Tue, November 4, 2008 at 11:52 PM For the first time in eight years, I can truly say that I am proud to be an American. It's a pretty good feeling. One that I sincerely hope isn't fleeting. Way to go, America. You've given this hardened pessimist some hope. 
Mon, November 3, 2008 at 7:21 PM Frankly, I didn’t think I could find a game like Fatal Frame II enjoyable.
I recently had the opportunity to go back and play it along with a group of friends and, suffice it to say, my expectations for enjoyment were not stunningly high.
First off, and I’m not afraid to admit this, I thought I would be too damn scared to enjoy myself. Aside from that, there was a small heap of niggling issues I thought would distract me as well: crappy controls, too much backtracking, inane puzzles, or any of a number of other stumbles of pre-Resident Evil 4 horror games.
The funny thing is, the game actually ends up avoiding almost none of these annoyances, but I still found myself hooked. I was playing the Xbox version of the game in the shiny new first-person mode it offers, avoiding the tank-like mess of a control scheme the game uses by default (along with most of its horror peers of the time, sadly). Even so, poor Mio has the walking speed of a toddler and she turns ever so slightly slower than a diseased turtle. Not to mention that the limited perspective of being stuck inside the frightened pre-teen’s head means all manner of spooks appeared outside my field of view.
In other words, even with updated controls that are immensely preferable to the originals, the game still manages to be clunky as hell.
In the course of playing this game, I must have traversed every inch of that stupid town fifty-seven times. I solved all sorts of utterly random puzzles that had no connection to what was going on in the reality of the game world whatsoever.
But still, despite all evidence to the contrary, I couldn’t wait to pick the game up again and see it through to the end.
Truthfully it did even more than that. It made me want to play other horror games when I previously had little desire to do so. It’s a real shame most of the genre is stuck in the same trends that almost turned me off of Fatal Frame. As much as I want to, I’m not even sure I could play the other Fatal Frame titles where the first-person view isn’t an option.
There’s something about this genre that seems to appeal a lot to what I like in games. The heavy doses of atmosphere, focus on their environments, and a constant stream of new experiences play to what I look for in a lot of games in general. If they could just get past a few hurdles far too common to the genre (higher-than-necessary difficulty, annoying resource limitations, and bad game mechanics like control and camera angles) then I’d be far more interested in the genre as a whole.
As it is, it looks like I’ll be forced to scrape around the horror bins for the few titles that play to my tastes while enjoying the atmospheric and scary elements of other games that aren’t really from the horror genre proper, such as those in Bioshock.
How I long for more games like F.E.A.R. that can strike a balance between creepy atmosphere, scary moments, and actually decent controls.
Anyhoo, it’s fairly clear that there’s something about Fatal Frame that’s more that the sum of its decidedly mediocre parts. Much of its appeal surely comes from its excellent atmosphere and the fascinating, if overly confusing, story that it tells.
It’s almost enough to make me pick up the other games in the series and just learn to deal with the clumsy controls.
Almost.
Oh, and just for the record, I held up much better against the scares the game threw at me than I thought I would.
Really. I did.
All right, fine. It scared the pants off of me on more than one occasion. But I made it through the game didn’t I? That’s better than I thought I’d do going in.
Color me surprised.
Wed, October 29, 2008 at 11:27 PM “Needs more tutorials.”
Now there’s something I don’t find myself saying every day, but if ever it was appropriate to utter the abominable sentence above, Fallout 3 is the place to let it slip.
The game exudes an atmosphere that I want to soak in through every pore. I want to explore, to discover, to roam, and to grow. But all of that is sadly difficult when I’m this bloody confused.
I’ve certainly played through my fair share of games that took handholding to the extreme. It’s rarely, fun. A bad tutorial can sour the beginning of a game for a new player.
On the other hand, a good tutorial section can seamlessly introduce players to the world, the story, and the game mechanics while providing a gripping opening scene at the same time. Metroid Prime, for example, teased players with its exciting space station start, complete with full weapon set, puzzles, enemies, and an escape sequence.
Fallout 3 comes maddeningly close to this ideal latter scenario. The opening moments, from birth through childhood and to adulthood, provide the perfect backdrop to let players create their character and stats while introducing the story world and basic mechanics. The problem is that it doesn’t go nearly far enough.
There are numerous aspects of this expansive title that are not introduced or explained to the player by the game (not to mention others that are explained much clearer in the manual, as I found out the hard way too late for it to do me any good).
When that vault door slams shut behind the character, the player’s digital avatar isn’t the only one left stranded by herself in a barren wasteland. The game seems to abruptly stop teaching the player at about this point, right when the information is needed the most.
Once I found my way to the first settlement and had a couple of quests to my name, I hit kind of a wall. I didn’t know how to make money. I wasn’t entirely sure where to go. I was too weak to explore just about anywhere (or, seemingly, travel to complete one of my quests). Meanwhile, the game just sat back and quietly snickered at my ignorance, offering not so much as a hint of a helping hand.
It doesn’t help that the game is too hard for my tastes on normal difficulty. I have since turned it down, without shame I might add, in hopes it would help my experience become more enjoyable. My fingers are crossed.
It also doesn’t help that the game is set up to force me to make decisions long before I’m ready to make them or can understand their implications. This bugs me in every game that does it, and it seems particularly common in these open-ended RPGs (such as, oh, I don’t know, Oblivion, say).
How the hell am I supposed to know which of these 27 categories to put my points in? I haven’t even played the stupid game yet. I don’t know what they do, what I like, or how I want to play. How many points should I put in each category? Is this too much? Should I spread them out? Is that bad? Will this hurt me in the end game or does it not matter much what I do until later? Can I change it?
