Another D&D Link

By Grabthar's hammer, there must be something in the water. I hesitate to introduce D&D to my daughters, although I'm not at all sure of my reasons. I suspect it's mostly because, La-Z-Boy dad that I am, I couldn't be bothered to help them sort out the intricacies of gameplay. Besides, gameplay is the sort of thing they ought to be dishing out, and not some basement-bound fella on the far end of the spectrum.

Dungeons & Dragons, Part The Second

Although I'm bitter at being scooped by Ethan Gilsdorf, it behooves me to link to his piece on mid-life campaigners. He admits that nostalgia is a crucial motivating factor, but uncovers a few others that hadn't occurred to me, including:

"Gamers are married, making babies. They are encouraging their kids to discard their Xbox consoles in favor of the communal storytelling experience that is the cornerstone of D&D."

More anon.

Dungeons & Dragons, Part The First

“We’ve got a campaign going on in Ty’s* basement. Care to join us?”

Thus began, in the summer of ’80, my exceedingly brief history with Dungeons & Dragons. I was 15 years old, and getting ready to spend a few weeks at my aunt and uncle’s farm, where my activities would be chiefly devoted to practical concerns. A summer afternoon in a friend’s basement playing this game with the weird name seemed like a good stepping-off point.

Ron, the friend who made the invite, was a Tolkien buff who made my enthusiasm for Lord Of The Rings look like the superficial acquaintance it was. The basement “campaign room” was standard-issue 70s rec room: ceiling-mounted flourescent lighting, inexpensive paneling on the walls, shag rug, a beaten-up couch set and a stocked bar we were too mindful to abuse. Ty was “Dungeon Master” and spread his charts and sheets on the coffee table, which he sequestered to himself so that we couldn’t cheat.

As the graph paper and bizarrely-shaped die were produced, Ty explained the temporary character I was going to play. He might as well have spoken Japanese — or Elvish — the way he droned on. “You’ll catch on as you play,” he said.

It took a while. Ron showed me the map he'd drawn of the dungeon we were in. There seemed to be a lot of white space. “This is as far as we've got,” he said, pointing to a square. Earlier in the campaign he and some others had encountered and fought orcs, a gang of bandits, and some goblins. “Right now we're in a large room where the only item of consequence is a large tapestry hanging on the eastern wall.” He looked at Ty. “Can we remove the tapestry? Roll it up and take it with us?”

Ty shook his head. “You cannot.”

Ron asked about a few other techniques, including casting a spell of some sort. Ty wasn't budging on the tapestry. Ron huffed. “Alright, try this: with my lance, I gently lift the southeast corner of the tapestry and peer behind it.”

“You see a brick wall.”

“Is there a door, or some hidden panel?”

“All you see is a brick wall.”

“Ahm . . . have I got enough magic left to check for enchantments?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, then.”

“Still a brick wall.”

“Are you serious? What happens if I scratch the tapestry with the point of my lance?”

“Sorry, did you say you slash the tapestry?”

Ron's eyes lit up. “Is this a prompt?”

Ty retreated. “Clarification. I'm just asking.”

Ron leaned forward. “I slash the tapestry!” He made a sweeping motion with his hands.

Ty snickered. “A green, viscous ooze pours out of the slash, covering you and your party and killing you. Your campaign is over.”

This was when the many-sided die finally came into play, to be thrown at Ty the Dungeon Master, who quickly retreated behind the bar.

When tempers finally cooled, another campaign was initiated. The first thing our fictional band encountered was a group of traveling merchants. Once again, the lengthy Q&A. Once again, we might as well have encountered another brick wall. The way I understood it, Ty was a would-be novelist, hoping we'd suss out the plot as we snooped around his setting. To my mind, the obvious encounters in which a central or even secondary character might gain illumination were nothing more than cruel cyphers designed to frustrate players. I said so to my friend as we walked home for supper.

