The lows are low, but the highs are home
Month
I know I’m two days late to the party, but who doesn’t like comics from The Oatmeal? Certainly not bears.
Geez, how hard is it to just get rid of people?
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to become what I want without erasing my past and getting people to let go, I just want to be myself.
Your past will always be a part of you, no matter how much you try to deny…
Oh, no, you certainly shouldn’t hold onto the past or grieve over things you can’t change - but neither should you deny that what you’ve done in the past has anything to do with you now. You have to accept it, because you can’t change it. Whether you want “the good times” back, or wish you’d done things differently, it’s just two sides of the same coin. Either way, you haven’t made peace with your past. It’s a foundation for the future - what kind of a house has no foundation? You can’t just rip it all out when you decide you don’t like it.
You won’t make the same mistakes again? Well, that’s why your past is important. It’s what made you who you are. If you’ve decided to change, that’s because of your past, and that decision couldn’t exist independent of what you did and how you felt about the results. I don’t believe people should be held responsible for things that they’ve done in the distant past, as long as they aren’t still doing those same things. What’s done is done, so there’s no point in hiding it or denying it.
I mean, what I’m getting at is, if you were to “erase your past” as you said, then you’d be erasing all of the things that you’ve learned from it. The present and future matter the most, absolutely, but they’re inexplicably inextricably bound to what has come before. Dissatisfaction with the past -> change in the present -> better future. You’re not clinging desperately to the past, you’re bringing it along with you into the future. I think it’s better to go hand in hand, rather than kicking and screaming.
I certainly don’t want to get involved where I’m not wanted, but I used to have plenty of friends who didn’t know me, either. It’s kind of why I started writing about myself here, because I was tired of hiding everything. The people who never really cared will drift away if you let them, but if someone is particularly tenacious, I’d say it’s best just to be honest about it. If they know that you totally do not want them in your life, and continue to insist, that’s harder to deal with. But you’ll never make any progress if you just wait for them to figure it out on their own.
…Because they probably never will.
Geez, how hard is it to just get rid of people?
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to become what I want without erasing my past and getting people to let go, I just want to be myself.
Your past will always be a part of you, no matter how much you try to deny it. You can kick people out of your present life, and you can become a different person from who you used to be. But who you were is just as important as who you’re going to be.
Last summer, when we moved to Ottawa, my mom decided that we should all have our own cell phones. My dad already had his own, so she got a 3-year contract family plan for herself, my brother, and I. Her phone, the main line, cost $35/month + $20/month for countrywide My5 call/text. The other two lines were each $30/month. Total: $115/month. We got the most basic crap phones you could get, because hey, we never needed fancy cell phones before. I started itching for an upgrade after a few months, but the reality was that all I needed to do was making one call per month and send text messages, so anything would do.
BUT THEN DISASTER STRUCK. About a month ago, after being crushed and scratched by 30 kg (66 lb) bags of concrete mix, my phone’s signal quality went down drastically. To the point where I would have no signal anywhere in my house, for days at a time. My mom and brother had identical phones, and when placed beside each other, I would have no signal and they would have a perfect one. This was the excuse I was waiting for! The phone either needed to be repaired/replaced, or I’d get an upgrade. However, I can’t afford a data plan, so I needed to see if I could upgrade the phone without paying for wireless data. When Lifehacker posted about Geekaphone, a site that would suggest the perfect phone for your needs, I made a list and set off for the phone store.
I asked after a handful of phones, and the only way I avoid a data plan would be to buy the phone off-contract for $400+, with the phones at the top of my list being $600. If I got a data plan, I’d get the “with a 2-year contract” price. However, I needed to pay a $35 administration fee for changing phones (offset by a $50 mail-in rebate), and a $120 “early upgrade fee” for not waiting out the contract. But again, this requires me to sign up for a $30/month data plan. I certainly can’t afford a $600 phone, and I definitely can’t afford to spend $700 on a data plan over the next two years. Well, I probably could in the long term, but with no income during the school year, it might be tough. And so, I resigned myself to finding out my options for an out-of-warranty replacement.
