My Cabbages!

     By Aaron Mingus

      So let me get this straight, I thought as I was led through the Hero Academy.  My whole purpose in life is to be the chosen one and I have the ability to either save or doom the planet… It was a lot to put on a child who had just watched his entire family killed and home burned to the ground.  Sounds like the standard affair!  After all, this game, Fable, was a fantasy RPG and being the most important person in the universe, often with a tragic background, tended to be par for the course.

      And that’s… kind of sad actually.  It seems like for all the fantasy games in existence (nearly every one that isn’t exclusively science fiction) very few unique stories have been told.  Most are either save the princess or save the world, and frequently “fulfill your destiny” is in there somewhere too.  Once while visiting a friend, he told me that he considered Final Fantasy XII a breath of fresh air, because it wasn’t as much about saving the world but saving the country, which is only marginally different at best.

     This lack of originality is probably why so many fantasy games are obsessed with side questing and activities.  One would think saving the world would be a pressing matter, but you can always stop to help the local farmers fight off bandits.  “Help me, help me!” shouts the princess in a dull, flat tone, obviously devoid of personality.

“I’ll save you, fair maiden!” you call.   “…just after I mine enough silver to craft my new shield.”

     And it’s all busy work added to pad out the game.  If the world was really in danger, if a meteor was really heading for the earth, then you wouldn’t waste your time with local squabbles over fishing territory.  That’s the kind of problem that should be solved by a local board of administrators and held up by the police.  The noble adventurer should have no time for it when the world is in peril, and the public should recognize that.

     If you get tired of saving the world, I suppose the best thing to do is to embrace the trivial side quests.  That’s why I spent some time traveling throughout the wintry landscape of Skyrim as Charles the Cabbage Thief, World’s Greatest Cabbage Thief, who would walk into town with empty pockets and waltz out with a cart load of cabbages.

     The idea came to me when I was trying to enjoy my play-through of Skyrim to no avail and came across a farm.  I plucked up all the cabbages and the owner didn’t even react.  No officer lurched over to me demanding compensation.  Then I started browsing around the houses and found that there were many cabbages left unattended and poorly guarded.  Being dragon born had gotten old, so I was reborn (spelled: restarted the game) as Charles and took the cabbages by storm!

     It was a fantasy adventure that had never been told!  Villagers would see what they perceived to be a mercenary walk into town.  They’d ask for favors, and to keep up the charade, I gladly obliged.  I recovered a warrior’s sword from a gang of bandits, but was sure to snatch up every cabbage in the hideout on my way.  The sword was secondary.  After I returned it to the rightful owner, the people of the town gleefully thanked me for my good work as I rooted around their kitchen cabinets.

     Eventually, cabbages became all that mattered to me.  I would rifle through dressers and drawers.  Onions, no!  Collard greens, pass!  Wizard robes, pah!  Healing potions, well, even a cabbage thief has to think about his health.  I would get calls from friends on Saturday nights.  “Where are you?”  They’d say.  “We haven’t seen you in weeks.  We’re going to Bon V in an hour.  Come with us.”  Four hours later, I had accrued a hundred and forty-six more cabbages, and that part of the story’s a complete and utter lie.  I have a wonderful social life.

     I imagined the peasantry of Skyrim missing that vital ingredient for their coleslaw.  They posted wanted signs all across the kingdom.  They would run into each other on the street and one would say, “I was struck by the cabbage thief last night, now what am I going to put in my egg rolls?”

     “He hit us to,” her friend would reply.  “I wonder what he does with all those cabbages.  He must have an awfully large store of kimchi.”  But the truth is I never learned to cook!  They were all sitting in a single barrel (…somehow) by the blacksmith’s front door in Riverdale, rotting away in disuse!  Oh, if only he had asked himself about the smell.  If only he used that barrel to store hammers or scraps of tin.  If only he had taken time to question why a man periodically came by shoving crate loads of cabbages inside his unused barrel, the mystery could have been solved.

     At last, the cabbage thief retired when I sold my PC, it being virtually impossible to ship a computer through US customs.  But for a while, it had really spiced up the dull narrative of Skyrim.  Someone once told me that when you play an Elder Scrolls game, you shouldn’t focus on following the story.  You should just explore and find something to do.  At the time that seemed like ridiculous advice, and now even after successfully doing that, I still find it bewildering.

