The consensus on Mage Gauntlet –  RocketCat’s promotional literature, the TouchArcade review that sold me on the game, various forums – is that it’s an action RPG. We have, however, been sold a bill of goods: Mage Gauntlet has more in common with River City Ransom than it does with Secret of Mana.

The problem is that the game’s visual style, theme, and mechanics have all been perceived as belonging to the categorical definition of action RPG: Mage Gauntlet takes place in a fantasy setting, and a couple of the underlying systems are governed by a set of stats affected by equippable items. The SNES-inspired art direction only reinforces the misconception.

So it’s true that Mage Gauntlet plays a bit like Secret of Mana, but the granular experience ultimately presents itself much differently.

The most obvious illustration of this is in Mage Gauntlet‘s “star” system and level design. Instead of a large, open world, Gauntlet is divvied into a few dozen different dungeons, and “exploration” is limited to finding a secret room or two in each.¹ After completing a level, the player is rated a number of stars: three for “clearing” — i.e. fully exploring — the dungeon without dying; two for either clearing and dying, or for simply finishing the dungeon without dying; one for dying and also failing to clear the dungeon. Players are given three lives per dungeon.

Even though Gauntlet‘s mechanics remain virtually indistinguishable from those in action RPGs like Secret of Mana — attack, move, spell — this rating system changes the entire tone and function of the game.

Mage Gauntlet is, at its core, about playing each level as efficiently as possible, about killing a bunch of dudes without getting hurt. Success is measured by how effectively the player uses the mechanics available to slash, poison, and burn her enemies, not by exploration or player progression. Mage Gauntlet is a hack-and-slash brawler, not an RPG.

This focus on combat manifests itself in ways that further differentiate Mage Gauntlet from established RPG tropes. Namely, there’s no real sense of improvement or progress though the game. There are numbers the hood, and they do increase as time goes on, but Gauntlet scales in such a way that the player never really receives that feedback. At the beginning and end of the game, dashing and attacking, not equipment or stat boosts, remain the primary factor that determines success.

Having a sword and sorcery theme doesn’t automatically make Mage Gauntlet an RPG, nor does it not make it a pure action game. And even action RPG is too generous, since the traditional role-playing elements are secondary, not complementary, to the action.

In other words — and I’m not entirely comfortable with this — maybe we shouldn’t categorize games by their mechanics, but by how they define success. Despite mechanics, setting, and visual style that traditionally have suggested otherwise, success is defined in Mage Gauntlet by effective performance — using spells wisely, conserving energy, and beating up dudes — but not by exploration, puzzle-solving, or maximizing a set of statistics.

This isn’t a criticism as much as it’s a description of the game: Viewed on its own terms, Mage Gauntlet is a remarkably competent action game, each design element finely tuned to build up tension as each level goes on. Each dungeon is large and winding, with plenty of hidden passageways and trap doors, well-populated by orcs, skeletons, kobold, zombies, necromancers, and minotaurs. The rating system creates an internal risk-reward dichotomy for each level: I have to find all the secret passages to get a three-star rating, but doing so puts me at risk of running into more enemies; if they kill me, I lose my rating.

Mage Gauntlet‘s hook is that Lexi, our ponytailed protagonist, can only hold four spells at a time, distributed randomly by enemy monsters and chests. Assessing each spell’s most effective uses adds another level of resource management and strategy without overtaking the pure combat.

Unfortunately, the difficulty spikes pretty suddenly in the last third of the game, which knocked me out of that tension-release loop that makes the game so enjoyable. Frustration occurs when the systems in place no longer support the design of the game, and Mage Gauntlet‘s touch controls simply don’t hold up when the screen starts to fill with belligerent sorcerers. I settled for two-stars on the last twenty or so dungeons.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Mage Gauntlet, though, is that RocketCat doesn’t seem to realize just how modern the game is. It’s marketed as a throwback, but this type of genre-blurring is a relatively recent trend, and they’ve done it in such a way that Mage Gauntlet feels totally unique. Trying to describe the game is like going through a dichotomous key: “It’s a brawler, but it’s not top-down, not sidescrolling. There are RPG elements, but they’re minor. There are dungeons, but it’s not a dungeon crawler …¹“

In any case, there’s nothing wrong with making a pure action game for iOS, especially one as good as Mage Gauntlet. The rub is that Mage Gauntlet is being consumed, critiqued, and sold as a certain type of product that it doesn’t even really attempt or want to replicate; that it leverages our collective nostalgia for games like Secret of Mana — explicitly through its marketing, and implicitly through its art style — without really following through on that promise with its mechanics or design goals.

Nevertheless, Mage Gauntlet is a fine game with a neat spell mechanic and should be checked out if you own an iOS device. Just be careful what you call it.

¹ Though Mage Gauntlet is cut into discrete levels, it’s not a so-called dungeon crawler. There’s very little loot, and its effects aren’t as pronounced as skilled use of the dash and attack mechanics. In other words, combat relatively more important in Gauntlet than the click-click-click of games like Diablo or Torchlight, in which loot and player statistics play a much larger role.

In a 2003 interview with Edge magazine, Yoshinori Kitase explains the motivation behind Aeris’ death. “Death comes suddenly and there is no notion of good or bad attached to it. It leaves, not a dramatic feeling but a great emptiness. When you lose someone you loved very much you feel this big empty space and think, ‘If I had known this was coming, I would have done things differently.’ These are the feelings I wanted to arouse in the players with Aerith’s death relatively early in the game.”

