Playing Inside A Comic Book

XIII is a unique game, effectively it is the father of both Far Cry and Borderlands. And it can now be enjoyed worry-free.

The good plot of Far Cry bears eerie similarities to XIII, not in the tropical island setting but in that the hero wakes up with amnesia on a beach (with the roman numeral XIII tattooed on his arm) and than has to feel his through an obsessed assassin and a pack of ruthless mercenaries. The race is on not only to stay one step ahead of his conspiring enemies but also to discover his true identity.

This was the first major PC game to sport the daring comic-book look of cel-shading. Unlike Borderlands, which I found to have done so only halfheartedly, XIII pulls it off with gusto as the comic-book graphics are accompanied with comic-book exclamations and comic-book picture-in-picture format, offering a unique experience. It is like playing inside a comic-book - and it is great fun!

Now, the game is not without its flaws. It has a checkpoint saving system that makes it much harder that it should and the guns (probably to stay faithful to the original comic-book the game was based on) look rather underwhelming. However, although not perfect, this a game that you will enjoy playing and you will remember it for years.

When XIII came out in 2003 I went nowhere near it as it harbored an overzealous DRM scheme (an early version of Tages) that blocked disk drives from working properly and refused to launch the game if you had any form of "suspicious" software installed (let's just say that Ubisoft considered NERO to be...pirateware!). Eight years (and a couple of class-action suits) later, one can enjoy the game DRM-free (just be careful which version you choose).

The Eastern Side Of The West

This is the one of the most original FirstPerson shooter console games I ever experienced. Red Steel 2 is a SteamPunk-Western/Anime and it has been perfectly designed to take advantage of the technological capabilities of the Wii!

SCARE YOUR ENEMIES BY THE WAY YOU CARRY YOURSELF

The controls are a breeze to pick up. You move with the nunchuck and you turn by pointing the Wii-Remote. You fire your gun with the B-button whereas you unsheathe your katana with the A-button and swing the Wii-Remote like a real sword. And the last point is what makes this game so much fun. You slash, stub or hack by simply doing the same movements with your right arm holding the Wii-Remote.

This is not a workout game but after about an hour of having fun slashing and stubbing you will feel your upper arms to burn.

As you progress, there are improvements for your weapons and powers to purchase as well as special moves to learn by the cheeky weaponsmith/sensei.

THE WEST NEVER LOOKED THIS COOL

High-end graphics have never been the Wii's strong suit. That is why the cel-shaded (comic book) graphical style (similar to XIII and Borderlands) fits the gameplay well. Backgrounds, enemies and fighting moves (especially finishing moves) look really cool and crisp and greatly help the player immerse in the Anime atmosphere

The game requires the MotionPlus! extension of the Wii-Remote (usually not included with the game but is now included in most Wii bundles). 

They are coming again - keep those katanas high and ready!

Deliciously Weird

Everyone has his or hers favorite TV shows, and  our preferences may shift with seasonal moods, age and personal experiences. However, Twin Peaks is television at its best! The frivolity of the 80's gave way to the seriousness of the 90's - all painted in 50's Americana nostalgia of innocence lost.

Atmospheric, mysterious, quirky, intriguing, intelligent, naive, bold and nostalgic for an American way of life gone - if it ever really existed - yet coveted in all our visions of Utopia. Then again, there is a serpent in every Eden. And David Lynch knows how to, masterfully, give us brief terrifying glimpses of it!

Words are just not capable to describe this prematurely terminated series! Every time I watch it I discover another moment, another gem I treasure. Casting three of the most beautiful women of the 90's did not hurt either. Too bad the network executives decided to, first, meddle with the plot and, when this backfired, then treat this masterpiece as filler material, moving it around to different weekdays and different time-slots. No wonder ratings floundered resulting in the series eventual cancellation.

True, the 25 years are not up yet. However, I think that real Agent Cooper has remained trapped in the Waiting Area long enough. Let's all petition David Lynch for a long-awaited movie or TV mini-series to tidy things up.

Own it and make weekends out of it. Once in a blue moon a certain magic manifests amongst us. One that never fades.

And there is always music in the air.

How do I know? 

A gentle giant told me.

The Return To The Age Of The Classics

First things first: in the past I have chastised EA a number of times for its release of cookie-cutter games, crippled with atrocious DRM schemes. So, in all fairness, I now have to say this: Dragon Age: Origins is a Gamer's Dream! It is an excellent game - and it comes free of any DRM madness (well, try to avoid Origin).

This is one of those games that are easy to control, a joy to roam through and fun to play at no end.

I am a huge cRPG fan and cannot remember such a great companion/squad cRPG ever since the Baldur's Gate Saga. And to tell you the truth, this is the game I was dreaming of being able to play one day while playing BG (yeah, by now we all know that NeverWinter Nights was too late in deliviering).

There are about a dozen gender/race/class/background choices and a great many combinations in forming your party. The armor and the weapons are exceptionally made and everything shows on your characters. And the graphics are truly beautiful! You have to see the rendering of flames to believe them.

