Unedited thoughts on Physical Media Resurgence & Backlogs & Media Access & Self-Control

 I’ve been seeing more and more videos of people younger than me doing self imposed challenges where they don’t use social media for X amount of time, or limit their media consumption to just a few things for a month, or spending a year tackling their backlog of movies/videogames/etc. And it’s interesting seeing people live in the way a lot of people HAD to in the 90s and earlier. I was just thinking recently about how I have more, and more easy access, to videogames than when I was in say 8^th grade, where unless you borrowed a game from someone or rented it, you just had the games you had to play, and nothing else. Same with CDs: I remember when I finally owned more CDs than my 15 disc CD wallet could hold, and how it felt like I had SO MUCH music, whereas now I can open Spotify and have access to thousands upon thousands of albums and songs.

At the same time, I see comments on social media about how people miss videostores and that whole experience. Of course they forget the inconvenience and limited stock and the other downsides that were the reason videostores went away, but perhaps in some way the limited stock is a desirable trait.

Anyway, all of this has me thinking it’s not a black and white issue like it’s portrayed as. When I was in 8^th grade, I would’ve given anything to have access to media like I do now. And this isn’t even a matter of we’ve been spoiled for so long we don’t appreciate what we have; I, at least, always appreciate the convenience of the Internet and nearly-limitless access to information and entertainment. So this whole topic doesn’t to me boil down to “limited media access” vs. “unlimited media access” and which one is better. As with anything, the truth is more complicated and nuanced. Yet ultimately this can be boiled down to self-control. If you can’t stop yourself from endlessly scrolling TikTok all day and checking Reddit every 20 minutes, no amount of self-imposed challenges will permanently alter your behavior. As soon as the week or month or whatever length of time the challenge lasts, I would bet dollars to donuts that most of those people eventually slide back into their old habits. YOU must control your consumption. YOU must learn the balance of mindless content vs. meaningful content you need in your life. YOU must learn to put your phone down and sit down to concentrate on an album or book wholly. But that’s not as simple and sexy as a clickbait title that screams “I lived like someone in the 80s for a week!”

So let’s do a little thought experiment. If you go to your local used media store and buy a DVD boxset of, say, The Office, and this is in your selection of physical media you’re “allowed” to watch during your self-imposed challenge. So on the first day of it, you begin watching season one of The Office on DVD. Outside of the interface and having to physically change the discs as the seasons go on, there is no fundamental difference between the two ways of watching. You could just as easily have used your self-control to say, “I’m going to put my phone down and watch the first 6 episodes of The Office on streaming.”

Ultimately you can use whatever methods or systems proposed by YouTubers and others to enjoy as much media as possible and not waste your life on social media and mindless content churn websites. But you still have to have the self-control to stick with these methods or systems, and this ultimately is what makes them a novelty rather than a paradigm shift: you are ultimately responsible for yourself. It’s always within your power to decrease your social media time and increase time spent reading or watching new TV shows or whatever.

I do think the one valuable thing people are taking from this whole topic is getting back into physical media and as a result having real ownership of media again. While I still maintain there’s a balance to find between being all physical media and all streaming, I can’t deny that with the former the movie studio can’t come into your house and steal your bluray copy of The Princess Bride.

My own system for say music is that I curate a collection of vinyl records of my absolutely favorites and rare releases you can’t always find on streaming, but I also use streaming all the time because of the ease of use and the amount of music you get for that monthly fee. Similarly with movies, I only buy a physical copy of something if I especially love it OR if it’s an obscure movie that might go out of print—it’s been re-released recently, but for a long time you couldn’t watch Dogma on any streaming services and had to track down a DVD copy, for instance.

Now as for backlogs…I think this is also about self-control, but additionally about having honest conversations with yourself. We all know that sometimes we purchase things because we’d like to think of ourselves as the kind of person who casually decides to read One Hundred Years Of Solitude but realistically most of us will stop at the purchase/acquisition. This is why so many people have dozens of games in their Steam library they haven’t touched. You WANT to be the kind of person who plays in-depth strategy games or esoteric RPGs with dense mechanics, so you buy those games, yet you never end up playing them. You can use whatever systems or self-imposed challenges you want, ultimately you have to make yourself accountable and actually play them. I have this thing where, when I’m between videogames, I play an hour or two of a few different games I’ve bought but haven’t played. This gets me to rapidly reassign games in my own ranking: Games I’ll Never Want To Play, Games I Might Want To Play Someday, and Games I Want To Keep Playing After This Is Over.

 

Return of The Videogame Solipsist

 An Unedited Rant Medley About The Games I've Been Playing

BattleTech

Randomness absolutely ruins this game for me. I guess Front Mission 3 will continue to be my platonic ideal of a game that actually makes you feel empowered fighting using giant robots instead of like they’re worse, more fragile and finicky versions of tanks.

I wanted to love this game so badly. I gave it far more chances and time than I ordinarily would have. But even on the lowest difficulty I constantly found myself getting bad luck and shitstomped by enemies. No matter how carefully I tried to edge forward on maps, I still kept getting surprised and overwhelmed. The enemy always outnumbers you, and depending on RNG this can either mean 8 to 4 or 20 to 4.

It feels like actually running your own mercenary company in the far future,  including all the unfun business meetings and personnel issues and operating budgets nobody should want to have to do.

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: your IP is not popular enough for people to want to play what sounds like a soft reboot minus the The that usually accompanies these.

 

BallxPit

This is the sort of game where the first dozen or so hours are constant fun and progress being made, but you start to realize most of the characters you’re unlocking aren’t fun to play as because of their downsides, and you have to level them up from scratch instead of them being the same level as your current characters. Depending on the level, the character(s) you choose, and the luck you get with power-ups, your runs will either be a cakewalk or a miserable slog that ends in failure, which is not player agency and skill but rather gambling.

The town building aspect? Well, it’s not nearly as deep and fun as it wants you to think it is. Shooting workers to bounce around and collect resources is fine, but having to finish building structures by also bouncing them off? That’s not a fun and meaningful mechanic, it just feels like dull busywork.

There’s still a lot for me to unlock in this game yet after almost 36 hours I’m not sure I care anymore. This game is a classic example of one that a decade ago would’ve been a mobile game that purposefully slows your progress to get you to spend money; instead it’s just a game that starts to feel like a checklist or homework because it takes so much time to make any real progress.

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: why invoke ballpits if your game gets boring far quicker than ballpits do?

