Asses Kicked, Bubblegum Chewed

So when last we talked I gave the VERY abridged version of the development History of Duke Nukem Forever, leaving the final chapter out but leaving a cryptic video of the introduction to a completely different and awesome game.

That game if you were not paying attention Was Borderlands, a scifi single player shooter of epic proportions loved by fans and critics alike, and bringing Gearbox Software into the forefront of video game visionaries. Previously they were known as “those guys that did Half Life Mods for Valve.

The final development chapter of this review is that after a minor bit of Drama, Gearbox walked up to 3D Realms, raped it, took their baby away and left behind a roll of quarters for cab fare. And while such imagery may be vile when done to real people,. I can honestly say that 3D Realms deserved it.

So here we after after 15 years and one last delay for old times sake, is Duke Nukem Forever worth it?

No, it is not worth 15 years of development.

Let me elaborate. I was a Duke fan since the side scrollers. I know the game I followed it. I lost hope and regained it, and upped the bucks for the shiny super jumbo deluxe version to reward my reaffirmation of the game and its new developers. And when I played it, and got about half way through it I went back to playing Halo Reach.

Under that magnifying glass, Duke Nukem forever is not worth the money I paid. But then two things happened when I played the game for a friend of mine who was only vaguely familiar with Duke Nukem as a franchise.

I blew up then pulled the tongue out of a 3 boobed alien monster, went right into a strip club and had some fun. And my friend said

“This is actually one of the coolest games ever!”

He elaborated that there was no part of the game as a shooter that was trying to be serious. The over the top voice acting, the goofy writing, the ambiance all made for a rather hyper masculine cathartic package. That the lack of emphasis on story, game mechanics, and trying to “push the envelope” emphasized the character of the game.

Okay so he did not say it in so many words, but that was the conclusion I came to after viewing Duke Nukem Forever through his eyes. Speaking of which when he popped them back in his head from a virtual lap dance he applauded the little things that could be done, from using a toilet, to smoking cigars, getting lap dances, playing pool, pinball, arcades, and even flipping off the lights.

This perspective also allowed me to see how when you examine DNF you can see across the past 14 years at all the little traits that had been pilfered from other shooters. This allows the game mechanics themselves to be solid, if not revolutionary.

And that is the key thing to take away from Duke Nukem Forever. It is a solid game. They key criticism that you will find in any review is that “it does not bring anything new.” Never mind that whole franchises have been doing that for years and gotten away with it. Mechanically the weapons are uniqe, the Platforming elements are solid. the only point I really complain about is that about 2/3rds of the way through the game you have to engage in a vehicle section that is drawn out way the hell to far. but overly log arduous levels are nothing new in video game history either, right?

Long and short, check your high expectations at a door. This is not a fantastic game, but it is competent. I want to see what Gearbox can do with the franchise next.

Come Get Some!

So yeah, 15 years in the making, was Duke Nukem Forever worth it? Yes and no. Wait most of you don’t know what Duke Nukem Forever is? Okay story time!

Duke Nukem began its life in 1991 with Apogee Software releasing a simplified side scroller, whereby a blond hero named Duke Nukem was captured by the Mad Dr Proton and had to escape and simultaneously stop his antagonist plans for world domination. Plots don’t get more silly then that. It was popular enough that a second side scrolling sequel was released in 1992, but by then Video Games were undergoing a fundamental shift. At the time a Mesquite Texas based company founded by Kansas City Native John Carmak created Wolfenstein 3D, followed by Doom. Both published about about the same time.

Seeing a chance to make a name for itself on the then emerging First Person Shooter Market, Apogee Renamed itself 3D Realms and took the plunge. After three years of development Duke Nukem 3D was released. And did it impress.

Seriously the computer gaming world had seen nothing like this, and consoles were unable to compete as well. The titular character went from a bland sprite to this over the top, chauvinistic blend of Ash Williams and Snake Pliskin. More so then anywhere else Duke Nukem 3D tread on ground no other game would, by introducing elements such as alcohol use, sexual situations and entertainment, drug use, and no holes barred foul language, Duke Nukem played to the adult market at a time when even PC gaming was seen as for children.

