Posters, Posters, Posters!

Over the years I have amassed quite a lot of artwork of my own doing. On this blog alone, I have created hundreds of original pieces of art - so, about a year ago, I decided that I was going to start selling posters through a little this-and-that eBay store that I run with my wife as a neat and fun way to make a little bit of extra money (ie. daycare support!).

The store is doing well and we enjoy messing around with it. We aren't changing the world with the number of posters we have sold, but we have sold a few.

This has prompted the set-up of a mini-poster boutique site called Poster Attic, that you can visit here - posterattic.com.

The selection is a little small right now because I'm still building it out. If you would like a wider selection of poster and prints head on over to our eBay HT Spirits store where there are over 100 unique posters to browse.

I hope you'll see something you like.

ABOUT

Both my wife and I have B.A.'s in graphic design and fine art. From 2001 - 2017 I worked in online distribution, assembly, and manufacturing with Art.com, Inc. and Amazon.

If you would like to follow comings and goings of our little poster biz you can follow:

Follow @HtSpirits

Here's what the stores look like:

MLS in the English Football Pyramid

A frequent conversation you see on social media between strangers is where MLS teams would fall were they to take part in the mighty English football league system.

Where you fall in this argument essentially depends on your affection for MLS. So let's start there, the definition of who a fan of the league is.

MLS fans, to this day, are recycled fans of other US sports. It is unusual to find a lifelong, soccer 1st fan making MLS their league of choice for any long period of time. Contrary to popular belief, soccer 1st folks, whether they came to the sport later in life or were born with a ball at their feet, do watch MLS. It's just that they have a better understanding of its place, globally. This isn't a knock, same goes for folks that have traveled extensively have a more rounded global perspective.

As with anything, there is a bias built in. Like MLS? Well, you probably think it would have a few teams popping up into the top level of English football. Luke-warm on MLS, "hey, they'd compete pretty well in the Championship," and so on down the line.

Me, personally? I'm a lifelong fan of the sport that was excited when MLS launched - forgot about the league in the mid-2000s - rediscovered it in 2008 - got excited when Garber talked about Promotion and Relegation in 2010 and decided to cover the local MLS team, which I did continuously for eight years (I challenge you to find any blogger covering it longer).

Now, with my MLS credentials laid out there - where do I think MLS teams would fall in England and their 11 tiers and 7,000 odd teams?

League 1, mostly. Then split between League 2 and lower.

You may have a couple "Championship quality" teams, but they would not survive an actual competitive system.

AN ACTUAL COMPETITION

What do I mean by that? Well, league competition in England at the pro level is a meat grinder. Teams play over 10 more matches than MLS a year in their league alone. Add in cup matches and you quickly find out that MLS teams would just fall apart. They are not built for that. If they would have a star DP miss a few weeks or longer, or have a nasty contract dispute, the team would fall to the bottom half of the table alone.

Regardless, I do believe there are a couple of things at play when this conversation comes up. 

First is the "super bowl" effect. What that means is that MLS fans look at it as a one-game type thing. Like, LAFC could hold her own in a single game against Stoke, per say. And that's kinda true. But that's not what a league competition is. Hell, that's not what THE SPORT OF SOCCER IS. It's about who navigates a 40+ game season the best.

Second (and settle in here, I have a lot to say): Video games. 

SOCCER VIDEO GAMES

Load up the latest EA Sports FIFA and take your favorite MLS team online and you'll see that you can beat someone playing with the best in the world. I've been here. I remember my best online seasons were controlling 2010 Columbus Crew teams for hours on end. It gets you thinking "Hey, I'm winning! MLS teams are great!"

There's more to the video game impact. Compare and contrast player ratings and you'll see that the folks in Vancouver who decide such things have a player like Justin Meram or Patrick Mullins rated just the same as some Premier league players. Reason would have you thinking; well, MLS is just as good. Again, this just isn't the case. Setting the inflated rating argument aside for a moment, MLS teams only have a couple players per team like that, whereas teams like Everton have 20+. It's a wall have talented players, not just a few.

Another impact games have is when you play the game on a difficulty level that does not challenge you as a player. You see it all the time on Twitter, hell, I've done it. "So-and-so MLS player had six goals vs Real Madrid last night!" MLS is great!

VIDEO GAMES AND USSF REFORM

As a long time soccer gamer with a collection of games dating back to the Atari 2600 in my possession, I can safely tell you that I am confident in my video game understanding and analysis. I can also tell you that it was a video game that, in part, drove me to become a proponent for reform within the USSF.

It's something I've thought about often over the years. How on earth did it happen?

Somewhere a decade ago, around the same time I was rediscovering MLS, I discovered how fun it was to create your own tournament within EA games. What I would do is swap out all the MLS teams for English League 2 teams, pick the Crew and climb the ladder. It was incredibly fun to see how far MLS teams would go along with my own journey. 

