The Future of Niblets

As many of you are no doubt aware, yet another school year looms just ahead of us waiting to throw off its black cape of misery and descend on us with much malice and pain.  In addition to these old nuisances, I find myself in a new awkward situation having been charged with my own class to teach (Nineteenth-Century Cheeses II)!  Good heavens!  With all these new and exciting developments, the future of Niblets has been on my mind constantly this week—when I’m not thinking about the seventeen blank faces that will be looking to me for guidance four hours a week, that is.

My week of full-time teacher training may have drained me of content for this week’s post, but I am firm in my resolve to not let my new responsibilities as a Basic Advanced Studies In Franz Kafka’s Late Works instructor deter from my love of the Niblets entirely.  Updates in the past have, for those of you keeping score at home, been every Monday and between 1250-1500 words in length.  Now, I am entertaining two possible changes to that scheme: updates in the coming months will either be shorter in length, or come after two weeks time.  If things get particularly rough (as the first year of teaching is notorious for) I may resort to both (posting a shorter article after two weeks) but I’m going to do my best for you to not let it get that far.  Regardless, Monday will always be the day.

Good luck to you all out there, and keep an eye on the horizon for the niblets!

Reginald Backswaite

Mock Parliamentary Debate Referee

Criswell’s School for Smugness and Haughtary

Is Time To Run, Niblets!

As I sit typing this, it is Monday, August 18^th and I am awaiting the latest news on the looming “Heavy Update” for Valve’s landmark online team-based FPS Team Fortress 2. I’ve already seen the other four updates and am feeling kinda “meh” so far. The “Killer Gloves of Boxing” seem like a fair upgrade (I’m all for giving Melee attacks pure upgrades, as the Medic’s and Pyro’s have, for the most, been) and new maps are less exciting than weapons so I’m not losing my head over them. The Heavy’s new mini gun weapon “Natascha” has me worried. The reduced damage combined with a slowing effect on enemies it hits won’t (or at least it shouldn’t) affect his one-on-one interactions as long as the slowing effect is proportional to the damage reduction, so I’m more interested to see if this has a big impact on how the Heavy fits into the team. It could be the greatest support weapon of all time, the Heavy spraying bullets at whatever moves so Soldiers and Demomen can pick them off one by one, or it could prove to be completely useless, too passive to effectively benefit the team. However, despite these misgivings I am undoubtedly excited for what lies ahead: you and I, dear reader, are about to embark on a day by day trip through (most) of the first week on the Heavy update. We will document the ups and the downs, be there through the early nerfs and wait for the inevitable late fixes. We will experience it all. Is time to run, cowards!

Tuesday, August 19

Never before have I seen so many stray bullets fly across any TF2 battlefield. The early achievement glitches had me thinking that I’d be obtaining “The Sandvich” early but those hopes were soon dashed, not to mention I missed the first two hours of the update, and therefore prime achievement farming time, do to some computer maintenance I chose to partake it moments before the update dropped. I haven’t yet felt the effects of the “Natascha” minigun despite playing with several people already using it. My brother is convinced it needs balancing though I’m not sure. It seems too specialized to me at this point to warrant a major nerf. After achieving the Sandvich late in the day, I’m firm in the opinion that it’s a positive addition. I was initially resistant to it because it seemed too gimmicky, but now I see it as a balanced solution to the Heavy’s health problems. The new Arena mode is 100% fun. It’s like little Counter Strike-marshmallow bits in my TF2-Lucky Charms. I love it.

Wednesday, August 20

Had my first real experience with the new “Natascha” gun today. Overall, it doesn’t seem to be earth shattering. While it does improve some of the Heavy’s one-on-one interactions significantly, like with the Pyro and Scout (although those weren’t really much to worry about in the first place), it doesn’t do much for the rest. See, in one-on-one situations, Natascha only makes a real difference if your opponent’s offense is movement based, so Demoman, Engineer, Spy, and Sniper don’t really have to worry all that much because their methods of taking out enemies are, in general, indirect or instantaneous, leaving the Heavy with nothing to shoot at. Medic and Engineer are in trouble to an extent, but they didn’t really stand much of a chance solo against a Heavy anyway. Heavy versus Heavy, the slowdown is a non-issue, so it’s back to whoever starts spinning up first, or, because of Natascha’s lowered power lever, who has the Minigun equipped. Instead, Natascha seems more like a good support weapon; helps insure kills when double teaming, can save your teammates from incoming pyros, stall scouts, etc. Still, the weapon seems worth having regardless, and I’m going to do some extensive testing tomorrow to confirm these observations…

Thursday, August 21

My suspicions about Natascha have all but been confirmed. The slowdown effect is interesting, but I find myself wishing I had the extra damage of the Minigun more. Natascha’s uses are, it seems apparent to me, as follows: to help new players or those who don’t set their sensitivity high enough to follow fast-moving players, to cinch kills on retreating enemies, and to make killing Pyros easier. None of these, in my opinion make it a standard weapon suitable for all around use. Following enemies’ movement at full speed with the Minigun is something a player can learn with a some effort, retreating enemies can be killed faster with the increased damage of the Minigun, and as a Pyro gets closer to you, the more damage you’ll do to him, and you’ll be able to kill him before he kills you anyway. Natascha, then, is a weapon that offers specific advantages in specific situations, and it’s up to the player to judge those situations and implement it, and I’m sort of disappointed that we didn’t get something else that actually increased the potency of the Heavy—but then again, isn’t a weapon that can only shine in the hands of a skilled player the hallmark of a good competitive unlockable?

Friday, August 22

Missed a day. I got a chance to hang out with a friend I don’t see often because I live out of town and I took it.

