Tomb Raider was the first game I’ve ever attended a midnight release for, accompanying a friend who was buying the game. It was a disappointingly sedate affair. No one trampled by angry mobs in a mad rush to the counter, no one arriving after they’d sold out and angrily telling the clerks that their refusal to magically conjure more copies of the game into existence has ruined Christmas, no burly die-hard fanboys cosplaying in tiny Lara Croft shorts, no GameStop employees using their hypnotic mind control powers to force people to trade in used games against their will. (I have it on good authority that the latter does, in fact, happen on a regular basis. Otherwise I’d have to entertain the possibility that the comments section at Kotaku contains a significant number of reactionary hysterics who can’t grasp the idea of people whose preferred trade-offs between money, convenience, and time actually differ from theirs, and that couldn’t be. Perish the thought.) I’ve not played the game, but I have been present for a playthrough of most of it where I prevented several player deaths with my Molotov cocktail-spotting skills, so I think I can speak with some authority on it. Some thoughts: He learned almost too late that man is a feeling creature... I liked the more humanized version of Lara Croft. She gets knocked around a lot and actually seems to feel it, she gets scared of things, she looks filthy for much of the game, she gets physically sick the first time she kills a man, and her chest size in combination with her extreme agility doesn’t require me to assume that she’s a cyborg whose original spinal column has been replaced with carbon nanotubes and titanium to preserve my suspension of disbelief. She has a more interesting personality than the original Lara Croft, though that’s admittedly not the highest of bars; the GameStop bag we carried the game out with and the bottle of Pepsi I drank later that night have won similar accolades. Oh, the pain, William! The pain! Croft soaks up a truly impressive amount of abuse in this game. She’s perpetually falling or being thrown off of high places, whacking into and/or being whacked by objects at high speeds, or sliding down near-vertical inclines at velocities that would probably leave a mere mortal needing months of intense physical therapy before they were able to sit in a normal chair again. And I say this as someone whose standards for what constitutes an “impressive” amount of damage to inflict on a main character is pretty high. I spent quite a bit of time playing Spec Ops: The Line not long ago, a game where protagonist Martin Walker takes several very nasty spills involving damaged skyscrapers and a crashing helicopter and suffers burns that have him looking like an alternate-universe version of Two Face who joined the Army instead of going to law school by the final stages of the game, and I was still struck by how the game puts its heroine through the ringer. On the other hand, Lara Croft never had to walk down a barren desert version of the Sorrow’s river of the dead from Metal Gear Solid 3 (so really not at all like the Sorrow’s river, now that I think about it) while being berated by the Eye of Sauron. There are some moments where it started to seem a little silly, particularly the part early on where one of her punishingly rapid descents is followed by her stepping into a freaking bear trap. At that point I half-expected anvils to start falling on her head. For the most part, though, it does a nice job of conveying how hellishly arduous the main character’s journey is.
Somebody get this man his own prequel series Conrad Roth, the captain of the ship Lara Croft and company were on, is a badass and all-round awesome character. He’d be a shoe-in to be my favorite older mentor figure in a third-person action game about an adventurer killing lots of people in gunfights during archaeological investigations, if my heart didn’t already belong to Sully from Uncharted. I can knock a hundred dollars off that Trucoat! On the other end of the spectrum, the only thing saving Dr. Whitman from being far and away the most repellant character in the game is the fact that the competition includes a small army of murderous cultists. And unlike the latter, he doesn’t have the excuse of being driven insane by years trapped on an isolated island with nothing but other people who’ve also been driven insane by years trapped on an isolated island for a company. He’s whiny. He’s untrustworthy. He’s both cowardly and stupid, never a good combination. He’s smug and dismissive towards others when he thinks he can get get away with it, unctuous and servile when he doesn’t. The man practically leaves an oil slick in the air when he walks. The fact that he sort of looks like William H. Macy’s character in Fargo with a mustache doesn’t help. Stormguard don’t surf You eventually gain access not only
to regular burning arrows, but to napalm arrows. This pleases me. It has
the dual virtues of being both absurdly over-the-top and oddly
realistic, since making homemade napalm isn’t terribly hard. (Link
is for educational purposes only. By clicking it, you agree to
indemnify Pointless Side Quest against any damages that occur if you
roast yourself alive and then come back as some sort of vengeful fiery
ghost.)