“Well, Ty is a particularly opaque Dungeon Master,” he said. “Ideally we'd have someone a little more generous with his detailing and characterization, like Kent.” Alas, Kent's summer with the Air Cadets had already begun, so the D&D bug never took hold of me.

Alright, now take a look at this:



That is a screen from “Wizard & Princess,” one of the earliest Graphic Adventure Games. See the command prompt, and the game response? That's just one example of the moribund stasis these games frequently lapsed into. If you weren't part of a discussion group — which, in this the early age of the telephone modem, would physically gather at the vendors that rented out these games — the odds that you'd ever see these games through to their designed completion were stacked against you. Although I finished one or two of the later, more user-friendly (read: “so simple an addled chimp could do it”) games, I never had the prerequisite patience to engage in the larger, ostensibly more rewarding graphic adventure games.**

No surprise, really, that these games were more robustly enjoyed by my friends who had devoted themselves to the intricacies of D&D. After all, there was something of value in that tapestry, or behind it, or somehow or other related to it. If we'd only had the patience and the persistence and the correct variation of inquiry we might have discovered just what that was . . . .

Richard Moss entertainingly unspools the quarter-century history of the graphic adventure game, which he reckons has all but concluded — or evolved to a superior format, depending on your point of view — with the advent of episodic games.

*All names have been changed, to protect the guilty.
**Including, most recently, Grim Fandango.

The Pokemon Card Game, As Hacked By Tots

For several years running the girls conducted an ongoing game with the few dozen Pokemon cards they’d collected. The rules were clear to them (and created independently of the existing corporate rule structure) but confusing to me. The game seemed to involve courtship and marriage, and prolonged bouts of mischief — occasionally violent, always comic — conducted between clans of indeterminate character. Lengthy exchanges of dialog between cards was the norm. As stories developed, the girls would quibble over specific traits, but once the matter was settled, it remained settled.

As I watched the proceedings, two things struck me. First of all I was in awe at the voice and depth of character the girls would endow individual cards, which were little more than colorful cartoons on a small piece of cardboard.

Secondly, after witnessing them concoct their game and its world more or less on their own (they'd only seen one or two episodes of the television series, which failed to sustain their interest), I had to wonder if role-playing-games weren’t an innate instinct. As with many of the standardized games they played and enjoyed, cards were traded (via marriage, etc.) or lost (disease and violent death), but it wasn't enough just to play a variation on Old Maid: following an exchange the different characters would, at length, either lament or express relief at the outcome. In fact, the dialog between the characters (and the girls who played them) determined the shape of the game.

There seemed to be two objects to the game: 1) see who can get the other participant to laugh the hardest; 2) keep the game going for as long as possible. It didn't really end until this summer, when both girls gave their cards away after admitting they'd finally lost interest.

And yet an aspect of that early experience lives on in their video gameplay. If I eavesdrop on a Saturday morning session of LEGO Batman (always two-player mode, usually villains) I'll catch them talking to each other in the exaggerated tones of the characters they're manipulating. In fact, watching them play the game can be frustrating because there are frequent, extended periods when their gameplay isn't concerned with the dictated objective, but with horsing around in the environment and, yes, getting the other player to laugh.

It seems that, for my daughters at least, there are two impulses being met in games like this: the comic impulse, and, in assuming distinct voice and specificity of “another” character, the “acting” impulse.

When a person truly discovers those profound pleasures, she will rarely let go of them, and then usually only under great social duress (“Grow up and put the Barbies away, already!”). In fact, I'm wondering if these impulses are ever released at all? Is it not more likely that they are sublimated in the act of reading or watching, or given dictated expression in community theatres and church basements, or occasionally set free to entertain during a meal shared with a trusted audience?

Games! Huh! What Are They Good For?

In a puritanical variation on the "But is it art?" question, Jane McGonigal wonders whether video games mightn't be good for gamers, in a "Mikey likes it!" way. Clay Risen protests the question: "(Games) can be a hell of a lot of fun. Isn't that enough?" Meanwhile, experienced gamer Michael Agger does the sensible thing and awards McGonigal points per talking-point.

