Sun Chips Marketing Fail

What the fuck idea are they going for? Maybe I am the one that missed the boat but does anyone actually take bag decomposition into consideration when buying chips? When buying any food product? What is the matter? Advertising a superior or unique flavor no longer sells the chips? Advertising the extra loud crunch no longer works? Well... Maybe it's about time this product HIT THE BRICKS.

What kind of a person throws the bag on the ground anyway? Not the kind of people who care about how fast a plastic bag decomposes. Those people would never throw a bag on the ground. Those "super green people" are probably too busy being vegan to even eat chips. It must be for the degenerate kids who throw fast food bags out of the window of their cars while flirting with disaster speeding are going to start buying sunchips now. After all at least now they can have all the fun of littering with none of the negative consequences.

Work (June 9, 2010)

bicycle chained
dog chained to bicycle
doesn't mind the rain

rainy evening
content to stay indoors
milk and honey tea

milk and honey tea
I so enjoy the flavor
but often forget

water pot boiling
splash—frozen tortellini
boiling no longer

oil pains the ocean
hotel tycoons lose tourists
I cry for the birds

Video Game Piracy, How Bad?

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy

Interesting analysis from a game developer.

Honey Tea (May 6, 2010)

chilly drizzle
I drink my tea with honey
—wishing a downpour

Happy Birthday (May 4, 2010)

the same cup of tea
ever-changing backdrop
dandelion seeds

Dishes (March 30, 2010)

ceramic plate
bathing in dressing
lone onion curl

Sunset (March 24, 2010)

beautiful day—
video games call to me
television's glow


bowl of mixed candy
all day long I stare at it
just to consider


through the window
on the painting
sunset


glimmer of cars
strip mall parking lot
lessens

Wasted Potential: Plants vs Zombies

Plants vs Zombies is pretty much a sensation. It is out on all platforms I can think of (PC, Mac, iPhone, PSN, xbox360, probably WiiWare) and it's doing very well on all of them. I am not sure why, I mean it's a mediocre tower defense game, although I suppose they are all mediocre.

Definition of Tower Defense via Wikipedia:
Tower defense or TD is a subgenre of real-time strategy computer games. The goal is to try to stop enemies from crossing the map by building towers which shoot at them as they pass. Enemies and towers usually have varied abilities and costs. When an enemy is defeated, the player earns money or points, which are used to buy or upgrade towers.

What makes this game different from other tower defense games? Well it has a somewhat unique resource gathering system. In most TD games you get money from killing enemies, and use that money to build more towers. In PvZ you get "sunshine" by planting sunflowers. They slowly dance, and spit out sunshine balls which you click on to pick up. This is interesting because you are in full control of how many sunflowers to build, and you must build them for "money." Each time you are going to spend sunshine (I will be using sunshine in place of money from now on) you need to decide if you are making defender plants, or sunflowers for more sunshine. I am a fan of making choices and resource tension so I think this is a great system. Also you have limited space and sunflowers take up that space. Other than that it's probably the cute graphics and humorous themes that make this game so popular.

I think the game is great. I had lots of fun playing it. I didn't beat it however. Anytime I don't beat a game, it means that game failed to hold my interest in some way. I know exactly where it went from in this game. The pacing. Each (standard) level starts with you having 0 plants, and 50 sunshine. A sunflowers costs 50 sunshine. So the first flower you plant absolutely MUST BE a sunflower because if you plant anything else you will have 0 sunshine and no income. Okay so I build the sunflower, now I have 0 sunshine and I sit there and watch it dance. I don't know how long it has to dance, I never timed it, it just smiles and wiggles. FINALLY it spits out 1 sunshine, I click on it, +25 sunshine, that isn't enough to buy anything. More waiting. More waiting. More waiting. Flash forward to when I have 5 or 6 sunflowers all giving me 100+ sunshine on a regular basis and finally the game actually begins. This is how every level starts. Maybe 1 or 2 zombies will stumble along before you have your sunshine factory up, and you just plant 1 random defender to kill them.

