Jolt Country

I have completed the game (with the exception of some secret, hidden content I’m now learning about from the Intertubes), and so will now present a NON-SPOILER REVIEW. I will start another thread on the BBS for SPOILER-FILLED ANALYSIS.

It says something about the game that it warrants both a review and an analysis thread, a fact which is itself part of the review..

Anyway! BRAID NON-SPOILER REVIEW

Here we have a game working on three levels. There’s a dual meaning there, in that “working” in this context means both “presenting content”, as well as “successfully delivering the goods” (though this last part is subjective, but that’s the purpose of a review, isn’t it?)

Level One is purely a level of gameplay. Stripped of story and aesthetics, here we have a puzzle game with the basic mechanics of your everyday Super Mario platformer, with the additional mechanic of time manipulation. The one constant manipulation available is the ability for your character (”Tim”) to reverse time on a whim. This means death isn’t a threat, since you can just rewind, but this mechanic comes into use in all sorts of other ingenious ways later in the game. Each of the game’s worlds also adds another time-related quirk available to the player, whether it’s the ability to slow time, rewind and have a “shadow” Tim retrace your earlier steps, or to be completely in lockstep with time, so when Tim steps forward, time moves forward, and vice versa.

Essentially this insures that you will be tackling puzzles you’ve never tackled before, and will likely have to reshuffle your brain molecules to think in a totally different way than it’s used to. The level design in this respect ranges from “clever” to “brilliant”. One level in particular is repeated twice, but a different time mechanic is present for each version, so your approach has to be completely different (and very inspired).

So, if you are a fan of puzzlers with a unique, original, mind-bendingly fresh bent to them, Level One on which the game works should be enough to sell you on the game.

Then there’s Level Two, which would be the aesthetic presentation. As anybody who has heard of the game knows from the screenshots, it looks like Super Mario Bros. if SMB was done by an impressionist painter. The delicately drawn characters jump and walk around the levels with a backdrop of stunning artistry, each level presenting something of a “living painting” in the background, as colors shift ever so gently and clouds and other shapes morph and drift about. This becomes very welcome when you have been beating your head against a particular puzzle for what seems like way too long — sometimes just “stopping to smell the roses” and enjoying the scenery can provide just the break to keep you from getting too frustrated and flipping the game off (again, a double meaning). It is as if it has a built-in relaxation device. Coupled with this is the absolutely lush, emotionally evocative score which when played at normal speed lays the perfect blend of melodic sadness and longing (this is a “find the Princess” game, after all), and an ethereal dreamlike quality which just fits in so well with the rest of what’s being presented. But when time speeds up and slows down and reverses, the score follows suit, adding another dimension of otherworldliness and downright unsettling eerieness to the proceedings. Even the opening screen, before the game proper begins, is lush and mesmerizing. In any rating system, Braid definitely gets the highest marks on presentation.

And then there’s Level Three, which is the storyline, and which for better or worse (generally much better, according to most critics) has the potential to turn Braid from an excellent puzzle game into a creation which transcends video games and proves for once and for all that games can, in fact, be art.

Well.

The fact is that there is a story here, but it is told by way of written word describing sporadic glimpses into incidents or thoughts in Tim’s (probably?) past, memories of regret and isolation, brief snippets of turning points remembered, leaving the reader a lot of room for interpretation (see the upcoming Analysis thread for more of this). Without being able to piece the story together with any certainty, through the game, the story seems to just lend an air of sorrow to the proceedings, though you don’t know why. There are only two things you know for sure:

1. You are searching for the Princess, who is being held captive in a castle, by a monster.

2. The game begins on World 2.

Other than that, you are left a little bit in the dark, having to piece together some sort of cohesive picture from intentionally vague (or “aggravatingly pretentious” depending on your take) screens of text at the beginning of each world.

Meanwhile, you do your duty and solve your puzzles, and then arrive at the ending.

Much has been made of the ending, with one breathless reviewer suggesting it might be the most significant, earth-shattering ending in the history of storytelling. While I appreciate the author’s penchant for hyperbole, this may be a bit much? And to suggest that the ending “ties it all together” is also somewhat misleading, as there are still plenty of holes left for the reader/player to fill in — even more so after an even-more opaque, fractured, bewildering epilogue. And to suggest that the ending “makes one rethink all that has come before” is, while factually true, disregarding the fact that most of what has come before is trying to figure out how to get the key, or how to get up to that goddamn platform to get the puzzle piece, not dwelling on the philosophical ramifications of doing so.

So there’s plenty of room for overstatement. That being said, the ending is remarkable. The significance of what goes on before your eyes will not be lost on you, even if the specifics of the narrative are. It is a departure from the rest of the game in form only — it is just as, if not more brilliant and clever, just in a different way.