The number of people looking for ways to bring her back to life, or to save her from dying, suggests the team was successful. Fans felt loss—but instead of just thinking about the things they would have done differently, they tried them all, and hoped that they would save her from dying.

Looking for a way to stop Aeris’ death or to resurrect her after she’s gone—they’re both ways of dealing with loss. So is blaming Square for killing her, or Sony for keeping Square from seeing its vision to its completion. And so is refusing to give up almost to the point of blindness, the idea that trying anything is better than nothing.

– Brian Taylor, “Save Aeris,” for Kill Screen

The following is a large chunk of the RAAM’s Shadow review that I left on the cutting room floor — not because I don’t think the topics aren’t salient, but for the crime of inelegance. It follows a discussion of the ways the DLC fails to expand on RAAM’s character:

And how come he gets to command his own flock of kryll that (conveniently) survive in the daylight while most others can’t?

Other plotholes and nitpicks abound. At one point, Zeta Squad fights two Giant Serapede, giant, creatures that made their debut in Gears of War 3 but are mysteriously absent from the events of the Lightmass Offensive and Operation Hollowstorm (which take place in Gears 1 and 2, respectively).

“RAAM’s Shadow” also introduces Elite Maulers, who come equipped with reflective shields that richocet bullets back at the player. It’s a neat mechanic, but it’s incongruous that the Locust would have cool spaceshields early in the war but not have used them later on.

The iconic COG Lancer — with the chainsaw bayonette — was developed, according to the Gears cannon, to better penerate the Locust’s tough skin when the humans realized that the regular bayonette of the Retro Lancer wasn’t strong enough. Since “Shadow” takes place in the first days of the war, chainsaw Lancers shouldn’t even have been developed yet.

In any case, a laundry list of highly-specific nitpicks isn’t particularly good criticism, but it’s important to note that post-release DLC is generally bought by devoted fans of the series, the types of people who notice internal inconsistencies and anachronisms.

More broadly, the new Mauler mechanics (or the introduction of a bayonetted shotgun) aren’t supported by the Gears story at large which suggests to me a lack of communication between the writing and gameplay teams at Epic. Experimenting with new mechanics in DLC is fine — in fact, it’s one of the strengths of the form — but keeping track of those changes and making sure they fit into the gameworld seem equally important.

My complaints aside, I actually kind of like RAAM’s Shadow, and I like how my coverage of it turned out. You can read a preview here — it’s kind of about 9/11 — and a more traditional review here.

by GuillemHP, guillemhp.deviantart.com

Early in George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, Ned Stark beheads a direwolf belonging to his daughter, Sansa, while camped at Castle Darry on the Kingsroad. It’s a sordid affair — a young prince gets bitten, lies are told, friendships are betrayed — but it’s a turning point in the reader’s understanding of the politics and social economies of Westeros.

In any case, I’ve read the scene twice and seen it on TV as many times, but the its most basic symbolism has always eluded me. Here’s Greg Tito from the Escapist:

After watching the final scene where Eddard Stark must take Lady’s life at the order of his friend and King, I considered the symbolism of the wolves for the Stark family. The sigil of House Stark is the direwolf, which is partly why Ned kept the beasts, but he and his girls are leaving the North to go to the dangerously unfamiliar intrigues of the capital city. The Starks will be out of their element. Sansa and Arya sought to bring their wolves with them, but at the conclusion of “The Kingsroad” both are gone – Lady executed and Nymeria chased away. The Starks cannot take the North with them to King’s Landing and the wolves can no longer provide protection like Summer did for Bran.

Before reading Tito’s analysis, I’d always read this scene in terms of the interpersonal drama between Ned and Robert Baratheon; of Sansa’s budding — and politically necessary — infatuation with Prince Joffrey;  of Arya Stark’s loathing of her sister; of the family politics between King and Queen, father and daughter. It’s a brilliant, dense, and supremely mournful scene, and it’s crucial to readers’ understanding of each of these characters.

But my reading is only one  level of what turns out to be — as Tito points out — an allegory. Dante — yes, Dante – provides a basic framework with which to read his allegorical works in a letter he wrote to Can Grande della Scalla: there is a literal layer; a symbolic layer (the one Tito points out); a moral layer; and an anagogical or religious layer.

I don’t want to get into too far into Dante’s poetics (especially since they only explicitly apply to the Comedia), but picking out symbolic meaning was a lesson that I’d hoped I had learned during my time studying his work. Apparently not. I don’t mean to discount Tito’s observations, but they aren’t exactly obtuse or obscure and most readers, I assume, could make them.

What’s particularly galling about my inability to pick up on the obvious symbolism in the scene at Castle Darry is that Martin practically begs his readers to pay attention throughout the early chapters — he’s already used the direwolf as a cipher for House Stark, and it’s a symbol we should be familiar with by now.

In one of the first scenes in the book, the Starks find a litter of direwolves nursing from their dead mother, an antler lodged in her throat, a dead stag nearby. Without getting into spoilers, a dead direwolf and stag — sigils of Houses Stark and Baratheon, respectively — is ominous at least.

Symbols are important to the people of Westeros — the second book, A Clash of Kings, opens with an extended meditation on omens —  and the Starks spend a considerable time trying to suss out their meaning. ”The direwolf is the sigil of your House. You children were meant to have these pups, my lord,” Jon Snow explains to Ned Stark. Or consider Catelyn, explaining to her husband that his relationship to King Robert is fragile: “‘The King is a stranger to you.’ Catelyn remembered the direwolf dead in the snow, the broken antler lodged deep in her throat. She had to make him see.”

