Modern Warfare 2: Some Notes

So Modern Warfare 2 is already setting sales records. And it has not shied away from conspiracy for even one second. Before release, Infinity Ward was releasing some advertising material that just baldly seemed built to piss some people off and get their game talked about pre-release. The simple acronym at the end of that linked video "Fight Against Grenade Spam" was worth a couple more Kotaku posts than the game would've gotten, and it seems to have cost them nothing. So, even before the really big news about that one level I'll talk about in a moment, Infinity Ward was deciding to show some balls here, and I don't think it hurt their sales.


*ahem* SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT *ahem*


The game only takes a few hours to beat, so hopefully some day we won't have to add that notice. So, yes, in I believe the fourth level, roughly forty minutes to an hour into the game, we have the infamous level in which the player is sort of a terrorist. They covered it on Fox & Friends this morning, picking a representative for video games who clearly hadn't been on TV before.*

The player is a CIA operative infiltrating a Russian terrorist's organization in order to get information, and take him or some other vague enemy down later on. During the loading screen, the player is told something approximating "You don't want to know how much we paid to get you in this far. You'll have to pay with a piece of yourself, too. Regardless, this way will save far more lives." Then, the player sees himself as part of a group of five Russians wearing bulletproof vests, with automatic weapons, walking slowly into a Russian airport lobby. The other people open fire on a crowded group of civilians, heavily suggesting that the player should follow suit to stay under cover. Most of the rest of the level, you walk slowly through the airport, shooting more civilians and police officers. The player can decide to not shoot anybody, with the only possible consequences being that they could still be shot by the few police officers present. In that case, the player would simply walk through the level as the massacre happens, without killing any civilians.

You are allowed to skip the level in-game. The game specifically asks you as you start it up if you feel you might want to skip parts, and you can do it from the start menu while in the terrorist mission as well.

No matter what you do, once you make it to the end of the level, the Russian terrorist group's leader shoots you in the head and kills you (or one of the characters you play, anyway) which then allows Russian police to discover your body and find that you're American, which becomes a casus belli for Russia to invade the United States in the coming missions. So, you can at least say, in being killed by the terrorist leader, that character is cemented as a bad guy whereas yours is certainly a good guy and a victim, whether or not he had to kill civilians.

So, hey people! It's a moral dilemma! That's good, it's interesting! We're trying to move video games up to other media, in which good guys can be bad at times and bad guys can be good at times! The crime boss protagonist doesn't always have to get what's coming to him! The superhero can save lives while also on crack! Rockstar Games has been doing something like this with virtually every game they release, trying to move video games up to where the same things are accepted in them as in movies, books, etc. Video games can have full nudity. How is that worse than actual moving pictures of full nudity?

I think we're past the point where this becomes a serious drive for violent game legislation again, at least in the U.S. I guess we'll find out.

*I just read this about the poor guy: "There are a few gaming sites out there bashing Jon for losing his train of thought early in the segment and closing his eyes towards the end as he stood his ground defending simulated violence in video games. I’ve known Jon personally for several years now, and what the asshats who are ridiculing him don’t know is that Fox contacted him that same day with just a few hours notice. In addition to Jon never having been on television before, the segment was filmed at 3:30 AM his time, which meant he wasn’t exactly “well rested” before going on air."

Blood Pressure Raised by TV Time

According to the study covered here, children's blood pressure may go up as they watch TV or play video games. Oddly enough, blood pressure increases independent of the body type of the 3 to 8 year-olds studied did not increase with regular sedentary activity or computer usage, but it did increase when the children watched or played on the TV. I wonder if wearing a special device to measure their blood pressure and trying to play a video game may have caused the kids some undue stress, perhaps.

Sphere Psychosis Game Released

I've started making my own games, so here's the first: Sphere Psychosis, an entry into the Unofficial TIGSource Vaporware Competition, in which you had to make a game that was never released. I chose Marble Madness II, and decided to make it 3d, with the Unity game development tool (definitely recommended).

Download it at GameJolt here (be sure to rate, please)

EDIT: Now available in web player format!

Different builds for Windows and Mac included, Quick Play online available for Windows users through GameJolt as well. There are only two levels in version 0.5 (if that's still the current version when you're reading this) and one is easy and the second is rather harder. Press Escape to return to the main menu if you get stuck (which happens a lot on Level 2).

I made the music in Melody Assistant, if you're interested.

Terrorism Can Be Fun With Red Faction: Guerrilla!

I've almost finished playing Red Faction: Guerrilla, and I'm having fun with it. The sledgehammer-swinging pure destruction is just so much fun, all on its own, that the rest of the game would have to be terrible to bring it down. Miyamoto famously asked his team to make a simple game with a cube jumping and make it fun before they could start on Super Mario 64, so I think it's a good design idea to just start with a fun physics element and work up with a game like this.

