Hello! In case you missed it, I'm making a Giant Bomb level set in LittleBigPlanet 3. While I do that, I've decided to make a series of blog posts related to LittleBigPlanet. This one's about what I think makes a user-creation game successful and what I think is today's best example of that. Perrhaps it's too good of an example?

Mario Maker is the Perfect User-creation Game

For all the games out there that have some sort of level creation tool, very few of them have outed such a feature as a significant main portion of the game. Mario Maker is the latest such game, and it should be pretty evident just in the game's title. You could theoretically never touch the creation toolset and just play user-created levels, but Mario Maker's tools are just begging to be used.

Other games of this ilk have done great jobs at this respect: LittleBigPlanet, Garry's Mod, Minecraft, Starcraft, and so on make user creation a high priority and a major selling point, but I think Nintendo has finally hit the Goldilocks spot of user-generated content. They've managed to find the formula for the most democratized, most accessible, and most gratifying system where players are able to make and play each others' levels/games, because what is a game based on user-generated content if you don't have as many players creating content as possible? In that regard, Mario Maker may be the perfect example of this genre. Now, the game itself isn't perfect; there's some limitations that are annoying; however, it's perfect in a way that I don't think another game of this type could ever replicate such success, get so many people involved in the meat and butter of the game, and I think the overarching reason behind that is because Mario Maker is so simple.

Part of that refers to the formatting of the levels themselves, in that they are short and have standardized rules entailing what can be created. This might sound like a point against Mario Maker at first. Wouldn't complexity be favored more because the possibilities seems much more endless? True, but complexity involves a creative mind, and the average person isn't going to want to put in the time and energy to make something amazing if they don't have a direction. With Mario Maker, that direction is already provided: you're making a Mario level!

Which relates to another reason Mario Maker has so much potential in the creative space: it's fucking Mario. I think it's a reasonable thing to say that everybody who plays games knows what Mario is. They probably know what a Mario level looks like, and maybe they know what makes Mario levels fun, or maybe not, but they do know that they are fun even if they don't know all the reasons why.

With that, it's easy to imagine that anybody could make a Mario level. The components are obvious. There's a start, a ground, pits, blocks, enemies, items, maybe some secrets, and a goal. There's not much more than that in essence. It's easy to get started too. Just whip up a combination of those things, and you'll have a level pretty soon. In the video Giantbomb did where Dan made a level, it took him about an hour to make a completed rough design. I can speak from experience in LittleBigPlanet that it can take an hour just to get a certain section working properly, if you're lucky. And in Garry's Mod? Minecraft? Making something in those games takes incredible amounts of effort more. You really need to know what you're getting into before you can commit on making a level on your own, and Mario Maker makes it less painful to make that commitment.

It's a combination of many things, perhaps a perfect combination, that make Mario Maker's success ensured that don't involve the high quality of the game itself. The familiarity of Mario is enough to draw you in, the simplicity of the toolset encourages you to start, and the mechanics and structure of a general Mario level make it take less time to go from start to finish. That combination ensures that as many people as possible make as many levels as possible, and I believe the grand hallmark of a user-creation game is how many levels are people able to put out. In that respect, Mario Maker exceeds more than any other game.

And I'm not just making up a bunch of flowery prose here. Mario Maker has sold over a million copies, and almost 2.5 million levels have been created. This is within a few weeks of launch. It took about 9 months for LittleBigPlanet to reach just one million, and many other games have never reached even a million creations. Mario Maker has a long life ahead of it and millions more levels, and maybe even millions of players can get to enjoy making levels instead of just playing them. Maybe one day, we'll have a bunch of awesome video games made by people who were first inspired to create via Mario Maker. With so many people making levels, that reality is much more likely than with similar games past.

The thing I'm worried about is that this is the best that could possibly be done to a game like this. I honestly don't think a Maker game of a different Nintendo series would have the same appeal or ease of creation, and I'm not sure if Nintendo's ready to commit to a sequel that let you do some weird shit to Mario, kind of like how LittleBigPlanet 2 allowed you to make levels that weren't platformers. (That's the scenario I'm hoping for with Mario Maker, btw.) After all, how do you do better than perfect? I could just say this is the reason why I'm not working for Nintendo and leave it at that, but I imagine that they must have some sort of plans for more games of this kind because Mario Maker was such a success, even if those plans are ill-fated. Will the players tire out, or ask for more? If they don't ask for more, then what's next for this genre of games?

Maybe when it's far into the future, when AI is an integral tool in helping us design games, will something surpass Mario Maker in ease and joy in creating levels and games. I know that the main idea of this blog post essay thing will someday become moot and obsolete, but I'm hoping that it does sooner than later.

Also, A Giant Bomb level update!

It's been three weeks since my last update, but don't worry. This thing's still on track for an end of the year release. I just haven't been spending every day on this because I'm a normal person who has other things to do.

I've now finished the second level--thank God--and have moved on to the fourth level (decided it'd be cooler to work on). That level's seen major changes. I decided to redo the visuals on the level and turn it into a synthwave nightmare, complete with pink and blue neon, scan lines, and lasers everywhere. I may change the song in the level for it to match the aesthetic...

In addition, the boss battle for this level has been entirely rebuilt into a much more friendly fashion. The old system was last built many months ago, and it was a mess, and I forgot how it even worked, so I redid it in a cleaner format. I've gotten far enough on it so that it knows who's turn it is and what state its in between turns. I just have the dirty work to go on it: compiling the animations and health bars that go into each attack.

Also, I added an instrumental of Where the Hood At to the game. Also, in the credits level, I've gotten Hatsune Miku to “sing” custom inspired lyrics to the song. This may be the dumbest fucking thing I've ever done.

Gallery

Hello! If you didn't see last week, I announced that I'm making a Giant Bomb level set in LittleBigPlanet 3. I've also decided to make a weekly blog post about my experiences with the game, making the levels, and overall game mechanics in general until these levels are ready to publish. In the meantime, here's a piece that summarizes a key component about why I love this game.

The Joy of Limitations

A couple years ago, I took a couple community college courses in the fields of computer programming. I thought that since I liked computers so much I should give a Computer Science major a spin. My heart wasn't into it. I wasn't very good. I had no motivation to program. So, I gave up on that idea, and switched to a different major that I'm happy to be striving for a degree in.

Meanwhile, I've put several hundred hours into the LittleBigPlanet Create mode across the whole series. That time was spent in enjoyment rather in frustration. So, if I can't get into programming in real life, why does the Create mode in a video game hook me?

With this kind of telegraphing, I'll have to explain how making stuff in LittleBigPlanet is similar to programming for this to make sense–Also, I should point out that the stuff you do in LittleBigPlanet is not literally programming. You aren't typing things–Both involve the creation of a sequence of instructions designed to make something happen. In programming, this involves learning commands and the way they are ordered and setting them in an organized fashion. In LittleBigPlanet, this manifests as a visual set of tools that can be tweaked and placed in a physical environment. Wanna make x do y? In programming, you learn what commands do what, and you type in a set of instructions that will eventually make x do y. In LittleBigPlanet, you learn that w tool with z settings hooked up to tools a, b, and c in this certain fashion and placed on character j make x do y. With that kind of phrasing, the latter's system of doing things sound incredibly clunky, while the former sounds elegant and efficient. Furthermore, computer programming allows you to make virtually anything, while with LittleBigPlanet the canvas you create and the tools you are given have a limit to what you can achieve.

