TL;DR - You can watch an archive of the Comic-Con concert here http://www.twitch.tv/twitch/b/433486043

At some point, you may have stumbled across this blog I wrote last June when I was invited to be part of the choir performing on-stage for the Video Games Live concert being held in conjunction with E3. It was a strange and magical experience, and I was instantly on-board when I found out we had been invited back to perform in not one, but two VGL concerts this summer.

So apparently my home town decided it was classy enough to need metered parking up until 10PM but not classy enough to install parking meters that take credit cards, which was a fun thing to deal with after fighting through an hour-and-a-half of rush-hour traffic trying to escape West LA. I eventually got to rehearsal which was rehearsal. Some of the songs were repeats from last year and some were new. "The Song of the Dragonborn" (footage from us last year!) made a triumphant return. The most notable additions were a song from a next-gen game (sekrit!) and "One Winged Angel" which always seemed like an odd omission from last year's concert. I mean, if we're talking about orchestral music from Japan, that's the song right?

I knew that Russell Brower was going to be back so this time I came prepared to nerd out and get my copy of the CE soundtrack from Diablo III signed. What I didn't know was that two other Blizzard composers were also going to be there. Neal Acree, who did a lot of the music for Heart of the Swarm, and Jason Hayes, who has been responsible for tons of Blizzard stuff including World of Warcraft, were guesting as conductors for songs they had composed. If only I had known, I would have tried to dig up more CE soundtracks buried in boxes somewhere in my home. Russel did recommend that Neal sign my D3 CD since he did a fair amount of the music for that game as well.

On the day of the concert I dropped my daughter off with my mom before heading down to Irvine. It was a crazy song and dance, trying to make arrangements for a full day's worth of childcare, but we made it happen. After arriving at the Verizon Amphitheatre a few minutes ahead of our call-time, I set about to find the choir and ended up with an interesting walking buddy. Derek Duke, yet another Blizzard composer, was there and he helped me find my way to the stage.

It's funny, all in all we did a total of four Blizzard pieces and, on my way back to the car after the concert, I overheard one of the audience members saying, "I think I would have liked this concert better if it wasn't this concert. I just wish they didn't have to kowtow to Blizzard just because it's in Irvine". All I could think to myself was that this kid clearly didn't get it. The whole point of VGL is to pay homage and respect to the people who have, in a way, created the soundtrack of our lives as gamers. What better way to do that than to put those composers in front of an audience of thousands with a full orchestra and choir at their disposal to show them what making music really means?

Other guest conductors included the return of Austin Wintory, the composer for Journey and the upcoming Banner Saga, and Eimear Noone, the recording conductor behind a majority of Blizzard's soundtracks as well as the conductor for The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddess concert tour.

They cut out the solo acts this year but kept the audience-participation sideshow in the form of a "motion controlled" Space Invaders, with the orchestra providing the soundtrack, and a Guitar Hero score challenge on "The Pretenders" by the Foo Fighters, with the orchestra and Tommy Tallarico wailing on guitar in the background. The original challenge was to play the game on hard, and when the contestant requested that he be allowed to play it on expert instead the audience lost it. They were clapping and screaming the entire time, getting especially into it whenever he activated Star Power. #eSports I guess?

The concert was a ton of fun and I'm really excited for the upcoming show this Saturday at San Diego Comic-Con. Actually, I had originally planned for this blog to be a big mess of text covering both concerts. However, I recently learned that, as part of a sponsorship by Ubisoft to promote Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, the concert is actually going to be free admission on a first-come first-served basis. On top of that, the entire thing is going to be streamed live by Twitch! It's probably going to be crazy packed, but if you're in the area it might be worth considering heading down to the venue a few hours earlier and scoping out the line. You might get a free concert out of it! Otherwise, I'd strongly recommend that everyone check Twitch on Saturday around 7:45PM PDT when I'm sure the VGL stream will be sitting right up at the top.

And hey, if you tune in, you might even see me! Then you can say to yourself, "Hey, I know that guy", and it will be cool for like 3 seconds before you forget all about it.

Oh right, the worst Burger King in the world! Well, we had a dinner break in between our rehearsal and the show and so, with extremely limited options, we decided to go to Burger King. It was Wednesday so I went for the $4.99 Whopper meal "for here", rings instead of fries, and started waiting for my "fast" food.

They were still quite a few numbers behind me, I saw them serving number 37 immediately after placing order number 44, but it was only a few minutes before the person standing in front of me in line received his food. I knew I was next. I saw the Whopper sitting on the warmer and some onion rings in a weird plastic scoop/tray thing over the salty, greasy abyss of fries. The guy arranging the orders grabbed the rings, the Whopper, and put them in a bag.

Hey, waitaminute.

My heart sunk as he grabbed the receipt clearly labeled number 50 and headed for the pickup window. He then proceeded to serve my friend who ordered after me, number 47, and a few other people waiting at the drive-thru. I was about to say something when the girl working behind the register noticed me looking antsy. She saw my ticket, sad number 44 still sitting up there, then shouted to the back for more onion rings.

Finally, after a few minutes more waiting, the rings were done. The girl was extra nice about it and stuffed as many rings as should could into the small container before piling a handful of extra ones on top. The food was fine and we still had plenty of time, but I have never waited for anything close to the 15 minutes it took them to serve me my "fast food".

Whatever, fuck that place. See you (you see me?) on Saturday!

Spoilers, duh

Cut into three pieces so it's legible, I need to get this game out of my brain! I wish I knew how to use spiffy things like Photoshop so that I could actually make this look cool. Each colored line represents a different dimensional trunk.

EDIT: Ok, added the Robert/Rosalind shenanigans to the timeline

Disclaimer: I have not played Dead Space 3 (DS3) and am basing my opinions primarily on various reviews and information gleaned from the DS3 discussion during this week's Bombcast.

Encroachment

It's no surprise that we, as core gamers, feel an instinctual aversion towards microtransactions. We remember a time when buying a game meant buying a game. We remember when Free 2 Play games first started cropping up and how horrible they were. And now that they've started to bleed their way into our games, we're afraid that the well of fair design has been poisoned by greed.