Returning home, we dialed up our wireless provider and made our way to a customer service agent. It would cost $20 to replace my phone with an identical model, but for $40 I could get a Samsung A886 (meh), and for $80 I could get a Sony Ericson Xperia X1 (meh-ish). No matter what I got, I’d keep the same contract and not need to shell out for a data plan. To give me time to research the phones, my mom (who is nice and polite pretty much all the time) asked if we could change our plan to match the current offerings. Eventually, we came out of the deal paying $65/month for the main line and $15/month for the two additional lines, with 500 extra monthly daytime minutes and countrywide My5 for all three phones. Total: $95/month, for a better plan. Not bad, and we didn’t even have to yell and scream and talk to customer retention!
I had grudgingly decided to go with the X1, if only for its sliding keyboard. However, since we’d earned a lot of goodwill from the customer service lady, I asked what kind of phone I could get for more than $80. The next step up was the Motorola Quench (known as the Cliq XT in the US) for $130. Officially, it’s stuck at Android 1.5 because there was no way to get 2.1 to perform adequately on the mediocre hardware. But recent updates to CyanogenMod have added support for the phone, so the decision was made: get the Quench, root it the day I get it, and optimize everything for performance. Since I spend most of my time either at home or on campus, I’ll have access to secure-ish WiFi most of the time. Why bother spending $30/month just so I can check Facebook while I’m on the bus?
The only potential downside here is that the phone might just suck so much that nothing runs well on it, but with all the customization options, I’m hoping I can manage. As long as I keep in mind that it doesn’t have gigabytes of RAM, I should be able to run things pretty smoothly… one at a time, anyway.
Until I get a hold of it around Friday, you’re safe from me talking about all the stuff I’m doing with it. But when I get it, expect to be inundated with an absolute nerdfest of Android-love.
Greenman gaming is a website where you can buy games for Steam and for their own capsule client for cheaper than the regular retail price, you also get an extra $5/£5 store credit if you register and buy through my link, there’s also a 20% off discount code for you here: 20PEC-FACEB-SAVER
If you’re thinking of buying Deus Ex HR, Red Orchestra, etc then I strongly recommend buying from there.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get Deus Ex: Human Revolution for $45, but it cost me $34 here with the 20% off coupon and… yeah I bought it. You don’t get the credit until after your first purchase, though. However, they have a neat thing where they suggest games you could buy with the credit you’ve earned - I could get Hitman: Blood Money or Tropico 4! I’ll just hang on to it for now, and come back next time I want to buy a PC game.
I’d pass on my referral link, but that would be uncouth. I am grateful to our bro, Cameron, and I shall show my gratitude for this deal by passing on his referral link as well. Also, Vael bought the game yesterday and paid more than I did so har har.
Stumbled upon the website psychologyofgames.com, which I will hyperlink even though you could drag it into your address bar, and in addition to being worth exploring on your own I thought I’d link to a few interesting pieces. And actually, I’ve posted about them before - their Three Reasons We Buy Those Crazy Steam Bundles article is very good at keeping me from wasting my money!
A follow up to something I posted long, long ago is Procedural Generation and User-Generated Content II: Storylines, AI, and Emergent Gameplay. I didn’t title it, so don’t blame me. While I like the idea of generating random contexts, and I’m sure it is being done already in the games we play. The emergent storylines part, in particular, is very interesting to me from an AI perspective - but also in terms of what the player can be allowed to do in something like a browser-based game where players have to be explicitly allowed to do things. Also, basing the game on text (i.e. most of the browser-based games I’ve played, because games made in Flash are “flash games”) makes it super easy to add mechanics. You want to let the player seduce, or murder, or steal from, or lie to any NPC in the game? Easy, just give them dialogue options. No need to animate it all, or have art, or a button dedicated to doing this action, or show what happens when they succeed or fail.
All of that being said, I’m dubious about the idea of totally procedural games. It would have to be very, very sophisticated to match the kind of output talented human writers and game designers can come up with. As soon as a player realizes that they’re being sent to [kill] [X] [for Y coins] for the seventeenth time, by some randomly selected character archetype (last time it was a peasant, this time a wizard!) it will all fall apart. Not only that, it would be hard to craft deep and truly meaningful experiences - mature experiences! - without a human hand to guide the complexity.
