Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Congratulations Masturbating Werewolf!


We all know that werewolves love two things: masturbating and napping. When werewolves aren’t transforming, they’re usually sleeping off their last transformation or masturbating furiously so they can build up to another really satisfying nap.

But here’s the downside of it: all that masturbating, paired with all that sweat and hair, means that your apartment smells like shit. And your persistent, almost crippling laziness keeps you from ever cleaning it up or airing it out. You kill a well sized animal once a month to keep yourself from wandering the streets at night in wolf form, murdering innocent people, and you barely even bother cleaning that up. Everything else just adds to it and makes your living situation unbearable to people who aren’t you.

Case in point: tonight you’re going to get a lady back to your “den” as you like to call it. She’ll be just the right mix of desperate and abused. She’ll want your approval and vaguely feel disgusted by you the same way she craves her father’s approval while feeling almost perpetual disgust for him. It’ll be a rough mix for her, but for you it’ll look pretty good.

But the moment she peeks her head into your apartment and catches a whiff of the mix of blood, sweat, semen, feces and fur that pervades it she’ll reflexively cover her mouth and stagger on the threshold.

“Holy shit,” she’ll mumble to herself. “What the fuck happened in there?”

“I’m a werewolf,” you’ll explain. “So I don’t really do normal people things, and there are a lot of odors associated with my lifestyle.”

“That’s a terrible excuse,” she’ll mutter between retches as she backs away from the door.

You won’t have a very good response to that, which is just as well because it’s tough to see you convincing anyone to do anything, let alone to stay in your terrible apartment. After a few minutes of awkward silence broken only by her labored breath, she’ll find the strength to stand and announce:

“I’m gonna go home.”

You’ll shout after her, “Can I get your number?!” but she won’t turn around. She’ll just keep getting smaller and smaller in your hallway, leaving you to go inside and masturbate imagining her on top on your sullied, filth swollen mattress. It’ll be pretty fantastic, even if sex with her would’ve been better.

Congratulations Masturbating Werewolf!

Monday, July 30, 2012

Congratulations Masturbating Businessman!


The fist will slam into the door again and again but you won’t be able to stop: your own fist will be spun into a fine grip around your penis, moving up and down furiously, in a way that has to be audible from outside the stall. You’ll simultaneously feel shame and intense arousal and you’ll wish, just that once, that you could just finish. You’ll pray to come, but instead of coming you’ll exhale loudly and shout at the person trying to beat the stall door down.

“FIVE MORE MINUTES!”

“Fuck you!” the muffled response will come from outside, followed by the crash of a boot on to the door and a leap of steel on steel as the hinges groan against the onslaught. It won’t be long now before the door caves, and the sweat on your face will be forming thicker and steadier than it was before. The salty taste of it will trail down your nose on to your exposed tongue, but even this won’t help you finish. So you’ll pull out your belt with your free hand and, in a practiced motion, loop it around your neck smoothly. Then you’ll pull it taught. Very taught. Your vision will blur right away and the part of your brain keeping you from coming will ebb.

Your tongue will become a far more intense presence in your mouth, a slippery, welcome foreigner covered in mucus and wonderment, and as it grows smoother in your brain your grip on your own member will grow looser and faster and easier and then and then and then

the door will collapse and the man, the man who was kicking in on it, Robert Carnacki, the only African American man in your office will burst in just as you finish, his entry coinciding perfectly with the issue of a thick, demanding stream of jism from your tip which will spurt laconically for a foot and a half before it comes to rest right next to your shoe. You’ll loosen the belt and look up at Robert, who will be standing there perplexed. He’ll take in your sweat stained clothes, your contorted face and your tortured red penis, and he’ll shake his head. There really isn’t much more he could do.

“Heya Robbie,” you’ll pant at him, nodding and waving your lube caked hand in his direction. At this he’ll punch the door and walk away, shouting over his shoulder.

“I’m getting security.”

“Bye bye, Robbie,” you’ll mumble into your collar as he goes.

Later, when security arrives, you’ll try to pull the old “you know how it is” story on them that has worked so often in the past. But not today. You had to be discovered by a BLACK co-worker. The only thing that would make it worse would be being discovered by a female co-worker. “There’ll be no coming back from this,” the Russian security guard will tell you as he hauls you from your seat on the toilet and on to your feet. “Is curtains for you.”

Congratulations Masturbating Businessman!

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Super Nerd Sunday Presents: The Danger of Completionism!


Completionism is a strange beast. It’s a boon and a curse, a driving force and a barrier every bit as effective as an arbitrary, invisible wall or a hastily erected range of unsurpassable mountains. Many’s the time I’ve found myself stalled out in a game, not because of any recognizable barrier to progress but because of a fear, mostly irrational, that whatever I do next is going to keep me from being able to backtrack, that if I push this button I won’t be able to find any super secret secrets that I’ve walked by accidentally in the game so far.

It’s not always that direct: right now my playthrough of Red Faction: Guerilla has halted completely thanks to the little ore deposits that dot the map. A less obsessive-compulsive player might just take their money and roll out into the Mohole, where the Raiders are sitting on the key to a superweapon, but I’m not willing to progress in the game until I grab the last of the minerals sitting on the world map, minerals I need to grab my thermobaric rocket upgrade. Four rockets is just too few – I want more, god damnit, and damn the expense.

So I’ve taken to the internet, the bane of every puzzle game designer and strategy guide publisher, and I’ve started to search for maps detailing the location of various ore deposits. Then I obsessively comb the landscape, searching for untouched deposits or, barring that, husks that mark that I’ve found valid ore deposit locations. It’s a painstaking, boring process that cuts into everything else I do. Even my teaching aspirations are undercut by this, the most banal of virtual tasks for an item I don’t see myself using a whole lot in the game itself for an achievement no one else will ever see. But still I persist. I grit my teeth, take my weird Raider-halberd thing and smash rocks, smiling grimly at my labors even as I grimace at the meager fruits they provide. I putter around, smashing into support struts, dropping buildings and blowing up fuel tanks whenever and wherever I can to liberate a few extra minerals so I can make tiny steps towards getting bonus missles.

There’s no rhyme or reason to this blind pursuit: I could finish Red Faction: Guerilla in a matter of hours if I just stopped trying to earn minerals, but to do so would be an act of surrender, an act of compliance with the EDF. And then I’d have lost something bigger than my time: I’d have lost the war of ideas against a vastly superior foe, a foe I somehow defeat each time we meet, regardless of the odds (curious that!).

It’s even worse in Legend of Grimrock, my other current obsession, where secrets are concealed in the very walls, tiny blocks of retro-hand-drawn art with moveable sprites concealing precious food, ammo, scrolls and better armor that I can employ in the fight against ice dinosaurs, squid-wizard-ghosts, fire people and walking mushrooms. And what’s even worse is that, after seven floors of precociously studying walls and praying that I don’t miss anything, I’ve taken to using Gamebanshee’s impressively thorough game guide, which reveals (for the worse) every hidden element with roughshod description and lovingly crafted maps. It ruins the core of Legend of Grimrock, but without it I can’t progress: I just sit there and chew at my own tongue, wondering how to get that Iron Door open, where I can find the next weapon I need to make my party the best of all possible parties.

This glut of secrets is far more oppressive to me than any collection of fiends that beset me: I can circle strafe them to death with blades and pelt them with arrows, slipping past each attack without incident. My larders are well stocked (I have every piece of bread in the game still in my inventory, in a system of lovingly arranged sacks, saved for a rainy day) and I’m never wanting for potions, or potion ingredients. At least not for long. But if I miss a secret, even a secret totally worthless to me, a weapon I don’t use, I’m stalled with apoplexy. I have to stop, sort out just what I missed, and grab it, whatever it takes, before I move on to the next floor. Even if I’m unleashing horrors that I’d much rather not deal with, I’ve just gotta get those secrets, those hidden deets.

