Game Under Podcast 103

Join Phil and Tom on the awesome adventure of amateur podcasts, as they discuss the prequel to Life is Strange season 2 (does it stand up to Papo y Yo?), petrol sniffing, Harlan Ellison's legal legacy, C-Span, the present state of the internet (part 2 of a trilogy), and whether or not Silent Hill is a church—God took umbrage at this, and cut us off; but we will return to the subject in the next episode!

In the meantime, listen to the current episode here.

Takayoshi Sato single-handedly produced the FMVs, living in the office for 2 and a half years.

Postcards From Silent Hill

I happened to be up in the early morning (watching Australia lose to Peru) after finishing Silent Hill so, as one does after completing what is widely considered to be one of the most terrifying games ever, I decided to go on a walk in the dead of night*—only to discover I had been transported to the foggy fairyland of Silent Hill itself!

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I wouldn't advise parking here.

I decided to document my discoveries as if I've learnt anything at all from classic horror games, it's that you must make a record of what you witness; if only so you may continue once you die. But rather than put pen to notebook or ink ribbon to typewriter, I made a photographic record instead. Which is a completely different mechanic from Siren that has nothing to do with saving, but discovering ghosts.**

Oops.

Luckily I survived.

—And maybe I even found a ghost or two?

You be the judge.

Oh! And please look forward to my full impressions of Silent Hill, coming in episode 103 of the Game Under Podcast! 

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As you can see here, it really is fog; not just the auto-focus failing in lowlight.

*The early morning being the night is a bit confusing, isn't it?

**I think. I haven't actually played it.

Game Under Podcast Episode 102

Having filled the entire front page with filler, Tom and Phil finally return with a new episode of the Game Under Podcast. 

There's some stuff about games in it, some stuff about the internet, too, but the real attraction is Phil's new feature, Tom's Five in Five.

Please look forward to hearing it in all the podcasts you actually listen to. But now, at least, you know where it's from!

Listen here.

LEGO

By now it's generational trope, told year after year by those pining for their youth, or at least the dollars that their toys/ comic books/ baseball cards/ pogs/ video games could now be generating on Ebay.  It goes like this, "I left my X collection at home when I went away to college, and my parents threw out/sold at garage sale all my favourite stuff.  It'd be worth a fortune these days".

And for over 20 years, that is what I thought had happened with my 1980's collection of Legoland Space sets.  A few months ago, my mother revealed that in fact all the LEGO I had carefuly saved for during my childhood, were in fact intact.

As a kid, I played with these a lot, but I was always careful to keep the boxes, instructions, even the small plastic bags that held the legos.  I don't know why, I just did.  And for the last couple of decades, I figured they had been thrown out, sold or given away to neighbours.  Mostly becase the first time I went home after about 10 years, they were nowhere to be found.  I never said anything to my Mom as I did not want her to feel bad.

I've been very busy since, so I've only slowly started to put them back together.  There is still a third more to go.  I was happy to see that all the catalogs and ephemera I picked up from the toystore was also still together, along with the hand drawn plans and inventories I put together as a 11 year old.

I'll finish up this story in the next episode of the Game Under Podcast.

Phil Fogg

Life is Strange: Before the Storm Limited Edition

Without intention I was able to pick up the Limited Edition copy of the second season of Don't Knod's Life is Strange text adventure. (I was strolling through a GameStop looking to  buy a copy of Playstation All Stars Battle Royale, but sadly their PS3 selection has dwindled down to about 30 games).

Square Enix chose Nine Sticks to develop the Life is Strange: Before the Storm, which is set prior to the events of the first game, which Tom and I recorded a spoiler cast.

Quality matte finish cardboard was used. The inserts inside smartly hold everything together.

Since I really enjoyed the first game, and always regretted not having a physical copy, I picked up the Limited Edition for $47 on sale (usually $80 in Australia - US customers can pick it up for $29 USD as of the time of this writing).

Unlike many "limited edition" games, whch come with digital trinkets, this is one of the better ones I have picked up in recent years.  It comes with a hardcover full colour artbook, an original soundtrack on CD, as well as a disc version of all episodes of Life is Strange: Before the Storm

A music CD! I may have to pull out my Dreamcast to listen to it.

In addition to the physical items you also get a code to download the entire first game, as well as a bonus episode for Before the Storm. A few digital trinkets in the form of additional outfits are also offered.