Electronic Arts has been at the forefront of the $60+ movement, but their tentative forays have been largely innocuous. An unlock here, a bonus item there, and a minor hullabaloo over Mass Effect 3 multiplayer. And while it came as no surprise to me when it was revealed that DS3 would also have microtransactions in-the-box, I was somewhat taken aback by the massive amounts of vitriol being spewed across the internet.

After all, we had no idea how the in-game economy was balanced. How could we possibly pass judgement on a system we knew nothing about. But no, a majority of people seemed to be asserting that the actual design of the game was irrelevant. The mere presence of microtransactions was enough to condemn DS3, sight-unseen.

Denoument

Now that the game is out in the wild, it sounds like microtransactions have had no negative impact on the design of DS3. The rate of resource accrual is properly balanced for players that choose not to spend any additional money, and in keeping with other EA titles, the single-player microtransactions exist only to serve as a shortcut for impatient players.

So I ask you, where is the harm? Are we willing to condemn EA for crimes they have yet to commit? Is it our place to deny the others the freedom to "ruin the experience" in our perception?

Development costs are inflating, making secondary revenue streams more and more crucial to a game's success. When the next generation rolls around, refusing to support a game that features microtransaction may mean finding a new hobby. Or sticking exclusively to the Wii U.

POLL: Here

2012 has been nothing if not a controversial year. Both the journalist and enthusiast communities helped prove the law of mob intelligence (lowest IQ among mob members ÷ total number of mob members = mob IQ) and a disturbingly large number of game developers have been either imploding or exploding. Despite all this, there has been such an embarrassment of content to experience that I have barely scratched the surface on many of my most anticipated games.

So without further ado, here is my 2012 in a nutshell.

2012's 2011 Game of the Year Presented By Steam Sales

Saints Row: the Third

I don't like open-world games. I never have. And I've tried, putting at least a dozen hours into the most lauded entries in the genre including Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption, but have never been able to fight my way through the middling mechanics and, in the case of GTAIV, the mental disconnect between the tough and gritty storyline and the manic insanity of what is presumably "fun" about the series.

Then Saints Row: the Third happened and GiantBomb went nuts. I wanted to jump in again, just to see what all the fuss was about, but I couldn't in good conscience pay full-price for the game. It was trapped between a rock (my overwhelmingly negative past experiences with the genre) and a hard place (the impossibly high expectations set by Giantbomb's staff and community). So I waited and waited and waited for the Steam Summer Sale and the $12.49 price tag it brought.

Needless to say, I was blown away. It may have something to do with the fact that I'm a mouse & keyboard snob, but for the first time the gameplay of an open-world game felt tight. The driving and shooting were actually a ton of fun to do. No more slogging through action sequences just to get to the next story beat, I actually went around looking for trouble. And the snappy writing and cartoonish violence set the proper tone for gleeful mischief which is where open-world games shine. Now I'm a believer, and am actually looking forward to Grand Theft Auto V with something approaching actual excitement.

Runners-up: Pushmo, The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings

Best Surprise

Tie: Binary Domain / Sleeping Dogs

These are games that, by all rights, should not have been any good and were so far off my radar that I barely knew they existed outside of their name sardonically stated on the occasional podcast. Then they came out. Then the buzz started, but almost nobody bought them anyways. Then they started showing up on PC at extremely discounted prices. So I bought them, and wow.

Binary Domain is the wrong sort of game from the wrong developer in the wrong genre, so how is it so fun to play? The tactical options afforded by the location-based destruction of enemies make every encounter and interesting puzzle to solve. And while the upgrade paths are extremely shallow, they offer just enough customization to instill a sense of ownership over the characters. Sure, the wildly twisting plot is standard fare for anyone who regularly partakes in Japanese fiction, but the story meshes with the understated western designs of the cast in unexpectedly wonderful ways.

Sleeping Dogs, on the other hand, was caught in a development hell that most games would never have made it out of. The people at United Front Games are nothing short of miracle workers for managing to resurrect the game from its own ashes and elevate the entire genre in the process. The shooting is solid and the melee combat is sublime. And with numerous small touches they created a world that encourages players to drive within the lines and maintain that immersive sense of place.

Runner-up: Asura's Wrath

Geico Insurance's Best Game to Play While Driving

Magic: the Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013

...or pushing a stroller, or walking, or cooking, or giving my daughter a bath, or...

Hi. My name is StarvingGamer, and I am addicted to multitasking.

I have a restless mind that I need to keep occupied. As a kid, this meant lugging around a heavy, cumbersome book everywhere I went. Then the Game Boy Advance SP came out and I was diving a lot and there was this game called Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising and, well, that was that. Since then I have never left the house without a dedicated handheld device in tow, be it 3DS, Vita or, as it was for a majority of this year, iPad with Magic: the Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013.

MTG is a thinking man's game. A glance is all you need to get enough information to plan your entire turn, making it easy to play while on the go. And while DotP will never be fully-featured enough to fully satisfy my card-lust, the deck variety and system of unlocks are enough to keep me happy while my 15,000+ collection is in mothballs.

Runners-up: Penny-Arcade The Game: Gamers vs. Evil, Persona 4: Golden, SolForge Demo

Biggest Disappointment

Resident Evil 6

I've already spoken of the myriad failings of Resident Evil 6 at length here so I'll just say this: Resident Evil 5 was an incredible symphony mechanics, balance, and design. RE6 is a cacophony of dissonant ideas from developers completely tone-deaf to the successes of RE5.

Runner-up: Darksiders II

The Amazon.com Game to Pay Full-Price For and Not Play of the Year

Zone of the Enders HD Collection

As a person with a history of giving up food in favor of games, I have become more and more aware of my ever-growing pile of shame. In recent years, I have managed to crack down on my erroneous purchases for the most part, but every once in a while a few games slip through the cracks in my psyche despite the fact that I KNOW I will either not play them until they hit the bargain bins or not at all. This year, that game was Zone of the Enders HD Collection.

But what sets ZoEHD apart from the rest of the pack is my amazing ability to rationalize my poor life-choice. You see, Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner is one of my favorite games of all time and still the best example of high-speed, anime mech combat in a game to date. So where is Zone of the Enders 3? WHERE KOJIMA!? You keep teasing me but all you make is Metal Gear games! I want my Jehuty! I want my Anubis! I want my ADA!

