In 2008, Turok: Son of Stone will adorn multiple shelves in every Blockbuster and Hollywood Video in this great land. As it should. Because it’s about a fucking indian fighting hordes of dinosaurs with bows, arrows and tomahawks, making every single human being in any other dinosaur versus humans film look like a total pussy. Turok, IIRC because I’m far too lazy to wiki this, was a somewhat crappy comic book from the late 80s and early 90s, that started out strong and got shittier and shittier as time went on. The title had a resurgence of popularity following the release of a videogame for the Nintendo 64 – but, like the comic, sequels got shittier and shittier, until Acclaim finally killed the franchise off with a crapfest launch title on the PS2, Gamecube and X-Box.

The first game was about Joseph Fireseed, a Cherokee who one day wakes up to find that he has inherited the mantle of Turok when his father is killed. A Turok is a spiritual warrior who must fight for the Lost Land, a jungle populated by dinosaurs, the ruins of a lost civilization that once had unspeakable power, and the military wing of a violent dictator, who was struggling for domination of the area with the native flora and fauna. Pretty awesome. I don’t remember all of the sequels, but the last one for the Nintendo 64 was about zombie Joseph Fireseed trying to kill his nephew and niece while leading an invasion of 24th century earth with cyborg dinosaurs that had frickin’ laser beams attached to their head. The premiere Turok title on the following generation, and the last Turok game for nearly a decade, was about an indian and a psychotic confederate colonel who had killed eachother in battle, and woke up in crazy ass alien dinosaur land. The game looked terrible, and didn’t play very well at all. It sold about as much as it deserved to.

It is no surprise that someone is trying to restart the Turok train. The concept is awesome and bears repeating. Indians. Bows and arrows. Dinosaurs. Claws and teeth. Yes! The coming game reboot only kinda follows this, but doesn’t look as horrible as previous attempts – it’s about a guy with a mohawk who invades a dinosaur infested planet, and then kills some dinosaurs and enemy soldiers. It’s half cyberpunk, half Jurassic Park, and too early to tell if it’s going to be horrible or not.

As someone who would probably enjoy Pathfinder, I have high hopes for this franchise.

So I came across some other jackass with a blog who does something similar to what I do, but apparently from an amateur perspective. He may very well be a nice guy – good with kids, kisses his mother on the cheek when he goes to visit her, holds the door so that the elderly can pass through. That cheesy hitman style myspace mugshot at the top of his website doesn’t count for anything, really, but that analysis of his deserves a full and proper fisking.

Despite what he’d have us believe, Don here is not a prophet. Every analyst in the industry announced that Halo 3 would be a huge success, and would definitely be moving consoles for Microsoft. Even the MSM was featuring stories about the buzz around the Master Chief in Time, Us Weekly, and the old gray lady.

He then goes on to say that it’s video games that move consoles, not the other way around. Actually, it works both ways. Consumers tend to commit themselves to one console and stick with it, and don’t want to limit its use. They might as well have a brick next to their television as a game console they don’t use. For some people, a killer app like Halo 3 will sell them a console, but as we’ve seen in the past, mediocre titles like Lost Planet have done huge sales just because they were on a console during a dry spell where no other games were coming out. So, essentially, people bought new video games just because they wanted to use their console. There were no killer apps for the PS3, and some might argue that there still aren’t any, and that there won’t be any until mid-2008. By Don’s logic, that console shouldn’t have moved a single unit. A lot of people bought it because of brand familiarity, not because they were dying to play Ratchet and Clank 5 next year, and they went on to buy really crappy games like Lair because there was nothing else to buy. It’s funny how he points to the pre-holiday release of Halo 3 as a mistake on Microsoft’s part, and yet gives November and December to Sony despite the fact that they don’t, and never will, have anything even approaching the success of the Halo franchise coming out in the next few months.

