Distance

Recently I came upon this game: Distance


The controls couldn't be simpler. Mouse clicks advance the frame, and you watch the two characters go through their separate days. Then, each day ends with a phone conversation where you're given a choice of two possible conversational routes.



You pick one, then see how things go, then go to sleep, then click through another day, the end of which sees you in this same place, making another choice.




The way this game is sneaky is that the choices slowly become deeper. Do you want to talk about a movie or soul mates?

There are a couple things about this game that really grabbed me.

What this game does well is capture the experience of those awful long-distance relationships. If you've never tried it, it's awful. I would tell you to never try it, but that's a ridiculous thing to say. Every person I know would declare "I would never want to be in a long-distance relationship" but what they're really saying is, "Given the option to do it or not, I pick not." The real question isn't whether or not one would be in a long-distance relationship, in general. It's really, "Would you be willing to engage in a long-distance relationship with [person you currently love very much]?" Those are two very different questions.

Having done this before, it's tough. And what the game really does nicely is taking you back to that place where you're really unsure about everything. Does she still love me? Do I still love her? Can I love someone even if we never occupy the same physical space? What if someone else comes along?


Even more so, and this part rang more true for me than anything, the game reminded me how shitty the phone is. When you have a phone-based relationship with someone, you have good nights and bad nights. And what's really strange is you can't be sure why some are good and some are bad. Why did asking about a beard turn into a conversation with laughs and both people hanging up happy? How did I ask about her dog and somehow turn things into discussing how we don't agree on the idea of soul mates?

You can play it a number of ways as well. The way I played it was certainly trying to make things work, as though I am the person on one end of the phone. I felt really bad when things didn't work out, but maybe making it work involves saying things not so much because it's what you want to say, but saying what the other person wants to hear.

Yeah, it got kinda real for me in front of my computer there.

The thing that makes this game truly excellent is that it values story over all else. I was listening to the fantastic podcast The Indoor Kids and one of the hosts made a great point about the idea that story and emotional attachment are becoming king. Meaning: we're quickly coming to a point where graphically, anything is possible. Games are less and less limited by someone saying, "That's not possible," and they're more and more based on, "What do you want to do?"

The range of emotions I've experienced with video games is pretty much limited to the triumph of finishing Special World and the agony of being killed over and over by this asshole. And these emotions are all created as a result of my gameplay abilities, not because of story elements or characters. And what scares me about games like Bejeweled is that there's no narrative, and really nothing for me to get into from that angle. I think that's a lot of why I rarely enjoy driving games and sports games. Even Street Fighter II had backstories, slim as they may have been. But I don't care so much about faceless drivers, and because I don't follow sports the players are just cardboard cutouts to me.

So when someone asks "What do you want to do?" I would say that I want to feel something as a result of narrative. Maybe it's just a little twinge, but SOMETHING would be a good start.

Resident Evil was one of the first games that was legitimately scary. God of War was one of the first games that used scale to underscore the narrative arc. But what makes Distance so fascinating is that it doesn't find an emotional place within the larger context of missions and collecting. The emotions are the totality of the gameplay.

It can be done, and it can be done on a minimalist level. I think the gauntlet is thrown down. Personally, I'm looking forward to a world of gaming where some of the cash goes towards creating stories that are heartwrenching and hilarious, and characters who are memorable for their traits and not because they make handy mascots.

Captain America and the Avengers

Thanks to my good friend Nica, I was able to enjoy this wonderful game from my childhood at home, revisit the memories, and see just how well the thing held up.

I should say this, for starters: Playing arcade games on a machine that does not require quarters kind of kills a bit of the fun, the reason being that there's really no way to LOSE, lose. Quarter-based games really were like gambling where there was a certain amount of skill that could make it last longer, although eventually you will have to pump in more money to succeed. They are also like gambling in that I am very bad at them.

This game is a classic beat-em-up style where you walk from left to right beating the shit out of everyone and everything that gets in the way.

In order to complete your task, you are given the choice of one of four characters. Allow me to discuss each, going from right to left for the simple fact that I moved from left to right for so much of my life in these games:


Hawkeye: The worst one in terms of powers. He's good at shooting, so he elects to use a bow and arrow instead of a gun. Also, according to the game, he posesses super vision, a skill that I would think would be posessed by the character named goddamn Vision. Not my first choice.

Captain America: Ah, the brave leader. Note that this was in the 90's, a time when Captain America was not very cool. It took about 10 years of him doing shit like being a werewolf for comics to get through the phase where everything had to be about darkness and almost seeing a titty. Also a very unlikely choice.

Iron Man: This was my guy back when. He could shoot lasers, and in the levels that involved swimming or being in space he did not require any sort of bubblehead contraption to breathe. It made the most sense to me, which is kind of hilarious in that NONE of this makes any sense. You can throw a rock and make it explode in this game, but I was concerned with the fact that Captain America's headbubble might crack, and then he'd be fucked.

Vision: Now we get to the reason we went right to left, in order to save Vision for last.

