In Defense of World War II Games

There are a lot of World War II movies. There's also a lot of books on the subject, as well as tabletop strategy games, and video games, the list goes on. WWII was so massive, so important, that its influence and legacy lives on. Things happened in World War II that are directly and indirectly responsible for events happening now. It was the last big war on Western European soil, a landscape many of us have a connection to or are familiar with. It was a war that accellerated technology, firmly moving war out of the industrial age into the modern age. So it goes without saying that the biggest appeal of the genre comes with its drama, location, its combatants, the mythology surrounding it (particularly the Nazi fascination with the occult) and its justifications.

That said, there are a lot of people who complain that there are too many World War II games. While that's an understandable viewpoint, it is a bit shortsighted and unfortunately the genre itself propagates it. Every time a game comes out set in WWII some people complain, which in turn causes other people to complain, following suit like lemmings. But World War II isn't a specific genre of game, it's only a setting that many genres from FPS to strategy, even an MMO, utilize.

My question is, why all the complaints about there being too many games set in World War II when there are hundreds if not thousands of games taking place in some generic sci-fi or fantasy setting? You could argue that "generic space or fantasy setting" could be any universe at any point in time. But that doesn't hold water in the face of, ironically, lack of creativity. Sci-fi settings nearly all have the same things: lasers, aliens, hyperdrives, et cetera. They always go out of their way to make sure the evil looking ones really are evil. Fantasy? Same issue- swords and sorcery. Elves? Check. Orcs? Check. Magic? Check. Magic armour? Checkity check. At least World War II was a real world setting and therefore has some built-in restrictions, which excuses them from the lack of originality/creativity argument, and in addition, it's far back enough in time that it avoids political issues that a game set in the modern day, or even as far back as Vietnam, would not. Science fiction and fantasy settings don't have these restrictions yet by and large they're all basically knockoffs of Star Trek, Heinlein, and Tolkien. It's totally the developers' fault, of course. With a sci-fi or fantasy setting, they have the option of showing players something new, but more often than not, they don't take that option. That makes it hard to find something that does something different, and to have it be good on top of that is like finding a diamond in a sea of shit. Fallout was revolutionary because it stepped away from the saturation of fantasy in the cRPG genre, changed the way cRPGs were played, introduced the concept of retrofuturism into gaming as a whole, and either avoided most of the usual science fiction tropes or used them deliberately. There is a new space RTS coming out called StarCraft 2. Lasers? Check. Aliens? Check. Glowing bits? Checkchekchchhcclhekcehefkkikekekekekekekekeke

Second of all, the two biggest contributers to the conception of WWII games being ubiquitous has been Medal of Honor and Battlefield 1942. Medal of Honor has what, 10 games in the series? They're pretty much all crap, too, with the exception of Infiltrator and to some extent Airborne. BF1942 had a huge following for years and is largely responsible for there being a heavy multiplayer element in WWII games these days, though it's been reduced to a bunch of hardcore clan fags who scream cheater for doing stuff that's described in the manual. Granted, there are quite a few WWII series, but to be perfectly honest World War 2 has been a common theme in games since the days of tabletop wargaming. I had a history teacher who had so many wargames I suggested that he could basically re-enact every battle of World War II from the invasion of Poland in 1939 all the way to the battle of Berlin. This tradition continued into the strategy genre of PC gaming, and into the RTS subgenre.

I think the fascination these days with World War II- a fascination which seemed to die out in the 70s and 80s, in part because of Vietnam- is due to Saving Private Ryan, which was the first WWII film to truly portray the sheer brutality of the war. It used to be, if a character died, he would just fall over, no blood- thanks to the censors that controlled Hollywood. As the censors lost power and faded away, it's become much more realistic, culminating with Saving Private Ryan. The film was revolutionary in the war movie genre, and established a certain style that would be used in war movies since. This happened just as FPS games were beginning to come into their own and break away from the "Doom clone" label.Okay, granted, there was Castle Wolfenstein way back on the Apple II, and then Wolfenstein 3D, but they weren't really about famous battles- instead it played on the espionage and intrigue that took place behind enemy lines. The lack of realistic locations, too, was a result of the technology of the time. The first FPS to ever actually show some simile of WWII combat was actually a mod for Duke Nukem 3D that came out in 1997. The creators went on to make WW2GI, which sucked. The point is that Duke3D was one of the first games to portray a real-world setting as realistically as possible, proving that FPS games were more than just the same damn hallway over and over and over. This allowed for a level of detail that previous games could not reach- and thus the modern WWII shooter was born.

The truth is, there's nothing wrong with the genre itself. The problem isn't that there are a lot of games with that setting. It's that too many of them tend to share a lot of the same issues: an overreliance on the American viewpoint, lack of meaningful character development (something Brothers in Arms tries to fix, with very good results), overreliance on the most famous battles (Omaha Beach and Normandy come to mind), too much emphasis on the European front compared to the Pacific, very little plot (just because it's historical doesn't mean you can't expand on the story; this is made all the more apparent with the lack of characterization), and what plot there is tends to be the usual flag-waving "let's hear it for the grunts" trope that propagates the idea that America won World War II singlehandedly, a problem that afflicts most WWII films as well. If you're going to complain about WWII games, complain about the above issues. But there's no point in complaining about the whole of WWII- Europe, Africa, Asia- as a setting unless you're going to complain about fantasy as a setting or sci-fi as a setting.