     What’s the point of having a story in a game if the players are going to ignore it?  What’s the point of having a plot about saving things and restoring peace if that is the least interesting part of the game?  The driving force of a good, narrative game should be its plot.  That’s the part which moves us forward and keeps us coming back.  If always “saving” things doesn’t work than maybe we need something new and different, instead of searching for our own ways to amuse ourselves.

PokeGames

  

 by Aaron Mingus

      I walked into my classroom and began checking homework when a little girl in the front row excitedly pointed to my feet.  Oh! I thought. I forgot to change into my work shoes.  I was still wearing my Chuck Taylors.  Thankfully, this girl was keen to point that out to me, as well as saying, “Teacher!  They are children shoes!  I have pink ones!”

     I decided not to argue too much with her.  Chucks are not children’s shoes.  They are skater shoes and I have been wearing them since high school, but I shouldn’t have to explain that to a kid… Besides, she was probably right.  Chucks are not a marker of maturity like my classy, wing tip work shoes are, and I had honestly bought my Chucks for nostalgia’s sake.

     Similarly, I sometimes use Pokémon and some other games as a way to relate with students.  A lot of kids love Pokemon and like to talk about it, and that talking is really important for Korean English students.  I too have a fondness for Pokemon.  I even have a Pokedex App on my iPod, just in case I encounter a Spearow in the wild.  But Pokemon is a children’s game, and I find that it is continuing to be a children’s game despite my aging.

     A fantastic example of this is one of the more recent installments, Pokemon Black & White, where the main antagonists are an ALF-style organization called Team Plasma.  Their goal is to end what they view as the oppression of Pokemon by humanity.  That’s what makes them villains.

     As adults we tend to have this urge to interpret messages or question morals found in any narrative, often times unconsciously.  We might feel slightly conflicted about the tribal, African, spear wielding zombies we are slaying on mass in Resident Evil 5.  Some people might associate this with “dated” racial stereotypes being unnecessarily injected into a game.  Alternatively, this can be a good thing.  The developer of Shadow of the Colossus probably wanted us to question the morality of killing the colossi, which is one reason Wanderer is brutally wounded every time he downs one.

     So in Pokemon Black & White we, adults, are going to ponder the morals of the story.  The game directly offers us an argument against the trading and battling of Pokemon.  Unfortunately, that children’s game’s writers treat the material too simply for the complex ground it is treading.  See, Team Plasma is actually power hungry and evil!  Well, that justifies their defeat… but then it really doesn’t answer the question, does it?  You know, is forcing Pokemon to fight wrong?

     “Of course not,” the consumerist mecca known as Nintendo says as it shrugs its shoulders apathetically.  “Now shut up kids, and buy more Marios!”  But really, when you take a step back and look at the games, players participate willingly in the trading and fighting of intelligent creatures for self-gratification, to be the “very best” or the Pokemon “master”.  I doubt one could seriously address this problem in a Pokemon game because it is so obviously antithetical to the premise set up by its publisher.

     As I am growing old, certain games are beginning to feel their age… or rather I am beginning to feel my age when I play them.  Pokemon, for example, is becoming much harder to appreciate for its simplicity and fun when similar ideas in reality are so complicated and serious.  I can’t help but feel Team Plasma was right and my Chuck Taylors were probably made by a kid in an Indonesian sweat shop, so now I can go be miserable all day, my youth and nostalgia ruined!

NO, no no, no no no.... anything but this.

Well, I had a long well written review for Aliens: Colonial Marines, but I said fuck it! Our mini review should tell you everything you need to know.

 P.S. Don't buy this FUCKING game.

A Day In The Life

    by Aaron Mingus

    Video games often let us take on incredible roles.  One moment, we could be a space marine single-handedly blasting through swarms of aliens on a ring in space.  The next, we are a circus freak who runs away to a psychic summer camp.  Some games, like LittleBigPlanet, even give us the opportunity to create virtually anything, expanding the already broad array of possibilities.

     But some games are not about the incredible.  These are simulation or “day in the life” games.  For example, Dinner Date and The Sims allow us to join seemingly mundane, human worlds where the ultimate goals are architecture and social interaction.  The Harvest Moon series lets us step into the shoes of a farmer.  We don’t battle any evil lords or save any princesses.  Rather, our struggles come in the form of old tree stumps and dating.  Often times, both our incredible and more realistic games generate human experiences.  However, others can turn us into different creatures entirely.

