While changing over the layout of the blog a few weeks ago and updating the bits of it that inevitably broke while doing so, it occurred to me I never said anything about Petz Fashion: Dogz and Catz coming out for the Nintendo DS earlier this summer. Let’s fix that now, shall we?

Petz Fashion: Dogz and Catz (henceforth referred to as just Petz Fashion) is a new installment in Ubisoft’s long-running series of pet sims where you adopt an animal (in this case, a puppy or kitten) and then take care of it, seeing to its needs by feeding, watering, and cleaning up after it, buying it new toys to play with, brushing its fur, and so on. The games have done incredibly well for Ubisoft, as evidenced y the ever-growing amount of shelf space they take up in stores – this is Powerhead’s third Petz title so far, and Ubisoft has an internal team devoted solely to developing even more games starring all sorts of animals, including monkeys, dolphins, and horses (oh my). Some are collections of mini-games, others let you carry pets over from one game to another and even breed them, and some are just straight-forward pet sims in the style of the super popular Nintendogs games. Petz Fashion is the latter, which for my first foray in to the world of artificial animal friends I was happy about, as it keeps things a bit simpler. None of that circle of life business going on here, thank you very much.

Of course, it’s not just a pet sim – as the title suggests, there’s also a fashion component. Petz Fashion follows in the footsteps (paw prints?) of an earlier game by another developer, Petz: Dogz Fashion, which featured (among other things) a narrative about fashion shows starring your canine companion, a bunch of clothes to dress them up in, and a collection of mini-games to play. For Petz Fashion we took a more stripped down approach, culling the narrative and mini-games in favor of having fun with your pet through more free-form play. We also added the ability to adopt a second pet without starting an all new save file, allowing players to switch between the two whenever they wanted from a toolbar on the DS’s Touch Screen. While there are still loads of fashion shows to attend and plenty of encouragement to do so in the form of invitations arriving once your wardrobe is up to snuff, special outfits and other prizes to take home, and more, the player is free to go through them at their own pace. Despite the name of the game putting the spotlight on fashion, it was important to me and the rest of the team that caring for and playing with your pet remain the most important aspect. You can’t attend fashion shows if your pet isn’t healthy and happy, for instance, and taking time during the prep phase of each show to make sure your pet is well-fed, groomed, and in good spirits is a big part of your final score. While Petz Fashion is hardly a how-to guide on how to successfully raise a pet (and was never intended to be), we wanted to enforce good pet owner habits across the board. Nobody wants a real-life version of Parker Posey’s character from Best in Show, after all.

Along with the Fashion Shows and how much fun it remains to just play fetch with your pet or get them to chase a laser pointer, I’m really please with how well performing tricks worked in to the game. It wasn’t something we originally planned for, but as production moved forward and we kept talking about it, we eventually all agreed that it would be fun if your pet could perform tricks – not just as a special animation at the end of a successful walk down the isle at a show, but on command. One of the rewards for acing the game’s fashion shows is your pet building up a collection of tricks it can perform via a menu on the Touch Screen or by speaking in to the DS’s microphone, from the basics of sitting down and rolling over to chasing its tail and break dancing (as the finer breeds of show dogs and cats are known to do on occasion). While I generally don’t like the microphone on the DS (too fickle, too embarrassing to use in crowded places, and often too gimmicky in execution), it was pretty great the first time our lead programmer got his dog to sit by telling it to. It helps that there’s a menu option for tricks as well, allowing you to show off your pet’s moves without causing a subway delay after somebody decides to see something and say something.

It’s a good game, and one I’m proud of, particularly considering the blink-and-you’ll miss it schedule the thing was on. I’m pleased with how much there is for the player to do, from buying new toys for their pet, attending fashion shows armed with a gigantic wardrobe and more clothing customization tools than have ever been in one of these things, or just taking pictures of their pet in mid-air as it leaps from the couch to attack a red dot on the floor. Whenever we came to a crossroads or impasse during production, we tried to stop and ask ourselves “What’s more fun for the player? What would a person playing this game want to do here?” As a designer, I consider one of my main jobs to be an advocate for the player, to constantly keep the wants, needs, and priorities of the people who are eventually going to be playing the game front and center over the course of development. With Petz Fashion, I think we pulled it off nicely.

Originally published at Expertologist. Please leave any comments there.

