Undiscovered country: My early impressions of the world of Red Dead Redemption

It’ll probably be a long time before I can comment on how Red Dead Redemption, the pioneering Western from Rockstar, ends, but I can say that it starts brilliantly. In the opening scene, your protagonist, John Marston, rides a train to the town of Armadillo, giving you not only a glimpse of the beautiful, untamed frontier country where the game takes place, but also a glimpse into the issues that loom large in this rapidly changing America of 1910. Two old biddies behind Marston bicker about the intersection of money and politics, while in front of him, a young lady expresses some bold new ideas about the nature of good and evil, only to be gently but firmly set straight by the traditional preacher who accompanies her. Indeed, Red Dead Redemption seems to be largely about the collision of the old and new, of shifting ideas about religion and politics, but also of the products of industry—cars and telephones both make early appearances--starting to dramatically change the way people live their lives. In the superb Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar demonstrated an earnest desire to explore the cultural forces that shape this country, and Red Dead Redemption seems poised to follow in that game’s footsteps.

Of course, every great Western needs a great protagonist at its center, and Marston seems to be made from the same mold as some of the genre’s greatest. An early scene provides him with the motivation for revenge that drives him in at least the earliest part of the story, but reveals little about him, leaving him with that hint of a shady past and that aura of mystery that can be so alluring in a man on horseback. He’s not so reticent, though, that we can’t connect with him. On the contrary, he treats kind people with the warmth becoming of a gentleman, and has an invitingly self-deprecating sense of humor. Of course, to a large extent, who John Marston is is up to you. My John Marston, like the person controlling him, seems to be something of a ne’er-do-well, and has spent more time in the Armadillo saloon playing poker than exploring the frontier, doing good deeds for troubled strangers. Clearly, this country was built by harder-working people than me.

But now that I’m sitting here at work on a lunch break, I’m positively desperate to get back to the world of Red Dead Redemption, to see what’s waiting for me out in that wild landscape. It’s clear, even at this very early stage, that this game is something special, a product of rare ambition and quality, and, if it delivers on the promise of its earliest moments, of rare meaning, too.

High Hopes for Game Room

Wanna come over and play Asteroids?

The reactions I've seen to Game Room have been pretty divided. A lot of people just don't see the appeal of using a powerful modern console to play ugly, thirty-year-old games. And I can understand this, especially if you're not old enough to remember these games in their heyday. It can be hard, after playing visually stunning games like God of War III, to see beyond the simple graphics and one-button gameplay of Outlaw and understand that this is what once passed for thrilling multiplayer competition.

For me, the appeal of Game Room is clear. But then, I grew up with the Atari 2600 and with smoky, neon-lit arcades in which you couldn't hear yourself think over the noise of all the machines. What wonderful times those were.

People say that games today are better. In many cases, that's true. But I also think that games today are different in a crucial way. Most games today are story-driven, and most of those games establish a difficulty that makes it possible for just about anyone to complete that story and have a satisfying experience. That's all well and good, and I adore many games that fit this description. But I think there remains something to be said for games that are pure, unforgiving tests of skill, just you vs. the machine, where your only goal is to earn as high a score as possible. The appeal of this philosophy lives on in newer games like Geometry Wars and Pac-Man: Championship Edition, but the best early examples of this are timeless. Asteroids Deluxe, probably my favorite Game Room launch title, is a game that remains a thoroughly captivating test of skill. Most games in the Game Room launch may not hold up quite so well, but I've sunk over 45 minutes into Asteroids Deluxe, with much of that time spent trying to surpass a friend on the leaderboards. (Game Room encourages this by having banners above each machine that display the name and score of the highest-ranked person on your friends' leaderboard.) When I finally did it, the result was a sense of accomplishment of the sort the mostly relatively easy games of today seldom deliver. The faithfully recreated cabinet, so detailed that I can read the fine text on the front as I'm playing (selecting Cabinet view in the Graphics options) is icing on the cake.

There are definitely some serious, frustrating bugs and performance issues in Game Room that need to be ironed out. And it's disappointing that, while the cabinets for the Atari arcade games have the authentic artwork, the Konami ones are utterly featureless. But in addition to Asteroids Deluxe, I find Centipede and Gravitar to be so pure and simple that they're as compelling to me today as they ever were, and I've even been introduced to Shao-lin's Road, a fun game I'd somehow never heard of before that's a follow-up to Yie Ar Kung-Fu, an arcade cIassic I once loved. And the versatility of the Challenge feature means I can test my skills against those of my friends in ways that were never possible in the good old days, when all I could hope for was to enter my initials on a machine's high score screen. Now I can get creative, establishing challenges that start at any point in a game, based on score or survival. It's awesome, when it's working properly.

I look forward to more games like these, old favorites that have stood the test of time as well as cIassics I've never played before, hitting Game Room. With my own arcade, I can finally fulfill my childhood dream of being like Ricky on "Silver Spoons."

We all had that dream, right?

The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection: My Top Ten Games of 2009

The best games of 2009, for me, were marked not by innovation, but rather by doing the very same things that games have been doing for a long time, but doing them better than they've ever been done before. (That's not to say that this was a year without innovation. On the contrary, GameSpot's pick for Game of the Year, Demon's Souls, is boldly innovative and utterly uncompromising, and I respect the hell out of it. I just didn't personally enjoy it all that much.) The two best games of the year for me were particularly exceptional in this regard. Forza Motorsport 3 and Street Fighter IV are like well-oiled, nearly flawless high-performance machines in their respective genres.

Forza 3 is a game of such elegance that I feel like I should be eating excellent French cheeses and sipping fine wine whenever I play it. But not in a stuffy, oppressive way. No, it's an elegance that's perfectly befitting of the beautiful, fine-tuned automobiles it celebrates. And the experience of playing it is about as close as a game has ever gotten for me to being transportive. The handling, the sounds, the visuals are all so convincing that I could almost swear I can feel my car soaring down the Sebring Raceway. I'm such a devoted fan of over-the-top arcade racers over simulation racers that I often catch myself wanting to press A to trigger a vehicle boost, Burnout-style. But where so many other simulation racers have left me cold, Forza 3 is one I can't stop admiring. In addition to the absolutely top-notch driving, the way the game rewards you for each victory, constantly opening up new cars, new events, and new benefits as you earn experience makes playing "just one more race" nearly irresistible.

What Forza 3 is for driving games, Street Fighter IV is for fighters. It hits the sweet spot between pick-up-and-play accessibility and tremendous depth. The incredibly tight controls and exceptionally balanced combat ensure that fights are always exciting and intense for me, and even losses feel rewarding as a chance to observe the techniques of more skillful players and very slowly get better. And the better I get, the more I appreciate how incredible this game is, as I slowly come to grips with things like the focus attack system that adds layers of depth onto the core, tried-and-true Street Fighter II model. If I could stop time for a while and spend unlimited hours playing any one game from this year, this is the one I'd play, because as much as I enjoy it now, I know that being a truly competitive, outstanding player would only deepen my appreciation and enjoyment of it still more.

The quest to capture big, Hollywood-style adventure movie thrills in game form is certainly nothing new. Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2 pulls it off more effectively than any game has before. Expertly paced, with one terrific setpiece moment after another, and an excellent cast of characters whose relationships make you feel invested in the story.

Modern Warfare 2 was far and away the year's best shooter for me. Sure, you can rightly criticize the brevity of its campaign, but its whirlwind globehopping adventure packs more terrific locations and more memorable moments into its five hours than most games four times as long can manage. Add in the exciting and challenging cooperative Spec Ops missions and the highly addictive competitive multiplayer and you've got a well-rounded and consistently outstanding shooter.

While I have a soft spot for the moody Burton-influenced visuals and catchy tunes of Sunsoft's excellent 1989 NES game based on the first Michael Keaton Batman film, I have to admit that Arkham Asylum represents far and away the most compelling and effective representation of the Caped Crusader in a game. Everything you love about Batman--his gadgets, his detective skills, his use of stealth and shadow, his scarred psyche--is manifested here to terrific effect. It's so effective, in fact, that even if you go into the game not knowing or caring much about Batman, Commissioner Gordon and the other characters who populate Gotham City, you'll probably come away from it with a real appreciation for what Rocksteady has done with them here.

There was very little doubt that The Beatles: Rock Band was going to be good, but I was nonetheless surprised at just how superb it turned out. Harmonix could have taken the lazy route with this one and still sold a bazillion copies on the strength of the Fab Four's catalog of timeless and incredible songs. But instead, they went all-out, creating a rich Beatles experience jam-packed with the kinds of little details that imbue the game with the warmth and reverence the material deserves. Time spent playing this with friends was perhaps the greatest source of pure joy I got from any game this year.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars was perhaps the biggest WOW of the year for me. No other game revealed previously untapped potential in a platform as dramatically as Chinatown Wars did with the DS. No compromises here, this is GTA reimagined from the ground up for Nintendo's handheld, and it is fantastic.

