| Eureka! |
[Dec. 26th, 2009|02:38 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | Expressed | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Look Pimpin--Sick YG | ] |
I just realized why the notion of people wanting more story in their games is so offensive to me. It took a disgusting article on disgusting Kotaku to make me realize it.
Of course, there's the relatively standard reason: games are games. They don't NEED stories. They can, and frequently are, totally successful without stories. I'd wager that you'd be hard pressed to find a game with some shitty wannabe Hollywood narrative that outdoes a game that whoops ass on a pure gameplay level like Deus Ex or the 3D Mario games.
But it goes one level beyond that. In that article, the premise the author uses to explore the notion of motivation for grunt-level enemies in videogames is why Goombas choose to stand against Mario. Now beyond the mere superficial coating of hipster "LOOK AT MY CLEVER OBSERVATION" bullshit apparent in such malarky, it codifies something that goes beyond the mere "games are games dammit stop trying to put words in there":
It's about abstraction.
I like cartoons. Y'know why? Because they invoke the human imagination in a more efficient fashion than tenuous scribbling of written prose without being as bound to the, at-times, mundane aesthetic of the real world. The same thing applies to games that have non-stories: why script every goddamn moment, every detail in tiresome, Tolkien fashion when you can let the player fill in the blanks in regards to the details of what's going on?
Y'know what I did with GTA4 after I finished it? I did the vigilante missions. Last gen, it was a lot of fun to just go on a rampage, but the more "realistic" approach to GTA4's play mechanics kind of muted that kind of fun. Instead I would find a cop car, look up a database of criminals, and then go Punisher on them for their crimes. And it was pretty neat. Did I need some fucking elaborate backstory for WHY Nico Belic felt like killing criminal scum? Did I need a 12 page police dossier on these crooks instead of a 3 line summary of their name, their crime, and their last location? Hell no. Because it was more fun in my head than it probably would've been in the game.
In fact, some of the BEST FUCKING NARRATIVES in games are the ones that have the lightest touch when it comes to story. Everyone loves Shadow of the Colossus, right? And did that game spell everything out? What about Portal? While Glados certainly has a ton of dialogue, the actual nuts and bolts of your characters imprisonment and subsequent escape are more or less left for the player to decide.
It actually reminds me a lot of how I feel about long-form writing. Of course there are writers who try to put everything together in excruciating detail. Those guys are weenies. The best fiction writers, I believe, are the ones who use their readers own imagination to sculpt by proxy an captivating story. And similarly, the best game stories are probably always going to be the ones who do the same thing, only with videogames instead of text.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is fuck realistic graphics, fuck cliche-ridden self-serious "LOOK HOW MATURE VIDEOGAMES ARE NOW" type narratives, fuck you for trying to apply your boring real world logic to my awesome abstract TV games, and quadruple motherfucking fuck Uncharted 2 and Heavy Rain. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 26th, 2009|01:00 am] |
I woke up this morning with a sore throat and one nostril completely stuffed up, which, haha oh MAN, can I tell you, is my least absolute thing ever. I haaaaate not being able to breathe through my nose, of which I'm having a significant problem with right now. :( Uncool. Seriously uncool.
But Christmas was still completely wonderful. Half as many presents under the tree than usual but that was okay by me, 'cause seriously? I couldn't ask for a better present than moving back home AND getting my degree. SO THERE.
( Weee pics! )
AND THEN, we finally got to see Terminator: Salvation. I liked! And that's saying something, given that I'm non-ironicly terrified of robots. Clowns and robots, you guys. I cannot even. BUT. Marcus! LOVE. Apparently that's the same dude who's in Avatar, yeah? And OOOH, he's gonna be Perseus in Clash of the Titans! MMMM I APPROVE. And then there's Señor Bale who made me lol from "IT'S FUCKING DISTRACTING. OHHH, GOOD!" and, you know, Batman voice.
OH AAAAND! ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) unperfectwolf I got your cookies yesterday AHHH THANK YOU SO MUCH! You are the BESTEST. ♥!!!
Ugh, I have no idea what I'm still doing up. I'm gonna go dope myself up on Dimatapp and try to sleep. I hope you guys had a fabulous Christmas!! <3333 |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 24th, 2009|10:29 pm] |
Because tomorrow I plan on approaching food coma stages before too late in the day: Merry Christmas, y'all! I love you guys, you're the best friends ever. Please have good holidays - eat drink and be merry. <333 |
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| Merry Christmas everyone! |
[Dec. 24th, 2009|10:33 am] |
Hi everyone! I've been busy with my brother visiting us for the holidays - barely been on the computer and suddenly it's Christmas Eve day. So I thought I'd pop in and wish you all a great Christmas and lots of blessings for 2010. 2010!!! Can you believe it?! Wow.