Which brings us to this prediction: that "fad" comment about the Wii is going to bite him in the ass some day. The Wii is the widest spread console in the world, and has been universally embraced in Asia, Europe, Australia and North America. Africa gets nothing because they po’. It is family friendly, innovative, and easy to develop for – a perfect combination for a successful entertainment system. With Nintendo’s emphasis on new and exciting gameplay over graphics and realism, the Wii could easily not only continue to dominate the console war to its finish this generation, but also be the last console standing. As Sony and Microsoft release their new iterations of the Playstation and X-Box brands, it is very likely that developers and consumers will still be interested in the Wii. Granted, a recent study in Famitsu magazine indicated that sixty seven percent of Wii owners haven’t been using the console very often in the past few months, but that will completely change as Nintendo closes the gaps between its release schedules.

He then goes on to say that the 360 is going to have a rough holiday, citing the Gamestop release schedule. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. WRONG, he’s wrong. Because of the development cycle for multiplatform games, the big non-exclusive releases will very likely have much higher numbers on the 360 than they will on the PS3. Most multiplatform games are almost entirely developed using the Microsoft dev kit, because they’re easier to use, and the specs on the 360 allow for more available RAM. The cell processor on the PS3 is a nightmare to develop for, because the eight different cores are isolated from each other. So throughout the history of multiplatform games this cycle, they’ve looked and played better on the 360 than the PS3. In fact, to get a game up to equal snuff on both consoles, developers often push back the release of their PS3 version for a month or more.

Also, Reisinger is also ignoring something very important: number of consoles already sold, and what their attach rates are. As of October, Microsoft has sold nearly 12 million consoles in under two years. Sony has sold less than five million consoles in under one year. An attach rate, just to clarify, is the number of games bought by console owners – the average for PS3 owners is six a year, the average for X-Box 360 owners is fifteen a year. In other words, that post holiday software chart is going to be lighting up X-Box green.

Jumping tracks for a second, whether you keep an eye on the industry or not, you probably knew about Halo 3’s release. You might even have passed a magazine cover or flipped past an advertisement in a comic book showcasing Mass Effect. But have you ever heard of Uncharted, Haze or Tekken 6? I’m betting that the answer for less-than-hardcore gamers is, "no." But these exclusive titles are supposedly going to bail the PS3 out somehow. There’s no hype behind them and the majority of gamers aren’t looking forward to them, so how are we supposed to expect sales figures any larger for previous PS3 exclusives, like Heavenly Sword and Lair? When it gets to the point that you have to literally sell your game to two thirds of the people who own a PS3 just to be profitable and have an ok month for the company, well, that’s just not worth the effort.

As a result, third party developers are bailing already, and yes, Sony is going to have a rough holiday, a rough year, and a rough console cycle. I blame men like Hirai and Kutaragi. They stupidly thought that they could turn their business inward towards Japan and still appeal to western markets, but there aren’t enough otaku perverts in the world for that to be anything less than a suicidal business plan, especially as the industry approaches the $20 billion a year mark. Nintendo walks in both the eastern and western worlds, and they’re benefiting from that greatly, while Microsoft is focusing on the western market. That would be just as bad as what Sony is doing, but it’s a gigantic market that includes Europe, North America and Australia. Did Sony even plan to compete globally this time around? Because it seems like they’ve shot themselves in the foot, and liked it so much, they decided to do it again, and again, and again.

Every time the PS3 is predicted to retake its throne, it trips over home plate on its way to first base. They dropped the price $100, sales barely moved up. They introduce a 40 gig model for $100 less than that, barely anyone buys it. Without the price cuts, the sales on the console go down every single month. Now they’ve got three November releases that nobody cares about, inferior and delayed versions of multiplatform games, and they’ve got "strong" prospects for the holidays? I’m not saying that sales won’t go up – of course they will, they always do for this stuff around Christmas. But thinking that "Haze" is going to be Sony’s Christ child is so very stupid. To conclude, this guy doesn’t know what the Hell he’s talking about. Time will tell who is right or wrong, of course, but his assertions are so very annoying, and so typical of people who don’t know the numbers and trends of the industry, and just go by their gut feelings.

Truthiness has no place in business analysis, Don.