     I recently played Krillbite Studio’s The Plan and had the opportunity, for the first time ever, to briefly explore the world through the eyes of a common house fly.  Now why would I want to be a fly? is the question anyone would ask.  And they would have a good point.  It’s hard to love a creature that spends its evenings licking porta-johns before landing on every hot dog at the picnic.

     The Plan is not about ruining your Fourth of July.  I began play in a very dark forest and could barely see in any direction.  Luckily as I went up, I could view a tiny bit more of the world.  But even then dangers were sometimes impossible to see.  The first problem I faced was in the form of a cobweb which I couldn’t spot until I was trapped in the middle of it.  As a fly, I was so small and defenseless that even falling leaves seemed threatening.  In the everyday human world, flies are little more than annoying, but in The Plan, I was just little.

     By letting us experience the world as something no more important than a fly, a game can help change our perspective and understanding of life.  That puny creature we literally brush off becomes relatable and sympathetic.  That’s an impressive achievement considering the normal associations we have with those pesky, little monsters.  And it’s one we really can’t have unless we gain the ability to be a fly.

     I’m a lover of “day in the life” games.  They offer completely new views of the world that can rarely be experienced outside gaming, whether we are tending the crops or buzzing through a forest at night.  Sadly, the simulation genre is often under-appreciated or churned out as a cheap money-making scheme (Farmville!), but a good simulation game should always be welcome to give us that chance at seeing life in a new light.

Aaron Mingus is author of  Museum of bad ideas and an all around ok person. (that last bit depends on who you speak to.)

The week in Nerd!

     This week on Nothing but Nerd should be a pretty big week to look forward to with a slew of new articles and videos. Stay tuned to catch some Crysis 3 gameplay footage and Definitely some Metal Gear Revengeance, yes I know that isn't a real word. Also we have our usual article from Aaron on Monday and we should have quite a few guest articles. Plus our reviews for Aliens: Colonial Marines, Fire Emblem Awakening, and Dead Space 3 will be out this week and should be some sultry reads. 50 Shades of Grey ain't got shit on us! For the time being though please enjoy this video of Aliens:colonial marines and one of the thousand reasons you shouldn't buy it.

Yeah I know it is FUCKING TERRIBLE!

Injustice for All

The DC Comics Universe brings its form of bloody Kombat to your living room

By Matthew Greene

    On April 16th 2013 Nether Realm Studios, the makers of 2011’s reboot of Mortal Kombat are set to bring the superheroes of  DC comics to life while attempting to change the fighting game genre with Injustice Gods Among Us.

          Injustice Gods Among Us will feature a who’s who of the DC Comics universe battling it out in the intense fighting game action fans are accustomed to. The game will pit the characters of DC Comics against each other in classic fighting game fashion with a few new twists.  While Injustice will not feature the classic fatalities that Mortal Kombat fans have loved since day one. The main flow of the action will feel very similar to Mortal Kombat. Injustice will showcase some stunning finishing moves unique to each hero or villain as the case may be.

         Speaking of Heroes and Villains the roster for Injustice is shaping up to be a comic fans dream. (the full list that has been revealed to this point will follow the article.) The DC universes holy trinity Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman will be present and accounted for and will be joined by other fan favorites such as The Flash, Green Lantern and Green Arrow. While the lineup of heroes will be robust everyone knows a hero is only as good as his nemesis, and Injustice has no shortage of rivals for our heroes. The usual suspects will be on hand. Famous bad guys such as Superman’s sworn enemy Lex Luthor, Batman rivals Bane and Catwoman will join perhaps the most famous of all villains The Joker.
   
          Injustice will have a feature set of modes similar to Mortal Kombat, however some new additions will be present such an online practice mode to allow you and a friend to work on those killer combos. Injustice will also feature mini-games in story mode. A battle pitting Lex Luthor against Batman opens with Lex charging Batman. The Bat quickly whips his batrangs out from his trusty utility belt and begins hurling them towards Luthor. The player will control this action through a quick time mini-game. Each batarang that hits reduces the health bar of Luthor causing him to start the fight down health. This feature can potentially be a game changer in story mode. Story mode while having only one difficulty setting will feature scaling difficulty. This is designed to prevent gamers from giving up on a fight that is too tough for them so they can see the story thru to completion.