Immediately upon the commercial success of Duke Nukem 3D, 3D Realms announced in 1997 a sequel titled Duke Nukem Forever. Despite Seven Spin off games however during the times pan, DNF was delayed repeatedly.

The development History of the game is nothing short of Legen- Wait for it…

It got to be so bad that DNF became the butt of many jokes, to the point of being the definition of Vaporware. Such comments like Duke Nukem If Ever, Whenever, Fornever and the list goes on became standard for making fun of it. Fans even grew weary and by 2001, there was little press on developments as 3D Realms shuttered itself and simply said it would hit the streets “when it’s done.” In that time-span fans largely forgot about the game though some remembered, and compiled a list of things that happened since Duke Nukem Forever was announced.

When it was finally announced that 3D Realms had fired the Duke Nukem Development Team and was undergoing financial restructuring, Forever finally seemed all but dead, despite the teaser released earlier in 2007.

But then again…. There ain’t no rest for the wicked.

We will finish the History Lesson and get to the review next time.

Some things Just do not need to be...

WHY GOD WHY!!!!!

Look, here is the thing, I am a Halo fan. I was first exposed to Halo combat evolved when my brother and I simultaneously split with our respective girlfriends and in a huge bout of male sympathy, I had my first beer with my dad, we went out for burgers and ended up buying a Microsoft X Box and half of its launch library. Halo was the only thing that stood out. While its level design was not very impressive, it did a lot of things to the First Person Shooter (which I was still calling Doom Clones) that were impressive. A regenerating health bar, the ability to only carry two weapons, use of grenades as an action instead of a separate weapon. Halo took a lot of ideas from various other shooters and melded them into a perfect experience.

Halo as a fictional universe has a core trilogy, surrounded two (later three) main characters on a quest to save the galaxy from Religious arrogance, I mean space bugs. It was rich in allusions to Biblical, Torranic, and Islamic scripture. It also had elements of Greek myths, Chinese fables, and even King Arthur, particularly the ending of the core Trilogy.

RIGHT THERE! The hero who saved the world is presumed dead from his crusade, and is being escorted by the Lady of the Lake to sanctuary until he is needed again. Bang! Fineto! Done! story is closed, yes there was allusion to further tales, but really we did not need them. If the Halo Universe was to survive, it should have done so upon its own merits rather then trying to artificially drag out a long gone protagonist’s story.

And you know what pisses me off more then anything else. I am going to buy it! I am going to play it! And I will probably enjoy it despite the inevitable glaring faults.

Video Games ARE Art!!!

So last month the National Endowment for Arts declared that Video Games are considered an art-form, and therefore are open to federal funding for development, the same way television, film, theater, and literature are occasionally granted pitiful grants that keep the people working on those projects fed for a month.

Run on sentence lead-ins aside, we now have exhibits from talented developers on video games great and small on display in the Smithsonian. This project from what I hear was in development for the past five years, and continuously updated till its debut this year. So next to your Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, and the Shredder will be the works of Shigeru Miyamoto (of Mario Brothers fame).

This is unequivocally a good thing. One only needs to go onto YouTube and search for “Halo 3 VidDoc” too see the tireless effort that artists go into drawing on paper, then creating real life models of before finally rendering onto screen their works to be the Master Chief we love to send out into Alien Kickassia on weekends.

Wow I am abusing grammatically correct run on sentences today…

Of course it did not take much time for the controversy engine to stir up whether this new declaration had Merit. Credit has to go to Fox news for presenting our subject matter in not only the wrong light, but an incredibly biased light. You can either watch this video or if you want a smart ass comic that tells the same story you can look at this.