 

Vampire Survivors

Just go play this game if you haven’t already. There’s a reason it’s so beloved and so addictive. Every couple play sessions I kept unlocking new aspects and mechanics, and the drip feed of unlocks and new weapons/items is pitch perfect.

I’ve also been playing quite a bit of co-op with my wife, and that’s a lot of fun, too. You trade off on level up’s, but you occasionally can choose to give both of you a random weapon upgrade.

This game could’ve been used for evil. Designed by a former casino slot machine designer, this could’ve been an addictive and predatory mobile game. Instead it’s all the fun of the first few hours with a mobile game before you hit the wall, but it’s that feeling throughout your time playing it.

I kept telling myself, as I tried the other games I’m talking about in this post, that I was finally done with Vampire Survivors, I was getting bored of the gameplay loop and I was seeing the game when I closed my eyes, yet I kept coming back to it. It’s like cigarettes that don’t kill you.

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: ummm is this a reference to how you never fight vampires, so they’re the survivors, or am I surviving vampires by never fighting them?

 

XCom 2

I’m so glad I only paid $5 for this on a Steam sale, because that’s exactly how much fun I got out of it.

I loved the first modern XCom from like 2011(?). There was a younger version of me that could put up with, even enjoy, the constant stressful decision making and feeling like the underdog constantly. The RNG didn’t even bug me that much.

But playing the sequel, I couldn’t shake the feeling, “oh, I’ve done this before, it just looks shinier now.”

I lost my will to continue during one of the terror missions where you have to rescue civilians. I do get that these missions are supposed to be stressful and a big difficulty spike—but even playing on the easiest difficulty, I could not get through them for the life of me. I either was too reckless in trying to protect the civilians and got my soldiers killed, or I didn’t rush enough and lost too many civilians for the “rewards” after the mission to be worth it.

I say this as someone who loves Dark Souls: intentionally making a game difficult is not always fun. I would love to play a XCom game where I feel like I can play well and in a way where I don’t have to constantly feel like there’s no objectively best option to choose, that in getting one cool weapon or soldier I am losing the opportunity for something equally cool at the same time.

Also, fuck RNG. You need to sculpt RNG in games like this so if my soldier is shooting at an alien monstrosity construct nega beast from five fucking feet away they can’t miss. A 90% hit rating should actually feel like it will hit 9 times out of 10, instead of 3 times out of 10.

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: XCom? More like hex dumb. Yeah that’s the best I could do.

 

Divinity Original Sin 2

The opening of a game, ideally, should grab you and within an hour show you something fun or cool or interesting that hooks you. This game feels like actually playing a tabletop RPG with friends, and while that may interest a lot of you out there, I would rather just do that in real life instead of with a clunky, slow moving isometric RPG with way too many status effects and a glacial, unexciting combat system. I don’t even dislike turn based RPGs, it’s not that, it’s something about this game and the way it’s presented.

I ended up initiating a fight because some lizard cocksucker insulted me, and then all hell broke loose. I somehow got killed but at the same time triggered the next story event and ended up getting trapped inside the ship because I couldn’t figure out who had the key to open the door to let me outside.

Here’s hoping Baldur’s Gate 3 is better. Baldur’s Gate 1 had a more compelling opening stretch….

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: the only thing original about this game is how fast I stopped playing it.

 

Into The Breach

Oh, look, another turn based strategy game where you control giant robots but you feel disempowered and are always a step behind the enemies in terms of numbers and lethality.

I know a lot of people love this game but it’s not for me. If it was being honest, it would describe itself as a puzzle game more than a turn based strategy game. I always felt like if I was making the exact perfect moves and actions each turn, I was being punished. At that point I’ll just watch someone else play it.

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: I’m putting Into The Breach, Out Of My Reach.

 

Skyrim

I am proud to say I’ve only bought this game twice: back on release for the PS3, and on PC this past Fall.

Much like the first time, I put a lot of playtime into it but got nowhere near finishing it other than a couple major sidequests and a couple dozen shorter ones. I killed giants and dragons, I bought a house, and I saved my game and killed everyone in towns  a few times.

What else can you say about this game? It both does and doesn’t hold up, because that’s every important/popular Bethesda release.

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: Yes I know technically it should have The Elder Scrolls but the series name and the item itself both suck and are the least interesting parts.

 

Shadowrun Returns

I apparently bought this game and played about two hours of it. I remember nothing about this experience. I was probably crossfaded, which leads me to believe it’s not a very fun or interesting game because normally I am more forgiving in that state. I think I did one or two fights and they were clunky and boring looking.

In the era of dynamic looking turn based RPGs like Persona 5 and Fire Emblem: Three Houses, there is no excuse for a game to look this boring during fights. It’s literally as visually engaging as the very first Fallout, a game that gets a pass because it’s otherwise a masterpiece, and it came out in 1997. Actually Final Fantasy VII came out then, didn’t it, and that had cool looking attacks and a dynamic camera…

Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: no thanks, you can go back to being gone.

Lunacid (review)

 

(2024, PC)

Lunacid is the most 8 out of 10 game that is actually a 10 out of 10. It achieves everything it sets out to do, and while not flawless, it’s still a perfect experience if it really clicks with you.

Obviously, it really clicked with me. I love the late 90s high fidelity visuals; I love the soundtrack, which fits the game and its varied areas to a T; I love the occasional silly or fourth wall breaking moments like the various video filters you can choose from or setting the language to be Nyan (which makes all the text in the game and menus Nyan-cat inspired gibberish); I even love the amount of miss-able content and secrets, because I never am trying to 100% a game on first playthrough.

Lunacid is one of those games you want to go in blind, other than maybe watching a trailer or a couple spoiler-free gameplay videos to see if it’s your vibe.

Something familiar about that name...

I will say, the difficulty of the game contributes to its 8 out of 10 rating. By this I do mean the overall difficulty (some enemies are piss easy, some are big difficulty spikes) but also difficult in the sense of knowing what to do next/where to go next. Much like the first Dark Souls, while I also thoroughly enjoyed my initial blind playthrough of, I did have to look up a couple things that weren’t nearly as obvious as the game seemed to think they were. In addition, it’s possible to stumble on secrets or hidden items but have no clue what they do without looking them up online. In one instance I couldn’t figure out how to get any further into newer areas without looking up where to access the next area or two. Whether all of this is a good or bad thing will depend on you and how much you like being “lost.”