Feist is the best example of how to kill your indie cred and look beautiful doing it. Formerly a member of Peaches‘ legion of STD infested European skanks, Leslie Feist is a Canadian born performer who has been hovering on the verge of international success for half a decade. She may have finally found it with her video for, I shit you not, this is the name of the song, "1 2 3 4,". Why, after years of struggling as a musician, having only the story about how she opened for The Ramones this one time in her success column, is she suddenly being catapulted to success in America? Because she let Apple use that song to sell iPods, thus selling out as hard as an indie musician possibly can.

Girls who haven’t washed their hair in a month are such a turn on.

If you clicked both of those links, you may notice that Feist and Peaches have drastically different styles, despite having been room mates together while living in Berlin for three years. Peaches depends on a mind numbingly repetitive electro beat, audience participated screaming, and grinding her crotch on loudly humming speakers in order to sell her music, whereas Feist is just a non-insane Bjork. Because of this vast difference in personalities, Peaches is probably going to be restricted to the underground scene for her post-post-Madonna act and loud opinions, but Feist has a chance to become the next… uh… Avril Lavigne or Nelly Furtado? No, better than them, because her music isn’t made to be infectious like most radio crap. It’s excellent indie pop, with organic piano music, a steady hand on the drums, and the artist actually performing by singing, dancing and playing her own instruments.

Like Moby, Of Montreal and The Arctic Monkeys before her, Feist is at a crossroads. Achieve immortality in the underground music scene by keeping her dignity, or move to L.A., and get a famous producer to make all of her music for her while she poses for cameras in ass chaps, or whatever is the next women’s butt trend (please let it be ass chaps!).

Fallen indie angel

It wouldn’t be surprising if she went with the latter. Of Montreal was once a highly respected band, but they might as well have strapped on some blonde wigs and whored themselves out at the Las Vegas Bunny Ranch when they adapted their biggest underground hit into a jingle for Outback Steakhouse. So could Feist betray the self loathing world of being a barely successful musician for a chance at Beyonce-like status? Yes.

I hope she doesn’t, though. Because she’s making great music on her own, and achieving the level of success she deserves, oddly enough, will change that. I’m looking at you, Dido.

Gabe Newell is one of the brilliant minds who developed and produced Half-Life. After thirteen years of working for Microsoft, he cashed out his stock and became a millionaire, allowing him to finance Valve Software, starting in 1996. Now that the industry, and the company, has grown into something more behemoth in nature, his direct role in game development has been marginalized. The General no longer has to be on the front lines, so to speak, and he makes executive decisions more often than he sits down to bang out baby Siddhartha in ASCii form with the other code monkeys.

Speaking truth to power.

As an unstoppable juggernaut of old school success, mostly because he has a genuine love for his fans, he can be viciously blunt about how major corporations operate without consequence. He recently critiqued Sony’s PS3 architecture, claiming that it was essentially a waste of time – he even outsourced development of a PS3 version of The Orange Box to Electronic Arts, which was delayed a month beyond the PC and 360 release. Despite working for Microsoft for most of his youth, however, he is by no means a fanboy, and also scolded Microsoft over the shoddiness of Windows Vista, and their idiotic idea to make Direct X 10 exclusive to that platform. He also hates Macs, consoles in general and non-open source operating systems. Just about the only thing he doesn’t hate is the Wii, saying that the fact that there was nothing being developed for the system was a major hole in Valve’s strategy, as it was the only console that deserved to exist due to its innovative and simple design, and gigantic install base around the world. That sort of straight talk from a man as powerful as he is – it’s just beautiful. He’s the John Wayne of the gaming industry.

Listening to the commentary tracks in The Orange Box, you get more and more a sense of how absolutely important his contribution to the industry was. With the average age of hardcore gamers now set at 35, and casual gamers approaching the average age of 40, the medium is being taken more and more seriously by the dinosaurs in old media, and with them, a larger and larger number of people in the world.

Fuck yeah.

If it wasn’t for forward thinking minds like Gabe Newell’s, video games would be seen as just another silly toy to keep the kids quiet. Now they’re quickly becoming a story telling device, not necessarily on par with books or films, but games definitely have new and interesting ways to invoke emotions in their audience. By giving us a degree of control over the action, and therefore, responsibility for it, game developers can spark flight or fight reactions far better than the goriest Eli Roth murder porn.

