Holy shit. Kimchee belches are really fucking foul.
And I am talking about my own. I can hardly stand to be around myself.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Napalm Death, Dazzle Me
Genre music releases seem to come out cyclically. I couldn’t tell you exactly what that cycle is, but we seem to be back ‘in’ one after the first several months of this year being very dry… at least for the heavier more subversive stuff. Thank goodness for itunes, though. Much as I hate Apple’s customer service (I’ve had nightmare ipod repair stories), living in a cultural wasteland as I do, I don’t have a brick-and-mortar corner record store to go dig up older music to round out my collection while waiting for new releases. But with itunes I can poke around and almost always find something worth getting.
In any case the dry spell ended a month or two ago, and in the last week or so I picked up six CDs all worth the money. I want to ‘blog specifically about Napalm Death’s Time Waits For No Slave, But in my inimitable style I’m going to wax pedantic with history and observation before I actually the probably-important-only-to-me point.
‘Napalm Death are utterly badass’. That descriptor doesn’t come that easily from me. I’ve been into heavy music for a long, LONG time. I’m something of an old dude. Throughout its history metal has progressively gotten heavier. As with any art form with legs, the repeat audience wants more. More of everything. In the same way that horror movies have gotten more graphic since the good ol’ days of Universal’s dominance pre-WW2, or literature has pushed the bounds of good taste (and social criticism) since the breathy days of Wuthering Heights, heavy music has pushed onto the next frontier and the next with each passing year. There is also a sort of endpost that tends to be reached where the art form doesn’t go any further and all that seems to happen is that a lot of the other artists just catch up to the pioneer who took it there in the first place. I’m really generalizing. Obviously in any creative sphere there are artists who work in ‘traditional’ spaces or keep to the old(er) ways.
With heavy music, the subgenres of grindcore, black metal, noise/drone (the metal version), and mathcore came into existence years ago, but there’s never been anything created since then that has really been more extreme. There are just a lot more bands doing it now in proportion to metal as a whole. There’s only so fast you can play, only so guttural you can make your vocals, only so dense a wall of sound, and only so disjointed you can make your song structures. The signature sound of each of these styles is practically unlistenable to an untrained, mainstream pair of ears, but the best bands or musicians in each of these styles have learned that you need to mix in tempo changes, and references to other styles to keep the music interesting, i.e. Dillinger Escape Plan puts jazzy interludes into some of their craziest, most angular songs or Immortal having a thrash-based middle eight breaking up a hyperblasting number. It makes for a more dynamic, ‘cooler’ listening experience if you give the listener something of a rest, making the return to the ‘intense parts’ almost cathartic. This need to breathe and change is also one of the reasons why grindcore songs, arguably the most extreme music form, tend to be so short. Many of the tunes just blur by in a minute or two.
Back in the day, when I was growing up and banging my head, I would, like many fans, move onto the next heavier or more extreme thing when it came out. In hindsight, there really wasn’t anything literally heavier than Black Sabbath’s albums Master of Reality and Sabotage until Metallica (and the other thrash bands) came along. Venom, before thrash, was heavy in its way, but they also were just plain sucky. Metallica, Anthrax, and Megadeth opened a floodgate. Forget the Hetfield of now, and go back and listen to Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All. Those are harsh, barked vocals, and rhythm playing far faster than almost any mainstream release of the day. And it took some getting used to. I liked Metallica from the get-go, but it was largely for the music… which was just an extreme extension of what I was already listening to. The vocals were quite unlike metal up to that point. But they caught on. With me and the rest of the heavy music fanbase.
Nowadays Metallica’s early albums are good, but almost quaint sounding. The roots of the most extreme metal styles are almost all there, but the speed, vocal violence, and production punch have all gone through the roof in the years following. Thrash, as the style has come to be known (through a number of name changes I’m not interested in going into for this post), was a fusion of punk sensibility, political bent, and speed with metal’s attitude and musicianship. Thrash is still considered, along with the basic genres death metal and black metal, to be one of the ‘extreme metal’ forms.
Grindcore, like thrash, has roots in punk, specifically hardcore. While it developed in a different way, grind has so much in common musically with death metal that it has been absorbed by it for the purposes of discussion, marketing, etc. Parallel evolution in a sense, grindcore is pretty much considered the most extreme version of death metal, though its lyrical content still hews to the political and social commentary of its punk and hardcore lineage.
When it was first starting to hit the metal venues (and record store merch racks) I had no interest in grindcore. I even saw Napalm Death, considered amongst the masters and originators of the style, in concert and was decidedly unimpressed… I’m not sure whether they actually had a good show because my ears were not up to the task of deciphering the style. It was just, as it would be to 99.9% of the population, a blur of speedy noise. But gradually, as the years have gone by, driven by acclaim by critics, a desire to push boundaries, and awesome album covers, I’ve grown accustomed to and even appreciate the more extreme forms of metal. This may seem odd to today’s extreme metalhead, who has grown up on Opeth, Lamb of God, or Dimmu Borgir, to name three bands who can be found in any popular music store, and that all play music far harder than anything I could’ve bought when I was a teen.
So I’ve been buying grindcore albums for awhile now. Not tons of ‘em, mind you. It isn’t a style that incorporates a lot of variety. But I have a few bands I go to for a guaranteed good listen when I’m in the mood for utter metal extremity.
But perhaps because of my bad experience in concert all those years ago I never put Napalm Death into the buying list. Which is retarded really. Even bands I’ve always liked have had live performances that pale next to their studio albums. I read a review (in Terrorizer I think) that was just jizzing about Napalm Death’s latest. And something about that review made my conscious brain rebel against the dislike of Napalm Death that had been imprinted on my cerebral cortex. I read a few other columns and everyone and their grandmother was all about this album. In fact, apparently the last few Napalm Death albums had represented some return to form for the band (not one I was aware of, shunning their work), and the latest was the greatest.
So I bit. In the years following that ill-fated show, I’d purchased albums by Nasum, Gadget, Cephalic Carnage… all grind staples. I was ready to reacquaint with whatever blastbeats and throat-shredding Barney Greenway and ND was ready to throw, but the album exceeded my expectations. Most of the better grindcore bands have incorporated a somewhat modern development mentioned above, the incorporation of ,dynamics, into the songs. This could be speed or tempo changes, or incorporation of another style (something the critics usually call ‘groove’). In the case of this particular album, the dynamic injected is thrash. Which is actually cool and very resonant with me, since the thrash heyday is when I first heard Napalm Death. Almost every song on the album either cuts the grindcore blasting liberally with thrash sections or is completely a thrash song but with grind aspects. AND Barney’s got a lot of different vocal deliveries going on too. Most of it is still harsh, but there’s a lot of variety. The whole thing just smacks of veterans who know exactly what they are doing, and I don’t mean that in the phoned-in performance sense. I mean it all clicks together and they make it sound easy. I’ll point a finger particularly at Barney’s vocals and the drumming. Grindcore drummers have one of the most punishing jobs in all of music. Like drummers for black metal and death metal bands, they need to be machines. But this guy, again, makes it seem easy. Within the grind style, the songs go so fast that it is hard to discern a lot of musical creativity. Skill yes. It takes a lot of skill, and stamina, to play what they play. But creativity in the ‘jazz drumfill’ sense doesn’t really get all that apparent in grindcore. It may be partially due to the thrash bits, but the drumming on this album is definitely a clinic for wannabe extreme metal drummers.
