Gaming Reflections: Assassin’s Creed

I wrote fairly recently about my first impressions on Assassin’s Creed.  You can find that post here.  Long story short?  It was a good game in theory that was frustrating me to hell and back with its poor game design.

I said a lot about what I wanted to say there.  About the poor level design, the monotony of the missions, et cetera.  I don’t have to say much more about that, and while I do plan on comparing and contrasting that to Assassin’s Creed II (which I’ve started on), but I’d like to get further into it before doing so.

Now, though, it’s time for me to reflect on Assassin’s Creed now that I’ve finished it.  It won’t be too long of a post, as all I have to say boils down into one question: did my opinions of the game improve?

The answer: kind of.

Okay, yes.  Assassin’s Creed had some boring missions and the parkour stopped being fun and became a chore after having to do a certain amount of it.  Combat was pretty bad.  And I found out that all those flags the game asked me to collect and the generic Templars it asked me to kill?  Yeah, doing that doesn’t do anything other than giving me an achievement.  Or, since the copy of Assassin’s Creed I played was a DRM-free PC edition, nothing other than the satisfaction of 100% completion.  Those are all issues that didn’t change because they were part of the game.

However, I found that when you stop trying to go for 100% completion and just do the minimum of three tasks before embarking on the actual assassination mission, it’s more fun.  What’s more, the boss fights become a bit more varied later on.  My personal favorite was sneaking across the boats on the water to assassinate Sibrand.

Of course, while the missions get varied near the end, that doesn’t mean they get better.  The final battle is just a series of straight-out fights, and I’ve already mentioned that the combat mechanics aren’t exactly great.  That, and there’s no way to replace the throwing knives you use near the end, which I began to grow fond of.

The plot…improved.  It came together some at the end, and the story began to become enjoyable.  However, there wasn’t a lot that I found special.  It was a twist we’ve seen before, alongside some intriguing plot threads that were left ambiguous.  Overall, it felt like the game’s plot was nothing more than a setup for more games.  How they thought people would want to buy more games like this is beyond me, personally.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  The game is still really cool, despite its flaws.

So overall, my verdict remains mostly the same, with one small update: I no longer think that Assassin’s Creed is a good game that’s secretly really terrible.  Instead, I think it’s a decent game on the condition that you do not in any way attempt 100% completion.  Either take away the sandbox to streamline the game, or give me a shovel and a bucket or some other fun toys so I can actually have fun when I play in the sandbox.

I’ve heard good things about the sequel, and from the short amount I’ve played, I have high hopes for it.  I’ll see you when I have more to report on that.

Webcomic Thoughts: The Value of Homestuck

I’m not one of those “Homestucks,” a term that here refers to a member of the Homestuck fandom (not quite as catchy or creative a name as Trekkies, Whovians, and Bronies, in my opinion).  In fact, I’ve only mentioned Homestuck once before on this blog, and that was to say it has the second-worst fandom I've encountered.  I’ve read Homestuck and I enjoy Homestuck, but I think that it is a terribly overrated webcomic.  There are people I’ve spoken to who could quote me as having said that Homestuck has no literary value and that studying it in a college course would be a waste of money (I’ve never actually said that last part but I’ve said something similar and implied that sentiment).

 As an English for New Media major, I am now eating those words.

 Homestuck is, by the way, a webcomic written by Andrew Hussie and is one of the stories he has written and hosted at MS Paint Adventures.  You can find it here ( brief warning: it starts out dull and it’s a VERY long read, but it’s also very entertaining once it gets moving).  Homestuck, however, is not like other comics.  Instead of using speech bubbles, it uses single-panel images (and sometimes animated gifs) with narration or dialogue boxes below the images.  It will also occasionally include music, short videos, or even fully interactive games.  There is also reader influence on the narrative.

 Basically, Homestuck is an experimental, one-of-a-kind story that is taking advantage of new media in a way that very few stories are.  Pretty much every other webcomic I’ve read could be translated to a print medium exactly as is.  Homestuck is truly a webcomic, not just a comic that’s on the web.  It is a new way of storytelling that couldn’t have existed just a few years prior.  And as an English for New Media major, I can say without a doubt that that shit is worth studying.  Maybe not for the story itself, but it is definitely worth examining just for how it’s told.

 Homestuck takes a lot of influence from interactive fiction games like Zork or Colossal Cave, and the game is framed as such.  It is told in second person (getting around being told from multiple viewpoints with the running gag “you are now X”) and contains text prompts—the difference being that instead of writing them in, they’re already written in for you.  Apparently there was originally a place for users to submit command prompts, but as the story grew more complex, Hussie had to drop it.  However, he retains that same style to this day.  So even from the first page of the story, a reader can tell that the story is meant to be interactive and, overall, a different kind of comic.

 Hussie also takes advantage of his medium by frequently including animated gifs to give the images just a bit more flavor.  The first one we see is again on the first page, but it’s just the protagonist looking around a bit and blinking.  The second one on the second page is what really sets the tone of how these gifs will be used.  After clicking the link to the next page asking what the protagonist’s name will be, we get this:




Wow.  Genius.  Absolutely genius.  I’m not even kidding.  This is a great way to introduce how gifs will be used in the webcomic.  They give you a little visual gag that images alone aren’t able to convey and that are too short to bother putting into video, as well as conveying just how much Hussie will be playing around with the fourth wall in about five seconds.  So we’re only on the first two pages of the comic, and we’ve learned several things:

• Homestuck takes influence from interactive fiction
• Homestuck may be somewhat interactive itself
• Homestuck is not laid out like a traditional webcomic
• Homestuck includes animated gifs
• Homestuck has a self-aware sense of humor
• The narrator breaks the fourth wall by interacting with the player/reader
• The characters break the fourth wall by reacting to the player/reader

Eight key things (seven and a half if you don’t count the second point, but I believe original readers would have discovered that it was interactive right away) that end up being true throughout the comic all the way through, and it all shows up within the first minute of reading.  And that’s if you read slowly.