And now that artificial intelligence is advanced enough, not every game has to be a series of run and gun fights. Characters can react to what you do and the things you choose to say, making things like pursuing a romance subplot or a simple heated verbal confrontation a lot more satisfying to achieve, because, instead of just watching the action play out between characters as we would in a film or in a novel, we can either win, lose or have a result somewhere in between based on our actions, or at least, a level of freedom that allows for choice. This makes it easier for an audience to personally connect to and care about a fictional character.

Gabe Newell just don’t give a damn.

Now, I kinda trashed Half-Life 2 in my previous review, but that’s only because it’s an older game, and other developers have outshined it by learning from its mistakes. Again: Half-Life 2 was an excellent game for its time. That said, the beautiful brains at Valve will wow people again the next time they make a genuine new release, and with leadership like Gabe Newell, who is willing to openly say what problems exist and why they need to be fixed, there should be no doubt that Half-Life 3, or whatever they choose to pursue after Half-Life 2: Episode III is released, will be a top tier title.

Oh yeah. He also has a pretty boss folk band.

Half-Life. It is considered, almost unanimously by veteran gamers, to be the greatest first person shooter ever made. After six years of doing almost nothing but growing and nurturing a thriving community of modders, map makers, multiplayer freaks and story tellers, Half-Life’s developer, Valve Software, finally released Half-Life 2. A year after its PC debut, the game appeared on the X-Box, and due to a severe lack of marketing, flopped. Valve is looking for a second attempt at dominating the console market, as they have the PC, with The Orange Box, a compilation of five games using Half-Life 2’s Source engine.

The Orange Box is many things, but most of all, it is a re-release of Half-Life 2. This may have been a bad move, as the original title was developed with mid to low end PCs in mind. So essentially, it is a three year old game, and while it didn’t hurt to look at in its time, it doesn’t look much better on the 360. It definitely doesn’t stand shoulder to shoulder with current generation games, like Bioshock, Oblivion, Resistance: Fall of Man or Halo 3. I’d even go as far as to say it looks only slightly better than Metroid Prime 3, which was recently released for the Wii, a system that has the minimalist in mind when it comes to hardware.

Still, games aren’t all shiny graphics, and I wish I could say that Half-Life 2 is still fun to play throughout, but there are a lot of level design choices that are really difficult to understand. It is one of those games where you’ll find yourself stuck in a boring room for five or ten minutes wondering what the Hell the designers want you to do, with little or no hints from the environment. It plays best in segments where you are constantly moving forward, plowing through enemies and intuitively following the shifting path ahead of you, but the slower puzzle solving parts of the game do a lot to put the breaks on the fun.

There are two very redeeming qualities about the game: Its story, and the character animation. Valve designed an excellent facial animation system that really hasn’t been outmatched. The skins on their models aren’t super realistic, but like a proper cartoon character, you don’t feel weird looking at them and you can easily tell how they feel at any given moment. Stare at the female lead character for too long, and she’ll shyly turn her chin away while looking at you through the top of her eyes – the only thing that would make the effect complete would be if she could blush. Characters in battle look worried or angry, character who are depressed look depressed, characters who are happy to see you look and act happy to see you. It’s a testament both to the voice actors, and the animators at Valve, at how alive these characters are. Equally impressive, this same range of emotions immediately turn to peace and neutrality whenever they are killed. The effect is limited, as there are maybe only six main characters who have their faces exposed – everyone else is a stock NPC, or are either hidden behind a military death mask, or underneath a headcrab.

The story is fun to watch unfold, but that’s all you do, watch. The game’s main character, Gordon Freeman, is the most uninteresting blank slate to headline a blockbuster this side of David Morse. The fact that your character adds nothing to the game beyond progressing from level to level hurts the entire narrative, especially as you watch the relationships between father and daughter, scientific colleagues and oppressed civilians banding emotionally together to get through each day. Alyx Vance, who is the game’s real hero, escorts Gordon through some significant portions of the game, and while she flirts with Gordon and praises his achievements as the game goes on, the silence in his replies is deafening.

