I wasn’t really sure what to write a Super Nerd Sunday about this week. I’ve been stressed and caught up with my coast to coast move, and while I’m used to banking short stories for the weeks leading up to times like these I’ve been so overwhelmed that I haven’t been able to digest any of my gaming experiences. But I have had a chance to dabble with Old World Blues, Fallout: New Vegas’ latest expansion (a full treatment is forthcoming, but so far the thumb is way up), and it’s made me consider a lot about the landscape of America.
See, the New Vegas expansions mostly just play with the idea of how the world has changed in other locations after the bombs fell. A remote part of California, the Zion Valley park in Utah, wherever the fuck Big Mountain is (Wyoming, maybe?): all of these places feature new takes on just what has become of the world with unique personalities emerging from them, completely distinct from the Mojave’s. And driving across the northern edge of the United States lengthwise, you get to see a lot of landscape that looks like it would be untouched by the apocalypse.
High desert country, sparsely populated, dots the eastern edge of Oregon and Washington. Passing through you’ll catch sight of abandoned mines and ramshackle farmsteads, the last vestiges of someone’s dream of subsistence a century ago. All of this set against a bleak, sparsely populated backdrop of surreal beauty and harsh serenity. I’m sure most normal people just drive through these areas and appreciate the pristine nature and the amazing vistas provided at every twist and turn. But I cannot help but look at the wooded hills of Montana, its high plains filled with verdant grass, flowing with clean water our present self-destructive industrials has not yet devastated, and wonder what the end of the world, more specifically Fallout’s end of the world, would look like here.
I know Fallout one and two sort of explored this concept already, and Fallout 3 ostensibly did the same thing New Vegas did for the DC area. But there’s something far more evocative about the approach Fallout: New Vegas takes to exploring various landscapes. Even within the game, each town and place has a very distinct feel. I’d be hard pressed to really notice the difference between the Red Rider factory and the Corvega factory in Fallout 3, but even the H&H Tool Factory, a throwaway building I imagine most people never saw in New Vegas, had its own unique personality and a story that tied directly into the mythos of New Vegas.
After my drive through the Indian reservations of Southern Montana and Northern South Dakota my interest is especially piqued. These tragic places of poverty existing against a backdrop of staggering natural beauty paired with the clusters of entitled civilization bordering them just to the north and south, populated mostly by white people stuck in flyspeck towns, set a backdrop for a future conflict in my head. And it seems perfect for the Fallout setting. Does an older, better way, if somewhat tragic in origin and not always as terrible and effective as our modern methods, win out? Or does the inevitable march of progress without concern for its direction win out, material wealth and excess outdoing quiet isolationism?
The Northwest and Midwest of the United States seems like such a perfect place to examine the social experiments that Fallout revels in, it seems like a total loss that it hasn’t been examined yet. We already know what the somewhat less than urban capital of Fallout 3’s world would look like, what the Mojave desert and its already scattered bastions of civilization might grow into. The first two Fallouts even gave us an image, granted a pixilated one, of the American West Coast (except for the part north of Corvalis which, most people from California will agree, is pretty much unimportant unless you’re trying to shoot a film on the cheap). But we’ve never considered the Midwest in anything more than a passing fashion.
People from the coasts tend to ignore the Midwest. But the Midwest has given us so much: the Hmong-American cultural identity, Leinenkugel’s Honeyweisse, Barack Obama’s political career, awareness of Lutefisk and Bob Dillon. In all seriousness, the Midwest is a ubiquitous place to outsiders, but people who know its landscapes, both cultural and physical, know it to be a rich landscape for storytelling. Many of our most interesting authors hail from the Midwest, write with a Midwestern perspective and tell Midwestern stories. More than just Dillon has emerged from the Midwestern musical scene, and while American Movie made a spirited mockery of the Midwestern spirit of film making it also told a uniquely Midwestern story, just like Twin Peaks and Juno did.
The Midwest is more than just fertile ground for storytelling. It’s a part of the American culture and landscape, a unique feature of our nation. And it’s rarely given its due. Fallout is the perfect venue for revealing the true heart of the Midwest. Before Fallout: New Vegas rolled around I didn’t give a shit about Las Vegas. One night passing through and I was done and gone (to be fair, I don’t find casinos that interesting – ditto goes for Fallout: New Vegas). But New Vegas showed me how much more there was to Nevada and Vegas itself. By casting the city in the light of a struggling place riddled with violent crime and corruption instead of a monolithic capital of corruption with relatively little violent crime for its deeply entrenched perfidious institutions it drew me into Las Vegas’ unique culture and made me care about the story it had to tell.
There are even hints in New Vegas about Montana retaining a thriving culture. I’d just like to see that play out. The scale is big, certainly. Much bigger than anything else we could consider. But I could totally see a game centered around Missoula being incredibly interesting. Or Bozeman. Or Butte, or Billings. Any of Montana’s quaint, unique and yet somehow constant cities littering the I-90. Expansions could investigate reservations, Wyoming and the horror that is the Idaho border. I’ve even got a title for that last one: Allen’s Heart. It’s about a robot heart encased in stone in the ruins of Couer D’Alene. I’d like to look for in 2012. Work with me here, Zenimax.
My point, belabored as it may be, is that Fallout is great at bringing places I never really cared for to the forefront of my imagination and my daily thoughts. And that the Midwest is just itching for that treatment. In that, or in any video game. Aside from Puzzle Agent, which already nailed Northern Minnesota but good.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Congratulations on Your Marketing Failure!
You had a good idea. Kids love action figures. Adults love cocaine. Cocaine Joe should’ve been a fantastic follow up to the venerated G.I. Joe series of figures, an updated take for the post-9-1-1 world. But there were problems from the start.
First of all, too many cooks. You knew that that could be a problem from the beginning, but it should’ve become really obvious when that bitch said that she thought your action figure might be offensive fifteen minutes into the meeting.
“FUCK YOU!” you shouted back, but what you really meant was “You have a valid point.”
She pointed out how monetizable the figure could still be if it was marketed as a work of satire, a post-modern delving into the foulness of consumerism counterpointed by the mysticism it is imbued with by the general public. She even had some TV campaigns lined up that involved shifting the marketing from teen girls you wanted to think dudes who did coke were cool towards adult males who found the idea of a coke fueled asshole hilariously douchey. They would’ve bought your figure in droves with all their disposable income, especially with cute animated ads and a six episode ironic HBO series about how the character didn’t learn lessons backing it.
But you had to try and translate your attempt at launching a line of action figures into an attempt to bang tweens, because you’re a closeted pedophile and you have serious problems with coming out about that, addressing it and moving past it. So your launch is going to fail and you’re going to find yourself tonight in a hotel room covered in plastic, surrounded by executives.
The closest executive will be loading a revolver. A .38 special with a standard barrel. He’ll put a single bullet in one of the chambers and spin it. He won’t bother to stop it. Instead he’ll hand you the gun. He’ll gesture for you to cock it and put it in your mouth.
Which is how this Saturday will end. With you with a pistol in your mouth, staring at a circle of businessmen who want to either watch you kill yourself or feel briefly and wonderfully alive for half a second. They’ll get off either way. The only real questions is which one will come to you as you stand there with the gun in your mouth, growing heavier by the second. You’ll draw the hammer back and close your eyes and wonder if you’ll become another Walt Disney in the next few seconds.
Congratulations on Your Marketing Failure!
First of all, too many cooks. You knew that that could be a problem from the beginning, but it should’ve become really obvious when that bitch said that she thought your action figure might be offensive fifteen minutes into the meeting.
“FUCK YOU!” you shouted back, but what you really meant was “You have a valid point.”
She pointed out how monetizable the figure could still be if it was marketed as a work of satire, a post-modern delving into the foulness of consumerism counterpointed by the mysticism it is imbued with by the general public. She even had some TV campaigns lined up that involved shifting the marketing from teen girls you wanted to think dudes who did coke were cool towards adult males who found the idea of a coke fueled asshole hilariously douchey. They would’ve bought your figure in droves with all their disposable income, especially with cute animated ads and a six episode ironic HBO series about how the character didn’t learn lessons backing it.
But you had to try and translate your attempt at launching a line of action figures into an attempt to bang tweens, because you’re a closeted pedophile and you have serious problems with coming out about that, addressing it and moving past it. So your launch is going to fail and you’re going to find yourself tonight in a hotel room covered in plastic, surrounded by executives.
The closest executive will be loading a revolver. A .38 special with a standard barrel. He’ll put a single bullet in one of the chambers and spin it. He won’t bother to stop it. Instead he’ll hand you the gun. He’ll gesture for you to cock it and put it in your mouth.
Which is how this Saturday will end. With you with a pistol in your mouth, staring at a circle of businessmen who want to either watch you kill yourself or feel briefly and wonderfully alive for half a second. They’ll get off either way. The only real questions is which one will come to you as you stand there with the gun in your mouth, growing heavier by the second. You’ll draw the hammer back and close your eyes and wonder if you’ll become another Walt Disney in the next few seconds.
Congratulations on Your Marketing Failure!
Friday, July 29, 2011
Congratulations on Remembering Your Special Condoms!
Most of the time you’re lucky if you even recall to bag it. That’s why you’re riddled with herpes. All kinds, even the Complex kind. Normally people in your position would take heed of their crisis and slow down or, at the very least, invest in a combination of treatment and preventative measures. But not you. You just keep getting fucked up on Wild Turkey and sticking it in crazy bitches, mostly because TV tells you to.
But you still care about “her comfort,” whatever the shit that means, so every once in a while you buy some really classy condoms. Condoms that cost a little bit extra.
Aww yeah. Now we’ve got your attention.
So tonight you’re going to meet this chick at a bar who has a ponytail or whatever. We’re not entirely sure what’s up, because you’re going to be blackout drunk and Steve, the predictor who pulled the short straw and ended up watching your life of all god forsaken shitshows, is only able to see things through the eyes of the person he’s channeling. So he’s only going to remember what you remember.
He’s going to remember the splinter you get from the girl’s doorway, which will catch in your hand and bury itself in your finger too deep to get out. It’ll be a short shock of pain, one you’ll forget until the next day. He’ll remember the way you taste, like Old Crow and breath mints. From your mouth he’ll realize your desire for this young woman, blowing gales against your subconscious.
He’ll remember you finally convincing her to come to bed, her insistence that you wear a condom. You’ll act surprised about it, like you look like someone people fuck more than once, but after she insists you’ll remember your fire and ice shit, those condoms that make your dick hot and/or cold and ostensibly do something to the genitals of the women you’re fucking which, you understand, are supposed to be capable of feeling things as well. And once the condom is out of your wallet and swabbed around your dick she’ll cautiously lower herself on to you and have cautious, tenuous sex with you.
The whole time it’ll feel like she might break away. She’ll muffle her shrieks occasionally, mumbling into her own arm as she rides you. Occasionally you’ll reach up to touch her body, but she’ll bat your arms away. As she works herself on you you’ll slowly come to realize how insignificant you are in the world. Under her tender ministrations you’ll approach orgasm and, for the first time, avoid it. You won’t want to shame yourself in front of her.
But she’ll outlast you, despite the numbing powder the condom you’re using is filled with. You’ll twitch as you finally come, writhing underneath her, and she’ll smile for the first time since she started fucking you.
She’ll withdraw from you after that, standing at the side of the bed until you awkwardly stand and then pointing for you to leave her bedroom. She’ll give you some sheets and a throw pillow the pullout couch that you’ll find yourself on, staring up at the ceiling. As sleep beckons you’ll wonder what she’s thinking right now. You’ll wonder if she’s masturbating herself to fulfillment or sleeping contently. You won’t really have any context, since you’ll usually be insensate before this part of the night. It’ll be strange for you, laying there alone, wondering what just happened. It’ll feel a little bad.
Congratulations on Remembering Your Special Condoms!
But you still care about “her comfort,” whatever the shit that means, so every once in a while you buy some really classy condoms. Condoms that cost a little bit extra.
Aww yeah. Now we’ve got your attention.
So tonight you’re going to meet this chick at a bar who has a ponytail or whatever. We’re not entirely sure what’s up, because you’re going to be blackout drunk and Steve, the predictor who pulled the short straw and ended up watching your life of all god forsaken shitshows, is only able to see things through the eyes of the person he’s channeling. So he’s only going to remember what you remember.
He’s going to remember the splinter you get from the girl’s doorway, which will catch in your hand and bury itself in your finger too deep to get out. It’ll be a short shock of pain, one you’ll forget until the next day. He’ll remember the way you taste, like Old Crow and breath mints. From your mouth he’ll realize your desire for this young woman, blowing gales against your subconscious.
He’ll remember you finally convincing her to come to bed, her insistence that you wear a condom. You’ll act surprised about it, like you look like someone people fuck more than once, but after she insists you’ll remember your fire and ice shit, those condoms that make your dick hot and/or cold and ostensibly do something to the genitals of the women you’re fucking which, you understand, are supposed to be capable of feeling things as well. And once the condom is out of your wallet and swabbed around your dick she’ll cautiously lower herself on to you and have cautious, tenuous sex with you.
The whole time it’ll feel like she might break away. She’ll muffle her shrieks occasionally, mumbling into her own arm as she rides you. Occasionally you’ll reach up to touch her body, but she’ll bat your arms away. As she works herself on you you’ll slowly come to realize how insignificant you are in the world. Under her tender ministrations you’ll approach orgasm and, for the first time, avoid it. You won’t want to shame yourself in front of her.
But she’ll outlast you, despite the numbing powder the condom you’re using is filled with. You’ll twitch as you finally come, writhing underneath her, and she’ll smile for the first time since she started fucking you.
She’ll withdraw from you after that, standing at the side of the bed until you awkwardly stand and then pointing for you to leave her bedroom. She’ll give you some sheets and a throw pillow the pullout couch that you’ll find yourself on, staring up at the ceiling. As sleep beckons you’ll wonder what she’s thinking right now. You’ll wonder if she’s masturbating herself to fulfillment or sleeping contently. You won’t really have any context, since you’ll usually be insensate before this part of the night. It’ll be strange for you, laying there alone, wondering what just happened. It’ll feel a little bad.
Congratulations on Remembering Your Special Condoms!
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Congratulations Less Important Ajax!
Today you’re the less important Ajax.
Remember how Ajax was a big figure in the Trojan war who fought for years against the Trojans and was generally a badass? Remember how a dude with the same name who was way less important died in obscurity early in the war when Achilles cut him open like a pig?
You’re that Ajax. Today you’re living out your own death in the Greek afterlife.
We know what you’re thinking. Shouldn’t you be in the heroic part of the Greek underworld?
Not really. You were kind of a shit in general in life. You argued for no reason, you never supported anyone worth half a shit. You mostly just tried to kill people with huge spears and shout your name really loud in the hope that people would think you were the important Ajax and try to fuck you.
It rarely worked.
So tonight we hope that as you live through your own death for the umpteenth time you find some measure of peace as you realize, once and for all, how terrible you are and how much you deserve your own punishment. Because honestly, if you accept it you just might be able to leave. And then we can stop feeling sorry for you.
Congratulations Less Important Ajax!
Remember how Ajax was a big figure in the Trojan war who fought for years against the Trojans and was generally a badass? Remember how a dude with the same name who was way less important died in obscurity early in the war when Achilles cut him open like a pig?
You’re that Ajax. Today you’re living out your own death in the Greek afterlife.
We know what you’re thinking. Shouldn’t you be in the heroic part of the Greek underworld?
Not really. You were kind of a shit in general in life. You argued for no reason, you never supported anyone worth half a shit. You mostly just tried to kill people with huge spears and shout your name really loud in the hope that people would think you were the important Ajax and try to fuck you.
It rarely worked.
So tonight we hope that as you live through your own death for the umpteenth time you find some measure of peace as you realize, once and for all, how terrible you are and how much you deserve your own punishment. Because honestly, if you accept it you just might be able to leave. And then we can stop feeling sorry for you.
Congratulations Less Important Ajax!
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Congratulations on Earning That Black Eye!