So while I may never actually crack open the case and insert disc, hopefully my expenditure is the one push Konami needs to greenlight the next game in the series.

Runner-up: Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask

Game of the Year

The Walking Dead

This game has been talked to death, so I'll just say this. In all my time playing video games, I have never experienced a story so effectively affecting. The Walking Dead sets a new standard for interactive storytelling and player-choice that is going to be incredibly tough for anyone to top. I know I can't wait for the rest of the games industry to try.

Runners-up: 2. Persona 4: Golden, 3. Diablo III, 4. Mass Effect 3, 5. Borderlands 2, 6. Asura's Wrath, 7. Persona 4 Arena, 8. Binary Domain, 9. XCOM: Enemy Unknown, 10. Sleeping Dogs

Ok, sorry, I just need to get this out of my brain. Bear with me.

I've always been an In-N-Out guy, there was one two blocks from my high school which should be illegal, and was actually completely oblivious to the existence of Five Guys until I started coming to Giant Bomb. After moving to West LA earlier this Summer I finally found one of their locations in a nearby mall and today I decided I'd see what all the contentious bickering was about.

So I go there, I'm checking out the menu, and I'm thinking to myself "Awesome, look at all those toppings. I love toppings!" I go up to the guy and tell him it's my first time eating at Five Guys. He tells me the standard burgers come with 2 patties so I order a cheeseburger with everything plus green peppers and BBQ soss. Now if I was only hungry enough for a sandwich, everything would have ended hunky dory. That was not the case.

You see, as a lifelong frequenter of In-N-Out, I've become a devoted fan of fries served "animal style." For the uninitiated, animal style fries are fries served covered in cheese, grilled onions, and In-N-Out's secret sauce (namely Thousand Islands dressing). So you can imagine how intrigued I was as a topping lover, eating a joint that seemed to be all about the toppings, when under sides I see I can order my fries "Five Guys Style."

In eager anticipation I asked the guy, "So what are 'Five Guys Style' fries?"

He looked at me, looked sideways at the menu, and said, "Well, for the 'Five Guys Style' fries we put salt on them."

I tried to force my brain to hear an ellipsis as I waited for him to regale me with the cornucopia of toppings my fries could bring me if I ordered the fabled "Five Guys Style" fries, but no more words came. That was it, nothing more, Full Stop.

Have you ever had a time when your brain was having so much trouble reconciling reality with common sense that you burst out in mad laughter? Well, I can tell you I barely kept my shit together as I completed my order, paid, then abandoned my fiance waiting for the food to find a place to change my daughter's diaper.

I mean, what the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK? They might as well start calling their fountain drinks "Five Guys Style" because they put them in a cup with ice. Are their burgers "Five Guys Style" because they're made with meat? FUCK. Putting salt on your food isn't a "style," it's cooking 101 ie "seasoning your goddam food so it doesn't taste like shit."

Anyways, the food was alright but I think I'm still an In-N-Out guy. Toppings are great, but not 2.5x the cost great. Thanks for reading, I needed to get that out of my system.

Oh, and I got the cajun fries instead.

(I know the timeliness of this blog is a bit off, but various real-life issues and my continued obsessions with Borderlands 2 and X-Com prevented me from finishing it last weekend. Since I had already put a decent chunk of time in it I figured it would be a waste not to wrap it up, so here it is.)

What was it about Resident Evil 5 that got people like me, the Achievement/Trophy-ambivalent crowd, to play it over and over again, S-Ranking it almost by accident? It certainly wasn't the story. I have no problems appreciating campy fun, but once-through should be enough for anyone. No, what it came down to was the gameplay: the purity of experience only possible when every key system and mechanic hums together in perfect harmony. Capcom, in particular, has excelled at delivering this balance of design throughout the years from Mega Man to Street Fighter to Devil May Cry to Monster Hunter.

So what happened to RE6? Where did Capcom lose the plot and, in their attempt to please everyone, end up pleasing almost no one? It's easy to decry the "actionification" of the series and speak of nebulous things like "feel," but we need to know exactly what went wrong before we start talking about how to make it right. And before we can do that, we need to understand the symphony that was RE5.

Controller Meet Hand, Hand Meet Controller

Right now I imagine I sound crazy to some of you. After all, RE5 was also heavily criticized for the way it controlled. Moving like a tank and having to stand still to aim your gun seemed incredibly backwards for a shooter in 2009. What most people don't realize is that RE5 wasn't a shooter at all (despite what Capcom marketing might have wanted you to believe); rather it was a strategy game more akin to a real-time version of Valkyria Chronicles.

*record scratch*

You heard me. The controls, systems, enemy behaviors, and environmental designs combined to create a metered, tactical gameplay loop focused on resource management and efficiency.

The RE series has been moving further and further away from the horror genre since RE4, but survival was still the name of the game all the way throughout RE5. Enemies in RE5 hit hard, would absorb tons of bullets unless you were targeting the right place, and health and ammo were limited. This all would have been bad news bears if not for three key things: the enemies, the environments, and the shooting.

Enemies

The Majini were tough to kill. A few shots to the head did the trick, but the only thing a full clip to the chest got you was an angrier Majini. In a world where bullets weren't hanging off of every tree and a strict inventory system forced players to carefully pick and choose between versatility and longevity, it was a blessing that the enemies were so single-minded in their purpose. Their pace was slow and their approach direct, giving you a very clear timer in which to land the shots you needed. The threat was real and if you missed a few shots you were in trouble, but as long as you stayed calm and played smart, standing still wasn't a problem.

Environments

Of course staying calm and playing smart would have been moot if enemies were spawning right on top of you and you had limited space to work with. Thankfully the designers of RE5 thought of this and almost every environment was perfectly tailored for the encounter. Major battles took place in large arenas designed with obstacles to impede enemy movement without obstructing the player's aim. These areas offered looping paths for players that wanted to kite or bottlenecks for players that wanted to stand their ground. The environment was a tool players could use as they saw fit to take full advantage of their particular load-out.