          According to Nether Realms Hector Sanchez story mode will feature seamless transitions from cut scenes to fights. The way you fight in Injustice will be different as well. The round system that has been the staple of fighting games will be gone in Injustice. In its place each combatant will start with dual health bars. When both bars are depleted the battle is over.  The story mode is set to open with a bang literally with the Joker destroying Superman’s home turf of Metropolis. Things will then quickly spiral out of control.

         Injustice Gods Among Us is poised to be the premier fighting game of 2013. Nether Realm is looking to expand on the success of Mortal Kombat while also bringing us a fresh spin on some of the world’s most iconic heroes. For more on the game and to see future character reveals head over to www.injustice.com Also be sure to check back in April for our review of Injustice Gods Among Us to see if it is indeed a game charger or not.


Confirmed Roster
Superman
Batman
Wonder Woman
Flash
Green Arrow
Aquaman
Green Lantern
Joker
Lex Luthor
Solomon Grundy
Bane
Catwoman
Captain Marvel (Shazam)
Cyborg
Death Stroke
Harley Quinn
Nightwing

THE WEEKLY LIST!!!!

     Today we start what will most likely turn out to be my favorite thing we do..... ever. Our life is littered with top 10's from music to worst laugh in cinema, I'm looking at you Brad Pitt... you sexy bastard, so it only made sense to take all those "best of''s" and "desert island 5 things" and throw them on here every week. From here on out every Wednesday this will be your place to judge and rank the things you love and hate.
  
        This week we feature the dudes who have made our lives miserable. The princess stealing, memory card reading, virus spreading, Aeris killing bastards who we despise with all of our nerd being, but also can't help but acknowledge as some of the best bad guys of all time. Now this list is entirely our personal favorites and in no way are we saying we are right and you don't know shit about it, because that would be rude to flaunt our superiority. So enjoy our list of the top 10 villains we love to hate, and let us know in the comments who you would have picked.

The SimCity Beta: First Impressions

   Today we have a first impressions look at SimCity Beta by our friend Robert Poplin, that isn't it for today though. Keep your eyes peeled for our first top 10 of the week, and maybe even a special review from yours truly.
  

 The SimCity Beta: First Impressions 

By Robert Poplin

    I’ve long been a fan of the city building genre.  Starting out with games such as SC2000 and the like, I just couldn’t get enough of the balancing act between supplying the resources to meet the demands that your citizens place upon you.  At one point after the release of SimCity 4, that game began consuming a vast majority of my free time during my high school and college years.  There was just so much to do, and the game was so vast that the possibilities seemed endless. 

    Enter Cities XL…  With the exception of SimCity Societies (*shudder*), Cities XL was the first true attempt at a socialized, natively 3D city builder.  Expectations were high, and before its release it was being touted by the internet hype machine as the “SimCity killer”.  With features such as curved roads (lykohmahgawd), a completely 3D experience, and an online goods market, it sought to fix many of the long-standing issues that die-hard SimCity fans had with SC4.  After its release, though, players quickly discovered that this wasn’t the SimCity killer that they were expecting.  Game mechanics were completely different than SimCity (and not well-explained), and players really didn’t care to take the time to re-learn everything that SimCity had taught them.  Coupled with a quagmire of bugs and technical issues, Monte Cristo was forced to close up shop and shut down the multiplayer servers.

    Playing the beta for SimCity, I really got the sense that I was playing the game that Cities XL was meant to be, with some key differences (not all of them being favorable).  Gameplay is centered on the new game engine called “Glassbox”, which takes the background simulation done in previous games and attempts to make the player more acutely aware of the direct and indirect consequences of their decisions (and it does a fantastic job of accomplishing this).  For instance, plopping your water source next to your heavy polluters means that your citizens become more ill more frequently.  As a consequence of this, your Sims call in sick to work.  When they call in sick, factories produce less.  When factories produce less, your local businesses suffer.  When your businesses and factories can’t sell goods, they close up shop.  When your businesses close shop, your Sims lose their jobs and your entire economy suffers.  This all sounds very harsh, but I was very impressed with how those effects gradually became more severe over time, giving the player time to react to their tragic mistake of poisoning their citizen’s drinking water with whatever sludge was oozing from the local makeup factory’s waste output on that particular day.  The game engine is incredible, and explaining every little thing that plays into how a city functions would risk boring the reader into narcolepsy.

