Hey Bomb-niciates!

Here is the latest Deep Look! Deep Looks are largely gameplay and commentary like a Giantbomb quicklook; however, I try to cover games that have been out for a while and I intend to use the videos to highlight moments and mechanics that I found interesting. Also I aim to keep the videos under 20 minutes.

In this Deep Look I show off some of the small architectural details that define the city of Rapture in the early moments of Bioshock. Watch me break down how the values of Andrew Ryan and the city are chiseled into the very walls of Rapture. I only cover the initial level, but there is more than enough to dissect thanks to the dense level design. I leave no wall ornament un-turned in my search for symbolism!

Spoiler warning for the end of FFX! Spoiler warning for the end of FFX! Proceed at your own risk!

For the last few days I’ve had Final Fantasy X and Ryan Davis on the brain. Tomorrow will be the one year anniversary of Ryan’s passing and I have been working on a long essay on FFX, so the two topics have been ping-ponging around in my head. The scene from FFX that keeps coming back to me is the very end of the game, after defeating Yu Yevon; the scene in which Tidus fades away. In that closing moment of FFX, Tidus is both present and not present. He seems to be visibly untouched, talking to Yuna and the other party members. He looks so healthy. He sounds so normal. Yuna refuses to believe that he is dying: he is still right in front of her. Yet, when Yuna reaches out to touch him she passes right through. He is irrefutably gone.

In the current age of the internet no one is ever truly gone. Once upon a time, authors and poets spent lifetimes to create a single work worthy of publication and hopefully immortalization. Leaving a mark on the world was neigh impossible. Until about 10 years ago, when it became neigh impossible to truly die. Nothing on the internet ever truly gets deleted, and at this point almost every internet user has produced more indestructible personal data than Shakespeare. When Ryan passed away over a year ago he left behind a legion of fans and friends, but he also left behind days of videos and podcasts. He left behind books of reviews. He left behind several personal diaries worth of tweets and forum posts. If anyone wants to see what a vibrant person Ryan was they can simply tap into the eternal present that is the internet. Ryan will always be hosting a podcast or a Quick Look there. He will always be wearing his poncho, his crappy blonde hair, and his handlebar mustache. Until something happens to the endless server racks out there in Kansas, some of Ryan’s camera-captured magic will exist and he will still be present, yet not present. In working for a website, Ryan left behind a functional legacy that will preserve much of what made him such a beloved person and that legacy is always available. There is no fight to hold him in our memory because as far as the internet is concerned he never left. In FFX terms Ryan is a lot like the people on the Farplane. Everyone who passes away in FFX ends up on the Farplane where their images can be infinitely called back by loved ones. The image is crystal clear and perfect, yet is just that: an image, nothing more.

In FFX, once Yuna understands that TIdus is fading away, he attempts to hug her. You can see that the two of them are clipping through each other, not making physical contact. Yet, in this moment of touch-less embrace the emotional connection between the two shines through stronger than ever. In being “held” by Tidus as she slips through his arms, Yuna shows the desperate, grasping love that every survivor feels after a loved one passes away. You try desperately to hold on to that loved one, at first physically, then in memory. But, ultimately you fail one way or another, the person passes and memories fade. In the end, Tidus ultimately fades away permanently. However, in the modern day, digital memory never fades. People never go away completely. The reams of data they leave behind is always out there. There is always a part of them out there to reconnect with, but sadly never enough. There is always a ghostly silhouette left behind on the internet when a person dies nowadays, lingering. Present yet not present. I really don’t know if it is better to have this permanent record of a person’s day to day work available for all to see. I don’t know if it is better to simply hold someone’s memory in our hearts and cling to that memory desperately, knowing that the memory will fade. I do know, however, that the symbol of Yuna slipping through Tidus’s clinging arms is more powerful than his ghostly form floating in the Farplane forever.

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P.S. I also want to add a little less academic memorial to remember Ryan by. I remember last year hearing about Ryan passing away and i didn't know what to do. I sat up in bed all night knowing that someone who I had spent almost a decade listening to and watching on various shows and podcasts had gone away. I knew that the sense of loss and astonishment I felt couldn't compare to what the guys on the GB staff were going through. He had been a person I thought of as a friend, but the people at the site were the ones he called friend. All I could do was be astonished and grieve and hope that the writers and producers whose worlds were rocked found a way to persevere.

I learned from Ryan how to lead a discussion without dominating it. I learned that the funniest person in the room does not have to tell the most jokes. I learned that if you enjoy life enough, people will follow. He would likely never have known he was teaching me, but he was.

Following his passing I redoubled my efforts to pursue game writing and game studies. His passing was a flash point for me. I remembered my own mortality and I remembered that writing about games is one of the things that most brings me joy. I remembered that although my pursuit may seem inconsequential to others, if you enjoy life enough, people will follow.

