He gained his fame as a manager in the WWF, and is mostly widely known for his appearance as Cyndi Lauper's disapproving dad in the gloriously '80s "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" video. But I remember him most fondly for his defining performance as Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
You have to remember, I was, like, eight. Mario Brothers and Zelda were, almost literally, my entire life. And here was a daily TV show, which came on just as I was getting home from school, which combined the two in one brilliant package. There'd be some sitcom stuff with Mario and Luigi, a Mario cartoon, and then -- every Friday -- a long-form Legend of Zelda episode. I was enraptured. And considering the hellish time I was having -- separated from my mother, living with very loving but very not-my-mother great-grandparents -- the Mario show was an escape that I badly, badly needed.
I haven't seen anything from the show since I was a kid, and I'm okay with that. I'm afraid my cynical adult eyes will tarnish what are very fond memories of both the show and of Albano.
So rest in peace, Captain. You were very important to me during a very difficult time of my life. Which is pretty much the best thing any artist can do, isn't it?
(Or: A Man Chooses, a Slave Obeys, and a Hack Weeps for the Cameras, Hears Communist Propaganda in His Rice Krispies and Calls the President a Racist)
(Or: Would You Kindly Throw Yourself Down an Elevator Shaft?)
Yes, that's Glenn Beck on the cover of Time. Glenn Fucking Beck.
A few years ago, I referred to Beck in passing as the Most Obnoxious Man on Television. It was true then -- the impenetrable smugness, the pathetic attention-grabbing nature of his unwatchable "news" program. And his former masters at CNN Headline News -- not even real CNN, either, where even Lou Dobbs pulls down a paycheck -- at least seemed to recognize what they had in Beck: a delirious, inconsequential showman whose chortling nonsense was a good chaser for the comedy stylings of Nancy Grace.
But after he was unceremoniously kicked to the curb, he found a new home where he always should have been to begin with: Fox News, where the seeds of his insanity could be watered and nurtured until it could fully grow and bloom.
And oh, how it bloomed.
So, he's a nut. And hey, that's fine, there's room for nuts on television. Hell, didn't I mention Nancy Grace a few sentences ago? But the election of Barack Obama unleashed something very special in Beck. Something dangerous.
It turns out that Beck has something of a messiah complex. He started calling America to action, giving them rules for living better lives, insisting that his show and his show alone had the courage to "open the eyes" of America, rewrote Thomas Paine, and anointed himself the intellectual heir of Thomas Jefferson and Ayn Rand. He organized the 9/12 Project, an online effort which "galvanized" "millions" of "Americans" to his cause, drawn in as they were by his...uh...well, I'm not sure what exactly drew them in. Other than their fears of being taken over by godless Muslim Communists, a fear that Beck not only preyed upon but created out of thin fucking air. (Another commentator might suggest that all Beck did was put a marginally respectable face on the 9/12'ers and Teabaggers flagrant and deep-seeded racism, allowing them to vent their hateful rhetoric without having to expose to the world what rotten, awful apples they truly are. A commentator like President Jimmy Carter, for example. But not me.)
And now, this lunatic rampage has not resulted in Glenn Beck's dismissal from cable news, not resulted in his committal to a mental health facility, not resulted in him returning to where his views would be given the weight and attention they deserve (that is, scrawling them on sandwich boards and wandering down the streets, scaring small children) -- no, he's on the cover on Time goddamn magazine.
Next time anyone -- especially Glenn Beck -- argues about the liberal bias of the mainstream media, I want someone to hold up that magazine cover. "Look," you'll say. "The liberal, socialist mainstream media gave credence and credibility to your nonsensical bullshit. They put you on the cover of Time magazine, and wrote the accompanying article not as a scathing attack on you, but a fluff piece about your inexplicable success. Now, shut up and go back to transcribing your fever dreams for use on tonight's show. Look, I think that cloud looks like Karl Marx!"
Hey, there's never been a shortage of wackjobs shouting about evil shadow conspiracies. But we're not putting the 9/11 Truthers on magazine covers, are we? Spike Lee went on television and claimed the government blew up the levees in New Orleans, no one interviewed him for Time. I don't recall anyone holding million-man-marches in support of Kanye West when he accused George W. Bush of being a racist. But there's Beck, with his appropriately smug cover photo.