Long time readers (yes, yes) will recall the heady days of 2008 when I wrote a not entirely regular column about comics called Comics Are Expensive. Each installment featured a handful of reviews of the books I’d bought that week, covering a wide spread of offerings from the likes of Marvel and DC to tiny self-publishers and everything in between. It was mostly fun while it lasted, and while I don’t regret it at all, I think the experience has put to bed the idea of doing a weekly column about anything for a good long while. While I still love the format (the idea of a place for people to show up each week to hear about things they like is hugely appealing), weekly columns are bastard hard things to write, both for the amount of time each piece takes and the challenge of keeping it interesting. No matter how wide the subject matter appears to be at the start (and “comics I bought this week” is a fairly massive expanse), it quickly begins to feel narrow and limiting as fears of repeating yourself begin to creep in around the edges. Rereading the lot of them recently, the lack of truly negative reviews really stood out (at least to me) – there are books I love, books I like, and books I don’t like as much. While it fits with the rather dubious from the start mandate of the column covering books I bought that week, I can’t help but wonder if there were any readers struggling with the idea of there being someone so full of love and and light for comics of all sorts and sizes as to never run across deserving of more than a friendly “not for me, I guess”. If you thought so then or now, let me reassure you that I hate all sorts of comics. I just don’t buy them, is all.

The other thing that hit upon rereading them all (and, at long last, the point of this post) was how many of them I’m still happy with. Like most people who do anything creative, I hate the vast majority of what I write upon rereading, seeing only typos, overused tics, bungled attempts to be more clever than I am, and a dozen other reasons why I should pack it all in and never lay fingers to keys again. And while there’s plenty of that spread over the dozen or so columns I managed, I’m ultimately pleased with how much I managed to get right. With that in mind, and to keep them from disappearing in to the ether like so many other things I’ve written for web sites over the years, I’ve gathered all of Comics Are Expensive here on my blog-thing. Each are timestamped with the day they first went live, as the Dead Milkman did that once with a tour diary from the eighties and I thought it was clever. You can find them by clicking on the Comics Are Expensive tab in the column on the left, or by clicking on the links I’ve handily included below.

1. Teen Titans #55, Avengers: The Initiative #9, Suburban Glamour #3, Captain America #34, Northlanders #3
2. Fantastic Four #554, Tiny Titans #1, Nova Annual #1, Uncanny X-Men #495
3. Umbrella Academy #6, Immortal Iron Fist, Crossing Midnight Vol. 2
4. Rasl #1, Kick Ass #1, Action Philosophers Vol. 3
5. Atomic Robo #4-5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer #12, PS238 #29, Casanova #12
6. Comic Book Comics #1 and Maintenance #9
7. Incredible Hercules #115, Fear Agent #19, The Boy Who Made Silence #1
8. Transhuman #1 and Proof #6
9. Echo #1-2, Resurrection #1-4, Criminal Vol 2. #1-2
10. The Damned: Prodigal Sons #1, Scarlet Traces Vol. 1
11. Invincible Iron Man #1
12. Minx Special
13. Superman Beyond #1

Originally published at Expertologist. Please leave any comments there.

I love the simplicity of the controls in Trials HD. One button makes the bike go, one button makes it stop, and slight taps to the left stick makes the little guy lean forward or back on his bike. It’s everything you need to get through the game’s many stunt tracks, from the earliest “this is what a ramp looks like” tutorial stages to the crueler gauntlets of explosions, falling I-beams, and jumps so ridiculous you’ll spend so much time in the air as to wonder why you’re dirt bike doesn’t come with an in-flight meal. With just three inputs mapped to the most natural feeling bits of the Xbox 360’s controller, Trials HD gracefully nails one of the more important aspects of any good game – you feel completely in control of your character, and when you mess up, no matter how much you yell and curse at the broken remains of your driver and bike, more often than not you know it was you who failed, not the design of the game.

