I haven’t mentioned this game yet, but I just wanted to point out that I know about it, it’s there, and I do plan on getting it as soon as my queue clears out a bit.
A game for $20. Clever writing. No DRM. The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, the Penny Arcade game:
T w e n t y S i d e d
They would have to butcher the gameplay for this title to miss, because everything else about it seems perfect.
I’ve been playing Indigo Prophesy. The game is actually called Fahrenheit everywhere else in the world. A lot of fuss has been made over the fact that this game was “censored” for the American release. Censored in this case means that the developer willingly removed nudity from the American Release of a game so that they could get the game onto the shelves at Wal-Mart. No government coercion was involved, which means the word censorship is probably a bit overly dramatic here. I’d prefer to keep that word for use in referring to the forceful (under pain of law) suppression of speech (or other forms of expression) by a government. The government isn’t involved here, so we can’t blame them. Developer Quantic Dream removed the content willingly, so we can blame them.
But they wouldn’t have removed that content if it wasn’t for pressure from Atari, the publisher. Atari insisted they sacrifice artistic freedom to increase sales. So we can blame Atari.
But Atari wouldn’t be in this position if it wasn’t for the nonsense policy of big retailers like Wal-Mart. PC Games sell poorly enough already, and unless you’re a big name title you just can’t afford to be left off the shelves if you want to recoup what you spent on development. You can’t expect a publisher to have so much respect for artistic expression that they allow a game to tank and end up laying people off. They were forced into this position by the retailers, so we can blame them.
But a retailer doesn’t really care about the content of the game. After all, they’ll sell you the Widescreen Special Edition of Eyes Wide Shut, so they don’t actually have a problem with selling stuff with sexual content. They’ll sell whatever. The only reason they care about sex in videogames is because they’re afraid some group of ignorant busybodies will jump out and start screeching about how they’re selling pornography to children. So we blame the busybodies.
But the busybodies wouldn’t have any power if it wasn’t for the circus-like media coverage they attract. Cooper Lawrence and Kevin McCullough both proved that you can make outrageous and easily disproved accusations about the sexual content of a videogame and get major media attention without worrying about anyone fact-checking you. So we can blame the media.
But the media is driven by viewership and readership. They run stories they think people will read. If people want to read stories about how children are being raped by videogames and every console is a gateway to a hardcore pornographic assault on their families, well… the media is just telling people what they they’re most likely to listen to. So we can blame ignorant and idiotic people for seeking out sensationalist news about things they don’t understand.
Ah, the idiots. They always get blamed for everything.
(Ah yes. Another post that promises to open up the floodgates of angry debate and controversy. No, I didn’t set out to start a series of bloody flamewars recently. I don’t know how I keep ending up writing about so many hot-button topics. Tune in tomorrow when I propose my idea for a new Sims 2 expansion pack: Barefoot and Pregnant!)
If you want to play the uncut version of Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophesy, it is being offered in North America via Direct 2 Drive. Only $20. There are some NSFW screenshots that should give you an idea of what was cut.
I have the edited American version, which is what I’ll be reviewing.
Last week the thread on Oblivion deteriorated into the old PC vs. Console debate, based mostly on my comment that games were “dumbed down” for consoles. That debate is as stale as they come, and I doubt we’ll gain any new insight into the issue.
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They could have changed the core parts of the action gameplay to suit both platforms, and console gamers would rightly be able to complain that the action parts of the game were “dumbed down”. Any button-mashing that works gracefully on the PC is going to be very easy and simplistic on a gamepad, and any fast-paced button pushing that works on a gamepad is going to be a mess on the PC. Re-working God of War or Soul Caliber so that the controls work for both PC and console gamers would ruin the highly polished experience that console gamers have grown to love. Designers can either cater to one platform at the expense of another, or they can write two different games. Guess which one is more likely?
But I have been thinking about the differences between the two control schemes. Let us dismiss from the start the idea that one system is superior to the other: They each have their purpose, and each has their place in gaming.
The Dual Shock controller (and it’s many cousins) is a very interesting device. Check out the diverse selection of buttons: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “PC and Console Interface Design:
Dumbing Down”
One of the major advantages of Oblivion was the fact that the game was so easily mod-able. This allowed the modding community to do things like:
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The release of Oblivion stung badly for me because the game was so buggy and unpolished. What was I going to do? Wait for the next freeform RPG? If we are very lucky we will get one more before the decade is out. And even then, we still must hold out hope that Fallout 3 won’t be dumbed down by its obligations to consoles, that it won’t be encumbered by unacceptable DRM, that it will run on computers that can be constructed on this planet, and that it won’t be a software jalopy like Oblivion was.
So I find myself in the position of needing to play and complain about this title at length. If there is only one game in your chosen genre, you’re sort of obligated to play it. Although, since it’s the only one, I guess we can say Oblivion is the very best freeform RPG for this generation of PCs.