 The first act is by far the shortest and serves as an introduction to the story (as many first acts do), but it also includes a few pages with sound and concludes with a short video (consisting of animation and sound).  The first game (consisting of simply walking around and clicking on objects to interact with them) takes place very early in the second act.  These simple few things set the stage for the multimedia Homestuck will be using in the future.

 To briefly go back to Homestuck's structure, though: The separation of image and text allows for a very interesting use of variable pacing.  Sometimes, Hussie will drop text entirely and just show a series of images over individual web pages that either form a great visual gag or just provide tension.  Sometimes, a single image will contain a text box with a looooooong chunk of exposition.  Both are done in ways that traditional comics wouldn’t be able to—the first because the images would have to be full spreads (i.e., cover both pages) to have the same impact, and the second because that much text would take up several pages and cover the entire comic with speech bubbles.

 So that’s how Homestuck is laid out.  Just the fact that it’s a multimedia, interactive comic in the first place makes it incredibly unique, but I’ve got more to say.

 Andrew Hussie decided to make Homestuck up as he went along, scattering undefined story pieces as he progressed that he would be able to pick up later—something he referred to as “retroactive forshadowing.”  These objects had no real meaning when he created them, but he put them there knowing that he’d be posting the story episodically as he wrote it (itself a fascinating topic since it limits revision so heavily), so he gave himself options.  Why?  Because, as Hussie put it, “There was only one sure thing I knew when starting HS. That was that this thing would go batshit insane in ways I couldn't begin to imagine. In fact, it was practically the mission statement.”

So how did Hussie undertake writing this “batshit insane” story?  With the power of crowdsourcing.  Now, Hussie ultimately has ultimate control of the comic.  But a lot of what gets written is inspired by the readers and the Homestuck fandom.  Characters that people like can gain more attention.  Fan theories can become canon.  Hussie does a lot of pandering.  Why?  Because, above all, Homestuck is an experiment.

 The quality of the writing wavers.  It wavers heavily.  There are a lot of absolutely hilarious or amazing moments followed by a lot of pointless angst or terribly slow pacing.  There are great plot developments, and there are things that are really, really dumb.  A lot of this is due to Hussie attempting to experiment and take chances in order to gauge readers’ reactions, and every writer reading Homestuck should take note of this and watch for what works and what doesn’t.  Let me give you just a quick example: Vriska Serket.  She was designed to be a “base breaking” character: a character that people would have violently different opinions on.  She does a jig on the line between “cool and awesome” and “too blatantly cool and awesome and also unlikable.”  Some people, myself included, can’t stand her.  She’s the undisputed favorite character of others.

 Basically, Andrew Hussie has a very strong relationship with his fans.  It’s an ambivalent one to be sure—as much as he panders to them (to the point of tweaking a few jokes when they caused some backlash), he also trolls them very heavily.  The whole thing is basically a game for him, seeing how far he can push his experiment before it collapses (the answer is surprisingly far), to the point of Homestuck almost feeling like a sociology experiment.  And as the writing industry changes, this sort of relationship is what we should be looking carefully at. Social media is changing the relationship between creators and readers, making the gap between them just a little bit smaller.

 So how good is Homestuck as a story?  I’m leaving the answer of that question up to you, since it's not important to what I'm saying.  If nothing else, Homestuck is worth looking at because of how it’s written.  Hussie is paving the way for new media writers by taking storytelling chances and by testing reader reaction.  That is the value of Homestuck, and while my opinions on it may be mixed, I hold Hussie in high esteem.

Literature Reviews: Trader Tales by Nathan Lowell

Near the end of last school year I stumbled across Podiobooks, which are basically authors podcasting free audio versions of their books, dubbed “podiobooks” (I love how the term is a portmanteau of two other portmanteaus: podcast (iPod+broadcast) and audiobook (audio+book)).  That summer, since I do a lot of solitary outdoor work, I decided that doing some ear-reading would be a good alternative to talking to myself to pass the time.

One of the series I picked was Nathan Lowell’s Trader Tales series (or maybe Trader’s Tales or Traders’ Tales—Podiobooks labels it Trader Tales so that’s what I’m calling it for the sake of consistency).  What drew me to this series?  Why, the fact that it was one of the most highly-rated series on the site.  Because playing it safe is always more enjoyable than taking a chance, right?  Anyway, I also picked it because it was a longer series and would last me longer than some others would.

Trader Tales is a six-book long narrative chronicling the life of Ishmael Horatio Wang as he goes from a grunt on a spacefaring trade ship to the eventual owner of his own company.  That’s a bit of a spoiler, yes, but the titles make it clearly obvious.  Each of the six books (Quarter Share, Half Share, Full Share, Double Share, Captain’s Share, and Owner’s Share) make it obvious from the get-go that Ishmael is going places and the focused is moved from the “what” to the “when and how.”

The story starts with the death of Ishmael’s mother, a professor at a university on his home world.  Unfortunately for Ishmael, since he’s eighteen years old and living at the university with his mother is now out of the question, he’s forced offworld.  He’s able to solve his problems by taking a job aboard the Solar Clipper Lois McKendrick. There, he starts forming a kinship with his crewmates and quickly grows to love life in the “deep dark” and begins to learn the ins and outs of trading.  The overall story can be split pretty clearly in half.  The first three books focus on Ishmael as a young man aboard the Lois McKendrick, and the later three books focus on him as an older up-and-coming officer.  These later three books have less connectivity between them, as a fairly notable timeskip occurs between each and Ishmael changes ships and crew in each, but they still sort of form their own arc.  For that reason, I’m going to be talking about the plots of two halves of the series separately.

The first half of the story (Quarter Share, Half Share, and Full Share) has a solid plot, though the plot is actually fairly strange.  For the first two or three books, there really isn’t any sort of antagonist or even much of an antagonistic force.  The conflict is very low-risk and it feels more like a “slice-of-life” type of story.  In fact, it’s not until the the end of the second book that anything even really starts going wrong for Ishmael.  However, this doesn’t mean that it’s poorly written or unenjoyable.  Even with the lack of major conflict, there are a lot of solid story and character arcs that are built upon in later books, and I thoroughly enjoyed them.  In fact, the first few books were probably my favorites.

