Notes Left Behind, PS3 Troubles, and White Knight Chronicles

So I found out Negative Victor was trying to get you guys to troll me, but that didn’t work out as well as he would have hoped. Unfortunately, that means he’s prone to coming back eventually since I’ve yet to kill myself and I don’t have a thicker skin.

He did leave behind a note in the private drafts of the blog, wherein he essentially says “F you” to everyone on my blogroll. I guess that’s his way of saying goodbye or something. I dunno.

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In any case, I’ve been remiss in updating the blog due to school concerns, as schoolwork is starting to get heavier with multiple requirements piling on top of one another. That meant getting my life back in order, reading like a madman, cramming my work, and getting some gaming in for inspiration for this blog when there was a decided break time in the preparations.

That said, those of you who’ve read my Twitter entries know that I recently purchased White Knight Chronicles for the PS3, only to find out that the Blu-ray drive on my PS3 wasn’t working. Since we’re not officially supported by Sony, I had to go do the next best thing, which was to visit a game console repair shop here in my country. They opened it up, tested the drive, and basically replaced the thing that allows the PS3 to read discs. I don’t know how long it’ll last, but it’s probably not going to be a year before it conks out again unless I take extremely good care of it.

I’ll have an impressions article up within a day or so once I find more time to see how it handles. As it stands, I have some reading to do. In the meantime, feel free to tell me what you think of White Knight Chronicles if you played it.

Thicken Regular Victor Stillwater’s Skin Through Mean-Spirited Trolling

Negative Victor here. Apparently, the combined emo of an entire lifetime sucked out the energy from regular Victor’s body, summoning me into this world filled with what appears to be ponies and kittens. In my world, kittens and ponies are anthropomorphic beasts that seek to eat the other in an attempt at cultural and gastronomic dominance. In other words, my world is hardcore.

Unfortunately, if I keep getting summoned here, I won’t be able to eat said ponies and kittens as part of the third, ultimate faction of humans who don’t care which other faction dies, so long as they’re delicious.  So I need you to thicken the emo bastard’s skin as an experiment.

I’d like the readers of this blog to unleash their viciousness upon Regular Victor and troll this entry repeatedly, filling it with hurtful words, personal insults, and attacks on his mother’s dignity as a human being. If you’ve ever had a gripe or felt hatred towards someone, unleash it upon Victor, because he probably knows the person via the six degrees of Eggs and Bacon (who the fuck is Kevin Bacon?!). Imagine that he hates your favorite video games,  eats your food, and sucks your soul in your sleep (because he probably does). In general, if you hate Negative Victor (THAT’S ME MOFOS) then hate him, because of the awakening of infinite possibilities that he has to be a dickwad.

If he thickens his skin and doesn’t summon me again, then I win. If he kills himself and never summons me through a torrent of emo again, then I still win.

Just do me a favor, and keep him the fuck away from me.

-Negative Victor Stillwater

Games Journalism, Tough Decisions and Memories

Illustration by Paul Gilligan

Syp over at Bio Break pulls no punches in his latest entry. In it, he writes about a certain inability of the gaming press to ask tough questions and acquire straight answers for those questions from game companies.

There are a variety of reasons why this is so, and he notes quite a large number of them in his post and in the points added by Shawn Schuster of Massively. For my own post though, I guess I wanted to talk candidly again about what it was like being in a lesser known gaming website/blog.

First, let’s discuss the conditions of the work. We ran three shifts of eight hours each back when I was working at my old job, and during that time, we’d have to come out with at least eight or nine articles a shift per writer, with less if you had editing duties. My old group covered everything, from the consoles to the handhelds, to MMOs and PC games.

Because we were a lesser-known site, we had to work with what we had, which meant not getting interviews or trips to American events. Instead, we’d focus on hunting down big news, posting it on the site, and automatically coming up with a digg link for that report within five minutes of posting. It didn’t always work, as larger sites would sometimes get more traffic (That’s the theory of Social Presence for you), but we did a respectable job drumming up traffic.