I’m not saying this album is going to make someone a fan of grindcore, or as some people might qualify this thing, death metal (its on the less extreme end of grindcore). But what a great listen if you are already attuned to extreme music. I would challenge anyone not to bang their head when the tempo changes hit in this CD. I’m over my Napalm Death embargo.
In any case the dry spell ended a month or two ago, and in the last week or so I picked up six CDs all worth the money. I want to ‘blog specifically about Napalm Death’s Time Waits For No Slave, But in my inimitable style I’m going to wax pedantic with history and observation before I actually the probably-important-only-to-me point.
‘Napalm Death are utterly badass’. That descriptor doesn’t come that easily from me. I’ve been into heavy music for a long, LONG time. I’m something of an old dude. Throughout its history metal has progressively gotten heavier. As with any art form with legs, the repeat audience wants more. More of everything. In the same way that horror movies have gotten more graphic since the good ol’ days of Universal’s dominance pre-WW2, or literature has pushed the bounds of good taste (and social criticism) since the breathy days of Wuthering Heights, heavy music has pushed onto the next frontier and the next with each passing year. There is also a sort of endpost that tends to be reached where the art form doesn’t go any further and all that seems to happen is that a lot of the other artists just catch up to the pioneer who took it there in the first place. I’m really generalizing. Obviously in any creative sphere there are artists who work in ‘traditional’ spaces or keep to the old(er) ways.
With heavy music, the subgenres of grindcore, black metal, noise/drone (the metal version), and mathcore came into existence years ago, but there’s never been anything created since then that has really been more extreme. There are just a lot more bands doing it now in proportion to metal as a whole. There’s only so fast you can play, only so guttural you can make your vocals, only so dense a wall of sound, and only so disjointed you can make your song structures. The signature sound of each of these styles is practically unlistenable to an untrained, mainstream pair of ears, but the best bands or musicians in each of these styles have learned that you need to mix in tempo changes, and references to other styles to keep the music interesting, i.e. Dillinger Escape Plan puts jazzy interludes into some of their craziest, most angular songs or Immortal having a thrash-based middle eight breaking up a hyperblasting number. It makes for a more dynamic, ‘cooler’ listening experience if you give the listener something of a rest, making the return to the ‘intense parts’ almost cathartic. This need to breathe and change is also one of the reasons why grindcore songs, arguably the most extreme music form, tend to be so short. Many of the tunes just blur by in a minute or two.
Back in the day, when I was growing up and banging my head, I would, like many fans, move onto the next heavier or more extreme thing when it came out. In hindsight, there really wasn’t anything literally heavier than Black Sabbath’s albums Master of Reality and Sabotage until Metallica (and the other thrash bands) came along. Venom, before thrash, was heavy in its way, but they also were just plain sucky. Metallica, Anthrax, and Megadeth opened a floodgate. Forget the Hetfield of now, and go back and listen to Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All. Those are harsh, barked vocals, and rhythm playing far faster than almost any mainstream release of the day. And it took some getting used to. I liked Metallica from the get-go, but it was largely for the music… which was just an extreme extension of what I was already listening to. The vocals were quite unlike metal up to that point. But they caught on. With me and the rest of the heavy music fanbase.
Nowadays Metallica’s early albums are good, but almost quaint sounding. The roots of the most extreme metal styles are almost all there, but the speed, vocal violence, and production punch have all gone through the roof in the years following. Thrash, as the style has come to be known (through a number of name changes I’m not interested in going into for this post), was a fusion of punk sensibility, political bent, and speed with metal’s attitude and musicianship. Thrash is still considered, along with the basic genres death metal and black metal, to be one of the ‘extreme metal’ forms.
Grindcore, like thrash, has roots in punk, specifically hardcore. While it developed in a different way, grind has so much in common musically with death metal that it has been absorbed by it for the purposes of discussion, marketing, etc. Parallel evolution in a sense, grindcore is pretty much considered the most extreme version of death metal, though its lyrical content still hews to the political and social commentary of its punk and hardcore lineage.
When it was first starting to hit the metal venues (and record store merch racks) I had no interest in grindcore. I even saw Napalm Death, considered amongst the masters and originators of the style, in concert and was decidedly unimpressed… I’m not sure whether they actually had a good show because my ears were not up to the task of deciphering the style. It was just, as it would be to 99.9% of the population, a blur of speedy noise. But gradually, as the years have gone by, driven by acclaim by critics, a desire to push boundaries, and awesome album covers, I’ve grown accustomed to and even appreciate the more extreme forms of metal. This may seem odd to today’s extreme metalhead, who has grown up on Opeth, Lamb of God, or Dimmu Borgir, to name three bands who can be found in any popular music store, and that all play music far harder than anything I could’ve bought when I was a teen.
So I’ve been buying grindcore albums for awhile now. Not tons of ‘em, mind you. It isn’t a style that incorporates a lot of variety. But I have a few bands I go to for a guaranteed good listen when I’m in the mood for utter metal extremity.
But perhaps because of my bad experience in concert all those years ago I never put Napalm Death into the buying list. Which is retarded really. Even bands I’ve always liked have had live performances that pale next to their studio albums. I read a review (in Terrorizer I think) that was just jizzing about Napalm Death’s latest. And something about that review made my conscious brain rebel against the dislike of Napalm Death that had been imprinted on my cerebral cortex. I read a few other columns and everyone and their grandmother was all about this album. In fact, apparently the last few Napalm Death albums had represented some return to form for the band (not one I was aware of, shunning their work), and the latest was the greatest.
So I bit. In the years following that ill-fated show, I’d purchased albums by Nasum, Gadget, Cephalic Carnage… all grind staples. I was ready to reacquaint with whatever blastbeats and throat-shredding Barney Greenway and ND was ready to throw, but the album exceeded my expectations. Most of the better grindcore bands have incorporated a somewhat modern development mentioned above, the incorporation of ,dynamics, into the songs. This could be speed or tempo changes, or incorporation of another style (something the critics usually call ‘groove’). In the case of this particular album, the dynamic injected is thrash. Which is actually cool and very resonant with me, since the thrash heyday is when I first heard Napalm Death. Almost every song on the album either cuts the grindcore blasting liberally with thrash sections or is completely a thrash song but with grind aspects. AND Barney’s got a lot of different vocal deliveries going on too. Most of it is still harsh, but there’s a lot of variety. The whole thing just smacks of veterans who know exactly what they are doing, and I don’t mean that in the phoned-in performance sense. I mean it all clicks together and they make it sound easy. I’ll point a finger particularly at Barney’s vocals and the drumming. Grindcore drummers have one of the most punishing jobs in all of music. Like drummers for black metal and death metal bands, they need to be machines. But this guy, again, makes it seem easy. Within the grind style, the songs go so fast that it is hard to discern a lot of musical creativity. Skill yes. It takes a lot of skill, and stamina, to play what they play. But creativity in the ‘jazz drumfill’ sense doesn’t really get all that apparent in grindcore. It may be partially due to the thrash bits, but the drumming on this album is definitely a clinic for wannabe extreme metal drummers.
