I Will Survive

Nostalgia is most often characterized by that "flashback" moment we're privy to in blockbuster moments; the main character looks back through the years in hazy sepia tones, holding hands with his love as they swing in an affectionate embrace. The echoing laughter of children (an indicator of innocence and purity and also a sure-fucking-fire sign that a complete reversal in the form of excessive violence is about to take place) reverberates through unseen halls padded with teddy bears and ice-cream sundaes, Fourth of July picnics and late Christmas Eves waiting for Santa to impossibly drop his fat fucking lard ass through the chimney. The flashback is suddenly cut short by the sound of blaring gunfire, as faceless mooks swarm around the main character's location, moving in unison to their boss (identified by the fact that he's wearing a hat) barking orders to "cut that fucker's head off" and so on and so on. The main character's eyes, meanwhile, suddenly pop open. He's driven, he has new purpose. And he...

I'm getting distracted. That'll ungracefully segue towards another theme for another day. Along with distraction, which seems to be my M.O. nowadays.

Where was I? Ah, yes. Nostalgia. For me, nostalgia isn't viewing happy experiences through a filtered, hazy, sepia-toned lens. That isn't to say that I don't partake in revisiting happier moments in my life, be it while farming my memory for applicable vignettes to keep my students entertained, or while taking a shit. Either/or. Happy moments in my life are abundant and plentiful when I'm in the best of moods, or far and few in-between in my more sour days. I'm just that kind of person.

But wait, I'm getting off-topic yet again. My brand of nostalgia is keenly set on the negative moments in my life, where I found myself emotionally tested by shitkickers, assholes, and all-around fuckheads. Sticking close to that tired-out cliche regarding that which doesn't kill me, I've found that my nostalgia, when necessary, often takes the form of a certain year spent in a certain Chinese city prior to the prospect of marriage, let alone dating rearing its head.

I had something else I wanted to talk about, but a combination of laziness and forgetfulness has caused me to all forget about that. So fuck it. No deviation.

I survived close to an entire year of a 30 year-old homosexual suicide-attemptee roommate who said he was and then wasn't in love with me, but would try to subtly menace me towards guilt when I forced him to stray closer to the latter.

This is nothing, this... this place that continues to rot itself inside out. I've been through worse shit.

This is nothing.

Dear Beijings, pt. 3

"Subway Ettiquette"

Hello, our friends. This is the Beijing Subway line. Robert couldn't be here today to regurgitate his previous ideas, mainly because he's a man of pride who hates to sound redundant, but does so on numerous occasions.

Robert contacted us yesterday and asked me if I'd like to fill in for a guest spot for today's blog entry and, to tell the truth, I was somewhat hesitant. Ever since our hivemind-like consciousness was bestowed upon all 550 of my cars running concurrently under Beijing's busy streets by a demon of cosmic origin - hailing from as far as the nether star Darkylis, nestled under the watchful gaze of the plague-ridden, demonic Watchers of the Seven Gateways - who would identify himself as "Nyarlathotep The Unspeakable", we've had plenty of time to do plenty of different things. Everything but write. I mean, doggone it, as we run our blind courses, gliding upon the rusted steel bridges that function as both our eternal imprisonment and our salvation, we don't have time to do any writing, much less dabble in anything that resembles literary prowess.


But, as things would have it, this gives us a good chance to come forth and make an announcement: We are now under the protection and domination of the Watchers of Arcturus, who rode the aether plague winds of the ruined city Sarnath and sailed upon Morducain's carrion rivers of death, and came to this planet before time reared its ugly, doomed head and drew its first breath. FYI.

We're plenty peaceful. In fact, the only time we've had to act out of violence was when we engaged a young man from Guangzhou, who, in an act of foolish hubris, thought he could withstand the might of the Beijing Subway. And boy. That wasn't pretty. We weren't too happy about it, but sometimes the limit of man's knowledge must be confined in blood and brimstone. But this is good stuff, gotta think of it that way. Our friend, the arcane sorceror of deceit known as Thomas Friedman says you Chinese folk are facing a "population problem." So, with all of these rules in place, maybe y'all be able to get along and make the ride home a pleasant one!


With that being said, here are the new rules for riding Beijing's Subway lines: This means, Line 1, Line 2, The Olympic Line, Line 10, and the City Metro. And the Batong expressway, if you're into that sorta thing.

1) First, observe the "First out, then in" rule. That means, folks who are getting off the train receive priority, so you folks who wanna get on - gotta wait. Any attempts to violate this pact will trigger the Panes of the Eldritch, which creates a panel of unholy pestilence between the train and the platform, searing any flesh that it makes contact with and cursing those within a 10 foot radius of its maddening sight to a lifetime of apocalyptic visions.

2) Second, seating priority goes to the elderly and people with children. Failure to meet the conditions of this pact will result in the tender flesh that drapes around your body wiltering away into a dust of nothingness, which'll probably be scary to the kids. So, don't forget.

3) Third, do not play mp3s from your cellphone at full blast unless you have brand-specific headphones, or unless the song in question was composed prior to the later half of the 20th century. This means all songs from Taiwan, Sweden, Germany, and random songs culled from game audio rips of DDR are all forbidden. Should your sense of decency fly in the face of this pact, a choir of blind and deaf daemons, forever cursed to madly dance in the court of Azathoth, will descend upon you with a cacophony of songs sung in the most arcane of the forbidden languages, the same devil tongue that sank the thriving and mighty Atlantis millions of years ago. Your head to collapse upon itself as your body joins the doomed choir in unison, your hollowed remains shuffling along to a requiem of the dark ones that only you can hear. Once again, remember the children.

4) Finally, please remember that standing straight is the mark of a proper gentleman or a well-to-do lady. Leaning against others in a fit of slumber or unintentional rudeness is unacceptable. The Watchers'll kill your entire fucking family if you do this shit. Believe that.