I don't like Glenn Beck very much. Have you noticed?
But there's something much deeper than that at work here. Beck's insanity is only a distraction, the carnival sideshow bearded lady pulling attention away from the rigged games and pickpocketers. See, because here's the world Beck and his cronies on the right want:
Welcome to Rapture. No government. No regulation. Just free enterprise, as free as possible.
(A mildly spoilerish discussion of the two-year-old game Bioshock follows. Consider yourself warned.)
Bioshock takes its premise from the Ayn Rand screed Atlas Shrugged, which is less a novel and more a treatise on Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. It boils down to this: government exists only to take from the rich (and thus productive) members of society and gift to the poor (and thus unproductive) members of society. The richer you are, the more valuable you must be to the world, and if you don't have any money it must be cause you don't have any value. Rand pondered how the world would suffer if she were to stop writing books, and thus came the plot of Atlas -- the rich get tired of their innovations being "abused" by society, tired of "holding up the world," so they leave it, forming their own secret city in the middle of nowhere.
This is also the backstory of Bioshock, which replaces Atlas's John Galt with Andrew Ryan, a business magnate who gets tired of paying taxes and decides to build a secret society in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. He gathers together brilliant scientists and artists and businessmen down there in Rapture, and they live the Utopian life you'd expect without that awful government intervention.
Of course, everything goes to hell, because it turns out that even in a society of "elites," somebody still has to mop the floors and clean the toilets, and nobody thinks it should be them. And Ryan's government-free Utopia collapses into insanity and violence. (Sure, there's a sci-fi element to the whole mess -- tiny eels that give people supernatural powers -- but that doesn't alter the basic metaphor I've got working here. And Rand used sci-fi in Atlas, too.)
Ryan built Rapture on the backs of the very poor he despised -- the "parasites" he longed so desperately to get away from. And Beck, along with most of the conservative right, are doing the exact same thing: they've somehow convinced legions of the poor that it's morally wrong to tax the rich. The right has convinced their supporters that the government is nothing more that a parasitic monster, leeching the hard work from the worthy and giving it to the unworthy and unvaluable. Those 9/12 fools, they think the government is going to take everything they have and give to illegal immigrants or something, cackling their moustaches and singing Russian drinking songs all the while.
This would be funny, if the fooled had something to take.
In typical post-Rove fashion, the Republicans have taken the very people health care reform should be helping and made them its staunchest opponents. They've taken the very people the free enterprise system has hurt the most and brainwashed them into thinking the President is a Communist. And the Democrats in Congress -- because they're Democrats in Congress -- have pretty much just let it happen.
I started this by talking about Glenn Beck, and I should finish it that way. Beck's compared often -- mostly by Beck himself -- to Howard Beale, the doomed news anchor from Network. But Beck can't seem to remember what finally did Beale in: pissing off his corporate bosses. Oh, sure, rile up the masses, get people to scream at their televisions, but step on the congolomerate's toes, and it's game over. But Beale had the courage -- or insanity -- to do it. Beck, on the other hand, is nothing more than a company man, a shill for the suits upstairs. Beale didn't want to tell you write your congressman because he wouldn't know what you should write; Beck knows exactly what you should tell the government, though he'd prefer if you'd just shout epithets and carry dumb signs, and don't forget to buy his book, on sale now!
Beale was a mad prophet; Beck is just a schmuck.
And I guess Beck's forgotten how Network ends, as well.
[First: slight adjustment to the style. Everything working okay? Everything looking good? If not, let me know.]
So, I like Scrabble. I can't imagine that's a real shock to anyone, considering my status as an obsessive lover of words. What's shocking, actually, is how bad I am at it -- I can spell great words, sure, but true Scrabble savants have figured out all the little tricks, stacking two- and three-letter words inside and around each other so they end up getting forty points or some shit every time they drop two tiles down.
