Red Dead Redemption's Missed Opportunity

Red Dead Redemption is pretty slow to start, but once it gets going, it is fun as hell. That's why I've had the game for months, but am just now starting to get into it.

So now I'm going to quasi-complain about it. It doesn't really count as criticism because I can't hold against the developers things they haven't done that I would really like.

Red Dead Redemption (herein referred to as RDD) plays into just about everything I already thought about the old west. This is stuff I learned from movies and TV, so its accuracy is dubious at best. In terms of its portrayal of history, RDD has yet to subvert any of my expectations. Rather, it seems to cater to pretty much all of them. Now, I do understand the purpose of it. By doing so, it makes for one hell of an exciting game. What with all the gun fighting, robberies, prostitution and so on.

But if gaming is exploration and play, then we're missing out on a really cool opportunity to show a side of the Old West that we didn't really know or expect. Imagine playing an open world game about what it was REALLY like, rather than what you just hope it was like. Gaming is more exciting when it defies your expectations, rather than just playing into them.

Like I said, I understand why they designed the game the way they did. I also understand how difficult it would be to make it super fun if you removed a lot of the action. But I loved the missions where I was helping out with the ranch, wrangling cattle, or breaking horses. I don't think it would be too difficult if you just made the characters and story interesting enough.

It just makes me a little sad that I feel this way about an otherwise fantastic experience. It isn't really fair to be sad about what could have been, especially when it relates to my own hangups about gaming in general.


One last thing while we are on the subject of Old West stereotyping: They seriously have a drunken, skeevy Irishman? They didn't even draw attention to this obvious and somewhat offensive stereotype. They could have at least been winking at the player about it. Sheesh.

E3 2011 or: Why I Hate The Kinect Now

I'm going to reference Mitch Hedberg on this one: Watching E3 conferences is like eating pancakes. All exciting at first, but by the end you're F#@$%& sick of 'em.

That's the way I felt when I started watching Microsoft's Presser, the first of three that I would ultimately view. What follows are my impressions---

MICROSOFT:

I officially hate the Kinect. When it was first revealed two E3's ago, I was skeptical but optimistic. It was a strange and exciting new technology, but one I worried would result mostly in gimmicky experiences. The tech demos they displayed were very much "concept" videos, and I took them as such. But it looked really fun anyway, if this stuff was actually possible. The live demonstrations obviously real, because they were loaded with technical glitches.

If we leap ahead one year to E3 2010, the demos were oddly perfect. So they were most likely all staged. I can forgive that, though, for the sake of presentation, assuming that is all stuff the Kinect can actually do. But it doesn't speak much to the confidence of its performance. At any rate, it had been a year since the Kinect was revealed, so developers had at least a year to play with the new technology. The demos were, in my mind, awful. They were nothing but gimmicky new ways of controlling the same old games. The games themselves were all incredibly limited, on-rails experiences. I felt sad this was all they had to show.

Let's leap ahead an additional year to E3 2011. Surely after at least 2 years with the Kinect, we were to be bombarded with fascinating demonstrations and new games using the Kinect in ways we never anticipated...right?

NO!

It was the exact same bullshit we saw last year! I felt sad. Then I felt angry. Then I felt sad again. Then SUPER ANGRY! Then I completely gave up on trying to like the Kinect. If nothing interesting has happened after 2 years, what will?

Then Microsoft revealed Kinect Fun Labs! Oh my! An app store dedicated to small, experimental Kinect experiences? This sounds promising! It kind of is, if you bought a $150 camera just to screw around with little meaningless apps. It was almost like Microsoft was admitting this was about it. No meaningful experiences here. Just some insubstantial little tech demos, kind of like their E3 pressers.

For shame. But I will remain optimistic. Maybe Fun Labs will provide inspiration for some really cool experiences in games. Maybe.

SONY:

This year's E3 was a lot like last year's in that Microsoft's event made me angry, while Sony's just kind of underwhelmed me.

They didn't focus too heavily on the PlayStation Move, which was nice of them. They did go into more detail about their Next Generation Portable, now known as the PlayStation Vita.

What I like about the Vita is that it's an all-purpose mobile gaming device. It has pretty much everything a current generation smartphone has (tilt-controls, multi-touch screen, etc) in addition to real physical controls, which is something that keeps smartphones from being able to easily play games like Megaman. In that regard, it's pretty cool. I can play pretty much any type of mobile game on this thing.

What I don't like about it has to do with its entire approach. They keep hammering home the point that this thing can play near-PS3 quality games on the go. I don't want that! Granted, the visuals on this thing are impressive, but I don't want to play Uncharted on a dinky screen. If I'm going to be playing a game as stunning and immersive as that, I want to be doing it at home, on my nice TV, nice sound system, and from the comfort of my recliner.

Now, there's nothing that says the Vita HAS to do that, but it's something Sony keeps talking about ad nauseum. I am glad, however, it has a bungle of mobile tech to make for other types of experiences. It could be a good device to play iPhone-style, quick mobile games. But then the issue becomes whether or not I want to carry around a completely separate device for that.

The Vita is a promising hardware platform, but like the PSP, it remains to be seen of the software will support that promise.

NINTENDO:

Where to even begin? This was kind of a crazy one. That controller is bonkers! Wii U? I guess we'll eventually also get over the silly name like we did with the Wii.

Nintendo was really channeling the first reveal of the Wii with this press conference. The difference is that the Wii's use case was a lot clearer than the Wii U. They showed the Wii U controller doing some wild stuff, but all of it was still kind of fuzzy.

So it's a controller with a screen, and the screen can be a extension of the TV, or replace the TV? It has motion controls? How does a screen utilize motion controls? This all seems kind of cool, but only vaguely cool.

It was immediately obvious what the original Wii was going to do, even as misleading as the first concept videos actually were. The Wii U? Not so much. I'm still kind of excited, though. It's all up to developers.

Wait a minute... the developers didn't really do much interesting stuff with the Wii's motion controls, or even Wii Motion Plus. Most of the best, recent Wii games haven't really been using motion controls.

BLARGHHHHH!!!

Double Jump Episode 6!

If I were going to describe this next episode of Double Jump using only culinary terms, "saucy" would probably be the first thing that came to mind.

Imagine you went into a McDonalds and you ordered a Big Mac. What you didn't notice, however, is that Wolgang Puck was back there grinding the beef, baking the bun, and blending together the special sauce himself. With the utmost care, he places the bun on the table, plants the first juicy patty, some diced onions that he grew himself, the next fresh bun, the final medium-cooked patty, romaine lettuce, and the special sauce with ingredients imported from Tasmania.

And here you were expecting just a normal Big Mac, but instead you got this incredible "core sample" of a burger from Wolgang Amadeus Puck himself.

Yeah, that's kind of what the next episode of Double Jump is like.