Not One Sparrow Shall Fall...

You may not know Mary Doria Russell, or her book The Sparrow. It was released in 1996 and it received strong reviews and a few rewards, but its mix of heavy theology, deep tragedy and science fiction doesn’t lend itself to a wide readership. If you are a person who is fascinated by questions of faith and encounters with extra-terrestrial life, I can’t recommend the book highly enough. The closest cultural reference I can think of is the film Contact, except that the ending makes more sense and it ends like an Italian Opera. I’m really not spoiling anything; at least, no more than Russell spoils herself.

A humble, muted cover, but it does a good job of announcing the Novel's theological nature. 

The book progresses along two narratives and they both revolve around the life of Emilio Sandoz. The first begins in 2059 introduces Sandoz as a man who has been mentally and physically broken by his journey to another world. The second thread begins in 2019, and gives us the history leading up to said mission, and eventually, choice details from the mission itself. As you would expect, these two threads alternate, with a cadre of priests trying to tease details out of the tortured Sandoz. It’s interesting to note that in the readers guide included in my copy, Russell acknowledges the hardest part of writing the story was the pacing, which I think is the novel’s greatest weakness, but more on that in a bit.

The greatest strength of the novel is Russell’s varied experiences in science, anthropology and biology. It’s a pleasure to read books written by intelligent people, particularly when those intelligent people are willing to grapple with lots of different issues in the same book. Despite having a vocabulary that includes words like “australopithecine,” Russell’s prose is aggressively readable and usually quite clean. She is not a wordsmith by trade however, and that is evident in a few descriptions that come across as bombastic while others are rather unclear, but on the whole the book is very accessible. I also liked the fact that Russell doesn’t over-emphasize the fantastic technology used in her book. She strikes a nice balance between existing technology, like SETI satellite arrays to speculative stuff like AI vultures and mass driver propulsion systems. Technobabble rarely, if ever, takes a front seat in the narrative, allowing readers to focus on the interpersonal, and inter-species issues that arise from the book.

Russell’s most fascinating thought experiment is the idea of dual sentient habitation.  Rakhat is inhabited by two intelligent species of animals; the  Runa, peaceful but simple minded herbivores, and the Jana’ata, cunning, carnivorous creatures who have successfully domesticated the more plentiful Runa. Inventing a planet with just one new species is an impressive feat of world building; doing two at once is extremely impressive. Russell also demonstrates the world she developed impressively by giving us access to the alien’s perspectives on a couple occasions.

The heart of the book lies with the humans though. Emilio Sandoz is intelligent, conflicted, charming and passionate, and he goes through several appreciable stages of change throughout the novel. The leading lady, Sofia Mendes, is one of the best modern female characters you will find outside of Stieg Larson’s Millennium Trilogy. Another interesting revelation the reader’s guide revealed, is that Emilio and Sofia were “their own characters” while Russell borrowed the voices of real people for many of the other characters. I initially liked Anne, a character Russell implies is based on herself, but she becomes steadily less interesting as the plot progressed. Other characters had their share of faults as well. DW and George weren’t flat, but blandly affable, and many of the other characters on the mission essentially  serve as Red Shirts; dying to demonstrate the dangers of the hostile world. In the present day story arc, John Candotti, Sandoz’s advocate and friend, steals the show, along with Father Voelker, a poisonous prick of a character.

Despite the successes of characters and her dual species thought experiment, Russell falls short in her goal to explore the idea of first contact with a foreign culture given the benefit of hindsight. The missionaries to Rakhat take very few precautions regarding disease and infection as they interact with the Runa. Another issue that makes the book feel rather dated is that none of the bright, forward ever considers the possibility of large scale human colonization on Rakhat. Given the dire-straights of our current ecological situations, such considerations would be inescapable. These issues are never addressed in any great detail, and the novel dates itself as a result.

As I mentioned earlier, my biggest problem with the novel is the pacing, particularly toward the end of the novel, though discussing why will involve a long list of spoilers. Russell kills Anne and DW in one sudden, swift stroke and while their deaths are handled carefully and given some pause for reflection, the plot defenestrates itself as far as pacing is concerned. Everybody else except Sandoz is killed off as a campaign of widespread infanticide sweeps across the planet. Russell doesn’t give the reader any time to come to grips with the deaths of Sofia and Jimmy, which strikes me as a cop-out, given how emotionally complicated their relationship with Sandoz was. Russell is just getting warmed up though. Immediately after the genocide, Sandoz is tortured to the point of losing the use of his hands, and brutally raped. Finally, because all that isn’t enough, he accidentally kills one of the alien children he had befriended. He is then sent back to Earth alone. Which invites a problematic, question: If Sandoz had lost the use of his hands, how the hell did he feed himself during the several years he was flying back home?