Shooting

These various elements wrapped up as a cohesive package of sublime gameplay in the hands of the player, thanks to the shooting. Sure, Chris and Sheva may have moved like tanks, but they also shot like tanks with a mechanical precision. There were no aiming reticles showing you the general area through which your bullets were flying, there was a laser sight that painted a big red dot on the exact spot you were going to hit. It was exactly what players needed to tackle each scenario as the tactical combat-puzzle it was meant to be.

RE6 Meet Controller, Controller Meet Wall

Unfortunately, it seems the designers of RE6 either lost focus or were completely unaware of what made RE5 so great to begin with, and as a result we are left with a game that is the worst possible combination of survival and shooter. Enemies still hit hard, can still take a lickin', and ammo and health pickups may have been increased but are a far cry from abundant.

Enemies

The new J'avo are even tougher than the BOW's that came before. They come with head armor by default and actually become stronger if you happen to shoot them in the wrong place. They would much rather duck and weave and shoot as they wait for you to hit them in the arm so they can transform and charge into melee range while using their mutated arms to cover their face.

Environments

Unfortunately, the much more linear, cramped environments of RE6 are constantly getting in the way as you try to take your enemies down intelligently. The increased emphasis on shooting means that every area is full of various forms of cover, cover which exists for the sole purpose of obstructing aim. Navigating the environment is rarely an option as it doesn't take very many enemy bullets to permanently lose a chunk off your health bar, but standing your ground is also difficult unless you're willing to waste most/all your ammo trying to take out the melee J'avo before they reach you.

Shooting

And you're going to waste ammo. A lot of ammo. Because in addition to the faster enemies and cramped environments, the developers felt like RE6 needed one more feature to make it feel more shootery: aim variance/sway. The concept of an aiming reticle is simple: rather than indicate a point of contact for your bullets, a reticle designates the general area through which your bullets will fly. This is a thing that shooters do and so, with a total disregard for the experience of the player, a reticle was forcibly inserted into RE6. In order to "balance" this, the optional laser-sight that was rock-solid in RE4 and 5 now swims across the screen as if Chris and Leon have since been struck by some sort of degenerative nerve condition.

One Wrong Note

There was something magical about the way the various elements of RE5 came together to form a shooting experience that actually felt suited for a console (yes, I'm one of those Mouse & Keyboard snobs that finds games like Halo and Gears frustratingly boring). And maybe these faster enemies and cramped environments wouldn't have felt so bad on their own despite the laughable inclusion of "moving while shooting" that is so slow, you might as well be standing still. It's the loss of precision that has changed RE from a math problem, something with a solution that can be approached intellectually, to a dice-roll gamble every time you pull the trigger.

If RE5 is a symphony then RE6 is a cacophony, a wall of contrary noises forced to play simultaneously, assailing the senses in a manner devoid of any foresight or forethought. It straddles the line between RE5 and console-shooter, inheriting qualities of both but the virtues of neither. Is it the worst game ever made? Certainly not, and considered objectively, it's not the utter disaster most video game coverage outlets and internet forum-goers are making it out to be. But as a Resident Evil game it completely misses the mark, stripping key qualities from the experience in an ill-conceived courting with mainstream appeal.

Resident Evil will return, and when it does it will be on a new set of shiny boxes. Hopefully Capcom will get the message and make sure that someone in a position of power understands that mechanics for the sake of mechanics does not a good game make. I'm available on a contract basis.

Ripoff n. a blatant or unscrupulous copy or imitation

Last week the internet was jostled by Kamiya and his condemnation of Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale (PAS) as a rip-off of Smash Bros. This blew my mind. I've always respected Kamiya as a mechanics guy, I mean look at the way his games play. As someone who gets his kicks digging deep into systems, the myriad ways that PAS is decidedly NOT a rip-off of Smash seem glaringly obvious. So Hideki Kamiya, allow me to educate you.

Parallels within a genre

As the medium has grown, genres have been free to develop their own sets of best practices, various bits of design that remain a near constant between games regardless of developer. Take the fighting game genre for example. Pick up any fighting game from the past decade and chances are you're going to have two life bars on top, a timer in between, and more often than not a pair of super meters in the bottom corners. On your controller up will jump and down will crouch. For defense you're either going to be holding back or a dedicated block button.

Throws will beat blocks, blocks will beat attacks, and attacks will beat throws. Attacks will be divided into start-up, active, and recovery frames. Your character will have a hitbox and a hurtbox. And more likely than not, at some point you will be rolling your directional pad/joystick from down to down-forward to forward and pressing a button to get an attack. Bonus points if that attack happens to be a projectile and you used it to truncate the recovery animation of your previous attack.

Pick up any racing game and you know which shoulder button to press for gas and for brake. Somewhere on the screen you're going to find a minimap giving you a preview of the upcoming track. These things have become standard for a reason, because they work and they work well and they work best. You know what happens when a current-era-army-shooting-from-a-first-person-perspective game comes out and LT/L2 ISN'T ironsights. People throw a fit, and for good reason.

That's the great thing about working in an established genre. You have the work of thousands of people trying to make the best experience possible to use as reference. Ignoring that collective wisdom would be irresponsible and, quite frankly, stupid.

Of course the PAS situation is a little bit trickier. Outside of Power Stone (and a few blips not worth mentioning *koff* Onimusha: Blade Warriors *koff*), the arena fighting genre has been largely defined by a single franchise, Super Smash Bros. While quantity shouldn't matter, this significantly smaller playing field makes it easier to make comparisons and cry foul. But if we look a little closer, we can see that the mechanical divide between PAS and Smash is actually so large that in a more crowded category, each game could be considered part of a different sub-genre.

How are they similar?

Of course that isn't an entirely accurate assessment. In fighting games it has always been easier to split them up as 2D vs. 3D. But what about a genre where no matter the style of game, the playing field is going to be more or less the same like say, the driving genre?

Modern driving games are interesting in that, no matter their race, color, or creed, they're always going to be played from the same perspective. Whether it's carting, arcade, or simulation, the camera is going to be placed behind and slightly above the vehicle (with an optional cockpit/hood cam thrown in on occasion). The gas button and analog stick/D-pad will always be your primary way of interacting with the game liberally seasoned with brake or e.brake, boost, and shoot buttons. There will always be a mini-map somewhere on screen to let you know about your current position and a timer during race events.