I’m not saying this album is going to make someone a fan of grindcore, or as some people might qualify this thing, death metal (its on the less extreme end of grindcore). But what a great listen if you are already attuned to extreme music. I would challenge anyone not to bang their head when the tempo changes hit in this CD. I’m over my Napalm Death embargo.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Smoking in Hell
On a recent trip stateside I had the pleasure of visiting a real honest-to-goodness tobacconist. That might be a ‘so what’ moment to most others, but you have to understand what a barren wasteland I live in culturally, and that includes a lot of things typical Americans take for granted, including a lot of common basic shopping outlets. I’m an occasional cigar smoker. I don’t like cigarettes, though I can tolerate the smoke just fine. The chance to indulge this vice really only comes ‘round during the four month stretch of warm weather we get here. Can’t smoke ‘em indoors, and winter is just too brutal for smoking something that can last you upwards of an hour or more (if smoked slowly/properly). So summer it is. A very short summer.
If you visit the stores that carry cigars here you will find scant selection, questionable humidification, and incredibly high prices… sometimes triple the costs you can get a stick for in the states or over mail order, even with shipping figured in. So I have some stuff in storage in North Caroline where I made a trip to try to get things organized, and while I was there I got to visit some malls and stores the like of which my current town of residence doesn’t supply. Having lived in the Baltimore area for years this sort of consumer super-overload wasn’t unfamiliar, just hadn’t been around it for awhile… ‘civilisation’ as I often call it.
So I looked around this clean, shmancy cigar store, overwhelmed by the selection and the low costs and ended up buying only one because I needed to rethink my strategy; at these prices I should be purchasing a box of twenty-five or more and I didn’t have space for that in my return luggage.
So upon return I looked up the website for the store I was in, but the website wasn’t up to the impression left by the shop. It was mostly trying to sell the store’s special brands and I’m particular to some global marks. One online retailer, a huge popular one, just had incredibly high shipping rates to Alaska. The point of ordering the cigars online is not just to get ones I can’t get here… which frankly, is just about every cigar of quality… but to also NOT spend the money I’d have to here. Finally (and sure I’ll plug ‘em) Famous Smokes in Pennsylvania turned up and they will ship via the post office for nominal rates.
I just wanted a basic go-to smoke. Nothing super-fancy, and it needed to be medium-bodied/strength, since I was only getting one box to start… and that might be all I’d manage to get through this summer since I don’t smoke ‘em every day. I’d never know when an opportunity to light up would present itself and a really heavy full-bodied cigar is just not appropriate all the time. Basic doesn’t mean crap though. I had some experience with different brands and I understand cigar terminology, sizing, and all that, so I decided on a box of (Dominican) Partagas Almirantes. Medium to large-ish cigar with decent width (ring gauge) so it’d be a cool smoke, last a decent while, but not so big it’d be obnoxious-looking in casual company. Natural wrapper. I’m familiar with these, though from quite awhile ago.
The trick to great cigar experiences is not to rush anything. Light ‘em slow, smoke ‘em slow. Lighting them so you toast the end as opposed to charring the shit out of it is the first step. Then don’t huff the motherfucker like its an oxygen mask. One puff every minute or so… a slow puff. With no significant inhaling.
So I get this box in the mail that worked out to only $4.60 a cigar after shipping and everything, and these things are just the best cigars I’ve smoked in a long time. I handed some out to people at work—and showed them the right way to light and smoke them, and you’d think I was giving away cards for free blow jobs. After two weeks, I’ve only got half my box left, but they were so cheap I don’t even care.
Understand. Cigars are a luxury item. When I say cheap, I don’t mean ‘comparable to cigarettes’. Good cigars are expensive but you can’t equate them on a smoke-for-smoke basis with cigarettes because the two have completely different roles. Cigars are not habitual for most smokers. They are more like the occasional glass of good scotch. Not the beer you drink almost every day.
I’m sure I’ll be hitting that smoke shop up again pretty soon, though. Paying one-third for your smokes finds you looking for opportunities to smoke more often!
If you visit the stores that carry cigars here you will find scant selection, questionable humidification, and incredibly high prices… sometimes triple the costs you can get a stick for in the states or over mail order, even with shipping figured in. So I have some stuff in storage in North Caroline where I made a trip to try to get things organized, and while I was there I got to visit some malls and stores the like of which my current town of residence doesn’t supply. Having lived in the Baltimore area for years this sort of consumer super-overload wasn’t unfamiliar, just hadn’t been around it for awhile… ‘civilisation’ as I often call it.
So I looked around this clean, shmancy cigar store, overwhelmed by the selection and the low costs and ended up buying only one because I needed to rethink my strategy; at these prices I should be purchasing a box of twenty-five or more and I didn’t have space for that in my return luggage.
So upon return I looked up the website for the store I was in, but the website wasn’t up to the impression left by the shop. It was mostly trying to sell the store’s special brands and I’m particular to some global marks. One online retailer, a huge popular one, just had incredibly high shipping rates to Alaska. The point of ordering the cigars online is not just to get ones I can’t get here… which frankly, is just about every cigar of quality… but to also NOT spend the money I’d have to here. Finally (and sure I’ll plug ‘em) Famous Smokes in Pennsylvania turned up and they will ship via the post office for nominal rates.
I just wanted a basic go-to smoke. Nothing super-fancy, and it needed to be medium-bodied/strength, since I was only getting one box to start… and that might be all I’d manage to get through this summer since I don’t smoke ‘em every day. I’d never know when an opportunity to light up would present itself and a really heavy full-bodied cigar is just not appropriate all the time. Basic doesn’t mean crap though. I had some experience with different brands and I understand cigar terminology, sizing, and all that, so I decided on a box of (Dominican) Partagas Almirantes. Medium to large-ish cigar with decent width (ring gauge) so it’d be a cool smoke, last a decent while, but not so big it’d be obnoxious-looking in casual company. Natural wrapper. I’m familiar with these, though from quite awhile ago.
The trick to great cigar experiences is not to rush anything. Light ‘em slow, smoke ‘em slow. Lighting them so you toast the end as opposed to charring the shit out of it is the first step. Then don’t huff the motherfucker like its an oxygen mask. One puff every minute or so… a slow puff. With no significant inhaling.
So I get this box in the mail that worked out to only $4.60 a cigar after shipping and everything, and these things are just the best cigars I’ve smoked in a long time. I handed some out to people at work—and showed them the right way to light and smoke them, and you’d think I was giving away cards for free blow jobs. After two weeks, I’ve only got half my box left, but they were so cheap I don’t even care.
Understand. Cigars are a luxury item. When I say cheap, I don’t mean ‘comparable to cigarettes’. Good cigars are expensive but you can’t equate them on a smoke-for-smoke basis with cigarettes because the two have completely different roles. Cigars are not habitual for most smokers. They are more like the occasional glass of good scotch. Not the beer you drink almost every day.
I’m sure I’ll be hitting that smoke shop up again pretty soon, though. Paying one-third for your smokes finds you looking for opportunities to smoke more often!