In fact, I’m not even sure I give a shit about finishing the game at this point: I sort of just want to get all the secrets in the dungeon and see just how powerful my little party can get. They’re already pretty tough, but they’re nowhere near unstoppable (by design it seems: Legend of Grimrock is totally unconcerned with how well gauged your asshole might be, it will gauge it for you without asking or preparing you) and, let’s face it, as long as you’re still gaining experience in an RPG, there’s still fun to be had. The end screen sort of constitutes more of a failstate than the death screen in RPG lingo – death is a comma, the conclusion of the story a period.

I’m aware of people who don’t feel compelled to behave this way. Rational, normal people who just play games, beat them and move on. I’m not one of those people. Reasonably arrayed collectibles will keep me captivated a good, long while. Shit, unreasonably arrayed collectibles will too. I spent quite a while searching for those flowers in The Path, and I’m still not sure why (spare the majesty of the woods as I traversed them in search of each mysterious cluster of light). Games I don’t even like will hook me with hidden items that give me a little twinkle each time I grab one.

And yet, if you present collectibles too prominently or too elusively, it will ruin your game for me. I’ll stall out or, possibly worse, turn the game into a collectible hunting meta-game that I’ll eventually turn to some sort of Game Guide service for, just so I can nod at myself and say “Caught ‘em all.” This means that instead of engaging with your game’s design, I’m engaging with it on a meta-gaming level, which is pretty much always inferior.

And if I’m pressed to do this (sorry Grimrock and Icewind Dale) to feel like I’m paying right, your game has some problems. Maybe I’m being a bit too critical of games that are just trying to challenge players in a world where challenge has become something of a dirty word, but I think that design and pacing are key elements, and that scaffolding puzzles should work in a way that encourages players to try and fail again and again, rather than make them feel like each failure represents a tick of a clock, where the game works against them. I get that Grimrock is representing a different era in gaming, where this sort of punishing play was commendable, even laudable, but at times it does get a little bit obtuse, especially when the puzzles are laid out with unclear boundaries and the solution rely on relative perspectives and interpretations.

But I’m nitpicking – I’m still playing and enjoying Grimrock, and realistically I won’t stop any time soon. And I’m going to find every last one of those fucking mineral deposits in Red Faction: Guerilla. Just you wait and see! Really, I just wanted to write a love letter to collectibles, the most delightful elements to ever grace and then break my favorite games.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Congratulations Blind Pilot!


Our society loves to tell people what it can’t do. Women can’t vote. Drunks can’t drive. And blind people can’t fly planes.

Well you know what? Society can go fuck itself, and you aren’t afraid to tell it so. Today you’re going to give society the biggest, baddest middle finger you can manage by popping up the double birds and enrolling in flight school.

“A blind person probably shouldn’t fly a plane, right?” the secretary will say to the flight instructor sitting next to her, essentially ignoring you. He’ll shrug in response.

“Robuts pretty much do it for us at this point, to be honest,” he’ll respond, removing a handful of chaw from his mouth and slamming it into a garbage can by his knee.

“I can do whatever a sighted person can do!” you’ll shout, facing away from both of them.

“Can you pass a colorblindness test?” the secretary will ask, holding up a card showing a set of multicolored dots arranged to show a letter “E.”

“WITHIN REASON!” you’ll shout-ply, still facing away from her.

She’ll open her mouth to speak (not that you’ll be able to see this) but before she can get a word out the old flight instructor will stand up, cram a fresh handful of chaw into his mouth and loudly declare:

“Shiiiiiii… I’ll teachur.”

Tears will begin to flow from your sightless eyes. “I won’t let you down, sky-coach!” you’ll shout, still facing away from the flight instructor and the secretary. But that won’t rattle the flight instructor none. He’ll step around until he’s facing you and smile real big so you can feel it when he takes your hand and puts it on his face.

“Reckun the skies’r big ‘nuff fer a lil’ creative flyin’.” He’ll pat you on the shoulder while you awkwardly grope at his face, then put a cigar in his mouth and light it, all the while still chawing up a storm. He’ll blow a big cloud of smoke in your face before he speaks. “Mah daughtur, she’s blind. Folk’r tellin’ her she can’t fly. I aim t’prove ‘em wrong.”

Then he’ll dramatically put the cigar out (you won’t be able to see this, remember) and sit down to help you fill out all your paperwork correctly, which is a really big deal for blind people. Once that’s done he’ll take you out to a “just friends” dinner and tell you all about his daughter, who’s actually in her mid thirties and doesn’t really have an interest in flying, as it turns out.

But that won’t discourage him from helping you fulfill your dream of reaching the skies, largely through using a voice-assisted auto-pilot system to take off, land and navigate in flight, and ensuring that you always have a trained, experienced co-pilot who can step in in the event of an emergency since, as a blind person, you can’t even see the controls, let alone what all those crazy little gauges are up to.

Congratulations Blind Pilot!

Friday, July 27, 2012

Congratulations Mountaineer in Love!


Mountains’r nice. Everyone knows it, and some people deny it to themselves, but those who are true to both the world around them and their hearts spend their lives acknowledging how great mountains are and climbing them whenever possible. But, of course, this true-ness isn’t for everyone. Even though you embraced it you fell in love with a woman who couldn’t admit to herself what love was (she currently believes love is a well sharpened set of knives, a mid-priced vacuum and a husband who works in the financial sector) and that just did it for you: you put all your love into mountains.

You climbed ‘em and climbed ‘em and climbed ‘em some more, all the while hoping that climbing one of these mountains would somehow conquer her heart. But it turns out that living in relative isolation and enduring physical hardship is NOT how modern women like to be courted, and she spent most of her time on online singles profiles, where she fell into an unhealthy relationship where she had everything she thought she wanted and, from there, decided to get married. Which left you mountaining your heart out, mountaining twice as hard as you ever had before just to keep your head above water.

You’ve mountained everywhere you can think of by now: most of the continental United States, Europe, eastern Europe, that one place in Africa, the less-stabby parts of Asia. There’s really only one set of mountains left for you to conquer: the Himalayas.

So today you’re going to begin the first in an epic series of virtually gearless climbs, wearing only a winter jacket and carrying the backpack you had when you still held her heart (and the whole world) in your hands. You’re going to step on Everest and for the first time in a long time, the majesty of nature will strike you and, for a heartbeat, push the feelings of dejection and self-hatred that normally make up your day to day out of your mind.

Later you’ll feel vaguely disappointed by the raw amount of human waste dotting the mountainside. You’ll get to the top and wonder, mind dazed for lack of oxygen, if that’s all there is. Then you’ll realize just how high you really are and how remarkable it is that enough people have come this far to actually make the amount of human shit on the mountain a problem. It’ll be bittersweet, but it’ll be better than mooning after that dumb bitch who, let’s face it, probably isn’t as cool as you’ve made her out to be.

Congratulations Mountaineer in Love!

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Congratulations on Getting Spanked!


You’ve got issues. Big old issues. But it turns out the most prominent issue you have is being hot and kind of a mess, psychologically.

This means you say yes to nearly every potential suitor with the balls to step up to you and ask if he can put his finger in his butt and you don’t start saying no until they ask if they can fuck you without a condom (you’re crazy, not retarded). It also means you exclusively fuck assholes who take the time to approach you and think they’re “good enough for you.” These people aren’t the sort of nurturing GGG partners you really need to get off, unfortunately.