When we did get interviews or reviews for certain games, they wouldn’t be real interviews. Usually, the devs or their spokespersons would ask us for a set of questions, and they’d just pick or choose what we could ask. We were limited in our ability to get to them, and we had to play by their rules, sadly, even if we had burning questions that needed to be asked.

The whole discussion on Syp’s part reminded me mostly of one tough situation I personally had to grapple with. An XBLA developer had contacted us with review code for their Xbox 360 games, and I got to review two of them. The first game sent to us (via redeemable review code on XBLA) by  the PR company behind that developer was really good – the combat was well-done for an on-rails-ish space shooter, and it had replayability, and I could honestly give it 4 out of five stars on our rating system.

They liked the review well enough that they sent us a redeemable code for another XBLA game, which was an underwater photography simulator, for lack of a better term. Unfortunately, this game wasn’t that good: it was an on-rails camera shooter that forced you to go through the same stage repeatedly if you missed something the first time, it had limited replayability and, despite being an underwater photography sim for kids, offered little redeeming educational value when they were using the names of what appeared to be actual fish (never mind the mermaids).

Now, there were two options here: keep the review score at medium to high to get the PR company to come back with more, possibly better material for us to write about, or review it for its limited strengths and glaring weaknesses and risk the ire of the PR company. As the head of the Xbox 360 division at the time and the reviewer of the games, I had to make a decision, and I chose to give an honest assessment. Sadly, they never really contacted us with other games after that, as far as I know.

The outcome wasn’t exactly ideal, but it wasn’t unexpected either. It’s just somewhat disheartening to remember that because it was one of the few times when I had to make a command decision for myself, stand by it, and live with the consequences; a few months later, I was let go by the company due to downsizing and a lack of profit, so I never got to find out if the game company came back to the company with other games.

Much like anything in this world, there are things we want to do and do well, but we are hampered by the various constraints that force us to reevaluate our position. It’s tough to seek the truth and be honest in the world of journalism in general, and in games journalism or in any other market where the news sources are also your advertisers, it’s probably even more difficult. That said, a stronger sense of integrity will help in keeping true to the tenets of journalism.

Picture Source: Concordia University Magazine

What “Henshin” Means to Me

“Henshin” is a Japanese term meaning “transformation,” which in most cases usually refers to a change or transformation of one’s physical body. It is commonly used in anime, manga, or tokusatsu dramas, and most commonly heard as the transformation call of people who play characters in Kamen Rider (Masked Rider) series.

What does this have to do with Games and Geekery? Well, a lot actually.

Before I got into video games, one of my best childhood memories was waiting for 6:00 P.M. to roll by every Saturday so I could watch dubbed versions of the 1987-88 television show Kamen Rider Black. It was one of my main forays into a world of heroes fighting a good fight, and it’s my introduction to the idea of a person given tremendous power choosing to do good with the power he was given, even if that power was forced upon him by an evil terrorist organization.

Now, I could go off on a tangent about how it’s a kids show, and how it’s a show meant to sell toys, but that’s not what this essay is about. Instead, I wanted to discuss what that one word, Henshin, meant to me.

I’m a firm believer of the ability of a person to change, not in the literal superhero sense, but in the emotional or psychological sense. It’s not about gaining strength, but in acquiring depth of insight. It’s not about power, but about how one chooses to use his gifts. Whenever I think of Henshin, I think about the potential of an individual to change, and even if we think we don’t see it often, it does happen.

Henshin is also about choice, and when one changes, one chooses how he changes, whether it’s a positive change or a negative one. For instance, I see it when I think of Syncaine these days, as he’s still the same individual he was before, only more considerate of others’ feelings. I see it when I think of how people helped each other during the worst storm in Metro Manila, or when people gave their all when Haiti fell into a state of calamity.

Of course, it also has its root in video games, as the games allow me to live out heroism on a different scale, but then, that’d be a write-up for a different day, I suppose.