I have my own thoughts on the matter, based entirely on anecdotal evidence compiled and collated from the annals of my own experience. I've played video games since Pong, I dabbled in D&D back in the day, and I've mulled over what brings my daughters back to a particular game.

Oh yes, I do have thoughts.

Krull-Inspired Desperation

It should surprise no-one if I admit that I was one of the original contributors to the meager box-office pot of 1983's galling sci-fi/fantasy mash-up stinker Krull (i).



Youngsters who have been raised in this golden era of Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings and Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica might find this difficult to believe, but 20 years ago the pickings for fans of either genre were so slim, we happily joined the queue. And when the movie was over, we marched over to the video arcade to play the game -- our desperation was just that great.

Having said that, I don't believe even I would have been so desperate as to willingly give myself away in a Krull Wedding promotional stunt. Unbelievable, but true (via boing-boing).

"I may not know what I like, but I know art!" Further Thoughts On Video Games

Roger Ebert waves a sort-of white flag on the issue of whether a video game can be art, and scratches his head over the results of his push-poll.

It's been a month since I plugged in the PS3 I got for my birthday and played a bit of catch-up with Gaming's High Society, and I've been mulling over the "But is it art?" question. Ebert admits to two fatal flaws in his original rant: he didn't provide a definition of "art", and he is entirely unwilling to play a game -- any game -- that could potentially change his mind on the matter. To my mind the former fault is the greater. A link to Denis Dutton's criteria for art would have settled the matter in Ebert's favor.

I'm not completely on-side with Dutton, however, and I doubt Ebert is either. I'm happy to accord artistic value to Swamp Thing, a movie that amuses but does little to disturb the viewer into a heightened state of unanticipated empathy. Similarly video games: a player would have to be a morally stunted not to feel at least a little squeamish about some of the choices pointedly put to the fore in games like Bioshock and Half-Life 3. But in the main even these games are structured as a combined thrill-ride/shooting gallery. If you're not a gamer, imagine riding through Disney's Haunted Mansion with an Uzi. There is a textured aesthetic, and frequent meta-references. Video game aesthetics might not penetrate the player's consciousness to the degree that Huck Finn or Pride & Prejudice does. But is that depth necessary for something to be called "art"?

Of Surveys & "Art"

Roger Ebert is trying his hand at Rovean Science: go here to take his "survey."

I chose the video game, out of pique. I'm starting to come around on the matter of video games as art. More than that, I think it ill-behooves America's Critic to give Swamp Thing three stars, then proceed to throw stones at the gamers' glass house.

Addiction

Yikes -- there but for the grace of God go I.

Lego Conquers All

Further proof, as if any were needed, that there isn't a video game engine/concept that can't be improved by LEGO.



Yes, that's Iggy Pop you're looking at. I very much doubt we'll hear his wife or band-mates whining about his appearance. In fact, I'd like Lego to have a go at my appearance!

Not only that, I'd like Lego to have a go at every other successful video franchise. Halo, Bio-Shock and Fallout* -- they could all stand the Lego treatment in a big, big way.

*Grand Theft Auto was not included in this list because there's no improving on it after The Simpsons Hit & Run (wp).

Arcade Nostalgia

Once when our family was visiting my grandparents I discovered a weathered catalog with a blue cover from Auto World, dated 1967. I was 10 or 11 when I found this publication, and I spent hours poring over it. This place in Scranton, PA didn’t just sell and ship every model car in existence (from floor models to “show cars” like 007’s Aston Martin, The Munster’s Dragula, The Man From UNCLE’s Piranha, and of course everything with Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s name on it), they also sold every conceivable accoutrement relating to model cars.

I recently mentioned this catalog to my uncle, and this provoked some curious memories from the mid-to-late 60s, when he was an adolescent. When my grandfather drove into the city, he’d drop my uncle and a couple of his friends off at a slot-car derby — an arcade-type establishment where a kid paid 75 cents an hour to run his slot-car on a huge, elaborate track that filled the room. These cars were of a different scale than the ones I was familiar with: mine were no larger than a Matchbox car, while my uncle’s required two hands for proper placement on the track.