Instead of major conflict, we’re treated to Ishmael working in Lois’s galley, forming bonds with members of the crew, and forming a freelance trading partnership with his first and closest friend, Pip.  During this, Ishmael comes across as a bit of a golden boy, turning the ship upside down as he shows them his outsider way of doing things, as all the other crew members come from shipping families and he’s the only “land rat” on the crew.  It’s frequent to the point of being noticeable, but not to the point of being irritating.  Ishmael isn’t a genius or messiah; he just has a different perspective, is well-educated, and is very, very lucky.  There are three main story arcs through these first three books.  The first is about Ishmael and Pip organizing and launching a union for independent trading on the ship.  The second is Ishmael’s mission to become rated in all four disciplines (I have, unfortunately forgotten the actual term used in the book—basically, all jobs on a ship fall under one of these four disciplines).  The third is Ishmael’s developing relationships with three ladies: Beverly, Brillo, and Diane.

These arcs run throughout the first three books before ultimately coming to a conclusion at the end of the third.  The fourth book opens with Ishmael fresh out of an officer academy.  At this point, the entire cast changes, and much of the tone of the series does as well.  In the first half, Ishmael had nothing to lose. It became clear fairly quickly that he could get things done and therefore had some job security, he was making friends where he previously had few to none, and he was blessed with plenty of luck on top of that.  All responsibilities beyond his job were of his own choosing.  Double Share throws all that out the window, starting from the point that Ishmael graduates only around the middle of his class at the academy.  After all, perspective can only do so much, and while he has a sharp mind, he lacks the life experience others in his position would have grown up with.  From this point on, everything becomes an uphill battle for Ishmael.  The Lois was a healthy ship with a wonderful family of people, but Ishmael doesn’t end up so lucky when he finishes his education and returns to the deep dark.  His employer sees he has potential and tests it by putting him in high-risk situations where he has everything to lose.  When he manages to improve how one ship runs, he’s made captain of the worst ship in the fleet.  When he turns it around into one of the best, the company fires him to encourage him to start his own shipping company (they have their own reasons for doing so).

I could go into the individual plots of the second half of the series (consisting of Double Share, Captain’s Share, and Owner’s Share) more, but they aren’t as connected as the first three books and are consequently harder to briefly summarize.  These books also don’t require me to explain a lack of antagonists since they each have fairly tangible ones, so I think I’ll leave the plot summary as is and let you experience the story yourself.  I will say, however, that I felt the story of Ishmael Wang came to a satisfying conclusion.  His journey obviously isn’t over, but for now, it’s enough.  Lowell has expressed a desire to write other stories set in the same universe and has mentioned that we may see more of Ishmael and his old crewmates, and I’m personally looking forward to that.

The series also has some very strong characters—at least in the first half.  The characters in the second half are pretty strong, but they only get about a book or two of development each, and just don’t quite stand out as much as the characters in the first half do.  There are some standouts, of course, but almost all of my favorite characters were from the first half.  In fact, I was incredibly disappointed to see them go, and just a little angry that absolutely none of them even made cameos in the second half past an offhand mention.  The development of all characters is done well, though.  All the romantic relationships (as well as the non-romantic relationships, for that matter) feel like they develop naturally, and Ishmael’s mother is even posthumously developed through Ishmaels thoughts and reflections.

It’s worth mentioning that the entire series feels very true and real.  The universe is slowly developed and pretty much everything introduced evokes a “sure, I’ll buy that” reaction instead of a “this is clearly fantasy” reaction.  I don’t know how scientifically accurate it is, but it feels like it was well-researched, which is the part that really matters.  All the characters also feel like real people, and whenever something painful happens to Ishmael, the reader is left with a sort of “well, that’s life” feeling.

But moving past the writing itself, I want to talk about the audiobook format.  That is, after all, how I listened to it.  So it can be a good book, but if it’s a terrible audiobook, it won’t make much difference.  What’s worth noting is that the story was written specifically with audiobooks in mind, so it should be great as an audiobook, right?

First of all, Lowell’s reading is great.  Every podiobooker (is that a term?  It is now) has their own ways of doing the reading.  Patrick E. McLean, for example, does imitations of all his characters’ voices.  Philippa Ballentine enlists other podiobookers so that her novels have full voice acting.  The approach Lowell takes is the simple approach: he simply reads it.  It’s a first-person narrative, which lends itself to this approach well (the narrative and Ishmael’s voice are one and the same), but for other characters he doesn’t do much: just barely tweaks his tone of voice enough that we can tell it’s a character other than Ishmael who’s speaking.  It’s barely noticeable and doesn’t draw attention.

The story is also read very well.  Lowell puts plenty of emotion into the reading, and if he ever stumbles, it’s rarely.  He inflects properly where he needs to inflect, and will often do things like yawn as Ishmael talks about how tired he is or pause as the a revelation sinks into the characters’ minds.  It’s just a small things like that, but they draw you into the story just a little bit more, and I appreciated them.

The production of the audio files is top-notch.  This is not something that you would usually look for, but all it takes is one bad experience (sound not coming through both headphones, issues with volume, background noise, etc.) to make you appreciate it.  The music chosen is enjoyable, and always fades in and out smoothly.  One thing that I really liked about the first two or three books was that, at the beginning of each episode (not chapter; each episode contains several chapters), there is a brief “previously on” sort of segment that gave you a few passages of a sentence or two from the previous episode. It was unobtrusive and helped notify you if you had somehow gotten your files out of order (since mp3 players can be a bit wonky that way) or helped you find your place if you had stopped listening in the middle of an episode.  I don’t know why Lowell dropped these later, but I really wish he hadn’t.  It was something I had not seen in a podiobook up until that point, and I really appreciated it.