The Video specifically mentions the Call of Duty Series, and it possibly getting federal funding. Call of Duty, for the uninitiated is a video game that places you in the perspective of a solider (usually British or American) fighting wars. Initially the game was set in World War II, but eventually evolved into more modern scenarios. As I mentioned above the argument postulated by Fox is that should such a game be entitled to N.E.A. funding.

I agree with Fox, it does not. I also agree with Activision, it does not. I agree with numerous gaming websites and magazines, who all agree with Fox. There is no need for a Triple A studio blockbuster of a Video Game to receive any federal funding to ensure its release. It is a good thing that is not what the NEA is interested in.

To give Activision federal grant money to release a Call of Duty game (which despite my criticisms does have some artistic merits) would be the equivalent of the NEA giving James Cameron money to make Avatar. No one would deny the artistic merit of the film, but it was doing fine on its own, being funded by one of Hollywood’s powerhouses, and a major studio.

The NEA would be more interested in providing funding for a game like Minecraft, Braid, Limbo or Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Google each one of them, or YouTube some game footage and you will see what I mean. These are engines of creativity that even despite every one of them being a roaring success never got enough credit.

Of course major media outlets don’t care. They call up IGN and ask “what were the top 5 selling games of the past year?” Then of course they are treated to four First Person Shooters and Grand Turismo and show clips of those while they ask game developers “IS THIS ART!” And they might as well do it in German accents for all the choice any relatively reasonable media critic or games industry insider has.

The key thing is that we have across the world what is Commercial Art, and what is Fine Art. You never see and advertising agency putting up their projects for Kellogg’s up for federal funding. Likewise BioWare will not be trying to get the Feds to fund the last quarter of Mass Effect 3. Even controversial art-house games would be subject to federal scrutiny, and cynical attempts to garner attention like the so called “School Shooter Mod” would be rejected immediately. (if you want to see an art-house style game covering school shootings I highly recommend Super Columbine Massacre by the way. The creator actually makes a significant attempt to explore the psyche of the Columbine Shooters.)

History is on the side of Games however. We have schools at major universities devoted to animating assets for video games. There are more man hours spent rendering every curve and angle of Miranda Lawson’s arse then in any one Rembrandt painting.

The major Pushback against Video games entering the mainstream has to do with one very key item. Video games are still by and large regarded as toys for children. Much in the same way that Radio was regarded as a tool, and film a meaningless novelty, the origins of Video games from the days of the Magnivox Oddessey and Atari 2600 has permitted a generation of journalists and political leaders to have a clear waypoint to try and keep games “in their place.”

Where the moment in games is that the proverbial “chains” were broken and Video games managed to break free of being merely children’s toys, I can not point to. Some say as early as February 12^th of 1991 with the release of Super Mario Brothers 3, one of the most critically acclaimed video games ever. Others would cite Final Fantasy VII or Halo: Combat Evolved.

But the chain has been broken, game designers are no longer toymakers, and players, as has been shown by statistical analysis time and again are not just children. Games are no longer approaching mere entertainment, but instead ask the player to consider moral quandaries and balance out the consequences of their actions. Whole avenues of entertainment have sprung up around gamer culture. To say that it is only a matter of time shows that people have not been paying attention, as now we merely have to wait for the stubbon holdouts to die.

Pointless Bitching about TIm Burton

I am a movie fan, as I think I have intimated at least once here. And I like all sorts of movies. Action, Comedy, Drama, Epics, Fantasy, Horror… you know the genre I can name at least ten films I liked in that genre.

But you know who I don’t like in movies, at all, to the point of generally boycotting them entirely these days? Tim Burton.

I don’t know what it is about this guy, but he has driven me bat shit ever since the Nightmare Before Christmas. Wait I do know what it is about this guy. And I think I will outline it right now.

First off Tim Burton has some serious Daddy Issues. While this was not REALLY prevalent in Beetlejuice or Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (and I can not comment on Vincent as I have never seen it.) Ever since he directed Batman in 1989, Tim Burton has been really big on daddy issues. In Batman it was I watched my daddy die, in Edward Scissorhands it was Daddy did not finish me, and Nightmare Before Christmas “Daddy controls me to much.” I could go on about other films (Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Big Fish for example.) but the point is that the theme of Paternal neglect, abandonment and abuse runs rampant through his films.

