"I just was having a moment and wanted to tell you (again!) how proud I am of you. And I'm proud of us too! This morning I got a horrible email from someone and it referenced you in a way that was intended to hurt me, but of course it didn't because a) you and I aren't those people anymore and b) it's been 6 years. I've gotten over it, you've gotten over it...others should too. But it did make me stick up for you in a way that I haven't before and I just realized that I'm very very happy that we're aren't the same people that we were six years ago and that we've developed a real friendship against the odds and against all my expectations."

Aerothorn: speaking of naked
Chicken Brutus: I'm listening
Aerothorn: so her first year of college she made a CafePress t-shirt with a naked photo of herself, just for her to order/have for laughs
Aerothorn: then a month later, she gets a $75 check from Cafepress for sales of the t-shirt
Aerothorn: she accidentally made it publically available for order
Chicken Brutus: that's...pretty hilarious actually
Aerothorn: then someone on her hall finds out about this
Aerothorn: and they all buy copies
Aerothorn: (she is the only girl on this hall)
Chicken Brutus: was it explicit? not that I want one, I'm just curious. it'll make a good detail for a character some day
Aerothorn: only in the nudity sense
Chicken Brutus: like, tastefully nude I assume...and hope
Chicken Brutus: ah, gotcha
Aerothorn: I admit I've never seen it
Chicken Brutus: right. just checking.
Aerothorn: and do not want to
Aerothorn: hey, you know what
Chicken Brutus: it's still pretty funny. definite character detail. you can tell her that at some point she'll be immortalized. you know...moreso than she is already.

I will be posting this elsewhere as well, maybe in a somewhat refined format, maybe not. But I might as well toss this up for now. Somebody uploaded a walkthrough in five parts, and though it obviously misses out on a lot of the description-window jokes, it hits enough of them that I thought I'd write this up for anyone who might be at all interested.

0:02
The voice: Though it's practically identical to the Monty Python "Gumby" voice (any dis-similarity is down to my utter lack of skill as a voice actor), the voice is actually an in-joke with some friends of mine. It's based on a boy we went to school with, who actually sounded very little like that, but such is the nature of schoolyard harassment. I don't mean to make it sound as though our impersonations of him were relentlessly cruel; it was light-hearted and I never heard him complain or get too upset. It's just that, at some point, we decided that every single sentence in the world would be funnier if spoken in that voice. If you disagree--and you probably do--then you should thank your lucky stars that you didn't know me in person 10 years ago. The misreading of the title cards is a separate, unrelated joke, and one that I quite like.

The icons: The graphical cursors are enormous, unwieldy, and ugly. You wouldn't know it to look at them, but I modeled them on the cursors from Space Quest 6, which I thought were an absolutely perfect design for what they were supposed to do. Somehow I ended up with something almost entirely different; as though I intended to single-handedly duplicate the recipe for Coca-Cola, but didn't get any further than making sure the can was red.

The score: A Hitch-hiker's Guide reference, though I doubt anyone out there didn't know that already. There are a few too many 42s sprinkled throughout this game and its sequel. I apologize belatedly for the reliance on this non-joke. I'm sure the me of 2000 has a good reason for thinking it was so funny, but the me of 2010 certainly doesn't. Also, you will exceed the maximum score by the end of the game. This is a little funnier. A little.

References: "Bladerun Like Hell" is a reference to Bladerunner, of course, a film with which the game's plot shares a similarity. If I had gone with my original plot idea (read on) the parallels would have likely been much stronger. It's also a reference to Run Like Hell, a song by Pink Floyd off of their album The Wall. It's the first of a few Pink Floyd references, which is somewhat surprising to me now as I didn't become a genuine fan of theirs until a few years later. (At this point I was mainly into Bob Dylan and The Who.) The alternate title is a reference to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which is the Philip K. Dick novel that inspired Bladerunner, and is thus one of the few jokes in this game that doesn't feel shoe-horned in beyond any respect for natural enjoyment or cohesiveness. Enjoy it while you can!

0:16
The music: Sultans of Swing, by the Dire Straits. Not a huge Straits fan, but they've got some excellent stuff. My process for scoring this game consisted of visiting this enormous archive of MIDI classic-rock songs. Sometimes I'd think a song would be perfect for a certain scene, so I'd download the MIDI and realize how much different it sounded than what I heard on the radio. (Go figure!) Eventually I just downloaded masses of songs that I knew by name, and listened to them all separately from how they were "supposed" to sound. This means that my selections were made based upon the quality of the MIDI's sound, rather than upon any particular fondness I might have had for the actual song. I wish I could remember what some of my original song choices were, but that information is long forgotten.