And in the same way that Jon suggests to his father the direwolves are an omen, Martin is telling his readers to be on the lookout. Catelyn has “to make him see;” but she has to make us see, as well.

Given all this, the meaning of Lady’s death and Nymeria’s exile should be obvious, but I missed it. That I never read these scenes in their symbolic context tells me two things: I’m more dense that I care to admit; and Martin is a master of sleight-of-hand. Cersei Lannister is so diabolical, so outsized in her cruelty, that readers focus on the literal instead of the symbolic.

It’s a deft move — and indicative, I think, of how subtle Martin’s subplots and diversions and red herrings and foreshadowing can be — and it’s empowering, as a reader, to catch him in the act. Would that I caught him more often.

In any case, for a more rushed, off-the-cuff look at A Game of Thrones so far, Brad Nicholson and I are doing a series of bookclub podcasts over on Electric Hydra.

I was surprised to learn that I couldn’t change my companions’ armor in Dragon Age II. I shouldn’t have been: when I spoke to Matt Goldman for a series of previews I published on Destructoid, he let it slip.

“And, basically, to confer the advantages of having that one really good design on all of our characters, we made certain decisions: to limit the amount of changes you could do on them. They evolve as the story evolves, rather than when you decided to give them different gloves, for instance. Which, I think is a stronger motivation for changing their appearance.”

It seems obvious in hindsight, but I totally glossed over because I was speaking with Goldman with art direction in mind, not design or mechanics. And it’s too bad, too — if I’d been thinking about it in different terms, I could’ve run it as a story. Instead, I learned about it from Joe Juba on Game Informer three months later.

Role-playing games of the J variety tend to also be pretty stingy with character designs. Despite, say, Zidane Tribal’s gear being fully customizable, I can’t think of a single high-profile JRPG that is as visually flexible as, say, Diablo or Dragon Age: Origins — Final Fantasy X-2 being the exception that proves the rule. To see that extended below the presentation layer as an actual game mechanic is new to me, though.

And it creates something of a problem: in the interest of maintaining strong character designs, BioWare sharply curtail the amount of flexibility the player has to customize Hawke’s party.

Goldman’s problem seems easy to solve and BioWare already has the tools to do so. Both Origins and DAII occasionally restrict gear — it’s not uncommon to find a special sword that is only available to, say, Sten. Or an amulet only for Wynne or Merrill. Why not extend that to every piece of gear?

For example: Aveline, the captain of the City Guard, spends most the game in her guardsman’s issue armor. In my hypothetical version of Dragon Age II, I could find, say, “Ceremonial City Armor,” made out of red steel and sporting an attack bonus. Draw my new armor in the same style as Aveline’s template armor, and problem solved — I retain my sense of customization (and the joy of seeing Aveline in some badass red armor), and BioWare keeps control of Aveline’s strong design.

My other armor-related quibble — and, to be sure, that’s exactly what they are: quibbles — Dragon Age II refuses to tell me what class of armor each character is wearing.

Let me backtrack: In Origins, light armor generates less threat than massive armor, threat being a hidden stat that calculates which team member a given enemy will attack. Because I cannot change companion armor in DAII — and because the game does a bad job of communicating how its threat mechanics work — I have to make a series of assumptions based on my collected knowledge of role-playing games.

I can assume, for example, that Aveline generates a lot of threat because she wears bulky armor and carries a shield. I come to this conclusion because, traditionally, warriors with shields generate a lot of threat. What about Fenris, though? He’s a warrior (traditionally threatening), but he wears a little leather breastplate (traditionally non-threatening). For people who really want to dig into the tactics and mechanics of the game, this isn’t a trivial question, and it’s one that DAII never really answers.

Furthermore, this is exactly the kind of behavior that BioWare were trying to avoid with Dragon Age II. There was much gnashing of teeth and harumphing when lead designer Mike Laidlaw stated that his team were hoping to make DAII accessible to new players. I think they’ve succeeded, more or less, but the fact that I have to rely on years of built-up role-playing knowledge — and not information presented to me by the game itself — to decipher its underlying mechanics signals a misstep.

And yet, I don’t fault BioWare for its decision, if only for the way it fits into an entire campaign to individualize the half-dozen roustabouts you’ll be buccanneering with for fifty some-odd hours.

The stickiest, messiest point in all of the discussion of Dragon Age II is that some players feel that their choices are meaningless. A question like this isn’t limited to BioWare games or even RPGs — it’s pretty critical to the modern videogame writ large. It’s well-aimed criticism, but only half-true in my opinion.

Think of the extent to which Hawke’s decisions change the lives of her immediate family. Think of the small-scale genocide she may (or may not) trigger. Think of the lives she holds in her hands — a quick count reveals at least a dozen.

And yet, Hawke’s companions are largely indifferent to her opinions or whims. Merrill, Andres, and Isabella each make decisions without Hawke’s knowledge or approval; Aveline and Fenris change and grow, slowly but surely, over a decade, despite Hawke’s well-laid plans.

The beauty of Dragon Age II is the extent to which Hawke’s companions flex their agency — it’s not enough that they each have personal ambitions or motivations, but they tend to act on those ambitions. Kirkwall is equally independent — one gets the impression that the political tensions of the Free Marches would come to a head whether or not Hawke was involved.

Make no mistake — BioWare’s is a seldom-used gambit. For most RPGs, “meaningful choice” means that the mechanisms that propel life in a particular game-world can’t function without player input. Dragon Age II takes a different approach to world-building and  its thesis — lead, I suspect, by Mike Laidlaw — is fundamentally different from most.