You probably shouldn’t have mentioned your opinion of her tits, and you definitely shouldn’t have mentioned it so soon after you launched a lengthy tirade on why gay marriage should be illegal, why whales are actually assholes and why Kenny G. is better than Kenny Loggens. Just shitty decisions all around. But hey, at least now no one can say that you didn’t earn anything in your life you worthless piece of excrement.
Congratulations on Earning That Black Eye!
Congratulations on Earning That Black Eye!
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Congratulations on Acing Your Thesis Defense!
Lately it’s the cool thing to do. You shit all over Bob Jones University. Doesn’t matter if you know your asshole from your elbow from Bob Jones’ quaintly diverse faculty. It’s just hip to call people from the south who don’t believe in evolution ignorant assholes.
But you don’t give a shit about that. Your momma raised you to do your own thing, so when you were accepted to the Bob Jones theology and archaeology PhD program you hugged her goodbye and packed your bags to learn on Domino’s pizza’s dime for eight years. And today it all comes to a head.
Your professor, a dude in a black robe who chants a lot, sometimes without really knowing what he’s saying, will lead you through a long hallway. It will be lined with torches and spiders will be all over the place, doing their spiderly business. He won’t say a word on that day, though. He’ll just lead you through the hall to a giant double door. He’ll open the door a crack and gesture at the darkness within and you’ll nod at him before entering.
He won’t respond.
Once you’re inside a single torch will light at the end of the hallway. That’s how you’ll know it has begun.
You’ll move through the hall without any real sense of where you are. You’ll just feel the rush of air as blades twist and scythe around you. You’ll slide your body around your spine, flipping back and forth as spikes slide up from the floor. Arrows will rain around you, but the torch will grow closer and closer.
Your world will be a swirl of color and light as you move constantly, guided by instinct rather than thought. When you finally reach the light the chaos will stop. Your breath will come ragged and quick, but you’ll be alive. Wonderfully alive and on the dias.
Voices will suddenly sound around you. “Well done,” they’ll announce. You’ll know that the entire faculty of your two departments, including your advisor, will be just outside the circle of light. They’ll be there judging you silently. Some of them might be holding weapons. In fact, all of them might. You won’t know.
You’ll just wait there in silence, waiting for them to speak again. When a voice finally rises anew you’ll feel a suddenly rush of relief. It’ll be all you can manage just to keep from shitting your pants right there in front of everyone.
“Your thesis was acceptable,” they’ll say. A diploma will fly at you from the dark and you’ll catch it, successfully earning your degree. Then the giant boulder will be released and it’ll be time to flee.
Congratulations on Acing Your Thesis Defense!
But you don’t give a shit about that. Your momma raised you to do your own thing, so when you were accepted to the Bob Jones theology and archaeology PhD program you hugged her goodbye and packed your bags to learn on Domino’s pizza’s dime for eight years. And today it all comes to a head.
Your professor, a dude in a black robe who chants a lot, sometimes without really knowing what he’s saying, will lead you through a long hallway. It will be lined with torches and spiders will be all over the place, doing their spiderly business. He won’t say a word on that day, though. He’ll just lead you through the hall to a giant double door. He’ll open the door a crack and gesture at the darkness within and you’ll nod at him before entering.
He won’t respond.
Once you’re inside a single torch will light at the end of the hallway. That’s how you’ll know it has begun.
You’ll move through the hall without any real sense of where you are. You’ll just feel the rush of air as blades twist and scythe around you. You’ll slide your body around your spine, flipping back and forth as spikes slide up from the floor. Arrows will rain around you, but the torch will grow closer and closer.
Your world will be a swirl of color and light as you move constantly, guided by instinct rather than thought. When you finally reach the light the chaos will stop. Your breath will come ragged and quick, but you’ll be alive. Wonderfully alive and on the dias.
Voices will suddenly sound around you. “Well done,” they’ll announce. You’ll know that the entire faculty of your two departments, including your advisor, will be just outside the circle of light. They’ll be there judging you silently. Some of them might be holding weapons. In fact, all of them might. You won’t know.
You’ll just wait there in silence, waiting for them to speak again. When a voice finally rises anew you’ll feel a suddenly rush of relief. It’ll be all you can manage just to keep from shitting your pants right there in front of everyone.
“Your thesis was acceptable,” they’ll say. A diploma will fly at you from the dark and you’ll catch it, successfully earning your degree. Then the giant boulder will be released and it’ll be time to flee.
Congratulations on Acing Your Thesis Defense!
Monday, July 25, 2011
Congratulations on Eating All the Cheese!
Today you’re going to be a mouse. But you’re not just going to be any mouse. You’re going to be a red-blooded American mouse, one that loves to fuck, fight and eat and doesn’t give a shit about what anyone thinks of him. So today, when the people whose house you live in go on vacation for three days out to Tahoe you’re going to do what any good American would do: take everything that isn’t nailed down.
At first you’ll just devise systems of conveyance to drag truly massive objects back to your mouse-house: bags of flour, sacks of rice. At one point you’ll even get a turkey, a real whole cooked turkey (half of one anyhow) back to your hole. But you won’t be able to actually get any of it inside. You’ll consider devising a means by which to destroy the wall blocking your path, or finding a way to rapidly shrink the products you’ve brought back with you by reducing them to much, much smaller pieces. But after a while this will grow tiresome, and you’ll wander back into the kitchen in search of something more manageable to steal.
You’ll catch sight of your chosen target almost immediately: a wheel of home-made mozzarella cheese cooling and congealing on the counter, completely uncovered by the slow witted (they’re both financial advisors) jackanapes that reside in this house with you.
Now we’re not fans of stereotypes. Sure, they pay most of our bills, but the reality of it is that mice actually really do love cheese. They love the shit out of it. They love it so much they can’t control themselves. Only the fear of death can remove them from their cheese-induced madness even briefly. And today you’re going be bereft of that fear of death. So you’re going to dive into that cheese, tiny mouth hanging open, and start chewing.
You’ll essentially swim through the warm mass of congealing bacteria, devouring it in whole mouthfuls. Each bite will strike you as a delicious treat that you and only you will ever know. You’ll be so enamored of this flavor that your mind will fog, your eyes will roll into the back of your head and you’ll lose consciousness within the cheese mass. Most of it will be devoured, concealed now within your horribly distended body, but the toll will have been high.
Your hubris, in believing you could consume that much cheese, will have undone you. And as you lay there, the world fading around you, you’ll want to shout “America!” at the top of your lungs. But you’re a mouse and you can’t use language, so you’ll just die.
Congratulations on Eating All the Cheese!
At first you’ll just devise systems of conveyance to drag truly massive objects back to your mouse-house: bags of flour, sacks of rice. At one point you’ll even get a turkey, a real whole cooked turkey (half of one anyhow) back to your hole. But you won’t be able to actually get any of it inside. You’ll consider devising a means by which to destroy the wall blocking your path, or finding a way to rapidly shrink the products you’ve brought back with you by reducing them to much, much smaller pieces. But after a while this will grow tiresome, and you’ll wander back into the kitchen in search of something more manageable to steal.
You’ll catch sight of your chosen target almost immediately: a wheel of home-made mozzarella cheese cooling and congealing on the counter, completely uncovered by the slow witted (they’re both financial advisors) jackanapes that reside in this house with you.
Now we’re not fans of stereotypes. Sure, they pay most of our bills, but the reality of it is that mice actually really do love cheese. They love the shit out of it. They love it so much they can’t control themselves. Only the fear of death can remove them from their cheese-induced madness even briefly. And today you’re going be bereft of that fear of death. So you’re going to dive into that cheese, tiny mouth hanging open, and start chewing.
You’ll essentially swim through the warm mass of congealing bacteria, devouring it in whole mouthfuls. Each bite will strike you as a delicious treat that you and only you will ever know. You’ll be so enamored of this flavor that your mind will fog, your eyes will roll into the back of your head and you’ll lose consciousness within the cheese mass. Most of it will be devoured, concealed now within your horribly distended body, but the toll will have been high.
Your hubris, in believing you could consume that much cheese, will have undone you. And as you lay there, the world fading around you, you’ll want to shout “America!” at the top of your lungs. But you’re a mouse and you can’t use language, so you’ll just die.
Congratulations on Eating All the Cheese!
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Red Faction: Disappointment!
Red Faction: Guerilla had quite an impression on me. It was one of the few games that captivated me enough that it made me want to write a play by play journal of experiences. But when I heard tell of its sequel I couldn’t make myself get too excited for it. It looked like it was more or less set underground, and the setting itself was unclear. If not for a Steam sale, that most wonderful of occurrences, I probably wouldn’t have bought Red Faction: Armageddon at all. But it went on sale and, sure enough, I caved and picked it up.
It would be wrong to say that I’m sorry I did so, because I always would’ve wondered what Armageddon was like if I hadn’t. And I certainly enjoyed parts of Armageddon’s strange, scripted adventure. It captured elements of what made Red Faction: Guerilla such an incredible game. But it missed the core of it.
What I loved about Red Faction: Guerilla was the strange nature of the world, the way that everything everywhere could be destroyed and the way that the destruction you rendered would often, not always, endure. It was also more or less wide open. There were areas that were difficult to navigate, false barriers and all that, but more or less the entire world was accessible. And moreoever, things were constantly happening in it. Convoys were emerging to be ambushed, prisoners were being held. Bringing up morale and bringing down the EDF presence in each area was as much a free-form activity as it was a way to advance the plot.
The story was no great shakes, and the combat was actually kind of bad. But the open world destruction, the subtle pleasure of positioning all of your demolition charges in all the right spots to bring a building down in one blow, was so rewarding that it surpassed things that would normally have shaped the core of a game. Red Faction: Guerilla re-defined much of what it meant to make a video game, and it helped me understand how games without stories worth telling could still be great.
Enter Red Faction: Armageddon, a game with almost nothing in common with Red Faction: Guerilla spare its engine and the first two thirds of its name.
Red Faction: Armageddon isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever played by a long shot. It actually has quite a bit going for it. It uses Red Faction’s combat system, but it has been updated so that the system is a great deal more user friendly. Weapons have reasonable clip sizes for the damage they do now, and ammo isn’t quite so scarce now, in either your inventory or the world around you. You’ll all but trip over piles of bullets while exploring the world, and most of the time it’ll be a total fucking mystery who left all of this shit lying around.
And the writing is alright. There are the usual “huh?” plot moments that film, television and video games rely on all too often nowadays, but the characters, the core of writing, actually come through pretty strong. Mason isn’t too much of a douchebag, and his romance, Kara, actually develops in some interesting ways. A caveat: interesting for this sort of a game and for this series. She wouldn’t be at home in a Franzen novel, but she does just fine adding depth and context to the Marauder society that counterpoints the weird, pitchfork wielding villagers who make up the Martian colonists.
But all that lovely open world game play that made Red Faction: Guerilla so great? Gone, gone, gone. In place of an open world mechanic is a mission based series of maps which focus on destroying specific buildings, repairing others with your magic Nanoforge and generally involve killing a shitload of enemies with a number of weapons, four of which are actually useful.
It’s kind of heartbreaking to see the engine of Red Faction: Guerilla be adapted into a middling third person shooter, but that’s exactly what happened here. In place of all those clever destructo puzzles, side missions and enduring conflict waged across a landscape that you can impact with your actions directly, not just with scripted decisions hard coded into the game we’ve got a mechanic based around destroying and rebuilding various terrain items, but only items that have been designated as destructible and/or re-creatable. The line between these two categories is fuzzy at best until an item has been destroyed, and many of the items my nano-forge allows me to re-create are things I’d never want to re-make, like dozens of crates or walls that keep me from reaching collectibles.
Which wouldn’t be quite so bad if I had a flashlight I could control, but I don’t. If you want to be able to see in low light conditions you’ll either need to use your Nano-Forge’s repair function, which casts a nice blue glow that lets you see nearby items when it doesn’t repair nearby items that block your view, or wait for the game to bring up a scripted flashlight. Considering how dark most of the game is you don’t get nearly enough time that flashlight.
On a related note, the world of Red Faction: Armageddon has none of the spectacle that Red Faction: Guerilla had. Unless you’re really into reddish caves and gray gunmental cities you really won’t get to see anything interesting. There’s an interlude with a series of tunnels which apparently constitute some giant Marauder temple, but the lighting remains so poor, the entire setting so indecipherably planned that it feels less like a cultural document encapsulated in a location and more like a forced skin change that was thrown into the design doc at the eleventh hour.
On the upside, the shooting gameplay is more or less fun, and there are a group of special abilities tied to your nano-forge which impact combat in some interesting ways. Experimenting with them can really change the game, and while you can go throughout the entire experience without every really needing to use these special abilities they do add some much needed depth and diversity to the combat system, diversity not afforded in the enemies you’ll be fighting.
See, Armageddon is one of those unfortunate games that you’ll encounter only a handful of enemies, all of whom have the same basic attacks, in. Angry alien looking creatures in three sizes (small, medium and large) will attack you with occasional assistance from invisible aliens, giant worms and alien batteries. At least, I think they’re alien batteries. I wasn’t entirely sure what they were or how they came up by the end of the game, especially given the explanation for how the aliens emerged (some sort of virus affecting former colonists, I think?). But I’m getting into plot, and plot has never been Red Faction’s strong suit.
So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by how meh the entire experience once the greatest elements of it have been removed from the game. But it is more than a little disappointing to look at the sequel to one of my favorite games of yesteryear and see a rendering of the divine destruction that made Red Faction: Guerilla so amazing strapped on to the back of a middling third person shooter that never really finds its own legs.
It would be wrong to say that I’m sorry I did so, because I always would’ve wondered what Armageddon was like if I hadn’t. And I certainly enjoyed parts of Armageddon’s strange, scripted adventure. It captured elements of what made Red Faction: Guerilla such an incredible game. But it missed the core of it.
What I loved about Red Faction: Guerilla was the strange nature of the world, the way that everything everywhere could be destroyed and the way that the destruction you rendered would often, not always, endure. It was also more or less wide open. There were areas that were difficult to navigate, false barriers and all that, but more or less the entire world was accessible. And moreoever, things were constantly happening in it. Convoys were emerging to be ambushed, prisoners were being held. Bringing up morale and bringing down the EDF presence in each area was as much a free-form activity as it was a way to advance the plot.
The story was no great shakes, and the combat was actually kind of bad. But the open world destruction, the subtle pleasure of positioning all of your demolition charges in all the right spots to bring a building down in one blow, was so rewarding that it surpassed things that would normally have shaped the core of a game. Red Faction: Guerilla re-defined much of what it meant to make a video game, and it helped me understand how games without stories worth telling could still be great.
Enter Red Faction: Armageddon, a game with almost nothing in common with Red Faction: Guerilla spare its engine and the first two thirds of its name.
Red Faction: Armageddon isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever played by a long shot. It actually has quite a bit going for it. It uses Red Faction’s combat system, but it has been updated so that the system is a great deal more user friendly. Weapons have reasonable clip sizes for the damage they do now, and ammo isn’t quite so scarce now, in either your inventory or the world around you. You’ll all but trip over piles of bullets while exploring the world, and most of the time it’ll be a total fucking mystery who left all of this shit lying around.
And the writing is alright. There are the usual “huh?” plot moments that film, television and video games rely on all too often nowadays, but the characters, the core of writing, actually come through pretty strong. Mason isn’t too much of a douchebag, and his romance, Kara, actually develops in some interesting ways. A caveat: interesting for this sort of a game and for this series. She wouldn’t be at home in a Franzen novel, but she does just fine adding depth and context to the Marauder society that counterpoints the weird, pitchfork wielding villagers who make up the Martian colonists.
But all that lovely open world game play that made Red Faction: Guerilla so great? Gone, gone, gone. In place of an open world mechanic is a mission based series of maps which focus on destroying specific buildings, repairing others with your magic Nanoforge and generally involve killing a shitload of enemies with a number of weapons, four of which are actually useful.
It’s kind of heartbreaking to see the engine of Red Faction: Guerilla be adapted into a middling third person shooter, but that’s exactly what happened here. In place of all those clever destructo puzzles, side missions and enduring conflict waged across a landscape that you can impact with your actions directly, not just with scripted decisions hard coded into the game we’ve got a mechanic based around destroying and rebuilding various terrain items, but only items that have been designated as destructible and/or re-creatable. The line between these two categories is fuzzy at best until an item has been destroyed, and many of the items my nano-forge allows me to re-create are things I’d never want to re-make, like dozens of crates or walls that keep me from reaching collectibles.