    Another new feature I really enjoyed was the ability to modify existing civic structures to meet the growing needs of your city.  Instead of demolishing a clinic and plopping down what looks like “Surgery Land” in the middle of your town, you can expand that clinic to meet your town’s demands.  Adding new wings and additional vehicles to structures increases both capacity and coverage, respectively.  While this was a very nice feature, I found myself struggling to grasp how this system really worked.  Watching my ambulances drive around town, I noticed that the coverage area followed it.  This to me didn’t make any sense, unless perhaps it was referring not to the actual range of the vehicle but the range at which that vehicle was most effective.  Hopefully some tutorial will take care of this issue at launch.

Much of the trade and city specialization system was disabled during the beta.  The only specialization that users could demo was gambling.  I really feel like this is going to become an essential part of building large cities, as building a city without any specialization and watching it grow is a significant challenge.  The budget became very tight as the city demanded additional services, and growth even stagnated at some points while I was trying to meet this need.  To become a successful mayor in SimCity, you’re going to need to play well with others. 

Here’s the catch; cities are very, VERY small.  A city in SC 2013 feels something like a borough or even a small town.  The devs have made claims up to this point that the cities are close to what a small city tile in SC4 was like, but I think they’re even smaller than that.  If I had to wager a guess, I’d say that each map is approximately 1 square mile.  This means no more suburban sprawl and will make for some awkward-looking skylines.  The beta only allowed players to play for an hour with up to medium density, so I didn’t get to see how a truly well-developed city skyline would look.  I can say with confidence, however, that your cities will likely resemble one of these sticking out of the ground.  Maxis have attempted to counteract the visual problems through the use of tilt-shift effects, but this really only helps draw your attention away up to a certain point.  Map size is likely dictated by the processing power required by the game engine, but I feel that those with higher-performance machines should have the option of choosing a larger map.  If there is one major disappointment I have with this game so far, it is hands down the map size.

If you haven’t been able to gather it by now, I’m neither wholly impressed nor completely disappointed by the beta.  I think we’ll need to see the game in full swing before a final judgment can be made.   The game’s engine is rock solid and provides countless hours of entertainment, but the limitations on city size could mean that players are left with too much to do and too limited a space in which to work.  While I’m not convinced that a few neat post-processing tricks will fix the issue, I am interested to see how Maxis addresses this problem before launch (or more likely, how the modders handle it afterwards).  I’ll definitely buy the game, but I’m not entirely sure if it will live up to my previous expectations.

Live at the Overmind

One of the most empowering moments I had while playing games came from a fairly unlikely source.  It was during a “Rescue the Princess” match of Fat Princess and I had managed to enter the enemy keep, cut down several other players, grab my poorly fed princess and leap off the ramparts onto the battlefield before my opponents could regroup.  What made it so rewarding was that I had really beaten the odds.  The only assistance I had from allies came after I liberated our leader. 

That feeling of satisfaction was cut short by the cruel hand of a vengeful server host, who just so happened to be on the other team.  As I led my fair maiden through the gate of our castle, I was removed from play.  I could only imagine what happened next in that battle.  The brave warrior charges through waves of enemy soldiers, grabs the damsel in distress, and guides her through a warzone, making sure she is kept safe.  When they return to the castle, still pursued by her kidnappers, the warrior collapses in her arms.  He’s gone.  It must have broken her heart.

It certainly broke mine, because after that match I never touched the game.  Fat Princess had been a real step outside my “gaming comfort zone” and an unfortunate one.  While I loved playing Fruit Ninja or Street Fighter with friends, at their house on their couch, I was not a person who liked competitive online gaming.  Even worse were those days I’d visit friends and they’d open up a laptop to watch professional Starcraft matches.  Now, this is too much! I thought.  Why would anyone waste their time watching strangers play games?

Maybe the answer can be found in Korea, where professional gaming has its own television station.  I remember hearing numerous times that Starcraft was the Korean National Pastime. Dwelling on the strangeness of it all, I decided to go to a live game of Starcraft.  More specifically, I went to the OGN Stadium at the iPark Mall in Seoul. 

