkin, Chez [EDITED BY BRAIN GREMLIN], and Gloom have not been so lucky. The gameplay for each of them is disturbingly similar. The first few times, you have to learn a set of rules that feels a touch more complex than it was meant to be, and made more so by some very vague definitions. Then someone plays a card that has new rules printed on it that take precedence over the ones everyone else has been playing by. The card's grammar and syntax are puzzled over, someone is hosed, and the game continues.
As familiarity with the set of cards sets in, you get down to the serious business of applying deep strategy to a game that doesn't have any. You start basing strategies on whether or not the Big Unfair Card you need will show up, and praying that the chaff that makes up half the deck ends up in someone else's hands. Then, everyone gets sick of the game and it's either time to pony up for a new expansion featuring more wacky cards (Do you think "Auntie Paladin" is funny? What's wrong with you?) or move on. Alternatively, someone in the group can get an official Munchkin T-Shirt that gives him bonuses in the game. That will bring the game to a much swifter ending, especially if alcohol is involved.
The revised edition of Give Me The Brain is another matter altogether. The rules are only as complex as they need to be, and each card has a sense of fitting into a fairly balanced whole. Six years of playtesting turned out to be just what the game needed.
Finally, I might as well expand on Guitar Hero 2. The game provides you with a mostly complete single player game and a good enough multiplayer mode. If you can put the two together, you'll end up with a complete game. Other facts of note:
Playing on Easy and Medium are easier than in the first game
Playing on Hard and Expert are harder than in the first game
There is no difficulty level in between Medium and Hard
A practice mode is included in the game, to help facilitate the endless replaying you'll have to do once your natural talent runs dry.
As I mentioned before, expect to play through all of Medium difficulty before you even touch the multiplayer game. If you want to unlock more than just a few characters and all the available songs, expect to plumb the mysterious depths of the fifth fret, and the best of luck to you.
The song list has a bit less goofy fun and a bit more angry metal and arrhythmic guitar wanking than I care for. That said, it's the only licensed rhythm game made that doesn't force you to play A-B-C, making me more than willing to forgive songs like Yes We Can. I've even made my peace with Freebird, since the last song I'd want to play is the last song that I have to play.
As an added bonus, the vocals in Killing In The Name Of are performed by a man who only pretends he can't sing.
So instead of meager excuses for late posting, I offer swagger and braggadocio. Last night, I ran a game of Unknown Armies with players who I can trust to outsmart me nine out of ten times, and the tenth time is usually because they forgot about an obtuse comment mentioned by one person three months ago in the middle of the night. Plots were hatched, mysteries were plumbed, and I managed an accent that didn't careen into "Not Even Close To Sounding British."
And do not let Narraptor fool you with his devious trickery! Even though I've burned out on almost the entire genre of wacky card games, I still enjoy Give Me The Brain. Games like Munchkin, Chez [EDITED BY BRAIN GREMLIN], and Gloom have not been so lucky. The gameplay for each of them is disturbingly similar. The first few times, you have to learn a set of rules that feels a touch more complex than it was meant to be, and made more so by some very vague definitions. Then someone plays a card that has new rules printed on it that take precedence over the ones everyone else has been playing by. The card's grammar and syntax are puzzled over, someone is hosed, and the game continues.
As familiarity with the set of cards sets in, you get down to the serious business of applying deep strategy to a game that doesn't have any. You start basing strategies on whether or not the Big Unfair Card you need will show up, and praying that the chaff that makes up half the deck ends up in someone else's hands. Then, everyone gets sick of the game and it's either time to pony up for a new expansion featuring more wacky cards (Do you think "Auntie Paladin" is funny? What's wrong with you?) or move on. Alternatively, someone in the group can get an official Munchkin T-Shirt that gives him bonuses in the game. That will bring the game to a much swifter ending, especially if alcohol is involved.
The revised edition of Give Me The Brain is another matter altogether. The rules are only as complex as they need to be, and each card has a sense of fitting into a fairly balanced whole. Six years of playtesting turned out to be just what the game needed.
Finally, I might as well expand on Guitar Hero 2. The game provides you with a mostly complete single player game and a good enough multiplayer mode. If you can put the two together, you'll end up with a complete game. Other facts of note:
Playing on Easy and Medium are easier than in the first game
Playing on Hard and Expert are harder than in the first game
There is no difficulty level in between Medium and Hard
A practice mode is included in the game, to help facilitate the endless replaying you'll have to do once your natural talent runs dry.
As I mentioned before, expect to play through all of Medium difficulty before you even touch the multiplayer game. If you want to unlock more than just a few characters and all the available songs, expect to plumb the mysterious depths of the fifth fret, and the best of luck to you.