The same parallels exist between PAS and Smash. Both games are played from a pulled-out side view of a 2d playing field. Your analog stick controls your movement and you use your buttons to whip out attacks, blocks, and grabs. On the bottom of the screen space is allotted to inform players of their current status as well as the status of their opponents. But that's where the games diverge.

What makes them different?

So how do you differentiate games like these? Much like the above example of GT5 vs Hot Pursuit, it comes down to mechanics.

In GT it's all about playing conservatively and controlled, following your line and waiting until the perfect moment to make a pass. Similarly, Smash is a position-based game that favors intelligent defensive play. Because of the % system, the only hit that really matters is the last one that scores the KO. This means that you actually derive more of a strategic advantage from avoiding combat altogether

In a 4-man FFA, every time you hit an opponent three players benefit: yourself and your two other opponents. In the cold calculus of the battlefield you are working to give a total of +2 advantage between your opponents while only earning +1 advantage for yourself. The deficit this leaves you at is compounded by the fact that you are now at risk of taking hits yourself which benefits all of your opponents. Tactical play of Smash involves avoiding conflict and pushing your opponents toward conflict with each other (made especially easy in a game designed around attacks that knock your opponent away), taking safe potshots from far away, and waiting for the crucial moment when you can swoop in and land a decisive smash.

On the flip side, Hot Pursuit is much more about aggressive risk-taking: drifting, oncoming, near-miss madness to build up boost to go even more dangerously fast. PAS is capturing a similar feeling by making the change from % based ring-outs to a super-meter system. Under this system, the one player benefits when you hit your enemy: you. Also the downsides of getting hit are significantly smaller since you're only worrying about the enemy doing the hitting getting closer to their own KO's, not every enemy on the field.

In a way, this almost makes PAS more true to the names Brawl and Melee. This focus on maintaining an effective offense is facilitated further by the introduction of combos. Unlike Smash where almost every attack is a one-off sort of thing that knocks your opponent away and allows them to reset to a neutral state before you can follow up, characters in PAS will be able to execute true combo strings of multiple attacks keeping your opponent in hit-stun. Sony even went as far as to include an infinite prevention system in the game. That's how far these combos might go.

It's almost as if PSA is MvC3 and Smash is a version of MK9 where every non-special attack is an uppercut.

In conclusion (TL;DR)

All the games in the Smash series are great, and a lot of that comes from intelligent design in terms of UI and controls. It's true that Sony borrowed a lot from Nintendo in this regard to make PAS, but game genres are incestuous as all get-out so this should come as no surprise. When you take a moment to consider the mechanics and the different ways they influence gameplay it should become clear that PAS is no more a ripoff of Smash than MK is a ripoff of SFII than Burnout is a ripoff of Gran Turismo.

Fuck man, video games.

What a week.5 it's been.

So as a baritone of talent in the LA area I had the unique opportunity of being called in as a ringer to perform with one of my old choirs in the Video Games Live concert during this year's E3. Since becoming a father I had to put all of my extracurricular musical activities on hold but I couldn't pass up the opportunity. Arrangements were made and I managed to find the help I needed to free myself up for two evening rehearsals and a full afternoon for the show.

Driving to my first rehearsal I was running late as usual. I'd like to blame extraordinary circumstances, but really it was because I was reciting the "just one more drop" mantra while playing Diablo III. Imagine my surprise when I walked into the choir room to hear them in mid-rehearsal of "And the Heavens Shall Tremble", the main theme from the game! It was a very surreal experience.

So I grabbed my music and we went through it. Mostly basic stuff with a lot of "aaah"s and "oooh"s, it is background music after all. The last piece, however, was something entirely different: "The Song of the Dragonborn". I had never actually heard the piece since I was completely uninterested in Skyrim due to being an Elder Scrolls hater despite trying really really hard to like Morrowind (decidedly un-tactical combat and a dumb leveling system, the two reasons I play RPGs). I was immediately blown away, it's a great piece of music and VERY fun to sing if you're the type of performer that gets into the theatrics of a piece.

So fast forward two-and-a-half weeks to the day of the show. I won't bore you with the details, but by the time I reached the Nokia Theater at 5:00PM for my 4:00PM call I was exhausted from only getting two hours of sleep before waking up at 6:30AM in order to do heavy lifting for the next nine hours. Basically the manager at my new apartment sucks and moved my move-in day twice, the first time without informing me at all (I learned about it by accident!) and the second time by calling me at 5PM the day before.

Anyways, I snuck on stage and thankfully they hadn't started rehearsing the choir bits yet. We went through the numbers and it was a lot of fun finally being able to put our sound together with that of the orchestra. All of the conductors were extremely easy to work with, full of enthusiasm and positive energy. I already knew we would be performing with Russell Brower of Blizzard fame, the composer of the Advent Rising soundtrack Emmanuel Fratianni, and of course the charming Tommy Tallarico himself, but it was a pleasant surprise to see Austin Wintory there as well to conduct one of his pieces from Journey.

So the concert started. A lot of talking happened in between acts but unfortunately they did not turn the monitors on for the choir meaning we couldn't understand a single thing being said. For some reason Walter Day was there in his trademark referee's uniform handing out a bunch of plaques to various random people from the development industry. And incredibly creepy looking Billy Mitchell was following him around holding posters for something but I have no idea what was going on. As a neat little bonus, however, one of the awards they handed out went to Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert. Immediately after the concert ended I ran into them backstage and (it's odd how familiar these people can seem when you've been watching them talk to you online for years) walked right up to Tim Schafer and said, "Hi, I gave you $100." In my defense I was only half-awake and they gave me some promotional buttons so hey, I must not have been completely horrifying.