Secondly there is the strand of Re-Makes and non original IPs that Burton has a hand in that really piss me off. He famously said during the production of 1989’s Batman that he did not need to be familiar with the comic books to make a good batman film. Fortunately it seemed there were others involved in production that steered it in the right direction, but this blasé attitude continues in other films. Mars Attacks was a crappy redo of the infamous Ed Wood flick Plan Nine From Outer Space, despite having little to do with the originals plot (there is an actual Plan Nine Redux in the works right now though that looks spectacular.)

In Planet of the Apes, the visuals were stunning, and the makeup was as fantastically innovative as the original. But the Stranger in a Strange Land idea that made the initial Planet of the Apes so awe inspiring was not there. People point to many specific things, but for me it was that the humans in Burton’s planet retained a sense of intelligence and culture, however suppressed it may be. Compare that to human beings in the Charlton Hesston film who were one step shy of being wild animals. The juxtaposition of a sapient human in a land where it was apes who were sapient was lost right there.

Finally with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Burton Openly messed with greatness. I can not fathom that film other then “Here is Johnny Depp acting kooky!” The visuals were garish, the music was forgettable, and NONE of that magic from the ’71 was ever rendered. Like the candy Willy Wonka made, it was sugary and hollow.

Oh wait, I mentioned Johnny Depp didn’t I? While the performances rendered in Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood were brilliant, showing both subtlety and passion respectively, it seems that Burton is nothing more then the bottom bitch to Mr Depp whenever his bank account runs dry. Only Helena Bonham Carter has appeared in more Burton films over the past decade and that is because she is fucking Burton.

Through all of this I can not say that Mr. Burton is a talentless hack, but his talent just does not show through. The man is a master at cinematography, but he needs to spend more time directing films rather then micromanaging them to meet his acid trip visions. What’s the point of all of this? I really don’t know I just wanted to bitch about Tim Burton, go in peace my friends.

Munchkins

This is another case of me sharing someone else story. There is a debate going on in the Battletech community of “what is and is not Munchkin.” It arose for reasons I can not quite explain, though it seems the property is in this state of singularity, with so many antique rulebooks that the company with the IP now has been working, for really the past five years now, to create a set of “Core” Books to put everything in a few easy to read volumes.

The way it works is that the core rule books are “Tiered” in a particular way. The first book gives you the Standard Rules, the ones that will never change or go away. Book 2 is an instruction manual on how you can build your own game pieces, which is where things start to get controversial. The reason being is that after a quarter of a century in development, Battletech already has over 1000 “Official” play pieces and variants, so there is a core of players who refuse to play with customs made from this second book.

Books 3 and 4 instruct you in ways to expand the standard rules to allow for new ways to play. The joke is that with them, you can have a military conflict on a sinking super tanker in a hurricane that was carrying hives of bees that are now loose, and giant robots are throwing cargo containers at each other like wrestlers and steel chairs. And there is one more book to go.

Among players there is this sense that if the rule even exists, then they have a right to use it, no matter what other players say, so this can cause some contention if at the very least, no other player is even familiar with the rules being used. Anyway on to the story.

“Back in the days when the Clans were relatively new, I got conned into playing a demo at the local RPG store. While just hanging out one day, I was talking to a friend and mentioned some 10-15 ton ‘mechs that I had designed and was quite proud of; I said that I’d put them up against any canon light design in the books. Next thing I know, the owner of the store says “We have a challenge!” because another player there told him he’d take that challenge.

So we work out the date, time and terms: I’d bring a 4-‘mech lance of my custom IS ultralights and my opponent would bring a lance of 4 LIGHT Inner Sphere ‘mechs from any official book available at that time. We settle on maps (3 x 3), victory conditions (last ‘mech standing) and go home.