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story is the latest and greatest entry in AlphaDream's consistently excellent series of RPGs starring the Brothers Mario. Endlessly inventive, irresistibly charming and completely hilarious.

I'm still inching my way through Assassin's Creed II, one kill at a time. While I find the gameplay a smidge too easy to be completely gripping, the varied, richly detailed and atmospheric cities make this breezy ride a very enjoyable one, and pulling off a stealthy kill in broad daylight, then walking away and leaving no one the wiser is immensely satisfying. I recall the negative reactions of some to the concept of the animus when the first game was released, but here, I find that all the crazy conspiracy theory elements woven into the game make it feel all the more epic and compelling, creating a sense of high stakes and of an age-old conflict that extends far beyond Altair, Ezio or Desmond as individuals.

What Borderlands lacks in story, it more than makes up for in sheer addictive playability. It brilliantly merges the loot-finding and character-building that makes games like Diablo II so habit-forming, with...guns.

An honorable mention goes to Dragon Age: Origins, another title I haven't found the time to conclude yet. In fact, I've still got a long way to go on this epic journey. The pace lagged for me in the early stages, but now that I'm starting to make some serious progress on the main quest, I'm finding myself becoming more absorbed in the fully realized fantasy realm of Ferelden. Bioware's signature talents for creating richly detailed worlds and compelling moral dilemmas are in full effect here, and I'm determined to see this quest through to its blood-spattery end.


In my opinion, the year's best downloadable content was The Ballad of Gay Tony. Rockstar continues to challenge notions of who and what games can be about. Terrific nightclub atmosphere brings a previously unseen side of Liberty City to life, and the outrageous missions help bring GTA IV to an explosive conclusion.


And since I'm listening to it right now, I'll add that my favorite original soundtrack this year belongs to Shatter. It's a catchy and gorgeous collection of electronic compositions that are as incredible on their own as they are in the game.

More Russian: Modern Warfare 2 and Games in a Post-24 World (Spoilers)

Much is being said about the campaign for Modern Warfare 2, and in particular, a level called No Russian. Personally, I thought the level was effective and the campaign as a whole was nothing short of spectacular. It's easily earned a place as one of my favorite shooter campaigns of all time.

One of the criticisms I've read levelled at the campaign is that the writing is poor and the story is ludicrous. I agree completely that the story is ludicrous. I think that most video game stories are ludicrous. But so what? The important thing in a game like Modern Warfare 2 is to cram as many intense moments into its five-hour campaign as it can. I can't think of a game that sustained such an unrelenting pace, and since the story does its job of providing a vehicle to string all these things together, in my mind, it's a success. I won't argue that it's great writing for a second. But it's writing with a very specific purpose, and I think it does a great job of accomplishing that purpose.

There may have been a time where I would have enjoyed it less, where I would have spent half my time stepping outside of the absurd action of the story and yelling at the screen, "Oh, come on! That would never happen!" Perhaps it's all that 24 I watched, but at a certain point, my outlook changed, and I realized that I was willing to sacrifice a certain amount of plausibility if, and only if, something succeeds in delivering over-the-top thrills so incredible as to make my suspension of disbelief worthwhile. Most of the time, 24 succeeded here for me. In the end, it's not the overall story of a 24 season that matters, but the moment-to-moment thrills that story allowed the season to deliver, and seriously, if you think Modern Warfare 2 is implausible, watch a season of 24. I don't know for sure, but I'd be willing to bet that 24 has been a direct influence on the Modern Warfare games.

24 ushered in an era of television where viewers could no longer be sure, one week to next, that any character (wiith the possible exception of Jack Bauer) was safe. Audience favorites are routinely killed suddenly and unflinchingly. The Modern Warfare games certainly followed in the series' footsteps here. The death of a player character in the first Modern Warfare, like the death of lovable Edgar on 24, was shocking. Perhaps in Modern Warfare 2 they go a tad overboard with this and it starts to lose its impact a bit, but I still found most of the twists and character deaths surprising and impactful.

And then there's No Russian, in which, as an undercover CIA agent embedded in a terrorist cell, you must stand by, or even participate, while your fellow terrorists slaughter hundreds of civilians at an airport. Many of the arguments I've read about this level are rooted in the illusion of choice. There you are, holding a gun, but you must stand idly by as this massacre takes place. You are unable to turn the gun on the terrorists and attempt to stop this atrocity, which is something that any moral person would surely at least consider doing in that situation. Anthony Burch, in this Rev Rant at Destructoid, argues that as the player, your feelings of revulsion about what's happening totally pull you out of the moment. (At least that was what I took away from his argument, but I'm paraphrasing, and I encourage you to watch it for yourself.) And maybe that's true. He contrasts this, though, with the player's relationship with Alyx in Half-Life 2. In Half-Life 2, he says, you like Alyx. Because the game reinforces your positive feelings about the character, Gordon's choice to not just use the gravity gun to fling her into the nearest bunch of headcrabs and run jibes with your own feelings, creating a seamless relationship between you and the character you're playing. But to me, that's an arbitrary distinction. Another player may totally loathe Alyx and actually wish to kill her. In both Modern Warfare 2 and Half-Life 2, you have no choice. Choice is a complete illusion.

Some may feel that games are more enjoyable when we always feel a positive connection with the character we're playing and the actions of that character. I'm fine with that not being the case, with sometimes being cast in an unsavory role. If Modern Warfare 2 were a film, could the actor cast in the role the player plays in the No Russian level say to the director, "You know, if it were really me in this situation, I think I'd say to myself, 'To hell with this undercover thing, I'm turning my gun on these monsters!' So is it okay if I do that in this scene?" Of course not. It's essentially the same thing here. We are cast in this role. We have a part to carry out, and we must carry it out, whether we like it or not. If you're playing Metal Gear Solid, you must stop Liquid Snake. Trying to join forces with him is not an option. If you're playing Ocarina of Time, you cannot shirk your responsibility to defeat Ganon and just go live on a farm somewhere, no matter how much you might rather do that. In games, almost always, choice is an illusion.

The other criticism I've heard about No Russian is that some feel such a horrific scene of violence is inappropriate in something that's essentially just trying to be a piece of pure entertainment, that it's exploitative to use something so terrible in the context of something that, let's face it, doesn't really deal with the consequences in a serious, meaningful way. Maybe I'm just callous, but I didn't mind. Again, perhaps it's all that 24, which doesn't shy away from crashing commuter jets, releasing chemical weapons in hotels, and detonating nukes in densely populated areas, killing anywhere from hundreds to hundreds of thousands at a time. Nor is it reluctant to try to make you feel the loss of a single human life.

And always, not long after one of these moments transpires, Jack Bauer is back to kicking ass and walking away from unsurvivable situations unscathed, all in the name of delivering pure entertainment.

Orson's Game

There's a little burger stand near my place that I positively love. Juiciest burgers I've ever tasted, and I am a fiend for a nice juicy burger.

One day, the owners of the restaurant started telling me about how they get their tomatoes from this wonderful tomato farm. Now, I'm not a huge tomato person. Really, I could take or leave the tomato on my burger. It's just not an important part of the experience for me. But the owner was so excited about this tomato farm that I decided to look it up online, and I was dismayed by what I found out.

Oh, not about the tomatoes they produce. In fact, they do have a reputation for growing some tasty tomatoes.

No. You see, I was dismayed to find that these tomato farmers are white supremacists, and they're quite vocal about it, too. They serve on boards of organizations that seek to oppress minorities and strip them of their rights.

After that, I was really torn about going back to that burger stand. Some other patrons decided that they were going to boycott the stand. When the boycott was announced, the people who grow the lettuce for the stand spoke out, saying, “Hey, we're not white supremacists! In fact, we actively support all kinds of human rights measures. If you boycott the stand, we will suffer, too!” I appreciate the plight of the lettuce farmer. Still, I can respect the position of the boycotters. The restaurateurs didn't publicize the lettuce as being an important part of what makes their burgers so incredible. No, they talked up the tomatoes. Its the tomato farm whose name is now known far and wide in association with those juicy burgers. Not, alas, the lettuce farm.

As for me, I did go back to the stand, and I still enjoyed the burger, though I had to rationalize to myself that it was okay because I don't care for the tomatoes much one way or the other. If the restaurant owners themselves, the people who put all the work into grilling those patties and making those burgers so tasty, the people I actually hand my money over to, were the white supremacists, I never could have gone back.