That’s the only obvious logical fallacy the book suffers from, though seeing how this is a book about Jesuits flying to an alien world before anybody else, there are a couple moments in the plot that taxed my suspension of disbelief. The book actually tries to turn these long odds to its advantage by having characters reflect upon spiritual significance of the improbability of their situation. It’s a gambit that half pays off. Judging from the title, which is a reference to Matthew 10:29-31, the book seems to imply that God is at work in the novel. Russell never comes out and says it, in fact, she seems to imply that Sandoz may not believe in God at the end of his experiences, or that he may believe in God and hate him. Readers get no firm theological explanation for the travesties that Sandoz suffers, but I think that's one of the strengths of the book. That’s essentially the point of the novel; to raise questions about faith, and make the reader realize there is no easy answer where religion is concerned. I like a book that asks questions rather than forcing answers down the reader’s throat, especially when the book is a work of science fiction, and the answers to questions are loaded with dogma.

If you’re the type who doesn’t mind a little God, or even the possibility of little God in your science fiction, give The Sparrow a read. I have yet to read the sequel, but if I do, I'll let you know if its any good.

Strange Magic

It's terribly hard to talk about magic and books without bringing up The Boy Who Lived, especially if the book in question is British. I'm especially guilty of this. I mean, look for godsakes! I've gone and brought him up before I could even tell you what other book I'm talking about. For shame! Bad writer. No Biscuit. Anyway, there is magic to be found in Britain beyond Hogwarts, as proved by Susanna Clarke's Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

It is a rightly celebrated book that's been out for a few years now, and while it's not nearly as accessible and inherently joyful as Rowling's septology, it is also more Literary. Therefore you can read it and then tell people you read it, and then feel smug about yourself even though it's a book about magic and that sort of thing is generally not something you're supposed to be proud of reading. Think of it as the opposite pole on the fantasy spectrum from Twilight: A grownup book for earnest readers who appreciate complicated characters, nuanced relationships and smart prose.

This is a fine cover. It was enough to get me curious about the book and once I read the jacket, I knew I had to read the rest.

The book is also very much a period piece. A Victorian period piece set amidst the Napoleonic Wars no less; a scenario some might consider the 'periodest' of period pieces. Consequently, the writing is not streamlined to suit the modern tastes of text messaging and net slang. The stilted properness of the era feels like it has been slightly exaggerated to poke fun at itself. Clarke has more in common with Austen and Dickens than Rowling, Lewis or Carroll. The book is thoroughly contemporary in it's fusion of society and magic, however, a trend that currently dominates the fantasy genre. There is also a wink of meta-fiction in Clarke's writing. The entire book is riddled with footnotes referencing a vast corpus of magical scholarship and history that Clarke has dreamed up. Many of these footnotes are short stories unto themselves; brief fairy tales of the old school with archetypal characters in need of harsh social lessons.

So what is the damn book about? Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell of course. Two men who have been destined to bring magic back to England. The practice of magic is deeply ingrained in the history of Clarke's England,  but recently, actual practical magic has all but departed in Britain, leaving a bunch of pompous old men practicing "magic theory." Enter Mr. Norrell, a neurotic, highly introverted man who stuns the world by doing actual magic. Later on in the story (further along than I would have preferred in fact, we meet Johnathan Strange), a romantic, mercurial young man who takes up magic on a whim, and ends up as Norrell's apprentice. The book details both magicians' efforts in the Napoleonic Wars, and the strains of their social relationship caused by differing opinions on magical practice. There is also a scheming fairy who must be overcome, distressed damsels in need of rescuing, and several human antagonists of varying degrees of despicableness.

The book is in part, a comedy of manners. We have well-intentioned oafs, ill-fated everymen, scheming control freaks, sharp tongued servants, superficial rakes, saintly wives and flawed husbands. One of my writing teachers once told me that dialog is as much about what characters hear as it is what they say, and that is extremely evident in Clarke's writing. Miscommunication, both supernatural and mundane, pervades the book. There are segments of the book, particularly at the beginning of the narrative, where the pompous social interactions feel quaint and not quite as clever as they are supposed to be. At times, the book moves at a tediously deliberate pace, and there were some passages where I was desperate for Clarke to just get over herself and get to the point.

