Far Cry 3 Review

Cool Jungle, Bro

One of the beautiful sights of Rook Island

I must say that I've developed quite a fondness for sandbox games. Whereas some people are paralyzed by the ton of things to do, I become obsessed with trying to do all of them. Far Cry 3, developed by Ubisoft, was honestly not on my radar, but I was given the opportunity to try it out. Let me tell you, this game is a lot of fun, and if you're looking for yet another game to scratch that sandbox itch, there is really no way to go wrong with this game.

I'll start with what is the weakest element of the game so far, which is the story. The main narrative begins with with a group of friends vacation in the Pacific islands somewhere, and they end up skydiving over Rook Island. It seems their landing was rockier than normal because it landed them in the grips of a drug and human trafficking ring of pirates somehow, managed by the intense Vaas Montenegro. After a bungled stealthy escape attempt, the game's hero, Jason Brody, manages to run for his life through the jungle before he passes out. A man residing with the local Rakyat rebels, Dennis, saves you from certain death and tries to empower you to save your friends and support the local cause. He simply sets Jason off on his quest into the dangerous jungle. As Jason points out to him, he's never even shot a gun in his life, but so goes the story of a bro who becomes a hero. (Hebro?)

After finishing some introductory steps, the whole of Rook Island becomes Jason's oyster to crack. Along with following the story, there are a number of side activities to follow. First, in similar fashion to the Assassin's Creed series, climbing to the top of radio towers reveals portions of the map to better navigate the terrain and find secrets, and there are many secrets. Chests containing ammo and money, ancient relics, memory cards with pirate logs, and letters from WWII are littered all over the island. Next, there are outposts in every square area of the map; by overtaking these areas for the rebels, the amount of enemies reduces making the majority of that section relatively safe for passage.

There is nothing creepy about this scene.

The game even rewards Jason with more XP based on how stealthily these outposts are claimed. As much as I enjoy this, given my preference for stealth, I can't help but feel bad for the players who prefer to waltz in with guns blazing. The game even rewards you for stealthy takedowns better than normal shooting. Still, taking over these areas are fun, and when you're done, they become fast travel points replete with a locker that acts as a mini-shop and extra sidequests including assassination missions and rare animal hunting. What remains baffling still is that when you're done, the local rebels drive in with a handful of guys holding machine guns. Almost all the rebels hold machine guns. Why can't they take over these places themselves? Better yet, why can't you recruit them to help you? The connection is so obvious there.

Personal progression through the game is represented by a strange tattoo involuntarily given to Jason early in the game. Utilizing a skill tree system with three branching paths, as you learn skills, the tattoo grows down your forearm, a symbol of your growing skill as a warrior. Great games have great skill trees, and this one is no exception with unique abilities like kicking an enemy away from you as you pull his grenade clip or taking down a guard stealthily and using his knife to kill another one. However, those great skill trees don't always need great backstories, and this tattoo, which grows on its own without ink, only has a ridiculous explanation. Circling back to the story, this ultimately makes Jason's story of a simple partying twenty-something turned guerilla warrior seem like it could only possibly appeal to the already empowered single heterosexual white male audience that most video games are already marketed towards. It's a rather shameless plea for their rapt attention. You can already imagine Jason's friends after the end game going, "Cool tat, bro!" For a game that is enough fun to appeal to anyone, it is sad to have a sellout protagonist geared towards a niche demographic. That said, to Jason's credit, he is not silent in a story that demands he speak up, one of my gripes with Dishonored before.

Back to the good, though, Rook Island bears one of the most fascinating terrains I've explored in video games. The designers really went through a lot of trouble to create a huge area that is actually believable as a setting. With only endless waters surround Rook Island as a hidden wall around the whole setting, the environment  of Far Cry 3 is really yours to travel and have fun with. The terrain has many elevations ranging from tall mountains to underground caves. Every time I found a waterway that led to the middle of the land via a winding cave system, I was in awe. However, getting lost is not really an option. The map allows you to set way points to any objective, outpost, or mission, and the minimap is handy enough to help you navigate the local terrain without popping open the main map too often. I think it could afford to have mulitple zoom options (like the one in Grand Theft Auto IV), though, which would help with fast driving segments over and around hills where you can't see the road ahead too well.