Not really sure what to expect, I found a fairly dark room filled with plastic chairs for the audience and a stage with a table dividing two pod shaped desks for competitors.  Three announcers were at that table running through the highlights of a previous bout with boundless energy.  There were several cameras in the room.  One of these was on a crane and would sway above the stands, occasionally locking onto viewers of interest.

I awkwardly took a seat in the back.  A round of Starcraft II started, but I was more interested in the audience than the game.  For one, there were far larger numbers of women than I would have ever expected.  Gaggles of teenage girls sat around or lined the back walls.  There were even a few middle aged women scattered about the crowd.  One of these was clearly the mother of a player on stage, as the camera kept lingering on her.  When the Zerg gained the upper hand, she visibly swelled with pride.

Then the players came to a stalemate.  Each of them had amassed sizeable forces and their generals spent much time micromanaging a dance between their armies.  They would come close then jerk away just as the first shots rang out.  It kept up like this until one player took a misstep and the screen became swamped with Zerg and Protoss units.  I was surprised by how easily the Protoss wiped Zerg troops from the field.  Then it ended.  One fight, one dance, and the match was over.

Not knowing exactly what I had witnessed, I went over to the first native English speaker I saw.  He happened to be DoA, a professional American commentator for a South Korean broadcaster.  He explained how the previous game had been won.  That is, when one player’s forces are devastated and they can’t build up troops in time to recover, they honorably surrender.  That solved the mystery of the ballet.  The players dance around the field, constantly testing the opposition, watching the opposition, but not wanting to risk a major defeat.

I asked him why Starcraft was so popular in South Korea and he credited that mainly to PC bongs.  PC bongs are a place where people can go to use computers for a ridiculously low price.  Playing Starcraft is free at virtually any PC bong and has been for a while, which helped dramatically increase the game’s popularity.  While Starcraft II has a slowly growing fan base, neither of those games is actually that revered in Korea right now.  The honor of “Korean National Pastime” could probably be awarded to League of Legends for the time being.

We live in funny times, and great times for gaming communities.  There are multiple branches of game development that are growing these days.  Games are being established as a significant art form where ideas and emotions can be expressed.  At the same time, they are being established as competitive sports with corporate backing and known players.  Also, major publishers find they are losing ground to small teams of independent developers, as in the case of Korea’s newly found love for League of Legends over Starcraft.

While I might not understand why people enjoy online, competitive gaming or why people enjoy following competitive gaming as entertainment, I certainly respect its right to exist.  I will continue to shake my head and wonder as stadiums become increasingly packed with fans for these sports, but at least they help show the numerous ways games can be experienced and allow us to experience the world.  That said, I still won’t be playing Fat Princess any time soon.








Aaron Mingus is author of  Museum of bad ideas and an all around ok person. (that last bit depends on who you speak to.)

A Lump on the Throat of the World

Starting today we are going to be featuring a new weekly article in which our buddy, Aaron over at Museum of bad ideas, chips in and rants about what he has been playing lately. Aaron is a hell of a guy and a fantastic writer so enjoy.

      


         The first time I played The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was an amazing experience.  A dragon was attacking an outpost near the city of Whiterun and I had been issued a platoon of soldiers to go defeat it.  As soon as we saw the horrible beast raining destruction upon the devastated, stone tower, I knew precisely what to do.  I rushed up the steps, bow in hand, and leaping into the sunlight loosed an arrow in the wyrm’s belly.
It reeled in pain and continued its attack with an even greater fury.  Thus went the timeless tale of Moby-Dick, that eternal struggle between man and beast.  Tiny me precariously lodged on an island of a battlement while that massive devil circled all round.  Yes! I thought with child-like joy. This is how fighting a dragon should feel!

        And then that child-like joy died as the dragon landed, not on the tower so it could face its adversary in a mortal melee, but on the ground…far below me.  I waited patiently a moment, wondering when my dragon would be rejoining our epic battle.  A few “Here dragon-dragon-dragon” calls later and I realized it wasn’t going to come back up.  So I rushed down the steps at falling speed, arriving at the tower’s doorway just in time to watch my foe die at the hands of a nameless footman.