The point being the magic, of course. Clarke's haunting scenery and her magical phenomena are equally wonderful to read. Spoilers are sprinkled throughout this paragraph, so you may want to skip it. We have ships made of rain, ornate fences that have turned rosy with rust, chilling ruins of the fairy realm and comical geographic juggling. There is very little in the way of combative magic in the book however, even amidst the war, which on the one hand is tremendously refreshing, but also somewhat disappointing. We never get to see a magical duel between the titular magicians, which struck me as a tremendous lost opportunity. Their reconciliation is also too abrupt, and I think it skirts some of the personal issues that played a hand in their separation. I'm not saying that Norrell is in love with Strange, and that he felt betrayed on both a personal and intimate level, or that Strange blames Norrell for the death of his wife and trying to control him and English magical society in its entirety... no wait, that's exactly what I am saying. There is a lot of fascinating subtext that gets no real resolution. The brief glimpse we get of the enigmatic Raven King is suitably climactic but it's also a terrible tease, as we are no wiser of his intentions or motivations.

The Man With Thistle-down Hair is an awesome antagonist.

The fact that the book uses illustrations, albeit sparingly, is a nice touch, and one that I heartily approve of. I was surprised to learn, via Wikipedia, that some reviewers found them to be overly sentimental and inappropriate. I'm all for mixing text and images, especially since illustrations were a fairly big deal during the narrative's time period, and given that contemporary society is increasingly visual, I don't see how their addition is a anything less than an awesome move. It's a fusion of past and present tastes and Portia Rosenberg's are pretty damn good.

So, do I agree with Neil Gaiman's assessment that it is "Unquestionably the finest English novel of the Fantastic written in the past 70 years?" No. At least, not without some tricky qualifiers. If we are invoking 'finest' in the sense of Fine Arts and use "English novel" to refer to a specific novel of exceptional Englishness, then yes, perhaps. Clarke's prose are tremendously more complicated than Rowling's and her characters are more subtle and complex. And Anglo-files will be in heaven with the book's Victorian pomp. I have to say that I prefer Potter's saga however. Up until the very end of Strange and Norrell, there is very little urgency to Clarke's prose. Things simply happen, or don't happen, and it is frequently hard to appreciate what is at stake in the grand scheme of things.

That said, I can't wait for the sequel, and I'm glad I didn't read this right as it was released in 2004. Given that the first novel took 10 years to write, I'm not holding my breath for the follow up, or for the film adaptation that is supposedly in the works. Seeing how it's going to be a long wait, you might as well snatch up Strange and Norrell now. It'll keep your mind warm throughout the long winter.

Redeeming Dead

Death is a fairly pedestrian experience in most modern video games. It's like waiting at a stop light. It's a delay or an annoyance at most, but it doesn't really cost you anything. Saves and checkpoints can be reloaded. More lives can be obtained. Dying is a mere hiccup in the emergent narrative of your play session. In most cases, failed attempts aren't even addressed by the game's given narrative. Mario will inevitably beat bowser. Nathan Drake never really dies. That time you used your face as a catcher's mitt for a Bullet Bill? Those leaps of unfounded faith? Your brilliant idea to charge the a platoon of fortified enemies? Don't sweat it slick. They were bad dreams. Outtakes. Omake. Life is cheap, so waste it as you see fit.

That's part of the charm of video games, obviously. Real-life is much stingier with second chances, and  it's incredibly liberating to be able to leap off the highest cliff you can find without fear of consequences. But there's also a helluva lot to be said for games that allow you to die an appreciable death. A meaningful defeat that gives you cause to pause and reflect on what just happened is an incredibly valuable experience. It's also hard as hell to balance. If you make losing too costly, players won't have the will to start over. Make it too mild and... actually, many players don't seem to mind at all, hence the recent trend of games that mitigate the cost of death, or do away with it altogether. But it's a sore absence if you ask me. So today, I'd like to take a moment to address games that redeem the value of death in play, either by having it significantly influence mechanics, giving it appreciable narrative gravity, or just doing something interesting with it. Mega spoilers abound, so take caution.

Now this here is how you do a Western, I tell you wut. Hats off to them Rockstar boys.