Seriously, look at this.

Along with the varied topography, Rook Island features equally varied wildlife populating the area. As I said, you are given missions to hunt some of these animals, but otherwise, they are roaming free waiting to be picked off. Although you are not rewarded with any XP for the endeavor, the game features a crafting system that utilizes the hides from the deer, boars, tigers, and whatnot wandering in the wild. At the beginning of the game, Jason's ability to carry ammo and money is limited until he can craft larger carriers for all his stuff. Each time you craft an item, the next size up usually requires the hide of an animal in a completely different section of the island, which encourages more exploration and risk taking.

Also in each area are different color classes of flora, which Jason can use to craft syringes that enhance his performance (ahem) and abilities. I won't deny that all of these systems are useful and provide more fun to have in this well-developed game, but once again, the writers ask me to suspend a lot of disbelief. Jason is immediately knowledgeable in the art of hunting and skinning an animal, though his grunts of disgust never dissipate regardless of how often he does it. Slicing leaves off of plants is an easier skill for me to believe he can figure out on his own, but his willingness to shove syringes in his arm repeatedly tells me that he should've been in rehab instead of traveling the world. Oh, and this is all without going into his divinely conceived recipes and crafting diagrams for this stuff. And can anyone explain why he needs two deer hides to make a so-so wallet, but he can't craft a larger wallet with either more deer hides or better utilization of large hides? How does he know he needs a tapir? Has he ever seen one before?

Far Cry 3 features a plethora of weaponry to fit your killing desires. On top of covering essentially every class of firearm you could desire, it also feature multiple types of each, including a bow and arrow to make you feel like Rambo. (Rambro?) Then, if that doesn't sate you, you can purchase attachments to modify almost each gun to your liking, such as better sights and silencers. I have never played a game carrying an arsenal of bow and arrow, silenced sniper rifle, and silenced assault rifle before, but it makes me feel awesome. If the price for any high class weapon seems prohibitive, climbing the aforementioned radio towers and reestablishing radio access to the locals opens up higher classes of weapons for free. With all the XP and money you can earn from sniping random pirate camps and the like, this game is practically giving you more power away for little effort. It could probably afford to be a little more restrictive with the weapons, but I can't complain while I'm having fun accomplishing my tasks with deadly accuracy. The only problem is the backstory with the skills designates that until you reach a certain point in the main narrative, you will be stuck a limited set of skills to unlock and a surplus of skill points waiting to be spent. I personally recommend breezing through the story at a quicker pace to make the skill tree more accessible sooner.

To accompany the continuously fun gameplay, the graphics are really gorgeous. Not simply a console port, the settings allow players to really ramp it up and make it look quite lush. Admittedly, since The Witcher 2, this is the first game in a while that I couldn't run on max settings without sacrificing playability, but even on lowered settings, the game looks really good. An additional bonus is that human and animal character models all look good and animate believably, though the game suffers from the common trope of giving the most discernible details to the main characters, leaving the citizens of Rook Island to live with doppelgangers meandering about.

The majority of textures look good and are fairly passable up close, i.e., I did not focus on muddiness like I do in other games. The plants are all gorgeous from afar, too, but hiding in a bush does reveal the cracks in the rendering work. I should also mention that I experienced zero texture pop-in. The soundtrack varies from tribal to techno, which is all fitting without any one song standing out from the rest. Voice acting is all handled well and words generally match lip movements on all characters and NPCs. What is confusing is that the locals and rebels all speak Malay convincingly  but when it comes to English, they vary between a Pacific Islander accent and a Kiwi accent, going so far as to occasionally say, "Kia ora," when Jason passes by. I don't get it, but it's a detail the majority of gamers won't be bothered to notice.