Fortunately, The Orange Box comes with a lot more than just Half-Life 2. Two episodes of the extended single player campaign are included, and follow the events after the main game’s climax. Both episodes are significant improvements over the core gameplay of the original game, and the flow and pacing is a lot smoother. There were many fewer hiccups in the level design, and you almost always know what you’re supposed to do in any given situation. The episodes are also best representative of the now four years old physics engine that Valve created in house, including one puzzle where you must literally detonate a hinged garage floor underneath you to get launched onto an otherwise unreachable ledge. That type of innovation in puzzle design is what made Half-Life 2 more than just another shooter, and for all the poorer parts of the game that require clairvoyance or a strategy guide, there are many more challenging and genius, but not frustrating, parts in Episodes 1 and 2.

Episodes 1 and 2 have the same story problems as Half-Life 2, as Gordon still hasn’t decided to say anything yet. But the good parts are even better in the expansions – the time between the release of the original game and the additional content has probably allowed Valve to absorb some criticism. I’m glad to see that they’re improving an already excellent franchise based on fan feedback.

And yet there’s more. Team Fortress 2 is the most in depth multiplayer shooter ever made. The tone of the game speaks best through the advertisements for its class systems. It looks beautiful, there is a minimal amount lag in the 360 version and almost none in the PC, and its fun to play. What more do you need? It’s a simple game, and people will be playing it for many, many years. The original Team Fortress, which was created using the original Half-Life engine, is one of the most prolific online games ever made. TF2 seems like it will definitely follow suit.

The crown jewel of the Orange Box is also its smallest. Portal, a hilarious and brilliant puzzle game involving tears in physical space, made me happy. Again, this is a game that uses the Half-Life 2 engine, and has a silent protagonist just like Gordon, but an entirely different tone. Half-Life 2 is a survival horror shooter where you have to lead an uprising against faceless dictators while trying to keep the human race from being turned into the undead hosts of parasites, Portal is a giant lab rat maze wherein an insane A.I. tries to coax you into doing things for cake. The events of Portal take place in the same universe as Half-Life, as is alluded to in the second episode. It fits, but in a very strange way – it’s like watching Alf walk across the bridge of Kirk’s Enterprise, gulp down a tribble, and not being phased by it.

All of the games also come with commentary tracks that you can listen to while you’re playing, and these allow you to hear the thought process of the games’ makers around key areas while you’re actually exploring them. It’s really cool – it’s like walking around inside a Alfred Hitchcock movie while he’s telling his philosophies on character development and set design. The audio quality for these is… eh, subpar at best, so sometimes it’s hard to hear what they’re saying, but when you can, they’re usually saying something really fascinating, and they provide a lot of great insight into the industry in general, and specifically how deep their work really is.

Having been around for so long, Half-Life 2 alone would not be worth anyone’s hard earned money for sixty bucks. With the huge amount of content that comes with The Orange Box, it’s actually a great value, especially if you haven’t played Half-Life 2 since it first came out.

Somewhere around two out of five times when I’m wailing on a videogame, its because it came out of another country and wasn’t localized effectively. It’s a cultural thing – even Jackie Chan doesn’t like his own American films. So, as a red blooded American male who enjoys beer, Halo and the goings on in the life of Terrence Gene Bollea, I was surprised that I liked Eternal Sonata.

At first glance, it’s Precious Moments: The Videogame. The body language and art style is sickeningly cutesy, so adorable and sweet it will give you diabetes. And the story will rip the seams right out of your heart strings with its aggressive plucks.

Rather than another story about a young boy with magic powers who, along with a ragtag group of friends with high pitched voices, has to avenge the destruction of his village by an allegory for the a-bomb, this J-RPG actually has an original and non-whiny storyline. The final days of the legendary composer Frederic Chopin’s life were spent in a beautiful fever dream. As he lays dying of tuberculosis, attended by his mourning sister and a physician, he became lost in the musical world inside his mind. Accompanied by adorable personifications of musical terminology (such as Polka, Allegretto and Beat), Chopin struggles to make peace with death as he comes to understand this Wonderland his imagination has created to help him.

