Star Wars Games I Want To See

I like Star Wars.  No, that’s not right.  It’s closer to say that Star Wars is a part of me.  For me, it’s not about the individual movies, books, and games.  To me, Star Wars is a genre.  It’s not sci-fi, it’s not fantasy, it’s just Star Wars.  And when I see a property in this way, I want to see it branch out in directions the creator didn’t necessarily intend. 

In other words, not everything with the “Star Wars” logo on it has to be an action-packed space opera.  I mean, zombie movies are mostly horror, but then we have movies like "Fido", "Shaun of the Dead", and "Warm Bodies".  A while back I read a "Lost Stars", which is basically a romance novel set in the Star Wars universe.  And I loved it.  Personally I’d like to see Star Wars sitcoms, Star Wars cooking shows, and whatever else fanatics can come up with. 

So when I look at Star Wars video games, I’m pretty happy.  There’s a huge amount of variety in there, from RPGs to squad combat to flight simulators.  Unfortunately, a lot of them suck.  But that’s the problem with licensed games; they’re driven more by the marketing department than the artistic vision of the programmers.  Still, they should keep trying.  Assuming a skilled team of programmers with the freedom to follow their artistic vision without executive meddling, here are some Star Wars themed video games I would like to see:

“Bushido Blade” Style Lightsaber Duels

Bushido Blade for the Playstation was a completely different kind of fighting game.  There were no health meters.  Instead, you concentrated on parrying.  If your opponent’s sword hit you in the arm, that arm would hang limply at your side for the rest of the match.  Hope that wasn’t your sword arm!  If you got hit in the leg, you would limp along slowly for the rest of the match.  Both legs injured?  You crawl, making it nearly impossible to win the match.  And if you got hit somewhere vital, the match was simply over.  As you can imagine, matches were usually quite short.  We would typically hit “Rematch” five or six times before switching characters.  I know that sounds annoying, but it was actually incredibly fun. 

I especially loved the arenas.  You weren’t confined to some squared-in tournament pit, you fought in natural-looking asymmetrical environments.  Some had multiple levels, or let you fight waist-deep in water.  My favorite had you fighting in a field of bamboo, where your wide sword swipes would cause the foliage to fall down around you as you dueled.  You could choose different types of swords, which effected the speed, reach, and power of your blows.  There was also a sledgehammer, and a rather unfair secret character who wielded a gun.

The entire time I played it, I kept thinking, “This would be awesome with lightsabers.”   Just think about, lightsaber duels where severing limbs is a constant possibility.  It only takes one hit to win, but first you have to get through their defenses.  It might still have some sort of a stamina meter, but running out of stamina would just make your blocking less effective.  At full stamina, blocking would be almost automatic, but you would lose stamina the more you swing and block.  You would also be able to use Force powers from this pool of stamina, making it a trade-off to use.  This stamina meter would gradually refill whenever you aren’t mashing buttons.  Maybe it wouldn’t be a visible meter, so much as your character would stand like they were running out of breath.  I don’t know, I’m mostly spitballing here.

One of Bushido Blade’s biggest problems was a lack of characters.  My Star Wars version would include pretty much everyone who has ever wielded a lightsaber in the movies.  Who cares if it doesn’t make any sense in the timeline?  Just throw in a line about it being a training simulator or something. 

I’ll admit the chances of this happening are pretty low.  With Disney owning Star Wars, a dismemberment-based fighting game is less likely than ever before.  But you can’t deny it would be pretty cool.

A Decent Tournament Fighting Game

I know I sound redundant, but this one would play nothing like Bushido Blade.  Playstation’s “Masters of Teräs Käsi” was not a great game.  But that doesn’t mean it was a bad idea.  I loved the concept.  You had a button that switched between fighting modes, just like later Mortal Kombat games.  With your weapon drawn, it controlled like SoulCalibur – three slash buttons and a kick button.  If you sheathed your weapon, it played like Tekken – each button controlled a limb.  That was awesome in itself because it catered to more players that way.  Hate Tekken?  Keep your rifle out.  It was pretty clever at the time.

Unfortunately the controls were sluggish, the combos were dull, the roster was small, and the graphics were primitive.  There is nothing about that list of flaws that a modern day sequel couldn’t fix.  A couple of the SoulCalibur games had Star Wars characters as guest stars, and they were fantastic.  I’d love a sequel to Teräs Käsi that actually plays well.  Some people thought concept was silly, but I don’t care.  Yeah, yeah, why would these characters be in a fighting tournament together?  Why would someone with a rifle be entering the ring with someone wielding a lightsaber?  But they’re overthinking it.  All I care about is that it mixes some of my favorite movies with one of my favorite genres of video games.  If Mortal Kombat X can let the Predator fight Leatherface, then what’s so weird about Han Solo fighting Darth Vader?

And yes, it’s silly that you can hit someone 15 times with a lightsaber before it knocks them out, but you could say the same thing about dozens of Star Wars games, from “Super Star Wars” to “Knights of the Old Republic”.  You could also say that about other powerful weapons in fighting games, such as the swords in Soul Calibur or the bazookas in Marvel Vs Capcom 2.  The X-Ray moves in the last few Mortal Kombat games are particularly fatal-looking, but the match goes on.  So don’t tell me a guns vs lightsaber tournament fighter is unrealistic, when realism isn’t exactly inherent to the genre.

“Need for Speed” Style Speeder Bike Racing

There are certain scenes I’ve always wanted to recreate in a video game.  The speeder bike scene on Endor has been done in video games several times, but never really well.  There were a couple of decent pod racing games, but I’d rather play something that doesn’t carry the stigma of Episode I.  The original "Return of the Jedi" arcade game was fun, but the isometric view doesn't really draw me in.  At least one of the Battlefront games has a speeder bike scene, but they just don’t capture the feel I’m looking for. 