As you may already know if you've been reading this site for a while, there was once, in the mists of prehistory, a British-based videogame website called Robot Geek. In addition to being a writer there, I was part of their occasional podcast, Some Assembly Required. Robot Geek is no more, but I missed the old gang there. And so, I've been working on bringing that podcast back in some form. At last, I'm very pleased to announce the first-ever episode of Pointless Side Cast, featuring John Markley, Corey Atwood, and Jade Kimmel. Now, I should warn you that the sound is not exactly professional quality. And that we'd all been out of the saddle for a while and take some time to start firing on all cylinders again. And that it was recorded a few weeks ago- Superbowl Sunday, in fact- and wasn't exactly on the bleeding edge of the news even then. And that Corey has an utterly filthy mouth. And that some of us were drinking throughout the show. And that the subject of the conversation sometimes wanders a bit. And that I have a weird, annoying voice that sounds sort of like somebody punched the G-Man from Half-Life in the mouth and started giving him amphetamines and barbiturates simultaneously. Aside from that, though, it's a good show. You can download it here, as well as subscribe to the feed, or scroll to the bottom to play it without soiling your hard drive. Download this episode (right click and save)
So join us, if you like the sort of writing I do here at Pointless Side Quest and/or listening to three people in various stages of sobriety discussing such topics as: Exciting new games of 2013! Crysis 3's multiplayer beta, and how much I suck at it! Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky turning in his grave! (Special thanks to Musopen) SimCity's new DRM! The musical stylings of Master Chief! Devil May Cry and Max Payne 3 fashion Dos and Dont's! XCOM: Enemy Unknown! Dolph Lundgren! The cruel dramatic irony of Corey telling us about how much he's looking forward to the release of Aliens: Colonial Marines! Chrissy from Growing Pains! Watchdogs! Decades of X-Men continuity fully explained in 15 seconds! Tomb Raider! Super Bowl XLVII! Atlelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk! The episode of Star Trek that revolved around how horny Spock was! Shin Megami Tensei, cruelly taunting me once again! Our impending deaths at the hands of NFL assassins! Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance! Novel uses for your bathroom! The Walking Dead, DayZ, and some of the ~400 new zombie-themed games coming out this year! Star Wars 1313! Yours truly laboring under the misapprehension that the Superbowl occurs under the auspices of something called "Major League Football!" And much, much more.
Hey,
everybody, and welcome to another year of Pointless Side Quest!
2012
was a bit of a slow year at the blog- in large part because my
grandfather and both of my cats died, so if you have ever so much as
contemplated being annoyed by the slow pace of new content here you
are officially a horrible, horrible person- but I have higher hopes
for 2013.
I'm
also inaugurating a brand-new regular feature on Pointless Side Quest
that, at the risk of seeming hyperbolic, will be a greater and more
important development in the history of video games than Pac-Man, the
joystick, Shigeru Miyamoto, ROM cartridges, ENIAC, and the
nucleosynthesis of the first silicon atoms in the cores of dying
primordial stars, combined.
It's not far away, so don't miss it.
In accordance with the ancient Pointless Side Quest Christmas tradition passed down by my fathers before me, it's once again time for my annual post on The Star Wars Holiday Special. Please to enjoy, for a certain value of "enjoy."
It's the Christmas season once again. To celebrate, this is the time of year when this blog make a foray beyond the world of video games into the larger world of holiday entertainment. Sadly, there is a dark side to Christmas. I'm not talking about the weather, or the parents rending each other apart like rabid beasts at Toys R Us, or the built-up resentment that can explode at family gatherings, or those horrific modernized versions of Christmas carols that every place of business in the state of Illinois is apparently required by law to defile my eardrums with for the entire month of December. No, I speak of something much worse...
The Star Wars Holiday Special has appeared on American television once, in 1978, and oozed into various foreign markets to make similarly brief appearances over the next few years. It has never been rebroadcast in the US and has never been released on home video in any format. George Lucas, who would probably release a boxed set of the prequel trilogy with an added bonus DVD containing 90 minutes of footage from the parking lot security cameras of Skywalker Ranch and call it the "Star Wars Ultimate Edition" if he thought anyone would buy it, disavows it and has refused to make it available.
Scorned by legitimate society, it exists only in the form of unauthorized copies made from VCR recordings of the original. Like so many other blasphemous tomes of daemonic horror bearing unspeakable eldritch knowledge never meant for the eyes of Man- Friedrich von Junzt's Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Abdul Alhazred's Necronomicon, Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy Trilogy- it circulates covertly in the dark corners of the world (I think that's an entirely fair description of most file-sharing networks) where students of the grotesque and unnatural risk their very sanity to seek it out.