The song list has a bit less goofy fun and a bit more angry metal and arrhythmic guitar wanking than I care for. That said, it's the only licensed rhythm game made that doesn't force you to play A-B-C, making me more than willing to forgive songs like Yes We Can. I've even made my peace with Freebird, since the last song I'd want to play is the last song that I have to play.
As an added bonus, the vocals in Killing In The Name Of are performed by a man who only pretends he can't sing.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Sometimes Mr. Bile Is Boring
By posting that he would write something interesting later on Thursday, Mr. Bile violated Canned Food and Shotguns Rule #2. For those keeping track at home:
No spoiler warnings
No posts promising more or better posts later in the day
No apologizing for not posting on post days
No spelling apologize with a "s" or color with an "u"
No boring posts about boredom or depressing posts about depression
No politics
No Ron Jeremy or ATM
I believe the third, fourth, and fifth rules are new. Rules #6 and #7 have gone unsaid, but have always been in place. None of these have been ratified by a show of hands, but I intend to strictly enforce them all. The consequences for breaking a rule are having said disobedience pointed out. Mr. Bile, consider yourself chastened for ignoring rules you never agreed to and I just came up with.
Let the metafictional conflict begin. It can be like The Colbear Repor, but without the people who don't get it going "Whoo!"
Now, I happen to know that Mr. Bile was facing technical difficulties on Thursday which may have prevented him from giving us insight into why he no longer plays Give Me the Brain Age, but that is precisely why Rule #2 is in place. It saves us all from disappointment and more behind-the-scenes blogger commentary like this. I probably wouldn't have mentioned it at all, but given that I only have proof that Mr. Bile and I visit this page on a regular basis, I'm not too concerned with whether I'm boring people or not at this point. Add to my comments section sometime and I'll start to tailor stuff to you, dear Stephen King Reader. One person already got the font changed. Who knows what influence you might have?
I was issued a challenge last week that I was not able to address, but I now accept. Look it up, dear. Or wait until Tuesday.
I turned this on five minutes in last Saturday and watched it in its entirety. Never before has the Frogtown Barrier been crossed at 9:00 in the evening. (An interesting aspect of the Frogtown phenomenon, alcohol is never involved.)
There was one good joke in the...er, film: "Pick up my brother at the airport." You had to be there and you didn't want to, as it was at the expense of James "Lo Pan" Hong, one of the last great Asian-American character actors of our time. At some point in the future, the sad state of parody must be discussed.
No spoiler warnings
No posts promising more or better posts later in the day
No apologizing for not posting on post days
No spelling apologize with a "s" or color with an "u"
No boring posts about boredom or depressing posts about depression
No politics
No Ron Jeremy or ATM
I believe the third, fourth, and fifth rules are new. Rules #6 and #7 have gone unsaid, but have always been in place. None of these have been ratified by a show of hands, but I intend to strictly enforce them all. The consequences for breaking a rule are having said disobedience pointed out. Mr. Bile, consider yourself chastened for ignoring rules you never agreed to and I just came up with.
Let the metafictional conflict begin. It can be like The Colbear Repor, but without the people who don't get it going "Whoo!"
Now, I happen to know that Mr. Bile was facing technical difficulties on Thursday which may have prevented him from giving us insight into why he no longer plays Give Me the Brain Age, but that is precisely why Rule #2 is in place. It saves us all from disappointment and more behind-the-scenes blogger commentary like this. I probably wouldn't have mentioned it at all, but given that I only have proof that Mr. Bile and I visit this page on a regular basis, I'm not too concerned with whether I'm boring people or not at this point. Add to my comments section sometime and I'll start to tailor stuff to you, dear Stephen King Reader. One person already got the font changed. Who knows what influence you might have?
I was issued a challenge last week that I was not able to address, but I now accept. Look it up, dear. Or wait until Tuesday.
I turned this on five minutes in last Saturday and watched it in its entirety. Never before has the Frogtown Barrier been crossed at 9:00 in the evening. (An interesting aspect of the Frogtown phenomenon, alcohol is never involved.)
There was one good joke in the...er, film: "Pick up my brother at the airport." You had to be there and you didn't want to, as it was at the expense of James "Lo Pan" Hong, one of the last great Asian-American character actors of our time. At some point in the future, the sad state of parody must be discussed.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Holding Pattern
Writing about things I found boring turned out to be boring. Who knew? Interesting things will be discussed later in the evening.