I want something more along the lines of Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit.  You pick either the Imperial (cop) or Rebel (criminal), and you race through the forest, either fleeing the Imperial or trying to catch the Rebel.  The emphasis would be on the speed.  The forest may have to be more sparse than in the movie, to keep you from crashing every three seconds.  Other planets would be welcome, too.

It doesn’t have to have anything to do with the plot of Return of the Jedi.  On one planet you could be working as a courier, trying to deliver stolen plans to a Rebel outpost.  Another mission might see you breaking out of an Imperial prison camp, trying to return to the Rebels without leading the Imperials there.  Or, heck with it, just make it a racing game.  I just want to feel that kind of speed in a Star Wars environment, racing against other players.

Obviously multiplayer is a must.  I may be old fashioned, but I’d really want a split screen racing mode.  VR might also be nice.

“Kingdom Rush” Style Tower Defense

Now I’m really reaching.  But I love tower defense games, I can’t help it.  Obviously this would mostly be for tablets.   But picture the Death Star, with a long winding trench leading to the exhaust port, and hundreds of X-Wing fighters following the trench to the end.  You have to place various kinds of turbolaser turrets to destroy them before they reach the port.  Another level might have R2-D2 overriding the Death Star’s own internal defenses to keep an army of Stormtroopers from reaching the landing bay.  Another might have you defending a walled Tatooine town from a party of Tuskan Raiders.  Or how about a level where Imperial scouts are following a trail through the Endor forest, and the Ewoks set up a bunch of traps to slow them down?  Some levels would be Light Side, some Dark Side, and all would be lighthearted and comically animated.  Long shot?  Yes.  But they did a Star Wars version of Angry Birds, so who knows.

The Sims: Star Wars Edition

Well, now I'm just being silly.  You can already mod the Sims into just about anything you'd want.  Still, I'd love to see a Sims game that was completely Star Wars right out of the box.  Sims 4 comes with some Star Wars costumes, but the characters look out of place in the suburban neighborhoods.  I'd like to see neighborhoods themed after Star Wars locations, with objects and furniture to match.  With occupations like smuggler, bounty hunter, and Imperial agent.  I think it would be hilarious to control a guy going through his day to day life, only to have him don a Stormtrooper suit when it's time to go to work.  Maybe I'm the only one who wants to see that, but I doubt it.

Ugly Bags of Mostly Hit Points

Today I feel like complaining about overly long boss battles.

When I first tried my hand at running a D&D game, I had a tendency to make up my own monsters instead of using the ones from the monster manual.  I think I was actually pretty good at giving them interesting abilities, but I had a tendency to give the bosses too many hit points.  The battles just dragged on and became boring.  I remember one particularly long battle against a giant bug, where I realized my players were getting antsy, so I halved the monster’s hit points mid-battle.  I don’t think they caught on, but I certainly learned a lesson.

Video games, on the other hand, don’t care if you get bored.  It’s one thing if a boss battle is interesting, and has lots of different puzzle-type aspects, but even then I wouldn’t want it to take more than ten minutes.  It’s even worse if the battle is really difficult, far from a save point, or has an unskippable cut scene you have to watch before each attempt.  Endurance tests are flat-out boring.  If you see everything there is to see in the first three minutes, but the battle still continues for twenty, that’s just dull.  It’s also a cheap way to add fake difficulty.

Final Fantasy VII had a couple of optional boss battles that were just long for the sake of long.  Emerald Weapon was especially boring.  The fight had a 20 minute time limit, and you really were in greater danger of running out of time than getting killed.  One of the preferred methods for winning is to spam “Knights of the Round”, a powerful summon that unfortunately has a very long animation.  I can forgive FFVII since they were optional, though.

The Metroid series has some good examples bosses battles that overstay their welcome, but it also has some examples of bosses done right.  I think the problem is that programmers associate Metroid with the original 8-bit game, so they think, “Oh, only hardcore Nintendo fans love this series, we have to make sure the boss battles are as Nintendo Hard as possible!”  The problem with this logic is that, for the most part, older games were difficult because otherwise they’d be too short.  And while as kids we loved bragging about the games we’d beaten, we also despised the frustration of games that expected godlike reflexes (I’m looking at you, Ninja Gaiden).  I hear people my age wax nostalgic about how stupidly difficult the hoverbike level was in Battletoads, but I’ve never heard any of us say, “Hey, let’s dig it out and play it again now!”  Because while they are fond memories, the level simply isn’t fun.

I have no doubt that Metroid fans enjoy a good challenge, but at the same time, GameFAQs is full of posts complaining about the length of certain boss fights.  So I know I’m not the only one.  I’ve put off finishing “Samus Returns” on 3DS because I’ve seen the final boss fight.  It looks dreadfully long.  

Bottom line, some programmers need to learn the difference between challenging and tedious.  There’s more to a memorable boss fight than a big bag of hit points.

Rant over.

Waiting For The Endgame

Okay, I’m calling it.  The wait between “Infinity War” and “Endgame” is officially too long.  I haven’t been so anxious for a resolution since “The Empire Strikes Back.”   I was only 6 when ESB came out and I can still recall arguing with my friends about how Luke was going to get Han out of the carbonite.  

Right now I’m suffering from what I’ll call “Speculation Fatigue”.  My brain is tired of wondering what is going to happen in Endgame.  Yeah, sure, there’s less wait between Avengers 3 & 4 than there was between Star Wars 5 & 6, but the stakes are higher.  Frozen Han Solo?  Ha!  Try, “Half the universe has been disintegrated.” 