For those who miss the deific powers of most RPG protagonists, the perceived lack of meaningful choice isn’t so much a criticism of Dragon Age II, but a fundamental disconnect with the game’s goals. On the other hand, I’m impressed by BioWare’s decision to limit the scope of the story and its protagonist and their willingness to draw fully-realized companions.

And because I buy into Hawke as a badass but ultimately limited hero, I also have to buy into the limits imposed on how she interacts with her companions — i.e. their armor — despite the execution of those limits as a mechanic.

In any case, my review of Dragon Age II has been on Destructoid for a while by now. You can check it out, if you’re so inclined, here.

After transforming — as if by alchemy — twenty pages of transcribed audio into eight articles and almost 8,000 words. I’ve wrapped up my pre-release coverage of the game for Destructoid. It’s probably the most extensive project I’ve ever done, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I wasn’t proud of it, dozens of angry comments notwithstanding.

I did a traditional preview. I asked about downloadable content and the internet’s collective backlash against the game; and  about changes from the original, especially its art and story structure and new morality mechanics. I learned about how BioWare used it’s player data to refine its development process; and under which lineage Dragon Age II might fall.

I’m not sure if squeezing blood from a stone is a marketable skill, but it’s almost certainly been done here.

Like most of the (educated) world, for the past several weeks I have been watching the events in the Middle East unfold with bated breath.  BBC’s coverage of the people in Tahrir Square following Mubarak’s resignation almost had me in tears in my cubicle at work—I get that there is a lot of work to be done, but it was emotional, alright?  Sometimes you have to get a little teary-eyed over a revolution.

Fast-forward to this past weekend.  Reports from Libya—in the midst of its own protests against autocratic ruler Muammar al-Qaddafi (who looks like Prince John from Disney’s Robin Hood, just sayin’)—indicated that the state had begun attacking its own citizens.

So where is the response of the international community?

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley (how the fuck is anyone supposed to take him seriously with a name like P.J.?) issued a statement, saying the U.S. was “gravely concerned” about the situation in Libya.  SERIOUSLY?  They are bombing protesters and burning defecting soldiers alive, and the best we can muster is concern?  YahooNews is quoting a vague “administration official” as saying that the U.S. is “considering all appropriate actions” against Libya.

I’m positing that the U.S. needs to consider humanitarian intervention.

According to my thick-as-hell international law textbook, under the United Nations charter, four criteria must be met to justify humanitarian intervention:

1. There must be a compelling and urgent situation of extreme humanitarian distress.

THEY ARE BURNING PEOPLE ALIVE IS THAT EXTREME ENOUGH FOR YOU.

2. The state directly involved must either not be willing or able to deal with the situation.

THEY ARE THE CAUSE OF THE SITUATION HOW ABOUT THAT.

3. There is no alternative.

Do you think that the State Department telling Libya they are “concerned” is going to make them stop attacking their own people?  Of course not.  Once you’re to the point of bombing civilians, you are past the point of giving a fuck.

The fourth is basically about how the response has to be limited in scope and just necessary to relieve the situation—BORING.  The international community has intervened before, even without Security Council approval (y’all remember Kosovo? Is that a bad example?).  Point is, the entire premise of the UN Charter is to promote human rights, and last time I checked, being burned alive for resisting your government wasn’t one of them.

Even UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has issued a statement, saying “such attacks would constitute a serious violation of international humanitarian law.”  NAW, REALLY?  And bless her heart, even Hillary Clinton is weighing in: “Now is the time to stop this unacceptable bloodshed.”  IT’S NOT LIKE YOU COULDN’T.

It would be a huge misstep for the international community to avoid addressing the issue head-on at the risk of being seen as interventionist.  It’s obvious that Libya could use a little bit right about now.

Sidebar: I don’t expect the U.S. to actually do this—they gave up their man card as soon as they let a dude named P.J. speak on their behalf.  Anyways, this post was originally supposed to be about Omar al-Bashir (the president of Sudan-soon-to-be-North-Sudan) vowing not to run for president again in four years EVEN THOUGH THERE IS AN INTERNATIONAL WARRANT OUT FOR HIS ARREST.

Ain’t that a bitch.

[Photo via Reuters]

A “No Russian”-fueled media frenzy accompanied the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 this time last year. Screeds and diatribes of varying quality were slung with fervor, sussing out the various political and moral implications of the game, sometimes escalating to that perennial industry bugbear — “Are games art?” (Or as Matthew Burns might ask, “Are games ert? And are they fon?”).

This is no such salvo.

A few weeks ago, I played through the single-player campaign — twice actually, and that second run is really what drives my opinion of the game. I don’t mean to suggest that game criticism shouldn’t be social and political, but with so much of the discourse hitherto focused on “No Russian,” I don’t get the impression that anyone has taken too close a look at Modern Warfare 2 in and of itself.

I tried to do just that during Episode 19 of The Electric Hydra, but that only lasted for, like, five seconds.

On the smallest, granular level, MW2 just feels good. This is probably because Infinity Ward tuned and tweaked the auto-aim to a razor-fine point, a welcome complement to the analog sticks with which (and I’m guessing here) most people  played the game.

And what better way to build on solid shooting mechanics with level design that is constantly dynamic and engaging? It’s certainly true that MW2, structurally and otherwise, is a strikingly linear game, but its individual levels seem to subvert that aesthetic. Yes, most levels are a series of corridors, but those corridors branch and split and turn several times before bottlenecking in ways that seem natural and organic. It’s, admittedly, smoke and mirrors, creating an illusion of agency and split-second decision making, but the entire package stands up to scrutiny.