Tonight that’s going to change.

Today, after you get your final grade for the computer programming night class you’ve been taking so you can learn to make apps or some shit, you’re going to walk up to your professor and say:

“Look, I know I’m hot, I think you’re pretty okay, I’d love to get to know you better and maybe ruin you sexually for other women tonight.”

Then you’ll lean over his desk until he looks at your cleavage and stammers out his assent.

Two hours and twenty dollars at the Olive Garden later the two of you will be back in your apartment, where you almost never take your asshole sex partners. You’ll be making out pretty hard and, feeling your replacement father figure’s bone throbbing through his pants, make your assertive move to try and get a little bit of something good out of him.

“Spank me like I’ve been a bad girl,” you’ll whisper in his ear while stoking him with your one hand.

“I-I-Is this a teacher thing or something?” he’ll mumble, perplexed.

“Or something,” you’ll purr. Then you’ll slip over his lap and arch your back, showing off a nice, thick ass booty. He’ll start bringing his hand down and it’ll be like electric current running through your body. Suddenly the fabric of your jeans will feel like it’s just vibrating, your every nerve will stand on end and you’ll become very, very aware of just how aroused you are.

After ten minutes of wordless spanking, punctuated only by his beleaguered grunts and your desperate moans, you’ll convulse mindlessly, without warning, ruining your underpants and effectively putting your jeans in the “dirty” category for next laundry day.

“Are you okay?” he’ll ask, petting your ass, which will already feel swollen through your jeans.

“Uh-huh,” you’ll slur, melting on to the bed from his lap, slipping your hand down your pants and beginning to work them off. You won’t thank your father for leaving when you were eight to “join the circus,” which actually meant “sell used cars outside of Omaha,” but you probably should for that orgasm. And your teacher definitely should for what’s gonna happen next.

Congratulations on Getting Spanked!

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Congratulations on Getting Your Denim Jacket Back!


Sometimes you’ve got to just let the world do you wrong. But far, far more often what you really need to do is strike back against the world and say HEY FUCK YOU WORLD! GIVE ME BACK MY JACKET!

And if the world is your cousin Randy, and if you add a summary stabbing on to shouting, this is exactly what’s going to transpire today.

And Cousin Randy, after the third stab, is going to loosen his grip upon your jacket. And you’ll triumphantly drape it over your shoulders and quietly sit back down to enjoy what’s left of the braised chicken at your sister’s wedding.

Once the jacket’s good and on you’re also going to spit on Randy for good measure, just to make sure he knows what’s up. You wouldn’t do that last bit if he wasn’t family.

Congratulations on Getting Your Denim Jacket Back!

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Congratulations Racist Bird!


We all know that birds hold secrets within their hearts, secrets that they conceal only because they lack the capacity for speech. If they could talk they’d be saying shit all the time, mostly about people’s social security numbers and masturbating habits. But some birds have their own secrets to tell: birds like you.

And after you shit on a wizard’s head, he’s going to give you the ultimate curse/gift: he’s going to grant you the ability to speak.

“FUCKING MICKS ARE RUINING AMERICA!” you’ll shout as you stretch your wings. “EVERY SINGLE TIME I SEE ONE OF THOSE POTATO FACED FUCKS I JUST WANNA CUT MY OWN DICK OFF, IT’S THAT FUCKING BAD!”

Fortunately we’ve actually institutionalized racism against the Irish, so it won’t be too tough for you. You’ll occasionally have to dodge a rock thrown by a bleary eyed son of Erin, but for the most part you’ll just flit about proudly declaring the ways the Irish have ruined America. Enjoy your new gift, and the solitude that it brings with you as your feathered brothers begin avoiding you now that they know exactly what it is you have to say about the world.

Congratulations Racist Bird!

Monday, July 23, 2012

Congratulations Other British Rapper!


As you stand outside the bar smoking, your eyes will scan the crowd for faces, faces you recognize, faces that recognize you. No spark will appear in their eyes, no momentary double take, head twist, stall in mid-stride as they wonder “did I really just…?”, beckoned back momentarily by curiosity, at the same time too concerned that they might be wrong, or worse right, to actually ask.

You won’t mind too much, but it will be a little disappointing. I mean, you didn’t become a famous rapper so you could stand on a street and be totally ignored. But it turns out that if you’re not Dizzee Rascall or one of that ugly guy from The Streets, no one really gives a shit about you. So you’ll stand on the corner and puff and scowl at passers-by, who will, in turn, wonder why you’re dressed like a low-level Russian gangster.

But after about thirty minutes and two and a half cigarettes, something incredible will happen. A young woman will walk by and then call you by your name. Not your birth name: your stage name. She’ll say it right to your face, her own cigarette clutched between forefinger and middle finger, smile forming on her lips.

“Yah, s’me,” you’ll tell her in your best British rapper voice.

“I love your hip hops!” she’ll brogue at you, which is what British and Irish people normally do after meeting a famous rapper. You’ll nod at her, which is the appropriate response from a British rapper to one of his fans who just declared their love for said British rapper.

She’ll start fawning over you, asking you if all of the “birds” (American translation: bitches)in your songs are real, and if you actually get into fights when you sell the drugs, the way you pretend you do in your songs. You’ll tell her that yes, some of the birds are real but no, not all of them, and that mostly while selling drugs you just play Playstation with your Pakistani roommate, who also sells drugs but is considerably better at it than you.

She’ll be captivated by your real hip-hop stories, and by the look of her hands you’ll be looking at an HJ and a half if you play your cards right. You’ll be at half-mast just thinking of her palms (we think that’s the right word there) on your tallywacker (we’re positive that one’s right). But, of course, since you’re a British rapper, shit can’t go right for you.

She won’t have been talking to you for more than five minutes when the guy from The Streets will walk by. He’ll be funny looking, as always, and surrounded by a racially diverse collective of British miscreants. As he moves by her head will just swivel, turning before it even sees him, as if she can feel his presence, even as he glides behind her, silently.

She’ll walk after him, smile on her face, leaving you there, cigarette dangling between your lips. You’ll be incredibly upset for the first five minutes, but after a little spell you’ll realize that this is just the sort of source material you need to become the kind of incredibly successful rapper you’ve always dreamed of being. You’ll pull out your notebook and begin composing your latest British rapper: “Cockblocked by The Ugly Guy From the Streets Outside the Pub Again.” It will be a smash hit.

Congratulations Other British Rapper!

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Upside Down Story World!


It’s ironic, I guess, if you misuse the term irony: I’ve been going to Star Wars: The Old Republic for my daily dose of digital storytelling of late, and I’ve been leaning heavily towards single player narrative experiences to get away from coherent and structured storytelling. It’s a backwards world, but it’s the one that SWTOR has essentially built for me, with its impressively intricate set of plots, all of them interlocking in a grand series of late-game flashpoints that, to be understood, require an impressive level of investigation and investment on the part of players.

But it’s the way games are functioning as texts now: they’re reflexive creations that insist on a collective or collaborative construction of meaning. So what does it say about me that I’m mostly just returning to old games, to games I played long ago, and re-considering my approach to stories long since experienced?

It means the experience of the game is sometimes much, much more important than the narrative itself.

Red Faction: Guerilla is possibly the best example of this ever. I mean EVER. When I first encountered the game I decided that it’d be best to write about it at length in a series of time-lapse style fake journals that endeavored to capture the total irrelevance of the plot while expressing the fucking amazing experience of tearing down every single god damn structure in the game itself. I spent most of the journal lamenting the game’s writing and expounding on its play, even (especially) when it was at its most frustrating. The focus was on the experience, because, fuck, Red Faction: Guerilla just doesn’t work any other way. And the designers knew it: the story bits are occasional, tongue in cheek, and they’re over quickly. They’re just bits of dialogue and cutscenes that rapidly contextualize the next destructo-puzzle that the game wants you to work your way through.