All in all, I give Traders Tales a glowing recommendation.  It’s a fascinating book with a solid story and Lowell performs a great read of it.  If you’re looking into podiobooks this is a great place to start.  Is it the best story I’ve ever read (ear-read?)?  Well…probably not.  I haven’t really mentioned many issues with the story.  I really don’t have many issues with the story, but I was listening to it out of the corner of my ear (that’s a phrase now) as I worked.  If I were to truly look hard, I could probably find all sorts of flaws with it like any jaded critic worth their salt.

However, Nathan Lowell is a small-time author, and as an aspiring author myself, I don’t think it would be beneficial to anyone to nitpick.  I do Lowell no service by deterring people from his work, I do all you readers no service by asking you to read about a series you’ve never heard of and then saying “by the way, it’s not worth it,” and I do myself no service by doing nobody any service.  The fact remains that, for such a small-time author, Lowell’s work is fantastic.  I don’t have a giant pool of podiobooks to compare it to, but the Trader Tales series were some of the best I heard and lasted me the longest.

So please, check out Trader Tales, especially if you’re interested in some entrepreneurship as the first books in the series give a lot of insight into the process.  I believe that Lowell is currently working on re-issuing the series and possibly releasing physical versions of the books.  For now, at least, the podiobooks are available for free, no strings attached, at the link I provided at the beginning of the post.  They’re very accessible books, even if you don’t like sci-fi, so give them a listen.  If you enjoy them, donate.  Or don’t and live with the guilt, I guess.  Support this wonderful small-time author by listening to his work and telling your friends.

Memes: the Cancer that is Killing Comedy

Let's take a moment to talk about memes and their place on the internet and in comedy.

First, what exactly is a meme?  Well, a meme is sort of an infectious phrase or notion.  To give a more demonstrative example, it's kind of like a movie reference.  Let's take a movie that everyone's seen.  Star Wars, for example.  If I were to tell someone "May the Force be with you," they would automatically recognize it as a line from Star Wars.  Even the hundred-odd people in the world who haven't seen a Star Wars movie would recognize it as a line from Star Wars.

Does this mean that the line is a meme?  Not exactly.  It's more of a pop culture reference (which many memes actually are).  It's hard to pin down the exact definition as used on the internet, but the best explanation I have is that it's somewhere between a reference, a fad, and an inside joke.

There's something that all three of those have in common.  Can you see it?

I'll get into what exactly it is in a bit.  First, I'm going to go into what exactly the place of memes in culture is.  Memes have been on the rise lately and have become an integral part of internet culture.  It started with just a few notable things, but really started to take off in about 2005--around the time that YouTube and Facebook emerged on the scene and shortly before Twitter.  From there, as the popularity of the internet and social media took off, memes became more and more numerous.  Now, memes have gone from inside jokes that the internet as a whole is in on to templates for responses or comments for almost any situation.

Now, I'll ask again: what do a reference, a fad, and an inside joke have in common?  The answer is that they are all someone else's work.  No one who uses a reference or inside joke or joins in on a fad is contributing anything original.

Now, none of these things are inherently bad.  A well-placed reference can be absolutely hilarious.  The thing is, they can be good, but only--and I'd like to stress this--only in moderation.  As an example, let's look at Seltzer and Friedberg.  Seltzer and Friedberg are a pair of directors who worked on the Scary Movie franchise and later broke off from that crew to create Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, and Vampires Suck.  These movies are known for confusing references with comedy.  There are jokes where the punchline is literally "hey, look at this character who's from this other movie!"  The character then disappears.  That is not a joke.  That is a cameo, and cameos are not inherently funny, and are certainly not funny (or even enjoyable) when they are thrown at you constantly.

As an aside, some of you may be saying "Hey, I thought Disaster Movie was hilarious!"  I hate to break this to you, but you are wrong and you have terrible taste in comedy.  This is not an opinion.  This is an objective evaluation.  Seltzer and Friedberg make undeniably terrible movies.  If you like them, it means that you are part of the Lowest Common Denominator.  It's a harsh criticism and you may be upset at me for making it, but I stand by that assessment for reasons that I'm going to be explaining below.

Let's look at these movies in context of Mel Brooks. Mel Brooks is responsible for parodies such as Spaceballs, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and Blazing Saddles.  I'll use the first as a reference point because it's the one I'm most familiar with.  Both the S&F movies and Mel Brooks movies feature a lot of nods to their source material, but the difference is in how frequent they are and how they're handled.  Spaceballs makes a lot of references to Star Wars, but most of them aren't really played to be particularly comedic.  Most of the references are woven in smoothly as opposed to blatantly shoved in our faces (such as Also Sprach Zarathustra playing during the "Megamaid" sequence as a nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey or the ruins of the destroyed Megamaid referencing the infamous Statue of Liberty scene from Planet of the Apes). 

What's more, and this is the important part, there are jokes and plot events that are separate from the source material.  For example, the "combing the desert" scene, where they're literally taking giant combs to the desert, or the scene where the villains are watching the movie they're in to figure out where the heroes are.  Neither of those jokes are in any way references to any other material but independently funny jokes.  There are direct references, yes, and there are cameos (Mel Brooks plays a small role in each movie), but they're few and far-between so they come as pleasant surprises.

Compare this to S&F movies.  The plots are pieced together from other movies and strung together by a series of references.  In fact, you could argue that they do not, in fact, actually have plots.  They're just a bunch of loosely connected skits.  Unfortunately, these skits are also all just references, either to movies (often based solely on the trailers) or to pop culture.  As a result, it feels like they're just regurgitating other movies.  Instead of a unique movie with a lot of recognizable elements, we feel like we're watching a movie we've seen before, but it was far better the first time.

Why the discourse on Mel Brooks vs. Seltzer and Friedberg?  Well, because much like S&F simply regurgitate funny concepts onto the screen and end up with unfunny drivel that people have already seen, people simply regurgitate memes that everyone has already heard.

The thing with memes is this: they are originally funny.  That's why they become memes in the first place.  And some memes are just idiomatic.  "First world problems" and "that awkward moment" are, for example, just new figures of speech that have emerged because they describe concepts quickly.  But others are just slightly humorous or catchy phrases that other people have used.  There are also reaction images, which are images with or without a short accompanying text that portray an idea.