Your digital camera acts as a way to tag and track enemies. Also, you can just look at the graphics better.

Control in Far Cry 3 is fairly comfortable with a typical mouse and keyboard setup on the PC. Most elements react well to input. The worst offender seems to be driving vehicles, where using a keyboard clearly lacks the nuance afforded by a controller with thumbsticks and pressure-sensitive trigger buttons. There is essentially one gear, and it's pedal to the metal. Also, the game allows you to maneuver the camera while driving, which I don't suggest doing ever because you'll drive off a cliff and not know why. In that regard, the game is a lot like real life! Another navigation gripe is the game's sensitivity to walking over small edges. I complained about something similar in Borderlands 2, but here it rears its ugly head in the silliest areas, requiring you to literally jump through doorways to proceed inside a house. Jason's ability to climb ledges is restricted to ones with overhanging ropes or vines that he doesn't actually use as grips despite their presence. Coming off of Dishonored, with the best first-person platforming ever, I found it jarring.

Finally, the game is a little too particular about the exact angle and distance at which you can interact with objects, such as found money and bodies to be looted. You have to be the in a precise position before it'll prompt you to do anything. This also emulates real life but in an unpleasant way. With all the money to steal and bodies to loot, you just want to grab and go. The worst culmination of all these came when I wanted to open a chest on a porch. I could not walk right onto the porch, of course, but the roof over it was too low for me to jump onto the porch. However, the extra foot the edge of the porch set me away from the chest prevented me from opening it. I had to climb nearby stairs on the other side of the house, jump onto and over a lounge chair placed at the corner, and maneuver myself to the chest that way. Imagining this scenario in real life yields only puzzlement.

Regardless of all these meaningless faults, I must reiterate that Far Cry 3 is a ridiculous amount of fun. The narrative notwithstanding, you will just have so much fun actually playing the game. The sandbox style is remarkably rewarding, and it affords you to have a very meaningful time doing nothing important. There is just the right amount of things to do written into the gameplay, and there are enough enemies, animals, and caves to pursue in between these moments. Combat is fun and provides a silly amount of options to play the way you want. Even as frustrating as it is to hear a tiger growling right behind you while you are picking off a pirate base one guard at a time, it's these unique moments that separate the game from others. I don't know what else I can tell you. Go play it!

Images obtained by playing the games through Uplay through Steam. It's like video game launch Inception.

I Had a (Fever) Dream

Wherein Advil Cold & Sinus Develops a Game

Last week, I was granted the misfortune of being sick. It was one of those couple's colds where you sit around blaming each other and reconsider living in close quarters. However, on the worst night of my cold, I actually had a rather amazing dream.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a game where you do...stuff.

Let me preface this by saying I've been playing Assassin's Creed III lately, and right before that, I finished two playthroughs of Dishonored. My dream starts off in a dank sewer or some underground space. There are a few people near me as well. I already have a vague knowledge of what I need to do, though. It seems this sewer connects to a nearby headquarters for some business, and I'm tasked with killing the president/founder/what-have-you. I know he is arguably evil, but I'm never given the full rundown as to why. (I assume if I want that, I should purchase the full dream for $49.99 on Steam.) I also know there are a number of ways to get up to my target's office and a number of ways to get through each of these points. You see, I can't just walk straight through and murder him, but unlike a lot of games involving assassination, the area I'm infiltrating is not solely filled with soldiers waiting to kill me. There are office workers, too, who may not recognize me, but they also don't know me from Mike on the third floor in Accounting, who tells really boring stories about his kids in the lunchroom. So I know I'll be safe to walk around in some areas as long as I don't arouse suspicion.