Saturday, August 23

Played a lot of Arena today. As I said before, it’s like playing Counter Strike, but more fun. The persisting class-element plus the established “cartoony” atmosphere of TF2 take the “BOOM! HEADSHOT!” edge off the Counter Strike-style setting, while the action maintains the intensity; it’s intense but not intimidating. While there was an understandable torrent of Heavies earlier in the week, the community has quickly embraced the value of diversified teams in the new mode (as it should) and the result is a welcome option for a change of pace. The short, sweet bursts of action sprinkled into the average map rotations break up the often long, hard-fought wars of 2Fort’s capture the flag or Dustbowl’s inch by inch offensive crawl. It’s good. It’s real good.

Sunday, August 24

Well, it’s been a hell of a week (well, six days), and I’m very happy with what the Heavy update hath wrought. The new achievements are fun and don’t require going too far out of your way to complete. Instead, they focus on perfecting valuable skills and showcasing new additions to the game, like an effective update should. The Heavy’s new weapons complement his style and add another level of amusement with their gimmicks, like an effective update should. The new maps and “Arena” mode build on the standard style of action while introducing a new element that changes the game, like an effective update should. Valve has done a spectacular job with this content update for Team Fortress 2, and my hat’s off to them. I’ll have no problem occupying myself until the next update pack is released.

The World Ends With Niblets

The World Ends With You, an RPG developed by Square-Enix’s Kingdom Hearts Team released for the Nintendo DS back in May, is a game that, while receiving a fair amount of critical praise, didn’t seem to gain the foothold in mainstream gaming it deserved. It is a game that took great strides in RPG innovation: it revolutionized typical RPG game mechanics and control schemes, simplifying them while enabling more complex results; it showed that a good story can be “epic” quality without being forced; it showed that a game can be visually irresistible without photo-realistic lighting effects and a billion pixels; but most importantly, it showed that all these things can be done at the same time, and not at the expense of one another.

The World Ends With You starts out very J-RPG (spiky-haired, amnesiac emo kid awakens to find himself beset by demons while paired up with a bubbly, pink-haired chick) but quickly differentiates itself with well calculated, effective character development and a well executed over-arching story of deception, friendship, and redemption. I know, I know, that still sounds like pure anime, but I challenge you look past this if you’re not typically into J-RPGs, and play the game anyway—it’s not Saturday morning Yu-Gi-Oh, it’s Adult Swim Ghost in the Shell; wild and out there while maintaining a serious attitude. The Short version is that Neku, the game’s protagonist, becomes an unwilling participant in “The Reaper’s Game” and must form pacts with various (pre-determined) partners at different points in the game in order to survive the Reapers’ servants, The Noise, but also the Game itself, and escape with his right to exist (yes, that’s the exact wording and it is important). Between the beginning and the end, however, Neku discovers that the “rules” are subject to interpretation and are some of The Reapers’ most powerful weapons against him. By the way, The World Ends With You earns it’s “T” rating for mild language and dark themes that gel nicely with the post-modern style. It’s a brilliantly told story.

The game even parodies its typical J-RPG counterparts. Neku’s (the protagonist) amnesia hardly figures into the plot of the game at all, and his raging cynicism cuts throws a serious wrench into stereotypical J-RPG situations, dialogue, and themes whenever they present themselves—especially when he encounters the over-enthusiastic-know-it-all-full-of-energy follower of The World Ends With You’s diversionary minigame “Tin Pin Slammer,” who serves as the stand in for Ash Ketchum, Naruto Uzumaki, and every other annoying anime protagonist. Neku is always quick to point out when the cheese scale strikes a little high, and it endears him to the player unlike the whiny, “effeminate” male leads of most J-RPGs that succeed in annoying the player more than anything. On top of that, its setting is a departure from standard J-RPG formula. The entire game takes place in a well recreated (at least from what I understand) modern Shibuya district in Japan, and the localization has taken great pains to keep the flavor of Japan alive while implementing authentic American dialogue that immerses the modern gamer (Neku remarks that other characters are “full of fail,” etc.). The soundtrack completes the picture, painting a background of catchy pop and light techno beats that cement the game’s hip style.

The setting also figures into the equipment system. Shibuya is known, at least within Japan, as a fashion hotspot where trends in Japanese style are defined, and the game takes that to heart. You buy your weapons and armor at clothing stores (in the form of “pins” that generate psychic attacks and actual clothes), each with their own set of brands. Then when you equip your purchases, you get bonuses (and in a lone extreme case, a penalty) based on whether or not the area you are in favors your style or not. The upshot of this, however, is that persisting in wearing your brand of choice in any given area (fighting battles) boosts its popularity and allows you to “force” trends for combat boosts.

Perhaps the best thing about equipment system of The World Ends With You, for non-RPG fans, is that it relieves the player of the necessity to “grind” levels—which isn’t to say you can’t if you’re into that kind of thing, you just don’t have to. See, the game has this genius little mechanic called “shutdown PP” (PP being the EXP your weapons or “pins” gain to level up) that uses the DS’s internal clock to calculate a PP bonus for pins based on how long your DS has been turned off. Let me put it a simpler way: can’t beat a particular boss? Turn off the game, do something else, wait till tomorrow—the next time you play the game you’ll have another level on your pins. Plus, the game features a “mingle mode” that allows you to set your DS to a passive communicative state and interact with any other DS communicating wirelessly with anyone regardless of what game it’s running—and you get EXP for that too (not to mention player information, the ability to buy other people’s powered-up pins from them, and make some money this way yourself). Throw in the fact that different pins grow, or “evolve,” through focusing on different types of PP (either “shutdown,” “mingle,” or good old-fashioned “battle” PP) as well as the ability to set and reset difficulty and adjust your overall level achieve different drop rates for rare items and you’ve got yourself a very unassuming equipment system that becomes addictive over time. Oh, and for any of you out there noticing any Pokemon similarities don’t worry: it’s a good thing, it doesn’t detract from any other element of the game and it is by no means the only reason to play it.