Catherine is deep and meaningful by virtue of its subject matter, but then there are games like The Witcher (first and second) that become deep and meaningful through the complexity of the situations they present. Any given quest has various interpretations, based on who you talk to and what you know. So then any procedural generation has to make your gameplay situation, but also add a lot of context in terms of ulterior motives and hidden information unavailable to the player. And then you get into the realm of things that need so much processing power, they have to be generated during development rather than at game time, and that’s cheaper than paying humans but far less dynamic.
Game AI vs Traditional AI offers interesting insight into AI in games, and why it sometimes seems to lack in the Intelligence department. I don’t have much to add to what’s already there, but if I tell you that it’s an article about how to make players feel like they are The Batman will you be more interested?
Yeah, I thought you would be.
Trenches seems like a relatively interesting webcomic project between Penny Arcade and the guy behind PvP, at least as far as a webcomic with five comics can be “interesting.” However, what is very interesting is their Tales From The Trenches that accompany each comic - anonymous stories from people who have worked as game testers. These are fantastic tales of horror, and I highly recommend reading a few. The one you’ll see linked to if you read this the day I post it, titled “Ship It,” is particularly soul-crushing.
vael:
https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/6.0/releasenotes/
Honestly seems more like a release for developers. The problem with firefox releasing like this is that they’re trying to compete with Chrome… but chrome users aren’t even aware when their software is updated most of the time….
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/is-it-compatible/
This puts an addon’s compatibility versions right in your addons thing, and all of my addons have assumed compatibility for FF 7-12. Probably because all the developer has to do is type “compatibility = 7” in a file and it claims to work. I actually still haven’t updated from FF 4, but now that I see everything is compatible even with FF 6, I may as well update.
Still, I’d be interested in knowing what Chrome does differently with its addons from Firefox. Or does it just have different kinds of addons? If an addon doesn’t change anything that a browser update would (interface, deeper fiddly features) then it makes sense it would always be compatible, but those are the best kind of FF addons. Also, I have my addons set to update themselves automatically in FF 4, so I never know when I’ve gotten a new version of one. You can set the same option for Firefox updates, but I like to have control over that.
[Continuing from yesterday’s post about Catherine, here’s the critique part. Or at least, critique-ish. It was meant to be one post originally, but it got to be really long. As in, I spent three hours writing it, so… Best to split it up. You know, this seems to happen whenever I talk about the game…]
Up until the end, I was also going to say that Catherine is a great example of how you can make meaningful gameplay. There’s a lot of symbolism in the game, and most of the gameplay is a metaphor for one thing or another. Then they shot themselves in the foot during the ending. “Did you notice the central conflict that this game’s masterful creators placed at its core?” says the narrator. And then they tell you what that was. So… what did I say about literal references to these deeper meanings, because otherwise players won’t notice? “The stairway Vincent was forced to climb could be taken as a metaphor,” the narrator says after explaining the central conflict. And then they tell you what it was. And we were so close to a game that just hints at this stuff! You get a few hints in the game towards the end, and at the start there’s a nod towards the metaphor as well to get you thinking. So you’ll probably get a rough idea of what’s going on if you think about what’s going on as you play, and that’s great - some serious analysis would piece the full story together, even if they never explained it. And then they did! It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I kind of wish they hadn’t. Still, at least everyone will get the idea, and maybe take the time to re-evaluate the game based on the explanation.
I’ve got a few things to mention inspired by comments on a (spoiler-filled, you’ve been warned) community blog on Destructoid called, simply enough, “Catherine Sucks”. One of the main problems the author has is that most of the game feels like the “rising action” of your typical three act structure, and Vincent really only makes up his mind in the game’s final hours, which makes the conclusion feel weak and a bit rushed. Commentor (commentator?) ‘fulldamage’ notes that the sort of long-form character development the author is looking for is the “hero’s journey” type, exactly what you got in Personas 3 and 4 - by contrast, Catherine is more like a short story, and it focuses on just one pivotal moment in time rather than an entire lifetime of the characters. The comment by 'Noir’ echoes something stated in the Art Book included in the game - the character designer, Shigenori Soejima, writes that the characters in Catherine are all fully-grown adults who don’t necessarily grow throughout the story as the teenagers in Persona games would. When you meet someone for the first time, you’re not going to get every detail about their lives or see some long struggle to overcome their problems - you just pick up bits and pieces of what’s important to them as you talk to them, and that’s more or less what happens in Catherine. 'The Silent Protagonist’ also mentions that it’s a more “adult” - dare I say “mature”? - kind of story because none of the characters are blank slates or in need of psychological profiling, but how things are said and what’s left unsaid can speak volumes.