Note: if you’re wondering why Kamen Rider sounds so familiar to American ears, it might be because there are American adaptations of Kamen Rider Ryuki, known as Kamen Rider Dragon Knight in the US, and Kamen Rider Black RX, known as Masked Rider (back in the 1990s).

Obssessives Beware: White Knight Chronicles has Purchaseable DLC

The PlayStation Blog decided to drop some “interesting” new tidbits of information regarding White Knight Chronicles: International Edition today. If you thought the long time it took to adapt WKC was an indication of how much they packed into the disc, well, they apparently have more than could be packed into the disc!

Let me just quote Cristian Cardona from the PlayStation Blog for this one:

1. Many of you have had questions about clarifying micro-transactions in White Knight Chronicles. The Georama will have parts that you can create and parts that you can choose to purchase using micro-transactions to further enhance your space. These are by no means mandatory purchases, as there is PLENTY for you to work with in the game itself, but an option for those of you looking to take your Georama spaces even further.

2. For those of you who are going to be investing significant time in your characters, there will be an option to remake them without having to start the game over by purchasing a special key through the PlayStation Store for only $4.99. This will allow you to redesign your avatar at any point and keep all that hard work you’ve put in intact. This feature will go live this Thursday on the PlayStation Store.

In the comments section of the post, you’ll also note that the character remaker DLC is a one-time deal, so you better make sure you get it right the first time.

Personally, I’m a bit annoyed at it all, but since these two types of DLC are optional for this game, I can probably pass on them for now. What’ll be somewhat more annoying would be additional Mission DLC for the online component of the game, which I probably won’t pay for, but will feel bad that I don’t own. Oh well, such is life.

Picture Source: PlayStation Blog Flickr Account

What is the Trek All About?

Let me begin by paraphrasing the opening monologue that we normally attribute to Star Trek Original Generation and Next Generation:

*ahem*

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Normandy. Its purpose, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. “

The idea I’m discussing today isn’t so much about whether Mass Effect 2 or Star Trek Online is better. In fact, I probably won’t even talk about Star Trek Online since I haven’t played it. Instead, I’ll mostly talk about what a trek is all about.

To trek is to make a slow or arduous journey, either by foot or through other means of transportation. I think that, given that definition (and I suppose other people who’ve played Mass Effect 2 may agree with me), Mass Effect 2 has a trek through the stars of its own.

Though most of the given areas you can visit are already plotted out for you on a galaxy map, as a newcomer to the game, I felt as if everything was there to be explored. Each galaxy had its clusters, which had its own planets, and had its own asteroid fields and whatnot. Along the way, you would visit alien worlds, meet new people, and befriend old comrades.

Much like the Star Trek most people know and love, the overarching story of a voyage in space is punctuated by moments of action, and Mass Effect 2 is no different. The weapons may change, but you’re still setting your phasers (or the equivalent gun) on kill rather than stun, and taking out the opposition from behind effective cover.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Star Trek doesn’t have the monopoly on Trek-ness, and that it takes a pretty good game developer to induce that sense of trekking into a game, comparisons be damned.

Picture Source: Mass Effect Wikia

1000 Words: Mass Effect 2 is more Star Trek-y than STO

At least, this is my imagined reaction people will have to the idea that Mass Effect 2 is More Star Trek-y than STO.

Super Brief Mass Effect 2 Impressions (for now)

This is Victor Shepard. I tried to make him look like me, but I can’t make his face any fatter (BOO!).

Playing an Infiltrator after trying out the Sentinel, and loving the Sniper Rifle (YAY!)

Sniper Rifle has so few shots, it’s not funny (BOO!).

I can color my armor blue (YAY!).

My free mercenary Zaeed is a heartless bastard. (BOO!)

Archangel, who is also a sniper, is wearing blue (YAY!).

Did I mention that playing an infiltrator in this game is tough work? (BOO!)