The game plays on the real themes in Chopin’s works, each one being alluded to in the chapter titles. For example, the first chapter is titled "Raindrops," which was one of Frederic’s most famous and moving preludes. It was even used in Halo 3’s marketing campaign, which was super effective (RPG joke, ahyuck). It sets up the rules and dramatic action going on inside Chopin’s head, as well as introduces some of the most beautiful background music I’ve ever heard. The most amazing part is that, while the game’s composer’s work is inspired by Chopin – it is original. You really get the sense that if this man had lived a few more years, he would have produced something similar to the prodigy who actually wrote Eternal Sonata’s music.

This was a game made by genius music lovers who have the imagination and vision of a Lewis Carroll, or a Neil Gaiman. Even though the game is about the inevitability of death, and the remorseful passion a dying creator feels for his creations, it is an uplifting and heart warming story. It may take some time to get over the art direction, but once you do, you’ll find yourself drawn in to an amazing and slightly educational fantasy universe, and a very satisfying and complete gaming experience.

Chopin, shortly before his death in 1849.

Chopin, shortly before his death in 1849, only freakin’ cute and adorable.

"What is eternal?
What is damned?
What is clay and what is sand?
Who to dis?
Who to trust?
Who to listen to?
Who to suss?"

Moving back to California, I’ve been trying to reestablish some links I had to some people in the media that I’ve neglected for about two years now. One of my best friends from High School is doing an internship for a "MAJOR NATIONAL NEWSPAPER" in her senior year of college, now working directly underneath one of their ombudsmen for the Lifestyle pages. We talked about the relevance of her position, and while those pages are intellectually sound, they’re basically quasi-entertainment about actual entertainment.

This is what criticism feels like.

Reading criticisms before choosing to spend money seeing a film, choosing to spend time watching a TV show, or choosing to spend brain cells on a new alcoholic beverage actually can be a lot of fun. Everybody loves chiding blows of snark and wit laying into projects that people have spent months, sometimes years of their lives risking success on. But, as was found in the moral of Ratatouille, the problem with critics is that their work and opinions are completely useless to a significant portion of their intended audience. Obviously, people having that pesky individuality thing is the cause of this, but unfortunately, a lot of people just go with the flow of popular opinion directly in spite of their personal tastes. This is partly their own idiot fault, but a lot of it has to do with how the media itself operates.

Sometimes critics polarize themselves around a project because of ideological reasons. Recent examples would include 300, V for Vendetta, and probably Harrison Ford’s upcoming movie, Crossing Over. Those reviews are fun to cheer for, and fun to hate, so they’re great padding for slow news cycles. But more often than not, critics all agree about what’s right or wrong about a project, and then just add some small personal twist on an element of a production to make their work seem individualistic. Those kinds of reviews are worth thumbing through if you support or oppose a project, and want to reconfirm your preconceptions about it, but unless the writers you regularly read are particularly talented (Joe Crowe!), you would probably be reading the same thing over and over and over again. And every review boils down to, basically, the acting is good or bad, the dialogue is good or bad, the pacing is good or bad, the story is good or bad, the action is good or bad, the score is good or bad, the special effects are good or bad, etc.

In the few cases where a critic’s opinions are strong enough to break from the herd, being unable to relate to a reviewer can ruin their reputation in the mind of the reader. Losing readers, or temporarily gaining them from antagonism, is a risky business. So many of the smaller named contributing writers for the paper my friend works for just read other people’s early reviews, and shoot for the safe consensus, rather than taking a risk at airing an unpopular opinion. Essentially, a herd of sheep media writers are leading a herd of sheep media consumers. That’s how Scooby Doo 2 made forty million dollars its opening weekend.

Knowing this, my friend and I agreed that we generally only trust opinion pieces on the internet, and put together a quick list of what to look for in your search for your own personal, entertaining and dependable critic.

