Mind and Crumpet

I don't know whether to recommend Spec Ops: The Line, because having finished it I'm quite sure that I never want to play it again. It's very mean to shooter fans and its gameplay is pretty indifferent.

But despite it being set in a city occupied by refugees and American troops in the middle of the desert and wracked by sandstorms, it reminds me very strongly of Bioshock. It uses Nolan North to his fullest potential. It had Bjork and Jimi Hendrix in the soundtrack! It makes "No Russian" look utterly absurd (which is good, because it was). Its visual design should be freakin' studied.

If you do decide to play it, I would recommend lining up a game where you can just walk around being nice to people and chocolate (or your comfort drink of choice) for afterwards. And try not to think about white phosphorous.

There is not a single speaking female role, though, which is aggravating.

News about that new Thief game whose working title is too silly to reproduce here is pretty scarce. For all that it was announced more than a year ago, there have been no trailers, no concept art, no prospective features, no hints about the plot or tone or setting or protagonists it may or may not have (and since the third game rounded off the overarching plot pretty definitely, those parts would be important. Those last four things are Thief - their interplay and interconnection with the game mechanics and design made it beautiful). It's been relegated to the back of my mind lately mostly because SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM SKYRIM and to a lesser extent various other things I've been following. And life, too. I suppose life is involved somewhere.

I just found something to spark my interest again, though; a piece of flotsam kicked up by Good Old Games getting their hands onto Thief Gold and Thief 2: Metal Age and poking them into working on today's computers. (Run and buy them now!) Thief did things with sound that games today still don't do. So it was somewhat of a relief to find the fellow in charge of the new game's noise-making (Paul Wier), despite not being Eric Brosius, making this presentation about generative sound (or making noises that shift smoothly in tone, key, scale and general mood according to specific game states on the fly, rather than composing looped backing tracks for each setting or situation). And it was an instant sell for me because of the slow thrumming atmosphere he brought about. No heavy percussion, no noticeable melody, just...foreboding.

Because of course, Thief is not about being James Bond or Solid Snake or Sam Fisher or Catwoman. It's darkness and stone, old magic and the dead, and the ever-present press of technology and zealotry.

...Anyway it's called Stealing Sound and if you don't want to listen to a somewhat nasal-sounding dude talking about the processes going on you can just skip to the last two or three minutes and listen to the impromptu track he plays. The volume might need to be turned up. Also headphones are possibly necessary for the proper experience. Mmm, tasty noise.

I has a PS3.

More importantly, I has the means to play a PS3, which I lacked before.

It turns out Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is one of those games where, directly after finishing it, I have the intense desire to stick a syringe in my head and suck out the memory of playing it ala Dark City, so I can play it all over again fresh.

Although I have to wonder if Prototype has broken my moral compass, because I didn't feel bad about shooting all those mooks. Maybe it's the lack of blood? Or dismemberment? Hmm. Or maybe it's because these guys apparently don't feel bad about throwing a tank and one point four bazillion soldiers with machine guns through a sleepy Tibetan village to get at one ninety-year-old guy, who knows.

I guess my point is that one level had throat-singing in its soundtrack and it was sweet, especially because I could identify it when previously I had been flailing due to my complete lack of knowledge about Tibetan (or indeed most Asian) culture. There was also Nathan's notebook full of a) notes and hints about puzzles, b) practical reminders for a globe-trotting adventurer and c) extremely silly doodles about whatever happened to occur to Nate during a quiet moment. Some multilingual.

Um, holy shit.

( There's an intensely creepy and beautiful trailer here. )

Look at those colours. ...If it's anything as lovely on release as it looks there, I might need to look into a Steam account. Drat.

I think the stupidest line I've heard in Dead Space 2 thus far (and there's some stiff competition) is a scientist saying, with a completely straight face, that only "smart people" will be able to withstand the Marker implanting information into their skulls.

Her words.

A scientist.

"Smart people."

Mmm. And just what is the metric for "smart," lady?

How about "After extensive tests, I believe the implanted information can only be withstood and translated by people with technical and practical intelligence; architects, mechanics, engineers, scientists...to anyone else (even anyone else whose intelligence is great in a different area, such as emotional or creative) it is so much noise, and the overload will eventually drive those who do not fit the criteria to violent, self-destructive insanity. I have yet to isolate the exact mechanism by which this occurs; further testing is needed. Please see attached list for traits proven common to the most productive subjects."

The character writing has improved, marginally, but the rest of the writing, particularly anything involving the MagGuffins or 'scariness', remains very very silly.

So I'm watching the ten minutes of mildly spoilery Bioshock Infinite game footage that's just been released, 'cause if nothing else I can be relied upon in my nerdery targets, and exactly one minute in I hear the voice of Booker DeWitt, the protagonist.

And he's Garrett.

Seriously, he's Stephen Goddamn Russell doing his Garrett-voice, sounding as rough and cynical as he ever has (except more American. And less of a stoic loner).












SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET

I was excited about this before, because AEROSHOCK BIOSHIP BIOSHOCK WITH AIRSHIPS, but now I can add 'Ex-Pinkerton Garrett' to my mounting glee.

It's been raining for the past week. Like, non-stop. Dog is displeased with this state of affairs. Towns up north are being flooded out. I never thought I would miss the searing light of the sun, but oh god humidity.

So let's have ourselves some meme answers and then go find a blanket.

( Meme Answers, Part One: Reasons to Avoid People in Hoods )

More answers to come!

I had a dream wherein I got to wander around AC2 Renaissance Italy. It was beautiful. Then my subconscious decided to have it be attacked by zombies.

Playing through Assassin’s Creed 2 and Prototype simultaneously may not be good for my brain.

An RL friend of mine is in the hospital. It's fortunately not very serious - just apparently miserable and unpleasant. This hasn't stopped me from worrying, of course, so I'm going to write about Fable: The Lost Chapters, which is shiny and cheerful and nice.

( I was a good-aligned, high Skill/Will hero and neglected my Strength, which resulted in a tall skinny blonde dude who was slightly blue... (Spoilers.) )

Dead Space wants to be System Shock 2. It wants to be System Shock 2 so bad. It writes meticulously researched self-insert fanfiction where the nameless SS2 protagonist is really named Isaac Clarke. For god's sake, the Hydroponics level is a point-for-point reconstruction of the Hydroponics Deck in SS2, down to mixing up a poison and putting it through the ventilation system.

This is unfortunate, because there's already a game like that, and that game was Bioshock; more or less a remake, but with a large handful of fantastically clever ideas and enough changes to stand on its own. They even have different story themes, despite their story structures being identical. Bioshock is a great game, an excellent game, for that. Dead Space, on the other hand, is neither.

( However. (Spoilers, but this game spoils itself, honestly.) )

In other news! I am going back to classes soon! I will be wrestling with the Centrelink dragon so I can get my moneys, but first I must quest for the Mighty Medical Report saying I am kind of crazy, so as to exempt me from some requirements! It will be a glorious battle! (Well, it'll actually be me nervously presenting the form to my doctor, but that seems to count as epic battle in every RPG I've ever played.)

I've been generally feeling a lot better lately. It's pretty cool!

ETA: Incidentally, the Australian release date for Coraline is May 7, and movie publishers can suck my metaphorical wang. There is a correlation between these two facts.