Red Dead Redemption is a game I've been meaning to talk about for some time. The most frequent indictment brought against RDR is that it is simply GTA with horses and this is largely true. When friends asked me what the biggest difference was between RDR and GTA4, I said it was the way horses control versus cars. It was an off the cuff the answer, and looking back I realize that "the environment" would have been a better answer. The frontier Rockstar presents you with is the most impressive digital landscape I've yet encountered, and it is teaming with flora and fauna that you can interact with. At some point in the game, you will be killed by a cougar. Wolves will attack you in packs. You will hunt bears and skin them. You will pick wild flowers and herbs and sell them to buy bullets and whatever. The extent to which you interact with these elements is still mostly elective however, similar to GTA's Taxi/Police/Ambulance mini-games. There are a few missions where you hunt plants and animals toward the end of the game, but the vast majority of the game has you completing missions by riding horses and shooting fools, similar to the way you drive cars and shoot fools in Liberty City.

So what does this have to do with death? Nothing. I just wanted to talk mechanics for a little bit. The game does do something interesting with death, however.

After hundreds of shoot-outs, fetch-quests, horse-chases and other decidedly western trials, John Marston meets his end at the hands of the US Army in the final mission. Some context is necessary to appreciate the significance of this death. Marston is an ex-gangster who has been pressed into tracking down his former gang members by the US Government who is holding his family hostage as collateral. You complete this task about three quarters into the game at which point you are reunited with your family. The last few missions have Marston simply acting as a husband and a father. John's son Jack, is particularly ambivalent toward his father. He realizes that his father did not leave him out of choice, but he also struggles with abandonment issues and does not know the full details of his father's past or his service to the government. The game has you reconcile John with his gentler, slightly bookish son. After John dies protecting his family, the game allows you to continue playing in it's world, as traditional of RockStar titles, but you continue to play as Jack instead of John.

By continuing your father's legacy, the legacy of the character you have played throughout the entire game, the values of the old west are validated, and John's questionable life is redeemed through Jack. Video games rarely consider what happens after a character dies. Usually, they simply imply that evil wins and justice is not served. The fact that Red Dead Redemption goes farther, is refreshing and interesting. That said, Marston's ultimate demise doesn't cut as sharply as it could, seeing how you will have likely seen him die several dozen times before his canonical death.

Reach offers solid gunplay and good times online, 

but it could do more with its premise.

Another recent game that nearly does death justice is Reach. It's not quite as poignant or novel as RDR, which is a much longer, more emotionally involved affair, but you do adopt the role of a marine fighting in a military campaign doomed to failure. Reach is by no means the first title to put you in this position, but it's still fairly fresh territory for video games, and watching your squad mates die one by one, until you are finally left to your own last stand makes for a novel experience. More can be done with this premise however. Halo has never been a series for subtlety or ambivalence. It's monotonous rhetoric of duty, teamwork and sacrifice has always reached propagandistic proportions, and the game never once has Noble Team question their orders or consider their own chances. But showing the losing side of a battle, where even when you win the game, the good guys lose, is an interesting jumping off point for future titles to tackle.

This is a great game and you should buy it.

As I implied at the beginning of this post, death is used most impressively when it gives players cause to pause and reflect. To that purpose, few titles are as effective as Minecraft. When you die, you drop all of your items, and you only have a few minutes to collect your belongings. "That sounds like corpse running," you might point out. Very good. It is corpse running. But unlike the corpse runs of MMO's where reclaiming your belongings is a forgone conclusion and running back to your body is just a hassle, you very often won't be able to retrieve your lost goods in Minecraft. Loss is painful and consequential. It makes you think twice and weigh risk against reward. The game also introduces Creepers; easily the vilest new video-game of the last decade: hissing, walking bombs that can destroy your house as well as your body. What is valuable about having your house blown up you ask? Like the rest of Minecraft, a minimalistic gem of a game, the risk of death scales to your aspirations in play. The deeper you dig, the more you stand to gain. The deeper you go though, the harder it is to reach the surface and reclaim your loot. The grander your architectural schemes, the longer the shadows cast by Creepers. When you succeed, the triumph is not at all artificial or forced, but organic.

Finally, an oldie but a goody that I've been looking for a long time. Planescape: Torment, recently resurrected and available for purchase from Good Ol' Games. I'm not too far into the campaign yet, but I've played enough to tell you that it is superbly written. The game was created at the end of a magical era, where people still used written description to supplement game narratives, as opposed to relying solely on graphics and cinematics. As for how the game handles death, it marries your ability to come back to life with the narrative: you play as an accursed soul caught in limbo who cannot die or return to life as you know it. From what I have gathered so far, your ultimate goal may be to die once and for all; a fascinating quest to say the least.