By the year 2024 (or whatever) FIFA had MLS teams rising to the Championship along with me and eventually to the Prem. That said, the unintended nightmare side effect of this was when I would check to see how things were in the ol' MLS - and see how the swapped out League 2 teams were doing...

This is where things changed. 

There they were, fake-EA years advanced where I, myself and the Columbus Crew, had climbed to the highest levels of European football - Northampton Town, Bury, Chesterfield, Shrewsbury Town and on - just sitting there. Stuck in a virtual MLS prison. Playing each other for eternity over and over. Nothing to climb, nothing to fall too. Just... there.

Not long after I experienced a similar emotional event playing Sega's Football Manager.

With this game, I found myself officially reviewing it for a site for another MLS outlet. Of course, I had to play as an MLS team, in MLS. It was a straight-laced, out of the box, play. Which was fine.

At the start, I had no problems. In fact, the experience helped in my understanding of the quirky league rules (salary caps, DPs, international slots, etc) and improved my writing. 

It was fun, that first season or two. However, a few virtual seasons on is where I ran into problems. Not with the game, mind you. It was MLS. 100% MLS. It became groundhog day. Same teams, battling it out, season after season. No real reward. No real failure. Things just clicked along. 

A familiar nightmare type feeling came over me. Just like when I sent history soaked League 2 sides to MLS with EA, I now felt like I was in an MLS prison. To put it another way, I felt like I was riding a never-ending merry-go-round when all the other kids were riding every other roller coaster in the amusement park.

After I finished the review of the game I decided to look for another job in the virtual world of Football Manager. Which I found. In the Vanarama Conference North.

I've never looked back.

Games

Every once and a while I'll spin a thread about a game or two over here > Happytown Applesauce

Applesauce

Happytown Applesauce

A little while back I created a little place called Happytown Applesauce to write and do - well, whatever really. After resisting the urge many a night to post here (sometimes succumbing), I've decided to make it a place to tuck away my thought on games. It'll serve the same purpose as Helltown. Just a creative outlet with as many interesting thoughts as possible, clean space and not driven by ads. Honest thoughts, warts and all.

I've just finished a post on EA's Battlefield Hardline (LA Noire and writer Tom Bissell). Not out to change the world but I like games and do feel like they are a little under served as far as thoughtful writing. I'll do my best. Go check it out if that's your thing. Thanks!

Seventh Annual Helltown Beer Game of the Year, This War of Mine

2014 marked a different kind of year for console focused game players as we saw all three of the major players - Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony - release new consoles to as little fanfare in the history of video gaming.

That's not to say it's a bad thing. It's actually good. Have we finally reached a day that gaming progress isn't marked by better graphics on bigger and badder TVs? The macro market says "no, we have not." But, while it might not show at the executive summary level, there has been a shift away from that to something more simple.

[I see PC folks nodding their head].

I've been through enough new console events to know that the first year is basically a dud. All the new hardware requires studios that have the money time, and more time, to adjust, learn and expand upon. One of the best things about the last generation was that it lasted so long. Longest in the relatively short history of gaming, actually. So what ended up happening is that developers had the tools and comfort level with the hardware. With that, we got some of the best games in a generation. It's something that this new generation had to teach me, I guess.

With that, my Game of the Year is This War of Mine. A comparatively simple game with a deeply moving and intense narrative. By intense - I mean downbeat. Solemn. Thoughtful. Terrible. Depressing.



Those words remind me of a story I once heard about an art exhibit. It was in a hallway and focused on typography. On one side was words like FAST, RUN, INTENSE, and the like. Active words. On the other side was the opposite. SLOW, WALK, and so on. What the exhibitors were looking for was if the words had any impact on the visitors. Indeed they did. People that were reading one side moved through faster than the other. The impact of simple language at work in a simple setting.

This War of Mine takes a look at war from a civilians perspective. Not a in the hero or godlike warrior form we normally see these days. Just in the for of normal people figuring out how to survive in a war torn city. The gameplay is resource driven. Go out and scavenge for supplies and risk healthy character to help sick ones? Or leave him home to stand guard through the night. This game tells you that there is no correct answer.

This game impacted me in another way, in that I had a employee on my one of my teams from an area, let's say, close to Bosnia. He didn't talk much about the war, nor what it was like. But I do know that he had to leave the US to go back to try and prove that, in fact, he did exist. Reason being, generations of records had been destroyed by a recent war in the region. There was nothing. He felt he was nothing and had to go back to prove he was a person that existed. The day he left I told him I should come out and visit... "visit what," he replied.

This War of Mine is unrelenting and. for anyone that tries it, has you questioning what exactly makes a game. To me, it taps into the incredible storytelling power of games that can hit you like a load of bricks. Not the made of foam type that movies have. The real kind. And each minute of this game has to working that out.

The game is about decisions and not skill / reaction time or big cut screens. This past year has seen games, game writers, artists and developers realizing that you don't need those things.