This is bad design. The first 2 or 3 minutes of every level plays out almost exactly the same! I was on something like level 4-3 when I just couldn't take it anymore. There are so many ways to fix this problem. I can think of three right off the top of my head!

1. Player starts with 250 sunshine, and 4 zombies attack right away.
This would be an improvement because you would be able to make valuable choices right away. You could spend all the sunshine on 5 sunflowers but that would leave you defenseless. You would need to strike a balance of constant income and steady defense right away. It would be tense and exciting. You would have time to plan everything out. It would also give you the option of buying a fancy super plant early.

2. Player starts with 5 sunflowers planted in random spots on the map to kick start the generating.
This is a cool idea because sometimes the sunflowers will be placed in bad spots that are hard to defend, or are to far out in front. They would all work for a short time, but soon the zombies would start eating them unless you put defenses on each one. This would be a fun strategy element because you would need to choose which sunflowers to defend and which to let go.

3. Sunflowers make larger sunshine balls, or generate them more often.
This would simply accelerate the slow pace of the game, although adding little strategy.

I am sure there are more I could come up with if someone wanted to pay me, or seriously ask me to think about it. But this is simple stuff. How did nobody notice that around level 30, planting your first 3 sunflowers is a real drag? This could have been one of my favorite tower defense games. But instead it's just a great example of wasted potential.

Self-Plagiarism

I remember an event in my young life, in middle school, we had to make some kind of art project relating to the Oregon trail. Well back in elementary school for an art project the whole class made a little rocking chair made out of clothes pins. It was perfect I thought. A perfect hand made miniature rocking chair, the kind an old-time carpenter would make for the setters of the time. So I handed that in and got an A. The teacher thought I did a great job, until some pompous cunt decided to tattle on me and tell the teacher that I made that in an art class two or three years ago. The teacher confronted me about it, and I didn't lie, I said yes I made it some years ago. However I was never graded on it, and after all I DID make it. Although I vaguely understood that I had broken a rule and did feel somewhat guilty about it, I had some doubt and some questions. Was this really wrong?

I don't know why I have been thinking about it today, but I keep adjusting the scenario a little bit to see exactly where it becomes "wrong" to hand in your own work. Here are some scenarios.

Scenario 1: I made the chair in art class three years ago, took it home, and turned it in as an art project at a later time. (What actually happened.) This is against the rules, and can be considered academic dishonesty. Pretty serious crime.

Scenario 2: I made the chair in art class three years ago. I lost it, but remembered how to make it. I remade the same chair for the Oregon Trail project. Now this is interesting. As a matter of fact I could have simply lied and adopted this story and no one would know any better. I made the chair, absorbed the skills, and remade the same chair but for a new project. I am not sure what would have happened if I took this stance but thinking about it, it seems totally legitimate. The idea remains the same, but the labor was put in just like everyone else.

Scenario 3: I read how to make the chair in some book, and simply made the chair. Obviously this is fine, and this is what the teacher would like me to do.

It seems like so much grey area. What is it exactly that we are being graded on in this case? The creative process? The time, labor and attention to detail? I think those who paradigm should be changed and students should be allowed to plagiarize their own work anytime they want. I think it will create work of a much higher quality and encourage students to keep detailed bibliographies and source lists of all the work they have ever done because it WILL come in handy. Imagine how nice it would be if you put 15 hours into a paper, but you knew it would probably work for you at least two or three times? Not to mention these papers would go through years of refining, which would bring the quality up.

I don't know I haven't made up my mind about this. Just some food for thought.

Board Games as Art

Link to story via Escapist Magazine

A game designer creates a board game with a provocative twist ending. M. Knight Shamalllmallayan eat your fucking heart out.

Rain (March 10, 2010)

scavenger piglets
abusing their privilege
—free parmesan cheese


familiar tea
television entertains
a rainy Wednesday

Nice Shirt!