Alien Abortion- I mean Resurrection

As some of you who know me will attest, I am a big fan of the Aliens series of films, as well as the related media such as comics, video games, and novels. I had seen parts of Aliens when they showed it on WSTR-64 here in the Cincinnati area, back when it was known as Star 64 during the 1990s- my father enjoyed the film but at the time I was under the impression that anything dad watched was inherently bad because mom said so. Give me a break, I was still a kid. In any case I would sometimes sneak a look at it, but I never watched for long. Sometime the mid-1990s, (I forget when exactly) ABC aired Alien 3 as a prime-time network premiere. My mother was on the other side of the house that evening, working on some project, so I was left to entertain myself- I watched the entirety of the film and loved it. I would eventually come to borrow the films from my parochial school's preist and religion teacher, the affable Fr. Wysong, affectionately known as Father Y. Eventually I got around to watching Alien Resurrection... and was less impressed by it than I was by the other films. I rarely watch it anymore, and when I finally popped in the disc (I have the big 9-DVD boxed set, I don't want to know how much my aunt spent on it to get it for me one Christmas) last November after 4 years of refusing to watch it, I realized why it took me so long to watch it again.

I am about to explain to you exactly why Alien Resurrection is an absolute abortion, a crime against humanity, and a perfect example of why Joss Whedon is the worst writer in Hollywood. I realize by my writing this last sentence there are a couple hundred thousand people, many of them with neckbeards, who suddenly feel a disturbing, unexplained need to form a lynch mob, but I stand by my position and I'll state it again for the record: Joss Whedon is the worst writer in Hollywood and I hope he dies horribly. I mean don't get me wrong. I liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Then I graduated high school.

Anyway, on to the movie.

The Script

Joss Whedon, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, needs to stop fucking writing everything like a comic book. It is not good writing. It is not funny. It is not witty. He is a hack who should never have been allowed near the Alien franchise. The man can't write dialogue to save his life. It's evident in his other work too- his Buffy universe is high school tripe and anyone who thinks that Firefly or Serenity are in any way clever in the way that it blends several different genres is utterly tasteless because Joss Whedon has managed to make about 3 or 4 different genres boring all at once. His script for Alien Resurrection is like a bad fanfiction. It does have a few good parts, but it escalates way, way too quickly. The first three movies have always been about the slow buildup of tension and suspense. Even Aliens, far more actiony than its prequel or sequel, built tension to an almost unbearable point. Alien Resurrection is basically the movie equivalent of premature ejaculation, and you're left wondering "what the fuck just happened?" But its biggest problem is the dialogue. It's horrible. There are too many characters and they all end up sounding the same, which is basically true of nearly anything Whedon creates because of his fetish for ensemble casts. Whedon once said he likes to cast actors who can do comedy because he believes comedy to be harder than drama, and so if they can do comedy... Anyway he's wrong and he should feel bad. What makes Alien Resurrection particularly irritating is that with one notable exception (Gary Dourdan as Christie, awesome character) the only characters even worth remembering are the ones who make it all the way to the end. Least worthy of all was a military guy who would not shut up about weapons and whatnot. He gets so feverish about it you half expect him to sink to his knees and start masturbating at the sight of a gun. Shut the fuck up and go shoot things like you're supposed to you meathead. But the biggest crime is the Newborn.

Oh my fucking god. Whose brilliant idea was that? It's horrible. The concept itself is kind of retarded but could've gone over better if it didn't feel so tacked on, not appearing or even being hinted at until the last third of the movie. Sometimes a sudden appearance can work (such as the Queen in Aliens), but in this case it didn't, it failed horribly. The scene where they introduce it is singularly awful- possibly one of the worst scenes in the whole movie. There's this scientist, who's glued to the wall, going on and on about how the queen took on a secondary reproduction sequence. If he hadn't taken on the ridiculous "THIS IS RIPLEY'S GIFT TO HER" horseshit and just kept on mumbling scientifically I would have liked that scene a lot more. But no, he actually fucking says, "you are a beautiful beautiful butterfly." I puked in my mouth a little.

People say Paul W.S. Anderson ruined one of my favourite franchises with Alien versus Predator. No, Joss Whedon did it first. I want him to die in a fire.

The Directing

Never let a Frenchman direct a horror film. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's directing is flatout fucking terrible. Now, I've heard a lot of praise for two of his earlier films, Delicatessen and City of Lost Children, both loosely dystopian films, but this isn't about those movies. It's about Alien Resurrection and frankly Jeunet's directing only compounds the horrible script. The tone he brings to the film is all over the place: wait here it's serious, wait now it's a surreal comedy, now it's serious again, no wait it's a bad 80s action flick, wait now it's a comedy again. Wait, this film is just shit. One thing in particular he did that irritated me to the point where I gritted my teeth every time he did it was when he zoomed in on people's faces at odd angles during what were supposed to be emotional moments. All it really did was show how overacted the scenes were and resemble a college student film thesis that barely scored a C.

The Production

I'll be honest, I did like the setting somewhat. It was kind of a cross between the interior of the Nostromo from Alien with the grittiness of the colony buildings in Aliens. But I wasn't happy with the alien hive at all. The hive in Aliens was smooth and almost skeletal. In Alien Resurrection it reminded me of those horrible tentacle rape .gifs you used to see on the internet back in the day. Ripley disappearing into it only makes it worse.