However, I really wish that they would get their tomatoes from somewhere else. Surely there are excellent tomatoes on the market that aren't grown by vocal white supremacists, and I'm of the mind that the tomato farm of white supremacy does not deserve our support.

None of this is true, of course. (Well, I am a fiend for a nice juicy burger. This cannot be denied.) This is simply my analogy for the controversy around Orson Scott Card's involvement in the new Xbox Live Arcade release, Shadow Complex. Card is a science fiction author and vocal opponent of equal rights for gays and lesbians, who currently serves on the board for the National Organization for Marriage.

The game is set in the “universe” of his Empire series. While playing the game, I didn't feel that his contributions could possibly have had too significant an impact on the overall experience. If I hadn't been aware of the association as a result of publicity given to his involvement, I never would have suspected. The game's setting and plot seem generic enough that I would have just assumed the creators were riffing on Metal Gear Solid.

Some have boycotted Shadow Complex due to Card's involvement. I did not. I purchased the game and I enjoyed it, recognizing that it's the work of a great many people, many of whom don't agree with Card's views. Still, as a member of the queer community and an ardent opponent of discrimination based on sexual orientation, Card's highly publicized involvement in the project doesn't sit well with me, and I really wish that Chair Entertainment had found someone else to get their tomatoes from.

(And I'm fully aware that those who oppose marriage equality will object to being likened to those who discriminate on the basis of race, but I have yet to come across a compelling argument that there is any appreciable difference. Denying someone rights on the basis of sexual orientation is no less reprehensible than doing so on the basis of race or religion. It is a sad commentary on just how far we still have to go with this issue that, while almost all of us are quick to condemn the views of those who discriminate based on race, discrimination against gays and lesbians can still hold such widespread approval.)

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On a more uplifting note, check out these awesome Courage Campaign volunteers, including "straight Mormon feminist" Joanna Brooks. They're an inspiration. Please help make marriage equality a reality.

Greetings from Big Surf Island!

I've been off from work this past week, taking a mandatory furlough, like many people are having to do in these harsh economic times. While I am hoping to go on an exciting trip or two in the not-too-distant future, as I wasn't being paid this week, I didn't want to spend too much money, so I stayed in town. That doesn't mean I didn't have a kind of vacation, though. I've visited the following exotic and exciting destinations during my time off:

Big Surf Island: I was absolutely mad about Burnout Paradise when it first came out, and Big Surf Island has gotten me pumped about it all over again. The island is a bit smaller than I imagined it would be, but it's positively packed with outrageous jumps and all the other stuff that makes Paradise such an exhilarating game. The dune buggies you find there are a blast to drive, too, with a great rough-and-ready feel to their handling. I've already completed 40/45 billboards, 13/15 mega jumps and 74/75 smashes. I just know that finding that last one is going to be a real pain. I also have just one event left to complete: a stunt run. Those are the bane of my existence. I'm not generally a completionist, but Paradise compelled me to get 100%, and I know I won't stop until I've jumped every jump, smashed every smash and every billboard, won every event and ruled every road in both the Time Road Rules and Showtime (AKA Katamari CarCrashy AKA Michael Bay Directs a Car Wreck) modes on Big Surf Island. It's good to be back in Paradise.

The Ring: When I was a kid, I could beat Mike Tyson without breaking a sweat. It seems my reflexes aren't what they used to be. My current record in Punch-Out!! is an embarrassing 20-67, and I'm currently facing Don Flamenco in the title defense section of the game. But I don't mind. On the contrary, I'm very pleased that the game is so challenging. It goes easy on you for a while, but once you get to defending your belt, Punch-Out!! is no joke. At this point, the bouts are tough enough to quite literally get my pulse racing, and each victory feels like an accomplishment. It's hard in much the same way that the NES game was hard,but I think it's harder, thanks to more complex attack patterns from your opponents, which you need to learn during the first phase of your career and then completely re-learn during title defense. If the game had ended when I'd won the world championship, I would have felt like I could have better spent that $50, as fun as the experience was up to that point. But this game has proven to have lasting value and to keep the excitement comin'. I'm thrilled to see this franchise get reinvigorated like this.If only the game shouted "BODY BLOW! BODY BLOW!" like the arcade games did, it would be just about perfect.

Unnamed Middle Eastern Country: In the past I've never really been one to spend much time with online shooters, but I've gotten back into Modern Warfare's online multiplayer in a big way this week. I don't consider myself to be all that great at shooters so I generally shy away from exclusively team-based games like Gears of War 2's multiplayer (that way I can't let any other players down) but free-for-all deathmatch in CoD4 is so exceptional, I keep coming back to it again and again.It's easily the online shooter I've enjoyed the most. Here's a question for anyone here who might play this game online: If I play exclusively free-for-all deathmatch, is it worth it for me to spring for the map pack that contains Creek, Broadcast, Chinatown and Killhouse?

Temeria: This compelling land is the setting of The Witcher, which I downloaded off of Steam this week. I'm utterly taken with the setting, which is rather unlike the setting of any other fantasy RPG I've played, It feels rougher, more lived-in and worn, bleaker, and more believable. I haven't yet been able to spend as much time as I would like with the mysterious Geralt of Rivia, but you can bet I'm eager to do so.

The Sprint Studio: Lastly, I've been enjoying the beta season of 1 vs. 100 on Xbox Live. The game itself couldn't be simpler, but I'm excited about the way it's being implemented. I think the opportunity to join a live game that's being played by tens of thousands of other players, that involves answering trivia questions rather than, say, killing orcs and earning loot, is really exciting. (It helps that I am a huge sucker for trivia questions.) I also like the fact that up to four people can play from a single console, as it just feels like a party game that would be way more fun when shared with friend. In fact, I think I'm gonna invite some friends over for some pizza and beer and 1 vs. 100 one of these weekends.

I also want to say just a few things about E3.

When I was a kid, it really bothered me if someone abused a stuffed animal, even though I was well aware that the thing had no feelings of its own. Apparently there's still part of me that harbors that irrational perspective, as the first thing I imagined after seeing the Milo demonstration was thousands of people unleashing verbal abuse at their Milos. It made me sad. Apparently Milo won't respond to abuse, though, so that's good. Maybe if it's utterly pointless, people won't bother to engage in it. Of course, I'm assuming that Milo is actually going to be as amazing as it appeared in the demo, but then, I have no reason to doubt that it will be. After all, it was presented by Peter Molyneux of all people.

There are too many games I'm excited about to mention, but one announcement I'm particularly intrigued by is Metroid Other M. As a huge fan of most of the 2D Metroid games, I always felt that the Metroid Prime games really missed one hugely important aspect of what makes Samus so much fun to play: she's quick and agile. Metroid Other M looks primed to rectify this issue in a big way, so I'll be keeping my eyes on that one.

So, how 'bout you? What are you playin'? Any E3 announcements strike you as particularly promising or exciting?

Mis juegos favoritos de 2008!

Greetings from Tijuana, Mexico, where the thing to do on a Saturday night is stay in your room writing entries in your blog! This is not a list in which I'm arguing that these are the very best games of the year. There were too many games I didn't get to play for me to make those kinds of arguments (I've barely scratched the surface in Fallout 3--PUN INTENDED!) and anyway I'm not interested in making them. This is a quick and dirty, off-the-top-of-my-head celebration of the games I personally enjoyed the most.

For me, the area where games saw the most dramatic advancement in 2008 was narrative. My two favorite games each, in their own way, set a new standard for the kinds of stories games can tell, and how those stories can be told, while also delivering outstanding gameplay.

My favorite game of the year is Grand Theft Auto IV. Games have faced me with choices before, but never have the choices been so difficult, troubling and impactful as they are in Rockstar's masterpiece. In its stylized, thrillingly alive depiction of contemporary New York City, complex protagonist Niko Bellic's journey is not just a shootout-filled crime epic, though it certainly is that. It's also a story about class, culture, loss, revenge, forgiveness, and that most elusive of all concepts: the American dream. I'm not saying this game is The Wire. I am saying it cuts deeper and truer than any other game into the America we live in now, and I was mesmerized from start to finish by nearly every aspect of the game, and how they all came together to create an experience that was as thought-provoking and emotionally affecting as it was viscerally thrilling.

