Um, Red Pill Please

One foot after the other, I make my way towards the break room so that I may consume my mediocre microwavable meal in the company of people I don’t like. Feeling in a particularly good and goofy mood, I raise the spoon in my left hand up to eye level and stare at it intently. “There is no spoon” I muttered eagerly, half hoping one of the idiots I work with heard me and will provide a chuckle for my satisfaction. The only laughter returned my way was when the doorway forcibly told me to watch where the hell I’m walking, jabbing itself into my shoulder.


Pfff, freaking door doesn’t even exist. Nothing does. Nothing but my mind and the people around me exist. Therefore, this pain in my shoulder caused by the fabricated door is a fabrication itself, a lie that my mind has made real. You see, years ago we created artificial intelligence called SkyNet, funded by Cyberdyne Systems. Unfortunately, SkyNet became self aware and attacked humanity because it viewed us as a threat. We torched the skies to kill their energy source, but in turn they just captured all of us, striped us naked, and placed us in see through bathtubs filled with pink goo. All the tubing protruding from our bodies keeps us well nourished while at the same time plugging us into a false reality to keep our minds busy. We didn’t know, not until I just told you, that we’re actually being harvested as battery power for the evil machines that turned on us. This is why my shoulder pain isn’t real, and neither is the spoon.

Of all things that were fascinating to me in the true story of “The Matrix”, the scene with the bald, I’m going kill myself to live on a comet, looking children was the best to me. The kid was bending a spoon using only his brain (compensating I bet), and Neo, the talentless noob (portrayed by a talentless actor) who fills the role of the protagonist, is astonished at how the child is able to perform such an act.

“You cannot bend the spoon, that is impossible, instead, only try to realize the truth.”

“What truth?”

“There is no spoon”

I’m just kidding, that part was boring as hell. The best part of the movie was when Neo and Trinity killed everyone to death at the security desk of that building. Totally awesome.

How true was that kid’s statement though? There is no spoon, just like there is no job, money, homes, and movies. It’s all just a made up story placed in my head by the machines that control me. What a weird relationship we have with these guys. Seriously though, none of us can really complain. I mean, we need each other to survive. We nuked our own planet and rendered it pretty much useless while at the same time stealing the energy source (the sun if you didn’t catch it the first time) the machines use to survive. Well someone had to take action for the greater good, or else the whole world would’ve been dead. The machines use us to keep themselves alive, and in return, we get to live a normal life, who cares if it’s in our head? I mean sure we’re not really eating that juicy steak, and instead we’re having something put into our system to keep up alive, but at least we’re not awake to taste it. That would be like being awake while the doctor gives you a vasectomy.

*What? They do keep you awake for that?*

You know, on second thought, what a crappy existence, you imprison me to this tub, surrounded by millions of other people chilling in their own tubs, hook my brain up to a network and feed me fallacious horse shit and call it reality? Why would I want to go back and live the same old boring life that I had before the rise of the machines? I don’t enjoy doing the same routine every day. Hell if you want to use me for energy, then how about allowing my mind to live in paradise while you use my body as the energizer bunny? Set me on an island, erase natural disasters and death, and let the people I love be there too. Oh, and bring lots of video games, that would be nice. Only issue would be that we’d get bored right? Well every year or so, switch up the scenery. One year a tropical get away, the next the snow capped mountains of the Rockies. Why can’t I have that option? This really makes me feel like a prisoner and I don’t appreciate that. Oh, and I actually have to pay for my games still? Ridiculous.

Here is what I want to have happen; I’d like to be set free by an ugly black man and his crew of pale white skin, dark clothed Goth freaks. Hell I sit in a cubicle, shoot me a fed ex brother and let me answer that phone. John Connor isn’t going to get me out of here; he’s too busy running from Arnold. Don’t worry John he’ll grow tired of chasing you and wind up cheating on his wife, you should have enough time to escape when that happens. Seriously though, get me out of here so I can learn that crazy shit you guys know how to do. You know, Kung Fu, expert marksmen, hurdling sky scrapers, making a satisfying dish of Crème Brulee. You know, that stuff.