As for the aliens themselves... why do they all have to fucking breathe steam? Aliens don't breathe, period. They're biomechanical constructs created by an alien race as a weapon of war. Also, the sequence where this one alien uses his inner jaw to pound on a button that releases liquid nitro to freeze a guard is mindnumbingly stupid. It would've been a lot less so if the alien had used his, you know, HAND. The inner jaw is is for puncturing skulls, not basic object manipulation.

Stuff I Did Like

• The one part where Ripley wakes up in her cell- very creepy "birth" motif there.
• The bit where they show her pictures and she cries at the one of a little girl (which is not actually in the theatrical version, which is retarded because it adds depth to the character that's largely absent otherwise.)
• The bit where she rips out an alien's jaw.
• Ron Perlman. (Of course. Who doesn't like that guy?)
  
• The underwater scene.
• Seeing Gary Dourdan before he was cool.
  
• The director's cut ending.

Conclusion

This movie could've been so much better if it had a different script, a different director, a different plot, a different and smaller cast, and was basically not this movie.

And no fucking Newborn.

However, if Joss Whedon were to catch fire right now for his horrible horrible script, I think that would make the movie so much better because I could enjoy it in the knowledge that if nothing else, Joss Whedon died in a fire for this terrible movie. Honestly? The series could've ended with Alien 3 and it'd have been a perfect trilogy, even considering the problems Alien 3 had. But noooo. That squirting sound is of a franchise being milked for all it's worth.

Event Horizon: The Real Doom Movie

So I watched the Doom movie tonight, after having only seen 15 minutes of it in the past and putting off actually watching the whole thing for the last 3 years, partly because of how universally reviled it is. And I got to thinking, you know, there's another movie, completely unrelated to Doom, that's truer to what Doom is about than the movie actually based on the game.

In August 1997, a movie called Event Horizon was released in theaters. While ultimately a standard space horror movie in the vein of Alien, its thematic elements, much of its set designs, and the plot, drew influence from a wide range of sources: aside from the Alien series, it borrowed elements from the original Russian version of Solaris, 2001, The Haunting and Hellraiser. in addition to non-film media such as Doom and the tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000. Some of the thematic influences are quite obvious. The Gothic-inspired design of the Event Horizon seems to be lifted from Warhammer 40,000, as is the concept of a dimension of pure chaos that sits between point A and point B when a ship attempts to bend space and time in faster than light travel. Teleportation being a gateway to hell was also a majour theme of Doom, as well. The pacing and mood of the film is not unlike Alien and Aliens, starting off slow but building up into a crescendo. The film was written by Philip Eisner (also known for cable channel Sci Fi's Firestarter: Rekindled) and an uncredited Andrew Kevin Walker (perhaps best known for Se7en). It was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who was riding high on the success of the Mortal Kombat film and wanted to go back to making R movies. Regardless of what one may think of most of his work (among them the Resident Evil movies and Alien Vs. Predator, which in my opinion is an absolute abortion that still doesn't reach the level of failure presented by Alien Resurrection), this film turned out to be quite good.

The year is 2047. and the Event Horizon, a ship that has been presumed lost, having disappeared without a trace in 2040, has suddenly reappeared near Neptune. The Event Horizon was designed for faster-than-light travel, by a stardrive that would bend space and time to create a wormhole extending to any point in the universe. Unfortunately, when the original crew attemped to use it, the entire ship disappeared. Dr. William Weir, played by Sam Neill, designed the stardrive and so accompanies the rescue ship Lewis and Clark. When they arrive at the Event Horizon, the crew is absent, the ship is without power, and bioscans return strange readings. As the rescue crew explore the ship, the stardrive activates itself and pulls the engineer in, sending a shockwave that damages the Lewis and Clark. Things only get worse from there, as Dr. Weir and the others are plagued by visions of the things that haunt them, the engineer returns, comatose, only to attempt suicide, and Weir himself falls prey to the influence of whatever had taken over the ship. In the end, Captain Miller of the Lewis and Clark sacrifices himself to save the last surviving members of his crew.

The film was a failure at the box office, and it got a bit silly towards the end ("you let me burn! *fwoosh*") but became a cult classic, to the point that a special edition was released in 2006. Paul Anderson is a hack, but he managed to pull off some excellent direction. I think the main difference between this film, and the Resident Evil and Alien versus Predator series is that Paul Anderson didn't write Event Horizon.

Then there's the Doom movie.

The general plot of Doom, both the classic games and the more recent Doom 3, has been that attempts to create teleportation technology have opened up a gateway into Hell. The Doom movie gets rid of all that. In the movie, released in October 2005 with a high production budget, the monsters that roam the UAC facilities are revealed to be humans turned monstrous through an added 24th chromosome. These monsters are able to infect others through bites, and in the end it is revealed that the monsters tended to go after the more unsavoury characters, such as a Marine named Portman, a perverted asshole obsessed with sex and a bit of a coward. Private Hudson his not. The hero, John Grimm, is injected with the chromosome as a last-ditch effort to save his life, and becomes superhuman instead, going on a rampage throughout the facility slaughtering monsters and zombies left and right.