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Go Buy Some Clutch
Originally hailing from Germantown, MD... near my old stomping grounds but far from my current culture-starved locale... Clutch is one of the largely unsung greats of the rock 'n' roll universe.
Depending on the album, they careen around between blues, stoner rock, and beer metal, but always with a groovy heaviness and a really fat sound. If you listen to them for about thirty seconds or less it might be easy to dismiss them as a 'typical' (though not really so common these days) but tight bar band. But give them just a little time, and their genius becomes apparent.
Neil Fallon has an appealing whiskey-soaked delivery but his lyrics are what will really get your attention. Lots of wordplay, literary and mythological allusion, and cultural insight all fittting music that seems about as far from an appropriate vehicle for it as is possible to get. But it works. Very clever stuff. And the music works a similar angle. If one could use the word 'progressive' within the bar band sound then that might be a correct tag. Clutch really 'explores the space' (sorry BOC) of the stoner rock/metal sound and always keeps things interesting.
If you like bands like Brand New Sin, or to reference something more mainstream Black Stone Cherry, Clutch is like a mind-bent cousin, in the same way Corrosion of Conformity might be but without the harshness that band sometimes pushes.
Get on itunes and check out From Beale Street to Oblivion, their most accessible album, and if it appeals work your way up to their magnum opus Blast Tyrant. You really can't go wrong with any of it. Along with King's X these guys would probably be on the top of my 'have to see them in a bar' list. I've seen King's X multiple times in all sorts of settings and was spot-on with THAT call... so I'm guessing Clutch would be the cat's ass close up with booze.
Depending on the album, they careen around between blues, stoner rock, and beer metal, but always with a groovy heaviness and a really fat sound. If you listen to them for about thirty seconds or less it might be easy to dismiss them as a 'typical' (though not really so common these days) but tight bar band. But give them just a little time, and their genius becomes apparent.
Neil Fallon has an appealing whiskey-soaked delivery but his lyrics are what will really get your attention. Lots of wordplay, literary and mythological allusion, and cultural insight all fittting music that seems about as far from an appropriate vehicle for it as is possible to get. But it works. Very clever stuff. And the music works a similar angle. If one could use the word 'progressive' within the bar band sound then that might be a correct tag. Clutch really 'explores the space' (sorry BOC) of the stoner rock/metal sound and always keeps things interesting.
If you like bands like Brand New Sin, or to reference something more mainstream Black Stone Cherry, Clutch is like a mind-bent cousin, in the same way Corrosion of Conformity might be but without the harshness that band sometimes pushes.
Get on itunes and check out From Beale Street to Oblivion, their most accessible album, and if it appeals work your way up to their magnum opus Blast Tyrant. You really can't go wrong with any of it. Along with King's X these guys would probably be on the top of my 'have to see them in a bar' list. I've seen King's X multiple times in all sorts of settings and was spot-on with THAT call... so I'm guessing Clutch would be the cat's ass close up with booze.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Whoops.
So I've been holding off on buying an Xbox 360 until there's a decent number of games I really want to play on there. Notice I didn't say 'good games', I said 'games I really want to play'. My life doesn't consist solely of sitting around playing video games, however much this 'blog makes it appear that way. No, I pretty much have to be assured of being REALLY into it, in order to buy and spend time playing it.
So up to this point, the Xbox 360 has had about three games I've had lined up to buy right away when I finally knuckled under and got the console. Shutokou Battle X (Import Tuner Challenge), Senko no Ronde (Wartech), and Earth Defense Force. All badass, all truly kvlt.
Anyway, three games do not an expensive console purchase justify. Then the news that a number of STGs originally designed by Cave were going to be ported to this machine. Holy crap, that accelerated my timetable!
But wait. By all accounts, the first Cave port, Dodonpachi Dai Ou Jou EX is utter rubbish! Nooooooo!
Cave ports to consoles have been something of a mixed bag, with only software house Arika really seeming to nail them down to being 'arcade perfect'. BUT. They are all playable. Occasional graphic or slowdown issues aside the games look and play recognisably like their arcade counterparts.
I haven't delved deep enough into the issues surrounding the new Dodonpachi for the Xbox 360, but as I understand it, as soon as you start to play using the deeper mechanics that Cave shooters are known for... that is to say, not just moving and shooting... the whole game falls apart. The company responsible is already online apologising and talking about issuing a patch to fix it. This does not bode well for the future planned ports, which I believe are from this same developer... assuming Cave doesn't pull the license from them for such a botched job.
I'm being a bit of a cock not just buying the Xbox for the three (and probably more) games I want to play. But to play the Cave games I'm looking at an import console, and that ups the price again. I guess in a way I should be grateful I've been spared spending the money since things are a bit tight in my life at the moment!
So up to this point, the Xbox 360 has had about three games I've had lined up to buy right away when I finally knuckled under and got the console. Shutokou Battle X (Import Tuner Challenge), Senko no Ronde (Wartech), and Earth Defense Force. All badass, all truly kvlt.
Anyway, three games do not an expensive console purchase justify. Then the news that a number of STGs originally designed by Cave were going to be ported to this machine. Holy crap, that accelerated my timetable!
But wait. By all accounts, the first Cave port, Dodonpachi Dai Ou Jou EX is utter rubbish! Nooooooo!
Cave ports to consoles have been something of a mixed bag, with only software house Arika really seeming to nail them down to being 'arcade perfect'. BUT. They are all playable. Occasional graphic or slowdown issues aside the games look and play recognisably like their arcade counterparts.
I haven't delved deep enough into the issues surrounding the new Dodonpachi for the Xbox 360, but as I understand it, as soon as you start to play using the deeper mechanics that Cave shooters are known for... that is to say, not just moving and shooting... the whole game falls apart. The company responsible is already online apologising and talking about issuing a patch to fix it. This does not bode well for the future planned ports, which I believe are from this same developer... assuming Cave doesn't pull the license from them for such a botched job.
I'm being a bit of a cock not just buying the Xbox for the three (and probably more) games I want to play. But to play the Cave games I'm looking at an import console, and that ups the price again. I guess in a way I should be grateful I've been spared spending the money since things are a bit tight in my life at the moment!
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
What the fuck is Alan Moore's problem?
Alan Moore wrote the illustrated versions of the stories V For Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell, and Watchmen.
He also wrote Miracleman, some issues of Swamp Thing, and the lavish collection Lost Girls, none of which have been adapted in film.
I just got done watching V For Vendetta on DVD. I saw it the theaters, and liked it but never got around to buying the home version. Not too long after watching the theatrical release I bought the DC/Vertigo graphic novel. This was one of the rare times I've watched a film based on a comic property and was NOT familiar with the source material.
A month or so ago I read the graphic novel, enjoyed that, so was inspired to finally pick up the DVD, especially since I was having trouble, from what I remembered of the film, what Alan Moore's issue was with it could be.
Turns out Alan Moore's problem is a problem founded in principle. Based on his previous experience, true, but also because he's a dick.
Alan Moore was utterly disappointed with the film adaptation of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen... which I get. The film was ass. He was also disappointed with From Hell, which I understand less because I'm one of the few people that liked the film, and (as we will see with adaptations of his later work) because I was surprised by how much of his incredibly rich story they actually managed to fit in.