I know there are hundreds of titles that handle death in innovative, inspiring ways which I have not addressed here. There are even several recent titles that deserve to be examined, Demon Souls being chief among them. But I won't weigh in on a title I haven't played yet, and this was never intended to be a comprehensive list of any sort. If you have ideas of games that work with death in interesting ways however, I would love to hear them. My thesis may work along similar lines. I realize this update has been a long time coming. Hopefully the length compensates for it somewhat. I'll try to have something on Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell up before October is out, but I make no promises. Check back soon!

Been Busy!

I realize it's been a good long while since I've posted dear readers, and I do apologize for the lapse. Turns out graduate school is harder than college (go figure) and staying on top of everything has occupied almost all of my attention. I have found time to keep reviewing videogames however! I have been writing for Georgia Tech's school paper, The Technique, and if you are so inclined you can read my take on Civ V, Reach, and Monday Night Combat. Just this morning, I finished writing about the indie smash-hit Minecraft, (tl;dr: buy it) but it probably won't be posted until Friday. Something to look forward to.

Actually, given the season, the picture is surprisingly appropriate.

If you simply can't wait, there are a couple of my academic projects you can check out. I will be posting on Georgia Tech's Newsgames blog periodically and my first article examining the decline of the editorial cartoon should be up for reads soon. I've also started an affair with Wordpress in the form of Speculative Technology & Designs, a blog chiefly concerned with Nanotechnology that should demonstrate what I am learning about digital media and design. Turns out this site is all kinds of ugly!

That said, I am absolutely not abandoning Sarcasmancy. I will endeavor to post something up here at least once a month! I'll be weighing in on Red Dead Redemption, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and possibly Plainscape: Torment soon, so please be patient a little longer and thank you for your readership. You sustain me!

A Shotgun, A Zerg And You

A little while ago I quipped that "Blizzard got Firefly in my Starcraft  and I couldn't be happier." The truth though, is that you can always be happier, especially if you're both cynical and optimistic, and while Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is an excellent title, it could do even more with it's country-western mash-in. But before I start in on the narrative, I want to repeat, the first installment of Starcraft II is an excellent piece of videogame. Even if you don't plan on partaking of the game's robust multi-player component, the single-player campaign is a parade of finely crafted, uniquely challenging missions that boasts surprising replay value. 

Each mission in the campaign has a unique hook that prevents it from being a typical game of Starcraft. Waves of fire or tides of lava will force you to move your base from point A to point B. Swarms of zombified marines will besiege your base come eventide, forcing you to hunt their lairs during the day. In one mission, you must intercept shipping routes and rob trains (which, to my eye, is the pinnacle of this sci-fi western strategy concoction, but more on that later). These variations keep the campaign fresh and many of them beg second playthroughs.


To further replay value, you accumulate limited funds and research points throughout the campaign which can be allocated to purchase and upgrade troops in various ways. There are also several points in the narrative when you are forced to take sides in disputes between two opposing characters, resulting in two unique missions and two unique narrative outcomes. One decision determines which special unit you will have access to, and another affects which enemies you will face in a later mission. At long last, a strategy videogame that let's you make meaningful tactical decisions in your virtual crusade This is a feature that could stand to be played up a lot more in Heart of the Swarm, though I have to wonder how that sort of diplomacy will translate to the Zerg campaign.

I assume the multiplayer is good because people treat it like a fucking sport, but I can't really comment on it because I haven't touched it yet. WoW aside, the prospect of PVP in Blizzard games kind of terrifies me. I don't have the lightning quick reflexes, or the patience to memorize hotkeys and stats for each unit in the Terran, Zerg and Protoss hierarchies. I would not last five minutes in a campaign. Or worse, I would provide my opponent with just enough interest for him to bat m around the map for twenty minutes while an audience of thousands looks on with scornful cackling. Yeah. That's how it works right? Maybe I'm making it worse. An old penny-arcade comic comes to mind, but I can't seem to find it. I might take a stab at it provided I find a friend to tutor me, but harsh memories of DotA (admittedly, not a real Blizzard game) and Warcraft III are enough to steer me clear for now. I'm not here for the bloodsport anyway.


No sir, I enlisted to follow the trials and travails of James Raynor and his raiders. That said, I haven't read any of the extraneous fiction available to flesh out the game's universe. I didn't even pay particularly close attention to the narrative of the first game. I did however, develop considerable respect for Blizzard as storyteller during my tenure as a WoW-addict, specifically when I was taking hits of Litch, and I wanted to see where they were gonna go with their return to the RTS format. 