There were a fair amount of solo-acts. Martin Leung, the Mario piano dude, played a Mario medley and then a bunch of random stuff while filling time for a Guitar Hero segment suffering from technical difficulties. Laura Intravia, the Zelda flute girl that I saw on Geekologie once, apparently made it as she was not only the soloist for a Mario medley and a Zelda medley, but was also the vocalist for "Still Alive" and the song from Journey. There was a guy called Viking Jesus who played a metal version of music from Star Fox that sounded completely unrecognizable. Finally, they doubled down on their Zelda with the violin girl Lindsey Stirling. She's a pretty solid player when you consider all the jumping around she does, but some of the hip gyrations she did near the end seemed a bit inappropriate. Maybe it's because the choir was viewing her from behind.

The concert went without a hitch for the most part outside of the aforementioned technical difficulties. The version of Guitar Hero they were trying to emulate wasn't working properly and it was interesting listening to the professional guitarist/guitar maker sitting next to me in the choir grumble about his low opinion of the game. Oddly enough he seemed genuinely interested during the "Still Alive" sing-along and I passed along all of the JoCo information I could. I'm proud to say I was able to sing along word-for-word without having to look at the screen for the lyrics.

I'm a bit bummed that amidst the confusion of the move I managed to forget to bring along my copy of the DIII CE soundtrack to be signed but part of me feels that doing so would sully my self-image as a professional musician. The only thing that I'm really upset about is the fact that my phone hasn't been charging properly so I wasn't able to take very many photos before it just up and died on me. So instead I'm co-opting pictures from other choir members that were posted to the group's Facebook page. At the end of the day, as beaten and worn down as I was, I can say that the experience was definitely worth it. I hope we get invited back next year.

~~~~~

When @scarace360 queried in the matchmaking thread about whether or not anyone knew a 6k+ damage combo with Filia using no assists and one meter I thought to myself, as the resident combologist, that I probably should. After burning through the Tutorial mode (mostly out of curiosity, I mean I know how this dance is done) I hadn't spent any time with Skullgirls because of other distractions like my continued addiction to ME3 multiplayer and LoL sessions with my BFF. The fact that I had just upgraded my PC to once again be able to handle my capture hardware cinched it, it was time to make some new combo videos for the WMFightClub (CBSiFightClub?) YouTube channel.

As with most fighting games, I was going to have to invest a significant amount of time acclimating my hands to the timing of the cancels and the general pace of the game. As a father of a now very active nine-month-old, I wasn't sure how I was going to pull this off, and at first opted to build the combo in segments.

So what came first? Well, since I was dealing with a juggle system a la MvC or BB the first thing I wanted to figure out was how to relaunch. After testing out her various normals I realized I could get some extra damage and height by chaining Filia's cr. into her . This, combined with her air-dash and multi-hitting j. gave me an easy way to bring the enemy back down to the ground for another chain into launcher. In between chasing my baby around the house I managed to grind it out, launcher>air chain>relaunch. In the end the notation looked something like this: +>+>+>>xxSJF, Air >>xxADF, , Land, >>+>>

Now I had to figure out if I could get another relaunch out of the combo. With the vague knowledge I had about the Infinite Prevention System I knew I couldn't abuse her j. again so I started looking for a ground-bounce. A few tests later and I found it in her j.. This time I worked on launcher>ground-bounce>relaunch which looked something like this: >>+>>xxSJF, Air >>(1 hit)>, Land, +>>

With them back in the air it was time for the ender. This ended up being Air xx+(3 hits)xx+ , Land , >>xx+ On paper this all seemed to make sense and so I offered up the following combo for testing despite the fact that I didn't actually know how much damage it did or if it would even work: Air xxADF, , Land, +>+>+>>xxSJF, Air >>xxADF, , Land, >>+>>xxSJF, Air >>(1 hit)>, Land, +>>, Air xx+(3 hits)xx+ , Land , >>xx+

Of course I couldn't leave it at that and kept grinding it out until I made it past the ground-bounce and, fuck me, the infinite prevention system kicked in. I couldn't understand why, I thought the rules stated that I couldn't start two chains with the same attack which I definitely didn't do, but I kept working at it making minor tweaks the further I got. In the end I found that I had somehow broken the infinite prevention system three times. A little research told me that the actual rule was no starting a chain with ANY attack used after the first two chains. A few adjustments and I recorded the following combo for the interwebs: Air xxADF, , Land, >>+>>xxSJF, Delayed Air >xxADF, , Land, >>+>>xxSJF, Air >>(1 hit)>, Land, +>+>xxSJF, Air >>xx+(3 hits)xx+ , Land, >>+xx+

At this point I was feeling pretty good. I had met @scarace360 's goal of 6k damage and had a pretty snazzy looking combo. Unfortunately it wasn't long after posting this combo to Shoryuken that disaster struck. You see, due to the understandable limitations of an indie development team the training mode in Skullgirls is devoid of AI options. As a result, I could not set the training dummy to auto-guard or, more importantly, auto-tech. Because of this I was forced to undergo the crushing revelation that a blue impact circle indicated a ground-bounce that could be teched out of. My combo was not a "true combo."

In my frustration and exhaustion I did something stupid. I tacked on a ridiculously impractical jump-in to boost my damage and simply cut the entire second relaunch out of the combo without any significant thought. Here's the offending combo in question: Air xxADF, >, Land, >+>>xxSJF, Delayed Air >xxADF, , Land, >>+>>xxSJF, Air >>xx+(3 hits)xx+ , Land, >>+xx+

Again my good friends over at SRK.com called me out on my bullshit. It was already midnight and I was running on 4 hours of sleep 20 hours ago. I was exhausted and my baby was being angry about going to bed and honestly I just wanted to close my eyes and let it all fade away. I suppose it was fortunate that it was a particularly fussy night as I was forced to sit on the sofa with my daughter and surround her with blankets and pillows while waiting for her to fall asleep. Since I was there I figured why not give these BnBs another try.

Maybe it was because the onset of delirium was giving me clarity of mind, but I finally really started to think about how I could make the infinite prevention system work for me rather than against me. That's when I realized that I didn't have to give up the second relaunch. After all, where a ground-bounce fails a wall-bounce may suffice and that's exactly what Filia's Gregor Samson Blockbuster provided me with. Two-and-a-half hours later with my baby passed out in a pile of pillows I was finished recording the absolute best practical BnB I could conjure up for Filia in one, two, and three-meter varieties: +>+>>xxSJF, Delayed Air >xxADF, , Land, >+>>xxSJF, Air >>xx+(3 hits)xx+ , Land, >>xxSJF, Air >>xx+((3 hits)xx+ , Land, >>>+xx+[xx+])

