DAY 1

I made a promise, like I am apt to do, to have my album recorded within the next ten days, since there are only ten songs on the album. If I don’t have it done, my buddy Rowr will be able to change my statuses and other terrible things to shame me for not finishing the stupid thing. Keeping in mind, though, that I am only talking about having the songs recorded, and not released. After they are recorded, I’ll need to meditate on a name, transcribe it in case it ever becomes necessary, see about cover art (I have a few names in mind) and apply for Creative Commons. So while the album is finished, it’s probably not going to be available until February. That’ll at least give me time to listen to it over and over and consider the mixing.

So, real quick, I’m going to put up a track list, mostly so I can keep it as a running tally of what songs are done.

The album is currently untitled, and I refuse to self title an album, so something will probably end up appearing soon. I have a few bouncing around in my head

1. They Already Won

2. Speak Lightly

3. Right Hand Drive

4. Of Empathy As A Male Trait

5. European With American Hours

6. That’d Be The Mists

7. Think About This Later

8. I Didn’t

9. They Already Won (Reprise)

Italics mean Recorded.

Each of the songs have a kind of interesting circumstance for me, so I’m going to try my best to give a back story on the creation of the song while not really discussing it’s meaning to me. I mean, what’s the point in art if there’s only one correct interpretation?

So the first song, “They Already Won”, is done, and has been for a little while now. It’s a rough, ethereal electronic tune that was born out of my first weekend with having my production tools fully functional. The song it started as was radically different, too. The feel of the song, originally, was like a big thumping dub song, with pounding bass and scattershot drums. I ended up keeping the drums, but within the course of a day, the song started as one thing and ended completely differently. It only recently had a meaning attatched to it, which’ll come up when the time to talk about the reprise surfaces.

The creation of the song was also the birth of my aesthetic towards the variance of a song, and the idea of what a song needs. It’s only three instrument tracks, swirling around each other and spacing themselves widely away from each other. When I had the sounds I wanted, I knew right then and there that I had everything I needed to call this song finished, to call it mine. While some of the songs are limited by resources- not having a proper drum kit- I feel absolutely secure that I have everything I need to make these songs complete.

DAY 2

So Day 1 and 2 are gonna go up on the same day, since I forgot to post Day 1. Let’s look at the track list.

1. They Already Won

2. Speak Lightly (Recording)

3. Right Hand Drive

4. Of Empathy As A Male Trait

5. European With American Hours

6. That’d Be The Mists

7. Think About This Later

8. I Didn’t

9. They Already Won (Reprise)

Speak Lightly. I had the song completely written up months ago, and felt wonderfully comfortable with what I had written down. I came back months later, and looked at the writing I had at the top of the sheet, and… couldn’t make heads or tails of it. It’s complete tonal gibberish that was fascinatingly ugly, and I’m not sure how I could ever have intended that to be recorded if it was ever even close to that. I recorded a rendition of it to serve as an intro and bridge, twisting it around to help slide into the actual content of the album in comparison to the bouncy, “having fun on a cloudy day” feel of They Already Won.

So, essentially, I wrote a song today. It’s not beautiful, but, I’d be concerned if it was. It’s an introduction to both my vocals (one of a few things I have left to record) and percussion (also). It’ll likely be the first test of the listener, too, to see if they’re that interested. I know that, for me, a bad singer can ruin everything, and while I’m not a bad singer, taste is taste. I’m going to expel that now and try to just record it.

It’s also the first time I’ve had to record final takes on instruments, with metronomes and all that. I’ve no reason to lie: I’m not a great musician. I’m only slightly better than some. So what the songs are consisting of are cobbled together from multiple takes of the same sections until it feels good to me. If I ever perform this, I intend to hire actual musicians and just sing, since I don’t really trust a lot of people with my lyrics. Delivery is everything.

Man, it’s going to be weird to face people who’ve heard the album. It’s something I’ve had bottled inside so long, and it’s so many… odd stories that I wish I knew now how they’ll react. That’s one of the things that really excite me about the whole process.

Back to work.

I promised this quite a while ago, but it’s finally done.

I’m going to do this Lawrence Lessig style, and explain three issues and then how Audiosurf counters these three issues.

1. I was going to start with some anecdote about the way things were, but, I know a frankly horrifying amount of people that started playing console games last generation, or maybe with the playstation. They genuinely don’t remember how things used to be on consoles and arcades. So I’m going to attempt to explain this as best as possible.