And yet, that's precisely why I enjoy it so much.

I could just end this on the short answer being, “I find LittleBigPlanet easier to deal with because it's more accessible, there's not as much to do with it as real programming, and it's not as overwhelming.” but that would be a boring way to end it, so instead I'm going to attempt to articulate what that short answer means to me and why it matters in the grand scheme of things.

Unlike LittleBigPlanet, I don't see programming as a game. It's a fair enough statement. After all, LittleBigPlanet is a video game, and programming is not; however, by limiting what with you can do with a vast, yet bounded, toolset, LittleBigPlanet turns a version of programming into a game of its own. It's a game where the primary objective is, basically, “Given this set of tools, how can you use them to solve a certain problem?” You could say that about programming too, however. The tools of that consist of the language you are coding in.

The interesting aspect I find about LittleBigPlanet, however, comes from its platform. In order to use the “LittleBigPlanet Programming” language, you have to have a Playstation, a video game console which is designed to be limiting in order to be accessible to most people. I'd expect no less, and certainly much more, from a personal computer, but a Playstation? You can make things with that box? Well, in LittleBigPlanet, yes, you can. Sort of. You can't program full games in place of traditional LittleBigPlanet levels. You can't hack the Playstation or the game and edit the source code to do whatever you want. There are no third-party applications that are compatible with this game, and for the things you can download to add to the game, Sony expects you to part with your cash.

The result of this closed-source system brings a bootleg quality to many of the LittleBigPlanet levels that attempt to do something big, and it's kind of beautiful. To use an example, I recently played a series of levels inspired by Bloodborne. Well, it was basically Bloodborne. You play as the Hunter, you slash at zombies with your sword, and you take lots of damage when you get hit; however, it was very much a poor man's version of the game. The movement speed is incredibly slow, but it's insanely fast when moving in and out of layers. The hit detection is kind of shoddy. There are two buttons to dodge left and dodge right, instead of just dodging in a direction indicated with the stick and a single button. The level loads sections each time it wants to change the perspective 90 degrees in order to accurately portray the depth of Central Yharnam, so you sit through loading screens a lot. When you die, you lose the level, and it sends you to the next one. The most infuriating aspect I found was that the UI is impossible to read because of the darkness of the level. There's no way to slap on a UI overlay in the game; you have to physically create a layer for the UI to move around on and then have it follow your character, so whatever elements you have in it are affected by global lighting. In those levels, it was dark enough for me to be unable to tell how much health I had at times.

If this was made on a PC and money was charged for it, it would be a giant pile of garbage, and even in LittleBigPlanet it kind of is, but given the limitations of the system that made these levels, there's no doubt that there's a certain level of charm to it all. Somebody made an honest attempt at a Bloodborne game in LittleBigPlanet. A game that is rated M for mature and is absolutely filled with blood and guts when you slice through gory flesh demons, replicated in a kid's game in kind of a bootleg fashion. The art in those levels was absolutely stunning to look at, even if it made the game unnecessarily harder.

To be fair, the game isn't for everybody. Many people aren't looking for games where everything's a little under par. Anybody who actually derives enjoyment out of the LittleBigPlanet games, like I do, doesn't do so because of the gameplay. Much has already been said about the floaty jump physics being not-so precise. Nobody's going to play these games because they have prime hardcore mechanics because they don't. Some people might say that they are kind of bad.

The truth is: LittleBigPlanet is fun because the game is more akin to a toy, which is something I can't say about programming. Sure, it's limited compared to programming, but compared to the myriad games that have their own level editors, LittleBigPlanet allows you to do so much more. It's in the sweet spot in between no freedom and complete freedom, kind of like playing in reality. Imagine LittleBigPlanet is a virtual version of a pile of toys, and that the Create mode is akin to assembling the toys in a certain fashion. You can imagine and act out a lot of scenarios with toys, but no matter how wide your imagination is you can't physically turn your toys into things that they aren't. LittleBigPlanet gives you the power to create and destroy physical objects and turn them into virtually everything, but not infinitely everything. It gives you the power to script some powerful stuff, but it doesn't give you full control to modify the innards of the game's systems. There's only so much you can do, but you can, in return, do so much, more than anybody would think.

In a world where video games are prized for being serious, LittleBigPlanet stands in great contrast and succeeds in the other direction in a huge way. It's a video game where imagination takes triumph over mechanics, where the joy in playing a level comes not primarily from the quality of the level, but of the fact that the level was possible to make and play at all. It's a place where ideas are encourage over execution. And yes, while execution is still crucially important, the limiting nature of the game allows for the appreciation of levels that aren't tight mechanic-wise. (Let's not be too artsy here! A shitty level is still a shitty level.) The game is also democratizing in a way that programming isn't. It puts everybody in one big spot and makes it easier and faster for players to interact with creators. It's been almost 8 years since the series first debuted, and yet there still hasn't been another video game as big as LittleBigPlanet that has channeled that same sort of ideal positive personality.

I don't think I would've taken those programming courses if I knew the true reason why I enjoy LittleBigPlanet and the game's creation tools. It's not because of the inherent programming features themselves, but because the game provides a charming platform to allow such stuff to happen, and thereby makes the actual act of creating charming itself. I don't play levels and make things in LittleBigPlanet solely to be entertained or to prove I can do something; I do it to get inspired.

Also, a Giant Bomb level update!

I've mainly worked on the second level, and it has seen big promise. The boss fight in the level is finally playable. There just needs to be a small area in the middle of the level to be fleshed out, and it will be alpha-status. The lava has been changed to a more realistic material and kills the player with fewer buggy instances. Also, the entire level was positioned towards the background to allow for lava to fill the foreground, which makes it look way cooler.

Also, the gun powerup actually hurts enemies now, so I've been working on enemy encounters. The demonic Detective Jenks enemy now has the ability to kill you and be killed, as do other enemies in the level. This level should reach alpha-status soon.

Also, more dumb jokes and references have been added. There are a lot more secrets in this level now, including secrets within secrets. Have fun!

PS: The Quick Look for LittleBigPlanet 2 that Jeff and Ryan did sums up what makes this game great pretty well. One of my favorite parts of that video is Ryan saying “I … prefer it when you can see the strings that are being used to keep it all together.”

(This piece goes in-depth about Far Cry 4 and contains major spoilers. If you care to not know, I advise you to complete the game before reading this.)

There is a group of video games out there that make an attempt to stir up some meta-discussion about the medium of video games. Games like Bioshock, Hotline Miami, Spec Ops: The Line, and The Stanley Parable have all contributed to discussion about what video games are, why they are what they are, and why we play them. After playing Far Cry 4 to completion, I am surprised to say that I can add it to the list, and the 'surprise' factor is definitely part of its notability.

Anyone who has played Far Cry 3 knows that it is a quality product. It streamlined Far Cry 2 in a way that made it exciting and fresh. Anyone who has played 3 also knows that it has an awful, awful, horribly offensive, piece of fucking trash story that sours the strong start it may have had and even nearly ruins the whole experience, were it not for the gameplay being pretty solid. It's a testament to that amazing gameplay, therefore, that I was willingly gleeful at the chance to play what is essentially more of the same, even if it meant the possibility of another dreadful plot. No matter; I already made my peace with the game.