In the meatime, I've just discovered the fun to be had in Guitar Hero 2's cooperative mode. That is, the fun after someone studiously unlocks all the songs in single player mode, because everyone knows a multiplayer game works so well with 4 songs to choose from.
There is a training mode to the game. It ignores obvious questions you might have, like, "How can you play a five button fake guitar with only four fingers?"
Also, there are some questionable choices in the song mix. Guitar solos that consit of random notes played to no melody whatsoever. Also, I may have just rocked out to Christian Metal. This disturbs me.
In the meatime, I've just discovered the fun to be had in Guitar Hero 2's cooperative mode. That is, the fun after someone studiously unlocks all the songs in single player mode, because everyone knows a multiplayer game works so well with 4 songs to choose from.
There is a training mode to the game. It ignores obvious questions you might have, like, "How can you play a five button fake guitar with only four fingers?"
Also, there are some questionable choices in the song mix. Guitar solos that consit of random notes played to no melody whatsoever. Also, I may have just rocked out to Christian Metal. This disturbs me.
Getting Lost
The mini-season of Lost has come to an end, with no new episodes until February. I understand a few million viewers found themselves underwhelmed at the beginning of the season. I hope they're still paying attention.
The writers were faced with an unusual dilemma this season. Last year, ABC frustrated viewers with an erratic schedule, leaving the show off the air for weeks at a time, coming back for one new episode and following it with another two-week break. Ratings fell, and a balanced solution was sought. Would the series be better off if it ran straight through starting in January? That would be a long wait for one of the network's flagship shows. As a compromise, they split the series into parts. Six episodes would air in the fall, eighteen would be shown back to back in the second half of the television season.
I hope it's obvious to ABC and the show's producers now that that was the wrong move. Serialized shows work best when they can air week to week without interruption. Considering how many viewers are used to watching the show on DVD, a long wait for a full season is better than splitting it up into any number of parts.
Additionally, airing what amounts to a six episode prologue does nothing to placate the fickle audience who has been demanding answers right now for the past two seasons. Cliff-hangers on three different parts of the island had to be wrapped up. Given the show's grounding in character flashbacks, this took up half of the episodes. Immediately after those were resolved, a mini-season cliff-hanger had to be set in place. This tight outline allowed for little screen time for anyone other than Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, and left several mysteries that should have been addressed in the wake of last season's finale untouched. (Did Charlie tell anyone what happened in the hatch or was he happy living under the assumption that Locke and Eko were dead? How did Locke, Eko, and Desmond escape from the implosion? Has Sayid mentioned the big foot to anyone? What was the response on the beach to the sky turning purple?)
Put in perspective, I think the writers did the best they could with the time they had to tell a story. And while the payoff was limited in scope, it made for a very smart cliff-hanger. Leaving Sawyer with a gun to his head wouldn't exactly have me on the edge of my seat. Leaving Kate and Sawyer with one hour to escape from an island prison and Ben in the hands of a very pissed off Jack? That's something to look forward to.
To compare the show to one of my other favorite mysteries, I don't expect George R.R. Martin to bring the evil in a Song of Ice and Fire novel until all the characters have been reintroduced and we know where they're going. (On the other hand, leaving out half the cast didn't work well in A Feast For Crows, either. SoIF without Tyrion is like Lost without Hurley.) I expect Lost will return to business as usual in February, when we can finally learn what Bernard thinks of the fact that everyone else from the tail section is dead.
The writers were faced with an unusual dilemma this season. Last year, ABC frustrated viewers with an erratic schedule, leaving the show off the air for weeks at a time, coming back for one new episode and following it with another two-week break. Ratings fell, and a balanced solution was sought. Would the series be better off if it ran straight through starting in January? That would be a long wait for one of the network's flagship shows. As a compromise, they split the series into parts. Six episodes would air in the fall, eighteen would be shown back to back in the second half of the television season.
I hope it's obvious to ABC and the show's producers now that that was the wrong move. Serialized shows work best when they can air week to week without interruption. Considering how many viewers are used to watching the show on DVD, a long wait for a full season is better than splitting it up into any number of parts.
Additionally, airing what amounts to a six episode prologue does nothing to placate the fickle audience who has been demanding answers right now for the past two seasons. Cliff-hangers on three different parts of the island had to be wrapped up. Given the show's grounding in character flashbacks, this took up half of the episodes. Immediately after those were resolved, a mini-season cliff-hanger had to be set in place. This tight outline allowed for little screen time for anyone other than Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, and left several mysteries that should have been addressed in the wake of last season's finale untouched. (Did Charlie tell anyone what happened in the hatch or was he happy living under the assumption that Locke and Eko were dead? How did Locke, Eko, and Desmond escape from the implosion? Has Sayid mentioned the big foot to anyone? What was the response on the beach to the sky turning purple?)