All of this seems pretty par for the course, but here's where it gets interesting (to me at least). First, I am made well aware that my target is free to walk around and that he knows I might be coming. Thus, I need to use resources around to figure out where he may be at any given time, but I also need to make sure he doesn't catch me unaware. Next, to breach certain areas, those people around me in the sewer also come into play. They each possess some knowledge or skill set that can get me through certain areas of the building, and I'm given the option of going completely solo or accepting their help. However, they all want something, and they also don't all like each other. Their motives are sadly never revealed to me, but it is apparent that asking for assistance and returning the favor to one will piss off another. Pissing off another person around may close off an entire area of the building due to that person's influence over people there; I assume they work for the company or have close friends there. The other risk is that the people I anger may actually try to surprise me later on by alerting security or even making an attempt on my life.

Assassin's Creed is also a franchise where you can do...stuff.

The rest of the dream is pretty hazy. I know that I "played" a few times with varying levels of success. A few times I got really far, and other times I was ambushed. I honestly cannot remember if I ever killed the target, but I do remember that he caught me off guard a couple of times. For some odd reason, he was wearing a posh red smoking jacket, but I assume that was Dishonored's influence on me. I definitely found the whole scenario interesting. While poorly implemented in my dream (none of my dreams ever reach full credibility), it was cool just how much choice I was given. Multiple pathways, peculiar relationship system, and of course, the regular choices of stealth/confrontation and kill/subdue were looming around. There was definitely a more futuristic aspect to it, which was reminiscent of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Still, if developed exquisitely, I'd buy my game.

It just needs a much better writer.

Images obtained from Game Informer.

Dishonored Review

A Watercolor Painting of Revenge

Behold! The beautiful, but troubled city of Dunwall.

Your name is Corvo Attano. You are returning from a trip back to your home of Dunwall, where you serve as the protector to the Empress, who dispatched you to find aid to cure a plague that has beleaguered her citizens. However, shortly after your return, magical assassins infiltrate the tower and murder the Empress before your eyes. Before you can recover from the shock, her daughter is kidnapped, as well. To make matters worse, you were (conveniently) alone when this happened, so as soon as the assassins disappear from existence, the guards are there to accuse you of murder. So begins Arkane Studios' new game, Dishonored. From there, you begin a tale of conspiracy and revenge as you try to find the Empress' daughter, Emily, and right what's been wronged.

The first noticeable feature of the game is the design and the amount of thought put into it. Although for the most part, objects are rendered realistically, there's a layer of cel-shading, creating a beautiful watercolor effect over the environment. Body forms are exaggerated to have overly broad shoulders and large hands on men and skinny legs and long necks on women. The effect enhances the fantasy but also creates an internal dilemma between the violent actions you're asked to perform and the actual impact that killing caricatures could possibly have. Still, the game is a marvel to look at, and all elements of the design serve each other well. After the opening moments, Dunwall becomes something of a military state, mostly defending the rich from the diseased poor who wander the streets like zombies. During the course of the 15 to 20 hours the game could take you to finish, you will see both plague and opulence juxtaposed in colorful glory next to the military machinations and decorations of the ruling party.

He's thinking, "I'm a knife, knifing around. Cut cut cut cut cut cut..."

As with any game featuring open environments, you will also see some technical errors - characters stuck in geometry, disappearing bodies, dancing corpses, the sudden inability to move forward, and the like - but none of these happen often enough to detract from the experience that much. The worst offender would be overused character models and spoken lines. Encountering two identical guards in combat in a world with such character is kind of a let down. Similarly, after playing the game twice, I'll be happy if I never hear one guard ask another guard if he thinks he'll get that promotion. Here's a hint: he won't.