Headshots very Rewarding (YAY!).

Am Confused as to where to go. (BOO!).

Current Boo/Yay Ratio 5:4

Tentative Booyah score: 3.5/5 BOOYAHs

On In-Game Bastardry and Levels of Morality

This write-up was inspired by a comment by mbp (the second comment) on Tobold’s Blog, which leads to Syncaine’s Blog, which leads to Darwoth’s account of 20 clan vault heists he did during some time he spent in Darkfall.

In mbp’s comment, he asks, “Can nice people role play villains in a hardcore game like EVE or Darkfall where villains really do upset their victims or do you need to be a b*stard in real life to be a b*stard in game?”

While I probably can’t serve as an example of a nice person who roleplays villainously, I will say that, in the most general of senses, nice people can be evil bastards.

There’s probably a distinction that needs to be made regarding a person as he interacts with people in the world, compared to when he acts in a game. Each person has his own sense of right and wrong, but I suppose one can say that there are levels to the reasoning behind why a person does right over wrong or vice versa.

We can call this content (the action done, whether moral or immoral) and context (the reasoning or the WHY behind the action done).

The context behind certain content (eg. Some people do good/bad things because…) may lie in the fact that they really do feel that doing good is the way to go. Some others might simply do good things because doing the opposite can have severe consequences in real life.

Now, take someone who does good things out of fear of the law or repercussion and place him in a world where the any sanction is essentially just a slap on the wrist relative to the “fun” that can be had at other people’s expense, and you have someone who is more readily tempted to play a really bastardilicious (I’m trademarking that!) person in-game.

Of course, I’m not saying every person is like that. It is, however, one possible way in which a nice guy can be a bastard in-game. There are also people who can be psychopathic (lacking empathy or conscience), nice-seeming people in real life who simply play the game the way they live their lives, only more overtly. Or people who ignore their conscience (rather than lack one).

Much more can be said about nice people, evil people, bastards, thieves and whatnot, but I suppose that’s enough negativity for one day. It’s a nice food for thought though. The in-game worlds we play in aren’t completely analogous to the real world, even if we try to make connections between the two.

Ponies and Kittens (or Remembering my old job)

One of the very first short-lived memes I started back in my old video game newswriting job was positing the idea of a specific non-hardcore looking piece of PSP homebrew as completely hardcore. That homebrew game was called Ponies and Kittens, and developed by a homebrew maker named HardHat.

As I remember it, the premise of Ponies and Kittens was that you were a pink pony who was tasked with finding kittens and pairing them up, presumably in non-sexual terms. It was a platformer and puzzle game idea combined.

I thought it would be funny to coin the phrase “as hardcore as ponies and kittens” or something to that effect (it’s been nearly four years since that original post), and some people thought it was funny too. So I used it a couple of other times in other posts, until I decided to retire it.

On a whim earlier, I decided to check and see if that article was still up and, what do you know, it still is. The only thing about it, unfortunately, is that my name as author of the post has been replaced with a website staff terminology.

While I feel bad that my byline was replaced, I don’t feel utterly bitter about it because I understand the tech and behind their system. When a writer leaves the staff, they have to essentially save his account from tampering by newly-hired writers, so they either lock it or, as what appears to have happened here, replace the name of that old writer with a general staff term to signify that the writer has moved on. In the early days of my stay with that company, they’d reuse old accounts, essentially transferring the byline of an older writer onto that newer writer’s name, which is a rather stupid technical limitation on their system.

I miss being paid to write about games, but I suppose that can’t be helped. It was my first full-time job, and though the hours were weird, the pay and atmosphere was good enough. Sometimes, I still wish I could write for Kotaku or Destructoid or Massively, but do they even need someone who’s based in the Philippines on their staff?

I suppose I’ll just be happy I got to do something videogame related in my lifetime, that I enjoyed it, and that, even though I’m clouded right now by a sense of nostalgia, it was a time I remember fondly.

Picture Source