I didn’t mention the game’s story in my “review” up there because that would imply that you’re taking something as is, and just playing through the game to unlock the story that the developers made for you. Browsing through the GameFAQs board for Odin Sphere on the PS2, a few people said that even though the gameplay can get tedious (since you play 6 different characters, and start over each time and do the same basic stuff) it’s worth playing for “the story.” At that point, why not just look up the cutscenes on youtube or download a completed save file so you can watch the cutscenes in theater mode? That’s what we call film, where you passively watch something that’s delivered to you, as a finished product. From that point of view, the first comment by 'VenusInFurs’ on the c-blog I linked to is absolutely right - the plot and characters are “sub-par” and it’s a “typical anime,” and the last three hours truly do get “beyond silly.” “There’s nothing deep here, it’s not intellectually stimulating or mature,” says 'VenusInFurs.’ But that’s if the situations in the game mean nothing to you, and you’re just watching what the characters choose to do without thinking about it. If you empathize with the situations, and make decisions based on your honest feelings, there’s a thousand different stories to be told by this game. And like the other commentors mentioned, there’s a lot of character development for you to infer from the dialogue, in the sense of things to learn about the characters (i.e. how they develop for the player) as opposed to ways that the characters themselves change over time.
Speaking of the plot twists towards the end of the game, they occur so quickly that it might make your head spin. I truly don’t want to spoil the game for anyone, and I don’t accept the “willing to be spoiled” idea because it will ruin the game for you should I ever bring my PS3 to your house and make you play it. Which is something I would rather do than post story spoilers! Suffice to say that the game could have ended at one point, and it would have been pretty interesting and tragic. Fifteen minutes later, a (literally) crazy ending opportunity comes up, and it would have been phenomenal. But the game continues after that, and ruins the whole thing with a really dumb explanation. The problem is that they take a game that has been totally “normal” - the Nightmares stages are weird, but they’re nightmares, right? - and throw that all out the window. Either of the two points that I mentioned - the tragic one, and the crazy one, which you’ll understand if you’ve played the game - would have been so much more fitting, and even interesting. So, yeah, from that point of view the game has a pretty bad “story.” But again, that’s only if you take it all at face value and care nothing for the situations the game puts you in.
If it weren’t for the part where they explain it all to you, there’d be a lot of analysis to make about Catherine. And there’s stuff I could analyze about it anyway, but that would require spoilers, and I wanted to avoid those in this particular post. Mainly, the purpose of this post was to say how much I love the game and convince people to buy it. Then a little bit of critique, just the amount I can do without really mentioning anything specific. Kudos to you if you made it to the end of this post, and I hope you give the game a shot if you haven’t already. If you already have, have an internet high-five.
First, some good news: Catherine sold really, really well. It’s the highest selling game at launch that Atlus USA has ever published, so advertising, word of mouth, and good reviews all clearly paid off. To whoever failed to advertise Shadows of the Damned and Child of Eden: you’re doing it wrong, but it sucks that your games sold so badly.
Anyway, here’s the “review” part of this post. The English voice actors are absolutely fantastic. I mean, these are award-winning performances. When they give the award for best voice acting to some other game at the Spike TV Awards and whatever other award shows games have, it’ll be an absolute sin. As for the music, Shoji Meguro’s score is fantastic as always - the game features a lot of remixes of classical music, but mostly avoids the really iconic stuff so you don’t find it overly familiar. So, the audio: terrific.