The first favela level is a good example — I got separated from, and lost track of, my two AI companions fairly early. I soldiered on (hah!), exploring the labyrinthine favela, checking my corners, getting ambushed, and generally prairie-dogging my way in and out of cover. Check points and intermittent radio barks from Soap and Ghost gently nudged me in the right direction, although that direction never seemed particularly clear to me as I doubled back down alleys and explored rooftop apartments. I never re-grouped with my two squad-mates; they were presumably gunned down.

Michael Licht, a level designer at LucasArts, compares modern FPS design to jazz: “When a Jazz musician plays, he has to follow the song as it is written for the most part. This is called ‘staying in the groove’ and it’s what gives identity to the piece. But during the song there are certain opportunities for that artist to express himself through solos. This allows for variation in the piece without a complete departure from the overall song and keeps things from getting too repetitive or predictable.”

Getting lost in the favela, choosing between three different sets of alleys — each branching with stair cases, walkways, ladders — those branching opportunities pepper each level, and they’re the soli to whatever fucking terror-jazz MW2 is.

Good level design aside, what struck me most about the levels in MW2 is the extent to which each level is a function of geography, and to which each geographical location is a function of an overall narrative arc. Now, that narrative arc is ham-fisted, bullheaded jingoism to be sure, but in the sense that it dictates the rest of the game’s design, from the top down, it’s well crafted jingoism.

Por ejemplo, an early level puts Roach and Soap on some God-forsaken mountain in order to retrieve some top secret NORAD information stolen by the Rus … never mind. What’s important is the way that Infinity Ward used the geography — a blizzard, really — to incorporate an entire stealth mission. There are no stealth mechanics per se, but the level designers at IW capitalized on some absurd plot point to create an entire mission structure that holistically expands the range of MW2‘s mechanics without feeling tacked-on or arbitrary.

Unfortunately, those same plot points are also a source of constant disorientation, which — in a terrible example of ludonarrative harmony — extends down to the micro level. As quickly as MW2-at-large jumps from Iraq to Moscow to Washington D.C., Private Ramirez is also expected to be in about four places at once.

My first experience with the game, and with war games generally, is confusion — there’s a bunch of shit on the HUD; a voice is yelling vague directions at me (which alley should I run to? Didn’t I already explain that there are three?); and there are explosions everywhere. For a clearer example of how muddled the user’s experience can be, keep in mind that long-winded and inane plot exposition routinely occurs in the middle of heated firefights.

I first played MW2 on its “Normal” difficulty — and this is crucial — in which the operative verb seemed to be run, rather than shoot (or more importantly, think). When Shinji Mikami said that he wanted Vanquish to appeal to Westerners, perhaps this is what he had in mind.

MW2 is, if nothing else, frenetic and quick, a trait exacerbated by how brutally effective your AI squadmates are. With my squad leader yelling frantic instructions and my AI partners killing off most resistance, it’s very easy to get caught up in MW2‘s sheer velocity, without actually contributing to it in any meaningful way.

And that — shocking thematic overlay aside — is what makes “No Russian” such a radical departure from the rest of the game. It’s deliberate, it’s calmly executed, it’s slow — the player-character is restricted to a walk for the majority of the level. No more maze-like routes and strategies: follow and shoot are your only options. It’s the most explicitly linear and controlled level in the game — the level opens with a direct order, “No Russian,” and you literally follow the leader throughout. Without delving too much into the issues raised by “No Russian” — player agency, the dynamics of authority — it’s important to notice the way the level design and mechanics are restricted and the extent to which it puts the rest of the game in sharp relief.

(And, really, you should be reading G. C. Williams for a far more interesting analysis.)

But, back to MW2‘s constant motion — it’s modeled on some platonic ideal of the oeuvre of Michael Bay. It’s too easy to stumble, by the seat of your pants, through the campaign, aided and abetted by super-human teammates and your ability to absorb an obscene amount of bullets. MW2 looks cool (I guess), but it rarely feels that way because the stakes are never high enough to make my success important. Success in MW2 feels deterministic or pre-supposed.

My initial experience with MW2 was, I think, in keeping with Infinity Ward’s design ethic. Every rung of MW2 – its narrative structure, its level design, its presentation layer — is designed to be breathtaking! setpieces! explosions! go! Go! GO!

But playing that way isn’t particularly engaging:  like I explained, most of MW2 just happened, despite my presence. And that’s really the problem with MW2: buying into Infinity Ward’s aesthetic strips the player of agency, of ludic conflict, of any tension or catharsis.

Of course, the easiest way to mitigate that is to ramp up the difficulty level, in my case to “Veteran.” This has its own ramifications. (Natch.)

As far as I can tell, “Veteran” difficulty simply neuters your AI squad, brings your own health into one-shot territory, and improves enemy pathfinding and accuracy.  Once steamrolling your way through hordes of Russians ceases to be an option, MW2 suddenly becomes a tighter, more tactical game. You are forced to take cover, to shoot accurately, to know when and how to rely on your teammates, to be brutally efficient with your movements and actions. MW2 can be a very deliberate and methodical and satisfying game, but the onus is firmly on the player to make it that way.