Can someone explain this posture to me? What is he doing? It looks like he's about to break into a little number from Grease. And when he walks? Crosses his arms, upper body completely still, only his legs moving. It looks insane, and very affected. I hated that. Between his bizarre poses and the fact that he was wearing a Speedo and a cape, Vision didn't get a lot of play from me.

So you start walking and fighting, but almost right away you notice that the dialogue is a little funky. For example, one of my favorites:


Hmm...well, that is a tough question to answer, I guess. To be fair, if I were a bad guy this would disturb me a little. If Spider-Man was running around, quipping like a goddamn stand-up, I would be thinking, "Well, he's all there mentally." But if a roided-up guy in an America get-up spouted at me, "Why should it goes well?" I would be a little concerned that he would not be aces when it came to identifying that I was subdued versus having my brain mashed so hard into the sidewalk that the grease stain never really comes out.

Another great one:

Captain America: There is no escape!

Response:


OOOOO, sweet burn!
A little advice to all, if someone insults you and you respond with, "No, YOU are [carbon copy of original insult] then you are probably not going to impress anyone enough that they let you escape with a huge bag of potatoes with a dollar sign on it.

Just a couple of other favorites:

Bad Guy: "You came here to die!"

Good Guys: "What an evil thing you've done!"

Good Guys: "Where is the laser?"
Bad Guy: "Ask the police!"

Best of all, Captain America urges you on time and again with his battle cry of "Okay! Go!" Seriously, every boss you fight, when the boss' life gets about 3/4 drained, the game's theme song starts thumping and Captain America shouts a slogan I'm pretty sure was written for him by a drunk Paul Oakenfold.

But hey, the whole game is full of this kind of stuff, and really you could spend days scratching your head, wondering what the fuck is going on and what the fuck a Mechanical Taco is.



As in any good comic game, there are cameos from a number of characters who make attempts to help you along the way. Just for fun, here are the four other characters who show up. Try and guess which one is the most helpful.

1. Quicksilver: has the ability of super speed, like the Flash.
2. Namor: Super-ultra strong, shares Vision's fashion sense.
3. Wonder Man: Strong as fuck.
4. Wasp: Extremely small, fashion designer to the stars.

Did you answer Wasp? If you did, I have to believe you have played this game before because there is no reason for that character to be the one helpful extraneous character. It's just plain nonsense.

But before long, you get to the final stage.

Scene 4: The Giant Laser Cannon

You fight some more assholes, then you get to the Red Skull. This game does a very classic move where you fight the Red Skull, who is in a suit and has learned one karate kick in preparation for fighting 4 superpowered men at the same time, and just when you think you've beaten him he teleports into a little bubble, revealing a gigantic Red Skull robot!

Red Skull: "It's another trap, you stupid men!"

Stupid Men: "I'll show you the meaning of justice!"

The meaning of justice, we are shown, is punching out a giant robot until it falls onto the Red Skull and crushes him. Ah, horribly crushed on his own petard!

World saved. Dialogue giggled at. Superhero status cemented.



The big question: Is this a good game?

To answer that question out of context is impossible. I mean, really, how can this game compare to something like Batman: Arkham Asylum? Is that even reasonable to consider?

But! The things that were good about it in my childhood days are still good about it now.

The graphics are simple, but they're actually fairly crisp and enjoyable. The colors, too, are kind of brilliant, especially on the main characters (with the exception of Vision, who is a vision in beige).

Plus, it's just long enough. Right about when I'm getting sick of fighting the same stupid assholes with lasers, I get too the end.

There's an appeal to long, involved games. No doubt. But sometimes I want to put on headphones, listen to the first 3 minutes of a bunch of Mars Volta songs, and scroll left to right, punching indiscriminately.

MS Office Gets Sexy

For a presentation I'm doing in a little bit, I needed a piece of clipart to represent the concept "sexy." I did a search which resulted in two bits of media. One was a piece of audio that sounded like the kind of music you would get when Bugs Bunny stuffed oranges down the front of a dress and tried to bang whoever that racist cowboy guy was. Only shittier and made with a free, on-screen keyboard app of some kind.

The other piece was this image:

Now, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the sexiness of the picture. I mean, maybe it is. I don't know that we all agree on cowboy hats paired with what is essentially a clayface makeup woman, but whatever.

What makes this curious to me is that this is the ONLY image that comes up after searching "sexy." There are certainly other images that work. In fact, I found one of the bottom half of a woman, who is wearing a bikini, has a belly button ring, and is using the part of her bikini bottom that wraps around her hip as a way to hold sunglasses. So it's not that clip art is all for prudes or something.

But apparently the above image is the only one that everyone at Microsoft could agree upon as being sexy.

So I guess nerds know something. And if you are the woman pictured above, and you're out there, congratulations. Maybe it's like being the most tech-savvy member of a bizarre cult that lives in caves created by breaking holes in rocks, jamming branches inside the holes and soaking the branches to swell them and slowly increase the holes until they are big enough to live in. Maybe it's like that very specific reference, but it's still a sort of an honor.