In terms of value, I was hapy with the package, for impressions of the game, you'll have to wait until the next episode of the Game Under Podcast.

- Phil Fogg

Something I Wrote About Braid

It is perfectly symmetrical. But so was the thing about Cibele. I'd recommend listening to this episode of the Endless Backlog Podcast as well, or instead, wherein I discuss Braid with Gagan.

But if you do want to read this anyway, here it is. 

It doesn't even have any pictures. But if it did, they'd be pictures of Braid, which is one of the ugliest games ever made, so maybe that's a good thing.

You could also read this instead, which has at least one good picture, and offers great advice to all.

Several Ways to Make Australia Great Again

I have mentioned my exciting childhood history of vandalism on the Game Under podcast before, but, alas, in recent years my vandalism has been limited to boring acts of civic duty, or incompetent attempts of upholding the ideals of beauty and truth. Unfortunately civic duty, no matter how well meaning, may never uphold an ideal, due to its inherent pragmatism. (Admittedly, it is usually used to support the ideal of love; but more often it simply perverts it.)

Nevertheless, I can't help myself responding when I come across stickers or scribbles by people engaged in public acts of self-pity. This is not something to be lauded, but it is an act of civic duty, since most acts of public self-pity are political statements.

One longs for those Great Days of Yore, when one could still ride the Punt Road punt across the river.

Thus, when I came across the self-pity slogan Make Australia Great Again scrawled on a local stretch of the Yarra, I was doomed to self-degradation. Not only did this statement fail to tell us when Australia was great, it offered no ideas on just how to make Australia great again! Even worse, if we assume the greatness of Australia had anything to do with its culture, the use of the slogan itself suggested that Australia was still great, as one of the few cultural inclinations that can be traced back to the very beginnings of anything like a national character (if such a thing even exists; the experts are divided) is jealousy and fear of America; depending on whether you were for or feared liberty (revolution).

To make matters worse, Australia Day was just around the corner. So, when the day of national celebration and condemnation came along, I couldn't help myself, and walked down to the Yarra with a Sharpie in my pocket; all ready to perform my patriotic duty of participating in civil society.

So, taking the statement at face value, I assumed that something must have changed in Australia at some point, even if my fellow citizen wasn't sure what had. Along the way there was plenty of evidence that a lot had changed even very recently: instead of a bunch of drunken fellow citizens enjoying the resplendent surroundings of the Yarra on another meaningless public holiday, there was a convoy of cyclists riding past with Australian flags waving in the wind protruding from their helmets and/or bicycles (this must be terrible for aerodynamics; nevertheless, all were dressed in Lycra—something to be ashamed of not so long ago), and instead of people paddling past on cheap kayaks or canoes, there were whole teams of rowers spending the public holiday training! What the fuck? There was even an expensive yacht with an Australian flag as big as its bow motoring along this residential stretch of the Yarra, not showing off in the city. At least its spiffily-dressed sailors were almost certainly drunk; further flaunting their wealth by sipping on full glasses of (presumably tremendously expensive) champagne.

But this sort of change is a bit hard to encapsulate in a pithy slogan, so I humbly suggested that Australia could be made great again with decolonisation; colonisation being the most obvious, and greatest, change in the history of this country—a country that suppresses its own history in the most effective way possible: making it as uninteresting, unimpressive, and pathetic as it can. As a result, everyone's heard of Captain Cook and the convicts He shipped to Australia on His First Fleet, but not much else. Oh sure, some people know there was a gold rush in Victoria, but other than making a bunch of true blue cobbers rich, it probably didn't affect the state much—let alone the country—right? And fuck rich cunts, anyway! Well, maybe not anymore, since politicians have started affecting posh, educated accents, rather than middle class (British) or bogan ones (unless they're Lotharios), and I find myself living not in South Yarra, but Soho Yarra; I digress.

Now, while I do not believe in censorship, other citizens do, so rather than coming up with a suggestion that might be better for making Australia great again than my own modest proposal of decolonising it, they simply crossed it out. So I came up with a few alternative solutions, as well.

If you can't read my awful writing, clockwise it goes: Decolonisation (censorship inevitably fails) or White Australia policy to [make Australia great again], [make Australia great again] with another gold rush, with censorship, or import criminals to [make Australia great again].

