Hey all.

If you’re into console RPGs, like the Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest series, then you should check out my Overthinking It post on what makes a console RPG an RPG. It’s pretty great.

Not big into video games? Check out some of our recent guest posts, like this article linking Batman and Dostoevsky in The Dark Knight. I didn’t write it, but I edited it, so that counts for something.

If you don’t like video games or Batman, I’m not sure why you read this weblog. Go home now.

Three pieces of Overthink:

(1) I have a post up on the Fallout 3 soundtrack and its existentialist implications. It’s long but should be accessible even to people who haven’t played the game. Have fun.

(2) I’m sure you’ve all listened to this week’s Overthinking It podcast. If not, you can hear me stand my ground on the insipidity of the “celebrity death trifecta” against all comers. We also talk about Emmy nominations and the passing of Frank McCourt.

(3) So every now and then someone lands on our site (apparently) without reading the URL. Their comments on our posts invariably entertain. “hur hur u guys r so retarded its just a [movie / song / video game / comic book featuring Barack Obama] just hav fun wit it.” There’s no engaging these people, of course; explaining the schtick never makes it funnier.

I got one yesterday on my very first post for the site – in which I accuse Rick Springfield of advancing the mind/body dichotomy in “Jessie’s Girl”. Our dilettante wrote:

Actually I think I will say something as I am a loyal long term fan of Mr. Springfield’s and don’t appreciate his work or him being slammed like this. I think some of you need to listen to some of his later works rather than judge him harshly on only one song.

He has evolved considerably in his lyrics since 1981. On his latest CD, Venus In Overdrive, there is a song called “What’s Victoria’s Secret?” and no it’s not about the underwear. It’s basically the flip side of Jesses Girl and tells us men should look for what’s inside of a woman and not objectify their bodies.

There is another song on that CD, “Mr. PC” that has lyrics that sum up perfectly what I think of this specific article some of the negative opinions given:

On and on and on and on you go tell me Mister PC
Round and round and round and round you go preach it PC
You got a brilliant way of saying nothing at all

Given this anonymous poster’s instant lyrical recall of Rick Springfield songs that nobody knew existed, I can only draw one conclusion: Rick Springfield just trolled our blog. High-five, guys.

This media blow might get political, but that’s no fault of mine:

The Lives of Others: Oscar-winning German film from 2007. Set in East Berlin in 1984, it follows a Stasi captain ordered to surveill a popular playwright and his actor girlfriend. The passion in their lives draws him in, until he finds himself bending the rules to keep them safe. Like The Conversation, but heartwarming and taking place outside of Gene Hackman’s head. Phenomenal – moving, funny and rich in historic detail.

(Note: National Review called it the best conservative movie of the last twenty-five years – which, coming from a magazine that’s spent hundreds of pages defending warrantless wiretaps and detention without trial in the last decade, ranks as one of the sicker ironies I’ve read in some time)

Half-Life 2: Acquired it with the Orange Box; finished it last week. I see what all the fuss is about! The grossout horror aspects don’t do it for me (zombies! ceiling barnacles!), but the shooting felt more intuitive and intense than any other FPS I’ve played in recent memory. The house-to-house urban levels (Anticitizen One and “Follow Freeman”) justify the sticker price – which isn’t much in 2009, so go get a copy.

And the in-game dialogue does not disappoint (as it shouldn’t, coming from the makers of Portal). Dr. Breen’s tired lectures to the troops at Nova Prospekt beat the writing in any given Michael Bay movie, hands-down. “This brings me to the one note of disappointment I must echo from our Benefactors …”

I started in on HL2:Ep1 but logged off pretty early. Given the cataclysmic ending of HL2, I figured that Ep1 would put you in control of Alyx Vance as she fled City 17. Now that would have been cool. But no, once again it’s Gordon Freeman, forced to invade the same Citadel he just spent several hours blowing up. I’ll pick it up again once time has cooled its memory, I’m sure.

Slan: Typical ’40s pulp – lots of action, lots of breakneck pacing, lots of pseudo-scientific talk. In the distant future, the human race has united into a single global police state, fanatically devoted to one end: killing the super-mutants called slans. Slans look exactly like humans, except for the golden tendrils emerging from their skulls that give them telepathic capabilities. That, plus their superhuman speed and reaction time, make them a threat to the human race.