Alan Moore is a great writer. I'm not one of the people who doesn't get it. I don't think the sun shines out his poo-hole like a lot of people do, but I cannot deny his talent. I've enjoyed almost everything of his that I've had the pleasure of running across. He's a master.
Maybe everyone telling him he's a master has not been all that beneficial. He's the ultimate expression of high-caliber talent thumbing his nose at 'commercialism', 'corporations' or something. Now I completely understand all the stanzas in the True Artist's Writ. The lines about not selling out, don't let the suits tell you what art is, don't compromise, don't let the work suffer, the work is your baby... blah blah blah.
DC did not treat Alan Moore all that well. So he left 'em. His prerogative. But he has also dismissed all overtures they've made to make it up to him. They would let him have a lot of money. They would let him do his own projects. They would build him a 50 foot tall baby Jesus made out of chocolate if he wanted it. They'd probably give him a lot of control over film adapatations.
As I understand it, studios have solicited his help on the projects they've done already. But because he didn't like the first two adapatations, he's done the same thing to Hollywood that he's done to the big American comic book company. Turn his back. Just think what Hollywood would offer beyond what DC could if they could get Moore in their camp.
But he won't have it because they don't 'get' him or his work. They'd just water it down, or change shit 'round because the essence is just too deep for the shiny-suited tinseltown types. Sarcastic as this sounds, I sympathise with the root feelings of Moore's disdain. Hollywood can and does schlock the shit out of a lot of properties. Depending on how fanatic a follower you are it might be impossible for Hollywood to do justice to your favorite property. Lord knows the idea of a movie about Elric (a book series whose importance to me is hard to overstate) gives me hives. But being a fundamentally different medium (no matter how cinematic comics are described as being) there is just no way there cannot be, uh, alterations from the source material. Movies are collaborative. While not unheard of for a film to encompass a singular, auteur vision, it is pretty dang rare. Not so in comics. There are generally one or two individuals in American comics responsible for 90% of the work. Moore's vision only has to pass through one person, his artist, on its way to the page. And as controlling as Moore might be it is difficult for me to imagine that SOME of the art didn't turn out differently than what he pictured.
So how dare he forgive his artist for changing his vision. Is every illustrator now some mad hack that was foisted on him? No. So how come the artists get a pass on their interpretation but a filmic treatment with its legions of staff involved gets the finger?
The people working on adaptations of Moore's work probably give their all to stick to the spirit of the work. They may not get it right by Moore's lights, but people want to work on these deep, dense works because they really like them. There is something in his work that makes you consider and feel in a way most writers will never get close to.
It took years for a decent version of Stephen King's work to come out. And that shit is STILL hit or miss. Moore is English, and a wiccan hippie, and despite that he still had good movies coming out for his work by the second or third film!
I've been really surprised (starting with From Hell) in the case of V For Vendetta and Watchmen how much of the story made it in there. With V there was a fair amount of updating and simplifying, but I didn't think A LOT of message was lost. They even kept in a lot of the controversial stuff you'd think Hollywood would be loathe to put up on screen.
And Watchmen. That movie is so spot-on to the graphic novel, the pages are practically the storyboard. Coming out of that movie, I almost felt it was too faithful... which is a really hard thing for me to say considering, as I've labored on about, fidelity is pretty important to me.
But as a fan of both comics and film, I at least have the sense to view each format in its own terms. And in the terms of their respective environments. If you feel like a filmic treatment of your grandiose work needs to show every nuance (and what would be the point of your work still being in print if that was the case), the environment of the entertainment industry posits a miniseries maybe instead of a theatrical release... but of course the budget within which to realize your vision is going to suffer. So what's the lesser evil? Getting look and style close to your work with some simplification? Or the production values suffer (and possibly the number of people that see it), but you leave in more of the intricacies?
I get the feeling Moore wouldn't let Hollywood touch any of his properties no matter what. He isn't the forgiving kind. DC messed up, he doesn't even speak to them anymore. Hollywood fucked up two adaptations, no way can they talk to me about how they could do better on my other stories. While I understand that DC licensed these out because they own the rights, regardless of Moore's wishes... and THAT in itself is a sticking point for Moore, it just seems to me there'd be some merit in Moore trying to involve himself to the degree that he tries to ensure the audience sees as much of what he intended as possible.
No one probably thinks the Harry Potter franchise or the first Twilight movie is a patch on the original works. But those movies are all a damn sight better than they had any right to be considering all the shit Stephen King or Robert E. Howard's work suffered. Not to mention all the horrible comic adaptations. You've got the Batman and SpiderMan movies you've got NOW. They weren't always like that.
If you are an author and you feel 'No way. No way am I going to let Hollywood touch my work.', I respect that. Most authors have no clout with the Hollywood machine and if they sell their work, anything could happen to it. Not so Mister Moore. He has people up to the director level who'd be willing to listen to his points, because he is someone who is universally touted as knowing what the hell he's talking about when it comes to story AND the creative types involved are ON HIS SIDE.
Alan Moore. Alan Smithee. Separated at birth?
He also wrote Miracleman, some issues of Swamp Thing, and the lavish collection Lost Girls, none of which have been adapted in film.
I just got done watching V For Vendetta on DVD. I saw it the theaters, and liked it but never got around to buying the home version. Not too long after watching the theatrical release I bought the DC/Vertigo graphic novel. This was one of the rare times I've watched a film based on a comic property and was NOT familiar with the source material.
A month or so ago I read the graphic novel, enjoyed that, so was inspired to finally pick up the DVD, especially since I was having trouble, from what I remembered of the film, what Alan Moore's issue was with it could be.
Turns out Alan Moore's problem is a problem founded in principle. Based on his previous experience, true, but also because he's a dick.
Alan Moore was utterly disappointed with the film adaptation of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen... which I get. The film was ass. He was also disappointed with From Hell, which I understand less because I'm one of the few people that liked the film, and (as we will see with adaptations of his later work) because I was surprised by how much of his incredibly rich story they actually managed to fit in.
Alan Moore is a great writer. I'm not one of the people who doesn't get it. I don't think the sun shines out his poo-hole like a lot of people do, but I cannot deny his talent. I've enjoyed almost everything of his that I've had the pleasure of running across. He's a master.
Maybe everyone telling him he's a master has not been all that beneficial. He's the ultimate expression of high-caliber talent thumbing his nose at 'commercialism', 'corporations' or something. Now I completely understand all the stanzas in the True Artist's Writ. The lines about not selling out, don't let the suits tell you what art is, don't compromise, don't let the work suffer, the work is your baby... blah blah blah.
DC did not treat Alan Moore all that well. So he left 'em. His prerogative. But he has also dismissed all overtures they've made to make it up to him. They would let him have a lot of money. They would let him do his own projects. They would build him a 50 foot tall baby Jesus made out of chocolate if he wanted it. They'd probably give him a lot of control over film adapatations.
As I understand it, studios have solicited his help on the projects they've done already. But because he didn't like the first two adapatations, he's done the same thing to Hollywood that he's done to the big American comic book company. Turn his back. Just think what Hollywood would offer beyond what DC could if they could get Moore in their camp.