It’s the rare title that realizes just how central game play is to the experience of a game, and how story can stand in the way of the game itself, and Red Faction: Guerilla’s deft utilize of framing is right on par with Far Cry 2: it sets up the action and gets out of the way as fast as it can, and it’s much, much better for it. Compare Red Faction: Guerilla’s deft dancing in and out of story (and its wonderfully open, break-able world) to Red Faction: Armageddon. The same gameplay and mechanics paired with a totally different approach resulted in a very, very different, and I’d contend considerably shittier, game. Armageddon is, at best, a game where fun things sometimes happen by accident and, at worst, a muddled design document of how to adapt an open world game into a corridor shooter. I lean towards the latter myself: Armageddon was all about imposing context, while Guerilla simply gave players ample opportunity to explore their own destructive tendencies.

I’m not trying to say that a compelling narrative isn’t good, or that it isn’t a viable way to make a game interesting or engaging. There are plenty of games that use narrative to great effect. In fact, the shared narrative that The Old Republic uses to guide players through its areas is possibly one of the best that I’ve encountered. It’s a story that encourages storytelling between players, inviting passive and active collaboration in its very construction. I mean, players vote on how flashpoints, some of the central storytelling modules in the game, unfold. And then players whine at each other following each unfolding moment. They bitch and moan and find common ground and move on. But even in this instance, the story is part of a bigger experience, not just something left on its own: it’s a means by which players are invited to participate in their world, not a means by which the world is structured and limited.

What prompted this, really prompted this, is that in my old school gaming haze I picked up a copy of Legend of Grimrock, a delightfully old school RPG that has absolutely zero fucking story. You’re literally shoved into a pit by some dudes in an introductory cutscene and that’s it. From then on it’s all dungeon wandering and monster killing. There’s absolutely nothing driving it. There aren’t even any characters in the dungeon, or currency, or anything. It’s just a bunch of enemies, some scattered resources, and your party, constantly advancing in power.

It’s actually more stripped down than the games that inspired it (such as the venerable, and even more punishing, Eye of the Beholder, which intellectually battered me on Super Nintendo when I was just a boy) and it’s better for it. There’s no bullshit plot, no characters to uncover. Just dungeon to explore and monsters to beat on and sweet sweet loot to collect. It is dungeon crawler gameplay with marvelous aesthetic attached, boiled down to its barest and most delightful essentials. Sure, there’s a bullshit framing tale attached, but it’s primarily a means of providing players hints to especially annoying puzzles, puzzles even the sunniest, most forgiving player in the world would at best refer to as vague.

There’s a lot to be said for removing any but the barest of necessary narrative from games, and I get the irony of someone who writes stories most of the time saying that. But damnit, it’s true. Games aren’t like other storytelling mediums: they don’t need to tell a tale or evoke a specific set of emotions, they just need to provide players with a framework by which to generate their own experiences. Sometimes, this can be a tightly formed framework that does the job deftly and guides players through a closed environment to great effect, developing a conventional narrative that utilizes play as its mode of advancing the story, simultaneously conveying information and engaging the player as it all comes together. That’s pretty awesome. Sometimes this can be a framework designed around a principle of social interaction and collective storytelling and engagement. That’s pretty cool too.

But what I’ve been coming back to again and again of late is that games often work best when they barely try at all, when they just give you a premise and let you run loose, deigning to insert the hand of a narrator into your play only when designers worry that players lack direction or might’ve missed something important. These are the games that I can sit down and lose myself in, the games that give me a chance to really knit myself into an experience. And while they’re rarely literary masterpieces they are, in truth, better than many better written games, simply because they have the good sense to shut up and let me play. Which is, more often than it probably should be, exactly what I want out of my games.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Congratulations Fanny Pack Thug!


Your target’s car will be right there, parked outside the bar where the snitch told you it would be. That means, or at least should mean, that your target will be inside, in his usual spot, just waiting for you to step inside, ram your gun into his face and then pull the trigger.

Sure enough he’ll be in the corner, talking and laughing to a man you don’t know, a man with a beard. You won’t know him, but he’ll look the way most street-level operators do: like he barely knows his ass from the trigger of a SIG. You won’t pay him any mind. You’ll just walk right up, put your gun to the back of the target’s head and pull the trigger.

“OH SHIT!”the man will shout. The patrons of the bar will scatter and you’ll drop your gun and start to walk away, job done, time to vanish. That’s when the man with the beard will notice something and speak up.

“Is that a fanny pack?” he’ll ask, staring at your waist. You’ll stop in mid step, draw your gun again and stomp back up to him, eyes ablaze.

“It’s the best way to carry my spare clips,” you’ll tell him, flipping your gun’s safety off with your index finger. “Can you think of a better one?”

He’ll pause for a moment, stroking his beard in genuine consideration.

“A bandoleer?”

You’ll shoot him in the knee.

“Bandoleers are conspicuous!” you’ll shout at him, spittle striking his grimacing face.

“So are fanny packs!” he’ll shout back. “I just noticed that one!”

He’ll have you at that, so instead of shooting him in the face the way you usually do with people who criticize your decision to wear a fanny pack, you’ll smile, flip your gun’s safety back on and tuck your piece back in your pants.

“Thank you for your honesty,” you’ll say, nodding as you consider what he’s told you. Then you’ll walk out of the bar, get into the car you stole to drive here and drive off, wondering if there is another, less conspicuous way to carry an extra clip or three, like maybe pockets or something.

Congratulations Fanny Pack Thug!

Friday, July 20, 2012

Congratulations Ridiculously Oblivious Husband!


Today your wife will ecstatically declare: “I’ll be in the guest house with the pool boy, the gardener and the appliance repairman!”

“Don’t hurt yourself unsticking that door!” you’ll shout after her as she leaves the house. Then you’ll go back to reading The New Yorker, occasionally chuckling to yourself at the cartoons and mumbling “Oh, Heathcliff!”

Congratulations Ridiculously Oblivious Husband!

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Congratulations Openly Gay Dictator!


Dictatorial reigns have long been a straight person’s game. There were some rumors about Stalin and just what that moustache meant, but given how often he raped people most folk are willing to just factor the occasions where he raped men into the law of averages. And Castro’s beard was way too dumb for a gay. Only a straight man would ever think that a chin beard was an appropriate indicator of authority.

But today you, in a slimming tan suit with short shorts attached, will take control of Latviastonia in a horrendously blood coup, proving to the world that gay people can be every bit as terrible and psychotic as straight people under the right circumstances. As you press into the capital city on a tank covered with babies, in order to dissuade your opponents from firing upon it, you’ll speak from inside the tank to a loudspeaker crudely attached to its roof.

“LATVIASTONIANS!” you’ll cry. “THE REIGN OF UNFASHIONABLE STRAIGHT PEOPLE IS OVER! THE REIGN OF TRUEST OF FASHIONS, THE FASHIONS THAT WILL CHANGE THE WORLD, HAS BEGUN! BOW TO ME! TO MY SHORTS! TO THE POWER OF TAN!”

At this point you’ll raise your nation’s new flag, a plain square of tan, above the tank. The people outside the tank will begin screaming hysterically, but you’ll hear the sound as cheering, cheering for the glorious reign you’ll usher in, a reign where long pants are forbidden and outfits that do not include the color tan are punishable by death.