The story moves along at an engaging clip, pausing only on occasion for lengthy lectures on the history of the current situation. In these lectures we get a definite sense of the time in which van Vogt wrote this novel: 1940, when the world hadn’t quite lost its fascination with fascism yet. Because fascism isn’t just jackboots and insignia (though those are essential). It’s any political system which treats culture, genetics and politics as different facets of the same machine, a machine that, if it were only tempered just so, could launch the human species at a lightning pace.

Still, it’s pretty understated. Get past that and you have a classic piece of sci-fi history.

Buffy: I haven’t forgotten you. A couple more episodes, then I’ll have my next batch of 5.

Black Summer: Superhero comics stem from adolescent power fantasies, and the passing decades have not matured that appeal much. Sure, comic books sometimes touch on political issues of the day, but almost always within their own limited language – “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if a super-soldier punched Hitler in the face? and he had a sidekick who was my age?” At the end of the day, it’s still wish-fulfillment. And that’s fine. Indulging in wish-fulfillment gets the human race out of bed in the morning. But let’s call it what it is.

Black Summer is an independent comic series written by Warren “&%$#” Ellis and illustrated, sometimes too ornately, by Juan Jose Ryp. It tells the story that brings the Seven Guns, America’s only cybernetically enhanced vigilante team, out of retirement. Each of the Guns combines cutting-edge information processing nanotech with handguns of unequalled power – some can run faster than light, some can throw tanks at helicopters, some can see through every satellite or computer in the world. Four of them can hold off an Army battalion.

The series begins with the most trusted member of the Seven Guns, John Horus, killing the President and Vice-President with his bare hands moments before they’re scheduled for a press conference. He appears before the White House press corps and charges the (unnamed) President with a number of crimes, including but not limited to prosecuting an illegal war in Iraq and ordering the torture of enemy combatants. He demands a new election take place as soon as possible, and then flies off.

To Ellis’ credit, John Horus is insane. No one – not even his teammates – thinks that murdering the President will solve what’s wrong with America. As one of his allies puts it, John Kennedy was so unliked that he barely got elected, and now look what people think of him. So is Ellis saying violence won’t fix the system? That violence is an ugly but necessary first step? That the system can’t be fixed?

I don’t know that he’s saying any of those. I think Ellis took a dark idea that writers have been batting around since Watchmen (“what if someone truly invincible, and maybe a little bit crazy, were as mad at the President as I am?”) and ran with it. The result is an interesting, and brutally violent, little story. I don’t think it’ll change anyone’s mind on anything important. But, again, it’s a comic book.

If you’re not already subscribing, you should check out this week’s Overthinking It podcast, in which four white guys and an Asian argue about rap music. We also sling terms like “racially normative” around and, at one point, call Mozart “soulless and technical.” It’s the most controversial podcast I’ve ever been on; don’t miss it.

# # #

Media blows monitor your movements:

Brazil: Tasha Robinson over at the AVClub gave Terry Gilliam a lifetime pass for directing Brazil, and I have to agree with her. With a savage look at the demoralizing effects of bureaucracy and the numbing balm of consumer culture, Gilliam depicts a world too plausible to be real. It’s 1984 with punch and savage wit. The puppeteering and other effects, dated though they are, work wonderfully: Jonathan Pryce as an airborne angel, the legions of hunchbacked baby-faced ghouls, etc.

Half-Life 2: Started playing this about a week ago. I can go at it for maybe forty-five minutes at a time before I get revulsed or frustrated. Either something disgusting leaps out of a corner and attacks me (oh fuck, it’s on the ceiling, it’s pulling me up into its mouth, oh FUCK) or I hit a repetitive stretch of gameplay and tap out. However, I can definitely see what the fuss was about: the controls feel smoother and the enemy A.I. smarter than any other shooter I’ve played in a while. And there’s such an obsessive level of verite in every aspect of the world – from the scraps of paper and graffiti to the periodic radio announcements from City 17 – that I almost don’t want to leave.