It was in 2006 that I acquired a copy of The Star Wars Holiday Special, complete with the original 1978 commercials. It should have been a fine year: Neal Asher, David Drake, and Stephen Baxter all had multiple new books rolling off the presses. Ace Combat Zero came out for the PlayStation 2, and the release of the PlayStation 3 paved the way for me to actually buy one three years later. Iron Maiden, Evergrey, In Flames, Norther, Strapping Young Lad, Tool, Motorhead, Blind Guardian, and Týr released new albums.
Instead, there would be only the taste of ashes.
Now, one thing I share with several of my friends is the ability to enjoy crap. From 1950's skiffy schlock, to watching a near-comatose Richard Burton mumble his way through the uncut version of The Exorcist II, to Sylvester Stallone's arm wrestling epic Over the Top, to the climactic scene of The Satanic Rites of Dracula where Christopher Lee is killed by running into a small shrubbery, to Oscar-winning actor George Kennedy and a bunch of stupid teenagers trapped on a boat where they are picked off one by one by an evil hybrid cat/rat/godawful puppet in The Uninvited, to a seemingly endless horde of Godfrey Ho "ninja" "movies" created by buying the rights to various Asian films, redubbing them, splicing them together with new footage of white guys in brightly colored and sometimes rhinestone-studded pajamas running around and doing flips in what appears to a small municipal park, and feebly attempting to tie them together and pretend that the resulting Frankensteinian abomination was a coherent story, we've seen it all. We take that sort of thing in stride.
I want you to have that context in mind when I say that my first two attempts to watch this had to be aborted within the first half hour because the guys I was watching it with couldn't stand it any longer.
The plot, such as it is, is that Chewbacca is returning to his home and family on the Wookie homeworld of Kashyyyk to celebrate "Life Day," one of those vague holidays characters in kids' fantasy shows would celebrate when it was snowing and they wanted to do something festively nonsectarian. But the system is in the grip of an Imperial blockade fleet commanded by recycled movie footage of Darth Vader, and... Well, basically, there's a string of largely unrelated, godawful variety showesque events set in something that resembles the Star Wars universe featuring various C-list celebrities until things finally shudder to a halt what seems like several geological epochs later.
It's got all of the heroes from the
movie making their return, plus James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader. The only major actors from Star Wars not present- unless one also counts David Prowse, who appears only in the form of reused movie footage, or Carrie Fisher, whose soul appears to have departed her body and wandered off for much of her screen time- are Alec Guinness as Ben Kenobi and Peter Cushing as Tarkin, whose characters were saved from appearances here by the sweet, merciful embrace of death.(Which makes it suddenly seem very suspicious that Kenobi and Tarkin both met their ends because they conspicuously chose not to protect themselves from imminent danger, and either possessed supernatural powers that included the ability to sense horrible, cataclysmic events or hung out with people who did.) What could possibly have gone wrong?
There are some things the human mind cannot explain, only try to describe. Some of the thrilling spectacles we're treated to include:
Over ten minutes of Chewbacca's family screaming at each in Wookie, sans subtiitles! This is what the show leads off with. Little-known fact: Lucas actually wanted the first 20 minutes of the original Star Wars to focus on R2-D2 making random beep-bloop noises while doing routine maintenance on the Tantive IV's cafeteria vending machines, but was forced to start the movie with an exciting space battle instead when the studio said that his original cut of the film was too long.
Chewbacca's elderly father Itchy groaning in ecstasy while watching virtual reality porn! You have no idea how badly I wish I was making that up. NO idea.
Ever wondered what an elderly Wookie
having an orgasm looks like? Of course not, but now you know anyway.
Reused footage from the movie!
Reused footage from the movie tinted bright green, so that a shot of the Millennium Falcon approaching Yavin can double as a shot of a bright green Millennium Falcon approaching Kashyyyk! Alternately, if you're a die-hard Star Wars fan desperately trying to escape from the implications of this monstrosity actually being a canonical part of the Star Wars universe, it could be interpreted to mean that the entire special is actually taking place inside the Matrix. In which case it's arguably a better Matrix film than Matrix Revolutions.