Anyway, I find it interesting that Red Faction hasn't gotten in any trouble from watchdog groups, given its content. It's not too vulgar, not the absolutely most violent game I've ever played, and the enemies are abstracted into Halo uniforms, so they're not very human. No, the thing is, this game casts you, the player, as a terrorist. Given that until very recently, the US has said they were in a War on Terror (despite the fact that it's just a method, and not a physical object you can definitely destroy), I would think this would be a bit more controversial than it is.

Yes, you're liberating Mars from an oppressive regime. But, the regime is the Earth Defense Force (which doesn't sound too evil) and they're a group that were good guys in the past, so I think that they're somewhat comparable to the US Army, as an army of liberators that have become occupiers, and have to use increasingly drastic measures to keep the terrorists from taking over the country. The game could have explored this in any number of ways, but it doesn't seem like that's going to happen, having seen the last twist just now, which dodges the issue entirely.

Though you are a hero, you (somewhat) covertly go around and blow stuff up and tear down buildings, all in the efforts of getting the occupying military force to leave your planet! That's terrorism, just as the American Revolution was, and it shows that terrorism in and of itself does not equal Muslim extremists killing babies for no good reason. If only the makers of the game would actually try to bring up the issue themselves!

InFAMOUS Impressions Live Blog

My little brother is loading up InFAMOUS, and I'm on the laptop, and I can tell I have a lot to say about this extremely well-reviewed game, so here's a live recording of my reactions:

19:50: God, the writing for the opening sequence is ridiculously awful. There are so many cool ways they could do that, and they just don't. It's lame.

19:54: This is made by Sucker Punch, the company who made Sly Cooper, and it's pretty obvious when you think about it and watch the game. The main character of this game has the exact same animation as Sly does and his friend moves just like the hippo, whatever his name was. It's hilarious. Those were cartoon animals, and these are roughly realistic humans! Why would they keep the same movements?

19:56: I just hope that Trish doesn't move just like Bentley...

19:58: Murray was the hippo's name! And Zeke is his corresponding character here. Also, the main character, Cole I think, climbs lampposts like a raccoon.

20:00: They clearly spent money on the art, but apparently no money on a writer. Shame.

20:01: I've seen Flash games with more interesting "powerful moral choices" (Gamespot quote).

20:02: So yeah, your first "powerful moral choice": Either let people eat food, or kill them and keep the food for yourself. That would be better if we had any reason realistically to keep the food, but we don't, unless we just want to be pointlessly evil.

20:06: Why couldn't they update the animations from Sly 3, Santa? Why?

20:11: Games have too much tutorial crap now. It's much more interesting if I figure out how to do things most efficiently instead of constantly having that Zeke character tell me "Hang off the boxes to make yourself a harder target!".

20:15: I'm sorry, but you just shouldn't introduce a new character in a simplistically animated cutscene that the main character narrates. It feels weird when you actually hear that character for the first time, because you basically haven't seen them before that, you only heard narration.

20:17: Why must all gas pipes have random spots where they spew out, and why must that always kill our platformer protagonists?

Have a Reflective Memorial Day!

Download Stars 'n' Stripes here!

Enjoy this, the greatest Memorial Day game ever made, a program I wrote in Lite C, with some fantastic music stolen from LaLaLand 5. Now, I'll get back to trying to figure out Unity while I've still got twenty days of free trial left.

Telltale Games Anniversary Sale

Telltale Games, makers of the Sam & Max, Strong Bad, Wallace and Gromit, and Bone games are offering an anniversary sale until mid-June in which you can get any of their games for $5. Just use this coupon code at their site:

FRM-5A2-B9Q-DH7

Game Writing is So Bad, It's Not Even Funny

Check out my latest essay on BlogCritics. It asks why game writing is so bad, and comes to the conclusion that it's all economics. Go. Do it. C'mon.......... Please? Thank you.

George Will Feels Blue About Jeans

George Will, the conservative syndicated columnist, decided to lump video games in with his assessment of our culture's juvenility, characterized by the fabric denim. He says that everyone in America is dressing like ten-year-olds when they wear blue jeans, and that we are all making a conscious decision to look as shabby as possible when we do so. (He says instead that we should all dress like Fred Astaire in the picture below) Here's the video game-specific quote from the article: "Denim is the infantile uniform of a nation in which entertainment frequently features childlike adults ("Seinfeld," "Two and a Half Men") and cartoons for adults ("King of the Hill"). Seventy-five percent of American "gamers" -- people who play video games -- are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote." It's rather stereotypically grumpy-old-man-ish to me: Culture has changed and I don't like it. Not to mention his support of disenfranchisement of people who play video games is, well, you're on this website, so obviously it goes without saying that you disagree with him, I think.