I did not know Ryan well enough to speak about who he was with the depth of admiration he deserves. However, I can say that he helped form who I am and what I'm doing. I can say that I was one of many kids who grew up following that man and I am a better person for it.

Hey Bombstacios!

Here is the latest Deep Look! Deep Looks are largely gameplay and commentary like a Giantbomb quicklook; however, I try to cover games that have been out for a while and I intend to use the videos to highlight moments and mechanics that I found interesting. Also I aim to keep the videos under 20 minutes.

In this Deep Look I take a look at the many hidden secrets of the world of FF8. I show the breadth and the depth of the content on FF8's world map that can easily be missed, such as the monster of Obel Lake, the Island Closest to Heaven and Hell, and Cactuar Island. I also explain some of the design decisions that allow FF8 to be easily explored. This will probably be my last look at FF8. Next Stop Bioshock!

Hey Bomberinos!

Here is the latest Deep Look! Deep Looks are largely gameplay and commentary like a Giantbomb quicklook; however, I try to cover games that have been out for a while and I intend to use the videos to highlight moments and mechanics that I found interesting. Also I aim to keep the videos under 20 minutes (maybe I should have called them actual quick looks).

In this Deep Look I show off the different ways you can refine items in FF8 and how refining items makes the game COMPLETELY BROKEN. I also look at FF8's card game, Triple Triad, and show how to turn cards into items into profit! This will be my last look at the junction system so I hope you enjoy it. As always feedback is greatly appreciated!

Hey Bombadeers,

Here is the latest Deep Look! Deep Looks are largely gameplay and commentary like a Giantbomb quicklook; however, I try to cover games that have been out for a while and I intend to use the videos to highlight moments and mechanics that I found interesting. Also I aim to keep the videos under 20 minutes (maybe I should have called them actual quick looks).

In this Deep Look I examine the junction system in FF8 and show off how junctioning effects the combat and leveling in FF8. I explain how the junction system radically changes FF8's combat when compared to standard jrpg combat. I also explain how the junction system and scaling enemies disincentivize grinding and reward knowledge and skillful play. I hope you enjoy it! As always I love feedback and I am still striving to get better at this video thang so all criticism is welcome.

Edit: I also finished a Deep Look of more advanced junction techniques if you want something a bit more broken.

I was impressed by this latest series of E3 press conferences and announcements. I saw a ton of cool looking games that make me excited to jump in to the next generation of consoles. I was astounded by technical showpieces like Sunset Overdrive and Destiny, as well as indie triumphs like No Man’s Sky and Cuphead. Going in to the conferences I wasn’t sure which games would grab me, but there was one fact of which I was certain: Nintendo could do nothing to get me to buy a Wii U. I skipped out on the Wii and I rarely played my Gamecube. Honestly, I have never even been that invested in the mainstay Nintendo franchises. I thought there was no game they could announce to get me to want a Wii U, much less a multiplayer third-person shooter. Then Splatoon came along.

Let me preface this by saying I haven’t liked a competitive shooter of any kind since Gears 2 on the Xbox360. After Gears 2, my group of Xbox Live buddies fell apart and my tolerance for the limitless abuse of Xbox Live mainstays waned pretty hard. I just do not find myself longing to invest hundreds of hours into a single game anymore, and running the skill treadmill for a shooter is the last place I want to be in gaming right now. Even with all of these preconceptions I love what Nintendo is doing with Splatoon. By fundamentally changing the goals of a third person shooter, Nintendo has reinvigorated my interest in the genre.

I love the idea of shifting the end-goal of a third person shooter away from kill streaks and body counts, towards movement and territory control. Shooters like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Titanfall are putting mobility at the forefront of their military shooter reinvigoration plans; however, the way you actually win at Titanfall or Call of Duty does not actually require you to make use of that mobility. Killing someone with a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher does not need a preceding double-jump and wall run; the game’s developers are treating mobility as an additive, rather than transformative innovation. In Splatoon it looks like you will need to be constantly traversing the map to claim territory. Killing enemies may hinder them from shooting walls, but it won’t actually win you the game. It seems like you could play that game in an entirely passive-aggressive way, avoiding conflict and tagging every wall in sight. It even seems like that may even be a viable and useful strategy. You can even play defense without killing an enemy by breaking their “highways” of continuous paint, thereby slowing enemy advance or preventing escape. The ability to turn into an invulnerable and fast moving squid also allows for rapid movement and it further ties the actual act of shooting with the game’s mobility systems. In Splatoon you shoot to move and you move to shoot. By changing the way you win a game of Splatoon from the standard shooter win conditions, Nintendo has opened up a whole host of new mechanical space and play style variations.