While the story is enthralling and the equipment system offers all the collecting and team building aspects RPG fans love, the combat offers yet another opportunity for the player to become immersed in an addictive activity. The game is controlled entirely by touch (well, you can use the directional button to move when not in combat but it’s not as fun) and it hits the mark that previous games (like Phantom Hourglass) have missed. It balances a great variety of actions with an intuitive, fully customizable play style. Here’s the basic setup: you select pins from your inventory and equip them, each one with a specific ability activated with the touch screen. It goes something like this: I’m always partial to swords, so I equip a few sword-like pins that require me to slash across the enemy I want to attack, moving my character over automatically to perform different moves. I also want to have a long-range solution to do some damage without exposing my character, so I equip a pin that sprays bullets at whatever point I tap on my screen. Finally, I want something to heal me, so I choose a pin that recovers some damage when I tap its icon on the battle screen. When I get into a battle, it all flows naturally in real time. I’m slashing, I’m firing, I’m recovering, and my partner is building up combo attacks for me the whole time. In fact, the partner system adds another layer on top of basic combat, offering a chance for the player to flex his or her coordination muscles and operate both players at the same time by giving commands via the directional buttons to your partner on the top screen while fending off Noise with Neku on the bottom. Not to worry though, you can simply let your partner auto-play for fair results too. It adds another level of depth to combat that provides another challenge for the elite gamer, if he or she is so inclined.

Now, as any RPG gamer knows, nothing ruins a good combat system like endless, repetitive, unavoidable random encounters, and I’m proud to say that The World Ends With You is void of them. Combat is triggered by actually selecting which individual teams of enemies you want to take on when Neku activates his signature “psyche” that allows him to see the Noise around him, as well as read peoples thoughts (which is also quite a fun way to spend a few minutes if you’re bored since, throughout the whole game, NPCs rarely repeat themselves at all the various points of the game). This gives the player a sense of freedom and consequentially leads to a much more enjoyable experience including, at least in my case, more and more battles just for the fun of it.

The best thing about The World Ends With You, when all is said and done, is that it has all the elements that make you think about the game even when you’re not playing it, and leave you feeling sad and a little empty when you’ve played it to its extremes, scraping every last drop out of its seemingly bottomless well of content. Replaying the game once finished offers endless possibilities for chapter jumping and cutscene skipping (a blessing for J-RPG veterans and skeptics alike) to find specific secrets at specific instances without impeding the player more than necessary to maintain a challenge. It’ got everything that not only makes a great RPG, but a great game. The World Ends With You is the whole package, and it’s one of the best reasons to own a DS in this modern gaming world.

Do Not Compromise The Niblets

I recently got my hands on Assassin’s Creed for my PC and have been playing it quite steadily for the past five days or so. From these five days with it I can see that it’s a game that lives up to the hype—at least enough to not completely disappoint—although it does contain a few noticeable flaws. It’s another case of a game that could have been really really good instead of just being “good” if it hadn’t been rushed through its last stages of development in order to get it on the market, but then again the only studios that don’t do that are Valve, Blizzard, Nintendo and Kojima, and they can’t make every game, can they. But I digress. Onward with Assassin’s Creed!

For starters, the plot of Assassin’s Creed is, well, disputable. While the vast majority of the game is played as Altair, jilted master assassin forced to work his way back up to the top from the very bottom, the player really controls some guy who’s name is easily forgotten who is, for some reason, being held captive by a scientist and his sexy assistant while they probe his genetic memory for some hidden “secret” for their “employers.” Seriously. You talk like random-white-guy and you look like random-white-guy the entire game despite the fact that you’re supposed to be in the Crusades-era Jerusalem area. It’s something that would get on my nerves if it wasn’t part of the scenario design—and to its credit it’s a gold mine for the developers. It provides for an opportunity to teach the player the controls (teaching Desmond how to use the Animus machine), it provides a solution for when the player dies or fails an objective (the memory “destabilizes” and resets), and most importantly for the developers, I assume, it provides endless opportunities for sequels. Since the scenario itself is not limited to a time period because The Animus is a vessel for exploring human genetic memory, the Assassin’s Creed series is permitted to jump to all kinds of different periods of subterfuge and assassination, meaning we can expect anything from cold war counter-counter espionage to the Spanish Inquisition in the series’ future.

As for the gameplay itself, it’s like playing Metal Gear Solid crossed with Prince of Persia; the sneaking around, trying to be as stealthy and inconspicuous as you can is complemented nicely by the tight, well executed action elements like quickly fleeing a scene, acrobatically jumping from rooftop to rooftop and then blending in to your surroundings. It’s genius, and this is really the element of Assassin’s Creed that promises to “revolutionize the Action genre,” as so many have said.

Acrobatics and stealth really aren’t two elements that far apart—there’s more than one way to avoid being caught than just simply hiding—but it’s something that games have been limited in their portrayal of because of the hardware available up to this point. As controllers got bigger and more complicated throughout the 90s, it seemed logical to simply give the player more specific actions to perform. After all, games up until that point always hinged on giving the player set moves to work with—Mario for example—and it worked wonderfully. Up until recently, you simply pressed the button (or combination of buttons) and if the specific animation it triggered worked, it worked, and if it didn’t you went back to the drawing board. Now, however, memory capacity and animation technology has had a chance to catch up, giving developers the freedom to do more “for” the player. Essentially, games have become more intuitive, and complicated actions (like the ones a person would actually do in real life) can be performed easily by the player. These instances are extremely common in Assassin’s Creed and are somewhat of a centerpiece of the game. The control scheme, for example, is very free-form. Instead of simply having an “attack” button, or a “jump” button, buttons are used to activate your legs, arms, weapons, etc. based on your overall behavior and situation. You remember the “Action” button from Ocarina of Time? It’s kind of like that except every button is an action button. Now, I realize this concept isn’t new (like I just said, Zelda was doing it in ’98 ) but it’s done so well in Assassin’s Creed that it warrants credit.