Anyway. I'm playing Scrabble on XBox Live the other day -- 'cause I actually bought the XBox Live Arcade version of Scrabble, 'cause I'm a dork, as we've discussed previously, at great length -- and losing quite badly, as per usual. I'm holding my own, keeping a close second, but I know that, any moment, my opponent will spell some obscure word like xi or something and I'll be left in the dust. (I guess I should point out, in the interest of completeness, that there was a third player in this game. But he/she/it played so poorly that their score was a non-issue and never presented a threat.)
Now, I've got the volume turned down, because it's Sunday morning and Christy and the puppy are sleeping, and this version of Scrabble is hosted by Mr. Potato Head (don't ask) who likes to do backflips and make Pillsbury Doughboy noises every time you spell a word. But I see the little speaker next to my opponent's avatar keeps lighting up, indicating that he's talking over XBox Live's chat feature. No one else is talking to him, but that doesn't stop him -- he's downright chatty.
So after about twenty minutes of this, my curiosity gets the best of me. I (quietly) dig through my nightstand and find my XBox headset. After plugging it in and fiddling with the volume controls, I finally hear what Mr. Scrabble is saying:
And then I think -- This guy is playing Scrabble? On XBox Live? And beating me?
I would like to say I recovered to glory, but it was not to be. My opponent continued to feud with his children, eventually threatening to stop the game if they didn't shut up. And he made good on his threat, giving us a brief apology before leaving the game, thus ending it. (I consider this a win by default. I don't care if you agree with that or not, I'm taking it.)
I hope to spend a part of every weekend losing Scrabble games to people who probably haven't seen a dictionary since Chumbawumba had a hit. Next up: meth addicts!
Over the course of a life, one makes enemies. My life is no different.
When those enemies are made in childhood, the grudges can fester. Grow. Their evil can seep into the soil and bring forth blooms of seething, spiteful hatred. Again, my life is no different.
And over the course of two decades, that hatred -- unchecked, unabated -- can become monstrous, an animal no longer controllable or consolable.
Even if the target of all that rage is a drunken pink cartoon boxer.
You motherfucker.
When I was kid, I played Mike Tyson's Punch-Out a lot. A lot. I didn't have my own copy of Zelda yet, and I'd beaten Mario fifteen times by then. Getting to -- and then defeating -- Iron Mike was my sole focus for a good long while. My cousin Brian, he had a post-Mike version of the game, and again, the quest for victory over Mr. Dream consumed me. But I never beat Tyson, or his white-bread revisionist counterpart. Because I never got there.
Because of Soda Popinski.
Pop is your second opponent in the World Circuit, which actually consists mostly of rematches. Piston Honda shows up to fight you again, and in the interim he's learned how to duck. Not exactly a stunning revamp, to be certain, and he's easily dispatched.
And then: Soda Pop. The fucker.
I couldn't beat him when I was little. Couldn't, ever. I returned to the game briefly in middle school, and found that, if my timing was just right, I had no distractions, and the gods smiled in the heavens over Maryland, then I could actually beat him...once out of every, oh, ten tries. The other nine: defeat -- shameful, ignominious.
Remember that fucking dog we talked about, from Duck Hunt? Remember his laughter when you'd miss? Soda laughed, too. A strikingly similar sound, though a little rougher, I think. Deeper. Callous. Evil.
The fucker.
When I got my big batch of NES ROMs a few years ago, I fired up Punch-Out. And guess what? I still couldn't do it. I cheated, even -- used save states to keep my place just before the big fight. It took me hours, and I finally got him. Once.
There are myths and legends that speak of rivalries like this. I've written of them of myself, even when it comes to old video games -- remember Fester's Quest? My continued failure, followed by righteous triumph and victory?
Last night, we bought Punch-Out from the Wii's Virtual Console. I started it, remembering my Fester's triumph and picturing a similar story unfolding. Surely, I would achieve victory. Surely, I would put those old demons to rest.
"I don't think so," Soda Pop said. "And don't call me Shirley."
When you play a song in Rock Band, you're given a star rating based on your score. (It's not based on accuracy, which is a little annoying. But whatever.) You are ranked from one to five stars. If you're playing on Expert difficulty, and you get a super-duper-awesome score, you can get even higher: five gold stars. This is exceedingly difficult, and requires true mastery of the track.