Bleary eyed, I tucked my baby in to her crib and flopped down on the bed. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't dream of combos that night. But at least I was able to sleep satisfied in the knowledge that I had come up with a 100% practical BnB that was better optimized than any of the other BnBs I had seen online. Also with her ridiculous 2.9k damage jump-in she can hit 6949 damage for one meter so I still met my original goal.

Thanks if you stuck with me this far, I know I threw a lot of jargon out there and this probably wasn't interesting to most of you but the way I rapidly uploaded these videos offered a unique insight into the way the combos I develop evolve. I figured why not share? Now that I can finally use my capture card again I'll probably continue doing combo videos as time allows. I'm trying to decide between tackling Cerebella, Peacock, or Valentine. Any thoughts?

The internet is currently flooded with varying levels of dissatisfaction at the closure (or lack thereof) to one of the greatest epics in the medium of video games: Mass Effect. While I've popped into a few threads here and there just to say, "I'm cool with it," I've had some difficulty figuring out how exactly to articulate the reasons why. That is, until I came across a link to the following article: "Mass Effect 3 Ending-Hatred: 5 Reasons The Fans Are Right". Since the article seems to be a fairly thorough compilation of the more prevalent complaints, I wanted to take some time to address them one by one.

If I fail to address your specific complaints about the ending feel free to post them here and I will share my thoughts. For ease of reading I am going to use the male pronoun in reference to Shepard but don't worry, I started my femShep play-through about an hour after wrapping up with manShep.

5. Brevity

In all honesty, I think this simply comes down to a matter of resources. Yes, if they took more time with the game, they probably could have created the hundred+ cut-scenes that would have been necessary to show the exact repercussions of every key choice within the context of each of the three end decisions. Is that what Mass Effect 3 deserved? Maybe. Is it something we should expect? I don't know.

I think there's something to be said for the thrill of not knowing exactly what happens next. After all, we view the universe through the eyes of Shepard who meets his ultimate fate regardless of the ending we choose (although it's unclear how much of his awareness he retains when he Assumes Direct Control). Shepard makes his exit from existence with his eyes blinded to the future. Isn't it fitting that we should follow suit?

4. Confusing and Under-Developed

How did Anderson and the Illusive Man get there?

Right before Shepard finds him, Anderson makes a comment about how the entire structure is transforming around him. It stands to reason that the pathway he took to the platform morphed itself away. TIM could have easily arrived the same way.

<Insert picture of Xzibit here> something something Synthetics something something

A lot of people seem to be taking the Catalyst's explanation of the reason for the cycle in a very reductive manner. "It wants to stop synthetics from killing organics by having synthetics repeatedly kill organics? That makes no sense!" But if you listen to its logic, it actually makes perfect sense.

It is the nature of organic life to to create synthetic life in the pursuit of science. This is inevitable. It is the nature of synthetic life to eventually seek the eradication of organic life as it is inferior. This is inevitable. If these two theories are true, then the eventual elimination of all organic life is inevitable. Luckily, whether or not we agree with the Catalyst doesn't matter. These are the opinions it has formed and therefore it has acted accordingly by creating an enduring cycle that ensures the continual, nonspecific existence of organic life.

In regards to ghost kid, the AI is obviously super advanced if it was able to create the Citadel, Mass Relays, Reapers, and engineer this 50,000 year cycle. It makes sense that it would be able to dig into Shepard's brain (full of synthetics) and manifest itself in a sympathetically and emotionally resonant form.

3. Lore Errors, Plot Holes

The Mass Relays are destroyed, why did they not kill everyone like in Arrival?

I think that this is a problem of limited perspective. Yes, when Shepard crashed the asteroid into the Mass Relay at the end of Arrival, it triggered a massive explosion that eliminated everything in the system. This has absolutely NOTHING to do with what happens to the Mass Relays at the end of ME3.

The Mass Relays are the creation of the Catalyst, and therefore it stands to reason that the Catalyst would have an understanding of its technology that far exceeds, by magnitudes upon magnitudes, anything that organic life has gleaned since the last reset. Even with our modern, mundane technology, there are plenty of things that make a big boom if you hit it hard enough with a rock despite being able to serve a significantly less lethal purpose.

Inferred Holocaust, isn't everyone is trapped on Earth without enough supplies?

"Without the mass relays no one who came to help Earth is going to be able to get home." This conclusion seems logical enough. "Everyone will die of hunger." This seems like a bit more of a stretch. In order to believe this, we have to believe that the billions of aliens throughout the galaxy obtain a majority of their sustenance from goods shipped from their home-planet and have no means of generating food on their own. We already know this not to be true, as the Quarian Liveships are able to provide for the entire migrant fleet.

As mapped out as the galaxy seems to be, it seems unlikely that the various races would be unable to located a planet close enough to start colonizing before they ran out of supplies. This may actually be impossible, but as far as I can tell nothing in the ME lore speaks definitively either way. Of course, there is also the possibility that some of them managed to escape because...

What's up with the Normandy at the end?

The Normandy, along with almost every other ship in the ME universe, has an FTL drive. Now, based on the speed at which the red/blue/green energy washes across London during one of the final cut-scenes, I think it's safe to say that it was moving at a speed of several hundred or thousand miles per hour. Hardly the 186,282 miles per second that light travels at and an FTL makes you faster still. Even if the energy gradually accelerates beyond the speed of light, that still gives every ship with an alert pilot a significant head start. Maybe hitting the Mass Relay kicks it into overdrive which explains why it caught up to the Normandy mid jump, but there seems to be no credible argument as to why Joker and the crew couldn't have made it to the Relay first.

Which brings up what seems to be one of the bigger sticking points for most people, how did the crew get back aboard the Normandy? Whelp, in order for the crew NOT to make it back aboard the Normandy we have to assume a few things. Your squad members that accompanied you on the run to the Conduit were taken out by Harbinger. The Normandy was too busy fighting in space so there wasn't enough time to pick up everyone before the Crucible kicked in. But there are other assumptions that can be made just as easily.