In my number two spot is a game that tells an altogether different kind of story. While one could imagine the tale of GTA IV working as a novel or film--albeit without those difficult, all-important choices, the Metal Gear Solid games, and MGS4 in particular, are uniquely gamey in the tales they tell and the techniques they employ to tell them. MGS 4 is such a monumental success, such a powerhouse conclusion to this series that for me it redeems even the weakest moments of the previous MGS games. MGS 4 is somewhat accessible to even first-time players of the series, but it really shines as a tremendous piece of fan service for those who have been fascinated with every aspect of Solid Snake's long, labyrinthine odyssey. My favorite example of both the gamey storytelling and the deeply interwoven fan service are the X-button flashbacks that frequently pop up during the game's cutscenes. I was frequently surprised and even oddly moved by the connections that were woven throughout this game to past games in the series in the form of brief visual and aural flashbacks. It gave the storytelling a rather stream-of-consciousness feel, as if we were inside Snake's mind, remembering aspects of the past along with him as his journey draws toward what he knows, as his body starts to give out on him, are his final days. Of course, all of this virtuosic storytelling would be for naught if the gameplay wasn't any good, but it is absolutely excellent. Unforgettable setpieces abound, and the final brutal fistfight is a near-perfect sendoff of one of the greatest heroes and one of the greatest villains in video game history, that brilliantly evokes all of the games in this landmark series.

Of course, games are still, first and foremost, about the gameplay, and one of my favorite games of the year has no narrative at all to speak of, save what my imagination conjures up. Rock Band 2 is an endlessly exhilarating fantasy fulfillment machine. I understand that it's not a huge advancement over its predecessor, but the whole Rock Band experience was new to me the day I brought home my RB2 bundle. I've already spent many hours getting lost in the music while playing drums for The Intellivisions, and I hope to spend many more. The people behind this game really understand the culture of rock, and everything about it feels right, from the ambiance of the gigs to the iconic images on loading screens of your band, and your band's name on lunchboxes, bumper stickers and the like.

And then there's the chilling Dead Space, which builds on the framework of Resident Evil 4 by adding some uniquely sci-fi elements like vacuums and zero-g environments, and takes place on a ship so richly detailed and haunting, it feels like you've stepped into a really, really good Ridley Scott movie.

I also want to give special recognition to Fable II. It's a thoroughly enjoyable game whose storybook vibe is very charming, and whose various elements--questing, developing your character's combat and magic attributes, shaping your character's moral role in the world, and buying and selling property, come together to make for a surprisingly compelling, addictive experience. On a personal note, I also love the tacit implication in the game that gay people should be treated as equals in society and granted the same freedom to express their commitment to each other with a bond of marriage that straight people enjoy. Ah, what a ridiculous fantasy world Albion is.

My odd game out for the year is Little Big Planet, which I found absolutely enchanting in the days after its release and would not have hesitated to place on this list. Many user-created levels knocked my socks off with their beauty and inventiveness. Then things got unpleasant as many of the very best levels were nuked by Sony, in many cases for no clear reason. This left a pretty nasty taste in my mouth about the whole experience. I've heard that things have improved since then, but I haven't yet found the time to hop back into my pod and see what's new in the LBP.

I'm giving honorable mention to No More Heroes, Suda51's exhilaratingly original, audacious Wii action game. Fascinating characters, stylish lo-fi graphics, a dizzying story, excellent use of the Wii remote, and tons of fun, ludicrously bloody action. Brilliant.

And Gears of War 2 also deserves recognition. As dumb as Cliff Bleszinski's "Bigger, better and more bad-ass" phrase sounds, it's nonetheless accurate. Gears of War 2 improves upon its predecessor in just about every way, featuring action on a larger scale and a story that's nice and ignorable rather than one whose in-your-face stupidity actually hurts the experience of playing the game. Heck, there was even a cutscene in this game I found rather moving. With a slew of terrific cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes, Gears 2 is an outstanding package.

This was also an amazing year for downloadable games, both in terms of remakes of classics and original titles. My favorite update is Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix, which improves the visuals of the 14-year-old classic so that they look spectacular in high definition, and polishes up the gameplay, but also demonstrates just how well the fundamental game still holds up.

My favorite original downloadable game, and one of my favorite games of the year in any category, is Braid. It's a brilliant, beautiful puzzler that's not quite like anything I've played before. It's challenging but consistently, unfailingly logical, and each time I thought I might have to break down and look at a FAQ, I instead put the game aside for a day, and when I returned to it, looking at the situation with fresh eyes, the solution was immediately apparent. To bring us full circle, it's also one of the most challenging and rewarding narratives I've encountered in a game, dealing with regrets on both a personal and historic scale, with a jaw-dropping climax that gave me goosebumps and left me feeling utterly amazed.

In space, no one can hear you say, "Hot diggity, this game is awesome!"

I'm positively overwhelmed by great games at the moment, some purchased, some GameFlown. I still need to spend a lot more time with Little Big Planet, and I've barely scratched the surface of Fallout 3. Tonight, I spent some time fending off waves of Locust with friends in Gears of War 2's terrific Horde mode, but the campaign remains mostly untouched.

The game that keeps pulling me away from all the others is Dead Space. I know this is common knowledge, but man, is this game outstanding. It doesn't reinvent the survival horror genre--you can feel the influence of Resident Evil 4 throughout--but it provides an absolutely remarkable setting and tosses in enough pure sci-fi elements to set it squarely apart from RE4 or any other game. Fighting enemies in zero-gravity environments is deliciously disorienting, and the way the sound effects contribute to the experience of running through a vacuum as your oxygen rapidly depletes has to be heard to be appreciated. Putting enemies in stasis and then blasting their appendages off and seeing them slowly twist through the air is strangely beautiful.

In fact, nearly everything about the game is strangely beautiful. The Ishimura actually feels like a once-functional spaceship, and the level of detail makes me feel like I've stepped into a Ridley Scott movie. The sound design equals the visuals in every way, with the ship clanging convincingly and the eerie echo of once-important PA announcements haunting the halls. And although the story seems like pure Event Horizon stuff, it's still told in a way that has me wanting to find out how it's all going to end, with the slick, insane Dr. Mercer giving the gruesome evil a compelling human face, and enough eerie hallucinations to give the game's horror a psychological edge.

Most of all, the game's action is what has me so hooked right now. It's difficult and satisfying, it's constantly introducing new enemies and new elements, and it always has me feeling like I'm fighting for my life.

This is one of my favorite games of the year.

Niko and Caro, American Dreamers

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the plot of Grand Theft Auto IV.

It's been ten years now since I graduated from college, and that fact put me in a bit of a reflective mood for much of the past few weeks. Thinking of what I've done with the past ten years, and where I hope to be when another ten years have gone by.

When I graduated, in May of 1998, the future was anything but certain. I mean, a degree in theater from a small liberal arts college is not exactly a license to print money, and at that point, I still didn't really know what I wanted to do professionally. But I had a dream for my life. Not a big dream at all, really. It's quite simple, but it's mine. Maybe it's yours, too.

It's a dream that was expressed pretty well in this exchange on Showtime's entertaining Dexter:

Dexter: Do you have a dream for your life? Your future? Yes?
Rita: Of course. Do you?
Dexter: It might sound weird. I want to someday be content. Just feel comfortable, like everyone else. I want...
Rita: ...a normal life?
Dexter: Yeah, a normal life.
Rita: That's all I want. Just that.

Dexter, in case you don't know, is a sympathetic character who kills people, and he has the same dream for his life that I have for mine. That seems appropriate here, as I've been spending a lot of time lately with another sympathetic character who kills people: Niko Bellic, the protagonist of Rockstar's truly superb Grand Theft Auto IV.

Yes, as I was playing GTA IV, I was also thinking a good deal about my life, and my dreams for my life. My life since college has had its ups and downs. After graduating, I fell into teaching. That was a job that I think I knew immediately, as a transgendered person, I wasn't going to stay in, because it was neither safe nor, some might argue, appropriate, for me to attempt to transition while teaching high school students. Some people may have been brave enough to attempt that path. I am not one of them. And I suspect that, even were it not for my gender issues, I would have wanted to seek out other professional experiences. Teaching is simply not my calling. Since then, I've worked in coffee shops and customer service call centers, trying to inch my way closer to my dream, and also to work towards getting a job doing something that I'll find truly satisfying.

Niko Bellic comes to Liberty City with dreams of his own, dreams that have been fueled by letters from his cousin Roman, who wrote of living a life filled with cars, women and money in the land of opportunity. When Niko arrives, he finds that Roman has overstated his success just a tad, and that in fact Roman is deeply in debt, and in trouble with just the sort of unsavory characters Niko came to Liberty City hoping to get away from. What's Niko gonna do when he arrives in LC and needs to make some money, get a job at the local Bean Machine? No, that's what suckers like me do. Niko is not the latte-slingin' type. He's been through a little too much. He's a little too broken. Early on, a character named Dimitri Rascalov (Niko should have known better than to ever trust someone with that name) says to Niko, "We can choose the game, Niko Bellic, but we cannot choose the rules of the game." Niko has, for better or worse, chosen his game.