       Next, everyone was congratulating me.  “Our hero!” they said.  “You defeated the dragon!  You are the dragonborn!”  I looked about nervously.  Why were they all staring at me?  I didn’t save the day.  It was that guy over there, Footman B.  My anxiety kicked in and I began to wonder if this weren’t a part of the game.  I would be credited as the greatest dragon-slayer and led to the mouth of Lonely Mountain where everyone would be standing behind me, flicking their wrists and saying, “Go on, hero!  Save the world!”  Armed with nothing but a slightly-dull short sword, I would shuffle awkwardly into the cave, remembering the good old days before I became the messiah.

       Before they shipped me to Mt. Doom, I had to go to a quaint monastery near the top of the biggest mountain in the world and meet some monks who would train me to become the next Avatar.  Not long after starting the journey, I noticed some giants.  They were on the main road and didn’t seem all too friendly, so I thought I’d defeat them.  Moments later, my limp corpse was soaring through the sky like a majestic eagle.

      Clifford Galiher, a Ph.D. student at USC addressed this early encounter with giants in his paper, The Topography of Risk: Time and Punishment in ‘The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’.  There he stated,

     “One example of a non-calibrated challenge that appears early in the game has been immortalized by Ozrek’s oft-repeated comment: ‘Everyone’s first mistake in Skyrim / ‘I wonder if I can kill that giant…’’ The placement of an extremely difficult challenge early in the game—namely the two powerful giants just to the west of Whiterun, the first major stopping point in the game—essentially demonstrates the basic level of strategy inherent to playing a nonlinear game. The foreknowledge of risk alters the player’s approach, introducing an element of strategy that can in itself be a reward for the player: the circumvention of failure as enjoyment.”

     I’m not sure how much I was enjoying the circumvention of failure.  I was already proving to be a less than satisfactory Chosen One.  I didn’t slay the dragon.  A giant easily crushed me.  Now, I was trying to quietly sneak past anything remotely dangerous.  Skyrim felt less like an epic adventure and more like a very scary survival-horror game.

      Eventually, I reached the Throat of the World, the mountain where the monks lived and began to scale it.  When I was closing in on the monastery, I was rushed by a troll.  As it ripped my poor body to streamers, I had flashbacks of being gobbled up by the Yeti in SkiFree.  This didn’t seem fair.  I was on the main road heading for a story mission and I was being constantly, painfully slapped around.
It seemed the only way I was going to be ready to pursue my destiny was by spending time leveling up abilities outside of the main quests.  But in the world that is not Skyrim, I have a job and responsibilities.  I have dinner parties to attend where I dance in candlelit halls with beautiful women.  This makes it hard to devote long intervals of life to hunting bears, picking flowers, and gathering trinkets for every Tom, Dick, and Harry in this game.

      I’m not sure the point of all the grinding and dull item crafting aside from padding out a pointlessly long game.  Here, I was greeted by this big, open world where I could do almost anything, and all I wanted to do was a simple story mission, but I couldn’t.  I hadn’t put the effort into aimlessly wandering and wasting time that was required to essentially unlock that level.

     These kinds of games are designed to give everyone a chance to tell their own unique story.  Sadly, mine didn’t end gloriously or humorously.  I was just bored, and tired, and defeated.  I didn’t want to be the messiah anymore.  I hadn’t done anything to earn the title anyway, so I quit.  I curled up into a lump on the Throat of the World and vanished from Skyrim, perhaps leaving it to be saved by worthier heroes.

(Here’s the link to Clifford Galiher’s paper: http://www.tft.ucla.edu/mediascape/blog/?p=564#more-564)

Four in February for Nothing but Nerd.

       The holiday season is over, but you still have a stack of games sitting in their wrapping waiting to be opened up and experienced. It happens to all of us and it gets worse and worse with each passing year. This past year was a big year for gaming and yet again gamers have cried out as their backlog has become too much. Unlike other years though a hero has answered our call and created "Four in February."
    
        Mike Suszek (hero in question) of Joystiq decided enough was enough and spawned the idea of "Four in February," a plan to remove those unseemly blemishes on our gaming cred and conquer the games we have been meaning to play but just kept putting off. It is simple, pick four games in your backlog and beat them all in February.
  
       Once we heard about it we latched onto the idea and have spent the better part of 2 weeks talking about what games we should do. Arguments were had and people's feelings were hurt, (sorry about calling you ugly Trevor) but today we present our own "Four in February!"
  
       So check out our individual lists and tell us what you think. Join in with us if you can and tell us what games you guys plan for your own "Four in February." Stay tuned because we are going to review every game we play and want to talk about your experiences too.