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MORE GAMES I ENJOYED



First up is one I'm still enjoying. It's NBA 2K15. Visual Concepts, Take 2 and 2K have outdone themselves with this series. EA's FIFA might be the glamour title in the world of sports right now but this game... this game. I don't know how many hundreds of hours I have on FIFA over the years but nothing is as jaw dropping as 2K15. It's an amazing technical achievement. I've put a good bit in to the "My Player" function of the game recently and while the story drifts after a bit the gameplay picks it up. It's the summit of sports role playing. And it's beautiful. The vine you see here is of my first NBA start. It took me a couple 10 day deals to make it work but I made it happen. Well worth pulling out the phone to record the vine.

Something else worth mentioning is The Wolf Among Us. It's an episodic game, storytelling based with quicktime elements. Technically, it started back in 2013 but most of the episodes showed up in 2014.Telltale games is the publisher and with "Wolf" has become the sort of go to place for episodic games (currently working with the Game of Thrones property, which is about the top of the top). I picked up "Wolf" because the time (1980s) period and the familiar stories (fairy tales). Expanding upon stories is nothing new (Into the Woods type stuff, the 80s Broadway type) but it's a game with choose your own adventure type elements. It works. Really well. A downbeat game that captures a 200 Cigarettes New York about as good as any piece of modern entertainment has. I'm back and forth on the art/animation but an early scene with a chain smoking member of the three little pigs in a shitty apartment will have you hooked.

THE DUD, THE ALMOST NOT A DUD

Assassin's Creed is a series that I like and had irrational high hopes for with Unity. It is a labored mess but I won't let it tarnish a series that consider to be entertaining (on the major platforms). Unity is the quintessential year one release on a new console. A beautiful mess. I found myself taking loads of screenshots and videos but as you progresses through the game it became a godawful mess. So much pretty and so little meaningfulness.

Right behind that I have Far Cry 4. A game coming on the heels of a game I fell in love with in 3. This year's version fine tuned the story while trying to meet the demands of a media that dumped on the "mighty whitey" narrative of the third game.

Four has it's moments. Well, moment. I guess. The famous Rochan "Advanced Chemistry" brick factory comes to mind. Far Cry has a special place with me but it's one that I keep at arms length. So much filler (that I enjoy immensely) with little else as far as story. As I was playing it, I was constantly thinking of what to write about it. Ubisoft fine tuned the story and offered up a playgound of fun. Maybe that should be a testament to the game. Part of me believes that. But the other part of me thinks that the story was just an expansion upon what was just a bit part in the Uncharted series (albeit a beautiful part).

Far Cry 4, for me, is the game that bridges a lot of gaming gaps in a new console year. It's pretty. Stable. And fun as hell. Just not a lot to sink my teeth into on the story side. The idea and foundation is there, just not the execution. Difficult to explain after spending most of my holiday with this game. It's great, but more needed (?).

Did I mention pretty? Also, it's Far Cry. Ultimately, the previous two editions of this game are superior in many regards but Four has enough to satisfy the old school adventure gamer in all of us.

With that, a good place to stop. Lots of good games out there these days and I play them all year only to dump it all here in a game of the year post. It's unfair really.

Anywho. So much to cover, but I'll leave it. I found a great list over at Kill Screen that I like for year end things. Happy gaming.

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Previous Helltown Game of the Year Winners:

2014: This War of Mine
2013: Last of Us
2012: Sleeping Dogs
2011: Skyrim
2010: Red Dead Redemption / Heavy Rain
2009: Uncharted 2
2008: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

The 6th Helltown Beer Game of the Year

Every year I pick my favorite video game of the past twelve months or so and 'tis time for it once again. This feature has become sort of how I mark time here at Helltown.

THE 2013 HELLTOWN GAME OF THE YEAR IS LAST OF US

Naughty Dog is a one of the handful of studios that seem to be doing it right and are on top of their game. Directors Bruce Straley, Neil Druckmann... Designer Jacob Minkoff... Artists Erick Pangilinan and Nate Wells... I want to list them all because of the impact this game had on me.

I've never finished a game and sat in amazement as all credits rolled, save for this one. A lot of times in games finishing it is more of a relief. An "alright, let's wrap this up already" type thing.

One of the great things about video games is that the good ones have a distinct feel that you can play around in. When done right, a game has a sort of fourth dimension over other mediums; gameplay. That, along with design, artwork, colors in Last of Us feel distinct and fresh even though the story of post apocalyptic earth his getting an extreme workout right now.

The main game dynamic is that of protecting something you perceive as not being able to protect itself. This isn't necessarily new but one that has never been mastered. In the case of Last of Us it is a little girl. You do, at different points in the experience play them both but you mainly control Joel.

Joel is a middle aged man who lost his daughter during the beginnings of the apocalypse (which, in this game is a fungus that overtakes the minds of humans making them crazy). Years and years after that, Joel ends up helping / taking cross country a girl named Ellie who is about his daughters age when she died.