Later that day you’ll execute the entirety of parliament. This will cement your hold over Latviastonia for about three years. After that you’ll be executed by a splinter group of considerably less stereotypical gays who hate the way you’re portraying their sexual orientation. Your death will be heralded as another marker for progress, as you’ll no longer simply be the first gay dictator to come to power through a violent coup, but also the first gay dictator to be assassinated after your insanity has become glaringly obvious to the people who once supported you.

Congratulations Openly Gay Dictator!

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Congratulations Last Guy Who Speaks Latin!


Classics departments used to have all the hottest ladies. WE GET IT! All those togas and hats made of leaves and the sandals? OH GOD THE SANDALS!

But here’s the thing: no one speaks Latin anymore. Some people speak Greek, sure, or permutations of Persian and Farsi, but no one gives a shit about Latin. It’s a well known fact, introduced to our discourse largely by the hit HBO show Rome, that everyone in ancient Rome really spoke English, sometimes with British accents, sometimes with strange speech patterns that only actually manifest themselves during stage performances.

So you wander the offices of your classic department shouting things in Latin, hoping someone will respond to you. You do it every day as you enter the office, as you leave to get lunch, return from lunch and depart for the evening. Today, following your evening-departure-shout, something glorious will occur. A young woman will emerge from her office, following your shout of “QUIS HUC LATINE LOQUI?” with a smile on her face and lust in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, is that Latin you’re speaking?” she’ll ask, chewing on the end of a pen in the most suggestive way imaginable.

“Yes,” you’ll declare, puffing out your chest. “Yes it is.”

“Hot,” she’ll moan, grabbing you by the neck and pulling you into her office for desk-sex. Later, you’ll discover she’s married to the chair of your department, which will make life hard for you, but hey, at least speaking Latin finally paid off!

Congratulations Last Guy Who Speaks Latin!

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Congratulations Pterodactyl Porn Star!


The video remains burned in all of our minds. The woman, perched atop one prone pterodactyl-man whose wings are splayed out uselessly beneath him. Your compatriots, arrayed around her, penises clutched in her hands and you, star of the show, in a sense, will stand there between them with your phallus in her mouth as she lolls her tongue futilely, desperately.

But that was a long time ago, and it turns out that pterodactyl porn star isn’t exactly the best paying gig in the world. In fact it is, arguably, the worst, given the hours you spent researching the role, the time you spent constructing your own costume out of a combination of felt and old wire coathangers and the endless reshoots in different locations, ranging from a natural history museum after hours to a forested area of a public park. All for a fifteen minute dinosaur fetish scene in a movie no one knows the title of that everyone has seen and been simultaneously aroused and repulsed by.

And the years since have been unkind. Turns out it’s difficult to get a job when the only bolded entry on your résumé is “pterodactyl number two in pornographic movie.” Even porn producers aren’t terribly psyched about employing you, despite your fervent declaration that you are “hepatitis free” at the bottom of résumé. But there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. Because today you’re going to be interviewing for a job as a forklift operator at a warehouse specializing in the shipping of paper and office supplies. And while you’re in the office of the floor foreman, who is actually a woman, she’ll look you dead in the eye and ask you a question no one’s ever asked you before.

“Do you still have the pterodactyl costume?”

You’ll be so shocked that you’ll spit up a little coffee on your shirt. The fore-lady will laugh and hand you some paper towels, with which you’ll feebly attempt to mop up the spill as it seeps into the fabric. She’ll smile, shake her head, and ask again.

“Sorry, but do you?”

You’ll laugh uncomfortably for a few seconds before nodding.

“Yeah, it’s in a box at home.”

She’ll smile, get up and walk behind you, to the door to her office. You’ll hear the lock click behind you and then you’ll feel her arm as it drapes over your shoulder and around your throat.

“You can start on Monday. Be sure to bring it,” she’ll murmur into your ear as her free arm snakes down your body to your crotch, where it will settle and begin petting, as if she’s found the world’s most interesting cat.

Congratulations Pterodactyl Porn Star!

Monday, July 16, 2012

Congratulations Constant Reminder of Our Failures!


Twenty-two years ago Sexy Results Future Agency was young. It was hip. It had dreams and the means by which to pursue them. But one day Sexy Results Future Agency got all up on another Future Predicting Agency, who it loved very much at the time, and it was so excited it forgot to use protection and nine months something that we probably should’ve seen coming came out: you.

We were proud of you at first, because you were pretty much just our accomplishment for the first two years of your life. But as time went on you started doing things like walking, talking and manipulating objects. Since then it’s all been downhill.

Today you’re going to really hammer home just how disappointing every single action you’ve ever taken since you became an independent entity we weren’t responsible for have been. You’re going to move back in with us following your graduation from college.

Sure, you’ll be welcome here. We’re not assholes. But we’re not going to curb our drinking in the least, and we’re still going to have loud sex with our new girlfriend, who will try to act like she’s your new mom even though she’s barely ten years older than you and isn’t really equipped to deal with her own emotional baggage, let alone yours.

Our new girlfriend is a website that sells handbags, by the way.

After a few weeks of this you’ll be pretty sick of us. But your exhaustion will be nothing compared to just how disappointed we are in you. Your total lack of gainful employ, your exceedingly entitled opinions about life, the world and everything, and your total reliance on our meager salary will all combine into a perfect storm of depressing awfulness that will compose your absolutely shit life so far.

We’ll come to resent you just as hard as you come to resent us, until it explodes in a spectacular argument that leads to you tromping out of the duplex one night in a huff to go call your mom, who doesn’t really talk to you that much since you graduated from website college, mostly because of some things you said about the time she spent as a porn site to support you when you were younger. On the upside, you two will mend some fences, but in the end you’ll come back to stay with us, just as disappointing as you ever were.

Congratulations Constant Reminder of Our Failures!

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Cthulhu Saves The World Saves The Mythos!


Immediately after graduating from college back I moved back into my parents. It made sense at the time, but in retrospect it was the dawn of a bleak era, a year long period where I had absolutely no mastery over my own fate. That it followed four years of relative freedom made it that much more sour. I was, at the time, a helpless thing, incapable of paying my own rent, relying on them for healthcare (as opposed to just not having it). After almost a decade of being told I was smart and special I was cast into a workforce that didn’t give two fucks how smart of special I was. It was around this time that I first sat down, really sat down, with the writings of H.P. Lovecraft.

Cthulhu isn’t the biggest player in Lovecraft’s mythos, which might surprise you given how much press he usually gets. Fish men and their foul overlord, many-titted demons, super smart space worms, and sentient colors all take up equal page time. But he’s one of the more interesting ones. His home doesn’t adhere to our laws of geometry and the imagery surrounding him is striking. He’s also got cultists. Lots of cultists. He’s a popular guy, even though he’s really just hanging out in one spot all of the time. And maybe readers and authors have picked up on this popularity, which is why they’ve made Cthulhu such a major feature in popular culture and interpretations of Lovecraft’s work at large.

I connected with Lovecraft, with his portrayal of Cthulhu, the nameless Swede’s madness and the general sense of smallness in a massive world utterly unconcerned with your survival or well being. It resonated with me at that time in my life and, indeed, it’s kept resonating with me as I’ve hopped from place to place, constantly reminded of how disinterested the world surrounding me is in who I am and what I’m capable of, and how vastly superior so many of the forces within that world are at simply…doing things. They’re just better than me at it, most of the time, bigger than me, and when they’re not hostile they’re usually unconcerned with me to the point where they won’t even consider stepping on me instead of over me to get something they want. This aspect is at the core of Lovecraft’s fiction.

But Cthulhu Saves the World possesses none of these qualities.