So how are memes killing comedy?  Simple: they're replacing natural wit with jokes.  Jokes can be funny, yes.  What's more, they're accessible.  That's why people sit around telling them.  Even a person lacking in any wit can retell a funny joke and get laughs, and they're very beneficial for children as they lay the foundation of humor and wit (which I personally believe are very beneficial to health, courtship, intellect, etc.).  They're good in that respect.  But a comedian cannot just stand up on stage and tell knock-knock jokes.  TV and movie characters cannot get laughs by asking how a raven is like a writing desk (well, the joke is actually a Lewis Carroll reference and is consequently an intellectual joke that will get laughs from people who get it, but I'm just giving examples here).  It's because once you've heard them once, they cease to be funny.  They're unoriginal and formulaic, and anyone can tell them.

Memes are like that.  They're jokes that anyone can tell and don't require any real wit.  All you need to do is to see a situation where a meme is appropriate, use the meme, ???, profit!  Sure, the meme can be played around with and executed well, but overall, it's just parroting someone else's joke.  Image macros aren't much better, as they're basically "here's a template for a joke, fill in the blanks."

The terrible thing is that this type of "comedy" is encouraged.  For a while, everyone is making memes, because they don't realize for a while that the joke is getting old, just because people are able to put spins on it long enough to prolong its shelf life.  However, it's still going to go stale.  Remember Chuck Norris?  This is Sparta?  All your base are belong to us?  The cake is a lie?  The Rickroll?  All jokes that, a few years ago, were everywhere.  Bring them up now and you'll get dirty looks.  Fortunately, we've started wising up.  Memes don't endure as long as they used to.  Rebecca Black/Friday, arrow to the knee, and the Harlem Shake all experienced rapid rises and decline because they got overexposed and even small variations couldn't save them.  All have fallen from grace and while they haven't retreated into obscurity yet, they're on their way.

So please: stop using memes.  If you want to be clever, be clever on your own instead of telling someone else's jokes.

And if you think I'm being unfair with this, well, there's really only one thing I can say to you....

Gaming First Impressions: Assassin’s Creed

What?  You mean I actually do “First Impressions” posts that aren’t about anime?  Perish the thought!

When I was building my computer, the graphics card I bought came with a free digital download of Assassin’s Creed III.  Their way of saying “we’re so glad that you bought our product that we’re going to give you a free game with it!”  I had heard some really good things about the series in the past, and I figured I’d play the two (and two halves, i.e. Brotherhood and Revelations) games that came before it before I got around to the third one.

Assassin’s Creed is sort of two stories: the story of Desmond, a bartender (and former assassin?) who’s been kidnapped and has two people going through his “genetic memories” to find something.  The memories they are going through are the memories of Altair, an Assassin during the time of the Crusades.

So I started with the original, and was instantly drawn in by the fun gameplay and assassinating people and what exactly are these sinister people who have imprisoned Desmond and PARKOUR, YEAH!

And then the game stopped being fun and started to suck.

Basically, the game starts out really strong.  It gives you a great mystery, develops a wonderful world, gives you some fun gameplay that’s easy to learn, and sets you off on a quest for redemption.  And for a level, it’s fun.  It’s fun to watch as Altair goes off on his quest for redemption, it’s fun to try to figure out what’s going on with Desmond, and it’s fun to jump around on buildings collecting flags and hunting down targets.

The only problem is that things don’t get more varied than that.  Here’s how the story so far goes:
-Desmond is being held by two people who are probing his memories looking for some Mysterious Thing™
-Altair ends up in trouble with the Brotherhood of Assassins because he is a Cop Assassin Who Does Not Play By The Rules™
-We really start learning controls in a pretty fluid way that’s still fun.
-Altair goes off to some city to find some dude the Brotherhood wants dead.  There are hints to some larger scheme after he’s assassinated.  Altair relearns a skill afterwards.
-Altair goes off to two more cities to find two other dudes the Brotherhood wants dead.  There are hints to some larger scheme after they’re assassinated.  Altair relearns skills after each.
-Desmond learns a bit more about the people who are probing his mind.  There is DRAMA and MYSTERY.
-Altair goes off to different parts of all three cities to  find three more dudes the Brotherhood wants dead.  There are hints to some larger scheme after they’re assassinated.  Altair relearns skills after each.

I don’t know what happens after that since I haven’t beaten the third mission in that last chunk, but you can see why I’m having issues with the game at the moment.  It’s extraordinarily repetitive, and just extends the length of each “memory block”/level by increasing the amount of repetitive missions in it.  Sure, the first mission is fun.  It’s great to jump around the rooftops of Damascus.  It’s less fun when you’re doing the exact same thing in Acre and Jerusalem, though being given archers as hidden blade fodder provides a bit of new entertainment.  But by the time you have to do it again in all three locations, it’s become a chore.  What’s worse, absolutely everything looks the same.  The landscapes and cityscapes aren’t diverse enough to provide enough good landmarks, and you’re better off navigating by the icons on your map.  The sandbox elements of the game (i.e., gathering all the information instead of just most of it, saving citizens, climbing viewpoints, collecting flags, and taking out Templars) are repetitive and take a terribly long time.  I don’t even know what collecting the flags or defeating the Templars DOES, since there are so many of them and there’s no way to find them other than trial and error or an online guide.

What’s more, the story moves painfully slow.  After the first bit, it gets as repetitive as the gameplay itself.  You’re given pieces of the plot through ambiguous hints, but it’s entirely separate from the rest of the gameplay and there’s not enough to keep me interested.  Your reward for an intensely long session of gameplay is a sparse section of story that probably only makes sense once you’ve played through the game twice, but come on.  With a game this long and repetitive, who has time for that (as well as it would fit, I refuse to say “ain’t nobody got time for that” because using memes instead of your own words is dumb and uncreative and stupid and dumb)?