I’ve watched dozens of Youtube videos with fan theories, videos that will be obsolete in just a few months.  It reminds me of all the books that came out before “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” was released.  We still own some of the fan-made books that give their predictions for book 7.  Most of their theories were dead wrong, of course, and I’m hoping Endgame surprises me just as much.  But I’m not really sure that’s possible any more.  I’ve heard just about every possible sequence of events, so whatever happens it won’t be “Wow, that’s unexpected!” so much as “Wow, that’s fan theory #347!”  But I’m just so exhausted by all the speculation that I’m losing my excitement for the movie.  By the time it actually comes out, I might be like, “Let’s get this over with.”

I’m not sure they should have released the trailer for “Spider-Man: Far From Home” until after Endgame.  In the Endgame trailer, they were so careful not to show any scenes with people who had been dusted, so it’s weird that they would be okay releasing the Spider-Man trailer at this time.  At the very least, they shouldn’t have shown Nick Fury in the trailer; that’s one more person we now know survives.  Sure, showing Spidey means that the dusted people come back, but Fury still could have been killed later in Endgame by other means. 

But the fact that Fury’s in the mentor role instead of Tony Stark could also be a spoiler.  Yes, everyone knows that RDJ is quitting after Endgame, but we don’t “know it” know it, you know?  In D&D terms, that’s “out of character knowledge.”   I kind of miss the days when I didn’t know much about a movie before seeing it; Stark’s departure would have so much more shock value.  Now I’m going to spend the entire movie wondering if this is the scene where he gets killed. 

Anyway, “Far From Home” looks okay.  I laughed here and there, but nothing about the trailer really stood out.  With Stark gone, I guess Happy Hogan’s going to be a Spider-Man character now?  Mysterio and Hydro-Man (or whatever that is, possibly an illusion) looked great, but the MCU is starting to look more cartoonish.  I guess I’m okay with that.  I’m glad this series has maintained such consistent quality for so many movies, and after Endgame it might well be time to start getting really wacky. 

My hopes for Endgame and beyond:

I hope Tony sacrifices himself to save Steve; it would be a perfect apology for Civil War.

I hope (as some have speculated) that Steve is sent back in time, and lives out his days with Peggy Carter.  It would be the kindest possible way to retire the character.

I hope time travel isn’t overused in saving the day.  The last thing I want is a “Ta-da!  The first movie never happened!” victory.  

I hope we get another Thor movie.  I know four movies is a lot for one character, but Ragnarok felt like such a reboot in both content and tone, that I really want to see another Thor done in that style.

I hope they don’t gloss over the Asgardian refugees this time.  Other than Thor’s line about how Thanos “killed half my crew”, Infinity War was maddeningly silent on the fates of Korg, Valkyrie, and the other survivors.  If they don’t mention it in Endgame and don’t make another Thor movie, then the question will bug me forever.  You know (lots of “ifs” coming), if Drax dies in Endgame (since Dave Bautista is angry about the firing of James Gunn), and if Gamora doesn’t come back to life, and if there isn’t going to be another Thor movie, then Valkyrie and Korg could make decent members of the Guardians.

I hope that future movies feel more self-contained.  I’m afraid that the minute Endgame is over, they’ll jump right into the build-up for the next major crossover event.  

I hope General Ross gets fired, and has his career so totally ruined that he spends the rest of his life collecting discarded soda bottles to buy Ramen noodles.

Beyond that, anything goes.

Life Is Strange: Chapter 5 and Afterthoughts (Spoilers)

Warning: This blog entry contains spoilers for Life is Strange.

So, when we left off, Chloe was dead (again), and I had been drugged by my teacher.  

I wake up strapped to a chair, in Mark's "Dark Room" (which is more well-lit than it sounds).  I manage to look at some nearby photos, and use them to time travel to a few hours earlier, when I was still captive and having my picture taken.  As crazed photographer Mark tries to capture my innocence in film, he tells me all about his evil plans.  Jeez, he monologues worse than Syndrome.

I manage to get him to show me the first selfie I took in Episode 1, and use it to travel back to the beginning of the game.  While there I send a text to David, telling him where to find Mark's Dark Room.  Then I go forward in time to see the results.  Chloe lives!  Mark arrested!  I've won the photography contest, and am on a plane to San Francisco to have my work shown in a gallery!  Life is Perfect (TM), roll credits!

Um... roll credits?

Whoops, I forgot there's still a superstorm headed for Arcadia Bay.  Well, I can't very well be in San Francisco when that happens, what will happen to Chloe?  So I focus on my winning photograph to go back in time to when I took it, then destroy the photo while I'm there... Whoops, I think I broke Time.

Back to the present, and I'm back in Mark's chair.  Wait, so I had to win the contest for him to be arrested?  Oh, because after I destroyed my own work, Mark burned my other photos, which I had previously used to go back in time, so now I never went back in time to get him arrested... MY BRAIN HURTS!

David to the rescue; I never thought I'd be happy to see him.  Of course, I have to give him six or seven warnings to let him survive the encounter.  Then I steal Mark's car and book it to the diner to meet Warren, so I can use a photo of his to go back in time again.  Maneuvering through the storm was intense, like last episode's party scene, it was full of sensory overload.  

I meet Warren and use the photograph, warn Chloe in the past, and do my best to fix everything in the past, present, and future.  But all my time traveling catches up with me, and I end up in a psychedelic nightmare world.  