I played Far Cry 4 because it is fun to play. It's fun to sneak up on an outpost, scout it out, and devise the best strategic (or most awesome) way of taking out guards and claiming it under my control. It's fun to run around a nice-looking environment and seeing what nonsense may happen. It's fun to level up, acquire new stuff, and upgrade my attributes. Putting it frankly, it's the game, stupid, and any resemblance of a story that the game bothers to include is simply an excuse to allow me to have fun. Little did I know that the story would have it's own kind of fun playing with that excuse.

The story, for those of you who care to know, centers around one Ajay Ghale, an American born in his native country of Kyrat, who's come to honor his mother's dying with by scattering her ashes in Lakshmana, presumably somewhere in Kyrat. Of course, this doesn't go according to plan, and Ghale ends up being kidnapped by ruler of Kyrat Pagan Min, a self-stylized despotic monster. Min sits Ghale down to dinner for a cordial chat, but then has to leave to answer a phone call. Min has plans for Ghale, but before Ghale learns of what those entail, he escapes with the help of the Golden Path, the resistance that has been fighting Min and his army for nigh the past 30 years. Ghale, being the son of the late leader of the resistance Mohan Ghale, is seen as a pivotal player in the civil war. He meets up with two rebel commanders, Amita and Sabal, who both wish for the downfall of Pagan Min but have very different ideas about how to pursue that goal as well as about how the country should be run afterward.

Past this point, the story receives less attention. You do whatever it is you do in Far Cry games, and the story injects itself every so often. You'll encounter a vast variety of others along the way, some of them very annoying and dislikable, as is par for the course for a Far Cry game. Everything is thrown at you. As you become adept at killing Min's forces, everyone in Kyrat comes to rely on you to get the job done. Many characters need your help in solving problems. Someone wants revenge for the animals that ate his family. Another needs you to quest for blood diamonds to repent for past crimes. A couple of stoners want nothing more than for you to test their new drugs out. All of Kyrat is depending on you to tear down as many propaganda posters, gain as much Karma, and rescue as many hostages as you possibly can. In short, it's a video game, and you're the star of the show.

It seemed funny to me, therefore, that the character of Ajay Ghale comes across as the most bored, uninteresting person imaginable. All of his lines are delivered in a nonchalant way as if Ghale had gotten out of bed minutes prior. It's like he doesn't care about the situation he's in, and furthermore, it seems as though he doesn't even care about what he's doing or how he even ended up in this mess in the first place. He doesn't say much of anything interesting either. I swear that 90% of his dialogue consists of “What's the problem”, “Uh”, and “I'll take care of it.” He's a robot doing everybody's chores for them!

It's stark, then, that Ghale continues to quest out in search of killing bad guys and upgrading his equipment to be the best there is. Much of the game is spend on Ghale killing soldiers and animals, collecting collectables, and such selfish endeavors in order to make himself more powerful. It just so happens that the things Ghale does benefit the Golden Path, the group he's working for. Amita or Sabal will even remark over the radio what a good job you're doing for the resistance. That begs the question: why does Ghale do?

Even Ghale seems confused sometimes. A good example of his confusion is evident in a series of side quests where he helps a couple of stoners test out their drugs. He does this not once, not twice, but four times! These drugs are insane too! He gets put out and wakes up in a hostile trippy world where he could possibly die with a higher chance than normal on the count of enemies popping out of nowhere, random free falls, and statues rising out of lakes. It's the definition of a bad trip, and Ajay willingly pursues this four times?! Even Ghale doesn't know why he's doing this. He just does! Now these are optional missions not required to complete the game, unlike most missions involving a letter-shaped icon on the map. Ghale doesn't have to do this. He doesn't get any substantial rewards for each quest, and he doesn't even get anything cool at the end of it all unlike most sidequest branches. There is no good reason to do this, but should the player want to, they can direct Ghale to complete these missions anyway. After all, it's something to do, right? Far Cry 4 has absolutely no shortage of things to do.

I'm sorry, what was the point of all this anyway? Let's not lose track here. I can use that as a metaphor, actually, for my time with the game as I was having enough fun playing it to forget why Ghale was in Kyrat in the first place. It wasn't until about 2/3rds of the way through the game, about the time you first enter the northern half of Kyrat, that I remembered the purpose of Ghale's trip to Kyrat: spread his mother's ashes in Lakshmana. And then I thought, "How funny that in order to do so, he has to single-handedly wipe out the military of an entire country and cut the head of their totalitarian leader!" It's nothing new in video games, of course. Most shooters give a flimsy reason as to why dude with a gun must kill people, and do a very good job at it to boot. By this point in the game, the story gets more interesting and begins hint that it will play with that trope.

With the successes of the Golden Path ensuring an unstoppable path to victory, the rivalry between Amita's and Sabal's factions becomes much worse to the point that they are refusing to compromise on anything. (A metaphor for US government perhaps? I digress.) Many missions before had Ghale choose one person's mission over another, but the final straw that changes everything is reflected in a mission to either preserve or destroy a major Kyrati temple. After this mission, Amita or Sabal will take full control of the Golden Path and will then send you out to actually kill the other. These characters were once bitter but rational, but with the opposing interest group losing power, the winner becomes an extreme tyrant, making Ghale doubt that the people he was fighting for were much of good guys to begin with. (Hint: they aren't.) If the Golden Path aren't good guys, and Pagan Min certainly isn't a good guy, then who's the good guy? Is Ghale the good guy?

Pagan Min, of all people, has his own answer to that question. I'll summarize the ending of the game here. A final assault on Min's palace ends in victory for the Golden Path, and Ghale gets to decide Min's fate himself. Min then cordially invites Ghale to yet another dinner for a civilized chat. Ghale can choose to muder Min on the spot, or he can accept Min's request. If Ghale spares Min, then Min lectures Ghale about what happened the time Min kidnapped him. Min, before he left for a phone call, told you, “STAY here. ENJOY the crab rangoon. DON'T move.”

Now, if I was Ghale, and I was kidnapped into some place I've never been by some horrible person, I'd think it most reasonable to follow his advice. I'd be too scared to wander around the mansion for a way to escape just yet. Because this is a video game, however, I chose to wander around until I found something important: a man getting tortured and then the Golden Path busting me out. The video game wouldn't reward me for sitting there doing nothing, right?

It, in fact, does. It doesn't matter if you play through the game like a normal person would or if you refuse to touch the controller again after pressing the start button, the game ends in the same way. This secret ending can be activated by doing nothing at the start of the game. You don't have to kill any soldiers or help out any rebels or do any random person's dirty laundry. You can, if you want to, however; it's a video game, but does it even qualify as a video game if it can end before you start playing it?

Anyway, whether I followed Min's advice in the first minute of the game, or I spared his life in the last minute, Min will follow up with this next: he will actually allow me to do what I set out to do in the first place. Seriously, Min has no problem with this. He reveals the plot twist of the game, that Lakshmana isn't a place, but is rather the daughter of Pagan Min and Ajay's mom. Min tells the story about how Ajay's father sent his wife to spy on Min, where she ended up falling in love with Min and having a kid. Ajay's father, upset about this, ends up killing Lakshmana, a baby, in rage, and then he ends up being killed shortly after by Ajay's mom. At some point, Ajay and his mom left for America, which deeply upset Pagan Min. Thus, it is revealed that Pagan Min's reasoning behind him being the most immoral monster of a tyrant is that the Golden Path killed his daughter, and he wants revenge.