And, well, that's about it. That seems like a pretty easy list of simple rules to follow, doesn't it?

Doesn't it? Hello? Beijingers? Oh , Gods no. Masters, forgive us for the blood that will soon stain our once-innocent hands, it's happening all over again... These Chinese people. Just. Don't. Listen.

"Good. Everything is going as planned. Soon, the blight of mankind will receive as violent of an end as the day it was fucked into existence. So says The Elder Gods."

I'm in a weird mood

Heart Film Pt. 1

"Let The Right One In"

When I was about 12, I started to develop the personal and emotional skills, or rather, shortcomings, that paved the road to antisocial, Asperger-like behavior that I would soon awkwardly stumble on. I'm unable to pinpoint an exact catalyst that led me to this harmlessly deviant lifestyle, but I'm privy to a few reasons: First, my parents had just divorced, leaving me to choose weekdays with my mother and a lifestyle of guilt and torment with my father. Also, I was just starting intermediate school, a phase in my life that underwent the roughest of transitions by basically challenging everything I knew, or at least thought I knew, about my friends, and the circumstances in which a person was considered acceptable by pocket-social standards.

After encountering the unfamiliar spectres of friend after friend making the unsure attempt of reaching that little peak of mental acuity we Americans like to call "maturity", something in me snapped. Not "snapped" as in a seizure or any kind of breakdown, but just, I reacted. Subconsciously, now that I look back. As the people around me adjusted to their self-imposed new imagos of maturity, I regressed. I developed an interest in the strange labyrinthine lyrics of Smashing Pumpkins and Tori Amos. In addition, I started up a morbid fascination with the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, an author, apocalyptic at his worst and nihilistic at his best, who wrote about the uncertainty of that ultimate truth mankind is unable to face. Lots of his stories dealt with people going insane, or seeing weird shit, with most of the things happening to them being attributed to some sinister cosmic influence, incomprehensible in it's evil and scope. Some of his other stories were a result of his love of Lord Dunsany's works, long overblown couplets of fallen grandeur and ravaged splendor. Make no mistake, H.P. Lovecraft's writing was bat-shit insane. And I loved every bit of it.


I never openly shared my hobbies to the coterie of people I kept as friends at the time, because, honestly, I never saw the point. My friends were nice enough not to give me a hard time about my joys and hobbies, but they were never open-minded enough to not potentially shatter my little sphere of protection through constant teasing, should I had ever made my hobbies apparent. Through my books and music, I had a little escape, a getaway I could take in my best or worst of moods. Via Tori Amos' virtually impregnable stronghold of metaphors and H.P. Lovecraft's bleak viewpoint of man's fate written in the stars, I was both invigorated and isolated in this tiny imaginary multiverse of my own creation that I couldn't explain to other people. Then again, it wasn't anybody's fault that I couldn't do so: I had already rejected their truth just as I expected they would reject mine.

The interesting thing about my life, at the time, was the fact that I was a straddler of all lines. I was nerdy and geeky, but still had enough pop-culture savvy to carry on "meaningful" conversations with classmates. In the above example, my friends were neither the cool kids on campus nor the outcasts.

Conversely, I was never bullied at school, but I had a fair share of subtle tormentors, each of their minimalistic forms of cruelty coming and going as swiftly and surely as traffic on any other day. The person who knocked over my can of Cactus Cooler and heartily laughed, "Sorry, dude." The guy who bypassed paper towels in the bathroom and decided to use the hood on my sweater to wipe his hands. All of these nameless faces, each so careless yet seemingly calculating in their apparent meanness, all served to challenge my idealism, much in the way daily news does to me now.

I've always been an idealistic person from the onset of my mental awareness, as I am now. This is a dangerous thing. Idealistic people carry within their iron-girded minds a pitch-perfect worldview of how society and the people around them should act. This idea, in turn, emanates from a Sesame Street-engendered view of utopia, innocent yet deep in hope for a better world that stands a chance of not imploding on itself. And this view? It starts with our parents telling us to look people in the eyes and smile when meeting them for the first time. It is cultivated when our friend forgets to bring lunch money and we break off half of our turkey swiss sandwich without even thinking. It receives validation when we give up our seat on the subway to an elderly gentleman, and the gentleman smiles, nods, and graciously thanks us for our kindness. It is so goddamn fucking simple to the idealistic person, and unfathomable to various degrees: why can't other people be this way? Why?

It's the fixation on the "why?", and not the "how" that led me to numerous emotional pitfalls during the beginning of my teenage years. I felt alone in a world that operated on MTV and Airwalk sneakers, the headbanging youth of America in direct competition for individuality by scrambling to meet the same criteria of acceptance of those around them, and forever locked in a ouroborosian circle of eatting and then shitting themselves and those around their circle of destruction. It was when I articulated this thought in my mind that I suddenly craved karmic revenge on even the smallest of infractions exacted upon me in such precise, targeted measures all of those years by people I never crossed or said a mean word about. I craved blood.

I wanted to break the fingers that nudged me on the forehead because someone was too occupied to say "excuse me" or, even, "move." I wanted to stab the tender white-bordered flesh of those unprotected eyes that stared me down with such random hatred and menace, the glare itself an indication of someone doing something simply because he knew he could. On random occasions, I wanted to take a meat cleaver, cut through the spinal cord, larynx, and various strips of meat and sinew that attached the head to the neck, and stand in the middle of the quad with a random dipshit's head held firmly in my left hand and the still-bloody cleaver in my right. I was that precise in my revenge fantasies because that was how much I hated, and still hate, these people that made my world that much of a less nicer place to wake up to every morning.

I hated the people who took it upon themselves to brand people as "poseurs" and "dickless." I hated the senselessness of it. I hated the contagious effect it was having on people, creating new creatures that preyed on the suffering and inadequacies of others. I hated the lazy excuses people were using to mask cruelty and harmful insensitivity under the guise of reckless youth, and worse, phases. And most importantly, I hated that I could do nothing about it.