In brief, the storyline for the first installment of a planned trilogy is good, and the smartest move Blizz makes is tapping into the same creative leylines that Joss Whedon channeled to create Firefly. It's a space-western right down to the twangy soundtrack and cowboy dialog, and it helps Starcraft II curb it's harshest artistic criticism; that it's nothing more than a Warhammer clone. That said, it accomplishes this feet via another imitation. James Raynor is conflicted, moody and lovable, but not as compelling as Malcolm Reynolds. Despite his folksy phrases, Jim lacks the humble and at times bumbling, charm that made Mal so fresh. Raynor comes off as a bit too heroic, and heroically flat. The supporting cast is similarly likable-but-bland, lacking the complicated relationships that made Serenity's crew so damn exciting to be around. One of the problems is that the plot is a bit too grand for it's own good. Raynor's civil war baggage and lady problems, two tried-and-true staples of the western genre, are handled quite well, but the practical aspects of his revolution, the down-to-earth, everyday concerns that Firefly made so damn compelling, are shortchanged.

Among the supporting cast, Tychus Findlay easily steals the show. 

Desperation, particularly as precipitated by scarcity of resources, is an essential theme of The Western. That seems like it would make a natural fit with the resource obsessed strategy genre, yet I never got the sense that Raynor and his crew were ever scraping. Yeah, they plunder tech from The Dominion, but I never got the sense that they were worried about having a warm meal, or that they wouldn't have enough minerals to fuel their flagship. You have to make some hard calls when it comes deciding between that last mercenary contract or upgrading your infantry, but the fact is, you've got extra money to spend. The train job mission is a step toward scarcity, in spirit and aesthetic, but most of the other missions, fun as they are to play, provide players with a glut of resources that diminish The Western's characteristic leanness. 


And leanness isn't the only thing lost. For a game obsessed with details by play-style, the narrative seems to gloss over a lot of logistics that have a lot of dramatic (and game-play) potential. How does Raynor hide his raiders from The Dominion? How do the mercenary troops get along with the raiders? The funny thing is, Blizzard has proven themselves brilliant at filling in these world-building gaps, time and again through the tiny quests in World of Warcraft. I can't help but wonder how they might have more effectively translated that world-building to Starcraft II.


I'm not saying that Starcraft II should aspire to be Firefly: The Game, or that it should be World of Starcraft. It shouldn't. I'm not even saying that Starcraft II fails as a story-telling game. It doesn't. As game narratives go, it's a real winner. But it could be even better, and I hope Blizzard continues to push the envelope in the next two installments. 

The Dragon Age Blues

As you may have noticed, there has been an smörgåsbord of triple-A video games over the past year, and I have commented on relatively few of them. Assassins Creed 2 and Dragon Age came and went without comment.   Heavy Rain and Allan Wake, the sort of narrative-driven titles I relish, arrived sans discussion. Even the exquisite Red Dead Redemption, which people have hailed as a triumph of Literature, Literature with a capital "L" Literature, remains unexamined. And now there is also StarCraft II to consider. Rest assured, I still plan to discuss these titles in detail, but I have been too busy trying to play through them that I haven't had much time to write.

Applying to graduate school, finishing college, getting married, moving across the country, and starting graduate school have kept me busy, but the games themselves constitute considerable time-investments. I have a backlog of roughly ten titles. Each of them off anywhere from 40 to 80 hours of gameplay, excluding any applicable multiplayer components. This tells you several I am (A) very spoiled and (B) very unfocused, but the very fact that I refer to the games I am currently playing as a backlog, says something about the modern videogame: They are digestible artifacts; things to be consumed and completed rather than relaxing methods of passing the time.

In short, it is the difference between playing table-tennis (Pong) and reading War and Peace (The Witcher). This transformation has blurred the lines between leisure object, and laborious objective. This is especially true if you play a game while following a guide to try and wring out all of its secrets and sidequests, or if you find the title to be exceedingly challenging. This environment of purposeful, highly structured play and frequent frustration can transform play into chore. Such is my relationship with Bioware's Dragon Age for the PC.

Behold the best written game of 2009. Pity that accessing the narrative can be such a chore.

The game is brilliant written. It wins my vote for best-written title of 2009 hands-down. Ferelden is a world of splendid squalor, caked with dirt and dried blood, besieged by demons and despots, and filled with a number of truly fascinating thought-experiments. For example, "What if the catholic church believed that god had turned his back on creation?" (Answer: Catholic Nihilists. There may be nothing scarier.) Then there's also the whole "using drugs to control magic users" thing which is a concept I hold dear to my thoroughly medicated heart. Best of all, the game manages to be both dark and tragic without succumbing to the sort of absurdist nihilism that is evident in many other games with mature narratives. Rockstar, I'm talking about you. The characters are also a lot of fun, and their histories are much richer than the cast of Mass Effect.