Again, nothing new of video games to have flimsy excuses for villains to be bad. What is new is that Pagan simply doesn't care. He knows it's a bad excuse, and is simply using it as a crutch to do whatever he wants. He then lets Ajay know that his bad excuse to kill people is probably as pathetic as Ajay's excuse to kill people. You know what? After what I experienced in this game, I kind of agree with him.

Pagan Min is the worst kind of monster: the kind that knows it is a monster and is lovingly willing to show it off to everyone else. Min is essentially asking you, the player, if you can accept that you are a monster too. It becomes easier to accept this when you return to Kyrat and find Amita or Sabal dragging Kyrat back into dark times. This is Ghale's fault, by the way. It's your fault too. In fact, I think it your fault way more so than it is Ghale's fault. I don't think Ghale is much of a human being to begin with given how boring he is. Hell, his last line of dialogue is "Fuck you!" He might as well be you, or be me. I was the boring, nonchalant person the whole time, rolling my eyes at the story elements I judged to be clichéd nonsense getting in the way of my fun. Pagan Min was talking to me; no wonder Ghale was so silent for much of the game. And, just why was I doing those drug missions I mentioned earlier anyway? I don't know. I guess it's because I could. I wanted to see what would happen.

If there's any solace to be found in Far Cry 4, it's that there are actual good guys to root for in the game. You'll find them in the side missions that involve you protecting a truck with supplies en route to its destination. The ordinary soldiers of the Golden Path have good intentions with these missions. One has you protecting a truck delivering books to secret libraries across Kyrat so that the people can be literate. Another truck is part of a mission to take Kyrati cultural items across the border so that it can not only be sold to fund the revolution, but give the rest of the world some knowledge of Kyrati culture, knowledge that Pagan Min or Amita and Sabal would have rather melted down or destroyed for their causes. These ordinary people are the real heroes of Far Cry 4, and I can say with pleasure that giving ordinary NPCs the moral high ground is a relatively new thing of video games to do.

I learned some things about Far Cry 4. I first learned that this isn't a story of morally gray faction 1 vs morally gray faction 2, as I first expected. This is actually a story of morally black faction 1 vs morally black faction 2, with you playing for faction 1 and Pagan Min playing for faction 2. Pagan Min is bad, Amita and Sabal are bad, your father was bad and pathetic, and you're bad too. I also was reminded that you don't have to play as the good guy in a video game. This game reminded me a lot of Spec Ops: The Line, another game where the protagonists actions actually make everything worse. The difference between Spec Ops and Far Cry 4 is that with Spec Ops, I was expecting a deep story to tackle such themes. With Far Cry 4, I didn't expect it until a few minutes before the credits rolled. It was a complete surprise, especially with the memory of 3 still ingrained. I think that's more remarkable, actually. Going in expecting one thing and coming away with another can be more powerful sometimes.

The way 4 turned out has me excited to see what Far Cry 5 is going to be. (Oh, I'm sure they'll make another one.) Do they try to make a game that keeps in mind what happened in 4's story? Or, do they just make another dumb shooter just like 3 and 4 were? If the latter is the case, that'd be incredibly disappointing, even more so that 5 has a chance to finish the discussion about morality that 4 started. I hope 5 ends up being different from 4, both from a gameplay perspective and a story one as well. 4 set up such a high bar for 5, but it's almost impossible to know what changes they could make to keep the series fresh while still adhering somewhat to the core of what makes Far Cry games fun. These high expectations are doubly so now that 4 has made the Far Cry series a bit self aware.

I'm still not sure if the overall story of Far Cry 4 is any good. If placed in a medium other than video games, the story would be forgettable trash because aspects of the story require that the video game be a video game. I still have issues with the way certain things are portrayed (especially in regards to some awful characters), but I can say that better so than the average video game, Far Cry 4 has given me something to think about, and if you played it as well, I hope it gave you something to think about too.

To sum it all up, Far Cry 4 asks you if you enjoy playing video games. To that I say, "Yes. I enjoyed playing this video game too." To answer the question in the title of this article, it's because it's fun.

(This piece goes in-depth about Far Cry 4 and contains major spoilers. If you care to not know, I advise you to complete the game before reading this.)

There is a group of video games out there that make an attempt to stir up some meta-discussion about the medium of video games. Games like Bioshock, Hotline Miami, Spec Ops: The Line, and The Stanley Parable have all contributed to discussion about what video games are, why they are what they are, and why we play them. After playing Far Cry 4 to completion, I am surprised to say that I can add it to the list, and the 'surprise' factor is definitely part of its notability.

Anyone who has played Far Cry 3 knows that it is a quality product. It streamlined Far Cry 2 in a way that made it exciting and fresh. Anyone who has played 3 also knows that it has an awful, awful, horribly offensive, piece of fucking trash story that sours the strong start it may have had and even nearly ruins the whole experience, were it not for the gameplay being pretty solid. It's a testament to that amazing gameplay, therefore, that I was willingly gleeful at the chance to play what is essentially more of the same, even if it meant the possibility of another dreadful plot. No matter; I already made my peace with the game.

I played Far Cry 4 because it is fun to play. It's fun to sneak up on an outpost, scout it out, and devise the best strategic (or most awesome) way of taking out guards and claiming it under my control. It's fun to run around a nice-looking environment and seeing what nonsense may happen. It's fun to level up, acquire new stuff, and upgrade my attributes. Putting it frankly, it's the game, stupid, and any resemblance of a story that the game bothers to include is simply an excuse to allow me to have fun. Little did I know that the story would have it's own kind of fun playing with that excuse.

The story, for those of you who care to know, centers around one Ajay Ghale, an American born in his native country of Kyrat, who's come to honor his mother's dying with by scattering her ashes in Lakshmana, presumably somewhere in Kyrat. Of course, this doesn't go according to plan, and Ghale ends up being kidnapped by ruler of Kyrat Pagan Min, a self-stylized despotic monster. Min sits Ghale down to dinner for a cordial chat, but then has to leave to answer a phone call. Min has plans for Ghale, but before Ghale learns of what those entail, he escapes with the help of the Golden Path, the resistance that has been fighting Min and his army for nigh the past 30 years. Ghale, being the son of the late leader of the resistance Mohan Ghale, is seen as a pivotal player in the civil war. He meets up with two rebel commanders, Amita and Sabal, who both wish for the downfall of Pagan Min but have very different ideas about how to pursue that goal as well as about how the country should be run afterward.

Past this point, the story receives less attention. You do whatever it is you do in Far Cry games, and the story injects itself every so often. You'll encounter a vast variety of others along the way, some of them very annoying and dislikable, as is par for the course for a Far Cry game. Everything is thrown at you. As you become adept at killing Min's forces, everyone in Kyrat comes to rely on you to get the job done. Many characters need your help in solving problems. Someone wants revenge for the animals that ate his family. Another needs you to quest for blood diamonds to repent for past crimes. A couple of stoners want nothing more than for you to test their new drugs out. All of Kyrat is depending on you to tear down as many propaganda posters, gain as much Karma, and rescue as many hostages as you possibly can. In short, it's a video game, and you're the star of the show.

