Fan Art

Check out this nifty TGO fan art from elbubojr, imagining what the show's characters might look like if it were animated (or if I had a higher costume budget and/or more actors):

Love it.

He also did color versions of NecroThinker, PyroThinker, CryoThinker, RetroThinker and both forms of The Anti-Thinker, after the jump:

 Awesome. I especially like "Antiverse Form" Anti-Thinker as a plus-size bruiser, and his design of NecroThinker actually nails the "Kirby/Starlin Cosmic Villain" look I was going for overall better than the actual costume does, IMO.

Good stuff, either way - actually got re-invigorated by this to go out and start pricing-out props for the two (so far) new character's who'll be showing up once the NecroThinker story concludes. I won't say who/what they are, but one of them will mark the first time I've had to wear a wig on the show. (There would've been one already, but I ultimately decided to spare you a one-off character called "UberThinker, who was German and... yeah, that was kind of the whole joke.)

Sony's "Smash Bros." Clone Looks Like a "Smash Bros." Clone

People have been referring to the rumored "Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale" as a Playstation-centric version of "Super Smash Bros" since it was first mentioned, but I doubt anyone was expecting it would be almost exactly the same game:

EPISODE 69: "AfterMass"

Sick of talking/hearing about "Mass Effect?" Me too. But newsworthy is newsworthy, and the next "big" gaming story (in terms of news or even a discussionworthy new release) has yet to rear it's head. So one more round - especially in light of how dramatically the Bioware/Re-Take thing evolved after the last episode. And even if that's not really your bag, this one also has zombies, gunfights, the return of The OverSword and a much bigger helping of Ivan the Intern:



This episode evolved along strange lines. The topic I initially wanted to cover wasn't quite coming up adequate at the script-level (I think I've since cracked it, or at least gotten closer); and eventually it made more sense to do a "sequel" of sorts to "Crass Effect" - especially since the framing-story action in this sort of mirrors the previous episode already i.e. both revolving around "game company under attack" visual sequences. Also, the aforementioned "troublesome script" goes MUCH better with the action in the next episode (which more-directly involves NecroThinker.)

What I'm more curious to see than anything is how having Ivan pop in with added commentary in the "main" part of the show "plays" for people. The day after I recorded the audio, I was thinking it sounded overly-confrontational and wanted to add in some levity and qualifiers; and "interupting myself" in Ivan's persona felt like a better way to pull off those additions. Also, Ivan really does seem to be the "breakout character" of the supporting cast - something that continues to pleasantly-surprise me - so you can maybe consider this a "trial run" at maybe giving him a bigger presence in the show and possibly beyond that.

JOY

There may come a day when Nintendo's monetization of nostalgia becomes so completely predictable that something as relatively simple as ressurecting power-ups from Super Mario Bros. 3 is no longer sufficient to settle anything that could be bothering me at any given moment, leaving me in a blissful near-stupor of psychological comfort.

Today is not that day:

Image is one of a handful of just-released snaps of "New Super Mario Bros. 2;" a 2D sidescroller previously announced for the 3DS, now revealed and dated for August. Also announced right around the same time (but with fewer details) is a 20th Anniversary "Kirby Collection" compilation coming for Wii. No world yet on which games it would include (presumably the NES/SNES ones I imagine, hoping the GameBoy/GBA/DS and maybe even N64 ones too.)

Nintendo also supposedly registed a "Super Mario 4" domain name, which could mean nothing. However, a yet-unidentified WiiU Mario game (launch title!?) is supposed to be announced at E3. I'm obviously psyched for this stuff because... y'know, I just AM; but I'm also glad that the new-generation fans who got introduced to 2D Mario via "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" (which is still killing, sales-wise) will have more to look forward to than my generation's leftovers.

I wonder... is it perhaps too much to hope that the Frog and Hammer suits will make a comeback here as well?

Episode 69 Announcement!

"Episode 69: AfterMass" will be viewable by all audiences on Wednesday, April 25th. ScrewAttack Advantage members can get an early look at this link NOW.