My uncle had a cheap model called “La Cucaracha” (purchased from this mail order outfit) which eventually earned the reputation for being the fastest thing on the track. An older brother of a schoolmate dropped a bunch of money on the most expensive model in the catalog, determined to beat my uncle. He didn’t realize until the model arrived that much of what he was purchasing was “detail work” — all sorts of fiddly bits and pieces that contributed to the model’s “authenticity” but did nothing for the car’s potential velocity.

When it came time to race, this kid brought out his expensive car and pitted it against “La Cucaracha.” Unfortunately for my uncle’s nemesis, “La Cucaracha” was a single-molded vehicle which ran low to the ground and hugged the track like a coat of paint. As both cars took the first hairpin curve, “La Cucaracha” fishtailed and sent the fancy car flying off the track. It hit the floor and shattered into dozens of little pieces. The older lad gathered what was left of his formerly fine car, then slouched out the door.

My uncle’s story has come to mind because Boing-Boing has been linking to nostalgic recollections of video arcades, the slot-car derbies of my youth. In the late 70s and early 80s downtown Winnipeg was the living embodiment of a hippie’s bad acid trip. From Eaton’s to The Hudson Bay, Portage Avenue was chock-a-block with arcades, record stores and head shops (which not only had video games, but rock ‘n’ roll and drug paraphernalia, and skids and skids of porn). I can only recall a few of these establishments — there was Circus Circus, a creepy, filthy place with too much light for good gaming; the Pirate’s Den, which was painfully loud despite its wall-to-wall carpeting; and Mother Trucker’s, which somehow acquired the distinction of being “drive-through drug city.”

I can’t begin to account for the hours and money I spent in these places, which were all billed as “Family Fun Centres!” Out of a perverse desire to prove the point I’d occasionally cajole our father into joining me (which he did out of a perverse desire to bond with his older son) and dropping five dollars for 30 minutes of noise and mayhem. The proprietors treated him the same as anyone else, but at 40-plus he was easily double the age of any other patron in the room. I got a kick out of how the twittering, chirping, buzzing pandemonium that hit him at the door always seemed to catch him off-guard.

My friend liked to initial his high scores with “DDT.” I chose “ZAP”; when I later spotted someone else using that, I switched to “ILK.” We were both jealous of our friend “KAZ” — a uniquely truncated version of his last name, which also served as his nickname. When a game called “Commando” allowed for longer high score entries, I underwhelmed a potential girlfriend by entering, “I ♥ JAYMIE D!!” My fruitlessly saccharine missive placed 10th in a list of gutter obscenities.

Some guys manage to dovetail their video game addiction into true love. Last Christmas a neighbor was given a vintage “Asteroids” game, from his wife. That woman dropped serious coin on eBay, but it’s a matter of record her husband outdid the “Nintendo response” come Christmas Day. That’s a “first year of marriage” gift: at our stage of the game (15 years next month), if my wife were to present me with a vintage cabinet I’d take it as a pointed cue to book the marriage counselor. A mutual gift of new living room furniture, on the other hand, is the sign of a healthy, happy marriage. Well ... that and a boxed set of some kind.
These memories are certainly pleasant, but I can’t say I’m especially nostalgic for video arcades. Every senior centre on the continent has a billiard room where the menfolk go to remember the glory of their youth. A video arcade in my future retirement centre would be a waste of space. The consoles and games of today beat the simple pleasures of the 80s by a very wide margin.

And yet, and yet ... a couple of years ago KAZ sent me a disc loaded with MAME versions of arcade games. I booted it up and showed my daughters a few favorites, including Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins. I found that even after I tweaked the controls I couldn’t get any further in the game than I could when I was 19. Twenty-five years later, I still suck.

So why is it, in this age of Wii delights, the girls occasionally nudge old ILK in the ribs and ask him to fire up GnG and play with them?