Which wouldn’t be quite so bad if I had a flashlight I could control, but I don’t. If you want to be able to see in low light conditions you’ll either need to use your Nano-Forge’s repair function, which casts a nice blue glow that lets you see nearby items when it doesn’t repair nearby items that block your view, or wait for the game to bring up a scripted flashlight. Considering how dark most of the game is you don’t get nearly enough time that flashlight.
On a related note, the world of Red Faction: Armageddon has none of the spectacle that Red Faction: Guerilla had. Unless you’re really into reddish caves and gray gunmental cities you really won’t get to see anything interesting. There’s an interlude with a series of tunnels which apparently constitute some giant Marauder temple, but the lighting remains so poor, the entire setting so indecipherably planned that it feels less like a cultural document encapsulated in a location and more like a forced skin change that was thrown into the design doc at the eleventh hour.
On the upside, the shooting gameplay is more or less fun, and there are a group of special abilities tied to your nano-forge which impact combat in some interesting ways. Experimenting with them can really change the game, and while you can go throughout the entire experience without every really needing to use these special abilities they do add some much needed depth and diversity to the combat system, diversity not afforded in the enemies you’ll be fighting.
See, Armageddon is one of those unfortunate games that you’ll encounter only a handful of enemies, all of whom have the same basic attacks, in. Angry alien looking creatures in three sizes (small, medium and large) will attack you with occasional assistance from invisible aliens, giant worms and alien batteries. At least, I think they’re alien batteries. I wasn’t entirely sure what they were or how they came up by the end of the game, especially given the explanation for how the aliens emerged (some sort of virus affecting former colonists, I think?). But I’m getting into plot, and plot has never been Red Faction’s strong suit.
So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by how meh the entire experience once the greatest elements of it have been removed from the game. But it is more than a little disappointing to look at the sequel to one of my favorite games of yesteryear and see a rendering of the divine destruction that made Red Faction: Guerilla so amazing strapped on to the back of a middling third person shooter that never really finds its own legs.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Congratulations on Proving You Don't Have Herpes!
You’ll take off your pants and point to your freshly shaven vagina.
“Check it out,” you’ll purr at your partner to be. “No herpes.”
He’ll shrug, not even bothering to put down his X-Box controller.
“They could just be in remission,” he’ll say as he guides a sports car into a wall, only to watch it re-materialize seconds later half a lap behind where he was. “Damnit it, you’re distracting me.”
You’ll roll your eyes and sigh. If you don’t find a way to prove you don’t have herpes you’ll never find a way to get your roommate to let you trade your poon for your half of the rent. But just then a knock will come at your door. You’ll open it up and outside your friendly Afro-American letter carrier will be standing, a very special piece of mail in his hand.
“Check this shit out,” he’ll stereotypically shout. The two of you will share a laugh and then high five as he hands you your mail. It’ll be just what you’ve been waiting for: the STD test results you ordered from Planned Parenthood a week ago, back when you were worried you wouldn’t be able to make rent this month.
“Fuck yeah,” you’ll shout, high fiving the letter carrier again. He’ll oblige you and then stand there and watch as you open the letter, partly because he wants to know how your struggle will unfold and mostly because he wants to keep being able to fantasize about having sex with you without imagining himself with a disease afterwards.
The piece of paper will be almost indecipherable, but a breakdown at the bottom will announce the results to you in simple terms: you’ll be totally clean.
“FUCK YEAH!” you’ll shout again, louder this time, high fiving your letter carrier and slamming the door in his face as you turn to show your roommate what you’ve found.
“Check this shit out,” you’ll announce to him, shoving the letter in his face until he grabs it. Then, while he’s distracted, you’ll unzip his pants and start working his penis. It’ll get hard almost immediately, which is what you expected. You live with the guy, and you know how rarely he gets laid.
That’s why you came up with this idea. You figured that if you could prove you didn’t have herpes you could find a way to fuck your way out of paying rent for at least a month, and you figured that he’d have to play the field in a pretty stealthy way to have caught herpes himself. He won’t be complaining as you get him hard. You won’t be sure if the letter satisfied him or if he just stopped caring once you touched his dick.
He won’t put the letter down until you slip out of your jeans settle on top of his penis and guide it gently inside of you. As you begin riding him you’ll look at the pause screen of Forza 3 and wonder if you should’ve asked him to get tested too, just in case. But as your body takes over you’ll stop thinking about anything other than being able to afford food for the next few weeks, or anything else after that if you don’t get another freelance editing job.
Congratulations on Proving You Don’t Have Herpes!
“Check it out,” you’ll purr at your partner to be. “No herpes.”
He’ll shrug, not even bothering to put down his X-Box controller.
“They could just be in remission,” he’ll say as he guides a sports car into a wall, only to watch it re-materialize seconds later half a lap behind where he was. “Damnit it, you’re distracting me.”
You’ll roll your eyes and sigh. If you don’t find a way to prove you don’t have herpes you’ll never find a way to get your roommate to let you trade your poon for your half of the rent. But just then a knock will come at your door. You’ll open it up and outside your friendly Afro-American letter carrier will be standing, a very special piece of mail in his hand.
“Check this shit out,” he’ll stereotypically shout. The two of you will share a laugh and then high five as he hands you your mail. It’ll be just what you’ve been waiting for: the STD test results you ordered from Planned Parenthood a week ago, back when you were worried you wouldn’t be able to make rent this month.
“Fuck yeah,” you’ll shout, high fiving the letter carrier again. He’ll oblige you and then stand there and watch as you open the letter, partly because he wants to know how your struggle will unfold and mostly because he wants to keep being able to fantasize about having sex with you without imagining himself with a disease afterwards.
The piece of paper will be almost indecipherable, but a breakdown at the bottom will announce the results to you in simple terms: you’ll be totally clean.
“FUCK YEAH!” you’ll shout again, louder this time, high fiving your letter carrier and slamming the door in his face as you turn to show your roommate what you’ve found.
“Check this shit out,” you’ll announce to him, shoving the letter in his face until he grabs it. Then, while he’s distracted, you’ll unzip his pants and start working his penis. It’ll get hard almost immediately, which is what you expected. You live with the guy, and you know how rarely he gets laid.
That’s why you came up with this idea. You figured that if you could prove you didn’t have herpes you could find a way to fuck your way out of paying rent for at least a month, and you figured that he’d have to play the field in a pretty stealthy way to have caught herpes himself. He won’t be complaining as you get him hard. You won’t be sure if the letter satisfied him or if he just stopped caring once you touched his dick.
He won’t put the letter down until you slip out of your jeans settle on top of his penis and guide it gently inside of you. As you begin riding him you’ll look at the pause screen of Forza 3 and wonder if you should’ve asked him to get tested too, just in case. But as your body takes over you’ll stop thinking about anything other than being able to afford food for the next few weeks, or anything else after that if you don’t get another freelance editing job.
Congratulations on Proving You Don’t Have Herpes!
Friday, July 22, 2011
Congratulations on Drinking All the Whiskey!
“All the whiskey?” the foreman of the Jameson factory in Corcaigh, Ireland will ask the tour guide while paramedics pound your chest, trying to convince your lungs to breathe, your heart to beat. “How is that even possible?”
The tour guide will shrug.
“I turned around just a moment and he was just taking to it like a fish to water. Didn’t even have time to notice that it had happened. Just heard a crash and suddenly all of the barrels were gone.
You won’t be capable of communication, so you won’t be able to explain how you’re a traveler from a future without whiskey who came back and, through the use of a time dilation device, drank literally all of the whiskey in a small, concentrated space to both enjoy the treasures of a former age and to remind the world of how important whiskey is by removing a lot of it from their lives so that they’ll never let it languish or let its production lapse.
“Well,” the paramedic will shrug at the foreman and the tour guide. “He’s dead, that’s for certain.”
You’ll lay there unconscious, your brain dying rapidly. If this were a movie you’d have a smile on your face, but this isn’t a movie. So you’ll be covered in vomit and your face will be contorted in pain, an image to be preserved forever, reminding mankind of the dangers of excessive drinking.
Congratulations on Drinking All the Whiskey!
The tour guide will shrug.
“I turned around just a moment and he was just taking to it like a fish to water. Didn’t even have time to notice that it had happened. Just heard a crash and suddenly all of the barrels were gone.
You won’t be capable of communication, so you won’t be able to explain how you’re a traveler from a future without whiskey who came back and, through the use of a time dilation device, drank literally all of the whiskey in a small, concentrated space to both enjoy the treasures of a former age and to remind the world of how important whiskey is by removing a lot of it from their lives so that they’ll never let it languish or let its production lapse.
“Well,” the paramedic will shrug at the foreman and the tour guide. “He’s dead, that’s for certain.”
You’ll lay there unconscious, your brain dying rapidly. If this were a movie you’d have a smile on your face, but this isn’t a movie. So you’ll be covered in vomit and your face will be contorted in pain, an image to be preserved forever, reminding mankind of the dangers of excessive drinking.
Congratulations on Drinking All the Whiskey!
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Congratulations Dodo Lover!
Most dodo lovers are people with a profound respect for the natural world and birds in general, people who find the story of dodos tragic and edifying. They view it as a tragic tale of man’s hubris and the violence man perpetuates against the natural world, and they’re definitely not janitors who work at prominent natural history museums who are turned on by stuffed dodos. Which is exactly what you are.
So tonight you’re going to shock no one at all and stick your dick in a dodo. It’s what you do most nights when you don’t think anyone is watching.
“Uhh!” you’ll moan as you rub your dick against the dodo’s sand filled vagina. “Nah nah nah nuh!”
The dodo won’t respond.
You’ll be doing this for around forty minutes when one of your co-workers walks in and sees you.
“Fuck!” you’ll shout at him as he stands there, horrified at what you’re doing. “Don’t you knock!”
He’ll shake his head and back out of the room, wondering just what he should do. After twenty minutes he’ll decide that telling the manager is the right thing in this scenario and he’ll head off to do just that. A day later you’ll be fired, but at least you’ll have a great story behind how it happened.
Congratulations Dodo Lover!
So tonight you’re going to shock no one at all and stick your dick in a dodo. It’s what you do most nights when you don’t think anyone is watching.
“Uhh!” you’ll moan as you rub your dick against the dodo’s sand filled vagina. “Nah nah nah nuh!”
The dodo won’t respond.
You’ll be doing this for around forty minutes when one of your co-workers walks in and sees you.
“Fuck!” you’ll shout at him as he stands there, horrified at what you’re doing. “Don’t you knock!”
He’ll shake his head and back out of the room, wondering just what he should do. After twenty minutes he’ll decide that telling the manager is the right thing in this scenario and he’ll head off to do just that. A day later you’ll be fired, but at least you’ll have a great story behind how it happened.
Congratulations Dodo Lover!
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Congratulations Non-Deviant Sexual Entity!
We’ve been told for legal reasons that we need to provide some sort of encouragement to at least one non-deviant sexual being in the course of our normal actions. So here’s to you, theoretical man or woman who only likes doing it missionary with a person you’re married to once a month. We’re pretty sure you’re a weird fetish unto yourself, but we’ve been told by our lawyers that we shouldn’t say or even think this, lest you sue us, so here’s to you and all your “normalcy.”
Freak.
Congratulations Non-Deviant Sexual Entity!
Freak.
Congratulations Non-Deviant Sexual Entity!
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Congratulations Internet Age James Dean!
There can never be another James Dean. Even the first James Dean wasn’t always James Dean. Watch Rebel Without a Cause and keep yourself from bursting out laughing when he kicks the portrait of his grandma. We dare you. Hell, we double dog dare you. We’re that serious.
But people always like people who remind them of James Dean, and you fit the bill. In fact many would say that you’re the James Dean of the Internet Age. How did you achieve such laudable status, you might ask? Through drugs? Lying? Murder? No, you did it by creating an Okaycupid profile called notjamesdean and looking a lot like James Dean.
Unsurprisingly, this has lead to a string of hookups with women you have only the faintest idea of what to do with. Everything from emotionally unstable women who are absolutely nuts in bed to really hot women who just sort of lay there have come back to your unkempt studio apartment with its walls covered in Zeppelin posters. You’ve also slept with a bunch of heavyset girls with nice curves and lots of tattoos, by merit of joining OkayCupid in Portland, and since they’re not “tens” in coastal lingo those girls are fine doing most of the work. Which has been good for you since, as we mentioned earlier, you barely know which hole to put it in.
But lately the hookup grind has gotten you down. You’ve been longing for someone who doesn’t consider you a sex symbol from an older era, and today you’re going to find her because today you’re going to out on a date with one of Portland’s rare African-American bachelorettes.
Megan will show up at the bar five minutes late, her hair in barrettes and a big smile on her face. She’ll wave at you genuinely instead of nodding demurely at you like she’s already found out how your dick feels.
“Hey,” she’ll say, sidling up to you. “I’m Megan.”
You’ll nod and sneer at her a little, twitching your upper lip up so that she knows you mean business.
“Are you alright?” she’ll ask. You’ll nod at her, sweating. You’ll be out of practice after months of sleeping with women based entirely on how you look, and actually having to interact with someone to get them to find you interesting will be puzzling and frightening for you.
“Let’s get a drink,” she’ll say, her eyes darting at the bar unsteadily. You’ll laugh too loud and make a break for the door, your confidence destroyed.
When you emerge into cool night air your sweat will be cold on your skin. You’ll look at the bar behind you, wondering what that Megan girl will do once you’ve left. Will she post a message about you being kind of a douchebag on your OkayCupid profile? Will she just have a drink and go home and laugh about how big a dipshit you are? You’ll consider for a moment returning to the bar and talking to her like a person, but your fixie will be so close, your embarrassment so vibrant in your mind, that you won’t be able to bring yourself to turn around. You’ll step on your bike and set out without a helmet into the night, tempting cars to end your misery.
Congratulations Internet Age James Dean!
But people always like people who remind them of James Dean, and you fit the bill. In fact many would say that you’re the James Dean of the Internet Age. How did you achieve such laudable status, you might ask? Through drugs? Lying? Murder? No, you did it by creating an Okaycupid profile called notjamesdean and looking a lot like James Dean.
Unsurprisingly, this has lead to a string of hookups with women you have only the faintest idea of what to do with. Everything from emotionally unstable women who are absolutely nuts in bed to really hot women who just sort of lay there have come back to your unkempt studio apartment with its walls covered in Zeppelin posters. You’ve also slept with a bunch of heavyset girls with nice curves and lots of tattoos, by merit of joining OkayCupid in Portland, and since they’re not “tens” in coastal lingo those girls are fine doing most of the work. Which has been good for you since, as we mentioned earlier, you barely know which hole to put it in.
But lately the hookup grind has gotten you down. You’ve been longing for someone who doesn’t consider you a sex symbol from an older era, and today you’re going to find her because today you’re going to out on a date with one of Portland’s rare African-American bachelorettes.
Megan will show up at the bar five minutes late, her hair in barrettes and a big smile on her face. She’ll wave at you genuinely instead of nodding demurely at you like she’s already found out how your dick feels.
“Hey,” she’ll say, sidling up to you. “I’m Megan.”
You’ll nod and sneer at her a little, twitching your upper lip up so that she knows you mean business.
“Are you alright?” she’ll ask. You’ll nod at her, sweating. You’ll be out of practice after months of sleeping with women based entirely on how you look, and actually having to interact with someone to get them to find you interesting will be puzzling and frightening for you.
“Let’s get a drink,” she’ll say, her eyes darting at the bar unsteadily. You’ll laugh too loud and make a break for the door, your confidence destroyed.
When you emerge into cool night air your sweat will be cold on your skin. You’ll look at the bar behind you, wondering what that Megan girl will do once you’ve left. Will she post a message about you being kind of a douchebag on your OkayCupid profile? Will she just have a drink and go home and laugh about how big a dipshit you are? You’ll consider for a moment returning to the bar and talking to her like a person, but your fixie will be so close, your embarrassment so vibrant in your mind, that you won’t be able to bring yourself to turn around. You’ll step on your bike and set out without a helmet into the night, tempting cars to end your misery.