Several minutes of Chewbacca's repulsive son Lumpy watching miniature holographic acrobats! That's right, Chewbacca's immediate kin consists of two guys named "Itchy" and "Lumpy." Presumably, the name "Chewbacca" is a human-pronounceable approximation of the Wookie word for "Scabby" or "Oozing."
Lumpy! I've already mentioned his role in the Special's events, but the very existence of this... this thing appalls me so much that it warrants its own entry. With the possible exception of that loathsome, soulless homunculus wrought in obscene parody of a human child from Son of the Mask (the CGI baby, not Jamie Kennedy), nothing has ever filled with such instinctive horror. JEFFERSON STARSHIP!
Harvey Korman in a dress! And in two other separate parts, as an amorous Tatooine cantina patron and a cyborg instructional video announcer (a cyborg who announces in an instructional video, that is, not an announcer in an instructional video about cyborgs) who appears to be suffering from some sort of degenerative motor neuron disorder. Not since Peter Sellers in Dr. Stranglove has there been such a multi-role tour de force.
The musical stylings of Bea Arthur! This is actually the closest we get to a high point.
Harvey Korman trying to get into Bea Arthur's pants!Though anyone hoping for some actual on-screen Hedley-on-Maude action will be disappointed, sadly.
An animated segment featuring the most repellently butt-ugly animation in human history!It does have the first-ever appearance of Boba Fett, which some people may be interested in. Frankly, I've always considered Fett one of the most overrated characters in fiction. It's a damning indictment of how low our society's standards of masculinity have fallen when possessing some basic tracking abilities, dressing like the Rocketeer, flying around in a big metal shoe, and being killed by a blind man is enough of a résumé to be declared Biggest Badass Ever.
One odd thing is that the cartoon, like a number of other segments, is actually introduced as something being watched by Lumpy. Which implies that this segment depicts events that are fictional not only to us but to the characters, and that the cartoon itself actually exists within the Star Wars universe.
Which, I just realized, means that Jefferson Starship does, too.
A brief appearance by an incredibly bored-looking Harrison Ford, who doesn't even try to conceal his utter contempt for the proceedings!
Mark Hamill wearing more makeup than Queen Amidala, Bozo the Clown, and Dick Clark combined! Usually I'd be reluctant to say something nasty about this, since it's probably to conceal the injuries Hamill had suffered in a car crash the previous year, but The Star Wars Holiday Special exists on a plane where human concepts of morality and decency are not merely absent, but meaningless. If you gaze into the bellowing unsubtitled Wookie abyss, the bellowing unsubtitled Wookie abyss gazes also into you.
Carrie Fisher singing a festive Life Day carol set to the tune of the classic Star Wars theme while clearly stoned out of her mind! But you don't have to take my word for it:
She's no Bea Arthur, I'll tell you that much.
Eventually, Chewbacca makes it home for the holidays with his repellent family. To the best of my recollection, no one learns a valuable lesson about The True Meaning of Life Day, if in fact it has one. I really can't do justice to how teeth-gratingly bad it is. I have no strong personal stake in Star Wars. I liked the original movies and a few of the tie-in books, but I've never had the strong emotional attachment to Star Wars that some people do. I didn't like the prequel trilogy but never had the sort of "I have sworn a Sicilian blood oath of vengeance upon George Lucas' and his entire family line because he murdered my family, burned down my village, and deflowered my house pets" response that is often seen on the Internet. The idea of crap with the name Star Wars on it is not some sort of personal affront to me. Given that sitting through this made me want to gouge out my own eyes and just run through the streets of Chicago gibbering like a lunatic until my heart and/or lungs burst, I can only imagine how devoted Star Wars fans feel about it.
(PC)A
free-to-play first-person online shooter set in a near-future war
between Russia and the United States fought in the Arctic region.
Must
we fight the Russians yet again? Admittedly, this really isn't the
game I should single out for this, since in Arctic Combat making the
main belligerents the United States and Russia is actually neccessary
for the whole “combat in the Arctic” premise. Geographically and
politically speaking, there aren't a whole lot of countries that
would be at least semi-plausible leaders
in a war against the United States in the Arctic region, and a game
where the United States had to fight Unspecified Middle Eastern State
#76-B's invasion of Alaska or struggle for dominance of the Arctic
Circle against the mighty war machine of the tyrannical
Norwego-Canadian Empire would be sort of silly. (Than
again, Homefrontactually
got made.)