It seemed funny to me, therefore, that the character of Ajay Ghale comes across as the most bored, uninteresting person imaginable. All of his lines are delivered in a nonchalant way as if Ghale had gotten out of bed minutes prior. It's like he doesn't care about the situation he's in, and furthermore, it seems as though he doesn't even care about what he's doing or how he even ended up in this mess in the first place. He doesn't say much of anything interesting either. I swear that 90% of his dialogue consists of “What's the problem”, “Uh”, and “I'll take care of it.” He's a robot doing everybody's chores for them!

It's stark, then, that Ghale continues to quest out in search of killing bad guys and upgrading his equipment to be the best there is. Much of the game is spend on Ghale killing soldiers and animals, collecting collectables, and such selfish endeavors in order to make himself more powerful. It just so happens that the things Ghale does benefit the Golden Path, the group he's working for. Amita or Sabal will even remark over the radio what a good job you're doing for the resistance. That begs the question: why does Ghale do?

Even Ghale seems confused sometimes. A good example of his confusion is evident in a series of side quests where he helps a couple of stoners test out their drugs. He does this not once, not twice, but four times! These drugs are insane too! He gets put out and wakes up in a hostile trippy world where he could possibly die with a higher chance than normal on the count of enemies popping out of nowhere, random free falls, and statues rising out of lakes. It's the definition of a bad trip, and Ajay willingly pursues this four times?! Even Ghale doesn't know why he's doing this. He just does! Now these are optional missions not required to complete the game, unlike most missions involving a letter-shaped icon on the map. Ghale doesn't have to do this. He doesn't get any substantial rewards for each quest, and he doesn't even get anything cool at the end of it all unlike most sidequest branches. There is no good reason to do this, but should the player want to, they can direct Ghale to complete these missions anyway. After all, it's something to do, right? Far Cry 4 has absolutely no shortage of things to do.

I'm sorry, what was the point of all this anyway? Let's not lose track here. Those who remember the very beginning of the story know that Ghale's mission is simple: spread his mother's ashes in Lakshmana. How funny that in order to do so, he has to single-handedly wipe out the military of an entire country and cut the head of their totalitarian leader. It's nothing new in video games, of course. Most shooters give a flimsy reason as to why dude with a gun must kill people, but Far Cry 4 is an interesting case because of the way it plays with such attempts at reasoning.

It was about 2/3rds of the way through the game, about the time you first enter the northern half of Kyrat, that I remembered the purpose of Ghale's trip to Kyrat. Ghale, once a presumably normal young American man, has now wiped out Royal Army presence in the south and led a group of rebels that he has very little actual connection to onto a path of certain victory against Min. It's also at this point that the story gets a little more interesting.

The rivalry between Amita and Sabal's factions becomes much worse to the point that Amita and Sabal are refusing to compromise on anything. (A metaphor for US government perhaps? I digress.) Many missions before had Ghale choose one person's mission over another, but the final straw that changes everything is reflected in a mission to either preserve or destroy a major Kyrati temple. After this mission, Amita or Sabal will take full control of the Golden Path and will then send you out to actually kill the other. These characters were once bitter but rational, but with the opposing interest group losing power, the winner becomes an extreme tyrant, making Ghale doubt that the people he was fighting for were much of good guys to begin with. (Hint: they aren't.) If the Golden Path aren't good guys, and Pagan Min certainly isn't a good guy, then who's the good guy? Is Ghale the good guy?

Pagan Min, of all people, has his own answer to that question. I'll summarize the ending of the game here. A final assault on Min's palace ends in victory for the Golden Path, and Ghale gets to decide Min's fate himself. Min then cordially invites Ghale to yet another dinner for a civilized chat. Ghale can choose to muder Min on the spot, or he can accept Min's request. If Ghale spares Min, then Min lectures Ghale about what happened the time Min kidnapped him. Min, before he left for a phone call, told you, “STAY here. ENJOY the crab rangoon. DON'T move.”

Now, if I was Ghale, and I was kidnapped into some place I've never been by some horrible person, I'd think it most reasonable to follow his advice. I'd be too scared to wander around the mansion for a way to escape just yet. Because this is a video game, however, I chose to wander around until I found something important: a man getting tortured and then the Golden Path busting me out. The video game wouldn't reward me for sitting there doing nothing, right?

It, in fact, does. It doesn't matter if you play through the game like a normal person would or if you refuse to touch the controller again after pressing the start button, the game ends in the same way. This secret ending can be activated by doing nothing at the start of the game. You don't have to kill any soldiers or help out any rebels or do any random person's dirty laundry. You can, if you want to, however; it's a video game, but does it even qualify as a video game if it can end before you start playing it?

Anyway, whether I followed Min's advice in the first minute of the game, or I spared his life in the last minute, Min will follow up with this next: he will actually allow me to do what I set out to do in the first place. Seriously, Min has no problem with this. He reveals the plot twist of the game, that Lakshmana isn't a place, but is rather the daughter of Pagan Min and Ajay's mom. Min tells the story about how Ajay's father sent his wife to spy on Min, where she ended up falling in love with Min and having a kid. Ajay's father, upset about this, ends up killing Lakshmana, a baby, in rage, and then he ends up being killed shortly after by Ajay's mom. At some point, Ajay and his mom left for America, which deeply upset Pagan Min. Thus, it is revealed that Pagan Min's reasoning behind him being the most immoral monster of a tyrant is that the Golden Path killed his daughter, and he wants revenge.

Again, nothing new of video games to have flimsy excuses for villains to be bad. What is new is that Pagan simply doesn't care. He knows it's a bad excuse, and is simply using it as a crutch to do whatever he wants. He then lets Ajay know that his bad excuse to kill people is probably as pathetic as Ajay's excuse to kill people. You know what? After what I experienced in this game, I kind of agree with him.

Pagan Min is the worst kind of monster: the kind that knows it is a monster and is lovingly willing to show it off to everyone else. Min is essentially asking you, the player, if you can accept that you are a monster too. It becomes easier to accept this when you return to Kyrat and find Amita or Sabal dragging Kyrat back into dark times. This is Ghale's fault, by the way. It's your fault too. In fact, I think it your fault way more so than it is Ghale's fault. I don't think Ghale is much of a human being to begin with given how boring he is. Hell, his last line of dialogue is "Fuck you!" He might as well be you, or be me. I was the boring, nonchalant person the whole time, rolling my eyes at the story elements I judged to be clichéd nonsense getting in the way of my fun. Pagan Min was talking to me; no wonder Ghale was so silent for much of the game. And, just why was I doing those drug missions I mentioned earlier anyway? I don't know. I guess it's because I could. I wanted to see what would happen.

If there's any solace to be found in Far Cry 4, it's that there are actual good guys to root for in the game. You'll find them in the side missions that involve you protecting a truck with supplies en route to its destination. The ordinary soldiers of the Golden Path have good intentions with these missions. One has you protecting a truck delivering books to secret libraries across Kyrat so that the people can be literate. Another truck is part of a mission to take Kyrati cultural items across the border so that it can not only be sold to fund the revolution, but give the rest of the world some knowledge of Kyrati culture, knowledge that Pagan Min or Amita and Sabal would have rather melted down or destroyed for their causes. These ordinary people are the real heroes of Far Cry 4, and I can say with pleasure that giving ordinary NPCs the moral high ground is a relatively new thing of video games to do.