Also, the game controls?  Mostly good, but the combat controls are terrible.  Your hidden blade is useless in direct combat, you have limited throwing knives, and the swordfights are dependent on unforgiving timing.  You’re given enough health that, after you learn how to counter, you can just hold down the defend button and hack and slash your way through the enemies with counterattacks.  But that makes the battles take much longer.  What’s more, swordfights draw attention and once you’ve engaged in one, it’s easier to take out all the enemies in a long, drawn-out fight instead of running, finding cover, inevitably being spotted right  before you dive in, and repeating until you manage to get away safely.  And rescuing citizens, one of the main sidequests, almost always requires a swordfight that can draw dozens of guards in later missions.

Let me take a moment to compare Assassin’s Creed to The Legend of Zelda (i.e. my favorite game series) because they’re both action adventure games.  Let’s look at what they do differently.

-The Legend of Zelda sends you through varied and diverse locations. This usually prevents players from getting lost.  Assassin’s Creed has buildings that all look the same, forcing you to navigate by the (limited) minimap.

-The locations in The Legend of Zelda take different skills to navigate that usually require a short period of thinking before moving.  Assassin’s Creed is more trial-and-error. instead of being able to plot clear, strategic routes to safety, you’re forced to run around a disorienting maze of streets and rooftops until you stumble across one of the three types of places you can hide.

-The Legend of Zelda usually has quick battles that require just a little strategy, like finding the right angle to attack at in Skyward Sword or figuring out how to best get around a dodongo to attack its tail.  The battles in Assassin’s Creed are less dependent on strategy and more dependent on hoping you press the right button at the right time.  The only exception are the boss battles, and even then the strategy consists largely of “chase the target down or go here and wait for the right time to strike.”

-The Legend of Zelda offers a variety of gameplay between dungeons dependent on manipulating the environment.  In Assassin’s Creed, you do the same thing over and over and over again.

-The Legend of Zelda will often (though not always—I’m looking at you, Spirit Tracks) give you a bit more of the story as you’re moving through each new environment.  Assassin’s Creed gives you the gameplay, then the story, then the gameplay, then the story, etc.

You get the point.  And I get that the Zelda series is based around puzzles while the Assassin’s Creed series is based around stealth, so they’re obviously going to be different in some respects (especially regarding combat and how exactly the gameplay works). 

But I could really choose other Action Adventure games.  Let’s take Dark Souls, for example, which I’ve been playing for a class.  Sure, you’ll do a lot of repetitive things in Dark Souls, but it’s usually the same thing because you died.  That’s because, in Dark Souls, combat takes a lot of strategy.  It’s long and often tedious like it is in Assassin’s Creed, but the difference is the health bar.  Dark Souls won’t let you just charge in and attack because that’s a good way to get killed.  You have to wait for an opening to attack and avoid what attacks you can.  It’s not about pressing the right button at the right time, it’s about watching for right time and waiting until then to press the right button.  Dark Souls has diverse architecture and while it’s possible to get lost, the structure of the buildings are diverse enough that you can usually find your way around with ease once you’ve learned the landmarks.  And most all of Dark Soul’s story is told subtly and is integrated into the gameplay.

So what do I think about Assassin’s Creed?  Well, I actually think that it’s a good game, at least in theory.  It’s got great design and world elements a wonderful concept, and it’s fun.  The only problem is, it’s a good game that happens to suck pretty heavily.  The great gameplay and world are marred by repetitive architecture and some wonky combat controls, and you can only play ninja for so long before you start wanting more from the game—though I’m speaking in terms of quality, since I want less quantity.  It’s a concept that deserved to be great, and it wasn’t.  So I feel disappointed.  Disappointed and betrayed.  And really, that’s about the worst feeling possible.  If something’s inherently terrible, I don’t feel as bad.  But when something with great potential doesn’t capitalize on it, it feels like it’s broken a promise.  A promise to be good.

I hear the sequels are better.  I’m really hoping they are.  Because at the moment, Assassin’s Creed isn’t a game; it’s a chore.

Well, I’ve still got about half of the game to go.  It’ll hopefully pick up after this.  And if it doesn’t, well…the rest of those soldier-assailed citizens can just go ahead and suck it.  They probably were thieves anyway.

Gaming Reflections: Portal 2

Everybody grab your Companion Cube and get ready to think with portals, because I’ve finally been able to play the game that lets you have your cake and eat it too.

All right, and now that it’s not 2007 anymore, I’m going to stop referencing Portal memes.  Really, I don’t even know what I mean when I say the game lets you have your cake and eat it too.  I’m just contractually obligated to make a cake reference when talking about Portal.  See?  It says so right here in my file.  “Test subject [insert subjects name here] must make at least one reference to that overused meme that nobody even thinks is funny anymore.”

So, Portal 2.  Basically, Portal was a short little wonderful game that could only be defined as a “first person puzzle game.”  You shoot little portals out of a portal gun.  You solve puzzles with these portals by moving through them to otherwise inaccessible locations and drop boxes onto buttons.  Short, simple, and intellectually stimulating (my goodness do you get a rush from correctly solving a particularly tricky puzzle).  That alone would have made it a “good” game.  However, the game also decided to have a wonderful and unique sense of humor, launching it into “great” and making it pretty much an instant classic.

Of course, the original Portal was just a small little side-game launched in a package with several other games.  Portal 2 was designed as its own standalone game.  It expanded upon some implied backstory in the original game, keeping the tone of the first game wonderfully and continuing some wonderful gameplay and story integration.

As is frequent, spoilers follow.

You play as Chell, a test subject with an ambiguous past, though it seems to be somehow connected to the Aperture Science Laboratories that the game seems to take place in.  She has been put into stasis for an unknown amount of time that is implied to be extremely lengthy, but is broken out by Wheatley, a spherical AI.  The two of you accidentally resurrect GLaDOS, the robotic, science-obsessed antagonist of the first game.  Then puzzles with limited plot resume, until you find GLaDOS and replace her with Wheatley.  Wheatley, who is revealed to be a memory core specifically designed to make GLaDOS dumber, goes mad with power, then dumps you and GLaDOS (whose AI has been transferred into a potato battery—yes, you read that right) off somewhere to get you out of the way.