I like that this game encourages lateral thinking, looking at your inventory and set of spells and trying to come up with solutions. Though for me the boss fights mainly consisted of spamming my strongest attacks and chugging health potions, I honestly thought this was a fun break from the normal combat of the game, which is more measured and encourages patience.

The spectral effect on certain enemies is super cool

I’ve seen many people say the melee combat is clunky and underpowered, but to me it worked great 99% of the time. Certainly I had the Skyrim issue of whiffing attacks I thought had enough reach to hit the enemy, though I chalk this up to my own ignorance; for 2/3 of my playthrough I didn’t notice different weapons even had different range stats. I always found it fun to switch weapons and spells up, try new things, rather than just minmax by paying attention to elemental weaknesses or weapon stats. That said, there certainly are enemies and areas that feel like a big difficulty spike until you change your weapon/spell and suddenly because you’re hitting their elemental weakness they die like chumps.

The main thing this game nails is atmosphere, a sense of being in an otherworldly place and not fully understanding what is happening. As such, while I inadvertently ended up in the final boss fight before I really wanted to, I decided to roll with it, and this sudden climax and slightly abstract ending sequence have all combined to intrigue me into another playthrough. To add to this, I want to return to this world someday soon. When arriving to each new area, when encountering each new enemy, I was so spellbound, at times even scared of what I was experiencing, that I wanted to just linger and observe. Moreover, Lunacid succeeded multiple times in jumpscaring me (those god damn floating horse heads!) as well as establishing a feeling of dread I only a couple times experienced in Dark Souls.

As someone who never played the Kings Field games, I can safely say this game stands on its own and doesn’t feel like a slavish imitator or mere ancestor of that series. It feels like a modern game, though you can change the settings to customize the experience to be more like that series.

Best Of The Worst, eat your heart out...

My second and final biggest gripe about the game is the lack of a clear indication of what levelling up certain stats does. It took me quite a while to realize why I couldn’t make certain jumps in the game, for instance. It was NOT because I wasn’t supposed to be able to make those jumps, but because I needed to pour points into my Speed and Dexterity to run faster and jump higher/further, respectively. As I was trying for a magic focused build since I started as a Witch, I was putting my upgrades towards that.

In some game design sense, though, my two big gripes seem intertwined with the parts I loved. This is kind of what I mean about it being a 8 out of 10 yet 10 out of 10 game. It’s part of this style of game, this vibe of game even, that you end up figuring it out with a community online. Lunacid is never so difficult that you could theoretically level yourself into a dead end, and the cryptic nature of a few progression points didn’t deter my enjoyment. 

You may have to cover the screen during certain sections.

Indeed this indirect logic seems fitting for the abstract nature of the game’s world and backstory, and it was fun trying to figure out what certain things did, like the spell that brings objects to life or the Headless Horseman boss I stumbled into, which after completing the game I looked up and it turned out to be a seasonal event I lucked into unknowingly, which retrospectively made that a special memory I now cherish from playing it.

Ultimately Lunacid is a 10/10 experience in a 8/10 game. Perhaps a better way of saying that is it’s a subjective 10 and objective 8.

To quote Homer Simpsons, "Brilliant. I have absolutely no idea what's going on."

30 For 30: Fallout

I turned 30 on February 18th. I want to celebrate this, and get myself back into writing, by spending a few weeks rambling about the 30 things that have meant the most to me over the years. These will be from music, movies, books, videogames, and maybe even art and other things for good measure. I feel like my life has been much more about the things I've experienced than it has the people I've known or the places I've traveled to, and these 30 things have helped to make my 30 years more than worth all the innumerable bad things. Expect heartfelt over-sharing and overly analytical explanations galore! In part 13, imagine Ron Perlman reading this entry out loud for the authentic Fallout experience.

While RPGs on videogame consoles had gotten better and better throughout the 90s, during the same period the genre had all but stagnated on PCs. Credit is largely given to BioWare for breathing life back into PC RPGs, but it's easy to forget that Fallout and its sequel were both out by the time Baldur's Gate arrived in late 1998. I don't want to diminish the impact that BioWare's classic had though I do think that Fallout deserves more credit than it gets, to say nothing of the Elder Scrolls series. Not so much for its influence on games released in its wake but rather for its originality and replayability, Fallout should be held up as one of those 'exceptions to the rule' games that proves companies don't need to rely on Fantasy or straight up Sci Fi settings to find an audience.

Even though Fallout's world and style borrows liberally from the Wasteland series, as well as other post-apocalyptic media like Mad Max, the addition of a retro-futuristic style gave the game its own personality. The inclusion of the song 'Maybe' by the Ink Spots and the famous Pip-Boy character make Fallout stand out from any other game of its era. Fallout is also a heavily atmospheric game, with a cinematic/ambient soundtrack that perfectly complements the environments of vast desert landscapes and run down post-apocalyptic settlements. This aesthetic and atmosphere is the crucial part of what makes the Fallout series what it is, far more than the overhead camera angle and turn based combat that most diehard fans want developers to bring back. This is why, despite being excited for the original version of what was supposed to be the third Fallout game (dubbed Van Buren), I wasn't worried when we first started to see what Bethesda was doing with their version of Fallout 3. In the midst of complaints that it was going to be a sloppily thrown together “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion but with guns”, I thought the addition of Fallout's aesthetic to a first person open world RPG in Bethesda's trademark style, if done properly, would be genius. Whatever flaws the game might have in the eyes of Fallout purists, I don't think there's any denying that Fallout 3 looks and feels like a Fallout game, which is a hell of a lot more than can be said for the execrable Fallout: Brotherhood Of Steel, a game everyone seems to have agreed to erase from history.

 Pip-Boy reenacts reaction to Brotherhood Of Steel

By today's standards, Fallout holds up pretty well. You might even be able to convince someone it was a modern day labor of love Kickstarter project to explain some of its awkward gameplay quirks as intentional throwbacks. Since character creation allows for a wide range of choices, you can usually find a way around the parts that prove difficult for your specific character because Fallout does a decent job of accounting for different builds and play styles. By contrast, I'd argue that the first Baldur's Gate suffers from close adherence to its license (Dungeons & Dragons, specifically the 2^nd edition), so that the first few hours of the game can be ridiculously hard thanks to the random dice roll based combat. And god help you if you've never played the game before and you go for a Mage style character (Mages being notoriously underpowered and weak in the first few levels of any 2^nd edition D&D experience). With Fallout, however, once you get over the slightly clunky interface you soon learn how the game is going to work and can adapt accordingly. It does suffer from the common mid-90s PC RPG issue where, unless you look up a FAQ, you won't know how important certain stats and abilities are going to be. For instance, you won't know that Throwing and Unarmed are useless skills unless you're going for a very specific character build. But once you learn how crucial Stimpacks are, the importance of aimed shots, the way the game's economy and barter system works, and how to maximize your AP usage during combat (by doing things like shooting enemies who use melee attacks from as far away as possible, forcing them to spend several turns moving before they can get close enough to hit you), Fallout plays as well as any modern game.

