Top 50 Video Games: Number 16

Platform: Just about every platform I've ever owned or played a video game on
Absurdly Specific Genre: Being the best 3D platformer/shooter ever - that's not really a genre, is it.
Difficulty: From 1 to 10, depending on how fast that damn block is dropping
Beaten: A close as it can be, I suppose.

Seven shapes. One goal. Endless permutations. A video game that has pretty transcended the medium (admit it, you don't even really think about it as a video game anymore).

Tetris is, of course, the game that most of us can play by now simply by closing our eyes. It's the first game in which I had even a modicum of skill.

The elegance of the game is obviously is absolute simplicity. A child can learn to play passably within minutes, yet a player who has been playing for years can be tripped up in a humblingly short period of time with just a few bad blocks (usually those damned 'S' and 'Z' blocks).

Yeah, screw you. You're not welcome here - and by 'here', I mean 'anywhere'.

I haven't played the game properly in a long time now, but the next time I do, I'll feel that same exact way that I have on countless occasions - enthralled, with nothing required of me but reflexes, and all manner of enjoyment to gain. Tetris is no ordinary timewaster, it's the supreme timewaster. None can hope to match it.

Now, if I could just get that 'l' block...

CD Review: Lana Del Rey - Born to Die

With everything that's been said about Lana Del Rey, it's worth noting that her major label debut album has been out for all of one week. We've heard all about the woman's image, her constantly morphing videos, her lips (especially the lips), and how calculating it all is. All of that chatter has two sizable disadvantages. First, it has a shelf life that expires, it would seem, about two weeks before the album itself drops (publications that adored the idea of getting 'firstsies' when 'Video Games' came out are falling all over themselves to distance themselves from the finished product). Second, it really has nothing to do with the only thing I'm even remotely interested in.

Is the damn album any good??


Well, yeah. It is. I mean, to a certain extent, it was bound to be. Anyone with an open mind loved 'Video Games' and 'Blue Jeans' (I certainly did), and the title track is excellent, as well. That's three good-to-great songs - already more than to you're likely get out of a vast majority of pop albums. The only question was whether or not the rest of the album was going to live up to those songs. On that count, how could it possibly do that? Anyone who was going to enjoy Lana Del Rey at all was going to have heard their favorite song by the time they pop in the disc for the first time (and truthfully, if you hated "Video Games" or "Blue Jeans", then you really don't need to give this a try... nothing here is going to convince you if you didn't like those songs). The track listing doesn't do Born to Die any favors, the three songs people have heard are loaded at the front of the album, giving people a glut of lesser songs to close it out.

The music itself is darkly poppy, with a hint of hip-hop beat to go with the string flourishes that Born to Die is absolutely full of. Lana's better with the solemn stuff, her voice sounds a little frail for the more upbeat stuff (though I will cop to enjoying the 'harlot scarlet' bit in "Off to the Races"). She's clearly meant to evoke a sultry nightclub singer, but there's always a weird "innocence corrupted" angle that pops up. The allusions to Lolita obviously aren't by accident. They are a recurring theme throughout the entire album ("Off to the Races" directly appropriates a line from it, and several other songs allude to it). This could come off as heavy-handed, or even a little creepy if the music wasn't so damned catchy - and make no mistake, the songs are catchy. Even if they sometimes have obvious flaws (would it have killed them to do a take where she takes an extra half pause between "let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain" and "you like your girls insane"?? I may have to make an edit that adds it in. It will never stop bothering me), they are well built.

Born to Die is interesting to me, not because of the weird controversy that hovers around it, but because it's a well built, if flawed, album. The flaws seem so correctable in spots, but they give the whole thing a character that overcomes what could have been a connect-the-dots affair. At the same time, it leaves a lot of room for Lana to improve. I think there's every chance that she will. This might be truly great, but if she can capture that dark, haunted, yet cynical vibe that makes her best music jump, there's no reason to think her next one might not be. I'm a lot more interested to see that than I am to hear another heavy-handed dissertation on how her lips make her a sellout.

7 / 10

Highlights
* Born to Die
* Blue Jeans
* Video Games
* Diet Mountain Dew

Top 50 Video Game Moments: Number 17

Today's top video game moment comes to us from Mass Effect. It's a relatively substantial spoiler, so if you haven't played through the game, you'll probably want to steer clear.

Top 50 Video Games: Number 17

Platform: Playstation 2
Absurdly Specific Genre: Being the best 3D platformer/shooter ever - that's not really a genre, is it.
Difficulty: 5-ish, I think?
Beaten: Yes.

I'll level with you. I know the following things about this game/series:

• * It's my favorite 3D Platformer/Shooter
• * It's a better series than Jak and Daxter
• * This is the best game in the series of the ones that I've played (the first three).
• * I absolutely loved this game when I played it.

Unfortunately, it falls in the same mental hole that Jak 2 does. I remember particular parts of the game (the ending, the vid comics, and some of the basic gameplay), but the gameplay by and large escapes me.

Worse still, I can't just pull it off the shelf and play it, because I lent all three games out to a friend of mine, who never returned them (I found out later that he forgot that they were mine and sold them at a yard sale).

I certainly plan on purchasing all three games again. I loved these games. The excellent mix of self-aware humor and kickassery; the RYNO (one of my very favorite weapons); the little segments where you had to play as Clank... everything about this series was spot on.

Ah, I should go play them all front to back right now......

...oh, wait.

Spookymilk Survivor X: Afterlife

Last week, Vogons just couldn't be stopped. They vogon'd everywhere. It was glorious, like a big, Vogon-y dream.