Before “immersion” and “storytelling”, games were about “fun.” It’s a weird concept, I know. The idea that having fun and achieving goals isn’t related to story progress or statistics seems completely foreign. Rather, your reward used to be things like entering three characters as your initials and watching your name on the high score board. That used to be enough! That used to be the Holy Grail, the top ten, fifteen, or twenty names on a leaderboard. It was a tangible, provable statistic of how good someone was at a game.

The issue is that consoles, for a long while, did not have online systems of any fashion. Sega made the first steps towards an internet gaming service on a console, first with the Saturn adaptor and then with the Dreamcast. I’m sure someone will call me out for this, but, there were very rarely games that took advantage of the idea of having people all over the world compete for scores. And despite that, the 32 Bit Era disposed of scores, except for Time Trials and ports of Arcade shooters, instead of the idea of most games having points.

The modern answer to this is twofold, both best shown on the 360: Friends leaderboards, which I find self explanatory, and Achievements, which were deliberately, and cynically, designed to fill this need. They fail at this task because they don’t say you are the best at anything, just that you can do certain things of varying difficulty. They aren’t a measurement of skill, but rather, of time, and of varied libraries. How do we get rewards in games anymore?

2. As games have grown, inputs have grown. Pong was played with a dial. Pac-Man was played with a joystick. Galaga was played with a joystick and a button. The NES had the D-pad, two action buttons, and a start and select buttons. Controllers now have at the least 14 buttons (D-Pad is one button, that’s why a D-pad works). This is a key factor as to people losing their interest in gaming. If you have four or five buttons, it’s pretty easy to explain what’s supposed to happen, and what’s supposed to do what. A lot of modern games that we, the game consuming public, think to be the best games ever made alienate these casual players. There’s just too much to remember.

The need for so much complexity seems artificial most of the time, since it is entirely possible to make games with limited command inputs. The less a game does, mechanically, the more critically acclaimed it seems to be, with the exception of PC gaming. However, the complexity is balanced by the availability of Popcap and other available casual games that almost seem like miniature games.

The connection between minimalist game design and consumer response is well established; most games that attempt to design a game with as little as possible end up getting large critical acclaim and mild cultural impact, with very little in the way of sales. That is to say, the games that do more with less developed a large, dedicated fan base. Think of how many people you know that quoted jokes from Portal after it came out. Think of how many people- myself included- get excited at any news from Team Ico. Think of how many videos exist of detailed Ikaruga runs. Think of the market response to Mega Man 9.

The best example of the power of small, minimalist gaming is the Wii game series. All four of those games- Wii Play perhaps undeservedly so- have enjoyed large scale successes, critically and from word of mouth. Of course, Wii Sports was a pack in, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was an extremely well received experience. The lack of complexity resulted in easy explinations, and easy understandings of the system. The limited negative response to Wii Sports seemed to mostly be a case of disliking popular things, or probably more accurately, a backlash against Nintendo for not packing in what we would view as a “Real” game.

3. Music in games is a very powerful force. Great game music is relived and played on a variety of formats and instruments. Many different songs live on in video game history, being revisited and often remembered favorably. There are now games dedicated exclusively to music, although the interpretation of what a game about music should be seems strange. They extol virtues of you recreating the music, instead of you creating or experiencing the music. It is very much a celebration of songwriters, but not songs.

Audiosurf meets all three of these concerns, and then extols virtues of its own.

Firstly, the entire purpose of the game is fun. It aspires to nothing else but fun, and excels in this. The point of the game is to use a vehicle of your choice- each vehicle has different tricks and scoring mechanics- and traversing a course. It takes the familiar puzzle mechanic of tiles moving towards you, and instead, moves you towards the tiles. You collect them and score points with them. There are different achievements and multipliers that can positively or negatively affect your score. Most importantly, for replay value, the levels are automatically uploaded to a global scoreboard. You can immediately compare your own progress with anyone else that has played the level.

Secondly, the inputs are as simple as it gets. You can either use the keyboard, mouse, or gamepad, but no matter the inputs, the controls are the same. You move left to right, and you collect colored blocks. Some cars have specific actions that are activated with an action button. Never does the game get more complicated than “move, get some, dodge others, action button does stuff.” This makes anyone able to play the game. However, unlike most games, there are clearly terms of failure, like when you collect so many blocks that the grid overflows.

Thirdly is how the game uses music. See, when I was discussing the levels, I didn’t mention- purposefully so- that the levels are generated from the music you select in the program. Any audio file you have- provided it’s not laced with DRM- is a new, exciting level in the game, and a different challenge to overcome. The game intelligently analyzes the song, and forms a landscape with it. The blocks are placed in correlation with the song’s instruments, and a landscape is formed with the pace. Faster parts go down steeper slopes, and slower parts are uphill crawls. The slopes are determined in relativity to the pacing of the songs. But even considering the logical construction of game from music, it does create a different way to interpret and experience the music. Visualizing music is an interesting hobby, and the game is a form for allowing the visuals to serve a function, and for that function to be redeeming in so far as a fun experience.