This AP abuse is a necessity against the god damn Deathclaws

I think the main reason it holds up so well, far better than Fallout 2, is that it isn't a terribly long game and encourages experimentation during subsequent replays. You can try to play through Fallout without killing anything, and conversely, you can wait until you have the best weapons and armor and go back through each town and kill everyone in it—including children, shockingly enough. Tired of shooting everything? Try a stealthy character who steals from people and plants explosives in the pockets of unwitting foes. Wonder what will happen if you min/max? Play through it with a low Intelligence stat, and the game accounts for this by giving you different dialogue options. On the flip side, if I recall correctly, you can play a character with high Speech and Science skills and talk the 'end boss' into realizing his plan is doomed to fail, avoiding a fight entirely. Fallout even lets you get a 'bad' ending by agreeing to join forces with the mutant army. Further adding to the replay and experimentation are the random events that happen when traveling on the world map—if you get really lucky, you can find a crashed UFO with the best gun in the game.

All of this aside, what makes Fallout mean something to me is the world that it builds. Which is perhaps ironic because it's not like other fictional worlds I want to escape into when reality has me down. This is why I find the appeal of it, and why it continues to mean something to me, hard to explain. The best I can do is to say that it gives me something that no other games or media can. It has a feel and atmosphere all its own, affecting me in a way that is somewhat dreamlike and yet somewhat nightmarish, too. It's perfect for playing late at night with headphones on, an eeriness seeming to pervade the room while you're wandering through post-apocalyptic ruins and scrounging for supplies in every nook and cranny. Sure, it has some goofy characters and moments that lighten the mood; I don't want to make Fallout seem as unendingly bleak as Silent Hill 2. But you know, it can be just as bleak at times, especially with its bummer of an ending, dooming your character to continue wandering the wasteland instead of returning home to live in the Vault you just saved. I wouldn't call it depressing, it's more melancholic, like the ending of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. And anytime I can compare a game to a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, it has to be worth something.

30 For 30: EarthBound

I turn 30 on February 18th. I want to celebrate this, and get myself back into writing, by spending a few weeks rambling about the 30 things that have meant the most to me over the years. These will be from music, movies, books, videogames, and maybe even art and other things for good measure. I feel like my life has been much more about the things I've experienced than it has the people I've known or the places I've traveled to, and these 30 things have helped to make my 30 years more than worth all the innumerable bad things. Expect heartfelt over-sharing and overly analytical explanations galore! Today we consider cult classic EarthBound, released in 1995 for the SNES.

Discovering that some obscure thing you love is also treasured by many others is one of the best and worst aspects of the Internet. Had it never come around, you might have lived your entire life without meeting anyone else who, for example, loves legendary bad movies like The Room or Troll 2. Now, though, you can find entire communities of people who have similar insanities. This is one of the best aspects of the Internet because you no longer have to be some kind of outcast wishing you knew someone else who thinks it's funny to shout “you're tearing me apart, Lisa!” However, this is also one of the worst aspects of the Internet because your singular experience with something is no longer so singular, so unique. It's like finding out that your significant other is just one of many clones of the same person that thousands of other people also have “their” version of to have sex with and cuddle up to at night.


With EarthBound, this “it's a small world, after all” feeling happened twice in my life, once on a macro scale and once in a face-to-face way. The first time was a couple years after my family got AOL, which was also around the time I gave the game a second chance and fell for it—but we'll get to that later. The important thing here is that stumbling on Starmen.net while trying to find more information about EarthBound was akin to thinking you were a pretty big fan of Kit Kat bars only to travel to Japan and see how far people can really take their Kit Kat fandom. Starmen.net was one of the first major fansites I can remember which wasn't run by elitist assholes or by people who can't properly design a website and spell correctly. It was thanks to Starmen.net that I found out EarthBound was known in Japan as Mother 2, an exciting revelation which meant there was at least one more game in the series. Far more important, though, was participating in their yearly Fanfests, in which you play up to a certain point of the game per day and can try your hand at various challenges (like getting the items that certain enemies only drop 1 out of 128 times). It was an annual celebration of love that never seemed repetitive or obligatory like, you know, Valentine's Day.

The second time the EarthBound world shrank for me was in meeting someone else who also grew up obsessing over it. I worked with this person for a few years and I'd like to think we both decided to become friends, at least initially, purely on the basis of our mutual affection for EarthBound. I vividly remember waking up after one of his parties, scrawling “Thanks for a great time, EarthBound for life!” on the dry erase board on the fridge, and, while various people on couches and in chairs continued to sleep, I quietly slipped out the back door to walk to my car on a Summer morning that seemed more sunny and beautiful than any had in years. Shortly thereafter he let me borrow a GBA SP with some kind of blackmarket game cart that had, among many other gems, a translated ROM of Mother 3 on it.

This image is not a link, but it is an endorsement

Now, while I would like to lament how Mother 1 and Mother 3 never came out here, and crow about how Nintendo of America has continually shat on EarthBound fans for years, that's been done to death other places before. The important thing is the warmth and affection EarthBound continues to inspire in me despite the fact that I haven't replayed it in years. So let's go back to an earlier point I left dangling—that it took giving the game a second chance to fall under its spell.

I'm almost positive I got EarthBound the year it came out but I can't for the life of me tell you why. The advertising campaign in the U.S. was so mishandled that I'm amazed anyone bought it. Even at the tender age of 11 I thought the emphasis on gross-out humor was stupid, with the ads in magazines having slogans like “Warning: use only in a well ventilated area...because this game stinks!” and “Comes with more rude smells than the ol' pull my finger joke.” Since this style of humor barely appears in the game itself, it's hard to tell who Nintendo of America thought they were selling to. It was as if someone mixed up the ad campaign for Boogerman: A Pick And Flick Adventure with EarthBound's and they were too lazy to correct the mistake. There's also the odd choice of advertising a videogame with scratch-n-sniff cards, which is kind of like advertising a movie with slap bracelets. It doesn't really make sense, but it doesn't not make sense. Those clay models were pretty cool, though.