And on the third day, they went to the media blow, only to find the stone rolled aside:

The Limits of Power: A book-length op-ed. Heavy on assertions, backed up by telling but sparse anecdotes, Bacevich’s new book on American imperialism likely won’t convince anyone who wasn’t one foot in the bag already. But for those of us who were, it’s a stirring call: an indictment of the view that American military presence is capable of bringing peace and democracy in “small wars.” Bacevich does a good job of separating Democratic rhetoric from the historical record. The wars that Bush started were hardly a break with American tradition: Presidents have been intervening in regional conflicts, starting wars on spurious pretenses, and expropriating foreign resources for domestic use since the late 40s. Hell, if you include the Louisiana Purchase, it’s been happening for centuries.

(I know that little blurb’s going to rile up readers on both the Left and Right, but I’m not really interested in debating it. If you want to defend American exceptionalism, take it up with Bacevich, not me)

Crank: I watched this on Sunday in anticipation of Crank 2: High Voltage this weekend. It’s vacant and dumb, but it’s well-paced. I’ve said this several times before, but Jason Statham can hold an action flick together with his tired, unshaven Everyman nature. He works best when he isn’t given zany one-liners – just a weary look and a bruised resiliency.

Despite its shallow appearance, Crank has a lot going on beneath the surface. Expect me to write more on that subject on Overthinking It later this week. We already touched on the Easter symbolism in Sunday’s Overthinking It podcast, which you should definitely listen to.

Xenos: In contrast to the decrying of fascism in Bacevich’s The Limits of Power, I read Dan Abnett’s breezy glorification of Sci-Fascism, Xenos, at about the same time. Abnett’s novels take place in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, known for its tabletop strategy games and online multiplayer RTSs. Xenos follows Gregor Eisenhorn, a gun-toting Inquisitor in the Church of the God-Emperor of Mankind. He jaunts from planet to planet with a retinue of psychics and gunfighters, hunting down twisted worshippers of the Chaos Gods.

Xenos is fun, mindless pulp. The body counts are high – over twelve thousand people die in the first three chapters (most of them all in one blow) – and every other chapter ends with someone kicking in a door with a gun in his hand. Abnett tosses around sci-fictionisms like “ceramsteel” and “data-slates” with abandon. A diverting guilty pleasure.

Mass Effect: Beat it this past Saturday. Rebooting after the first 5 hours and tinkering with some of the auto-target settings cured what ailed the game – I enjoyed it much more throughout. I’d still rather read a novel set there then play a game, but I’ll buy the sequel (eventually). My advice to the first timers:

• Order of planets: Lissa, then Feros, then Noveria, then Vermire. Trust me.
  

• Give everyone without the Fitness trait or the Soldier trait an armor upgrade that regenerates their health. You’ll save medi-gel, and mental effort, if you don’t have to worry about healing the other guys between combats.
  

• Get comfy with the squad orders on the D-pad. If an enemy digs in, use the Up button to send your other two guys forward, laying down covering fire. If enemies are strafing your weaker engineers or biotics, use the Down button to tell them to dig in, then charge ahead with grenades and autofire.
  

• Do as many side-quests as you can before visiting the first plot point planet (see order above). Also, visit as many other planets in the Galaxy as you can. Mineral deposits and random scavenging leads to boatloads of cash, and cash is only useful in the early game.

A pre-birthday media blow:

Mass Effect: I can’t get over the feeling that I’m playing this game wrong. Part of this feeling arises from the fact that Mass Effect has no tutorial to speak of, throwing you into the action with limited instruction but deep backstory. But most of this feeling arises from the hundred different variables the game asks you to worry about. Do I want to upgrade my armor to improve its “hardening,” its “physical protection” or its “damage reduction”? Do I need my weapons to do more “physical force” or to reduce “cooldown”? Is it better to bring a squad mate with four dots in Sabotage or five dots in Overload?

I played this game for five hours before abandoning my first build – reluctantly, after several attempts at driving across a frozen tundra in an ATV that handles like two drunk cows, only to arrive at a distant lab, be denied the opportunity to save, and then die at the hands of a giant robot four times. I considered those first five hours my tutorial, started a new game, and have since enjoyed it much more. As with all Bioware games, the setting oozes detail and history from every pore. Cultures and factions exist not just to provide obstacles but to add depth to a rich mural.