I’m not sure if I am going to buy a Wii U to play Splatoon, but I will say that it is the first multiplayer shooter to get me excited in a good long time. Leave it to Nintendo to invent an entirely new shooter game type and design an entire series of mechanics around that new mode. Every time I count them out they always manage to surprise me.

Hey peoples, I'm back with my second Deep Look! Deep Looks are largely gameplay and commentary like a Giantbomb quicklook; however, I try to cover games that have been out for a while and I intend to use the videos to highlight moments and mechanics that I found interesting. Also I aim to keep the videos under 20 minutes (maybe I should have called them actual quick looks).

This time I'm looking at the level design in Psychonauts. I take a look at two of the more interesting levels in the game and show off some of the hidden memories in those levels. I go on to talk about how Psychonauts represents the mental worlds of its characters through its level design. I focus mainly on how Psychonauts blends level design and character development into one coherent whole. This is my second rodeo so I hammered out some of the audio issues that I had with the first video. Any and all feedback is welcome!

There are countless people on the internet who love to tell you how to spend your gaming time. They love to tell you about their favorite videogames and board games and card games. What’s more they have monopolized the perfect formula for evaluating just about any experience: raw, objective evaluation based on a game’s intrinsic merits and technical proficiency. But why does the ideal review format need to be restricted to purely hobbyist games? Why are we not applying this format to the greatest games of all: sports? Countless children and adults pour endless hours of their lives into sports training and sports watching, but they don’t even know how many stars their sport of choice earned. They don’t even know if their sport is the BEST sport. Well I will not abide this lack of informed decision making any longer. I will review the sports I have played, ascertain their value, and express that value in the only way that matters: five star review scores. So to kick this thing off I’ll review football, the most popular sport in the United States.

Hardcore football is played with, at a minimum, two teams of eleven players who alternate between offense and defense. Each offensive team has four plays or “downs” to advance their ball 10 yards (9.144 meters for my un-American friends). If the offensive team succeeds, then they are rewarded with four more downs. If they fail, the defense takes control of the ball and the offensive and defensive roles are swapped between teams. However, gaining downs is simply the minute to minute incentive for each team; the overall goal of a football game is to score as many points as possible. Points are scored in a variety of ways, but the most conventional method is through the “touchdown.” A touchdown is achieved by advancing the ball to the “endzone” or outer horizontal boundary of the opposing team. Each touchdown is worth 6 points. All other methods of scoring are largely reserved for the most organized and hardcore of games. In fact, most casual games of football only utilize touchdowns, and they often feature teams of less than eleven members.

Stopping a player in hardcore football requires tackling him/her to the ground as quickly as possible. This results in many opportunities for injury and glory. Before undertaking in a hardcore football game you need to know that you might break a bone or two or suffer long term head injury. For those who are unwilling to risk their health on a children’s game, there are casual modes of play. Touch or flag football replaces the bone-crushing tackles of hardcore football with friendly two-hand touches or flag-snatching. Much like Rock Band and other casual games on the market, casual football is great for parties and gatherings.

Although the game can seem quite obtuse on first glance, with people running all over the place… then stopping… then running… then stopping, the game is actually not that complicated to understand. You see, football is a class based sport. Every player on each team either picks or is assigned a different class based on their natural physical abilities. People who are tall and can throw are quarterbacks (the attention grabbing stars of each team). People who are fast and coordinated are either running backs or wide receivers (the other attention getters). People who are tall and coordinated are tight ends (valuable, but all but the best are largely ignored). People who are overweight or otherwise huge are linemen (the tanks of the team, and just like tanks in any game their job is boring and largely thankless). Every player on both offense and defense has a class whose function is clearly defined and established. As a result, winning a football game requires every player to PLAY THEIR F***ING CLASS! If linemen start going out for passes or quarterbacks start running the game quickly degenerates into chaos, and an easy victory for the opposing team. On top of the physical handicap associated with cross-class play, there is also a huge skill gap between each position. You see, almost none of the positions in football have overlapping skill requirements. All of the time you spent practicing throwing as a quarterback does not translate as a wide receiver; all of the time you spent learning how to carry the ball as a running back does you no good when you have to block as a lineman. Therefore, football greatly incentivizes min-maxing one position for your entire playing career.

It is worth mentioning that playing hardcore football requires a hefty investment in money, as well as time. Although the sport seems to only require a ball, in truth once you buy a ball you can only play casual football. There are several other micro-transactions that you must make before you are able to play a full game of hardcore football. A helmet, pads, and cleats are a must for any REAL game of football and most players prefer to buy cosmetic items such as sweat bands and eye-black. An interest in football could easily cost hundreds of dollars to simply get off the ground, and that number increases exponentially if (when) you get injured.

