Site News: Last.fm thingy added, also: drunk posting
Okay, sorry for three posts in one day. If it counts towards anything, I'm drunk making this last post.
In my drunken stupor I have added a Last.fm thingy to the site, so that you, my loyal reader(s), can always see which bands-you-have-never-heard-of I am listening to, and amend your record buying habits accordingly.
Also, if my last post didn't make it clear enough, those among you who read comics should be reading Gail Simone's 'Birds of Prey', and should probably get the Trade-Paperback 'Villains United' (my favorite series, not counting Seven Soldiers, of last year). Also, go see Brick, listen to the new album by Why? and try to love each other a little more each day.
Oh, and I am one-tenth through my thousand-page meganovel 'Zero Dollars'. Coming to bookstores summer of 2010. Or 2020. Well, sometime before we're killing our neighbors to get at the last can of food on the continent, or saluting World-President Jintao.
Excelsior and all that!
All Cheesecake buffet
Rejoice fans of fighting and boobies- The Dead or Alive movie is almost upon us! Here's the trailer, which should stoke guys with IQs under a hundred as if their febrile minds were a dying fire.
Now, I played Dead or Alive, I can't remember which one, and finished it kinda quickly, as in under twenty minutes, since no rough-housing simulation since Street Fighter Two has presented a challenge to anybody using both hands to play. DOA: Beach Volleyball is somewhere on my Xbox's hard-drive, somewhere near the downloaded NES Roms, and will go unplayed unless I have to wait out a nuclear winter in my front room. Much like Dungeon Seige, I really don't care that they're making a movie out of this game and, also like Dungeon Seige, I'll never see it. I'm really more pissed off that smart, creative people whose talents could benefit the games industry are going to see this crap and be turned off.
Y'know, in the last few months I've only blogged about videogames, comics and movies of videogames. I really ought to read a book one of these days.
Everything's Blurry
Many thanks to my number-one gal Emily for this magnificent portrait of me, done in the style of the cover to this Blur 'best-of' (full disclosure: despite how my the picture on my Blogger profile looks, I am not an action figure of Deathstroke teh Terminator. Sorry everybody)
Also, this cartoony picture and talk of Deathstroke has gotten me in the mood to review This Week in Comics:
Birds of Prey- Gail Simone, Paulo Siqueria (pencils), Robin Riggs (ink)
'Twice the talent, half the sales' Part 2 of 6
The all-female superteam team up to stab the villainous Captain Comicbookbuyer in the crotch. Simone once again delivers witty dialogue, compelling plot twists and a excruciating scene in which everybody who bought All Star Batman and Robin is made to choke on the cover of issue three. Only 3000 copies of this issue have been printed and most pages aren't inked due to D.C's descision to reallocate much of their budget onto the forthcoming 'Power-girl, Starfire and Bulleteer: Pillowfight of Destiny'.
Next month: Part 3: 'Seriously, did you see how many copies of Ms. Marvel they're selling and why can't I do one fucking interview without being asked what it's like to be a woman working in comics?'
Marvel Civil War: It's an allegory, fuckers. Mark Waid et al.
Part 1: 'It's like 9/11 and stuff.'
When a superhuman conflict turns deadly the government introduces the 'Superhero registration act', a concept which we've never seen before in comics history! This multi-series crossover promises the return of obscure heroes from Marvel's past (who is the mysterious 'Wolverine'?) and finally satisfies Marvel fans' need for a earth-shattering crossover event.
Punisher fucks a bear Garth Ennis, Steve Dillion (pencils)
Part 4 of 6: 'The Asiatic Black Bear'
Urban avenger Frank Castle stalks and defiles Ursus thibetanus, a species of bear native to the highlands of South-East Asia.
FOR MATURE READERS ONLY.
Runaways, Y the Last Man and Ex Machina: I pwn all you bastards, Brian K. Vaughn et al.
Part 1: Mayor Hundred laughs at new issues of Green Arrow.
In this hotly anticipated inter-company crossover event, Marvel's Runaways, Vertigo's Yorrick Brown and Wildstorm's Mayor Mitchell Hundred each find themselves in the 'pwnage zone', a shadowy dimension filled with comics by lesser writers.