At the set date and time, I show up with my force; two15-ton and two 10-ton IS ‘mechs (I might post stats later; fastest one was 6/9, I made extensive use of advanced IS tech and the lance was fairly well balanced with LRMs and even an ISerLL… and all-regular 5/4 pilots.

My distinguished opponent brought a STAR of FIVE custom clan ‘mechs; ranging in weight from 35 tons to 55 tons (yes, two mediums) each with an elite 2/1 pilot.

When I pointed out to him that this was not the agreed force composition he claimed to have forgotten, that he’d misplaced his TROs, that he was ‘used to clan tech’, that it was too late to make new sheets, blah, blah, blah…

When I complain to the store owner, he says that I ‘did say any ‘mech’ and implied that I was being a poor sport. In the end, I had nothing better to do that afternoon and if nothing else, I’d test my designs in battle.

I did ask to level the playing field by at least matching skill levels (to which my opponent strenuously objected, claiming that ‘clan pilots are the best’ so he would not even consider reducing his pilot’s uber-elite rating), but after much wrangling (and being accused of being a crybaby) I was “magnanimously” allowed to increase my pilot’s rating to 3/2.

So there I am, my 4 IS ultra lights facing five custom clan ‘mechs, the lightest of which is twice the weight of my two heaviest ‘mechs put together and his heaviest heavier than my entire lance put together.

Battle starts and surprise, surprise; he ignores zell. I start setting fires anywhere useful, generating smoke and maneuvering to get the best advantage of available cover. Within three turns we started shooting at each other. Superior tactics on my part (humbly, I have to admit it’s true; he basically tried to charge across an open field, decreasing his chances of hitting) and a few lucky rolls soon (2 combat turns) had two of his ‘mechs down and a third in dire straits, while only two of my units had any type of damage (worst damage was the loss of an arm with nothing mounted on it).

My opponent goes NUTS. Picks up one of his minis, throws it against the wall, overturns the table, kicks his sheets on the floor and storms out in a fit of fury, never again returning to the store.

Yeah. He pretty much defined “munchkin”; extreme power-gamer hell-bent on winning at any cost, including at the cost of the enjoyment of others. No single thing makes someone a munchkin.”

What we wanted Mace Windu to say...

Today is Star Wars day and I am feeling Irreverent, so here is a list of things that everyone WANTED Samuel L Jackson to say during his tenure in the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy.

1) BASIC MOTHER-FUCKER DO YOU SPEAK IT!

2) This is your father’s Lightsaber, when you absolutely, positively must kill every mother fucker in the room, accept no substitutes

3) Hold on to your Butts, or tentacles, or whatever you got that you sit on.

4) Say try mother fucker! Say try again! I DARE YOU I DOUBLE DARE YOU SAY TRY AGAIN!

5) Use the force bitch!

6) You have reached the desk of Mace Windu, please leave a message after the beep. HEY I SAID AFTER THE BEEP! *Beep* That’s better!

7) Does he look like a nerf? *IGNITES LIGHTSABER* DOES HE LOOK LIKE A NERF!? THEN WHY YOU TRY TO HERD HIM LIKE ONE?

8) Whether or not what we experienced was an According to Yoda miracle is insignificant. What is significant is that I felt the touch of the Force.

9) Not even the Force knows what you're doing!

10) You having a nice day, sir? You feeling all right? Not to get too personal, but a Sith standing in the middle of Courescant wearing a sign that says "I hate Jedi" has either got some serious personal issues, or not all his dogs are barking.

11) Who was the last person to beat Darth Vader? His mother!

12) Mano a mano? My Lightsaber wants to laugh.

13) I got this young nineteen year old Country girl named Sheronda. I found her on a Starport two days outta Hoth, barefoot, country as a Nerf herd. I took her to my place in Taris, told her it was Courescant.

14) Obi-Wan can tell me any story that comes into his pretty little head, just so long as at the end of that story he hands me my motherfucking Credits.