But he won't have it because they don't 'get' him or his work. They'd just water it down, or change shit 'round because the essence is just too deep for the shiny-suited tinseltown types. Sarcastic as this sounds, I sympathise with the root feelings of Moore's disdain. Hollywood can and does schlock the shit out of a lot of properties. Depending on how fanatic a follower you are it might be impossible for Hollywood to do justice to your favorite property. Lord knows the idea of a movie about Elric (a book series whose importance to me is hard to overstate) gives me hives. But being a fundamentally different medium (no matter how cinematic comics are described as being) there is just no way there cannot be, uh, alterations from the source material. Movies are collaborative. While not unheard of for a film to encompass a singular, auteur vision, it is pretty dang rare. Not so in comics. There are generally one or two individuals in American comics responsible for 90% of the work. Moore's vision only has to pass through one person, his artist, on its way to the page. And as controlling as Moore might be it is difficult for me to imagine that SOME of the art didn't turn out differently than what he pictured.
So how dare he forgive his artist for changing his vision. Is every illustrator now some mad hack that was foisted on him? No. So how come the artists get a pass on their interpretation but a filmic treatment with its legions of staff involved gets the finger?
The people working on adaptations of Moore's work probably give their all to stick to the spirit of the work. They may not get it right by Moore's lights, but people want to work on these deep, dense works because they really like them. There is something in his work that makes you consider and feel in a way most writers will never get close to.
It took years for a decent version of Stephen King's work to come out. And that shit is STILL hit or miss. Moore is English, and a wiccan hippie, and despite that he still had good movies coming out for his work by the second or third film!
I've been really surprised (starting with From Hell) in the case of V For Vendetta and Watchmen how much of the story made it in there. With V there was a fair amount of updating and simplifying, but I didn't think A LOT of message was lost. They even kept in a lot of the controversial stuff you'd think Hollywood would be loathe to put up on screen.
And Watchmen. That movie is so spot-on to the graphic novel, the pages are practically the storyboard. Coming out of that movie, I almost felt it was too faithful... which is a really hard thing for me to say considering, as I've labored on about, fidelity is pretty important to me.
But as a fan of both comics and film, I at least have the sense to view each format in its own terms. And in the terms of their respective environments. If you feel like a filmic treatment of your grandiose work needs to show every nuance (and what would be the point of your work still being in print if that was the case), the environment of the entertainment industry posits a miniseries maybe instead of a theatrical release... but of course the budget within which to realize your vision is going to suffer. So what's the lesser evil? Getting look and style close to your work with some simplification? Or the production values suffer (and possibly the number of people that see it), but you leave in more of the intricacies?
I get the feeling Moore wouldn't let Hollywood touch any of his properties no matter what. He isn't the forgiving kind. DC messed up, he doesn't even speak to them anymore. Hollywood fucked up two adaptations, no way can they talk to me about how they could do better on my other stories. While I understand that DC licensed these out because they own the rights, regardless of Moore's wishes... and THAT in itself is a sticking point for Moore, it just seems to me there'd be some merit in Moore trying to involve himself to the degree that he tries to ensure the audience sees as much of what he intended as possible.
No one probably thinks the Harry Potter franchise or the first Twilight movie is a patch on the original works. But those movies are all a damn sight better than they had any right to be considering all the shit Stephen King or Robert E. Howard's work suffered. Not to mention all the horrible comic adaptations. You've got the Batman and SpiderMan movies you've got NOW. They weren't always like that.
If you are an author and you feel 'No way. No way am I going to let Hollywood touch my work.', I respect that. Most authors have no clout with the Hollywood machine and if they sell their work, anything could happen to it. Not so Mister Moore. He has people up to the director level who'd be willing to listen to his points, because he is someone who is universally touted as knowing what the hell he's talking about when it comes to story AND the creative types involved are ON HIS SIDE.
Alan Moore. Alan Smithee. Separated at birth?
Entitlement or Video Gaming as Social Microcosm
There are lots of articles and rants using the word ‘entitlement’ when referring to the youth of today, and their perceived attitude of wanting everything spoon-fed to them. An older generation deriding ‘kids today’ is really a diatribe as old as time. But there’s something a little different these days, an additional aspect to the old discussion. Entitlement has come into it’s own.
For parents of every decade it has always been a tightrope act to give their kids the best they can but still foster a sense of independence and a willingness to work. Work for what they get, work to overcome challenges, and learn to accept that sometimes work results in failure. We want our kids to have the proverbial ‘better lives than we did’ but at the same time it is commonly accepted that difficulties, setbacks, and hardship can be beneficial and a cornerstone of character building.
As a society (and I generally mean Western nations, where I hold a membership card) we have gradually nudged ourselves, throughout the last century and into this one, to have a pervasive caretaker attitude. In schools, government, and much of social discourse we are telling our children they are just as good for trying, or just showing up in many cases, as they are for actually accomplishing. ‘An A for effort’ has become a mantra.
Y’know? That mantra’s bullshit. Dash from Pixar’s The Incredibles was telling it like it is when he said, ‘If everyone is special, then no one is’. There has to be something more for the winner. I’m not saying there is NO merit in effort. I think there is. It is frequently the silver or bronze medallists who become the gold medallists. But when our young people leave the nuturing, A-for-effort, environment of their schools and get out into the real world, it is something of a shock for them to find the workplace actually expects fucking results and not to just have done ‘something, anything’. It is becoming an oft-repeated tale, the manager exasperated by the new hires (or interviewees) who feel ‘entitled’ to the rewards and attaboys, even if they don’t do a good job… like the position itself justifies all the stuff that comes with the job. The problem is becoming endemic so that many workplaces are feeling like they have to have some kind of policy in place to motivate these self-entitled tits. And you can’t just hire a different sort of worker, because it is rapidly becoming apparent that this is about all there is.
With my kids, I’m fighting a neverending battle against the Forces of Mollycoddle, just to have them grow up with some fortitude and a decent work ethic.
Kind of a long rant/backstory to where I really wanted to go with this. I’m not really all that worked up about the topic because the place where I live is so full of general apathy, and other problems related to it, that the entitlement thing is just a drop in the bucket and I’m kind of inured to it, in the real day-to-day world. But it provides some sort of rationale for why the video game world (or at least the video game sphere on the internet) are full of such whiny pricks.
They’ve existed for years. Older gamers invented the term ‘scrub’ to define newbies or rather newbies with bad attitudes, usually in the context of 2D fighting games. These were the kids in the arcades who thought they’d found the invincible character, or the undefendable spam-able super that SHOULD win every fight for them… but would cuss or yell (accompanied by parting swipe at joystick) when one of the arcade’s veterans would hand their ass back to them. Today’s bitchy n00b is a descendant of the old scrub.
It’s too hard.
It has limited continues.
This character sucks.
No one could beat that boss.
The CPU cheats.
The game has rank.
It’s the fucking controls.
You’d have to buy the hint book to figure that out.
On and on the complaints. Not that any of the above issues are never true. I’ve played enough games to where every one of those things on the list have crossed my mind… or rather been shouted at the screen. We all have our good days and our bad days playing. The problem comes in when today’s players let this stuff spill out into the world, which of course is all too easy with access to the Web.