The story choice to make the protagonist a 50-ish person is different and refreshing in that Joel is somewhat grumpy and showing that age. His history is hidden from Ellie. Joel hides it but it is an ever present plot point.



The video above has some of the hallmarks of a Naughty Dog game. Writing, story, artwork, animation... Oftentimes a story / cut scene spills over to the gameplay seamlessly in Last of Us and it never feels forced or out of place. You also are always aware of what is going on (in large AAA games the main story line can get lost, happens quite a bit).

Another game mechanic that worked extremely well was how dangerous the world around you felt. It is a rare game where you do not play a super man / godlike character. In Last of Us have to approach things with a plan or you will die. This tightened the survival, protection role you play to levels that sometimes had me turning off the game because of the intensity.

The ever present danger never really goes away but as you progress you can craft better tools to increase your chances in a fight or, at least, know when not to fight. Firing a weapon or getting tangled in a fist fight feels meaty, raw. Not mindless.

In this next video you'll get a really good feel for how the game plays. Much of it is like this. Again, the story is clear, objectives (get to the bridge) are simple and the environment is breathtaking.

Fair warning; this is a brutal scene in the game. It serves to show the impact of real actions not cartoonish ones that so often plague games.



The world in this game is alive and just about every character (friend or foe) is unique. None of what is happening above is mindless or out of place. Instead of 50 bad guys to worry about there are only a handful and they are just trying to survive as you are.

You'll again notice the banter between the two characters, this is not unusual as this is how the story is told and how you become invested in what is happening.

It's hard to classify Last of Us a landmark game or some sort of crowning achievement in gaming. There are great games coming out almost monthly now but this one stands above the rest last year.

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THE ALMOST 2013 GotY IS ASSASSIN'S CREED BLACK FLAG

"In a world without gold, we might have been heroes!" - Edward 'Blackbeard' Thatch

Assassin's Creed IV is a fantastic game that had to grow on me a little bit but just like any good work of entertainment and art, it did. There is so much worthwhile to do in this game it's nuts. It's also beautiful and gives you plenty of reasons pause. Like, physically pause and watch the sunset drifting in the middle of the Caribbean.

Producer Martin Schelling and Mission Director Ashraf Ismail started this project back in 2011, which explains a lot by way of the incomplete nature of ACIII, which I about consider to be the greatest game that almost was. What melted my heart about ACIII was the time period, story and artwork. It's an amazing, amazing game but it was not a finished product.

Something else that hurt the previous installment in this series was the jumping between past and near future. Nothing horribly wrong with jumping back and forth but the jumps were too harsh and disconnected.

I can see why now knowing that the next installment was getting a ton of attention because there was a lot of the story that was going nowhere. Another reason for the attention is because the game was also released on the Xbox One, the version that I played (am still playing).

There are parts of the AC series that still exist that maybe shouldn't. The jumping back in for in time still there but the story in the present has lightened up. Another thing I despised was the game asking me to rate each mission when completed. I realize that crowd feedback can make games more fun but I don't elements that take away from the immersion. Immersion is one of the greatest qualities in games.

Maybe part of me wanted to give ACIII game of the year last year but I just couldn't and am now wanting to give the award to a finished work in the same series. That could be part of it I suppose but shouldn't take away from how fun this whole series is.

PREVIOUS HELLTOWN WINNERS

2013: Last of Us
2012: Sleeping Dogs
2011: Skyrim
2010: Red Dead Redemption / Heavy Rain
2009: Uncharted 2
2008: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

OTHER NOTABLES FROM 2013

Football Manager 14 is probably my runner up, if I did such a thing. Along with it being insanely fun (and near on mandatory for anyone who writes about soccer) above all, it is a gamer's game. In fact, it was good enough that I did a full review of it over at Massive Report.

Next up would have to be Splinter Cell Blacklist. This is personal pick for me because I have a great, fun history playing this game with friends. Blacklist was a true return to Chaos Theory. There were many points in the game where I just had a huge smile on my face. Any game that does that is a winner.

Tomb Raider had a semi-reboot this year and did very well. The game is very fun and very similar to the Uncharted series of games. If there was one game to recommend as a surprise game, it's Tomb Raider.

Last game to mention this year is the big one: Grand Theft Auto V. It's a blast to play and well done. This one just seemed a little too modern for me. Too cynical. Difficult to put my finger on it but after Rockstar games like Red Dead Redemption and even LA Noire, this one seemed spiteful, and too many times not fun.

As a technical achievement, the GTA V world is nearly second to none. It's got everything, you can do everything. LA looks spectacular. Separating out three playable characters into what is basically each one of GTA's demographics was ambitious, but they pulled it off pretty well.

Could be that somewhere in there is part of the problem though. Suffers a bit from a disjointed story. The game just wants to be everything. All at once. The other problem with the game is that I can't think of anyone that I would recommend it too.