This is a bomb shirt.

Mass Effect 2 Trailer

Youtube link

Not that ME2 needs more hype, but this trailer makes me wish this game had a CG series.

Why not, they did it with Dante's Inferno.

Mass Effect 2 Haiku Part 2 (February 23, 2010)

Grunt
Tank-bred for killing
blood-splattered face locked smiling
—only a baby


Zaeed Massani
Unlikely hero
pre-occupied with vengeance
—inferno grenade


Tali'Zorah vas Neema
Trapped in her space suite
overflowing with passion
She pines for Shepard


The Vanguard
all sides surrounded
both squad-mate casualties
nothing charge can't fix

Kasperov on Chess and Computers

The Chess Master and the Computer

Pretty long, but an interesting read. If you are a dork.

Dante's Inferno First Impressions

I am on the boss of Lust right now. This is the second circle out of nine. I am assuming they get longer as you go, so I am going to toss a number out and say I am 15% done with the game. So far I am pretty let down. The circle of Lust was probably the biggest let down since Fable II. I spent the entire circle in an elevator going up being attacked by monsters. I didn't see any people suffering, or any vast expanses of storms. Just an elevator taking me to the top of some tower where I am having a boss fight.

It has already become clear to me that Visceral games spent more time and money on hype and advertising than the actual game. I suppose that's a good strategy if you only want people to impulse one of your games and then never trust you again. Among the HUGE amount of press releases and information about this game out on the internet was a set of "Dev Diaries" where the developers revealed some cool stuff about the game, and each diary was themed to the nine circles. The gameplay/cutscene footage they showed for the circle of Lust wasn't in the actual circle of lust. They either cut it, or made JUST FOR THE FUCKING PRESS. It's really sad.

Anyway on to more specific complaints. There are (so far) three types of enemies: fodder, demons, and mini-bosses. Fodder are like zombies, and demon babies stuff like that. This is the set of enemies I have a big problem with. This game incorporates this mechanic where once enemies are wounded enough, you can press right trigger next to them and enter a sort of cut scene of you killing them. You don't have to do it this way, you can just keep beating them up until they explode, but punishing/absolving them gets you bonuses so you want to do it as often as possible. Now with fodder enemies you don't need to weaken them to enter this animation. You can simply press right trigger next to them and you immediately stab them with your scythe and are given the choice to punish or absolve (X or B). Once you do this, they die immediately. While you are in the animation you are invulnerable to attacks. So what happens if I get attacked by 40 fodder enemies? I press RT+X 40 times. What happens if I get attacked by 120 fodder enemies? I press RT+X 120 times. Are they for real? Did no one catch on to this? They should at least make me hit them a little first? So 80% of the enemies I have "fought" so far die in one hit, and during that one hit I am invulnerable. Boring. It's sweet that I have all these badass scythe combos though. Thanks.

I'll give the game credit where it's due though. The combat is amazing. The moves look beautiful and the combat is more fluid than any game I have played of this genre. Even if you are in the middle of a combo, you can press any other button to cancel out and evade, or block. You never get "stuck" doing some huge move. The boss fights are epic and cool. I look forward to more combat as I level up.

Here is my big concern. I played the demo of this game before it came out and I enjoyed the combat immensely. But once I got done with the demo all I could say was "What a terrible demo! It didn't even show my anything epic, or anything vast and infinite." Usually games with badass elements give you a taste of one of them up front. I am 15% done with the game and I haven't had a taste yet. I am afraid they have nothing to show me.

Ammunition and Innovation

Ever since I read the ammo article from Gausswerks (Out of Ammo) I have been giving ammo a lot of thought. Another thing that made me think deeper is how BioWare abandoned it's "infinite ammo" system from Mass Effect 1 in Mass Effect 2.

Quick recap: In ME1 your guns would overheat if you fired them to fast. They work similar to the plasma weapons from the Halo series. So you either had to hold off the trigger and let them cool, or let them vent for a few seconds after overheating. In ME2 they abandoned the system (not in concept though) and use standard ammo clips which run out. Why did they make this choice? I think it's because they realized that ammo adds tension, and tension is good.