COD Elite Has Pro-Hitler Staff Pick

Accident of internet-algorithims gone unchecked? Probably. Classic Kotaku sensationalism? Definitely. Darkly amusing, given the game(s) in question? You betcha.

The "Staff Picks" linked to a Call of Duty Elite user account - troublingly named "GhostOfTheReich," incidentally - include a YouTube video for a White Supremacist rock group called "Final War." Activision has yet to comment on the issue, which is at this point about three days old.

Badass Digest Out-Geeks "Re-Take," Again

Episode 69 is in the can and awaiting a release date (you'll find out right after I do), but it's not a spoiler to reveal that I'm going one more round with "Re-Take Mass Effect" in light of EA/BioWare's decision to attempt placating them* with "story-expanding" free DLC. I'm glad I finished it up last night, because I probably would've felt compelled to scrap my plans in a fit of "what else can I POSSIBLY add after this!?" envy and defeat after reading today's piece by Badass Digest's Devin Faraci. B.A.D. should be a daily stop for geeks and film buffs anyway, but this was a real (if SPOILER-Y!) treat.

The argument itself isn't necessarily "new;" Devin mostly laments the degradation of fandom from loving a work(s) of fiction so much that lore-obsessing and continuity gaffe "a-ha!-ing" became a fun communal game into the obsession=ownership entitlement mentality that leads people to treat - without a HINT of irony! - an ending you didn't like as a consumer-rights issue.

What I like best is that he grounds his opinion in proper historical context; not only via a pretty terrific uber-geeky Tolkien reference but with heavy reference to fanboy founding-father Philip Jose Farmer, who's not only one of the more interesting scifi/fantasy authors largely forgotten by modern audiences but also more-or-less the inventor of Professional Fan-Fiction. That kind of broad perspective is sorely lacking in a lot of the games-as-art discussion, and one of the reasons for the curious phenomenon that so much interesting games journalism pieces recently have come from folks who usually write/work in different mediums.

For some reason I've never comprehended (this is expanded upon in Episode 69, incidentally) it's considered verboten in some gaming circles to draw critical or artistic paralells between games and any other media - as though the fact that some cursory interactivity and/or player-input renders video games so incomprehensibly different from movies, books, etc that the comparison is utterly unwarranted.

In any case, read the column. Agree or disagree, I think it's an important addition to the discussion.



*Speaking of "placating," if you haven't see "Cabin In The Woods" yet, you're missing out on probably the most brutally honest piece of commentary about the fandom/creator relationship to be filmmed in a good long while. I won't say anything beyond that, other than that you really do need to see that movie - it's AMAZING.

VOTE!

Okay, this isn't necessarily scientific or going to amount to anything, but I thought I'd take an informal poll of viewers/readers/fans/whatever. The subject: Here's a list of ten characters who've appeared on the show between, er... since we started having characters other than me on the show - I'd like to see people "rank" them in order of favorite to least-favorite in order of 1-10, 10 being least-favorite and 1 being favorite:

STRAWMAN
PYROTHINKER
CRYOTHINKER
COMMISSIONER BUNNYFACE
THE ANTI-THINKER
HOODED FIGURE (aka "MONSTER-VOICE GUY")
RETROTHINKER
NECROTHINKER
SENATOR LIEBERSON
IVAN THE INTERN

You'll of course note that there's no "I hate them all, just get rid of them and make a generic YouTube slideshow" option; but by all means feel free to opine in that direction as well - because surely this time it's going to register, as opposed to every other time ;)

Better Business Bureau Agrees "Mass Effect 3" Falsely-Advertised

Well, so much for THIS nonsense being over with.

The Escapist reports that a communications director at the Better Business Bureau has come out in public agreement with the position that Bioware's pre-release hype about ME3 was sufficiently different enough from the final product as to constitute wrongdoing.

Bad PR day for EA/Bioware to be sure, but I have a feeling folks are going to over-inflate the importance of this. Despite the name, The BBB isn't a government organization and has no legal power in such matters - they're an activist organization whose primary focus is corporate malfeasance, so it's not at all surprising that they'd come down on the anti-corporate side of this particular discussion.