Hoping that Rockstar leans towards something a little more interesting in the next few years.

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All I got for now. Looking forward to a great gaming year in 2014. The great and mighty Mark McCracken sent me over a Ouya recently so looking forward to digging into that this year as well!

In 3's, Easy to Please. Game of the Year

Hard to believe this is occurring for the 4th time. Gotta say that 2011 was a little different, though. How so? My "game time" was supplanted by good scotch and scribbles on the Columbus Crew (as opposed what it use to be; gaming and, well... scotch).

Crew stuff towards the bottom if you don't like video games.

Got a mess of games in though. Missed a couple here and there, but for the most part had a good time with what I did play.

There were 3 game franchises that I kinda like that were on their 3rd game. Gears of War, Uncharted and Modern Warfare. I liked all three (still liking Uncharted: Drakes Deception right now).

Also, there were sports games that I picked up: EA's FIFA 12 and Madden 12. SEGA's Football Manager 12 and NBA 2k12.

I'm still collecting old games, and of those - a couple were pretty good. Konami's 2001 MLS Extra Time was interesting. Also a more recent cast away XBOX 360 game called Darkest Days that came out early in the 360s life. Good stuff.

A lot of great games played this year, but a couple stood out. Rockstar's LA Noire and Bethesda Softworks' Skyrim.

LA Noire is the type of game I'd like to see more of. It pulls the player in with familiar controls and feel but then takes them to a slightly different mental place. Slightly, yet boldly.

Skyrim is a fantasy masterpiece. It reaches that magical place between astounding game mechanics / play / artwork and my own imagination. I'm a sucker for games that allow me to create my own script. I read somewhere about a Skyrim player who played the game as a pacifist and only commanded other non-playable characters to fight his battles. In another story I heard about a player never using weapons and using only his fists.

Finally, my favorite. A player claiming to strip down naked whenever he took on a dragon in-game. No weapons, no armor, no magic. In the buff and Beowulf style.

For that? Etch it into Helltown Lore. Skyrim earns it.

2011: Skyrim
2010: Red Dead Redemption / Heavy Rain
2009: Uncharted 2
2008: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

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SPORTING SOCCER Notes and Bonus Crew Stuff

2K Sports and Visual Concepts has impressed me for the 2nd time(the other time being that 2k5 NFL thingy that I spent many hours with Bleeno playing). What 2k12 has shown me is how much further EA can go. I like FIFA 12. But it stands between itself. One side of the game is the ridiculous amount of time spent getting rosters and player ratings correct / balanced and the other side is creating amazing gameplay. Both those things work really, really well. But it is far from bringing them together and forming a deep experience. Insanely fun? Yes. Ultimately satisfying? ... just missing... something. Maybe why I play it so much. Searching for that missing whatever.

For a deep sports experience pick up Football Manager 12 for the device for which you are reading this blog. My Lordy. Interesting to note: FM 12 includes 141,000 players from all over the world. Real players. Meticulously rated and graded.

Players in the Costa Rican (new Crew signing Olman Vargas-es-as former;) league do not make that massive list. I'm excited for any international signing coming to town, don't get me wrong. Just don't make assumptions based merely on the fact they are from outside the boarders of the United States. Can you dig it?

Hope so. Negligible talent washed out in a 'last picks first' system that rewards mediocrity, yet somehow expects greatness. Hm, maybe learn from the Austrailians. Sell them players, MLS. Shake that maker.

Ream, Le Toux, Rogers. I said. Can you dig it.

EA's First Soccer Game

In 1993 EA published there first soccer game for the Sega Genesis. Since I'm fortunate to have both the Genesis and FIFA International Soccer I took it for a spin.

Not a terrible first effort, considering there were not too many soccer games around at the time. It plays out as more of a kickball game. Controls are very simple and pesky rules such as fouls and offsides can be turned off. It's up and down. Goals can be scored from anywhere on the pitch (practically). It is meant to be played with four people, and in that, succeeds.

That said, it does have some game play elements that are taken for granted today. For example: Formation selection, Replay, Tournament Mode, and Substitutions. It has crowd chants and goal reactions. Lots of things that make soccer unique. It is a very well done first effort.

Let me brush off the old 2606Films skills here:



The music is Starscream (The Future, and it Doesn't Work) and the magic happens in the video where the hula girl dances. 2606 is still in here... some, where.

So where does it fall on my ranking scale? Overall, pretty low.

25

But, ranked higher then many sports titles on current generation of consoles. The average off all my rated sports games (I rank them low) is 34. So it is right in the middle.
ALL OUT!

Forza 3 Dust Ups

Red Dead Redemption

Been a little bit since I got excited about a new game. I've been eying this one for some time. It's yet another game that has gone way past deadline after deadline. More often then not it seems to mean the game is struggling. This one is no exception. Well, on the struggling part. It doesn't come out till next week.