Gameplay seems most akin to Deus Ex: Human Revolution in terms of the options set before you. You become an assassin like those who wronged you, so you're mostly expected to lurk in the shadows. However, compared to it's half-brother, Dishonored leaves you better prepared to handle enemies when they are alerted to your presence or, at the very least, prepared to disappear from their view and lay low. After completing an introductory level (Sneaking 101) and some exposition, the game gives you a magical ability, Blink. This is granted courtesy of The Outsider, a character who is much like Satan in the Book of Job in the way that he opts to meddle in human affairs from the sidelines. Blink allows you to teleport to a location in view and ultimately becomes the most useful traversal ability in your possession. As you progress, you can find runes to gain more abilities or upgrade existing ones, both active and passive, and there are bone charms to discover which provide buffs to combat and magic as you equip them. Like receiving a treasure map, The Outsider also gives Corvo a standalone beating heart which can point out where to find these collectibles. It is strange, to say the least, and the voice inside it is never clearly explained.

No, nothing seems right about this at all.

In terms of navigation, I'd say Corvo is the most capable first-person platformer since Faith from Mirror's Edge, only the feats you're expected to perform are much simpler to execute given the slower pace. The most noticeable convenience is the automatic climbing mechanic. While you can't run up walls like Assassin's Creed, pressing the jump button near a climbable object (read: nearly everything) results in a very quick but fully animated hop onto the top of it. If you encounter a ledge, holding jump makes Corvo surmount it. Thus, there is little jumping distance or height estimation involved. Automation takes the height while Blink takes the distance. Beyond this amazing but obvious leap in platforming, Corvo has capable running and sneaking modes when needed.

Stealth itself is handled gracefully, and I encountered no omniscient AI. For those who are interested, I was playing on Easy mode, so it is possible the NPCs are all-seeing gods on the harder difficulty settings. Although a first-person perspective makes it troublesome to know when you are out of view, the game makes it simple - if you can't see an enemy, he can't see you. This is made fallibly untrue when using the lean mechanic, though, which allows you to peer around objects without being seen even though your head would technically be sticking out. I won't deny its use, of course, and I can only assume it makes up for your ability to see around the protagonist in games played from a third-person perspective. Other abilities also help out stealth, such as Dark Vision, which lets you see people through walls along with their cones of vision, and Bend Time, which lets you slow down (or stop with an upgrade) time to navigate around obstacles quickly. Another rule set clear is that stealth mode mutes your footsteps while it reduces your speed and vision height. All of these things work to make first-person stealth very satisfying while maintaining the challenge of remaining unseen. Another compensatory gift Dishonored offers is an extended reaching distance, both for grabbing items and dispatching foes when sneaking up on them. The reduced guess work is a great bonus.

A beautiful shot from my favorite mission in the game.

The choice between being stealthy or blatant isn't the only one presented to you. Choice is the shining light of the game. First, many of the environments present multiple pathways to your objectives. Getting from point A to point B could mean navigating back alleys, carefully crawling along exposed ventilation shafts up high, or finding an unaccounted-for rat tunnel between two buildings. Next, completing your objectives typically involves a layer of player choice. Despite being an assassin by trade, you are able to lay the no-fail choke hold on NPCs to make them unconscious. The game even has achievements based on the number of people you kill or don't kill for those enthusiasts. [I'd like to note that there is a known bug regarding receiving the Ghost and Clean Hands achievements. I won't be specific because spoilers, but you can find out about it on internet forums out there. To the developer's credit, Harvey Smith, the co-director of the game, said they are presently looking into it. This does not affect gameplay or overall enjoyment of the game, only two specific achievements.]

Furthermore, if not suggested to you by a primary character, Corvo will typically come across additional side quests. Some of these have multiple tracked steps while others are a matter of being in the right place at the right time, for example, to stop an over-zealous guard from killing a civilian for a health elixir. The rewards for completing these tasks range from safe combinations to runes to newly revealed ways to reach and complete your objectives. I talked to every NPC I came across on one mission, and that resulted in finding a man willing take my target away instead of performing the kill. All of these are nice touches, which encourage exploration and reward completionists for their extra efforts while not penalizing those who opt for the quick and dirty. The game is essentially yours to shape. While not a negative, the amount of abilities you unlock along with the weapons you find will outnumber the amount of either that a typical player will use during a given play session. Mission structures are fluid enough that no one ability or weapon is required to move on. As a designer, I would be disappointed to create a neat ability only to see someone ignore it, but it also speaks volumes about these designers that they are willing to let players arm themselves as they see fit. I can't think of a single moment where I was funneled into doing something specific to finish what I was doing.