In terms of the visuals, the game has a great aesthetic. The character models in particular deserve special recognition, because they look “better” than anything I saw in Heavy Rain, or that I’ve seen from LA Noire. It’s probably got something to do with the light anime vibe and the fact that they weren’t going for photo-realism, but Catherine dodges the uncanny valley completely. I mean, the thing about the former two games is that they tried to portray completely realistic people, and it was weird to see because it was done imperfectly - you can’t necessarily render every little wrinkle on someone’s face, much less animate and shade it perfectly. But I actually think I like the in-game parts of Catherine more than the anime parts, because it looks that good. In sum, the visuals are just as good as the audio.
The gameplay has two different parts: the puzzles, and everything else. I’ll start with the puzzles, set in the main character’s nightmares. I found them tough, even on Easy difficulty, and I wouldn’t recommend even playing on Normal your first time through the game. In Easy mode, you have the option to undo 9 (?) of your most recent moves, so you don’t have to restart the level if you push a block the wrong way. Which happens, even when you’ve been playing the game for hours. I don’t play a lot of puzzle games, really, and I didn’t know if I’d like the Nightmare stages at first. But the action is really quick, and when you complete a difficult boss stage it’s a whole lot more satisfying than some jRPG boss fight.
Aside from the regular stages in the story, there are 128 (!!) stages in an arcade cabinet in-game, and a whole bunch more stages in the Babel mode that you unlock by getting gold medals on Normal difficulty. I don’t really want to tell you what the puzzles are like, or how they introduce different types of blocks, because none of that matters. The puzzle stages are intense, and you’d be hard-pressed not to enjoy them once you give it a shot. I had to look up walkthrough videos to get past a few mind-bending stages, because sometimes you just wont get what they want you to do. Even so, I finished the game and found myself wanting more puzzles, which - as much as I like the game - is more than I can say about the battle system in Persona 4.
The “everything else” gameplay is all of the social simulation stuff, but some of that occurs at the “landings” in between Nightmare stages. The game’s story mode is referred to as “Golden Playhouse,” and a narrator introduces you to the game by saying that your role as a “viewer” is to help guide the main character, Vincent, and that his fate depends on you. You aren’t supposed to be Vincent, or agree with the way he deals with situations, but instead make honest choices when talking to people and answering questions. Your choices influence Vincent’s inner thoughts, and at different points in the game a meter will come up and you’ll see the results of your “guiding.” For example, what you do before Vincent first cheats on his girlfriend decides how he reacts to waking up with a strange woman in his bed - you don’t get to literally choose whether he thinks “oh shit, what have I done” or “SCORE!”. So when you’re playing, be honest and just go with what you’d do IF you got into a similar situation - even if you wouldn’t do the kinds of things Vincent does.
Anyway, I found a lot of meaning in this part of the gameplay, and it’s pretty good mechanically as well. You’re in the bar, and you spend your time talking to people, drinking, and answering text messages (which is great, by the way, and much more interesting than the e-mail mechanic in .hack or Xenosaga), and as time passes people will enter and leave the bar. Who you talk to, and what you say, influences their lives… although if you don’t talk to them, or care about their problems, then what happens to them probably doesn’t matter to you. There’s a theme of selfishness and selflessness to this part of the game, especially in the Nightmare stages, where most of the people you meet think that helping others will only give them more competition for survival. You can play the game as a selfish person who only cares about himself, or a kind, compassionate person who realizes that it doesn’t cost anything to give people a few kind words and helps others to help themselves. Although, because of the way the game plays, you don’t really get to know the characters well - it’s just a brief snapshot of their lives. More on that in a bit.
So with all of that said, it gets high scores in every category and I really do think it’s worth $60. It’ll probably take you 12-15 hours to finish the story for the first time, which is a pretty good length because it doesn’t overstay its welcome but gives you enough to feel like you got what you paid for. After you’ve finished the game, if you replay on the same difficulty level, you can actually skip the puzzle stages and just play for the story if you want to try for different endings - you could probably blaze through in a few hours that way. If you hate the game after playing the demo, you probably won’t like the full game, but do give it a shot if you own a PS3 or 360. If you have both, I’d recommend the PS3 version, because I’ve heard the 360 version may not play as smoothly, and I hear the d-pad on the 360 controller sucks? But then, as someone who only owns a PS3, of course I would say that. Still, consider giving it a rental, and at least download the demo if you have a decent internet connection.