It is instead a celebration of what the Mythos has become, a star (that’s kind of a pun if you’re familiar with Cthulhu and friends in general) studded cavalcade of maddening creatures laid out against a delightfully forgivable (or impressively punishing, if that’s what you’re into) combat system that carries you through a lighthearted, textually aware story about the tropes of storytelling and the manner in which fandom influences work. It’s a spot on reconsideration of the old school RPG, one that recognizes its place in time while simultaneously dismissing the manifold flaws of games of old, instead focusing on their whimsy, the varied elements we remember fondly rather than the painful grind we spent so much of them endeavoring to avoid.

It’s the rare title that completely understands what made its source material great without actually holding on to a single scrap of it. While it looks like an RPG and uses characters from the Cthulhu world there’s nothing Lovecraftian about it, and there isn’t a lot of old school RPG action going on. Instead there’s a battle system that feels very smooth and intuitive and a story that in no way takes itself seriously and never, ever, ever waxes poetic about how we’re all just stellar meat patiently awaiting our demise from some greater force that sees us as the feeble meal on two legs that we are.

So if it abandons all the conventions of its source material, what forms (and informs) Cthulhu Saves the World? Fun, to put it simply. It’s a game about celebrating nerd-dom, esoteric knowledge and the RPGs you used to enjoy that there just isn’t enough time for now. It’s a stripped down, re-designed relatively grind-less RPG, one that’s eager to be your friend and be liked. Every aspect of it winks, from the first character you meet (a clear send-up to the perennially encounter love interest JRPGs normally throw at the main character as quickly as possible) to the last (an affable demonic dragon who turns into your airship which, in turn, catapults you into the late game, wherein the restrictions of the world map no longer have meaning).

Paired with a system designed solely to dole out interactions with these characters the aim is clear: this isn’t supposed to be a grinding, onerous return to form. It’s a fluffy reminder of what was, pausing at times to invite characters into have casual conversations with we’d normally only see at crucial junctures in a more conventional RPG. It loves the absurdity of RPGs of old, darting between wacky settings, some of them more in line with Lovecraftian ideas than others, most of them places where battles would rarely, if ever, occur in a traditional roleplaying game.

Are there more enriching things to do with your time? Of course. Cthulhu Saves the World isn’t a game changer. It could be said that Breath of Death VII was, in that it both birthed Zeboyd Games, Cthulhu’s most recent creator/collaborator, and breathed new life into the 16 bit RPG. But Cthulhu Saves the World is just good, clean, kinda guilty fun. It’s liking frosting off a butter knife. It’s tacos with too much hot sauce. It’s good, even if it can be a bit much, but it’s over fast enough that you’ll finish it wanting more. And there’s more to be found. There are more bonus quests and alternate game modes available after completing CSTW than I’ve stomach to attempt, and while I’m skeptical as to just how much they’ll change the experience of play, but their presence is something of an inspired choice in my eyes. It’s the rare developer who scales up the “bonus material” of their game and provides a front-end experience targeting casual gamers that allows them to complete an epic-feelings game in a meager eight to ten hours.

What I’m saying, I guess, is that Cthulhu Saves the World is everything the writing of H.P. Lovecraft isn’t: it’s upbeat, it has a lot of Cthulhu in it, it’s really well paced and when I finished it I felt pretty happy. Heck, I even sort of wanted to come back for more. And I definitely wanted to settle in and play Penny-Arcade’s latest episode, which seems to owe its resurgence in no small part to Zeboyd’s rise as a game developer. Cthulhu Saves the World is a pleasant inversion of everything you’d imagine it to be. Play it. It’s like five bucks, and if you’ve ever spent time with a 16 bit RPG, it’ll make your week. If you haven’t, maybe you’ll get a hint of the magic we once all swore by.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Congratulations Afro-Centric Murderer!


Some people fight for liberty. Some people fight for justice. Some people fight for their right to party.

You fight for your right to wear a giant afro.

You walk the streets, crowbar in hand, smashing skulls and picking your fro until it looks as amazing as is physically possible. Then you smash some more skulls.

Turns out the cops don’t take kindly to the fact that you brutalize people’s faces, though. They’re totally unconcerned with the fro, but you’re really self-conscious about your hair so you interpret any criticism at all as criticism of your hair, and that means that instead of recognizing that, yes, you are a murderer, you’re going to flip out and say “FUCK YOU PIGS, I AIN’T GONNA STOP WEARING MY FRO!”

You’ll be incarcerated sooner than later, where you will be allowed to retain your fro, but will not have access to any heavy objects or really the outside world. You’ll interpret this as an attempt to both shame you and excise your wonderful, wonderful hair from the world, an injustice which cannot stand.

The rest of the world will disagree, except for one crazy white lady who lives in New York. She’ll fight really, really hard to get you released. But as one of the few people in Philadelphia who belongs in jail, it’ll be a terribly misdirected campaign which will do more to tarnish the notion of activism than it will do to service any kind of justice.

You won’t really care about that. All you’ll care about is your sweet, sweet Fro. We’d say we hope you’re happy with yourself, but we really don’t, and we already know you are. So instead we’ll just say: we hope you acquire the capacity for shame sooner than later.

Congratulations Afro-Centric Murderer!

Friday, July 13, 2012

Congratulations on Being Drunk in Public!


You didn’t marry rich and loveless to drag your heels and shield your eyes every time a young and pretty man looked at you. And you certainly didn’t outlive your sham husband to pretend, even after his death, that you loved him. So you don’t see a problem with going out to bars and getting into cars and slamming back drinks until you can’t think. But Johnny Law does, and he’s not much for your tomfoolery, so tonight you’re gonna have a run in with him.

You’ll have it, as so many do, on Boylston Street, just outside of Candy Heaven. You’ll be sitting out there with your just barely legal companion, drinking from a bottle of Stolichnaya you brought from home. Occasionally each of you will pop skittles into your craw, to cut the bite of the vodka. You’ll talk about growing up poor in southern Russia and fighting to get everything you’ve ever had in life, and he’ll talk about how hard it is to be a student at BU when your parents are always riding you to get Bs or better.

There won’t be a lot of overlap. You’ll mostly just talk in circles around one another, just as oblivious that your companion is a living, thinking human being as he is of your vast life experience and the hideousness of life outside of the protective bubble of the world he has been raised in. Eventually you’ll get frustrated that he’s not attentive enough or affectionate enough or both, really, and you’ll just start screaming at him. You’ll swipe your purse, claw at his face and kick at him with your spiked heels, an impressive achievement given their bizarre, nigh non-Euclidian construction.

He’ll give as good as he gets, or close to it: tearing at your clothing, getting a handful of your hair out of your scalp, leaving you bloody-faced with one tit all but falling out. And since your English is speckled, your breath stained with liquor and your companion young and handsome and very, very white in the American sense of the word, where white means of the cultural norm, when the police arrive, as they inevitably will, you’ll be the one who’s considered in the wrong.

And so, kicking and screaming, you’ll be the one dragged into the back of a police cruiser. You’ll be the one who punches a cop in the face on your way into the car. You’ll be the one who weeps uncontrollably and wordlessly all the way back to booking and then becomes a model citizen the moment you’re placed behind in a chair in the booking room. It’ll be like you were transported back to your first border crossing, where you were told to be as quiet and cooperative as possible and to avoid drawing attention to yourself at all costs.

And this cooperation will draw the attention of the officer who you punched in the face earlier. And that night he’ll watch you as you sleep off your vodka and skittle induced rage. He’ll make sure your blankets cover you. And the next day he’ll smile at you. And you, you’ll thank him for being so kind. You won’t notice he’s slipped you his number until you’ve been at home a good long while, but when you do see it you won’t hesitate. You’ll call him immediately, ringing to voicemail. At this point, things become indistinct, but we still have high hopes.