Best Video Game, Redux

Another impediment to my enjoying Fallout 3 is the family console. We don't Xbox 360 here: we Wii.

This limits my gaming experience, but in a good way: we get fewer first-person-shooters, and more get-up-and-move games. In the latter category is No More Heroes(MC) -- Paste's #5 pick, succinctly and artfully summed up as "the first game in history to satisfy the video-store junkie and the video-game burnout in equal measure." Hey, that's me!



It is fabulously silly, gouts-of-bloody fun -- which means I have to play it when the kids are asleep. Also, the swordplay requires some physical dexterity and a sharp memory for the appropriate combination moves. In other words, this is not a game for the pleasantly beer-buzzed. A clear head and primed muscles are a definite asset -- yet another recommendation for the game.

No More Heroes isn't my favorite Wii game -- that title still belongs to Super Mario Galaxy (MC). But it certainly rates as this year's gaming highlight. Bonus: after a year of poor sales it can be had quite cheaply.

Conversation Fodder: Best Video Game of 2008?

I have no doubt that, had I world enough and time, 20 straight hours ensconced in the family Sumo before our gargantuan flat-screen Hi-Def Behemoth playing Fallout 3 (h) -- Paste magazine's video game of the year -- would be just the thing. My daughters could take turns refreshing my mug of rooibos tea, while my wife would happily serve up ramen noodles every four hours. I suppose some sort of industrial absorbency diaper would be in order, as well as an occupational therapist for massage purposes: don't want to lose circulation to any extremities that aren't enlisted for button-mashing.

Unfortunately my trust in Paste's video game judges was irreparably damaged when they piled on the fudge and gave The Simpsons game a positive review. Some people might say I'm being too hard on a game that was merely mediocre, but I'd argue otherwise. The Lego games are mediocre; they're also pleasant diversions. The Simpsons is bafflingly unimaginative and no fun whatsoever -- pretty much in line with 95% of the games out there.

It sounds like the engineers of Fallout 3 worked hard to weave in as many textured surprises as possible. I'm sure if I gave it a chance I'd enjoy it. But (and I'm willing to receive correction on this) it also sounds like it's a run-n-shoot game. Thirty years of run-n-shoot, and we're willing to call this "a towering achievement"?



Please: a little less hyperbole and a little more critical sand. The industry might not comp you with as many $80 games, but I'd be tempted to resubscribe. And who would dare put a dollar value on that?

Console Wars: Part One(?)

Last Thursday, just before the release of Sony's Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii, I was gearing up to prognosticate the "winner". I wrote a few paragraphs, then promptly quit. I was creeping toward genuine analysis, and when I realized going further would require some basic groundrules, or even (*gasp*) a little research, I headed for the exit.

I could not, for the life of me, see the appeal of the new Playstation, and simply assumed this was true across the board. I've always maintained that "realistic" graphics do not make for better games, and that the game industry has, with precious exception, become moribund and unimaginative. Any console focussing on graphics and sound was focussing on bells and whistles, and fated to limited success. Because Nintendo seemed to be pushing its console just outside the envelope, while Microsoft and Sony were keeping their's tucked safely in its folds, I picked Nintendo as the winner.

It's still too early to declare a fast winner, but my instincts re: Sony were a tad off the mark. The first round of PS3s disappeared like so many Tickle Me Elmos, and it's likely to sell in decent numbers until Microsoft releases its next generation of xBox. When I asked my 18-year-old nephew about this consumer response, he acknowledged the craziness of it all. He figured his current PC could be upgraded to PS3 status with less than $300 worth of new hardware, while the PS3 pricetag is nearly $800 before taxes. Still, he had to admit his first instinct was to line up with his buddies and shell out the extra bucks.

That urge is not altogether foreign to me. But when it comes to spending money on digital entertainment, I'll sit out the "wars" and wait for a clear winner -- or, more likely, reluctantly choose a platform that appeals to my current life parameters. I'm too old and too happily married and much too pleased with family life to waste time charting possible trends in the wi-fi world. Based on this, this and this, it's possible Nintendo will score a little more cash from our family budget in the next few years.