It's not unusual for a good film or book or television show to make me think about my own life in some way, or about the world around me, but a video game? That's pretty much unheard of. GTA IV, though, did just that. I'm not saying that the characters could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those on The Wire, but I am saying that while The Wire is, in my opinion, the best television show in recent years about the America we're living in today, GTA IV is the best videogame ever about the America we're living in today, and that, like all truly good crime fiction, it is not the immoral or amoral product so many right-wing crusaders would have you believe it is, but it is, in fact, deeply moral, a story of choices and consequences.

There's a moment near the end of GTA IV where I really believed that Niko might end up with a simple, honest life, that he might fly off into the sunset, heading for the American Midwest with a nice woman at his side, leaving the crime network of Liberty City that he's fallen into behind. Of course, I realize that I was naive to think this, but it's just that I'd come to feel really attached to Niko as a character, and that I really wanted it for him, wanted him to have his own little American dream, and when it was all taken away from him in an instant, it was genuinely upsetting. Money is the closest thing you have in Grand Theft Auto to a score, and by the end I'd racked up well over a half million dollars, but as another character declared, "You won!", it all felt so hollow to me, and, I suspect, to Niko as well. Yes, Niko wound up with tons of money, and had established for himself a seemingly pretty safe and secure place in Liberty City's underworld, but at what cost?

It would take forever for me to list all the reasons I love this game so much. I love the razor-sharp satire of things like the Republican Space Rangers cartoon, Weazel News and the Bastion's Buddies right-wing radio talk show. I love the huge, diverse, vibrant soundtrack, filled as it is with wonderful details like jazz great Roy Haynes DJing the jazz station and sharing poignant, heartfelt anecdotes about the musicians he's featuring, but, in a nice touch, referring to events as taking place "here in Liberty City" instead of New York. I love the exhilarating beauty of unplannable moments like finding yourself flying over the city by helicopter on a rainy night as Pruit Igoe by Philip Glass swells up on the radio. I love the living, breathing city, where people walk down the street talking on their cellphones, or wash shop windows, or do tai chi in the park. But most of all, I love the characters who populate it, and the story it tells. When Niko finally comes face-to-face with the man who betrayed him so many years ago, a moment he has built up in his mind, been obsessed with, for years, he finds that the man is an utterly pathetic figure. This is one of the moments where the game gives the player a crucial choice. You can kill him, as Niko has intended to do for so long, or you can walk away. GTA IV certainly isn't the first game to offer choices of this kind, but it sure does it better than any game before in my opinion. Your choices in games are frequently between the most saintly of goodness and the most diabolical of evil, and so they never feel quite real to me. I'll do one to see what happens, then play again to make the other choice, but I never feel any real investment in it. It's just a game, after all. But so well-drawn are the characters in GTA IV, and Niko in particular, that I really felt personally invested in these choices. In this case, I chose to walk away. In the moments that followed, on a quiet car drive back home, Roman said some things to Niko about forgiveness, about letting go of the past. Things that were simple and true. That was beautiful. And while Niko's victory against the predatory forces of the underworld may seem hollow, there are other victories, smaller but more meaningful. Niko meets a young woman who had, like so many, come to Liberty City from the Midwest with big dreams of making it as a star, but had fallen into drug addiction and prostitution. Niko helped her get on a train back home to her parents, and she sent a nice email to thank him and let him know she was doing all right. That meant something.

Of course, like so many, I'm already wondering what's next for Grand Theft Auto. How do you follow this game? Will Rockstar continue along this more serious, contemplative path for the next few games in the series, or will we see things veer back towards the more cartoonish violence of earlier games? Will we return to the neon-drenched streets of Vice City, or visit someplace entirely new? And, I can't help but wonder, when the next game rolls around, will I be any closer to my own little dream? In any case, I won't stop trying, and that's what matters. I'll just keep on cranking up the LCD Soundsystem and walking through this world like the badass superstar I am.

My Aunt Ikaruga Is In Town

According to the Wikipedia, "Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity." It's an elusive feeling for me. I'd say that, in some of my better theatrical performances in college, the ones where everything just sort of fell into place, I experienced it. And there are times when I experience it playing certain video games. Sometimes it can happen when I'm writing, and almost invariably the things I write the most effortlessly are also the things I think are the best. Also, if I get into a good rhythm at work, whether it's firing off email after email or producing latte after latte, I can hit it for a while, though it's extremely challenging to maintain your singular focus when you must look into the visages of customers and see the existential despair that people only seem to experience during those three minutes before their triple soy mocha is delivered into their hands, restoring a sense of meaning to their lives.

As I was doing just that today at work, I was thinking about Ikaruga. If you don't know what Ikaruga is, it's a vertically scrolling shooter that was first released in 2001, and was made available this past Wednesday on Xbox Live Arcade. It's a very special example of the genre. (If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend Don Pachi's lovely appreciation of the game.) What sets it apart in gameplay terms is a simple but very effective polarity mechanic. You can switch your ship's polarity at any time between black and white. While black, black bullets cannot hurt you, and while white, white bullets cannot hurt you. However, while black, you do twice as much damage to white ships, and vice-versa.

I'd never played the game before Wednesday. I have to admit, before playing it, there was this part of me that thought that maybe I'd have what it takes to be an outstanding Ikaruga player. I knew that the game had a reputation for intense difficulty, but I also knew that there are those players who excel at it. As it turns out, I am not one of them.

One of my favorite features of the XBLA release of Ikaruga is the ability to download and watch replays of high scoring performances. I always enjoy it when games include a feature like this. It was a neat addition to Gameloft's excellent XBLA remake of the 1989 classic Prince of Persia, and in that game, watching replays of great performances helped me to improve my own performance. I don't think that's going to happen with Ikaruga. But what I like so much about the replay feature is that Ikaruga is the sort of game that seems downright impossible if you're not very good at it. You'll find yourself in a situation where it might appear to you that there's no way to emerge unscathed from the hail of black and white bullets headed your way. The game might seem unfair. Well, it isn't. All you gotta do is download a replay from the leaderboards of someone totally acing that section, and you'll know it's not impossible. It's just that you suck at it. And what makes these stellar performances all the more impressive is that these players manage to rack up chain after chain of enemy kills (by destroying three white or three black enemies in a row) to earn the really big points. As if just surviving wasn't difficult enough.



Ikaruga is a beautiful game, and it's especially beautiful when it's being played well, because those performances make it look easy and graceful and natural. I could be wrong, of course, but I suspect that, for the players who can perform on that level, it actually is kind of easy. I suspect that they've gotten to the point where, when playing Ikaruga, they enter that place we call flow. And that is a beautiful thing.

You Have To Burn The Rope

Go play this game, now. It made my day. I think you'll love it, too.

P.S. It's Swedish.

The Queen of Kong: For a Few Brawlers More

Amidst laying in bed coughing, watching hella Lost and dragging myself off to a few job interviews, I also watched The King of Kong this past week. What a neat little movie. Of course, my interest in video games probably made it more enjoyable, but in fact, I'd recommend it to just about anyone, as it's not just about going for the all-time high score in Donkey Kong. It's about the personalities of two distinctly different people. Steve Wiebe is a likable hero and underdog anyone can root for, and Billy Mitchell, with his hilarious tendency to spout self-aggrandizing statements with the affect of a zen monk, is, to me, a compelling and amusing villain of sorts. "I'm the most seasoned person in the hot sauce chicken wing business."

The movie did make me want to play some arcade-perfect Donkey Kong. DK was always one of my favorite arcade games, and I still think it's one of the very best games of all time. It's so rare for games these days to test one's skill on anything resembling that level. For instance, I got 100% completion in Burnout Paradise this past week as well, but as much as I love that game, I don't feel there's any sort of accomplishment involved there. Just about anyone, if they put enough (read: way too much) time into it, can get 100% completion in Paradise. But you and I could play Donkey Kong for hundreds of hours and never get to the level of play at which people like Wiebe and Mitchell compete. Still, I'd love to have a go and see what my own personal best high score could be.

Unfortunately, inexplicably, there's pretty much no legal way to play arcade-perfect Donkey Kong short of dropping upwards of a thousand bucks on buying a DK machine. You'd think, especially with the film, that there'd be some level of interest in the game that Nintendo could capitalize on to make a few bucks, but the only version readily available right now, via the Wii's Virtual Console, is the NES version, which sucks. It doesn't have the How High Can You Get? screen or the "pie factory" level, so it ain't really Donkey Kong. Of course, plenty of people have bought Donkey Kong on the Virtual Console, because they don't know any better or don't care. It's the same reason so many people go to Starbucks. (The arcade version of Donkey Kong was included in Rare's 1999 Nintendo 64 game Donkey Kong 64, but even that version alters the flow of the game's levels a bit.)