Beyond that there is the way the game requires you to behave realistically in the scenarios it puts forth. Playing like a video game character (bumping into people, starting conversations with randoms on the street, jumping on everything in sight) no longer cuts it here. Doing so will get you odd stares from the crowd and may even set the guards on you. It’s new level of immersion that I’ve been waiting to see in games for a long while. The Metal Gear Solid series was the closest so far (and I’ll admit I haven’t gotten my hand on MGS4 yet so I don’t know for sure), but Assassin’s Creed does the best job I’ve seen yet. The accompanying visuals make the experience even more “real” for the player, and, in a world that seems to want to substitute good graphic for good gameplay more and more, I can confidently say these are warranted.

Of course, when you begin to look at the negatives of the game, you find that the elements that lead to some of the game’s biggest positives also contribute to its biggest negatives. For starters, whenever Altair walks past a piece of the terrain he can interact with unprompted, he does so without hesitation. Now, this is all well and good, until you’re trying to walk past a ladder by moving forward and Altair/Desmond keeps attempting to climb up it because you’ve got your finger on the ‘up’ button. Not to mention that scaling a building, something that should seem monumental to the player, becomes routine three hours in the game. In fact, it’s expected of you to climb one at least every hour or so in order to find new objectives, and holding down the requisite buttons while you simply watch Altair find foothold after improbable foothold becomes, well, dull.

Also, the “keeping a low profile” thing seems to have a few kinks in it. Remember Altair’s auto-hide? Well, some of these instances produce result that should be more …conspicuous… than the game thinks they are. For example, whenever Altair passes by a haystack, he always gleefully hurls himself into it to “hide.” Now, I’m just one man, but, to me, seeing someone walking casually down the street one second and diving into a pile of hay the next would be a little, well, suspicious: “Hey, you see than guy just now?” “Yeah Bill, I did. What the hell, right?” “He just jumped into my pile of hay!” “I know man. Whatcha gonna do though, am I right?” And what’s worse, it actually fools the cops: “Unit two move in, we’ve got him cornered.” “You see where he went?” “Yeah. Turned a corner, no place to—DAMMIT! NOTHING HERE!” “What?” “THERE’S NOTHING HERE! JUST HAY! CURSE YOU, YOU WILY BASTARD, CURSE YOOOOOOOOOOOU!”

What it really comes down to, in the end is repetition: Assassin’s Creed is very repetitive. Besides the changes in assassination targets, you go through essentially the same motions for every kill, and it gets stale. So, in the end, as innovative as it is, Assassin’s Creed is more of stepping stone in action-game design: we’re not quite there yet, but this is a solid glimpse at where we’re going. That said, it’s hard to recommend it fully; it’s not quite worth the $40-50 being asked for it by retailers, but supporting this game will lead to good things in the future. If you’ve got the cash lying around and nothing pressing to play, pick this one up for some good times.

Today on Niblets, My Guest Will Be the G-Man

I first got my hands on Half-Life 2 when I purchased the Orange Box last October. Lack of funds and a sufficient video card had kept me from indulging up to that point, but the promise of Team Fortress 2 beta and Portal was too tempting, so I eagerly gave in a shelled out the 45 clams for a prerelease copy on Steam. Naturally, I’ve spent a great deal of my time since then playing TF2, and with Portal being my single-player top priority, Half-Life 2 was pushed to the side and became a game I turn too when can’t connect to the internet, or I’m hanging out with my brother and we want an FPS to play together. The game is his favorite shooter, after all, and he can help me when I’m stuck—which brings me to my point: Half-Life 2, while and undeniably great game that changed what we could expect from video games back in 2004, contains some elements that just frustrate and confuse the long-time gamer in me.

Maybe I should start by confirming my credentials as a gamer to give you a sense of where I’m coming from. My first conscious memory is of myself playing Centipede at Little Caesar’s with my mom. I was pressing the button while she moved the little shooter-pod around at the bottom of the screen. These were back in the days when Little Caesar’s was dimly lit and it resembled some kind of dungeon filled with video games and pizza. It was heaven for my young imagination. I obsessively played Centipede, my sharpening dexterity eventually allowing me to graduate to solo play and expand my repertoire to include Rampage and Donkey Kong. These were days when you could still find Street Fighter in the supermarkets and such, and I would stay behind with a pocket of quarters whenever my mother did the shopping.

My first “home” video game unit was an original Gameboy, given to me by an aunt when I was five for Christmas. Up until this point, and continuing until I was ten, “TV” video games were forbidden, and the Gameboy was some kind of concession to satiate my growing desire. I begged for a Super Nintendo constantly over the years, but was always denied. Therefore, I threw myself into reading about video games: strategy guides, magazines, and reviews. I quickly learned about the games I wanted to play, and what made them good. In this time I also played extensively with friends at their houses and got way into games like Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog, Earthworm Jim, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Vectorman—well, as much as two hours a day three to four times a week will let you.

Eventually I won out over my parents nay saying, got an N64, and the rest has been history. I’ve been playing video games and scrutinizing them ever since—right up to now with Half-Life 2—and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to keep an eye out for design elements, both good and bad, as they become apparent. Half-Life 2 itself is a masterpiece and has all the right elements where it counts. The controls feel second nature, the visuals are immersive and “real” and the plot is top notch—and delivered well to boot. It’s just the little things that get me down some times.