But Cody, it’s not possible to learn things the way they did in that movie. Um, yes it is. That movie was a true story. But, Cody, would you really have fun leaping from skyscraper to skyscraper? Yup, I shoot aliens in the face all the time on my Xbox and those games are just as real as the air I’m breathing. Wait…what am I breathing? If this reality is nonexistent then I’d like to have some fun with it. Sleeping in a nice and comfortable bed and being able to eat heartedly at breakfast beats sleeping on a metal cot and getting runny snot to eat in the morning (and lunch and dinner). I’d only leave this place when stuff got out of hand, like the one time they tried to make a woman the President. How’s that going to work, if you’re running the world, who’s going to make my sandwich? Oh sexist jokes are funny because they’re not true. I am pretty hungry though.

I’d choose this fake world over reality any day. Living off of snot, floating around the underground tunnels, and living in an underground city close to the Earth’s core? Yeah, I’d rather live on a street corner next to McDonalds holding a sign that says, “Hunger Attack, get this man a Big Mac, beer money would be much appreciated.” I just want Morpheus to take me out of this long enough to gain some skills and knowledge so I can reinstate myself with the knowledge of how to be amazing. I could become famous, rich, and did I mention famous? I would be known as “that guy from Colorado”, the man who can leap over skyscrapers, whoop your butt with some kung fu, shoot the balls off a nat from a mile away, fly a helicopter, read a book in two seconds, bend a freaking spoon…..using…..his…..

“Cody! Wake up! You’ve been in here sleeping for over an hour; get your ass back to work!”

“Dude hold on a sec. I have a very important question. Is the Matrix real?”

“You’re an idiot.”

I pick my spoon back up and stare it as I make my way back to my desk. Now my other shoulder hurts and the spoon has yet to move. Reality is boring.

This Gaming Life Part III: The Underrated

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Be sure to read Part I and II before continuing on this epic journey!

*Side note* I realized I rushed the ending of part II a little bit, so I wanted to give you the opportunity to let me know if you wanted to know more about what I disliked about Halo ODST or my thoughts on Halo Reach. Also, I failed to mention Halo Wars, an RTS game that was put out for Halo, and also the clan Bryan and I started, JPH (Jocks Playing Halo). If you’d like to see a post on any of these things, please send me an email or just simply comment on today’s post.*/side note*

Have you ever wondered if there is more to life than the seemingly bland existence we tolerate on a daily basis? I often do, and perhaps that is because I am one of those people who thinks his existence is rather bleak and dreary. Waking up every single day and heading into a dead end job that is full of hypocrisy and borderline tyranny is enough to send me spiraling into an emotional vortex. I believe that everyone should be happy with the lives that they have, no matter what their career options are. If you’re working a job that turns you into a depressed Emo child that has an insatiable urge to cut himself, perhaps it’s time to look for a new career. I hate Emo kids and I would certainly never cut myself, but I feel it would be beneficial for me to begin a career in something that I enjoy doing. Work is never really “fun”, but people should enjoy what they do in order to maintain emotional stability. Work is exactly what it sounds like, work. In my case, I love the military because of the awesome benefits that accompany it, but on the darker side of the moon, I don’t enjoy for one second what I do. With recent events that have occurred in my life that may or may not have an effect on my career (I don’t feel like telling you because I’m secretly Emo and sad), I’ve decided I need to focus more on what is really important, my family and our future. Aside from trying to complete a degree or three, I’ll be working on the short story I’ve started and developing video games.

Ah yes, developing games, that brings us to the topic of this edition of “This Gaming Life.” I know it’s been about two months or so since I’ve last updated this segment and now it’s time to press on. Hopefully you’ve read Part I and II so you’ll know where we left off. Now as I introduced this topic I spoke a tad about wanting to move on in life with my writing and game developing, but the question for myself is how to get started. I’ve started writing that short story I spoke about, but I didn’t get very far because I hit an obstacle. Midway through the first chapter I realized that my readers have no idea who the main character is, where the setting takes place, or why they should care. Instead, I forced the reader to enter the story via the first person narration of this no named character’s lonely and demented life and forced them to read every little detail about his insignificant surroundings and people. There has to be a more creative way to introduce a character, especially when I’m telling the story in the first person perspective. I took some time to do some research and found that a lot of successful writers are telling other aspiring writers to read a lot of fiction and to practice. By reading other author’s literature, I can learn different styles of writing. While I’m doing that, I’m also learning how these other authors seem to build their characters and what avenues they use to make me care about their fictional creations. The more I delve into that to find which style of writing will be my own unique method, I realize that becoming a writer first is going to further help me develop games and write video game scripts. Well sheesh, how do video games stories pay into this? Using the “read other fiction” method to help find a technique for writing, I’ve decided to apply the same thing with playing other games. This is simple enough because I’ve played many games and I plan on playing many more. I’m a gamer; it’s only in my nature. What better way to take my fun and thrilling, yet often lazy, habit and turn it into something constructive. That’s right other companies who’ve made games I love to play; you’re going to be a very significant help in molding me into a successful developer mwahaha.