I really worry about the logical-extremes of this kind of thinking in regard to entertainment products. Outright lies are seldom "cool;" but when it comes to narrative media like movies, books or games a certain amount of potential consumer misdirection is an essential tool. For example, "Cabin In The Woods" - entering movie theaters this weekend and you should ALL go see it because it's fucking amazing - is advertising itself as, essentially, a mashup of "Evil Dead" and "Saw." It's NOT. Not at all. And the shock of the various reveals of what the film actually IS to unsuspecting audiences is the whole point of the film. Will the BBB etc next come for it? Should we also retroactively call-out Ubisoft for not mentioning the HUGE first-act surprise in any of the "Assassin's Creed" trailers?

COME SEE THE OVERTHINKER AT PAX EAST 2012!

I'll be starting my weekend-long stint at PAX East tomorrow afternoon. If you see me around the floor, feel free to say hi - in addition, I'll be featured at the following two panels on Friday night:

6:00 PM - "BLANKETY BLANK PANEL" (Manticore Theater)
A gamer/geek centric version of The Match Game. Should be a blast!

10:30 PM - "ESCAPIST MOVIE NIGHT" (Wyvern Theater)
Escapist editors, Shamus Young, the LoadingReadyRun crew, The Space Janitors, myself and others present select episodes of The Escapist's most popular shows (including some never-before-seen new stuff!) preceded by a live Q&A.

See you there!

Home

Whatever the ultimate fate is of The RetroThinker (keep watching, his story is far from over) I'd like to think he'd be heartened by this pair of stories that broke today; giving renewed hope that The Golden Age of gaming still has yet to slip completely away:

Firstly, IGN reports that WayForward (a developer who has done more to keep me invested in gaming than almost any other lately) is bringing rebooting "Double Dragon;" and since it's WayForward there's no need to fear the dreaded "Gritty Reboot" virus taking hold: Instead, "Double Dragon: Neon" is going all-in on capturing not only the 2D Brawler gameplay but also the tacky 80s excess that so memorably colored the original; complete with "blaring buttrock" soundtrack. I'm IN.

But it's not just the 80s feeling the retro love - the 90s were themselves a Second Coming for Disney, and that extended into gaming: Licensed platformers based on Disney brands developed by Capcom and Sega are among the most fondly remembered games of that era; and today Kotaku reveals that the 3DS installment of the continuing "EPIC MICKEY" franchise is being built as a throwback to those vaunted titles - specifically, it's a return to the "Mickey's Castle of Illusion" series with a "Drawn to Life"-style mechanic added to the mix. DO WANT.

The Good Days don't die unless we let them die.

Yes, More "Mass Effect"

WARNING! All links and everything after the jump carries a MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING!

"Bob, WHY do you keep talking about this??" Because it's still THE story in this particular realm, that's why.

In any case, Devin Faraci of BadassDigest is the latest web-personality to weigh in on the controversial finale of "Mass Effect" - apparently he didn't get the memo that movie critics' opinions on video games aren't to be taken seriously, either. He does, however, bring the thus-far rare perspective of someone who - whether he is officially a "true gamer" or not - has played through the entirety of "Mass Effect" and actually really likes the ending. It's an extremely thoughtful piece (I don't always see eye-to-eye with Devin, but he knows his shit) that gamers would do well to consider:

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT!
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Money quote, from Devin: (boldface mine)
"In the end Mass Effect 3, like any other narrative video game, is a story being told to us. We have some control over the peripheral business but the meat of the story belongs to BioWare. This is the tale they’ve been telling. This is the culmination of what they’ve been doing since the beginning of Mass Effect. And I love it. This is true scifi, a story that examines the nature of conflict and humanity through the prism of imaginative, speculative fiction. I’ve never played a game where the decisions I made felt so powerful in the abstract; I wasn’t worrying about whether or not one choice would give me a better power up, I was worrying about the moral and ethical implications of the choices. And after all of that the final choice was so obvious, so true to what had come before, that I was kind of irritated at how slowly old Shep moved."