What is ammunition in games? It's a way to kill bad guys of course, but in the end it's what keeps you alive. Ammunition is the ultimate realization of "a good offense is the best defense." Imagine you are playing a FPS and you run out of ammo and find yourself in a firefight. You are probably dead. In a case like this, ammo almost acts as a separate life bar. Most well designed games have none-ammo solutions like a knife or a chainsaw but we all know that if you have 0 clips and are forced to use the knife you are pretty much toast especially if you are a hardass playing on the hardest difficulty level. The risk of running out of ammo, which you need to defend your precious life bar, creates tension in your gaming experience. This tension is good. It makes the game more enjoyable because it demands that you as a player make more decisions. You need to choose which gun you use, which ammo to save and when it's safe enough to use the knife. It also pulls you to explore the levels in hopes of finding a hidden ammo stash. I love ammo, and I love being almost out of it.

On interesting innovation in regards to ammo is limiting how many weapons the player can carry. I feel Halo is a pioneer with this concept. It was the first game I ever played that used this limit, Gears of War also adopted the system. It definitely adds more realism and decision making to games. In Doom III you get to keep every gun you find. It's funny to imagine the Doom guy carrying a pistol, machine gun, mini gun, rocket launcher, plasma rifle, BFG, and a chainsaw along with ammo clips for each one. Do you guys even have any idea how much a single rocket would weigh? Well in Halo every time you come across a weapon you need to decide if you want to give up one of your weapons to carry it. Each weapon has unique trade offs. Some are better for little guys, some better for big guys. Some have tons of ammo, others only have a little. The rocket launcher is the ideal example of trade-off. In Doom III once you get the Rocket Launcher you just have it. No matter what the situation you always have it, there is no tension there. In Halo you get a rocket launcher with six rockets and one other gun. The rocket launcher is a very polarized weapon, it is really good sometimes, and really useless other times compared to something like the battle rifle which is pretty good all of the time. Sometimes the rocket launcher will be dead weight and you will wish you didn't decide to lug it around, until the tank comes. But if you didn't take it you will have an easier time fighting all the other stuff until the tank comes. That tension is excellent.

Going more into depth about ammo, I want to talk about the reload. It's something I didn't think about until now. Not all games deal with reloading the same. Wolfenstien and Doom/Doom II back in the old PC days didn't even have a reload button. You had 145 rounds of chain gun ammo and they would magically fly out of your pockets into the barrel of the gun until you were out without a single reload animation. This was very simplistic, and it worked for the time but modern games have a little more realism.

Now you have to reload. Everyone who has played a shooter knows that reloading in the middle of a fight sucks. Deciding when to reload, looking for an opening to reload, and looking for cover to reload in all make the gaming experience more dynamic. It allows more choices for the player, and forces you to adapt to a wider variety of situations. This creates more fun.

One noteworthy game series I wanted to highlight is Bungie's pre-Halo Marathon series. An exceptional shooter with an excellent story and a unique reloading mechanic. In Marathon there is no reload command. All the guns work in clips, but you can't reload until you empty the entire clip. So if you have one bullet left in your eight bullet clip then you just need to shoot that bullet off and insert a new clip. This is much more realistic than how most shooters deal with ammo. They allow you to reload anytime you feel like it. You can hide around the corner, shoot a 3-round burst from your SMG and then while hiding take 3 bullets out of one of the clips you picked up, and insert them into the clip currently in your gun. Of course it's silly to reload partial clips with no consequences, which is why Marathon is so interesting. Playing Marathon presents a deal tension. The risk of running out of ammo is very real, but reloading in the middle of combat also puts you in serious risk. So what do you do when you have three shots left in your pistol, and 2 extra clips on your belt? You will stumble into a battle and be forced to reload after three shots. The only alternative is to just fire off the three shots and totally waste them just so you can be prepared with a new clip. You constantly faced this situation in this game with the pistol, the assault rifle and especially the grenade launcher. I think this element added a lot to the game and I wouldn't mind seeing similar reload mechanic explored in the future.