Congratulations Internet Age James Dean!
Monday, July 18, 2011
Congratulations Monkeyfucker!
You’re a janitor in a lab where they do monkey research and it’s not the worst job in the world. You work a nine to five where you get to mostly do your own thing, listening to music and occasionally watching monkeys solve puzzles. Sometimes, when the scientists aren’t looking or they tell you it’s okay, you just hang out with monkeys. You get stoned with them, hang out and chill. They’re actually really cool, as are most of the scientists.
The only problem is that something has happened recently in your life. You’ve realized you might be gay.
It’s not that you’ve found any single man particularly attractive. Nothing so easy as that, I fear. No, what’s happening here is that you’ve realized, after years of fucking women, that you just don’t enjoy it very much. It’ll occur to you when you’re looking at internet porn at 12:17 AM this morning.
“Man, this isn’t doing it for me,” you’ll mumble at yourself as you watch a penis ram in and out of a vagina in an intense closeup. You’ll zip up your fly without finishing and head to bed, puzzled but not overly frustrated.
And this morning you’ve already caught one of those monkeys looking at you, showing off his genitals, and you felt like, hmm, this might be something I’m interested in.
So tonight, after lights out, you’re going to sneak back into that monkey’s cage, strip naked, and just see what happens.
Turns out the little queer is gonna be crazy about you. He’s gonna jump all up on ya, grab your dick and give it a tug and do things you didn’t think monkeys could do. You won’t feel like you’re forcing things at all when it’s all going down – in fact you’ll feel a little bit violated but just how aggressive this monkey is.
When the two of you finish you’ll lay there, holding the monkey against your chest while the monkey grooms your meager chest hair, occasionally snickering at how odd you look. You’ll rub his belly and, for the first time in years, feel content.
Congratulations Monkeyfucker!
The only problem is that something has happened recently in your life. You’ve realized you might be gay.
It’s not that you’ve found any single man particularly attractive. Nothing so easy as that, I fear. No, what’s happening here is that you’ve realized, after years of fucking women, that you just don’t enjoy it very much. It’ll occur to you when you’re looking at internet porn at 12:17 AM this morning.
“Man, this isn’t doing it for me,” you’ll mumble at yourself as you watch a penis ram in and out of a vagina in an intense closeup. You’ll zip up your fly without finishing and head to bed, puzzled but not overly frustrated.
And this morning you’ve already caught one of those monkeys looking at you, showing off his genitals, and you felt like, hmm, this might be something I’m interested in.
So tonight, after lights out, you’re going to sneak back into that monkey’s cage, strip naked, and just see what happens.
Turns out the little queer is gonna be crazy about you. He’s gonna jump all up on ya, grab your dick and give it a tug and do things you didn’t think monkeys could do. You won’t feel like you’re forcing things at all when it’s all going down – in fact you’ll feel a little bit violated but just how aggressive this monkey is.
When the two of you finish you’ll lay there, holding the monkey against your chest while the monkey grooms your meager chest hair, occasionally snickering at how odd you look. You’ll rub his belly and, for the first time in years, feel content.
Congratulations Monkeyfucker!
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings: Attack of the Colons!
I came to the Witcher 2 in a rare state. I was aware of the first Witcher only vaguely. I knew it was an RPG adapted from a series of Polish novels. I knew of its reception, that it had been hailed by many as a master stroke and dismissed by others as woefully generic. But I knew nothing specific about it. I had no desire to play through the first title when it came out, distracted as I was by many, many other releases. But the Witcher 2 received such positive buzz from people levied such harsh criticism of most RPGs that I was actually excited to see just what all the fuss was about. I saw it on sale on Steam and decided, what the hell? Let’s give it a shot.
And I have to say, for a game I thoroughly believed would be unpleasant, I’ve been quite pleasantly surprised. Sure, the Witcher 2 has a lot of proper fantasy names and high falutin’ fantasy politics based on a map I’ve never seen filled with numerous kings who all want each other dead, but it renders its in-medias-res story with such gusto and consistency that it’s actually not that difficult to follow. It’s one of the rare games that managed to tell a story by showing, rather than telling. Upon occasion there’s some forced exposition or some laughably bad dialogue, but for a game stuffed with so much there was very little dross, though the game’s epilogue did take the form of one long piece of expository dialogue. Power hungry wizards and warlords never stall to openly express their machinations for power, and deciphering the plot is part of the fun and part of making decisions in the game.
And what a group of decisions to make. The Witcher 2 is all about branching decision trees that have big, serious impact on the world. Sometimes this impact is vague at best, and sometimes it’s quite obvious, but it’s always interesting to see how the story develops. I’m tempted to play through the game again (I played through it in a trim 47 hours, a trifling amount of time to spend on an RPG in this day and age) just to see how the various decisions I can make will impact the world this time around, but I have a feeling that there are more than two permutations to each event, and that early events can have a domino effect on later events. It’s an achievement of storytelling which could only flourish in a game, and to see it so lovingly rendered and so well executed makes me feel encouraged for the entire medium.
Sure, the game has some serious documentation problems. Puzzling out how to use Quen was crucial to a number of the famously difficult boss fights for me, and no one ever made even the slightest effort to clue me in on how it was supposed to work. And there are some very serious mechanical issues where hit detection will fail, controls will lock up during extended fights and enemies will juggle you as you flail about on the ground. On one occasion I was juggled by a boss after missing him with several hits, having the game fail to detect my order to Geralt to dodge like a motherfucker and lost over half my health to a series of exaggerated, fiery punches. In a game where you cannot regenerate health in combat without prior preparation and action elements are so prominently featured it’s tough to justify design mistakes like these.
But by the end of the game I was left with a feeling that I’d overcome some great trial by merit of learning how to play the game properly. Despite all these issues I managed to beat some bosses who felt like they were cheating during most of the game. And I did it looking good and banging a different chick with each of my witchy, witchy dicks.
I assume that the Witcher, Geralt, has at least seven dicks, by the way, based on how often he’s using them. You can bang your way into a number of places in The Witcher 2, and there are big whorehouses with literal stables filled with women that you can visit. As far as I could tell there wasn’t any sort of achievement for fucking your way through the entire cast of hookers that the game provides, but I could’ve missed some.
It would’ve been easy for all this sex to make the Witcher 2 feel exploitative, but if anything it gave the game more color for me. The world of the Witcher 2 has a very lived in feel, and when I finally finished it I felt like the characters I’d spent so much time with were going to go on with their little lives in their little fantasy world between the end of the game and the beginning of the inevitable Witcher 3, artfully set up in the conclusion of the game’s plot. It’s normal to expect a sequel from a major retail release at this point, but it’s rare to actually see a well built game that both delivers a satisfying ending and finishes with a sequel in mind. I’m pleased that the Witcher is so content to tell smaller stories that combine into a larger narrative as well as it does.
It even gets major props from me for utilizing amnesia as a plot device without sucking at it. Most games, including the seminal Final Fantasy VII, use amnesia as a means of defining the world around the character through the character’s history. But The Witcher 2 actually uses it to establish the character after establishing the world. Before I was ever treated to flashbacks of how Geralt became so Witchy I learned of the elements that contributed to his madness and memory loss. The end result was a game that made me feel as if I was developing a character, granted a bit of a cipher, through my actions, and as I learned more about his past I didn’t learn about who he was, but who he had been. I was never instructed how Geralt should feel, except by the occasional passive-aggressive journal entry told in the third person by a bard, and even then it had some basis in the decisions I’d made.
The Witcher 2 gets high marks, despite having a number of problems, for the sheer ambition behind the game. It’s rare to see a game so willing to let you make choices, and a game so willing to let you specialize your character. It’s also rare to see a game with such a well realized and human world. The Witcher 2 is a work of interactive fiction, a story that could only be told through a game. And it’s a good one at that, an arrival well worth celebrating.
And I have to say, for a game I thoroughly believed would be unpleasant, I’ve been quite pleasantly surprised. Sure, the Witcher 2 has a lot of proper fantasy names and high falutin’ fantasy politics based on a map I’ve never seen filled with numerous kings who all want each other dead, but it renders its in-medias-res story with such gusto and consistency that it’s actually not that difficult to follow. It’s one of the rare games that managed to tell a story by showing, rather than telling. Upon occasion there’s some forced exposition or some laughably bad dialogue, but for a game stuffed with so much there was very little dross, though the game’s epilogue did take the form of one long piece of expository dialogue. Power hungry wizards and warlords never stall to openly express their machinations for power, and deciphering the plot is part of the fun and part of making decisions in the game.
And what a group of decisions to make. The Witcher 2 is all about branching decision trees that have big, serious impact on the world. Sometimes this impact is vague at best, and sometimes it’s quite obvious, but it’s always interesting to see how the story develops. I’m tempted to play through the game again (I played through it in a trim 47 hours, a trifling amount of time to spend on an RPG in this day and age) just to see how the various decisions I can make will impact the world this time around, but I have a feeling that there are more than two permutations to each event, and that early events can have a domino effect on later events. It’s an achievement of storytelling which could only flourish in a game, and to see it so lovingly rendered and so well executed makes me feel encouraged for the entire medium.
Sure, the game has some serious documentation problems. Puzzling out how to use Quen was crucial to a number of the famously difficult boss fights for me, and no one ever made even the slightest effort to clue me in on how it was supposed to work. And there are some very serious mechanical issues where hit detection will fail, controls will lock up during extended fights and enemies will juggle you as you flail about on the ground. On one occasion I was juggled by a boss after missing him with several hits, having the game fail to detect my order to Geralt to dodge like a motherfucker and lost over half my health to a series of exaggerated, fiery punches. In a game where you cannot regenerate health in combat without prior preparation and action elements are so prominently featured it’s tough to justify design mistakes like these.
But by the end of the game I was left with a feeling that I’d overcome some great trial by merit of learning how to play the game properly. Despite all these issues I managed to beat some bosses who felt like they were cheating during most of the game. And I did it looking good and banging a different chick with each of my witchy, witchy dicks.
I assume that the Witcher, Geralt, has at least seven dicks, by the way, based on how often he’s using them. You can bang your way into a number of places in The Witcher 2, and there are big whorehouses with literal stables filled with women that you can visit. As far as I could tell there wasn’t any sort of achievement for fucking your way through the entire cast of hookers that the game provides, but I could’ve missed some.
It would’ve been easy for all this sex to make the Witcher 2 feel exploitative, but if anything it gave the game more color for me. The world of the Witcher 2 has a very lived in feel, and when I finally finished it I felt like the characters I’d spent so much time with were going to go on with their little lives in their little fantasy world between the end of the game and the beginning of the inevitable Witcher 3, artfully set up in the conclusion of the game’s plot. It’s normal to expect a sequel from a major retail release at this point, but it’s rare to actually see a well built game that both delivers a satisfying ending and finishes with a sequel in mind. I’m pleased that the Witcher is so content to tell smaller stories that combine into a larger narrative as well as it does.
It even gets major props from me for utilizing amnesia as a plot device without sucking at it. Most games, including the seminal Final Fantasy VII, use amnesia as a means of defining the world around the character through the character’s history. But The Witcher 2 actually uses it to establish the character after establishing the world. Before I was ever treated to flashbacks of how Geralt became so Witchy I learned of the elements that contributed to his madness and memory loss. The end result was a game that made me feel as if I was developing a character, granted a bit of a cipher, through my actions, and as I learned more about his past I didn’t learn about who he was, but who he had been. I was never instructed how Geralt should feel, except by the occasional passive-aggressive journal entry told in the third person by a bard, and even then it had some basis in the decisions I’d made.
The Witcher 2 gets high marks, despite having a number of problems, for the sheer ambition behind the game. It’s rare to see a game so willing to let you make choices, and a game so willing to let you specialize your character. It’s also rare to see a game with such a well realized and human world. The Witcher 2 is a work of interactive fiction, a story that could only be told through a game. And it’s a good one at that, an arrival well worth celebrating.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Congratulations on Saving Your Life Partner!
You’ll arrive at the park at 12:02 AM, where the terrorists will be standing around, looking chagrined. Carrie will be there too, suspended above the shark tank by some industrial strength nylon rope. When they see your Subaru blazing a path through the park, cresting hills with wild abandon and tearing up earth as you brake, they’ll look kind of relieved. That is, before you step out, gun in hand.
They’ll want to start talking.
“You will pay for-“ the lead terrorist (the one in a red head wrap, obviously) will begin, but he’ll be cut short when your nine millimeter round catches him in the throat, tearing out most of the valves and pipes that people take for granted in there. His friends will scatter, leaving Carrie bound and gagged, dangling above the shark tank. She’ll be mumbling and watching you as you stride towards the terrorists, gun in hand, firing round after round into them as they dive for cover.
You won’t take it easy or slow on them, and you won’t be shooting to wound the way you normally do. They made this personal when they brought Carrie into it, and you’ll want to make an example of them. You’ll want to show anyone who’s watching what happens when they try to bring your work back to your home.
Bullets will rain on them, catching men in the head and torso as they cower behind benches, struggling to chamber a round in AK-47s that seemed so easy to use a few hours earlier when they weren’t being shot at. You won’t miss with a single round, leveraging kill shot after kill shot in rapid succession. A dozen men will be scattered across the fields of the park when you stop shooting, dead or dying. Carrie will be watching you with wide eyes, her mouth straining against her gag. She’ll fall silent after the chaos subsides, content to stare at you as you stride up to the lead terrorist’s body and remove the machete from his belt.
He’ll still be alive when you take it, his breath sputtering with blood each time he exhales. His eyes will be wide and he’ll reach towards you as you step away from him, begging you to end it, but you won’t even look at him. You’ll just stride right past him, up to the shark tank, and jump in.
You’ll work with a quiet precision in the tank, slipping the machete around the shark’s teeth rather than into any particular part of them. Each motion will be clean, precise and instinctive. Carrie will catch the whole thing from her perch above you. Later on she’ll retell the story like she was watching you dance. She won’t mention the water stained red, the brain matter spilling out of the shark’s skulls. She won’t mention the stench of their bodies as they die. But she will mention when you threw the machete at the rope over her head like a boomerang, severing the rope and dropping her into your waiting arms.
She’ll tell it with a smile, just before she gets to the part where you took out her gag and asked her “Miss me?” before giving her the biggest kiss of either of your lives.
Congratulations on Saving Your Life Partner!
They’ll want to start talking.
“You will pay for-“ the lead terrorist (the one in a red head wrap, obviously) will begin, but he’ll be cut short when your nine millimeter round catches him in the throat, tearing out most of the valves and pipes that people take for granted in there. His friends will scatter, leaving Carrie bound and gagged, dangling above the shark tank. She’ll be mumbling and watching you as you stride towards the terrorists, gun in hand, firing round after round into them as they dive for cover.
You won’t take it easy or slow on them, and you won’t be shooting to wound the way you normally do. They made this personal when they brought Carrie into it, and you’ll want to make an example of them. You’ll want to show anyone who’s watching what happens when they try to bring your work back to your home.
Bullets will rain on them, catching men in the head and torso as they cower behind benches, struggling to chamber a round in AK-47s that seemed so easy to use a few hours earlier when they weren’t being shot at. You won’t miss with a single round, leveraging kill shot after kill shot in rapid succession. A dozen men will be scattered across the fields of the park when you stop shooting, dead or dying. Carrie will be watching you with wide eyes, her mouth straining against her gag. She’ll fall silent after the chaos subsides, content to stare at you as you stride up to the lead terrorist’s body and remove the machete from his belt.
He’ll still be alive when you take it, his breath sputtering with blood each time he exhales. His eyes will be wide and he’ll reach towards you as you step away from him, begging you to end it, but you won’t even look at him. You’ll just stride right past him, up to the shark tank, and jump in.