Whether or not you buy into whatever “message” (if any) you interpret from the game, the fact is that Braid is most remarkable ultimately because 80% of the discussion about it isn’t even about the actual game, but instead about its merit as an artistic medium for exploring the nature of time, love, humanity, whatever other themes the player believes are being explored here. The fact is, it’s difficult not to spend time reflecting on the game and its potentially heartwrenching thematic significance, even if you scoff and roll your eyes at the “artsy” elements, even if you can’t figure out what the game is about.

I don’t think anyone can figure out, with authority, what the game really is about, unless Jonathan Blow comes over to your house and tells you to your face. So in this way, it can be about a lot of things. So everybody wins. Or everybody loses. Depends on your tastes. Worm, for instance, would hate this game.

But regardless, in deciding if (and how) Braid is an artistic success, whichever side of the discussion you wind up on, I think the fact that the discussion exists in the first place means Braid has succeeded.

(And even if you think it has no artistic merit at all, the puzzles are still very, very clever.)

RATING: A

Well, alright. I’ll try, anyway.

Of course, it can be a difficult sell, depending on how the salesman approaches it. If I come up to you (Robb Sherwin) and say, here, watch this, it’s a two and a half hour movie about porn in the 70’s, of course you (Robb Sherwin) would probably get so angry you’d stomp out of the room, stopping only to kick a hole in the wall.

So I’m not going to do that. Particularly since Robb IMed me that his three biggest misgivings about the movie were that 1) it was two and a half hours long, 2) it was about porn, 3) it was set in the 70’s.

I suppose I could tell you instead that it is actually a 70-minute movie about a guy in the future who builds a time machine to go even farther into the future to blow shit up with lasers, and while Burt Reynolds kind of looks like a futuristic laserguy in the movie, you will probably begin to suspect I’ve lied to you once he starts asking Marky Mark about his cock five minutes into it.

So, I guess I can just list some of the things about this movie which make it so fantastic, despite the subject matter and the length. (Of the movie, not of Marky Mark’s fake monster cock.) (Well, not necessarily of that.)

To watch this movie is to watch one of the great film makers of our time burst onto the scene with the unbridled ferocity of a giant, rabid, mutant kitten. How Anderson went from making Hard Eight, an excellent but quiet thriller about a loser finding a father figure in a more mature loser, to this artistic explosion of epic proportion is really amazing. You would never have known he’d have this sort of movie in him. Though I remember watching it for the first time, thinking, I didn’t know anyone had this kind of movie in them. I’d never seen — experienced — anything like it. Two and a half hours of raw, blistering power that just continued to bludgeon you from all sides with its fists of originality and energy.

Stylistically, it is no secret to say that he borrows very liberally from Scorcese and Tarantino, but at the same time manages to outdo them both in terms of audacity and technical bluster. All the tricks of the trade are here, from copious use of music, ridiculous tracking shots (one of which starts, I think, in a bedroom, and ends up underwater in a swimming pool), to all the rest. His followup, Magnolia, is often criticized as being too flamboyant in its stylistic excesses, and it seems reserved next to this.

All of this wizardry is nothing if it’s not in service of an entertaining story. Now, the subject matter may or may not interest you, but the frailty of the human experience which is the focus of the story arc is not exclusive to the porn industry of the 70’s. It is timeless and universal.

Of course, we can say simply it’s a cautionary tale about the excesses of money, drugs, whatever, and we can say “been there, done that”. Which may be a fair argument, but you certainly won’t notice that while you’re watching it. For one thing, it’s not a story about one guy, it’s a story of a bunch of people, all on the same ride, but all affected it by it differently, and watching how their relationships come about and change is fascinating.

This is a whole family of people who all believe they are doing the right thing, who so very genuinely and naively believe that they are headed in the right direction, while we the audience see otherwise.

Then one night, in one of the more memorable, shattering sequences in movie history, everything comes to a head, and it starts to become clear that while they thought they were climbing the ladder to heaven, they were all the while digging themselves into hell. Nice imagery, huh? I thought of that in the shower this morning.

But who cares, right? Even all THAT wouldn’t be any good if the movie just wasn’t a blast to watch, and I’m telling you — I’m telling you, Robb Sherwin — that this movie is a friggin’ blast to watch. It’s a riot. It’s hilarious, sad, exasperating, goofy, all of it. You ask me if it’s a long 2.5 hours? My friend, it is the shortest 2.5 hours in all of moviedom. You ask me if we will be able to throw quotes back and forth, as we’ve begun doing with all the other PTA movies? Boy howdy, can we.

It shares the “dangers of excess” theme with There Will Be Blood (with money, drugs, and fucking in place of oil), but there’s one other thing it shares, which is that where you would expect the movie to end, one last, completely bizarre and off-the-wall scene shows up — a scene of such brutal intensity that you will never, ever forget it, and one of those scenes that changes the way you hear a particular song. Much like you can’t hear “Stuck In The Middle With You” anymore without picturing Mr. Blonde torturing Marvin Nash and cutting his fucking ear off, this scene has a similar effect. It’s just ten minutes of amazing cinema.