Speaking of shaping the game, your actions do have a binary set of consequences, though. Killing your targets alone will not have much of an effect, but going on killing sprees increases the chaos level of the game. This results in a larger level of armed guards and plagued citizens as Corvo reaches the final hours of his efforts. Reaching the last level of the game is vastly different depending on whether the overall chaos level is considered low or high, and your objectives will be satisfyingly altered to compensate. While I won't speak to the specific details, I would like to note that the ending to the game is clearly biased towards the low chaos approach, resulting in a more rewarding though equally brief cinematic at the end. In contrast to the slew of trailers and demos Arkane Studios provided demonstrating the multitude of fun and fulfilling ways to dispatch your enemies, the game ends up admonishing you for doing so. My personal suggestion is to try for a no or low kill playthrough first for the achievements, the challenge, and the "good" ending and then follow it up with as relieving a slaughter as you can muster. Dishonored does warrant multiple playthroughs if only to exercise more choice and change your overall approach.

While there is so much to enjoy about Dishonored, I wish the story was on par with the gameplay and the presentation. I do appreciate a game that puts more of itself in my hands, but many of the explanations for your environment and even your abilities come from books and notes you can find along the way to your objectives. Of course, many of those are in the optional areas, so someone just flying through the game is not presented with much depth to this fully-realized world the developers have created. The game then becomes a list of targets to remove from the world somehow with an exciting twist somewhere along the line. The biggest failing is that Corvo is a silent protagonist in a story that practically demands his input. He's the one who's been framed for murder, and he's the character who should be most motivated for revenge, especially given some later revealed facts (if one stops to read them). However, because of his silence, he becomes the least invested in his own actions. None of your mission objectives are choices made on your own; they are all assigned, and that's unfortunate for a game that boasts, "Revenge solves everything." It isn't revenge if you're assigned the people to exact the revenge on. Though I take little umbrage with the silent protagonist in games in general, it acts as a glaring omission in this narrative.

However, don't let this rather specific problem sway you from playing an immensely satisfying game. The amount of choice it affords you is better than other games that force the player into trial-and-error situations until he or she discovers the developer's intent. Here, every way you get there is the right way, and every action you perform is rewarding somehow. There's nothing like playing a game that is adept at both conflict and stealth and keeping them fun.

Go for the beautiful kill (or don't)!

Trolling Needs to Stop

A Big and Unfocused TL;DR about Hurricane Sandy and Loss

On Monday, around 7 PM, the power to my apartment went out entirely. I had just finished Dishonored (review coming) earlier that day and was just perusing around the internet. This power outage, sadly, was no coincidence. It was the result of the infamous Hurricane Sandy, which tore its way through the northeast. Notably, it left millions of homes and businesses in my home state, New Jersey, without power. Worse, it devastated the Jersey shore, destroying homes, tearing up boardwalks, and leaving entire towns covered in water and sand. The photos are heartbreaking, and though I am an indoors kind of guy, I feel severely dismayed about what has passed through my state.

As of 11:50 AM yesterday, power returned to my apartment following a 15-minute fake out the previous day. Since then, I have been able to enjoy heat, hot water, and internet unfettered. I am lucky, however you wish to interpret the word. Many people in New Jersey and New York City are still without power, and many are still evacuated from their homes, living in hotels or with family if they managed to escape the hurricane in the first place. Although my home has been returned to normalcy, the fact is that the area around me still has not. Supermarket stock is being wiped out as soon as it is put on the shelves because of people's empty refrigerators at home. Gas stations that manage to get power have lines going down highways within five minutes of reopening, and many are reporting that they have run out of gas due to their supply being overtaxed. For lack of a better word, it is chaos out there.

