A New Perspective on Bitching.
OK, so:
Back in 2002, early 2003, Microsoft rolled out the Hype Train for an upcoming game called Brute Force. In retrospect, they probably poured the hype on a little TOO strongly, as it got a bit of a backlash when it came out and wasn’t the Next Halo… but I digress.
I’d played the demo version included with a magazine and quite liked it, and it came out shortly before my birthday, so my loving and thoughtful wife made sure that I had a copy.
Keep in mind, I hadn’t played Halo, or really any similar games on the Xbox up to that point. I’d spent an awful lot of time playing Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball and Panzer Dragoon Orta.
With those as my gaming foundation, Brute Force was Hard. I died over and over again just getting through level 3, then finally gave up on the game as a lost cause thanks to an escort mission on level 4 where I simply couldn’t keep the guy I was escorting from running in front of me and getting to enemies before I had a chance to clear them.
It didn’t help that, while the game looked great, the main character had all the personality of a rock.
Not an interesting rock, either.
Four years later I decide: Yeah, the main character is still pretty damn uninteresting, but I’m going to man up and and least TRY to play it.
I got through the first six levels in a sitting. I barely even noticed the escort mission this time. I’m not going to do anything silly like complain about this; I’m just going to feel a little silly about all the bitching I’ve done about how I really wanted to like this game, but they had to put in a stupid impossible escort mission and blah blah blah blah.
Backlog: The Progressing.
3 months ago - October 26, to be precise, I made up a list of 45 games to put at the top of the backlog. Everything else went into plain white storage boxes so I could concentrate on titles that were either highly regarded, or that I’d played through partway and been distracted, or that, well, just had a cute main character.
Finishing Kameo today brings me up to having finished 7 of those, so that’s some decent progress.
I’ve also played through, well, six games that weren’t on that original list, so I pretty much suck at sticking to a plan.
Still, it’s keeping me off Everquest. I get the occasional twitch now and again, but whenever I consider resubscribing, I remember that if I do that I’ll never get anywhere with the backlog. 
Kameo: Making Things Difficult For Myself.
So, I’ve gone back to the Xbox 360’s launch library for my next game, Kameo. This was a game I was really looking forward to when it was announced as a Gamecube title - I even had a Kameo wallpaper as my desktop background for some while.
…but, then it got moved over to the Xbox, and then it got delayed long enough that it turned into a launch title for the 360, and I don’t pay full price for launch titles on any system so I wound up not getting it until I found a copy in Sears for 20 bucks…
Anyway, when I was looking at “what should I play next”, I picked it because it had a reputation for being fairly short, and well, cute fairy in miniskirt.
Ahem. Carrying on. It’s a really pretty game and I forgive it for taking so long to come out. I know Rare’s gotten some knocks for not being the juggernaut developer they were back in the Nintendo 64 days, but this is a really gorgeous bit of software.
It is, however, possible to make some truly tragic mistakes while playing.
For example: The intro level is a tutorial kind of mission, and when it’s over you wind up in a garden that serves as kind of a hub for the rest of the game.
If you go poking around the garden a bit, you wind up with all kinds of power upgrades, including two extensions to your health meter and a doohicky that serves as a health regen item.
If you dash right off into the world, and don’t go poking around the garden, you might wind up cursing for the first several levels of the game, including a couple of boss fights, before you look up a FAQ to see if it really IS supposed to be this annoying and if you really ARE supposed to be dying so often.
Let’s pause for a moment and consider which approach I might have taken.
Thank you, and good night.
The Doctrine of First Theft.
Pardon me for a minute while I get serious and ranty. I promise, it’s all back to “yay, I finished another game!” or “look at the neat thing I bought” next post.
I was browsing around for new wallpaper last night and ran into something that really annoys me - it’s something that, in a play on the “Doctrine of First Sale”, I’ve decided to call “The Doctrine of First Theft.”
It’s the idea that, because you’ve stolen something, it gives you some kind of ownership over it.