 "Slip the monkey a banana" sounds dirty in any context

The first time I tried playing through the game I couldn't make myself finish it, even with the assistance of the strategy guide that was included inside its absurdly large box. I think my reasons at the time were the same for anyone who doesn't “get” EarthBound now: the graphics and gameplay, which were primitive and unimpressive even for their time. “Primitive” doesn't automatically equate to bad, though I don't think anyone could argue that—judging it from a technical and not an art direction standpoint—EarthBound is nowhere near as good looking as the 2D/sprite art of Chrono Trigger or the (at the time) impressive faux-3D of the Donkey Kong Country series.


As for the gameplay, EarthBound has a lot of interesting ideas that I appreciated even on my aborted first attempt but they're never what hooks anyone on this game and they never add up to something that feels truly deep. I can point to any number of these “interesting ideas”—the rolling slot machine HP meters, the way enemies far below your level run away from you and let you score instant victories if touched, the whole “Jeff will randomly fix broken items in his inventory when you rest at hotels” aspect, and much more—but I would be willing to concede that one man's “interesting idea” is another man's gimmick or novelty. I may love them and they're part of what makes EarthBound such a unique experience, yet they only matter in rare cases or on a superficial level; they don't transform it into a game you play for the mechanics. This is what I mean when I said the gameplay, like the graphics, is unimpressive and primitive to someone who isn't already in love with the game. Moreover, EarthBound doesn't have anything like the Job system, which it changes how you play the entire game because it's another layer put on top of the standard RPG leveling/character building template of “fight guys, get stronger, get better equipment, repeat.” Instead, the game's “interesting ideas” just make what would otherwise be a graduate of the Dragon Quest school of gameplay slightly more engaging and unique.


This feeling of uniqueness is crucial because it is what keeps me coming back to EarthBound after falling in love on that 'second chance' during the Summer of 1998. I can't think of any other game from the 90s that was so self aware and surreal to an almost deconstructionist, post-modern degree. It has the character Brick Road, who makes dungeons that parody and comment on how dungeons worked in RPGs of the time. Then there's the weird 'Fuzzy Pickles' cameraman who shows up during various points of the game to take screenshots, all of which you get to see at the end of the game like it's a photo album of fond memories. Warping the usual opening pre-game segment, in EarthBound you get to name not only the characters but your favorite 'thing' and your favorite food, the latter of which shows up as the dish the main character's Mom feeds you when you go back to his house (leading to some amusing, immature moments if you enter in Sperm or Farts as your favorite food). And I'd be crucified by the EarthBound fanbase if I didn't mention the Mr. Saturns, what with their unique speech patterns and the way their text is in a crazy looking font different from the rest of the game.

Yes, of course that font was exported from the game by fans. Yes, of course I downloaded it as soon as I found out.

The frustration with trying to explain everything that I feel EarthBound has going for it is that I end up writing thousands of words and still have more aspects that would require even more words to gush about. I mean, I haven't even talked about the music or sound effects, which will stay with me until the day I die because they're so memorable and perfectly complement the feel of the rest of the game. If I really wanted to, I could exhaust myself by rambling about every moment and every little thing in EarthBound that makes me geek out. Even now I find myself feeling like someone who is out of breath after excitedly talking non-stop for an hour, wheezing out repeated variations of “wait, don't go yet, I have more to say, just give me a second here!” while standing hunched over with my head down and my hands gripping my thighs.

This is what EarthBound does to you if it clicks with you, if you “get” it like I didn't at first. You end up wanting your affection to spread to everyone else, because you're so sure they'll eventually come around, too. You want your joy to be their joy even if, realistically, it's not going to work for 90% of the world like it does for you. To put it in terms of another cult-like group, it's like how when you become a fan of the Grateful Dead you no longer hear aimless noodling and lame songwriting but instead hear crackling improvisation and classic tunes that blend folk, rock, jazz, and the blues into a truly American synthesis. You want everyone else to make this same transformation, too, until you fail to convert people enough times that you eventually give up and realize it isn't going to happen.






Anyway, this was supposed to be about what the game has meant to me, and the more I think about what my life has been like these past 30 years, the more I'm realizing that EarthBound is one of my cherished right-thing-at-just-the-right-time-of-my-life experiences that helped me understand myself, and even life in general, a little better. As odd as it feels to talk about a videogame so reverently, I also feel like I can never do justice to it regardless of how well I explain the very specific things it means to me. And that's usually a sign of something or someone that has had a profound impact on my life and in shaping what my sensibilities are and how I think about the world. EarthBound was a revelation, unlike anything I had played before. I didn't know there could be games like that and I didn't know I wanted a game like that. I knew I wanted an RPG that was different from things like Chrono Trigger and Ultima VI, but the ways I wanted it to be different I couldn't have put into words until I experienced them in EarthBound.

The only way I can explain it better is with an overlong food analogy. Imagine growing up somehow not knowing about bacon while also always craving it. You can't put a name to your desire because as far as you know it doesn't exist. You like pork chops just fine but you want something that's like them but...different. “Different how?” your friends would ask, and you'd shrug while staring off into the distance and answer, “I dunno...just, different. Not bigger or smaller or with stuffing. Different.” Years later you're on a business trip in some other city, sitting in a restaurant looking at the menu thinking, “I've never had...'back-on' before, but everyone here seems to love it. It sounds like something I might like, I'm into trying new things...Oh, it's pronounced 'bay-kin', huh?”

I guess what I'm saying is, I like EarthBound as much as bacon. Anyway.

If you don't like bac—I mean EarthBound, or you don't “get” it, that's fine. No amount of my words will convert you, just as I could never hope to make anyone love the Grateful Dead. I don't know that people who grew up after EarthBound first came out will give it a chance or fall for it like many of my generation did. All we, the faithful, will ask is that you keep out of our secret clubhouse, the one hidden in the trees in Onett. If you don't get that reference then you'll probably want to just turn off the SNES right now, but not before calling your Dad to save your game.