My first impression of the movie was that they drew a good deal of their set designs from Doom 3. The plot is nothing at all like Doom, having replaced the Biblical concept of Hell as presented in the games with genetic modification with a morality twist and mixed it with Aliens. It's basically Resident Evil in space.

It's hard to decide if I like or dislike the movie. I remember there was a lot of pissing and moaning about the plot as details were revealed even before the movie came out, and the writer defended it to the death, blaming Hollywood for just about everything that pissed fans off. I'm not sure if the genetics plot was his idea or not, but the premise is frankly irritating especially in light of what Doom is supposed to be about, but the movie itself has high production values and the acting isn't shit-terrible for the most part. It definitely has an Aliens feel to it, but that's not saying much as sci-horror with a hidden, elusive enemy was basically invented by the Alien series and is nearly an ubiquitous trope now. Plot aside, it suffers in the same way Doom 3 did- too much trying to balance action and suspense, killing both. The movie fared better than the game, for the most part, but the only time it ever actually felt like Doom was the 5-minute first person shooter sequence. And even then it didn't feel like Doom 3, it felt more like Classic Doom- the classic, borderline silly run and gun that I grew up with. Which I guess kind of saves the rest of the movie- it's Grimm's Crowning Moment of Awesome, and the movie's as well.

So it comes down to this: Why do I call Event Horizon the "real" Doom movie? Because it embodies what I think Doom 3 should have been and what it clearly wanted to be- a high-suspense horror tale that relies on a cultural fear of classic, Fire n' Brimstone Hell to create tension, making the scary parts that much scarier. It's not as action-packed, but frankly the argument over "Modern Doom" and "Classic Doom" and whether one or the other should be action-packed or suspenseful is an article for another day.

Doom 64: The Real Doom 3

On December 10th, 1993, version 1.0 of the shareware version of Doom was uploaded to the FTP at University of Wisconsin. The sequel was released September 30th of the following year. On April 1st, 1997, Doom 64 was released.

Doom 64 was initially titled "The Absolution" but for unknown reasons Midway changed it. The name was retained for the final level of the game. Regardless of the name change, the game was a somewhat different beast from its PC origins. The original game, concieved as a mixture of Aliens and Evil Dead II, was nevertheless set largely in daylight or some approximation thereof. This had the effect of creating a feeling of relief when looking out upon those strange mountains after a few very long moments in the dark tunnels of the Phobos base, a snatch of daylight, however grey it was. Doom 64 on the other hand takes a more Aliens-style approach. The sky is dark and starry, a permanent night on an alien surface. The original version of Doom had no coloured lighting (a feature that wouldn't appear in id Software's own games until Quake 2) and while much of it was set in dimness or outright pitch blackness, much of it too was set in stark bright light. Doom 64's levels on the other hand would be nearly pitch-black if not for the dim glow spilling from the floors and ceilings providing light, just barely enough to see in some places.

While Doom on the PC had a focus on action, despite its dark tunnels, Doom 64 seemed intent on creeping the player out, creating tension and a sense of dread. The enemies and weapons were largely the same as always, but their appearances had been altered, in some cases quite drastically, and are overall much less cartoonish. Some of them had slightly different behaviour, as well- Lost Souls, the annoying flaming skulls that flew around and slammed into you, were much more aggressive; the Arachnotron fired two streams of plasma and the Pain Elemental, probably the most drastically different in appearance, fired not one but two Lost Souls. Some of Doom's monster lineup (such as the Spider Mastermind, but also most of Doom 2's new additions such as the Arch-vile and the Chaingunner) had been dropped due to cart space, and indeed the weapons themselves were less animated for the same reason. In the PC version, firing the shotgun resulted in the weapon being pumped- in Doom 64, the weapon, and its double-barreled counterpart, simply cocked back a bit, before resuming the ready position- behaviour which was previously seen in Quake. The plasma rifle no longer kicks back when you release the trigger, but does have a constant buzzing noise. A new weapon, called alternately the Alien Laser or the Unmaker, was originally described in Tom Hall's Doom Bible but never made it into the final game. The message upon pickup is "What the !@#%* is this!" and for good reason- it appears to be a lashing-together of alien and human technology framed by bones and dried skin. It fires a reasonably powerful laser that can kill a baron in a few seconds. However, where it really comes to shine are the 3 special keys scattered throughout the game. These keys serve two purpouses- the first and foremost is that they seal up the teleports in the final level from which an endless stream of monsters pour from, and the second is that they power up the laser. At its most powerful, the laser can kill the final boss in a matter of seconds.

Doom 64 had two basic settings- the haunted base, and Hell itself. The PC version of Doom often had a mixture of the two, particularly in its second episode where human technology and architecture was slowly being subverted. Tall steel support pillars became marble; monitors gave way to gargoyle reliefs. The third episode of Doom is set in Hell itself, and is portrayed in a fairly traditional way- hot, volcanic, under a red sky that could barely be considered a sky due to its nearly organic appearance. Doom 64's version of Hell is something else entirely, a much darker, more ambiguous world of caverns, ruins, forgotten tombs, small fortifications and structures floating in a void of misty nothingness. Thunder would roll out from the ominous clouds swirling over it, and in later levels the sky itself seemed to be on fire, huge flames broiling up in the distance. However none of the subversion present in Doom 1 can be seen in Doom 64- the two settings are kept wholly separate.