I've made it my mission in life to get five gold stars on every song we have -- all 99 of them. Since I suck with the Rock Band guitar and I'm not that good a drummer, it'll have to be on vocals. I'll keep track of my successes here. Why? Because I have to be able to brag about something, don't I?
Gold Stars achieved on... [* denotes a perfect 100% performance]
"Maps"
"Creep" * (27th place on the PS3 Rock Band Leaderboard)
So, the last few days have been good as far as life goes. If by "life," I mean "the world of movies, music, books, and video games, which I hold up as a shiny fireworks display to distract from my miasmatic personal life," then yeah, it's been good.
Friday -- Iron Man. A fantastic film, and one of the better comic book movies. You should definitely see it if you haven't already, and it wouldn't hurt to see it again if you have.
Saturday -- the Usual Suspects dropped by for what has become a weekly event: a combination of Rock Band and Mystery Science Theater 3000. Fortunately, I have many episodes of the program on DVD -- this week, I believe our feature will be Monster A Go-Go. You guys thought Girl in Gold Boots was bad? Oh, you ain't seen nuthin' yet.
Sunday -- I caught up on last week's House (good), several old episodes of Corner Gas I had cluttering my DVR (very good), and the last few episodes of Scrubs (spotty). I also watched a few of the South Park episodes that had begun to accumulate, and I have to ask: are Matt and Trey completely out of ideas? Because every episode this season has just been a rehashing of an old movie. I know they do that a lot, and it's fine, but this season already we've had The Lottery,Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Grapes of Wrath, Stand and Deliver, and frickin' Heavy Metal.
Monday -- I (finally!) picked up the Orange Box for the PS3, and got to play Portal for the first time. Six hours later, of course, I was finished, but I was well-satisfied with my purchase. And as much as I love playing "Still Alive" in Rock Band, it's a billion times funnier in context. And now I'll finally get to play Half-Life 2's Episodes 1 and 2! And play Half-Life 2 again! (You remember how enthralled with the game I was the first time.)
Today -- I finished reading Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, which is easily one of the ten best books I've ever read. Then I returned home to find that Trent Reznor has decided to release the new Nine Inch Nails album, The Slip, totally for free.
Ah: good times.
I also must now fulfill a promise, and offer thanks to my Pizza Place co-worker Al, who stayed for an extra few minutes the other day to help me out while I was closing. He also read this blog -- all of it, apparently. A truly Herculean endeavor, sir. Thanks.
1. Ah, yes: it's baseball season again. And the Astros' pumped-up new starting lineup got things going exactly the way you'd expect them to -- by losing their first two games, scoring all of one run in the process (and that came on a bases-loaded walk). But then last night, they blasted four home runs off two future Hall of Famers, made Trevor Freaking Hoffman blow a save, and won 9-6. So clearly they can hit when they need to. Which is a relief. And I like the way they're playing so far, despite the lack of scoring in the first two games. (And in their defense, they were up against two excellent pitchers in Jake Peavy and Chris Young. But still.) I remain cautiously optimistic, especially because we still don't have our full lineup out there yet (Kaz Matsui is still out with...um, an unfortunate injury), and we also play in the National League Comedy Central, the worst division in all of baseball. It's a total crapshoot.
2. I bought Beth Kinderman's album, All of My Heroes Are Villains, and you should, too. I've talked about her music at length before, but this is a real record -- recorded in a studio with a band and everything. It sounds phenomenal, particularly "Hannibal Lecter" and "Valley." So you should buy it. It came with a free bumper sticker, too. Here's a rundown, in my patented iTunes-screenshot review style:
3. I also bought Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings, the new Counting Crows album, and it's probably their best record since Recovering the Satellites over ten years ago. Trust me: the catharsis to be found in singing the last verse of "Come Around" at the top of your lungs cannot be understated. "And one of the million lies she said / Is, 'Everything you love is dead' / But I've seen what she thinks is love, and it leaves me laughing / So we'll still come around."