You’ll work with a quiet precision in the tank, slipping the machete around the shark’s teeth rather than into any particular part of them. Each motion will be clean, precise and instinctive. Carrie will catch the whole thing from her perch above you. Later on she’ll retell the story like she was watching you dance. She won’t mention the water stained red, the brain matter spilling out of the shark’s skulls. She won’t mention the stench of their bodies as they die. But she will mention when you threw the machete at the rope over her head like a boomerang, severing the rope and dropping her into your waiting arms.
She’ll tell it with a smile, just before she gets to the part where you took out her gag and asked her “Miss me?” before giving her the biggest kiss of either of your lives.
Congratulations on Saving Your Life Partner!
Friday, July 15, 2011
Congratulations on Hotwiring Your Own Subaru!
Most people will go their whole lives without having to hotwire a car. Most people avoid danger at all costs, mitigate risks and generally don’t draw the ire of international terrorists who concoct elaborate revenge schemes every time one of their ill-founded plans goes awry. But you’re a super sexy secret agent who happens to be incredibly gay and madly in love with her partner and today, in a perfect storm of shittiness, your partner is going to be kidnapped by terrorists and you’re going to lose your keys.
That means when the cell phone call comes in at 11:30 PM that you should show up at a public park by midnight or the love of your life will be lowered in a shark tank that the terrorists brought to the park at great personal expense, you’re not going to be able to call AAA and wait for them to show up. Hell, you won’t even have time to call the office and ask them to send a bunch of snipers down to the park the way you normally would. You’ll just have enough time to break into your car and hotwire it.
It’ll start with a coat hanger. You’ll twist it up and ram it between the rubber buffer outside the window and the window itself, feeling for the locking mechanism on the outside of the door. The Subaru Forester isn’t exactly a tough cookie to crack, though, so this won’t take more than a few seconds.
Once the door lock is off and you’re behind the driver’s seat, that’s when it’ll get tough. You won’t have enough bars on your i-phone to pull down an electrical diagram for your car. That means you’ll have to wing it.
You’ll have your wire strippers with you, rusted and well-loved but no worse for wear, and with them in hand you’ll slice through plastic and slip the wiring out from under the dash, one cluster of wires in each hand. You’ll strip them down a quarter inch each and begin twining them together one by one. You’ll have only the vaguest idea of what you’re doing, since most spy training consists of watching old movies about the CIA (and two of the four Die Hard films) but you won’t be discouraged. Each splinter of copper in your skin, each tiny shock from a mistake, will be like a badge of honor for you.
And after ten minutes of despair and trial and error, pairing each cluster of ignition wires together in every possible combination, you’ll finally hit on one that works. The engine will sputter as you touch the wires together, then roar as you twist and bind them.
“Fuck you, Google,” you’ll mumble at your worthless phone as you pull your car into reverse and back out of your driveway, racing the night towards the woman you love.
Congratulations on Hotwiring Your Own Subaru!
That means when the cell phone call comes in at 11:30 PM that you should show up at a public park by midnight or the love of your life will be lowered in a shark tank that the terrorists brought to the park at great personal expense, you’re not going to be able to call AAA and wait for them to show up. Hell, you won’t even have time to call the office and ask them to send a bunch of snipers down to the park the way you normally would. You’ll just have enough time to break into your car and hotwire it.
It’ll start with a coat hanger. You’ll twist it up and ram it between the rubber buffer outside the window and the window itself, feeling for the locking mechanism on the outside of the door. The Subaru Forester isn’t exactly a tough cookie to crack, though, so this won’t take more than a few seconds.
Once the door lock is off and you’re behind the driver’s seat, that’s when it’ll get tough. You won’t have enough bars on your i-phone to pull down an electrical diagram for your car. That means you’ll have to wing it.
You’ll have your wire strippers with you, rusted and well-loved but no worse for wear, and with them in hand you’ll slice through plastic and slip the wiring out from under the dash, one cluster of wires in each hand. You’ll strip them down a quarter inch each and begin twining them together one by one. You’ll have only the vaguest idea of what you’re doing, since most spy training consists of watching old movies about the CIA (and two of the four Die Hard films) but you won’t be discouraged. Each splinter of copper in your skin, each tiny shock from a mistake, will be like a badge of honor for you.
And after ten minutes of despair and trial and error, pairing each cluster of ignition wires together in every possible combination, you’ll finally hit on one that works. The engine will sputter as you touch the wires together, then roar as you twist and bind them.
“Fuck you, Google,” you’ll mumble at your worthless phone as you pull your car into reverse and back out of your driveway, racing the night towards the woman you love.
Congratulations on Hotwiring Your Own Subaru!
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Congratulations Suburban Sex Fiends!
Today your neighbor is going to come over to borrow a cup of sugar during play time.
You’ll be wearing your leather harness and your wife will have her ball gag in. The black guy from work you roped into bringing his wife over will be there too, in a suit, just getting into the swing of things. Your neighbor will take it all in for a second, then nod approvingly.
“Didn’t know you were busy. Send me an invite next time you want to get something together, I’ll put it on my Google calendar,” he’ll say before he heads back to his house to tell his wife that it turns out they’re not the only kink couple in the neighborhood.
You’ll turn to your wife and your work friend and shrug.
“I didn’t know he was on Google!” you’ll say. Everyone will burst out laughing, because that obviously wasn’t the more unexpected fact that you’ll have learned about your neighbor that day and jokes like that go over great in the kink community.
Congratulations Suburban Sex Fiends!
You’ll be wearing your leather harness and your wife will have her ball gag in. The black guy from work you roped into bringing his wife over will be there too, in a suit, just getting into the swing of things. Your neighbor will take it all in for a second, then nod approvingly.
“Didn’t know you were busy. Send me an invite next time you want to get something together, I’ll put it on my Google calendar,” he’ll say before he heads back to his house to tell his wife that it turns out they’re not the only kink couple in the neighborhood.
You’ll turn to your wife and your work friend and shrug.
“I didn’t know he was on Google!” you’ll say. Everyone will burst out laughing, because that obviously wasn’t the more unexpected fact that you’ll have learned about your neighbor that day and jokes like that go over great in the kink community.
Congratulations Suburban Sex Fiends!
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Congratulations Rodeo Sam!
You’re a person named Sam who works at a rodeo. Seems pretty standard, right? But oh shit, there’s a catch! You’re a girl!
You’re a girl with a drinking problem and a burning itch to ride whatever comes your way, be it man, beast or some sort of man-beast hybrid created by a government sponsored scientist for military purposes. The last bit hasn’t happened yet, but you’d be open to it.
And you’re doing pretty well for yourself at it. You’ve fucked your way through everyone you fancied at the rodeo and most of the people you saw in the crowd who looked pretty or interesting, and you’ve ridden damn near everything with hooves between here and San Antonio, regardless of where here is.
But there remains one beast which has broken every rider, one creature which threatens your supremacy, and it resides in a small town in Iowa that you just happened to have stopped in for your latest show. That beast is Reggie, a three year old bull who still has his pecker and has an attitude to match.
Reggie has thrown every rider he’s ever had in under a minute flat. You’ve had it said that you can ride anything for two minutes at least and get off easy as if it was just what you were wantin’ to do. Reggie’s gonna put that to the test today.
You’ll mount him while he still rests in his pen to the cheers of the crowd. Most of them won’t know your name. They won’t know you’re a girl. They’ll have only the vaguest idea of you as a person, no sense of the curves underneath your chaps and flannel, the cords of muscle running up your arms through your shoulders and into your neck. They won’t even be able to see your hair. It’ll be tucked under your hat for the ride. They’ll just be there waiting to see something go wrong.
That’ll change the moment the gate opens and Reggie starts bucking. He’ll throw your hat from you right away, casting it clear across the grounds, but no one will notice. They’ll all be staring at you.
When the hat flies off your hair will fly out from under it, cascading in amber waves across your shoulders and bouncing with each hurling effort of the bull’s shoulders. The crowd will hold their breath as they watch you hold on for dear life. You’ll do it with an ease and grace that makes it seem like you were in cahoots with the bull the whole time, even though he’ll be kicking wildly as he ever has. You’ll look like a dancer there, and even though they can’t see your tits there won’t be a man, woman or child who won’t fall in love with you as you and Reggie play your parts.
At around a minute and fifty seconds, long after anyone thought you’d still be up, long after you thought you’d still be up, your arms will be aching. Your legs will feel like they’re fused around Reggie, and your hand will slip. You’ll drop the pommel and in a moment of despair hurl headfirst around Reggie’s neck.
You’ll catch yourself, throwing your arms around him and putting your head under his, tucking your legs around his neck. You’ll be small, smaller than most riders, and that means that he won’t be able to trample you the way he would a bigger man. So instead he’ll twitch and stumble for a few seconds before he lets himself be born to the ground by your weight around his neck.
When he finally settles, when he grows still beneath you, you’ll untangle yourself from him. You’ll give Reggie a pat on the neck like he just laid you okay and you’ll walk out of the ring without a word or a gesture to the crowd. They’ll keep quiet the whole time you’re walking out, just watching in wonder. When you leave they’ll explode into applause, but you won’t turn around. You’ll already be heading back to your trailer, back to a cup of tea, a warm shower and some ice packs.
Congratulations Rodeo Sam!
You’re a girl with a drinking problem and a burning itch to ride whatever comes your way, be it man, beast or some sort of man-beast hybrid created by a government sponsored scientist for military purposes. The last bit hasn’t happened yet, but you’d be open to it.
And you’re doing pretty well for yourself at it. You’ve fucked your way through everyone you fancied at the rodeo and most of the people you saw in the crowd who looked pretty or interesting, and you’ve ridden damn near everything with hooves between here and San Antonio, regardless of where here is.
But there remains one beast which has broken every rider, one creature which threatens your supremacy, and it resides in a small town in Iowa that you just happened to have stopped in for your latest show. That beast is Reggie, a three year old bull who still has his pecker and has an attitude to match.
Reggie has thrown every rider he’s ever had in under a minute flat. You’ve had it said that you can ride anything for two minutes at least and get off easy as if it was just what you were wantin’ to do. Reggie’s gonna put that to the test today.
You’ll mount him while he still rests in his pen to the cheers of the crowd. Most of them won’t know your name. They won’t know you’re a girl. They’ll have only the vaguest idea of you as a person, no sense of the curves underneath your chaps and flannel, the cords of muscle running up your arms through your shoulders and into your neck. They won’t even be able to see your hair. It’ll be tucked under your hat for the ride. They’ll just be there waiting to see something go wrong.
That’ll change the moment the gate opens and Reggie starts bucking. He’ll throw your hat from you right away, casting it clear across the grounds, but no one will notice. They’ll all be staring at you.
When the hat flies off your hair will fly out from under it, cascading in amber waves across your shoulders and bouncing with each hurling effort of the bull’s shoulders. The crowd will hold their breath as they watch you hold on for dear life. You’ll do it with an ease and grace that makes it seem like you were in cahoots with the bull the whole time, even though he’ll be kicking wildly as he ever has. You’ll look like a dancer there, and even though they can’t see your tits there won’t be a man, woman or child who won’t fall in love with you as you and Reggie play your parts.
At around a minute and fifty seconds, long after anyone thought you’d still be up, long after you thought you’d still be up, your arms will be aching. Your legs will feel like they’re fused around Reggie, and your hand will slip. You’ll drop the pommel and in a moment of despair hurl headfirst around Reggie’s neck.
You’ll catch yourself, throwing your arms around him and putting your head under his, tucking your legs around his neck. You’ll be small, smaller than most riders, and that means that he won’t be able to trample you the way he would a bigger man. So instead he’ll twitch and stumble for a few seconds before he lets himself be born to the ground by your weight around his neck.
When he finally settles, when he grows still beneath you, you’ll untangle yourself from him. You’ll give Reggie a pat on the neck like he just laid you okay and you’ll walk out of the ring without a word or a gesture to the crowd. They’ll keep quiet the whole time you’re walking out, just watching in wonder. When you leave they’ll explode into applause, but you won’t turn around. You’ll already be heading back to your trailer, back to a cup of tea, a warm shower and some ice packs.
Congratulations Rodeo Sam!
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Congratulations on Finding a Way More Practical Use for a Golf Club!
You’re a loan shark and today you’re going to try to collect money from a wealthy dude while he’s playing golf.
“This game is fucking retarded!” you’ll tell your partner as he shakes down the wealthy dude.
“Yeah!” your partner will shout, passing you one of the strange metal clubs that the wealthy dude was using to play his stupid little faggot game.
“It’s quite nuanced,” the wealthy dude will say, his upper lip quivering while he speaks. You’ll know that means he’s scared, which means it’s time to do your job.
“You ah!” you’ll shout at the wealthy dude as you strike out with the metal club at his legs. He’ll shriek in pain and collapse as you strike him, falling to the ground. At this point your sociopath training will kick in and you’ll follow through, viciously beating the wealthy dude until he loses consciousness.
“That seemed pretty good,” your partner will say. You’ll nod, looking approvingly at the wealthy dude’s club. Then you’ll notice he had a whole fucking bag of them just sitting next to him, big metal clubs he never even thought to use to defend himself.
“Fucking score!” you’ll say, offering up your hand to your partner to high five. He’ll slap your palm and the two of you will leave the golf course carrying the new implements of your trade, which you’ll call faggywackers, a slightly gayer name than the one most people use.
Congratulations on Finding a Way More Practical Use for a Golf Club!
“This game is fucking retarded!” you’ll tell your partner as he shakes down the wealthy dude.
“Yeah!” your partner will shout, passing you one of the strange metal clubs that the wealthy dude was using to play his stupid little faggot game.
“It’s quite nuanced,” the wealthy dude will say, his upper lip quivering while he speaks. You’ll know that means he’s scared, which means it’s time to do your job.
“You ah!” you’ll shout at the wealthy dude as you strike out with the metal club at his legs. He’ll shriek in pain and collapse as you strike him, falling to the ground. At this point your sociopath training will kick in and you’ll follow through, viciously beating the wealthy dude until he loses consciousness.
“That seemed pretty good,” your partner will say. You’ll nod, looking approvingly at the wealthy dude’s club. Then you’ll notice he had a whole fucking bag of them just sitting next to him, big metal clubs he never even thought to use to defend himself.
“Fucking score!” you’ll say, offering up your hand to your partner to high five. He’ll slap your palm and the two of you will leave the golf course carrying the new implements of your trade, which you’ll call faggywackers, a slightly gayer name than the one most people use.
Congratulations on Finding a Way More Practical Use for a Golf Club!
Monday, July 11, 2011
Congratulations on Muffling the Screams!
You won’t believe your good fortune when you get her into your apartment. She’ll be so beautiful, so graceful. She’ll seem to float a foot over the ground, her eyes twinkling at the sight of your vintage Zep poster.
“Zep rules!” she’ll slur into your ear, licking inside of it as she speaks.
“I know!” you’ll mumble into her open mouth, your breath blowing boozy gales down her throat. She’ll smile back, her jaws gaping.
“Let’s fuck,” she’ll manage to moan and mumble into your neck.
You’ll put your fist up in the air and lead her, or drag her depending on your perspective, to your bedroom. Once there you’ll strip off her panties, leaving the rest of her clothes on, and shove your semi-hard dick into her dry vagina.
Sex will be going about as well as it usually does for you (unpleasantly) when she’ll start screaming out of the blue. At first you’ll assume it’s some sort of night terror scenario and that she’s living through some previous traumatic quasi rape experience. But when you actually look at her face you’ll see that she’s looking up at you, her mouth twisted in what could potentially be called pleasure.
As you ineptly gyrate it’ll be readily clear that this is just how she expresses pleasure. She’ll purse her lips at you, claw at your chest with one hand and once hold up her hand to receive a high five, all the while making that horrible keening sound she must’ve learned from some kind of weird Soviet porn.
The two of you will reach a compromise when, after seven minutes of unsatisfying and increasingly awkward sex, you hold a pillow over her head and keep thrusting away.
Congratulations on Muffling the Screams!
“Zep rules!” she’ll slur into your ear, licking inside of it as she speaks.
“I know!” you’ll mumble into her open mouth, your breath blowing boozy gales down her throat. She’ll smile back, her jaws gaping.
“Let’s fuck,” she’ll manage to moan and mumble into your neck.