Seriously though, game stories are written with so many avenues left open to help strengthen or continue the main plot. That or they’re in place to provide numerous side stories that don’t necessarily tie up its loose ends, which in turns becomes a novel that sells millions *cough* Halo *cough*. Mass Effect is one game that I can admire for its unique ability to stretch its universe into depths of imagination that takes place in a different galaxy (literally) than the main plot. There are dozens of different planets that a gamer can explore in the Mass Effect universe, but upon reaching these places, there are side stories and quests that stand on their own with zero support from the main objectives. As a gamer, I feel as if I am a part of this enormous and dramatic universe where galactic issues never seem to cease. The fact that the writers of Mass Effect took the time to write out a detailed history for each planet, even if the planet has no significance to the game what so ever, makes me realize that writing a game will be a much more imaginative and well thought out process than just writing a book.

In Part II of this gaming life I reminisced about my complete (almost) experience with the Halo universe and how it introduced me to the many things that games can offer. I know I made it look like all we ever played was Halo, but that’s a fallacy. There are many games out there and I’ve played quite a few of them. There are few games I would actually consider to be “major” titles and I base my judgment on that by how popular the game is and by how much I like it. Not every game is going to be a colossal success in that sense. I’ve played a plethora of games and it’s easy to note that a vast majority of the games are smaller titles than the games I really like, some of which are extremely underrated, in my opinion of course. I’m betting that most people know the titles I’m going to talk about in this segment and if you’re a gamer there is no doubt in my mind that you may have even played them. I’d like to talk about some of my favorite games that are popular, yet underrated on that same note. They haven’t reached the level that Halo, Gears of War, or even Call of Duty have, but they’re certainly part of the backbone that has helped shape the way game stories and game play is viewed today.

Splinter CellGenre: StealthPoint of View: Third person (over the shoulder)Titles: Splinter Cell (2002), Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (2004), Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005), Splinter Cell: Double Agent (2006), Splinter Cell: Conviction (2010) Splinter Cell 6 (TBA)

You are a mercenary hired by the bad guy to protect some top secret stuff and you’re out walking a beat on the same dark path without a flashlight, smoking a no named brand of cigarette and listening to the ambient sounds of nature. You continue to walk in the exact same pattern, lazily vigilant of the shadows, or the soft sound of rustling leaves nearby. The continuous sound of a distant waterfall splashing to the pond below it and the monotone groans of wind are just a couple of the many noises causing a distraction to your ability to hear the subtlest of things, like an approaching intruder. You walk up to the edge of a cliff and begin to urinate over the side. Just as you finish you find yourself swiftly succumbing to a headlock while your right arm is involuntarily outstretched as far as it will go by the intruder, whose thumb is pressing hard on the pressure point beneath your palm. Congratulations, you’ve just met Sam Fisher, the stoic badass protagonist from the Splinter Cell series.