Now, as we fast-forward about 13-14 years in incoherent narrative, I'm in a different place. I'm more or less settled in my comfortable niche. I have a great family back home in the United States, and a pretty awesome family here. I deeply and sincerely love my wife, and she deeply and sincerely loves me. I'm not too crazy about my job, but I've since managed to use it as a learning experience in testing my limits and the things I am capable of even under professional duress. Also, to say that I'm now more emotionally stable and mature is an understatement. I managed to turn my antisocial and regressive behavior and turn it into this brand of wry, acerbic sarcastic cynicism that I have yet to make a cent from (see what I mean?). For the first time in my life, I can say I am happy, possibly blessed.

I wrote about the hopelessness of my teenage years under the guise of a movie review, but then again, that isn't entirely true. I was prompted to write this because, to speak in the frankest of terms, Let The Right One In, shook me in a profound way. I was moved to tears at the end of the movie, both terrified to a silent chill and comforted by that bittersweet nostalgia the pain of adolescence oftentimes brings. Beneath my horror and exasperation laid an understanding that could both relate to and support the passive rage boiling within Oskar, the troubled protagonist of the movie, as I could also share in the delightful, nightmarish pain of Eli's tormented isolation. Strip away the entire vampire element and you're left with a movie that is, at it's core, about the relationships that seem to spring even within our most hopeless of times. While the bleak violence that surrounds Oskar and Eli is anything but pure, I found it chillingly and soberly beautiful that the relationship, and later, love, between them is perhaps one of the most pure and innocent kinships ever committed to film.

This is where Oskar and I are different: I never had an Eli during my teenage years, and my wife is anything but. Nature and nurture are two seemingly important but ultimately random factors that decide a person's fate in an increasingly contextual world. I wonder, then, what kind of person I would've been like had had I met and bonded with a force of nature such as Eli in my youth. I wonder, what kind of expression would I have worn on my face as I emerged out of the swimming pool? My god. I can only guess.

I Actually Watched This, Pt. 2

"The Punisher: War Zone"

"Sometimes, I'd like to get my hands on God."

-Frank Castle AKA The Punisher

If that above comment offended you, you are not part of that precious "core audience" for this movie. If you get queasy at the sight of wholesale, morally-bankrupt slaughter, this movie is not for you. If the idea of a man, who after losing his entire family to a senseless mob shoot-out, decides to take it upon himself to wage a one-man war upon all forms of organized and disorganized crime in New York, sounds remotely appealing, then... hmmmm. Do or do not watch this movie. There is no try, because fuck it, you have to be a certain type of person to enjoy, let alone get past this kind of movie.

Punisher: War Zone is an ugly, disgusting movie. I read a review somewhere where the critic appropriately described the movie as a "slasher-film with guns." This is true, and accurate to a fault, on so many levels. The movie possesses within it's bones a sadistic and sociopathic nature in which the numerous slayings in the film are shown. Heads are lopped off, the main villain takes a ride in a glass crushing machine, and at one point, a man's kidneys are eaten. You can actually see that shit.

There is a difference between stylized violence and meaningless violence. P:WZ doesn't just straddle the line between the two, it takes it's sweaty palms and grips the silicone-injected tits of both sides while banging it's head to Lamb of God. There are numerous scenes in which the Punisher and the many villains the movie is attempting to make us hate splatter heads with automatic weapons and leave various edged weapons in the bodies of their victims, but the one scene that made me pay the most attention and, in some ways, sum up the entire movie in a few seconds, takes place when Jigsaw, the aforementioned main villain, breaks into the house of a former undercover FBI agent and threatens the wife and her daughter with all sorts of promised violence. When Jigsaw fails to obtain money or something or other in the house's safe, he screams "Fuck" a couple of times, where he proceeds to storm to the daughter's bedroom, and riddle her stuffed toys and dolls with bullets.

That scene, after witnessing murder after murder in a saturated glow of yellow and red, made me perk up, because it's so specific in it's purpose and so graphic in it's specificity. Here is a movie that is so shameless and conspicuous in its hatred of mankind, even a little girl's belongings, vestiges of an innocence that subconsciously struggles to remain pure in an ugly world, is spared no quarter. Clearly, the filmmakers thought of everything.

I said before there is a certain type of person that will be interested in this movie, and there is a certain type of person that will enjoy this movie, or at least make it to the credits. What type of person am I, then? I'm a fanboy. Obviously. And here's the tricky part: Punisher: War Zone, in all of it's hateful violence and disgusting acts of murder, acts as a perfect counterpart to Garth Ennis' (in my mind) definitive depiction of the character on Marvel MAX's comic, simply titled "The Punisher."

"The Punisher" comic book, under the imprint of Marvel's for-mature-audiences-only MAX line, is quite possibly one of the most fascinating comic books I've ever read. In it, Ennis' Frank Castle is a war-hardened, ruthless killing machine, and I emphasize "machine." The first issue of the comic perfectly sets up the type of person Frank is: after luring a convention of mobsters out into an open yard of a mansion, he opens fire on the hundreds of goons with a Squad Automatic Weapon, or SAW machine gun. After Frank's barrage is done, he then proceeds to fire his second belt of rounds into the field of corpses, pointing the barrel of his gun in any direction where the faintest sound of a moan or whimper can be heard, effectively grinding the lifeless bodies into hamburger. One can't be too careful, after all, and Frank is a perfectionist in his art of death. It is this type of cold precision and logic that dictates Frank's every move and action.