The scene: I drew this? It's hideous. The color scheme isn't bad. The walls, floor and door are, at least, not offensive to the eye (in terms of hue, that is), but everything about this is wrong. I'm not a much better artist now than I was then, but Jesus goodness, how was I able to face myself in the mirror after drawing this mess? Some elements of the scene have black borders, most have none. The doorknob is the size of Semprini's head and if you held one end of that telephone to your ear, the other end would bash you in the penis. The desk is gigantic, and Commissioner Fishbian is, for some reason, dangling his arms over the side rather than resting them on the top, which I'm sure is what I was going for. This is horrible stuff.

The cut scene: Also, what you're witnessing is an introductory cut scene, which, as you can tell by the floating wrist-watch, is unskippable. I'm pretty sure that the only way to NOT watch this cut scene is to load a saved game from the "Bladerun Like Hell" title card. Nowhere are you told this in the game. It's poor design, but, I can say honestly, it was at least intentional. I enabled the action cursor on the title card for just such a reason. I can't remember why I DIDN'T enable it here, but I think it had something to do with the music or the dialogue going screwy if someone accessed the toolbar during this long conversation. There were better ways of handling this; I used none of them.

Professor Semprini: Semprini is a reference to an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, in which the word "semprini" is said to be very naughty indeed, though we never find out what it's meant to mean. I wish the joke were any deeper than that, but considering some of the other crap I expected you to laugh at back then, maybe it's good that it's not.

Commissioner Fishbian: The name Fishbian comes from my final year of high school, when I was a co-anchor for the school-based local news. We'd put together a show every week, and it'd air relentlessly through the next week on the local information network. It was a great deal of fun, and some of my best memories come from that class. Anyway, a new student arrived in the class at some point during the school year, when all of the positions were filled. We invented a new position just for him: he'd read out the birthdays for that coming week. One week he had to read out the name "Mr. Fishbein," which was pronounced "Fish Bine." But whenever he got to the name, he'd read it as fish-be-in. It was one of those moments where one person's laughter causes everyone else to start laughing, and each time we did another take (I'm sure we did a dozen), it took longer for us to stop laughing. There was something tremendously funny about the idea of a Fishbian. Ultimately, we just didn't air birthdays for that week. Such is the curse of having a name that makes it sound like you sleep with fish.

0:27
The caption: Whoever made this video inserted the following caption: "The art might look a bit raw to put it gently, but the creator is a writer, not a cartoonist." I think him for this (accurate) acknowledgment of the reason for the art's limitations. Unfortunately, this leaves me with no defense at all for the poor quality of the writing.

0:37
"...": It still bothers me to this day that the characters use their speaking-animations whenever they say "..." All I wanted to do was get them to pause for a beat for the purposes of comic timing, and I couldn't figure out how to do that. So instead I have them say "...", which would be kind of like instructing the actors in your stage production to say, "I'm pausing for thought" instead of just pausing for thought. I hate it. It probably has something to do with the fact that I programmed the entire game with the graphical editor instead of using any actual coding, but...it's just an excuse either way.

0:45
The Lovely Rita 4200 Parking Enforcement Cyborg: Another 42, another lazy song reference in place of a joke (Beatles this time), and the revelation that I didn't actually know what a "cyborg" was. Oh well. At least I got the "Parking Enforcement" thing right.

1:34
Mr. Barkwoof: I'm surprised I never ended up showing Mr. Barkwoof as a character. In fact, I wasn't even planning it for LVIII, in which the K-9 patrol was going to play a substantial role. I guess I just forgot about him. The "Mr. Barkwoof" name is a pretty standard "funny dog name" joke, so it works simply because I can't be blamed for it, but it's also based on Mr. Barky, who was an actual K-9 patrol-pooch in my hometown. He almost attacked a friend of mine when the cops arrived after he crashed into a tree. I guess Mr. Barky had already claimed that tree as his own.

1:40
"You might as well send a pudding.": I didn't know what a pudding was, either. One of a few Britishisms that made their way into this game. I sometimes wonder if I had any capacity for language whatsoever, or if I just strung together pieces of other people's sentences and hoped for the best.