The fact that the other 140 minutes are just as good is astonishing. You may complain about the ending not being “final” enough, but as with Blood, I think the movie ends when there’s really nothing more you need to see. Any more frames would be wasted. And you’ll be too exhilarated and exhausted from the ride that you’ll be ready for a nap anyway.

In conclusion, you should see this movie because it is:

1. Exciting.
2. Hilarious.
3. Amazing.
4. Awesome.
5. Great fun.
6. Almost zero scenes showing a closeup of a 12-inch donger.
7. Has a character named Rollergirl, which you appear to think is a good thing.
8. One of the best movies ever.
9. You will like it.
10. Trust me.

#0: Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor (2008)

As I said before, this list is “genre based”, in that I tried to make sure that no basic gaming genre ended up with more than one entry. Whether this was a wise decision or one which ultimately renders the list pointless, I will let the pundits and historians argue over for time immemorial. Is it a travesty that I left off such definite top-10 material as Half-Life, Robotron: 2084, and Barbie Fashion Show? Of course. But I don’t care, because I am HOUSE.

However, I did have a tough time picking the 4X winner. As much admiration as I have for the Civ games, the fact is that there is one 4X game which I have played far more, and enjoyed far more, than any other, and it is Galactic Civilizations.

As much as I wanted to, though, I couldn’t, with any sense of integrity as a gaming expert, pick GC, because the fact is that when it was released in 2003, it was already way behind the times.

You could only play as one race (humans). Lots of other races in the game, but you could only play as that one. No multiplayer. No ship design — there were a handful of stock ships you could research, but that was all you got. The very thought of releasing a space 4X game with a straight face, in 2003, with these limitations, is almost inconceivable.

And yet, it was the most fun 4X game I’ve ever played. I loved it primarily for two reasons:

1. Even with the aforementioned limitations, it still had a perfect blend of style, panache, and charm that no other 4X game had ever matched. There was still a depth to it, multiple victory routes, a robust trading and diplomacy system, but it was all done so smoothly, with such great humor and obvious love, that it was even more impossible to put down than the most state-of-the-art 4X games. The game’s complexity was masked by a uniquely well-designed UI and a lighthearted (but not cartoonish) touch which made just one more turn way too compelling. And though it was clearly an independently developed game, the quality level was strikingly high. The graphics weren’t going to wow anybody, but too they weren’t a giveaway that it was an indie game. And it still has the best, most memorable orchestral soundtrack of any game I know.

2. I gained most of my GC experience while living in Boulder, CO, without a job, and recovering from getting my tits lopped off. Of course, now I’m so fat that they’ve grown back again, so the entire thing was a waste of time and money, but what was NOT a waste of time and money were the drugs that I was prescribed for the post-operative pain. These were Percoset and Ambien, to be taken together, and friends, to say that playing GC on Percoset and Ambien is the most fun thing ever is not an understatement. Of course, neither is it an understatement to say that anything you do while on Percoset and Ambien is the most fun thing ever, so this perhaps skewed my opinion somewhat.

No matter, it was definitely my favorite 4X game — my favorite computer game — ever.

Now, I put it away for a while, and waited patiently for Galactic Civilizations II to come out. Which it eventually did, in 2006. This was an important milestone, because GC2 finally brought the franchise into the 90s, adding such not-quite-obsolete-yet features as being able to play other races, being able to design ships, and introducing “3D” graphics, letting you rotate and zoom the map however you’d like.

This was all very exciting, and yet… something was wrong. For all of the new additions, something seemed to have been taken away. There was more to do, but doing it seemed clunkier. You could rotate and zoom the map, but it didn’t seem to add anything except slower framerates and difficulty finding a layout that made the map as easy to read as the old 2D map in the original game. The 3D ships looked clunky and added nothing. The humor and charm still seemed to be there, but even that part of the implementation seemed rough, unfinished. And you could play as any race, but all that seemed to change is what color the border around the screen was, and how your ships looked.

In short, it made me miss GalCiv. And that upset me so much that I just disavowed the franchise entirely.

Until!

On April 30, 2008, Stardock released Twilight of the Arnor, the second expansion pack for GC2. I hadn’t bought the first expansion, and certainly was not going to get this one. That’s when the reviews started showing up, claiming that this was no mere expansion pack. This was to be the last offering in the GC2 line, and the developers just went insane trying to put everything they could possibly manage into it, knowing it would have to hold off GC fans for at least a few years until GC3 came around.

I so much wanted to love this franchise again. I so much wanted to give it another chance. So finally, I caved.

So friends, here is the verdict:

Holy fucking shit.

To call this an expansion pack really does not tell the story. Much more accurate would be to call it Galactic Civilizations 2.5. You have to understand what they did here:

- All races now have their own tech tree and look/feel. That’s 12 different tech trees for 12 different races and 12 different themes. That is frigging huge. Now there is a reason to play other races, and feel like you’re not just playing the Red guy or the Green guy.