Put in perspective, I think the writers did the best they could with the time they had to tell a story. And while the payoff was limited in scope, it made for a very smart cliff-hanger. Leaving Sawyer with a gun to his head wouldn't exactly have me on the edge of my seat. Leaving Kate and Sawyer with one hour to escape from an island prison and Ben in the hands of a very pissed off Jack? That's something to look forward to.
To compare the show to one of my other favorite mysteries, I don't expect George R.R. Martin to bring the evil in a Song of Ice and Fire novel until all the characters have been reintroduced and we know where they're going. (On the other hand, leaving out half the cast didn't work well in A Feast For Crows, either. SoIF without Tyrion is like Lost without Hurley.) I expect Lost will return to business as usual in February, when we can finally learn what Bernard thinks of the fact that everyone else from the tail section is dead.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
The World Of Insufficient Light
I was exposed to the World Of Darkness by a well-meaning classmate in high school. He had heard that I had been playing Dungeons and Dragons and wanted to spread the word of something a bit more contemporary.
He gave me a role-playing game called Werewolf: The Apocalypse, part of White Wolf’s The World Of Darkness series of Gothic-Punk roleplaying games.
At first, it didn’t seem that much different from Dungeons and Dragons. It even began with the same form of introduction: “Imagine something that’s not roleplaying. Now imagine that it is!”
But as I read deeper, I wanted to give the game a spin. It was the first role-playing game I had encountered where a character wasn’t created by randomly generated numbers. And being forced to choose between pre-defined stereotypes to play made things even easier, allowing a person to easily role-play their character without having to spend time on a backstory. There was even flavortext sprinkled liberally across each page…bad poetry, stories in unreadable fonts, outright lies deluding you into thinking that with five points in Law, your character was the reincarnation of Perry Mason. But the flavortext didn’t have to be good, it just had to exist. Even the mechanics seemed novel back then, rolling and re-rolling dice like a game of jacks.
Werewolf was set in a world where nature was Good, and technology was Bad. You fought businessmen with a penchant for turning into tentacle demons when cornered, and evil werewolves that looked just like you, but slimier. In downtime, you got to jockey for political renown amongst your clan, who were all power hungry assholes and/or sage mystics. In other words, it was a game steeped in anime insisting it was Gothic-Punk. But since I didn’t know a damn thing about anime, Goths, or punks, I just accepted this as fact.
Likewise, the storyline of the rest of the World Of Darkness games were a schizophrenic mish-mash of conflicting ideas, and for a while, that was what I was looking for. I enjoyed the fact that each book featured an entirely different conspiracy that controlled 80% of the world, and didn’t know about each other. What I didn’t realize for a while was that each game put the players in the position of being given goals they could never actually achieve. You could play as Mages who couldn’t use magic, or Ghosts who couldn’t save themselves from Oblivion. Werewolves were already extra-doomed, to the point that “The Apocalypse” was in the subtitle of their book. And of course, there were Vampires. Ancient, alien intelligences that would plot and scheme for thousands of years to bring about the downfall of their enemies. You didn’t play as those people. You played as their henchmen’s henchmen, so far down the totem pole that there was no way in hell you could ever gain a bit of political power. But since no game company could put out modules based on a character’s individual struggle to gain contentment and peace in their lives, all adventures were about being sent to fight people much stronger than you in an attempt to gain favor with a powerful Vampire lord. That was unless you were involved in storylines that could equally be defined as a “Comedy of Manners” or “Dilbert.” Could you bluff your way into the inner circle of upper-class twits who could read your mind and then rip it out of your skull? Of course not.
At the time, we didn’t know any better. Most of the role-playing games we played offered sadistic advice we’d choose to ignore. Dungeons and Dragons would warn that actually letting the players collect the wealth and fame they sought would destroy your precious storylines. Call of Cthulhu was about defeating the undefeatable, and in Paranoia, everyone was trying to survive to see the next day, and that simply wasn’t going to happen. The difference is that World of Darkness was the first role-playing game publishers to take deviation from their vision as insulting. Players who became the prince of their city were simply carving out adolescent fantasies, and werewolves who kicked too much ass were not being realistic enough. The very idea that people were playing Vampire-Werewolves in the privacy of their own home really annoyed them, and they weren’t shy to say so. Repeatedly. In sidebars of books that you had just paid too much money for to few pages of information. Then they’d publish a book featuring a werewolf with a cybernetic arm and nothing to lose. Of course, he has a mysterious past.