Gaming Sideshow of the Week: PaRappa TV Show

I'm going to try to stay on topic for all of my blog posts except one each week, from now on. This week, my special gaming sideshow of the week is the old PaRappa anime, of which there are a few episodes on YouTube with some terrible fan subtitles, which I'm not sure are entirely legit (I could almost fill in as much as they say in the subtitles by just guessing from context). Anyway, embedded hereafter is the episode "So This is Love", in which Katy falls in love with PJ the DJ. The episode itself is horrendous, but make sure to watch the intro and credits, which are in exactly the style of a light-hearted anime show.

Six Days in Fallujah

Konami has announced that they are publishing Six Days in Fallujah, an FPS set in the Second Battle of Fallujah in the (currently ongoing) Iraq War. This has stirred up a bit of a storm, mostly from those who have been in Iraq before, as we all only attempt to guess what the game will be like. Some are worried it will treat the subject too trivially, or glorify it, or even make it more of a documentary, perhaps showing white phosphorous attacks or something. We don't know what it will be like, but it has the potential to be the most important game, um, ever.

If this game does choose the documentary route, it will be a huge deal. Few people actually know the details of the Second Battle of Fallujah, and most would probably be surprised that the Iraq War even has named battles. A portrayal of this conflict with some of the nastier bits left in would actually mean video games would have surpassed other media in spreading awareness like this. I'm sure there are films that have brought this sort of thing to light, but not that showed nationwide in theaters. This is a popular, large publisher video game, and even if it doesn't reach Call of Duty 4 numbers, it will still be widely played and recognized.

With my extremely optimistic hopes for this game, it could be considered the turning point for games as mainstream art, video games' "Birth of a Nation", sort of. But, then again, it will probably just be Call of Duty 4 with similarly inane writing and no real relevance beyond the real setting, which will be totally just to get attention on news networks.

Close Range (The Onion Parody)

Hot New Video Game Consists Solely Of Shooting People Point-Blank In The Face

The Onion News Network (basically The Onion's video section) released a video, "demo", and poster for its fake video game, Close Range. The game consists of nothing but shooting people point blank in the face, along with some horses and ostriches to mix things up. The video is basically a parody of the gaming industry's typically shallow, awfully-written, super-violent AAA titles.

I was planning on writing an editorial for BlogCritics asking why there aren't really many funny games any more, and the underlying problem there is that no games have good writing. Killzone 2's dialogue is basically a random mixture of "Holy Shit!" "Whoa!" and "What the-!" over and over, with no interesting, well, anything, writing-wise. Yet, it is likely the top-reviewed and purchased game this year. The Grand Theft Auto series is better (I haven't tried Chinatown Wars) but still not up to any real writing standards.

Why do games have awful writing? Because critics don't care and consumers don't care. You will virtually never see a mainstream video game review take points off on a game for having retarded dialogue or scenes or writing. The Metal Gear Solid series is probably the best-written of major game series, and critics are more likely to complain about the story and writing than admire it, because it's not extremely well-executed either (endless information dumped in one monologue over and over, almost pretentiously confusing as Japanese storylines tend to be in my experience, jarring silly moments that also tend to be in Eastern storylines in my experience). Anyway, if we ever want to really claim that games are art, we seriously need to improve the writing. Games can already look amazing, and they are rewarded for doing so by critics, but there is currently no impetus for engaging storylines.

19-Year-Old Protests Against CoD Animal Cruelty

When you take the "desensitize" argument to its logical and extreme conclusion, you get this. The pointlessly small, monochromatic, and fuzzy screenshot above comes from the Lowell Sun's report on a 19-year-old girl's animal cruelty protest over the game Call of Duty: World at War. Because you shoot attack dogs in the game, clearly she should "fear young kids playing these games and thinking it's all right to do this -- because they do it in a video game." In my experience, kids love dogs more than they love people. And, the dogs in the game will literally rip your throat out if you don't shoot them first. And, dogs are varied enough that we can tell between attack dogs and the 19-year-olds Pomeranians (apparently named Winnie the Pooh and Fluffy, no joke). But, kids are killing dogs in the game, so they'll just feel so compelled to get a gun and shoot the nearest dog that they start itching for it, literally unable to sleep at night without shooting innocent dogs.

This is almost a parody of the "violence desensitization" argument. No, young and impressionable kids aren't going to shoot dogs because they had to in Call of Duty. It's not even an "object of the game" as the 19-year-old says, but rather, as Kotaku says, part of the overall goal of staying alive for as long as you can. So, will kids think they have to shoot every dog they see to stay alive? No, because there are also friendly dogs in the game that tear the Nazis' (or Japanese/Americans') throats out (and kids aren't ridiculously stupid sub-human beings. At least not all the time.)