By now, you are probably wondering why I am talking about this on my video game blog. Aside from a single game reference, this largely seems irrelevant. Here's the truth, and it is a truth I shared with a lot of gamers out there. It was not long before I missed my video games in a bad way. During the week, I work full time, and I miss playing. Work also requires me to travel, which means even less gaming. But the fact that it's there when I get home along with my partner and two cats is comforting. Even when I'm home doing something else, I know I can power on my PC or PS3 and escape into the fantasy world some video game developer has envisioned. Whatever psychological reading one can make from it, I do use video games and their environments as an escape from the day-to-day grind. For nearly three full days, I had no escape. I lived minute to minute completely confronted with darkness, cold, and boredom.

This isn't about me, though. I feel so close to my video game hobby that the thought there are others out there presently deprived of their passion upsets me. Video games can be seen as juvenile by the ignorant public, but they mean a lot to a lot of people. Also, if you're purely a console or computer player like I am, it's not as portable a hobby. You can't leave your home with a game in hand and expect that, like a DVD, your family member or hotel has something to play it. For those who have lost their homes entirely, they have also lost hundreds to thousands of dollars worth of their prime source of joy. And along with books or DVDs, when it comes to rebuilding, these objects - these escapes - will not be the first items they purchase to return to normalcy. Seeking warmth and food is the primary objective for a lot of families right now, and no amount of I Am Alive or Red Dead Redemption playing has prepared any one of us to deal with constantly trying to survive. The comfort of video games, too, is that we are not personally dealing with the protagonists' problems.

Maybe this is a surprise, but this isn't about those people either. The fact is that daily, gamers around the world act privileged to a disturbing degree, and it's because they don't deal with real loss. The internet has become a hot bed of disturbing trends in behavior mostly enabled by the anonymity it provides. When a game reviewer gives a big-budget game an 8 out of 10, there are those who feel entitled to attack that reviewer personally, threatening his life and his family. Two points higher, and people go on long diatribes about how the reviewer was bought and exerting effort to discredit him, knowing nothing about the actual truth or his personal financial situation, which I'm pretty sure is only slightly above that of a retail worker's. If a woman wants to engage the gaming world in an open discussion about the disservice video games do to women, it is unnervingly OK to unload threats of rape and violence that would make most prison inmates blush. Lastly, when a trusted developer releases a subpar (not necessarily awful) game, cries of execution and public shaming begin to surface.

You know, it's fine to complain. Don't let anyone tell you that you don't have a right to complain. It is impossible to spend every minute of every day deciding whether the problem you're experiencing right now is as big as a starving child in Africa or a cancer patient in Haiti. When your game freezes or your hero unheroically falls through the floor he was standing on, you have every right to feel bothered. It is by a reasonable set of standards that developers can create gaming experiences which successfully act as escapes for us, the gamers. However, complaining and wishing loss on anyone for any reason are two seriously different actions. Do not lose sight of the fact that you are physically able to complain. You have a body that functions as you desire it to do so, not strapped to a wheelchair and blinking to communicate. Don't forget that whatever goes wrong in the game, you can reset and keep playing because you have a home, electricity, and a system to play it on. There are others who wish that your problems were the only ones they had to worry about, but more importantly, they wouldn't wish their experience on someone. Someone whose spouse and son drowned in a flooding basement during a hurricane would not threaten pain or loss of life to someone else who wants to talk about redefining gender expectations.

Here is the TL;DR for those of you who just want the point:
Keep complaining, and try offering constructive criticism to make gaming continuously better. But, until a game developer, publisher, journalist, or even player causes you or your family significant loss of wealth (bankruptcy), shelter (home destroyed by tide), or livelihood (more games with female or gay protagonists do not threaten this category), and sometimes even then, you have no right to threaten that person or company violently or sadistically. That is called harassment, and it is destructive and sickening. Moreover, it does not serve the gaming world, including yourself. Things will not get better because of your threats and insults.