The White Australia policy wouldn't really have much material effect on the country, but it would result in better integration for incoming migrants, because we'd be importing migrants explicitly supported by the country's racial policy; that's better than being supported by a shitty citizenship test that most citizens can't pass anyway. Which would you rather be told on becoming a citizen: you're the people just like us who we like just because you're just like us (incidentally, you're a fucking wog and we still hate you, cunt), or: we begrudgingly accept you, because you're smarter than most of our dumb as dog shit citizenry, but, hey, at least we're still racially superior, so fuck you, too, mate? Indeed, the current policy results in a feeling of inferiority for the citizenry, as it provides objective proof that once a migrant has stayed in Australia for long enough to be able to take (and pass) a citizenship test, they have in fact become better citizens than the citizenry itself! 

The gold rush, which not only materially affected Victorian history, but Australian, British, and even world history, was surely a time when Australia (or at least Victoria), could be considered great. Another gold rush would enrich the country's economy, while solving unemployment for a brief period of time (albeit simultaneously resulting in a massive labour shortage), all over again. Then we can go through another crippling depression, but at least a lot of great architecture and institutions will have been built in the meantime.

Censorship. Now, other than allowing us to spend less energy thinking or being outraged, I can't really imagine how it would make things much better for anyone.* But apparently this was the only plan anyone else could come up with to make Australia great again, so I thought I'd mention it, as my fellow citizen was only cable of drawing squiggly lines, and not actually writing it themselves and, as you can see, their plan failed as I simply rewrote the same statement. At least they were leading by example?

Importing criminals would not only complement a new trend in Australia's post-war history of copying America (specifically: sadism for profit; or, the privatisation of punishing criminals), but also give Australia a pliable labour force that would work not only below the minimum wage as migrants do today, but for no money at all; instead they need only be promised clemency! Almost-but-not-quite slave labour, a new market (human trafficking of the criminal class; a throwback to Captain Cook's First Fleet), and more jobs for Aussie tradies (someone has to build the penitentiaries)! Everybody wins.

Luckily, someone else came up with a better, apolitical statement, subsuming my own—and my fellow citizens'—bullshit. It may not have made Australia great again, but it certainly made this little patch of concrete a bit better than it was before.

*If this constitutes censorship, then perhaps the subsumption of bullshit, by something less bullshit, is a valid form of censorship, after all.

Call of Duty - Collection Update

As I've mentioned on the show a couple of times, my relationship with Activision's Call of Duty franchise is very casual.  After the release of World at War, I have only picked up used copies of the games, often 2 years after release. I am not even console-loyal -- bouncing around between the various Playstation and Xbox systems.

I was therefore surpised that I've only missed out on five games in the series, the original, Black Ops 2 and 3, Infinite Warfare and 2017's WWII.

Not quite in release order.

The list for the main series so far:

1. Call of Duty (2003)
2. Call of Duty 2 (2005)
3. Call of Duty 3 (2006)
4. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007)
5. Call of Duty: World at War (2008)
6. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009)
7. Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010)
8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011)
9. Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2012)
10. Call of Duty: Ghosts (2013)
11. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2014)
12. Call of Duty: Black Ops III (2015)
13. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016)
14. Call of Duty: WWII (2017)

Ghosts was the first Call of Duty game to not include a gun on the front cover. Tom and I used to have a segment on game covers called "Gun or No Gun". The joke was there was a gun on 99% of game covers.

It was leaked this week that the 2018 entry in the series will not feature a campaign mode, which is the only reason I pick up the games, so depending on how that experiment pans out for Activision WWII may well be the last Call of Duty game I buy, which will be a fitting capstone given my introduction to the series was the incredible Call of Duty 2 on the Xbox 360.

Call of Duty's players are mostly derided in gaming culture, with the games seen as being intended solely for the same narrow band of player that buys Madden every year, which is an easy and unfair categorisation. Despite the online braggadocio and bombastic style of the game, they are none-the-less enjoyable shooters with unmatched polish and can be a mindless, though engaging game experience.

I found Ghosts campaign to actually be thoughtful and reflective, and throughly playable and diverse (though not quite up to the standard of Titanfall II, which it was clearly emulating).

If WWII is the end of the road for Call of Duty as we have known it, I am completely at peace with that. It's been a very long and succesful run with relatively original take on the FPS genre.