Reading Ennis' origin story on the MAX version of Frank Castle, titled appropriately enough "Born", provides further insight as to who Frank Castle is. During his stint in Vietnam, Frank, a ranking officer, catches one of his men raping a female Viet Cong sniper. To make an example to the rest of his men, he drowns the soldier to show he will not tolerate this kind of behavior. By the logic of any rational human being, this is extreme behavior. What is even more cold and ruthless is the fact that prior to his "example" being made, Frank executes the female sniper. While she's being raped. As a prisoner of war who has been violated in the worst and most demeaning of ways, the sniper would've received a fate far worse than a bullet in the head. This, at least, is Frank's logic.

Earlier, I mentioned the "precision and logic" that "dictates" the Punisher's actions. While I was writing that, I nearly ran into the danger of using an appropriation of the word "justification." As the Punisher, Frank needs no sort of justification for his actions. He is an embodiment of the id, driven by his base desire to serve as both executioner and witness to the eradication of all criminals across the world, or at least the ones he can get his hands on. There's no redemption to speak of, either. As far as Frank is concerned, he has committed no act that requires redeeming. "The Punisher" is a nihilistic, dark, and savagely funny portrait of a man who is monomanicism given form. At the same time, because of who he is, Frank can never attain the status of a "tragic figure." Rather, he is born out of tragedy, a common comic book trope, but instead of adopting the Batman approach, he uses his enemies' weapons and tactics against them: slaughter, mayhem, and destruction. Scorched earth policy to the extreme. As he states in the conclusion of the futuristic tale"The Punisher: The End," after slaughtering the last remaining scientists and bureaucrats who can restore earth's population post-apocalypse:

"Mankind. You've seen what it leads to."

"The Punisher" is a nihilistic, dark, and savagely funny portrait of a man who is monomanicism given form. Punisher: War Zone, then, is perhaps as accurate a portrayal of the comic book as possible. There are some genuinely funny, or at least chuckle-worthy moments, but these arise out of how ridiculous and over-the-top the methods the Punisher uses in dispatching his foes sometimes are. But it stays true to the comic, and furthermore, stays true to the character of the Punisher in that he will use anything at his disposal to kill anything that requires killing. It doesn't matter if he fires one .45 round through a mobster's skull or kills the same mobster with an ground-to-air missile (as demonstrated in the movie), a kill's a kill and he is one step closer to reaching his never-ending goal.

Why, if the comic's so damn good, do I label this movie as disgusting and offensive? Because of the differences in two mediums. Comic book series exist, perpetuate, and thrive on continuity. Before Frank gunned down hundreds of mobsters in Garth Ennis' run, there was already thirty years of established continuity on who the character was, and who's he's killed in the past. Also, Ennis' comic is clever in its executions, using everything from grenades to polar bears to take out some of the more overconfident mooks in the comic, each one of them guaranteed a come-uppance in the form of horrible, horrible death.

The movie, however, is not stylized in its killings; just wanton, only. Punisher: War Zone is a commercial Hollywood movie based on a very niche hobby in America. As such, it's schizophrenic in it's deciding what it wants to be. For all it's violence, there is a subplot in the form of that "redemption", namely, Frank's guilt in accidentally shooting an undercover FBI agent. Uh-oh. Like I said before, this is where the identity crisis of the medium comes in. The movie wants to play it straight, but it's obvious it's influences and source material is unrepentantly nihilistic in it's view of the human race. Any movie or perhaps television series based on The Punisher either needs to play it straight or completely push that envelope as much as they can.

Punisher: War Zone gets a lot of things right over it's earlier incarnation starring Thomas Jane. The Thomas Jane vehicle did many things wrong: the setting in Miami, the little Rube-Goldberg series of events and mishaps the Punisher sets up as his revenge against Howard Saint, and well, Thomas Jane. Tom Jane is a comic book fan, and he's likable enough, but he's too damn pretty to play someone as ruthless and unflinching as Frank Castle. Maybe that was the point, in showing how an act of tragedy can push even the most wholesome of individuals to the realm of indiscriminate slaughter, or maybe I'm just reaching too far. There was also a scene that totally rubbed me the wrong way, in which Spacker Dave says to Frank, "You stood up for me. Not too many people have done that for me, before." No, no, no. This version sees our Punisher stationed in New York, where he belongs, gritty cinematography, plus one hell of an actor in Frank Castle. Seriously. Ray Stevenson FUCKING IS Frank Castle. If you disagree with me on this, you're wrong.

So, the ultimate verdict on this movie? If anything I said above was of relevant comprehension to you, go see it. The rest of you? Eh. I'd say no.

Taking Aim At Teh Haterz

"Why can't I aim while moving?"

"I should be able to aim and shoot while I move."

"They aim and shoot in the cutscenes. WTF?"

"Aim. Moving. Wah."

Resident Evil started off as a fixed camera-angle third-person action game. At the time, there wasn't a term for the genre that RE and games that would soon follow in spirit and philosophy, which is the survival horror genre.

According to Wikipedia, which is the greatest website in the world, because anyone on the internet can edit the information on it:

Survival horror games are distinct from action games or other horror games, where the player is unable to fully prepare or arm himself. In order to create feelings of suspense, the game is designed to leave the player feeling vulnerable, and thus powerful weapons such as rocket launchers are rare [...] As such, survival horror games are usually single player, in order to create the feeling of being alone in a hostile world. This experience is often magnified by giving the player an avatar who is more frail than the typical action game character [...] survival horror games involve gameplay that emphasizes vulnerability and a lack of preparation.

<sup>Because Resident Evil is a Japanese-made game, this means many things. First of all, it adheres to many conventions of Western horror/slasher films, as well as many Asian misconceptions of Western protagonists and their values. Then there's also the other stuff that's involved with the creation of any Japanese video game; ie. the child worship and, let's not forget, the super-Saiyan form seemingly every boss has, as well as every single character being some kind of acrobatic, kung-fu fightin' ninja, their every move accompanied by a 300-esque stop-and-go camera shot, as they decide to reload their pistols by tossing clips into the air, ax-kicking a zombie in the face, using the hole in the zombie's face as a kind of stepping-block, and then flipping through the air with their pistol behind their back and tilted upwards as the gravity-affected clip falls precisely where the character's pistol is and, lo and behold, locks into place. All that instead of just simply, you know, reloading.

