Archive by Author

Of Diablo 3 and Laziness

27 May

This showed up last week.

Contrary to popular opinion, I didn’t immediately tear of the packaging and install it on  my PC to play. No. Rather I finished off Max Payne 3 first, indulged in some of its multiplayer hijinks, and wrote a post about it.

Then I ran myself sore playing football and watched 2 seasons of Seinfeld. Which got me wondering if I’m in some sort of weird trip of denying myself fun. Reason being:

1. Haven’t had a drink in a month. And I don’t feel the need to. I think.

2. The cats at home don’t quiver in my presence any more.

3.  My sister is happier. A direct result of me not trolling her.

4. I’m not having as much pizza as I should (read: every time possible).

Anyway, here I am, close to a week after I got Diablo 3 and am about to fire it up. Here’s hoping it lives up to the hype.

I’m Batman?

26 May

He: “So who is the Marvel superhero who they’re going to announce as gay?”

Me: “Marvel? No man, DC.”

He: “Is it Spiderman? Superman? I think it will be Batman.”

Me: *awkward, long, deliberate pause*

He: “Because…”

Me: “No. No. No. Just NO! Not happening.”

He: “Why not?”

Me: “He’s a complete bad ass that’s why!”

He: “But it would explain a lot of things.”

Me: “Yeah I guess that would explain Robin.”

He: “The overcompensating gruff voice, the fact that he isn’t prone to Catwoman’s charms.”

Me: “Or Poison Ivy for that matter. His fascination for the Joker. Yeah, guess you’re right. The logic makes sense.”

He: “The only reason they won’t do it is because of backlash from the fans.”

Me: “True, but you know what would be funny? XYZ is a huge fan. In fact his better half even told me that he paraded around his college dorm in a Batman costume.”

He: “Seriously?”

Me: “Yes. Imagine how this would screw with his head?”

He: “In ways more than one.”

In defence of the Government

25 May

The last couple of weeks have been an utter mess. Petrol prices went up a fuckload. The internet came under censorship, regulation and other assorted red tape. And at the moment, word is the lovely state of Maharashtra is looking to enforce an arcane law requiring you to be 25 years or above and acquire a drinking permit in order to guzzle down a cold beer.

Sure, there was and is outrage, drama and impassioned pleas from folk everywhere. Now I’m no political genius or master of governance to fathom the rationale behind such moves, but it seems that all the government is doing is exercising a fair bit of control (insert Captain Obvious remarks here). You know, the sort an overprotective mother indulges in. Instead of calling you a million times a day or forcing a curfew on you, you’re being told what to do and what not to do, in spite of well, being a democracy.

Which brings me to the crux of this blog post. We all crave control in some form or another. Be it snooping on your friend’s text messages, silently observing a family member’s online antics or simply being extremely overbearing to those around us. It’s human nature. A response to some warped insecurity or another. This isn’t wrong. It’s human nature which we’re perfectly fine with. Here’s why.

The government is just acting like that one alpha male/female in a group of friends who wants to control everything from where the gang go to eat to which cinema they watch The Avengers at. Being the civil polite people that we are, we rarely do tell Mr. or Ms. Bossypants to his or her or it’s face that his or her or it’s behaviour is appalling. We may however, bitch about said person on Twitter and move on.

What’s scary in this case is, we’re not doing anything about the scenario. We’re more than happy to be resigned to the fact that for the rest of our living, social existence, the terms and conditions of where we go and what we do is decided by someone else. We’re perfectly fine with it.

Having said that, we’re completely wrong, out of line and impolite for trying to tell our lovely PM and his friends anything. After all, we’ve been conditioned to deal with it in ways that don’t involve public outcries, petitions and other forms of protest. They’re just macro scaled a social aspect we’re used to. So deal with it, be nice and stay classy (read: shut up). Well, unless you want to be labelled a maoist.

Collaboration

24 May

He: “Dude!”

Me; “Yes?”

He: “I called because I got suddenly inspired!”

Me: “Hmmm, that’s rare.”

He: “I know, I know. I got an idea.”

Me: “Okay…”

He: “I’ve been very inspired because I listened to Tenacious D! If you’ve read my status messages.”

Me: “Uh-huh… What status messages?”

He: “Oh that’s right, you don’t check Facebook.”

Me: “No.”

He: “I was thinking we should collaborate!”

Me: “…”

He: “You can write, I can come up with the music!”