In this particular case, it was someone who scanned images from art books, stuck them in front of a background, and then claimed that the result was their creation, and as such you couldn’t take it and put it on your own page. This is a rationale used quite a bit on fan sites, whether it’s something that doesn’t take any real effort - screen captures, scans, that sort of thing - or whether it’s something that actually takes some creative efforts - wallpapers, fan-subtitles, and so forth, that take a piece of existing art and create a derivative work.
My innate reaction to the concept is “To heck with that, you stole it in the first place, so you don’t have any control over what’s done with it.”
But, it strikes me that I might be being somewhat unfair, so I wanted to go through my thought process on the matter.
This is a photograph of a cel I own.
This is a physical object and bit of artwork. I own this; I can sell it to someone else or cut it into pieces, put it into a collage with other things, and sell the collage.
This is a scan of the same cel:
I don’t own this. If I were to put this image on a T-shirt and try to sell it, Shogakukan could legally stop me from doing it.
In fact, by putting it up on the web, I’ve infringed on their copyright. They could ask me to take it down. They could ask me in all sorts of nasty legal ways, and they’d be in the right. I rather hope they don’t, but I can’t complain if they do.
Now, then - if you were to take this image and put it on your own web page, what recourse do I have? I don’t have any ownership of the image, so it’s not like I could come to you and say “Hey! You stole my picture! Take it down!” - I have no right to distribute it in the first place, it’s not my picture.
I suppose I could go to Shogakukan and say to them “Hey, this guy has an illegal image on his web page, make him take it down”
But that would be kind of silly since I put it up on the web in the first place.
That’s not the whole issue, though. Let’s continue.
Here’s a photo from my last vacation to Japan.
I’m pretty sure I own this. I’m within my rights to put it up on this web site, and if I wanted to publish a calendar of “temples in Japan”, I could probably use the photo. I’m not entirely sure how the presence of bystanders in the photo affects that, but I think I’m still in good shape legally.
By taking the photograph, I automatically get copyright protection. This means that if you copied the photo and put it up on YOUR web site, I could legally say “Hey, take that down!”
Not that I would, because I’m not a jerk and I don’t think my vacation photos are all that special, but in theory I own this image.
So let’s combine this with the image I don’t own:
Let’s take a moment and admire my amazing Microsoft paint skills.
…
OK, let’s continue.
I’m pretty sure I don’t own this. I own the background, sure, but by adding an image that I don’t have any rights to, I think I’ve created a composite image that I don’t have any rights to. So, again, Shogakukan could say “Hey, knock it off!” and I’d have to comply.
But I’m also pretty sure that, again, I can’t tell anyone else what to do with it. I can’t say “I stole it first! It’s mine!”
Anyone out there want to chip in with their two cents?
I achieve perfection!
…well, in at least one way.
I finished Phantasy Star Universe’s offline, single-player Story Mode tonight, and that gave me 1000 gamerscore of a possible 1000. So, I got a perfect achievement. See?
Moving on…
While I still wish that Sega would get their act together, ditch the 3d action pseudo-MMORPG thing, and put out a turn based Phantasy Star V, it turned out to be pretty enjoyable. Your own enjoyment potential will depend on how much you can tolerate truly dreadful voice acting and one-dimensional button-mashing gameplay, but apparently I have a decent tolerance for both these days.
It helps that the storyline is broken up into twelve episodes, as if it were a TV show, each with an opening sequence, ending credits, and next episode preview. This is a design that I’d like to see more of in RPGS - one pitfall it’s easy to fall into in an RPG is not knowing when to call it a night and save, to grind just a little more and get just a little further. That way lies boredom and burnout. With highly episodic content, it made it easy to stop playing and take a break, and that in turn helped prevent burnout.
The game also gets many bonus points for providing cute girls in bulk lots. There’s one character in particular that will appeal to any old Gall Force fans with Catty fixations, but even if pink-haired robot girls aren’t your thing, you’ll probably find someone to bring a smile to your face.
Oh, and the voice actors do eventually get better. I’m still an “original language or die” kind of guy, but the actors seemed to be much more in touch with their characters by the end of the game.
I understand that there’s also an online mode, where you team up with up to 5 other people and take on instanced missions while you grind experience and loot, gaining access every five levels to a new set of instanced missions and better loot. I’ve played that. It was called Lost Dungeons of Norrath. I’m not playing it again.