Preferably, they will…

…understand your generation. As a kid, you might’ve been lucky enough to have a cool older cousin, or maybe even an awesome uncle who would introduce you to neat things you didn’t know about, but eventually, there is going to be a generation gap between what you like, and what someone ten years older than you likes – just as someone in their fifties probably wouldn’t take the advice of someone in their twenties. The problem that comes with being an established commenter in the media is time and age. Leonard Maltin, Roger Ebert and Gene Shallot’s opinions are not timeless, and while at this point in their lives, they are wise connoisseurs of great cinema, they’ve also become more irrelevant than ever in the internet age.

…share, or at least respect, your values. One of the reasons the United States is so fiercely divided along partisan lines is because of the sheer tonnage of acid spitting, cold hearted, asshole revealing propaganda being published every day, lashing out at ideologies that huge groups of Americans share and cementing a suicidal "us vs. them" mentality. You’re far more likely to agree with and enjoy the writing of someone who embraces their own bias rather than hiding behind a shield of "objective journalism," and also is willing to reinforces your own beliefs, than someone who challenges your opinions and thought processes. It is sad in a lot of ways, but most people are very closed minded ideologues, and nothing short of a thorough ass kicking will change that for many of us.

…have a writing style that separates them from High School newspapers. There is no excuse for reading an article from a writer who works from an outline to its completion. Whether you prefer critics who are brutally honest, batshit insane, or polite, if they’re boring, you have no reason to pay heed to their work. Unless, of course, you like boring. In which case, get the fuck off my blog.

…understand value. Asking sixty dollars for a videogame from its target audience is asking a lot. For some people (Disney employees), after taxes, asking for sixty dollars is like asking for ten hours of their working life. If a product isn’t worth that sort of financial investment, I want to know about it, rather than the quality of the product without the price tag. I realize that most critics get their review copies of games, films or whatever they’ve made a career critiquing for free – but we consumers don’t. Is seeing "Michael Clayton" worth a two minute drive to the movie theater, a ten dollar ticket, and two hours of my life? Or would I appreciate it more as as a three dollar Pay Per View rental in six months?

Well, probably neither, because it stars Batnipples. But I also know that I don’t want to see it because there are people who have taken that bullet for me: critics who love and hate the same things that I do, consistently. In the immortal words of David Bowie, "The pretty things are going to Hell, they wore it out, but they wore it well."

I caught this article dealing with the value of "silent protagonists" (which is an oxymoron, considering that protagonist literally means "he who speaks first") in videogames, and it reminded me of an argument I had with several co-workers. As trivial as it sounds, while I had a lot of fun at my job these past few months, I think this is the only thing we talked about where one side wasn’t swayed.

My perspective is this: The silent videogame protagonist isn’t an artistic device, and never was, but is rather a product of old limitations on technology, and laziness. There is never a silent protagonist in books, poems, films or television, and until developers finally dump the concept on an industry wide level, their work won’t be able to be taken seriously as an artistic and expressive medium by a significant portion of the population. The problem is not that silent protagonists like Half-Life’s Gordon Freeman, F.E.A.R.’s Point Man or Bioshock’s "Jack" do not speak, the problem is that they also don’t communicate, which harms the character, the story, and the suspension of disbelief. Even if a game was about a mute, he could still attempt to communicate his feelings, motivations and plans by some other means than speaking – sign language, writing, universal hand gestures, whatever. Gordon and his ilk don’t do that. They are only motivated to do things by the player’s hands on a keyboard, not by politics, religion, the need to survive, etc. – making their games not only linear, which isn’t a bad thing by itself, but also shallow.

Everyone’s talking about Halo 3, so it’s not cool to praise it too much right now, but I think Bungie struck the right balance in their attempt to create an enigmatic character that any player can relate to, who also has his own life and background. The Master Chief speaks only when absolutely necessary, and when he does, he reveals a little bit of who he is underneath his armor. He’s a professional soldier who considers his duty first, but still has a soft spot for his comrades in arms. That’s all we need to know about him. Everything else is interpreted by the player – from the death of a close friend, to the sacrifice of a noble stranger, to the strange and confusing customs of an ancient AI, what he’s thinking and how he feels about those situations is up to the player. The reflection in the Chief’s visor is a reflection of ourselves – a poignant thought to those who bought the Legendary edition, and literally saw their reflection in the Chief’s visor when they opened the game. This method establishes a realistic character, while leaving room for interpretation. The problem is that while characters like the Chief are the coolest of the cool, there can be only so many Boba Fetts in this world before the archetype grows tiresome. Same law applies to the Fonz.