I learned some things about Far Cry 4. I first learned that this isn't a story of morally gray faction 1 vs morally gray faction 2, as I first expected. This is actually a story of morally black faction 1 vs morally black faction 2, with you playing for faction 1 and Pagan Min playing for faction 2. Pagan Min is bad, Amita and Sabal are bad, your father was bad and pathetic, and you're bad too. I also was reminded that you don't have to play as the good guy in a video game. This game reminded me a lot of Spec Ops: The Line, another game where the protagonists actions actually make everything worse. The difference between Spec Ops and Far Cry 4 is that with Spec Ops, I was expecting a deep story to tackle such themes. With Far Cry 4, I didn't expect it until a few minutes before the credits rolled. It was a complete surprise, especially with the memory of 3 still ingrained. I think that's more remarkable, actually. Going in expecting one thing and coming away with another can be more powerful sometimes.

The way 4 turned out has me excited to see what Far Cry 5 is going to be. (Oh, I'm sure they'll make another one.) Do they try to make a game that keeps in mind what happened in 4's story? Or, do they just make another dumb shooter just like 3 and 4 were? If the latter is the case, that'd be incredibly disappointing, even more so that 5 has a chance to finish the discussion about morality that 4 started. I hope 5 ends up being different from 4, both from a gameplay perspective and a story one as well. 4 set up such a high bar for 5, but it's almost impossible to know what changes they could make to keep the series fresh while still adhering somewhat to the core of what makes Far Cry games fun. These high expectations are doubly so now that 4 has made the Far Cry series a bit self aware.

I'm still not sure if the overall story of Far Cry 4 is any good. If placed in a medium other than video games, the story would be forgettable trash because aspects of the story require that the video game be a video game. I still have issues with the way certain things are portrayed (especially in regards to some awful characters), but I can say that better so than the average video game, Far Cry 4 has given me something to think about, and if you played it as well, I hope it gave you something to think about too.

To sum it all up, Far Cry 4 asks you if you enjoy playing video games. To that I say, "Yes. I enjoyed playing this video game too." To answer the question in the title of this article, it's because it's fun.

I have not given a lot of attention to my PS3 for a while. PC gaming has pretty much taken over all my home entertainment needs these days. That said, I had a strange compulsion to return to the big black box just to see how everything was doing. I downloaded some Borderlands 2 DLC that I haven't yet played, downloaded a little bit more of Vanquish, and deleted everything that wasn't related to gaming to allow for more of the space that I just recently filled up entirely.

The main reason for this return: I was looking for my Vita charging cable and found it attached to my PS3. You see, when connecting the Vita to the PS3 for file transfer you do not have the option to use a USB cord as you do when a PC is involved. Well, the Internet was down when I wanted to see if Closure can be played on a Vita. (It can't.) I gave up in frustration at the complete lunacy of the situation. This time the Internet was working, and now that I had the Internet connection required to connect the Vita and PS3, it then required me to plug in a USB cable. Fuck you. You're telling me I need an Internet connection to use a fucking cable?! This always-online crap will not end!

Anyway, after discovering that bullshit, the thought of using a Vita as a controller for the PS3 came into my head, and so I used the Vita to search the Internet to find out whether that was true or not. Well, kind of? There's a secondary feature in the Vita's Remote Play app called Cross Controller, which allows you to use a Vita as a controller and second screen (Take that, Nintendo!) on certain games. Of the incredibly short list of games that support it, I was surprised at the inclusion of LittleBigPlanet 2 on the list. Since I own the damn game, I pretty much had to check it out.

Turns out, it's actually a downloadable new level pack that adds such functionality to the game. There's new tools that take advantage of the touchscreen, I guess. I didn't buy it, but I probably will in the future due to my strange unconditional love for that game. I then proceeded to lose myself in the costume menus for about half an hour while fulfilling some sort of nostalgia quest to remember all the good times and strange things about that game. In a related fashion, it then hit me to check out the new content in the store. I hadn't checked on what new stuff could be in the store for probably a year now, so I made it my duty to refresh myself on the matter.

They still keep adding content! I don't know how many people still play this game, but good on Media Molecule to keeping the community alive for all these years. The community page is constantly updating with community-related stuff, so that's cool. The store page is much more streamlined, doing away with the searching the felt planet bullshit they had earlier and having actual menus. They probably had to, since there's now so much stuff! They now show only bundles on the menu, and when you click the bundle you can choose to buy everything in it or pick some individually. The whole setup is smart except for the fact that descriptions seem to be missing. Oh well. Even if most of the costume packs don't grab me, I'm sure people are still buying the new ones. They just added a Bioshock Infinite costume pack, with five characters bundled together for six bucks. I had to force myself not to buy it so impulsively.

Somehow, that reminded me that my avatar and theme were kind of outdated, so I decided to head into the PlayStation Store to check out some newer ones. I was already aware of the Store update before, but this was the first time I spent more than a couple minutes in it. I have some good things and bad things to say about it. I like the new way you can search games. No more selecting the first letter and scrolling down a long menu. Now you type it out until the option presents itself to the right. You select a game, and everything related to a game is there. Not bad. It also looks cool to me. Some may like or hate the new look, but I feel the minimalist style and font choice are definite improvements.

There's a lot I hate about the new Store though. It's fucking slow! I mean holy shit! At least the old Store booted up in five seconds. This one takes as long as a game to load up. Every individual action within the Store is sluggish as well. I don't know if it's because of old hardware or poor optimization, but it's a problem, and I don't like it. While searching for games is a lot easier, I swear that process involving themes and avatars is even worse than before. There's absolutely no good way to filter what I want to look for. I can't text search for themes and avatars, so if I find a cool theme that I want to save for later or tell a friend about, I have to slog through the one huge menu to find it.

I found a cool tank theme among the stuff I care not about in the slightest. It's a dynamic theme that shows some German tanks shooting stuff, I guess. I decided not to buy it, but I wanted to and probably will in the future. Apparently, it's the second theme in the series, and I wanted to see what the other one was. Boy, what a pipe dream! It took me 10 minutes to find that one theme in the first place, and I suspect it will take just as long to find it again. As for the other tank theme, fuck it. I don't know how to find that. It might as well not exist as far as the Store is concerned. The filters do not help at all with these themes, since they are only categorized in areas such as "Action" or "Strategy". I can't find those tank themes using the filters. The filters included probably only make up 2% of everything in the themes and avatars section, and that's terrible.

I bought a Terraria avatar for 50 cents. Quick and easy since the avatars were at the top of the menu. Can't say the same about those avatars in 6 months though.

That's where my short journey ends. I learned a lot of new stuff about the PS3 since I last did anything on it other than play games occasionally. There was a lot to take in, and I can't imagine what it would be like for a person new to the PS3 to take in all this and more. It can be difficult to keep up with everything in the games world when you have limited amounts of leisure time, or don't have to do that as part of your job!

When this game came on sale for $30 on Steam, I had some sort of itch to play this game. It was my birthday recently, and I decided to spend some of that money on some games, Far Cry 3 included. After all, who could argue with playing Giantbomb's Almost-Game-of-the-Year? Now that I'm about halfway through, I decided to jot down some things I've noticed about the game.