No shit, the CPU cheats. No game AI is going to be able to match the unpredictability, and cleverness of a (good) human player. So they program them to do things YOU cannot pull off. Look up the common trope ‘SNK Boss’ for a good example. I (along with a lot of players) hate rank in my STGs. It just seems like if you play well enough to earn all the powerups and extra ships there should be a commensurate ease with which you continue to blow through the opposition. I’ve run across my share of roadblocks that no reasonable, sane person could be expected to get past without a hint book or a peek at GameFAQs. There are all kinds of methods designers use to inject challenge into a game. The best of them use a gradual curve that follows a reasonable expectation of gained skill. And if it doesn’t, hopefully there is a difficulty setting in there somewhere.
These issues are often a legacy from the position the game companies used to have of sucking the quarters out of you in the arcades. It used to be quite an art to make a game easy enough at the beginning to get you hooked, and then start raping you for your money if you wanted to see further and further into the game. Nowadays, with the arcade model largely outmoded, game companies now build difficulty in to give a game longevity for the dollars you spent outright. If you are paying your ten to sixty bucks, the companies know they need to do better than give you an hour’s challenge… because then the n00bs will complain about THAT. ‘It’s too easy.’, ‘It’s too short.’. ‘It’s for casual gamers’. Cripes, just buy a DVD. You can find more eye candy for less effort that way. Spoon feed your brain and use your hands to hold a bag of Oreos instead of a controller.
There ARE (or have been) games that are too hard. It is sometimes difficult in the confusion of the internet to discern truly expert or hardcore gamers, but when their consensus points out a difficult or problematic instance, chances are they’re right… those damn levering platforms in the first Mega Man or the eagles in the NES Ninja Gaiden come to mind. Can anyone say that actually beating one of these ‘unfair’ situations is not the greatest moment in video game playing?
My own kid sounds kind of n00bish when he complains about the lack of continues in the games I play. But y’know? He’s ten. He also has grown up in a time when video games (of incredible sophistication compared to the old arcade games) are just pouring out of stores and into homes. He can download old arcade games. Find last month’s games at bargain prices. Sees ads for Mario, Sonic, Crash, and whatever mascot they dream up next month, hawking the latest. He doesn’t have a frame of reference from when video games were paid for one grueling quarter at a time, were only available when you made the effort to go there, or had home versions that barely resembled what you were used to playing.
Unfortunately he does have a Dad that trashes him when he’s being a scrub. Actually, that’s a little harsher than reality. But I do try to relate to him the same principle I’m trying to get to in this post:
That the good video game experience, like most things in life, is something that should be worked for… it should be earned.
I won’t tell him (or anyone) to never use a continue. Or a hint book. Sometimes, you just have to. But I’d also say don’t look ahead in the book. Or use the practice option if the game has one. Or go online to look for actual play tips as opposed to cheats. Or set the damn game aside for awhile and come back to it. Learn the game. If it was worth paying thirty bucks for, don’t just dismiss it as too hard or use a cheat to blow through it.
Don’t act fucking spoiled. You are spoiled, bitchy newbie. But stop acting like you are.
Jebus, I’ve been spending the last week looking at my local game stores for the new Samurai Shodown Anthology. If this disc had existed when I was a teen playing SamSho in the arcades I’d have seriously considered digging out my left nut with a rusty spoon if that would’ve obtained it. Now its out (somewhere) for twenty bucks on the PS2, thirty bucks on the Wii. Are you fucking kidding me? These things were arcade games. And if you could afford a NeoGeo they were originally hundreds of dollars per cartridge. Now you’ve got six of ‘em… all able to play on your sixty dollar refurbished PS2. And I’m reading whiny bitch-posts about controller support, graphics filters and whether SSV Special Edition is on there! Those complaints don’t have anything to do with difficulty-whining, but they are indicative of the mentality in the herd.
Occasionally, there comes a game that the level of effort involved in playing it well just doesn’t seem to match up to the reward. I’ve run across those games myself occasionally. This is, of course, related to the ‘crappy ending’ trope, but I’m not going to cast my net quite that wide for this particular ‘blog entry. It is just getting harder and harder for players looking for a really good experience to find it with all the information available… much of it poisoned by whining entitled newbies.
The internet has always been an outlet for people with too much bad to say and too much time on their hands. I sometimes wish these people had to go back in time and play video games the way they used to be played. One quarter at a time, waiting your turn behind some dude who made it look easy. And when you were done, you did NOT have the luxury of firing up the same game at home and playing it to your hearts content. Your next chance to practice wouldn’t come ‘til you went back to the arcade.
My son is catching on. As he’s gotten older, and his reflexes are catching up to his interests, he is putting the casual stuff aside and starting to recognize what the appeal is to the real deal. He’s currently into driving games because that’s where I am, but he’s got his own game he’s working through. He’s starting to feel it is too easy. What’s keeping him in it is that it funnels rewards to the player in pretty rapid succession so he’s eager to see what’s next. But he has his eye on a Shutokou Battle game, where some real challenge lies. He also thinks STGs are the cat’s ass. He sucks at them, but he’s getting better. He understands the greatness.
All in good time. I don’t put video games up there as any kind of gateway to being a better person, but I will really be happy if some of his understanding about challenges and perseverance learned in video games spills out into the rest of his life. If he doesn’t feel entitled in his simple entertainments, then there’s a shot he won’t take anything for granted.
I think that’s the deal with the entitled modern gaming scrub. He won’t put the effort in for the rewarding experience, yet he is inundated with terrible, casual or easy games. Not every young gamer is like this. I’m really dealing in generalities, but the good guys don’t bark nearly as much. They’re too busy enjoying the good games.
For parents of every decade it has always been a tightrope act to give their kids the best they can but still foster a sense of independence and a willingness to work. Work for what they get, work to overcome challenges, and learn to accept that sometimes work results in failure. We want our kids to have the proverbial ‘better lives than we did’ but at the same time it is commonly accepted that difficulties, setbacks, and hardship can be beneficial and a cornerstone of character building.
As a society (and I generally mean Western nations, where I hold a membership card) we have gradually nudged ourselves, throughout the last century and into this one, to have a pervasive caretaker attitude. In schools, government, and much of social discourse we are telling our children they are just as good for trying, or just showing up in many cases, as they are for actually accomplishing. ‘An A for effort’ has become a mantra.
Y’know? That mantra’s bullshit. Dash from Pixar’s The Incredibles was telling it like it is when he said, ‘If everyone is special, then no one is’. There has to be something more for the winner. I’m not saying there is NO merit in effort. I think there is. It is frequently the silver or bronze medallists who become the gold medallists. But when our young people leave the nuturing, A-for-effort, environment of their schools and get out into the real world, it is something of a shock for them to find the workplace actually expects fucking results and not to just have done ‘something, anything’. It is becoming an oft-repeated tale, the manager exasperated by the new hires (or interviewees) who feel ‘entitled’ to the rewards and attaboys, even if they don’t do a good job… like the position itself justifies all the stuff that comes with the job. The problem is becoming endemic so that many workplaces are feeling like they have to have some kind of policy in place to motivate these self-entitled tits. And you can’t just hire a different sort of worker, because it is rapidly becoming apparent that this is about all there is.