You’ll put your fist up in the air and lead her, or drag her depending on your perspective, to your bedroom. Once there you’ll strip off her panties, leaving the rest of her clothes on, and shove your semi-hard dick into her dry vagina.
Sex will be going about as well as it usually does for you (unpleasantly) when she’ll start screaming out of the blue. At first you’ll assume it’s some sort of night terror scenario and that she’s living through some previous traumatic quasi rape experience. But when you actually look at her face you’ll see that she’s looking up at you, her mouth twisted in what could potentially be called pleasure.
As you ineptly gyrate it’ll be readily clear that this is just how she expresses pleasure. She’ll purse her lips at you, claw at your chest with one hand and once hold up her hand to receive a high five, all the while making that horrible keening sound she must’ve learned from some kind of weird Soviet porn.
The two of you will reach a compromise when, after seven minutes of unsatisfying and increasingly awkward sex, you hold a pillow over her head and keep thrusting away.
Congratulations on Muffling the Screams!
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Super Nerd Sundays Presents: MoH? More Like Meh.
Medal of Honor’s reboot is bad. It’s one of the rare games that makes me want to re-write my genocidal shooter piece to account for the bodycount per soldier in this game. I haven’t been keeping close track, but I’m pretty sure I already killed more people in Medal of Honor than I did as a time controlling super-soldier in Fear 3. If this is a realistic portrayal of war, as it supposes itself to be, it’s amazing that anyone is left alive in Afghanistan to still fight. Apparently the bog standard Ranger insertion involves dozens of people dying as they run off of helicopters while a group of four Rangers rack up a body count in the thousands to make up for their lackluster entrance. These enemies are relentless, fearless, and self-less, constantly throwing themselves at me and my group of apparently invincible co-soldiers regardless of how inane the objective we’re holding really is. Although perhaps the partially destroyed mud hut I was defending was a key tactical resource which, if left in American hands, will almost certainly win us the war in Afghanistan.
All of this would be enough to make Medal of Honor a game bad, but it kicks it up a notch by throwing in some pretty weird sexism. Every character is either a man or a literal object upon whom ideas of traditional masculine and feminine roles are projected. In the aforementioned mission as a Ranger, perplexingly named Dante Adams in a half hearted attempt to realistically represent the makeup of our armed forces, a woman flying an Apache saves your group of Rangers from the outlandish standoff I outlined above. Then the Rangers extol her graces while she, as a woman, displays her disinterest and inability to understand flirting. Women, right?! Luckily a man steps in to clear things up for her: the Apache pilot who just killed dozens of enemies to save her comrades just doesn’t understand warriors. You know what he means, ladies.
Then I’m placed in control of another male character, just in case I be asked to relate to a woman who fights in our wars, who works with the aforementioned female Apache pilot. I then am placed behind what appears to be a magic camera which shifts inexplicably, regardless of location, to various screens where I can navigate finite spaces to kill enemies who cannot shoot back at me. This is that “shooter without the challenge” bit I mentioned before. There’s a little bit of risk in another scene, where I’m asked to protect the silly female Apache pilot, who almost get shot down (probably because of some vaginal issue that distracted her during combat) and to top it all off my name is Brad during this sequence. It’s offensive on nearly every level. I mean, who the fuck is named Brad?
Medal of Honor is the sort of game that sociologists want to make Mass Effect, Grand Theft Auto and Dragon Age into. Childish, ignorant of the larger factors surrounding the story it’s attempting to tell, poorly designed and so aggrandizing of violence that it makes Call of Duty 6 look careful and considered in its portrayal of terrorism. You don’t need a psych degree to see the seams in its structure, the manner in which it moves from masculine image to masculine image, occasionally accompanying these images with little captions that make things sound a little more impressive just in case the fact that you’re playing a game where you shoot an endless supply of people in the face didn’t make you feel empowered enough. You’ll also spend the bulk of the game as what is called a “Tier 1 AFO.” I’ve been too lazy to Wiki that acronym but I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to make me impressed. Tier 1 sounds like it might be the highest tier there is. Or the lowest, I’m not sure. If it’s related to beard growing, judging by my military teammate’s impressive facial hair, I’m guessing it’s the highest.
In fact, the nicest thing I can say about Medal of Honor is its beards. It has some of the best beard technology I’ve seen in recent memory. Beards are bushy, they’re thick, they’re full and they’re well rendered. Beards look better than the awkward plastic cast of characters I’m asked to sympathize with during each drawn out, unfortunate cutscene. And the beards make more sense – they’re beards, they grew, and someone’s face was cold, so here they are. There’s a logical point of origin, there’s a logical purpose, and a logical outcome to the entire beard process. I wish I could say the rest for Medal of Honor’s storytelling.
But that’s low hanging fruit. If I was going to knock every game with a bad story I wouldn’t be able to love games like Painkiller, with delightfully absurd stories that feature devil bikers assaulting me on my journey into Hell to recover Eve from the Devil so I can ascend to heaven and chill out with my wife (true story!). What makes Medal of Honor’s story bad is how serious it is, how dedicated to its own fiction it seems and how much it wants to recast the United States as an underdog in Afghanistan, which, let’s face it, is a war which is both difficult to talk about and which makes us reconsider who we are in a national stage. If you want to make a game about patting yourself on the back, you don’t want to set it in Afghanistan. And it’s offensive how thoroughly they from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s (surprisingly good) story about the heartless nature of war without ever approaching the vicious poignancy that Modern Warfare managed.
All of this could be forgiven in a game with competently executed shooting. But Medal of Honor doesn’t even get that right. Instead it is populated by a handful of toothless guns which fit into traditional roles. You’ll have a shotgun, a few assault rifles, two sniper rifles (one for good guys and one for bad guys) and some machine guns that work more or less like assault rifles and are mostly indistinguishable from each other. There’s no personality to any of the guns, and the options for the arsenal in the single player game are pretty limited. You’ll occasionally have a chance to pick up an enemy weapon, but since your default guns have unlimited ammo so long as you ask your teammates nicely there’s never any reason to use any of the AKs you see generic terrorists dropping left and right.
Occasionally you’ll be asked to use special weapons like laser pointers that make missiles and big bullets fall from the sky, which is supposed to mimic the JSOP program’s impact on warfare. My personal favorite moment involving these “joint munitions” scripted sequences so far came when I had to suppress a machine gun nest in order to allow my allies to throw a smoke grenade into said nest so that an airstrike could remove it. The notion of just using a normal grenade, or marking our own position so that we could be avoided never occurred to my squad-mates, which is just as well because I’m pretty sure I killed the guy manning that machine gun before the bombs ever hit him during the process of firing something like a thousand fucking bullets at him.
This sort of comical excess and convoluted force is clearly intended to ape Modern Warfare’s famed C-130 scene, as is the camera-switching Apache bit. It’s supposed to make you feel like you’re part of a bigger army doing big army stuff, but the end result is a laughable design touch that fails at making any sort of point and just isn’t very fun compared to other things I could be doing. With invulnerable generic teammates, unlimited ammunition and constantly regenerating health seeing me through every conflict, I can just barely force myself to scrape by each level and view a brief missive about life behind the front lines to see how a white man in a suit who I think is some sort of general is ruining the war for a black man in a uniform who is definitely some sort of colonel. And then I’m hurled into a battle against an endless stream of terrorists who I assume are hell-bent on destroying America and her delicious freedom pies. The end result is some of the most generic gameplay and dialogue that I’ve had the displeasure of engaging over the last few months. It’s clear that Medal of Honor wants to ape other, better games: it recalls Battlefield 2, which bursted with personality, and Modern Warfare in many of its design choices. But it can’t manage any of the fun that Battlefield 2 brought to bear and it lacks Modern Warfare’s fine, self aware polish. In the end there’s very little to recommend it as a game. The only value I can find in it, aside from its brevity, is as a post-modern argument against war. After all, if war is anything like the Medal of Honor reboot it is good that it should be so terrible, lest we grow fond of it.
All of this would be enough to make Medal of Honor a game bad, but it kicks it up a notch by throwing in some pretty weird sexism. Every character is either a man or a literal object upon whom ideas of traditional masculine and feminine roles are projected. In the aforementioned mission as a Ranger, perplexingly named Dante Adams in a half hearted attempt to realistically represent the makeup of our armed forces, a woman flying an Apache saves your group of Rangers from the outlandish standoff I outlined above. Then the Rangers extol her graces while she, as a woman, displays her disinterest and inability to understand flirting. Women, right?! Luckily a man steps in to clear things up for her: the Apache pilot who just killed dozens of enemies to save her comrades just doesn’t understand warriors. You know what he means, ladies.
Then I’m placed in control of another male character, just in case I be asked to relate to a woman who fights in our wars, who works with the aforementioned female Apache pilot. I then am placed behind what appears to be a magic camera which shifts inexplicably, regardless of location, to various screens where I can navigate finite spaces to kill enemies who cannot shoot back at me. This is that “shooter without the challenge” bit I mentioned before. There’s a little bit of risk in another scene, where I’m asked to protect the silly female Apache pilot, who almost get shot down (probably because of some vaginal issue that distracted her during combat) and to top it all off my name is Brad during this sequence. It’s offensive on nearly every level. I mean, who the fuck is named Brad?
Medal of Honor is the sort of game that sociologists want to make Mass Effect, Grand Theft Auto and Dragon Age into. Childish, ignorant of the larger factors surrounding the story it’s attempting to tell, poorly designed and so aggrandizing of violence that it makes Call of Duty 6 look careful and considered in its portrayal of terrorism. You don’t need a psych degree to see the seams in its structure, the manner in which it moves from masculine image to masculine image, occasionally accompanying these images with little captions that make things sound a little more impressive just in case the fact that you’re playing a game where you shoot an endless supply of people in the face didn’t make you feel empowered enough. You’ll also spend the bulk of the game as what is called a “Tier 1 AFO.” I’ve been too lazy to Wiki that acronym but I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to make me impressed. Tier 1 sounds like it might be the highest tier there is. Or the lowest, I’m not sure. If it’s related to beard growing, judging by my military teammate’s impressive facial hair, I’m guessing it’s the highest.
In fact, the nicest thing I can say about Medal of Honor is its beards. It has some of the best beard technology I’ve seen in recent memory. Beards are bushy, they’re thick, they’re full and they’re well rendered. Beards look better than the awkward plastic cast of characters I’m asked to sympathize with during each drawn out, unfortunate cutscene. And the beards make more sense – they’re beards, they grew, and someone’s face was cold, so here they are. There’s a logical point of origin, there’s a logical purpose, and a logical outcome to the entire beard process. I wish I could say the rest for Medal of Honor’s storytelling.
But that’s low hanging fruit. If I was going to knock every game with a bad story I wouldn’t be able to love games like Painkiller, with delightfully absurd stories that feature devil bikers assaulting me on my journey into Hell to recover Eve from the Devil so I can ascend to heaven and chill out with my wife (true story!). What makes Medal of Honor’s story bad is how serious it is, how dedicated to its own fiction it seems and how much it wants to recast the United States as an underdog in Afghanistan, which, let’s face it, is a war which is both difficult to talk about and which makes us reconsider who we are in a national stage. If you want to make a game about patting yourself on the back, you don’t want to set it in Afghanistan. And it’s offensive how thoroughly they from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s (surprisingly good) story about the heartless nature of war without ever approaching the vicious poignancy that Modern Warfare managed.
All of this could be forgiven in a game with competently executed shooting. But Medal of Honor doesn’t even get that right. Instead it is populated by a handful of toothless guns which fit into traditional roles. You’ll have a shotgun, a few assault rifles, two sniper rifles (one for good guys and one for bad guys) and some machine guns that work more or less like assault rifles and are mostly indistinguishable from each other. There’s no personality to any of the guns, and the options for the arsenal in the single player game are pretty limited. You’ll occasionally have a chance to pick up an enemy weapon, but since your default guns have unlimited ammo so long as you ask your teammates nicely there’s never any reason to use any of the AKs you see generic terrorists dropping left and right.
Occasionally you’ll be asked to use special weapons like laser pointers that make missiles and big bullets fall from the sky, which is supposed to mimic the JSOP program’s impact on warfare. My personal favorite moment involving these “joint munitions” scripted sequences so far came when I had to suppress a machine gun nest in order to allow my allies to throw a smoke grenade into said nest so that an airstrike could remove it. The notion of just using a normal grenade, or marking our own position so that we could be avoided never occurred to my squad-mates, which is just as well because I’m pretty sure I killed the guy manning that machine gun before the bombs ever hit him during the process of firing something like a thousand fucking bullets at him.
This sort of comical excess and convoluted force is clearly intended to ape Modern Warfare’s famed C-130 scene, as is the camera-switching Apache bit. It’s supposed to make you feel like you’re part of a bigger army doing big army stuff, but the end result is a laughable design touch that fails at making any sort of point and just isn’t very fun compared to other things I could be doing. With invulnerable generic teammates, unlimited ammunition and constantly regenerating health seeing me through every conflict, I can just barely force myself to scrape by each level and view a brief missive about life behind the front lines to see how a white man in a suit who I think is some sort of general is ruining the war for a black man in a uniform who is definitely some sort of colonel. And then I’m hurled into a battle against an endless stream of terrorists who I assume are hell-bent on destroying America and her delicious freedom pies. The end result is some of the most generic gameplay and dialogue that I’ve had the displeasure of engaging over the last few months. It’s clear that Medal of Honor wants to ape other, better games: it recalls Battlefield 2, which bursted with personality, and Modern Warfare in many of its design choices. But it can’t manage any of the fun that Battlefield 2 brought to bear and it lacks Modern Warfare’s fine, self aware polish. In the end there’s very little to recommend it as a game. The only value I can find in it, aside from its brevity, is as a post-modern argument against war. After all, if war is anything like the Medal of Honor reboot it is good that it should be so terrible, lest we grow fond of it.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Congratulations Clumsy Bow Hunter!
Most people would be embarrassed if they did what you’re about to do. But you won’t be. Not a smidge. Because this is going to get you in the paper, and that’s all you’ve ever really wanted.
Today, while bow hunting, you’re going to be sighting on a big stag, a majestic beast standing woods without a care in the world. You’ll feel as if you’re trespassing just looking at him, and this feeling that you’re committing a crime against nature just by trying to kill this wondrous creature.
This feeling will prove so distracting that it will lead to you fall upon your own bow and arrow, impaling yourself in the stomach. You’ll be in okay shape, as much as you can be at least. You’ll be able to call 9-1-1 and within forty minutes a team of paramedics will have you on a gurney and out of the woods. You’ll be fine and you’ll have a scar that makes it look like you had gastric bypass surgery.
You’ll get in the paper a few days later under the headline “Local Plant Rapist Impales Self on Own Arrow!”
Congratulations Clumsy Bow Hunter!
Today, while bow hunting, you’re going to be sighting on a big stag, a majestic beast standing woods without a care in the world. You’ll feel as if you’re trespassing just looking at him, and this feeling that you’re committing a crime against nature just by trying to kill this wondrous creature.
This feeling will prove so distracting that it will lead to you fall upon your own bow and arrow, impaling yourself in the stomach. You’ll be in okay shape, as much as you can be at least. You’ll be able to call 9-1-1 and within forty minutes a team of paramedics will have you on a gurney and out of the woods. You’ll be fine and you’ll have a scar that makes it look like you had gastric bypass surgery.
You’ll get in the paper a few days later under the headline “Local Plant Rapist Impales Self on Own Arrow!”
Congratulations Clumsy Bow Hunter!
Friday, July 8, 2011
Congratulations Pasta Master!
Many aspire to the rank of pasta master, and many fail. But today you’re going to attain it.
Your day will begin with you and another one of your master’s students, Greg Arroyo, a second generation Mexican immigrant with a natural penchant for cooking, being singled out for the Duel of Pasta Masters.
The other students will be chattering before the announcement comes, but once they hear just what’s going down they’ll all fall silent. You and Greg will stand and bow at one another and the Pasta Master will list the rules which, by now, you’ll all know by heart.
“Each of you will be given one kind of pasta and four ingredients. You’ll be forced to make an incredible sauce with those four ingredients. And salt. For Salt is the Foundation of All Great Pasta.”