- The entire graphic engine was overhauled. The map all of a sudden seems to jump to life, and the ships have all been overhauled to look, there’s no other way to put it, bad ass.

- The UI has undergone countless changes and now runs smoother than a roll-on deodorant. Ship design is still available, but now the computer will design them for you if you don’t feel like having to micromanage that stuff.

- All of the wit and whimsy shines through more magnificently than ever.

- Ladies and gentlemen, the FUN is BACK.

And when the fun is back in the GC world, that can only mean one thing:

Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor is the 0th best game of all time.

(And the music is still fabulous.)

#1: Civilization IV (2005)

My history with the Civilization games is checkered at best. I remember when the original first came out. I was right there in line to buy it the day it was released. I bought it along with another game which I don’t remember. I brought them both home and started playing the other game. I hadn’t even opened Civilization when Doug “Finsternis” Linder came over, saw the box, said “I’ve heard this is really good, can I borrow it?” and I said sure.

He left with the box that night, and I never got it back. I didn’t much care, either. I’ve had a lifelong ego struggle with this man, and even back then I knew that if there was something he liked so much that I couldn’t get even a borrowed copy back from him, it certainly wasn’t anything I wanted anything to do with. So I missed it. That’s okay, I didn’t even know what a “4X” game was.

To the uninitiated: “4X” refers to “explore, expand, exploit, exterminate”, a type of strategy game in which you generally find yourself in the middle of a large, unknown map, then set about 1) exploring the area, 2) building cities or military units in order to expand the amount of territory and resources you control, 3) wash, rinse, repeat until you’ve blown up all the competing players or otherwise found a way to victory or defeat.

My very first experience with a 4X game would come later, ironically with a much older game. I had to work late one night, just to monitor some overnight job for hours on end, and that same Doug “Finsternis” Linder handed me a worn, dogeared floppy disk with a game called Empire on it, and suggest I use that to while away the long, boring hours. Well, it had been years since he’d played it, so I figured that was enough time for the “Doug germs” to die and fall off of the game’s packaging, so I loaded that sucker up.

I started a game of Empire, and before I was able to finish it, and before I knew it, it was 3 AM and the job was over and it was time to go. I never went back to Empire because of the obsolete graphics and unwieldy user interface, and also because I could still smell some Doug on it, but one thing I learned that night was that the 4X genre was the finest, most addictive, most compelling genre of computer game that I would ever come across.

As an aside, I’d like to give you a sense of how terribly addictive this type of game can be. There is another venerable 4X franchise, set in space, called “Galactic Civilizations”. I was a huge fan of the first game and played it for countless hours while I was taking my year-and-a-half “finding myself” tour of the country. At the end of a game, if your score was high enough, you could have it automatically posted to the GalCiv website for all to see.

All I remember was that there was one guy, named “Technician”, who would play the game every single day, once a day, with the game set to the exact same settings every day — highest difficulty level, small galaxy, same number and type of enemies. He owned the first page or two of the all-time high score list. He had obviously mastered the game, at least with these (extremely difficult) settings, as he would win every single day. Not a loss on his record.

I looked back through the history, and he had been doing this for months. More than a handful of months, at that. Once a day. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. Eventually I asked the guy, you’ve obviously mastered the game, you’re obviously never going to lose, why on Earth would you do this day after day, month after month?

He said, simply, he enjoyed it.

That’s how addictive it is.

Shortly after that first encounter with Empire, Empire Deluxe was released, and that remains to this day the only computer game I’ve ever faked an illness so I could stay home and play it the day after I got it.

I told Doug about my affinity for these games, and he suggested I go back and try Civilization, since it was, in his words, like “super-Empire”. I couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful, but still my repugnance for this man’s tastes and suggestions was stronger than my desire for a super-Empire game, so still I steered clear.

I would have to wait for Civilization II to truly get my first taste of the game that I bought and never played, lo those many years ago.

It was, truly, super-Empire. Turns and hours just melted away for weeks on end. It was, and still is, hard to believe that a game could have that strong a hold on a player for that much time. It truly is one of those games which just never gives you a reason to stop playing, all the way up until the game ends, which in Civ II’s case could have been 10-20 hours in the future. And then there’s not that much reason to not fire it right back up again.

Since those days, 4X games have come and gone, even another Civ game had come and gone. People didn’t like Civ III but at that time in my life I wasn’t playing games much, so I’m not sure why.

Then Civ IV came out and it was like that night with Empire all over again. I was under the spell again. The perfect gaming genre had won me over again. But this was different. You could fire up the worst 4X game in the world and it’ll still draw you in for a few hours before you realize how much it sucks. As my hours with Civ IV went on, though, it began to occur to me that this might not just be the best genre, but the perfect entry into it.