What am I getting at? Ammunition shouldn't be an afterthought. ME2 is catching a bunch of complaints for adding a "stupid ammo" system. These people are missing the point. ME1 had an ammo system which reduced tension, and decision making. Simply put, in ME1 you never ever ran out of sniper rifle rounds. You never needed to look for or buy more, and you never needed to conserve it or worry about running out. Boring. In ME2, you can carry limited rounds, and need to choose what you snipe. When you are a sniper and run out of sniper rounds, it's as if you are playing a totally different game.

Anyone who doesn't agree is stupid.

Mass Effect 2 Haiku (February 5, 2010)

Miranda Lawson
super genius
engineered perfection
please reveal your tits


Jacob Taylor
Soft-spoken fellow
fighting for the galaxy
—warrior poet


Mordin Solus
Courageous doctor
buried in his distant past
—an atrocity

Mass Effect 2, a Mass Rebuttal

I have been reading some stuff on various forums about ME2. The complaints especially. I don't agree with most of them so I decided to post a rebuttal to a few. There are some that are legit however.

"Ammo Clips Suck"

ME1 didn't have ammo. In ME1 your guns would fire until overheating, and then you could have to let them vent or cool for a period of time. During this period you couldn't fire that gun and had to hide behind cover or switch to a different gun. In reality I pretty much always let it vent and never switched guns. Or better yet, fire the gun carefully and never reach the point of overheating. What was the effect of this method? You always used the same gun, which ever is best. There is never a reason to change guns unless it's practical like going from sniper to a close range weapon. Boring. The bottom line is ammo is fun. Ammo adds a tension to your game. Not having infinite sniper or shotgun rounds can make you think differently about how to go about battles. In ME2 I often find myself out of sniper rounds and having to drastically change my plans. Ammo conservation also plays a role. Finishing wounded and fragile enemies with a worse weapon is something to consider and adds strategic depth. The addition of ammo in ME2 makes combat much more dynamic.
"Planet Scanning Sucks"

I didn't hate scanning as much as other people did. I never did it all that much, but I agree it is boring. It is much faster than ME1's Mako planet explorations. But it isn't something you need to do. It's extra, it's grinding. The only reason you need to scan planets is to get minerals to upgrade your armor and weapons. This isn't something that needs to be done. On my first playthrough I probably only scanned for a total of 2 hours to get every upgrade in the game. I did this blind without any guides as well. You can easily find a guide online and only scan the best planets for all your mineral needs and spend half the time doing it. But there are two factors that you should consider when complaining about this. The first is, in ME2 there is absolutely no need to grind. You never need to "level up" as you are never "underleveled" part of the brilliant enemy scaling system Boiware uses. The second thing is, on your second play-through you get a big bonus in starting resources and you likely hardly have to do any scanning at all. It's a minor inconvenience yes, but not everything in an RPG can be super mega fun or it won't ever feel like you earned anything.

"lvl 30 cap"

Honestly I didn't even know there was a cap, I never reached it in my first playthrough. But there are hardly enough skills to even use that many points? This isn't something I see as a problem but at the same time I am not sure why it's there. I don't see any problem with allowing you to gain infinite experience and just keep getting stronger and scale all enemies accordingly. I am assuming there is some reason for the cap, but I don't know what it is.

"Unappealing characters"

This one is simply false. The characters in this game are all interesting, well developed and wonderfully voice acted. Some of them even develop and change as the story goes on. If you just don't like the characters, thats fine. But this is hardly something to complain about. The game has 12 characters how can you find them all unappealing? They are all so different.