I’ve never played the Phantasy Star Online games, because, well, the “Online” in their title turned me off. I’m given to understand, however, that they may actually have offline story mode play as well, and I may have to go back and check them out.
RPG goodness on the cheap.
Scored at Goodwill tonight:
Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate : Tales of the Sword Coast, Baldur’s Gate II, all for a massive $10. Boxes trashed all to heck and back, so not pictured, but discs in reasonable shape. No manuals for Tales of the Sword Coast or Baldur’s Gate II, but I did get the Quick Reference Card - and map! - for BG2 and found a PDF version of the manual at Sorcerer’s Place, so I think I’m pretty much set.
I’ve been having decent luck finding older PC games in thrift stores. I guess I can sort of thank Gamestop for that - since they dropped their used PC section, there’s no easy way to sell a PC game when you’re done with it. The condition the games are in when they actually get to the shelves, mind you, often leaves a bit to be desired…
Building up quite a nice little Bioware collection now - in addition to these, we’ve got Fallout 1 & 2, Fallout : Tactics, Neverwinter Nights, and Icewind Dale. Hours and hours of no-doubt-entertaining gameplay await.
Stuff it, Turtleneck-boy.
You had me all stoked to start renting movies on your i-toons thing, and what do I find when I decide to try it out?
standard-def, full-screen mockeries. Apparently that’s all Mac owners deserve.
No, I’m not going to buy an appleTV to get widescreen 720p rentals, especially not with a 30-day-after-DVD-release window.
Please try again.
I think I’ve had about enough Tangos.
Whole mess of “firsts” recently:
I finished Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six : Vegas on the 360…
This is the first “Tom Clancy’s subtitle subtitle : subtitle” game I’ve ever played through. I do own “Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell”and “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon”, so I guess I could play those next if I felt like I needed more Clancy in my diet.
It’s also the first “tactical shooter” (I keep hearing that’s a genre, anyway) I’ve finished, and I had enough trouble with it on Normal to have great respect for anyone playing through it on “Realistic”. I also hear that this is “dumbed down” compared to the “glory days” of the franchise, and if that is the case I will be certain never to go back and play any of the earlier games, because I don’t think I need that much humiliation.
I got to experience my first Xbox 360 Disc Read Errors, so I’m probably well on my way to experiencing my first Red Rings of Death experience.
Anyway. It wasn’t my normal kind of game. It’s not at all cute; there’s no cuteness to be had here. It’s also not particularly story-driven, though the OMG! plot twist right at the end managed to catch me off-guard…
It does score some points for having really good AI for your squad mates. I’ve played a couple of squad-based games lately - Giants : Citizen Kabuto and Armed and Dangerous - and both had squad mates that were, well, they were pretty dumb. In R6:V, there were an awful lot of times where I could point them at a room full of “Tangos”, and they would cheerfully go and clear the room for me. I guess the “skill factor” in those cases boiled down to knowing WHEN my squad mates could do all my work for me.
It also gets serious cred for the environments. I will admit, up front, that I’ve never been to Las Vegas, so if it’s laughably bad in comparison to the REAL Las Vegas, please forgive my being impressed with it. I’d heard that it was only six levels long - and, yes, it IS only six levels long - but each of those levels is huge, usually with multiple inside-and-outside bits. It’s not running through rooms full of slot machines for hours on end, which is kind of what I’d expected.
The designers did themselves a serious disservice by putting the “made out of brown” Mexico level right up front. It makes sense for story reasons, but… wow, it’s not exactly suck-the-player-in eye-candy. Kind of like the Statue of Liberty level in Deus Ex, it’s kind of the tough, fibrous shell that conceals the sweet fruity center.
Anyway - over all, a good experience, nice to play something a little out of my normal comfort zone… but I’ve had it with hearing “tango down!” “tracking tango!” “eliminated tango!” for a while. I swear that at one point, when we came under fire, one of my squad mates shouted “we’re being tangoed!”, which I think is not an appropriate use of the term AT ALL.
Wait, define “Failure” again?