The graphics were, for the first time, not merely functional, but very beautiful. The lush landscapes seem to come alive on your screen in a way no 4X game has managed. In one of the more impressive special effects I’ve seen in any game of any kind, you may seamlessly zoom in to a single city square, and hear all of the bustle and music within the city, and then zoom back out again so far that you are floating in the solar system, seeing and rotating the entire globe, hearing nothing but wind and emptiness. Sure, you can’t hear wind in space, that’s not the point. Does it affect the strategy or game design? No. Does it finally raise the 4X genre to the level of art?

Absolutely, and with poetic flourish.

The rest of the game is similarly polished and wonderful. World Wonders, when accomplished, bring back the little movies from Civ II, but this time fully computer-generated and magnificent. Leonard Nimoy’s voice resonates with the perfect balance of studiousness and whimsy. The icons are all clear. Everything you need to know about the game is no more than two mouse clicks away. Everything is spelled correctly. Search the game from nook to cranny, and everything is just right.

On the gameplay front, 4X has never been deeper. It is not just about territory. Layers upon layers of shifting power overlay the landscape, offering countless ways to “expand and exploit”, from religion, to cultural influence, to economic power, to resource monopolization. It is like several games in one, all being played at the same time, and all brutally effective at sucking away your time and brainpower.

And they even managed to make the gameplay smoother than all of the predecessors. Games are mercifully shorter now, without losing any of the punch.

This is the desert island game, the last and only game you will ever need. You will never be done with it, and the only way to lose is to stop playing. Everything else is endlessly joyous, endlessly fun, and essentially flawless.

Civilization IV is the greatest game of all time.

#2: Rollercoaster Tycoon (1999)

Before there was Mall Tycoon, and Zoo Tycoon, and Crackhouse Tycoon, and Auschwitz Tycoon, there was Rollercoaster Tycoon. Let me start the review with the end of the review, which is that there still has never been a better “building” game, and RCT does what it does with such perfection, freedom, and joy, that it shakes free from the bonds of its own genre to become one of the greatest games in history (some would say, the second best.)

But besides all that, it’s important to point out that RCT is one of two games, along with Microsoft Flight Simulator, which actually changed my life in a non-trivial way.

The background is that I’d loved coasters as a child, and spent significant chunks of time “designing” and drawing coasters wherever I could, on blackboards, in the margins on papers, on book covers, etc. Something about the mixture of the elegant curves of the structure, along with the promise of fun and excitement, just spoke to me. The family’s yearly trip to Kings Dominion was the highlight of my young life. I wanted to be a roller coaster when I grew up.

Then, something happened, I grew up, I left home, and coasters just disappeared from my life.

In 1999, my coworker Justin and I saw a downloadable demo and (on company time and equipment), installed it and fired it up. We both sat there transfixed, fiddling with the controls, realizing that, holy crap, this would actually let you build the coasters you had rolling around in your head all these years. Seems he was in the same boat, and something about this game was rekindling flames which once burned brightly in our youths but were sadly extinguished. We vowed that day to go out and buy the game the day it was released. And we did.

Many, many hours were spent with the game that weekend. That’s the point where we realized that Six Flags Great Adventure was just down the road, and after not having had the joy of clickety-clacking up a lift hill for far too many years, we got our ride on in a big way.

And, man, that was it. We were both gleefully, immaturely hooked all over again. This newly re-found obsession culminated in a two week trip spanning most of the northeast quadrant of the country, and the enjoyment of over 120 different coasters all over the US in about a two-year span. Coasters were my life, all over again, and it was a time which I will always remember fondly, and which was just too much fun to begin to describe.

And all of that can be traced directly back to this game, which reminded me of one of the great loves of my life.

None of that is enough to qualify it for being the second best game of all time, though. What IS enough, is that it is about a hundred games in one, and manages to do them all superbly, and tie them together into a magnificent whole, with unlimited replay, and unlimited capacity for creative expression and, damn it all to hell, fun.

The coaster building part was revolutionary. The economic model was perfect. The animations and individual tracking of thousands of park visitors was astounding. The pathway design, park decoration, theme building, landscaping, and advertising parts, all perfectly able to occupy hours of time on their own, were nothing but beautiful, in terms of UI design, pacing, variety, graphics, sound, all of it. The game world is a huge canvas, full of unlimited potential, onto which your only job was to paint a good time.

And that’s the last thing which makes RCT special. It is one of the few games that have been purely about fun, and in which nothing bad could ever happen. Look at the other games in this list. In one way or another, they are all about killing something, or not getting killed, or avoiding disaster, or blowing something up, or struggling through obstacles, etc, etc. This is the case for 99% of all games ever, as far as I can tell. RCT had none of that. The worst that could happen was, other than a little nausea, people would be sad that you didn’t have rides they wanted to ride on. Nobody to kill, nobody to be killed, no treasures to protect. The purpose of the game was to generate as much fun and joy as you could. If you didn’t do well, you only generated a little joy. If you excelled, you created much joy. The currency of the game was fun and excitement. Even the granddaddy, SimCity (which could have very well been on this list itself), forced you to deal with things like crime, and fire, and natural disasters, and pollution.