1:47
Sideburns: For whatever reason, sideburns get a big reaction out of people. No idea why. I had them at the time I made this game (and for a year or two before), and people would always, without fail, comment on them. Sometimes to make fun of them...sometimes to stare in vague mystification. Once I had a Wal-Mart employee tail me for a few minutes. When I turned around to see her, she asked me, "How did you GROW those?" I shrugged and told her I just didn't shave there. I don't know why sideburns seem so alien to people, but being as Larry's sideburns are remembered so particularly by those who played this game, I think it's something universal. They're funny, but damned if I know why.

1:55
"A talking monkey?": I've never seen Any Which Way But Loose, but for some reason I assumed Clyde could talk.

2:02
"A dead guy who gooses people?": I've never seen Weekend At Bernie's, but for some reason I assumed Bernie would goose people.

2:07
"Webster?": A pre-Family Guy reliance on the recognition of somebody else's creation in order the generate a chuckle of familiarity. I really liked jokes at that point in my life; I just wish I actually wrote a few.

2:09
"Lounge-lizard type": I had no idea what a "lounge lizard" was. Are you noticing a pattern here?

2:18
The music: "Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" by Bachman Turner Overdrive

The badge: Our third 42, and the game hasn't even started.

Pitchfork Productions: A production "company" I shared with two friends, Joe O'Sullivan and Justin Leary. Whatever we produced at that time (usually individually) bore the Pitchfork Productions stamp. At some point we really did want to build Pitchfork into something meaningful, a company along the lines of Apple Corp. that would have helped other young artists get off the ground. Of course, you can't help people off the ground if you yourself haven't left the ground, so it went nowhere.

Philip J Reed, VSc: Blame Harry S Truman for the missing period after my middle initial, and Red Dwarf for the VSc distinction. (For the record, it stands for Video Scholarship, which I earned at the end of the school year for co-hosting the local news. I think it was a check for $25.)

Larry Vales: Nothing particularly funny about the name, and I have no idea how or why it occurred to me. It's a GOOD name, of course, unlike most of the others in this game. It's believable, but slightly off. I probably should have changed it to Harry or something, as there was already a very popular Larry series in adventure gaming, but I was stubborn that way. Larry Vales was actually first used as a minor character in a novel I was writing when I was around 15, as a traffic patrolman, but he wasn't created specifically for that novel...

Traffic Division: I had an idea many, many years ago for a game called Larry Vales: Traffic Division. It was to be an adventure game, just like this, and it was to feature Larry traveling to various locations all over the country to track down and deactivate these berserk police robots. Each area would function independently, with its own puzzles and things to do, allowing the player to finish the game in whatever sequence he or she preferred. One of the locations was to be an enormous tourist trap called South of the Interstate, which is a much funnier name and concept than The Jolly Parasite Motor Estates turned out to be. It was going to be the same type of game, only much, much better. When I ended up making Larry Vales: Traffic Division, I didn't even bother to attempt the multiple locations. This is for the best; there's no way I ever would have finished such a massive game, especially my first time designing one. I gave Larry a single location, and did my best to craft a round, rich experience from there, based mainly upon the single-location elasticity of Leisure Suit Larry 6 or Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist. (The latter of which is still my all-time favorite adventure game, and the ideal model, I feel, for anybody looking to design on.)

2:35
The Jolly Parasite: Probably the result me trying to think of a funny name, failing, deciding I'd figure one out later, and never getting around to it. I'm not even sure what's MEANT to be funny about it. I did want to give the little green bug a tophat, and have him take it off and put it back on again repeatedly, and I don't remember why I didn't do it. All of my animation was actually done by assigning several backgrounds to a single screen, and cycling through them. I was just that good. The idea for staging all of the action around a hotel probably came from LSL 6, which I mentioned above. Great game, and the hotel setting really proved that you can accomplish more with a character in isolation than one who is given free reign over the entire planet. (Compare LSL 6 to LSL 2 for evidence of that.) I don't think I INTENTIONALLY thought I'd use a hotel because that's what the other Larry used, but I'm willing to believe it was indirectly responsible for my decision. Again, Freddy Pharkas was my main inspiration, so I'm going to chalk up the hotel setting as a semi-coincidence.