If you ever played through "The Park", you might remember the final area where you walk through increasingly maddening versions of your own house.  Walking through Max's endless dorm halls had a similar feel (note, "The Park" and Episode 5 of "Life is Strange" were both released in the same month, so I doubt either one actually copied the other).  

Several mindscrews later, I get to walk past the game's events like they were scenes in a museum, until I finally catch up with real time.  Chloe and I have a good talk, and we realize that all the weather problems started when I began messing with time.  The only way to keep everything bad from happening was to go back to the beginning and let Chloe die.

I swear I stared at this screen for 10 minutes.

And then the big moment came.  Now, I’ve known about this game’s ending for a couple of years now.  It was spoiled for me a long time ago, probably by some YouTube video about video game endings.  I might have been more careful about avoiding spoilers, but at the time I had no idea I’d ever play the game.  Come to think of it, the ending of LiS is actually one of the first things I learned about the game, just like the first thing I heard about Metroid is that you turn out to be a woman.

So I knew what was coming, but that didn't make the choice any easier.  I was so ready to say "Screw Arcadia Falls" and skip town with Chloe.  But I couldn't do it.  "The needs of the many..." and all that crap.  I couldn't live with an entire town on my conscience.  Damn it.  I have since viewed the "Chloe Lives" ending on YouTube, and I think I made the right choice.  Leaving the town in that condition would have made me feel like a monster.

Anyway... now that I've finally finished the game, I thought I’d throw out some final thoughts.

After a while, I actually found the time-rewinding aspect to be a little annoying.  I was enjoying the story so much that the rewind puzzles felt intrusive.  Which is weird, because that’s the one gimmick that’s supposed to make the game so unique.  Remember the later episodes of Herman’s Head, when they didn’t show his inner thoughts as often, and when they did it felt forced?  No?  Wait, am I the only one who remembers that show existed?  Okay, remember the second season of Bosom Buddies, when the writers realized that Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari were funny enough without the cross-dressing joke, so they deemphasized the show’s entire concept?  Still no?  Wait, am I getting old, or do I just have obscure tastes?

Anyway, the time-rewinding thing is probably the game’s biggest draw, assuming you’re on the game’s marketing team.  But I found myself so engrossed by the story, the visuals, the music, and the characterization that I didn’t want the story interrupted by rewind puzzles. 

With that in mind, maybe I'll end up enjoying "Before the Storm" even more than LiS.  I doubt it, though.  It's hard to really enjoy a story when I know both main characters are walking corpses.  I've blogged before about my dislike for downer endings, though sometimes they are necessary. 

Come to think of it, Life is Strange combines two of my least favorite things - downer endings, and plots where the conflict was caused by the protagonist.  The latter is annoying because it makes the entire story pointless - the outcome would have been the same if the hero had just sat on their hands.  It's one of the reasons I never enjoyed the Doctor Who spinoff "Torchwood" - not only was it full of downer endings, but several conflicts only happened because the "heroes" decided to play around with the alien tech they'd acquired.

But there are exceptions to every rule, and I can put up with the above tropes if the story is well written.  Chloe was fated to die from the beginning.  Yeah, fate's a bitch, and Chloe doesn't deserve living under such a curse.  But the story works.  Life is Strange was enjoyable from beginning to end, and a megahappy ending would have just felt trite.  

Excellent game.

My choices:

Life Is Strange - Chapter 4 (Spoilers)

Warning: This blog entry contains spoilers for episode 4 of Life is Strange.

It’s hard to find time to play this game.  With most games, I’m content to play for about an hour now and then.  With LiS, I would rather play an entire chapter at once, so I don’t break the dramatic tension.  I’ve read that each episode is supposed to take about two hours, but for me it’s taking almost four.  I just want to go everywhere and read everything, and I take tons of screenshots.

When we left off, I had gone back in time to save Chloe's father.  When I got back to the present, her dad was alive... but now Chloe was was in a wheelchair.  Sometime in the intervening years, Chloe had been in a bad car accident, and was now paralyzed from the neck down.  That family really needs to take more cabs.

I watched Blade Runner with her, during which she fell asleep.  In real life, I've tried to watch Blade Runner twice, and fell asleep both times.  Girl after my own heart.  Later, Chloe told me that she wasn't going to live much longer, and that she wanted to today to be her final memory... and she asked me euthanize her.

It wasn't an easy choice, but ultimately I refused.  I do think someone in Chloe's position has the right to die on her own terms, but I just can't be the one to do it.  Ethics aside, could I live with myself afterwards?  Would the memory of watching her last breath haunt me forever, especially knowing I flipped the switch?  Would people know it was me?  Would I get arrested for murder? 

It didn't matter anyway.  Pull the plug or don't, I knew my next action was going to be more time travel.  I wish there was a way to save both Chloe and her father, but it doesn't look like that's in the cards.  Jaunt back, jaunt forward, and Chloe's dad is dead again.

I swear, this game could be used in ethics classes.  You’re constantly given variations of the Trolley Problem, and even though there are no “correct” answers, I still feel like I lose every time.  

But it was good to see Chloe in full health again, and ready for some mischief.  We broke into the boy's dorms to steal Nathan's phone.  We ran into Nathan on the way out, but Warren protected us.  Warren really went to town punching Nathan.  I was given the option to stop him, but... hmm hmm hmmm... I was enjoying seeing Nathan get his ass handed to him. 

Back at Chloe's house, we got serious about assembling all the clues we'd found.  It's so nice seeing Chloe get excited about something, instead of just getting angry at everything.  She's like a different person when her life has a purpose.  

Yes, Chloe has grown on me.  I said earlier that she’s hard to like, but the more I see of her history (both versions), the more I like her.  Before, I saw her as  a jerk who reacts to adversity in the most self-destructive ways.  Now I see her as more of a tragic survivor desperately trying anything to feel alive again. 