“And we are the Builders,” your class will chant in response. The Pasta Master will nod in approval and then he’ll ring his giant and totally culturally I nappropriate gong and the contest will begin.
You and Greg will discover that your ingredients are sour cream, whole black peppercorns, pepperocinni and tomatoes, an easy mix. You’ll both set about creating vegetarian cream sauces with a strong tomato spice to them. But you and Greg will come from different schools of thought.
See, Greg’s Mexican upbringing will have edified him in the use of salt. He’ll believe that it is something to be applied liberally and constantly, something that draws out the inner beauty of any food.
But you’ll have travelled extensively, especially in China, where brine is considered acceptable. This exposure to the excesses of salting and spicing things will have given you a less is more approach which will focus on drawing out the natural flavors of ingredients emerge without salt’s sometimes vicious encouragement.
In this case, where sour cream must inevitably form the base of the sauce, that’ll give you an edge over Greg. He’ll salt the living shit out of his sauce. So much that it’ll overpower the sour cream and give the whole mixture a bitter overtone. The pepperocini will languish, and the tomato will add color more than anything else.
But your sauce will pop with the zest of the tomato and the cream, and the pepperocini will give it some kick. It’ll augment the creaminess of the sauce and the combined consistencies of the various ingredients will make it a rich, textured experience where Greg’s sauce will be a blasé mish mash of the various base elements.
And the Pasta Master will know it. He’ll beam at you affectionately and shake his head at Greg, disappointed. Greg will nod grimly in response and pick up his chef’s knife from the table, using it to open his stomach and then stab himself in the throat repeatedly. The students will all look onward silently, fearing that such a fate may befall them one day. But they knew the price when they signed up to become pasta masters, and none of them would hesitate to open their veins if they were told to do so.
Such is your way, your oath, your risk. For truly great pasta cannot exist without risk. And you, newly declared Pasta Master, know this better than most.
Congratulations Pasta Master!
Your day will begin with you and another one of your master’s students, Greg Arroyo, a second generation Mexican immigrant with a natural penchant for cooking, being singled out for the Duel of Pasta Masters.
The other students will be chattering before the announcement comes, but once they hear just what’s going down they’ll all fall silent. You and Greg will stand and bow at one another and the Pasta Master will list the rules which, by now, you’ll all know by heart.
“Each of you will be given one kind of pasta and four ingredients. You’ll be forced to make an incredible sauce with those four ingredients. And salt. For Salt is the Foundation of All Great Pasta.”
“And we are the Builders,” your class will chant in response. The Pasta Master will nod in approval and then he’ll ring his giant and totally culturally I nappropriate gong and the contest will begin.
You and Greg will discover that your ingredients are sour cream, whole black peppercorns, pepperocinni and tomatoes, an easy mix. You’ll both set about creating vegetarian cream sauces with a strong tomato spice to them. But you and Greg will come from different schools of thought.
See, Greg’s Mexican upbringing will have edified him in the use of salt. He’ll believe that it is something to be applied liberally and constantly, something that draws out the inner beauty of any food.
But you’ll have travelled extensively, especially in China, where brine is considered acceptable. This exposure to the excesses of salting and spicing things will have given you a less is more approach which will focus on drawing out the natural flavors of ingredients emerge without salt’s sometimes vicious encouragement.
In this case, where sour cream must inevitably form the base of the sauce, that’ll give you an edge over Greg. He’ll salt the living shit out of his sauce. So much that it’ll overpower the sour cream and give the whole mixture a bitter overtone. The pepperocini will languish, and the tomato will add color more than anything else.
But your sauce will pop with the zest of the tomato and the cream, and the pepperocini will give it some kick. It’ll augment the creaminess of the sauce and the combined consistencies of the various ingredients will make it a rich, textured experience where Greg’s sauce will be a blasé mish mash of the various base elements.
And the Pasta Master will know it. He’ll beam at you affectionately and shake his head at Greg, disappointed. Greg will nod grimly in response and pick up his chef’s knife from the table, using it to open his stomach and then stab himself in the throat repeatedly. The students will all look onward silently, fearing that such a fate may befall them one day. But they knew the price when they signed up to become pasta masters, and none of them would hesitate to open their veins if they were told to do so.
Such is your way, your oath, your risk. For truly great pasta cannot exist without risk. And you, newly declared Pasta Master, know this better than most.
Congratulations Pasta Master!
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Congratulations Cat Abortion Doctor!
The same dogs who tried to kill that dogcatcher the other day? Well just in case anyone felt any sympathy for them we just wanted to let all of our readers know today that those same dogs actually fund a number of abortion clinics for cats.
These aren’t state funded, Obama-bortion clinics where people who want abortions get them in a healthy, sane and safe fashion. No, this is a crazy back-alley just what Republicans want abortion clinic where cats are strapped to tables and forced to abort their babies.
You’re the son of a bitch who runs this particular clinic. You’re an amoral douche who worked for years as a statistician who was tracking the population growth of cats and you eventually decided to take a stand against their rampant growth.
So here you are, in this back alley cat abortion clinic, surrounded by dogs who have brought in the latest batch of cats to get abortions. It’ll be a sorry sight, but it’ll be one that gives you hope. Because in your mind, cats are the cancer that will rot society from the inside out, and if we don’t do something about them they’ll destroy our whole country.
Unfortunately a band of right-wing activist acts will disagree. And after months of planning they’ll choose this day, this moment, as you finish this sentence, to burst into your office and end your reign of terror once and for all.
A cat wearing a vest made of plastic explosives will jauntily trot into your office at that point and detonate herself, killing you, most of the dogs inside and almost all of the cats you were giving unsafe animal abortions to. She’ll have been funded, trained and transported to your office by a band of religious fundamentalist cats who wanted to see you die.
We’d love to say that this is a complicated issue, but the only thing we actually take issue with here is the cat’s politics. She makes us a bit uncomfortable in terms of how conservative she was. We think you’re an asshole and you deserved to die, no question there.
Congratulations Cat Abortion Doctor!
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Congratulations Dog Catcher!
You’ll be out today, just doing your job, when a car will pull up next to you.
You’ll look to the side and, sure enough, dogs will be driving the car. One of them will have a gun pointed at you, an old revolver with a nice, big heavy barrel.
“Fucking animals!” you’ll shout at you dive out of your dog-catching truck to the hood of the parked car next to it. The dog will fire the gun as best he can, which won’t be very well, while you run into a yard, where his friends could easily run you down if they weren’t trying to drive a car.
“Dogs suck!” you’ll shout at them as they try to escape their seatbelts, proving once and for all the superiority of man over beast.
Congratulations Dog Catcher!
You’ll look to the side and, sure enough, dogs will be driving the car. One of them will have a gun pointed at you, an old revolver with a nice, big heavy barrel.
“Fucking animals!” you’ll shout at you dive out of your dog-catching truck to the hood of the parked car next to it. The dog will fire the gun as best he can, which won’t be very well, while you run into a yard, where his friends could easily run you down if they weren’t trying to drive a car.
“Dogs suck!” you’ll shout at them as they try to escape their seatbelts, proving once and for all the superiority of man over beast.
Congratulations Dog Catcher!
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Congratulations Night Terror Sufferer!
You’ll awake, as you always do, with your heart pounding, your lungs screaming. You’ll want to shout but you’ll be unable to make a noise, struggling out of your sheets to see the ceiling of your apartment suspended above you, off white turned gray in the darkness.
You’ll look around, the vaguely oppressive horror of whatever force awoke you pushing in around you. It’ll be miserable, a feeling that the world is going to end without knowing how or why. The sense of inevitability will be unbearable.
You’ll roll over to check your cell phone. It’ll read three AM. You’ll open the contact list and flip through the names you think you’d want to call, to talk to, but after a moment’s consideration you’ll close it. They’ll all be asleep, you’ll think to yourself. I should be asleep.
But you won’t be able to rest. You’ll feel uneasy, deeply uneasy. When you think about why your mind will shy away from the facts of the matter, drifting to lovers you’ve lost, people you’ve stopped speaking to. You’ll want to cry, but tears won’t come. It will be a unique sort of misery.
You’ll lay there, knowing you should get up, but you won’t be able to. And when you finally move to you’ll notice a dark shape hovering over your bed. It’ll be massive in scale, its skin barbed and black as night. The only light which will cast from its form will be a pair of glowing red slits, the definition of evil eyes.
“You’re not alone,” the creature will grumble, its voice emerging from somewhere far, far below its chest.
Panicking, you’ll switch the light on, your pulse racing. You’ll know that this could be your last moment, the last night you ever awake panicking in the middle of the night, and you’ll want to see the face of whatever kills you.
The light will cast shadows about the room, making the creature look ten feet tall. And the creature will do its part, standing there with grim purpose, its face unreadable in the low light, its form almost incomprehensible to the human mind.
“Craig?” you’ll mumble.
The creature will nod. It’ll be Craig, the monster that used to hide in your closet when you were young. He’ll be standing there at the end of the bed with the horrifying expression he always used to wear when he was the ill defined existential horror that you feared in the night.
“What’s wrong, buddy?” he’ll grumble, sitting down on the side of your bed.
You’ll spill out your feelings to him then. You’ll tell him of the sense of helplessness that has been occupying your thoughts the last few months. You’ll tell him of your fears of dying alone, how you’ve been losing sleep over the pointlessness of your work. You’ll tell him of the feeling that you’ve accomplished nothing in your life, the knowledge that your death will be just as silly and anticlimactic as your life inevitably.
He’ll sit there and hold your hand, listening to you, which is really all you needed. Someone to make you feel like you really existed. Like you counted in the world, the way Craig did, ever night for a decade and a half, making you feel that the universe itself was attempting to destroy you.
He’ll make you feel free.
Congratulations Night Terror Sufferer!
You’ll look around, the vaguely oppressive horror of whatever force awoke you pushing in around you. It’ll be miserable, a feeling that the world is going to end without knowing how or why. The sense of inevitability will be unbearable.
You’ll roll over to check your cell phone. It’ll read three AM. You’ll open the contact list and flip through the names you think you’d want to call, to talk to, but after a moment’s consideration you’ll close it. They’ll all be asleep, you’ll think to yourself. I should be asleep.
But you won’t be able to rest. You’ll feel uneasy, deeply uneasy. When you think about why your mind will shy away from the facts of the matter, drifting to lovers you’ve lost, people you’ve stopped speaking to. You’ll want to cry, but tears won’t come. It will be a unique sort of misery.
You’ll lay there, knowing you should get up, but you won’t be able to. And when you finally move to you’ll notice a dark shape hovering over your bed. It’ll be massive in scale, its skin barbed and black as night. The only light which will cast from its form will be a pair of glowing red slits, the definition of evil eyes.
“You’re not alone,” the creature will grumble, its voice emerging from somewhere far, far below its chest.
Panicking, you’ll switch the light on, your pulse racing. You’ll know that this could be your last moment, the last night you ever awake panicking in the middle of the night, and you’ll want to see the face of whatever kills you.
The light will cast shadows about the room, making the creature look ten feet tall. And the creature will do its part, standing there with grim purpose, its face unreadable in the low light, its form almost incomprehensible to the human mind.
“Craig?” you’ll mumble.
The creature will nod. It’ll be Craig, the monster that used to hide in your closet when you were young. He’ll be standing there at the end of the bed with the horrifying expression he always used to wear when he was the ill defined existential horror that you feared in the night.
“What’s wrong, buddy?” he’ll grumble, sitting down on the side of your bed.
You’ll spill out your feelings to him then. You’ll tell him of the sense of helplessness that has been occupying your thoughts the last few months. You’ll tell him of your fears of dying alone, how you’ve been losing sleep over the pointlessness of your work. You’ll tell him of the feeling that you’ve accomplished nothing in your life, the knowledge that your death will be just as silly and anticlimactic as your life inevitably.
He’ll sit there and hold your hand, listening to you, which is really all you needed. Someone to make you feel like you really existed. Like you counted in the world, the way Craig did, ever night for a decade and a half, making you feel that the universe itself was attempting to destroy you.
He’ll make you feel free.
Congratulations Night Terror Sufferer!
Monday, July 4, 2011
Congratulations Birthday Girl!
You’re an eight year old girl and today’s your birthday.
You’re going to get the works today, let me tell you. You’re going to get a pony and a clown and all that shit that we understand little girls like but have never cared enough to actually check if you really do. You’ll get presents, most of which we assume are trendy dolls or maybe i-Pads. As we mentioned earlier, we don’t keep up with little girl shit.
It’s going to be great, or so we understand, right up until a black Mercedes pulls up outside your house. The window will roll down and a mountain of a man will slip out of the window holding a gun. He’ll point it at your father and shout “This is what happens when you turn state!”
Then he’ll shoot your dad with like, a dozen bullets. You’ll scream:
“No! Daddy!”
But the sound of fireworks in the surrounding neighborhood will drown out both your cries and the gunfire.
It is on this day that you’ll swear your non-sensical twin oaths: to destroy America and to destroy organized crime in America. You’ll make it to about twenty percent on one and fifty percent on the other, but that’s a story for another day.
Congratulations Birthday Girl!
You’re going to get the works today, let me tell you. You’re going to get a pony and a clown and all that shit that we understand little girls like but have never cared enough to actually check if you really do. You’ll get presents, most of which we assume are trendy dolls or maybe i-Pads. As we mentioned earlier, we don’t keep up with little girl shit.
It’s going to be great, or so we understand, right up until a black Mercedes pulls up outside your house. The window will roll down and a mountain of a man will slip out of the window holding a gun. He’ll point it at your father and shout “This is what happens when you turn state!”
Then he’ll shoot your dad with like, a dozen bullets. You’ll scream:
“No! Daddy!”
But the sound of fireworks in the surrounding neighborhood will drown out both your cries and the gunfire.
It is on this day that you’ll swear your non-sensical twin oaths: to destroy America and to destroy organized crime in America. You’ll make it to about twenty percent on one and fifty percent on the other, but that’s a story for another day.
Congratulations Birthday Girl!
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Super Nerd Sundays Presents: The End of Fear!
The F.E.A.R. series (represented without its absurd capitalization or parenthesis for the rest of this diatribe) has always been near and dear to my heart. I’ve always had a soft spot for the first game ever since I first gave it a try, back in the hey day of amazing demos. Then the second game broke my heart twice: first when it came out and presented itself in a lackluster fashion, then again when I finally bought it as a sale item on Steam and it failed so thoroughly in every way that the first Fear game had succeeded that I lost faith in Monolith’s ability to create games.
The expansions which dotted the landscape leading up to the second game, long affairs that showed the legs that the first game, a franchise about a nameless protagonist killing purposefully generic bad dudes, also never drew me in. I’ve got copies sitting on my computer and I’d generally rather play Spectromancer than give those a whirl most days. Terraria’s old school action holds more appeal for me than beefed up versions of the first Fear game, resplendent with additional weapons I probably won’t use and new enemies that, judging by the demos I played long, long ago, I’ll probably find more frustrating than fun to play against.
All of this was actually kind of convenient, because I thought that Fear 3, or F.3.A.R. as it is being marketed in a noteworthily retarded way, was a game I could totally ignore. Between some absolutely terrible teaser trailers and news that the design was being taken over by Day 1 Studios, best known for Fracture, the ambitious and abjectly shitty game about changing the elevation of terrain in order to do damage. It was an unnecessary sequel to a franchise that started strong, squandered its good will and monetized itself in the most ridiculous way imaginable. Being able to play as a psychic ghost was, on its surface, not very interesting. Can you even shoot a psychic ghost, after all? And what’s the fun of being a superpowered ghost running around without any danger? What’s the point of an FPS without risk? I’d never have cared about the answers to these questions if Fear 3 hadn’t gotten positive buzz from critics I actually pay attention to (one of whom isn’t a critic at all).
The game answers these questions by making them completely irrelevant. You’re never playing an invincible superghost. In fact, the “dual play” option is something players unlock after playing through each level, so being able to play as Paxton Fettel is actually a bit of a reward. And while Paxton does some very, very interesting stuff, such as mind controlling enemies and blasting them with psychic power until their heads explode, the Point Man remains the focus of both the game’s development and the portion of it which most people will end up playing. And this is all bells and whistles for most players. Fear, the core of the Fear series, is about the Point Man and his abilities: holding a limited number of guns, using a limited number of guns and slowing down time pretty much whenever you feel like it.