At this point, though, MW2 falls into the same trap that Gears of War 2 fell into: a narrative arc that demands aggression and speed pulling against mechanical systems that are best used slowly and deliberately. MW2 absolutely hates it when players try to slow their pace — if you stay behind cover too long, or if you’re blowing Russians away too slowly, or if you’re not completing objectives fast enough, your squad leader is more than happy to constantly shout petulant reminders of what you ought to be doing. The level design suggests a certain amount of autonomy, but fuck you if you try to take advantage of it.

For the most part, this dichotomy is easy to ignore, but it comes to a head late in the game, in a level titled “Loose Ends.” It begins innocuously enough — storm a cabin, steal a computer, and set up a perimeter defense while you download the contents of said computer. The climax, though, highlights very clearly MW2‘s instability, and the game as a whole is worse after its inclusion.

After downloading the entire internet to a harddrive, Roach and Ghost make a mad dash down a hill to a waiting helicopter. This helicopter has inexplicably landed behind several dozen well-armed Russians and seems content to let them blow Ghost and Roach the fuck up with mortar fire. There’s no cover, and the pair are vastly outnumbered, making your hitherto-successful tactics — taking cover and being smart and careful — impossible. Instead, you’re forced to run.

“Loose Ends” breaks all of Modern Warfare‘s rules and sells the player to Hollywood for thirty silvers. The idea is that two men running for their lives (into, I remind you, a bunch of enemies with mortars) might make for a dramatic finish. And on the Regular difficulty, it does; on Veteran, the game falls apart because the mechanics simply cannot bolster up the platonic ideal of Michael Bay. With the difficulty cranked up, player-characters simply don’t have enough HP to make it through the free-for-all in front of them; the game crumples under its own filmic ambition. Instead of being breathtaking — Infinity Ward’s ultimate goal, I think, with the MW2 campaign — it’s simply frustrating.

It’s true that without the guys with rocket launchers, “Loose Ends” would lose some of its drama, but it would also be a lot more playable and enjoyable. And that’s really the core of Modern Warfare 2‘s problems: Infinity Ward demands — through the HUD, through the narrative arc, through the mission structure, through the level design — that you fly by the seat of your pants, that you subscribe to their ethic of speed; however, they do so at the expense of thinking critically and strategically, of the possibility for a player to study and master the game’s mechanics.

Infinity Ward issued an ultimatum: My way or the highway. That’s a tough sell for any medium, but given that Modern Warfare 2 is, first and foremost, a game … well I already made my choice. I chose to up the difficulty level, to make the game engaging and tactical and tense, but Infinity Ward fought me tooth and nail, every step of the way.

It’s not as though I’ve kept my love for international affairs secret, or the fact that I think a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine should be a global priority — I had a good rant about it some time ago.  The issue is particularly salient in light of the recently stagnating peace talks between Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A friend and I had a discussion last weekend about how to reconcile sympathy for the Jewish cause with their relatively aggressive presence in the region.

Though the peace talks themselves are at a standstill, reconciliation can be found at the grassroots level — for example, the popular  program Seeds of Peace and the lesser-known Sadaka Reut, both of which work to bring Palestinian and Israeli youth together in summer programs and outreach trips, or the Bereaved Parents’ Circle, a support group for Palestinian and Israeli parents who have lost children in the conflict.

And then there’s this typeface.

Seriously! Einat Kayless Argaman, a web designer based in Israel, drafted a typeface for her graduate work called “Identity,” where each of the characters can simultaneously be read in Hebrew or Arabic.  It’s really beautiful; sort of a visual manifestation of the things for which the groups I mentioned above (and others) are striving: a common thread between two seemingly disparate cultures.

I am continually fascinated by the ways in which people from both Israel and Palestine attempt to reach out to the other side.  “Identity” is just one example of an everyday commodity that has been re-purposed in a way that challenges norms and fosters dialogue between two separate but maybe not-so-dissimilar people.

That’s pretty RAD.

I’m not sure that I ever came to any conclusions, but I’d be willing to place Brian Phillips — whose writing germinated, after a fashion, my entire line of thinking in the first place — in the eucatastrophic camp:

Pelé strikes me as a comedy, or better, as a comedian: not as a stand-up comic or a satirist, but as the opposite of a tragedian, the author of the kind of classical comedy that always ends with a wedding, the kind that revels in turning the order of things upside down so that it can give you the giddy satisfaction of seeing them turned right-side up again. This kind of comedy is in the business of reconciliation: The king turns out to be wise, the lovers love each other, and the villains reveal themselves to be failures, however things look for a while. When Titania is in the forest with Bottom, everything is wonderfully backwards: the queen of the ideal is enslaved to clumsiest physicality. Then Puck flies through, Pelé scores his goal, and all the faculties go back to their right places.

– Pelé as a Comedian

Over on Brian Phillips’ blog, Run of Play, Supriya Nair contributed an essay titled “Stepchild of Time,” positing the thesis that “Maybe Pelé is blessed with the fate of all origin myths, to be simultaneously ubiquitous and unrecognisable. Because he is the figurehead of a certain view of football. … He stands at the fount of all our conceptions of football heroism; perhaps only a stepchild of time can do that.”

While all of the essays during Pelé Week have been supremely interesting — as is Run of Play generally — this one struck a particular note with me, not least because Nair manages to compare Pelé to Tom Bombadil (of all things).

Tom Bombadil is a contentious figure at the heart of the canon. He appears to us as a random, singing, omnipotent figure, a giver of gifts and an utterer of doggerel; he gives us tantalising hints of his powers, but remains an affable cypher from start to finish. Is he a deus ex machina, pulled out by the authorities at the start of the adventure to armtwist us into believing in their power? Is he a blip of probability in a predetermined world; the end of imagination, or its wildest flight of fancy? Why is he called Iarwain ben-Adar, oldest and fatherless?