But I played the games because role-playing games are viral in nature. Each time my group of friends got tired of the strange mechanics and awkward storylines, someone else would come up with a new idea, and we’d be back on the wagon. In college, this trend continued, as any new game was as likely as not to be about things that went bump in the night.
As time went on, White Wolf became more concerned with defining what the game was not than what it wasn’t. In an entire supplement devoted to wire-flying humans and people armed with robots powered by the dreams of Japanese children, they took the time out to explain why Blade was stupid, and you were stupid for thinking vampires could learn kung-fu. But that wasn’t what finally tipped the scales. In the end, it was the simple fact that the good people at White Wolf games would reissue new editions of their books every few years, usually with hard to define rule changes, and a lack of hooks that would drag a player in…and a steeper price tag. This is the sort of thing that stops a player from continuing on, and also causes him to re-evaluate his previous investments.
My final exposure to White Wolf was Adventure!, a game based on pulp novels from the '20s. It ended with trying to play it. In a game of fast moving action and dramatic flair, I question mechanics that divide “rolling on the ground, picking up a knife, and then throwing it at a goon” into three separate actions, each requiring a separate roll to determine success.
I’m told that eventually White Wolf decided that their storyline had gotten much too complex, and that it was time to end over a decade of interweaving books, comics, and in-game fiction by weaving them together into the final ending that the series had been striving for all those years.
The ending was, “Well…what do you think happened?”
Then White Wolf rebooted it’s series of games from ground zero. It featured the same plotlines, the same themes, and suspiciously similar characters…but it did have better statistics.
He gave me a role-playing game called Werewolf: The Apocalypse, part of White Wolf’s The World Of Darkness series of Gothic-Punk roleplaying games.
At first, it didn’t seem that much different from Dungeons and Dragons. It even began with the same form of introduction: “Imagine something that’s not roleplaying. Now imagine that it is!”
But as I read deeper, I wanted to give the game a spin. It was the first role-playing game I had encountered where a character wasn’t created by randomly generated numbers. And being forced to choose between pre-defined stereotypes to play made things even easier, allowing a person to easily role-play their character without having to spend time on a backstory. There was even flavortext sprinkled liberally across each page…bad poetry, stories in unreadable fonts, outright lies deluding you into thinking that with five points in Law, your character was the reincarnation of Perry Mason. But the flavortext didn’t have to be good, it just had to exist. Even the mechanics seemed novel back then, rolling and re-rolling dice like a game of jacks.
Werewolf was set in a world where nature was Good, and technology was Bad. You fought businessmen with a penchant for turning into tentacle demons when cornered, and evil werewolves that looked just like you, but slimier. In downtime, you got to jockey for political renown amongst your clan, who were all power hungry assholes and/or sage mystics. In other words, it was a game steeped in anime insisting it was Gothic-Punk. But since I didn’t know a damn thing about anime, Goths, or punks, I just accepted this as fact.
Likewise, the storyline of the rest of the World Of Darkness games were a schizophrenic mish-mash of conflicting ideas, and for a while, that was what I was looking for. I enjoyed the fact that each book featured an entirely different conspiracy that controlled 80% of the world, and didn’t know about each other. What I didn’t realize for a while was that each game put the players in the position of being given goals they could never actually achieve. You could play as Mages who couldn’t use magic, or Ghosts who couldn’t save themselves from Oblivion. Werewolves were already extra-doomed, to the point that “The Apocalypse” was in the subtitle of their book. And of course, there were Vampires. Ancient, alien intelligences that would plot and scheme for thousands of years to bring about the downfall of their enemies. You didn’t play as those people. You played as their henchmen’s henchmen, so far down the totem pole that there was no way in hell you could ever gain a bit of political power. But since no game company could put out modules based on a character’s individual struggle to gain contentment and peace in their lives, all adventures were about being sent to fight people much stronger than you in an attempt to gain favor with a powerful Vampire lord. That was unless you were involved in storylines that could equally be defined as a “Comedy of Manners” or “Dilbert.” Could you bluff your way into the inner circle of upper-class twits who could read your mind and then rip it out of your skull? Of course not.
At the time, we didn’t know any better. Most of the role-playing games we played offered sadistic advice we’d choose to ignore. Dungeons and Dragons would warn that actually letting the players collect the wealth and fame they sought would destroy your precious storylines. Call of Cthulhu was about defeating the undefeatable, and in Paranoia, everyone was trying to survive to see the next day, and that simply wasn’t going to happen. The difference is that World of Darkness was the first role-playing game publishers to take deviation from their vision as insulting. Players who became the prince of their city were simply carving out adolescent fantasies, and werewolves who kicked too much ass were not being realistic enough. The very idea that people were playing Vampire-Werewolves in the privacy of their own home really annoyed them, and they weren’t shy to say so. Repeatedly. In sidebars of books that you had just paid too much money for to few pages of information. Then they’d publish a book featuring a werewolf with a cybernetic arm and nothing to lose. Of course, he has a mysterious past.