Your squad members following you to the Conduit were taken out by a Harbinger blast at some point, likely early in the run, but were not hit directly. It's clear that there's a lot of concussive force in the general area meaning a near miss could have resulted in a 20-foot tumble leaving whomever too groggy and too far behind to catch up to the rest of Hammer team. At this point it would appear that the push to the Conduit has been an utter failure, after all they wouldn't immediately be aware that Shepard and Anderson made it through, leaving them with absolutely no reason to stay on the surface. And what do Normandy crew members do best when they're stranded and in deep? They radio Joker for extraction.

And isn't that what Joker and the Normandy have done best throughout the series: operate independently from whomever they're fighting alongside and pull the crew through impossible situations? The Normandy is future fast and stealthy. Do you really think Joker would leave EDI and everyone else to die on the ground if there was a sliver of a chance he could save them? That's not the Joker I know. Then it makes perfect sense that once the Crucible pops and the weird energy comes out, he would want to get everyone away from it as quickly as possible since they would have no way to know what the energy actually is. And again, with his super piloting skills and one of the best FTL drives around, if there was any ship that could make it to Charon before the energy wave it's the Normandy.

2. Key Philosophical Themes Are Discarded

Tolerance and Unity

Now, this one seems a bit odd as it comes entirely from the perspective of a Paragon Shepard. After all, my Renegade femShep has a mean streak of space-racism and is really distrustful of synthetics. Hell, she told Legion to blow up all the heretics when she had the chance. Her consistent theme of INtolerance fits right into the Red ending where all synthetic life is destroyed.

But let's think about the Blue ending. The Reapers are a very advanced form of AI yet they seem incapable of true independent thought. After all, the true nature of synthetics is to eradicate ALL organic life rather than perpetuate some cycle. The only possible reason the Reapers have not evolved to this point must be because of shackles placed upon them by the Catalyst. So if you believe that synthetic and organic life can co-exist peacefully yet do not want to homogenize the galaxy into organic-synthetic hybrids, you have to remove the Reapers from the equation. By integrating with the Reapers, this is exactly what Shepard accomplishes. The cycle ends and the races of the galaxy are left alone in the hopes that they will learn to get along.

Synthetics vs. Organics

This entire argument seems to hinged off the fact that Legion and EDI disprove the theory that left to their own devices, synthetics will without fail ultimately seek the end of organics. First off, this is an extremely narrow view to take as relationships and opinions inevitably change over time. Just because Legion manages to convince the Geth and EDI seems to be super into organics (if you know what I mean) that doesn't mean that the peace will last. After all, the cycle is set to 50,000 years. Who knows what another 50,000 could yield.

And all of this doesn't matter because this entire organic vs. synthetic ultimate fate of ultimate destiny is nothing more than the Catalyst's personal belief. Just because it is a super duper awesome advanced AI doesn't mean that it's always going to be right 100% of the time. Maybe the Catalyst is wrong and given the right circumstances, we can all be friends. That's the problem with beliefs, they're incredibly hard to change no matter how intelligent you are.

Free Will

Sure, all three options at the end of ME3 suck in their own way. But sometimes there are sucky decisions to be made (Sophie's Choice anyone?), and sometimes your epic story turns out to be a tragedy. I've seen some arguments for a Shepard that says "fuck you Catalyst, we're going to do this on our own," and to me that seems like the most un-Shepard decision possible. After all, no matter how he is played, Commander Shepard is not an idiot. He knows full well that even with the combined might of all the races, there is no chance of beating the Reapers in an all-out war. Refusing to take the Catalyst's offer is an effective death sentence for every space-faring organic race out there. As idealist as he may be, when he is backed fully into a corner, he is willing to start doing the cruel calculus of war and execute on whatever is necessary to save as many people as he can in the best way he can. And the Blue ending is perfect for the idealist Shepard since he doesn't have to commit genocide and he doesn't have to alter the very fabric of life against everyone's will. He simply stops the killing.

1. Player Choice Is Completely Discarded

Complaints that the endings are too similar are short-sighted. They come from players thinking about the ending at a mechanical level based on the specific images they are shown at the end of the game. If you take a moment to consider the potential consequences of each of the three decisions you realize how drastically different each situation is. Sure the Normandy crashes on the same planet no matter what which I am okay with since it seems a bit ridiculous to expect Joker to flee in a significantly different way simply because the color of the scary energy coming out of the Crucible is green instead of blue. People are faulting the storytelling and ignoring the actual story.

In the Blue ending the Reapers are gone but everyone else is very much alive. While the landscape of the galaxy has been drastically changed, no specific judgment has been levied against anyone. They are all free to pursue their lives in a way they see fit, according to their established values. Shepard trusts the galaxy to figure it out for themselves and hopes that organic and synthetic can truly coexist.

In the Red ending Shepard sends a clear message by blowing up the Reapers and the Geth (and presumably EDI). Synthetic life is bad and does bad things. This will create a prejudice that will echo throughout the galaxy. Should AI ever be developed again in this reality, the outcome should seem obvious. Catalyst's predictions are likely to come true.

In the Green ending the galaxy is on the verge of a utopia. Everyone is a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll, meaning there is no more reason to fight. No war. No discrimination. Shepard wants to turn the galaxy into a giant bonfire with all the races in a drum circle singing Kumbaya. Of course it's probably too saccharin to be true since living things always seem to be able to find reasons to kill one another.

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Wow, I can't believe how much I just wrote (especially consider the last time I slept was for three hours, 22 hours ago) but it feels good to finally get all these thoughts out there. Don't get me wrong. I agree that the ending scenes seem like they were rushed and everything post-Conduit is a bit of a convoluted mess. But even if the rough edges defy the overall polish that the trilogy has consistently delivered, I firmly believe that these endings bring the saga of Commander Shepard to a satisfactory close.

Of course maybe it was all a dream (INDOCTRINATION LOLOL) but hey that could be cool too maybe...? Anyways, thanks to all the people that have stuck with all of my ramblings. I look forward to your comments.

I am super tired and have done almost no proofreading, so, troll away I guess?