Me: “…”

He: “It can be something like “Fuck Her Gently”  or a one minute sketch. It can be entertaining!”

Me: “Hmmm…”

He: “C’mon man! It can be something like the liquor permit issue. Or fuel prices. It should be something I understand. So if you write about*…I won’t understand it!”

Me: “Um….okay.”

He: “It’s like what you do in your blogging!”

Me: “…”

He: “What’s the matter?”

Me: “I’m not too keen on collaborating. I rather work on my own.”

He: “Write what you want, I’ll just come up with the music to it!”

Me: *facepalm*

He: “I’ll get my acoustic over to your place! Let’s jam!”

Me: “Let’s see.”

He: “What’s the problem? You busy? At work or something?”

Me: “No. I just don’t think this is a good idea.”

He: “Oh. Okay. I’ll speak to you later.”

(*I took away my phone from the earpiece while he narrated this bit, so I have no idea what he said next)

[RANT] So I finished Max Payne 3

23 May

I searched the cold confines of my soul in an attempt to fill up this blog post with something to write about everyone’s favorite anti-depressant addict. Much like a Mumbai policeman at a Juhu rave party, I ended up empty.

There isn’t much to say that hasn’t been said of one of the biggest releases of the year that isn’t called Diablo 3 or prefixed with the words “Call of Duty”. Max is witty and brooding as always, backed up by writing godly enough to make Sachin Tendulkar seem human. Trademark Rockstar production values are back as well.

It might not have the open world charm of Red Dead Redemption or GTA but the attention to detail is stunning as usual.Oh and there’s more than a hint of film noir. In fact it’s slathered in it, from the story telling to the moody music and the shifty environs.

Controlling Max is a sluggish affair but a few tweaks to the control sensitivity, and you won’t miss a beat since the last game in 2003. For a series that invented the oft-used and abused bullet time slash slo-mo move seen in a ton of other titles, it’s good to have it back in full force. So far so good right? Well, mostly.

You see, for all the awesomeness the developers have managed to pack there was one colossal loop hole that keeps nagging me long after I’ve put the game down. If you’re sensitive to spoilers, stop reading.

No seriously, stop.

You still here? Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The last segment of the game takes place on an airstrip. To get there you have to hop on a train. Obviously with this being the near end of the game, you’ll find yourself outnumbered and outgunned by tons of armed baddies who are on another train on the side of yours, going in the same direction.

After you’re done offing most of them, you realise that your train is going to crash into a slab of steel. You promptly jump onto the other train, dispatching the few remaining cronies who were laughing at what seemed to be your apparent downfall.

Then you’re delivered to the airstrip, where, no surprise, there’s enough disposable soldiers for a huge disposable army. It’s at this point where the writers and designers took a magical leap of disbelief. You’re treated to a cut scene of Max Payne slinking off into a hangar like he was Solid Snake. Which he obviously isn’t else this would be called MGS5.

What’s amusing and yet, at the same time, vexing is that not a single bad guy, not a single hired gun would realise that a train just arrived with more corpses than people, carrying the one man single-handedly responsible for lowering the life expectancy of the average video game goon to almost single digits (preceded by a decimal point). It was a frustrating turn of events in ways more than one as it made no sense.

Did Max, after his years of alcohol and painkiller abuse master the art of invisibility? Or did his foes have a death wish? The possibilities are endless because the logic did not exist. Perhaps that was the wrong way of looking at things?

After all, this is a game about a down on his luck, mostly drunk, depressed ex-cop on a quest for redemption who has the ability to slow time down in a gunfight.

The fact is, logic cashed in its chips and left the table a long time ago. It doesn’t make Max Payne 3 any less of a game, it’s just that for a title so polished, some flaws that you’d gloss over if it was called “Angry Gringo Gun Battles 2012″, end up sticking out like a nun in a brothel.

Now that’s a title that Rockstar should have gone with for South American markets. Angry Gringo, not nun in a brothel. Or both. Maybe.

Fed up.

22 May

Today marks the beginning of the realisation of a phase that I’ve been in for the longest time.

I’m fed up.

No, it’s not the job, that’s pretty sweet. It’s not the daily grind of commuting in a city befitting the status of a war zone and it’s not the standard of living in the shadow of a dystopian, scumbag government either. I’ve made my peace with these elements a long time ago. After all, what else would you expect from someone who wakes up each morning anticipating an alien invasion?