4. Rock Band is the single greatest multiplayer game ever made. It's also the best music game ever made. It is impossible to describe how fun it really is. Our band, Scott Tenorman Must Die, broke the 500,000 fan threshold last night and earned our spot in the Rock Band Hall of Fame. Our best song? "Epic," of all things. We own these setlists. Except for "Green Grass and High Tides," which we have yet to complete. Not even once. But it's getting there.
5. For serious this time: I've restarted work on my Saying Story for this month, "Miles and Miles and Miles and Miles and Miles." It's about vampires. And ghosts. And the Who. What's not to love? You can check my progress with Regina Spektor in the sidebar.
6. Though most of it isn't written down, I have almost the entirety of the next Revolver episode in my head. So as soon as "Miles" is out of the way, that'll be coming.
7. My friends are surprisingly patient and supporting of my problems. (Though one of them, of course, laughs in my face when something bad happens, he sends very considerate e-mails.) Everything fell apart for me at once last month; on Tuesday, I think I made the first step toward building them back up again. And they'll be there when I do. Breathing a sigh of relief, I'm sure -- I'm insufferable when I'm depressed. Thank you, guys.
That list was longer than I thought it would be. But then, that's the point in counting them, isn't it?
I bought the Lost video game on Friday night, as I indicated I would. And I finished it last night, somewhat short of the promised twelve hours of gameplay. How was it? For non-Lost viewers, I imagine it would be a mediocre gaming experience with an unintelligible story -- virtually every dialogue contains a reference or inside joke from the show, and characters and places are suddenly thrust into the narrative without introduction or explanation. The game is extraordinarily linear, with a handful of boring Myst-like fusebox puzzles. For true Lost fans, though...it's even worse.
The dialogue is dreadful, and comes off as poorly written fan fiction. And it doesn't even work as video game dialogue -- they're described as "dialogue trees," but they're not trees. They're just lists of questions that always get the same answers no matter what order you ask them, and almost all of them are pointless. All the voice actors -- even the handful of real actors from the show -- sound like they're on downers (except Michael Emerson, who just can't help being awesome). The jackass doing Locke's voice, particularly, needed a Mana Potion -- I'm sure two months' worth of vitamin B12 would've given some life to his performance.
It is fun to explore the island, for a while -- and the section where you get to wander around the Swan is a blast. It should've been a lot longer, in fact...as should the rest of the game. It may have been stupid and badly written, but it also cost me sixty dollars -- I shouldn't be done with it the next day, especially when it has absolutely no replay value whatsoever. Oh, I guess I could go back through it to find the secret objects I'm supposed to snap photos of, but all you unlock are pieces of concept art -- whoopty-shit.
One of these days, I'm going to remember that I always get screwed over when I buy these Lost tie-in products. I'm going to remember it before I buy the thing, not after.
But hey, I guess that's what happens to a Lost whore -- you get screwed.
So, apparently Animal Crossing is a game that people play. I've never played it myself, and haven't a clue what actually goes on in it. But whatever it was I thought, it wasn't anything like this:
Neither, apparently, was it what Something Awful poster Chewbot thought he'd find. So shocked was he, it seems, that he twisted his screen caps -- taking very few of them out of context -- into a narrative called "The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing." He began adding his own artwork to the tale to provide depth and backstory, and the result is spectacular. He even brought in a choose-your-own-adventure aspect in the final act, giving readers a vote to make a choice for the protagonist (and then provided an alternate ending, showing the results of both).
I wanted to link to this a few months ago while it was still ongoing, but you wouldn't have been able to read it without a Something Awful membership. Now that's it concluded, though, someone has gone to the trouble of putting up a mirror. So you can enjoy the madness without paying for an SA account. A winner is you!
Seriously -- read it if you have the time. It's quite the chilling tale.
I love the internet.
(One note, though: you'll see mention of an audio track -- several readers are putting together a dramatic reading of the story, complete with sound effects and music. It isn't quite finished yet, so don't bother looking for it. Though the final part does feature a brief video.)
To those who celebrate Christmas, may you have a merry one. To those who don't, happy Tuesday. I will spend mine at home, enjoying a rare day off by playing games on my shiny new PS3 and watching my favorite Christmas movies -- A Christmas Story and Die Hard.