That last part especially is what creates a cognitive dissonance in the minds of many a player, especially someone who has never bared witness to the utter genius and fun that is the Resident Evil series. There's been many complaints about the upcoming RE5's control scheme, these complaints surfacing as early as the announcement of the game. Longtime RE fans said, "another Resident Evil? Starring Chris Redfield? Yes, please." Even more hardcore RE fans said, "erm, excuse me, but I believe the game is called Biohazard, or '</sup>バイオハザード ,Baiohazādo', " as they fondled their anime pillows and turned up the volume on their PC blaring tunes from Naruto: Shippuden.

But the non-RE fans and nowadays potential Western audience all said: "I can't strafe? Or fuckin' aim and shoot? Fuck this fuckin' game, I'm fuckin' sticking with my fuckin' Gears, yo! Gimme another Bawls, dawg, I'm gonna fuckin' game as hard as I fuckin' can before Nate comes to pick me up to fuckin' go see Breaking Benjamin! Whoo!"

Or, at least, that's what I imagined their outpour of verbal wisdom sounded like. Which is odd. Given the vastly competitive scene gaming has become thanks to Xbox Live, I'd imagine that most of the Halo / CoD4 / Gears players would welcome that extra bit of challenge in not being able to strafe or run-and-gun, as we would say nowadays. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I take these gripes somewhat personally, because Resident Evil 4 is quite possibly my favorite game of the last generation. Yes, I liked it more than any of the Final Fantasies and more than any of the Metal Gear Solids. It is, still, in my mind, the best-made, most satisfying experience in games I've ever encountered, putting it possibly (depending on my mood) past Call of Duty 4 or Bioshock in terms of games I was absolutely absorbed in. And for all intents and purposes, Resident Evil 4 should not be something that qualifies as "favorite game" caliber. I died quite possibly at least thirty times in finishing the game on Normal, Ashley is quite possibly the only life-size tampon with the ability of speech I've ever seen, and then there's that control thing.

But let's get one important thing out of the way: If there was no Kill.switch, there probably wouldn't have been a Gears of War. If there was no Resident Evil, there definitely wouldn't have been a Gears of War. Which means the XBL kiddies would be shit out of luck in their ways to kill time prior to inevitable rejection from state colleges and inevitable employment at Jiffy Lube in less than five years. Wow, that's kinda mean. Anyway, what I said is true. RE4 is, correct me if I'm wrong, the first game to entirely take place in the "over-the-shoulder" format, with the "zoom" being provided by the laser sight prevalent on every single ballistics-based weapon. Cliffy B (which he was known as at the time) even cited Resident Evil 4 as a huge inspiration on Gear's mechanics, feel, and tone.

I understand the accusations of Resident Evil 5 not being a "relevant" game, due to it's now-seemingly odd control scheme. But hey, Capcom did include a "strafe" option in one of it's control set-ups. And let's look at Resident Evil 4 and compare it to Gears, the one game that's receiving the love of so many a pimply-faced teen across the US. Gears of War is an action-based, military shooter, with the prime focus of strategy being involved in the cover-system, a mechanic that will never get old or less fun to play around with, as far as I'm concerned. Strategy and tactics lies in positioning and knowing when to lay down cover fire for your co-op partner, knowing when to split up and flank, and knowing when the best option is to stay together and pound a similar target with a barrage of gunfire. Delta Squad is bad-ass, but they're quick-witted and quick-thinking badasses, and that's the key; making split decisions to save not only yourself, but your partner's skin, as well. The 'Horde' mode in Gears 2 only reinforces this idea.

Resident Evil 4 is a completely different game. Survival horror games are each their own miniature lessons in economics. Economics is not just the study of the way money flows or the study of consumer behavior; there's a term, "thinking like an economist", which implies a person understands cost versus benefit. Resident Evil 4 is a prime example of that. Although ammunition is comparatively plentiful compared to earlier iterations, pumping your enemies full of rounds is a quick way to completely deplete your ammunition and leave yourself open to enemy attacks from all sides. The cost-benefit ratio also rears its ugly head in your item management, a huge factor in survival horror. Do I want to carry all these medicinal herbs, or should I ditch them in favor of grenades and ammo? Do I want this piece of body armor? It might soak up some damage I take, but is the reduced damage really that noticeable, or is it neglible? The rocket launcher kills pretty much anything in one shot, but I really like the TMP, too. Should I ditch the permanent weapon in the form of the TMP in favor of the one-shot-one-use rocket launcher? Decisions, decisions. Should I use my limited funds to upgrade my sniper rifle or my Blacktail pistol? I do use that pistol alot, but upping the damage on the rifle would save on the number of precious rounds I normally use.

All these difficult decisions you have to make are all elements that successfully make the survival horror game what it is. It's the feeling of vulnerability, lack of preparedness, and your character's ultimate weakness, that creates the tension in RE4. Sure, that magnum's powerful as shit, but you're not going to find that many rounds for it. The key, then, is using your pea-shooter pistol carefully, using the environment, and setting yourself up for damaging special attacks in the form of a sweeping kick on a stunned enemy. RE4's "tank controls" is perfect for these kinds of combat situations; namely, you are always fixated, even on the apex of your victory, on your limitations or what you can't do, as opposed to your strengths and what you are able to do. The guns pack a punch (in some cases, as the shotgun, a huge punch), and it's so satisfying to get a good punch in on a Ganado, but at the same time, it's disheartening as hell to shoot one of the chainsaw-wielding sisters in the face with a shotty, only to see her stand up while more Ganado's rush you from all sides. Because you are unable to sidestep, this results in your active and functional paranoia setting in everytime you encounter a new batch of enemies or prepare to cross that waterfall. The "tank controls" serve to reinforce your frailty in the game, despite your arsenal and supply of healing items. RE4 constantly throws all sorts of challenges and, concurrently, rewards at you, sadistically baiting you towards that inevitable conclusion. The tension that builds and forces you to enthusiastically choose "YES" when prompted whether or not you want