And you will mess up. A lot. You’ll hit ramps at the wrong speed to make a jump, or be going fast enough only to realize your position on the bike was all wrong, ending your run (and the structural integrity of your neck) in a messy face plant and sharp crack that echoes through the abandoned warehouse-turned-stunt track-turned abattoir each of the tracks are set in. Or you’ll fly too high, a motocross Icarus for the X-games generation, only to land so hard the shocks in your bike collapse in on themselves and leave you eye level with the underside of your tires. Or you’ll tumble in to a clutch of exploding barrels. Or you won’t be fast enough to get across a bit of collapsing track in time. Or any of a dozen other horrible things will happen, resulting in the always fun sight of driver and bike ragdolling themselves to bits against the environment.
Which brings us around to my favorite part of Trial HD’s controls – the reset buttons. At any time, alive or dead, you can hit one to send you back to the last cleared checkpoint (helpful for avoiding frustrating bits you may have lucked through, but later hurting your final score), or you can hit the other one to start the whole level over. Thanks to the smallish size of the game and the whole thing living on the 360’s hard drive, resetting a level is an instant process, with no loading screen giving you a horrible few seconds to reconsider the merit of beating your head against a stunt track-shaped wall. With the push of a button any disaster is wiped away as though it never happened, nothing left of it by a distant, painful memory from a past life where you leaned forward a bit too much at the wrong time.

Trials HD gets a lot of things right – it’s lovely to look at, its camera, despite being fixed, is fixed just so that you rarely think about it if ever, and it’s challenges, while often utterly bastard hard, escalate in such a way that you almost don’t notice when they turn in to devious Rube Goldberg devices of death and flame. But what I love it for, what I most admire and keep coming back for, is its ability to keep me around for one more go. No matter how frustrating a level might be, no matter how sure I am that I did everything right only to die in a flurry of shouted curse words, I’m always in for one more go. The ability to instantly reload a level, the scores of my friends (and how I’m doing against them) displayed across the top of the screen, the way the track falls apart around me as I stumble towards the finish line, often on fire and seconds from death, it all adds up to one of the most addictive games I’ve played in ages. At it’s best, Trials HD manages real magic, wiping away the urge to throw my controller through my very nice television with a push of a button, replacing my pure rage with the faith that this time, this one time, I’ll do everything just right and stay on the bike and moving forward long enough to cross the checkered line.

When designing games I’m personally not a big fan of traditional binary fail states. I think in a lot of games they break up the flow of play in unnecessary and frustrating ways – being around to deal with the consequences of not doing as well as you’d hoped or needed to and having the chance to make it up is a more interesting design challenge for me than who shot first and fastest. In a game like Trials HD, though, I’m just fine with the Groundhog Day-esque cycle of death and rebirth nameless stunt guy is trapped in, as developer RedLynx have made it just so compelling. Cringing and laughing out loud as your latest botched run sends your little guy in to a physics-upped flurry of broken bones pretty much never gets old, taking the edge off even the most crushing defeats. Between a failure sequence so entertaining it becomes more of a reward for trying in the first place and the ability to instantly start the whole thing over with the push of a button, it becomes clear why it can get away with some of the mind-boggling (on first brush, at least) level designs they throw at you.

Yes, it can be an intensely hard game at times, and yes, there have definitely been moments where all I’ve wanted in the world was to see my TV explode in a shower of sparks and broken dreams as my controller flew through the screen. That I never do, instead stabbing the Back button with all the rage I can while growling “One more” at the hapless rider on his bike as he reappears at the start of the track before gassing the engine, is where it becomes clear just what sort of game Trials HD is. It’s not about getting everything exactly right the first time, it’s about learning from each and every mistake, finding the perfect degree to lean at for a jump, positioning your bike just right for landing, ad slowly discovering the correct blend of insane risk and precision needed to get from one end of the track to the other as fast as possible while remaining in one piece. It’s one of the best “just one more go” games I’ve played in ages, and looking at the ways it quickly funnels you back to the starting line, siphoning off just enough anger to keep you from quitting in a rage (or at least postponing it), it’s not hard to see why. Trials HD is a master class in balancing fun and frustration, giving players all the tools they need to become good enough at the game to perform incredible feats of dirt bike derring-do. Making the most useful tools the subtlest is something I’m very much trying to learn from.

Originally published at Expertologist. Please leave any comments there.

So a few months ago I wrote a post weighing in on the whole “are games art?” thing. It wasn’t exactly a new topic at the time, and several (often smarter) people and articles appearing in industry magazines and sites have gone on to beat the point even further in to the ground, but it was nice to get out of my head and written down, and it prompted some nice discussion with friends, so it was worth it. One of those discussions* was a comment-turned-full-post in response from friend Jones that I totally meant to reply to at the time, but then totally neglected to do. I get distracted easily. Things come up. You know how it is. At any rate, I’m linking to it now, and suggest you go read it before continuing as I’m probably going to talk about it a bit. Go on. I’ll wait.