Audiosurf’s other virtues are many fold. It’s infinitely replayable, and only ends as soon as you’re out of songs to play. Its aesthetic is beautiful, confident, and moldable to player specifications. It’s an avenue for distribution of new, obscure music that would be difficult to find any other channel. It’s $10. It’s constructed with the love that only a singular developer can provide, AND that developer didn’t go insane and say he was better than some random designers combined. It’s easily scalable and compatible on a host of machines. It supports a wide array of file formats.

The one possible knock to have against the game is the lack of narrative, which is something that is becoming increasingly necessary in games, for better or worse. There’s no good answer to that, and in the face of the rest of the things games provide, it’s really such a small thing.

All of these things are why I think Audiosurf is the best game of the year. Sorry it’s out after the actual relevance of the Giant Bomb awards, where I did vote for Audiosurf.

Cave Story on the Wii.

I'm assuming this to mean 2008 releases. I ended up playing Fugitive Hunter: War On Terror for my podcast ( Broken Lampcast on itunes) and that's pretty miserable.

So, as you can see by my wall, I’ve had some questions brought up to me. Rather than record another podcast answering them, I’m going to use my blog! Plus, I think I can express the Prince of Persia thing better with words.

Issue 1: Prince of Persia.

My issue with the game isn’t realism at all. Rather, it goes back to listening to a lecture from Jonathan Blow. I can’t quote verbatim, but one of the arguments he made was in the respect of games, and what they’re saying outside of what the creator wants to say. Some games say more with what the mechanics are, and what you have control over, than they do with their narrative and art style. Animal Crossing is a good example of this, where the game is a second form of society. What is that society, though? It’s disingenuine, it’s full of people that want things from you, and material goods that you need to pay exorbitant amounts for. And at the end of the day, after all those impersonal letters, everyone you know could just as easily be replaced. The player slaves day after day, endlessly, in order to meet some material need without any ultimate reward, and certainly without release. This isn’t what the designers intended the game to say, and I don’t have an answer as to what they could do to make the situation less awkward than it is. City Folk just enflames it by demonstrating limited contact with a few intimate friends, and placing services you need in larger, even less personal and more bureaucratic cities.

I’m getting off the point. My point is, I do not like the things that Prince of Persia is portraying about failure, self-reliance, and independence.  Now, this complaint could be leveled at Braid, since the time rewind function prevents all losses, but the difference is that the narrative, disturbing as it is, justifies it. He doesn’t rewind time because he’s magic, or whatever. He rewinds time because of his crippling fear of mistakes, of risks, and because of his problems with taking risks. When you’re rewinding time, you are undoing your mistakes. Now, since the player experiences time as we know it to exist, we remember what has been done in the past, and one would assume Tim has. The idea, though, of someone who does everything perfectly the first time only after making absolutely sure all other avenues are exhausted is a key part of the narrative. In Sands of Time, it was a cool dagger, and they didn’t pay any attention to what it really means to be able to reshape time as you see it, and the horrifying, devastating things that brings.

What Braid said of making mistakes, or more specifically the fear of making mistakes and taking risks, PoP embodies. You literally cannot fail. To my knowledge, there is no way to die in that game, whatsoever.  And the way that you are kept from failing is from another person. This communicates the idea that your failures don’t count for anything, and that there’ll always be someone for you to rely on, and you should never rely on yourself to do better, to get better at what you’re doing. Someone will be there to push the offenders back, to pick you up when you fall. This is a horrifying thing to say, on every possible level. It flies in the face of reality, and teaches lessons- and if you, dear reader, do not think the media you consume doesn’t teach you anything, think of how your manner of speech changes the more phrases you learn from TV, or how your way of interacting with the world changes based on playing video games. Those are warning signs, not charming reminders of how life is this toy or this moving picture- that are incredibly destructive to people who shouldn’t be hearing this sort of thing.

The things it says of independence are just as bad. Unfortunately, that part of my case involves massive spoilers involving the narrative of the game- particularly the ending- and it’s within the 90 day limit. Suffice to say, the ending is as appalling as anything in the game.

Issue 2: Resistance 2

Jastaz was here, and he played the multiplayer, so, I quoted him- and paraphrased a little bit here and there.

“The multiplayer varies. The competitive modes are, well, competitive modes, and they have a large variety of modes. However, the co-op is developed very well. The classes are well developed and varied, and you need a balance of all of them to do well. It’s a lot of fun.”