Thinking in terms of origin myths — Gareth Simpson notes that “[b]efore Pelé, no one used the phrase jogo bonito or samba football to describe the Brazilian national team. Pelé was the head author of those myths, the creator of that particular brand, fashioning the lasting image of Brazilian football out of the ashes of 1950.” — the Tom Bombadil comparison seems apt.

"Tom Bombadil & Goldberry," Anneth Lagamo.

Nair refers to Bombadil as a deus ex machina, but Tolkien has his own particular derivative of that technique. He called his version the eucatastrophe in an essay called “On Fairy-Stories”:

The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially escapist, nor fugitive. In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur.

Both techniques serve to pull the protagonist — in Pelé’s case, football writ large — out of some sort of bind or peril through a uniquely fortuitous series of events. The deus ex machina, though, is otherworldly, something irrevocably separate from the real world, from whatever narrative framework we’ve established. The eucatastrophe, in contrast, “is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. It perceives … that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made.” In other words, the eucastrophe makes sense in a larger narrative context. As far as the Pelé comparison goes, it would suggest that he’s a man just like me.

Tom Bombadil may be an example of deus ex machina. If Pelé, too, is a god from the machine, then he’s just that — an impossible myth, a demigod who, by all rights, shouldn’t be allowed to exist, who violates the natural footballing order. And Kári Tulinius might agree that there’s something to this theory, that there is a different chain of being that creates, once every generation, a new footballing Tom Bombadil. After Pelé, that machine made Johan Cruyff and Diego Maradona and George Best and Zinedine Zidane and, just maybe, Leo Messi.

On the other hand, if Tom Bombadil is an example of eucatastrophe, then Pelé’s just a guy who happened to be really good at soccer, who played at Santos, and who FIFA appropriated to their own ends, a view proposed by Richard Whittal. Which isn’t to say that Pelé-as-a-man can’t be as romantic or romanticized  as the other interpretations of the Pelé myth. There’s something proletariat about Pelé, and Brazil in general, that I find appealing, something classically Romantic about poverty and its genius that flies in the face of the socio-economic models of football that don’t account for how awful England were this summer. Don’t forget that the essence of eucastrophe is joy, samba football’s chief export.

Which of these views — not that they’re mutually exclusive, nor that they’re the only ones available — is more accurate, I’m not football-literate enough to say. But I think the distance between deus ex machina and eucatastrophe cuts to the heart of how cultures create and maintain myths — especially this one about a man named Edison Arantes do Nascimento.

In any case, even if parsing obscure literary techniques and ham-handedly trying to apply them to a seventy-year-old soccer player strikes you as foolish, I nevertheless want to offer an Official Gin Ocean Endorsement of both Run of Play and Pelé Week.

World politics is turbo awesome.  Period.  Maybe my outlook is colored by the fact that international politics was my concentration in college (definitely), but it is really interesting.  I could nerd out for some time about the intricacies of diplomacy, jus cogens standards, and how bizarre and wonderful it is that states follow international law when there is no tangible punishment for breaking it.  RAD.

Anyway.

Foreign Policy (<3 <3 <3) ran an opposing views feature some days ago debating whether or not President Obama has failed in his foreign policy endeavors, with Marc Lynch arguing that he has not and Stephen Walt providing the dissent.  It’s a really well done piece–read it!

After I read it, as much as I hated to admit it, I had to side with Walt.  US foreign policy is completely busted.

Don’t get me wrong–me and Brobama are tight.  I understand that the majority of the problems he has faced since coming into office were inherited and not of his own design, but there are also some glaring mistakes.  Joseph and I spent a long time debating the point of whether or not the fact that these problems are all  lose-lose scenarios made any difference–I say no, because as midterm elections roll in, and the upcoming presidential race begins, the American public’s collective amnesia will render any “But, Bush started it!” arguments moot.  For this reason, I’m hesitant to engage the Iraq/Afghanistan quagmire, though I will say that the drawdown in Iraq is the best I could hope for at this point.

Anyway, on to my quibbles.

Israel and Palestine. Dude.  C’MON.  I was pumped when Obama came into office promoting bilateral talks and a two state solution (SPOILER: I am mega pro-Palestinian).  When Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu went rogue back in March, I was anxiously waiting for the US to rebuke them.  Nothing.  Hilary Clinton’s statement amounted to, “Gee, we really wish you guys would stop building those illegal settlements,” but no one dropped my  favorite S-Bomb: sanctions.  (An article in the Washington Times might see things differently, but I don’t think a phone call amounts to “tough criticism.”)  At the very least, I would love to see  some of that foreign aid we’re sending recalled–$30 billion over the last decade, which is astronomical compared to what we send other countries.  I mean, if you’re counting.  And please, no counter-arguments about Israel as the only Middle Eastern ally of the US or Israel as the tiny nation that needs our protection–they’ve had the most advanced military in the region since the 1940s, and it’s not like they are the most reliable ally.

The inability of the US to hold Israel accountable, despite our one-sided relationship, is one of my biggest frustrations with the current administration (Can we please address the recent border skirmishes between them and Lebanon?) and is probably my greatest disappointment with US foreign policy.

Guantánamo Bay. Blow that place up already.  Just extraordinary-rendition all of the 176 people still there back to wherever they were snatched from and call it a day.  It’s a colossal human rights disaster and seriously affects US credibility when addressing the international community–maybe we can put a parking lot on it like Germany did over Hitler’s bunker.  Joseph took issue with my inability to offer a coherent strategy for dealing with the remaining detainees–valid, but if I had an answer, I would be making all kinds of money with the State Department.  I don’t claim to have the solution, but then again, I didn’t promise that the facility would be shut down already.