Ah well. I have at least spent some time today playing a Nintendo game, the insanely hyped Super Smash Bros. Brawl. If you're not familiar with this series, the SSB games involve a roster of characters from Nintendo's storied history...Mario, Link, Donkey Kong, and so on...smacking and kicking each other in environments that are also taken from Nintendo's storied history. They're basically Nintendo's big love letter to itself, and as fan service, they're outstanding. As a Nintendo fan myself, I admit I got caught up in the hype and excitement leading up to the game's release. The thing is, as games, despite a multitude of rabid fanboys across the internets declaring Brawl the best game ever, they're just so-so. Playing SSB has reminded me of David Cross' story about having a good time at a Harlow concert until he had a realization. "Wait a second. I hate Harlow."

I don't hate Smash Bros., but it's just really basic. There isn't enough depth to the gameplay to make it rewarding or interesting for me. The only fun I really had with the previous game in the series was when I had a few friends over who were up for some mindless button-mashing fun, because the games are definitely good for some laughs. Especially if a few drinks have been had. Brawl does bring online play to the series so perhaps I'll wrassle up a few friends online and get some mindless enjoyment out of the game that way. And the game is full of awesome unlockables, like the ability to play the lame NES version of Donkey Kong for THIRTY SECONDS! Rad!

Anyway, Lost. Yeah, I finally decided to see what all the fuss is about with that show, seeing as how ABC has put all the episodes up for viewing on their website. The only drawback of watching them on the website is that I have to keep sitting through an ad that makes the mind-boggling claim that, with the inclusion of "stars" like Adam Carolla and Steve Guttenberg, this season of Dancing With the Stars is going to be HOTTER! STEAMIER! SEXIER! than ever before. Yeah, that Adam Carolla is a sexy, sexy man.

What I like most about Lost, not surprisingly, are the elements that feel like something out of an adventure game: the Dharma Initiative stations on the island, the button that may or may not need to be pushed every 108 minutes to save the world, stuff like that. (Also not surprisingly, Lost has just been turned into an adventure game. By all accounts it's a middling game, but I'll probably give it the ol' GameFly whirl anyway once I'm all caught up with the show.) What I don't like about it is how maddeningly little information it doles out in any given episode, but I guess that's how you keep people tuning in.

In other news, I'm stoked about giantbomb.com, the new site from former GameSpot dudes Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis. Not much there yet, but I think when it explodes onto the scene this summer, it's gonna be pretty awesome.

Finally, the job hunt continues. I've had two interviews recently. One of the two jobs is considerably better than the other but beggars can't be choosers. Thank-you cards have been sent, follow-up phone calls placed, and the scouring of craigslist goes on.

Gender Select:

My sense of myself as female is, as you may know, extremely important to me, and, like many women I know who play games, when given the choice between playing as a male character or a female character, all other things being equal, I'll pretty much always go with the female character. Particularly in role-playing games like Oblivion, I just feel a deeper sense of connection to my character that way, and I also really appreciate those rare instances when games with pre-set characters have female characters who are interesting and don't have proportions that would look grotesque on an actual human being. (Alex Roivas in Eternal Darkness is perhaps my favorite female character in a game, but such characters are still all too rare.) However, that's not to say that I feel a particular barrier between myself and my character in those situations when I have to play as a male, which is, let's face it, almost all the time. It's sort of like playing Burnout Paradise, in which you're just a car. I, myself, am not a car, but I still feel every crash in the game pretty intensely. Still, it bugs me when I come away from a game feeling like it would have been pretty easy for the developers to provide the option to play as a female, but they just didn't bother.

I think that, as a very broad generalization that has millions of exceptions, men are a bit more put off by the idea of playing as a woman than women are by the idea of playing as a man, though whether this is because women are inherently more easygoing about this sort of thing, or because of misogyny on the part of those men who have issues playing as a woman, or just because women have been forced to accept that, more often than not, playing a game means playing as a male character, I'm not really sure. And as I said, that's an exceptionally broad generalization. There are plenty of men who regularly play as female characters for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes there's nothing more to it than a sense that if you're going to spend hundreds of hours looking at a character, it might as well be one that you find visually appealing. But there are plenty of more complex reasons behind why some men do this as well. And certainly women will occasionally create male characters, though if I had to guess I'd say this probably happens less frequently than the opposite.

What got me thinking about this was a comment I read from a female gamer in response to this article, an appreciation piece about Gordon Freeman, the protagonist of Valve's exceptional Half-Life games. The piece asserts:

Gordon Freeman’s neutrality of dialogue and lack of overt personality within the game do not make him a non-character, but are in fact his strength. His lack of preconcieved identity provides not a single barrier with which to distance him from the player’s own personality, making him a blank canvas on which they can imprint their own values and outlook. Valve have even made it impossible for the player to ever see Gordon from a third-person perspective, either through cut-scene or reflection, meaning that in no instance does the effect of seeing a character who does not look like themselves pull the player out of the experience of ‘being’ him.

The comment I read about this assertion, which I'm deliberately taking totally out of context because I admit I'm more interested at this point in what it made me think about than what she actually meant, essentially stated that the flaw in this argument was that it was impossible for her to project herself onto Gordon Freeman because Freeman is male. While I would probably have felt a deeper connection to the protagonist of the Half-Life games if that protagonist were female, this argument seemed odd to me, as playing as Gordon Freeman never really impacted my ability to feel engrossed in the story and world of the Half-Life games. But then I realized that it's fully possible that I'm the odd one. People sometimes think that transgendered people have some sort of insightful perspective into gender dynamics, but I usually feel just the opposite, that my own perspective, anyway, is probably pretty limited and distorted, existing, as I do, outside of any gender dynamic I've ever felt at home in.

I guess I just don't feel like gender, while an aspect of our sense of personal identity whose impact cannot be overstated, is the be-all, end-all of our ability to relate to each other as human beings. While I feel deeply that I'm female, there are certainly some men I feel I can relate to pretty well, and plenty of women I can't relate to at all, and my sense is that this is true of most people. And I sometimes think that people give this stuff too much weight, or see barriers between the sexes that don't exist. It's not unusal to hear someone say, of a book written by a man in which the narrator is a woman, that the author didn't convincingly capture the female voice, or to say the opposite about a book written by a woman in which the narrator is a man. (A woman I know recently said she didn't feel that Donna Tartt was entirely convincing in writing from the male perspective in her novel The Secret History, for example.) And sometimes that may be true, but I also think that at times people scrutinize these books more, and latch on to anything that might ring false to them, things that perhaps wouldn't make them bat an eye if the author was actually the same gender as the narrator. Would the narrator of The Secret History have seemed odd to my acquaintance, I wonder, if the book had been written by a man? Or is she right in saying that there's something quintessentially female about the way the book is written, and no man in the history of the world would ever have written a male narrator that way? That's definitely possible.

This higher level of scrutiny is similar, it seems to me, to what many transgendered people experience, when they're held to a different standard of masculinity or femininity than, for lack of a better term, "cissexual" men and women. One might attempt to deny a transsexual woman her femaleness, for instance, by saying, "He's not really female, he likes video games too much," but wouldn't dream of applying this same logic to those cissexual women who love video games.

Anyway, I don't have any pat conclusion with which to tie a bow on this ramble. These are just some thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head lately, and if you have any thoughts on playing games as a character of your gender vs. playing as a character of the opposite gender, or about anything else I've touched on here, do share.

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In other news, the job hunt continues! I had an interview today that I think went well, at a place just off Market St. in the hustle and bustle of Downtown San Francisco. If I get this position, I think I'll enjoy having a reason to head into SF every day.

And just to further demonstrate how screwy my perspective on things is, here's the funniest thing I've seen recently: Garfield Minus Garfield. It is exactly what the title says it is, and the header on the main page is spot-on:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness in a quiet American suburb.

Well, spot-on aside from the fact that they spelled loneliness wrong. Anyway, I think the strip is brilliant, and it made me laugh until I had tears in my eyes. And, yes, I even find it oddly poignant. What's wrong with me?

The Waiting is the Hardest Part...

The week before last, I had a job interview for a technical writing position. The interview went swimmingly, and they called me in a few days later for a second interview, which also went quite well. I felt really comfortable with the people I met at the company, and although I've never had a burning passion to do technical writing or anything, it sure sounded like a nice change of pace after all the customer service work I've done for the past few years.