Doom 64 has often been compared to the original Quake, and it's easy to see why- aside from coming out within months of each other, Doom 64's environs, particularly its hellish portion, is similar in style and mood to Quake's. The original Doom's level design was in many places somewhat abstract, whereas design in Doom 64 is much more purpouseful. Its haunted castles and forgotten dungeons are reminiscent of Quake's... haunted castles and forgotten dungeons. They're both placing emphasis on moody lighting and unsettling shadows, with vaguely disturbing monsters to populate it. They both had a dark ambient soundtrack, as well, Quake's composed by Trent Reznor and Doom 64's by Aubrey Hodges, returning from the success he had with the similarly themed soundtrack for the Playstation version of Doom (which was mostly a "best of" version of Doom, combining Doom and Doom 2 into a single game.)

Doom 64 was a bit of a flop. It was not universally accepted as part of the Doom canon, and at the time was vastly overshadowed by Quake's fully 3D environments and monsters. Copies of it are hard to find nowadays and the Nintendo 64 is no longer in production. However, the game was ported, rather successfully I might add, to PC by a dedicated team of fans. Aside from some minour differences (and some majour ones like new levels) it's largely faithful to the original.

On August 3rd, 2004, Doom 3 was released. While its numbering would suggest that it is a continuation of the (rather sparse) storylines of Doom and Doom 2, it is in fact a retelling of Doom's story. Moving the action from Phobos to the more plausible Mars, it tells the story of the Union Aerospace Corporation and the utter decimation of its staff and the Marine units charged with their protection by an invasion from the forces of Hell itself- an invasion which you are witness to. Right way this sets it apart from the original game's plot- where in Doom and Doom 64, you are a soldier sent in to investigate and exterminate the threat (which draws from Aliens and its plot of the Marines investigating an abandoned colony only to discover a nestful of aliens) you are a soldier who has just been assigned to the place and were on your rounds when the invasion hit. Doom 3 seems to draw a great deal of influence from sources such as Event Horizon in terms of general aesthetics- in many places you will hear creepy whispering, and the appearance of any given area will without warning become a twisted, hellish version of itself- only to suddenly change back. Unfortunately any sense of dread or fright is undone by the nearly constant stream of action- around every corner is another monster to kill. While some would say this is what Doom is all about, I have to disagree. Doom 3's failings lie largely in its constant hinting at wanting to be something else but continually reverting to type. It wants to be System Shock 2 with its reliance on horror and telling an admittedly compelling story through audio logs, but those just seem tacked on to a generic post-Half-Life first person shooter.

Doom 64 has no pretensions. It is what it is- a significantly darker version of Classic Doom. It's a relic of the pre-Half-Life era, before the emphasis on realistic surroundings (realistic meaning a place that a person could believably live and work in, rather than plain empty rooms with no furniture, regardless of its overall setting of sci-fi or present day or historic/fantasy.) Its scares are more genuine than Doom 3 because it relies on a constant sense of dread that manages to persist even in the midst of a firefight. Doom 3 had very few truly tense moments- one in particular that I remember clearly is a hallway where a loud rumbling noise accompanied hellish symbols, strewn all over the walls and celing and floor, pulsing their way down the corridor- for once, you had no real idea of what was next. While such a visual effect was not possible in Doom 64, the older game managed to keep up its dark mood and maintain its creative roots in Aliens. It manages to do for Doom what Doom 3 failed to do- make Doom truly and honestly creepy.

Downtime

Apologies for the long wait since my last post. I'm still here, just trying to get myself more interested in posting here.

I should have a more substantial post soon.

10 games that have been very influential on me

Hi, sorry for the long wait since my last post. I suppose updates will be reasonably sporadic, but I'll try my best to keep this updated at least a couple times a month. Anyway today we're doing something a little special- ten games (or series) that have been particularly influential on me, whether its my tastes, my creativity, et cetera. These are in chronological order, from my earliest years as a gamer to more recently. This is by no means a comprehensive list- there are many other games that are influential on me but I wanted to stick with 10 or this entry would take up half a dozen pages.

Original Megaman series, particularly 2, 3, 4 and 5. I had spent my early gaming years with a NES, and while I had Mario, Superman, and a few other games it wasn't until I had played Megaman that I'd found a series that I deeply loved. I loved the idea that I could pick which level to go to and that the bosses all had weaknesses to some other boss weapon (which took me a while to figure out). I loved the enemy design, the music, the level design, everything. To this day 4 and 5 are my favourites; probably 'cuz they were the ones I actually owned.

Sonic the Hedgehog series. My mom had friends in Michigan (we lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, so they were quite some distance away and we only saw them a few times a year), and their daughter had a Genesis. I wound up discovering the Sonic games there, and being totally blown away by the gameplay, the bright lush colours, and of course the music. I liked the fast-paced gameplay edged with the sense that if you fucked up it could kill you. It pretty much quickly developed into an obsession that would stay with me for some 8 or 9 years. I wouldn't get my own Genesis until Christmas 1995, but that didn't stop me from having the Game Gear games and buying the comics every month. Pity the series has fallen so out of favour in the last 10 years.