The specifics (drug use, stealing guns, open hostility, etc) initially turned me off.  I’m not against recreational drug use per se; it’s one of those things that’s fine for some people, but not for me.  But allowing herself to get into so much debt to a scuzzy dealer like Frank?  There’s no way she ever needed drugs that badly, unless…  unless...

...well, unless she didn’t care how much debt she got into, because she wouldn't be around long enough for it to matter.  Before Rachel went missing, she and Chloe had been planning to skip town together.  Come to think of it, I’ve been there.  Some of my credit card debt was accumulated during the darkest days of my depression, when getting little things in the mail gave me tiny moments of happiness that kept me going.  I didn’t think about having to pay it off because on some level I didn’t expect to live to see the end of the year.

…huh.  Maybe I owe Chloe an apology.

Anyway, putting the clues together was a little tedious.  I didn't want to try every number in Nathan's notes to unlock his phone, so I made a quick trip to GameFAQs.  It turned out to be his birth date, which I suppose should have been my first guess. 

Our clues led us to a barn in a remote location, where we found the hidden bunker where someone - we assumed Nathan - had been taking drugged women.  It was very disturbing.   Then we found clues to the location of Chloe's friend Rachel.  We raced to the junkyard and found Rachel's grave.  Chloe was devastated, then enraged.  She dragged us to a school party so we could find Nathan.

The party was a noisy reminder of why I don't go to parties.  But that just shows how good this game's programmers are - I actually felt social anxiety walking around all the students.  I saved Alyssa from yet another minor accident, and nearly embarrassed myself sneaking into the VIP area. 

After asking everyone at the party about Nathan, we received a text saying that the evidence was about to be destroyed, and we rushed back to the scrapyard. 

Okay, here's another one of those times when the game doesn't give you a choice, when I very much would have chosen something else.  I get that a game can't give you infinite choices (which is why Dungeons & Dragons will always be superior to video games), but yeesh.  It's weird to have my character act one way when I control her decisions, then make irrational choices when the cut scenes take control.

So, yeah, I would not have chosen to return to the junk yard.  It felt like such an obvious trap.  I realize that normal humans have emotions and all, and don't always think things through, but rushing to the junk yard at this time felt like running straight into a crocodile's mouth.  And I was right.   A mysterious figure stepped up and drugged me, then shot Chloe.

Jeez, she dies a lot.  She's the Rory Williams of video games.  As I blacked out, I saw the face of our attacker.  M... M... Mr. Jefferson?  Well, suddenly I don't feel as guilty about throwing him under the bus at the end of episode 2.  I can't say it was a total surprise.  When the game kept pushing Nathan, David, and Frank as the villains, I wondered if the real baddie would be someone less suspicious. 

Okay, fine, I had no clue.

Nice cliffhanger.  How will I get out of this one?  Pretty sure the answer will involve rewinding time, but I can't wait to see it play out.  It pains me that I probably won't get to play again for a week.  

Btw, earlier this week I watched the Black Mirror episode “Bandersnatch” on Netflix, and I highly recommend it for people who like LiS type games.

Life Is Strange - Chapter 3 (Spoilers)

Warning: This blog entry contains spoilers for episode 3 of Life is Strange.

I find Max's use of time travel to teleport to be a little inconsistent.  So she blew the lock to enter the principal's office.  Once inside, she rewound time to restore the lock, while remaining in the room.  So does she always stay in the same place while using her powers?  I can think of several instances where something bad happened, then I moved a bit before rewinding.  People should notice Max teleporting all the time.

It was cool sneaking around school at night, looking for evidence.  But taking a midnight swim seemed unnecessarily risky.  It's so weird what things you get a choice about, and what things your character just does on her own.  I'm in control when I convince Chloe not to steal the school's charity money, but then Max just agrees on her own when Chloe suggests visiting the pool.  It was a great scene, but I'm just astounded that Max agreed to something that put them in such a vulnerable position.

Hiding from David in the locker room made me feel like I was playing Metal Gear for a second.  It was fun, but I'm glad they didn't draw it out any longer.  It would have been too much of a genre shift.

The kissing scene was a cute tease.  At the moment, all I really know about the game's ending is the final choice, but I don't know what leads up to it.  So while I would like to see Max and Chloe become more than just friends, I also know we're only a couple of days away from the superstorm, so I don't know how much time the game will devote to their relationship.  But if I do get to choose between a romance with Chloe or Warren, I will definitely choose Chloe.  Poor Warren, he seems like a nice guy.

I'm starting to wonder about the "once per episode" saving Alyssa from getting hit by random objects.  Is it just a running gag, or will it be important later?  Is she going to figure out I have some sort of power?  Is the extra waste of my power going to drain me prematurely at a critical time?

I love how it gave me a choice when distracting Frank's dog with a treat - "Throw it in the parking lot" or "Throw it in the street".  Sometimes I intentionally pick the less desirable choice first, just so I can see it before rewinding and picking the one I want to stay with.  But there was no way I was going risk getting a dog run over, not even if I intended to rewind.  What if I get the poor pup killed, and then find my powers stop working again?  He's not a bad dog, he's just doing his job.

The cliffhanger at the end of Chapter 3... just wow.  I saved Chloe's dad but now Chloe's in poor health.  It reminds me of that "Butterfly Effect" movie.  I can't wait to find out what happened.

Aquaman

The Aquaman movie is a blast.

It's silly, it's campy, and at its core it's a by-the-numbers standard superhero flick.  But it's also visually stunning and has some great action scenes.  I can't in good conscience claim that it's a "good" movie, but it's definitely worth the price of a ticket.  