Iran. Honestly, I never thought I would say this, but Ahmadinejad was kind of making some sense when he addressed the UN General Assembly back in May.  Beneath all of the rhetoric about the Zionist regime (Israel) and the US as a criminal entity, he actually made a reasonable, if not obvious, statement–how can the US expect the world to abandon nuclear arms when they themselves have not done so?  Sure, the US has signed a nuclear reduction treaty with Russia, but that might not get ratified.  If the US wants to be a legitimate broker for nuclear disarmament, there has to be reciprocation.

The nuclear issue notwithstanding, I am a little frustrated with the same tired approach to Iran that the administration is perpetuating.  In his speech to Cairo University, Obama promised to address Iran with no preconditions, yet the US refuses to enter into talks without Iran’s complete abandonment of their nuclear program–on top of that, the current administration went one step further, imposing new sanctions on Iran.  I’m not asking for the US to trade BFF bracelets with Ahmadinejad, but a little more of the open-mindedness that Obama espoused in Cairo could go a long way towards repairing the US image in the Middle East.

I doubt that any of these issues will be part of the greater American political discourse come the next round of presidential campaigning–I’m certain that the economy and domestic agenda issues like health care  and finance reform will dominate the conversation, for better or for worse (WHAT UP, TEA PARTIERS).  Even if foreign policy makes it into the discussion, it would most likely revolve around the cessation of combat operations in Iraq and its merits/consequences.  I’m certainly anxious to see how/if the tide shifts during the midterms and how effectively the Democratic party can frame these issues come 2012.

POLITICS.

This is our cat, Sherman.  Here he is making biscuits on his favorite blanket.

I think he was taken away from his mother too soon.

(Sidenote: I once attended an alcohol-free reception and vowed never again–there is just no way to comfortably navigate that kind of social minefield without a buzz.)

 There are no less than six wedding blogs that I read daily, obsessively bookmarking my favorite posts.  I’m not entirely sure where this compulsion came from–I have never been engaged, and it doesn’t look like I will be anytime soon (AHEM AHEM).  Despite this fact, I am giddy for all things marriage, most especially weddings that feature bunting, cute couples, papel picado, and DIY details.  Unfortunately, none of my favorite weddings share a cohesive theme or design, so I have a feeling my Big Day is going to be some bizarre Franken-wedding full of mismatched details.  Also, I’m serving Mexican food, so I really hope that Los Tres Amigos on Lebanon Road caters.

Though my devout following of the internet wedding community has shown me lots of wonderful ideas for my own (non-existant) nuptials, there are a few things that I wish would just disappear from the collective wedding-planning-conscious.

1. Balloons

I am continually aggravated by engagement and wedding shoots that feature balloons–I guess they are supposed to be whimsical? Youthful? I don’t care?  I am pretty turned off by using props in general (especially the close-up shots of the couple holding junk–I get it! You’re young and fertile! Fuck you!) but I think balloons in particular are passé.  FIND A NEW GIMMICK PLEASE KTHX.

2. Candy Bars

Please don’t think you are exciting my inner child with a candy buffet.  There is a reason why wedding cake has endured as the most common wedding dessert (it’s fucking awesome).  I like cake, and I want to eat cake at your reception, not spend the night picking hard candy out of my teeth (I can’t just not crunch on it).  If you’re using the buffet as wedding favors for your guests, I would rather having something practical–give my a coozie, or a candle, not a cavity.

Tangentially related to this complaint are the awful little stickers and signs that often accompany the buffets. This also ties into Complaint #3.

3. Wedding Puns

AW SHIT, THAT’S SO ORIGINAL AND FUNNY AND COMPLETELY AWESOME I BET NO ONE ELSE EVER HAS USED THAT.

4. Typewriter Guestbooks

Most people can’t type properly on a computer (see: your Facebook feed), so why would you expect them to type well on a 30+ year old machine? There is no backspace, no one is going to space things evenly–it’s a guaranteed mess. Also, I wouldn’t want to risk my guestbook saying, “OMG IM SO HAPPY 4 U GUYS. LUV U!!”  How’s that for posterity?

5. Tissue Paper Pom Poms

Thanks for this one, Martha Stewart.  With your tutorial, everyone has taken it upon themselves to make as many awful iterations of this craft as they possibly can.  I have never seen these executed well–they are never as full and pretty as they look in pictures–and I can say that because I tried to make them to decorate my dorm room 3 years ago.

Also related would be my utter hatred of paper lanterns. WOOF.

Tl;dr–quit spending your money on lame stuff and put that cash towards the bar. YOUR GUESTS WILL APPRECIATE IT.

1. Pick a single Pokemon type.
2. Generate a random number between 1 and 6.
3. Create your team here. Use the randomly generated number from step 2 and the type from step 1, excluding Legendary and un-evolved Pokemon.

You can grok my set up to the right. To be honest — my mind-meld with SoulSilver notwithstanding — I haven’t played any of the most recent Pokemon games enough to know whether or not I have a good team. (That National Dex just grows up so fast.)

Taking a quick glance, though, it seems like I have some built in resistance to fire-types: Empoleon’s water- and Probopass and Bastiodon’s rock-types will cut my fire weakness in half, right?

God help me.

[Via Fuck Yeah! Super Effective!]