"Less choices for weapons and armor"

Another complaint that is totally wrong. ME1's weapon/armor system was HORRIBLE. It was my biggest complaint. ME1 has four weapons: pistol, assault rifle, shotgun and sniper. Then each other those had thirty iterations where each was better than the last. So lets just call them upgrades. Four weapons with 30 upgrades each. ME1 did have different attachments you could use which was cool and I am sorry to see that go, but that was replaced by ammo skills in ME2 and thats fine. Armor was the same: heavy armor, light armor and medium armor. You ran around with armor VIII and sniper rifle VIII hoping to find armor IX and sniper IX. When you finally found them they acted exactly the same as the previous ones but did slightly more damage. So did ME1 have 200 guns? No, it had 4. ME2 however has more guns, it has different types of assault rifles and sniper rifles and they actually act differently. You can actually make a choice on which is better rather than always just picking the best. There is also a large number of heavy weapons which all act totally differently. There could be more unique guns, but I am sure they will be DLCed in.

"No XP for Killing Enemies/Hacking"

This complaint is silly for two reasons. The first is, ME2 uses scaling enemy difficulty so you never need to grind. There is no need to just kill re-spawning enemies to gain XP. I am not sure if enemies even respawn anywhere in ME1 or ME2. The only enemy I remember respawning was the thresher maw on random planets. But when you complete a quest in ME1 you killed a finite number of bad guys, and got experience for them. They didn't respawn. In ME2 you killed a finite number of enemies but get the total XP at the end of the mission. It's really not a big deal.

"Lack of ME1 to ME2 Carryover"

This is a legitimate complaint however it's clear why they diminished this (although they did overhype it). If you need to have played ME1 in order to understand ME2 then you are asking consumers to invest 120$ and well over 60 hours into the series. This would be a big hurdle in getting people to buy this game. ME3 will face even more of a problem with many people feeling like they can't buy it if they didn't play 1 and 2.

"Loading Time"

These complaints are silly. No one enjoys loading times and everyone wants the minimized. It's not like Bioware "put" them in and made them extra long.

Out of Ammo

Found a cool article about the abundance of ammunition in video games. The comments are pretty interesting too.

Out of Ammo

Mass Effect 2, Impressions

I just finished Mass Effect 2 and I am ready to give my first impressions. I will just come out and say that this is probably the best RPG I have ever played. It's better than FF3, better than Chrono Trigger and better than Secret of Mana. There I said it. There are two main reasons this is so.

RPGs usually have two elements, fighting and plot/story development. Usually the plot/story development is the boring part. You need to read tons of boxes of static white text. Sometimes they try to spice it up and of course it helps if the story is compelling. Mass Effect's plot/story modes are the best part of the game. It is fun to have conversations and listen to the story. Mass Effect is fully voice acted, and when you are selecting which dialogue option you are going to choose it's only a 2-word summery. Basically you are choosing the attitude with which you will speak, and what Shepard actually says is a surprise to even you. So on your first play-through, you wont even have the opportunity to read what the other options are. This encourages a second play-through and still keeps it fresh.

The second reason, which is a genius BioWare invention (I think) is enemy scaling. Ever since I played Knights of the Old Republic I have loved this concept. It works like this, the enemies are scaled to your level to matter where you are. So you never have to grind to level up, and you never out-level the enemies to the point were the game is a cake walk. This allows the game to be really open-ended and allow you to complete the various story missions and side quests in any order you see fit and always have a healthy challenge. The is so good for reply value. Because enemies level up similar to you, higher level enemies have more skills and better weapons then low level enemies. So if you do quests in different order on your second play, you will encounter totally different situations. Parts of the game that you felt were easy will instead be hard because all of the sudden now the Krogans have incendiary ammo, or the Asari now have Shockwave.

Good and Evil in Video Games

If you fallow the RPG world then you are probably as sick as me of the whole "good or evil" paradigm. I haven't played every game but I have played some major ones. Primarily the BioWare RPGs (Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Mass Effect) and Fable. KOTOR was the first game I ever played (or so I thought) that allowed players to follow the light side or dark side of the force. I remember thinking it was kind of neat but my first character was light side for tradition's sake. Then I tried the dark side, I found it to be terribly boring and predictable. The most shocking was how little it effected the story. Since then I have payed close attention to games that implement this and I have hated it every time. It never makes any sense, and it does not make for interesting gameplay.