And so on.
For me, the beginning of Fallout 3 has been marred by this lack of information. I spent far too much time simply figuring out what to do instead of enjoying the gorgeous world and fun game play. I still can’t help but be nervous that I’ve made some grave mistake in character planning or action that I won’t find out is going to totally screw me until about 30 hours in.
Hey, it could certainly have happened in Oblivion.
I’m anxious to get over these problems so the game can solidify itself as one of my favorite games of all time as I’m sure it eventually will.
In the meantime, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go study the instruction manual and buy a strategy guide.
Sat, October 25, 2008 at 1:55 AM When a band decides to pursue the path of change with a new album release, the trail is always fraught with danger. It seems that t.A.T.u. have attempted to brave this tricky task with their newest album, Happy Smiles (or Vesyolye Ulybki for those of you who can’t read Russian and would rather look at a jumble of incomprehensible letters than read the outlandishly stupid English title). The end result, despite the stupid name, is a more serious and mature effort than their previous albums, but one also lacking the poppy fun that was their signature.
There is a part of me that can see the good in this change. It’s something new. It’s no longer needlessly overproduced. They have slowed the tempo, delving into a more minimalistic, melodic style. It is, dare I say it, (slightly) more unique than their generic techno-pop of old.
t.A.T.u. actually manage to sound human on this album. Being able to tell a real, live female is singing the tracks is a major shift from the computer-aided fakery I was used to from them. That’s not to say the outside aid has disappeared from the vocals, because it hasn’t, but it’s less obvious, obnoxious, and ever-present than before.
For better or worse (which is to say, better), the duo’s trademark high-pitched caterwauling has also disappeared in favor of a lower-key (again, more human) approach.
On the other hand, that old generic techno-pop of theirs sure was catchy. This new material seems to have lost a little something by comparison. Happy Smiles is somber and minimalistic. Their first album was largely electronic instrumentation only, just like this one, but it was blippy. They’ve stripped all of the blippy out of this release. What’s left is more mature, but less fun.
Happy Smiles is bookended by its most memorable pieces. Beliy Plaschik and You and I hold up the front lines as the first two songs on the album, as well as the only two that really even remotely resemble prior albums. Indeed, You and I fulfills the requisite role of the new version of the All the Things She Said/All About Us formula, and it succeeds dutifully, almost managing to fade into mediocrity, but the changes to come on the rest of the album lend it a greater importance than it might have otherwise had.
Vremya Luny, placed second to last, provides something different. The sound is almost rock with even a tinge of industrial. t.A.T.u. has used guitars before, particularly on their second album, but this has a different feel to it. It’s a welcome and highly listenable change, marking one of my favorites on the album, though it probably would have been better served earlier in the lineup to give the plodding pace a little kick in the pants.
I will freely admit that I tend to be biased against slower music, but I did enjoy a lot of these tracks despite their slower nature. I’m not sure how much I’ll end up going back to the album as a whole in the long run, but there are some beautiful, well-done songs here.
Still, as a whole, the disc needed some pep to it. It could have used more songs like Vremya Luny. There’s a lot of good stuff here, but energy is hard to come by and somewhat unevenly distributed when it does appear. The album drags by the end as a result. The severe minimalism of most of the tracks doesn’t help, either. Even just a song or two closer to their older style might have livened the proceedings up a fair bit.
Happy Smiles is a change that is handled well and ultimately manages to impress, but fans of their prior work will feel a distinct void where the peppier, livelier tracks used to be. What’s here is good, but some otherwise memorable tracks are lost in a middle section that’s too flat for too long.
Happy Smiles, oddly, is not a happy disc, choosing to slow things down and introduce more mature, melodic elements. It works better than I would have thought, but I still can’t help but miss the catchy tunes I liked so much from their first album.
What can I say? I miss the blippy.
And seriously, what the hell is up with that cover? Really now, t.A.T.u. That’s just hideous.
Wed, October 22, 2008 at 3:05 AM 
There is a particular type of desktop wallpaper that I seem to like very much which is not overly easy to come by on the expansive Interwebs. Good wallpapers are hard enough to find, much less ones that fit my rather strange tastes.
The particular style in question is that of minimalism. I like to have wallpapers that are little more than a splash of color and a logo of a favorite band. Maybe a little bit more if it's really called for. It depends on the situation.
What can I say? I've always liked logos.
Needless to say though, most wallpapers, and especially those centered around bands, tend to be overly complicated. It's as if the makers are trying to show off their terrific Photoshop skills. Instead of producing something that one might actually want to, you know, keep on their desktop.
This combined with the fact that I have some rather obscure musical tastes makes this style of wallpaper rather hard to find.
Well, luckily I just happen to have a copy of that little Photoshop program and I know what a couple of the buttons do, so I occasionally like to mess around with it. As it happens, a minimalistic style requires minimalistic Photoshop skills, which suits me just fine.
There's no worry of my 133t skillz getting in the way of this image because, quite frankly, there's little skill involved in making the thing at all.
I might choose to fancy it up a bit in the future, should I see a need and actually learn how, but for now it suits my strange tastes just fine. A name, a logo, and a couple simple pictures (distorted a bit for effect; hey, I never said it had to be totally boring).
Simple as it may be, I'm rather fond of the thing. I guess making something yourself tends to do that to you, no matter the medium.
Anyway, I'm off to go logo searching. I'd like to make a few more of these. Maybe if I work at it enough I can build up my skills until I can make overproduced, busy trash like the rest of the wallpaper makers out there.
I can dream, can't I?