If you have a machine than will play it, I cannot give Assassin's Creed a strong enough recommendation. There will be those who say the investigation missions are repetitive; I cannot help but agree. There will be those who say the game's ending is less a resolution and more a setup for Assassin's Creed 2; I must bow my head and concur. (Though, make sure you see the credits -- if you haven't seen the credits, you haven't really seen the ending.)
There are those with complaints, and those complaints may be valid. But here's the thing -- none of that stuff bothered me. Sure, there are only four different investigations you can perform to unlock the assassinations -- I loved them all, and wish there were more of them. I love the combat, love the story, love the characters, love the graphics, the art, the assassinations, the music -- the game is fucking brilliant. EGM can kiss my ass. (X-Play, on the other hand, adored it, giving it a full five stars and giving it a slew of nominations at its end-of-year awards. That's more like it.)
Me: Do you have any PS3s? Them: Not right now -- we should have some next month.
AUGUST 2007
Me: Do you have any PS3s? Them: Not yet -- we're supposed to get them next month.
SEPTEMBER 2007
Me: Do you have any PS3s? Them: Actually, no -- but they're supposed to come in at the end of this month.
THREE WEEKS LATER
Me: Do you have any PS3s? Them: No -- should be next month.
OCTOBER 2007
Me: Do you have any PS3s? Them: Not yet -- try the end of this month.
THREE WEEKS LATER
Me: Do you have any PS3s? Them: Not yet -- should be in a couple of weeks.
NOVEMBER 2007
Me: Do you have any PS3s? Them: Not yet -- they're coming in for Christmas, so we should get them right after Thanksgiving.
RIGHT AFTER THANKSGIVING
Me: Do you have any PS3s? Them: Not yet. Should be on the first.
DECEMBER 1, 2007
Me: Do you have any PS3s? Them: Not yet. Should be in a few days.
A FEW DAYS LATER
Me: Do you have any PS3s? Them: Not yet, but we've got the shipping order for them. Should be today.
THE NEXT DAY
Me: Do you have any PS3s? Them: No. We don't know where they are.
A FEW DAYS LATER
Me: Do you have any-- Them: No! No, okay? Someone stole them off the back of the truck. Me: ... Them: But they were insured. So we've got replacements coming. Should be in a few days.
A FEW DAYS LATER
Me: ...? Them: Not yet. Should be this week.
NEXT WEEK
Me: ...! Them: Don't know yet. It should be before Christmas. Me: ...Okay.... Them: I hope. Me: ...!!
TODAY
Me: Anything? Them: Don't know yet, man. Should be before Christmas. Should be.
MY HOUSE -- TWENTY MINUTES LATER
[phone rings] Me: Hello? Them: We just got our PS3s in.
In a recent news post over at Penny Arcade, Gabe noted that both he and Tycho were working on "best of" lists, attempting to compile their favorite strips. A normal person could resist the temptation to make his own list, but I think you know me better than that.
I present these without commentary, because they're mostly so brief that there's not much to say. I'll note that most are from the last two years, and all from 2002 or later -- they've simply gotten better with experience. And of course, it's very possible I've forgotten a few -- this list is, at best, an impression of how I feel right now. My preferences are subject to change without notice.
So then. The best twenty-five strips ever produced at Penny Arcade:
Obviously, there were things I could've been doing. But this is too much fun.
This is the end of Seven, of course, with Dr. Eli Vance as Morgan Freeman as Somerset, some random guy as Kevin Spacey as John Doe, and Gordon Frohman as Brad Pitt as Mills.
In the shot, you can see Somerset's discarded pistol, the infamous box, the van that delivered it, and the helicopter that's observing the whole thing. In fact, here's a shot from that helicopter, just like in the movie:
Yeah, the chopper is tough to aim. But maybe I'm getting better: this one only took an hour and a half.
The coolest thing in the world: Garry's Mod, a Half-Life 2 mod that lets you spawn, pose and manipulate characters and objects from HL2 however you please.
That's the ear removal scene from Reservoir Dogs, with Dr. Kleiner as Mr. Orange, a random extra as Mr. Blonde, and the G-man as the cop. Or, it's as good as I could get it, anyway -- that took almost two hours.