…now that I have a blu-ray disc player, I’ve been paying more attention to assorted forum threads talking about the format.
There’s lots of folks out there who are convinced that both HD formats are doomed and that, instead of any disc format succeeding in the marketplace, we’re going to all be switching to digital downloads in the next few years… and this may be true. I’m no oracle.
But, what gets to me is that people keep comparing blu-ray to laserdisc, with the implication that laserdisc was a failure and that blu-ray will be following in its footsteps.
This bewilders me.
Laserdisc had, well, more than a few shortcomings. The discs were prone to self-destructing, the players were expensive, the discs were difficult to master and costly to produce, and you had to flip the disc over or put a new disc in every hour.
Even so, and even with less than 5% market penetration, and in a time when most people thought that VHS on their 19″ TVs looked JUST FINE and that letterboxing was taking away picture, it still managed to last for 20 years and get 10,000+ titles released - from high-profile blockbuster movies to the most obscure foreign and indie titles you could think of.
I’m HOPING that blu-ray “fails” even half as well as laserdisc “failed”.
Heavenly Sword: See Gong, Throw Hat.
I have to admit, I laughed at the Penny Arcade “Heavenly Sword” comic.
Well, let me rephrase that. It’s a comic, you’re supposed to laugh at it, laughing is a natural and expected response. What I meant is that I didn’t take it too seriously…
You know, that doesn’t really work either.
OK, third try: I really expected that the comic was an exaggeration of the truth. And then I actually played the game, and found that every time I felt stuck, I just had to look for the box of hats. I think Gabe & Tycho deserve serious credit for producing the shortest strategy guide in history.
But wait, you say, “Heavenly Sword” is a PS3 exclusive, and you are a die-hard Sony hater. What is up? How is it that you are playing this game?
Well, thank a combination of things for that.
1) Warner announcing Blu-ray disc exclusivity. The format war is over, and as much as I was pulling for HD-DVD to take off, it’s not happening. And, in truth, it didn’t matter which format died first, just that one of them DID die. This isn’t like “DVD vs DIVX”, where the prospect of being locked into Circuit City’s insane world domination scheme was a nightmare - both formats are pretty equal.
2) My wife and I started playing “Champions of Norrath” on the PS2 and, well, PS2 games look like ass on a 50″ screen. And not good ass, at that. The PS3 has built-in upscaling for PS2 games, which eliminates some of the blur around text in dialogue and makes the PS2 jaggies a little less obvious.
So, we bought a used 60GB PS3 from Gamecrazy.
This had the following beneficial results:
1) We get hardware based backwards compatibility with PS2 games.
2) Buying a used system meant that we didn’t give Sony any money.
3) Buying from Gamecrazy meant that we didn’t give Gamestop any money.
As a side benefit, the previous owner of this PS3 had apparently explored the full depth of the PS3’s game library… by which I mean that the only data on the console was save games for football and golf games. I don’t think it’s seen extensive use.
So, anyway, we rented the first Pirates of the Caribbean Blu-ray and Heavenly Sword. And Pirates looks really really nice in 1080i, and Heavenly Sword looks pretty decent as well. Minus 5 points for overuse of bloom and minus another 10 points for what I will call the Sudeki factor: Western developers trying really really hard to be Japanese developers.
I’m going to need to resist the temptation to re-buy DVD titles as Blu-ray discs, but honestly the price of Blu-ray discs will help curb that temptation. There are a couple of titles I never owned on DVD that may find their way home, but apart from that it’s rentals only for a while.
Man, I went link happy in this post.
About
About the author:
I’m a married 30-odd-year-old fanboy, college student, and software QA guy, mostly recovered from an 8-year long Everquest addiction and trying to catch up on the last decade of videogames as a result.
I’m working towards a BA in Japanese and hope to be done by 2011.
This blog contains an awful lot of posts about games as I finish them, occasional rants about keeping in shape, the odd bit of bitching about the antics of the instructors and students I cross paths with, and every once in a while a post or two related to weird things I’ve seen while traveling.
Oh, and the occasional post about videogame girls in glasses because I like making my wife roll her eyes and shake her head at me.