King Of Kong

One of the downsides of documentaries is that their content can be very ephemeral. I suspect that most of Michael Moore's films will age into irrelevancy as their righteous indignation and anger go from being poignant and timely to strident and outdated. A film following the world record contestants for a classic videogame is much less ambitious than Moore's socio-political potboilers, true, but it nonetheless would be just as moment-in-time because the record is bound to change hands many times after the movie comes out. Indeed, after King Of Kong's release, the record changed hands, and continues to.

However, this is not the focus of the film. The record, and indeed the game being played, are beside the point. It's really about the personalities involved, and the drama they go through before, during, and after the world record attempts, that matters. It's also about the alliances and seemingly devious rules and practices of a competitive, insular scene that few people knew existed. You could therefore accuse King Of Kong of being flagrant in its characterization of Steve Wiebe as the lovable loser, family man, and artistic underdog who is on the outside of the videogame world record scene going up against one of its Goliaths: Billy Mitchell, an egocentric, calculating businessman with a trophy wife. But that all depends who you believe or what you believe. Director Seth Gordon has stated that they actually made Mitchell out to be “lighter” than he really is, but again, who do you believe?

For what it's worth, Wiebe recently reclaimed the top score on Donkey Kong, but this knowledge is boring without the personal struggles and details this documentary gives. Reading the dry fact on Wikipedia isn't exciting without the faces, voices, and drama King Of Kong provides. It struck me as very odd, then, that King Of Kong throws a bait and switch with its climax by showing Wiebe failing at a world record attempt and rolling credits...but actually ending with a baffling coda that delivers the news that Wiebe did eventually succeed. It does this with all the pomp and circumstance of a casual P.S. and blunts its impact in the process. Still, my point remains: it's the rivalry and the political machinations of both sides that are the story here, not who is on top. In other words, it's a character study as much as anything. King Of Kong is full of (to put it mildly) eccentric characters, from the obsequious Brian Kuh, two-fisted-son-of-a-bitch Roy Shildt, to hippie musician/referee Walter Day. You may hate Billy Mitchell by film's end or tire of Wiebe's sad sack personality, but without those elements, the story of the Donkey Kong world record is just as boring as the hot dog eating championships without the “dude comes from nowhere to take it back from the Japanese” story of Joey Chestnut.

If this documentary leaves you feeling mildly unsatisfied, it's probably because there is no true head-to-head competition between Mitchell and Wiebe. They only briefly meet face to face and are never shown playing in person against each other. If King Of Kong had been a fictionalized account, it would undoubtedly have had an epic showdown between the two men. I found myself wishing this was the case since the actual conclusion is the very definition of an anti-climax. Still, I might argue that this lingering disappointment mirrors both Wiebe's own personal history of failures and losses as well as the way everyone in the documentary is bummed that when Mitchell finally shows up to a tournament he refuses to play in front of a crowd or challenge Wiebe directly. The problem of the muted, tossed-in “oh by the way, Wiebe does succeed after all” ending remains, instantly transforming the tone from someone learning to cope with failure while also being finally accepted/acknowledged by his peers, to being an oddly Hollywood-esque happy ending that is about three minutes long and treated with a anti-climactic tone. This weakens the film as a whole and should have been excluded, since the record was bound to change hands multiple times after its release. After all, without success at claiming the record, Wiebe's story is more poignant, affecting, and believable. An ending that says “you may have lost, but you still have your family, your artistic talents, the newly won respect of your peers...and you aren't that douchebag Billy Mitchell” leaves it up to the viewer to decide if this is happy or not. Therefore, it is infinitely better.

Player Choice and Freedom in Dragon Quest IX

Non-linearity and player choice are two of the main concepts that help define what a RPG will be. Depending on how freely you're able to progress, you can have anything from the rigidly-linear-to-the-point-of-absurdity Final Fantasy XIII to the go-wherever-you-want, do-whatever-you-want-but-you-may-die Elder Scrolls games from Bethesda. RPGs also present the player with innumerable choices beyond progressing the plot. Can you make or customize your characters, or are they pre-defined? Can you tinker with their stats/abilities/spells, or are these things going to progress in the exact same way every time, as with Final Fantasy IV? Can you return to previous locations in case you missed something, or do you have to wait until later in the game to go back?

The Dragon Quest series went from something I enjoyed to something I loved after I finished Dragon Quest IX. What strikes me the most about it, and some of the rest of the series, is its strongly Western derived non-linearity and wealth of player choice. Comparing the latest Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest entries has always been a study in contrasts in the Japanese RPG genre, but at no time in their respective histories has the difference been as stark as this year. Where FXIII was criticized for its dogmatic linearity, excising of genre traditions such as towns, and flashy-but-shallow gameplay systems, DQIX was praised for almost precisely the opposite reasons. In those regards, DQIX is indeed closer to Western style RPGs.

While its multiplayer aspects, as well as downloadable items and quests, are DQIX's most fresh and modern aspects, I found its overall classicist design to be its best asset. As with most old school Western style RPGs (as well as Dragon Quest III), you make and design both your main character and your party. I have a terrible habit of starting and never getting more than 20 hours into the original Icewind Dale because making up characters and deciding the party's composition is too much fun. DQIX goes several steps further by allowing you to change Jobs, as well as displaying every piece of equipment on your characters. The latter is something I wish all RPGs did, since you get bored of the same looking characters over the course of 40 or so hours. Anyway, the gameplay and whimsical charm of the DQIX's stories-within-the-main-story may be more classic Dragon Quest than Baldur's Gate, but there are several points in the game where you're either not immediately told where you need to go next or you're allowed to wander around to your heart's content. This is very reminiscent of Western RPGs; the original Fallout spring to mind, since you often had to explore a bit to figure out the next logical step. It's also analogous BioWare's modern games, which eventually get to a point where you have several branching locations to choose from to progress the plot, all of them tying back into the main plot thread at their conclusion.

Final Fantasy XIII may amount to a failed experiment or an attempt to revolutionize the jRPG genre in the way some of its forebearers had. That's for history to decide. On paper Dragon Quest IX may seem to be playing it safe, but like most of its forebearers, it sticks to the best traditions while simultaneously moving things forward a couple steps. In fact, much of its design is so smart and streamlined that the things that are behind the curve stand out more as a result. Had the multiplayer worked over the Internet instead of only local wireless, I think DQIX could've become the sensation here that it was in Japan. The 'Heal All' command makes a welcome return, but there are some nagging interface problems: menus/commands don't require a consistent amount of button presses, leading to mistakes; having to do some things one at a time when you should be able to do them all at once, like dropping off or calling up party members at the Stornway Inn; the traditional but probably unnecessary save system of having to go to a church; and so on. Still, these are only nagging issues at best, and I'll gladly put up with them if it means not throwing the baby out with the bathwater as FFXIII did with much of its design.