The manipulation is pretty tricky.
(Other shots from my Reservoir Dogs scene can be viewed here.)
My name remains at the top of the waiting list for PlayStation 3s over at Partners. Should be within a couple weeks.
And the Rock Band people have finally announced the pricing and release schedule of some of the downloadable content. Available within the first month of release:
Important things you should know about Guitar Hero III:
They improved the graphics of the arenas. This means dick while you're trying to play a blistering solo, but it's nice to see they tried.
They added a two-player cooperative career mode, which is cool; it has a completely different setlist setup and different songs, which is cooler.
The boss fights are awesome, even if Tom Morello is a pushover.
No matter which guitarist you pick, he/she won't show up in the cut scenes.
Yes, there are cut scenes.
Just because a song sucks, that doesn't mean it isn't fun to play. Case in point: "Same Old Song and Dance" by Aerosmith.
To be honest...Guitar Hero II was better. At least, so far. I haven't been all the way through the list. I started a career on Hard and told myself I'd stop and go to bed once I failed a song -- I got as far as "The Metal" before dying. Oh well. There's always tomorrow.
"Cherub Rock" is much, much harder than it sounds. Damn you, three-note chords!
That is all.
Oh, wait: have you watched Heroes yet? Let's just say that what Peter found in the apartment in Montreal was the very last thing I wanted him to find. "Hey, an impending catastrophe that threatens New York City, and only I can stop it! Boy, I'm glad this has never happened to me before!"
How could one man have slipped through your force's fingers time and time again? How is it possible? This is not some agent provocateur or highly-trained assassin we are discussing. Gordon Freeman is a theoretical physicist who had hardly earned the distinction of his Ph.D. at the time of the Black Mesa Incident. I have good reason to believe that in the intervening years, he was in a state that precluded further development of covert skills. The man you have consistently failed to slow, let alone capture, is by all standards simply that -- an ordinary man. How can you have failed to apprehend him? Well...I will leave the upbraiding for another time, to the extent it proves necessary. Now is the moment to redeem yourselves.
On the copy of Half-Life 2 that I bought, the box bears a lot of blurbs of praise. Over 35 Game of the Year Awards! Five stars from this reviewer, a perfect 10 from this reviewer! But the most conspicuous glares at you from the front cover: "The best game ever made." This comes from Maximum PC. I saw that quote and chortled. I mean, if I'm selling the game, I put that quote on the cover, too, can't blame them for that. But doesn't that just lead to high expectations that can't possibly be matched?
Well. I'm assuming that Maximum PC covers only PC games. If that's true, then the answer to that last question is...no. Half-Life 2 is the best PC game ever made.
All it had to do to win that prize was be better than its predecessor, which was no small feat. The original Half-Life was more than just the best first-person shooter, it completely redefined them and recreated them in its own image. It cranked realism to a level unmatched (before or since, frankly), turned run-and-run gameplay into a cinematic experience that left you breathless, and then crammed in a few exceedingly clever puzzles to hit you in the brain. Half-Life was just about perfect -- until its final stage, when it suddenly became a exercise in pinpoint platform jumping that lead to one of the most infuriating, anticlimactic endings in video game history.
Half-Life 2 improves on the first game in every single way. Every way -- the graphics are better, the world is more immersive, the physics engine is incredible, the new weapons are clever and fun, and the entire game feels like a living, breathing world. A living, breathing world overrun by a genetically-enhanced human military acting as the pawns of a foul race of interdimensional aliens called the Combine, yes, but living and breathing nevertheless.
You spent almost of all of the last game trapped in tiny corridors and cramped air vents, so the first half of this one opens things up. With the entire Combine Overwatch chasing you, you duck into sewers and drainage ducts and hop into boats and dune buggies to flee across the countryside. This leads to the beach, and nightmarish encounters with the hideous Antlions, savage beasts that rush at you from out of the sand in hordes.