It’s at this point that the game really starts to diverge from it’s predecessor.  It moves to an older, abandoned version of Aperture Laboratories, and PA announcements reveal some more about the founder, Cave Johnson.  Chell and GLaDOS return to the newer Aperture Laboratories, do more tests, and then try to defeat Wheatley and put GLaDOS back in charge because, while GLaDOS is psychotic, she’s at least psychotic and capable and is consequently the lesser of two evils.

The story is strong, the way it’s told is beautifully subtle, and like its predecessor, the real charm of the game is the witty dialogue (this time, coming from three colorful characters instead of just one!) that is often silly but always in an intelligent way.  The gameplay is solid and exciting, and if you were to ask me for my biggest complaint about the game, it’d be that the puzzle sections in the first third drag on too long (and potentially, the the puzzle sections in the final third as well, though not as much).

The part that stood out to me most, though, was the ending (and major spoilers obviously follow).  GLaDOS and Chell have always had an odd relationship that is somewhere between enmity and love, and in this game, the relationship is defined a bit more.  After some character development, it becomes clear that GLaDOS, at very least, respects Chell as an archnemesis.  The ending, though, cements that GLaDOS does care about her, even if she doesn’t want to admit it.  After saving Chell’s life when a portal almost sucks her into space (again, yes, you read that right).  But let me go into detail on the ending: after Chell is almost sucked into space, GLaDOS saves her, then expresses relief when Chell awakens.  She then reveals that she has created robots to do the testing and doesn’t need her anymore, before stating that “the easiest solution is often the best, and killing you?  Well, killing you is hard.”  She then proceeds to bid Chell farewell, sending her…to another floor of Aperture Laboratories, where there are turrets waiting directly outside.  All seems lost, until the turrets start singing a farewell to Chell, and as the elevator rises, it’s revealed that there is an entire choir of singing turrets (yes, you have again read that correctly).  That GLaDOS would bid you such an elaborate farewell is absolutely stunning—but still very believable with the character development she’s gone through.  It gives you a big “awww, she does care about Chell!” moment before the elevator reaches its destination and Chell is ejected from a small toolshed in the middle of nowhere.  However, there’s one more surprise left for both Chell and the players: a charred Companion Cube the same one that GLaDOS guilted Chell so much over for “killing” in the first game, is ejected behind her a moment later.

The ending absolutely stunned me.  Portal is not a particularly dark series.  Sure, there are a few dark elements that are mostly hinted at, but it’s largely silly and upbeat.  However, it’s still not the sort of series that you’d expect a happy ending from.  However, that’s exactly what you get for nearly everyone.  GLaDOS gets to continue testing, Chell gets a beautiful farewell, her freedom, and a reunion with the Companion Cube, and the Space Core (who is rapidly approaching cake levels of annoying meme) gets to go to space.  The only person who doesn’t get some happiness is Wheatley, and his story at least gets some closure and development.  It’s a fully satisfying ending with nothing bittersweet about it, and I’m amazed that Valve managed to pull that off.

Anime First Impressions: Fairy Tail

No, “Tail” is not a typo.

So yes, I’ve been watching Fairy Tail lately.  I’m about 15 episodes in, which is a bit lengthy in terms of a “first impression” post, but it’s looking like it’s going to be a long-runner.  I was really hesitant to start another long-running anime after professing that One Piece would be the one and only one I’d bother with, but I’d started seeing Fairy Tail around more recently and figured I’d at least try to give it a shot.

So why this change of heart?  Well, I watched a few episodes of it.  Hulu often has the first two to four dubbed episodes of a show available, especially if it’s a popular one.  I was interested by what I saw, and when I started writing “Warrior, Wizard,” I noticed that I had been drawing some from what I had seen of Fairy Tail, especially in terms of the “guild” structure. That’s what made me give it a shot—seeing if I could draw inspiration from it and/or separate myself from it.

Fairy Tail takes place in the land of Fiore, a land filled with magic.  There are guilds of wizards who take on various jobs.  One of the most famous guilds, and the one that the show focuses on, is the Fairy Tail guild.  It’s filled with a lot of powerful wizards—but also a lot of colorful personalities.  Which is a win-lose in-universe, but definitely a win-win for us!

Basically, there are five primary characters at this point in the show.  There’s the protagonist, Lucy, a celestial wizard.  She uses magical keys to summon different beings, and even has several golden keys, which are extremely rare keys based on the Zodiac.  I don’t know at this point if there are multiples or if there are only twelve of these keys in existence (in which case, how did Lucy manage to get her hands on them? I’m sure these questions will be answered in time), but I like the idea.

Then there are Natsu and Happy, a fire wizard and his friend who happens to be a talking cat that can transform into a flying talking cat (Happy is pretty much just there to serve as the show’s mascot).  Natsu is an ability-type wizard, meaning that he can use fire magic naturally, and he was…personally trained by a dragon or something?

Natsu’s greatest rival is Grey (Gray?  I never know the proper spelling since the color can correctly be spelled both ways), who is also an ability-type wizard, though he uses ice instead of fire.  He also has a habit of taking off his clothes.  Which is, um, actually explained in his backstory, oddly enough.  He and Natsu have a very “red oni, blue oni” relationship.  The term is a mostly Japanese trope concerning a specific foil: the hot-headed, aggressive “red oni” (in this case, Natsu) and the distant, logical “blue oni” (in this case, Grey, though “logical” is a bit of a stretch for anyone in Fairy Tail).  If you’ve ever seen Digimon, it can be explained pretty quickly as “Tai and Matt.”  Anyway, it’s emphasized in Fairy Tail by their “fire and ice” dynamic.

The fifth member the show focuses on is Erza, a woman who uses a type of magic called “requip.”  For those familiar with anime terminology, it’s basically magic hammerspace.  For those who aren’t, it allows her to store weapons and armor in an alternate dimension and quickly retrieve them for whatever purpose she wants.