The worst thing a game can do is become self-conscious and inconfident in it's trying to please as many people as possible. People with personality disorders aren't that fun to be around, and neither are games. Resident Evil's control scheme, despite how many "g4m3rz" deem it as "antiquated" or, more appropriately, "fuckin' old as shit, what is this, 1999?" is something that should be appreciated and applauded rather than condemned. Like the game itself, perception of a game is all about perspective. My perspective stems from Resident Evil 4, a game I still regard as in a caliber of it's own. It's also what makes strafing, for me, at least, a "take it or leave it" type of thing. Personally, I don't care about the strafing option that Capcom included for 5; I'm looking forward to the intense combat that having or not having strafing will undoubtedly provide. That Capcom has maintained their steadfast decision on keeping the "tank-like" controls (they did provide strafing, again) means two things, both of which make me very optimistic for the quality of gameplay RE5 will no doubt possess.

First, Capcom understands the oh-so important concept of active restraint when making a game. Like a painter, one should use their negative space as effectively as the subject of the painting, two parts of a whole. Capcom has heard the complaints and concerns of this new generation of game enthusiasts, which, by the way, seem to get younger and younger as time goes on, and I don't mean relatively compared with me. But Capcom has a clear picture on the kind of game they intend to make and the kind of game they would like their fans and potential audience to enjoy. The Gears control scheme, plus or sans cover option, has become so standard, any third-person action game I pick up, I almost immediately expect to play like Gears. However, standard does not necessarily mean "correct" or "most appropriate." Control and the strengths and weaknesses of a character are a factor amongst many equally important factors that determine whether the action of the game is a hyper-stylized, adrenaline-fuelled romp through waves of bad guys, or whether the action in the game builds to a slow burn, until everything goes to shit. RE5 is a prime, masterful example of the latter.

Second, on a more theoretical note, I commend Capcom for sticking with this control scheme, something that like Blizzard's art choice for Diablo III, has received numerous criticisms and complaints. One thing many gamers fail to forget is that our dollars and spending of said dollars in the purchase of games is that we are paying for access to the developer's vision, not the other way around. Certainly, game-killing bugs and UI-based difficulties are something a developer needs to address in sequels or patches, but for the most part, the vision and and execution of the game needs to stay consistent when the developer makes those tough game-building-or-killing choices. There will be times creators will listen to their fans (did anyone notice how Marcus never teamed with Cole in Gears 1? In Gears 2, they're like fucking BFFF!), but the key is in knowing when listening to fan complaints are a justification that you're doing something right.

Games are something that should be approached with an open mind. Subject matter is one thing, but our preconceptions and preconceived notions about the way we think things should be is a completely different, other thing. Likewise, I hope the Resident Evil Team at Capcom reaps the benefits of their hard work, and is congratulated by the gaming populace for their "unconventional" approach to third-person action rather than punished.

On the same note, I finally played the RE5 demo two days ago. I died within the first five minutes by being molested by a group of dirty, dirty not-really zombies. Needless to say, Resident Evil 5 really can't come out any sooner. I cannot wait.

More with the games, GAWD

While I was taking a break in between classes of listening to students go on about how they picked their weird-ass English names or why they didn't want English names as they felt it was a form of betrayal towards their Chinese culture, I read up a little on an old issue of 游戏机, or "Video Game Console" magazine, commonly referred to amongst those in the know as "UCG", due the similarity of pronunciation in the English letters and the actual pronunciation of the Chinese characters.

This issue, along with strategy sections, something I haven't seen since EGM started covering N64 games, has a lot of their picks for their best games of 2008. Which was an interesting read.

Chinese gamers are stuck in this weird, fantastic middle ground of gaming, or what I'd like to refer to as the East/West divide. Put very succinctly, with a lot of generalizing going on, Western gamers prefer straight-forward action, diving instantly into the action, and lots of first-person slaughter. This is evidenced in the obligatory inclusion of tutorials in almost any action-oriented game, the ability to move freely and interact with the environment during any cutscene or key event (if the game even has it), and the ability to sign-on-drop-out in multiplayer competitive gaming. Western gamers tend to have a shorter attention span, but why I don't know. Blame it on Myspace, I guess. Eastern gamers, on the other hand, enjoy item management, love their old-school platformers, and have lots of patience when dealing with the pace in which a game moves, as evidenced by the number of unskippable cutscenes and fifteen minutes straight of "bloop-bloop-bloop" dialogue bubbles between two static characters.

It's interesting to look at some of UCG's choices for best games of 2008, and it's even more interesting to see the chasm between the editor's choices and the reader's poll.

Some similarities with critics on our shores are present. GTAIV, as expected, receives a 5 out of 5 rating and is unanimously considered to be the best multiplatform game available, period. Metal Gear Solid 4 also receives the coveted 5 out of 5 rating, voted by the readers and deigned by the editors as a masterpiece of cinematic gaming. Other games, such as God of War: Chains of Olympus, Little Bigplanet, Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, and surprisingly enough, Dead Space all receive similar accolades.

But the differences, while somewhat negligible on any other day, are glaring. Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band, two games that both hold an 85 or perhaps on Metacritic, all receive a resounding "meh", both scoring a 3 out of 5 by the editors, and receiving little to no attention from the readers. The editors, in a quarter-square blurb of paper, state, in both reviews, they don't "understand the point of these kinds of games." They don't get into that "learn to play an instrument" thing of hobknobbery, either; they just don't get it.