I remember reading an AD&D Dungeon Master's Manuel once that although it's possible to run an "evil" campaign, it is not recommended. The D&D fantasy world is meant to have a few powerful heros fighting hordes of evil monsters. These are pretty much the people who invented role playing. It just feels more natural to play a hero than a villain. The story is more believable and the writing can be more interesting. You want specifics? Very well, spoiler alert.

Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) as I said was the first game that let you be evil (or so I thought!) in this game you play a regular shmoe who finds himself in the middle of a Jedi struggle. You are rescued from disaster by Carth, a military pilot. You and Carth need to then rescue goody-two-shoes jedi Bastilla. Then the three of you escape the planet and you discover that you have the force. So the goody-two-shoes jedi train you to be a jedi. This game contains a light/dark side meter in the character screen. All the characters have one. When you do evil things like threaten people with bodily harm to get your way, or use the force to force people to do what you want you get dark points. Also some quests have two solutions the typical solution is logical and good, while the other is usually very contrived and maniacally evil. Here is an example that really stand out with me. In KOTOR there is a woman who lost her robot (C3-PO type) and she asks you to get him back. You find the robot in a field being attacked by some beasts. You can kill the beasts and engage the robot in conversation. There is a little more to it but basically your choices are "Come with me back to your owner" or "Kill him." Why would you kill this robot? What purpose does it serve to your agenda to kill him? Just blatant murder? Well i'll tell you why, if you murder him for no reason you get evil points, if you don't murder him, you get good points. See in this game, and all the BioWare games you are rewarded with evil points for committing evil deeds. The more evil you get the more evil quests are unlocked and the more powerful your powers become. But the evil acts are so poorly written it really dumbs down the plot of the game. Also when I first started going down the evil path I was excited thinking maybe I can join forces with the end boss, and have the ending play out totally differently. Nope the ending is the same. The only difference is, instead of killing Malak to stop him from destroying the universe, you kill Malak in order to take over his roll of destroying the universe. The game plays out exactly the same except for the final cutscene. Yawn. STILL! this isn't my biggest problem. My biggest problem is this, it doesn't make sense to the story of the game for the player to be evil. Your closest allies, Carth and Bastilla would NEVER allow you to commit cold-blooded murder. It would be like Han Solo and Obi Wan standing by while Luke Skywalker just cut down a bartender because he asked to see his ID. They would fight your character to the death instead of allowing him to threaten and murder people because you can look at both of their "Light/Dark" indicators and see they are both 95%+ light side! In the LEAST they would refuse to travel with you, and go thier separate ways. Which actually would make the game really cool. If you commit enough evil your allies turn on you and you have to fight them but no. They just chime in with "Using your force powers like that is on the path of the dark side..." Gee thanks Bastilla. The other funny thing about this game is, before you even get any jedi training, it's possible to build up a pretty solid evil reputation, so by the time you meet the jedi council you are pretty obviously evil, red-aura and all. The five jedi elders will still give you jedi training and give you a light saber and ask you if you "Understand the jedi code" to which you can reply "yes." "no." and my personal favorite "(Lie) Yes."

Jade Empire shares the exact same problems with truly good allies that stand by and do nothing as you insult and torment defenseless villagers. It also included contrived over the top evil quest solutions.