Finally, a Mostly Okay Bailout Game

Since I've been talking so much about how absurdly awful the online bailout-themed webgame scene has been, I guess I'll provide a slightly less rant-y post here for Budget Hero's updated, sort of bailout-themed game.

Budget Hero's update includes one new "badge" to the game, allowing you to set one of your three requisite goals to be "economic stimulus". In the game, you are allowed to add to and cut from any part of the budget that the game provides for, a fairly sizable choice range. On just dealing with the Bush tax cuts alone, you have about ten different choices, ranging from keeping them to reversing them to reversing them and taxing the rich a little extra. Your goal is to achieve the best possible combination of a balanced budget (one that will collapse later than 2030 or so) and your three chosen goals (like "green", "social safety net", and "national security"). Every budget change you make that helps one of your goals contributes a sizeable amount to coloring in the badge, a fully colored one indicating that you were successful.

This is at least a thoughtful game. You are given many, many choices on what to do with the budget, and you can read a lengthy piece of text for each choice, indicating the situation, pros, and cons to implementing that change. There's a lot of information here, and you really feel the pressure dynamic between cutting your spending to keep the debt manageable and implementing the programs we need, especially with the stimulus.

I have a few problems, though. Your three chosen goals allow you to basically ignore everything else. I chose "economic stimulus", "green revolution", and "energy independence". That means that the game doesn't really penalize me at all if I, say, cut defense spending by 10% (which the majority of players have done, likely out of necessity to come near a balanced budget) or even something uncharacteristic for a liberal like eliminating Medicare, Foreign Aid, etc. Your three goals should matter the most, but the others should still matter. The party wouldn't support a move to privatize defense or something radical like that, even if it's not part of your specific platform to keep national security a priority. But, changing the game so that every possible goal matters would make things even more tense and realistic, and it is just a game.

The game also allows us to assume that we stay in absolute power for about twenty years to actually see all of our economic programs take effect. It takes a while, sometimes. Well, I've written enough already. Play it, it's somewhat educational and at least partially successful at representing the tension inherent in the job.

Trillion Dollar Bailout: Another Awful Game

If you weren't already sickened enough by the freaking terrible Bailout Game, enjoy yet another inane bailout-based webgame with Trillion Dollar Bailout! This one makes all the same mistakes The Bailout Game made, but with less humor and an even worse presentation. As in the other one, there is no limit on the amount of money you can use, and the bailout money is always good. Okay, then why is there any debate? Just spend all the money in the world, forever, and the economy will be perfect! Yay!

I did several playthroughs (the "play again" button at the end doesn't work, though) and here were the results:

1. I gave bailout money to two homeowners then had to leave the computer to do something else. I came back a minute later to find I had won the game. Unbelievable. It's obviously a weak game if you have to do basically nothing to save the economy. God.

2. I then made a semi-serious playthrough in which I bailed out every homeowner who wasn't labeled "Happy Homeowner," but rather "Homeowner - Foreclosure" or something like that. I won, perfect score.

3. Then I went back through and bailed out every business guy at the top of the screen, instead. I saved the economy. There was apparently no difference, though it seemed like the recovery was a bit slower when I gave it to them. Still, just give out the money, and you win.

4. Now, and this is the good part, I just let the computer sit. I never gave any money to anyone, nor did I slap anyone, which rejects them. I came back thirty seconds later, and I had won. Oh my God, this is stupid.

5. Now I slapped everybody. That made the economy go down. What's the difference between slapping them and not giving them any money? It's the same thing! This appears to be the only way to lose the game.

So, in summation, there is no point to doing anything. You win if you stay totally idle. You can give money, (as much as you want with no repercussions), and you'll win. It's only if you slap people, which doesn't mean anything besides "I'm deciding not to give them money," that you can lose. There shouldn't be any difference between slapping and just missing someone. This fails as a game and as rhetoric, because it isn't fun or challenging in any way, and it fails to reflect anything about bailouts. Don't dare click over to the game, it just helps someone who doesn't deserve the attention for the extremely minimal effort they put into this game.

Sonic Retrospective, With Juicy Details

Just watch this video. I don't care if you don't see the others, but this video describes Sonic's conception as a character as a mixture between Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton, and Santa Claus. Also, his name was "Mr. Needle-Mouse." Awesome.