[This will continue tomorrow, it was really long so I split it up]
Tying up some loose ends here with a lot of small things that don’t quite deserve entire posts of their own. This is all the miscellaneous stuff I’ve been doing in recent weeks, but haven’t really gotten around to posting about. So, without further ado…
Anime:
I also watched Summer Wars last week while waiting for EBGames to open and give me my copy of Catherine. It was kind of the anime equivalent of a Hollywood summer blockbuster - in other words, take the forgettable cash-grab junk and replace it with beautiful art and a fun little scrappy-kid-saves-the-world story that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Also, they do some neat future-esque computer stuff that is actually possible, which makes it more awesome somehow. I was really happy when the gamer kid lends his laptop to a guy and switches to a different virtual desktop on his desktop-cube.
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I watched American Beauty a few weeks ago, and I’d definitely recommend watching it. I’m not sure what to say about it, really, because it doesn’t have any one core thesis, but it’s got a ton of little ideas worth thinking about and it’s open to a lot of interpretation. I don’t know a whole lot about any of the parts of film, but I can tell there’s a lot of artistry in it. If you’re going to watch a movie, you may as well watch this one instead of some dumb romantic comedy or popcorn-munching action movie.
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I’ve started and nearly finished Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter for the PS2, and I think it’s fantastic. I really think it’s one of the better jRPGs I’ve played in recent memory, though my backlog for those has tons of quality stuff waiting to be played. It takes a lot from roguelikes - you can restart the game and keep the equipment, money, and some of the experience you’ve gained, and the more restarts you’ve done, the more you unlock of the story. It’s a very quick, focused version of a jRPG - I’ll probably be pushing 30-40 hours by the time I finish my first time, but the game rates a “perfect” playthrough as 8 hours or less. It’s just really solid mechanics, all the time. There are a few little town areas, with basic utility NPCs, and one relatively short sidequest. Well, plus the Antz Colony passive sidequest.
Now, allegedly FF XIII was an attempt to streamline the jRPG and cut out all the fat, but it felt very lacking. It felt empty, dull, pretty and flashy but with no substance. Dragon Quarter, on the other hand, is streamlined and constantly satisfying. To me, FF XIII felt like it gave me no reason to enjoy what I was doing - it never seemed like I was making any progress, or accomplishing anything useful. Dragon Quarter doesn’t have that problem, and for one reason or another it’s just an inherently more satisfying experience. It’s probably just a great combination of all the things it does well, against the things FF XIII did not. Anyway, I super enjoyed it.
Also, I’m going to talk more about Catherine soon, but it’s going to get its own post. So wait for that.
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I read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods during my vacation to PEI, Robert Sawyer’s Wonder, and Patrick Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind. All were excellent, and I recommend them wholeheartedly. I’m working on finishing Steven Erikson’s The Crippled God, and I started George R. R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons and Frank Herbert’s Dune. I know I should finish one book before starting two new ones (at the same time!) but when I’ve got two houses and a car (where I’ve spent a lot of time lately) I need to have something to read all the time. Erikson is doing his thing, and I happen to love it. The HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - which I haven’t mentioned yet, so know this: I love it, go watch it! - has changed my view of Martin’s work, and it’s better for it. Peter Dinklage’s voice behind Tyrion’s lines is just great. As for Dune, I’m enjoying it so far, but I’ll get back to you when I finish it.
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I’m probably forgetting plenty of stuff, but I can’t really call to mind everything I’ve done recently. Maybe I’ve already posted about the books I read, too? I didn’t think I said much about my vacation because it would be boring to tell you about how I hung out with my friends. I’ve been catching up on things in my bookmarks and Read It Later lists, which is nice, but many of them weren’t quite worth posting about. I haven’t been working on my Grand Quest To Finish All The Final Fantasies, but whatever. Although, I did read The Final Fantasy VII Letters and alongside the Final Fantasy Things tumblr, it’s got me feeling better about the vast amounts of time I’ve spent on this. There’s a certain sense of beautiful community behind these jokes, and I kind of don’t regret spending 50-100 hours on each of these games. Maybe it isn’t time perfectly spent, but spent well enough. I can live with that.