I just read a letter from the wives of some of the game developers. It is pleading with Rockstar San Diego to lighten up on their husbands. Part of this seemed strange to me in that it seems to presuppose that only males are game developers. Sort of like wives of soldiers in the middle east. I'm scratching my head on this one. I don't know the game industry enough I guess. Maybe part of the issue is that there are too many males working at R*SD? I'm looking into it a bit much. But the impression here is that this studio is filled with a bunch of young males with no work experience from the QA tester to management.

Whatever the case. No one seems to address that part of the WIVES letter. If you read it you'll quickly notice the poor grammar. "To whomever it may concern," it starts out. Unfortunately, to an outsider, it makes it seem as if wives of developers are un-educated housewives with too much time on their hands. It muddles the message they are trying to get across and I do wish the had an editor. Hey, my grammar stinks, I know. I just wish theirs was cleaned up, because I know it must be bad out there for a letter to have been written.

The message I'm getting is that R*SD is a much different place then Rockstar North, the makers of the GTA games. Not different in the way that they treat employees but in creative talent and professionalism. Maybe the working conditions there are terrible, but I haven't read anything like this wives letter. In the world of 'here today gone tomorrow' game studios, this sort of thing can be devastating. I am hoping for this game to have the feel of GTA but I'm nervous about it. Man, it's exciting to think about a GTA type feel set in the West but it's hard to get hopes up with some red flags popping up.

We shall see. Angry wives, overworked employees, piss poor management... not a good combination of things.

I'm pulling for it to be good. Hopefully a labor of love type thing. Something else to take from the letter being written is that they are working their little nads off to finish it.

"Again balance is denied, as working conditions worsened with no appreciation. Working harder, longer, faster, yet there was never a guarantee of a bonus nor if there was any earned, when they will be received!"

Wrap your head around that. ugh.

So, who is Rockstar SD? It was Angel Studios (I love doing this by the way). It appears that the produced a handful of interesting games that I'll have to check out. I see that Mr. Bones is on the list, an old Saturn game that I remember. Good, creative game but alas, it was Zono, Inc that developed the game.

Back to hope for the game: Angel Studios helped develop the RAGE Engine which was the advancement of the Angel Game Engine. It's the one that GTA IV used. I thought it was pretty amazing, but only part of the success of that game. However, go back to that game and you will see just how much the environment played in the the experience. We'll see if the boys from San Diego can make this work. I'm routing for them.

Action 52

Just finished watching The Angry Video Game Nerd's video on Action 52. Nothing sucks me back into game collecting then his stuff. Anyway, this video is a bit different then the rest in the way that he sticks with it through all 52 different games... well, 51. He is saving the 52nd for another video I suppose. And rightly so.

There is much written on Active Enterprises. Click on the link for a good one. Searching around I found full text of the manual. It's pretty funny to read the descriptions of the games. Here is a taste. Each sentence is from a different game. I'm just mixing them up randomly, because it really doesn't matter.

It's the last of the dragon wars.

The pasta has gotten out of control, destroying all terrible occupants and establishments. They are destroying everything and the only way to save the wildlife is to break the dam and let the water free. You have right and left thrusters.

Old man winter is at the top and is your goal, but it keeps snowing and he's blowing. Harder than it sounds. There is a black hole and on the other side are all your space dreams. It seems like your in the land of the giants. They're not human. They are everywhere. Using your tanks you must avoid the mine fields set by the evil army of Satan Hosain.

Brainy has his own robots and it's not going to be easy.

Ready your weapons and fire!

Ebert going after video games again

This time longer winded and responding to one person. HERE.

I agree and disagree. I won't get into it again. I've posted my thoughts before. I went back and re-read what I had written and I still feel the same way. To me video games are as much art, as a whole, as movies. I will never compare games to paintings, or even sculpture. But I will defend them against any movie. Movies are further along. But after thinking about art as a lasting window into our human soul I cannot defend or explain where video games fall into that. Nor movies. Most of these two mediums are there but for mostly the now. Both, unfortunately, are in a degradable medium. Both advance humanity, good or bad. But the lasting effects of culture are not found in such things. They are found, at least over hundreds or thousands of years, in a lasting medium.

If games and movies are found to stand the test of a thousand years, then, yes my friends, both can be considered art.

Ugh, only time will tell. Will we hold up film or electronic media in the same way we would a Caravaggio? Is art in a genius of one, not many? I guess if I were to answer that then I could have a doctorate.

But perhaps one could look past that. One could look to what one concerns themselves with. The finality of death. The everlasting life of Christ and his resurrection. No, not an alter call here. No music is softly playing in the background. Just a question of what matters betwixt. What gets us there, what we ponder, where we wind up. If all is consumed and shat out, what remains? What will others find to be the cornerstones or our existence, of our time.

Is life just a continuation. A continuation of time through what is now and what will be. Maybe through ultimate creation we have the answer, or at least in part. Creation through life. Through children. Maybe it is somewhere in there. Just maybe. I wish I could answer that, but I cannot.