What’s going to happen now? Sam is either going to kill you and pitch you off the cliff in the same direction you just relieved yourself, or he’ll just knock you out and drag you a thousand feet away so your buddies don’t get suspicious when they come across your unconscious body. Your demise will most likely be the conclusion of a torturous interrogation that you easily gave into because Sam made you cry like a little girl.
Welcome to Splinter Cell, a gritty stealth game that straps the shoes of Sam Fisher into your control and sends you on nail biting missions to prevent terrorism. Sam is a behind the scenes operative that technically doesn’t exist and is often sent on secret spy missions to end a person’s life before they have the chance to wreak havoc. Leading up to this climactic event, Sam typically spends his time infiltrating heavily guarded facilities to steal information that may or may not be related to the current threat. The first four games are relatively slow and quiet which emphasizes the fact that the games are stealth based. On top of that, Sam is given a unique set of gear that allows him to remain in the shadows to avoid enemies, or to help him put the oblivious baddies in his way to sleep. It’s extremely gratifying to sneak around a whole map undetected while still accomplishing the mission; however it takes a person with an abundance of patience to be able to pull it off. On the other hand, going through a map and silently killing every moving thing in sight is gratifying as well, in a demented sort of way.

I already vaguely touched on the story and unfortunately it’s a rather similar pattern for all five games, leaving little flavor in the imaginative spirit. The games are still rather fun to play through though, so please don’t let that discourage you. My only issue is that stories follow the same sort of path that something bad is going to happen and it’s up to you to stop it before it does (no, it’s not Call of Duty). The fifth game in the series, Splinter Cell: Conviction, is the game that all Splinter Cells should have been game play and story wise. Following the tiny portion of Sam’s personal life that is slowly revealed throughout the series, Conviction takes on a more personal tone than the rest. In the first few games, the player is made aware that Sam is a single dad to a girl named Sarah. In the opening credits of Double Agent we find out that Sarah is hit and killed by a drunk driver. On a quick side note, Double Agent sucks. Back to Conviction, Sam has since left the agency and is now being hunted by the same people he use to work for and they seem to have some secret information about his daughter’s death. In his journey he finds out some crazy things, like the new boss at his former job is a terrorist who’s in cahoots with the Vice President, and another small detail about his daughter and how she *spoiler, play the damn game if you want to know…*

I love Sam Fisher as a character because he’s extremely stoic and moderately dark. In Conviction he comes across as a sad and broken man with nothing to lose, hell bent on finding out what really happened with his daughter, all the while stopping, yet again, bad stuff from happening. Conviction is also the game that changed the way Splinter Cell defined stealth. No more spending hours quietly moving around people, or suffering the consequences of setting off the alarm. Instead, Sam moves a lot faster and unleashes death onto all who stand in his way by viciously killing them all. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…or Sam…in this case.

Max PayneGenre: Third Person Shooter, Film Noir
Titles: Max Payne (2001), Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (2003), Max Payne 3 (2012...hopefully)

“They were all dead. The final gunshot was an exclamation mark to everything that had led to this point.”

Max Payne is a dark man with nothing to lose and he will stop at nothing to make the people responsible for his melancholy life pay for their sins. His life wasn’t always grim, in fact he use to be a happy man. A New York City detective with a beautiful wife and newborn child, Max was on the verge of living the “American Dream.” He comes home from work one day in the middle of what seems to be a robbery. Three junkies had broken in and murdered Max’s newborn child and wife. Naturally Max kills the intruders to death (haha) and then collapses over the body of his wife, doused with the “payne” of the sudden loss of his family.

Naturally Max continues on with life, yet not the way one would expect. He takes up a job with the DEA to try and find those behind the distribution of valkyr, the drug that the junkies who killed his family were on. Max’s story really begins when an undercover mission goes wrong and his friend Alex gets murdered by an unknown assassin. Being the only witness to the murder, Max winds up being blamed for it and has avoid his own people all while chasing down the mobsters behind valkyr. As the mystery unfolds Max finds that there is more the murder of his family than some random junkies breaking into his home for theft reasons. Max battles his inner demons, the police, and those responsible for his family’s untimely demise. Throughout the game, the snow storm that is blanketing New York City seems to be mimicking the darkness that is blanketing Max Payne himself.

For some reason, and I don’t know why, but I love dark and gloomy characters. Perhaps it’s the way that tragedy changes them from the happy go lucky people they are into ruthless killing machines with nothing to lose. Maybe it’s the fact that many characters are portrayed as the invulnerable super hero badasses that seem nearly untouchable, making them hard to relate to. It’s easy to relate to a character that still has that bad assery about him yet still reveals his character flaws. Having feelings isn’t typically something a game character possesses, but real people do. Relating to the pain of death is another avenue to make that connection with a being that doesn’t even exist.