When Jones’ post first appeared I scrawled some notes in a little notebook towards an intended response, but the me of now is having trouble working out what the me of June was going for at the time, so I’m mostly going to wing it. For a bit of context, Jones very much comes from an art background, having been involved with pretty much everything considered (or at least argued) to be art, from acting, music, writing, painting, comics, a stint in videogames, and a few others I’m probably forgetting. He also ran a small art gallery for a few years, which on top of all the rest means a few things: he drinks a lot, is prone to cynicism, and usually knows what he’s talking about. As such, I feel confident he’ll correct anything I might get wrong below, probably while demanding I buy him a drink and making fun of my shoes.

The essence of Jones’ take on the much-sought after bade of being considered proper Art (pronounced “Awt”, for those reading aloud at home) is it’s a lot of crap, a popularity contest each new medium is forced to enter in turn. He argues that as videogame creators (or television people, or comics people, or purveyors of any of the “new” media) we should take the stance of not wanting to join any club that would have us as a member, focusing instead of producing the best work we can and placing craftsmanship over the approval of old men in universities with embarrassing beards.

I agree except where I don’t, really. His points on Craft and Craftsmanship strike a chord with me, particularly as I discover more and more that as much as I love discussing design theories and practice, I’d much rather just do the job. As for not needing to be art… I don’t know. On one hand, I’m a big fan of not depending on someone else saying I’m something to consider myself that something, but on the other, I’m not on the front lines of (or even involved with) game academia like Brenda Brathwaite, Ian Schreiber, or Tracy Fullerton. I’ve never been in a position where my work and passions might be professionally marginalized because they weren’t considered a valid art form by the powers that be, never had to fight to prove that what I was doing mattered. It’d be nice if games didn’t need status to prove they were worth the sort of in-depth exploration those mentioned and others like them are committed to, but if a label is what it takes, then yeah, I think we need the label. At least for now. There’s also the part of me that doesn’t want to be told my medium and I can’t sit at the Adult’s Table, but that’s harder to back up with links to smart people, so.

At any rate, read Jones’ piece if you haven’t already. Aside from any arguments over artistic validity, his points on the importance of good craftsmanship above all else are well worth it.

*Friend James claims he chimed in as well, but as I can’t find his comments anywhere, let’s just assume he’s lying.

Originally published at Expertologist. Please leave any comments there.

The question of when videogames will have their own Citizen Kane – that is, one that provides the great leap forward from embarrassing hobby to legitimate art form so desperately craved by so many – seems to crop up more and more with each passing month. It’s the bad penny of games journalism, the go-to question whenever a developer talks up their current title as providing a new, deeper experience for players or someone from another medium mentions games in a positive light. Across magazines and websites dedicated to talking about videogames, there’s a sense of anxious anticipation for the One True Game, a title of such messianic portent that it will immediately make the rest of the world stand up and take notice. No longer will videogames and the people who make and play them be ghettoized as boring virgins or the safe nerdy friend with the unrequited crush in sitcoms and movies. In the wake of this unknown game, videogames will be take their rightful place as the tenth art form, placed high on a pedestal along side art, music, theater, film, comics and all the rest to be respected and admired for having something to say worth listening to.

Unfortunately for those waiting and watching for such a game to appear, it’s not going to. There will be no Citizen Kane of videogames, no one game that suddenly vindicates gaming as an art form in the same way as Orson Wells’ masterpiece purportedly did, because that’s not the way the world works any more, assuming it ever did in the first place. Legitimacy doesn’t come from one person in a field doing one thing right; it comes from movements, from consistency, from progress across the board creating a new standard for future work to be held against. We’re spending all our time looking for one very special tree, when we should be paying attention to the overall picture of what’s going on with the forest.

As someone who works in games, I find the idea of waiting around for one wonderful game to solve the industry’s concerns with being taken seriously to be particularly grating for a number of reasons, the biggest being that it smacks of wanting someone to come along and do it for me. I’ve seen the question of when videogames’ Citizen Kane will come along put to the likes of Peter Molyneux, Ken Levine, Warren Spector, and a dozen others, and I can’t help but wonder if any of them ever felt a bit insulted at being relegated to John the Baptist status, forever doomed to be remembered best for paving someone else’s way. To ask the question implies not only that such a game or event hasn’t already happened yet, waiting for some future huddle of thoughtful types to point it out as the turning point, but that when it does appear it’ll do so with bells on and a note around its neck declaring its importance. It is, really, a stupid thing to ask of anyone, so loaded down with assumptions and deep misunderstandings on the nature of games and art as a whole that asking it should make you feel a bit ashamed of yourself. Why should games evolve the same way film did, and why should we expect them to? Why would you assume there aren’t already games deserving to be called art, with all the good and bad that carries with it? Why are we waiting for one great turning point, when games make so many small and important ones each year? And more important than any of those questions, why oh why do we as a medium need any one else to tell us how smart and pretty we are?