Screenshot
from early beta version of Arctic Warfare, final release may differ
Still,
it's getting a bit repetitive. At this point I'm pretty sure there've
been more video games about Americans fighting Russians released in
the past decade than there were during the era when they were
actually directly hostile to each other. It's like modern videogame
development takes place in some mirror universe where, instead of
dissolving in 1991, the Soviet Union embraced the even more
oppressive and anti-Western ideology of Supercommunism and became
more hostile to the United States than ever.
Vampire
Slayer FPS
(Xbox
360
Live Arcade) OK, that's
not a title.
It just isn't. Maybe something like this would fly in the 70s, when
it was perfectly acceptable for a game's title to be a dry summary of
its premise and games like Boxing and Air-Sea Battle filled the
shelves, but those days are past. I picked on Killzonefor
having a title that seems like it was selected at random from a list
of military terms, but at least that's still a title and not simply a
description of the game's subgenre. This is more like releasing Gears
of War,
Europa
Universalis III, and
Dante's
Inferno,
as Burly
Man Third-Person Shooter,
Early
Modern Period Europe Strategy,
and Stuff
I Drew in My Math Notebook When I Was 12.
Look,
for all I know it's a fine game. You shouldn't judge a book by its
cover. But you shouldn't publish your book with a cover that just
says Spy
Thriller Third-Person Omniscient,
either.
A few days ago saw a grim date in
American history, one that will long be remembered as an ominous
turning point for America- nay, the entire world- and looked upon
with horror by future generations cursed to live in its cold, bleak
shadow...
'Cause it was my birthday on Wednesday!
And it was a pretty nice birthday, in spite of some sad events that
have marred the past year and contributed to the meager output of
Pointless Side Quest in 2012. If you like this place, I apologize for
that, and I hope to make 2013 a much more interesting year.
If you're reading this, thank you;
being able to write things that people actually read means a lot to
me, even if I haven't been able to do so here as much lately, and I
hope you'll keep reading here for a long time to come.
Hearthfire is another
downloadable expansion for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Unlike
previous expansion Dawnguard, which added a series of new
quest and enemies, Hearthfire is about what the hero of Skyrim
gets up to during his downtime, allowing you to build and design
your own house. You can have useful facilities like alchemy labs
(presumably one used for the actual, magical sort of alchemy, as
opposed to the sort of home-based chemistry facility that about a
third of the guys I knew in high school are probably doing prison
time for by now) and greenhouses (again, presumably...), as well as
display cases to show off the exotic weapons and items you've found
in your adventures and a trophy room to display the exotic creatures
you've killed with them.
You design your new residence yourself
and can either oversee its construction personally or hire a steward
to do it for you. You can even start a family by having your spouse
move in and adopting some kids.(Biological kids are not an option,
unfortunately, since by the time the player has unlocked the ability
to build a house excessive exposure to the draconic spiritual
energies of the Thu'um shouts have already left the
protagonist sterile.)
Though unsurpassed on the field of battle and imbued with the mystical might to flense the flesh from men's bones with but a word, the Dragonborn's ignorance of proper high-altitude baking temperatures would be his undoing.
It sounds nice, and having a location
where I can show off all the cool stuff I've acquired in my
adventures is something I've long wanted in an Elder Scrolls game.
That said, it is sort of an odd man out placed alongside the premises
of prior Elder Scrolls releases and expansions. Consider:
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
As a bloody civil war rages across the land, you must battle an army
of resurrected ancient dragons who have returned to wage war against
all of humanity, led by a colossal soul-eating dragon-god who's
commonly referred to with epithets like “World Eater” and has
just returned after millennia of banishment beyond time and space in
accordance with ancient prophecies about the destruction of the
cosmos. You become the Dragonborn, a legendary warrior with the blood
and soul of a dragon whose very voice has the power to lay his
enemies low.
The Elder Scrolls V: Dawnguard
To save the world from an eternity of darkness, you must battle a
monstrous host of vampires who seek to cast the world into
everlasting night through an ancient magical ritual that will
permanently BLOT OUT THE SUN. You can become a member of an ancient
order of vampire hunters, or transform into a terrifying immortal
creature of the night yourself.
The Elder Scrolls V: Hearthfire
You
need a place to keep your stuff and kill time when not busy with the
above. You can become a foster parent or an amateur gardener. An
amateur gardener with the soul of a dragon whose very voice has the
power to lay his enemies low who may or may not also be a vampire,
but still.