I never touched Far Cry 2, but I have played a little bit of the first Far Cry just to get a sense of what the games are fundamentally about. It seemed cool, but then I had other games to play, and the original Far Cry just seemed too dated to hold my interest. It still looks nice for a 9-year-old game. (Though, I think Half Life 2 looks a bit better.) I'll probably go back to it some day, but Far Cry 3 is without discussion superior in every way.

Now, I really like open world games in general. They give me the power to do a multitude of things within the game's rules and still allow me to tell my own story. In Far Cry 3, I was able to craft the story of a man who shot an enemy truck driver in the face, leading to the truck flipping over, killing the passenger, and exploding, all from a single bullet, and just before a tiger ran up to me and chased me to an enemy stronghold and wiped out half the guards there before succumbing to a Molotov. The story continues from there, and open world games like Far Cry 3 allow me to tell my own personal experience that I feel is so rewarding.

Not that the game's own story seems to be any good so far. While the game sure opens strong, the rest of it feels pretty flat. There's the ever-present character dissonance, like in many games of late, where it takes little time for the character you play as to go from "I've never held a gun in my life." to "most efficient mass murderer in history," but that is the least of the story's problems. The goal is to rescue all of your friends and get off the island, but it feels like every time you're one step closer to meeting that end you get a cutscene that mostly just affirms celebration of game progression through the game without any meaningful story progression of character development. I rescued one guy, and all I ever got out of saving him was something along the lines of, "Great, man! Keep going!" It's not doing anything for me. Vaas is great, though, and I'd hate to see if his character is ruined in the end or not. (Do not tell me. I will find out myself.)

I've also heard talk about the game being kind of racist, and I came into the mindset that there was a particular scene that was offensive, or something along those lines, but the problems are actually intertwined into the story's themes. There's a list of sidequests known as "Story Quests" (confusing, right?) which are basically "fetch some things for me because you are, like, the chosen one." It's amazing how the islanders are in awe at the magical bullshit you are supposedly able to possess, and they use that knowledge to use you for their petty grievances like taking photographs of dead people, spying on husbands, and confirming the existence of aliens. Are the islanders really that pathetic that some obnoxious white kid can crash land into the island and put the mystical native magic to better use than any of the natives. They practically revere him as some kind of hero that will deliver them out of the darkness. This is the "Noble Savage" trope in all its non-subverted pureness. I would like to hope that the racism implied in Far Cry 3 is due to incompetency in the writing and not a reflection of the writer's actual views.

So the story is disappointing, to say the least, but after hearing discussion on the Bombcast and elsewhere I wasn't at all surprised. I did expect great gameplay, however, and in that regard I wasn't let down at all. The shooting feels great as it should in all FPS games, but where the game really shines is your ability to take out dudes however you want. I could go in guns blazing, snipe enemies from afar and watch as they freak out over nothing, or stab dudes in the face and neck up close and personal. Whichever gun or method I choose, it's always fun to kill dudes. Sometimes, random events in the world happen, such as firefights between pirates and animals or natives, and things like that help make the island feel like a living world. The AI is kind of dumb in spots, but it makes up for it in being really dumb in others. I watched as an AI buddy walked into a burning gas tank and died while another affirmed how awesome of a person he was until he stupidly walked into the tank and burned to death himself. There are plenty of ridiculous AI moments like that, so don't worry. Climbing radio towers is also pretty fun for something that sounds so mundane, and the game does a great job of making the rusty, dilapidated radio towers feel like they will collapse at any minute as they creak in the wind and fall apart. Reaching the top sets off a new and exciting adventure every time, as you view your newly sighted lands just waiting to be explored.

And boy, how awesome exploring is. While there's basically only one environment (jungle) the island's terrain is full of interesting little nooks and crannies that surprise at every turn. There are treacherous roads that aren't marked on the map to drive on, mountains to climb, rivers to swim across, waterfalls to jump off, and caves, caves everywhere, to search for relics. A few spots even include massive vertical craters with water at the bottom, and they look awesome. It also helps that the game looks incredible on PC, where you can best appreciate the game's smallest details. There are all sorts of animals on the island including deer, pigs, tapirs, cassowaries, bears, and the infamous tigers. What deer and bears are doing in the same tropical world as cassowaries and tapirs is beyond my understanding, but coming across these animals is pretty cool nonetheless. Sometimes, the animals will even help you out, such as tigers and bears destroying enemy camps at short notice. Some animals are encountered all the time while others, such as the snake and the crocodile, appear so infrequently that when they manage to jump out and bite my arm out of nowhere it frightens me every time.

The crafting is pretty interesting, as it's mainly a system implemented to keep you from unlocking all the good stuff early on. It only takes animal skins to craft better gear, so I spent the first few hours exploring the island looking for animals to kill, and within little time I had some pretty badass gear with me. It seems kind of cheap that you can get the best equipment in the game pretty early, but that's balanced out by the massive amount of enemies who want you dead as well as the fact that you are not a bullet sponge.

The other system in related regards is the skill tree. There are three different trees you can spec in, and they mainly boil down into Ranger, Tank, and Stealth classes. It doesn't take long for you to level up, and you can get some pretty cool skills, such as jumping on dudes to their deaths and throwing an enemy's knife at another enemy after you took him down. You can unlock every skill in the game, which I feel is kind of lame in an age where you can have interesting character builds that play in totally different ways (like Borderlands) but that probably isn't the focus of the game. I have gotten to the point where I've basically unlocked every skill that I care about already and am just waiting for the rest to unlock, which is lame especially given that you can acquire every skill eventually.

I haven't made it to the second island yet, but what I have seen so far has been a mainly positive experience. It's just really fun to shoot stuff in this game, and the freedom it allows you to do whatever is amazing. I've had a great time with the game so far; however, I also feel that the best of times are behind me as I mainly prepare to finish the game. I can't think of a way that the second island could shake things up a bit, as I imagine I will be doing the same stuff over again. Everything I've heard about the squandered potential of this game is a total bummer. That said, I will be excited to continue stabbing dudes, exploring islands, and laughing at AI comedy, right after the halftime show is over.

The new SimCity game is almost out, and parts of the Internet has already condemned it into the incinerator of shame. What could possibly be the problem? At E3 last year, we were shown the power of the game's engine, Glassbox, and its ability to simulate a whole bunch of individual stuff in real time, and that along with other new impressive features made this seem like the streamlined modern SimCity game everyone's been waiting for. Fast-forward 6 months to the game's first beta release, where players could interact with the game for the first time, and an air of skepticism had formed around the game already.

Their biggest rallying cry: the city size is small. The game limits all cities to an area similar to a medium city in SimCity 4. That is a 4-square-kilometer box for those who want numbers and shapes. Getting a large city with a population of over 250,000 is a challenge, let alone 1,000,000, and that does not fare well given that there is only one size type of city. Further more, you can't put a city right next to another, and cities are only connected to each other via a single freeway offramp and some random railways, leaving vast tracts of empty space that will never be used. How visually unpleasing!

The above photo is a region from SimCity 4. From an aesthetic viewpoint, this region looks pretty awesome. There's a huge urban area that you could imagine existing in the real world. Those mountains are your mountains, and those cities are your cities that you made the effort to make look like a real city when viewed form orbit. The mountains and waterways in the new SimCity, by contrast, are premade, unmodifiable blocks of terrain. Yes, there is no terraforming.