Or maybe it's just a matter of which customer line I'd prefer to join (cartoon link from the bro).

Whither Gaming?

I play a one-note trumpet when it comes to video games, but since no-one's listening, I'll put it to my lips yet again. I love playing video games, especially "shooters". I enjoy the sense of discovery that comes with rounding a corner, and the thrill of teasing out reaction patterns. But I believe the gaming industry reached critical mass with Half-Life and The Sims. The real-dollar decline in gaming began with Halo and the XBox required to play it. With The Godfather and Sony's Playstation 3 it's sinking fast, and I don't think it's likely to recover anytime soon.

If you look at the game templates coming out for XBox 360 and Sony Playstation 3, you'll find little of substance to differentiate them from Berzerk, the quarter-gobbling monster of the 80s. The Berzerk template was two-dimensional; you steered a stick-man through corridors and shot robots before they shot you. Someone -- probably not the programmer -- made an awful lot of money with that game (garnering a small fortune from yours truly, for starters). It worked, in other words, so that's the template -- second-person shooter -- the game industry has run with.

Flash forward 26 years. The new "bots" are more sophisticated in their behavior, and the overall playing landscape is more or less three-dimensional. But that's it. Same basic template. The end.

There are a few other templates, to be sure -- the virtual pilot, team sports, hand-to-hand fighting, etc. -- but they've all been around for 25 years or longer. We are talking about an industry that has delivered increasingly more spectacular bells and whistles, while keeping the baseline product unchanged for over a quarter century. The automobile industry might be able to coast on its laurels for that length of time, but anyone trying to pull the same stunt with computers is begging for a spectacular fall.

If you eavesdrop on industry conversations, you'll overhear a fair bit of chatter over how to make games that appeal to women. This is a good start, but the pitches are telling: a popular scenario with the suits is a Tomb Raider-type game with a Brad Pitt look-alike.

Wrong, all wrong.

If you want to know what the most addictive video game for women is, I'll tell you for free: Tetris. I don't know a single woman with the capacity to resist. I've played Tetris; I've enjoyed Tetris; I've even been a Tetris freak. But women put me to shame. They'll play it for hours. Then, when they finally pull themselves away, they'll stare at you with an unusual intensity. You might flatter yourself into thinking it's your Axe bodyspray, but the fact is they're staring at the gaps between your ears and your shirt collar and deciding what algorhithmic shape best fits that space.

I have got absolutely no theory as to why Tetris is so huge with women; I'm just here to pound the pulpit and say, if a programmer or developer is truly interested in keeping the gaming industry an economic engine that fires on all cylinders, they'll leave the shooter freaks to figure it out for themselves, and concentrate on producing the next Tetris.

And good luck to 'em.

Virtual Reality: Too Much Is Not Enough

Microsoft releases its new X-Box 360 today. I, for one, could not be more underwhelmed. But then, I'm not the target demographic. I'm too old, too impatient, and a foul-weather gamer at best - if there's even so much as a book to be dusted or a half-decent TV commercial to be watched, I'll choose that over the gaming experience.

Nevertheless, I am a gamer. And when all the elements are in place I have terrific fun at it, too. But that is an astonishing rarity, for a very simple reason: game developers show so little imagination. This surprises me, given the sort of hardware that's been developed in the last 15 years. The average game pad has a minimum of eight buttons within immediate reach of your thumbs and fingers. Most games respond not just to a singular button being pressed, but to combinations being pressed in sequence. I'll let someone else figure out the mathematics (is that eight squared? Eight cubed?! More?!?). The long and short of it is we're dealing with an incredible variable that should conceivably result in a fertile breadth of interactive entertainment.