At the point I’m at, the show’s starting to pick up storywise.  The groundwork has been set and there have been a few short arcs to set up the characters some.  Now it’s starting to go into some character backstories and set up storylines that will probably span multiple arcs.

As for my opinions on it?  Well…I’m not sure.  I’m torn at this point.  It kind of feels like Fullmetal Alchemist meets One Piece (and due to appearance and English voice actresses, Lucy even seems like a cross between Winry and Nami).  That’s not a bad thing, though.  Overall, I’m enjoying it.  It’s got a solid storyline, decent characters, a great world…but it’s just…lacking.  It feels like a shonen anime (i.e., anime targeted at younger boys)…probably because it IS a shonen anime, but it feels like it’s very much part of its genre.  At this point, it doesn’t quite have the emotion I’ve seen from One Piece, though it may grow into it. 

The main issue I have with it, though, is the writing.  I don’t know if this is the fault of the Funimation dub (I refuse to watch long-runners subbed), but it just doesn’t wow me.  It just feels a bit flat.  Not quite to the level of the Hunger Games trilogy—a series I felt had excellent potential that was destroyed by a few terrible writing choices—but still a bit of a disappointment.  I guess that’s to be expected to an extent with shonen, though.  My past experiences with shonen are Shaman King, Rurouni Kenshin, and One Piece, and I felt that the third went terribly downhill and wasted great potential while the latter two had some very mature, solid writing.  The creators of Rurouni Kenshin and One Piece have also worked together in the past, so it’s not too much of a surprise that I’d enjoy the works of both.  Maybe their excellent writing and characters have spoiled me?

Anyway, Fairy Tail is still a very solid series, and I’m going to continue watching it.  I’m just currently holding it to a high standard.  Maybe it’ll improve as it goes along?  Who knows?  These are just my first impressions, after all.

If you’re into shonen or fantasy, and especially if you’re big on worldbuilding, give Fairy Tail a look.  It gives some good explanations of its magic systems (it has multiple magic systems and pulls them off well), and it’s definitely something worth looking into for that.  Of course, if you hate shonen…you’re probably going to hate this, too, since it’s more of the same.

Gaming Reflections: Spec Ops: The Line

Why does everything have colons in the titles these days?  I hate having multiple colons in these titles.

Anyway, I’m not much of a gamer.  I’d call myself an intermediate: definitely more than a casual, but I’m not well-versed in the ways of video games.  However, I do enjoy a good game on occasion, and due to a combination of building my own desktop computer (and consequently having a computer that would actually run games), a Steam Christmas sale, and actually having funds, I went to having a pretty big backlog of PC games I’d heard a lot about (as well as some Xbox and PS3 games, which generally don’t come to the Wii (i.e., the only console I own)).  In addition to that, though, I was sent a game called Spec Ops: The Line. 

Now, I am very much not a First Person Shooter guy.  Halo is about the only FPS I have any sort of experience with, and I think that military shooters are dumb.  Now, The Line is actually a Third Person Shooter, but it’s still a military shooter.  So I was a bit “ehhhhh” when I received it.  However, I had seen commercials for it while watching Hulu and was actually kind of intrigued.  It looked interesting.  And hey, free game.  That, along with a comment from a friend about how it changed his perception of military shooters (and a confirmation that it was a short game) prompted me to give it a try fairly early.

I don’t have much to go on in terms of military shooters, as I’ve never played any before.  I don’t know how they control, and I don’t know much about them beyond the fact that they tend to have a “MURICA, FUCK YEAH” attitude.  So the controls seemed fluid enough to me (though on my first playthrough (I’ve been playing through it again for the other achievements and because the plot is a bit complex and confusing the first time around) I forgot the key to switch weapons into their secondary mode).  Graphics seemed pretty solid, I guess?  Solid enough to be uncomfortable when they needed to be.  As a writer, I usually judge games on their story first, followed by things like implementation of graphics and gameplay.  And with The Line, the “other stuff” was solid enough for me, and the story was wonderful.

The Line is very much a deconstruction of military shooters.  It doesn’t glorify war; it reveals how brutal it is and how much stress and pain it can cause everyone involved.  The titular line is shown in the game to be the metaphorical line between doing what’s right and flat-out brutality.  And (spoilers follow but I can’t really talk about the game without them) in the game, the line is crossed when you blast an enemy camp with white phosphorous, a devastating chemical that leaves fiery destruction in its wake.  You’ve seen the effects of it earlier on in the game, but the game still forces you to use it to move on (which some take exception to—but from a narrative stance, I fully support.  How else is it going to get the point across and drive the plot?).  What’s more, after that, it forces you to walk through the camp to see how much destruction you’ve wrought—and then show that the people you assumed were your enemy were trying to protect civilians, and you’ve burned dozens of innocent men, women, and children alive.  What’s more, you later destroy the water that’s keeping everyone alive.  As the game goes on, you realize more and more that no, you are not the hero.

A large part of the game revolves around making difficult choices, all of which toe the metaphorical line.  It’s often hard to tell what’s the “right” choice, especially since there are multiple factions and the line blurs more and more as you go along.  There are achievements for all the possibilities, and as the protagonists start detaching themselves from reality, so do the players start detaching themselves from the game, making it even harder to make the choice.  Do you save a soldier who has vital information, or save the lives of innocent citizens?  Put a dying man out of his misery or let him die a slow, painful death for destroying the water?  Take revenge on a friend or fire on the crowd of civilians that lynched him?  Die to atone for the damage you’ve caused?  Return home a shell of your former self?  Become the villain you’ll eventually perceive yourself to be?  All fairly tough choices to make, and when you’re sliding down a slippery slope, it’s sometimes more tempting just to jump (in fact, now that I think about it, the protagonist literally slides down and falls off of a slippery slope around the time they start shooting American soldiers…symbolism?).

Basically, if you like military shooters, play this because it will change your perception of the genre and really make you think.  If you don’t like military shooters, play this because it’s everything that other military shooters aren’t.  It’s not a fun game, but it’s a game that says something, and it’s a message that I think a lot of people need to hear.