From the looks of things, SimCity 4 looks to be a real winner in this fight. Over the last 10 years, SimCity 4 has accumulated a large and dedicated fanbase of modders determined to make their cities not just function properly, but also look pretty. Mods like ploppable RCI buildings, custom regions, and the well-known NAM mods have given this game a life that it wouldn't deserve if left on its own.

It's understandable then that much of the SimCity fanbase are crying foul over the new SimCity. The changes the new SimCity brings to the table are incompatible with the old way of building cities, a way that fanbase has had 10 years to get used to, and enjoy, particularly.

The new SimCity also brings a focus on city specialization. You can choose to have a mining town and sell your resources to your neighbors or invest in a gambling city to attract tourists, as examples. It's an interesting gameplay aspect that forces you to adapt to the region's characteristics and form not just good cities but a functional region on top of that. The problem many have with this is that there's no way to build a large city that includes just about everything. Huge primate cities like London and Paris are all but impossible to build. By the time you add all the special buildings, your city's population will have dropped dramatically, and your city won't be making any money. Lots of people just want one big city that does it all for them, and this SimCity does not offer that.

Apart from the game's looks, a lot of people are giving EA shit about how the online is handled. SimCity 2013 requires an always-on Internet connection due to the way the multiplayer is set up, or something. A lot of people don't buy it. Because of the way the game is built, city saves are located on the cloud instead of the hard drive, meaning players don't have access to tweak their region and don't have control over what happens to it. If something bad happens to their city, it's the developer's fault and not the player's, a responsibility many don't want to give up. The Multiplayer allows many players to build cities in a region and work together to improve everyone's cities. There is easy potential for griefing, however. Many SimCity fans don't want others screwing up their region, and there's a real problem to back that up with. What's to stop an idiot from joining someone's region, claiming a plot and building a shitty city, only to abandon it and never return. That only hurts the people in the region who legitimately want a good experience. Time will tell how this experiment goes, but a lot of people aren't happy about the instability of this situation.

I encourage you to try and play SimCity 4 if you have an interest in playing SimCity 2013. Actually, I dare you to try, as I bet the game will run poorly many of the latest video cards (The game only runs on one core and only rarely takes minute advantage of my GTX 680) Also, the game is extremely buggy, and often when I am building a great city the game inexplicably crashes and sends all my hard work down the drain. The vanilla game also has some terrible traffic pathing issues that can grind even the best cities to a halt (Mods have dampened this issue greatly, however) Looking at SimCity 4 today, it is a functional disaster.

Among the cluttered mess, however, it is easy to appreciate SimCity 4 for what it is best at: a sandbox. The modding community has shown for years that people really care about how their cities look, and SimCity 4 provides players and modders the ultimate playground for their experiments. The new SimCity, however, is treated more as a strategy game than a sandbox, limiting the customization options older fans have gotten so used to. The additions the game has added are admittedly amazing, but without some of the great features of SimCity's past, and some questionable aesthetic design choices, it's left many sour.

The new SimCity is a completely different game from its predecessors, and the features it has added and taken away are dividing fans of the older SimCity games and those who have never played them before, and that uneasy apprehension makes it difficult to predict the game's success. If the game can't attract older fans and newcomers alike, it will likely be a disaster bigger than any one city could handle.

What's an introduction supposed to even be? Do people really care about some new guy the minute he enters with some long essay about who he is and what he hopes to accomplish? Do they want to know his favorite interests in the belief that they'll somehow form an opinion of him that will last throughout eternity?

Of course they do, and I don't care if you don't, so here it goes.

My name is Tyler, and this already sounds tripe. I'm a student at Las Positas College in Livermore, Ca, and, I don't know, maybe someday get a job in geography? I've always been interested in maps, and as a kid I'd always just stare at an atlas, seeping knowledge about whatever Poland's second city happens to be. It's most likely the practical solution, but what I really want to do someday is become a games editor. You might laugh at me and write it off as some "I like games, therefore I should get a job playing them" kind of cry for attention, but I seriously am considering such a position. I'm not putting all of my chips on it, and I certainly don't plane on having a job like the Bomb Crew, of course. They probably have the only such jobs in the world. I've pretty much been raised on video games since I was a wee kid, and because it's such a big hobby for me I'd like to expand that hobby into something more professional. Basically, I want to be able to converse about games in the same way some seemingly pretentious art critic talks about paintings.

That may sound stupid to the average reader. "Who cares about the intricacies and symbolism? I just wanna see dudes punching other dudes in the face and explosions and stuff." Problem is that isn't really doing it for me anymore, and as I've observed the industry in the past few years it seems games criticism is moving away from grading games on a scale of its components and more towards the criticism we see in other media. Ten years ago, games were rated based on an aggregation of components such as graphics, sound, gameplay, and ... tilt? Whatever that is! That was back in the days of if one game averaged out to be a tenth of a point higher than another, well, then that must be the better game. Nowadays, it's more complicated than that. We still merit games on the quality of their components, but we're starting to see other factors play a role, factors that may be specific to one game or the entire industry as a whole that can't be given a numbered rating.

I just want to be able to talk about games intelligently, and I figure if I can do that enough, then I could get a job in something that I love and really care about. It's going to be a long road, however. I'm going to have to read a lot of books, write a lot of essays, read a lot of essays, write essays about essays, and then read some more, about things that in no way are related to video games, and not necessarily because I had to in a college course, but also just in general. As Adam Sessler points out, "Read a lot of other writers out there, ones that aren't writing about video games ... it helps you invoke a sense about what you like, what you don't like, what's interesting about a game." And also, "You need a broader perspective. You need to be able to contextualize games in the larger culture." That's what I want to do.

That's a dream of mine. It probably won't happen. Dave recently pointed out how hard it is to get a full-time job in games journalism, how there are so few people there are with such a job, and how connected you need to be to games writers in the first place. It's ok, though. I have a backup plan: get a degree and a career related to that degree, whatever it may be.

Well, that's enough of that depressing stuff. Um. My favorite food is pizza, without mayonnaise and not in a sphere. I mainly play PC games (my GTX 680 does the talking), but I also have a PS3 for exclusives and a Vita with a bucketload of games (but mainly to play Golden). Senior year was the best moment of my life.

I have a lot of favorite games, such as Burnout Paradise, Uncharted 2, Just Cause 2, Skyrim, and among others, but my most favorite game would have to go to Red Dead Redemption. That game has the most brilliant story I've ever seen in a game, and it's not limited to just cutscenes. The atmosphere and beautiful environments really warp you back in time over a hundred years ago and make you care about the factor's leading to the Wild West's demise. It also has the best ending in a game. Giant title card and music cue for the win! I could talk more in depth about why I like that game, but that's another 20 paragraph essay for another day.

I am an active player of World of Tanks. I'm on it almost every day, so if anyone's interested in playing with me let me know. The username is the same as it is here.

So yeah, there's my first post here. If you're looking at this from the future, you now know something about my life from early 2013 and how that has changed up to the present. Also, let me know how this entry could've retained viewer attention for more than 5 seconds after a casual glance. Life isn't over for me yet, and I still have a lot of work to do, God willing.