Nevertheless, what really stands out is the gameplay. Every battle is a puzzle to be solved, pausing ever so often to reallocate enemies to the best suited party members (a feature I loved in BG!). Of course one can always turn off the autopause feature and let the AI take over the rest of your party and turn the game into an hack&slash action RPG (not exactly my cup of tea but, hey, it's still nice to know it's there).

Finally, this is a game made just like the classics in many ways, including duration. I am now playing the game for over 20 hours and I feel that I barely scraped the surface! Dragon Age: Origins one satisfying RPG!

My only gripe is this: I did not appreciate such short dialogue options. Most fit a single line and more often than not they consist of a couple of words. I like my RPGs to be wordy and challenging to my verbal imagination as well - and I want my characters to participate in the humor, not just provoke it or react to it. Remember the long dialogue options in BG? Well, expect to find Dragon Age: Origins much more laconic. I guess 10 years of fast-paced FPS and blitzkrieging RTS games do take their toll...

The blood sprays, the swords clang and the spells explode. The animations are beautifully made and add a lot to both enjoyment and immersion. There is a verse in Homer's Iliad I love: "the warrior fell and his armor echoed around him" - and I was reminded of it many a times throughout the game.

This game will stay with you. Do not miss on it.

Top-10 Cyberpunk Novels You Must Read Before The Corporate Dystopia Is Upon Us

Cyberpunk is the cross between the genres of Science Fiction and Hardboiled Noir. Since both of its parenting vectors have always been considered marginal to canonic literature, it enjoyed more freedom to point out societal shortcomings and attack instances of collective shortsightedness.  

It had been foreshadowed for some time (mainly by the giant of SciFi literature, Philip Dick) but did not find the confidence in its step until the mid 1980’s, after Bruce Bethke coined it as the title of a short story of his, published in 1983.

There is no set recipe for cyberpunk yet there seems to be a number of requirements to be met before a novel is to be considered to belong to the genre. The story has to be set in the not too distant future. This future world must be dystopic for the masses, while hedonistic for the ruling elite. Technology has advanced asymmetrically, its abilities far outweighing its safeguards, and the computer/brain barrier has been breached. Said technology has completely different uses in the street, where hacking is a required survival trait. Said ruling elite consists not of politicians but of interconnected corporations. The Tyrells, the IOIs, the Maas BioLabs, the Ono-Sendais. The zaibatsus and the keiretsus. More often than not, cyberpunk novels come with an underlying message or a warning. Envisioning dystopias approaching in the horizon often does.

Obviously, I could not include any pure Science Fiction or Space Opera novels (such as the Dune or the Void series). I only included the novels that have the street moves down pat. The ones that come fully equipped with the hard and the soft. The ones that bring you into the near future and, there, brick up the door back to reality for you. The ones that will cut through all the Black ICE holding each and every one of us into place.  Crack open the spine of any of these books and the sound they make is the sound of a world ending. Do so at your own risk.

_____________________________________________________________________________

10. PHILIP K. DICK: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is the novel that the movie Blade Runner is based upon. And by “based” I mean loosely. Do not expect to read the movie. Regardless the differences though, the basic concept remains intact: how fragile is humanity from loosing itself amongst technological simulacra. When these imitations approximate us in both form and function, what is the remainder of the human essence that will carry our uniqueness? And, at the end, does such uniqueness actually exist?

I felt I had to include this as I consider it the most clear cyberpunk precursor.

9. PIERRE OUELLETTE: The Deus Machine

Set only ten years into the future (The Deus Machine was written in 1995) this is a unique cyberpunk novel in the sense that it relies heavily on biotechnology and the consequences of its abuses. How well do we understand the power of life? How secure is our hold over it? And just how bad can things go when the greedy wizard’s apprentice is overwhelmed by the power he unleashed? Is our ever-scheming, striving for power and instant gratification, murderous species a biological oddity about to be evolutionary corrected?

The story is set in a crumbling society where middle-class has been replaced by interchangeable drones that barely scrape a living. The novel has its rough edges but it is also unforgettable.   

8. CORY DOCTOROW: For the Win

Virtual economies within vast in-game worlds and third-world gold-farmers scrapping a living in internet cafés. Economic and political oppression in the process of merging into the Beast envisioned by the cyberpunk tradition. The author is not light-handed when it comes to slipping in his political views (with which you will probably come to agree with at the end). More importantly though, For the Win is a book that will not only make you give pause the next time you engage in any Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming, but it will also make you reexamine your structure of our global investment-bank economy.   

Congratulations! You have just completed Level 8! But are you playing the game – or is the game playing you?

7. NEAL STEPHENSON: Snow Crash

The future is this: franchises. From the pizza-delivering Mafia to the city-states (“burbclaves”) America managed to fraction itself into, everything has been turned into incorporated franchises. Including drug running. So when a new drug, called Snow Crash, kills a friend of the protagonist (and only Neal Stephenson could name his main character …Hiro Protagonist and get away with it!) while logged into the Metaverse, he decides to take action.