2:54
I'm surprised this player even visited this screen, but I'm glad he did, as it's worth talking about. I had big plans for the "mystery" element here. The idea was that you'd be able to see everybody's vehicles at the beginning of the game (all in violation of parking laws in some way or another), and, as you progressed in the game, the Lovely Rita would kill off those characters. You'd always be one step (at least) behind the murderer, so the farther you got in the game, the fewer folks would be left to interact with. I think I DID actually do this somewhere, with the lifeguard I think (I'll have to check again when we get there), but the plans to create a tense, cohesive thriller built around parking enforcement just didn't pan out. Also, you were going to be able to search the cars for useful items. This was basically an important screen in my head. Then I made the game, and it was actually totally unnecessary. I do feel the game is poorer for my not having included the gradual murders, though...and the existence of this screen is just a reminder of what probably should have been.

2:56
The walk: Man, check out that walking animation on Larry. Good stuff, huh? He glides along as though on ice, bolt-stiff like he's paralyzed from the waist up. This is horrible stuff. It's the one thing all of the reviews focused on at the time, and I can't blame them. Even the best reviews (and, shockingly, this game got more than its fair share of them) had to point out how awful the walk cycle was. Maybe I got lucky, in that way...the awfulness of the walking animation distracted them from the weakness of the writing.

2:59
So Charlie Striker (your partner) must have entered the hotel without you. Don't know why I didn't show that as a cut scene, or make any direct, unavoidable reference to it. As it stands, you don't even SEE your partner until halfway through the game, even though he's "meant" to be there all along. Very poor design choice, and not really excusable at all. Also: Charlie's surnamesake is Ted Striker, from the movie Airplane! They have nothing in common; it's just a great movie, and was one of my favorites growing up.

3:03
Music: Give Me Some Loving, by the Spencer Davis Group. This is one of those songs that fools me into thinking I'm having a good day whenever it comes on the radio. Also, the MIDI soundtrack was somewhat appropriate for the feel of this hotel. I remember, as a child, staying in a hotel in Florida with my parents. I took a walk alone to the gym, or the pool or something, and, in the elevator, something clicked, and I realized that the crappy muzak I had been hearing the whole time we were there was actually crappy muzak versions of popular songs, rather than non-descript session-musician noodling. Specifically, the song that clicked with me was So. Central Rain, by REM. Hearing the flute-and-castanet version of that in the elevator stuck with me, for some reason. Just this bizarre sort of artless approximation of a great song. (Is there really any reason hotel elevators can't play the ACTUAL songs?)

3:13
Dodge Vipon: Oh wow. Vipon was the subject of a comedy routine I remember Norm MacDonald doing...it was about a child he went to school with who was developmentally disabled. If I shared anything else I remembered about this routine with you, you'd think I was a genuinely horrible human being for remembering it so fondly. So I won't. But that's where it comes from. An absolutely tasteless--but thoroughly enjoyed by myself from a much crueler point in history--monologue by Norm MacDonald.

3:23
Mercedes, Bend: A sex joke, of course. I can't remember if it's actually mine. I get the feeling it's something I read somewhere...the punchline of some other joke that's been told a thousand times...but Google isn't helping me, so I have no evidence. It's possibly my joke. I'm not going to fight anybody else who'd prefer the credit, however.

3:58
Sandy: There was a reason I named the receptionist Sandy. I just wish I could remember what it was. Somehow I think I'll realize it was some lame-ass pun whenever her last name is revealed.

4:03
Message board: Quartet of Skokie really does make corkboards, as you probably know, but this was meant as a reference to The Usual Suspects.

4:07
Shitzu: ha ha ha

4:10
Wow, what a clue! You'd think that with all the truly great adventure games I grew up playing, I would have been a little better at designing the puzzles for this one.

4:21
The electricity bills are so high because the Lovely Rita has been recharging herself in the maintenance shed. Not that anyone cares, but there it is, as I'm not sure I made this connection clear enough in-game.

4:39
I love it when the back of Larry's head faces the person he's ostensibly talking to. Did I mention how humiliating it is to watch this again?

5:02
The Underwater Macarena: A comedy sketch a friend of mine wrote when we were in high school. Well, he didn't get any further than the title, but I'm sure that would have been the best part anyway.

5:24
Larry's speech pattern: He sure peppers his dialogue with a lot of "Why yes," "How odd," "But of course..." and shit like that. You can build up a certain type of character by having him or her talk this way, but, for me, I'm sure it just happened because I wasn't paying any regard to how any of this would sound in real life, coming out of an actual person. As such, Larry comes across as sort of a blue-blooded English gentleman with a serious concussion.

5:50
"I AM the law.": Oh good, I was hoping that 20-year-old Phil would make a Judge Dredd reference.