Alas, what we typically have is "Run + Jump + Kick + FIRE!" or "Accelerate + Turn + Brake + Turn" etc. The evolution from Pong to Castle Wolfenstein was indeed a remarkable one, chronicled in a pre-Cambrian bit-torrent sludge of quarter-plugging video games, but everything we've seen since shows no development whatsoever. The challenge, as currently framed by programmers, is how to make the familiar more interesting. To my mind, that's a bloody boring challenge.

The only people who can respond to this challenge are the CGI folks. The tack usually taken is to provide ever more "realistic" graphics. A lot of what we see as a result is very impressive, but this too seems to me to be a limiting and stagnant approach to gaming entertainment. Invariably, the graphics will look stiff and disappointing when compared to what you see outside your window (or, to use a more pertinent example that makes me shudder, outside your car's windshield. I can't help wondering if today's 16-year-old (exceptions allowed for) isn't a touch more prone to recklessness after playing a game like Need For Speed: Most Wanted).

If "realistic" is the predominant school of CGI rendering, the secondary school is "arcade". The former strives for exactly that; the latter bends the rules. Both work with laws of physics that relate to the ones we experience in life, but arcade CGI people will fudge and flex what we know - though very rarely, if ever, actually breaking our physical expectations on screen. Thus, Need For Speed will give you a Porsche physically responding to its surroundings - a rain-slick street, a brick restraining wall - the way you'd expect a Porsche to respond, while The Simpsons Hit & Run gives you a pink sedan that takes an incredible beating before bursting into flames and ejecting Bart Simpson, the driver, unscathed.

I tend to favor the latter, for several reasons. Playing with expectations is fun, and The Simpsons Hit & Run plays with a host of them. Kids drive cars, run over pedestrians who say things like "Spines don't bend that way!" or "This is a bad day for generic characters everywhere!" They jump incredible heights, fall off multi-storied buildings and land on their toes - all in aid of the sort of narrative hijinx you expect from Matt Groening's stable of writers. The action still takes place in a framework of limited expectations, but it exceeds those modest expectations and gets full marks from me.

It also looks unreal - it's 3-D rendering, but of the sort that is post-Toy Story, pre-The Incredibles. That is, it looks "animated", not "real".

"Animated" is another preference of mine. If something looks stiff, well - the viewer just assumes it's supposed to. Conversely, when "reality" is brought into play, it immediately distances the viewer with its discordant references: a game like LEGO Star Wars can be quite charming, where the other Star Wars offerings leave me cold.

Similarly, I'm curious to give the latest James Bond game (From Russia With Love) a spin. I'll admit I'm not expecting great things, even though the premise - Sean Connery! 1963!!! - is so very promising. The screen-shots alone are a disappointment. That looks like a boat, alright; that looks a lot like Connery; she almost looks like Tatiana; but that doesn't look anything like water.

The usual resort for Reality CGI programmers is "cover of darkness". So Wolfenstein looked absurd with its pastel blue flooring and bright red walls? Put it all in shadows and nightfall, and call it "Doom". As Walt Kelly's character Pogo self-consciously noted, "These silouhettes sure save a mess of drawin'." I'm sure most of From Russia With Love takes place at night. But I look at the terrific cover art for the game (borrowed from the movie posters of the time) and wonder why they didn't go the animated route, instead? Something like, say, XIII is the perfect example of how entrancing that technique can be. Drawing within the lines can provide surprisingly smart drama for the viewer/player - why not give it a shot?

But these are the minor kvetchings of a nearly-indifferent consumer. I won't pay the full $60 for a half-baked First-Person Shooter, or even a thrillingly engineered Race-and-Chase. I'll bide my time for the next year or two and get them used - if I'm still curious. In the meantime, I might just peruse some of the Open Source games available. My brother tells me the recent Castle Wolfenstein engine has been released to the public, to some amusing results. Allied Troops could be fighting the Nazis in North Africa, only to see the Millennium Falcon fly off overhead. One minute you might be fighting monsters, the next you might be firing a salvo at an angry George Jetson. It's still a First-Person Shooter, but at least you're a shooter in a world that's more akin to something imagined by Philip Jose Farmer - or stranger. And that's a step in the right direction.