DC needed this right now.  They keep trying to reinvent their superheroes, when audiences are wanting iconic versions first.   Marvel's doing it right.  Thor: Ragnarok reinvented the character by taking away his hammer and changing the nature of his powers.  But they waited until the third movie to do so, after they'd already established an origin story audiences were familiar with.

They let him evolve and mature into a new version of Thor, instead of presenting audiences with an unfamiliar character and saying, "Hey, this is Thor, not like the Thor you grew up on, but we're calling him Thor anyway."  DC is trying to rush things.

There's a lot going on in Aquaman, almost too much.  They flesh out his origin with several flashbacks, he fights two of his most well-known villains (Black Manta and Ocean Master) when a single villain would have been fine, there's a war between underwater kingdoms, he goes on a quest to find an ancient artifact, he fights for his birthright, and so on. 

At 2 hours and 22 minutes, it' a little long.  But honestly, I had too much fun to care.  It has more than enough action scenes, but even the exposition scenes are so full of eye candy that they don't slow it down. 

It was also cool to see Jango Fett as Aquaman's dad.  Hmmm... and I just noticed both Batman and Aquaman have fathers named "Thomas".  I can't wait to see the climax of "Batman v Aquaman".

Okay, I suppose I've got to list the downsides:  The script wasn't great, the plot was full of convenient contrivances, and the acting sometimes felt artificial.  Black Manta especially made me laugh, because with his mask on he sounded like Dark Helmet.  

But this is one of those movies where the end product is so much more enjoyable than its flawed parts.  I wish the current DC movie universe was more consistent with its quality, so I could buy them all and be proud to have them on my shelf.  The series is far from great, but Aquaman is definitely one of the standouts.

Life Is Strange - Chapter 2 (Spoilers)

Warning: This blog entry contains spoilers for episode 2 of Life is Strange.

So, I posted earlier that I’ve been playing “Life is Strange” and its prequel “Before the Storm” at the same time.  So, funny thing… I thought I owned them on different systems.  I was planning to alternate playing them based on whether it was easier to use the PC or the PS4 that day (my wife and I fight over the TV).  Well, I got to the end  of the first chapter of LiS and, whoops, Episode 2 is still showing unpurchased.  It turns out I own both games on the PS4, and it’s just the first chapter that’s free on Steam. 

Anyway, not wanting to buy it twice, I started over playing LiS on the PS4.  I’m no longer planning to alternate games; I’m going to finish LiS before I continue the prequel.  I don’t feel too bad about restarting, because I regretted a couple of choices I’d made.  Though the thing about LiS is, I rarely feel good about my choices, no matter which one I pick.  Even after I rewind time to view both outcomes of a conversation, I still have the nagging suspicion I’ve done the wrong thing.

But I think that’s the point.  The choices you make cause both good and bad things to happen, so there are no right answers… most of the time.  My new choices were a bit braver than the ones I’d made previously.  This time I stepped in while David was harassing Kate, instead of just taking a picture.  And this time I came out of the closet (so to speak) to take the blame when David found drugs in Chloe’s room. 

I finished Episode 2 last night.  Some thoughts:

I'm still having trouble warming up to Chloe.  I know she’s not over her father’s death, and her stepdad’s a jerk, and her friend Rachel is missing, and she has a lot of other problems in life… but she’s just so self-destructive it’s hard to sympathize.  Some of her problems might be easier to fix if she were to stop making bad decisions.  But maybe that’s what the prequel’s for – so you can walk a mile in her shoes.  Between accidentally shooting herself during target practice (Rewind!), and getting her feet stuck in the train tracks (Rewind lots!), I’m beginning to think Chloe was just born under a bad sign. 

The bottle collecting part was tedious.  I walked around that junkyard a dozen times before I found the final couple of bottles.  It felt like something out of... well... a video game.  So many elements of LiS transcend the medium, I guess I just hate it when it goes out of its way to remind me it’s still a video game.  It breaks the immersion. 

The ledge scene… ooooooh the ledge scene.  Look, I’m not new to tense moments in video games.  I’ve escaped the Mother Brain’s exploding base with just seconds to spare.  I’ve jumped from platform to platform while being chased by a mechanical dragon in Dr. Wiley’s castle, knowing one bad landing would send me to oblivion.  I’ve prayed for divine intervention to defeat Giygas.  I’ve watched helplessly while Kefka destroyed half the planet and Sephiroth murdered my girlfriend.  I’ve survived zombie dogs, giant spiders, and nearly becoming a Jill sandwich.  I’ve faced ninja assassins, giant space robots, and the Grim Reaper himself.  But never, in my entire video game playing history, have I experienced a moment that felt as tense as trying to talk a suicidal student down from a ledge. 

First off, your powers are temporarily offline.  It’s a great writing trick, actually – you give a character a powerful ability, then take it away, and they end up feeling weaker than if they’d never had the power in the first place.  And I’ve never felt more powerless than on that rooftop.  The training wheels are off, all you have is your own intuition and charisma to save her.  If you’re properly reassuring, she steps a little toward you.  If you say the wrong thing, she takes a step backwards towards the edge. 

I was doing well.  I’d made time for Kate earlier that day, even when it risked damaging my relationship with Chloe.  So when I told Kate I was her friend, she believed me.  But then I smurfed up.  I told her that I wouldn’t be the only one to miss her if she was gone.  She asked me who else would miss her, and I was presented with four possible answers: Her mother, her father, her sisters, or her brothers.  My blood went cold.  I could tell it was a life or death question. 