6:22
"For some reason the transitions take very long in this game.": I can't explain that. I don't remember them taking particularly long back when the game was new, but computers have come a long way in 10 years, and it's fully possible that the game data isn't being processed the same way that it was back then. It's also possible that because computers were so much slower back then anyway, there was no reason to single out the transition time between screens of Larry Vales: Traffic Division.

6:39
Room 142: Man, I sure am glad that 42 thing gets funnier every time I use it.

6:44
Lust For Vice: I do remember having a lot of fun hiding the titles of the other Larry Vales games in this one. They didn't exist, of course...but it was fun coming up with them. I think that's something else I borrowed from Leisure Suit Larry. Or possibly Space Quest. But I'm sure it's somebody else's joke.

7:21
So Charlie is in the shower. It's a serious problem in this game that you don't even get to see your partner until so much later. It prevents him from becoming much of a character. I honestly don't know why I didn't just have him arrive later in the game, or something...or be off in some inaccessible room. It's pointless to have him scamper into the hotel before you see him, then be out of frame in the shower as you walk around the room...it's like trying to hide Snuffleupagus from the adults in order to maintain the possibility that he might be imaginary. Eventually you realize you don't need to bother with this crap, and I should have realized that much sooner. As it stands, Charlie Striker might as well be Larry's Harvey.

Shake Your Groove Thing: I think this was meant to indicate that Charlie has laughable taste in music. Of course, EVERYONE in this game has the same taste in music, so the joke is kind of...unnecessary.

7:24
The music: Stuck in the Middle With You, by Steelers Wheel. God. Watching this is like one of those dreams you have where you're suddenly naked in the middle of school, and you try to run out of the building before anybody notices. Only instead of a dream, it's hidden-camera security footage that you're watching with your mother.

8:00
"Points! Ka-ching!!": Freddy Pharkas had a voice clip every time you earned a point. Blame that game for this one.

The candy: Why the hell didn't I just draw the candy? I might have had trouble with the object appearing "behind" the bed, rendering it inaccessible. No idea, but it's likely.

The room: This room was meant to serve as a sort of hub-point for Larry's adventure. He'd have to return several times for reasons I was never able to figure out...and so he never needed to return. You just need to visit it once and loot the place, I think. A definite missed opportunity to create a sort of "homey" feeling safe zone.

8:10
The fire evacuation map is 100% accurate.

8:26
The player here seems to have trouble leaving the room. I did, too. I never could figure out why it was so difficult to get Larry out of this room. Something to do with where/how I defined the exit area, I'm sure, but I do remember spending a lot of time trying to clear up the issue, and never succeeding.

8:44
Vomitorium: I don't think it's actually a word; just something I remembered someone saying on Seinfeld.

9:23
A Teddy Bears Picnic reference? Jesus Christ, I sure was casting the net wide, wasn't I?

9:33
1984, by George Orwell. Room 101 is the room O'Brien uses to break and brainwash the protagonist Winston Smith.

I found a playthrough of Larry Vales: Traffic Division on youtube.  It was the perfect mixture of flattering/embarrassing.

Anyway, I didn't watch much of it (just enough to mix my emotions), but the person who recorded it added a note at the beginning:

"This game was released in 2000."

Hm. 

Does anybody else think a long-winded, 10th-anniversary writer's commentary is in order?

Because, for some reason, I sure do.

At the CD store today I was browsing idly through a discount bin.  The store associate came over and said, "There's good stuff in there.  Like Alice in Chains, and some other oldies."

Grab it while you can for whatever price you like.  www.2dboy.com

It's normally between $15 and $20, depending which service you buy through.  I think it's worth full price, but you'd be downright foolish if you pass up the chance to get it for one penny.

GO.  NOW.  IT'S VERY VERY GOOD.

Stars shining bright above you
Night breezes seem to whisper "I love you"
Birds singin' in the sycamore trees
Dream a little dream of me

Say nighty-night and kiss me
Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me
While I'm alone and blue as can be
Dream a little dream of me

Stars fading but I linger on, dear
Still craving your kiss
I'm longin' to linger till dawn, dear
Just saying this

Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
But in your dreams whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me

(instrumental break)

Stars shining up above you
Night breezes seem to whisper "I love you"
Birds singin' in the sycamore trees
Dream a little dream of me

Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
But in your dreams whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me

Yes, dream a little dream of me.

...here are 15 REM songs I would genuinely cry if I could never hear again.