Football can be a hugely fun game if played in a controlled and structured environment with full teams of players who know what they are doing. A full, well-played game of hardcore football can look incredibly stylish and the thrill of victory can be intoxicating. However, the largely physical assignment of roles can be a real bummer for those that find their body does not support the class they want to play. No amount of practice can turn a player who is 5’5 (165.1 centimeters) into a lineman in a competitive game. Although there is a bunch of strategic depth and reward to the sport at the highest level, the inherent monetary investment and injury risk is hardly worth it, unless you are skilled enough to go pro. The return on a pro career is huge and that incentive is one of the huge drivers that keep people entering the game, but the reality of the talent and skill barrier between pro and armature is hard to ignore. Casual games of football can strike a great balance between strategy and sanity, and I highly recommend them. Football is the US’s favorite sport for a reason, but I cannot recommend this sport without several heavy warnings. Fans of Rugby will love football.

2 Stars

Hey All, this is my first foray into the motion pictures! I'm starting a video series ya'll! I call me series deep looks. The videos are largely gameplay and commentary like a Giantbomb quicklook; however, I try to cover games that have been out for a while and I intend to use the videos to highlight moments and mechanics that I found interesting. Also I aim to keep the videos under 20 minutes (maybe I should have called them actual quick looks). In this video I break down Psychonauts and its clairvoyance power and explain the many ways clairvoyance is used in the game. Spoilers people Spoilers!!!

This is my first attempt at something like this so any and all feedback is welcome!

A few weeks ago I wrote a short blog titled “What we can Learn from how we Play Games.” In it I tried to explain how the act of playing games, and specifically how you play games, is a form of self-expression. Unfortunately, I failed at that goal. Rather than explaining my larger idea I just explained how I have been expressing myself and my perspectives through games. So today I would like to try again.

Let’s start with the basics, videogames are an interactive medium. As such, no videogame is a complete work in and of itself. Without a player to play the game, every videogame ever made is essentially unfinished, since it is impossible to experience the entirety of a game without some input from a player. Therefore, unlike almost every other form of popular media, every game player is simultaneously an actor/director and a viewer. For example, “Of Mice and Men” will always have the same central plot, it will always be told the same way, and it will be identical in form whether I read it or you do. We may take different meanings away from the book or we may appreciate different parts of the narrative; however, the underlying text will always be the same. Though our unique perspectives shape how we view a book or a movie, those perspectives do not physically shape the work in question. Videogames throw that all out the window.

Videogames require us to shape both our physical experiences and narrative experiences. We must choose things as small as where to move and things as large as who lives and dies. We can choose to use particular characters over others. We can choose to complete side-quests or not. Heck, we can also invent our own rules to apply on top of a game, like speed running or role playing a character. Every one of these choices adds to the experience of playing a game, each one of them help make your version of the game. Now this may all seem self-apparent to you, but the interesting part about all of these player choices, to me, is how they affect analyzing games.

With traditional media, we often talk about how a work affects the reader or argues a point to the reader, as though the work was a complete whole created by the author or director. We examine passages or scenes and we dissect word choice and diction. All of these analyses are for the purpose of teasing out what the author or work is trying to say about the world, in the hopes of gaining potential insights into the world we live in. All of that is well and good. But, with games we gain another dimension of analysis. You see with traditional media we are treating the text as an authoritative and finished work by the author; however, games are by their very nature a collaborative effort between the developers and the player. As a result, we end up with two different routes of analysis, one that treats games like any other medium and views them as the product of a developer. Using this framework we can view each aspect of a game as a piece of evidence for the game’s interpretive significance. For example, Bioshock’s constant us of the Great Chain of Industry and objectivist rhetoric points to the objectivist philosophies of Ayn Rand, and as such its dystopian city can be viewed as a critique of objectivism. Alternatively, we can look at the experience of playing a game as a product of the player him/herself. By looking at games this way we can use bits of player input as a means to gain greater insight into the player and how the player views the world. For example, a player who consistently takes the “good” option in moral choice games may view themselves as moral or perhaps may view the character they are controlling as moral. Or perhaps the player in question consistently hoards money regardless of circumstance. This could imply that the player is very resource focused, always hoping to maximize their money, or they could just be cheap. These different play options are not necessarily indicative of the game’s design as much as the mindset of the player. In a way, we are still analyzing quotes and moments; but, the evidence is indicative of the player’s worldview, rather than the developers.

I think that as game writing progresses the ability to differentiate unique player driven experiences and designer created moments will be essential to game scholarship and criticism. However, the ability to use games and their options as a form of self-discovery and self-evaluation is very interesting. When analyzing books or movies you don’t really have a record of what you thought or felt as you were watching, unless you were taking notes. Playing a game leaves behind a record of your decisions, evaluations, and preferences in a way that I find truly unique and potentially enlightening. Videogames might be a way for your conscience or subconscious to show its work, if you care to look.