Over the course of last week, the job was just about all I could think about. (Well, that and how tired I am of being a boy, but that's such a constant that it hardly even seems worth mentioning.) I tried not to obsess about it, but in my mind I kept envisioning being offered the job, and not being offered the job. I think my brain deliberately tries to imagine possible disappointing outcomes for all sorts of situations as a defense mechanism, so that I'm more prepared for those outcomes if they come to pass, but I don't think this actually works, and I try not to do it. It's hard to stop, though. My brain has a mind of its own.

At the second interview, they'd told me that I'd find out on the following Friday if I got the job or not. This made for a very long week. I distracted myself some with reading, and watching a bit of The Wire, and playing some Burnout Paradise, but still, long week.

True to their word, on Friday, I got the call. "This was a really hard decision, you were a really strong candidate, but..." Indeed, despite my brain's attempts to prepare me for this possibility, I was pretty crushed.

But at the same time, at least the wait was over. And since then, I've found myself pouring my energy back into the job search with gusto. Many a resume and cover letter have been emailed. Of course, this is good, as I really need a job now. Things are starting to get a bit scary. I'm still hoping to find something that seems like an exciting opportunity, a nice change of pace, and some of the jobs I've applied for this weekend have fit that bill, but certainly not all of them. If need be, I can always take something along the lines of what I've been doing for the past few years and keep looking. Right now, I'm mostly just hoping to get something fast.

In other news, I wrote up a review of the NES game Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom, which hit the Wii's Virtual Console service last week. (Yes, my Virtual Console games are working again. Turns out the problem with my Wii was that I am an idiot.) I actually posted the review as a reader review at GameSpot. You can find it here. Here's the short version: Only five continues?! Are you fucking kidding me?! I plan to still write reviews of games from time to time, but I don't really know what to do with them. I may post them at GS and link to them in a blog post, as I'm doing here, but if you have any thoughts on what I should do with them, lemme know!

Finally, some good friends took me out on Saturday to see U23D. I'm a pretty big U2 fan, and although I don't think it's one of their best filmed performances--not like the ZOO TV concert from Sydney or the Elevation DVD from Boston--and although the novelty of having Bono get all up in my grill through the magic of 3D didn't really add much to the overall experience--I still really enjoyed seeing a U2 concert on the big screen. I sort of needed the soaring anthemic reassurance and passionate sense of determination only U2 can provide after Friday's disappointment.

I, I will begin again.

I Left My Heart in...the Curious Village?!

Happy belated Valentine's Day, y'all!

I got my 360 back on Thursday, and I would have expected myself to immediately hook it back up and finally hit the streets of Paradise City. But another game that arrived from GameFly on Wednesday had already sunk its hooks into me and wouldn't let me go: Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Oh, what a delightful, charming, maddening little game.

At its core, this Nintendo DS game is just a series of brainteasers, but while I do have a fondness for logic puzzles, I doubt a DS cart that consisted of nothing more than a collection of them would really do it for me. What really makes this game special is the story, characters, and art style. Prof. Layton and his young self-proclaimed apprentice Luke journey to the village of St. Mystere to track down the Golden Apple, which is the key to the will of the late Baron Reinhold. Prof. Layton is summoned due to his renown as a puzzle expert, and the people of St. Mystere certainly put him to the test. Everyone you encounter has a brainteaser for you.

This Penny Arcade strip pretty much hits the nail on the head, but to the game's credit you don't actually have to solve every puzzle you come across. You do need to solve a majority of them to proceed through the story, but if certain puzzles just aren't to your liking, you're welcome to take a pass on them, and you can go back to them at any time. (There are a few exceptions to this rule, and I admit that one mandatory puzzle near the end, a sliding block puzzle, drove me so mad that I broke down and looked up the answer online.)

I find the game's visual style a bit reminiscent of The Triplets of Belleville, and peppered throughout the game are a number of really high-quality animated scenes. The game just feels really elegant, and I encourage everyone who enjoys logic puzzles to give it a look. I'm already looking forward to the game's promised sequel.

Anyway, having successfully solved the mystery of St. Mystere, I have now in earnest moved on to Burnout Paradise. Spectacular. The game is full of amazing moments, and the ridiculously fast racing that Burnout is known for feels better than ever. One of my problems with the last game was that traffic checking made it feel as if most cars on the road were made out of tinfoil. That's been totally rectified here, and everything seems to have just the right amount of weight to it. It's also one of the most visually beautiful games I've ever played, and it looks gorgeous even on my SDTV. It does make me wish I was playing in high-def, though. At these speeds, deadly cement outcroppings and other obstacles don't come into focus soon enough for me to react.

If It's Not One Thing...

Microsoft reports that my 360--or a 360, anyway--is en route back to me and scheduled for delivery on Friday. I'm looking forward to finally getting in some time with Burnout Paradise. A bunch of people I know are still playing online pretty regularly so it seems I haven't totally missed the boat on that one.

But that's still a few days off, and I was hoping to spend some of that time with Lords of Thunder, truly one of the rockin'est shooters of all time. This TurboGrafx 16 classic, with some of the most smoldering guitar licks ever heard in a video game, hit the Wii's Virtual Console on Monday, and the game is a blast. The whole thing is like the notebook doodles of a big-haired 14-year-old ACDC fan circa 1988 brought to life, with an awesomely cheesy soundtrack to match.

Unfortunately, my Wii has started doing something very unusual. All of my Virtual Console games, including Lords of Thunder, have suddenly started behaving as if I am constantly holding down the 1 button on my Wii remote. At first I thought the problem was with the remote itself, but it's not. I've tested it with a number of Wii disc games--No More Heroes, Super Paper Mario, and so on--and they all respond perfectly each time I hit the 1 button. Yet every last Virtual Console game on my system seems to think the 1 button is in a permanent state of pressnitude, and this makes playing the games pretty much impossible.

I emailed Nintendo about this using the link on their tech support web page. After submitting my email, I got this statement:

"Due to the unprecedented popularity of the Wii, we're currently experiencing extremely high email volumes and it may take several days before we are able to respond."

Just a thought--maybe y'all could take some of the truckloads of money that are coming in every day due to the unprecedented popularity of the Wii and use it to hire a few new reps so that your customers who are contributing to said unprecedented popularity don't have to wait several days for a response.

Oh well. I guess for the time being I'll have to continue spending my free time the same way I have been for the past few weeks: watching way too much Law & Order: Criminal Intent on my computer via Netflix. The funny thing is that I don't even think it's a particularly outstanding show, not like The Shield or Six Feet Under, and I wouldn't even bother putting it on my Netflix queue and watching the DVDs. (I certainly wouldn't bother watching it as it airs. Watching TV on TV is for suckers.) But there's just something compulsively watchable about Vincent D'Onofrio as Det. Robert Goren, and Netflix has just made it so damn easy with this Watch Instantly feature, that I find myself sometimes watching two or three 43-minute episodes a day.

By the way, I have an interview tomorrow morning for a technical writer position. I'm hoping it goes well, as I'd really like to get out of the whole customer service racket, and I'm confident about my ability to do this job and do it well. But I hate job interviews, and thinking about it is already giving me the jitters. Wish me luck.

UPDATE: Contrary to what they said, Nintendo responded to my email in a matter of hours, not days. However, the response is basically a non-response, saying that they can't help me by email and that I should call them. So I'll call them tomorrow.

Also, I've determined that the issue isn't with the remote at all. I disconnected the remote altogether in the middle of a Virtual Console game and the game continued to behave as if the 1 button was being held down. Something's gone screwy in the part of my Wii's brain that handled VC games, it seems.

UPDATE TWO: I just called Nintendo. The rep I spoke to obviously had never heard of this issue before and had no idea what might be causing it. She quickly scheduled a callback, presumably with someone who might actually be able to help me, and I should be hearing from them in 24-72 hours. Terrific.

No More Hiros

Headlong motion through walls of emerald green, milky jade, the sensation of speed beyond anything he'd known before in cyberspace....The Tessier-Ashpool ice shattered, peeling away from the Chinese program's thrust, a worrying impression of solid fluidity, as though the shards of a broken mirror bent and elongated as they fell--

"Christ," Case said, awestruck, as Kuang twisted and banked above the horizonless fields of the Tessier-Ashpool cores, an endless neon cityscape, complexity that cut the eye, jewel bright, sharp as razors.

"Hey, shit," the construct said, "those things are the old RCA Building. You know the old RCA Building?" The Kuang program dived past the gleaming spires of a dozen identical towers of data, each one a blue neon replica of the Manhattan skyscraper.

"You ever see resolution this high?" Case asked.

"No, but I never cracked an AI neither."

--William Gibson, Neuromancer

Now you can crack an AI in Rez HD, available for the Xbox Live Arcade!