I’m fed up of people. I’m fed up of listening. I’m fed up “being there” for them. I’m fed up of hearing their sordid tales of their daily existence. I’m fed up of being accommodating of their idiosyncrasies. I have had enough and I can’t have any more. I’ve reached a point where my relationship with people is borderline toxic because I’ve had it with being the foil to everyone’s drama and I want out.

Having said that, I’m in the process of culling the unnecessary whining and noise. So don’t be surprised if you don’t see me on Facebook, have access to my tweets only due to retweets from others, and can’t view me on Foursquare, Instagram or the social network of the du jour. Oh and don’t get appalled if I don’t reply to WhatsApp messages, texts, emails or even pick up the phone.

It’s funny how the dynamics of modern day communication make me want to crawl into my shell rather than be more open to listening. Good thing the block and report as spam buttons exist. It seems like the best way to clean out the mess I’ve gotten myself into thoroughly. Fun.

Now listening to: Bonobo – Kiara

 

Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut. Fan Service and Midi-Chlorians

5 Apr

Merely a day after my ramblings about Mass Effect 3′s conclusion, it seems that the folks at BioWare are going to release a post-game DLC entitled Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut to explain the rather bleak and abrupt ending.

While rabid, vocal, rage-prone fans would consider this a win, I’m beginning to wonder when the hell did the industry devolve into fan service? Rather, would I be wrong to use the word “devolve” in the first place? Reason being, games were first products sold off the shelf, then the business model evolved to sell them as a service, keeping you engaged over the initial “OMG I HAZ NEW GAME TO PLAY” phase what with post-launch DLC and enhanced rosters (FIFA, NBA) among other things.

And then we have this step from BioWare thrown into the mix. A combination of some rather vibrant feedback and developers responding publicly. Though they aren’t going to change the ending, they’re offering more insight into what happened which should keep most if not all fans in check. A sort of collaborative post-game DLC if you will, squarely purposed around giving fans what they want, even if it isn’t exactly all of it.

Considering that consoles have long development cycles (compared to other devices) and sky high development costs, it isn’t such a bad thing to keep your existing audience happy. After all it’s easier to keep an already receptive gamer buying your new iterations (such as the rumoured Mass Shift game that takes elements from The Lost Guardian) with minimal marketing effort.

I do wonder though, what kind of precedent this sets.Since the smaller publishers don’t have the budgets of an EA and there are costs involved in hosting DLC on platforms such as Xbox Live and PSN as well as royalties, it becomes tougher to justify creating content on platforms that isn’t as open as say, Steam.

Most of all though, it smirks in the face of even considering games as art and puts it in the same category as cheesy anime and manga which is obviously anything but. Not that it matters though. If anything, this move will ensure sales of the next Mass Effect game are robust.

As for me, I’m curious to see what direction BioWare takes with the franchise though I believe that some mysteries, no matter how bleak and abrupt, should be kept as mysteries. The last thing I want, is another midi-chlorian moment. That’s what spoiled Star Wars for me. I don’t want the video game equivalent of Star Wars going down the same path.

Oh The Drama: Mass Effect 3 Edition (Spoiler-free)

5 Apr

It was Friday night. Or Saturday morning. Depending which side of the clock you’re more active.

But for me, it was the culmination of a five year journey. An epic adventure that consumed over 300 hours of my life. And at 3AM that day it was all over. Mass Effect 3′s end credits flashed across the screen and that was it. The first thing I did was delete all the 35-odd GB of game installs lying on my Xbox 360 hard drive since the first game’s debut in 2007. Unlike many a fan I didn’t feel the need to rage, troll, throw a bitch fit, fight for a refund or start a petition. Rather, I was overcome with a sense of relief.

You see, being a big RPG fan and by extension, an admirer of BioWare’s work, I was naturally pumped when I first read about this space-faring odyssey in the September 2006 issue of EGM (acquired second hand nonetheless) but over time, I’ve learned that things are never what they’re meant to be. There’s always some form of compromise at the end of it all. In this case, it was BioWare forsaking deeper narrative, culling out characters central to the game to package off as DLC and slap multiplayer on it in order to sell more units. Having been on the business side of things in the industry, I can understand where they were coming from and I guess they weren’t given much of a choice either.