Ask a father. I think they know the answer to that. I'll reiterate what I said in my other post; Art is creation. No need to look deeper into it then that.

I'm talking to you - Mr. Ebert.

Let us get Sam Fisher Straight

Now, I'm a video game player. I don't consider myself a hardcore gamer that plays Warcraft for endless hours. In fact, I don't consider that type of player a game player. It's more like a social networking thing. Similar to Facebook or even Second Life. The Sims may fall in there, but I consider that a game. Like some folks out there I like to buy into some hype. I have favorite games and even series of games. One of those may be Tom Clancy branded games.

I've played many a Ghost Recon (all of them I think), plenty of Rainbow Six (Rouge Spear, Vegas 1 and 2) and a bunch of Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow and Chaos Theory. I'd challenge most anyone to say they have actually played that many. Sure they have heard of them... but I mean PLAYED them.

I'm somewhere near the tail end of Splinter Cell Conviction. At least I think it must be. From what I have read the game only takes 7 hours to complete... or is it 6, or even 5. There seems to be some confusion on that in the shaky Video Game Media. I say that because I'm not sure the game has actually been played by many of the reviewers of the game.

I try to refrain from reading much about the game before it comes out. After I get it though, I enjoy reading a few review on it. I like to find out if I'm having the same experience as others. Having said that, I'm kinda frustrated. There are not many reviews out there where I feel like the reviewer has played the game. They touch on the main points like; "It's a different game, Fisher is out of Third Echelon". Yes, he is, but for goodness sake, to harp on how this game ventures off the tried and true Splinter Cell formula is completely false. It seems like every review starts there and ends there with lots of fluff (from a couple hours of gameplay) in between. Sometimes it seems the reviewer may even be only playing the demo.

I'm here to say this, make no mistake, this is a Splinter Cell game. It even expands upon the trade mark goggles.

All that said, let me talk about the game for a second. The look and feel of the game is very Chaos Theory. Albeit, maybe not as well done in set pieces. Chaos was cutting edge on the Xbox in terms of graphics and stealth gameplay. Conviction is not cutting edge on the 360. They remove a lot of the gadgets at the start and the graphics are run of the mill Rainbow Six Vegas stuff. But it is fun. It looks like a SC game, it feels like one, it plays like one. Even one, dare I say it, of OLD. Trip a camera... game over. If that isn't old school SC gaming I don't know what is.

Another thing that burns me is the references to the TV show 24 in reviews, yeah, I've seen a few episodes. But for the sake of Pete, Sam Was around before that dumb show. If anything, 24 is like SC. I have yet to find a reviewer that looks at it that way. We'll chalk that up to playing games longer then most.

Okay, I got back on the reviews of games... Back to Conviction. It has a new mark type system that I don't find myself using that much, but like when it is there. Doesn't ruin anything. The screen turns to black and white when in the shadows and places a type of ghost image when you are spotted. Both good improvements. The BW shots are bold and a kind of thing I'm impressed with. It sort of says that it isn't interested in showing off a kind of awesome graphical show that maybe some other games try to hard to do. It's a bold thing to do to turn everyones expensive 50" HD screen to BW. I like it because it is about gameplay. I could have gone for better visuals, but they seemingly went with what was working in other Ubisoft Tom Clancy games. Not spectacular, but still serviceable.

The game has a very non-SC scene early in the game set in Iraq. It is a type of Ghost Recon / Modern Warfare moment that it actually treats very well. I found myself liking the mechanics of it better then MW2. The cover system is solid.

Another thing worth mentioning here is the very long development time with this game. Something like four years. I remember seeing early shots of Sam with shaggy hair and animation demos with him using objects around him as tools. None of that is there. That must be a game that the suits at Ubi killed. A sort of Assassins Creed version that didn't come to fruition. I have not doubt that the power struggle between that game and the one that came out was the reason for the delay. I even have a friend request from a Ubisoft employee on Facebook to prove it. About a year or so back one of the employees read a review I made on this very, non-read, blog. I think she was hopeful that a fan may stick with the franchise. I don't know. Nice lady from England I think. Needless to say, all the shaggy haired Sam pics you see of the game are, well, from a game that wasn't released.

So if there is a story here, it's this. Conviction is a game that was going to be something completely different but turned out to be very much the right kind of Splinter Cell game. Game Over alarm fails, cool new sonar goggles and all.

Only complaint... not enough funny Ironside back and forth quips with his handler. Enjoy this Clancy game for what it is, because maybe the next go round we might just get a reloaded/revamped/prequel/re-imagining of the story.

the 48-Hour Game

I'm stealing this from Dubious Quality, who posted it as a link to Motherboard.tv. It is a competition held at the University of Michigan put on my Sid Meier and his son, Ryan. It's calm, peaceful and pretty cool. Sid Meier is the man.

Here is the link.