I guess busting out a quote from Neuromancer is pretty cliche, but the fact is that Rez comes closer than any other game to living up to the beauty of "jacking into cyberspace" as that experience played out in my imagination when I read William Gibson's landmark novel at 15, and again at 20, and again at 25. (There aren't any New York skyscrapers in the game's version of cyberspace, but there are statues of Buddha and other expressions of mankind's spiritual history amidst all the cold hard data.)

It's also the game that looks most like what I imagined games in the future would look like when I was very young, though those concepts were probably heavily influenced by Tron. I'd say that Rez out-Trons Tron, or at least creates a vaguely similar but far more beautiful world.

I'm glad Rez is now easily available at an affordable price. As has been said of it time and time again, it may not be much of a game, but it sure is an experience. So fork over your 800 points, turn out the lights and turn up the music.

------------

While Rez is basic and elegant and beautiful, the other game I've been playing a lot lately, No More Heroes, is goofy and violent and ugly, but it, too, has reminded me of a sci-fi book people sometimes lump into the "cyberpunk" category. Don't let that categorization fool you, though. This is a true work of literature, a staggering achievement that Time Magazine, and, more importantly, me, consider one of the 100 greatest novels written in the English language since 1923. I'm referring to Neal Stephenson's astounding Snow Crash.

I'm not saying that No More Heroes is on par with Snow Crash as an artistic achievement or anything. I'm just saying that the one reminded me of the other, for a number of reasons. For starters, they each have main characters with larger-than-life names. Snow Crash's hero has the unforgettable moniker of Hiro Protagonist, while NMH, the latest game from noteworthy designer Goichi Suda (AKA Suda 51), stars Travis Touchdown. They each live in very modest situations. Travis rents a tiny place at a crappy motel called No More Heroes, while Hiro lives with his roommate Vitaly Chernobyl in a space at a U-Stor-It storage facility. They both live in Southern California, in versions of the United States that are a bit politically fucked-up. Hiro resides in Los Angeles, while Travis makes his home in the absurdly named dead-end town of Santa Destroy. Actually, I'm pretty sure No More Heroes never explicitly states that Santa Destroy is in California, and in fact Santa Destroy has its own flag, a massive red, white and blue flag with a single star in the middle. The game doesn't explain what that's about, which I kinda like. Maybe it's its own city-state.

In both Hiro's and Travis' America, the dollar is not what it used to be. Inflation has hit the United States of Snow Crash so hard that, to quote from the Wikipedia entry, "trillion dollar bills — Ed Meeses — are nearly disregarded and the quadrillion dollar note — the Gipper — is the standard 'small' bill." In NMH, the common form of currency is called an "LB." The game never explains this, either, so I'm not sure if I should be imagining cash with Lyndon B. Johnson's face on it, or images of the Liberty Bell, or if I should assume that Lance Bass has conquered the nation.

Hiro and Travis both take on some pretty modest work to earn their money. Hiro delivers pizza for CosaNostra, and believe me, when you deliver pizza for CosaNostra, you absolutely, positively have to get that pie where it's going in thirty minutes or less. The stakes are so outrageously high that the first part of Snow Crash, which follows Hiro ("The Deliverator") on a wild pizza delivery adventure, almost plays out like a section of a video game. NMH takes some equally mundane tasks--pumping gas, for instance, mowing lawns, and picking up trash--and actually turns them into minigames. Each job has some bizarre lead-in from your employer, elevating the awful writing so common in so many video games to a kind of poetry. Whenever you go to the local job center searching for work, the dude behind the counter says:

Third class man?
I have not mastered the secret of the first class yet.
It's not too bad.
The first rated God will give a hardworking man a little smile.

And to those who think video games are a complete waste of time, let me point out that this game tries to teach important lessons about the value of hard work. When you go to pump gas, for instance, you get this lecture:

The unspoken rules of Santa Destroy dictate perseverance.
Perseverance leads to money, which in turn leads to wealth.
The world will forever remain closed to those who do not persevere.
The God of Gasoline is cruel.
Lose your perseverance and you'll burn up!
That is what perseverance means!
So get workin'!
Get workin'!

In Snow Crash and in No More Heroes, there are some pretty terrific businesses populating the landscape. Snow Crash has the aforementioned, Mafia-owned CosaNostra Pizza, along with Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, where Mr. Lee encourages visitors, "Whether seriously in business or on a fun-loving hijink, make yourself totally homely in this meager environment." Santa Destroy gives us the irresistible Pizza Suplex, and my personal favorite, the inexplicable Beef Head Videos. That's just cool if you ask me.

Also cool are the t-shirts you find in dumpsters around town and at Area 51, the game's clothing store. At first I thought adding an optional element of "play dress-up with Travis" was lame and pointless, but I have to admit I actually got into it, because the t-shirts you can wear are legitimately cool. And like Hiro, Travis gets around on a totally cool motorcycle. Travis' bike of choice is a massive flaming beast called a Schpeltiger.

And, perhaps most importantly, both Hiro and Travis know how to use a sword. Travis uses a lightsaber--err, beam katana--throughout the game (which is loaded with Star Wars references) while Hiro Protagonist's business card reads, among other things,

"Greatest swordfighter in the world."

With all these aspects of No More Heroes bouncing around in my head, reminding me of Snow Crash, I hoped that Travis Touchdown might turn out to be, like Hiro Protagonist (and contrary to the game's title), a true hero, someone smart and brave, fighting for something worth fighting for. A real cool guy. But as it turns out, despite his cool name and his cool t-shirts and his cool motorcycle and his cool way with a beam katana, Travis Touchdown is anything but cool. Dude is a straight-up loser if you ask me. His interests don't seem to encompass much besides anime and pro wrestling. He rents porn from Beef Head and humps his pillow. He can't handle himself around real women at all, and he has attitudes about sex that would seem immature coming from a 13-year-old.

So for a while I despised him. But at a certain point, I got it. Travis is, in a sense, the quintessential video game character, embodying all the loser attributes people frequently associate with "gamers." So many video game characters reek of what's come to be known as "baditude," a quality of being a badass to such a degree that it becomes almost parody. Travis Touchdown takes that concept to its logical conclusion. You just know that all these video game protagonists who act so tough are total losers when they're not busy saving the day. They're probably all obsessed with sex but utterly incapable of handling women as human beings. They probably all live alone in crummy apartments with no real social life to speak of. (Dante especially.) No More Heroes is just the first game honest enough to confront this fact.

The concept of games that know they're games is not an especially original one. EA's recent The Simpsons Game is a good example of a metagame, and it does a fine job of trotting out gaming cliches for our amusement. But No More Heroes, with its depiction of Travis as a helpless loser who thinks he's hot shit, cuts a bit deeper than your average metagame. It also makes a particular effort to recall the glory days of 8-bit video games. The menus have a great old-school sensibility to them, and when Travis nods off at one point, his dream even takes the form of an 8-bit-style game within the game.

But this appreciation for old-school gaming goes beyond the menus and one-off dream sequence. The gameplay seems to me to be rooted in some of the best concepts of the 8-bit era. Although there are other things to do in No More Heroes, at its core this is a game that has you taking on a series of opponents, facing them one-on-one to rise through the ranks and prove yourself as the best assassin in the land. Most of all, I was reminded of the classic NES game Punch-Out!! (or Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! if you prefer). That game had a very simplistic series of moves, and yet it was still very exciting and challenging. The challenge in Punch-Out!! came from playing defensively and using precise timing to take advantage of your opponents' vulnerabilities, and this same concept is at the heart of many of the confrontations in No More Heroes. The combat system isn't as complex as that in games like Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden, but the battles can nonetheless be very intense and satisfying. In fact, the overall simplicity of the game's combat system works to its advantage.

The Wii seems to be having a hard time establishing itself as a real gaming machine in the minds of many who have been playing games for a long time. Certainly No More Heroes would send many a housewife who purchased a Wii because she thought Wii Sports looked like fun running for the hills, and yet many "hardcore" gamers still seem to view the Wii as more of a gimmick than a console. Well, those people are wrong. The Wii is a real console, and outstanding games like Super Mario Galaxy and No More Heroes play to its strengths, incorporating motion controls to just the right degree, and providing experiences that are fresh and exciting and distinctly different from what else is out there.

As for Travis Touchdown, in the end, it turns out he's fighting for a bit more than is initially apparent. He may not be trying to save the world like Hiro Protagonist. He may not know how to handle himself around women like Hiro Protagonist. In fact, he may not be a hero at all. But he's still one of the freshest and most unusual video game protagonists to come along in a while, and No More Heroes is a bizarre, awesome and terrifically exciting game.