Wolfenstein 3D. In the early years of the 1990s I didn't have a real PC, just an old Tandy from the 80s we used as a word processor. But my neighbor had a PC. I would go over there and play Simcity and this random game where you were a space probe on some ship and there was something out there that killed you. One day I sat down at his PC and there was a little something called Wolfenstein. Now, earlier that year we had bought a used PC, it was a 386 with no sound card, and I played lots of Apogee and Epic shareware games on it. I had heard of something called Wolfenstein 3D and the concept intrigued me somewhat- shooting Nazis always does, though I didn't really fully understand WW2, even after seeing Schindler's List and reading Elie Weisel's Night, until I had seen Saving Private Ryan. My neighbor had it, though, and I went and started it up, and was completely sucked in. It was just the shareware, but I spent many an afternoon sneaking my way through what I thought was this brilliantly-depicted Nazi dungeon, stabbing Nazi thugs in the back. Spent a lot of time wallhumping, as well. This was my first FPS, so of course it's significant.

Doom. Again, this was something I had on my neighbor's PC, and again it was just the shareware but I spent many an afternoon working my way through Phobos, shooting monsters in the face. I think this game gave me a sense of dread not even Wolfenstein did, and I would constantly come back to it over the next 3 years to play it. Around the time my parents divorced, I got a disc of shareware FPS games, Doom being one of them, and I've... never really looked back since. I've been playing this thing pretty much since 1994 and I really don't intend to stop, even though I rarely actually play the original maps anymore. (Just FYI: Doom 64 = best official Doom game ever.)

Duke Nukem 3D. The shareware version of this little gem I'd picked up the same year I got the shareware disc with Doom on it, and I loved it. I had no sound thanks to Quake, but I played through it so often I knew the maps like the back of my hand. I think my teenage self was thrilled by the idea of porn shops and a stripjoint, but that was only the first two levels; but the mere idea of a realistic-looking (at the time) environment in which to shoot things thrilled me. I've been waiting for Duke Nukem Forever ever since.

Half-Life 1 (and its expansions, particularly Opposing Force.) I did not get a chance to play this until 2000, when my mom bought me a brand new Gateway computer (which I named Zayats) to replace the crappy eMachine (and the other, broken crappy eMachine that it replaced) I'd been using for the past year, and before that was the 486 that I'd broken the sound on to get Quake 1 working (and it worked!) I had saved enough money from doing stuff for my grandfather in the afternoons so I went to EB and bought a used copy of HL1, and despite having to play in software mode with 64mb of RAM (which led to stuttering every few minutes, similar to what has plagued some HL2 owners) I was blown the fuck away. For years I'd been playing Doom and Quake and Duke Nukem 3D and, hell, I'd just bought Redneck Rampage earlier that year. I had no idea that there were games like this- an emphasis on story, with a slow-paced progression that focused on tension rather than KILL EVERYTHING THAT MOVES RARRRGH like we all grew up on. I played this bitch so much- and all the singleplayer mods for it I could bring down over my poopy little 56k modem on fucking AOL- that I burned myself out on it for a couple years. (HL2 would later revive my interest in the series.) The irony is, the Starship Troopers TC for Duke Nukem 3D had just come out when I bought Half-Life, and in its own way is very much inspired by Half-Life at times- even using some of its music. There are a few vanilla Duke3D usermaps that have the same feel and progression, as well- I think at least one of them is called Holiday Holocaust and I remember the contest that spawned it and a few other great maps. So it was a lucky thing for me that after playing all these Duke 3D maps I discovered where their style had come from.

Fallout 1. My first real foray into cRPGs, and I was just blown away. I think I was really pulled in by the intro; it was just so damned DARK. The rest was just incredibly fun. I'll never understand the die-hard fans, but I certainly know why they're fans in the first place. I bought Fallout around the same time I bought Half-Life, and the two of them are pretty much forever intertwined for me thanks to it, along with Duke Nukem 3D. But more than that, it kicked off my fascination with retro as well as the post-apocalypse. I doubt I'd ever be interested in the TV series Jericho if it weren't for Fallout. (Jericho just got cancelled, too, it's not coming back for a 3rd season, which has me so pissed I could skullfuck someone. CBS are a bunch of dickslaving barrel rolling twatdivers.) I'm never going to be a die-hard cRPG player (for one thing, I bathe) but I'll always find myself coming back to FO1 every few years.

Deus Ex. This was one of the first games I played after upgrading Zayats in 2002. I still did not have a video card (I'm not even sure I understood the concept of it at the time) but when I tripled my RAM Deus Ex was suddenly playable, though the sound was frequently fucked up and fuzzy. My first playthrough ended sometime in Hong Kong; I didn't really know what I was doing. A few months later I fired it up again and played through it, still having no idea what the fuck I was doing but I managed to beat it, and was frankly blown away by the fairly deep choice of endings. I particularly liked Paul's final discussion with you at the end (having gone out of my way to save him the second time around)... there was just something so FINAL about the last hour of Deus Ex. That's probably why Invisible War was such a fucking disappointment. But you know what? The 2nd time through (discounting the first, unfinished play that ended in Hong Kong) on a new PC (Dagon)? Now that I knew what I was doing, the 2nd time was a fucking TRIP. You notice so many things that you didn't the first time; somehow only the 2nd one is that trippy, the first is just wtfwtf what am i doing and the third is like yeah yeah i've seen this before. This game has proven quite influential on me because I see quite a few of the little things in it happening today.