What I ended up loving most about DQIX is the way it encourages you to tinker and play around with its gameplay systems. Again, it's all about maximizing the amount of player choice. Its implementation of the Job system is among the most satisfying ever, even going so far as to let you farm skill points by leveling in one Job you don't plan on using and carrying the points back to one of your “main” Jobs. More choice still: you can evenly level the entire party in the same classes or you can play the game with only two or three characters or you can play through the game with friends in multiplayer. What's more, the game's Alchemy system can either be completely ignored or exploited to its limits during any point in the game. If you take the time out of the main quest to chase down obscure ingredients, you can produce items and equipment that are more powerful or at least cooler looking than what you can get in shops. The same applies to the 100+ side quests in DQIX: do them as they come up, do them all in one fell swoop toward the end of the game (or in the meaty post-game), or ignore them entirely. All of this, again, is in stark contrast to FFXIII; its character building system is obscurantist, trying to fool you into thinking you have more choice and customization than you really do. As for its Alchemy-style system, you're basically forced to do it to upgrade equipment. I can't speak to its side quests, since I didn't get that far in the game, but reportedly they don't open up until 30+ hours in.

While some entries in the series are more traditionally Japanese than others, Dragon Quest IX continually struck me as one of the best games at bridging the gap between the Western and Japanese approaches to RPG design. The original Dragon Quest, and other jRPGs of its era, were clearly patterned after Wizardry and other old school Western RPGs. Thus by the series sticking to its roots, it has wrapped back around to feel fresh and satisfyingly modern. Final Fantasy XII became one of my favorites of the last generation because it, too, took many cues from Western RPGs, albeit in a more purposefully modern form. It has an openness and depth of player choice that is more akin to a MMORPG or BioWare game than the other games in the series (not to mention much less of the bile inducing jRPG plucky teen heroes and pseudo-philosophical psychobabble plots). FFXIII superficially looks and plays like FFXII, but in their details and design, they are as different as, well, DQIX and FFXIII. The Dragon Quest series may never be as popular in the States as Final Fantasy is, but DQIX is definite proof that the supposedly staid and conservative jRPG genre has much life in it, thanks to the important Western influences of openness and choice.

Mother 3

Any sequel to a work that I hold near and dear to my heart prompts simultaneous feelings of joy and dread. For every sequel that's just as good or even better than the original, there's at least twice as many that are total let downs or lack what made the original great. Since Earthbound, aka Mother 2, was such a huge step forward from Mother 1 in terms of gameplay and story, it was hard to know what to expect from its sequel, which ended up taking more than a decade to come out. I had already conceded that there was no way Mother 3 could make the same kind of deep, lasting impact on me that Earthbound did, since that was a once in a lifetime, 'right game at the right time' confluence of events. It speaks volumes for Mother 3, then, that judged on its own merits and against the RPGs of its original Japanese release date era, it's still a wholly unique and satisfying title.

Mother 3 employs a similar narrative structure to Dragon Quest IV, playing out in chapters that feature different characters in each one until the main party is formed and is relatively stable through the last few. The game's story is surprisingly dark and mature, starting off with an unexpected tragedy that plays out with a sophistication and tact completely unknown to most videogames. The surprisingly expressive 2D sprites and animations help a great deal, though it is kind of odd that the enemies in battles aren't animated. But I digress. In Mother 3, you may still ultimately be going on a quest to save the world, which is hardly novel, but as with Earthbound, it's all the places, people, and events that you encounter along the way which make this game so compelling and unique. What's more, the various callbacks and ties to Earthbound thankfully come off as well done treats for fans and not empty, artificially implemented fan service.

Though Mother 3's story and world are nearly flawless, including some final boss battles that are every bit as memorable and artfully done as Earthbound's, the gameplay does seem a bit unbalanced and dated by today's standards. The rhythm based battle system never clicked with me, but it's not necessary to survive. No, my problem with the gameplay is its strict adherence to jRPG norms. In the early chapters of the game, this works against it because of the way the plot is structured. Controlling only one or two party members at a time, there are many surprisingly difficult spots in the game that end up being far more grindy and luck based than they should. In particular, the chapter where you play as Duster going to an abandoned castle to steal something was frustrating, as you have to use items to heal and you're dependent on his not 100% reliable thief tools to incapacitate or debilitate foes. But in general there's an unbalanced feel to the game, particularly in its boss battles, since some of them are neigh impossible until you've leveled up enough to get the right PSI powers. What's more, the eventual main party of Mother 3 also lacks balance, especially in comparison to Earthbound. Only two members can use PSI powers, so their “spellbooks” are huge and unwieldly to navigate. Meanwhile, one of your party members is a dog, who's only use is to see the weaknesses of enemies as well as having a high speed stat. This 'weakness seeing' ability could easily have been another thief tool of Duster's, so the dog ends up feeling like a generic warrior type. Sure, the dog is cute and fun for story purposes, but as a party member in a RPG he's boring

And that sums up my feelings pretty nicely about Mother 3. I really loved the game, but I loved it in spite of my issues with its gameplay. Like Earthbound, the fact that it's an RPG is almost incidental to its uniqueness and artful story. Speaking of, I'd like to give special mention to the very well done translation, which elevates an already excellent game to 'underground classic' status in my book. This is easily the highest quality fan translation I've ever seen and it so perfectly captures the spirit of the game and the series that it's hard to believe it wasn't official. Anyway, Mother 3's gameplay may be frustrating and unbalanced from time to time, but it's one of those videogames, like Silent Hill 2 or Shadow Of The Colossus, where it's easy to forgive or overlook gameplay or control deficiencies because the world and the narrative contained therein is so refreshing, daring, and memorable. Its subtle themes of anti-capitalism and anti-urbanization may be lost on some, but I doubt anyone can make it through the ending and the things that take place between the family members of the main character, and not be genuinely moved.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

My Favorite Games: Earthbound

Another new video series? Sure!

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Heavy Rain

Heavy Rain is certain to go down as one of the most talked about titles of this generation. If it is an "important" game, it is important for the way it moves cinematic videogames forward a few necessary steps. It is not the be all, end all of videogames; not the future for/of all videogames. But it is fascinating and often brilliant as an experience; as a videogame, especially one asking $60, perhaps less so.