WARNING: CONTAINS DETAILED PICTURES OF GERTRUDE'S VELOCIRAPTOR SHITTING OUT DIGESTED COPIES OF INFINITE CRISIS AND YORRICK'S MONKEY AMPERSAND THROWING IT AT A TRADE PAPERBACK OF HOUSE OF M.
Also on sale this week:
Spider Man #531: Let us never speak of 'The Other' again. The new costume's pretty cool huh?
Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein! #4: It'll be worth the wait, but that doesn't mean you'll ever know what's going on.
Astonishing X-men #14: 'If the guy who did Buffy says Grant Morrison's New X-men run happened, then it happened'.
Liberality for All #2: Apparently it's not all an elaborte joke and the writer is actually a xenophobic psycho with a persecution complex.
Desolation Jones #6: You never want to mess with Warren Ellis. He will fuck you up if he has time between updating his blog ten times a day. I'm going to tell him the Liberality guy called him a pussy and wait for the headline: 'Right-wing comic writer force-fed own balls over and over- police seek chain-smoking bald guy'.
That's it for this week true believers!
Double Barrelled Blogging:The Deadly Games of Teenage Jesus
Spot all 36 ninja in this painting and win an XBOX 360!!!! HOT PLEASE LOOK!!!
Today I've had my joy-buzzer tweaked but-good, by the unlikely bedfellows Teenage Jesus and New Scientist.
The above picture is artist Tom Trujillo's 'controversial' painting of Teenage Jesus, entitled 'Teenage Jesus'. In my head it's subtitled 'Don Killuminati: To the five boroughs: Disciples of the 36 chambers: off the chain fo' tha Y2k', but that's just me. The Justin Timberlake looking cracker in the picture is our lord and savior as a teen, rolling in the hood and sticking it to the man, fo' real. The Kids are totally going to be stoked by this picture.
But we'd better get it into every classroom soon, because from the looks of things our wee ones are savage monsters. Fortunately many of them will be so fat that their chubby little fingers won't fit inside a trigger guard, because: "each additional hour of TV watched each day by kids resulted in an extra 167 calories consumed, often from sugary drinks, fast foods and candy featured in adverts" Huh? Candy featured in adverts? Willy Wonka must have made a breakthrough, because last time I checked you can't eat the candy in adverts.
We've been hearing this stuff for years (the TV-violence stuff, Teen Jesus is a new development), and as violent crime rates continue to fall it just sounds more and more hollow.
Do yourself a favor an get away from a world of misguided religious sentiments and scientists who'd rather collect an easy paycheck than do worthwhile research: go see Brick. If you're in a major U.S city it's probably playing or will be soon, and it'll be in the rest of the world in a few months. For once I encourage you not to download it, at least until after you've seen it, because for once the filmmakers deserve your money.
No sex please, we're trying to have fun
Hot Coffee: The presence of a 'Fist' icon in the upper left is a little worrying.
So, I've noticed a lot of talk recently (in the linked article featured on Digg and in the always excellent Escapist magazine) about sex in videogames.
The argument goes that videogames are growing up (and pretty much falls down right there), and gamers are growing up, so we need grown-up themes in our M-rated games. Like fucking. So far, crap like the Lula and Leisure Suit Larry games have been as far as the mainstream has got to sex-based games, and neither series was that much fun. Then there was Grand Theft Auto, and the Hot Coffee 'mod', again not that much fun all told, and the whole 'romance' part of San Andreas was probably the weakest part of the game- often leading to immersion killing contrivances like the dance mini-games. There's also the fuckingness that creeps into MMORPGs, where (often cross-dressing) players whore their feeble imaginations out to higher-level players in return for gold and gifts (with hilarious results). It's all good fun- but I draw the line at cybering in Eve Online; hot Freighter-on-Freighter action is a kink too far.
So summarise: sex in games is either shit or improvised. Not surprising when you consider its competition: sex in real life, which can be improvised, sure, but between consenting, experienced adults is rarely all that bad.