With my kids, I’m fighting a neverending battle against the Forces of Mollycoddle, just to have them grow up with some fortitude and a decent work ethic.
Kind of a long rant/backstory to where I really wanted to go with this. I’m not really all that worked up about the topic because the place where I live is so full of general apathy, and other problems related to it, that the entitlement thing is just a drop in the bucket and I’m kind of inured to it, in the real day-to-day world. But it provides some sort of rationale for why the video game world (or at least the video game sphere on the internet) are full of such whiny pricks.
They’ve existed for years. Older gamers invented the term ‘scrub’ to define newbies or rather newbies with bad attitudes, usually in the context of 2D fighting games. These were the kids in the arcades who thought they’d found the invincible character, or the undefendable spam-able super that SHOULD win every fight for them… but would cuss or yell (accompanied by parting swipe at joystick) when one of the arcade’s veterans would hand their ass back to them. Today’s bitchy n00b is a descendant of the old scrub.
It’s too hard.
It has limited continues.
This character sucks.
No one could beat that boss.
The CPU cheats.
The game has rank.
It’s the fucking controls.
You’d have to buy the hint book to figure that out.
On and on the complaints. Not that any of the above issues are never true. I’ve played enough games to where every one of those things on the list have crossed my mind… or rather been shouted at the screen. We all have our good days and our bad days playing. The problem comes in when today’s players let this stuff spill out into the world, which of course is all too easy with access to the Web.
No shit, the CPU cheats. No game AI is going to be able to match the unpredictability, and cleverness of a (good) human player. So they program them to do things YOU cannot pull off. Look up the common trope ‘SNK Boss’ for a good example. I (along with a lot of players) hate rank in my STGs. It just seems like if you play well enough to earn all the powerups and extra ships there should be a commensurate ease with which you continue to blow through the opposition. I’ve run across my share of roadblocks that no reasonable, sane person could be expected to get past without a hint book or a peek at GameFAQs. There are all kinds of methods designers use to inject challenge into a game. The best of them use a gradual curve that follows a reasonable expectation of gained skill. And if it doesn’t, hopefully there is a difficulty setting in there somewhere.
These issues are often a legacy from the position the game companies used to have of sucking the quarters out of you in the arcades. It used to be quite an art to make a game easy enough at the beginning to get you hooked, and then start raping you for your money if you wanted to see further and further into the game. Nowadays, with the arcade model largely outmoded, game companies now build difficulty in to give a game longevity for the dollars you spent outright. If you are paying your ten to sixty bucks, the companies know they need to do better than give you an hour’s challenge… because then the n00bs will complain about THAT. ‘It’s too easy.’, ‘It’s too short.’. ‘It’s for casual gamers’. Cripes, just buy a DVD. You can find more eye candy for less effort that way. Spoon feed your brain and use your hands to hold a bag of Oreos instead of a controller.
There ARE (or have been) games that are too hard. It is sometimes difficult in the confusion of the internet to discern truly expert or hardcore gamers, but when their consensus points out a difficult or problematic instance, chances are they’re right… those damn levering platforms in the first Mega Man or the eagles in the NES Ninja Gaiden come to mind. Can anyone say that actually beating one of these ‘unfair’ situations is not the greatest moment in video game playing?
My own kid sounds kind of n00bish when he complains about the lack of continues in the games I play. But y’know? He’s ten. He also has grown up in a time when video games (of incredible sophistication compared to the old arcade games) are just pouring out of stores and into homes. He can download old arcade games. Find last month’s games at bargain prices. Sees ads for Mario, Sonic, Crash, and whatever mascot they dream up next month, hawking the latest. He doesn’t have a frame of reference from when video games were paid for one grueling quarter at a time, were only available when you made the effort to go there, or had home versions that barely resembled what you were used to playing.
Unfortunately he does have a Dad that trashes him when he’s being a scrub. Actually, that’s a little harsher than reality. But I do try to relate to him the same principle I’m trying to get to in this post:
That the good video game experience, like most things in life, is something that should be worked for… it should be earned.
I won’t tell him (or anyone) to never use a continue. Or a hint book. Sometimes, you just have to. But I’d also say don’t look ahead in the book. Or use the practice option if the game has one. Or go online to look for actual play tips as opposed to cheats. Or set the damn game aside for awhile and come back to it. Learn the game. If it was worth paying thirty bucks for, don’t just dismiss it as too hard or use a cheat to blow through it.
Don’t act fucking spoiled. You are spoiled, bitchy newbie. But stop acting like you are.
Jebus, I’ve been spending the last week looking at my local game stores for the new Samurai Shodown Anthology. If this disc had existed when I was a teen playing SamSho in the arcades I’d have seriously considered digging out my left nut with a rusty spoon if that would’ve obtained it. Now its out (somewhere) for twenty bucks on the PS2, thirty bucks on the Wii. Are you fucking kidding me? These things were arcade games. And if you could afford a NeoGeo they were originally hundreds of dollars per cartridge. Now you’ve got six of ‘em… all able to play on your sixty dollar refurbished PS2. And I’m reading whiny bitch-posts about controller support, graphics filters and whether SSV Special Edition is on there! Those complaints don’t have anything to do with difficulty-whining, but they are indicative of the mentality in the herd.
Occasionally, there comes a game that the level of effort involved in playing it well just doesn’t seem to match up to the reward. I’ve run across those games myself occasionally. This is, of course, related to the ‘crappy ending’ trope, but I’m not going to cast my net quite that wide for this particular ‘blog entry. It is just getting harder and harder for players looking for a really good experience to find it with all the information available… much of it poisoned by whining entitled newbies.
The internet has always been an outlet for people with too much bad to say and too much time on their hands. I sometimes wish these people had to go back in time and play video games the way they used to be played. One quarter at a time, waiting your turn behind some dude who made it look easy. And when you were done, you did NOT have the luxury of firing up the same game at home and playing it to your hearts content. Your next chance to practice wouldn’t come ‘til you went back to the arcade.
My son is catching on. As he’s gotten older, and his reflexes are catching up to his interests, he is putting the casual stuff aside and starting to recognize what the appeal is to the real deal. He’s currently into driving games because that’s where I am, but he’s got his own game he’s working through. He’s starting to feel it is too easy. What’s keeping him in it is that it funnels rewards to the player in pretty rapid succession so he’s eager to see what’s next. But he has his eye on a Shutokou Battle game, where some real challenge lies. He also thinks STGs are the cat’s ass. He sucks at them, but he’s getting better. He understands the greatness.
All in good time. I don’t put video games up there as any kind of gateway to being a better person, but I will really be happy if some of his understanding about challenges and perseverance learned in video games spills out into the rest of his life. If he doesn’t feel entitled in his simple entertainments, then there’s a shot he won’t take anything for granted.
I think that’s the deal with the entitled modern gaming scrub. He won’t put the effort in for the rewarding experience, yet he is inundated with terrible, casual or easy games. Not every young gamer is like this. I’m really dealing in generalities, but the good guys don’t bark nearly as much. They’re too busy enjoying the good games.
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