I could spend weeks reading a novel set here. I just wish I knew how to keep my team behind cover.

A Brief History of Time: I think I get it. Fortunately, Hawking has a unique gift for clear language in the deep sciences, and he repeats details as needed. For every two things I missed there was one thing I nailed dead-on.

Dead Man’s Shoes: Not as clever as it thinks it is, but still inventive and engaging. When a small town gang of North England drug dealers torture a mentally retarded boy, his brother (Paddy Considine, who also wrote) comes home from the army to enact his revenge. Were it not for a lot of long tracking shots over local soundtracks this movie would be 48 minutes – long enough for an hour of TV with commercials. As it is, it moves at an okay pace in ninety minutes. It’s all character study – little plot, little growth, little except some inventive cinematography and Considine, who’s very fun to watch.

Cosmos: John Scalzi pointed out that this entire series is now available on Hulu. To think that such a thing could exist – a slow but opulent procession of computer-generated imagery, teasing us with glimpses of distant galaxies and subatomic biology. Watching it in hi-def is a tonic: a means to restore your sense of wonder at a mundane universe. Take an hour, pour yourself a cooling drink, and watch an episode.

I also recommend this fan-produced video of an excerpt of Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot.” It instills in you a feeling of awe, humility and optimism. It’s the closest thing I have to the divine.

Weekend adventures included:

• Drinking at the Davis Square VFW in a benefit concert for the upcoming Avon walk for breast cancer research. Attendees too numerous to list: essentially, the entire Davis Square community on LiveJournal. I had plenty of beer and cheap gin – there’s no cheaper drinking than VFW drinking, let me tell you – and watched Provocateur do their usual electro-pop dance spectacular. Pictures available on Facebook.

• Shouted myself hoarse over the soundtrack at The Field while drinking with Hawver, Fraley, Dave G., Melissa and Katie H. Hawver and I debated which country would become the next world superpower after oil took another price spike (my vote: Canada; his vote: nobody). The conversation wound its way to rock music, at which point we all listed our five essential rock albums. We all agreed on Appetite for Destruction.

  This gave me the opportunity to recount my favorite Axl Rose anecdote, as told by Sebastian Bach:
  

  I had just finished shooting Supergroup for VH1. It was on TV in America while we were gallivanting across Europe. We had a beautiful dinner at some incredible Italian restaurant. We are sitting there and I go, “Dude, I just shot this reality show for VH1 and they paid me this amount of money, man. It was fucking easy. It was only like two weeks. It was hilarious. Axl, if they paid me this amount of money, they’d pay you like a million bucks for 10 days of some shit.” He’s looking at me with this look on his face and he’s all quiet and he goes, “Sebastian, you don’t understand.” I go, “What?” He goes, “I will pay VH1 $2 million to leave me the fuck alone!”

• Beating BioShock. Maybe I’ve missed out on some key developments in FPSs over the last five years, but the level design in BioShock seemed a little repetitive. You get within three feet of a goal in the first 10 minutes of the level, then some arbitrary wall is thrown in your path. So you have to backtrack through the level to get MacGuffins A, B and C, then you can advance the remaining 50 feet and fight the boss. Plus, the game would arbitrarily make the standard mooks that you run into more challenging at various points. I don’t mind facing harder enemies and having to upgrade my gear – I just mind when it comes without warning.

  That being said, it was rewardingly challenging, opulent in both graphic design and original score, and the rare type of video game that makes you think about the human social order. Expect more on that later.

• Jiu-jitsu on Sunday. While my work schedule stays crazy, I’m taking advantage of the new open classes on Sundays. Aside from some initial cardio there’s no fixed format – you work on what you like for as long as you like. I’ve learned and practiced some pretty exciting wrist locks these past two weeks. Plus it gives me an active cornerstone to what might otherwise be a lazy day.
  

Last week, Leonard asked what form of art or culture I deliberately resist for whatever reason. Thinking about it, I had a hard time coming up with a lot of answers – except perhaps Japanese animation. But I could go on at length about games.

I’m a gamer, but not a serious one. I get together an average of once a month to shoot dice, currently GMing a Mutants and Masterminds campaign. Sometimes I play more often, sometimes I wait longer stretches. But I game as a way to socialize and have fun with friends. I have a really hard time rolling dice with anyone I don’t already call a friend, or at least a good acquaintance.