So my hopes for this title rely on using mods to straighten what Bethesda has made bent. There are three major problems with the mod system in Oblivion: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Oblivion:
Mod Hell”
I’ve been getting emails and comments here and there from people soliciting reaction to the end of the Chainmail Bikini webcomic and asking about what I’m going to do next.
Shawn’s announcement says it all, really. There wasn’t any difficulty between us. We’re still cool. I’m still grateful for all the hard work he put into it, and I wish him all the success in the future. (And let’s be totally clear, he put a lot more work into it than I did.)
I plan to wrap up CB by posting my notes for the future scripts and a synopsis of the rest of the story. It won’t be funny, but I do hope it will give readers a sense of closure. I plan to set aside a block of time this weekend and finish that off.
I don’t have any immediate plans to do another comic with FtB. I’ll talk with them at some point and see what everyone is interested in doing.
For right now I’m scratching my comic-making itch with these little videogame comics I’ve been doing. I’ve done 15 of them so far, and they’re pretty fun to make. They don’t really deserve to stand beside DMotR or CB comedy-wise, but for the effort I’m putting into them (almost nothing) they are a bargain.
It’s rather telling that I’ve come to calling them mini-comics. They’re usually six or so panels, which puts them well over budget for a “normal” sized comic. They’re not small. They’re just small compared to what I normally come up with. Perhaps some day I’ll figure out how to work my japery into four panels.
I’m not sure how much further I want to take the idea. They don’t have a title or a logo or anything. I don’t follow a regular schedule. There’s no name for them. They’re just humorous pictures placed in a cynical attempt to get readers to endure my endless blather. That is, the comic is there to trick you into reading the wall of text. To that end, they have been a rousing success. I’m not sure if naming them and committing to a regular posting schedule is a good idea or not. If I get too formal I’ll probably start raising my standards, which would require actual effort on my part.
Anyway. Thanks for reading. Sorry it didn’t work out. I’m sure we’ll find some way to keep ourselves amused.
Shawn touches on a subject near and dear to my heart, which is the practice of lazy people to attempt to do business using the voice of a child. Shawn actually received an email which read thus:
Now, I don’t think of myself as overly pedantic when it comes to the written word. I have typos and spelling errors on this site often enough that I have no room to criticize others. I’m not faulting people who make simple errors in the course of business correspondence. I am faulting people who can’t even be bothered to try, who communicate by staring fixedly down at the keyboard, spewing out a formless stream of words and hitting “send” without so much as a glance at what the result was.
In the last ten years or so this has been growing in popularity. Nobody ever sent me email in this condition during the early parts of my career, but in the last ten years it’s become increasingly common. What is causing this? The rise of phone-based text messaging? The educational system? Are we being infiltrated by aliens who mimic our habits in every way except that they can’t grasp the most rudimentary rules of our written word?
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “i see ur a moran, lol”
A friend brought over his PS3 last weekend and we clocked a few hours on GTA IV. It is exactly what I expected: A series of mostly uninteresting and highly contrived challenges wrapped within some of the most spectacular technology and extravagant production values I’ve ever seen.
People are saying this game is less DIAS than its predecessors. That’s nice, I guess. Sort of admirable. Like finding out a pedophile has cut way back on molesting kids.
I only saw a few missions, and my friends assured me they were an aberration: The game had been fun and cooperative until the moment I started watching. Perhaps I just have bad luck, but the fact that Rockstar feels the need to spike the game with punishing “do it again” gameplay is depressing.
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Even during the early stages of the game that I witnessed, Niko is asked to bring about incredible destruction for a pittance. I don’t know how much I’d charge to assault a building filled with heavily-armed gangsters, swipe their duffel bag of drugs, and then battle my way through the city police to freedom. While I don’t know what I’d expect to be paid, I do know that I would not expect to still be poor after the job was over. Perhaps the game is social commentary on the plight of underpaid illegal immigrants.
I spent a good hour just driving around, exploring the vast and highly detailed world. I’ve never been a fan of the four to six hundred dollar price tag of the PS3 and Xbox 360, but if I was going to fork over that sort of cash then this is the sort of technical wizardry I’d expect from such hardware. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “GTA IV:
First Impressions”
A long-form analysis on one of the greatest horror games ever made.
Even allegedly smart people can make life-changing blunders that seem very, very obvious in retrospect.
What did web browsers look like 20 years ago, and what kind of crazy features did they have?
Did you anticipate the big plot twist of Batman: Arkham City? Here's all the ways the game hid that secret from you while also rubbing your nose in it.
People were so worried about the boring gameplay of The Old Republic they overlooked just how boring and amateur the art is.
Crysis 2 has basically the same plot as Half-Life 2. So why is one a classic and the other simply obnoxious and tiresome?
WAY back in 2005, I wrote about a D&D campaign I was running. The campaign is still there, in the bottom-most strata of the archives.
I wanted to take the file format of a late 90s shooter and read it in modern-day Unity. This is the result.
Since we're rebooting everything, MASH will probably come up eventually. Here are some casting suggestions.
Why Google sucks, and what made me switch to crowdfunding for this site.