RCT’s world, and its gameplay, were a perfect respite for all of life’s struggles and ills. You had fun creating fun. There was really no way to lose. The ultimate tool for putting a smile on your face.

The fact that it did everything so goddamn great was just a bonus.

I bought this CD off THE BAY, as it was only $3 and I have been listening to a rip of it virtually every day for the last two years. Before you project me as a monster, please note that the band broke up soon after this CD was released, as the lead singer no longer wanted to be in a rock band and went to work for his family’s business. So I didn’t even get the chance to screw them out of money. I’ll never understand why a band will practice and do gigs for years (they started in 1998) before releasing a very listenable CD and then break up, but it happens all the time.

Reviewing music is pretty pointless, because you can’t change people’s feelings when it comes to what appeals to them. Pinner could write a few paragraphs and make me not dislike the movie Magnolia. Worm can write a few instant messages and make me understand why I shouldn’t play The Witcher. But that doesn’t apply to music, so I won’t bother to say what I think of the disc, other than it successfully captures the feeling of being in an alternate reality game, one that involves traveling to the part of the USA that is equally distant from Denver and Kansas City on a Sunday night in the summer, as you wait for a phone call on a payphone and wonder if you’re going to get back to work on time, but then not caring if you do. This CD, to me, makes me feel like I am outside the hamster’s wheel of work and mortgage and traffic and getting hassled, and I have recently started every coding session that I have done for pleasure by playing it.

This was the first actual CD I have played around with in quite some time. When I put it into my computer, it wants to install some shit, and I declined the EULA. I went to find the audio tracks, but couldn’t. The back of the disc says it’s OK to rip it, so I fired it up into CDex… and whattayaknow. It identified the disc, and I was able to export the tracks I couldn’t find to .wav files. That’s how I am listening to it right now, in a lossless format. What the fuck. Thanks I guess? The weird part is that I can’t detect any difference between the 20MB wav files and the 192KB MP3 files I had been listening to. gg, ears (mine).

The songs on the disc are in a different format than what “Advance” MP3 I had grabbed. And I think I prefer the order they are in for the Advance, but there’s little I can do about that. I’d love to know why it was changed, but there’s just not a lot of prose written on this band. This post will probably shoot right up the search results chart.

At any rate, I like the disc so much because the songs blend into each other so well. There’s one song that stands out, the last one, which is called Glory/Us, and I think it best exemplifies the feeling of being alone in the middle of nowhere. It’s also the only song I have ever heard in my entire life that speaks to an absolutely positive and uplifting reaction to having your life destroyed by the deceit of another. It being the only one is amazing to me. Maybe it’s just the kind of music I normally listen to, which is fair, but I prefer to attribute it to the fact that this band really was talented, and it’s a shame that they won’t make a second CD.

NOTE: The game originally scheduled for this slot was CounterStrike. But then I thought, well, that’s not really fair to Half-Life, which could also be right in the same spot. But I don’t want to fill up the rest of the list with games of the same genre, so I knew I had to pick one. Totally different games, of course, but the FPS genre definitely needed to be represented by one of them. I went back and forth on it a lot. Counterstrike, Half-Life? Half-Life, Counterstrike? Multiplayer mayhem with a bunch of 14 year olds with foul mouths, or boxes and barrels as far as the eye can see?

It was a difficult decision, but late last night, after much soul-searching, as well as searching for CDs in the unpacked cardboard boxes in the garage and reinstalling games, the answer finally became clear:

#3: FAR CRY (2004)

The most vivid recollection I have of any moment in my history of computer gaming occurred about 30 seconds after I loaded up Wolfenstein 3D for the first time. I downloaded it just because I had been a fan of the 2D version of the game, and didn’t really have any idea what I was about to experience, so when the first screen came up and had me staring straight at the door to my cell, I thought, “hey, cool!” and started hunting around the keyboard to figure out what I needed to type to make the door open. In the middle of this exercise, my arm accidentally brushed my mouse… That’s when I looked up at the screen, and everything had… changed. I grabbed the mouse and moved it around a little, and the room spun and skewed right along with the mouse movements.

Hooooly shit.

In my little universe, the whole world of gaming had completely changed in that one little moment. There had never been anything like it. You were there, and you had full range of motion. You could do whatever you want (except, in Wolfie’s case, go up or down or eat anything other than chicken legs and dog food.) The FPS genre had been born.

In the fifteen years since, FPS and the technology behind it have enjoyed something of a binary relationship, as each continued to push the other forward to greater and greater heights. Things absolutely inconceivable even a handful of years ago have become commonplace. Unprecented levels of immersion and reality are achieved seemingly with every new release.