1) E-Bow the Letter
2) Find the River
3) Fall on Me
4) Sweetness Follows
5) Strange Currencies
6) Belong
7) You Are the Everything
8) I Believe
9) Hairshirt
10) Sad Professor
11) Half a World Away
12) Everybody Hurts
13) Departure
14) Be Mine
15) At My Most Beautiful

In no particular order, except for an unnamed few, which are.

Headline on cnn.com this morning: 

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER MASSIVE RING AROUND SATURN

Ya don't say.

For a good long while, the Wii was giving me more than enough to quench my gaming thirst.  In fact, it still is.  Another Zelda and Metroid game are in the pipeline, along with a third Pikmin, and before they get here we've got New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 2, A Boy and His Blob Wii and plenty of others to keep us busy.  It's a good system, and probably my favorite of all time.  (Admittedly, that's largely to do with its massive classic catalogue on the Virtual Console.)

But when the Xbox came down in price, I realized I could take the opportunity to catch up with all the great games from the past few years that I was just unable to play.  Fallout 3 was my first purchase, and this past weekend I grabbed an erroneously cheap Left 4 Dead (it was the Game of the Year edition for $20...while the regular edition was marked at $30...what happened there?).

The trouble is, though, that I haven't had much fun with Left 4 Dead yet.  You need to play it with three other people for it to be worth your time, and since it supports only two local players, you've got to go online.

Which I did.  But I kept getting booted from games.  I don't know quite how the process is initiated, but before long, every time, that little box would pop up, informing me that the others were voting on whether or not to keep me in the game.  And...it's unanimous.  Nobody wants Chicken Brutus.

Here's my beef, though:  they're not booting me because I'm being rude, or disruptive, or destructive, or anything like that.  They're booting me because I'm...well...not very good.  Because they've been playing this thing for a year and I have yet to make it through a full campaign.  It doesn't take them long to figure out that I'm so unskilled, and that makes sense.  Seasoned veterans probably don't open fire on the witch, for example.  And they probably don't go chasing after a thrown pipe-bomb thinking it's a bonus item.  And they certainly don't spin in circles trying to figure out who's attacking them.

But, hey, I'm pulling my weight.  When I see a teammate get knocked over, I get the prompt to help him up, and I do that.  Of course, sometimes I'm attacked while helping him, and I turn out to be no help at all, but that's not my fault.  I'm making an effort.  If someone's pinned by a zombie tackle, I smack the zombie away.  If somebody's hanging off a ledge by their fingernails, I make it more than halfway there before the timer runs out and they fall and die.

And that's the thing.  I'm making the EFFORT.  I can't help it that I'm new, and that I don't know the rules.  You learn by doing...just like everyone else.  It'd be a different story if I was ignoring the rest of my team, but I know the point of the game.  The point of the game is to get EVERYBODY to survive.  It's about operating successfully as a unit, rather than as four individuals.  I know that much, and I respect that much...

...so why vote to boot me?  Is that respecting the team?  Is that operating as a unit?  (Well, yeah, actually...the votes DO tend to be unanimous...) 

The question, now, is how do I get my money's worth out of the game?  I can't even tell if I LIKE it or not, as I can't get more than two or three sections into a map before the team gets sick of me and kicks me out.

Is it really so bad to have a relatively weak link on the team?  Shouldn't that be an opportunity for the other players to show just HOW good they are?  If they can survive the mission even with the enormous drag-factor of my presence, isn't that a mark of success that they can wear proudly?  Surely it must be more rewarding than conquering the same map with three other unkillable experts for the ten thousandth time.

It's just strange to me.  Do these people play the game to have fun, or to win every time?  I've only ever played games for the former.  Have things changed?  When?  I never expect to win at every game I play.  I do, however, expect to have fun.  Where swapped the priorities?

I've spent about a month with Fallout 3 now, and that's (unfortunately) more than I spend with many recent games. And I'm coming across all sorts of situations and design decisions that I feel are worth commenting on, but I never get around to doing it.

Last night, though, I happened across the single greatest wonderful experience in the game so far, and realized I had to start getting these thoughts down. That experience was Vault 106.

( Read more... )

Moving right along...I'll try to get the next few up relatively quickly, as there's another blogging project I'd like to begin (and finish) by October 18.  That's your only hint, as far as that goes, but it's probably more than enough to guess what it is.  But back to THE GAMES.


Maniac Mansion is probably the first game I ever really fell in love with.  And I mean truly in love.  I pored over the maps in Nintendo Power, trying to keep straight in my head how the rooms in the house all fit together.  What it would look like as a physical model.  Where the characters were at any given point in the game.  How to get them to go elsewhere.  How to help and/or hinder them.  How to elicit every single possible reaction from everybody.

