The cake is a lie!

I finished up Portal a couple of weeks ago Unbelievably awesome! It has a great gameplay hook (umm... portals), great dialog, excellent production values, and it's short enough that it doesn't become repetitive. And holy shit the song from the ending credits has been stuck in my head for a week. (<-- SPOILERS) It's also a genuinely funny game in a sea of super serious squad based first person shooters. Hooray comedy! I really hope that this game helps bring about shorter, more innovative AAA titles. This is exactly the kind of game that should be available in stand-alone form on XBox Live Arcade. Maybe Valve is the only kind of company that can make a game like Portal. They already have a great in-house engine that they don't have to pay any licensing fees for, and they have the cash flow from Half Life and Steam to pretty much do whatever they want to. The sky's the limit over there. But I've heard rumors of "budget" licensing of the Unreal engine, so maybe it's not too much to hope for. EA kind of squished my hopes and dreams for a middleware revolution a when they bought out Criterion in 2004... but maybe they just delayed the inevitable for a few years. If small studios full of talented people can license next-gen technology on the cheap and produce a short AAA title in the downloadable space then I'm going to be very excited about the future. And oh look... we already had RoboBlitz that used Unreal3... maybe the future's not too far away after all. :D

Hang on... this post was supposed to be about Portal. Portal is badass. And I've been told that ex-Double Finer Erik Wolpaw wrote a lot of the dialog. He's pretty awesome... and if you didn't think Portal was funny at all then I'm coming over to your house with a shiv. Actually... come to think of it... if you don't buy Portal right now I'm coming over to your house with a shiv. Remember the Detroit face-cutting thing? Yeah... it's real.

-Brad!

Bionic Commando!

Hot damn they're remaking Bionic Commando. Bionic mother fucking Commando.

If you aren't aware, Bionic Commando was an arcade and NES staple back in the day. You control some dude with a weird name like Ladd Spencer to save Super Joe, the main character from Commando (another ridiculously awesome Capcom classic). At first glance it looks like standard side-scrolling platformer fare, but the big twist is that your character can't jump... instead he shoots out his telescoping bionic arm to swing and climb around the environment. It was very innovative at the time and a hell of a lot of fun.

Bionic Commando on the NES was very different from the arcade version. The Japanese version was called Top Secret: Hitler's Revival. It's in the future and you have to stop the Nazis who are trying to revive Hitler. 8-bit games didn't exactly have the market cornered on original plot lines. When they localized it for the States they decided to take out all of the Nazi stuff and replace it with... other stuff. The Nazis became Badds and Hitler became the mysterious "Master D." (man... Japan is AWESOME) At the end of the game you shoot a rocket through the cockpit of Hitler's chopper and his face explodes (sorry if I ruined it for you, but I think the statue of spoiler limitations on Bionic Commando has passed). It was very badass to kill a reborn Hitler as a 12 year old. And holy crap was that a lot of rambling explanation just so I could post an 8-bit image of Hitler's face exploding.

I am a little bit cautious about getting too excited about the remake because of the development team. It's being developed in Sweden by a team that's most recently done PC ports of GRAW. It's being overseen by some creative directors at Capcom Japan. And it's being produced by American producers at Capcom USA. It's not necessarily a recipe for disaster... but... I'll be crossing my fingers. I want some hot next-gen bionic grappling arm action!

-Brad!

Jerks!

I've been playing a lot of Halo 3 recently and it got me thinking about what makes people act like complete asshats online. Every 20 second post-game lobby of a Halo 3 match is filled with more expletives than a 20 minute Lewis Black stand up special. What the hell is going on here?

Contrary to the beliefs of many Halo 3 players, I am in fact not an African American Homosexual. (side note: Why are these two "insults" the most popular ones heard on xbox live? Are we really that racist and homophobic?) I've been working on this theory about why the XBox Live community seems to be comprised primarily of douche bags. Here's my breakdown:

1) The Greater Internet Dickwad Theory. It's pretty simple... normal people, when given a public forum and pure anonymity, tend to just fly off the handle and become assholes.

2) Competition. I'm guessing that most hardcore gamers haven't been exposed to the concept of healthy competition. (or at least they think it's a load of shit) They don't see the positive qualities of being a humble winner and loser, so there's no reason for them to do it, especially in the consequence-free environment of the internets.

3) Fraternity hazing logic. I think that a lot of hardcore gamers are abused in other parts of their lives. School, girls, jocks, parents, etc... there are a lot of forces arrayed against them and they tend to be a frustrated lot. I know that I had a rough time being a nerd in school. Judging by the pitch of my opponents' voices, it seems like most of them are in middle-to-high school, facing a lot of rough challenges everyday. When given the chance to be a good sport after winning or losing, these kids tend to vent their anger and pass it along to me. Thanks kids!

4) Single player games. Most console-only gamers are pretty new to mutliplayer online gaming. Single player games have largely been about player experience... making you feel like a powerful badass as you stomp on the AI and achieve total action-hero victory. Most single player games have only gotten easier in recent years as well... they're pretty damn easy compared to how difficult they used to be. Halo's matchmaking is pretty good... resulting in a 50% win/loss ratio. That should be good enough for everyone to have a good time, but when you're used to utterly destroying an uncaring AI 98% of the time, winning 50% of the time is kind of like a swift kick in the junk.

I wish that I knew more about psychology or other sciences that deal with why people act like asshats. Maybe I would have more facts to back up my theory. So take all of this with a grain of salt... I'm sure there's someone out there with a PhD that could tell me just how far off base I really am.

And finally... my apologies go out to the 5% of players who genuinely return my "Good Game" sentiments in the Halo 3 post-game lobby. You guys are fucking awesome and you give me hope for both gamers and humanity in general. :D!

-Brad!