Now, let me get myself into a bit of trouble here: I'm wondering if it's more than coincidence that some (please, please, PLEASE note that I didn't say "ALL" or "MOST") of more interesting writing about video games coming out lately is coming from people - like Devin or FilmCritHulk - who come more form a film/literature background.

That's pretty close to blasphemy, I realize. Gaming has a fierce inferiority complex when it comes to movies - desperately wanting the visuals and narratives of games become more "cinematic" while stidently insisting that the interactivity of the medium makes it some kind of superior-evolution to stuffy old "passive" cinema. And I don't mean to suggest that one medium is innately superior on either the production or commentary side...

...BUT, a lot of the recent "big issues" in game-criticism ("Other M's" perhaps-unwittingly sexual-submission symbolism, "Arkham City's" casual sexism, "Mass Effect's" unusual ending, etc.) are actually narrative issues; and let's be real here: Film has been dealing with full-blown narratives for over a century and film writers have thus been dealing with them for their entire education and career; while gaming and thus game criticism has (with the niche exceptions of PC Adventure titles and JRPGs) barely been dealing with full-blown narratives for a decade or so. And even film didn't get there right away - it took a looooong time for a big-budget, wide-release movie to be permitted to end as abstractly as "2001" did; and even the magnificient "Psycho" is forced to follow-up it's intensely-awesome reveal with a horrible, clunky, dead-weight expository sequence where police veeeeery carefully lay out exactly what was wrong with Norman Bates, and why he is/isn't a transvestite, etc lest the audience go home without - what's that word? Closure?

What's the takeaway from that? I dunno. Maybe that gaming-culture would do well to not immediately dismiss criticism/commentary simply because it comes from outside "The Community;" I suppose.

Yes, I Saw The Jimquisition

Jim Sterling and I have shows on the same network, so yes I've seen his Mass Effect video. Stop Asking.

The Escapist : Jimquisition : Changing A Game's Ending And Destroying Art

I think he raises a plethora of good points - certainly framed more thoughtfully than the trolling I've been bombarded with for the last two weeks (guys, a MINUTE on Wikipedia can tell you that Arthur Conan Doyle left Sherlock Holmes untouched for about a DECADE before reviving him, and even then never "re-wrote" The Final Problem. Look shit up before you parrot it from 4Chan) but I still can't fundamentally agree that anything good will come of caving to "Re-Take Mass Effect;" whether EA/Bioware "planned to" or not.

I don't accept the premise that gaming is fundamentally different from film or literature because of the manner of user-engagement, nor that choose-your-own-adventure structuring and letting you adjust the visual look of a main character makes Mass Effect some kind of sea-change, NOR that any of this represents some kind of important shift in the relationship of audience to artist - and if it does, it's a bad shift. Good art and good stories are not made via democracy. The artist is the superior of his/her audience, with the sole caveat that they may choose to render said artist powerless by withholding support. You take that away and all we've got is made-to-order bullshit, which is where cultural stagnation comes from. People who only ever get what they WANT will never discover what the didn't know they NEEDED.

Also, I still say that the precedent this will set is one of the worst things that could possibly happen to this increasingly-ridiculous industry - YES, it's possible that Bioware's back-to-the-drawing-board approach will yield a "better" ending for this ONE game... but that won't be the end of it. This being so high-profile will have an automatically-disasterous effect on fans, telling them that if they throw a tantrum they'll get their way, and on publishers especially: they're already disgustingly risk-averse, and "Remember What Happened To Bioware!" will be a convenient cudgel to bludgeon the ambitions of any creative team that wants to do something risky or unconventional in the medium...

...but, then again, given the number of folks tripping over themselves to insist that "Games AREN'T art! They're PRODUCT! I don't WANT them to be art if it means stuff like this!!!" recently, maybe everyone else will be okay with that; while I just get used to the ever-clearer realization that my remaining actively-engaged in the modern gaming scene is becoming an act of masochism.

Still, let it never be said I can't appreciate a different point of view, and Jim expresses his exceedingly well.