See, as any hardcore gamer knows, when you sit down to play a video game, you’re not fighting the enemy soldiers, or zombies, or taxpayers, you’re using the set of player-controlled elements given to you to play against the mechanics built by the game designers. You are given a set of elements you can control, and are essentially dealing with whatever the preprogrammed system throws at you and the scenario is a veil that obscures this. This is why seasoned gamers always see how far they can stretch those player-controlled elements to discover bugs, exploits, etc that either make the game easier or expose a hole in the veil. Of course, this is why realism is important: to distract and immerse the player. It’s like The Matrix: if the scenario is believable, or at least convincingly feasible, then the player is more likely to excuse the bugs or “bad design” and continue playing happily. But, if the flaws are too prevalent or the scenario can’t adequately draw the player in, then the player begins to get frustrated and loses interest. 90% of bad games are bad for this reason. Now, the more freedom you give the player the easier it is for the bad elements to become exposed, but linear games (like Half-Life 2) have an edge in that they can direct the player’s attention.

When it comes to designing a linear game, or at least the linear elements of a game (and all games have them), the challenge for the player should, in my opinion, come from what I refer to as “figuring out how to get there” as opposed to “figuring out where to go.” This means, well, basically what it sounds like. In Super Mario Bros. you know where the exit is and the challenge is getting to it, not finding it. The player should know where they’re going, and then be given the freedom to decide how they want to navigate there—it’s not just about finding the only possible solution the designers intended, which is tedious and boring at best; clever designers (like the ones who designed Super Mario Bros.) allow for multiple “solutions” by keeping the obstacles non-restrictive and allowing the player some level of leeway—basically creating a bubble of freedom within the linearity.

3-D games have improved on this concept but also made it much more complicated. It’s almost an elementary concept now, but the goal is not always on the left side of the screen anymore, and can be, in fact, anywhere, so a game successful in this respect provides direction and “signs” for the player to read that tell him or her where to go so that he or she can focus on getting there. Half-Life 2, in this case, is so immersive to the point that it’s detrimental.

Situation: I’m in Ravenholm in the large “room” where regular headcrab zombies, flingers, and monkey zombies spawn endlessly. I start at one end of the room. I recognize this situation from Resident Evil 4 and begin taking out zombies. I realize eventually, while searching for the exit, that they are, in fact, spawning endlessly, and that the exit is non-existent. The trail I’m looking for turns out to be the stack of crates I’ve run past several times in search of a spare moment to look for the exit. The issue: the color pallet blends the set pieces with the traversable terrain so well that I repeatedly run past the mound of boxes dismissing them as decoration. When it comes to actually climbing the stack, I’m immediately concerned that I’m unnecessarily exposing myself to a threat that has been established as unstoppable. Jumping up the crates forces me to stand virtually in one place while making a series of four short hops, exposed to flying crabs and god knows what else—I’m just so damn paranoid that I’m worried anything can and will go wrong for me at this point. I’m disoriented and confused—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Case in point: Metal Gear Solid. Case in point: Eternal Darkness. Except it doesn’t seem intentional. Instead, I’m back playing Castlevania, trying for the nineteenth damn time to find the exact jumping pattern to avoid certain doom and beginning to worry that the designers intentionally designed this section poorly to increase potential play time. But I’m not, I’m playing Half-Life 2, a much better game. I like Half-Life 2!

Furthermore, once I’m atop the larger storage boxes, traversing the system of wooden planks that look too narrow to support me, I’m confronted with more zombies and learn that my previous faith in tactically dispatching them was misplaced. It appears that while applying combat strategy to this situation does nothing but waste my ammo—firing at zombies that don’t react to being shot in the leg, chest or any extremity—standing still and taking headshots proves much more effective.

Most of what I believe about good, modern game design, I learned from Valve. Their developer commentaries have introduced the world to their style of design and sheds light on how they always deliver a satisfying product: “cabal” groups that tackle problems based on who has the better solution rather than simply whose job it is to fix it, and playtesting, lots and lots of playtesting. I’m with them on both of these points—playtesting especially, since nearly all bugs, exploits, and “cracks” in the veil can be rooted out through good, extensive playtesting. What it comes down to is that they don’t skimp on the polishing, and polishing is what gives a game longevity. And that is why, given all this, I can’t believe my own complaints about Half-Life 2.

In the Portal commentaries, the Valve designers stress again and again the importance of teaching the player a new skill before asking them to implement it, and that’s one problem I seem to have with Half-Life 2: I just don’t feel like I’m being taught what I need to know. “Trial and error” gameplay is to be expected from any game—you can’t always be right the first time—but it seems like I’m having to start over A LOT in Half-Life 2, something that a long-time gamer who’s been around his fair share of first-person shooters shouldn’t have to do to such a degree. It also seems like the game punishes you for exploring, something you must do to find exits. I go off the path (when I know I’m on it) to look for ammo, health, maybe an Easter egg or two, and am usually rewarded with wasted ammo and two lost lives. I remember Half-Life 2 being criticized for being too linear, but the balance seems out of whack. Is this how they intend to guide me through the game? By mercilessly punishing me for going off the path until I do it right?

Situation: I’m driving the buggy along the coast, taking out zerglings—er, antlions with the mounted gun. I’m having a great time, until I’m confronted with a situation challenging me to get out of the buggy, climb up a ramp and activate some magnet controls while being assaulted by antlions and shot at by combine soldiers. At first, this challenge is fun, but soon becomes tiresome as I begin to realize that none of my solutions are going to work, and it simply is going to come down to perfecting the asinine process of getting out of the buggy, and fending off all the attacks on my way to the controls. Using the buggy to shoot the soldiers proves useless, since their slim profiles make horrible targets and driving the thing around in circles unable to watch the road because I’ve got to aim to the side only results in getting stuck in the pool Valve conveniently placed there to expose the player to all kinds of horrible death while he or she wastes ammo fending off antlions in order to buy time to dig him or herself out with the gravity gun. I understand wanting to impress on the player the feeling pressure to perform in intense situations but this just isn’t fun anymore after five or so tries. I eventually succeed, but only after I’ve found and perfected the one possible route that has become apparent to me through all my failures.