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 23rd, 2009|07:46 pm] |
I know, I know. I live in the middle of Florida. This should be old hat by now. But. Man. It's really disappointing. (At least it'll be cold Christmas night? And rainy all day, which will give the illusion of winter? Like, I don't want 230948 inches of snow and it being so cold it freezes your snot, but sweater weather? Maybe? ;_;)
So the people across the street have this TINY little kitty that wanders around our house a lot. Today we got it to come into our back porch and UGHHHH SO CUTE. Tiny little mews and it JUMPED up to our hands to pet iiiit. I feel so bad because it looks pretty skinny and the people across the street don't seem to let it in very much. I want to leave it food but then it'll get attached to us/our house and, you know, that's probably not good, seeing as how other people own it. But bawww I don't know what to doooo. I love kitties.
Alsooo I was thinking today about how many awesome people there are in the SPN fandom (yeah, I know, you kind of have to weed them out, but) that I don't even know, but I am way too much of a weenie to just go around and start friending people. I feel like I'm missing out, or something! HELL-ATUS SPN FRIENDING MEME. Someone more awesome than I should get on that.
And unffffff HELLO, HI. |
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| Cartoon Meme Checklist Thing |
[Dec. 22nd, 2009|02:04 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | YOOOOO JOEEEEE | ] |
| [ | music |
| | GI Joe Theme Song (Theatrical Edition) | ] |
The Animated Movie Meme:
- X what you've seen
- O what you haven't finished/seen sizable portions
- Bold what you loved
- Italics for what you disliked/hated
- Leave unchanged if neutral
( I LUV CARTOOOOOONS ) |
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| You know it's cold when the rivers start to freeze... |
[Dec. 21st, 2009|04:15 pm] |
So it snowed again today. It snowed the day we arrived as well as the next, but the two days after us were crisp blue skies and dare I say it, it was actually warmer today (positively temperate in comparison) - blue skies in winter are the devil. Today was a much nicer day and it was great having nice (snowy) weather for my birthday.
After three weeks of city jumping, gallery and museum visiting, bar crawling and packing/unpacking/packing we needed some downtime. Berlin has been great and is the city Brad and I would most likely move to if we decided to relocate, and in winter is gorgeous. We did a lot of walking and exploring but more so in the east, barely touching the west. I think if we had come here in summer it would have been a lot more accessible as when it's minus 5 degrees the last thing either of us really wanted to do was go exploring through the Tiergarten and parks. We explored a lot of Mitte (central Berlin) and SE, E, NE areas surrounding it.
Trips to the Deutsche Guggenheim, 'Museum Island' which is an area of gorgeous old buildings converted into various museums and galleries, the Jewish Holocaust museum and Checkpoint Charlie were both enlightening and horrific. I love Berlin but you can still feel the resonance of the war - there is still so much underlying hostility and internal conflict from the events of the past. We visited a contemporary art gallery and the majority of the works dealt with issues which arose from the war. I suppose there has been so much negativity throughout German history that a lot of people still need to express themselves and their families stories.
But it wasn't all doom and gloom - the wall (East Side Gallery) has been converted into an ever changing canvas of graffiti artwork that deals with hope, reconciliation and Disney (for some reason). The streets of Berlin are often filled with art and markets and it seems the people of Germany can't get enough of Last Christmas by Wham.
Also the food - Adam says delish. I don't think I've eaten so well this entire trip. The hotel breakfast is great and each of the places we've gone for dinner, whether Mister Vuongs Vietnamese restaurant (Berlin has a very high Vietnamese population and there is a bounty of restaurants to choose from) or random side walk cafes we pop into have all been amazing. (And yes Ashleigh, the desserts are just as good - apple strudels and creme brulees with chocolate and peanut butter spring rolls). We explored the area of Kreuzberg and ended up at a great restaurant, an odd bar playing a lot of ABBA in Swedish and a nice bar around the corner called Hafen; visited Pony Bar around Mitte but didn't get to the one club we wanted to visit on Saturday night as Brad and I were both exhausted and with the weather colder that minus 5, we started to freeze in our four layers of clothing - I didn't want to be standing outside waiting at midnight! Definitely need to come back in the summertime I think!