And yet, for the most part, every FPS game is still just Wolfenstein. You’d grab your gun, you’d go through some corridors, you’d shoot some bad guys, wash, rinse, repeat. Doom came out, which was Wolfenstein with stairs and demons and blinking lights. Half-Life came out and revolutionized the frigging genre, but when you stopped to really look at it, it’s still just Wolfie, with some trains and vehicles (and boxes and barrels) thrown in. Even in Half-Life 2, with its expansive outdoor environments, the gameplay is no different from when you are inside. You’re still pretty much in well-defined (often contrived) corridors, running through the levels like a well-armed rat in a maze, looking for chicken legs and dog food.

Far Cry starts out much the same way, and as you head down the first corridor, it is difficult to think that this is going to be anything more than another souped-up, high-tech version of Wolfenstein 3D.

And then you climb up out of that sewer and get your first look at the lush foliage, swaying palm trees, and expansive white beaches which lay in front of you.

Hoooooly shit.

If Far Cry had just done the whole “expansive playfield” thing, and just done the “pretty island” thing, it wouldn’t have been anything special. What makes it special is that it does absolutely everything else within its gorgeous environment right. Your very first experience outside the sewer, sneaking from hut to hut, is just exhilirating. Swimming through the cove, avoiding patrol boats and trying to get to the hole in the side of the carrier is spine-tingling. Hiding in the bushes and taking out some smug asshole with a headshot from 200 yards away is wonderful. And sitting in the middle of a huge hill, hearing footsteps searching for you, while the palm trees continue to sway, tropical birds flood the sky above you, and the great, shining blue expanse of ocean hissing behind you is just not an experience that you are going to get in any other game at any other price. It is the most replayable FPS I know, not because anything’s different the second or third time, but just because, wow. It’s like a virtual Club Med, but one where you get to shoot people in the face.

It came out well before Half-Life 2, and outdoes it in nearly every respect, except for Far Cry’s middle section, which essentially is Half-Life 2, and which is its weakest element. HL2’s vaunted physics engine has nothing over Far Cry except for silly puzzles involving the gravity gun. Doom 3 does not even come close.

It is the best entry yet in the world of first-person shooters, and deserves any accolade you can throw at it.

Epilogue: In my Caltrops review, I mention that at the time (and even as early as two weeks ago) I didn’t have a computer capable of running Far Cry at anything over the lowest graphical settings. Even at those lame settings, it was an unforgettable experience. I reinstalled last night to try it out on my new fancy graphics card, and set all the settings to “very high”, and it’s almost like a brand new game. Stunning. Phenomenal. And really, really good.

Let’s break down the Civilization games versus the Bard’s Tale ones. I am intentionally not including the Xbox Bard’s Tale game from a couple years ago, nor am I considering any of the billion Civ expansion packs, because humans only get 99 years. Let’s go!

Civilization vs Bard’s Tale I: Advantage: BARD’S TALE. Do you know anyone still playing Civ? The original BT is still a fantastic game. Creepy, claustrophobic and deadly.

Civ 2 vs Bard’s Tale II: Advantage: CIVILIZATION. It’s close, very very close. The Bard’s Tale might be the best sequel of all time — in terms of following a truly great original game, I mean. If the original Civ was a little better than perhaps we wouldn’t have all been monkeynuts for Civ 2.

Civ 3 vs Bard’s Tale III: Enormous Advantage: BARD’S TALE. BT3 is difficult, what with most of your helper buddies like Garth and Roscoe being dead (spoiler). I don’t know anyone who liked Civ 3 over Civ 2. Or who liked Civ 3.

Civ 4 vs Bard’s Tale Construction Set: Enormous Advantage: CIVILIZATION. JC Fun Fact: When I moved to Colorado I picked between developing Chicks Dig Jerks or what would have been a mod made with the Bard’s Tale Construction Set. I actually got fairly into the scripting language before ditching it and settling on Inform 6. Which was great, as I learned how to program through I6. If there had been more of a community in 1998 for Bard’s Tale games I guess nobody currently here would currently be here. On the other hand, I’d have a lot more moral support for continuing to show up to work and this website drunk.

LEGACY

Alpha Centauri vs. Wasteland: Enormous Advantage: BARD’S TALE. The games use pretty much the same engine as their predecessor and you need to consult reading materials to make any sense of either of them: for AC you need… you fawking NEED… the map on your wall. For Wasteland you need to read from the manual to get the game’s story. Which would you rather play, though?