I want to stress once again that I’m not turned off to Half-Life 2 by any of the complaints here. When I’m doing things right, figuring out the puzzles in a reasonable amount of time, and engaging in tight fire fights with the Combine soldiers, I’m having a great time. It’s just that, between these great action sequences, there’s a lot tedious “figuring out where to go.” But maybe it’s not all bad. When I finally get it right, the sense of achievement I get is great. It’s kind of like I’m on a seesaw: I’m either really loving Half-Life 2 or hating its guts, but something tells me that will make it all the better when I finish it.

Niblets on Vacation

Well, as the title suggests, I am on vacation with my family this week, so this’ll be a short entry. I thought about skipping the whole thing, but then where would that leave you, avid reader. With so much randomness out there, we all need some constants in our life, right? So don’t worry, Niblets has got you covered.

I had a chance to see The Dark Knight again and it’s given me a chance to reflect on my initial reaction a little. The problem I have with the movie, I think, is that it tries too hard to hit the same marks the first one did without devoting enough attention to creating new ones, and consequentially both suffer. We all loved Batman Begins, but we can’t have those days back, we need to look forward and create new, exciting marks for our movies to hit. That, and it’s too long—although I guess that’s a mute point since almost every movie made in the past ten years has been too long (do I even have to mention Lord of the Rings?) and nobody’s bothered to stop it.

It is also obvious to me now more than ever that The Joker was intended to return in the next installment, if not to appease the fans then at least keep this Batman series from getting to spread out like its predecessor. Bringing back The Joker brings the Batman series back home to the Batman-Joker face-offs we know and love from the comics/cartoons/TV shows. It brings us back to familiar territory. The previous series lacked continuity because it insisted on introducing two new villains every time—let’s not make that mistake again (and let’s keep the same Batman while we’re at it, Clooney can stay home).

Other thoughts:

It enrages me that there exists a third Mummy movie (or is it the fourth? We can’t leave out The Rock’s installment, can we?). The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (or Die Mumie – Das Grabmal des Drachenkaisers as it is lovingly referred to by the Germans) opens this Friday and I’m almost at a loss words. As a fan of Brendan Fraser, it makes me sad to see him typecast and forced into bad projects repeatedly to make a living. And furthermore, there isn’t even a mummy! It’s just zombie Jet-li—which is a real waste when you think about it because Zombie Jet-Li is a movie I would probably watch. Honestly, when it gets to the point that you have to take seven years off to invent a new undead antagonist for Brendan Fraser to charmingly match wits with, then maybe it’s time for you to realize that the source material really just isn’t meant to support another movie.

With the DS release of Chrono Trigger on the horizon (November for those of you keeping score at home) I started thinking about the game again and realized it is probably the only SNES-gen RPG that survives as a great game by today’s standards. Don’t get me wrong, Earthbound, and Final Fantasy IV & VI are all good games in their own right, but Chrono Trigger just doesn’t feel like it’s lost any ground to the technological and narrative advances video games have made in the near thirteen years since its release. It’s amazing.

I’ve been getting back into Half-Life 2 again recently and I’m having some issues with it, but I think that’s another story altogether…

And now, Diane, there are just two other things that struck me earlier this morning that continue to trouble me, and I’m speaking now not only as an agent of The Bureau but as a human being: what really went on between Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedys, who really pulled the trigger on JFK…

Thank you, and continue to have wonderful lives until we meet again.

Niblets Wishes to Inquire as to Why You Are Approaching the Current Situation in Such a Serious Manner?

The Dark Knight, the second in the “new” Batman movie series, is a movie that has garnered extremely high levels of attention before any footage was shown to the public. This is in large part due to the fact that Heath Ledger dramatically died after completion, and the media blitz generated by the death of a young, handsome, beloved-by-many actor ensured this movie to be a success before it ever hit the big screen. It has generated so much buzz as “the movie that killed Heath Ledger” (even though it didn’t) and “Heath Ledger’s last movie” (even though it isn’t) that it may become hard for audiences to see past it, and consequentially either dismiss the movie drivel that would’ve been considered mediocre at best if not for the actor’s death or accept it without question as a masterpiece. Thankfully, Niblets are to the rescue, wading through all that crap for you.

So, is the movie good? Yes. Is the movie great? Maybe. Is it the best super hero movie of all time? No. Definitely not. On the scale of “new” super hero movies, this one rates about a Superman Returns: good, but not delivering entirely what we were hoping for. Really, when you think about it, how could it? Batman Begins was, in my opinion one of, if not the best, new super hero movies. The high expectations (which were albeit justified) compounded with the buildup created by Ledger’s death will invariably make it fall short of people’s expectation. It has a light case of “sequel syndrome”—which is a problem with super hero movies in general; the origin movie is really good, but, with the exception of maybe Spiderman 2, when we get to the real meat and potatoes of being an established super hero day-to-day in the city of choice, the magic seems to fade just a little, but I digress.

Of course, the question everyone wants answered is: “is Heath Ledger good?” Early reports from the cast and crew indicated that he was phenomenal, there was talk of a posthumous Oscar award, and on the black carpet (ha ha) Michael Caine even insisted the performance was worth an Oscar regardless of Ledger’s death. So, is he really that good? The answer is an emphatic “yes!” The Joker is quirky, amusing, and terrifyingly psychotic all at once. The way he shuffles about taunting, misleading and horrifically killing people all reflect the true essence of The Joker. It’s a performance that really brings The Joker into the 21^st Century, which is reassuring since the Joker is easily the strongest element of this film, and future Batman franchise movies… DAMN!