The Gangs All Here

An Uncharted 2 Cutscene:

The Other Ones

While the last quarter of 2009, for me, was dominated by Uncharted 1 and 2 (finally getting the PS3) there was the rest of the year filled with great games.

The good ones:

Next up, or should I say right behind Uncharted is Modern Warfare 2. This game broke up my playtime between Uncharted 1 and 2. Yes, everything points back to those games. I'm looking at this strictly from a time played standpoint. Like Call of Duty 4, I played the heck out of this game. The single player experience was just as good as the first one and the online side of it chewed up many an evening. It's unfortunate that I'm looking at this from a time played standpoint, but I feel like if I'm spending time with it then I must think it is good, right? I'm questioning myself on that one now for some reason.

Another good one for me this year was Beatles Rock Band. It took all the great gameplay experience from Rock Band and put a very well done coat of Beatles goodness on it. What does that mean? I don't know. My experiences with the Beatles take me back to some of my fondest memories spinning the White Album on my parents record player. It's interesting to me that I found myself able to sing and play drums to songs I haven't heard in probably 15 years. Anyway, Rock Band 2 itself is still in rotation at my place due to some great download choices. The games are great, and when the mood catches you right you'll find yourself three hours in sweating out Spaceman on hard at 12am. Always a good sign for a game.

Forza 3. This game gets how a racing game (or any game for that matter) should function. The controller melts away in your hands the longer you play and you start feeling like you really have control of the car you are driving. You know it's strengths and it's weaknesses. Hearing the engine rev up on a late 80s early 90s Trans Am or Camaro hooks me every time. I've got an 88 Camaro. The Turn 10 team did their homework right down to the thing bottoming out on the slightest bump. Very well done.

The one that should be next up behind Uncharted:

Braid. It felt like a game my college self would have made if I could've. If anyone hasn't played it they should. Most gaming experiences feel similar but Braid will take your mind to a different, more creative place. I felt the same way about Monkey Island from Xbox Live. Another great one to check out.

The other ones:

Madden 10. The yearly money maker for EA was better then it probably ever has been. This game puts me (sadly) at three Madden games on the current generation. No mas. Good. But not this year.

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. What happened guys? I waited with such anticipation for this game and what I got was a sort of, well, I don't know. They took my most treasured experience from the previous game, mission editor, out. I know the PC version has this, but I'm not upgrading to get it. The original Xbox had that feature, why not this one? Was it sacrificed for multiplayer? the better graphical look? I don't get it. Anyway, I played the game enough and thought it was okay. I can see where the effort was and parts of it are wonderful, but it had very little in the way of creating any kind of special, memorable experience.

A good one that got away:

Red Faction: Guerrilla. I got it and started it up. Had lots of interesting and fun things going on but it got shelved. I'm hoping to get back to it.

That it really. I was hoping to be able to post a giant failure of a game that would be funny to make fun of, but I really don't have one. We'll chalk that up to a sunny attitude during a dark and snowy Ohio night.

Helltown Game of the Year

I had to do it this year because there was a game well deserving of it.

Uncharted 2.

To say this game is a remarkable achievement is an understatement. There isn't much I can say here that isn't said by others out there other then the wonderful way they handle relationships between characters. Never before has any video game come close to Uncharted in this way. It just isn't about hitting you over the head with cut scenes and dialog. It's in the way characters react to situation in a way that is more complex and impressive and doesn't pander to the lowest common denominator. It has to be witnessed to be believed.

Outstanding game and best game I have played in a long time.

Pripyat

With the fall of the Berlin wall 20 years ago you didn't hear much mention of an event that played a major part; Chernobyl.

I am fascinated with this event. In looking around and searching the city you'll find that Infinity Ward did an amazing job recreating this area (Modern Warfare 1). That part of the game, Bloc I think, remains to this day one of the most memorable experiences I have ever had playing video games.

Video Game Voice Overs

GO HERE

Dirk's Dragon Warfare

Modern Warfare 2 just became the most successful entertainment release in history. It is charting somewhere north of $300 million in its first few days. I just finished the short solo campaign and have come to the determination that it is much like the gameplay of Dragon's Lair. Move to the left you live, to the right, you die. Now, there's a lot more to the game; like the Special Ops portion and the online multiplayer, which is where the term "game" best fits. But the solo portion's mechanics, to which many are showering praise, is well trodden gaming territory.

Turns out that Modern Warfare 2 solo part is very much less a game then a story... but a good one, one that takes some risks and is fun to take part in. Therein, me thinks, is why it is making all that green. Games may not be for everyone, like crossword puzzles or scrabble or Civilization IV, but an interactive movie? Apparently so.

Up next for me is getting beat up by everyone online. AKA: The "game" portion. To give you an idea of how many people are playing this game... I'm ranked (after about 30 mins of playing) in the 3,000,000 territory. And that's just on the Xbox.

O, Dragon's Lair, where would we be with out ya?