But I played the games because role-playing games are viral in nature. Each time my group of friends got tired of the strange mechanics and awkward storylines, someone else would come up with a new idea, and we’d be back on the wagon. In college, this trend continued, as any new game was as likely as not to be about things that went bump in the night.
As time went on, White Wolf became more concerned with defining what the game was not than what it wasn’t. In an entire supplement devoted to wire-flying humans and people armed with robots powered by the dreams of Japanese children, they took the time out to explain why Blade was stupid, and you were stupid for thinking vampires could learn kung-fu. But that wasn’t what finally tipped the scales. In the end, it was the simple fact that the good people at White Wolf games would reissue new editions of their books every few years, usually with hard to define rule changes, and a lack of hooks that would drag a player in…and a steeper price tag. This is the sort of thing that stops a player from continuing on, and also causes him to re-evaluate his previous investments.
My final exposure to White Wolf was Adventure!, a game based on pulp novels from the '20s. It ended with trying to play it. In a game of fast moving action and dramatic flair, I question mechanics that divide “rolling on the ground, picking up a knife, and then throwing it at a goon” into three separate actions, each requiring a separate roll to determine success.
I’m told that eventually White Wolf decided that their storyline had gotten much too complex, and that it was time to end over a decade of interweaving books, comics, and in-game fiction by weaving them together into the final ending that the series had been striving for all those years.
The ending was, “Well…what do you think happened?”
Then White Wolf rebooted it’s series of games from ground zero. It featured the same plotlines, the same themes, and suspiciously similar characters…but it did have better statistics.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Phoenix Wright: A-Button Attorney
Phoenix Wright is no Freelance Police.
In the gaming press, reviewers for all platforms have fallen hard for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. To many of them, the game heralds a promising future for the long dying point-and-click adventure genre.
I am not a professional game reviewer, so upon reaching chapter four of Phoenix Wright I made the decision to trade the game in for credit. My research suggests that slogging through to chapter five may have finally opened up some semblance of actual play, perhaps even game, but that would have required pressing the A-button through more than 50 screens where the only text displayed was "...". I only suffered through as much as I did because it takes a long, long time to come back from Japan.
Phoenix Wright isn't so much a game as it is an electronic story told in sparely parsed sentence fragments. One critic on the 1Up podcasts likened it to Encyclopedia Brown. Considering I never liked those books either, I believe the comparison is apt.
Unlike a traditional point-and-click adventure, where your interactions with the environment are based on the icons or commands you choose, the pointer in Phoenix Wright is limited to one function depending on the scene. In investigation scenes, it is used to look. (Lacking a sensitive cursor, these scenes are the most frustrating, as it's impossible to tell if the object you touched is an individual item or part of a larger whole. Touching a desk lamp may prompt a message about the desk. Is the lamp part of the desk or did you miss and touch the desk instead?) In dialogue scenes, it is used to scroll from one sentence fragment to the next.
The pointer can also be used to slowly move about the limited locations in the game. Given the static two-dimensional environments, you'd think you'd be able to jump from the front gate of a movie studio to the trailer in lot B, but no, that requires going through the gate to the main path, taking the left branch, entering lot B and going into the trailer. That may not seem like much, but considering the puzzles in the exploration segments of Phoenix Wright involve going from location 1 to location 2, picking up item A, and making your way back to location 1, it quickly sucks all the joy out of tapping a stylus on a plastic screen.
Another difference between Phoenix Wright and a real adventure game is the lack of dialogue trees. The entire experience is basically text on rails. Puzzles cannot be solved until all the relevant text has been read. For example, in order to prove a lamp was bought at a certain time you have to go through a deposition twice, fail to find any contradictions in the witness' statement after pressing him at every turn, and allow your character to faint so he can be visited by a psychic vision of his former employer. She then tells him to look at the back side of the receipt you've been trying to submit as evidence for the last 30 minutes, at which point it can finally be put into play.
The impossibility of skipping to the chase makes the court sequences especially tedious. Testimony is presented once, and you have to click or tap your way through all of it (with the sound off, because every letter and punctuation mark is accompanied by a beep which cannot be turned off). Then it is presented again for rebuttal, and you must press the witness on every line of dialogue to get the full story. This leads to miscellaneous outbursts by the judge, the prosecuting attorney, and the court. A not-so-hypothetical scenario:
Phoenix Wright: Objection!