Mass Effect does a much better job. None of the "Renegade" quest solutions seem contrived or overly evil, and all of them can be justified with logic. I applaud Bioware for getting it right in this game. In Mass Effect you take the path of a Paragon or a Renegade, which pretty much means Captian Jean-Luc Picard or Worf style. It's like this, lets say there is a terrorist who has the remote control to a bomb in his pocket, and the bomb will kill 1,000 people. He is holding a woman hostage saying let me out of here or I will kill her. Worf would just shoot a bullet through the woman into the terrorist because saving 1000 people is more important than one woman. Jean-Luc would probably let him go and secure the woman's safety first and then find another way to stop the terrorist. This is a wonderful way to treat a game because you are never doing anything blatantly evil and out of character. You decide your preferred way of dealing with a truly interesting situation. However this game too pressures you to maximize your paragon or renegade points, and seems to dissuade you from playing a more balanced character. An unfortunate choice. It uses these paragon and renegade points to adjust your alignment and then rewards you with additional dialogue choices if you have acquired enough of these blue or red points. But only a finite number of these point are available total, so it's not possible to be granted all of the options without committing to one side. Also the paragon and renegade specific dialogue options are color coded blue and red (the colors themselves are tacky) and it makes the whole idea feel overly gimmicky.

The other game that really hyped it's morality choices is Fable. In Fable you go to a place called the Hero's Guild to train and gain missions. I guess villagers go to the Hero's guild and place requests for heros to help them stop giant beetles, or evil wizards. The weird thing is, bandit groups and criminals ALSO post requests at the HERO'S GUILD! Asking for help raiding towns and murdering villagers. Yeah that makes sense. All of the hero's guild emplyees, and the GuildMaster himself are clearly good guys, but they allow bandits to put in a mission called "Massacre Oakvale" how fucking stupid. The best way to become evil in Fable is just to go around murdering everyone you see for no reason. Being evil in Fable gets you horns and a demonic looking face and people run from you. Once again it has no effect on the plot of the game. The actual evil quests are totally shallow, and not all quests have evil solutions. Basically the evil path of Fable feels rushed, almost like a throw in. They should have just left it out. One of the problems in this game that makes it so shallow is the guards in the town can't stop you. You can walk into a town, murder all the guards and then have your way with the entire town. It doesn't even matter what level you are, the guards can't stop you. BioWare games do a better job with this, in those games you simply can't attack anyone in a town unless it's an activated event. So you can't just kill merchants. Fable doesn't have this balance and you can just go killing. I am fine with killing, look at my happy face when I am going on a spree in Grand Theft Auto. But in GTA if you get 5 stars on you, you are a goner. The cops will own you. In Fable you own the cops. Where is the fun?

It wasn't until I starting thinking about this stuff in depth that I realized there was one game that did it right. Fallout. I have never played Fallout 3, only the old school 1 and 2 so will be refering to those. There are several reasons why doing evil deeds worked in Fallout in a way it doesn't work in other games. I think the world itself is the best reason. It's a world that is mostly devoid of laws and doesn't have a strong sense of morality. The Starwars universe doesn't allow for any ambiguity, there are Jedi and Sith it's clear cut. Even Mass Effect has the galactic council and evil terrorists. In Fallout there is only your people, and everyone else. It's true that Vault 13 is an organized and civil community, but people on the outside world are savages and mutants. It's easy to consider yourself and your quest to save your vault more important then the petty laws of the outsiders. In Fallout you can deal with situations any way you see fit, for any reason you want, and no one is going to judge you. You can bust into the crime bosses building, kill all the guards and kill him just because you don't agree with what he is doing. You can even kill all the gamblers playing in his casino because you don't agree with that. You can join the crime boss and help him do some minor jobs, or you can help eliminate the law enforcement just because crime pays better and you need money. You can even work for the crime boss to gain his confidence and bring some hard evidence to the law enforcer to bring the boss down the legitimate way. The best part is, it doesn't matter! Nobody cares except for the immediate characters involved. You don't get a good/evil reward, just a feeling of accomplishment in whatever way you decided to do it.

Closed on Tuesdays (January 26, 2009)

Indian zombies
donning traditional garb
kiss surabhi's lock

groups of Indians
travel from their cars and back
frostbit parking lot

wasted lunch break
quest for Indian buffet
locked door doesn't care