LucasArts put together a truly perfect adventure game with this one, and it was an adventure that didn't even need to leave the house.  Maniac Mansion is a game of verb-and-item selection, a game of exploration, and a game of experimentation, and it prefigured so much that would later become commonplace that it's a trying exercise to give it all the credit it deserves.

It's a genre spoof, putting it at the forefront of such experiments, especially in video games.  It allows you to switch between multiple characters at once, a complicated process for its time.  What's more, those characters would each deal with situations differently, and since you could only control three at a time, you'd have to replay the game many times in order to see and do everything.  Each combination of characters could finish the game, but not all of them could achieve each of the different endings.

Yes, the idea of multiple endings is something else this game brought to the table, even though it's practically an across-the-board given now.  And on top of that, you could always choose your level of morality, working your way through the house by befriending and assisting its bizarre residents, or by upsetting and hindering them.  Either method works, but in a different way.  It's your choice, and it affects the ending, prefiguring the moral dilemmas of games like Bioshock, or the accumulated karmic effects of Fallout.  The characters also walk around, interact, live their own lives...they don't (all) just stand around waiting for you to find them and initiate conversation, which is STILL something games today have difficulty achieving.  And on top of all that, the isolated, inescapable setting populated by dangerous creatures and the danger of bumbling into a no-win situation makes it a clear precursor to the survival horror genre as well. 

And what's more, it's really, really funny.

Oh, and it invented the "cut scene," whatever that is... 

You know, let's just say it's responsible for more than we can even give it credit for.

It's a heck of a game, and one that will always have a spot in my heart, even if its puzzle solutions are often unfairly oblique.  Maybe I don't mind so much because the trial-and-error leads to enough entertainment in its own right that it's hard to get frustrated.

I've chosen the NES version over the PC original (which predates it by three years) because I prefer the cleaner, quirkier art style of the NES.  In a game like this, environment is everything, and that comes across far better on the console than it did on the PC.  The PC had an easier interface (it never gets easier than using a mouse, folks) and many people were upset by the censoring of the NES version, but really, I first played this game when I was about 10.  I didn't need Nurse Edna threatening to hold me down and fuck me to death.  (And I could still microwave a hamster and collect its bloody mess, so...I was thrilled enough with that.)  The NES version comes out just slightly on top.

Where can you play it now?  You'll probably have to track down a ROM or one of several fan remakes.  It's not currently available on the Wii's Virtual Console (though hope springs eternal), and though it was available as bonus content in the (very good but not nearly as good) sequel, Day of the Tentacle, that game is also pretty difficult to find.  It might take some work to get your hands on a copy of Maniac Mansion, but it's more than worth the effort.

Hoo-ee, it's been a while.  I had some limited use of my left thumb for most of that time, and outside distractions for the rest of it.  I'm going to try to finish this up within the next few days / weeks, as I have other things I want to blog about here, including some great Afterbirth news, all of the (horrible) things I'm learning about myself while playing Fallout 3, and this crazy dream I had where I was the first jellyfish in outer space. 

Until then...

The Legend of Zelda is my favorite video game series of all time.

That's...I mean, that could be my entire justification for including this game here, and, really, who would criticize me for that?  It's just one of those inherently classic franchises that deserves every drop of praise that it's been awarded.  And A Link to the Past is such a perfect distillation of the series' formula at its absolute best.

The original Legend of Zelda was something of an oddity in its time.  We are well familiar now with open worlds and the freedom to accomplish tasks in whatever sequence we see fit, but it was also riddled with flaws that are (unfairly, in my opinion) overlooked due to its classic status.  For starters, there's too much freedom.  You're never really told what you have to accomplish at any given time, and if you're looking for hints, you need a player's guide (considered cheating with games today, but sort of a necessity in the late 80s); the in-game advice provided by the obviously post-stroke Old Man isn't worth the black background it's written on.

But it brought a lot to the table in terms of what else you could do with video games.  (Read:  not all of them had to be platformers or puzzlers.)  The wealth of additional weapons and items are still of a respectable number today, and the variety of enemies and various strategies needed for the different bosses were great innovations as well.