I play video games, but I’m at least one generation behind the latest consoles. I never pay more than $25 for a video game if I can help it, meaning I usually wait until critical feedback and word of mouth have slashed a new release’s price by 50% before buying. I have a thin, eclectic collection. I never play for more than 2 hours at a time.

My tastes run pretty wide, but there are three types of games I’ve resisted getting into for years and very likely won’t: massively multiplayer online rpgs (MMORPGS), live-action roleplaying (LARP) or online first-person shooters (like HALO, Counterstrike, Team Fortress, etc).

I originally intended to give each of those a paragraph explaining why, but they all boil down to the same root cause: they all sound really cool except for the people I’d have to deal with.

From a cooperative standpoint – guild play, “roleplay” servers – I hate the immersion break that comes from watching comrades bitch about “nerfing pallys for the n00bs.” Or from standing on a damp lawn with a foam sword, listening to a pasty guy with a Systems Engineer beard rally the troops. I game for escape, not for status or an adrenaline rush. For me, immersion is critical.

From a competitive viewpoint – PvP, FPS, etc – I know that I cannot devote the same time or money to the game that the Dew-addled twitchers playing it do. These players make up the majority; as such, I will always be behind the curve. That’s not fun for me. I don’t relish spending $15 a month to consistently lose.

Here’s the funny part: take that online gaming experience and remove all the other people, and you get a game like Morrowind or Half-Life. And I love those games. So once you eliminate the crucial variable I warm up like butter.

Oddly, several good friends of mine, whom I also game with, play one or more of those games listed above. They clearly enjoy themselves, so it’s not like they’re weird or unnatural. It’s just not for me.

The lights went down on the Wang Theater and up on the crowded stage. A conductor with a shock of white hair and a black jacket with large silver buttons took the podium and tapped the orchestra to life. A screen behind the orchestra lit up, displaying the parallel lines of Pong. The orchestra led us through a medley of video game themes over the first twenty years of gaming history – Pong, Donkey Kong, Elevator Action, Burger Time, etc – while those same classics played nostalgically across the screen: the opening act of Video Games Live’s debut in Boston.

Then some asshole in red shoes showed up.

I can not overstate how much of a douchebag Tommy Tallarico is. I humored him patiently for the first five minutes he showed up, until I realized that he intended to spend another five minutes talking up himself and his show. His ham-handed attempts to win over the crowd annoyed me further. “Some people think video games are just for kids,” the forty-year old mocked, summoning a mighty “BOO” from the crowd in a way that Ric Flair would wince at. “Some people think video games cause violent behavior.”

(“Some people live in houses filled with strawmen,” I murmured)

Video Games Live is a gem. Its music appeals on several primal levels – from the nostalgia of childhood classics being played beautifully to the epic awe of today’s million-dollar soundtracks. VGL uses entirely local musicians – the City Arts Orchestra on stage and the Brookline High Choir for vocals. They covered a broad sampling of games, from the Mario and Zelda series to releases as recent as the new World of Warcraft expansion. I’m glad Melissa made sure we went, and I’m glad Serpico, RJ and Katie H were there with me.

I just need to stress how much Tommy Tallarico sucked. He served no purpose other than to leech energy out of the show. That might have actually been his role – stretching a 70 minute show to 2 hours with a lot of talk. I don’t know why, though. They have more material than they played. I only hope that, as the show becomes more monetized, corporate pressure fills the time with more music and less of that jackass.

(Seriously – playing your game’s score with a professional orchestra while cut scenes flash in the background? It’s a commercial people pay to see. Win-win!)

I won’t spoil all the show’s little surprises, but I have to pass this one along: the winner of a Guitar Hero battle in the lobby before the show got called on stage in the second act. Tallarico handed him a Guitar Hero controller. “If you get over 200,000 points in ‘Sweet Emotion’ on Hard …” he began. The kid shook his head, motioning upward with his thumb. “Expert?” Tallarico asked. The audience roared.^*

I’ve been quieter at close football games than I was watching that guy blow through Guitar Hero. The live orchestra backing him made it an epic spectacle. Plus, the tension of competing against the game transformed the song from a rock staple to a pitched battle. Imagine if Joe Perry broke every finger on his left hand, then going to see Aerosmith’s first live concert after they’d healed – will he pull it off? will he be as good as we hoped? That, plus lasers.