For all the tremendous leaps and bounds videogames have made since first appearing, our medium’s story is ultimately one of evolution, not revolution. The incredible strides made towards more and more meaningful and engrossing experiences are the results of countless iterations big and small to discover what works and cast aside what doesn’t. Videogames are a medium unlike anything the world has ever seen, with greater potential and challenges than nearly any other art form can muster. Instead of waiting to be taken seriously by the world at large like a child squirming for permission to sit at the adult’s table, we should claim the art form status that’s rightfully ours, even if we aren’t entirely convinced we deserve it yet. The first step to being a grown up is calling yourself one – sooner or later, the rest of the world will come around.

Originally published at Expertologist. You can comment here or there.

Alexandra Pusateri, games reviewer and columnist (and apparently a force to be reckoned with as the Sniper in Team Fortress) does a regular column at pop culture catch-all 411Mania called Reality Check, in which she explores the lesser known corners and real world ramifications of videogames. For her latest column, for reasons that may never be known or understood, she opted to talk to me about what it’s like in game design. Here’s a snippet:

For those wanting to have a career in game design, Lamb has some suggestions. “Learning to work with others and make concessions for the good of the game is one of the best things that can happen to you,” he says. While this may sound like a no-brainer, being creatively attached to your work may leave you a bit hurt.
“There will be times when the design you’re so very sure of will have to be changed in some way due to the say-so of someone else, be it a person on your team, your producer, your boss, a publisher, the licensor, or some other involved body,” he says. “It’s a very hard lesson to learn, and can be immensely frustrating, particularly when the change they’ve asked for ends up being for the better.”

That’s me in the quote marks, sounding remarkably like I know what I’m talking about. You can find the rest of the piece here. Thanks very much to Alexandra for giving me the opportunity to ramble incessantly at her about something I love, and for bravely soldiering through in the face of my answering each of her questions with the equivalent of a final term paper.

Originally published at Expertologist. You can comment here or there.

I really should have mentioned this earlier, as it’s both something I find incredibly interesting and feel deserves all the support it’s possible to give. Ian Schreiber, game designer, teacher, and co-author of Challenges For Game Designers with Brenda Brathwaite (you can find his blog on teach game design here and while you’re at it, check out Brenda’s always-interesting site Applied Game Design), is giving an online class on game design concepts – called, handily, Game Design Concepts – that starts in June and runs over the summer. The course description sums it up better than I can, and sounds all nice and official too:

This course provides students with a theoretical and conceptual understanding of the field of game design, along with practical exposure to the process of creating a game. Topics covered include iteration, rapid prototyping, mechanics, dynamics, flow theory, the nature of fun, game balance, and user interface design. Primary focus is on non-digital games.

The bit at the end there about non-digital games is particularly interesting, as I have almost no experience in terms of analog game design and have always considered it a huge hole in my toolset, one I’m lookingforward to filling in. Perhaps even more exciting, though, is the program’s price – The whole thing is free, other than the required text (aforementioned Challenges For Game Designers, which even outside of Amazon is half the price of your typical book on game design) and any supplies needed for the game you’ll create during the course. I picked up Challenges For Game Designers</a> back when it first came out, and after reading through a good chunk of it, I think anybody participating will be in very good hands. All the information on the course can be found at the Game Design Concepts site, including where to to send an email if you’re interested in registering.

I think this is an absolutely great idea, and one I’d love to see more of. There are all kinds of events, conferences, festivals, and so on happening year-round with a focus on various aspects of the games industry and the academia built up around it, but many of them are just too cost prohibitive in terms of time and money to be doable for someone like, say, me. I’ve never attended the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco becaust I can’t afford the thousands of dollars involved in going an no company has ever offered to pay for me to go. Next week sees the five-day Games For Change Festival happening at Parson’s New School here in Manhattan, including the likes of Henry Jenkins, Ian Bogost, Brenda Brathwaite’s incredible game Train, and more, but with the bulk of it happening during my work week and passes running several hundred dollars, there’s no way I can make it. There are some cheap or free events concerning games that are more compatible with my work schedule – the IGDA hosts regular meet ups and demo nights, and recently NYU’s Game Center opened up lectures featuring Warren Spector, Mark Leblanc, and Eric Zimmerman to the public, which was greatly appreciated. I attend as many of these things as I can, but it doesn’t do much to take away from the feeling that I’m regularly missing out on things I could really benefit from as a designer. At my more bitter moments, it’s hard not to look at things like GDC and other big, expensive events as a private club I won’t be able to buy my way in to any time soon.