In the reader's poll, Devil May Cry 4 came out on top as their choice for best game of the year, with Metal Gear Solid 4 coming in a close second. I bought DMC4 when it came out, and I loved it. It's fun as shit, in case you didn't know. But, ultimately, my view of Dante's latest adventure boiled down to a "eh" in light of 2008's other offerings. While the game is fun, it doesn't do anything new. That's not to say that innovation is the key deciding factor in determining whether or not a well-made game is, in fact, well-made. But there were plenty of games this year that made innovation their selling point, and most importantly, made that innovation damn fun.

As expected, Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G makes it into the Top Ten games of the year. No comment.

Compared to the quarter-page blurb for Rock Band 2, the latest iteration of Dynasty Warriors: Gundam receives a 4 out of 5, an editor's choice award, and noticeable support from readers and editors alike. If you've ever played any of the DW games, you know what I mean when I shudder, gasp in shock, and then probably die. If you haven't, imagine being forced to watch Jeffrey Dahmer rape a cow, reduce the tremorous, emotional shock of seeing said act by about 2.6%, and you basically have an idea of how the game functions.

Reading a Chinese gaming enthusiast magazine is an interesting experience to say the least. This being China, there are no corporate sponsors and PR representatives the magazine runs in danger of angering, as I don't think Chinese gaming press attends E3 or GDC on a regular basis. However, most of their games (barring the simplified star system they used for the year-end issue) are rated on the infamous 7-9 scale, with the truly horrendous crap of the rest receiving the rarely-grazing-in-the-open 6. Chinese gamers are, to sum it up in the simplest of terms, Japanese gamers with a love for FPSes, a love conditioned through years of Counter-strike 1.6. Because of the relative easiness it is to find entire libraries of Manga for rent, there's that video game / anime assocation with characters, rather than IPs themselves. Full wall-scrolls of Squall from Final Fantasy VIII are available for purchase at just about any retailer that dare refer to themselves as a game store.

I mention all of this, because it's important to note a few things. First, China has yet to establish itself as a global powerhouse in next-gen gaming, much in the way (hate to say it, but it's true) America and Canada have, and the way Japan was in the past. One look at these gaming publications displays a cross-section of a specific but hardcore niche audience here in China. They can't read or understand the text on 80% of these games, but they play the hell out of them anyway, and well, might I add. I got thwomped by a 13 year-old kid at Zhongguancun, China's Silicon Valley and loaded with purveyors of all things tech and maybe otaku, in a match of Gears 2, and I was using Dizzy, with my lucky cowboy hat and bad stereotyping in tow. This is a genuine love for games that transcends any kind of cultural differences or language barriers, and Chinese people being some of the most unpretentious people I've ever come across, this is a good thing. Rather than being overly critical, much attention is paid to only the positives of a game, which is constructive on it's own merits. So, with all this in mind, then, is where I make a statement that makes me somewhat sad to say it: China, by the looks of it, will never make anything gaming-wise of international acclaim.

Because of the rampant piracy that makes living in China such a wonderland of decadent digital lunacy, Chinese game developers have no plans to move their prospects towards consoles just yet. 90% of Chinese triple-A titles are free-to-play, microtransaction-based MMORPGS that are more or less rehashes of WoW, an example of "sticking with what you know" in heavy motion. Any other choice in development spells early financial doom for any game company that endeavors to invest the time and budget required to developing for consoles. Piracy is also the major prohibitive factor that prevents Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo from providing infrastructure and support to China, excepting Hong Kong and Taiwan, which, depending on your definition, do or do not constitute this "China" we speak of. Speaking of which, consoles are fucking expensive; it's doubtful that many Chinese PC gamers, many of them not quite enjoying that standard of life the decadent West so takes for granted, find it economically feasible to switch from a gaming platform that affords them a keyboard and mouse to a platform that forces them to score headshots with their thumbs.

Chinese console gamers, then, are stuck in this unique, observational position, where piracy allows them to absorb the best and oftentimes worst of gaming cultures from both sides of the Pacific, all at the price of an extra-value meal at McDonald's. Because gaming here is comparatively infantile in relation to Western countries and Japan, Chinese gamers have concepts and ideas that are mutable, and flexible, due to that aforementioned observational standpoint. There is a huge amount of talent here, as I've seen firsthand in my numerous visits to Zoe's office. But what does this piracy spell for China's aspiring game designers, fresh with ideas from playing Fallout 3 or Little Bigplanet? Sadly, not much. According to Zoe, game producers are rated at the bottom of the producer/art/programming hierarchy, meaning they earn the least and are considered to be the least important, aesthetically and financially, in production of a game. Why would a company pay top dollar to a group of planners, developers, and conceptualizers to come up with maybe five small variations on the WoW or, in some cases, Perfect World (完美世界) formula?

This is not to say that China needs to start upping the ante and producing huge, big-budget, morally-guided games like GTAIV or Mass Effect, but there needs to be some kind of forward momentum in terms of innovation. The role of the producer here in China serves as a huge contrast to other countries such as America, where we're provided with countless interviews with Cliff Bleszinski's tattooed biceps, or Japan, where we get thirty different posed photos of Tomonobu Itagaki, in sunglasses and leather trench, learning against thirty different walls in Shibuya. Games, like movies, are now sold on a few things, like established IPs and graphics. Those are givens. But like that radical paradigm shift in the comic industry amidst the waning popularity of Image Comics, where the role of writer was suddenly emphasized over the artist to heavy degree, games are now more and more being sold on the strength of their production and creative teams. Take Bayonetta, and the crew at Platinum Games, for instance. Why do we care about yet another third-person stylish action game in the vein of Devil May Cry? Because of the name: Shinji Mikami, a producer responsible for some of the biggest and most popular franchises in gaming of all time. This is what separates Bayonetta or a game like Mad World from another Ninja Blade, which really, after playing for a bit, I've come to realize isn't all that bad.