After VGL, Katie H. gave me a ride to Central Square. I headed toward ImprovBoston, only to find Dana already walking down the block. “You heading to Phoenix Landing?” he asked. “Robert just texted me; he said the place is packed.”

We found ourselves jogging to get there, one of those unspoken decisions born of enthusiasm. You live a buttoned-down life during the week, so when the opportunity comes to shake it out and perform in front of friends and strangers, you don’t want to waste a second in transit. And that’s what we do when we dance. We threaded our way through the crowd to the foot of the stage. Dana immediately leaped onto the benches that surround the dance floor and began attracting attention. That’s what he does.

After a while I joined him.

____________
^* This led to that classic exercise in futility, Changing The Settings In Guitar Hero. Anyone who’s played GH or Rock band knows how frustrating it gets when you’ve almost started the song but want to change one thing – the number of players, the difficulty, etc. Now imagine doing that on a stage in front of two thousand people. “You have to back all the way out!”, I yelled from the back of the balcony. “Main menu! Main menu!”

First off: I have a guest piece on the wildly popular OverthinkingIt.com today – “Quantifying Solace“. What exactly is a “quantum” of solace? And, if the movie turns out successful, what other emotions can the Bond series micro-measure?

(I know this is my second or third time mentioning it, but LJ went down yesterday)

# # #

While drifting off to sleep on Monday, I had the brief but terrifying urge to give World of Warcraft a try. Just for a few weeks. Just to see what it was like.

I didn’t bolt upright screaming, though perhaps I should have.

# # #

I thought Candid’s enthusiasm over the public library last year was the geekiest thing he’d ever written (at the time). Then I joined the Cambridge Public Library this summer. Have you seen their website? Holy hell!

You can browse their catalog of books online – not just Cambridge’s, but Natick’s, Framingham’s, Lexington’s, etc. And then, when you click on the book, they deliver it to any library you like. For free! And then you go and get it and take it home. For free! You don’t even have to set foot in the library to renew it. And you can do this as many times as you goddamn want.

I suppose the notion of a public library taking advantage of the Information Superhighway shouldn’t shock me. But I used to work for a public library in high school. I’m accustomed to a certain way of doing things. This is one of those unexpected and amazing conveniences that turns people into lifelong customers.

(Marketers trolling my weblog – and I know you’re out there – write that down. That’s the key to a good customer experience: unexpected, amazing convenience)

# # #

Penny Arcade had a justified laugh at Peter Molyneux when he suggested reviewers should play Fable 2 with people who don’t play games. But, at the same time, I understand the distinction Molyneux hints at – between hardcore gamers and casual button mashers. I’m pretty sure I fall in the latter.

Last night I hit three different stores in the Arsenal Mall^*, looking for a 20GB XBox 360. To bring the outsiders up to speed: Microsoft currently markets the 360 in three flavors: Arcade (practically useless; $200), Pro (60GB memory; $300) and Elite (ostentatious; $400). But only a few months back, they also marketed a 20GB version. Some stores still have one or two of these peeking around the corners, available on the cheap. Of the three shops I hit on Tuesday, however, I only found one. And even then I wasn’t swayed.

Instead I bought two games for the original XBox – Soul Calibur II and Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers. I got these for $10 total (not each). The music and electronics store that I bought them from had slashed every original XBox game’s price by 50%, in a frenzy to get the old crap off the shelves.

I do this sort of thing all the time: wait until a game drops to $20 or below before buying it. Waiting until the current generation console drops in price by 25-50%. I’m in no hurry to ride the state of the art curve. So even though I play video games all the time, I don’t consider myself a “gamer” in the same sense that the PA staff, or the guy who narrates Zero Punctuation, are.

It’s a trivial distinction to people who never play video games at all, but I think it matters.

# # #

Okay, so we hit: posts on other blogs, World of Warcraft, the public library, and video games. Pretty good for a Wednesday. Every now and then I need to dash off a post like this to help my street cred.

^* Out of the four that were open at the time.