Heavy Rain takes obvious inspiration from films like Se7en, certain police investigation procedural TV shows, as well as suspenseful thrillers of all types that involve life and death, chase sequences, and dramatic interpersonal conflict. But there's also a subtle noir and European art film influence going on, something compounded by the game's brilliant opening credits. At any rate, Heavy Rain switches the player between four characters: a father dealing with the loss of one son and the kidnapping by a serial killer of another; a FBI agent with a drug problem on the killer's trail; a private detective with asthma after the same killer; and a female reporter/photographer who, intentionally or otherwise, gets mixed up in the whole thing. The game does an excellent job of moving at appropriate times between the four points of view, and is especially interesting for the way its plot can branch dramatically depending on your actions. Any or even all of these characters can die and the game will go on, which is something I don't think any game has ever done before. There's no "game over, try again"; it just goes on without him or her. I stuck with this concept even though it meant one of the main four died. I never went back to re-do sections if they didn't turn out how I wanted, and this gave me a huge sense of "ownership" over the narrative. I found myself making the kind of decisions I would make, or that I think the characters would, rather than the ones I thought would be the most funny or dramatic like I do in other games. At the same time, I felt true empathy for the characters, which is something that's never happened to me with a game before. They were believable--or just believable enough--and, while often toeing well worn cliches, worked well. Even the death and subsequent ending for one of the four in my playthrough rang as true, intentional, and satisfying despite the fact in any other title it would have been considered a "bad" ending that I got through not playing right.

Heavy Rain's gameplay is mostly where it runs into some problems. I actually do like all of the QTE/timed button presses and motion control stuff, since I think this game does it better than anyone else. The button prompts organically appear where your eyes would be focused, and Quantic Dream have masterfully corresponded actions in the game to things you do with your hands. For example, to open a particularly rusted sliding door, you have to thrust the controller sideways in one rough, clipped motion. To, say, wrestle with another character for a gun or knife, you have to pound on a button and keep up on top of further prompts until your fingers become just as exhausted and confused as the character does. But for as far as the game goes toward wherever cinematic videogames are going, it still holds on to some obvious gamey tropes that take the player out of the experience from time to time. The awkward way you walk around (hold down R2 and "steer" with the R-stick while controlling your head with the L-stick) becomes second nature after a bit, but will still cause you to get hung up on objects in the way that someone in real life/a movie wouldn't. Moreover, you can purposefully fail a simple task over and over, leading to such comical situations as characters starting to open a door but giving up and closing it, over and over. And while this may just be because I was playing on the default difficulty, there were a few of those tense timed button press sequences where I felt cheated due to split second timing or poor implementation. I even killed a non-main character on accident during my first playthrough because I hit the wrong button...

Presentation-wise, Heavy Rain earns a lot of points for its expertly crafted camera angles and interactive cinematic sequences. Rather than having static characters stand and stare while talking, you can move around and lean on things or pick up objects as someone would in a movie or real life. There are a few very tense or very emotional sequences in the game that are pulled off with a cinematographer's eye for framing and pacing. In fact, there's a particularly gut wrenching scene toward the end where the female reporter visits an elderly woman with Alzheimer's: a sad, bittersweet scene about memory, love, and life that was aided by the game's often understated, classy score. Unlike recent titles like Uncharted 2 and Mass Effect 2, Heavy Rain's characters are very life-like and mostly avoid Uncanny Valley territory. The eyes and mouths are still not quite right, but the motion capture and voice acting are extremely proficient barring some strange almost-accents: the FBI agent has a slight Boston thing going on, and the mother of one of the serial killer's victims, Lauren, is clearly a French woman trying to sound American and hide her accent at the same time.

Other than the issues explored above, my two lasting problems with the game are its price and its lasting impact on the videogames medium. I happily paid $60 for the game, and don't feel that my money was wasted in any way. Heavy Rain is an utterly unique, moving, and thought provoking game that justifies its expense immediately to anyone who's into this sort of thing. But for most people, it'll be a hard sell. Though I am replaying the game and making very different choices, I have looked online for the different ways the plot can branch, and the ways the ending can play out, and I really do think this is a one way trip. It's so much more interesting to have your own canonical version of events and compare/contrast with others, which is something the game's director, David Cage, controversially meant when he said something about how he hopes people only play the game once.

Heavy Rain certainly isn't for everyone, and even I will admit that it's sub-10 hour length makes the $60 price tag a bit of a sticking point for those who are interested, especially in light of concurrent titles like Final Fantasy XII which offer dozens more. But there is a true quality vs. quantity balance to the game's sub-10 hour play time that bears mention, since, like Portal, it was the perfect length for what it was trying to accomplish, and was some of the best 10 hours I've ever spent with any game. Anyway, if you still can't quite take the leap of faith on this game, there's always renting it. As for the issue of its lasting impact...I suppose what I really mean is, how well it's going to age. In many ways it feels like the important next step, or series of steps, for cinematic videogames...but that also means it is arguably destined to end up an awkward middle child between older titles like Metal Gear Solid and whatever else is coming in the future.

I would wholeheartedly peg Heavy Rain as an important, interesting title that anyone who takes videogames seriously--as an art form or otherwise--should play. I hate kids, yet I felt every tinge of terror and grim determination for what the main character goes through while losing one son and later having to go through hell to save the other. I have also never felt so tense and on the edge of my seat with anything as I did during many of the game's "action" sequences, from escaping the clutches of a creepy doctor to escaping a burning apartment building to making split second decisions that will determine whether people live or die.

The promos and media surrounding the game ask: "how far are you prepared to go to save someone you love?" Heavy Rain itself will ask that question in increasingly gruesome detail as its story progresses: would you hurt yourself or others? Would you break the law? Would you kill or be killed? I never thought that videogames would have the courage to not only ask me that question but make me really relate such topics to my own life, but here we are. For all of its sometimes clunky gameplay and not-quite-there look, Heavy Rain deserves five stars for the things it made me think and feel. If that isn't art, if that doesn't make it the videogame equivalent of movies and books that do the same, then I don't know what is.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Mass Effect 2

Tried something a bit different with this one. In retrospect it may be a bit too dark, but oh well.

Game Shots: Uncharted, Torchlight, and Prototype

Due to various circumstances, I ended up buying a MacBook this weekend, so videos made after this one may look and sound slightly different since I'll be using different programs for both. Just thought I'd let you know, in case you care.