Thief series. I admit it. My first contact with this series was an ISO of Thief Gold I got off of Suprnova. Same for Thief 2. This was back in 2004; I've since bought physical copies of all the Thief games (Thief 1 excluded, never saw any point), but I kept the Gold and 2 ISOs so I don't have to mess with the discs and worry myself half to death every time I want to play. But when I first played TG way back in March 2004 my mind was blown. I had been interested in the series after reading reviews of Thief 3, and I was like "that sounds cool, I should try it!" Not wanting to play 3 until I'd played the others (not like I could at the time anyway) I gave Gold a try and frankly I've never stopped being a fan since. Hell, that's how I found my way here- I was googling for help on the game locking up on me! I was completely drawn in by the steampunk world and the heady feeling of stealing stuff and getting away with it. Garrett was a great protagonist/anti-hero, and frankly the Haunted Cathedral (and the Old Quarter surrounding it) are one of my favourite parts of a game. I love a good stealth game, but Thief was more than just that, it was this amazing universe that just sucked me right the fuck in.

Half-Life 2 (and the episodes.) Well, uh, what can I say about this game? It's one of the best games I've ever played. It takes everything great about HL1 and makes it better, and it's obvious that the 8 years or so in between have also had their influence. You can tell Counter-Strike has had a bit of influence in the game as well, and possibly Day of Defeat. When the game first came out I didn't really care- having burnt myself out on HL1 I was too obsessed with Thief at the time to give a shit. Then a couple of friends of mine told me about Ravenholm and I was immediately intrigued, being the faggot for zombie horror that I am. So I bought it, with my first paycheck at my new job at the time. After discovering how much I hated Steam, and that the installer was a piece of shit, I finally got the game going and while it wasn't the best thing ever on my poopy little GeForce FX 5200, it was good enough for me to keep playing. I was SUCKED IN. It engrossed me on a level only Thief had done before. I think when I was on the airboat (a favourite sequence of mine, btw) and I was like oh shit that tower is about to fall on me oh shit oh shit then WHAM it slams down behind me, I realized, holy fuck this is the best game ever. Yeah, HL2 has its flaws (which I think the Episodes fix nicely) and yeah, not everyone likes rail shooters (and some of them think Halo is better which entitles them to death by AIDS fire) but for sheer atmosphere, presentation, et cetera... well, this game will continue to be one of my favourites for years. No, it's not all that innovative, being merely a refinement of HL1, but what it does, it does so well you can't help but not care about its flaws, particularly the rather shaky performance and other issues it had in the year or so after its release.

Games and series that would've been on this list but I really had to pick and choose: Metal Gear, Stalker, Silent Hill, Blood, Metroid, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy 7 (my first true jRPG), Day of Defeat, Counter-Strike (a very negative influence until a couple years ago, actually), several others. I may do another list with these games in the near future.

"What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart?"

Today I watched A Scanner Darkly (2006) for the second time. This film, an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel of the same name, is notable for its interpolated rotoscope animation, a feature you've probably seen in a number of Charles Schwab commercials. (The process, incidentally, is done by the same guy.) I would argue that it is also notable for being Keanu Reeves' best performance. I am by no means a Keanu fan, but he really pulls off his performance in this film brilliantly. I've often felt that the best sign that an actor has been cast in your film well is how good he sounds in voice-over. There are exceptions, of course- there probably would not have been a better choice than Harrison Ford for Blade Runner (ironically, another film based on a Phil Dick novel) but he has completely the wrong voice for the voiceovers used in the original film; however, this is probably a bad example due to the fact that the voiceovers were a hotly contested issue during the making of the film and nobody involved actually wanted it in, it was a studio decision. Hence its very noticeable absence in the Director's Cut and Final Cut. But I digress; the point is that Keanu's voice-over suits the film well. He sounds tired, depressed, confused, and disillusioned.

This is the second time I've watched the film, as I've said before, but it wasn't until this second viewing that the full impact of the movie really hit me. When I had first watched it, I found it to be a good film, rather dark, occasionally funny, then it was over and I moved on. The second time around, though, I realized just how dark and fucked up it was. It portrays a future America "seven years from now" in the grip of a drug epidemic- a powerful new drug, Substance D, has hit the streets, and American troops are fighting an unseen war overseas over it. To fight this drug at home, the government has instituted a powerful surveillance program. Anyone and everyone can be spied on in any way at any time. Privacy laws have been flung out the window, and anyone even remotely considered to be part of the Substance D problem is subject to intense scrutiny. You can even be spied upon in your own home, without knowing it. Protagonist Bob Arctor (Keanu) is an undercover cop (codenamed "Fred" at the Orange County Police Station) who has been assigned to infiltrate and watch over a group of junkies, supplied by Barris (played very well by Robert Downey Jr.) in the hopes that Barris, and Arctor's girlfriend Donna (a virtually unrecognizable Winona Ryder), would lead them higher up the chain. In the process, however, he himself becomes addicted, and the resultant paranoia and identity crisis are the focal point of the film. Already quite disillusioned, and world-weary from the things he's seen in his work, he becomes much more so as the drug takes hold of him, and in a particularly dark, thought-provoking scene, he walks home from work musing on his job, on Bob Arctor the supposed drug fiend, and states that nothing makes sense to him anymore, wondering if a scanner sees things better than he does.