Some readers are put off by the juxtaposition of the futuristic story and Sumerian mythology, however, for me the worlds contrast brilliantly against one another. Also, prepare to laugh quite often. Snow Crash is a funny book.   

6. PAOLO BAGICALUPI : The Windup Girl

The world is getting smaller. Not because of a cataclysmic cosmological event but because the shortage of fossil fuels made us revert in relying on animal labor. Collapse of the economies of entire continents, chronic malnourishment, religious cleansings and an endless string of resistant terminal infections have pushed humanity to the very edge of existence. And yet, human greed and blind ambition still offer the impetus for the endless power-games that care not how many lives get trampled under its threads.

An American investor/spy after Thailand's only remaining bio-treasure; a shrewd and ruthless refugee trying to rebuilt his empire lost to murderous fundamentalism; government factions locked in a power-struggle to the death; and a seductively-designed Japanese Windup Girl that will unwillingly serve as the catalyst for the brewing explosion. I do consider The Windup Girl to be a cyberpunk novel as it depicts the aftermath of our ongoing technoeconomical binging. 

5. JAMES S.A. COREY: The Expanse Series

Even if this may be one of the rare occasions, where transferring a book to the screen actually enhances its impact, The Expanse novels are still well worth your time. An expansive adventure that perfectly blends unbridled futurism and technological meta-humanity with basic vices and familiar motivations. Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (the collaborating authors behind the pseudonym James S.A. Corey) took cyberpunk and shot it to the reaches of our solar system - and beyond. While, at the same time, they managed to convey the smell of a well used spacesuit, the uncertainty of moving in freefall, the taste of cheap printed protein paste and the terminal terror of the vacuum.  

Bite down hard and let the juice carry you through the gs.

 

4. WILLIAM GIBSON: The Bridge Trilogy

The three books consisting William Gibson’s vision of a near future West Coast are: Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow’s Parties. The technological futurism of the 20th century is on the cusp of emergence (even if the flavor we are getting is much more bitter than expected) and the corporate powers are elbowing for position. America has been Balkanized into numerous fractions while life tries to paint over the cracked pavement a thin coating of the normalcy people grew up in. Meanwhile, in depressingly upbeat Japan, the first crude attempt is made to treat personality simulations as real persons.    

The Trilogy gets its name from the first book, in which people have turned the earthquake-condemned Golden Bay Bridge into a makeshift habitat for the homeless. It is always creepy to realize how good Gibson is in predicting nodal points in both technology and societal progression.

3. RICHARD MORGAN: The Takeshi Covacs Trilogy

Handle with care, for the testosterone levels of these novels needle into the red. The Trilogy (so far) consists of Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies - but it would be an omission not to mention Black Man (released as Thirteen in the US) as a very worthy prequel. 

Dive into Takeshi Covacs’ world and you will crave resleeving your backed-up consciousness into fresh bodies, enlisting into the Envoy Corps, dreaming of Martian Artifacts (that are not Martian after all) and you will try to find a way to book tickets to Harlan’s World. My advice: start saving for a needlecast, the only way to travel!

Morgan has meticulously created a world that feels, sounds, looks and smells real. As a result, the story only grows richer and deeper every time he revisits it. 

2. NEAL STEPHENSON: The Diamond Age (A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer)

Mid 21st century Shanghai. Imagine a nanotechnology book-shaped supercomputer designed to train and morph any upper-class privileged girl into the proper young lady the neo-Victorian microsociety of her enclave demands. Now, imagine that this very valuable piece of technology somehow ends up in the hands of an underprivileged orphan girl instead. The Diamond Age is Stephenson’s tour de force in cyberpunk that manages to grab your attention from the very beginning and never lets go. A book worked to its finest detail, an impressive body of work that is extremely entertaining to read while leaving you with a thought provoking aftertaste that lingers on for years.

1. WILLIAM GIBSON: The Sprawl Trilogy

Neuroromancer. Count Zero. Mona Lisa Overdrive. Together with the collection of short stories, Burning Chrome, these are the Four Gospels of cyberpunk. 

A bleak world of nerve/biochip integration; ICE-cutting cyberspace cowboys and jacked up razor girls; artificial intelligence entities holding citizenships and striving to be more; immortalized billionaires spread single-cell thinly over acres of support vats. The constant grey drizzle condensing under the unfinished domes of the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Area urban sprawl tries to hide a world of drugs and hustlers and players – all losers and all winners in their little games. And Freeside, the Babylon in the sky, the rotating space station that serves as off-world data heaven and money-laundering banking shelter and houses a byzantine family of clones, locked in an endless power struggle.

In a world where knowledge and abilities is the insertion of a single biosoft away and media stars share their entire fine tuned sensorium with their fans, ambition and murder is the only aura to radiate. And William Gibson’s prose is poetic and hypnotic.

Welcome to the Edge. That is the Future. And it does not get any better, the closer it gets.