Critiquing Classics Through GameTap: Gravitar

Today's "Monday Leaderboard" challenge on GameTap is the Arcade version of 1982's Gravitar. Gravitar is a sort of shmup, in space, with Asteroids-style movement and shooting in the area just (and sometimes inside) planets. You start off in the map section of the game above, where you just have to fly to the planet you want for specific levels. The numbers correspond to the difficulty and bonus points possible from those levels. All of those levels except for "9000" have two or more ground turrets protecting the fuel in the ground (blue squares) that you have to destroy, while watching out for Space Invaders-y looking enemies that just kamikaze into you. The "9000" level requires that you navigate a difficult course to shoot a reactor then fly back out. Which is impossible, with these Asteroids controls.


So, the controls are sort of their own thing. Yeah, I may not like them, but with a better control system this might be a much easier game, as most of your learning curve is just focused on trying to get your ship to float just long enough above a turret so that you can shoot it without it shooting you or you falling into the ground. But, you have to be pointing in the direction you want to thrust, and pointing your ship around isn't extremely easy or quick, so it is very difficult to get into a quick hover, turn around, shoot four or five bullets (more on that later), then turn around and boost away from the ground in time. This process is also always being interrupted by the flying enemies, which you can't actually devote any time to destroying. If you shoot them, they come back faster than if you had just let them miss you and go around the planet surface, which is stupid.

Shooting is very erratic, like in a lot of old Atari arcade titles. You just keep pressing the button to shoot, most likely, and you'll shoot only four at a time, which is a real problem when you have to destroy both flying enemies, which are converging on you, or you have to shoot that turret quickly so you can turn back around and boost away. Having four bullets at a time wouldn't be so bad if there weren't already so much difficulty in just navigating to enemies.

There's just no point in going through the easy levels, score-wise. You'll get most of 2000 points for beating the easy "2000" level with only two turrets, but that's not a lot considering that the actually rather easy "6000" level gave me 12000 once I got past it. On the "6000" level, you must navigate a cave-like area, but half of your enemies are above you, not below you, which makes things infinitely easier. Plus, the flying enemies can't get to you down there. So, my biggest tip for the unskilled who want to win something at today's GameTap tournament, play that level first. If you beat it, you'll immediately have a better score than the vast majority of players.


I've been pretty pleased with the GameTap users' rating so far, as they actually use all ten numbers, and tend to aggregate to have good taste (though they hate some of my flight simulators and really old strategy games, it would seem). The GameTap users' rating of the game is a 6.2 currently. I gave the game a 7, because it is plenty fun once you have gotten some idea of how to control your craft and still shoot things. Yeah, difficult, but that's how it was in the 80's, when businesses weren't afraid to publish hard games. I'm sure I'll find plenty more of them in my next Critiquing Classics pieces.

GameTap is Freaking Awesome

GameTap, the game service that was until recently owned by TBS, is my new favorite thing. I played around with the free games on it several times in the past, but just now finally paid for the year subscription. I did it mostly to play the Sam & Max games while I was obsessed with adventure games, but I've found so much stuff that I can't believe it.

Every day, I find something else I'm just thrilled by. First of all, reliving the nostalgia games like Robotron, Centipede, and even Crystal Castles brought me was great. Then today I found that they had the first RTS, The Ancient Art of War, a game I wanted to play so badly that I bought the disks for it several years ago though I had no way of actually using them. There are plenty of only slightly old games that slipped through the cracks of my gaming expenditures, like Imperial Glory and a few of the old Prince of Persia games, so this is a really exciting thing for me.

There are negatives: You have to be connected to the internet, the games every now and then disappear, leaving you helpless, and, well, the cost isn't really an issue at $60 a year. With more than a thousand games for me to play around with and some pretty fun competitions online (I have to get that Sam & Max poster signed by Steve Purcell) this is a really great service.

I believe I may start doing some silly, "AVGN but just text" reviews of the old games found on GameTap as well, because I'm constantly thinking about that sort of thing while playing. Watch for that in the future.

I Don't Feel Comfortable Talking about "RapeLay"

You'll notice that there's no picture at the top of this article, and I'm not going to talk about this game for long, but rather provide links for anyone who actually wants to know about it. But, as a blog about controversial games, this has to be the worst I've heard of yet.

If you remember Sexy Beach 2, from the old X-Play episodes or wherever, this is from the same developers, and it's called RapeLay. It is a Japanese hentai, rape simulator game. Not even just a game that involves rape, oh no. It is a rape simulator. Your character goes through the implausible motions of publicly raping three different Japanese girls, with lots of nasty details that you can read at Something Awful instead of here.

Anyway, the reason this is in the news right now, is because Amazon.com was in trouble for selling it (through a private seller named hentaiguy). They recently kicked the game and hentaiguy off the website, unsurprisingly. If that game got into the United States in any real numbers, that would allow congressmen to be talking about something that isn't Custer's Revenge (1982) when they say "murder, violence, and even rape" are in today's video games.