The opposite of the Silent Protagonist isn’t necessarily Duke Nukem, spewing out fun one liners as they rip wanton destruction across a peaceful landscape. They’re standard dramatic characters, human beings or otherwise, that an audience can relate to and cheer for, but identify that they aren’t meant to step into that role. Solid Snake of Metal Gear Solid, Sam and Max, Alex Munro of Star Trek: Elite Force, Oddworld’s Stranger, Gears of War’s Marcus Fenix – they all deserve the simple and elegant title of "protagonist," and I think these characters are far more loved and memorable than silent characters from western shooters or eastern RPGs. Because they aren’t restricted by their silence, they can fully express themselves in their own humanity. They have their motivations, goals and philosophies, and aren’t shy in sharing them as their stories are told. That makes them a lot more noble than the mysterious Dr. Freeman, because they’re something he can never be until he opens his goatee’d trap and gives us a Silent Bob style rage fueled monologue:

They’re real.

… Chad Wardenn! Straight from the suburbs, baby, he’s slightly darker skinned than most of the other people at his school, so show the man’s ghettofabulous speech patterns some respeck. Fairly warned says I: he curses so frequently, even I am slightly offended, and I’m basically Caligula with bigger tits.

Some choice quotes:

"Everyone knows that girls can’t do sh*t except suck d***." – on Final Fantasy XII-2 (It’s funny because it’s true!)

"True games have some fiddy cent in the background. Some Lil’ John. Not f*ckin’ p***y ass Mad World." – on Tears for Fears comeback’s marketing

"Halo 3. Know what I’m sayin? They better rename that shit to GAYLO 3." – on how gay people play Halo

"Mexican ass n**** that just jumped over the border to fix people’s toilets." – in regards to Mario, of the Mario Bros. "Hello, ma’am, I’m here to clean your pipes, of piranha plants.

Now that I’m somewhere beautiful, I often watch the sunrise and ponder philosophy. What will be left of me and my impact on society in twenty years? Will my generation be looked upon with admiration and nostalgia for having pioneered various social issues and having physically grappled with some of the most oppressive societies known to history? Or will it be looked at as a bunch of fucktards who catapulted Will & Grace to mass popularity and mostly died for no reason in the middle east? Well, thankfully, we now have "It’s Always Sunny" on FX, and a completely ineffective legislative branch stuck kneep deep in a quagmire of patriotism questioning mung, so the latter is, thankfully, more unlikely. Then again, there’s no stopping the Jack train.

There are multiple marks against we children of the eighties. Limp Bizkit. Myspace. The Clinton impeachment. The emo movement. Europe, the continent. But perhaps our gravest sin is the platitude of industrial pop bands who rhymed the word "school" and "fool" in the lyrics. I think 1 Plus 1 is the top offender with their cover of Joan Jett’s poignant crowing of "Hello, Daddy/Hello, Mom/I’m a ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!" The bastardization of a song that many of us were conceived to is absolutely unacceptable.

The eighties and nineties also gave rise to stand up comedy, especially that which analyzed the differences between black people and white people. This forged the way for the sitcom era, some good, some bad, some awesome, but mostly horrible. I personally apologize for being partly responsible. When I outgrew Nickelodeon, I watched shitty HBO stand up specials re-airing on Comedy Central in a heavily censored form.

There are some nice things we’ve done, mostly in making the internet a big deal. But still, sitting on the side of a mountain, watching the sun rise over Glacier National Park, I must defiantly throw down my breakfast beer and wonder what the future brings. Because if eep op orp ah ah doesn’t mean shit soon, the cartoons have been lying to us all along.

Mercedes. At any cost.