TESTICLES

Lack of Adolph Hitlers vs. Getting Fucking Bombed In a Video Game: Advantage: BARD’S TALE. Every year there is some guy who fucks up picking a fantasy baseball team. This guy is already unwittingly deciding what round to take Cory Lidle in, he just doesn’t know it yet. Anyway, Adolph Hitler not being the grandmaster and Civ Head of Fake Game Germany in any of the Civ games is a goddamn travesty picked by the same kind of clueless moron. I’m sorry the most evil man in the history of the world happens to be the one leader everyone thinks of when it comes to Germany. Everyone except for Sid Meier, I guess. Leave Mein Fuhrer out of the German version of the game, I don’t give a crap. But don’t treat us (or THE U.S.!!) like mouth gaped, gap-toothed children. The Bard’s Tale demonstrates that getting nicely buzzed is important in getting anywhere in life and that lesson is paying dividends for me even today. “Ha, ha, more jokes about drinking” - nobody’s fucking joking. I would not have anything I currently value if I couldn’t imbibe the occasional glass of wine… and reflect. Eat shit, Sid.

So in my ultimate opinion, I’d take the Bard’s Tale and its direct sequels over Civ and its. Although if I were stuck on a desert island, I’d definitely be fucked because after finishing the first three Bard’s games, I’d be stuck waiting for someone to show up and play whatever I made in the construction set.

I’ve now spent several more (okay, at least 10 more) hours with the game, finishing one career, starting another, and here is my status report:

I am totally obsessed, and this bothers me. It bothers me because there is not one thing in this game I can point to and say, “YES, here! Here is why it’s so great!” If you take any one element from it and evaluate it, it’s generally just fine. No big shakes, just fine. Now, the ship-to-ship combat is definitely the best “mini-game” in the game, and is essentially the Age of Sail games, speeded up and with all the bugs removed, which is what they should have been to begin with. But still, one ship pounding away at another until one wins, hard to make a case for that being a great game.

So you’ll ask me, “what makes this so great?” And I can’t tell you. But this just might be the greatest example of the greatest game genre ever devised. The subtitle of the game is “Live The Life”, and that is really what is so compelling about it. Games are generally divided into three categories, and here they are:

1. Games where you’re supposed to do something specific, very well. (Chess, Asteroids, Civilization)

2. Games where you’re told it’s open-ended but you find this to be a lie because a) there really is a singular plot you are supposed to follow, and everthing else is a side game (GTA), or b) it really is open ended, but everything’s so goddamn boring why would you ever bother? (most space trading games).

3. Games where it really feels open ended, and you don’t mind that because everything you do is so enjoyable.

I would say that Pirates! is the first and only game to fit into #3.

The knock on it could be “well, it’s just a bunch of mini-games strung together”, but here’s my theory: That’s fucking life, dude. Look closely, and life IS a bunch of mini-games. And you can basically choose where you go, but shit happens, and sooner or later, you end up playing another mini-game. The work mini-game, the driving mini-game, the romance mini-game… That’s what it’s all about.

And Pirates! has a bunch of fun mini-games which just happen to tie together in one brilliantly cohesive, horrifically addictive whole.

And again, like life, you can see how silly the whole thing is, even as you’re compelled to just keep on going.

#4: ASTEROIDS

Asteroids is one of those games which gets exponentially better the better you get at it. I know this for a fact because it is one of only three games I can think of (including the next game on this list) which I ever considered myself really, genuinely good at.

For a while, it was inconceivable to me that anyone could possibly think that Asteroids was not, by far, the greatest coin-operated arcade game that has ever been. Then I got a chance to see some people play it, and what I saw was a lot of spinning around in the center of the screen, firing almost blindly out into the sea of angular vector shapes, stopping only to hit the “hyperspace” button whenever a rock got too close to the ship.

I can see how, when played in this fashion, the game would seem to be something less than incredible. However, every true Asteroids enthusiast can remember the first time they ventured over to try out that “thrust” button, then did his first “dodge-spin-fire” move. The game changes completely once you break this barrier, and the pure beauty and brilliance of its seemingly simple design begin to be uncovered.

It is still one of the few games in game history which offer the player complete freedom of movement, and the playfield is remarkably big in comparison to your ship, so there’s a lot of that freedom. As much as could be expected from an early video game, for all intents and purposes, you do feel cast out into a huge, uncaring universe to fend for yourself against harsh natural elements (and an occasional alien), and there’s nothing there to save you except for your own wits, techniques and strategies.

Asteroids is still used as training and practice for air traffic controllers, and for good reason. After you play for a while and gain some level of skill, your field and acuity of vision really begin to increase, to the point where while you cannot list one-by-one every rock on the screen, you realize that you instinctively still know where they all are, where they’re going, and what patterns they will take a half-second, a second, two seconds from now. You begin to see the entire screen all at once. Once you attain that level of what can only be called “enlightenment”, you begin to react instinctively. The game experience becomes fluid, as if you are in a never-ending dance with the rocks, and while you realize you are expending no energy thinking about what to do, still your fingers know where to move. The game begins to play you.

It is an exhilirating experience, and one which I believe is unique, definitely in arcade gaming, and possibly in video gaming in a larger sense.

And it still only costs a quarter.