So before the course even starts, I’m already tremendously grateful to Ian Schreiber for taking the time and effort to offer this sort of thing free of charge to any and all who are interested. I didn’t go to college for game design (or anything else, actually); I kind of stumbled-ass backwards in to the thing, discovered I had an affinity for it, and almost immediately never wanted to do anything else with my life but make up things for people to play. I’ve spent a lot of time amassing a library of books, lectures, blog posts, articles, and anything else I could find on game design to temper my own experiences with, and am constantly looking out for anything that might teach me something new and make me a better designer. As such, to have someone who’s approach to design I already appreciate and admire offer a college-level that won’t plunge me in to debt and adapts to my schedule is something of a dream come true, and I can’t wait to get started.

Originally published at Expertologist. Please leave any comments there.

And back to blogging.  Again.  Something more like a proper post should be up in the next day or so, and hopefully more should follow that in an ever-so-slightly more timely fashion.  The last five months have been very, very busy and then very, very lazy, and I feel the need to shake off some cobwebs.  And it’s also good to make sure I still remember how to log in to the wordpress every once and while.
Thanks then to Valve for providing an excuse in the form of the latest (and quite possibly best) video for their ode to Better Killing Through Teamwork, Team Fortress 2’s  Meet The Spy.

You can also find the prettier HD version here at Valve’s website.  The video officially came out last week as part of the Sniper/Spy surprise joint update for the PC version of the game, but it leaked via some canny person finding it in Valve’s YouTube profile last weekend. (the funny story and hilarious repercussions of which are well worth going back through the last few day’s of the TF2 team’s blog to read for yourself).   And now, finally, I’m putting it up here.  Because I like to think of this site as the terminus point for the relevance of things on the internet.  You’re welcome.

Inspired by the all the wit and personality Valve have spent the last two weeks pouring in to characters, I’ve dipped back in to the 360 version of the game several times over the last few days to remind myself of why, before the arrival of Left 4 Dead it was my favorite multiplayer videogame.  The game is still the same (sometime to it’s detriment – none of the PC upgrades or new maps have found their way to the 360 yet, due apparently to a memory issue who’s fix is taking the long way around), but the players have changed – the games in progress at any given time are nearly half what they were a year ago, and those playing them (at least on the teams I ended up on) seem to have forgotten the absolute crucial value of communication and planning out your moves rather than rushing in guns blazing.

It’s not entirely surprising, seeing how the game has gone over a year without a significant update or add on, and the creators should be praised for creating something that remains so fun with only four maps to play on and just the original weapon sets to kill each other with, but it’s still a bit sad to see.  I love playing the game, and when my hands remembered what it meant to be a Pyro on my second match in it was like I’d never left, but I can’t see it beating out the siren song of Left 4 Dead that goes out when my usual group comes online and is eyeing an Expert run.  I have hopes for a resurgence in the community when Valve finally finds a way to bring all their mad new ideas to the console, but with each passing month, it’s harder to believe it’ll be anything more than a casual fling when it comes.   Team Fortress 2 will always have a part of my heart, but at this rate, I’m not sure the same can be said for my time.  Not that I’m worried about that now – the fleeting nature of love is of little concern when there are spies to set alight.

And it looks like this has turned in to a proper post after all.  Oh, and did I mention the comic introducing the most horrible weapon of all, the Sniper’s debilitating Jarate?  No?  Well shame on me, then.

Originally published at Expertologist. You can comment here or there.

It’s very easy in Fallout 3 to stumble in to situations you just aren’t ready for. What’s left of the world has had a good long while to get used to the kill-or-be-killed side of post-apocalyptic living, meaning by the time you arrive on the scene they’ve all formed little gangs to handle gun toting loners like, well, you. Raiders and slavers travel or camp out in groups, wild dogs and mole rats with the size and temperament of boars roam the land in packs, and super mutants have turned the buddy system in to the stuff of nightmares. For the times you find yourself out-gunned and out-classed (something that happens quite often early in the game), there are a few options available for attempting to stave off death.