Accessing this excellent narrative though, can be a real slog at times. Truth be told, I'm not great at video games. I have this uncanny ability to find every possible pitfall, dead end, and failed strategy before making progress. This is a unique gift (read: personal problem) and I realize that. At the same time, I've played a lot of videogames of every kind, and I can usually cut through a game's "Easy Mode" without much trouble. Not so in Dragon Age. The first boss took an embarrassing number of attempts, and I have had to get into the habit of saving before every fight to avoid serious backtracking. My wife, who has played fewer videogames has had even more difficulty with the title. The fighting system isn't broken, or unpolished, (though it feels bit a dated), just punitively challenging. It bears mentioning that I'm playing the PC version, which I have heard is the hardest permutation of the game, so those looking for lighter fair may want to check out the console releases.

In any event, frequent death and backtracking in a game with a narrative of 80+ hours (with a variety of unique 6 hour opening sequences to choose from) makes play a daunting proposition. It requires the same sort of commitment as going to the gym everyday, or reading a seriously challenging text. And like reading a challenging text, a strange sort of Stockholm Syndrome comes into play. After spending so much time with a game, you tell yourself you're in love with it. Oh yes, there may be genuine affection in play, even genuine love, but like a battered wife, you excuse the game's punitive challenge and mind-numbing repetition as a part of the 'epic experience.' This is not a condition that is inherent, or exclusive to videogames mind you. Hell, I would argue that many 'Literary Classics' are guilty of similar long-winded self importance, and many of the people who claim to enjoy them are merely justifying their time investment.

This topic came up in a conversation I had with fellow graduate student and all-around good guy Chris DeLeon. Chris runs HobbyGameDev.com where he regularly writes articles designed to help aspiring game designers. He's also Vegan. It wouldn't surprise me if I learned he found homes for orphaned diabetic kittens in his spare time. Anyway, he recently published a post about short videogame design, where he writes "Videogames used to be light on content due to limitations of technology...The latest and increasingly dominant limitation now seems to be consumer time and attention." I am inclined to agree. Now that I am ostensibly an adult, finding time (and mullah) to invest in my habit has become a lot harder. This has led me to the dubious practice of buying games used, but even worse, it has also caused me to buy games that I will never finish. The industry's $60 price point is particularly egregious because, it's a lot of cash and I'll feel cheated if I don't get my money's worth, but at the same time, finding time for 60 to 80 hours of gameplay isn't exactly easy. Given those constraints, it's easy to see why iPhone and downloadable titles are seeing so much success. Chris' article lists a number of indie titles that make good on the promise of brief play in various ways.

On a related note, Donut Games' Cat Physics is another excellent free title for iDevices.

One base that isn't covered however, is narrative. Brief, aggressively affordable games are great, but I have yet to encounter an iPhone game with an engrossing story. Some titles may qualify as digital poetry, but narrative seems to be reserved for bigger budget console releases. I know that there are some episodic, downloadable games like the Sam and Max franchise, but for the videogame industry at large, mature, meaningful storytelling is shackled to big budgets and long-hours. I never believed that you need impressive graphics or a high page count to tell a good tale, and I like to think that someday soon, the short story game will have its day.

At the same time, I don't think long-form games will ever go out of fashion altogether. But given the tremendous success of casual controllers, I think we might start seeing play systems that allow people to access the later chapters of a game's narrative more easily. I don't mean to advocate the Mario Party approach to game design where everybody wins all the time; games must be challenging if they are going to be meaningful. But I know there is a market for game narratives outside of hardcore, gamers. I actually have a professor who is actually looking for somebody to play Red Dead Redemption so she can watch.

Over the next few days, I'm going to attempt to address a few of the titles I mentioned at the beginning of the article, but depending how grad school develops, I may get swamped. In any event, I will also be writing a review of Monday Night Combat for Technique, Georgia Tech's school paper, and I believe it will be available online. If so, I'll be sure to Tweet the link. Thanks for reading!