As for the rest of the cast, Michael Caine is superb as always, proving that he is the ideal Alfred Pennyworth once again. Christian Bale delivers a performance on par with his previous Batman appearance (which can be good or bad—I’ll leave it up to you). Gary Oldman makes you root for the underdog yet again, Morgan Freeman proves how awesome he is (as if he needed to), and Maggie Gyllenhaal is a significant improvement over Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes. Really, the whole cast has that rare quality that makes you forget their playing characters and that you’re watching a movie.

The only exception, really, is Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent—pre-Two-Face. This seems mostly due to the fact that it is important to the plot that he be the shiningest, most valiant angel possible to contrast with his Joker-induced shift into perhaps the second most deranged villain in Batman history. Before he makes the change, however, he functions as some sort of one-liner machine that frequently walks in front of explosions without flinching while punching out gun-toting mobsters. It’s infuriatingly annoying to watch, but is almost forgiven when it is put into perspective for the audience by his complete turn-around. Almost. His character is really more for the benefit of fictional Gotham than the audience directly. He’s the politician we all want: handsome, brave, and an untiring crusader for what’s right—like Batman. Too bad the ideal politician is also apparently annoying as hell to watch 24/7. Incidentally, his connection to Batman is played up by the movie in several places, casting Batman, Dent, and Gordon as the three pillars of hope for Gotham that the Joker attempts to corrupt at every turn.

I assume I won’t be spoiling anything for anyone by saying that Dent turns evil, since anyone who knows someone even mildly interested in Batman (or even easier, has looked at the movie’s IMDB page) will tell you they’ve known about the Dent/Two-Face relationship for months (or years) before the movie came out. In The Dark Knight, the change itself is extremely satisfying. While the movie is “good” up to this point, Two-Face’s emergence makes the film shine with glimmers of perfection as The Joker and Two-Face weave their separate paths of destruction through Gotham, bringing back that giddy-nervous feeling the audience got when Wayne Manor began to burn in Batman Begins.

Like all super hero movies, The Dark Knight contains its fair share of action, and this is where the movie finds its most fault. Directors and editors seem to think that there is no such thing as too much cross-cutting, cut-aways, and random angle changes these days, and this excess makes the action sequences in The Dark Knight borderline indecipherable at times. Batman’s ninja antics are cool—they were part of what made me so fond of Batman Begins—but the cinematography in The Dark Knight works against it, jumping around almost as much as Bale does. The kitsch is also turned up a little in this one. Batman Begins could get away with some comedic moments sprinkled into its hardcore actions scenes because they were genuinely funny and didn’t detract from the mood (“it’s a black” *BOOM* “…tank”), but The Dark Knight’s seem forced and are blatantly unfunny. One particular instance finds a high octane car chase interrupted by two kids in a car pointing their fingers at parked cars like guns and squeezing imaginary triggers; at just the right moment a car explodes and the kids gasp in wonder at their “powers.” Seriously? Oh jeez…

That said, the movie is still good overall. The plot is good (albeit a bit twisted), the characters are well acted, and it delivers a solid experience from the Batman universe, and since the movie is a guaranteed hit, I can’t help but wonder about the future of the series. While it’s a slim chance, another Two-Face appearance may be in the future, but more importantly the Joker is explicitly left as a possibility… DAMN!!! It really isn’t fair, Heath Ledger really is that damn good as the Joker. It’s such a shame to think that Batman’s No.1 antagonist could be put on the shelf for future projects. Say what you will, but future movies (and there will be future movies) will be lacking without appearances by The Joker. I mean, Batman versus The Joker is one of the most iconic struggles in all the super hero universes!

As previously stated many times, The Dark Knight is a very good Batman film. It advances the overall plot of the Batman story very well, and brings out the dark side of the Caped Crusader much more effectively than Batman Begins did. After all, as The Joker himself points out, the line that separates himself from Batman is a thin one, and this movie gives us more of a sense of Bruce’s inner conflict as he comes closer and closer to crossing it. When all’s said and done, this movie leaves me thinking about the future of the series more than anything—hell, even The Joker himself wants it to go on: “I don’t want to kill you,” he says to Batman, “What would I do without you?” and later, “you complete me!” Indeed. We need both of these characters very dearly.

Niblets Invade WALL-E

When you are inevitably dragged to see WALL-E with your kids/girlfriend, don’t order popcorn. Trust me on this. You’ll realize why roughly 40 minutes into the movie and thank me afterward. I’m trying to keep this light on the spoilers, so I won’t say exactly why right now, just that movie popcorn has the ability to make you feel particularly fat and sluggish—even if you don’t order it with butter.

Overall, WALL-E is a movie filled with answers, answers to questions like, “what will humanity look like in 800 years?” and “what would happen if ROB the Robot fell in love with an iPod? To answer those questions entirely here myself would, again, involve quite a large amount of spoilers, but I will say this in regard to the first: don’t order popcorn!

I know I won’t be the first to compare WALL-E to the classic silent films of Charlie Chaplin, and WALL-E himself to Chaplin. The film is built around rampant and infectious physical humor with very little dialogue (compared to other movies made today anyway) and a central character that is a potent mixture or romantic courage and sheer pathetic, adding up to an experience that is engaging from start to finish because of the absolute sympathy the audience feels for poor WALL-E. This is because, well, let’s face it, WALL-E’s life is kind of dismal but, because he’s a robot programmed to pick up trash, he has no idea. He simply bumbles along through his daily business of endless scooping, compacting, and stacking (much like ROB the Robot) the endless trash left in humanity’s wake (much like ROB the Robot), unwittingly discovering, and becoming enamored with, the everyday facets of our current lives. You see, WALL-E is more like a child left alone to play in a deserted city than anything else, which is irresistibly cute as well as gut-wrenchingly sad at the same time. To make matters worse, WALL-E communicates entirely with mixture of clicks, whistles and beeps like R2D2, and is used to a massively strong effect. WALL-E’s predicament is even further compounded by the few shots on earth of him unwittingly rolling past piles of his broken (or for all intents and purposes dead) comrades on his way back to his storage unit where he empties the days findings from his Igloo lunchbox into their perfectly sorted places in his collection, watches Hello Dolly one more time, and powers down for the night.