This season (like many seasons), it seems all of the contestants are intent on killing as many characters in as many colorful ways as possible. This week, we took a break from murdering our characters to briefly contemplate what might happen to all of these unfortunate souls. The theme was 'Afterlife', and the only rule was that the duration of the story had to occur post-mortum.

Did Vogon keep vogoning? Let's find out. First, my take on the great beyond. (note, I'm putting the formatting marks back in, because it kind of looks like ass without them)


A man and woman were in the car, arguing. What they were arguing about was unclear.

---

He awoke in an unfamiliar room. The fact that he had a mild headache was quickly overshadowed by a curiosity about his surroundings.

The clothes he was wearing were his, and he got the feeling he had been in this room before, but nothing about the room itself seemed familiar. He slowly got to his feet tried to figure out how he had gotten there. The previous night was a blur. Bits of pieces of memory came to him, but nothing that would explain his current predicament.

As he looked around the room, he saw two doors. The first was locked tight, the second led to a street. The sun was shining down and a robin chirped away in a nearby bush. Something about the street seemed familiar, so he walked its length for a while, eventually coming to a tree. The tree itself looked like a normal cottonwood that lined the streets of his childhood neighborhood. Whereas the sun was illuminating the rest of the street, the tree itself remained dark and foreboding, and a chill ran up his spine when he was near it.

As he turned to head back to his room, he saw her. A woman, dressed in a beautiful dress, her face obscured. He didn’t know why, but he felt terror in her presence. He began to run in the opposite direction, but as he did, a car came down the street. Waving his arms frantically, he tried to flag down the driver, but the car didn’t even slow down, and hit him at full speed. His broken body lay on the pavement as the world began to go black.

---

The man and woman were in the car, arguing. The woman crying as the man shouted angrily at her. Too late, he noticed the dog in the middle of the road.

---

He awoke in an unfamiliar room.

The sun had fled, replaced by clouds, but the scene unfolded, same it had had before. How many times it had happened, he didn’t know, but every motion he made gave him a sense that he had already experienced it. The street, the tree, the woman – everything was familiar, yet trapped in a part of his memory that he couldn’t quite grasp. Like a fading dream, everything became more unclear the harder he tried to remember it. The car came down the road, same as before, and left him bleeding and fading on the asphalt, same as before.

---

In his attempt to avoid the animal, the man sent the car off the road. He tried to hit the brakes, but the rain made slowing down in time an impossibility.

---

He awoke in the same unfamiliar room.

Rain poured from the sky. The man was drawn to the tree, same as before. Why didn’t it occur to him to take a different road? To take a left turn instead of a right? The tree stood before him, scarred by some horrific calamity. He turned to face the woman. He knew who she was now. He had always known.

The car claim to claim him again. He didn’t even flinch – he felt a strange sense of justice about it. He deserved this.

---

The car collided with the tree at full speed. A couple of bystanders tried to pull the couple’s bodies from the wreckage, but it was in vain. There were no survivors.

---

He awoke. The woman was sitting at the foot of his bed.

“Why are you avoiding me? Why are you trying to torture yourself over and over again about it?” she asked.

He opened his mouth to speak a couple times. There was nothing he could say. Nothing he could do to make it right. All he could do was damn himself to recreating that night over and over until he could make it right.

“Why can’t you forgive yourself?” she insisted.

“That night – the car wreck – the things…..the last thing I said to you…” he was kneeling on the floor. Practically choking for breath.

She knelt down beside him and stood him to his feet. Embracing him, she said “You know that I already forgave you. It’s time to let it go.”

“What if I can’t?”

“Then you’re just going to have to trust me, and I’ll be waiting for a time when you can.” she said, motioning him over. “Come here, I want to show you something.”

She withdrew a key from her pocket and unlocked the door.

Taking his hand in hers, she opened the door, which led to a beautiful meadow.

“I love you” he whispered. She simply smiled and gave an ever so slight nod.

Together they walked through the open door.

The judges' critiques.

K: Is it hell, or a hell of the dead’s making? Interesting. Again, I feel like the emotions could be ratcheted up here; I want to feel his despair so much more strongly so I can truly feel the catharsis the story deserves when the woman forgives him. 2


DK: This one really got to me. The repetitive structure was used to great effect, in my view, and the idea of being trapped in one’s last, greatest mistake for eternity really resonated with me. The emotional impact throughout rang true. 5

Back a few years ago, Roger Ebert made a point about video games not being 'art'. I thought things over (I concluded that he was at least half right, but that's a story for another post) and tried to contemplate what a video game might be that could qualify as having the same story and dramatic heft of a quality film. The rough outline that I came up with was a man waking up in the afterlife (though neither he, nor the player would understand this immediately), having just died in an automobile accident. The gameplay would be sort of Myst-like as he found pieces of his old life, all the while being haunted by the spectre of his final moments on earth and his last argument with his love. I decided that for maximum effectiveness, the whole thing would take about two hours in a straight playthrough, and would have a variety of endings, varying from the man running from the past fully (and thus damning himself to repeat his own little private hell forever) to owning up to things and moving on in the only way that could possibly make him happy. The ending that I used was more of a neutral ending. Like most of my ideas, nothing was ever expanded upon.

I thought of this concept immediately upon seeing the challenge, the only question I had was how to pare down what was essentially a two hour story (and only a rough outline, at that) and format it into a sub-1000 word story. A friend of mine came over unannounced and ended up staying at my house all weekend, so the final draft never got rounded out quite like I was expecting, so I'm not sure I succeeded (some of the emotional heft was drained by the lack of minutae, as well as a couple of wordy segments), but I'm overall pretty happy with the concept. Maybe I'll revisit it someday, maybe not.