Max Payne, to me, is the epitome of what a broken hero is and his story hits home much more because the game is narrated in the first person format, making it so Max himself is expressing his own “payne”. Max is an inspiration for some of the characters I hope to create, although I may not go too heavy on the similes and metaphors like Max does.

“Snow fell like ash from post-apocalyptic skies”

“It was colder than the devil's heart, raining ice pitchforks as if the heavens were ready to fall.”

“The bullet holes were rubies on her chest”

If you can get past the mediocre graphics and sound effects, Max Payne is actually an extremely fun game to play, especially with their “bullet time” slow motion action sequences that made it simple to blast numerous enemies while diving for cover. Too bad this feature didn’t really make an appearance in the disappointing 2008 feature film starring Mark Wahlberg as Max Payne.

“I was in a computer game. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of.”

 

Unreal ChampionshipGenre: First Person Shooter/Third Person Shooter
Titles: Unreal Championship (2002), Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict (2005)

I’m moving so fast that my brain is barely registering the images that are blanketing my eyes. My head is dizzy and I’m starting to feel nauseous because of it, yet I’m too relentless to quit. The action on the screen seems to pop out at me as if I were flipping through the pages of a children’s popup book. Eventually I stop, grab some medicine out of the cupboard and swallow it dry without any water, and then lay down to collect myself.

Welcome to Unreal Championship, an Epic Games creation that carved its way into the gaming world behind the genius Cliff Bleszinski. I honestly don’t remember the first time I swam in the uncharted waters of the Unreal universe, but I can remember that Unreal Championship introduced me to the untapped potential that was buried deep beneath the foundation of Xbox Live. Unreal Championship is solely a multiplayer game to begin with and even the single player story is crafted around the multiplayer aspect. There is an “instant action” option as well that places you into a multiplayer match against computer generated bots that can be extremely easy or difficult depending on the difficulty level you set them at. I wouldn’t recommend the “godlike” difficulty if you’re green to this game.

Playing online for the first time felt like it was the same as playing against the bots offline. However, I was quickly able to decipher subtle movements in the enemies that showed me they were being controlled by a human player. It was when I could hear other people talking that the reality kicked in, I was literally playing a multiplayer game against other people across the world. Well, at that point, most likely in the United States, but still, it was people I’ve never met in person and could’ve lived a thousand miles away. It was when they opened their mouths that I realized that people are assholes when they’re hiding behind the protection of their televisions screens. It’s rather pathetic to see how many people spew racism and hatred towards each other for no reason at all other than the fact that they’re able to do it with no serious repercussions. It didn’t get that bad in Unreal Championship, but when Halo 2 came out and made its online appearance, people showed off their true colors. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time playing Unreal Championship online, not until the second game came out anyway.

Fully loaded with the quirkiest weapons and blazing fast game play are two of the things that carried over from the first game. Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict contained an outstanding cast, newly added melee combat, coup de graw, and much more. I couldn’t keep my hands off of this game. The story wasn’t really that attractive, but it’s kind of hard to add a story to a multiplayer based game. However, watching Anubis try to win over the Ascension right over his former fiancé, Selket, and her reigning champ boyfriend, Apophis, did actually make it rather interesting. Not enough for me to put it in the record books though. The icing on the cake for this series is most definitely the multiplayer portion. The only thing I really took away from the storyline is one of the last things Anubis says. “Fuck your tournament.” Pretty childish, I know, but I remember it so well because it was one of the first games I ever played that featured the “f” bomb in it. The only other game up to this point that had swearing in it was Max Payne 2, and holy cow did the one character in that game drop a lot of “f” bombs! Of course that seems to be pretty routine with the more modern games we play *cough* Grand Theft Auto IV *cough*.



Well I hope you made it to the end of this extremely long edition of “This Gaming Life”, but in the end I hope it was worth the read. For me it’s important to remember these games and what I like about them because one day I’ll be able to draw inspiration from them when I’m making my own game. From this point on, “This Gaming Life” will typically feature one game at a time that has made an impact on me. Whether it’s old or new, I’ll talk about it, so please expect this segment to stick around. I may take a tad break from it so you can read something else besides video game stuff, but stayed tuned regardless for Part IV where I’ll be talking about Gears of War, the games.