Fear 2 inexplicably fucked up such a simple and almost perfect formula, pitting you against enemies that played like absolute ass, enemies which never acted up in an interesting way or added any interesting mechanics to the game. Ammo was always thrown at you, regardless of where you were in the game, and the story… Oh, the story. Fear kept its story relatively light, drawing heavily on semiotic themes and building itself around a shared cultural fears and knowledge: the abuse of children by their parents, a fundamentally horrifying trait of our society, and the slow building psychic and technological apocalypse of Akira, which hasn’t lost any of its relevance or canniness over the last two and a half decades. Fear 2 ousted this consistency of theme and tone, replacing these elements with a vague story about guys trying to find a girl who then end up getting surgery and having a bad time recovering from it. It’s set against a city where every set piece is either a red sky or a dark sewer, with one brief segment at the beginning in an underground lab which is apparently supposed to be a mock up of a real-world hospital.
And Fear 2’s shooting mechanics were toothless. Ammunition was abundant, the guns relatively samey and unsatisfying. Even the AI, one of the original Fear’s more impressive features for its time, was lackluster at best. Its sole redeeming moment was a bit of “what the fuck?” inserted as its coda, more of a fascinating comment on the nature of plot structure in video games than an earned conclusion to a well crafted story. On it’s own, Fear 2 was bad. Compared to the first Fear it fixed me with a feeling of betrayal.
It made me believe that Fear 3 would just be more of the same, a deeper descent into the shittiness that Fear 2 hinted at. I looked at Fear 3 with skepticism as a result. I thought I’d pick it up on sale in a few months, just to see what it tried to do with one of my old favorite games. I thought that, if anything, it would just further remove itself from the wonderful play of the original Fear. I was wrong, and I’m quite happy to say so.
It’s not quite right to say that Fear 3 is a return to form. It is, in a way. The guns in Fear 3 all have a great feel to them. They’ve all got their own purpose, their own mechanics and their own ammo, almost always acquired by walking over spare guns found in crates and corpses. And managing that ammo is a bit of a challenge, just as was the case in the original Fear. It’s a matter of making a simple, difficult decision: do you match your ammo use to the guns readily available to you? Or do you hold on to that gun you love and fire sparingly, hoping to find some more rounds around the next corner? And the bullet time is great – perfectly utilized, along with some satisfying, effective iron sights. The levels are well designed and the AI is great and varied perfectly. Enemies will act aggressively or carefully. They’ll dart from behind cover and try to flank you. They’ll even try to flush you from your position with grenades. Even the frustrating ghosts from the first Fear, one of them things I hated about the original game, are back. But there’s a lot of new stuff going on here, a number of new mechanics which contribute to all the goodness that came from the first Fear.
Fear 3 also throws in some of the mechanics Fear 2 brought to the table, things like mech segments. I’m still not crazy about these, but at least Fear 3 makes them part of navigating the level where Fear 2 just made them ways to churn through droves of enemies in short order. These segments have a more polished, puzzle-game feel than the mech segments of old. They’re a break from the combat, a puzzle that involves using a mech to destroy blocking terrain and heavy vehicles instead of hunting for a button. There are also grenade types again, although these are actually useful for a change. Fear 3 had me using flashbangs to blind and flank my opponents, something I’d never have done in Fear 2.
And the cover system is brand new to the series. Fear 2 hinted at the idea of moving benches, medical instruments and desks about a foot to create cover, which was about as useful as my English degree. Fear 3 has added a Rainbow Six style first-person cover system where you pop and fire at enemies after binding yourself to an obstacle. It’s surprisingly fun, and it works well with another new addition borrowed from other games – regenerating health. Normally this isn’t something I like in my horror games (nothing makes a game less tense than being able to sit in a corner until your wounds heal) but with the cover system it works surprisingly well. The fact that enemies will make appropriate use of cover helps too. Certain enemies even get the regenerating health ability that is normally reserved for the player character, as I discovered during one particularly infuriating boss fight. All of this goes towards making a very fun and fresh, if traditional in its roots, corridor shooter.
And as I mentioned earlier, there’s the introduction of Paxton Fettel as a playable character mixing things up. But this is less of a big deal than you’d think – Fettel still plays a lot like the Point Man, especially when he’s inhabiting something else’s body. He’s fun, and he’s new, but he’s not that amazing on his own. I imagine he’ll completely revolutionize any kind of co-op play I get myself into, but I haven’t had a chance to try any yet so that’s pure speculation. I’m more excited at the prospect of co-op, in fact, than I am at the prospect of playing a rage filled psychic ghost.
See, Fear 3’s co-op is kind of unique. And kind of hard to explain. Because it takes all of those mechanics I mentioned earlier and wraps them up in its co-op system by tying them to a point system in the campaign mode. Players are scored based on how well they complete challenges during a level. These can vary from getting a certain number of kills with a certain gun to spending a certain amount of time in cover to shooting enough people in the head. If there’s a mechanic in the game, there’s likely an achievement which will reward you for its proper use. And, in co-op, you’re being scored against your teammate. So while you’re slowing down time and getting headshots your companion might be inhabiting bodies and racking up kills with a possessed enemy. And only one of you can actually win.
Even if you don’t win those points are all going somewhere. Fear 3 has replaced its collectible upgrade system with a leveling system that uses these points. Fans of collectibles don’t despair – collectibles still abound, though now they just reward experience points to diligent players instead of health or slow-mo time. And Fear 3’s levels tier more than just player health and bullet-time. Ammunition storage, special melee attacks and extra grenades have all arrived on my doorstep because I decided to take the time to shoot three people in slow motion during the course of each level. And these upgrades endure between games. Each time you play you’re building up an enduring catalog of bonuses that will manifest themselves in unexpected ways. So far I haven’t seen any that are unique to Fettel, but I’m keeping an eye out.
This would be enough to recommend Fear 3. But apparently Day 1 shocked everyone and decided to also wrap a multiplayer game based on frenemy mechanics in to Fear 3’s package. And they decided to limit the player count to four, an unthinkable thing to do in the present day of game design. I haven’t taken time to actually explore any of these options (my multiplayer gaming of late has mostly been focused on RTSes, and the time I might’ve spent exploring these options on my own has been spent preparing for a cross-country move) but they’ve been generating substantial buzz. I’m not sure they’ll sustain themselves, much in the same way that Assassin’s Creed 2: Broterhood’s revolutionary multiplayer did not, but I’m pleased to see people recognizing new things as new and giving developers credit for trying to do something original.
Which isn’t something I ever thought I’d write about a Fear game. They always were derivative, even at their best. But Day 1 has taken the derivative shooter and made it into something great. They’ve taken mechanics we knew and loved, or maybe hated, and they’ve wrapped them in a shiny new package with things like point scoring, enduring leveling and original takes on what it means to play games competitively and cooperatively. They’ve taken a bullet time mechanic that they refined from the days of Max Payne and they’ve crafted it into part of a larger game about managing resources. They’ve taken the corridor shooter, the first person standard of old, and made it into something fresh. And that alone is worth the fifty dollars you’d spend to give Fear 3 a try.
The expansions which dotted the landscape leading up to the second game, long affairs that showed the legs that the first game, a franchise about a nameless protagonist killing purposefully generic bad dudes, also never drew me in. I’ve got copies sitting on my computer and I’d generally rather play Spectromancer than give those a whirl most days. Terraria’s old school action holds more appeal for me than beefed up versions of the first Fear game, resplendent with additional weapons I probably won’t use and new enemies that, judging by the demos I played long, long ago, I’ll probably find more frustrating than fun to play against.
All of this was actually kind of convenient, because I thought that Fear 3, or F.3.A.R. as it is being marketed in a noteworthily retarded way, was a game I could totally ignore. Between some absolutely terrible teaser trailers and news that the design was being taken over by Day 1 Studios, best known for Fracture, the ambitious and abjectly shitty game about changing the elevation of terrain in order to do damage. It was an unnecessary sequel to a franchise that started strong, squandered its good will and monetized itself in the most ridiculous way imaginable. Being able to play as a psychic ghost was, on its surface, not very interesting. Can you even shoot a psychic ghost, after all? And what’s the fun of being a superpowered ghost running around without any danger? What’s the point of an FPS without risk? I’d never have cared about the answers to these questions if Fear 3 hadn’t gotten positive buzz from critics I actually pay attention to (one of whom isn’t a critic at all).
The game answers these questions by making them completely irrelevant. You’re never playing an invincible superghost. In fact, the “dual play” option is something players unlock after playing through each level, so being able to play as Paxton Fettel is actually a bit of a reward. And while Paxton does some very, very interesting stuff, such as mind controlling enemies and blasting them with psychic power until their heads explode, the Point Man remains the focus of both the game’s development and the portion of it which most people will end up playing. And this is all bells and whistles for most players. Fear, the core of the Fear series, is about the Point Man and his abilities: holding a limited number of guns, using a limited number of guns and slowing down time pretty much whenever you feel like it.
Fear 2 inexplicably fucked up such a simple and almost perfect formula, pitting you against enemies that played like absolute ass, enemies which never acted up in an interesting way or added any interesting mechanics to the game. Ammo was always thrown at you, regardless of where you were in the game, and the story… Oh, the story. Fear kept its story relatively light, drawing heavily on semiotic themes and building itself around a shared cultural fears and knowledge: the abuse of children by their parents, a fundamentally horrifying trait of our society, and the slow building psychic and technological apocalypse of Akira, which hasn’t lost any of its relevance or canniness over the last two and a half decades. Fear 2 ousted this consistency of theme and tone, replacing these elements with a vague story about guys trying to find a girl who then end up getting surgery and having a bad time recovering from it. It’s set against a city where every set piece is either a red sky or a dark sewer, with one brief segment at the beginning in an underground lab which is apparently supposed to be a mock up of a real-world hospital.
And Fear 2’s shooting mechanics were toothless. Ammunition was abundant, the guns relatively samey and unsatisfying. Even the AI, one of the original Fear’s more impressive features for its time, was lackluster at best. Its sole redeeming moment was a bit of “what the fuck?” inserted as its coda, more of a fascinating comment on the nature of plot structure in video games than an earned conclusion to a well crafted story. On it’s own, Fear 2 was bad. Compared to the first Fear it fixed me with a feeling of betrayal.
It made me believe that Fear 3 would just be more of the same, a deeper descent into the shittiness that Fear 2 hinted at. I looked at Fear 3 with skepticism as a result. I thought I’d pick it up on sale in a few months, just to see what it tried to do with one of my old favorite games. I thought that, if anything, it would just further remove itself from the wonderful play of the original Fear. I was wrong, and I’m quite happy to say so.
It’s not quite right to say that Fear 3 is a return to form. It is, in a way. The guns in Fear 3 all have a great feel to them. They’ve all got their own purpose, their own mechanics and their own ammo, almost always acquired by walking over spare guns found in crates and corpses. And managing that ammo is a bit of a challenge, just as was the case in the original Fear. It’s a matter of making a simple, difficult decision: do you match your ammo use to the guns readily available to you? Or do you hold on to that gun you love and fire sparingly, hoping to find some more rounds around the next corner? And the bullet time is great – perfectly utilized, along with some satisfying, effective iron sights. The levels are well designed and the AI is great and varied perfectly. Enemies will act aggressively or carefully. They’ll dart from behind cover and try to flank you. They’ll even try to flush you from your position with grenades. Even the frustrating ghosts from the first Fear, one of them things I hated about the original game, are back. But there’s a lot of new stuff going on here, a number of new mechanics which contribute to all the goodness that came from the first Fear.
Fear 3 also throws in some of the mechanics Fear 2 brought to the table, things like mech segments. I’m still not crazy about these, but at least Fear 3 makes them part of navigating the level where Fear 2 just made them ways to churn through droves of enemies in short order. These segments have a more polished, puzzle-game feel than the mech segments of old. They’re a break from the combat, a puzzle that involves using a mech to destroy blocking terrain and heavy vehicles instead of hunting for a button. There are also grenade types again, although these are actually useful for a change. Fear 3 had me using flashbangs to blind and flank my opponents, something I’d never have done in Fear 2.
And the cover system is brand new to the series. Fear 2 hinted at the idea of moving benches, medical instruments and desks about a foot to create cover, which was about as useful as my English degree. Fear 3 has added a Rainbow Six style first-person cover system where you pop and fire at enemies after binding yourself to an obstacle. It’s surprisingly fun, and it works well with another new addition borrowed from other games – regenerating health. Normally this isn’t something I like in my horror games (nothing makes a game less tense than being able to sit in a corner until your wounds heal) but with the cover system it works surprisingly well. The fact that enemies will make appropriate use of cover helps too. Certain enemies even get the regenerating health ability that is normally reserved for the player character, as I discovered during one particularly infuriating boss fight. All of this goes towards making a very fun and fresh, if traditional in its roots, corridor shooter.
And as I mentioned earlier, there’s the introduction of Paxton Fettel as a playable character mixing things up. But this is less of a big deal than you’d think – Fettel still plays a lot like the Point Man, especially when he’s inhabiting something else’s body. He’s fun, and he’s new, but he’s not that amazing on his own. I imagine he’ll completely revolutionize any kind of co-op play I get myself into, but I haven’t had a chance to try any yet so that’s pure speculation. I’m more excited at the prospect of co-op, in fact, than I am at the prospect of playing a rage filled psychic ghost.
See, Fear 3’s co-op is kind of unique. And kind of hard to explain. Because it takes all of those mechanics I mentioned earlier and wraps them up in its co-op system by tying them to a point system in the campaign mode. Players are scored based on how well they complete challenges during a level. These can vary from getting a certain number of kills with a certain gun to spending a certain amount of time in cover to shooting enough people in the head. If there’s a mechanic in the game, there’s likely an achievement which will reward you for its proper use. And, in co-op, you’re being scored against your teammate. So while you’re slowing down time and getting headshots your companion might be inhabiting bodies and racking up kills with a possessed enemy. And only one of you can actually win.
Even if you don’t win those points are all going somewhere. Fear 3 has replaced its collectible upgrade system with a leveling system that uses these points. Fans of collectibles don’t despair – collectibles still abound, though now they just reward experience points to diligent players instead of health or slow-mo time. And Fear 3’s levels tier more than just player health and bullet-time. Ammunition storage, special melee attacks and extra grenades have all arrived on my doorstep because I decided to take the time to shoot three people in slow motion during the course of each level. And these upgrades endure between games. Each time you play you’re building up an enduring catalog of bonuses that will manifest themselves in unexpected ways. So far I haven’t seen any that are unique to Fettel, but I’m keeping an eye out.
This would be enough to recommend Fear 3. But apparently Day 1 shocked everyone and decided to also wrap a multiplayer game based on frenemy mechanics in to Fear 3’s package. And they decided to limit the player count to four, an unthinkable thing to do in the present day of game design. I haven’t taken time to actually explore any of these options (my multiplayer gaming of late has mostly been focused on RTSes, and the time I might’ve spent exploring these options on my own has been spent preparing for a cross-country move) but they’ve been generating substantial buzz. I’m not sure they’ll sustain themselves, much in the same way that Assassin’s Creed 2: Broterhood’s revolutionary multiplayer did not, but I’m pleased to see people recognizing new things as new and giving developers credit for trying to do something original.
Which isn’t something I ever thought I’d write about a Fear game. They always were derivative, even at their best. But Day 1 has taken the derivative shooter and made it into something great. They’ve taken mechanics we knew and loved, or maybe hated, and they’ve wrapped them in a shiny new package with things like point scoring, enduring leveling and original takes on what it means to play games competitively and cooperatively. They’ve taken a bullet time mechanic that they refined from the days of Max Payne and they’ve crafted it into part of a larger game about managing resources. They’ve taken the corridor shooter, the first person standard of old, and made it into something fresh. And that alone is worth the fifty dollars you’d spend to give Fear 3 a try.
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