So we pack up tonight for a train to Prague tomorrow and hopefully all our future connections will run smoothly (the train we are catching from Paris to London has been cancelled for the last three days due to terrible weather. I hope our flight from Prague to Paris and from London to Dublin isn't affected by all this crazy cold weather). This may be my last email for a while as I'm not sure what internet access will be like from Prague so I hope everyone has a very happy and safe festive season! |
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| I watched Inglourious Basterds |
[Dec. 20th, 2009|11:47 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | IT'S NOT BREAKFAST AFTER NOON | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Yukiko-san--Midori | ] |
Here's my comments
-HOLY FUCK WAS THAT MIKE MEYERS?
-Tarantino has a neat way of using tension. No melodramatic music building in the background (except maybe in the last few seconds), no crazy panic-y camera shit, just...you know something bad is potentially going to happen and it just gradually becomes more and more likely
-In addition to tension, he's also really good at using actors and soundtrack.
-I should go on the record and say I really hated Death Proof, and while I was already pretty sure I knew why, this movie cemented it for me: Q.T.'S movie's are ultimately pretty simple, but very reliant on character and dialogue. So in order for that to work, the premise has to hook you. A bunch of weirdos driving around the Southwest doesn't interest me at all, but a crazy samurai assassin lady and a bunch of gangsters and now some World War II guys? That's cool.
-The ending was a little....hm. Not abrupt, because there was a proper climax and everything, but it just kinda felt...I dunno, not as cathartic as it could have been.
All things considered, it's probably my second favorite Tara-chan movie now.
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| Copenhagen to Berlin... |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|03:09 pm] |
Before we left, Bradley and I were told it was going to be cold. Very, very cold. This was for New York and yes, at the time we thought 'This is pretty chilly but really, nothing to worry about'. Since arrive in Europe we have had snow on a regular basis, it was minus 5'C here in Berlin yesterday and I've learnt what it is like to try and talk with no feeling in my face. Thankfully there is mulled wine, latte machiattos and the warmest coat (which, like divorced parents, Bradley and I are fighting for custody) ever.
Our last day in Copenhagen was pristine and white. We wandered through the National Gallery and Museum before trying (unsuccessfully) to find our favourite coffee shop. Turns out we were so far in the wrong direction and it didn't help that it was snowing, dark and we were hungry. A couple of hotdogs later we skipped the coffee and headed back to Casa de Philip to thaw out before hitting the town. We got dressed up and ventured to our first bar which, since Philip had visited last, changed owners and was a very, very different bar. One beer later we existed stage left to the next bar which was really just a pitstop on the way to dinner. Madklubben was a very swanky, very 'interior designer' restaurant (I love that specialist designer furniture items that I fawn over and have to get imported in Melbourne are readily available in retail outlets in Europe and are used everywhere in hospitality environments) and shock horror it was well priced. The mission statement was soemthing along the lines of keeping the food quality high, prices low, and staff relatively untrained. There was no pouring of wine and all the other things some people take for granted but this didn't detract from the meal at all which was freaking superb, the drinks plentiful and the company grand. A short stumble, a snowball fight (several inches of snow had fallen in the previous hours) and we arrived at a gorgeous cocktail bar called 1106 at which we were served delicious cocktails to tide us over.
We tried in vain to stay up as we had to leave at 6.30am and when the alarm went off we awoke very groggy and did a mad dash pack as the taxi waiting for us left and then returned 10 minutes later. We grabbed our seats on the ICE Train to Berlin and settled in for a long trip. About two hours later though we were woken up and told to get off as we had arrived on a ferry. Yes ON a ferry (a fact that no one had told us would happen). So for about an hour we watched Denmark fade and Germany slowly disappear. The train ride continued fairly uneventfully, I tried to learn some basic German from my Lonely Planet guide and we arrived mid afternoon.
The central train station Hauptbahnhof is enourmous, with multiple floors, mezzanines, underground, above ground and a labrynth of stairs, escalators and elevators. We found an ATM after about 10 minutes and as we couldn't find an english speaking tourist info place we just jumped into a taxi and went to our hotel. (Turns out it is relatively easy to get to our hotel but on a few hours sleep in a new country it was fairly daunting). We are staying at a placed called Leonardo Royal Hotel just east of central Mitte in the Friedrichshain district. It's a brilliant hotel; very modern with a huge, free breakfast and very helpfully staff who supplied us with Berlin Welcome cards to get us discounts to museums, galleries, transportation and the like.
It has been ridiculously cold, but to be in this part of the world it is a price we are willing to pay. More on Berlin later on!
I hope everyone is doing well back home and from what we have seen on CNN bushfires have already started. I hope everyone is atying safe and out of mischief - speak to you all soon.
