Other things I've been up to

Here's some of the stuff I've written at other sites over the past few weeks that may be of interest.

Over at Robot Geek:

Where's Your God Now, Mario?: Religious Censorship in Games- A look back at the golden age of Nintendo of America's Standards and Practices, when naming a spell “Holy” or showing a cross on a coffin was forbidden due to fears that any religious imagery or references could cause offense or controversy. Did I mention that this was happening at the same time that one of the more prominent games on the Nintendo Gameboy was a a rather grim saga in which  the ultimate villain and true power behind all the evil, demonic beings the heroes fight during the story turns out to be God Himself? And that the game climaxes with the heroes kicking His top-hatted ass after discovering His heartless indifference to the suffering of His creations? Because it was.

Feeling like a hero, then and now- How games based on the premise that the protagonist is an elite badass among badasses fulfill that premise in their gameplay, or fail to. I express approval of Crysis and Vanquish but am somewhat less enthusiastic about Silver Surfer on the NES. Also includes a handy visual aid to help you, the player, distinguish between games that actually turn you into a nigh-unstoppable killing machine and those that merely claim to.

Meanwhile, over at Kuribo's Shoes, where I'm not hemmed in by Robot Geek's rigid “don't make up blatant lies” policy:

2K Games apologizes for statements by Duke Nukem Forever PR team, says reviewers will NOT be hunted for sport- Nor will 2K be unleashing the terrifying arsenal of orbital kinetic weaponry,
darksome sorceries, or international organ thieves at their command. Because they don't exist. Really. Just let it drop.

L.A. Noire’s development even more troubled than anyone realized- Long-time readers of this site know I enjoy welding as many utterly inappropriate and unrelated things into a single gruesome mass as possible, so I consider successfully working Motley Crue, the Holy Roman Empire, the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission, Blade Runner, Chris Tucker, and the phrases “orbital bombardment” and “consuming the souls of his enemies” into the space of a 600-word article about L.A. Noire a success.

Nintendo announces new voice actor for Mario: Michael Ironside- “The classic Mario gameplay that has delighted gamers for three decades isn’t going anywhere, It’s just that now, instead of a jolly Italian plumber, Mario will sound like a grizzled stone-cold killer.”

Xenoblade: The horrifying truth- This is a long one, since it was one of our special Friday articles, and due to a last-minute technical hiccup the pictures that would have been there to break up the text weren't included. Nevertheless,  I think this article's rigorous accuracy and grounded common sense make it well-worth your time, as well as a decisive refutation of  those naysayers who claim that writing your article about Nintendo of America's treatment of RPGs when you haven't slept in the past 192 hours and have been munching down hallucinogenic mushrooms like trail mix so that the unearthly things in your sleep deprivation-induced hallucinations can be fought off by their slightly less horrifying psilocybin-induced counterparts is somehow incompatible with responsible gaming journalism.

A rueful look back at E3, Part 4: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Initial reaction – Holy crap but that landscape is gorgeous. I'm accustomed to the graphics in Elder Scrolls games being sort of like having corn flakes for breakfast. It's there, it's adequate for its purpose, and it provides a substrate for more interesting breakfast foods things that can be placed on top of it, like sugar or strawberries or cheap bourbon so vile that even I won't drink it unmixed but am still too cheap to just get rid of, but it's not of much interest in itself. This is quite impressive.

(Question for other players of the previous Elder Scrolls games: Did anyone else, back when they had only seen the name “Skyrim” appear in written form, assume it was pronounced “Skeer-em”? It can't just be me.)

The footage I've seen seems promising. One of the disappointments of Oblivion was that it went from the fascinatingly weird setting of Vvardenfell in Morrowind- with its strange creatures, its native culture and that culture's tension with the encroaching influence of the Empire, its complex and mysterious past, its religion based on ancestor worship and living immortal god-kings and bizarre scriptures that were apparently written by someone on LSD- to the disappointingly generic quasi-medieval standard-issue fantasy setting of Cyrodil. Skyrim looks like it could be a bit more interesting- the woolly mammoths, snowy mountains, and rather brutish-looking warriors make things seem a lot less genteel than Oblivion. It has sort of a Robert E. Howard/Hyborian Age feel that I really like.

Hopefully Bethesda has learned from some of their mistakes in Oblivion, like burning through 90% of their voice acting budget in the first 10 minutes of the game and having all of the hundreds of talking characters you meet in the other 99.99%  of it voiced by approximately three people, or using a character face editor that was seemingly programmed by a deformed  Phantom of the Opera-esque recluse who hasn't actually seen another human being in decades and doesn't realize that non-hideous human faces are actually possible. I'll be keeping an eye on this one.