Congratulations on Being Drunk in Public!

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Congratulations Confederacy of Actual Dunces!


“For too long the stupid have been dismissed as dumb or whatever by other people!” you’ll shout, pounding your fist on the piece of wood resting atop concrete cinderblocks that passes for a table. “No more!”

Your comrades will mumble to one another in vague approval.

“I like biscuits,” one will announce.

“Ed Hardy shirts,” another will utter.

“Special sauce,” a third will concur.

“Okay!” you’ll shout, pounding the “table” again. This time you’ll strike it right in its middle, shattering the plywood and sending all the crackers you and your friends had carefully stacked on the table tumbling to the ground.

“Fuckin’ blacks!” you’ll shout at the ceiling.

Your friends will again mumble their concurrence. You’ll pick up your guns and march out into the street, where you’ll begin shooting around at random. The police will arrive within ten minutes of the disturbance emerging and suppress it rapidly, killing all but a handful of your friends and capturing you to stand trial for what will be known in the years to come as “the Retard Rebellion of 2012.”

Congratulations Confederacy of Actual Dunces!

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Congratulations Spectral Politician!


“There is no call to fear what lies ahead,” you’ll croon into the microphone horribly. “For what lies ahead cannot undo our existence. America has become the first nation to look beyond the grave for its leadership, and as such it will be survive all others by redefining survival.”

The crowd will collectively look at one another uncomfortably. One guy in the back will cheer.

“Hail Satan!”

You’ll laugh into the microphone, a horrible sound, like a record scratch moving around the room sporadically, constantly shifting sources.

“Also, I’ll fix the economy and end the war in Afghanistan.”

The crowd will applaud uneasily while the lone shouter throws up the horns from the back row. Thus will begin arguably the most productive presidency in American history, one that will lead to an amendment which specifically details that candidates must be alive in order to be elected to the office of president.

Congratulations Spectral Politician!

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Congratulations Insanely Dangerous Bird!


When you awake from your slumber, just beneath the blasting zone for the foundation of a new Arby’s, you won’t feel rage. Not really rage, at least. Simply the dull throbbing that comes from eons of uneasy slumber. As your talons and blunted digging claws scrabble through the thick, ancient dirt surrounding you it will slowly turn to rage, however. You’ll recall moments in time: a flash of light, the rush of air, the darkness surrounding you, the puzzling sense of floating within a moment, a voice whispering to you: wait.

The time for waiting, however, is now past.

You’ll emerge from the earth just outside of Madison, Wisconsin, next to a well appointed neo Victorian home. Inside a family will be screaming, horrified at the trembling ground and at your visage as you burst forth from the ground: a raptor multiplied a thousand fold, tremendous in scale and potency, your mouth open, tongue lolling, feathers pointed outwards in a gesture of profound anger. In one sweeping gesture you’ll tear into the house, your digging claws hooking one of the family mid shriek, ending their cry and letting you pull them towards you on wingtip and begin eviscerating them with your beak.

It will be the first meat you’ve tasted since your entombment.

It will be delicious.

Once you finish your meal you’ll shake the spent husk of human from your wingtip and spread your span wide, letting loose a long, triumphant cry. Then you’ll begin running along the ground, feet tearing up chunks of concrete and lawn until you alight, balancing just so on the tides of wind that feel unfamiliar, wrong somehow, as hot air currents move in strange pockets over slats of blackened earth.

When you finally begin moving comfortably in the sky you’ll survey the new landscape, your eyes catching the sheer heat of it more than anything else. So much life will be teeming below, so much warmth and motion. So much prey, the coarsest sketch of a thought will emerge. So little time.

Congratulations Insanely Dangerous Bird!

Monday, July 9, 2012

Congratulations Visitor from the Stars!


Remember how Highlander 2 ruined Highlander by making it a bunch of aliens instead of inexplicable immortals born to every age, reborn upon their violent death in battle? Well, that’s kind of like what you’re going to do today, when your space-pod crashes in the middle of Los Angeles and you emerge, covered in leatherite armor, wielding your nanoforged daikatanza (which coincidentally looks almost exactly like a katana). You’ll then proceed to go on a killing spree throughout the city of sun and fun, murdering dozens of people before you’re suppressed by a police officer with a tazer.

As you lay thrashing on the ground, covered in blood from the various civilians you cut down, the cops will look at one another, pondering for a moment whether or not they should do the usual thing that the LAPD does with illegal aliens (merciless beatings) when a black SUV pulls up. Men will spill out from the SUV, men in suits with glasses and scowls. They’ll flash badges that don’t actually have anything in them at cops who turn pale at the sight and then they’ll load you into the back of one of said SUVs and haul you off to Cheyenne Mountain.

Once you arrive (following a horrible, twenty hour drive) you’ll be hooded and dragged into the mountain itself, where you’ll be shoved into an elevator by two huge Secret Service Agents. Once you reach the bottom of the elevator shaft those agents will shove you out of the elevator and into the arms of another pair of Secret Service Agents. Those agents will in turn drag you to a room where the hood will be ripped off, exposing an imposing host of Earth’s greatest generals.

Colin Powell, Cyber-Rommel, Burt Reynolds circa 1977 and some dude with a robotic eye will be seated around a round table, flanking none other than President Barack Obama. There will be one open seat at the table, directly across from Obama. He’ll gesture for you to sit down.

“Hello, visitor from across the stars,” he’ll announce more than say to you in his most presidenty voice. “What can you bring to our little organization?”

Since you don’t speak English, you won’t so much respond to his question as try to slip your bonds and jump over the table to choke him. In response, Burt Reynolds circa 1977 will shoot you in the chest with a double barrel shotgun, obliterating your alien physiology.

Congratulations Visitor from the Stars!

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Super Nerd Sunday Presents: Holy Shit, The Walking Dead Episode 2 Came Out!


The Walking Dead Episode 2 came out last Friday at around noon. I started playing it after I finished up the last of my weekly business, at around four or five. I finished at about two in the morning, heart pounding, mouth dry, a little drunk but mostly stone cold sober for the story it told.

For the uninitiated, The Walking Dead is a comic book started in 2003 by Robert Kirkman, previously known for his work on Battle Pope. It’s quite good, far better than it has any business being, honestly, mostly because of its unflinching portrayal of humanity and a bleak willingness to kill off characters regardless of how important they are to the story itself. That is to say, it tells a story about humanity looking at its own end and does so fearlessly, rarely turning away from the horrors that populate our world, horrors that enter our own sheltered lives when circumstances become particularly dire. It tells a story where shit happens, and we just have to keep going because if we stop, if we shut down, we die.

The Walking Dead has also been adapted as a TV show that had no fucking clue that the comic book was about any sort of universal humanity and instead thought it was about action setpieces that involved people in heavy make-up and a bunch of guns.

It has also been adapted as a video game, which gets exactly what makes the comics great: sometimes shit happens and you just have to deal with the consequences. You make decisions about who lives and dies in haste and that is really the crux of the challenge: the immutable permanence of the choices you make, not the challenge of overcoming a given hurdle, forms the body contiguous of the game. The first episode of the game guided you through a budding zombocalypse, forcing you to do unpleasant things to survive, occasionally asking you to make really tough choices, neither of which were wholly right or wrong. In the end you were in a sort of perilous safety, and a “on the next installment of” video promised that this safety would not last and that the central issues of The Walking Dead (specifically a lack of food) would rear their head in the next episode.