China is, then, currently stuck in a position of comfortable staticity. There are enough people (a few billion, to be exact) here that there is never a concern as to whether a market will reach saturation point; logic dictates there will always be a potential audience for any product. As China is not an officially supported region for the Big Three, game piracy that takes place here is theoretically, and in the loosest sense of the word, a victimless crime. Victimless, that is, unless one day Chinese gamers of all shapes and sizes stand up in unison and declare a pox on microtransaction-run MMOs. Then we're all fucked.

All's fair

This is interesting. I found a link on Kotaku to boingboing.com, which touts itself as a "directory of wonderful things."

And indeed, it is.

A blog entry details an interesting relationship between a man named Hugh Spencer and his son Evan, who is a (shudder) "gamer", and loves shooting at things in Call of Duty.

Hugh is, based on the snippet I read, a pretty insightful person. He understands the need of balancing his desires versus his sons, and he's realistic about them as well. In order to reach some kind of balance, Hugh had his son read about the Geneva Conventions prior to playing the game. Afterwards, Hugh and Evan discussed it and reached an agreement that when Evan plays Call of Duty online, he and his teammates should play accordingly to the laws and bylaws of the Geneva Conventions. Should Evan fail to meet this requirement, the game has to be taken away for a while.

Naturally, any medium that allows a person to essentially point at and unload virtual bullets into a living, breathing (for the sake of the argument) organism, with realistic portrayals of exit wounds and gore causes all sorts of alarms to go off in a person's head.

I have no doubt in my mind that when my son is about 13 years of age, first person perspective-based shooters or adventures will still be a relevant and no doubt fun genre of gaming. But even as an enthusiastic fan of all things first-person, and obviously a lover of video games since Mega Man 2, I've debated as to whether or not I'd allow my son or maybe daughter to play these games before he reaches the intended age of 17+, as stated on the box.

Sheltering a child is one thing, but completely immersing a child, inundating his senses in an act of forced recognition... that's something completely different. Another fact that I have no doubt of is the difficulty of reconciling these kinds of situations as a parent, as someone who has faced similar forms of censorship and protection from their parents, later understood why, but has continued to grasp at the fine line between, as I stated above, full-on sheltering a child and presenting a child with the cold, hard reality of this violence we've all come to relative terms with.

I do believe games are, for the right person, a therapeutic outlet in many ways. Although many critics and parental watchdog groups vilify video games as a form of "murder simulator," I think there's a difference between someone who loves games and someone who plays games for specific reasons. There's a difference between someone who will play Katamari Damacy as a goofy way to waste time, then switch to Prince of Persia to lose themselves in an epic yarn, and then play the "Don't Call Me Shirley" stage in Call of Duty 4:MW on Veteran difficulty as a test of their reflex and skill, and someone who plays first-person shooters as a way to curb their innate desire to shoot at living things with families and aspirations. The latter is what we call mentally unbalanced.

As therapeutic as they are, however, I do believe video games are a distortion of reality. In order for that first hypothetical someone to fully enjoy these virtual worlds so painstakingly crafted to exude some semblance of reality, a person should first be well-grounded, or as well-grounded as possible at their age and emotional maturity, in the truths about their world and the society they live in. I don't mean "truths" as in a full-on 300+ years worth of socially just education on the class struggle or anything like that. I mean "truths" as in action versus consequence.

There is something about the FPS genre, something profoundly visceral about the empowering ability to soak up as many bullets as humanly possible in a short span of time and issue out ten times the amount of pain and damage. FPSes, then, are perhaps the greatest distortion of reality available in game form, because of the way the games are played out. In Monolith's latest F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, the entire game, from cutscenes to major events, play out in the eyes of the protagonist, namely, the person playing the game. As Monolith's effort is a supernatural / horror-based game, perspective and total possible immersion is important, and an FPS is an ideal genre to express the scares and shocks Monolith hopes to attain from the gamer. FPSes will always remain violent, because there's that perspective and that crucial presentation of reality that makes a good FPS just that.

Games will attempt to morally justify the gamer's slaying of potentially hundreds of thousands of virtual enemies. Maybe the enemy is part of an imperialistic army. Maybe the enemy torched your home to the ground twenty years ago. Or, the enemy's an alien. Fuck it. Go wild. This happens sometimes, but most of the time, the justification for slaughter boils down to "kill or be killed." This is the case with on-line competitive FPSes, where the sole reason for violence is violence itself. This is also where that distinction between reality and entertainment needs to be drawn. To go back to my opening example, Hugh Spencer hasn't exactly nailed that proverbial head, but he's engaged his son with an intelligent proposition. His son may have learned something useful about the Geneva Conventions, which may help him in his cultural geography class someday, but most importantly, Hugh is actively involved in fostering the idea of principles, moral guidance in his son.

Any parent who either has not educated their child to be a socially responsible individual or actively shelters their child from any form of violent video game is, I think, missing something in the big picture. I won't go as far as to say they're bad parents, as that's way too presumptuous, even for my tastes. Parents, amidst their busy schedules, try to do the best job possible in raising their child and educating them according to their own morals and values. But sometimes, realistic measures need to take place. It's interesting how Hugh's method of educating his son on the values of principle, even in something like an on-line shooting game, as pragmatic and realistic as it is, is labelled as "fresh", or perhaps "innovative." This either means, long story short, that many parents are missing the mark on that happy little divide, or we're not doing enough coverage on parents that are doing their jobs.

To go back to the previous examples, we are not defined by the games we play. Rather, our likes and dislikes define the games we play. More importantly, our personalities define the ways we play our games. Chances are, if you're a decently grounded person, a round of Call of Duty will not make you want to hunt down Russian ultranationalists in the dead calm of a snowy plain. As someone who has yet to even come to grips with the concept of potentially one day perhaps, maybe, possibly raising a child, Hugh Spencer's method is somewhat of an inspiration, and an important reminder to myself as to, when I'm that theoretical parent, what's really important when educating my kid.