1. Run. This is the least likely to work. If wild animals are after you, you can bet on them being faster than you. If it’s raiders or mutants, they’ll chase you down for sport. You’ll just die tired.

2. Fight. The VATS system helps even things out, but until you’ve leveled up a bit nearly every fight is going to leave you cut to little ribbons. If you opt to stand your ground, make sure you have plenty of stimpaks and keep a safe place you can recover at within limping distance.

3. Improvise. There are all kinds of things you can use against enemies to take them by surprise. Wrecked cars will explode with just a few bullets put in to their engine, and the various residents of the Wasteland tend hate each other as much as they hate you and will happily tear each other apart upon meeting. There’s every chance you’ll die in the process, but hey, at least it’ll look cool.

Evergreen Mills is in the Midwestern part of the map - make your way north from Tennpenny Tower and you almost can’t help but find it. In a past life it was a quarry of some sort, but now it’s crawling with Raiders, each armed to the teeth and considerably better fighters than the rabble scraping out a life in the Wastes. When I find the camp, I’m at the point skill-wise where I have a choice: I can try to kill them all and loot the place, but it’ll cost me in stimpaks, ammo, and wear on my weapons that I can’t necessarily afford, or I can try to make my way around the camp, hopefully not tip off any of the guards, and come away with nothing. Not trusting my skill with a rifle to be high enough to pick them off from a distance, I’m making my way through the rocks above camp when I notice the solution to all my problems: in the middle of the quarry is an electrified pen, and inside the pen is a Behemoth, a twenty-foot tall super mutant that can kill with a punch and soaks up damage like a sponge.

I hide in the rocks till night settles, watching the guards through the scope of my sniper rifle in opes of a gap in their patrols big enough to squeeze through. At midnight I turn on a Stealth Boy to max out my sneaking ability, put two rounds in to the pen’s generator to blow it up, and skid down the rocks in to the camp proper. Despite my added sneakiness, one of the Raiders spots me just as I make it to the Behemoth’s cage, but by then it’s too late. With the gate open, the Behemoth is free, and he’s angry.

The fighting lasts till sun up, but only because some of the squirrelier Raiders were smart enough to stay out of arm’s reach for as long as they could. Their friends aren’t so lucky - the ground is littered with bodies that were decapitated by a single punch. After a long night of sustained gunfire, the Behemoth still has over half his health left and shows no signs of slowing down. I’ve been watching the whole thing from a safe distance, taking shots every one in a while at the Raiders he can’t get to. After a while the quarry is quiet again with all of its residents dead, leaving the place ripe for looting. Over the course of the fight, I’ve only been hit two or three times and used up maybe a clip of precious rifle ammo. Not bad for a night’s work.

Of course, around now is when the flaw in my master plan becomes apparent. If I leave my hiding place to have a go at all the lovely bodies loaded down with all the ammo, weapons, and bottle caps I’ll need for a while, the Behemoth will turn me in to jelly. I can hit him from range with my rifle, but I don’t have nearly enough ammunition to put him down. The strongest weapon I have is a combat shotgun and forty-nine shells to put in it, meaning my only choice is to get as close as I can while avoiding his reach. I take a shot at his head, causing one of his health notches to fade a bit. He roars back, stomping the ground and kicking a corpse a good dozen feet or so in frustration.

It’s going to be a very long day.

Originally published at Expertologist. You can comment here or there.

I just saw Adult Swim has a new game up on their website, and hey, it’s one I had a (very small) hand in. It’s Dungeons And Dungeons, a side-scrolling leather-em-up through an S&M dungeon gone horribly, horribly wrong. Don’t worry, it won’t bite. Unless you ask nicely, of course.

It’s the latest game from flash auteurs and former employers This Is Pop, and serves as a nice addition to their streak of bizarre and original diversions made for AdultSwim.com. I wrote the proposal for the game and did some meager early design work for it ages ago, and then chipped in a bit of play testing a few months back when it was closer to done. I’m happy to see the thing out in the real world, though I doubt that compares to the feelings of the people who put in the time to actually make the thing. Well done, you bunch of hideous perverts. I hope it makes you all so famous that everybody knows your faces, if only to save you the trouble of telling every parent you meet how many yards you have to keep away from their children.

Originally published at Expertologist. You can comment here or there.