Which is why A Link to the Past shines so brightly.  It borrowed everything that worked from the original Zelda, discarded nearly everything from its lame sequel, and built upon it.  The hint system was better, without being obtrusive.  You had more direction in the game, but no less freedom.  The enemies were even more varied, and their attack patterns were less randomized.  Even the story--beginning with Link's uncle leaving the house to rescue Zelda himself--feels more urgent and personal.  This is the first game in which Link has character, and that's an innovation that really does deserve attention.

I think of A Link to the Past as Zelda's answer to itself.  The original was a classic, but was more a template of potential than anything else.  Zelda II was a misguided attempt at revolution for revolution's sake.  A Link to the Past took us right back to our starting point, and did everything better this time around.  (Super Mario World did something similar for its respective series around this time, too, and between them they set the precedent for Nintendo's long career of looking backward to find true innovation.)

Where can you play it now?  It's available on the Wii's Virtual Console service, and--as if I need to tell you--is one of the best retro offerings you'll ever find there.  It was also released on the Game Boy Advance, I believe, with an additional multiplayer quest called Four Swords, but I haven't played that one, and can't vouch for its quality.  Heard good things though.

Sorry for the delay.  I was eating sushi and reading "Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Fate of Atlantis."  Oddly enough I started this series of blog entries because I had nothing else to say on Live Journal, and I'm now deliberately not blogging about certain real-life developments for fear of interrupting my cockamamie video game countdown nobody cares about.

Ain't that a hole in the boat?

This is a gaming experience that is somewhat more experience than game, I admit, but Half-Life 2 is just phenomenal in so many remarkable ways. I’m of the opinion that the first-person shooter genre lends itself more readily to mindlessness (and artlessness) than probably any other genre in gaming, which is certainly a biased opinion, but boy oh boy does it help the exceptional stuff to stand out.

Half-Life 2 is an absolutely perfect experiment in mood-gaming. It’s chilling, but doesn’t go for the easy scare. It’s dramatic, but doesn’t resort to pre-determined deaths of likeable party members. Its story is rich and brainy, but we aren’t subjected to elaborate histories or genealogies.  It’s a game that feels, over and over again, as though it’s unfolding for the first time. It’s a game that so easily avoids the trappings of its own genre (and of others) simply by weaving an entire, coherent atmosphere out of suggestion and inference. 

Much was made of the impressive physics boasted by this game, and they certainly deserve their accolades. But as “technically” impressive as the physics (and, of course, physics-based puzzles) were, they served their real purpose in bridging the gap between gaming and reality. Nobody ever questions Mario’s physics, or Sonic the Hedgehog’s, and that’s okay, because they occupy a realm we will never know. We enjoy our time spent in those games, but, ultimately, we get to return home, to a world where things function very differently. On the other hand, Half-Life 2’s creaky valves, rusty filings, floating barrels, cement blocks and abandoned vehicles have too much in common (how they look, how they move, how they react) with the world we know to be left entirely behind when we shut the game off.

Admittedly, the most effective atmosphere in Half-Life 2 is reappropriated from George Orwell’s 1984, but that’s more a result of inspiration than imitation. City 17 is its own unit with its own rules and its own distinctive flavor of dystopia. The game can start to feel slightly schizophrenic once the player escapes from City 17, but it’s the effectiveness of this schizophrenia (and the constant uncertainty regarding even what KIND of game we’ll be playing in the next chapter) that keeps us under its spell. From the frantic helicopter chase aboard the airboat to the survival-horror episode in Ravenholm to the brilliantly structured “standing ground” segments of Nova Prospekt, the game never lets you get too comfortable with any one strategy for long.

Half-Life 2 is precisely the kind of game I wish all first-person shooters could be. Every kill is satisfying, every chapter is a surprise, and every puzzle has a root in the same logic we use to make it through the day. It’d be a stretch to call it perfect...but not an entirely uncomfortable one.

Where can you play it now?  Don't bother with retail (you'll have to download updates anyway).  It's available for download from Steam on your PC, either alone or as part of The Orange Box.  Buying it separately is somewhat foolish, as The Orange Box also includes two further installments of the Half-Life 2 saga, a universally-adored first-person puzzler called Portal, and multi-player killfest Team Fortress 2, which is probably fun for people who like that sort of thing.  Oh, Half-Life 2 was also ported to the Xbox and PS3, whatever those are.
 
Additional:  an online friend of mine points out that you Mac / Linux users can use Crossover Games to play Half-Life 2 and all sorts of other excellent Steam you're not supposed to be able to enjoy, without having to run a virtual machine.  Now where the heck was he with this kind of advice when *I* was saddled with a Mac?