His choice of movie presents the first problem for both WALL-E and the audience: WALL-E is, like most robots in the future it seems, very interested in the idea of love. His favorite scene, for example, in Hello Dolly is the song wherein two people hold hands at the end, which he is transfixed by, and he records it to, presumably, his internal memory. Watching him attempt to fit his clamp-hands together in mimicry of the movie brings tears to the eye of anyone watching—no exceptions.

When the love interest (the aforementioned iPod) is introduced, it immediately becomes a severe case of star-crossed lovers. EVE and WALL-E hit it off the way most couples do: she becomes marginally amused with him after almost annihilating him with her iLaser; he shows her his collection of stuff; she solves the Rubik’s cube he’s been working on for the past 300 years in two seconds; and finally he shows her Hello Dolly, tentatively attempting to hold her hand before she threatens to blow his head off. Ah young love. They’re so obviously incompatible: he picks up trash while she’s concerned only with her “directive,” he’s a small metal box while she is constructed from the finest white plasteel, and on top of it all he’s clearly a System 4.0 Machine while she runs on OS 327 (Super Cheetah). Still, there’s something about how their audio outputs beep and click out each other’s name that makes you think they have a chance.

The movie shifts when EVE accomplishes her mission and the pair hitch a ride into space and board The Axiom, the ship now housing all of humanity. Now, instead of observing WALL-E in a desolate environment void of humanity, we learn just what exactly happened to humanity. The good news is we’re still there. The bad news is that there’s much more of us, particularly in the midsection.

Another question is answered here too: how will major corporations be making our lives better in the future? Why the same way they always have! By repressing our natural urges with an overly luxurious lifestyle and fear mongering! At least some things never change. It’s kind of like watching Idiocracy the way all the humans float around on their automated chairs, eating meals in slurpee form, and talking to people right next to them with through video feeds on their individual screen while being bombarded by ads around the border. It also seems that the population is disturbingly homogenous. Granted, it’s hard to see clearly because they all wear red uniform jumpsuits, but there is very little visible diversity on the ship. Everyone has an American accent, most everybody is white. No Africans, very few Asians, no one in religious dress. Now this is probably because WALL-E is a movie targeted at an American audience that is about a robot in the future, but it still says something about or culture today whether it’s an intentional portrayal or not. Either way, it doesn’t get in the way of watching and enjoying the movie.

In this environment, it quickly becomes apparent that WALL-E, EVE, and the robots in general are more human than anyone on The Axiom. They flirt, they play, laugh, they cry. They make you feel the greatest heartbreak and the deepest joy. They run on emotion more than anything else, and that is what drives the movie to its climax, an event that is so emotionally satisfying and ultimately uplifting to the audience that it erases entirely the immense depression and anxiety that’s been building inside you since those first desolate scenes.

This is what Pixar is so good at that it makes all of their movies great, this one especially: they mix the cute with the serious in such a way that both come across and the movie never really has to overtly ask for the emotional reaction of the audience. The characters and situations are so authentically portrayed and introduced that you can’t help be authentically invested too. Even the villain, the stereotypical mega conglomerate company that is actively involved in keeping humanity imprisoned on the space station, represented by the forcefully monotone AUTO (or is it OTTO?) Pilot, doesn’t come across as stale and played out. This is because, while it most definitely represents that stereotypical idea, it is also a genuine cartoon villain. Its mechanical insistence becomes funnier and funnier the more you hear the monotone, deep Mac voice drone “Nooooo” over and over again every time WALL-E and EVE foil it. What’s more, you can’t help but genuinely begin to dislike it after seeing what tries to do to the captain, the passengers of the Axiom and worst of all, our precious WALL-E on the spur of the moment. Don’t go into WALL-E expecting your typical straw man, faceless corporation; this one will make you seriously think about destroying your BlackBerry cutting up your Sam’s Club card.

So what is the moral of WALL-E? That an Apple II with treads is more human than humanity, a fact we’ve all suspected at one time or another and yet denied so furiously all the same. That said, WALL-E is the best, most important movie of this year, and possibly of our generation. Not to mention it has a great live performance by Fred Willard! You’d be doing yourself a disservice by missing it.

The Struggle Begins

Welcome to “Niblet Invasion:  Attack of the Killer Niblets,” wherein the mysteries of the universe are explained with a quaint lack of insincerity and various products and pieces of art are reviewed for our collective amusement.

This is my blog.  I’m gonna write about stuff.  It’s gonna be great, right?  I’m going do my best to express my thoughts coherently in the form of  reviews, insights, and possibly even commentaries on today’s popular culture—which I sincerely hope that doesn’t get out of hand.  I may even try to dabble in the reviewing of the occasional useful/awful product advertised ad nauseam in the hopes of validating/exposing it for all of our general enjoyment.  I’m going to try and stay as current as the money situation allows, but that’s not really your problem, is it?  As for my personal life, I am an American working as an unemployed English major and my interests include video games old and new, movies, music, and criticizing all of the above.  Of course, I play the occasional Trading Card Game, but that’s another story.

Now, I’ll level with you:  this is the internet, I mean, who are we kidding?  It’s a big place and there’s a lot out there, so if you’re here you must be expecting something good, and I’m going to do my best to give it to you every time, by God, so that your time isn’t wasted.  But don’t let yourself get to overwhelmed by all this now; sit back, relax, and enjoy the words.

And remember, the Niblets are coming!