A rueful look back at E3, Part 3: Tomb Raider: My heart and various other organs in and on my thoracic region will go on

Crystal Dynamics gave us their first trailer for their upcoming reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise, which sets up the story by showing us how a young Lara Croft leaves her home to travel the world in search of adventure. Sort of like college-age kids who go backpacking across Europe, I guess, but with a greater focus on killing people and plundering antiquities. That's the British aristocracy for you. 

But Croft's trip soon goes awry when her ship is caught in a storm that leaves her shipwrecked on an island. Stranded and alone, she must struggle to survive, find a way to escape the island, and return to civilization so that she can wreak bloody vengeance upon her travel agent.

It's got a fairly dark, bleak tone, which fits with previous comments by developers that- like every other rebooted franchise in the history of mankind- the new Tomb Raider will be a somewhat grittier, harder-edged ake on Lara Croft than the original series. They've also definitely toned down Lara's over-the-top spinal-kyphosis-inducing sexualization from the earlier games in the series. Unless you've got some sort of emergency orthopedics-based fetish involving filthy, stranded women in exotic locales painfully resetting their own fractured bones- and, the internet being the internet, the odds are probably pretty good that at least one person reading this does.

A rueful look back at E3, Part 2: Halo 4

The Halo 4 trailer is quite brief, showing a frantic-sounding Cortana awakening Master Chief from the hibernation  he went into at the end of Halo three while their ship appears to be blowing apart around them from causes unknown. The Chief makes his escape from the dying ship's interior, and finally we see some sort of ominous-looking structure out in space that they're heading straight for.

It's not often a video game trailer strikes so close to home for me, with its grim depiction of an emotionally unexpressive guy who rarely speaks just trying to get some rest while a nagging female voice says “Wake up, John!” It's my 13 years in the public school system all over again.

Unrelated side note: I assume that the mist that drifted out when Master Chief emerged from his hibernation pod was  water vapor condensing because of the cold from the cryonic whatzit used to put the pod's occupant in suspended animation, but the first few times I watched it really looked like steam to me. Which in turn made the whole scene look like Master Chief had been taking a hot shower, or perhaps sitting in the sauna having a schvitz, while still fully armored. That's a man who takes the need to be ready for action at a moment's notice seriously.

A rueful look back at E3, Part 1: Fable: The Journey

Pointless Side Quest is back in action, and to commemorate this momentous occasion in the world of obscure video game humor blogs we'll be taking a look back at the second most momentous yearly occasion in the world of video games, the E3 show. So sit back, turn the date on your computer and any other nearby electronic devices back a month, and start gulping down the dissociative substance of your choice until you're confused enough to forget the actual date so that you can enjoy the excitement of hearing the hottest news from E3 for the first time. Today we kick things off with:

Fable: The Journey

Lionhead Studios revealed the next game in the Fable franchise, Fable: The Journey, and showed a short game play demo. The game is built around and will require the Xbox360 Kinnect. The demo was distinctly unimpressive, revealing game play that apparently revolves around moving along a predetermined path, being narrated at by an old woman,  and occasionally thrusting your arm outward to magically blast enemies like some cross between Gandalf and Phoenix Wright.

But, for once, this isn't just about my dislike of motion controls, or my lingering resentment at the disappointing bill of goods we were sold with the original Fable, or my numerous unpleasant memories that involve being stuck on a long vehicle trip sitting next to someone who keeps talking and talking and talking until I'm ready to stab him in the throat with a shiv carved from a tire pressure gauge and take my chances with whatever happens next as our now-driverless car continues to careen down the highway at 65 miles per hour. It was poorly received by many, and Lionhead's Peter Molyneux has since said that the demo did not include the game's navigation controls and that the actual game allows much more freedom than the demo suggests.  Which is a vague statement, since in a qualitative sense any increase from “none whatsoever” to “more than none whatsoever” can be a profound change, but one can hope.

And one should hope, because as it is now it looks like it's basically an HD version of Operation Wolf, if the 1987 arcade classic were transplanted to a generic fantasy setting and had its cool mounted force-feedback lightgun removed and replaced with a somewhat more dignified U-Force.