-- Adam |
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| IT'S THE GREEN IT'S THE GREEN IT'S THE GREEN YOU NEED |
[Dec. 17th, 2009|08:45 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | RAGE | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Friends on the Other Side--Keith David | ] |
I skipped the comics list this week because comics this week were terrible, except Green Lantern Corps. Christmas week is looking less miserable:
AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE # 31
CAPTAIN AMERICA: WHO WILL WIELD THE SHIELD? #1
DARK AVENGERS: ARES # 3
INCREDIBLE HERCULES # 139
NEW AVENGERS # 60
SECRET WARRIORS # 11
DETECTIVE COMICS #860
GREEN LANTERN #49
SUPERMAN #695
WONDER WOMAN #39
I think it's time to enact my plan...to kill Superman. |
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| A story of two guys in search of decent coffee |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|05:09 pm] |
Train rides across the countryside are gorgeous. Scandinavian green, rivers, yet a distinct lack of wildlife. Nevermind... We were greeted by a very enthusiastic Philip at Kopenhavn H station (Philip launched himself towards Bradley and set the tone for the rest of the week) who showed us the how-to-get-on-public-transport-in-Denmark technique before wandering down to his apartment. As you can all imagine (judging by our track record) the first night was spent eating a fine home cooked meal and drinking. A lot. After being so distraught with our broken gin, the saved bottle of vodka was put to good use.
Waking very late (and with only 6-8 hours of light a day we didn't start the day particularly well) we struggled through breakfast and spent the next few hours paying severely for the drinking the night before. However a walking tour of Copenhagen, taking in the architecture and public plazas, shopping districts and being warned where NOT to go for coffee (we Melburnians are extremely spoilt when it comes to coffee, international cuisine and the like, however a great coffee and juice bar called Joe and the Juice exists within several boutique shops). The peeps of Copenhagen ride bicycles everywhere, it's really refreshing seeing a whole city embrace this - thousands of bicycles all over the city (with several hundred drowned in the canals) all unlocked without fear of being stolen.
Over the next few days we visited contemporary art galleries, Copenhagen ruins, the 'free town' of Christiania (the last example of 1960's hippie love and also the focal point of last nights COP15 protests and police violence) and seeing a gorgeous mix of old and contemporary architecture. Bradley and I have also fallen in love with Danish shopping which, then it comes to prices, beats Melbourne hands down. This is how we justified everything :) It all will go to a good cause - our wardobes.
On a side note, we've discovered how biased/ignorant Australian media is when it comes to global news. The Danes (and I'm assumin a lot of Europe) are severely better informed to current world news, events and going-ons. With the climate conference on at the moment it's all anyone can really talk about (and it's hard not to with the heavy police prescence, helicopters circling and protesters everywhere. Several hundred people have been arrested so far though only a few arrested. We're keeping out of trouble!
Only a day and a bit left in Copenhagen before we exit stage left to Berlin, it's been amazing and the snow is still a novelty (with everyone wondering why we left Australia in summer for Denmark in winter) and we tell them the same thing everytime - we love it! |
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| A failed experiment |
[Dec. 14th, 2009|05:44 pm] |
What do you get when you transplant an Australian and a Kiwi from New York to Helsinki (one continent, one country and one timezone to another continent, country and timezone) after a day of sight seeing, give them 15 minutes of sleep on a very nice but very cramped plane (sitting behind an obese Russian woman with no concept of personal space), then send them off to the next country, timezone and language? A broken bottle of gin, that's what you get.
We had been in Stockholm for a whole 5 minutes, walking from the plane to the luggage carousel, sat down and smash. It took me almost a minute before I realised what had happened. Great start to Europe Adam!
From there we caught the Arlanda Express to Stockholm Central, worked out where we needed to go and arrived at a vey nice looking hotel called Rex Petit. Very nice until we got to our rooms. Rex PETIT should have been our clue - basement room with a double bed pushed up against the wall with just enough room to walk next to. The bathroom door opened and almost touched the bed. Small doesn't quite describe it, however it was reasonably priced, the breakfast was superb and the rest of the hotel was very nice. The problem is at this point we had been awake for over 26 hours and neither of us were functioning well. We had a nap for a couple of hours before we left the hotel and walked the snowy streets of Stockholm.
Wandering around we were conscious of just how tired we had become; not knowing the language, the snow obscuring the street names we ducked into one of the first restaurants we found, had a warm meal and wrote Stockholm off as a one day failed experiment. It was a shame as we really wanted to get out and explore.... but the whole lack of sleep thing kinda ruined it for us. Another time perhaps.
The next day we headed to the train station, discovered there was no record of our 'prebooked' rail tickets (gonna have words with my travel agent) and had to rebook. Thankfully it only cost $80 for the two of us for three journeys. We made ourselves comfortable and watched the Swedish countryside merge into the Danish. |
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