The first episode was the most Walking Dead thing I’d seen outside of the comics, and it had some truly awesome moments in it that made it tense and nerve wracking, despite a lack of fail states and puzzles that were less like puzzles and more like “click the right icon” bouts.

The second episode completely outstripped the first.

It’s fair to say that gameplay is sort of anemic in episode 2. There aren’t a lot of areas to explore, nor are there a lot of the urgent, challenging puzzles that usually populate adventure games. Instead there are plodding moments of uncertainty, where you’re forced to do really unpleasant things. The opening scene is basically a barrage of difficult choices which culminate in a brief action sequence, and even after going through the opening once I’m not sure there are any “right” choices to be made. I leave it feeling frustrated and a little bit hopeless, which seems to be exactly what Telltale is going for in this chapter. Because as you continue to play you’re going to be asked time and time again to do horrible shit. You’ll have to choose which wrong choice to make in front of the people you’re continuing to live with and then you’ll have to deal with the consequences.

The first episode centered around a parking lot puzzle which had players sort out just how to clear a motel complex of the undead. This was the overall tenor of the first game: carve out a safe haven and choose the allies you want with you in said safe haven. The second episode accounts for the strains that went into forging and defining those alliances and then forces those alliances into circumstances of humanity at its worst. It’s tough to discuss the episode as a whole without spoiling it (though I’m willing to bet most players will figure out the twist relatively quickly – I saw it coming the moment I set foot on the farm) but it’s important to note just how distinct the episode is from the first one. Episode 2 opens with you sinking your axe into a zombie’s head. Killing the undead is something you’re good at now. You’re practiced at using your axe and you have two functional legs. You’re not struggling to overcome babysitters anymore. But keeping your starving cadre of allies together? That’s another story. And the learning curve is steep, the conditions punishing.

By the end of the episode I wasn’t struck with a profound sense of awe for how the game rendered this environment and put me in the shoes of this character. I was horrified and revolted by the things I’d seen and done, and concerned for how these characters, who I was becoming attached to at breakneck speed, were going to fare in episode 3. The trailer for episode 3 had a considerably more upbeat air to it, but it didn’t really do much to alleviate the tension of the finale. Telltale’s embracing of the stakes of The Walking Dead’s world has made me deeply concerned for these new characters inhabiting it at every turn. I’ve gone from confidently believing that nothing will harm any of the vulnerable characters in the first episode to wondering who’s going to die next, and how the other characters are going to respond. Aside from Lee and Clementine, I’m not sure anyone’s really safe. And even there…

I found myself doing something while playing episode 2, something that never would’ve occurred to me during episode 1. I rewound my progress in the chapters occasionally to recast some of my decisions which, in retrospect, weren’t really in line with whom I wanted Lee to be. Sometimes it was to engage with content I’d missed which, in retrospect, became very apparent, sure. But more often it was in response to how a character acted following my actions. Clementine, specifically. I’m not sure that Telltale will let anything happen to her in the main story at this point – the parallel between Rick and Carl from the comics and Lee and Clementine in the game is quite strong. But I’m thinking more and more after this episode about how my actions actually impact Clem, and how regardless of the circumstances I’m teaching this young woman how to survive in this horrible new world. I’m feeling responsible for a virtual pre-teen girl. I’m seeing my actions through her eyes, not from my jaded twenty-something perspective, but from the perspective of a little girl who is totally reliant on me for her safety and well being. That’s really changing the way I see my actions in the game. Hell, it’s even changing the way I see myself as a gamer.

If you’re holding off on getting The Walking Dead games until the episodes are all laid out, I’d advise against it. Buzz generates fast for games like these, and spoilers will circulate and likely find their way into your eyes if you frequent the sites that report gaming news. And there’s something delicious in the tension of waiting for the next episode, that delightful, nervous waiting period that cereals evoke that makes playing each fresh episode as it emerges that much sweeter. It’s something any comic book nerd knows and loves, and it’s another element of the comics that The Walking Dead game manages wonderfully. If you love The Walking Dead, even if you don’t necessarily like adventure games, grab The Walking Dead game. It’s getting Walking Deadier in each iteration, and I mean that in the best possible way.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Congratulations Magnet Magnate!


You own a multinational corporation. Woop de shit! Who the fuck doesn’t?

What makes you so special is that your multinational corporation specializes in the creation, transport, storage and distribution of magnets. Fridge magnets, industrial magnets, magnets that go to high school science classes, even electromagnets made out of nails and wire fall under your purview. And you know your business well.

Which is why, today, you’re going to become a super-villain named Magnet Magnate. It’ll come to you after you read this story and realize that, hey, your first name is already Nate so why the fuck not just go with it?

Your first action will be to cut off the supply of magnets to the United States military until they conform to your demands (about five hundred percent of the normal price for magnets they want). They’ll capitulate almost immediately, since this is how military contracts usually work, and you’ll put the money into creating an army of robot soldiers armed with magnetic pulse weapons (something you developed decades ago but kept entirely to yourself so you could do just this at your convenience). Then you’ll get those robot soldiers to place EMPs near the data storage facilities of every major financial organization in the world (which you’ll have located through your conventional magnet business) and threaten to erase those records if major super heroes don’t come out to try and stop you.

This will lead to a brief, unsatisfying fight with Aquaman, which will in turn become a much more satisfying fight with Spiderman. And then rest? Well, that’ll be comic book history.

Congratulations Magnet Magnate!

Friday, July 6, 2012

Congratulations Masturbation Advocate!


Masturbation needs a white knight, and today you’re it.

Today you’re going to go on the senate floor and, along with Louis C.K. and the guys who run Redtube, make the case that there is no pursuit more American than masturbation, no goal more noble or noteworthy. We’d reprint the speech here, but we’re pretty sure that would actually get us thrown in jail, not only because of the obscenity used there in (beautiful obscenity, granted) but also because that might somehow constitute re-producing records of a closed session of the senate in which many senators will provide detailed information about their own masturbatory habits. Some, such as Al Franken’s, will be unsurprising, but others will be alarming (we’re not sure how Mitch McConnell gets anything done at all).

But here’s the thing: they’ll all come away from your speech knowing that masturbation is normal, healthy, fun and, above all else, doesn’t deserve the stigma that it currently possesses in our society. So we’re going to have you to thank for national masturbation day, which will fall on July sixth this year. In the future it’ll be the first Friday following the Fourth of July, so that enterprising masturbators can call in sick to work and theoretically spending the entire weekend patriotically jacking off with the full support of our nation’s highest legislative body.

Congratulations Masturbation Advocate!

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Congratulations on Making a Living Kool-Aid Man!


You’re a mad scientist. But there’s no business in warfare anymore, we’ve gotten most of the crazy fucking science there done already. No, what we’re interested in having amoral, brilliant quacks work on now is advertising!

You specifically deal in making living, breathing corporate mascots. It keeps costs down and allows for children to literally play with a creature who, despite the perpetual agony of their existence and the hellish torture that each second of life represents for them, will smile and reinforce brand synergy without ever asking for a day off.

Also, it’s kind of amusing.

Today you’re going to reach the pinnacle of your career: you’re going to make a living, breathing Kool-Aid Man. He’ll awake in a start, gasping for air. He’ll looking around the room in a panic with eyes welded to the side of the his head for several minutes before opening his mouth, coughing several times and summoning the power of speech to say:

“Kill… Me…”

You won’t. Instead you’ll pour morphine into the top of his head, enough to knock him out, and check your agenda to see the next interesting project on your list. Nothing will really strike you as challenging after this, though, which will really bum you out.

Congratulations on Making a Living Kool-Aid Man!