Phoenix Wright: I submit this evidence to show that my client is awesome!
Maya: ...!
Edgeworth: ...!
Judge: ...
Court: ...
Witness: ...?
Admittedly, I may have been setting myself up for disappointment, as I expected the game to involve some semblance of realistic detective work or melodramatic courtroom drama. Instead, during a trial to prove someone's innocence, I found myself getting a witness sentenced for murder. But no matter how much leeway I was able to give the setting, I could not forgive the writing. Phoenix Wright has been praised for its great sense of humor, and this reputation is completely undeserved.
A few examples: There is a character named Mrs. Oldbag. She is old, and she calls everyone "whippersnappers." Your assistant insists on calling you "Nick," even though that is not your name. You begin the game defending your friend Larry Butz--nickname, "Hairy Butz"--and later interrogate a nerd stereotype named Sal Manella. A man named Redd White is CEO of Bluecorp. April May...I could go on, but to sum it up, a sample of dialogue from the game:
Phoenix Wright: He couldn't handle the truth!
Compare that to this random soundbite from the first episode of the finally revived Sam & Max series, which is now finally a series, and unlike Monkey Island does not disappoint:
Sam: I think I've done enough pumping for one dream.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, is not a modern incarnation of classic point-and-click gameplay. At best, it is the first point adventure game.
In the gaming press, reviewers for all platforms have fallen hard for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. To many of them, the game heralds a promising future for the long dying point-and-click adventure genre.
I am not a professional game reviewer, so upon reaching chapter four of Phoenix Wright I made the decision to trade the game in for credit. My research suggests that slogging through to chapter five may have finally opened up some semblance of actual play, perhaps even game, but that would have required pressing the A-button through more than 50 screens where the only text displayed was "...". I only suffered through as much as I did because it takes a long, long time to come back from Japan.
Phoenix Wright isn't so much a game as it is an electronic story told in sparely parsed sentence fragments. One critic on the 1Up podcasts likened it to Encyclopedia Brown. Considering I never liked those books either, I believe the comparison is apt.
Unlike a traditional point-and-click adventure, where your interactions with the environment are based on the icons or commands you choose, the pointer in Phoenix Wright is limited to one function depending on the scene. In investigation scenes, it is used to look. (Lacking a sensitive cursor, these scenes are the most frustrating, as it's impossible to tell if the object you touched is an individual item or part of a larger whole. Touching a desk lamp may prompt a message about the desk. Is the lamp part of the desk or did you miss and touch the desk instead?) In dialogue scenes, it is used to scroll from one sentence fragment to the next.
The pointer can also be used to slowly move about the limited locations in the game. Given the static two-dimensional environments, you'd think you'd be able to jump from the front gate of a movie studio to the trailer in lot B, but no, that requires going through the gate to the main path, taking the left branch, entering lot B and going into the trailer. That may not seem like much, but considering the puzzles in the exploration segments of Phoenix Wright involve going from location 1 to location 2, picking up item A, and making your way back to location 1, it quickly sucks all the joy out of tapping a stylus on a plastic screen.
Another difference between Phoenix Wright and a real adventure game is the lack of dialogue trees. The entire experience is basically text on rails. Puzzles cannot be solved until all the relevant text has been read. For example, in order to prove a lamp was bought at a certain time you have to go through a deposition twice, fail to find any contradictions in the witness' statement after pressing him at every turn, and allow your character to faint so he can be visited by a psychic vision of his former employer. She then tells him to look at the back side of the receipt you've been trying to submit as evidence for the last 30 minutes, at which point it can finally be put into play.
The impossibility of skipping to the chase makes the court sequences especially tedious. Testimony is presented once, and you have to click or tap your way through all of it (with the sound off, because every letter and punctuation mark is accompanied by a beep which cannot be turned off). Then it is presented again for rebuttal, and you must press the witness on every line of dialogue to get the full story. This leads to miscellaneous outbursts by the judge, the prosecuting attorney, and the court. A not-so-hypothetical scenario:
Phoenix Wright: Objection!
Phoenix Wright: I submit this evidence to show that my client is awesome!
Maya: ...!
Edgeworth: ...!
Judge: ...
Court: ...
Witness: ...?
Admittedly, I may have been setting myself up for disappointment, as I expected the game to involve some semblance of realistic detective work or melodramatic courtroom drama. Instead, during a trial to prove someone's innocence, I found myself getting a witness sentenced for murder. But no matter how much leeway I was able to give the setting, I could not forgive the writing. Phoenix Wright has been praised for its great sense of humor, and this reputation is completely undeserved.