I don't have a huge readership here, and maybe I never will, but if this post nets me a label as a "White Knight Fag" or some such, then I will embrace it. There is a whole army of White Knight Fags ready to clean up this goddamn kingdom.

Never catching up with the present

Welcome to my gaming blog, From the Backlog. As the title should suggest, the video games I'll be focusing on are typically older, some of them by a few months and others by years. A while ago, I committed to playing only one major game at a time, which means awesome games come out, but I ignore them until I am finished with what I'm doing. (If someone wants to send me a review copy of a new game, I'm all ears.) Some people may be better adept to playing a few games at once, but I know that if I truly want to finish a game, I have to focus on it solely. Another reason I am behind the times is because I bought a Playstation 3 a few years after it came out, which means there were all kinds of games for me to play excluding new releases. Unless I quit my full-time job, I have games and will have games to play continuously for years. I also try to be frugal, so if I am only sort of interested in a new game, I will typically wait until it goes on sale for a price that meets my interest. (I will confess, I am a sucker for Steam sales.)

Beyond: Two Souls - One of those games I wouldn't mind receiving a review copy for.

Moving on, I'd like to note the kind of posts you should be expecting. Given that I will be playing games behind the times, I am not sure how relevant reviews will be by the time they go up. Instead, I'd like to offer up something possible more engaging: episodic blogging about my games, a subject discussed in this blog, which goes into why it is harder to review games in the same way one reviews movies. I often have a lot of insights into the games I'm playing, but I am not continuously taking notes. It would actually be easier for me to talk about the last couple hours of gaming as if I'm talking about my day. However, depending on how short a game is, I may still post reviews or post-mortems at the very least.

There are some games, which get me hot enough to buy them new and play them right when they come out. This year, I picked up The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings: Enhanced Edition, which was just amazing. Seriously, it is one of the best RPGs I've ever played, and compared to a lot of games you see in this HD era, the absolutely gorgeous graphics were the icing on the gameplay cake. More recently relevant, I played Quantum Conundrum, developed by Kim Swift, who developed Narbacular Drop, which laid the groundwork for the amazing Portal. The game was certainly entertaining, though it invites comparisons to Portal that end up becoming unfair; it's possible the game was marred by being shoehorned into a smaller digital download production, but I still would not play down its entertainment value. Games still to come that I am looking forward to playing upon release are Borderlands 2, Dishonored, Assassin's Creed III, Bioshock Infinite, and many others.

Seriously, The Witcher 2 is gorgeous.

Aside from just talking about games I am or will be playing, I'd love to blog about my opinions about the video game industry and journalism. I am also planning some dissections of video games themselves, looking into the mechanics to make the industry successful and how they hit our id. (Not to be confused with id Software.) Whether they will interest this blog's likely tens of readers is yet to be seen, but I hope my rambling hits home with some of you. Back to games for the moment, you will most likely see me talking about RPGs and adventure games. I lean on those genres the most, though the original Bioshock showed me that I can attempt first-person shooters with my PC on super easy mode. My only gaming consoles are a PS3 and a PC. I have nothing against the 360; I just didn't choose one in the store. (If you'd like to buy me one, I'll play on it!) In the past, I've owned a PS2, Gamecube, Saturn, Genesis, and Gameboy.

Hopefully, they didn't just up the ante in the graphics department.

So thank you for taking the time to read this long-winded introduction. I do hope you return as I will try to post often or die trying. In the meantime, you can hit me up on the Twitter: @gilmeansjoy.

Beyond: Two Souls screenshot taken without permission from GameInformer.com.
The Witcher 2 screenshot taken myself via Steam.
Borderlands 2 screenshot taken without permission from the official website linked above.