Given that BioWare got bought over by the same company who thought it was a cool idea to turn what was arguably the greatest strategy franchise into an FPS (that too, after buying the studio responsible for said franchise) I was expecting far, far worse. And sure, it was diabolical enough that the game mechanics forced me to play the multiplayer mode for over 20 hours, it was better than expected and even grew on me.

After all, it’s not everyday you get a semi-decent game from the same developers who gave you the steaming pile of turd that was Dragon Age 2. Craptacular characters, bugs galore, recycled dungeons and lame plot, it seemed like a pre-alpha build on release. Keeping that in mind as well, Mass Effect 3 wasn’t that bad a game.

Yes, a little more exposition would have been nice as would a greater emphasis on your choices throughout the trilogy but if a next to negligible portion of my 300 hours of gameplay ended up being rubbish, it would be stupid to hold it against the developers. Considering that we live in an age of disposable, 5-10 minute games, a mammoth, interweaving trilogy in itself is a tremendous feat.

So what I’m getting at is this, after all that has happened in the past what with the debauchery of the Dragon Age series and their parent company’s reputation, now unfairly voted as the worst in America, we could have been treated to something a lot more distasteful than a brief slipshod ending. An Angry Birds mini-game perhaps? Or maybe a mineral management simulation?  The possibilities to mess this up were endless. And as gamers we could have been a little classier about our response. I’d like to believe we’re a better breed than disgrunted Instagram using iPhone fanboys.

The Timeline of Tomorrow

1 Jan

A little something I rustled up for Mumbai Mirror’s New Year’s issue. Unedited, uncensored and hopefully, better formatted than the print edition.

The problem with writing a column about the web trends of 2012 is that I can’t exactly prophesies about flying cars, giant robots or alien visitations. Reason being, change on the internet is a little less dramatic (and less cliched) but as important all the same.

2011 has been its growing up year of sorts. From Egypt to Russia along with pitstops along the UK, US and to an extent India, you’d have to be living under a rock not to take notice of the role Twitter and Facebook have played in advocating governmental change.

While this doesn’t mean that we’d stop using social media to document drunken nights of debauchery, it just means the methods of doing so will change. Here’s my predictions for 2012′s internet trends.

1. Social media goes visual: rather than fill in your Facebook or Twitter status updates with random song quotes or banal whining about how crowded the local train was, video and photo uploads allow you those few moments to think “is this really worth sharing?”. Throw in the fact that your average cellphone camera is competent to film and shoot with ease, and that images speak louder than 140 characters, you get fledgling networks like Instagram ( a photo app currently for iOS devices only but heading to Android phones soon) and Viddy (a video editing and sharing app for smartphones) primed to steal a slice of Facebook’s and Twitters social pie.

2. Year of the mobile. For real: every year seems to the be the year when mobile internet takes off. 2012 is one of them. But what makes us believe it will finally happen? For starters smartphone prices are next to nothing, social apps like Facebook and Google Plus are now mobile in a big way and hardware manufacturers such as Nokia are pushing Near Field Communication to allow for contactless payments too. So you’d be using your phone for more than just Whatsapp or Angry Birds. Oh and the occasional call. Now if they’d just lower iPhone 4S prices…

3. Anonymity becomes a hot-button topic: Be it what movies you’re watching or where you are shopping, a lot of what you do in real life finds its way on the internet. If you don’t share, your friends will. It’s this always connected, always sharing system of social media that leads to privacy concerns. This is made worse by the fact that all your information is archived, making it easy to find at any given time. For example, the last thing a prospective job candidate would want, is a recruiter to chance upon his or her not so printable thoughts on Sunny Leone on Bigg Boss. On a more serious note, anonymity allows users to speak up without fear and gives whistleblowers much needed protection. The point is, as more people are aware of the importance for anonymity, it opens up an avenue to charge for it rather than leave you without a choice. Don’t be surprised if Facebook and Google Plus offer that option in 2012.

So there you have it, three of the bigger internet trends for the new year which promises to be more agile, vibrant and effervescent than the last.

Online Passes: The Death of Single-Player

30 Dec

Distributors and retailers refer to games as products. Publishers on the other hand, like to believe games are services, supported by a torrent of content to ensure that you’re hooked for as long as possible. They’re both wrong. To me, games are moments. They’re those events that make you wet your pants in fear, cry like a little girl or just simply smile. Be it the obtuse humour of Fable, the wide-eyed whimsy of Kirby’s adventures or the sheer adrenaline rush of Vanquish, there’s a lot that make games worth playing. And now, access to newer experiences and feelings that games can elicit are dependent on:

1. How fat your internet pipe is.
2. How often you’re willing to stretch your electric bill in the name of grabbing those levels that should have shipped with the game in the first place.
3. Your willingness to spend $10 for a scrap of paper over and above your used game purchase.