And just when I was thinking -- and remarking to a few people -- that the game was losing some of the claustrophobia that made the original so compelling, the game switches gears. Now, you're lead into a series of raids on Combine strongholds, and you're once again hiding from soldiers in corners and hiding desperately from sentry guns. The intensity builds and builds and builds, and never lets up again -- and then it builds up even more, once the battle returns to the ruined streets of City 17, and you find yourself a single fighter in a massive gun battle between the rebels and the Overwatch...who, of course, remembered to bring their gunships and heavy artillery.
Seriously, I've never been this blown away by a PC game. In fact, there's only a handful of console games that I've loved this much -- Chrono Trigger. Silent Hill 2. Zelda. Maybe Metal Gear Solid 2. And that's it.
The game has just been rereleased in a glorious Orange Box -- this includes Half-Life 2, the two mini-sequels (Half-Life 2: Episode One and Episode Two, which the creators admit should have been called Half-Life 3), the multi-player Team Fortress 2, and the first-person puzzler Portal, which has been called brilliant by just about everybody. I think it goes without saying that you should buy this fucking thing right now what are you waiting for seriously go right now.
If you'll excuse me, I'm going to start Episode One.
I took a break from playing Half-Life 2 a little while ago. The game is incredible -- I'd almost say it's better than the original, which is one of the best games ever made. The scope is bigger, the battles more strategic, the music is good, and the story is engrossing; seriously, play this game if you haven't already.
While taking a break, I began contemplating the idea of Half-Life 2 entering the Holy Pantheon. I then thought about the other games on that list, the ones I haven't played in ages. So I fired up my NES emulator and started playing a few old Nintendo games. I played a little Super Mario, a little Ninja Gaiden 2. I tried to play a few wrestling games, but the ROMs were corrupted. I even decided to play the old warhorse, that bane of my existence, Fester's Quest. Fester's Quest, of course, is the ludicrously difficult game that has been kicking my ass for fifteen years now.
So, what the hell? I loaded it and played for a little while.
And, holy shit--
I beat Fester's Quest!
As predicted, I made a fool of myself jumping around my apartment like an idiot.
It would help here to explain why the game is so damn hard -- because it was obviously made for about $500 over a three-day weekend. The game is so rampantly buggy that you'll occasionally run into spots where enemies will respawn infinitely, and if you don't have lightning reflexes, you'll be overrun and killed (since it only takes two hits to kill you).
But I overcame all of that. I picked up the two extra health bars, which I'd never found before (that was helpful). I beat the fourth boss, which was the farthest I'd been before. I destroyed the fifth boss (really, it was pathetically simple). I mastered the final labyrinth -- you get a item late in the game that summons Lurch to destroy all enemies on the screen; I used every goddamn one of them.
And I marched up to the final boss, and defeated it with...relative ease. And that was that -- Fester's Quest is my cross to bear no more.
That screenshot I saved? That's all the reward I get. That, and my sense of relief.
But you know what? It turns out...it's not really all that hard -- it's just badly, horribly designed. It's broken, to tell the truth.
Now, this? This is hard.
Fester's Quest? Not so much. Will that stop me from being overly elated at its demise? Of course not.
If you haven't listened to Wil Wheaton's keynote speech at PAX, you really must do so as soon as possible. (You can listen to it here, but a fair warning -- it's nearly an hour long.)
When he mentioned Dark Tower, I clapped aloud, even though I was alone in my car. And when he mentioned Blades of Steel -- "the best hockey game ever in life!" -- I think I got choked up a little. (You know how I feel about Blades of Steel.)
He speaks very fondly of arcade games like Asteroids and Wizards of War, and while I like those games, playing them is like listening to the Rolling Stones or the Who to me -- they're obviously fantastic, but they don't have the immediacy of newer music, simply because it's already classic by the time I hear it. By the time I came around to video games, the arcade stuff was already obsolete. But it's still fun to listen to him speak of it so fondly.
I also very much dug his description of games as a social activity, especially his joy in playing them with his brother. I remember very fondly the role video games often took in my house. I was obviously the expert there, but my mom and sister drew their own enjoyment from them. When he spoke of developing "level specialists" to get through certain games, I remember the (many, many) times my sister would play through a level and then thrust the controller at me to get through a boss. Ah, nostalgia.