I thought back… had she mentioned them in earlier conversations?  Did I see a family picture in her room?  I… think so?  Maybe?  I briefly considered heading over to GameFAQs, but shook that thought away.  If Max can’t use her powers, then I shouldn’t either.  I spent some time mulling it over, straining the limits of my memory, then pretty much picked “Brothers” at random.   I chose… poorly.  “Brothers? I don’t even have brothers! See, you haven’t been listening to me either!”  And then she was gone.  I couldn’t rewind, all I could do was watch the scene unfold.  It was devastating.

Later, in the principal’s office, I had to implicate either Mark (the dreamy photography teacher), David (the douchebag security guard), or Nathan (the jerkass who shot Chloe in an alternate reality).  It’s another example where none of the outcomes really make you feel good about yourself.  I didn’t want to show my cards to Nathan or David just yet.  Both of them deserve punishment, but at this stage of the game they can do more harm to me and Chloe than we can do to them.  I *might* have picked one of them if they hadn't been in the room, but it still seems like a dangerous idea.

So I had to throw Mark under the bus, and I feel really guilty about it.  But all I said was the truth – that I’d seen Kate run off crying after talking to Mark earlier.  I hope this doesn’t affect my grade in photography class.

Like I said in the last blog, I know how the game ends, but I still have no idea how it gets there.  I’m finding the journey very enjoyable, if emotionally taxing.

2018: The Year of the Spider

So this year we had two of the Spider-Man franchise’s most successful offerings, in the forms of a video game and an animated movie.

Into the Spider-Verse is a funny, trippy, visual delight.  It’s probably my favorite Spider-Man movie to date.  The animation is amazing, with a comic book style that never stops being impressive.  The characters from the different universe have their own animation styles as well, making things even crazier.  The writing is hilarious – I wasn’t expecting the movie to be so funny, and for me that was going the extra mile.  This movie would have sold well based on the visuals alone, but they put in the effort to give it a good script.  It’s also very self-aware.  At one point my wife pointed out an overused trope during the movie, only for the movie’s characters to point it out as well five minutes later.

The Spider-Man video game is equally impressive.  There’s not much I can add to the hundreds of glowing reviews out there, but I still want to give it its due praise.  The graphics are beautiful, the controls are intuitive (for the most part), and the overall sense of freedom is one of the best things I’ve experienced since GTA3.  Between missions I love just swinging around the city at different times of day, seeing what sort of trouble I can get into.  I always wanted to play something with the feel of a GTA game, but where you’re the good guy.  To be fair, some of the previous Spider-Man games used a similar template, but this one’s execution is nearly flawless.  Okay, so there are a few special moves that make me feel like I need extra fingers, but that’s a tiny quibble against an otherwise wonderful game.

It's especially funny to me because both the movie and the game were produced by Sony.  After the MCU’s “Homecoming” blew Sony’s “Amazing” series out of the water, it seemed like Spidey was at his best when kept in Marvel’s loving hands.  It almost feels like this is Sony’s way of saying, “We can do better, just give us another chance!”  Granted, they also gave us Venom this year, so they haven’t totally figured out what works and what doesn’t.  But at least there’s hope, now, that more quality Sony offerings are on the way.

All right, Sony, make with the Spider-Gwen movies and games!

Life is Strange and the Evolution of Electronic Storytelling

I played a lot of adventure games as a kid.  At first this usually meant text adventures, where you type “Go North” or “Get Sword” to progress.  Some had graphics, but some of the best ones didn’t.  I still have fond memories of trying to acquire the Babel Fish in “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”, or figuring out the spoonerisms in “Nord And Bert Couldn’t Make Head or Tail Of It”, neither of which had any graphics. 

But typing is tedious, and I’m a visual person, so I gradually got tired of these.  Later I played the LucasArts games “Maniac Mansion” and “Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders” on my C64.  These used a point-and-click interface where you constructed sentences by clicking words and objects.  It was an easy, intuitive interface and the games had a great sense of humor.  I remember wishing there were more games in the series, but sadly, “Day of the Tentacle” didn’t come out for the C64. 

I didn’t play any real “storytelling” games for a long time after that.  After college I got into role-playing games.  I love RPGs, but no matter how much story they put into them, you still spend a lot of time grinding levels and buying equipment.  Sometimes it’s nice to play a game where you don’t have to worry about combat, like an interactive movie where you just make decisions.  

I've played a bunch of visual novels, but I’m starting to lose interest in them.  They require a lot of time to read, and honestly, it’s hard to find ones written well enough to be worth that kind of time.  At this point if I’m going to take the time to read a book, I’d rather  just use my Kindle.

I’ve skipped a few storytelling games I’d probably like, just for lack of time.  There are several from TellTale games that sound interesting to me, like Jurassic Park and Guardians of the Galaxy.  I tried the GotG demo, it seems pretty cool.  I might come back to these.

Recently, I started playing “Life is Strange”, along with the prequel, “LiS: Before the Storm”.  Life is Strange is a few years old now, but then I’m usually a few years behind everyone else when it comes to playing new games.  Heck, I could probably start a blog dedicated solely to modern retrogaming, given the frequency with which I'm late to the party.

As of this writing, I’m only about a chapter into each LiS game.  I should probably have finished one before starting the other, but I’m weird that way.  Unfortunately the ending of LiS has already been spoiled for me, but I’m still looking forward to it.  And no, I haven’t yet decided what I’m going to pick for the final sadistic choice, but… and let’s keep this spoiler free… I will probably abide by one of Spock’s most famous quotes, painful as it may be. 