A few examples: There is a character named Mrs. Oldbag. She is old, and she calls everyone "whippersnappers." Your assistant insists on calling you "Nick," even though that is not your name. You begin the game defending your friend Larry Butz--nickname, "Hairy Butz"--and later interrogate a nerd stereotype named Sal Manella. A man named Redd White is CEO of Bluecorp. April May...I could go on, but to sum it up, a sample of dialogue from the game:
Phoenix Wright: He couldn't handle the truth!
Compare that to this random soundbite from the first episode of the finally revived Sam & Max series, which is now finally a series, and unlike Monkey Island does not disappoint:
Sam: I think I've done enough pumping for one dream.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, is not a modern incarnation of classic point-and-click gameplay. At best, it is the first point adventure game.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Offer Ends Soon
If you're going for a written piece, I suggest one of the remaining unused titles, like I Have Enough Friends Already, or Nobody Cares About Your MySpace Page. But please don't rely on the fact that sixteen-year-old MySpacers can't spell. Unless you are a high school teacher, I can't think of a good reason why you should be reading anything a sixteen year old has written. Second generation Internet slang is no more terrifying than the original 1337speak from which it sprung, and we can co-exist peacefully with it the same way we always have; by ignoring anything that has a number in it.
Some other helpful information for you: literary critic Gary Wolfe is all too familiar with being confused with sci-fi author Gene Wolfe.
While this may not seem important to you now, I do wish that I had known it a few days earlier. However, he much prefers that to being confused with Gary Wolf, author of the Roger Rabbit books.
Friday, November 03, 2006
It Was Late And I Was Tired 1
Talk about a craptaskular Halloween week. Sometimes it's better not to plan anything. Then there are no plans to be ruined.
My wife is now officially a Los Angeleno. Her car was broken into while locked in our apartment building's garage. Just another casualty of being the closest car to the exit, like having Twinkies rubbed into your rear windshield. There are good people somewhere in Los Angeles, right?
Oh, and my connectivity has been shot all week. Hence the odd updates.
I'm not in the mood to be amusing, so I'll let someone else do it for me. Enjoy this Internet chat transcript. You can also check out the latest CGW podcast to hear it performed by the Games For Windows Players.
My wife is now officially a Los Angeleno. Her car was broken into while locked in our apartment building's garage. Just another casualty of being the closest car to the exit, like having Twinkies rubbed into your rear windshield. There are good people somewhere in Los Angeles, right?
Oh, and my connectivity has been shot all week. Hence the odd updates.
I'm not in the mood to be amusing, so I'll let someone else do it for me. Enjoy this Internet chat transcript. You can also check out the latest CGW podcast to hear it performed by the Games For Windows Players.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Skeletor Runs Bartertown
If the last haunted house I went to is to be believed, the Post-Apocalyptic World Of The Future is now considered haunted. Similarly, the one I visited earlier in the week featured a foam rubber monster that had escaped from Doom. Questionable themes aside, both had effective moments and fun ideas, especially in a group where each of us was alarmed by different triggers. I was the one that twitched and giggled whenever people leapt out at us. Also, I discovered that haunted houses are more impressive when one is suffering from an acute lack of sleep. Not that I can remember what impressed me so much, but that's the price one pays for sensory overload.
I didn't go to the haunted house that's right next door to me, though. Which is a shame, since I'm told that it had much less of the actors-jumping-at-you scares, but did feature wandering alone through very dark hallways for five minutes at a time.
Next week I'll be discussing games I no longer play, and at least one of them will be filled with praise. Considering how many bad games I've played, this also means "exactly one post will be filled with praise." I won't even be discussing video games, because it's already expected that once you beat a game, you turn it into Gamestop for a complementary fifty cents credit voucher.
Are you in, Narraptor? Surely there's a centuries-long game of Jenga or two you'd like to talk about...
I didn't go to the haunted house that's right next door to me, though. Which is a shame, since I'm told that it had much less of the actors-jumping-at-you scares, but did feature wandering alone through very dark hallways for five minutes at a time.
Next week I'll be discussing games I no longer play, and at least one of them will be filled with praise. Considering how many bad games I've played, this also means "exactly one post will be filled with praise." I won't even be discussing video games, because it's already expected that once you beat a game, you turn it into Gamestop for a complementary fifty cents credit voucher.
Are you in, Narraptor? Surely there's a centuries-long game of Jenga or two you'd like to talk about...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)