This is in direct contradiction to the Singleplayer. We covered it on a previous episode of the BLC, back when we put everything up on Sendspace. The short version is twofold: First, that the story is basically a bore, and the way they tell the story irritated the hell out of the both of us. lots of first person talking, and what I refer to as Hook-In-Mouth Cutscenes, where you’re guided a specific path to see something very specific that they want you to see. It speaks to me of a total lack in confidence in their own ability to tell their story, that they have to FORCE me to see what they want to show me. It also doesn’t help that the Vision bob is completely different in the cutscenes than it is in the game. They make a lot of assumptions about the characters- mainly that they’re interesting- and then undermine this with

Second, the gameplay itself. They’ve changed a lot of the mechanics for no good reason that either of us can determine. The weapons and tech have been changed to an incredibly far out Sci Fi vision contrary to most of the point of Resistance 1, the battles- which were closely contested indoor, or close quarter battles- have been switched out for huge open fields with slow progression, the level design is unintuitive, and there are a lot- a LOT- of one hit kills, which is never, ever fun. Especially if they’re jump scares at the same time, which many of them are.

So, our abbreviated position on Resistance 2 is this: Singleplayer is a buggy horror show and plays like an afterthought, and the multiplayer is great and well defined. They had a lot of confidence in their multiplayer suite, and NONE in their singleplayer campaign, and it’s transparent.

I’m not sure if this is something I would want to do again in the future, since I would like to think we’ll be able to express ourselves well. That last podcast, though, wasn’t done on a lot of sleep.

And if you were planning to play MGS4, you should have Big Boss Is Alive done it by now.

This blog! I was able to just write for fun for a while, and while that fell off during the finals, it’ll be coming back in a big way next year. Click on the pictures to get the files, guys.

My podcast! Started on an indignant whim, Jastaz, Dave, and I have had a real blast making it. It’s something to look forward to doing and an avenue where I can talk about video games as much as I freaking want! We’re gearing up to do end of the year shit, which you can hear about on the next podcast, and we have even bigger, and better things in the future.

Music and video games! I’ve found more awesome shit in both fields this year than I did in any other year. For once, I agree with Pitchfork’s album of the year. I’ve played games online- Horde Mode from Gears of War 2 especially- with more people, and had more fun online than ever. I found ICO and had my world flipped completely upside down, then I got a blowjob while upside down, and landed on my feet content, happy, and kinda smelly.

Also, dick jokes!

The United States! That whole Barack Obama thing was great! Although I’m pretty bummed on all the gay marriage stuff.

My history professor, for being the realest motherfucker in the world.

One of the bridges I burned the year for got built up behind my back, and someone I previously assumed was completely fucking crazy is only mostly crazy!

Portal jokes are starting to go away, as is the goddamn song! Way to run it into the ground!

My buddy Chaz got back from his term in the navy all safe and shit!

And, most importantly, Giant Bomb Dot Com! Fucking coolest website in the history of the world! I wrote a humongous article about Fire ProWrestling Returns, and got featured on the front page the week after the site launched. There’s comic book and anime versions of this site, but fuck them! My heart belongs to Giant Bomb! And their chat channel is full of some of the nicest, best, and most fun people I’ve ever met and played games with. One of them even put some money towards my podcast on a whim. Rock on forever, Giant Bomb. So many shout outs to give. Goddamnit, I’m going to do it!

-Pepsiman, for putting up my huge wanky Fire Pro Returns article.
-Tanuki, for being my horde mode homie and also being a robot.
-Brukaoru, for laughing at my stupid jokes and being the podcast’s #1 fan.
-Motherfucking Matt Bodega, for being the world’s most excited man re; video games, and reminding me about how awesome games are.
-Casey, for having the best gamertag the world will ever see.
-Virago, for being so, so hot.
-Rowr and Johnny5, the Australian Kings of Power 4 Billion.
-MB, for being half financial backer, half dietician and all awesome.
-Everyone that had patience with me being the worst Gears player ever. You’re welcome for the shield idea.

And, finally, most importantly of all… crab claw.

ALRIGHT 2009, WE ARE GOING TO ROCK YOUR GODDAMN FLESH OFF! YEAHH!!

Well, not here. But if you were to go to my main hangout, you would find an album, and this week's episode of the Broken Lampcast.

I don't think the main problem with the game is that it's split into three games. It's main problem is that I didn't like Starcraft and this looks like more Starcraft.

So, I had started a blog elsewhere to talk about music, mostly because I was looking to avoid this username. Long story.