Now, am I alone in thinking that we play games to get into worlds and situations that are better than real life? In a real-life gun fight the two possible outcomes are a bloody death if I lose or a lifetime of guilt and possible jail sentence if I win. In games I can shrug off dozens of bullets and experience no guilt at all. Games one, life nil.
Then there's the matter of integration. Violence is pretty easy, because it presents a challenge. Fuck up your violencing and you have to replay from the last save point, or in MMORPGs you lose money, items or experience points (In Eve, if your Corporation's planet-sized Titan gets blown up you've lost several hundred dollars, several weeks of training and every friend you've ever made in the game). If you fuck up your sexualising? Well, the virtual girl might not like you any more (and you better believe your fucktarget's going to be a girl). The other alternative is a sexy cutscene as a reward. This is pretty horrible. You remember the end of 'Under Siege', where Steven Seagal makes out with that Playboy Bunny in front of the crew of that aircraft carrier? Watch that immediately after finishing an FPS and you'll see how awkward this idea is.
Then there's control and feedback. In real sex you've got five senses and a billion nerve endings telling you what's fun. If you're doing it right that's not even your primary concern- all the billions of nerve endings and suchforth in your partner is where your brain should be. An Excitement bar, some sound effects ('fap, fap, fap') and a buzzing control pad don't go nearly far enough to convey the complex feedback you get from a real sex partner. Now, I'm not saying that the funny little buzz from an Xbox controller replicates what it's like to fire a gun- there's no recoil, no gunsmoke- but sex is divine and violence is profane. In other words, you don't want to get violence right, so gamers and developers can settle for less, whereas sex is wonderful and seeing as games can't do it justice it shouldn't be done at all.
Also, before I forget half of the potential gamers in the world, dig this: sex in games going to drive women gamers away. You get that boys? Your LAN parties are going to become sausage parties, the chances of that buxom elf you've just signed your Epic Mount over to being a more realistically proportioned lady becomes slim to nil. I don't wish to imply that women are turned off by erotica, or even pornography- they aren't. Some of the finest pornhounds I know are female. But the games industry is more male-driven than even the porn industry, and it shows. Speaking as a guy involved almost exclusively in making imaginative fiction I can tell you on good authority that most of us are just not that good at crafting female characters that women can relate to. Those of us perceptive enough to realise that Princess McBreasts- the martially skilled but vulnerable love interest of Strongo the Barbarian- might not appeal to our limited female customer base usually seek out our wives, girlfriends and female friends to get their input on characterization. Not possible when the only woman working for your hip and progressive software company is the receptionist. Developers just aren't going to be able to write sexual situations that feel realistic to female gamers, and through word of mouth and blog potential gamers and developers who just happen to have ovaries are going to turn away, leaving only teenage boys who think that 'Well done for defeating those Kobolds Strongo, now take me with your Barbarian sex! (push up and down in rhythm)' is a mature situation.
(Oh, and don't get me started on the possibility of gay themes in games: when the maker of the biggest MMORPG in the world has to be told that a LGBT-friendly guild doesn't constitute hate speech we're a long way off from seeing 'Ah wish I knew how to quit you' as a dialogue option. Or even one gamer in a thousand who knows where that quote comes from).
So, developers: hire more women- especially in the non-technical side of the development process, like writing and producing. There's a female Will Wright or Peter Molyneux out there just waiting to transfer her ideas into code, and create a massively important (and profitable) crossover hit. Guy gamers: stop buying games with badly done sex in them- this should be as instinctive as saying 'don't put sharp things into your urethra', but apparently still needs to be said considering the sales of tawdry crap like Lesiure Suit Larry: Cum Magna Lauda. Women gamers: keep playing, don't hide your gender in MMORPGs or devalue it by 'cybering' your way to rewards males have to earn. Become the best at what you do, run your own Guild or Corp, call male players out on their sexist bullshit. This goes double for queer-identified players: don't let some pimply fourteen year old use 'fag' as an insult. Report them if they pull that 'but I'm doing freedom of speech' crap- they're obviously too stupid to be using a computer.
If enough people do this, we might just have a game fit for adult consumption some time before the universe implodes.