Jack Thompson Returns in Utah

Jack Thompson had a while to think things through after being disbarred, and has come back with his most nefarious (or at least possible to accomplish) scheme yet. He's proposing a bill for the Utah legislature, the most likely to pass one of his bills into law whether or not it's constitutional, and the bill will focus on false advertising claims rather than right-out bans.

What he means by this is that retailers advertise or claim that they do not sell M-rated games to minors. As soon as they have proof that minors got the game from their store, they can be attacked on false advertising grounds.

The problem with that is, assuming it passes and then succeeds under judicial review should it come to that, retailers don't have to even say they won't sell the games to minors. If your choice, as a Target, Wal-Mart, or Gamestop, is to either:

1. Say you won't sell games to minors for a theoretical "family-friendly" boost in marketing, and actually make absolutely certain that no minors get their hands on an M-rated game,
2. or just dump the whole "protecting minors from filth" thing so you have no chance of legal trouble,

I think I'd go with option 2 there. It's a bit like the "Happy Holidays" versus "Merry Christmas" deal. The retailers wanted to not mention Christmas to ensure that they didn't go to court with Johnny Suefurmunny, even though saying Christmas was more likely to appeal to the vast majority of regular consumers. Option #2 is safer for business, so even if this bill is successful, it may just make it easier for Utah kids to buy M-rated games.

This Freakin' "Islam is the Light" Thing

Alright, you can read here if you want at GamePolitics, but basically the story is that a mom thought she heard a baby in the DS game Baby Pals say "Islam is the light." I have several numbered points to make about this bovine fecal matter:

1. "Islam is the light" isn't even a real phrase that anyone uses. A quick Google search for the phrase reveals that this story is apparently the only place anyone has thought to say it. I've never heard of this as a real phrase within the Muslim world.

2. It's freakin' baby talk. If you're thinking ahead of time, as you most certainly will be, you can think it sounds like "Islam is the light". That doesn't mean that some company got a baby to say that specifically, as they most certainly wouldn't have tried to coach the baby to say something specific at all.

3. This represents a dangerous and hurtful paranoia in America. "Islam" does not mean "evil" or "terrorist" or even "bad." I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, so whatever.

4. What a stupid evil plot. Yes, all of us doll and video game manufacturers (or perhaps just the sound effects company they licensed it from) are so evil, cunning, and Muslim, that we're going to make people think they're hearing baby talk, when in fact they're hearing praise of the Muslim religion! Then they'll... Be entirely unaffected until they complain about it and boycott the products. Bwa ha ha ha ha!

So, yeah, it's stupid, but you already knew that. For a slightly more entertaining version of the story, you can check out Penny Arcade as well.

Skate 2 Trophy/Achievement Guide

Here you go, tips and tricks to earn the trophies and achievements of Skate 2, from the writer of the walkthroughs for Skate 1 and 2, me.

Bronze

1. On Top Of The World - Perform an invert on one of the highest points in the city in career mode - Just wait until you unlock the SV Peak, then do a handplant on a ramp there. That's the easiest way if not the fastest.
   
2. Skater Evolved - Get off your board in career mode - You'll need to do this just to get through the tutorial
   
3. I Like To Move It - Move your first object in career mode - You'll need to do this just to get through the tutorial
4. That's the Way - Beat all of Danny Way's film challenges- Consult my Skate 2 walkthrough for Mahalo.
   
5. GVR Champ - Win the GVR Contest - The final challenge in the street contests.
   
6. Big Air Champ - Win the San Van-a-Slamma- The final challenge in the tranny contests.
   
7. Still Alive? - Win a Deathrace in career mode
8. Race Hero - Win all races in career mode
   
9. Where's my TV show? - Beat all Rob Dyrdek challenges- Consult my Skate 2 walkthrough for Mahalo.
10. Meet Slappy - Meet Slappy- You'll need to do this just to get through the tutorial
11. New San Van Hero - Call Mikey 10 times- Just every time you see that little crowbar icon in the upper left corner of your screen, use Mikey's service. Cruise around downtown if you really can't just get this over time.
    
12. Pull the Plug - Drain every pool and fountain in career mode- There are 7 pools and several fountains. You can find all the pools after the game is over, as the remaining Thrasher missions will take you to them, but I can't find a simple map at this moment, check back here for me to upload one. Check this picture out for what the secret extra fountain looks like.
    
13. Real Estate Mogul - Purchase all property in career mode- There are only 2 properties: the Fun Track and the Monster Clubhouse. You can buy the Monster Clubhouse for 200,000 dollars after beating the team challenges.
    