DMC Review by Zach

     DMC Devil May Cry is Ninja Theory's shot at rebooting what was originally an in your face Stylized combat fest with lots of camp, but had become stale and pointless after three horrible sequels. After Ninja Theory released their first trailer a great deal of doubt arose that the developers wouldn't be able to deliver and that this would be another flop in the franchise, but I can tell you, once you sink your teeth into the first level all your fears will be put to rest as the gameplay is everything you want and more. Set in a type of dystopian future where demons control and enslave mankind using a popular soda drink, a brainwashing news network, and of course debt, you play Dante, a half angel, half demon, all attitude demon hunter.

    Most of the game is played in what is called limbo, a parallel dimension to ours consisting of mostly demons and really bad architecture. It is here in limbo that you battle what have to be some of the most grotesque and amazing enemies in game development history. Speaking of battle, fuck it is good! I will admit I don’t care for hack and slash style games. I hate them as a matter of fact... no really I think they are the "lazy fat bastards" of game development these days and only get made so someone can collect a new paycheck, no innovation. This game however from mission 1 slapped me in the face with its stylish visceral free-flow combat dick and made me its bitch.

    Ok maybe that is a little too over the top, but I seriously could not put this game down. The way they do combat is a tiny bit repetitive at first, but then you acquire your angel and demon weapons and from then on out it is a slaughterfest of fast paced balls to the wall action. My personal favorite thing is the ability to either grab an enemy and pull him to you, which had me screaming "get over here" at 3 am waking my wife up, or a hook move pulling you to the enemy. When used Correctly the two moves in combination with the ability to switch your weapons with a quick button press make for a rain of pain and chaos that I have never experienced in any other hack and slash.

    The only complaint on the controls is that at times I was a little overwhelmed with all I could do with the combinations of buttons, but that just makes me a pathetic excuse for a gamer. This game isn't just about hitting the Y button till you hand bleeds, you actually have to think about what you will throw in next so you can rack up a super sexy combo and get that SSS battle ranking, which was something I thought would be pointless and stupid, but dammit, did I find myself in the training section trying to figure out the best combos. I even thought that the few platforming parts were a nice way to break up the pacing and let my blistered thumb rest from all the carnage.

    While this game is all about the gameplay I was impressed by the storyline. It was well written and despite being a little too easy to predict, left me with a satisfied feeling after the credits rolled. Mind you, I went into this expecting the story to be garbage, so the high rating on storyline may be from my low expectations. The music mirrors the grizzly and adrenaline-filled levels with songs from Noisia, Combichrist, and others that I immediately went looking for after beating the game. I played the game on 360 and other than the occasional pooping in of layers I felt the art style and over all look of the game was very good.

        With Several difficulties to play, 7 in fact, the game offers a pretty good amount of replayability. My favorite thing about the higher difficulties is that they don’t just give everyone
more health and keep the same monsters there as easy and normal. No no. They throw different variations of enemies at you including end game monsters on stage one.

    For you completionist/masochist types out there after you beat the first 6 modes the "Hell and Hell" mode opens up which gives all your enemies more health and defense and you die in one hit.... yeah. Don't be afraid however, as this title is open to everyone as the first 2 difficulties are easily completable by the most casual of gamers, something that cannot be said for all of the DMC franchise, but i think is a nice addition.

     Really after all is said and done there is only one real problem with this game... The boss
battles are trash. From a game that is innovative in combat every other way, the boss battles really left me with a sour taste in my mouth. The same usual "hit the glowing thing" and "learn the pattern" doesn't cut it with this game, actually I feel it may be a victim of its own success in
this way. With any other game, I would have excepted these boss battles and been done with it. Hell, I thought the 3rd boss battle was even a bit fun as it had you jumping and trying to dodge lasers being projected from a giant head, but fuck that, not good enough. I really don't know how you would fix this problem but when your simple run of the mill fights are more enjoyable than the boss battles it's time to go back to the drawing board.

    If I had to tell you to buy this or not I would say YES absolutely do. If you cant afford it right now or this style of game doesnt interest you enough to pay 60 dollars at least do yourself a favor and rent it, or buy it on a sale. This game is amazing and I truly believe it can be the 2nd coming for stylized hack and slash as long as developers take a good hard look at this and use it as the blueprint.