There’s been a lot of drama around publishers and their online policies to curb used games. Be it locking out campaign levels, multiplayer modes or just modern day horse armour, it’s become a bit of a nuisance we’ve grown to tolerate. Gone is the time when you could just boot up a game and play it, there’s an install, patches, and of course, some varying chunks of megabytes of content that you’d to download before you can even think of playing your game. Add the obligatory driver downloads, config file edits and swearing if you’re a PC gamer. You’re spending less time experiencing the thrills of Arkham City and wasting more time waiting for the damn content that should have been on the disc to be downloaded.

I’m worried about is how this would affect single-player only experiences. Now, not all of us (read: me) are big multiplayer gamers. I like my solo fun be it mining for minerals in Mass Effect 2 (I actually liked that, true story) or flirting with fellow classmates in Persona 3, single-player games, particularly RPGS, are, for the lack of a better term, my jam.

Which is why this entire debacle of locking out single-player content in the name of protecting first hand purchases is preposterous. Even more so when a triple-A title like Arkham City does it simply because it sets precedent. But if we’re to be historically accurate, I do believe precedent was set with Dragon Age: Origins’ Shale DLC which punished gamers who didn’t pre-order or buy day one by missing out on the coolest character and her side-quest in the game. To be honest, I don’t think the game would be quite the same without having a big hulking stone golem with a psychotic dislike for pigeons and a disdain for humanity by my side. But I digress…

My major issue with this wholesale adoption of online passes is that it corrupts the design process. It dilutes the impact that a title would have. Imagine how FFVII would have been if you were asked to pay to access the death of Aeris? Or if Modern Warfare’s All Ghillied Up mission was an optional download? Would these have the same effect as they did when you saw them for the first time? I highly doubt it. You’d end up with thinking a little lesser of the game than you should. And you can’t be blamed either.

After all, it’s not like the developers and business folk have the best idea of what should be listed as an online pass what shouldn’t. There are some moments in a game that everyone should be able to access regardless of their type of purchase be it day one or two years hence, new or used.

Hell, it was quite tragic that the Naked City case in LA Noire was a download-only affair in certain territories. Reason being it was, in my opinion one of the cases that the game should have shipped with. It did a good job of fleshing out the details of 1940s Los Angeles’, it deserved more than being bunged in with the rest of Rockstar’s dismal online pass offerings.

Another caveat of restricting content to a digital code is the actual gameplay duration you get out of a single-player game. Fundamentally it means that you’re never going to get all the hours the game promises you unless you connect to the Internet and download the data as soon as you purchase it.

I wonder if any of the executives at publishers have ever thought how stupid it is to keep content out from a paying customer just because of his or her Internet reliability (Warner Bros and Rocksteady, I’m looking at you). It’s not like everyone has access to a blistering fast broadband connection or is comfortable with downloading a ton of data. Mass Effect 2 comes to mind where the collective wisdom of EA and Bioware thought it was a good idea to let us download close to a gig worth of content (Normandy crash mission, Zaeed Massani’s quests) after purchasing the game instead of dumping it on the disc.

Though the US figures show a different picture, it’s not exactly true for the rest of the world. Especially when some countries have ISPs that think it’s cool to have a fair usage policy restricted to 25GB. Sometimes I feel that the publishers are in bed with Internet providers and electric companies in order to make us spend more than we should on electricity and Internet to get something we’ve already paid $60 for.

To sum it up, online passes would, in my opinion result developers create half-assed single-player campaigns that make a mockery of your hard-earned money. After all, it’s not like you make it a habit buy a used car without wheels, or a used book without half its pages. Some might argue that games are not products, they’re services. I believe that games are neither. Games are moments.

And for this reason alone that this entire online pass hoopla is a complete clusterfuck in the making.We’re not far from the time when what could be classic moments that make video games special get sliced and diced as pre-order or day one add-ons. So go ahead, do your bit and don’t support titles that are making a making a mockery of the very core of gaming because as gamers, we deserve better treatment.

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