14. Fully Sponsored - Obtain all sponsorships- Basically just beat every challenge, you get a different sponsor depending on which line of challenges you have just finished.
    
15. The Architect - Upload a created spot
16. The Critic - Rate 10 community videos and photos
17. Pwn some n00bs - Win an online ranked match
18. Amateur Skater - Achieve Amateur Rank Online- I believe this requires only getting 1 bronze medal (100 xp) in one of the six event types.
    
19. Graphically Extreme - Add a custom graphic to your skater- As in, create a custom board or other piece of merchandise in the edit skater screen.
    
20. Dethrowned - Download and own a community-created spot
21. Skater's Choice - Win the Skater's choice award in an online ranked match- This is the little thumbs up next to a skater on the final standings in a Hall of Meat or Spot Battle match-up. It's based on who voted for who with the face buttons online, usually rewarding consistency or hilarious wipeouts in Hall of Meat.
    
22. Juggling Chainsaws - Wipeout at high speed in career mode- Not sure exactly what speed counts as high speed, but just roll down Cougar Mountain or the Rez roads for a bit before crashing.
    
23. Skitched Up - Skitch for 1000 meters or 3000 feet in career mode- Skitch by pressing R1 or the corresponding Xbox 360 button (someone tell me what that is) while behind a car. You may need to swing around behind it in the correct direction before turns so you don't fall away from it.
    
24. Make it Big! - Use Big Black's service 10 times in Career Mode- If you want, you can just hire him, then go into your cellphone menu and fire him ten times in a row. You need to unlock him first, obviously.
    
25. Running Man - Escape a chase off board in career mode- You don't have to escape off board the entire way, just walk over the border where they can't get you off your board after making most of the way there on board. The curb is typically the cut-off point where you reach "Freedom!"
    
26. DIY - Spend 30 minutes moving objects in career mode- I did this by putting a rubber band around my controller to hold the R1 button down, and it worked like a charm.
    
27. Good Samaritan - Knock down a security guard chasing another skater in career mode- Don't actively try to do this, just let it happen eventually. I mean, if you see a security guard actually chasing a skater, go for him, but there's not really any way to actively pursue this achievement.
    
28. Need for Speed - Maintain maximum speed for 5 seconds in career mode - Either skitch or just go down a hill and hang on without bailing for long enough.
    
29. Sandbag - Break at least 15 bones in a single wipeout in career mode
30. Gender Bender - Change your skater's gender- In the body enhancements section of edit skater. Just change gender and change back, you won't lose anything.
    
31. Grasshopper - Perform one grass gap of at least 10 meters or 30 feet in career mode- I'll try to come up with a specific spot for this soon.
32. Stairmaster - Perform one stair gap of at least 12 meters or 36 feet in career mode- If you don't get it beforehand, you'll receive this for successfully completing the 3rd Set's a Charm mission.
    
33. Uninsurable - Break 100 bones in career mode- Just let this happen over time. This should happen pretty quickly when you start on the Hall of Meat challenges.
    
34. Playing Nice Together - Complete your first online freeskate activity with your created skater
35. Cooperation is key - Complete 50 online freeskate activities with your created skater

Silver

1. SBM Cover - Get the cover of The Skateboard Mag- Consult my Skate 2 walkthrough for Mahalo.
2. Thrasher Cover - Get the cover of Thrasher- Consult my Skate 2 walkthrough for Mahalo.
3. How you like them apples? - Acquire all phone numbers for the pros- beat all the pro missions, basically. Consult my Skate 2 walkthrough for Mahalo.
4. Anyone Else? - Beat all the pros at Throwdown challenges- requires that you get all phone numbers first.
   
5. Spare Parts - All Hall Of Meat paths complete- Hall of Meat guide coming soon on Mahalo.
   
6. Urban Legend Too - Own all spots in career mode- Check out my spot map here at Mahalo.com.
   
7. Active Skater - Successfully complete all online freeskate activities with your created skater- a rather ridiculous requirement in my opinion, a lot of work, especially if you don't have about five friends who are constantly willing to play with you online.
   
8. Online Pro - Achieve Pro Rank Online- Requires 3 bronze medals in different events and one silver one.
   
9. Taste The Mongo - Mongo Push 5000 times in career mode- Get used to pushing Mongo instead of regular. I tended to push regular out of habit, and even after playing the entire game through, I have about 3000 more Mongo pushes to do. If you can find a spot to tape the button down or something, you can do one push per second, making for 83 minutes of Mongo pushing.
   

Gold

1. Perfectionist - Complete all paths in career mode- Consult my Skate 2 walkthrough for Mahalo.
2. Online Legend - Achieve Legend Rank Online- Not the same as Icon rank, as you'd suspect because the previous two were for amateur and pro, but rather just achieve legend rank on a single event, equivalent to 5000 exp.
   