I have to say I’m impressed with both games.  The visual interface is simple and stylish.  When you approach an object that can be interacted with, words pop up (with a charming handwritten font) that show which button does what.  The menu screens have a scrapbook theme that fits the story.  The stories are compelling and I like the characters.  You’re presented with a lot of difficult choices, and for a wishy-washy person like myself, making an important decision can be just as tough as a Ninja Gaiden boss.

Graphics have improved in the four years since LiS was released, but I’m still impressed by the artistry of these games.  They make great use of camera angles, landscapes, body language, music, and other nuances that give the story a cinematic feel.  There’s something to be said for any game where I can tell what my character is thinking by the way they’re standing.

The main character in LiS has the ability to rewind time, which not only allows you to undo bad events, it also lets you master the art of conversation.  Accidentally insult someone?  Rewind time.  Find out someone’s secret interest?  Rewind time so they don’t remember telling you, then suggest the interest yourself.  It reminds me a bit of Groundhog Day, when Phil tries to gain Rita’s affections by memorizing her favorite things.  “Before the Storm” doesn’t have this supernatural element, and instead introduces a “Backtalk” system where you can “win” conversations by choosing the most appropriate insults in the context of a conversation.  It’s hard to say which I like better. 

I can tell you I prefer controlling the protagonist of LiS to that of BtS.  Max (LiS) is a photographer, a pastime I can relate to.  Meanwhile, BtS’s Chloe is kind of a jerk (to be fair, her life sucks), and her main artistic talent is snarky graffiti.  I have a hard time making decisions as Chloe, because I can never decide if I should do what I would do in real life, or if I should stay true to her character.  I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to play D&D though, even though it didn’t seem like her style.  Playing a tabletop RPG within a video game was awesome. 

A while back on my other blog, I posted about the lesbian romance novels I’ve been reading lately.  This was possibly my favorite aspect of the LiS games.  I’ll always cheer for any positive LGBT representation in a video game, and the LiS games seriously get it right. 

Yes, some people do complain about the over representation of LGBT characters in video games today.  It seems like every time you turn around, there’s another LGBT character.  Some bigoted critics even accuse the game industry of “shoving it in our faces”.  But I think of it as catching up.  I’ve been playing video games since the late 70s.  If you look at the biggest games from 2014-2018, it may seem like there’s a higher-than-statistically-likely percentage of LGBT characters (okay, I don’t really see it, but some do).  But if you expand your range to 1978-2018, the percentage of LGBT characters is unrealistically low.  Given time, this supposedly unrealistic influx will settle down and even out.  But the truth is, these critics aren’t actually interested in realism; some of them think even one LGBT character is too much. 

Okay, to be fair, in a lot of old games you don’t really know your character’s sexual orientation, and sometimes not even your gender.  It’s not like “Pong” has a deep backstory.  But once games did have recognizable characters, the protagonist was usually male, and they were often tasked with rescuing a female, which establishes some definite cishet gender roles.  

As I’ve mentioned before, my favorite games are the ones where you can create your own characters, or at least choose your sex.  If there’s a romance option where you can choose your sexual orientation, so much the better.  In Dragon Age, for example, I always played a female character and romanced women.  I would have done the same in Mass Effect if I’d ever gotten around to playing it.  The Life is Strange games may not let you create your own characters, but they do a good job of giving you a character I would have created for myself.

Both are excellent games so far, and I highly recommend them.  I'll try to post another blog when I finish them, with a more complete analysis.  They make me really with I had more free time.

“Life is Strange 2” is currently coming out.  It’s being released episodically (as were the others), and as of this writing only one episode is out.  I don’t know if I’ll be as interested.  The main characters are male, and anyone who knows me knows that I’m 50% more likely to buy a game if there’s a female protagonist.  That percentage is even higher if I can play as a lesbian.  On the other hand, I hear LiS2 has some excellent social commentary that would appeal to a raging SJW like myself, so I may still check it out.  I will wait until all the episodes are out, though.  I hate owning incomplete games.

Book: To Stand Beneath The Sun

To Stand Beneath The Sun
By Brad Strickland

After spending a long space flight in suspended animation, colonist Tom Perion’s pod is ejected and he lands in the ocean.  He is rescued by a ship with an all-female crew.  He soon learns that women outnumber men on this planet 8 to 1.  In a society that resembles pre-industrial Earth, women do all the work and have all the power, while men are treated like pets.  From that alone, it sounds like the set-up for an erotic novel.  Instead, this is a well-written sci-fi drama.

The book has a major revelation about twenty pages in.  I won't spell it out here, but it's every bit as impactful as “the Planet of the Apes is really Earth”.  It feels like it's breaking a sci-fi rule to have this type of twist so early.  I can’t help but wonder if Strickland originally wanted that revelation to be closer to the end, only to discover he had more story to tell after the reveal than before it.

It’s a well-constructed world for a one-off novel, and I wouldn’t mind using the setting for an RPG.  The author goes into great detail about the society, the animals, the plants, and so on, but manages to spread it out so you aren’t presented with one huge boring infodump.  A lot of sci-fi authors try to make things alien by just making them weird, but Strickland actually thinks the ecology through, even putting thought into this planet’s evolutionary ladder.  A good rule of writing is to know way more about the setting than you actually put in the story.  In this case I yearn to know what was left on the cutting room floor.  I would love a complete sourcebook about this planet.

This book was published in the 80s, but to me the style feels more like the 60s/70s, when speculative fiction was actually speculative.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the cheesy 80s and modern sci-fi.  But let’s face it, the genre has lost its sense of wonder, and is now just drama that happens to be set in the space.  Sometimes it’s fun to read a story that actually does its homework, especially if it’s written as well as this one.

Excellent book, well worth the read.