Announcing Kuribo's Shoes

New posts for this site are coming soon- gotta have the latest breaking E3 news before the competition, after all- but first an announcement. As part of my ongoing quest to write at as many sites that aren't this one as possible, I'm happy to announce that I'm one of the writers for the newly launched humor site Kuribo's Shoes. Updated every weekday with the most important, cutting-edge, not strictly-speaking-actually-true news in gaming! So, check it out. And Like their page on Facebook, while you're at it.

Here are my articles there to date:


Archaeologists uncover records of early Duke Nukem Forever development in 4,500-year-old Sumerian ruins: The sort of rigorous historical scholarship that has always been my hallmark.

New breakthroughs in computer science, quantum mechanics may make maximum-settings Crysis possible within our lifetimes: Arguably the best video game-related humor article referencing Bose–Einstein condensates, Neal Asher, and Colossus: The Forbin Project published in the past year!

Gamers, developers shocked by revelation that The King of Fighters series has an actual plot: I'm as stunned as you are, gentle reader.

Sony takes gaming into the fourth dimension: Because I don't get the chance to wax Lovecraftian or use the word "tesseract" often enough.

Infamous 2: This is one of those rare times where appending "Electric Boogaloo" to the title would actually sort of make sense, but I'll restrain myself

I had intended to write something about the demo for Sucker Punch Productions' Infamous 2 over the weekend, but was thwarted when my entire neighborhood lost electrical power (because of a thunderstorm, ironically) on Saturday and subsequently became caught up in other business. Some would argue that writing about the demo is sort of pointless when the actual game is now out, but at Pointless Side Quest we strive to make everything we present here timeless, with a relevance that will endure long after some arbitrary date on a calendar. This post fails at that, but it's not as if that's ever stopped me before. Some thoughts:

The demo's most striking, immediately noticeable change from the original game is how fast protagonist Cole is in this game, both on foot and when's he's gliding- when I take to the rooftops I have a much stronger feeling of momentum. It also helps that you get a small boost upwards when you first activate your glide power- a lot of building -to-building leaps that would have previously required me to glide towards the target building, fall slightly short of the roof, grab hold of the side, and pull myself up are now one smooth motion. It makes a difference, especially when you're trying to go from roof to roof to roof at high speed.

I was sort of thrown off by Cole's new voice actor at first, but was fine with him once I had time to get used to him. I enjoyed Cole's voice in the original, but I like the fact that he sounds less gruff and overtly bad-ass in the new one- he seems more like a regular guy who was unexpectedly thrust into the role of superhero and less like a grizzled off-duty space marine who's been smoking two packs of unfiltered Pall Malls a day since the age of 8.

I like the little events that pop up as icons on your map, which you can then intervene in- stopping muggings, rescuing people being marched off as prisoners by the bad guys (I'm assuming; maybe New Marais just has really stern tour guides), and so forth. It's convenient when you're looking for some action outside of a mission, and it made the city feel more alive to me-there's stuff going on around you whether or not you choose to involve yourself with it.

I just hope we don't have anything like some of the asinine recurring missions that have appeared in some previous open world superhero games, like that damned army of kids in Spider-Man 2 whining at you to get their balloon back for them. I don't want to see that here. “What's that, kid? Well, I was about to head out to save an innocent person from being shivved in an alleyway by a band of muggers, rescue a group of people being dragooned to God only knows where by heavily armed paramilitary thugs, stop the massive rival gang shootout that just erupted downtown before they tear half the city apart, and subdue the rampaging horde of grotesque mutant  hellbeasts emerging from the swamps and killing everything in its path...  but sure, I'll put that off so that I can recharge your talking Optimus Prime action figure. What could it hurt?”

Early concept art for Cole's appearance at maximum negative karma in Infamous 2, later rejected by the game's designers for looking "too healthy."

This item is actually more of a question than a comment. I always played as a good guy in the original and so don't have much experience with evil version of the character. In one of the three missions in the demo you play as evil negative karma red-lightning Cole, so I was wondering: was evil Cole that pale and corpse-like in the original, too? He looks like what would happen if the lost love-child of Conan O'Brien and Wednesday Adams was raised underground in absolute darkness by Morlocks for the first 25 years of his life and then immediately contracted tuberculosis and joined a Norwegian black metal band upon reaching the surface. The guy from Nosferatu looks positively ruddy by comparison.

Zeke is back, and he looks even more like a 70's-era Elvis impersonator than he did in the original. Which is awesome. At this rate of transformation, he'll be guzzling down barbiturates like trail mix and wearing a jacket with enough rhinestones to outshine the sun by the time Infamous IV arrives. Sucker Punch, make this happen.