Pay2Play, the Blagojevich Game

Want an iPhone parody game with alcopops? Then Pay2Play, assuming that it's actually approved for the AppStore, is definitely for you. Make fun of the Illinois state government in style!

Listen! Hey! Zelda Reorchestrated

LISTEN! HEY!

I recently took the liberty of downloading every Ocarina of Time track at ZREO, so I thought I'd give their site a minor plug here, not that they're making any money. They have some often brilliantly redone Zelda pieces, and are by far the easiest way for me to download and listen to all the nostalgia-inducing tracks for free.

South Carolina Bill Seeks to Outlaw Profanity

South Carolina (my home state! Go Gamecocks!) Bill 56 seeks to outlaw any written or oral display of profanity in the public or in correspondence with minors (aw, so much for my short-lived regional pride...). For some reason, perhaps because of the bill's mention in GamePolitics, this has really been circulating around the gaming website community. Of course, video games are under another sort of attack by legislators, but this could have other effects on games as well.

Would the passage of this bill form a de facto ban of profanity-using games to minors? Would it mean that classic novels that say "Damn" once would be held away from 15-year-olds like pornography? Would I have just been fined 5,000 dollars for using the word "damn" on my site?

It shouldn't really matter, because this bill is completely idiotic even before you get into discussing it on a constitutional level.

5 Ways The Bailout Game Sucks

The Bailout Game is, to put it briefly, weak. It's a serious flash game about the current bank bailout process, and it tries to give you the reins on how to save and who not to. Gameplay consists of slowly (so slowly) advancing space by space, either saving or rejecting each bank in turn, followed by a humorous video or picture or something else that may or may not make any sense. Even as far as serious flash games go, this game fails on at least five levels:

1. Any rhetoric they may have attempted to splice in to the game is lost on me (and Ian Bogost, and others). Going through and simply bailing every bank out will leave you with about 500 billion in bailout money left and a place in the leaderboard. Mechanically bailing out every bank makes the economy actually grow. It would appear that the only way to get a better score is to skip spaces by double clicking the "Go!" button, apparently a glitch.

2. The game is very opaque in a way. If you actually try to reject certain banks, then random other banks will fail, and you're left none the wiser. Why should you even reject them anyway? On second thought, maybe the game just wants you to bail everyone out, even though its videos tend to ridicule you for it (old film reels telling you about "state capitalism").

3. The actual "game" part of the equation is shoddily designed. It's boring. Press a button to advance one space, wait for it to crank over to it, say bail or don't, see a gag/pull a lever like you're on a slot machine/play an easy timing game, wait for the camera to slowly pan over to the "recession" car then back to you, repeat. It's not efficient or interestingly designed. This would be fine if the above issues with the decision-making were interesting.

4. The comedy varies in quality. Some of the news scroll jokes on the bottom are okay, some of the old film reels are funny at first, but... If any of it had a point it would probably be better, rather than just "So Fred Thompson and John Edwards walk into a bar".

5. Otherwise, the game initially looks like a well-funded endeavor. Unfortunately, all the money was put into technical details rather than, I don't know, actual game design.

So go on! Play it, Woo!

You've Unlocked Bonus Concept Art

Achievement unlocked: View extraneous art post for The Legal Arcade.

I expect this to be part of a series of court scene drawings, but this one is for Pac-Man. Click for an embarassingly huge resolution image.

PWNies 2008: Best Independent Game

Okay, it was World of Goo. I'm not going to mess around with the nominees, primarily because I feel guilty that I didn't get to play Braid, so I can't be sure if I would have preferred it to this game or not.

Anyway, World of Goo was a real triumph for independent games, as the experimental gameplay project published a really successful game out of a simple concept (and some good humor and art design). Despite an apparent 90% piracy rate (shame) the game appears to have made some coin. I wrote a review of it for BlogCritics here, so you can read that if you're interested in reading a boring positive review.

PWNies 2008: Best Game

Welcome to the most presigious awards show at The Legal Arcade, the PWNies. Tonight, we'll (the royal We) be deciding what was my favorite game that I played in 2008. Here are the nominees:

Grand Theft Auto 4

Metal Gear Solid 4

LittleBigPlanet

Fallout 3

Fable 2


...and, the winner is *opens envelope* Of course!

Grim Fandango! Certainly my favorite game of 2008. I had never played it before, and it was a marginally better experience than any of the other nominees. I loved MGS4 almost as much, but Grim Fandango edged it.

Alcopops Banned from Video Games by Illinois

Um, yeah. Not that there has ever been a game that happened to advertise "alcopops", but in Illinois, there never will be. There you have it.

via Kotaku, via GamePolitics