- Phil Fogg

YakuzaKillzONE Decade

In this written installment of the YakuzaKillzONE Minute (but this time aproximately 4,734,720 minutes), Tom Towers offers his final thoughts on Killzone 2's multiplayer, after playing it for nine years. Yes, the servers finally shut down.

That's some hot shit! He's a real wild man.

But what does this have to do with Yakuza? Well, Yakuza 3 came out in the same year as Killzone 2, and Yakuza 3 was the first Yakuza game he played. So, absolutely nothing, really.

But read it anyway; it's rare he writes about videogames these days, so it must be good, right? Here it is, linked again for your convenience.

Not Even Pataphysics Can Save the Internet

If you’ve been living in  a cave with a bear for the past century, then you may not know that Pataphysics is the imaginary solution to problems.* Like all art, its business is also the conception, gestation, and rearing of the future. The trouble is, any solution to a problem, unless discovered by chance (which many solutions are), must, by necessity, at some time be imagined. Indeed, a problem itself must be imagined in the first place; something cannot be a problem, without the imaginary classification of problem. It would still exist, but it wouldn't be a problem. After all, one person's problem is another's solution.

Wait a minute, wasn't Pataphysics originally just a way of writing hilarious French farces?**

Yes, but now Pataphysicists exist outside of an in-joke (or as part of a global, open in-joke) and sometimes they try to solve problems by doing the opposite of orthodoxy. Sadly, this sort of attitude cannot be creative, or particularly imaginative, because it may only imitate or innovate its original source; albeit in the form of a mirror image or reactionary opposite. 

But, what does this have to do with the internet?

Well, Pataphysicists have made a search engine, with the noble goal of making the internet a little more like it used to be, before it had to be indexed to be usable. (Or so we're told by the people who index it.)

Unfortunately—and unsurprisingly—they have only succeeded in creating a mirror image of Google and YouTube.

As you can see below, I used the search term "work" and the image source provided by the pataphysical search engine (if it isn't limited in such a way, it simply finds pornography) on Google and YouTube, as well as the pataphysical search engine, and the results are almost identical:

A pataphysical image search for "work": all results are things directly related to, or assosciated with work.

Maybe people just work a lot?

A google image search for "work" and "getty" which has not only turned up similar work-related themes to the pataphysical search, but its foremost image, like the Pataphysical search's, is of an exhausted woman with her head in her hands.

At least it includes the great idler, Prince Charles; 69 years of age, and still not a king. If anything, Google has given us a less relevant result than the Pataphysical search! 

Here the pataphysical search has found a bunch of music videos, some of which don't appear to be very related to work. Well done.

But a YouTube search also found a bunch of music videos, seemingly unrelated to work! Still, they all had work in their title or description...

Maybe just try this map of the internet instead? You can find things you weren't looking for more easily (although, if I look up "work" on YouTube, I'm not looking for music, am I?); but you do have to wade through a lot of pornography websites. And it doesn't include GameUnder, the most interesting and unexpected site on the internet!

My own solution is that search engines allow you to tune the relevance of your results. Why not let us use the algorithm in reverse? Instead of the most related result, give us the least related. How about giving us the opposite of what we want? If we google "pizzagate", then give us websites on Russian collusion with the White House, and vice versa. Why not put everything into context? If we're googling "Ferguson", give us results on the LA Riots or the really scary original Red Scare. It won't have much effect on changing stupid beliefs (on the contrary, exposing an idiot to a poorly articulated argument against their idiocy is only likely to result in a greater devotion to their original idiotic belief), but it will make some people feel a little better.

It is another mirror solution...but at least I admit it's not very clever or creative. That's what people want, right?—mediocrity that admits it's mediocre, so we can all feel better about our own mediocrity.

*Originally it was a way for Alfred Jarry and his friends to make fun of their pretentious science teacher, and his made-up answers to their science-related questions.

**Download this and its subtitles now, as it's absolutely hilarious. Monty Python meets Macbeth. It's apparently the perfect time to watch it, as people say it's a great commentary on Donald Trump (just because Ubu is plump and likes fatty food?); but it isn't. I don't recall Donald Trump reaching the White House through a millitary coup (and it is a great commentary on military coups). Although, his debraining machine is as effective as Ubu's, but targets an entirely different audience.