The soundtrack is a brilliant work, evoking the original Blade Runner score, though obviously a little more modern in spots. The use of violin in the opening credits is heart-wrenchingly appropriate, and the music is fairly consistently dark and thoughtful throughout. The music fits perfectly with each scene, particularly the aforementioned "What does a scanner see?" scene as well as a scene where he gives a disjointed speech, the first hint to his disillusionment and world-wearinss to a gathering of Bear Lodge members.

The science fiction in this film is relatively minimal; you're not going to see flying cars a la Blade Runner's 2019. Probably the most sci-fi element in the whole thing is the scramble suits, which are worn by undercover agents while working in the police station so that their coworkers do not know who they are. To this end I think a person who says (as a purely knee-jerk reaction) "I don't like sci-fi" (and are likely thinking of some spacefaring thing such as Star Trek) can enjoy this film.

Part of why this film really grabbed me, this second time, was because I realized how much it hit home. We are rapidly becoming a society where privacy laws are considered draconian, and certainly there is a war "over there" that many of us don't really understand anymore. It also brings to mind the long-running (and long-lost) War on Drugs, which the government will never win, but is willing to destroy lives forever in its relentless pursuit of an unattainable victory. I feel that many of us are going to feel like Bob Arctor, if we don't already- disillusioned, tired, confused, and unsure of who we are and how we got here. Nothing will make sense anymore, not that it ever did in the first place. The things that happen to Bob Arctor mirror the things that happen to us. We are destined to be screwed over, and not only do we not see it coming, we won't even realize that it's happened. To us, it will seem like an accident. "If a bomb is wired to a car's ignition, then obviously there is an enemy.... But if an accident, or a series of accidents, occurs..., over a period of natural time..., then the victim, whether a person or a party or a country, can never marshal itself to defend itself." (That's from the book, by the way.) And in that regard, we're doomed.

Introductory post.

I suppose I should start with an introduction. I'm Andrew Joseph Ritter, "Andrew" or "Andy" to some, "Joey" to others. The use of my middle name stemmed from a period in my late teens when I had grown frankly sick of my first name and insisted that people use my middle name. At this point, most of the people who know me online know me as Joey, while my family and most of the people in the Real World that I meet now call me Andy or Andrew (I don't care which.)

I've had a rather interesting, screwed up life that can be summed up as "delayed". I'm 25 years old and have yet to graduate college. I did not get my driver's license until my 24th birthday (the exact date, in fact) and a long and convoluted setup that enables me to go to college proscribes me from getting a job until I graduate. And, I suppose I should note (though it feels more like a footnote than anything else) I am fully deaf in my right ear and use a hearing aid in my left.

At this point in time, I am a journalism student, a majour I have finally decided on and am serious about. I've considered a couple of other career choices in the past, and while it is considered perfectly normal for college students to change their minds over time I've gotten nothing but grief.

But that's neither here or there- I'm going to try to keep my personal life out of this blog, as it's a bit convoluted and nobody cares except me anyway. However, I will occasionally bring up my background as rationale for an opinion or other statement that I may make; your knowledge of this background should thus help you understand why I've said something.

I've created this blog because as a journalism student I came to realize that with increased usage of the internet- to the point where the infrastructure itself may not be able to handle it- journalism itself will increasingly be centered around the internet. Newspapers may never die, and neither will magazines, but I have no doubt that in the future they will serve mainly as outlets for internet-based news organizations. Thusly, with my goal of being a columnist some day, I feel it's only smart to begin now, with this blog.

Some of you know me from Livejournal as dethtoll. Let me make it perfectly clear- this blog is not a mirror for my Livejournal. My Livejournal was started some 7 years ago (has it really been that long? How time flies!) partly as a lark, and partly because the school counselor encouraged me to keep a journal. However, it has since devolved into the dumping grounds of my mind, full of an unfocused rage at my personal life, lashing out at the people I am angry with, unsupported opinions on all manner of things, plus the random meme, liberal doses of offensive humour, and random images designed to destroy the layouts of people viewing their friends list. I use LJ as a social networking site of sorts, since I abhor the cesspool of humanity that is Myspace and other such places such as Facebook. It's where I post on Mandatory Metal, the very existence of which is the tail end of a rather long story which has no place here.

What does have a place here is my commentary on, well, lots of things. Music, films, video games, books, comics, art, politics, culture; the things that make me angry, sad, happy, or disillusioned. This is not a politics blog; nor is it a gaming blog, nor is it a webcomics blog (or for that matter a webcomics-hate blog), or any other kind of specific blog. This is just a quiet space for me to post my thoughts. There will be reviews, there will be thoughts on gaming as a culture, there will be politely worded posts that are barely containing my rage over something that makes me angry. You may see the occasional bit of profanity here- I do not believe in self-censorship, and profanity sometimes gets across a point, emotion, or thought across far more efficiently than a lot of carefully worded prose. (I believe I just created a topic for myself to discuss in a later post.)

A word on the naming of this blog: I picked "Steel Like Vines" due to the image it provokes of structures like rising construction and the ubiquitous communication tower, stretching into the sky, climbing whatever it can- even itself- to be taller than the last. Much of my aesthetics stem from themes portrayed in many post-rock and post-metal albums (post-metal being a topic I'll discuss eventually) and this sort of thing is no exception.

To conclude, this is my attempt at formality- I hope you enjoy.