Scott Pilgrim Vs. His Movie

In our hype-saturated world, it's a rare thing for a movie to exceed the promise of its marketing material. Even rarer is the adaptation that manages to eclipse it's source material. This is especially true of videogame films where the compelling ruled worlds of source material are rendered through tedious exposition (rather than exploration and experimentation). Comic-books movies have faired much better. Hell, they've been doing pretty damn well for a while now, but most fans will agree that something is lost in the jump to the silver screen. Snyder's take on Watchman was faithful but uninspired, save for it's ultraviolence. Iron Man 2 was a good time but all the subplots and cameos left it feeling cluttered. Kick-Ass struck a strong balance between surreal, sometimes controversial violence, and nerdy self-deprecating humor, but its satire felt a bit sharper on the ink. 

I expected Scott Pilgrim would suffer similarly. I knew that Edgar Wright nailed the visual style from the moment I watched (and obsessively re-watched) the trailer, but I was worried about the leading man (you are forever George-Michael to me Michael Cera) and the challenge of compressing 6 graphic novels with about 20 characters into 2 hours. Wright not only captures the soul of the comic, he distills it and refines it. He gives it a 1-up, a fire-flower and a starman all at once. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is not only a brilliant comic adaptation, but a brilliant example of how to bring video games to the movies. Bryan Lee O'Malley's opus is a romance first and foremost, but it is also positively saturated with videogame references, and his take on Toronto is twisted by gamic logic. People throw fireballs, produce weapons out of thin air and take shortcuts through alternate dimensions. Ninjas, Psychic Vegans and robots abound. People erupt into showers of coins when they are defeated. Wright gets the game and he plays it well.

This poster is awesome! Why don't they use this one instead of that other dweeby one?

Spoiler alert; specific examples follow: The film opens with an 16-Bit take on the Universal screen, complete with a digitized soundtrack. Immediately thereafter, you are greeted by a familiar melody from the Legend of Zelda. Beloved, nostalgia inducing sound effects from my Super Nintendo youth punctuate conversations and character interactions. Text occasionally adorns the screen, dividing the film into chapters and visual effects illustrate sound effects and music. This super-imposition of visual sound effects and iconic imagery on normal cinematography not only enhances the light-hearted absurd humor of the movie, it leads to a sort of augmented-reality presentation that is prefect for our time: we are surrounded by reoccurring  icons and sounds in every day life. This is especially true of videogamers and cyber-jockeys and cell-phone junkies. This is the sort of stuff that makes a videogame movie.

There are a few moments where the thing starts to feel like the Wachowski Brother's Speed Racer; the screen splits apart to show closeups of several characters simultaneously, or the background fades to abstraction behind characters before they pull off 'special moves.' But unlike Speed Racer, these anime aesthetics are grounded in fresh characters and meaningful relationships.

Speaking of characters and meaningful relationships, the casting and acting are great. The entire cast glows with the sort of enthusiasm that says "I'm happy to be a part of this." Kieran Culkin steals the show as Wallace Wells (though in the comics, I always imagined he was Asian), though Aubrey Plaza's Julie Powers gives him a serious run for his money. Anna Kendrick is great as Stacy Pilgrim and I wish she had more screen time (though it honestly wouldn't fit with the story). The Sex Bob-Ombs all look and sound exactly like I would have imagined them. I still think Wright could have done better than Michael Cera for the lead (When he scowls or puts on his 'game face' it looks like he's pouting and he's still a bit too mopey and awkward), but the truth is, he also could have done much worse. There are a few moments where he's spot on. Mary Elizabeth Winstead makes Ramona Flowers seem much warmer and more appealing than she was in the comic without sacrificing the character's mystique. Ellen Wong also does an admirable job with Knives Chou, and I plan to keep an eye on her in the future.

The aforementioned dweeby poster.

The plot moves absurdly fast. Not quite 'Gilmore Girls dialogue' fast, but a lot of stuff happens and it happens fast. Again, the pace is pixel perfect for generation net. I can't help but wonder how older audiences would react to the film. Parents may or may not get it. Grandma might have a seizure. The pace is essential for fitting everything in however. I also applaud the edits made to the plot. In the books, (particularly in the second half of the season and the last book in particular), there are times where it feels like Scott is just drifting and O'Malley is killing time. To be honest, the last volume of the book, (released a few weeks ago) felt like a rather sloppy ending. The movie has a much cleaner finish, and the battle of the bands subplot adds some more structure to the narrative. All in all, both the books and the movie are worthy of your time, but for the first time in a long time, I have to say that the movie is better.

Part of me wants more. These characters, and the world they inhabit are just too damn fun. But the story is finished, O'Malley is finished with it, and I worry about what might happen if we try to push this forward. In any event, you should definitely give Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World a watch at your earliest convenience. It's an absolute blast.